A post that wasn't meant to be about politics or my cold...

Well, here I am.  Back after a strange interval of life that felt very rushed, yet very slow.  I got a massive cold.  I’m the only female I know that does Womanflu.  I think its related to the fact that I think my sense of personality is almost entirely contingent on my sense of embodiment.  If my body feels wrong, all of me feels wrong.  If I’m very tired, for example, then life can feel very dark indeed.  (Since Fluffhead has been born; even since the last trimester of pregnancy where I ceased to be able to sleep comfortably in any position, I have been in a different state of consciousness to before.  A very changeable and more prone to downers/anxiety and general instability than before.  And I’ve never been that stable!)  Tiredness plus cold, tsk tsk…

So, womanflu isn’t a good thing.  I’m notoriously addicted to Sinex nasal spray (for over 20 years now), so my nose is a permanent mess of blocking and unblocking.  When I get a cold, its far far worse.  Then there's the head fogging and headache, the itchy throat that drives you crazy at night with the attempt to not start coughing, cos if you do you’ll be starting something that will carry on indefinitely and feed itself.   

I find it annoying that I catch most colds from people that wouldn’t just be responsible and take a sick day from work.  It seems to be the hallmark of Manliness and Productivity in some workplaces (and it applies to women too, to not look weak, and fit in) to come in when suffering a bad cold and continue, lamely, to attempt to work anyway.  Whilst busily infecting everyone else in the workplace, who take it home and infect their partners and small children.  I find that short-termist and stupid.  That day or two days when you could have just gone home and rested and not spluttered over the communal kettle might have saved some mother and child several nights of asthma and steaming the child in the bathroom all night; or antibiotics for a chest infection they got.  It’s selfish in fact, to stay at work when you’re ill.  Go home, rest, recuperate, and come back when you’re better: be doubly productive.  If you have a full time permanent job, this is what sick days were invented for.  It’s not a contest to see who won’t ever have one and therefore be more manly, and dedicated to international capitalism.  (This topic really vexes me.  As you can guess, Stanley brought home this cold from two plaguey colleagues at work; who also took it home and infected their wives and tiny babies.  It was ironic that Stanley Typhoid Mary-ed this cold, in that he was actually the last to get it properly: me first, then poor lil Fluffhead, then him.)

Anyway, during all this snotty fun, it was Stanley’s 45^th birthday.  We are a bit poor at the moment (I say that like we’re temporarily embarrassed millionaires; this is a bit hopeful of me – we are poor for the foreseeable future, I just have hope we might be a tiny bit less poor at some point).  So I didn’t really have any money much to do anything great.  Stanley always takes his birthday off work, so he did.  I tried really hard to not make the day all about me and how I had to go out with him even though I Am Ill (imagine what fun I am as a companion; then run away)…We went into the biggest nearest town (East Croydon), and wandered about the shopping centre and sat peacefully and ate ice cream, like old folk.  I always get quite excited at shopping centres.  Partly because I have never shaken off the marvellous marketing idea that if I buy something (whatever it is) I will feel better about life in general, a new me!  This is usually rubbish of course, but its very tempting rubbish, and I can count myself as intelligent-ish all I like; I still get sucked into the miasma of this silly concept sometimes.  But this day was different.   I don’t know if it was because we wandered round the post riot sites first, and it was sad seeing so many burnt buildings and boarded up buildings…which then got me to thinking I was seeing more odd looking people out than normal.  (You know the odd people:  they look like they have never had a job, they have a way of sitting about like they never ever did and never will have anywhere to go in particular.  Some of them look angry and scary; some look sad and talk to themselves.  Some just tic, or look very lost.)  I see them everywhere, wherever I go, and they have always wanted to talk to me, always.  I have had some very good conversations with some of them; none of which made sense in the Agreed Reality where we buy things, have a job, have dinner, watch TV, have hobbies, families etc.  That Life.  But they all made sense in other realities (ones where the streets were golden and had red gems in; and another where a man took a good 45 minutes for me to convince him I wasn’t the ghost of his dead ex-wife).

We sat there, in the Whitgift Shopping Centre, eating double scoops of ice-cream and chatting about the world, while watching the odd people, and the women with babies (the babies were either of the Exceedingly Cute or Very Big Headed type – since Fluffhead, I gravitate to other babies when I’m not with him; he was at home with Saint Mum, being babysat).  I realised that though being out with Stanley alone was rare and wonderful; and talking with him was also rare and wonderful, it was sad too, as I don’t seem to like shopping centres anymore.  All I could see was endless things I couldn’t afford, or actually want, at all.  All advertised desperately, with gaily painted signs, neon, screaming loud lettering.  I don’t want any of this stuff – there’s nothing I can’t wait for.  I wasn’t excited about the clothes; I’ve never been much into fashion.  I wear whatever I see that I like and that’s that.  I don’t do labels.  I take from whatever is in if I like any of it and add it to whatever I have.  I haven’t liked anything much that’s been in, for ages.  (I suddenly felt Old.)  I asked Stanley and he felt the same way (he’s a black jeans and band T-shirts man anyway; he’s the casual-est a old Goth can get and still have a passion for Industrial music…he would hate that set of labels I just put on him, so take them as mere indications of a much bigger picture, not a set in stone description). 

I wasn’t excited by the music we heard as we wandered through HMV, him pulling me along casually by my belt loops, as he does do when I linger and he wants to move on.  Him dragging me affectionately about through music shops is something of a tradition.    I realised I was sitting, walking, moaning about the place, worrying about the state of society and feeling it was all a bit off and not right, even at this cursory afternoon glance.  Instead of eating out our lunch – the Big Treat – we decided to change it to Take Away Pizza delivered at home, so Fluffhead could share the garlic-bread and not be left out.  It was very strange.  It was better to be back indoors.   It felt …not unsafe….but almost soulless, while out.  I was unsure how much to attribute this to my altered condition of feeling pretty crap and mucussy; and how much it was actually the world.  I still haven’t mentioned politics yet, and I won’t really just this instant.  I just will say that a lot of things don’t feel right anymore…some people’s attitudes seem to be shifting.   

For example: Its no longer thought wonderful and a great feat, that we created the Welfare State out of a debt ridden and beaten up country at the end of World War Two, so that we could look after everyone and ensure that something as basic as the right to try and live a healthy, non-destitute life was not just a hope.  To not go back to the scary arbitrary charity helping of the 1930s – where people still died rather than go to the doctor because they couldn’t afford it; people still did starve, in this country, when there was no work and they couldn’t get a job.  (I'm not saying the welfare state is perfect; its riddled with flaws in its execution....but its a damn sight better than what preceded it, in my opinion.)  There’s a horrible creeping voice I hear all over the place, from the mouths of otherwise reasonable people.  They say things that work out to this sentiment: ‘why are we paying for people who aren’t our own?  Why is it coming out of my pocket?  Why am I expected to be responsible for anyone other than Myself, and my family?  Let the weak die.  Let them suffer, it’s their fault they have no job/are sick’ etc etc etc.  It’s often dressed up as: ‘we can’t pay for them; we can barely pay for ourselves.’  It’s often lately joined with: ‘This is all the fault of Labour, this economic mess…’  It truly IS amazing how one political party can be responsible for the gambling immorality of the Entire World Banking System.  I truly am impressed that the hedge funders, bundlers of debt salesmen and futures speculators are all Labour members, apparently.  You learn something every day…

Yep.  Lots of things bother me, and that day…they really got to me.  Those riots in August very much unsettled me.  At first I did my usual self preservatory panic and hoarded food and found the key to the nursery, so I could lock myself and Fluffhead in there if necessary (see – I don’t overreact to stuff; dead practical, me), while calling for the army on Facebook.  Calm as anything, exemplary…Then I really did calm down, and it stopped (mighty relief).  And I read loads of articles about why it happened, and the one comment that got to me more than any other was one made by Philip Shallcrass (a Druid, and thinker).  He simply said (in a rambling Facebook thread) that until inequality was addressed in this country, things like this would continue to bubble and erupt here and there.  I won’t rant about all the many and linked probable causes.  I just thought that one summed up the root, and summed up the solution.  Inequality.  And I walked about that shopping centre and thought of all those people just sitting about.  (Inclusion/exclusion.)  And the other ones buying stuff they probably don’t need, on their lunch hours, to cheer themselves up.  (Aspiration/Envy.)  Its bright and light and airy in there…and tempting and soul destroying.  Our society IS sick, but its not in the way Cameron would have it, and its not his solutions that will work…

Next year – I shall not take Stanley to a shopping centre.  (Lets not even mention Dawn of the Dead, eh?)  I don’t care what stuff he might want, we can zip in and out if there’s stuff he would get the satisfaction of buying and unwrapping.  (He is a technogeek – there is always some musical or computer gizmo needed.)  But then I’ll take him somewhere proper, somewhere real, where you can see the sky, and hear the birds.

***

(Off you go – have a toilet break before I ramble Part 2 of this post.  Which will be happier and involve random donkeys munching hay.  Really, it will. )