Words by me

Of all the silly things that people do, creating “naughty” words is one of the silliest.

My son is 2 years old and, for reasons unbeknownst to us, occasionally says “cunts” or “cunt”. He’s a chatty boy with a rich vocabulary, but he also likes to invent words and try out new sounds. So we suspect that when he says “cunt” or “cunts” he’s just saying something very much like “can’t”. So we ignore him, rather than make a fuss and let on that “cunt” is a word we don’t want him to say. Because if he knew that “cunt” is verboten, he would say it all the time. Especially when we’re on the bus. He’s mischievous like that.

I was thinking about the conversation we’ll have to have one day, where we explain that, although it sounds great, “cunt” is not a word that he can use, and I was thinking that it’s silly. How can I explain to a toddler that people have decided that out of all the millions of words, a handful are “offensive”. A handful of words has been deemed to be offensive, so people find them offensive. Why don’t we just decide that we don’t find them offensive any more, so we can call each other cunts with impunity? We’re only offended by what we choose to be offended by. There is nothing inherently offensive about any swear words.

Just as I was pondering all this nonsense, I picked up a tweet about an Ofcom report into the use of bad language (and some other shit). It’s hilarious and daft, but because society has concocted “rude” words, we have to assess how offensive these words are, and when we can use them. Cunt and pussy both mean vagina, but cunt is apparently ruder than pussy. Why? Shag is okay but fuck is bad. Both refer to sex. It’s fucking weird.

I’m a beginner. It’s fun to be a beginner. You can screw up and nobody cares. You can ask a million ’stupid’ questions and it’s fine, because you aren’t supposed to know the answer yet.

I’m a beginner at road cycling. Last weekend I joined a cycling club for one of their weekly club rides. I learnt a few interesting things quite quickly:

• My saddle was too high.
• My handlebars need to be adjusted to prevent my arms from being locked out.
• Energy gels are okay but I need some real food to power me through a 50-mile ride.
• The water in my bottle should have some energy-carbohydrate-powder added to it.
• An Ordnance Survey map is essential.
• I should charge my Tesco VX1 Party Phone the day before the ride.
• Spare tubes are no good without a pump (I didn’t puncture BTW)

I read a very sad story today. A young man died following an accident, because he refused the blood he needed to survive (Jehovah’s Witness teenager dies after refusing blood transfusion)

He preferred to die because to accept blood would have meant exclusion from his social circle, his “family” of Jehovah’s Witlesses. To accept blood would have meant excommunication and to live the rest of his days feeling tainted, dirty or somehow diminished in the eyes of his “god”. So he preferred to die.

I hardly know what to say about this. One’s initial reaction is to seek a remedy, to prevent lives being wasted like this ever again. But we can’t police everyone, or everything. Perhaps we should congratulate ourselves for having a society that allows us to die, so long as we claim it’s what our god wants.

But this boy, Joshua McAuley, was just 15. He could not vote, or drink, or smoke or have sex. But he could die for a fiction. Should we allow children – no doubt infected with the lies of their parents – to die in this manner?

New York’s mayor, a man called Michael Bloomberg, is either incredibly stupid, absurdly deluded or determined to mislead the people he represents.

“Terrorists around the world feel threatened by the freedoms we have in this country and want to take our freedoms away from us. “

No. No, no, no. Terrorists may hate us, but it’s got nothing to do with our ‘freedoms’.

Islamic terrorists hate us because of all the awful things we’ve done in Iraq,  Afghanistan and Palestine.

Bloomberg is a dangerous fool.

(The principal stated aims of al-Qaeda are to drive Americans and American influence out of all Muslim nations, especially Saudi Arabia; destroy Israel; and topple pro-Western dictatorships around the Middle East. Bin Laden has also said that he wishes to unite all Muslims and establish, by force if necessary, an Islamic nation adhering to the rule of the first Caliph.)

Does alcohol subdue people, removing their ability to be effective?

For many people, weekends are an oasis – an island amid the sea of employment. Weekends are a temporary escape from the bindings of their employer – a blip of freedom sandwiched between infinite slices of work.

And many people spend their weekends running away from their own consciousness, medicating their minds and forgetting their in-trays, their supervisor and their upcoming appraisal. Alcohol numbs the pain and makes all the bad stuff go away.

But Monday comes and the bad stuff is back. And with the bad stuff comes a hangover. Mid-week drinking or drug-taking blurs the edges of the monotony, the obligations and the stress of bowing to pedants and middle-managers. In between these narcotic thrusts the men and women of our nation are rendered pallid and uncertain.

Does our collective dependency on drugs and other mind-numbing things (like TV) crush our spirit and allow powerful men to dominate us? Do our politicians get away with heinous crimes because everyone is too dull to fight back?

Discuss.

For some reason that I can’t remember I decided to give up caffeine. I’d been gently reducing my caffeine intake for a while, thinking that regular cups of coffee and tea might be causing my nocturnal fidgets. But then I stopped completely, and experienced nine days of constant headache. A buzzing, rumbling cancer of a headache.

Drugs

Withdrawing from caffeine made me think (again) about society’s mixed-up thinking on drugs. Our society thinks it quite okay for nearly every adult human to be completely addicted to a powerful stimulant. A powerful stimulant that gives you a nine-day headache when you stop taking it. And when all of those wired adults want to wind down, our society advises a powerful depressant drug, drunk in great glassfuls. Have a few beers, a bottle of wine or some gin and let your brain melt into your knickers.

We can medicate our moods with stimulants and depressants of one kind, but not another. Addicts of one kind are called you and me, but addicts of another kind are called junkies and criminals. It’s just bloody odd.

I am a terrorist sympathiser. Now let me back-track: I’m not really a terrorist sympathiser, because I don’t think that terrorists should kill people. And actually all I have is sympathy for people who are so frequently oppressed, abused and silenced that they can only seek solace in terror.

No people should kill people, whatever their ‘justification’. And no people should oppress another people, whatever their reason.

Terrorists are very angry people. Nobody decides to blow themselves up without a good bellyful of outrage to help them depress the detonator. So the funny thing about our War on Terror is that we try to solve the problem of very angry people by sending our angry people (the military) to deal with them. It’s really weird actually, because if someone was angry with me, or intent on hurting me, I would want to know why, and I would try to resolve any conflict with communication before I ever threw a punch.

So why do Western societies tackle terrorists with extreme violence, rather than with calm diplomacy? Why do we throw hate upon hate? Bombing people who are already oppressed, downtrodden and fired up for Jihad just breeds more terrorists, so why do we do it?

Glourious Terrorism

I watched Inglourious Basterds yesterday and was surprised at my delight when the fictional band of Allied soldiers began hunting Nazis. The good guys were going after the oppressor, the abusive, violent Nazi scum, and it was almost heart-warming to behold.

Inglourious Basterds leads you to sympathise with terrorists; the Basterds are undoubtedly terrorists: they explicitly choose to commit horrifically violent crimes; murders so bloody and wicked that the Nazis speak of them in awe, in terror.

Because the Nazis are so completely awful, it seems acceptable for the Basterds to murder and mutilate them. The viewer watching Inglourious Basterds can cheer on their crimes, knowing that, however wrong, the bad guy is getting his comeuppance. But I wonder if this is how some Muslims feel when an Islamic terrorist commits a murder.

Have we become, in the eyes of some people, no better than the Nazis?

Speaking to Terrorists

We have a rule that we must not speak to terrorists. We can bomb them, but we can’t speak to them. We fought the IRA, but after many years of fighting, nothing changed. So we spoke more, and eventually the fighting stopped.
One day, perhaps many years from now, after all the bombs have been dropped and the guns are out of bullets, we’ll chat about our differences, see how we can live together, and stop terrorising each other.

So, we survived Christmas. Just.

Christmas is kind of nice, in theory, but it has some troubling aspects:

• It’s supposedly a religious festival, but we’re all atheists now.
• Families are forced together for an unnaturally long period of time.
• Christmas is an ugly orgy of conspicuous consumption.

Fixing Xmas

How can we fix Christmas?

• Make it illegal to mention Xmas prior to 1 December.
• Make it illegal to sell anything Xmas-related prior to 1 December.
• Take Christ out of it and call it “Xmas”, “Chrimbo” or “Festimal”.
• Encourage families to replace the usual drawn-out dinner with Flash-Xmas, which is lots of fun and only lasts 30 minutes.
• Encourage families to replace the traditional shower of gifts with a universal Secret Santa program, wherein every man, woman and child buys and receives one gift.
• Tell children that the ‘nativity scene’ is the ‘famous shed incident’ in which homeless people were given soup in an ancient shed.

To a child, a church’s pointed steeple can look a lot like a rocket. I know this because my son excitedly points them out, shouting, “ROCKIT!”.

I thought this was very sweet, and I gently explained that the ‘rocket’ was actually a building, a building called a ‘church’.

Then it occurred to me how very different churches are from rockets.

Rockets are used to power our exploration of space, to seek out new frontiers and to answer the mysteries of our world.

Churches, and the religions they house, are relics of fear and superstition. Religions are places to hide from the big questions as well as systems for dodging our fear of death.

Of course, rockets are also used to carry warheads. But we all know religion’s chequered past when it comes to making war.

Before I share my tips* for building will power and making yourself go to the gym (or whatever form of exercise you prefer), I want to briefly ponder the nature of will power, and why we even have an expression to convey this battle of the mind.

Being human is funny. Our lives are full of intentions that don’t translate into actions. People hatch plans, give promises and make arrangements, but all too often intentions fall from the sky, like dead ducks.

So why is it so hard to stick to our plans? Why do so many people struggle to do the things they actually want to do? That sentence is bizarre when you really think about it. People struggle to do the things they actually want to do. But why? Surely if someone wants to do something, then they just do it…? No?

Diet, exercise, smoking, bad habits, obsessions, addictions – these are all things that people struggle to control in the way that they want. The reasons why are clearly varied and complex, but I want to think about the internal battles that many people go through over exercise.

We all want to live well, to be healthy, to take care of ourselves and to enjoy our bodies. Our media constantly reminds us that exercise is essential if we want to be healthy, happy, attractive, psychologically-balanced and able to sleep at night.

So after all that, why does anyone find it hard to do regular exercise? I don’t know. But I know that many people do find it difficult to stick to their plans. So this post is about how I manage (occasionally) to carry out my intentions. This blog post may contain pseudo-science or pop-psychology, so apologies if that offends you.

Power your will

1. Focus on the goal, not the process.

Some people drag themselves through gym classes, thinking about the act of exercising, but exercise is one of those things that demands one foot in the future. Don’t be here now; be tomorrow then. Think of tomorrow. Think how fine your body will feel after exercise. You’re tuning the machine. You’re letting your body’s engine roar, and tomorrow you’ll feel better. Today’s trip to the gym is much more than just a trip to the gym, it’s part of a  lifetime of well-being.

2. Stop telling yourself that you hate exercise.

Why do you hate exercise? How can you hate moving your body? Your body is designed to move. To restrict your body is the unnatural thing. Sitting at your desk all day, moving as infrequently as a sloth – that is unnatural. Running like a human animal, engaged in a chase, the hunt, fleeing danger; that’s what we’re made for. Anything else is deeply unnatural. If sitting on your arse feels natural, it’s only because you’ve got used to it. Get up and run for your life.

3. Just do it.

People who want to do something often make weak promises, saying things like:

“I’m planning on not drinking this week.”

“I’m aiming for two gym sessions this week.”

“I’m probably going to run today.”

Right. We can all see the intrinsic flaws in these statements. There’s no commitment. There’s a big escape route left in every promise.

So if you’re going to exercise, just say you’re going to exercise. And just do it. Decide to do something, and do exactly that thing. Don’t make vague deals with yourself; decide what you’re going to do and do exactly that.

Sticking to personal promises is addictive. Once you start doing it you’ll find it hard to stop. And once the momentum kicks in you’ll find it impossible to stop.

4. Savour the feelings afterwards.

Okay, so you’ve just done it: you’ve exercised. Good work. How do you feel? You probably feel tired, elated, relaxed, spent, exhausted. That’s good. You’ve wiped away your stress, given yourself a better chance of sleeping well and started something big. Think about tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll feel better for having exercised today.

When you feel changes in your body, make sure you consciously connect them to your increased exercise. You know what you owe for these good feelings. Your mood is more balanced, your heart beat more tranquil, your complexion more sunny – you owe this to exercise. When you recognise and value the changes that exercise brings you, it becomes impossible to stop exercising because you know that if you stop, so too will the good feelings.

Want to continue feeling good? You’d better keep up the exercise.

5. Correct your false beliefs.

People have some funny ideas about exercise. Make sure you don’t fall for any crazy ideas…

Exercise makes you tired. No; being fat and unfit makes you tired; exercise gives you energy. If you’re tired, don’t have a nap, go for a run.  So when you’re feeling lethargic, run around the block.

Exercise is a punishment. No it isn’t. Sitting on your arse is a punishment. Dying at 38 of a heart attack is a punishment. Being unable to play football with your teenage children is a punishment. Exercise is a gift.

Exercise is the last thing you need after a hard day. Actually it’s the first thing you need. The last thing you need after a stressful day is a big glass of wine. If you want to reset your stress clock and set yourself up for a good night’s sleep and a happy outlook tomorrow, go to the gym. If you want to bottle up the bile and wind your stress clock another turn, setting yourself up for a tense day tomorrow, have a drink.

6. Say nice things about yourself.

Never say things like:

“I’m not the sort of person who exercises.”

“I’m shit at sports.”

“I should be in the pub.”

You may feel a natural inclination to deprecate your achievements, but don’t. Don’t reduce the power of your improvements with false modesty. Start being the person you want to be, and reinforce the new you with positive statements:

“I’ve been going to the gym regularly.”

“I’m falling in love with running.”

“Since exercising regularly I’ve been sleeping like a baby.”

7. Bottle your self-loathing.

By self-loathing I mean all the bad thoughts you have about yourself. The loathing, the resentment, the doubts, the fears. Every time you sigh at your reflection, every time you eat the cake you were supposed to avoid, every time you dream about being fitter and healthier, every time you notice a new wrinkle or roll, put that bad energy in a special place.

And when you’re struggling to persuade yourself to go to the gym, go to that special place, lift up the lid, poke in your nose and inhale deeply. That is why you’re doing it. This is why you are going to the gym right now. Because without exercise you will continue to be this fat, decrepit, ageing disease-carrier that you don’t even like.

In times of weakness, remind yourself of what you’re getting away from. Every gym visit is a step away from the things you hate. Every time you don’t go to the gym, you’re going nowhere.

8. Write down and share your commitment

Write down exactly what you’re going to do: when, where and how you’re going to exercise. No give this promise to a person that you admire. The best person to share it with is someone you want to impress, or someone who you would hate to disappoint. Explain your intentions and ask the recipient to ask you for regular progress reports.

This is a kind of self-entrapment, but if you really want to do something, what are you afraid of?

Related blog post: Writing things down to get things done

No more tips

That’s it for tips. I know it seems hard to make yourself do the right thing, but it’s actually very easy to do what you want.

I learned this fundamental truth by reading Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Until then I believed that it was very difficult to quit smoking. Turns out it’s very easy; I just hadn’t realised it.

A final thought on the nature of decisions

The difference between making one decision and making another is very slight. Whether you go to the gym today, or sit and watch TV, the difference, especially in the vastness of the universe, is very slight. There isn’t much in it. So we should never fool ourselves into thinking that any actions like smoking, drinking and exercising are difficult to do or stop. It’s all incredibly easy.

You’re not far from being exactly who you want to be. The struggle, if there is one, is all of your own design, and it resides purely in your mind.

*I must point out that I am far from perfect. I eat too much cake, enjoy pop music and can be deeply sarcastic. This post is, in many ways, a reminder to myself to be used in times of weakness!

My Name is Asher Lev is a story about the battle between a deeply religious man and his artistic son.

The boy’s art is seen as pointless and silly. The boy is faithful, but he can’t deny his talent.

Time passes, and father and son grow slowly apart, with the mother caught between two people she loves.

The book culminates with the boy, now a young man, painting a crucifix. Now this painting of a crucifix is a big deal. Deeply Jewish people do not normally paint crucifixes, mainly because it’s the symbol of christians, and christians and Jews have a history of… urm, issues.

My Name is Asher Lev is a fantastic book, which I’m not doing justice to here, but the book troubled me in one respect, because it demands an appreciation of this blasphemy, the outrage of Asher’s painting of a crucifix. You have to get on board with their observant Jewish lifestyle, and get just how significant Asher’s painting is.

I was doing quite well, and was feeling moved by the story, but I would occasionally slip out of the story and feel puzzled beyond words that:

1. Some people fashion their hair into twirly curls because they think an entity they’ve never seen wants them to.
2. Some people worship a man who may have died on a cross many years ago because they believe he’s the son of a god.
3. The rival groups are so tortured over each other that to adopt the imagery of one cult by another (for a painting) is an intolerable ‘blasphemy’ that threatens to rip a family apart.
4. That people choose to shackle themselves to belief systems, even when they bring misery.

So yes, Asher Lev is a great book, but sometimes it was hard to understand the intensity of the situations, mainly because I don’t do faith – at least not faith in the supernatural.

Most newspapers (certainly national newspapers) are political organs.

They aren’t really news papers, in the strict sense of being a paper full of news. They are full of political bias and commentary, but they aren’t very reliable as reporters of factual news.

Now I realise that what I’m saying is obvious. We all know that:

Guardian= liberal

The Sun= conservative pornographers

Telegraph= conservative

The Daily Mail= fascist

and so on.

I’ve always known this, but the other morning when I was scanning the headlines on the major papers (outside a supermarket) I could suddenly see how ridiculous our faux-news really is.

The Sun had manufactured a story that connected a mother’s grief to Gordon Brown; The Mirror had concocted its own outrage about something they’d decided David Cameron had done; the Daily Mail was frothing about immigrants; the Guardian was pulling eveything to the left.

Altogether, this montage made news look a little hopeless.

Our newspapers do not just report the news. They promote their agenda. They snipe at their enemies. And occasionally they report the news.

I wish I had been taught this at school: Newspapers are not reporters of the news. They are political organs that manipulate news to further their cause, be it political or financial.

And there’s another thing: newspapers are businesses.  And that’s a whole other problem…

Last Saturday I was riding my new bike along a sea-front cycle path (in Hove) when a careless pedestrian lurched suddenly into my way. We collided, she went flying, I came to a dead stop.

I was shocked and mildly wounded. She was okay, but similarly shocked. I was expecting a stream of embarrassed apologies, given that she ran into me while I was on a cycle path, but instead she shouted at me for hitting her!

Then, the group of people she was with (some kind of religious assembly that takes place on Hove beach) started berating me for not taking adequate care.

An argument ensued. They wanted me to apologise. I wanted the woman to apologise, or at least accept that she was wrong for not taking due care and attention.

It was not to be. We argued in a circle. They threatened to call the police, which I thought was a great idea. They decided the police were unnecessary. The vicar or leader of their squad came over and told me that I could go. I told him he could go, but we were both free to stay right there.

Eventually I walked away, shouting at them as I went (I think the mild shock made me angry).

For some reason, and to my consternation, this group of people continued milling about in the cycle lane, apparently oblivious to the purpose of that path, or the dangers it brings.

I’m not writing this for any great purpose, but if you happen to walk along Brighton sea front, be careful around the cycle lanes. They’re easy to wander into, but being careless could be painful. Oh, and it’s your responsibility, not the cyclists, so be careful because you’re on their turf. (I checked this with the police after the accident. It’s a bit like walking into a road: you wouldn’t blame a car for hitting you if you stepped into a busy road.)

I’ve been a keen cyclist ever since I was a child. I started with a little red BMX, then went on to a GT Interceptor that I thrashed around the neighbourhood on – skidding the tyres to ribbons and slipping across frozen rivers (this was somewhere in Kansas), until it was stolen from outside Truesdell Middle School. Bastards.

We moved from Wichita to Uckfield, England. I remained bike-less for a while, borrowing my friend’s mum’s Raleigh Lizard mountain bike (thanks Birgit!) for occasional outings. Then, I rediscovered BMX, first with an old chrome Torker that I struggled to fit a Gyro to, then with a GT Performer.

Eventually age and practicality got the better of me, and I bought a Giant Rock SE (mountain bike). And we had such fun! We rode to work, through Buxted Park, over hills and across Ashdown Forest. I bunny-hopped up curbs and flew over mud humps. I completed the London to Brighton on her, in a relatively fast time (considering I was on a mountain bike). Then some git nicked her from outside our flat on Third Avenue, Hove.

Again, I remained bike-less for a while. Then, my thoughtful in-laws gave me a shiny pink mountain bike for my 30th. Although the bike developed some catastrophic faults, it rekindled my interest in cycling.

So I scoured Gumtree and found a Mongoose Rockadile. And what fun we’ve had! Together we’ve explored the South Downs, whizzed through city traffic and travelled to countless meetings.  But all this city riding has made me yearn for more speed, less friction and something sleeker.

Update: some bastard stole the Mongoose.

The Raleigh Record Sprint

So I wanted a road/racing bike, but they’re not cheap. And having never ridden a racing bike, I was reluctant to spend £500 on something I might not like. So I scoured eBay, looking for a clean old racing bike.

It’s not easy to find a reasonably-priced classic racing bike at the moment, because there is a trend for converting these old bikes into fixed-wheel rides. So the prices are higher than they should be.

Anyway, eventually I found her: a 1986 Raleigh Record Sprint, in pristine condition. She’s spent most of the past 23 years in a loft, protected from decay by a coat of grease.

When I collected the bike, the original owner was clearly sad to see her go. He actually said, “bye bike,” and watched us walk up the stairs to the train platform.

I’m reading Father and Son by Edmund Gosse, and want to recommend it to you.

Father and Son is an autobiography that records a boy’s upbringing in a puritanical household.

The father, Philip Gosse, was one of the blindly faithful, a sombre fellow who recorded his son’s birth with this emotionally-vacant entry in his journal:

E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica.

Rejecting Darwin

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is that Philip Gosse was a prominent marine biologist, and was approached by Darwin and his supporters in search of support for their new theory.

Philip Gosse struggled to reconcile his fundamental faith in the Bible with Darwin’s theory of evolution, so he rejected it and wrote a book that expounded an alternative theory. He believed that his book, his ‘Omphalos’ would ‘bring all the turmoil of scientific speculation to a close’ and ‘fling geology into the arms of Scripture’. But:

…alas! atheists and Christians alike looked at it, and laughed, and threw it away.