On Buffy, aging without noticing, and people’s opinions of you

 

Grrr Arggg.  I just finished watching Season 3 of Buffy again, for the however many-th time. MayorWilkins was the best villain Buffy ever produced, for me. Oddly layered, humourous and relatable (in a way Ted wasn’t, even though they were written similarly). I almost wanted him to be in my family.

There were two things watching this time that I saw that I never saw before – after all these decades of watchings.   

First that Angel probably did sleep with Faith in the episode where he pretended to turn to get her to talk about the Mayor’s ascension.  So Buffy was so righteously sick about it, much worse than a kiss – how could I have missed this implication before?   

And the other was seeing Oz and Willow sleep together for the first time; and seeing Buffy and Angel break up.  The Oz/Willow thing was realizing this is the first time I’ve watched it and known I’ll very likely never be back there again in this life: that place of first, early hope in a relationship.  That place where you want to kiss your boyfriend all the time, and just be within touching distance – never straying too far, lest that silvery connection fizzles out.  Energy exchange.  And Buffy and Angel – that fatal connection that hurts so much.  It’s thankful I will likely never be back there, but also sad that I didn’t go there the very first time with someone who wasn’t a liar and as selfish as I was, but should have known better because he was so much older and more experienced with life. Either way, those extremes of hurt or hope…getting them from a person is a gone girl now. Not a possibility.  Likely.

The thing is, watching someone tenderly cradle someone’s face, look at them with such love or awe…I had no idea I’d one day watch that and think: not for me, anymore, that level of youthful hopefulness.  When did I age? I’m 50.  I didn’t think it would feel so different, to realise these things that may never happen again. Or that I don't view love the same way. I'm irritated that Stanley and I are no longer cradling each other's faces!  What happened!

I really enjoy sleeping (bear with me here).  I was wondering the other day if I’ll be consciously on my death bed one day, and think I wasted so much of my life being scared of the pressures of the day and sleeping as a result.  But maybe I won’t.  When you’re dead you can’t get that lovely liquid, pastel feeling of falling asleep, or waking up feeling different (“have you tried turning it off and on again?” says Moss). It’s just the one way street, and possibly right when you were in the middle of something fun or important. No more being massively productive in evenings and the night, like I always have been.  No more of that. No choice. Weird.  When did I get so much closer to this?

Much earlier this year, in the just beforehand of the Charisma Carpenter revelations  and Joss Whedon turns out to be a shithead fallout (go Google it), Alyson Hannigan said of Buffy’s character that Angel was the right boyfriend for Buffy to have as she was coming into her power; and Spike was the boyfriend she needed when she had her power.  An ideal of youth, and a messy rather mental painful reality, respectively.  I wonder when I'll feel its time for my 'power'?  A very nebulous idea that.  Maybe it simply means self-worth, and the degree of confidence that comes from that.

I also meant to say, watching Buffy after all this Joss Whedon stuff is fine.  He doesn’t get to kill it.  It’s always been bigger than him.  The writers and actors, the music people – what they all made has survived and been extraordinary despite his toxic personality.  Like a lot of things, people made beauty despite pain.  There’s a lot of places pain shouldn’t be but somehow it is.  He may not really have been a feminist, or taken us all for fools in that respect – but he still somehow managed to have a big hand in creating a character, a set of characters so relevant they still sing out today, so strong.  It makes me cry to think they suffered to make this beauty.  But at least it’s beautiful, and strong, and will survive him. Those characters still help me now, today.  This day.

Even if it’s only to see that I’ve gone past some points and may be headed in a different direction now. 

There’s this thing happening as I get older.  Not only does my quirkiness appear to no longer come across as cute - I used to regularly be told I was Phoebe-like, from Friends. Now instead I get reactions as if I am always nervous, uneasy and weird.  People seem to have either judged me before they met me (people at the café I worked at with Fry, judged me as Fry’s mum only); or made up their minds very soon after and decided I’m too much work, or awkward and totally lacking in confidence, or they think I’m a bit stupid.  This last is the cafe again, where one boss in particular (the annoying one) but also the other boss (the brilliant unusual one), seemed to view me as someone with no expertise at all, in anything.  And I was cleaning…

And I used to get it from my a more recent boss sometimes too, in a more conventional officey setting – I saw impatience or gritted teeth or something, go across their face when they ask me to do some writing, and I would ask for tone for it: perky, conversational but formal or conversational but informal.  They acted like they felt they’d said the answer enough times already, though each piece was different. Then they would over explain without the answer being within those words. 

It makes me wonder if people actually see me properly at all?  I know I ask the questions in a way that makes sense; sometimes I’ll say the questions again in a different way if the answer isn’t forthcoming.  But it’s as if people answer to their idea of me rather than what’s there or what I said or acted or did.

And people’s ideas of me appear to not be as friendly or charitable as they once were. When did this happen and what did I do? Is it partly to do with the Invisible Woman phenomenon noticed by lots of women in their late 40’s onwards, that once you get to be ‘middle-aged’, people (especially men) seem…to simply stop seeing you as active/dynamic/competent…or much at all? It’s as if you fade a little at the edges, and start to prepare to be someone’s nan, in print dresses, lots of polyester and very comfortable shoes; short helmet hair. Ugly coats.  It’s a whole thing coming at you[1].

I’m annoyed in a way to be writing this kind of thing (overthinky negativity) again – it’s the death of me ever wanting to read things back.  So many times in the past, I write to make sense of things, but then I’ll look at it weeks or days or months later, to see if I’ve learned anything, or can learn from my previous responses.  And all I find is this long tortured, convoluted and over complicated narrative I want no part of.  Even moreso if I handwrote it – I hate my handwriting. 

But things aren’t always simple, and especially not for me, personally.  So…I make sense best as I can?

The ghost of Fry is over my shoulder, and he says “your head, man…” while shaking his own head and looking rather smug that his head is not my head.

So who sees me and sees that I am an ok person, as much right to be here as anyone, and not useless, hopeless and stupid? I don’t know. 

It’s a shame we can’t trust our thoughts.  I suspect other people’s thoughts about me are incorrect (and maybe more about them), and I have read in countless books that thoughts precede feelings states, so that if I am sad and feeling hopeless, as I am now, it’s a problem with the thoughts I have had[2].  The words are useless and hopeless.  But the thoughts seem to come as feelings and they feel so true. It’s tiring to have the thoughts; it’s tiring to correct the thoughts.

I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.  People judge me on my children’s behaviour and attitudes; Stanley judges me on my sleeping habits, Best Mum thinks everything I say to her is a criticism; and I judge me on these thoughts that hold me down. But here they are.

Things are beautiful.  There is that.  The whole (slightly doomed) planet, filled with beautiful nature and creatures.  There’s art.  And I really really enjoy my books, films and TV…

There’s two quotes from Buffy that are apposite to my state of mind confusion here (of many, these were just the ones the popped into my head just now – it’s a damn quotable show). 

The ever astringent Cordelia, to Buffy in a moment of exasperation at her angry behaviour and navel gazing:

"Embrace the pain. Spank your inner moppet. Whatever. But get over it, because pretty soon you’re not even gonna have the loser friends you’ve got now." Gulp. That's me told.

And also the way more aspirational speech by Buffy in the last ever episode:

"I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking yet. I'm not finished becoming...whoever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be."

So I’m 50. There’s more to be done yet, no matter what people see and make of my currently chunky and rather grumpy exterior. 

Bring it on.[3] 

Well, you know, it'll come regardless what I say, so being spunky and feisty, and possibly even graceful, is the way to go, right...?

 

                          Me at 50; and Fluffhead at 11, unfiltered

 

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[1] And then, if you fight it, and dress your mental age or actual figure – you’re ‘mutton dressed as lamb’?!

[2] There’s the basis of CBT – change the thoughts to change the feelings.

[3] Of course, there’s also the immortal "Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live." But I usually save that one for when things are really dark.

 

Living with Dr Who

In our house we have a dalek on top of one of the bookshelves in the living room.  A medium size remote control dalek that has lost its forward motion, and can go only rather confusedly side ways.  But it rarely comes off the shelf; we spend a lot of time pointing at it, for Fluffhead, and saying: ‘What’s that?  What’s that?  What’s its name?  What’s it called?’  This is in an attempt to engage Fluffhead into the realm of the Speaker, rather than the incoherent occasionally specific Babbler.  (He’s a bit late in developing talking; though he understands everything.)  I have a smaller dalek on my windowsill of my book room.  It’s not mine, its Stanley’s (as is the other one), and I keep it forever next to a stuffed toy unicorn that is slightly larger.  To me, this originally random, and now left there deliberately placing, indicates the power in my mind of dreams over science and technology. Though I begin to see this is a false dichotomy.

We have all the Doctor Who’s ever released on DVD, and all the ones that weren’t or haven’t been yet, through one means or other.  We have a drive on the main computer called Dr Who, as it contains all the documentaries, makings of and various other bits and audiovisual pieces that are associated with the programme.  We have rare copies of the Radio Times from ages ago, in plastic covers, with Jon Pertwee velvetly gesturing, having just got out of Bessie. 

I used to think all this was rather cute.  Like Stanley’s other major thing he does in his spare time, collecting and building models (I don’t want to say obsession, as he thinks of loads of other things; yet its way more than a hobby), it’s a thing that takes up a lot of space and time (there’s a Tardis joke there somewhere), but didn’t really concern me.  It was one of those…things your partner does, that you don’t mind, but aren’t really involved in.

Stanley used to write for the old style Marvel Dr Who magazine in the old era (way before the new fangle-isation of the latest and ever younger growing twelve year old Doctors we have now), so not only does he have all the stuff, he knows loads of things about it.  He can nerdily correct anyone about any detail.  Whilst saying to me, as an aside, that he isn’t being nerdy, because he doesn’t subscribe to all that new stuff, specially all that stuff about Bernice, and the endless attempting, by fanboys, to correct continuity problems from the past, or replay and redo over incidents they didn’t like, from their own understanding of them.  To make it all better, and bigger.  He knows it for what it is, he says: A Programme He Likes.  That’s all.  Not a world, not a real universe, not a living breathing thing (which he seems to think you could be forgiven for imagining some of these other fanpersons behave as though it is).

Again, not really of any concern to me, really, I thought.  An interesting distinction, I thought.  I see what you mean.  I suggested, idly, one day a few years ago, that we have a Dr Who marathon (we are a couple of marathonhood when it comes to viewing anything; our twin nerds – and I freely admit Happy Nerd-dom about anything I like – sit peacefully entwined together watching many a boxset in our free time)[1].  This all went well through the early days of William Hartnell.  I used to get a bit annoyed with the bouffant haired whatshername being all teachery and posh.  But I loved the ‘Quite so!’-ness of the whole enterprise at this stage, it being one of my favourite expressions anyway. However, I had no patience with the BBC’s treatment of Patrick Troughton’s era, there being so few un-broken stories remaining to see.  I got all itchy and annoyed and stuck.  I insisted on moving on to the first Doctor of my childhood, Jon Pertwee, who I vaguely remembered loving for his flamboyancy.

I loved him all over again.  I wanted to be a scientist, like Liz Shaw.  I realised I remembered wanting to be Jo Grant, with her brilliant white knee boots, and her not really entirely ditsy but actually quite gutsy portrayal of a companion, when I was quite a small thing[2].  I thought the dinosaurs were brilliant – Stanley thought they were supremely poo and most badly done.  That’s just unkind.  (I come from a history of liking horror films with awful amateurish special effects, so I suspect I have a way greater tolerance of this sort of thing than he does).  I did fall asleep, repeatedly, during the Sea Devils.  But then, that was a very chase around story; not my favourite kind.  I had ecstasies re-watching The Daemons, and remembering I had thought of it as one of the first horror films I had ever seen; my mind somehow mixed it up, for years, with The Devil Rides Out.

Then we did Tom Baker.  I was surprised to find I mourned Jon Pertwee for almost the first 3^rd of watching Tom – the Actual Doctor of Most of My Childhood.  And Therefore Clearly The Best One, for me.  But the scarf helped.  The hair helped.  The mad eyes helped.  I wanted to be Leela – so loyal, unafraid and clear about so many things.  I wanted to be the second Romana, calm and clever and pixie like in her so often Victorian style clothes.  I was content to watch Shada even though it was broken.  (Still one of my favourites.)  Apparently I made my first nerdy Dr Who comment during this stage of the watching.  Apparently, I watched one story or other, and turned to Stanley, who didn’t like it much at all, and said, ‘Well, it’s no Talons of Weng-Chiang, but it’s alright, isn’t it?’  I had to laugh hearing myself come out with that.  Ehem.  I can never remember the name of my favourite story here – is it Seeds of Doom?  The one where a mad – and completely correct, in my opinion – person wanted to get rid of humanity, so that plants could retake over the Earth, as less of a danger than us.  Terence Stamp, was it, playing the mad person?

Then we got to Peter Davison.  Oh dear.  It was too much of a shock.  Just as in my childhood, I completely baulked at the new Doctor.  I watched the first 3 or so stories, getting ever more grumbly, before I came to a complete stubborn halt.  In childhood, I do believe I just continued growing up, or whatever it was I had been doing (reading the collected works of James Herbert or something).  As an adult, I was nagged a bit about consistency of viewing, and then we moved on to some other marathon (I think we were re-doing Space 1999, at that point).  I just couldn’t get past the low key cricket outfit, the blondey mellowness.  And all that slightly sickly bumbling about at the beginning of the run.  And the way the entire story styles and look of the programme changed.  I was informed by Stanley this was due to the beginning of the John Nathan Turner era.  I made mental faces at this man, for ruining my good buzz.  I mourned Philip Hinchcliffe and all that nice gothic-yness that had been going on for a while with Tom Baker’s Doctor.

Then Fluffhead, started getting nerdy about 6 months ago, the way tiny children can do.  When they want the same story read fifty times (this is how they learn: repetition, the orderliness of the same things appearing at the same time endlessly etc – you have to have the patience of a saint when reading).  We had a lovely run of re-watching Robin of Sherwood (my own personal English nerdfest) quite a few more times than was reasonable.  Then I wondered what else we could watch when indoors, that was in nice small segments.  When Stanley had Fluffhead, he always put Dr Who on, and the titles seemed to calm him, every single time, from any kind of unhappiness or tantrum.  I don’t know if it was the time tunnel effect or just the brilliant music (which I don’t think I will EVER tire of – and woe betide anyone fast forwarding through the titles and making me miss the music).  So I put on some Jon Pertwee, and some Tom Baker.  Fluffhead loved Robot, and Carnival of Monsters.  He would run up to the screen and keep pointing at the Doctor. In every scene, I had to re-identify him.  And the companions.  He seemed to really like Sarah Jane’s smiley face.  But Stanley had all the Dr Who’s in order, in a large bookshelf we had covered and hidden the front of, with weighty poster frames.  Because Fluffhead had loved the whole lot too much in the past and they were in danger of being broken with the stampede of loving little feet and tearing mashed potato fingers.  So one day when he was sleeping, I quickly disassembled the whole defence system, and grabbed a random large handful and rebuilt it back.  This being rather an afterthought, I was annoyed to find I had plucked out loads of Sylvester McCoy.  I had never seen any of those.  No idea who he was at all.  Oh well.  It was out, Fluffhead was up…

So I put Sylvester McCoy on.  And went a bit mad.  

We had previously been watching these in between other things; if Fluffhead sang or burbled at me (as he more or less does, all the time), it didn’t really matter if I missed bits, as these were old stories I was familiar with.  If I missed loads of exposition, or dialogue, again, not a problem, we would likely re-watch it later anyway, or I would just enjoy the colours and running about the countryside (or sewers or tunnels or whatever).

But right from the very first story, Sylvester was different.  He seemed to just fall into the role naturally.  He fitted in with the startling lack of money and sometimes downright daft plots and characterisations with no problem at all.  He was theatrical, funny; he had a very sympathetic face – both angry and compassionate.  I had no problem with Bonnie Langford, as other people seemed to have had.  She was cheerful – hey: I would love to be a cheerful person; I won’t besmirch the Chipper Fairy Woman. 

Suddenly I really cared if Fluffhead did that unerring child thing of yelling JUST when some very important thing is being said very quietly indeed, some important bit of exposition.  I found myself not getting through 2 full length 6 parters in a day (as we could previously if it was raining outside), but barely one story of less episodes.  I would watch it, then go back to where we got lost and just do it again, till I felt I got what was going on.  Whilst attempting potty training (what a lovely mess that still is on the rental carpet, sigh), reading and re-reading Tabby McTat and all the other books of Fluffhead’s, doing the laundry in a different room, and listing and preparing Amazon and ebay sales etc.  The universe was working with a Sylvester McCoy background.  I started dreaming about being Ace.  What a firey girl!  What a lot of possibilities she had!  What lovely character development – and not just in the way they wrote it, but mostly in how she acted it, as she went along.  I give credit to those two, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, for making the Cybermen and the Daleks bearable and even interesting for me, for the first time.  I generally have terrible trouble with villains that want world domination and demand ‘Destroy Them!’ with regularity.  It’s just boring.  I loved when Sylvester ranted at the daleks and mimicked their tones and wants: ‘Limitless rice pudding!’ he mocked.  I laughed out loud.  Exactly!  I even got past some pretty dodgy misuses of Norse Mythology, my other big obsession this year so far.  I mean – the Gods of Ragnarok????  …Had absolutely no relevance to that circus story, as a myth.  And The Curse of Fenric could’ve used the mythology so much better; but is forgiven for being a very good looking production, and just interesting on other levels. (And the Target novelisation makes it make a lot more sense, too.)

I was very happily confused during Ghostlight; laughed through most of Silver Nemesis, enjoyed the scenery in Delta and the Bannermen, and wanted to be a cheetah person (‘ride, sister, with the blood of your enemies in your mouth…’) in Survival.  I loved the way they ended the whole thing.  I like low key endings (or else endings where there’s a shoot out and everyone, absolutely everyone, dies[3]).  It was good the way he put his arm round Ace, and they just went off back to the Tardis, to …travel about more.  That was nicely done.

And Extremely Annoying.  Ending it just when I had totally fallen in love with the two main characters.  And when it had all gone rather Gothy again here and there, too…maybe John Nathan Turner ended up just where he didn’t want to be, and all those changes he made seemed to lead back to the same sort of darkish shining that he meant to change all those years back…but I was happy with where it had gone, where it finally had ended up.

And leaving me to have to go back to…Peter Davison.  The funny thing was; once I did (and I had to admit hookdom by then), I didn’t find him so bad.  I rather started to enjoy his quieter Doctor.  I realised that I quite liked a lot of his stories: I think Enlightenment is a most interesting idea (and my goodness Lynda Barron is bosomly brilliant in it!); I thought The Visitation was excellent; I really liked The Awakening too, and wished it had been longer (rarely I wish a Dr Who story longer; I usually think they could have mostly been improved by being a bit shorter, like most Stephen King later works).  There are more, loads more.

I looked at the BBC website and realised I liked more of the stories than I didn’t.  Stanley and I had a fight about The Myrka in Warriors of the Deep. (I think my relationships will ever and always involve arguments about things that make absolutely no sense to waste spittle on, for other people).  He maintained it was the worst pantomime horse monster ever; I maintained it was a charming large sea horsey thing and I wished it would come to tea and menace us, so I could stroke it and offer it a French Fancy or somesuch.  I do this to Fluffhead’s Cyberman toy too – it regularly has breaks in the whole World Domination Plan to have mashed potato, or a nice bit of chocolate; and we wrap him up in a muslin and put him in a shoebox to sleep at night.  As Fry would say, I have completely ‘un-cooled’ the thing.  (A lot of my reactions of this ilk are to do with Fluffhead – can’t have him being constantly scared of ‘monsters’ and aliens – so I call them ‘creatures’, a subtle difference, but its meaningful, you know.  Also – if he grows up with a healthy curiosity for lifeforms that look different to us, instead of a screamy 1960s companion type fear…what a better place the world will be, eh?!  The best way to deal with a scary looking ‘monster’ is to think of it as a cute creature – look at those lovely proboscis of that funny looking thing in The Twin Dilemma – bless its little face!).  Anyway.  We have agreed to disagree about the Myrka.  We have agreed instead, that Ingrid Pitt was not best served by either that makeup or that outfit.  She’s gorgeous and needed a nicer ensemble – I couldn’t even identify her from her voice, in that story, usually so distinctive.

Now I am travelling with Fluffhead through the mists that are Colin Baker’s Doctor.  I am not minding him at all.  He’s grumpy often, and arrogant.  He has very unsuitable clothes; but they are happy looking.  I hope he gets rid of Peri soon as she wheedles and I am thinking she is not really having a good time – people keep trying to kill her.  I shall be glad when the wheels of time move along and we get Bonnie Langford back.  When all this is over, I shall have to go back to Jon Pertwee again…Joy!

I found a way to do the broken (and too annoying to watch) Patrick Troughton stories.  As I have always liked him as an actor, and am muchly irritated that I don’t get to see his turn at the Doctor.  I remembered the Target novelisations.  I remembered I can buy on ebay as well as sell.  I frothed at the mouth when I saw how cheap the first editions still were.  Stanley despairs of the rate at which they are pouring into the house (he sold all his years ago).  I also found missing adventures, and new adventures and audio adventures.  I realised I could not only do all the missing Patrick Troughton, but extra Sylvester McCoys, and I could see how Paul McGann would have worked out, had he got to do more than just the (ehem lets not talk of it) film.  He’s another actor I adore.  So!  Worlds upon worlds opened up!

Stanley and I had another minor argument.  He doesn’t hold with any of the missing adventures unless they were from the season planned for Colin Baker then not broadcast, as well as a couple of others.  I have decided to be broader.  I will hold with stories rejected for any of the Doctors at the time of production and penned later.  And as for Sylvester and Ace…I’ll read and watch anything, and see what I think.  I got called an apologist for fanboys.  Regardless of pedigree.  I’ll make my own mind up.

Quite so!! 

So:  Dr Who world.  Hey!  Welcome the birth of yet another FanGirl.  Do I get a badge or something??

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[1] I remember, with a sort of sniggery laugh, that I used to know a wonderful osteopath.  He was a Man of Action, a real world person, not the slightest bit nerdyfied. He would tell me, in surprised and unbelieving tones, of his flatmate.  Flatmate and girlfriend never really went out of an evening.  Flatmate and girlfriend watched Boxsets.  One after the other.  And discussed the ideas wherein.  ‘They never went out for a run, or anything…’, my osteopath would say, in tones of total puzzlement.  I used to try to explain the joy of gorging on many episodes of something, and not waiting for a week till the next bit (I have been known to torture myself through the entire lengthy TV transmission of a season of 24, or somesuch long thing, to wait for the boxset, so I can over do it in 2 or 3 delirious days of wonder.  But anyway.)

[2] Oddly, I always want to be a companion; never ever the Doctor.  I don’t want the responsibility I think.  I like being the person standing next to the person causing the action.  I’m not generally in life, the person causing the action.

[3] By the way, that was what was wrong with the end of Buffy, for me: everyone should have died!  How dark that would have been…That’s where Angel did it better; except they only showed one death and left the others to be imagined – whereas they should have showed all or none.  I.e. not killed only my favourite character and left the others to fight hopelessly in the rain, but unseen…(As you can imagine, one of my favourite Buffy episodes is The Wish.)

Meandering with Star Trek and addictive TV

Last Sunday

It’s a strange day, weather-wise, outside and inside.

Outside its properly pouring with rain one minute, and now – this minute – very sunny, suddenly dry, and there’s an unidentified lovely tiny brown bird hopping out of the borage at the side of the garden hedge.

Inside, there’s the very distracting original Star Trek theme  from the living room, and lil’ Tetchyhead being awkward about having lunch.  I don’t need to be in there to know he’s twisted his way out of both of the straps holding his shoulders in place in the high chair, that his mouth is very orange and possibly so too is one cheek and the fingers of one hand.  My partner, Alias Stanley Kubrick is no doubt squinting between the TV and Tetchyhead, which won’t help the food distribution pattern. 

I feel guilty at not being in there, doing it myself, or just being with them, even though now is my time off.  And you really do need time off from whatever it is that you do all day (and all night, if its babies or small children), if you want to remember who you are and why you do that thing all day (and night).

When I was pregnant with Son Number one[1], his father and I used to watch original Star Trek every night on satellite.  We would come home from work (he as a printer, I was doing inventory in a warehouse for a now defunct Japanese designer goods shop in Bruton Street), and I would plop my immensely fat self down on the sofa bed in our box room we shared.  He would make a massive jug of chocolate Ovaltine (which I was very addicted to during the pregnancy), and we would curl up and watch that night’s double bill.  You know when you really really get into something?  I had seen Star Trek all through my childhood, but it wasn’t till I watched it whilst pregnant for that first time that I came to live for it every evening.  That I realised that All That Is Good And Right In Our Western Culture can in fact be found here, in original Star Trek.  It’s like a bible, a manual, for How To Behave In Every Situation.  Now – this clearly needs some backing up, as a massively daft statement.  (I can’t actually do that now – I’ll do it in a later post, I promise – I’d need to re-watch them all, which will take a bit of time; and my opinion will likely have changed – hell, its been 20 years since I watched them that closely.)

The weird thing is, I get that degree of total addiction to many TV shows (without being convinced they are also a manual for life).  Most of them can be blamed on Son Number One.  He’s an absolute connoisseur of finding addictive TV I will like:

Ø      24 (how to live life by running about and shouting a lot, being very definitive and consistently maverick) 

Ø      PrisonBreak (how to live life by running about and shouting a lot, whilst also making very good far thought out plans and giving Robert Knepper  the best role he’s had in ages) 

Ø      Big Bang Theory (I have always thought being a nerd was big and clever, and here is some very funny proof; and here is the actual big bang theory)

Ø      Two and a Half Men (its very scary that Charlie Sheen’s character is mild compared to his recently interviewed actual self – let no man say he cannot act) 

Ø      Buffy (one of the ultimate classics of teenage female empowerment and incredibly well-written) 

Ø      Angel (strangely more grown-up cousin of Buffy, also very well written) and

Ø      Lost (excellent long-running premise including unlikely polar bears, one of the world’s most handsome blonde men and an annoying ending) 

It goes back way further though.  As a rather miserable child who was bullied in two out of her three schools (the exception was the progressive school Prior Weston, where I happily did weaving with different shades of green suede and wool), I remember living for TV shows, or films, simply as a place to be instead of my world.  Flambards (recently re-released by the good people at Network ) I have yet to re-watch.  I almost don’t want to.  How can I find it as mesmerising as I did watching it as a dreamy and lonely child, wishing I lived in the countryside; wishing I had a weedy but brainy boyfriend into planes, and a brawnier love interest into horses?  Most importantly, that I was older and had some sort of control over my life and where I spent my time. 

Much obsessive time was spent watching and re-watching videos, when I hit my teens (which was notably the brilliant era of video-nasties and parents just not being quite aware what you were watching; or weirder, watching unsuitable things with you, like my dad did – later post on these).  I watched Grease, the marvellous Aussie Puberty Blues and Picnic at Hanging Rock with my Jodie Foster triple bill (The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane [yes, ‘school is stultifying’], Foxes  [and ever since have wanted a tattoo on my shoulder of an apple with a bite taken out of it], and Svengali [Peter O’Toole is always magnificent, I feel]) endlessly.  From each one I got ingredients to a world I liked better; or directions round this world that I understood more than interactions with anybody here.

Now see, we could go in so many directions now: about the fact that when you get older, quite often you still have very little real control over where you spend your time – for most of us, who didn’t study triumphantly to become marine biologists[2] and are well-mapped out and wealthy enough to grease our own pathways – the phrase ‘wage-slave’ means something. 

Or it would be interesting to see exactly what I got from each of those films, why I felt the need to escape so much.  (Not that I’m so incredibly interesting – just that many children in this situation do similar things, and it’s an interesting mechanism to look at – and how what they pick to disappear into influences their growth as a person.)

Or why so many parents of bullied children don’t change their schools?  Or try to help the children deal with the issues in any real way….Or why teachers used to accept it as just a normal thing that happens?  (A false understanding of the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ as an idea Out There In The Ether underpins a lot of that last).

But none of these will happen this post, as I hear the small Tetchyhead crying bullishly and no doubt very fat tears in the living room, and its been a long day for excellent Stanley K with him. I can feel my need to go and take the baby from him; partly as an act of partnery niceness, and partly as I can’t stand to hear him crying this way (its one of the worst parts of motherhood, listening to this noise of upsetness, it drills my brain and makes me want to cry as well; I often do).  So I’m going to have to go.   We’ll have to call this meander, the one that could have gone somewhere interesting, but really never got there.  I shall have to come back to it all later. (Welcome to Motherhood: Land of Interruption.)

PS - I f any of these links go wonky, tell me, and I shall fix or find new ones, or remove.

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[1] …who I used to call Pumpkinhead, purely because I liked the way the sounds of the words went together – he has a head nothing like a pumpkin in shape.  I had this pointed out to me so many times (by other people, not Son) I stopped doing it.  Likewise, ex-hub really hated being called Belovéd Pea Hen…Because the pea hen was the female of the species, was his reason.  He really liked being male.  Again, it just popped into my head and I loved the sound of the words.  I stopped doing that too.

[2] I know a nice girl from school who became a marine biologist; all down to the influence of our geography teacher.  So no offence to marine biologists – I was just trying to think of a specialised and highly trained profession that I actually respected (unlike lawyering, say).