Binge culture

We want it all and we want it now.  Matilda is two and came into the house the other day, her first words being -"I want Peppa Pig - Now."  No Hello granddad, just a demand for what she wanted. Instant gratifications seems to be the norm and I feel uncomfortable with that thought.

I am as guilty as anyone else in some respects, especially when it comes to wine and TV series. There was a time when a bottle of wine would las a couple of days and a series on TV would take weeks to watch and savour. Nowadays one bottle inevitably leads to another and it is very easy to watch multiple episodes of a series at one sitting while imbibing the aforementioned.  A bar of chocolate has a tendency to vanish almost instantly and I can order anything that I want on the internet and get it the next day. Waiting always seemed to enhance the pleasure of so many things and yet now we are not prepared to wait for very much at all. If we are kept waiting we moan and complain, convinced that our own time is far more important than anyone else's.  In all we are becoming spoiled and the next generations are simply going along with it. We cannot blame them for our shortcomings.

Sports day

I just got back from Oscar's sports day.  Restricted to the lower school it was a lovely display of children competing in a totally supportive environment and it was so nice that in every event, all that entered finished even when hopelessly beaten.  I believe that all of the children participated and a good time seemed to be had by all. Only one boy who was squeezed out of first place lay on the ground, writhing in imaginary agony, clearly having watched too much football.

It is a nice end to a school year and this was well organised. Everyone got stickers for their performances and all were cheered on for their efforts but parents grandparents and teachers alike. Oscar now moves from reception into year one and has been separated from many of his immediate friends; time will tell the effects of that move, though his teacher maintains that he has been placed with children that he works best with and that has to be a good thing.

When I was at school, sports day was generally held to be a good day. We could enter for any event that we chose and each event had a standard time or distance that we aimed to reach or better. Should you reach that standard you were awarded a house point and thus it didn't matter too much who won or lost. There were certificates for first three places but reaching the standard was the most important thing.  House points were awarded for all sorts of things during the course of the year, all sporting events counted towards the house, as did debating society, drama groups and public speaking, and at the end of the year a shield was awarded to the house that had accumulated most points during the year. All pretty meaningless in the long run but it did encourage a team ethos and gave the feeling that you could contribute something.

Many schools abandoned the house system along with most things competitive on the grounds that losing is a negative experience.  It can be, Oscar hates losing, but we cannot always be winners and learning that can only be achieved by losing. Parents and schools today seem to reward every form of behaviour and encourage kids towards mediocrity. Exams can be taken over and over again in order to achieve a grade that is acceptable and that in itself makes many exam qualifications pretty meaningless. Some grow up thinking that they are wonderful and that the world is there for the taking. They find that life is not like that and that there is competition for everything in the real world and those that can compete are the ones most likely to succeed.

Participation in sports day is important and learning to lose gracefully is also a life skill. On the other hand it is also important to try hard to succeed and to aim for a high standard in all we do even if we cannot always be number one.

The world is full of ass holes

At the front of the house, stuck away in a corner next to the garage, there is a water butt. The plastic lid was subject to the wind removing it and so I placed a couple of bricks on top to keep it in place. This morning I found the lid and the bricks missing, There was no wind last night and besides, it would be some breeze to lift two housebricks.  Someone stole the plastic lid of my water butt, probably the same person who stole the solar light that illuminated the from steps a while ago.

I can see that a passing drunk might engage in mindless vandalism but to steal two bricks and a plastic lid seems very strange to say the very least. Sometimes I despair of the human race and what it is changing into.

So fortunately I had a spare lid lying around - I don't throw much away, and that fitted perfectly. Sadly I felt the need to screw it in place, thus making it much harder to remove, though I suppose someone will tear it off if they feel the need. I never thought the day would come when I felt the need to protect a water butt.

I know that there are plenty of nice people around but it seems that they are in danger of becoming a minority and so my tendency to avoid people is encouraged once again.

There was a wonderful episode of Hancock's Half hour, when Hancock, tired of society in general becomes a hermit. I think it was called The wild man of the Woods.  Driven to desperate measures by the people that he had dealings with, he abandons society altogether and moves into the wilds of East Cheam.

His peace and quiet is short lived as others see that way of living as being desirable and soon the woods are filled with hermits and before long they have shops and a cinema set up. It seems that it is impossible to get off the bus and we are all being dragged along on the same journey.

My own need to be with people outside my small circle of friends and family, is dwindling as time passes, and although I would not wish to live alone, I wish to steer clear of something that I cannot change.

Star Wars

The latest obsession seems to be Star Wars. Not me I hasten to add, but Oscar, who, at the age of five seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things to do with five of the six movies. I am holding back on the Revenge of the Sith as it is rated as a 12 and I have to make some attempt to be a responsible grandparent.  We have watched all of the others together and discussed what he sees as issues at great length over and over again. For someone who talks all the way through the films he seems to be very aware of what goes on and knows all of the main characters including Darth Maul's brother who I didn't even know existed.  He clearly talks a lot about it with his school friends and of course he believes everything that they tell him.  I have tried hard to convince him that there is no Star Wars Ten and that even Star Wars Seven has yet to be released, but he insisted that his mates know the real truth.

Kids have a good  idea of the differences between good and evil, though Oscar seems to distinguish these traits through the colours of the light sabres. Even a broken stick in his imagination becomes a light sabre in his fertile imagination and he will re-enact fights over and over again, mostly choosing the character who wins, whether it be a goodie or a baddie.  It seems that the fighting is the best part for him and the space ships, battle stars and relationships other than enemies, are trivial in comparison.

Of course his sister, who is two, gets sucked in to his fantasy world and goes along with him as well as she is able, even though she has not seen any of the movies.  This is ok as far as it goes but alarmingly the other day she said to her mother - "Mummy, I choose the dark side."  I am now in trouble.

A sense of humour

At the weekend I went to the Hexagon theatre to see a performance by a stand up comedian. This was a first for me and I admit that I enjoyed his show enormously. Milton Jones manages to entertain his audience without resorting to profanities and seemingly avoided being offensive to anyone in particular. Having said that I am sure the there would be people who would have found something offensive in his jokes but it is unlikely that they would have been there in the first place. Most of us will avoid deliberately attending things that we know may be offensive and yet there are those who seek out such experiences and gain great pleasure from complaining.

Comedy is about underlining the ridiculous and of course most things that we take seriously can be seen as ridiculous  when viewed from a different perspective. We all do things that seem ridiculous to others and have all been laughed at. Mostly we brush it off but for some, being laughed at can be a torture, especially when young.

There was a time when comedians could joke about anything and offend anyone and everyone with relative impunity, but those days are long since gone.   Professor Tim Hunt, recently made some pretty poor jokes about women scientists at a convention. They were not funny or even accurate depictions of women but he has paid a huge penalty for his remarks and was forced into resigning from his job.  A career wasted and a life changed dramatically for a few misguided words that were not particularly offensive.

To lampoon Islam in any way shape or form is even more hazardous than the criticism of women. So far no-one. as far as I know has been murdered for mocking women, and yet public challenges to Islam are seen as capital offences and the world seems to have taken this on board and no-one will dare to stand up and highlight the ludicrousness of a cult that is above criticism for fear of being attacked physically.

Marge Simpson had a way with words; she loved Canada because it was "So Bland".  We are in danger of going that way. Blandness offends no-one, it challenges no-one and has nothing much to say. Things unchallenged will continue as they are, which though comfortable for some is not necessarily a good thing.  The world is in danger of levelling out and I think that in itself is pretty dull. No-one should be above criticism, even women and Muslims.

Crop failure

There is quite a lot of the Christian philosophy that I do not disagree with.  One of the fundamental tenets of most religions seems to to be about loving one's neighbour and being tolerant  of other ways of thinking.

History tells a different story however.  Wherever a state is taken over by a religion, the basic message of that religion seems to be overlooked and the reality is that it is all about power and the manipulation of people to do the will of the rich or the powerful.

People, and I include myself in this, complain that the government serves the rich at the expense of the poor. It is a truism that does not alter much whichever political party happens to be elected. Wealth corrupts, and the more we have, the more we want; there never seems to be enough and modern life seems only concerned with the accumulation of things. We are bombarded with commercials that successfully convince us that we do not have enough and so we respond by spending our money on things that we don't really need or even want.

The majority of the populace do not really give a damn about the poor and the incapable unless they happen to fall into their ranks, and so we elect a government that  appeals to the greedy and acquisitive side of human nature that seems to predominate.   There are some who care, but the numbers of poor people will always outrun the capacity of the carers to do anything for them. It is a societal issue and yet there are ways of reducing poverty on a global scale.

Many of the poorest nations are dominated by Roman Catholicism, and as such are unable to exercise free will when it comes to contraception.  So they are overpopulated and become dependent on foreign aid. Thus more people survive and breed and so on. Most poverty is due to overpopulation and this is something that can be controlled.

The churches all seem to pray for an end to poverty and yet in reality, they depend on it for their survival. The Churches are major landowners and are fabulously wealthy, and yet like the rest of us, are not prepared to shed that wealth, choosing instead to sing along with the capitalist songs and increase their wealth whilst bleating their platitudes from the pulpits. If their Jesus ever existed, which is debatable, he would be ashamed of what has sprung from the seeds that he sowed.

The Bridge

I have just finished, well not literally this minute, the Swedish/Danish crime thriller The Bridge. I confess that I have actually seen it before but it is so compelling and the visuals so good. Of course it is subtitled but that doesn't matter. It is a pretty amazing piece of TV and Sofia Helin is just gorgeous.

What prompted me to write about this, is that whilst browsing through Netflix for something to watch, I came across a second series and watched that in a couple of sittings. It was only when I had seen the second series that I realised that I couldn't remember the plot of series one and so, i watched series one again. Now i can't remember too much about series two so should I watch it again? Maybe not as by the time I see the end of it I will have forgotten series one again and so on - groundhog day.

I am the same with books. I can read and enjoy a book and only days later I forget what it was about and sometimes forget whether I have read something or not. Maybe I am just lazy but my memory has never been wonderful and in recent years it is getting worse. I find that writing this blog gets more difficult as I have difficulty remembering what I have already rambled on about.

I do remember some things well. Long term memory is pretty much intact though always there is case for suspecting the accuracy of this memories. We do tend to be pretty selective in some respects and often blank out things that we would rather not recall.

Anyway Sofia Helin, mmmmm, plays a detective with some form of autism. She finds it very hard to relate to others but has a tenacity and single minded approach that makes her a good detective. Her performance is wonderful and so believable as she tries hard to find her place in society. The story line is excellent and like most scandinavian tv, beautifully filmed and edited.

I must watch groundhog day again one of these days.

Book club

Not long ago I joined a book club. It was an attempt on my part to become more sociable,  a skill that seems to be slipping away from me as the years go by.  I find conversation more and more difficult, probably because I have less and less to say.

I missed the first meeting for some reason, maybe because I hadn't read the book, though it seems that doesn't bother some people, who turned up anyway. So anyway having flunked the first meeting, I gritted my teeth and made the effort to go to the next one. I had no idea what to expect, and frankly, my first thought went along the lines of what am I doing here. I felt like I was at the dentists with a room full of strangers waiting for something to happen. There are thirteen of us, enough for a coven, and the first meeting did feel very odd. The chosen book for that one was We are all beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, not something that I would have chosen to read, but as it  happens I did read it and found it reasonably interesting. The meeting though had a weird formality to it, each person in turn giving their own particular opinion and once we had all had a say, that was it, meeting over and the next book chosen.

The next book was The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth. Again a book that I may never have picked up as it is written in verse. However I did read it and found it strangely compelling. So I turned up to the next meeting. Opinions divided between those who loved it and those that didn't get past the first page or two. I tried to broaden the discussion and did have a degree of success though I still know almost nothing of the other members of the group and would be hard pressed to recognise any of them in a crowd. Most of them have been together as a group for quite some time and i am still a newcomer and a old fart at that.

I am not sure that it is helping me to enhance sociability, there is a get together dinner taking place next month and I cannot make that which is a pity but I probably won't be the only one. I will stick with it for a while anyway and if nothing else it gives me a new range of reading material.

The current book is To Kill a Mockingbird and it takes me back to my schooldays and O level English. I am sure that there will be plenty of issues raised in the next discussion - maybe we should take along some old O level papers and see how we do.

Post 678

I didn't realise how many posts I had created until today; 677 pages of randomness with no sense of coherence or even much sense. However it must be serving a purpose of some kind as i am still doing it. I rarely look back at what I have already said and so it is quite likely that I have repeated myself, or have covered the same issues over and over again.  I haven't had an anti religious rant for a while, so maybe I have said all that I need to on that particular issue.

I went to a concert the other night. Rochester is not far away and the sixteen were appearing there in a programme of renaissance Spanish music. Under Sir Harry Christophers, the sixteen are a remarkable  group of performers and the acoustics of the cathedral accentuated the sheer beauty of the music and of the human voice.

The evening reminded me that there are two groups of humans, those that create and those that do not. I know - an arbitrary distinction but never the less a very real one. I admire creators, and I know that I am not one of them. The real creators are those with visions that enable the evolution of the human race, whilst the vast majority of us are dragged along in their wake. The composers, the artists, the scientists, the architects and the engineers are those that make the world a much better place, while the rest of us do little more than produce problems for them to solve.

Fundamentally most of us are pretty useless. We are probably more helpless than our cave dwelling ancestors. I have never produced fire without matches or a lighter, and although I am quite practical, I  could not make the tools that I need to make anything.  Most people have never grown their own food, caught their own fish or hunted an animal. Even presented with an whole animal, most of us would have no idea how to prepare for eating.

Stranded in the wilderness, most of us would not survive. Even finding water fit to drink would be an issue and as for clothing ourselves, well no chance.  As a species we are so reliant upon those that can do things that we cannot and upon a technology that is way beyond our comprehension, and yet the things that are valued pay little homage to what is really important. As a species we have been sucked into the consumerist pursuit of money and it is those that manipulate money that seem to be valued. Bankers and other money launderers create nothing and yet they are sitting in the control seat, determining the direction and speed of our journey into oblivion.

Education is a political football that  has been manipulated and tinkered with for dogmatic ends and any real creativity in schools is being stifled before it has a chance to grow. The arts are being attacked by a government that cannot reason beyond the end of the cheque book, whilst our universities are just another tool of the marketplace.

Those that can create things that are worthwhile are becoming less and less abundant as the Conservative clone army grows and grows.  Already things are getting very bland in so many areas. Modern music is pretty much lacking originality, enabling ancient bands to keep touring, simply because what they have has not been replaced by something better.

The sixteen, and other highly skilled groups of musicians seem to attract an audience with a very narrow age range. I guess it was always thus, but what future is there for quality?