The first time was a classic. I was about 15and my life was an endless round of uninspiring lessons, exams and pointlessness. I wasn't a very sociable 15 year old, I didn't have a boyfriend and spent a lot of time looking out of my bedroom window at rain, listening to the charts, the Hairy Eyeball Show on the local radio station and writing to Terry Wogan about traffic cones and magpies. Margret`Thatcher was the prime minister, we were in global recession and constantly told in every assembly that there were no such things as good jobs for us and that we would have to retire before we were 50 (hahahaha). We were living with the spectre of a nuclear war, leaflets called Protect and Survive were delivered through letterboxes, advising us to hide under tables and stock up on tinned food. A house I walked past on the way to school had begun to build a proper nuclear bunker. I read too much. PE lessons, lunch and break were spent in the library, where I would work my way through the newspapers, the beano, New Scientist and Good Housekeeping magazine (the beginnings of an ecclectic taste). After a few years of this Raymond Briggs brought out his wonderful cartoon book and I was devouring all the dystopian fiction I could find. I didn't go on any CND marches because I believed the propoganda that your name would be on record for ever after and I already thought there was no hope of getting a job.
There was another serious episode before I had children when I was working in a bank but I think working in a bank will do that to a person.
This morning I woke early and sat in bed reading twitter and online newspapers and when I couldn't take it any more I started reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. This was a mistake, to read a book about a bunch of teenagers with terminal cancer didn't lift me. As I read, I realised that the world is in crisis again and it struck me that life really is about ever decreasing circles.
I read about the History curriculum and Michael Gove's insistance that every academic who disagreed with him on the subject was a 'Marxist living on Planet Red'. Then I started to get the old eighties paranoia again as I realised I would be on the 'people to round up and shoot come the revolution list' because I had googled Marxist parties in the UK. My reason for this search was that I believe Mr Gove to be deluded. If all these top academics were Marxists then I would have surely heard of a Marxist party in the UK and I hadn't. In fact I can't find one on the internet. There is a Communist party of Britain, who fielded a total of 6 candidates in the 2005 election and has approximately 900 members, although their ideology is largely Stalinist. Personally, I think History isn't a linear subject, it's a spiral (ever decreasing circles). The reason existential angst doesn't happen until teenage years is because before then it is impossible to reaslise that you've heard it all before. Children must relate all history to themselves, without this ego-centric view it won't make any sense to them. It's only when you reach an age where you've seen it all several times before that you can truly appreciate history for what it is. Michael Gove also claims that people are against his History curriculum because 'learning the facts about a war might, God forbid, make them grow up to vote conservative.' No wonder he wants to change it, if he thinks it would have that much influence. Most people I know are against the History curriculum because they think children will find it boring and no one learns anything when they're bored. I didn't like History at school, the corn laws, colouring in a map of the world with lots of pink to show the empire and the poem for the Kings and Queens just didn't really interest me. When I grew up I found History novels (more importantly Her-story novels) and museums that told me about the people and how we could learn from what has happened before, maybe but only if we are very clever and most of us appear not to be.
Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three,
One-To-Three Neds, Richard Two,
Harrys Four-Five-Six... then who?
Edwards Four-Five, Dick the bad
Harrys (twain), Ned Six (the lad),
Mary, Bessie, James the Ken
Then Charlie, Charlie, James again...
Will & Mary, Anne of gloria,
Georges ( 4! ), Will Four, Victoria,
Edward Seven next, and then
Came George the Fifth in 1910...
Ned the Eighth soon abdicated,
So George Six was coronated,
Then Number Two Elizabeth...
And that's all, folks (until her death...)!!
I'm just grateful that he doesn't think that the music curriculum can change voting behaviour.
I also read the sad story of Lucy Meadows. Her life destroyed. Speculation that it was caused by the press who were determined to get a story, a photo, a quote. They followed her, went through her bins, tried to pay family friends and enemies for a negative view and apparently refused to publish anything nice. This doesn't surprise me. Her life is a story that interests people and unfortunately people don't really want to read nice. Nice is boring. I have just finished reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and it struck me that even the unremarkable could suddenly find themselves the subject of a story the press are interested in. Post-Leveson nothing seems to have changed for ordinary people who suddenly find themselves at the centre of something that is totally out of their control. I do not want Press regulation and I do not think Richard Littlejohn (who wrote a negative piece about her in the Mail) should be sacked. It would be nice if they followed the code of conduct they already had but it seems to me that most of the distress is caused by so many people trying to 'get the story'. And there are more of those people around. I was reading about bloggers who do not have to follow a code of conduct or abide by any laws. These bloggers are not like me. They are not silly women who write down their life and opinions, who wouldn't dream of contacting anyone for a story, but are people who masquerade as journalists. People follow them and their views change people's opinions. I was listening to Guido Fawkes on the radio who said that no one could prosecute him anyway because his site wasn't even registered in the UK.
In the acknowledgements of John Green's book he says that his book isn't about real people and that we should be happy to appreciate made up stories. He is right, His-story, Her-story, My-story, Your-story, they are all important. So I have a plan that I hope all my friends and family will help me with if the press ever get interested in my boring life. I want everyone I know to sell stories about me. I want them to make things up, to make me more interesting than I am. The more money they are offered the wilder and nastier the story should be. I wouldn't deny any of it. Photo-shopped pictures should be sold for exorbitant amounts and then we could all have a laugh. People should ring me up and have bizarre conversations and leave odd items in my bin for me. Then I could ignore all of it and get on with my life.
I hope the weather improves soon, so that this existential angst can lift and I can go back to blogging about cupcakes, knitting and planting potatoes.
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