PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE LITTLE STATUSES AND MEMES

Lots of passive-aggressive little Facebook memes and status updates. Every day, news feed jammed with the bleating of moral and emotional cowards.
Look at me please.
Watch me eat my cake and have it.
You? Oh, no! I didn’t mean you! Eat my plausible deniability and choke. If you have to resort to guilt-tripping someone on Facebook or twitter to make them behave well or get them involved in your life, chances are, they either: don’t really want to be in your life; don’t really deserve to be in your life; or were never really there to begin with. Or vice versa. Any of the above. Or, if you actually care about a person and your relationship with them, try this . . . Try pretending it’s 1998. Pick up the telephone. Pretend it’s attached to the wall, or only has a few minutes of talk time in its enormous battery. Pretend there is no SMS or social media. Pretend they might be dead tomorrow. Call them. Better yet, arrange to meet them somewhere. Look them in the eye and...

A tiny taste, for anyone who may have wondered, of what I’ve been working on this year – instead of, you know, the morbidly introspective or shouty political blog posts.

Creating worlds is harder than fretting or bitching about the one you’re in, but infinitely more rewarding. The priest I could have written myself. His appearance, that is. Had I written his character I’d have made him less virtuous – or at least more corruptible. But no, this was a man who earnestly sought to do good. Thought at first this made him an idiot. Who knew such a heart could co-exist with such a mind? and in such a body – built so strong, so handsome almost, so seeming normal sitting behind his desk. Then he hoists himself and ambles on little crooked legs and you notice the outsize head, the shoulders all skewiff as he proffers that muscular handshake, smiling warm from somewhere near your navel. So here he is, God’s little joke, welcoming me to my new home. And he’s gushing about clean ai

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There’s a story old women tell in Eastern Europe or the Middle-East. I can’t remember which and it doesn’t matter. A story told by old women in one of those places where old women – mothers and grandmothers, sisters and wives – understand suffering. I may embellish it in the telling, but that doesn’t matter either. The things that have hurt you, the old women say, will never leave you. They talk about a box. You can’t keep that pain inside all the time and can’t keep looking at it, so you put it in a box. You’re attached to the box – maybe by an umbilical cord. It’s part of you but outside you. To move anywhere you have to carry it. Occasionally the box will get too heavy – you’ve been living life one-handed – you have to set it down. This is when you stop, open the box, and remind yourself what’s inside. You remind yourself it’s real, a part of you, and that you’ve been able to bear it. There will be more in the box than last time you looked. If you’ve been paying attention the n

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“I am the warm little centre that the life of the universe crowds around”
– Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club

This is fantastic! Why did nobody tell me?! Technology delivers on paradise promise. Early adopter I am not. If not Luddite, suspicious and nostalgic. Wary eyes in undergrowth. Let others eat the berries. No need iron, still have plenty stones . . . Have a laptop these days. Mobile phone (Nokia 5110) inserted in typewriter wouldn’t connect to interweb. Made typing hard. Have smart phone too now. Smarter than me. Nokia second hand. Nicely three years ago. Touch screen no. But . . . iPod! iPod iPod! iPod! (Microsoft spell-check recognises not) Used to have walkman. Discman. Clunky. Junky. Battery eating unwieldy drop and break it chew cassettes and scratch CDs. Bleh. Leave at home. Left at mercy of world. Had to pay attention. iPod. Fits right in pocket. Own little world next to house keys. Music best injected straight in head and mixed in

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