"People are bloody ignorant apes."

I try to like people.  I used to be gregarious once upon a time but somehow these days it all seems too much effort. Don't get me wrong, there are people that I like a lot and I can even cope with small groups but en masse, people generally make me want to withdraw into my cosy little shell. Even walking through the high street is, for me, an unpleasant experience; everyone seems oblivious about the presence of others and the respect for personal space seems to be a thing of the past.

I know that the flaw is in me and I try to analyse it. Partly it has to do with hearing loss. Having only one ear is quite a handicap. I have no perception of depth of sound and none of direction either. All sounds come from the same source and that could be anywhere. Where there are many sound sources, they all come in together and it is impossible to distinguish one from another and so I feel isolated in crowds where everyone is talking at once or if there is a plethora of background noise. It is hard to describe really but I just cannot function well in a crowd.

My intolerance of other people becomes more enhanced as I get older and in a few days I shall be heading for the airport.  Those places seethe with bodies and noise and smell. As soon as you enter the terminal you are trapped into a processing machine. Expected to check in three hours prior to the flight then herded through queues and  into the departure lounge along with the rest of those on the same flight.  I will examine the company carefully and hope that I don't have to sit next to the enormously fat person, the one with a cough or the one with a young child of any description. Flying is bad enough without making the nightmare worse.

In small select groups, people are ok. I enjoy spending time with friends and family and although I am happy enough in my own company, I would not wish to be alone for an extended period of time.

In Terry Pratchetts book "Small Gods" the villain dies and finds himself in a desert of black sand alone apart from the figure of Death. Death says "YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE EXPRESSION - HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE. IN TIME YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG."  *
Death vanishes and leave him there for eternity.

* Death always speaks in capital letters
** Samuel Beckett.

Living in the past

This year has begun strangely. Already a number of names that I grew up with have died and January is only half done. Someone said the other day that looking back into the past is pointless and that we should either live in the present or look forwards.  I certainly live in the present, and yet I find that replaying the past has many positive aspects. At my age, speculation about the future seems rather pointless, especially as those dying around me are much the same age as I am. My best friend from childhood is very ill and unlikely to last long and talking about old times with him is much more pleasant and productive than thinking about what is yet to come. I suppose the thing is, that as you get older, you have far more past than you do future and the distant past is far easier to recall than what happened yesterday.

Talking about the past can also be cathartic, buried memories can be the cause of issues that we do not understand, while opening those memories can enable us to put them away and allow them to rest. Most of us have skeletons in our cupboards and life when we were children was very different to what it is today. Our parents had lived through the terrors of the second world war, many were traumatised by what they had been through, just like their own parents, and there was no counselling in those days, you just had to get on with it. No-one wanted to talk about the wars; it was as if the telling of it would unleash nightmares and make it all happen again and so it was blanked out. No parent is perfect, and times were very hard for young working class families.

We edit our memories all of the time and by talking with those whose lives overlapped can help correct the errors and put things into perspective. We can still bury the unpleasant if we wish, but however bad the experiences may have been, they are part of who we are and accepting that enables us to live with who we are today.

I look back a lot, especially when I hear of the deaths of my contemporaries, and I am trying to create a log of my life, both in this blog and in a more extensive autobiography. This way my children and grandchildren will have a glimpse into the past that might serve to inform them of their own roots, whilst allowing me to indulge myself in reliving  some of the past.

Terry Pratchett said that there was a rumour going around that before you die, you see your whole life flashing before you; it is true, it is called living.

House buying

We bought our first house in the early seventies. Prior to that we had lived for a year in a caravan close to the beach which was wonderful in summer and pretty dire in the winter. We had almost no money and to buy a house was huge step. It cost us five thousand pounds and was a tiny terraced house without central heating or a decent bathroom or even running hot water. We took out a 90% mortgage and raided meagre savings to fund the rest. It was a step on the ladder however and we made the most of it.  We had pretty low expectations I suppose and that was the way that we had grown up.

Things are no easier today. Our son wants to buy a house rather than continue to plough vast sums of cash into the bank of a landlord who manages to raise the rent every single year   and who also requires that they pay a sum of money just to renew a contract.  

Many MPs are landlords and recently they failed to pass a bill that would have made landlords maintain their properties to a decent standard.  In the same week the tories are planning to demolish the sink estates, selling the sites to their friends and ensuring that affordable accommodation is becoming a thing of the past.

Buying property in London is already pretty much beyond most young people and property is being snapped up by companies and foreign investors, pushing the price of a basic property above the half a million threshold.  Even here in Kent it is hard to find a place  less than 400,000 pounds  and this is just silly money.

Mr Cameron and his friends have little idea as to what is meant by affordable, as to those with their hands on the reins, everything is affordable.                      

Changes

So David Bowie has died: his death, like his career was stage managed and as always, the media loved him for the opportunities that he provided. He was a remarkable human being, who did much to change the ways that people looked at the world and at themselves. He made it easier for people to be different, to be themselves and to accept themselves, as well as producing music that was in itself different and challenging.  His contributions to society were enormous and the tributes have come from all over the world.  Few performers or entertainers are worthy of the label celebrity but he most certainly was.

Musicians since the early twentieth century have set out to challenge the status quo (not that band), and have reflected the need for change. The Jazz and Blues that originated in the USA, opened the way to fighting racism and division in that country. Later, protests against war drove a whole wave of musicians, notably Bob Dylan, to rail against the futility of conflicts and the divisions within societies in general.

The sixties saw an explosion in bands playing a new sound altogether and dressing in styles that were a rejection of all that had gone before, this led to the Glam Rock of the seventies and then the anti music revolution of punk. After which it seems to me that music lost its way and few bands or artists have been able to be original or to challenge  or to bring about real change.  Everything is now about money; to see a band perform costs an arm and a leg, and the likes of Simon Cowell can put together relatively untalented bands and make them famous for five minutes.  Talented musicians with something to say seem to be absent and the kids are growing up with pap.

We may never see the likes of Bowie again; the rich and powerful dictate what music is made and aired, and of course they do not welcome change.

2016

Well that is another year gone, and I still don't understand the nature of time or its interconnectedness with the dimensions of space. I try, but frankly I struggle with three dimensions let alone four. I keep meaning to acquaint myself with the quantum world but having been told that it is possible, even ordinary for a sub-atomic particle to exist in more than one place at the same time; my mind is boggled. I suspect that those that claim to truly comprehend the quantum world have access to see of the world's best drugs and are not sharing.

From the tiny knowledge that I have, it would seem that at the sub-atomic level, things do not behave in the ways that we have come to understand, and yet there are some who believe that the odd behaviour of particles can be used to explain so much of what we experience.  I was directed to this expensive video by an acquaintance and have ploughed through part of it, but it would seem that quantum mechanics has been hijacked by those who wish to apply micro behaviour to macro situations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qisWnwj8VaA

They may be right, but as I watched this, the words bull and shit, kept cropping up and I did find it very hard to swallow.

I must watch again when I fully understand the true nature of life, the universe and everything. Maybe this year I will attempt to understand gravity.