Doctor! No!

It's always hard watching the decline of a dear, beloved old friend. And yet that's how I've spent the last few years. As I write this, he's nearing his end, so they tell me. We first met when I was very young but I didn't form any real, lasting attachment until later. After fleeting glimpses, we became properly acquainted in the school library. I was twelve. He was several hundred years old. His name was the Doctor, and I cannot love him anymore.

Right now I'm supposedly catching up with the episode I missed on Christmas Day, mainly because I'm going back to work tomorrow and someone's bound to want to talk to me about it, plus I'm expecting an e-mail from a ten year old who may expect me to make intelligent remarks about the storyline. And all I can do is whimper, "But it's drivel!"

Way back in, oh, when was it? 2002? 2003? I waited with some trepidation to see how the revamped Doctor Who would fare. To my surprised relief, it was a success. Christopher Eccleston was dynamic, Billie Piper didn't sing and it could only have been bettered if Charles Dickens had stayed on as a companion.

Slide forward a few years. Picture this: a small, ethnically and sexually diverse, group in a contained setting, in peril from something huge and powerful. One of their number may have psychic tendencies, one will be there for comic relief. There will be a woman, probably comely, almost definitely young and bosomy. The Doctor will arrive. Things will go awry. There will be explosions. At least two of the small, ethnically and sexually diverse, group will die horribly. There will be more explosions and some sort of extended chase sequence, possibly featuring hi tech motorised vehicles. The comely woman will kiss the Doctor, unless she is Lindsay Duncan and therefore too old to kiss anyone. If John Barrowman is in it, he will probably kiss the Doctor as well. The Doctor will realise with horror that simply waving his sonic screwdriver around is not enough and they are all doomed, so the comely woman will sacrifice herself nobly and David Tennant will do that stricken spaniel look he's had so many opportunities to perfect.

Which episode am I describing? Waters of Mars? The one that was on at Easter with the girl who used to be in Eastenders? The one with Kylie? The one with Georgia Moffett as the Doctor's daughter?

Having sat through the first part of David Tennant's swansong, my mental checklist has been marked off comprehensively. Gratuitous Christmas references? Check. Cheery mockney autopilot from Tennant to ease viewers into story before the Serious Expression sets in for the duration? Check. Portentous staring into the distance by Messers Tennant and Cribbins? Check. Shameless pantomime from John Simm? Check. Pointlessly long chase sequence? Check. Ludicrous special powers bestowed on the villain for no reason? Check. Unfunny comedy sequence featuring stars of yesteryear? Check. Crude forcing of TARDIS and/or Doctor into Christian imagery? Check. [For the record, I'm not a practising anything, more of an amateur theist, but I found this offensive in its arrogance.] Bangs, explosions and special effects at the expense of an intelligent script? Check. Over the top threat to humanity that is merely risible? Check. We're just missing cameos from Billie and Freema Agyeman to give me a full house.

When the Master complained of the drums in his head, can I have been the only one blaming Murray Gold's deafening soundtrack?

I'm not anti-Tennant. I spent three hours of Boxing Day almost glued to Hamlet. [Three hours at teatime is not ideal scheduling. At least there's an interval in live theatre. Thankfully, I was handed a toasted bagel during Polonius's slaying.] He's a good actor but not with recycled, effects-first-storyline-second scripting.

Doctor Who used to be a children's programme. I watched it as a child. I soaked up morality and science, adventure and history. Twenty-odd years on, when I finally got to call myself doctor (the indefinite article, I must note), it was a bit late to realise that it was the sense of narrative that was strongest in me and not the science. Still, those letters look pretty on the CV.

But this series now, this sound and fury, what does it signify? Is it going to inspire anything in today's children other than a desire for the toys and the DVDs and all the rest of the merchandising hoopla? While the children I know (of various ages from small to pensionable) enjoy the bangs and the spectacle, the child in me is huddled miserably in the corner, longing for the Target novelisation of The Ark In Space.

Doctor Who has regenerated into something I no longer recognise. All I can do is mourn.

Goodwill to all mankind (that includes shopworkers)

So, in the immortal words of Noddy Holder, here it is. Three and a half weeks to go until the big day. In shops and stores across the world, consumers are suffering varying levels of festive stress. In need of an outlet for this building pressure, they seize on the best virtual punchbag known to retail: the poor soul behind the counter.

This underpaid minion has not been wearing tinsel and reindeer antlers since the middle of October of their own volition. It is a Management Directive. They are not smiling at you because they are delighted at your custom. It is a rictus forced upon them on pain of unemployment. If at times this becomes a little tiring and they look a little surly, do not blame them, for their feet ache, the remorseless lighting and the relentlessly looped Christmas music have given them a splitting headache, and the general public at large, endured en masse, day in, day out, rot the soul.

You're at work. You're doing your job as best you can. Somebody comes up to you expecting to be treated with respect, nay, honour. They are The Customer. You smile, offer a polite greeting. The customer blanks you completely to bawl into their mobile phone. You scan their items and wait for payment. The customer continues to ignore you. A queue builds. Eventually the customer shoves a card at you, still talking, not making eye contact. Some time later, they deign to enter their PIN code into the machine. You finish the transaction and present their card, goods and receipt with a smile now a little frayed around the edges. They snatch the lot and leave without a backward glance, still yakking. If you're lucky, the next customer will give you a word or a look of sympathy. If you're unlucky, they'll be on the phone.

If you've never worked on the wrong side of a service point, you cannot imagine the rudeness, the venom that is spat at someone in no position to defend themselves. Ninety-five per cent of the time, it's not their fault but still they have to apologise for the perceived mistakes of others.

Today (not in my workplace) I heard a customer spend at least twenty minutes haranguing a man behind a counter for something that was a) not his fault, b) inconvenient but not insurmountable and c) temporary. All this in tones of real nastiness. It's a tone I hear a lot, sometimes directed at me, sometimes at other people.

When you're out and about, in shops, in public service offices, hanging on the phone to call centres, listen to yourself. Not just to what you say, but how you say it.

So you're having a bad day. So nothing's going right. We're sorry for your troubles. We're doing all we can.

Swear inside your head, not at us. Better still, take a deep breath and try to appreciate that we want to help if you'll let us, but if you carry on treating us like dirt we'll decide you're not worth the bother.

This may amaze you, but people in customer service have feelings too.

And she's hooked to the silver screen

It's taken me a while, but I've finally realised what the problem is. This is a Technicolor (TM) world. My soul is monochrome. Inside this scruffy exterior, buried beneath layers of ill-fitting denim, beats the heart of a wannabe silver screen siren. No wonder modern life leaves me so dissatisfied. In the first place, no-one wears hats properly any more. I certainly don't as I any hat tends to make me look like Noddy Holder crossed with Wally from the Where's Wally books (or Waldo if you're in the USA). Yet fifty, sixty years ago everyone wore hats by instinct alone and looked fabulous. The same goes for tailoring. The women were hoisted into place with discreet scaffolding of one kind or another. The men wore made-to-measure as a matter of course. Now I know I'm generalising wildly and yes, I know not everyone could afford to look like that. But that era had class. No-one flashed their drawers at the paparazzi. They'd be ashamed at the mere idea. Yet these days tartiness is de rigeur and I can't remember the time I saw a well-dressed man in the street. By now you're rolling your eyes and wondering what's set the mad tweedy women off on her soap box again. It's quite simple. Blame whoever did yesterday's daytime telly schedule and decided to put on a 1947 thriller, Odd Man Out, directed by Carol Reed and starring (deep breath to ward off swooning) James Mason. He was playing a wounded killer on the run rather than leaning suavely against a mantelpiece but it still set me thinking. My train of thought, a short one, admittedly, ran something like this: I'd forgotten how lovely James Mason's voice was. Oh, I haven't seen The Prisoner of Zenda for ages. Oh! Stewart Granger! Stewart Granger and James Mason in the same film! At this point I had to go and lie down, fanning myself with the Radio Times. You just don't get men like that these days. You don't get stars like that, all velvet-voiced and masterful. I mean, compare the brooding presence of Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights with Tom Thingy in the recent TV serial. It's a bad example for me because I didn't watch the latter on the wholly-justifiable grounds that I can't bear the book and just want to bash Cathy and Heathcliffe's heads together for being so irritating, but you can't fault Olivier. I'm on safer ground with Hitchcock's Rebecca; I've seen that several times and he was an excellent Maxim be Winter. Going back to James Mason, I've seen several old films in which he's never less than compellingly watchable even if the rest of the film's complete tosh. I know these men were actors, and gifted ones, and I know that sixty years ago there were probably women carping that screen heroes just weren't the same since the talkies came in, but I do think that modern men just don't compare. So while my inner self cries out to wear a fabulous frock with a nipped-in waist and my hair longs to do that twisted under thing beloved of the Foyle's War stylist, perhaps with a little pillbox hat perched aloft at a sassy angle, I have to say no and put my plimsolled foot down firmly. There is no point going to all that effort when men wear South Park t-shirts and talk like refugees from soap operas. As a species, we have no longer have any class. How frightfully, frightfully grim.

For whom the Belle tolls

So blogging lady of the night Belle de Jour has outed herself... as a former PhD student. Like many others, I read the media coverage in appalled amazement. How the hell did she find the time? Did she submit her thesis by the deadline? What about the rewrites? Was the quality of her work affected by her other job? And what about the effect of that work on her research project? This is where I have to hold up my hand and declare an interest. I spent four years of my life - and this is not something I'm proud of - as, yes, a PhD student. Even now, the memories fill me with shame. The long hours hunched over a computer, tapping away. The even longer hours trying to look busy while waiting for a simulation to finish running. The clammy, sweaty realisation that I had used the wrong variables and was going to have to start all over again. And the gut-churning day when the computer displayed a black screen with the dispassionate message: "Cannot detect hard drive. Please insert hard drive and press any key to continue" and I hadn't backed up any of the last two years' work. And perhaps worst of all, the self-loathing and bitterness that came from the realisation, about eighteen months in, that I did not want to do this for the rest of my life. The spurious glamour had faded and the fun had gone. But there was no way out. Dependent on the research grant for my survival, I was forced to spend the next two and a half years chained to a battered desk in an overlit, underventilated communal office, putting my soul through all sorts of twisted contortions as I tried to make the person I'd become measure up to the person I could have been had I been able to find the strength to walk away. Today I am rehabillitated, a hard-working, upstanding pillar of the community. But there is always the fear that, one day, my past will catch up with me. Despite the censure heaped upon PhD students, we fulfil a need in society. Someone has to drudge through the dead ends of human endeavour, drawing erroneous conclusions from incomplete data. Without us, there would be no Nobel prizewinners, no medical breakthroughs, no market for black t-shirts emblazoned with the logos of obscure Scandinavian hard rock bands. We live through the agony of peer review of papers cobbled together because our supervisor thinks it's time we published something, anything, through the pity of friends with five figure salaries, and with the almost overpowering temptations of eBay and Facebook. Every day we are forced to face up to our own intellectual inadequacies. We fell into this way of life, seduced by images in the media. We remain there, trapped by the desperate need for cold, hard cash to pay the heating bill. Please don't judge us.

I've got a little list...

When I'm not writing clunky blog entries or procrastinating, I read. Since procrastination takes up most of my time, I read far less than I would like too and less than I should. The usual result of this is spectacular multibooking. This week I have been blending Edmund Crispin with Terry Pratchett, which is good for the vocabulary if nothing else. I haven't dared add any battlefield archaeology to the mix. One of the less mindboggling side effects of this habit is that I always have a mental list of Books I Really Must Read When I Have Time. Everyone has a list like this. It's driven entirely by guilt and peer pressure. Wolf Hall? Oh yes, but there were about three hundred people on the waiting list at the library last time I checked. All three volumes of Simon Schama's History of Britain? Gathering dust on the bookcase for the past six years or so. A Clockwork Orange? Read an extract in the paper this morning, thought "oh, that looks good, I'll have to reserve that". The complete works of Christopher Marlowe? Got to read them for work but I fear I'll struggle. (I don't buy the Marlowe-was-Shakespeare theory on the entirely unscientific grounds that Dr Faustus bored me and the Shakespeare I've read so far never has.) The Lost Symbol? No, no and thrice no. Even for a giggle. The worst aspect of this condition is that the list gets longer all the time. I'll be wading through a social history of the personal column thinking "I haven't read Jane Eyre in ages". (A sub-condition is the buying of books I've borrowed and enjoyed, the theory being that I liked them so much I'll re-read them later. They gather dust with all the others.) Why do I do it? Life is finite. There is only a fixed number of books I can read. Why must I try to cram in more than I can possibly get through in the allotted time? Denial complicates matters still further. I know I won't read six books during my week off work but I still bring them back from the library anyway. I've read one, which has brought a small glow of achievement. I'd planned to read part of another today but somehow ended up ironing instead and then realised I hadn't finished the paper. The simplest thing would be to admit that I don't have time and send the contents of my overstuffed bookcase to charity shops, relying instead purely on the charms of the local library service, but that would be a betrayal of the avid reader I used to be. There's nothing for it. I am going to have to work through all the books on my list. One at a time...

Reasons to be cheerful

A bloggette today: five reasons to feel good about myself. 1. In spite of everything, I keep writing. While some might say this is not something to be proud of, I like to think it shows perseverence and a determination to improve. 2. Slowly but surely I am getting rid of decades' accumulated junk. Apparently this will feel liberating when it's finished, although at the moment I am just wondering where it all came from, since there seems to be no corresponding space in the cupboards I took it from. 3. By not conforming to modern standards of singlism, I am forging my own identity. No matter that this will end up as tweedy woman in bobble hat knitted from moulted cat fur. At least I am not walking about in a skirt shorter than my coat and no tights, so I am not going to contract pneumonia and be a drain on the National Health Service. 4. Although not stated explicitly on my job description, I seem to be the only person who can fix the fax maxhine at work. Apart from last time, when the most I could do was a post mortem. But I did it nicely. 5. I know all the words to Bowie's Young Americans, even the bit in the middle where he gabbles. It's not much, but it's a start. Oh, and I can write concisely when I want to.

Mirror, mirror

So I came back. Bit of a makeover for the blog, tart the place up a bit, try to encourage myself to come out of my barnacle-encrusted shell (do you get landlocked barnacles?) and just get on and write something. But what? Well, I said to myself I was going to be a writer, then I said to myself I'd better face up to the fact that it ain't gonna happen. And so it's time to face the other unpalatable truths of my life: 1. I am never going to be a beauty. Now I know I've blogged extensively about my bloodyminded embrace of plainness and all its attendant freedoms from unfeasible cosmetics bills and having to look in every mirror I encounter, but I have to admit here and now it didn't come easily. Because if I'm honest I'm like everyone else: I want the world to see how fabulous I am. Now, well-meaning friends and greetings card writers aside, no-one really cares about what's inside. Exterior is all. No-one ever said, "All right, she's got a face like the back of the bus but, my god, you should see her spleen." And that goes for more nebulous distinguishing characteristics. You could be the kindest, most noble creature on God's earth but if you look like a mangled trout no-one will give you a second glance, apart from, perhaps, the odd lairy twelve year old who will take great delight in informing you of your repellant aspect. (Really. It's happened to me at least twice in the street.) And all this leads on to: 2. I am never going to have a relationship of any meaning with anybody. Again, I've blogged bravely about the advantages of the defiantly single life, but when it comes down to it, when I've read too much Jane Austen or watched part four of the BBC's adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, it's a bit disheartening to know that I am never going to experience anything even faintly reminiscent of the grand passions evoked in great works of literature, or by the Mills & Boon oeuvre, come to that. In life, it takes a lot to get past first impressions (see point one) and no man is going to waste time on a borderline depressive teetotal wallflower. Well, one or two men might give it a go, but I know them by sight (and, in one case, by particularly pungent smell) and I take evasive action accordingly. When all's said and done, the fault's entirely mine. I'm misanthropic and would rather stay in sighing over fictional heroes than go out and find my own. Nevertheless, resigned singlism does have its problems, namely: 3. Leonard Cohen is never going to write a song about me. For various reasons, among them my inability to socialise like a sane human being, points one and two above, and, most importantly, the fact that we are never going to meet or have any other form of contact, I am never going to be the muse for a song of startling beauty and lyrical truth, sung by a man whose voice sends shivers down my spine. While realism insists I recognise this, I can't help feeling a twinge of disappointment as I listen to CDs on headphones in the wee small hours of the morning. 4. I am never going to be the wise-cracking all-action sidekick of a 1960s super-cool secret agent. It's 2009. Any remaining 1960s super-cool secret agents will be a) dead, b) too arthritic to swing or c) popping Viagra and trying to pull sceptical nineteen year old popsies with a line about their flying car that can go underwater. And it's that pesky point one again. 5. I never keep a promise, even to myself. I said I wouldn't write any more, but here I am. Next time, I shall blog on five things that make me feel good about myself. That will be a much shorter post. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to listen to Leonard Cohen. Well, a girl can dream.

So long, farewell, and so forth

One of the recommended pastimes for a wannabe hack writer is to read widely. I've read newspapers, I've read magazines. I've read blogs by people I know and blogs by complete strangers. I've read cereal packets and adverts on bus shelters. I'm trying to read two books simultaneously, one at home and one at work. They're both archaeology so at some point I am going to get seriously confused and put Culloden down as one of the major battles of World War One. And what has all this reading taught me? That I have nothing to say. I can't comment intellligently on topical issues (http://www.bitmorecomplicated.com) or on books (http://norfolkbookworm.blogspot.com). I can't write commercially; a sheaf of rejection slips attest to that. As a embryonic hack, the realisation that I'm just not able to cut it is a hard one, but at least, agents aside, I've not wasted anyone's time but my own. So for now I'm laying this blog aside until I've got something to say and the means to say it well. Thanks for sticking with it so far, and adieu.

Not busy, just disorganised

As Cliff Richard almost sang: Procrastination breeds consternation. I've got so much to do but don't know where to start. (It does fit. Don't deny you've got a copy of Congratulations somewhere. Dig it out and sing along.) I used to read Keith Waterhouse's columns avidly as a teenager. I think that may be what's made me so militant about the correct use of apostrophes (although I shall doubtless bung one in the wrong place in the course of this post.) I was saddened to hear of his death, but cheered immensely by the extract they used on the news last night. Paraphrasing wildly, the gist was that he appeared busy by doing six things at once, but was actually working on one while avoiding the other five. While he was working on his column, he was avoiding working on his novel. While working on his novel he was avoiding working on a script. The loud twang you may have heard around twenty past six last night was my soul resonating in sympathy. Right now, as I write this I should be doing at least one of the following: looking for a job that doesn't lead to ossification of the soul, polishing my CV as a means to getting said job (hollow laughter), practising my driving in readiness for the commute this mythical job might entail, ironing the kinks out of the manuscript of my first novel prior to submitting it to another agent, going through the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook (apostrophes seem OK there) to find another agent to send it to, replying to all the wonderful Authonomists who spared the time to give me sound constructive criticism on said book, reading the work of said Authonomists and giving them almost sound constructive criticism, working on the plot of my second novel which has stalled slightly, getting a framework down on paper for the other two books I've got in mind, reading my library books before they go overdue, reading the magazine backlog so I can recycle them, watching the DVD backlog so I can put them away instead of piling them on the floor, tidying my room so I have somewhere to put the DVDs, listening to the two plays and a serial I taped from the radio last month or longer ago, taking the stuff I have cleared out to a charity shop and washing my hair. In no particular order. Now it could just be that I have appalling time management skills, but there is a lot to be said for simplifying life and cutting out much of the pointless activity that leads to headless chicken syndrome. I think the best plan would be to write everything down and assess the usefulness of each task, rank them accordingly, and work systematically. I'll add that to my list of things to do.

Drawing the line under celebrity

I was going to say I was watching The Lady From Shanghai the other night, but that's misleading. It makes me sound like a film buff, which I'm not. I love good storytelling and I love the atmosphere of film noir, but I rarely have time to sit through a whole movie unless I'm sick. So what I actually did was watch the first twenty minutes of The Lady From Shanghai, remember that I have have an aversion to Orson Welles, regret that someone else wasn't playing the lead, vaguely wonder where I put my Maltese Falcon video, and start watching an archaeology documentary instead. What did strike me about the film, however, even more strongly than the awfulness of Welles's Oirish accent, was how jaw-droppingly lovely Rita Hayworth was. Her frocks were rather nice, too. And then I saw it. She was lying on a yacht (I think), singing, and it was there, clear as you like, magnified on the silver screens of yesteryear and the less magical screens of today. A line. Across her forehead. Right across it. And do you know what? It didn't detract from her beauty at all. If anything, it added to it. Beauty and character. If a woman looked like that now, she'd be vilified. Youth is all, beauty is all, but only if it conforms. All traces of character and individuality must be expunged. Open any glossy magazine. Unless you've nothing else to do with your time, I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to tell any of the women apart. Go back fifty years or more. The stars cultivated their individuality, celebrated it. Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Veronica Lake, Jean Harlow, Ingrid Bergman, Hepburns Audrey and Katherine, all of them completely distinct. All we have now is bland homogenity and high streets full of poker-straight-haired clones who aspire to be 'celebrities' without the hard graft. There's little real style, let alone any substance. I'm bored with identikit 'stars'. It's time for a change. The revolution starts here. Chuck out your straightening irons. Banish the botox. Reclaim your character, or, if you haven't got one, do something about it. What are you afraid of?

Open wide and say AAAAARRRGGGHHH

The first time it happened I thought it was a reaction from going from a glimpse of how I wanted my life to be to the reality of how it is. The second time it happened it could just about have been put down to a bad day. Today it happened for a third time. I can no longer ignore it.

I am happier having root canal surgery than being at work.

I know it's a terrible thing to say in a recession, and yes, I realise that I'm lucky to have a job at all, but ossification of the soul is setting in and I want to get out before it's too late. Life is finite and some lives are more finite than others. It's a truism that no-one has ever laid on their deathbed and wished they'd spent more time at work. I suspect there's a trick to it, knowing when to jump. I've done a fair amount of weighing up the pros and cons of resigning. It's not as if I'm employable anywhere else so my options are 1) grit my teeth (those that aren't held together by amalgam) and die slowly five days a week, or 2) politely hand in my notice and hope that the shock of having no income inspires me to find meaningful work PDQ. My landlady would prefer I chose the former option, although she sees why the latter appeals.

A friend has suggested I try for a sabbatical but I don't think that's fair on my colleagues, even if it were remotely possible that the firm would allow it. (Sabbaticals are for management. We minions must drag ourselves in every day unless certified clinically dead by three different doctors.) Last year someone went on unpaid leave for personal reasons and there was some ill feeling among those left to carry the workload. I dreamt of her the other day. I hope she's happier and healthier than she appeared to me then.

So no sabbatical. What other options are there, apart from undergoing a lobotomy? I could talk to the management, but I've tried that and was met with concerned incomprehension. With a company ethos that everyone must be happy at all times and dissenters will be disciplined, the safety valve of griping in the staff room has been closed off. Yes, we still do it in hushed whispers in corners, but it gets us nowhere and I find it easier to be there in body only while my mind is off doing something more interesting. So far only one colleague has noticed that my standard reply to 'how are you?' is 'hello, how are you?'

What I would really like is a year out. Lots of people have them. No-one would be surprised if I announced I was taking a year off to have a baby. No, let me rephrase that. No-one, apart from anyone who knows me, would be surprised if I announced I was taking a year off to have a baby. I'm not going to have a baby. I don't want one. It would be too much like being John Hurt in Alien. But why should I be penalised for wanting to live on through books and scripts than through passing on my DNA? Off the top of my head I can think of lots of books that are more worthwhile than some people I could mention. There's maternity leave and paternity leave. Why not literary leave?

Just think: six months to a year away from the workplace and several shiny new (fictional) people at the end of it. And everyone could share in that simply by reading my book.

Although some might prefer root canal surgery.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

"Class of 99," read the invitation. "Ten year reunion."

Words to strike horror into the heart of any sane thirtysomething. The invitation itself was friendly enough, glossy card covered with enticing photographs of the classiest of the campus bars. Tickets were reasonably priced and there was no objection to bringing partners.

And there we hit the first obstacle. There is every objection to bringing partners to a gathering of chums from student days, especially if you haven't seen said chums for a decade.

Look at yourself now. Steady relationship, maybe a kid or three. A mortgage you don't really want to talk about at the moment, thank you. A shelf of cookery books you like to look at but can't quite find the time to use for actual cooking. Your idea of a good night is tucking up the children with a kiss then vegetating in front of The Wire box set with a tub of ice cream.

Now think back to a time when your idea of a good night was something you can't actually remember. When you thought nothing of walking home alone at half past two in the morning, because, hey, it's all right, you've got a mobile phone the size of a brick and you can always bludgeon anyone who tries to attack you. When the bloke in the kebab van admired your mini skirt and doubted you wore knickers, so you showed them to him to prove you did, and he felt sorry for you and gave you a free can of Tango. When you set fire to your friend's hair trying to light her cigarette because you didn't smoke and couldn't get the hang of the lighter. When you ended up dancing on the stage of the students' union with the troupe of professional dancers on 70s night. Four times. Sober. When you pined unrequitedly for men who would have appalled your mother. You're not that person anymore. The relief is palpable. Do you really want to take your partner anywhere near anyone who might tell him what you got up to?

Conversely, those mates you partied with remember you as a mad-for-it goodtime girl, the first to lead the charge to the dance floor. Do you really want them to see you as you are now, with grey roots and crow's feet, opaque tights to cover the incipient varicose veins, yawning at nine thirty and preoccupied with the allotment? Wouldn't it be kinder to let them keep those memories unsullied? That's always supposing they can remember even as much as you about it all.

Then there's the agony of being compared with your peers. There will be at least one who has done stupendously well, who thrives in a challenging but rewarding career which she combines with bringing up two beautiful children and keeping an immaculate home for her handsome, successful husband. There will be others, less high-flying, but happy in the careers they've built on their degree. You got halfway through the course and realised you'd made a huge mistake, but you were too scared to back out. You saw it through but now you're in a dead end job and you couldn't bear your old friends to know that you wasted your potential so shamefully. If you told them, they'd commiserate to your face then gloat about it to their other half all the way home. No, that's not an option. No-one ever goes to a reunion and says how awful their life is.

Time is not kind to students. You agree to go because you think it will be a laugh, that all the familiar faces will be there. You will walk into that room and at first you will think you've come to the wrong place, or on the wrong night, because you don't know anyone. Then you realise that the ancient crone by the bar is the girl from your tutorial group your flatmate wanted to pull, and the balding lech with the pot belly is the stud you cried yourself to sleep over for weeks. And you know they're looking at you and thinking, "God, she's let herself go." The riotous evening of drink and reminiscence you foresaw turns out to be a never-ending ordeal of small talk about the effects of the recession.

This is where sites like Friends Reunited come in. You can find out what people are doing from the comfort of your own home, not standing in a bar that's seedier than you remember, drinking overpriced wine because you don't qualify for subsidised alcohol any more.

I read the invitation, grimaced a bit, and filed it somewhere random. A few weeks later a friend asked if I was going. I didn't think anyone would remember me. That didn't stop me hoping secretly that when the night came someone would be looking round wondering where I was if I wasn't there.

The photo album came out from the back of the wardrobe. Did I really dress that badly? Why didn't someone stop me? I wondered what happened to the people in these photos. Out of the large group I thought of as my friends, I'm in touch with maybe three on a stronger basis than Christmas cards. If we manage to meet once a year, we think we're doing well. If it wasn't for Facebook, that illusion of friendship, some might be given up entirely to vague memory. It was tempting to give in to curiosity, revisit the haunts of my youth and see how badly everyone had aged. And suddenly I missed my friends. I missed the fun we had. I was sorry I hadn't tried harder to stay in touch. Nostalgia is a powerful force. It drives us back to places we can never reach.

I resisted. The album went back in the wardrobe. I didn't go to the reunion. That didn't stop me looking at the alumni website a couple of weeks after the event and finding a list of those who attended. I recognised maybe five of the names. One of them was my first crush. There were photos.

Dearie, dearie me...

Fish and bicycles

One of the main characteristics of working in customer services is interacting with the general public. As anyone who's ever stood on the business side of a counter will know, you hear all sorts of comments to which your only permitted response is a polite smile. The one I heard yesterday is one I've heard many times before, but it's lit my blue touchpaper so here I go. Recently we had our computer system changed. This technological wonder has empowered us to do all manner of hi-teckery. It also means it takes us twice as long to perform basic functions. A customer watched me serve her and expressed disbelief at this. Then she looked at the shiny new hardware and said, "I bet it was invented by a man." Pffft. Szzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bang. (That was my blue touchpaper in case you were wondering.) Will the world please stop running men down? I know this may seem a little odd in a blog written by a professional spinster, but I like men. I really do. Not enough to want one of my own, but I am fond of them, by and large. Men have done amazing things over the centuries. Off the top of my head, men have invented telescopes, discovered penicillin, pioneered surgical techniques, fought fires, built bridges and railways and cities and drainage systems. They've founded charities to care for children, stood up for injustice, died for causes they believed in. They've composed sonatas and operas and chorales and played air guitar with no trace of irony. And put up countless shelves and removed innumerable spiders from baths. Yes, women can do these things too. Yes, I have heard of Marie Curie and Marie Stopes and Amelia Earheart and Mother Teresa and Erin Pizzey. And yes, I manage without a man about the house. I am the stranded spider's friend. Give me a screwdriver and flat-pack furniture and I'm happy for hours. I used to be a scientist and engineer. I wasn't very good at either, which is why I stopped, but that's because I took a wrong turning early in my career. It's nothing to do with gender. I don't go round sneering at iPods or Twitter because they were invented by men. I go round sneering at them because I'm a luddite at heart and cling to my vinyl LPs and postal communication out of sheer perversity. Since when did having two X chromosomes give women such a superiority complex? Except it's not based on superiority at all, because if women did feel they had the upper hand in any perceived disparity, they wouldn't need to be undermining. They'd act as if it was so final there'd be no need to comment. And don't say men have had it all their own way for too long, repressing women and waving their patriarchy at everyone. So what? People are people. It's time we stop this 'yah-boo, I'm better than you' attitude and start showing respect for people as fellow human beings. Because no-one ever said "I bet that was invented by a woman." Where's the equality in that?

I shouldn't bother reading this if I were you

You'll have to bear with me thoroughout this post. I am in the infuriating position of having almost decided to throw caution (and my pension) to the wind and make my living by my pen. However, several factors have given me pause. In no particular order:

1. I have the most atrocious handwriting, so living by my pen will not get me very far. 'Living by my keyboard' lacks the necessary romance of the grand gesture, quite apart from the risk that the phrase could risk people mistaking me for Rick Wakeman.

2. No-one wants to pay me for what I write. You don't. You wouldn't be reading blogs if you wanted to pay for reading matter. Quite right. Freedom of choice and all that. Not a lot of help to struggling hacks like myself, though. My last semi-pro gig was very enjoyable and the recording of the script went very well, but it's not going to be reflected in my pay cheque. (In fact, the person who recruited me for the job was reprimanded by senior management for using a member of staff to write rather than using volunteers throughout. I hope the final product vindicates us.)

3. Partly as a result of 2, I can't get an agent. This is a well-worn complaint of the unpublished writer, so much so that extraterrestrial observers hear it so often they think it is a mating call. I hope I'm not abducted, I could end up paired off with someone working on volume seventeen of a multi-layered science fantasy epic. That would clash horribly with my retro thriller ambitions. Imagine the children. No, don't. It's too horrible.

4. I've got writer's chilblains. Similar to writer's block, this is a self-inflicted condition caused by having all sorts of fine ideas for plotlines while nowhere near writing materials. When I come to set them down, the ones I can remember in any useful detail are trite and hackneyed and I get cold feet which soon becomes painful when drawn out over a long period of time.

5. When I do actually sit down and make myself write, reading it back it strikes me as the maunderings of a deranged mind.

All these things considered, I fear I shall have to stick to the day job. And for the benefit of those in the blogosphere, perhaps I should go back to wasting time on Facebook instead of trying to kickstart my writing on here.

Thank you for reading this far. I think you deserve a chocolate biscuit for making it to the end.

Variations on the theme from M*A*S*H: Part two

You may have seen the media coverage this week of the deaths of the conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife Joan, who chose to end their lives together at the Swiss suicide clinic, Dignitas. Lady Downes was terminally ill; her husband, though losing his sight and hearing and becoming increasingly frail, was not. There are those who say that suicide is an abomination, whatever the motivation. Yet even the Catholic church no longer deems it a mortal sin, since to contemplate suicide a person must apparently not be in their right mind. But when a person is a part of you to such an extent that living without them would be more agonising than dying, quietly, alongside them, suicide may seem less like an act of desperation and more like the last laugh against illness and infirmity. I'm not condoning suicide. It isn't my place to be either for or against it, since I believe it's a matter for the individual concerned, and can only feel compassion for those who believe this is the way their life must end. I have no connection with the Downes family, but I respect the decision of Sir Edward and his wife, and I hope they are now at peace. My sympathies are with their family and friends.

Glad to be grey

I saw in the paper this morning that there is a website dedicated to celebrating grey hair (www.goinggraylookinggreat.com). While this is a Good Thing, it's a pity that losing hair colour is something that needs a website to reconcile people to it. And looking at the site, it's still pretty high maintenance, with talk of highlights and different shades to soften the blow of (whisper it) getting older. It's in the interest of the cosmetics industry to hard-sell the illusion that hair colour from a bottle equals youth and beauty. In fact, everything from foundation to nail polish is marketed to sell that fantasy. Face it, we are all getting older every second of the day (unless we're dead, and there's another branch of cosmetics to deal with that). How do you want to spend those seconds as they stretch into minutes and hours? Doing something fun, something enlightening, something helpful? Or crouched over a sink squirting viscous goo into your hair and hoping you won't drip over the soft furnishings? Let alone sitting in a salon having someone else do the squirting while relieving you of a hefty sum? As I've said before, I am notoriously low maintenance. I deal with my eyebrows if they're starting to take over my face and I reach for the bleach if my facial hair starts to make me look like Peter Wyngarde, but otherwise I am much as nature intended. (Nature likes a laugh.) It never occurred to me that I should dye my hair. I've been greying since my early twenties and, yes, it shows. So what? Mind you, I'm a little put out that it's coming through in strands so I look like someone's draped tinsel over my head. I was hoping for a dramatic wing of silver, or perhaps a touch of distinction at the temples. (Have you noticed that women go grey while men become distinguished?) I know I'm odd, but I don't think getting older is something to shy away from. Age is supposed to bring wisdom. How can you advertise your sagacity if you've disguised your years with dye and surgery? So embrace your fading follicles. Grey pride starts here. And use the money you would have spent on hair dye on something worthwhile.

Mrs Worthington's lament

A few thoughts on fame, following the death of Michael Jackson. John Donne said. "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind." Whatever your opinion of Jackson, a man has died and there are people mourning him. But, having read the retrospectives in the newspapers and watched the tributes on television, I find myself mourning his life. To take a child and take that child's innate gifts, and to mould that child into something that is a child no longer, is to condemn the adult that child becomes. What Michael Jackson became is a consequence of what happened to the child that he once was. Please, if you have children, let them find themselves before you try to push them into becoming what you want them to be.

Variations on the theme from M*A*S*H: Part one

There are two starting points for this. One is very old: Thou shalt not kill. One is more recent: human rights. It's currently legal in this country (the UK) to commit suicide. That phrase in itself is telling: suicide was decriminalised as recently as the 1960s. Assisting a suicide remains a criminal offence. There have been several high profile cases in the news recently of people who have chosen to end their lives by travelling to a Swiss clinic where they will take a carefully calculated overdose. One woman is seeking assurance that her partner will not be prosecuted for helping her end her life. If she cannot receive that assurance, it is likely that she will choose to make the journey while she is still able to, arguably shortening her life unnecessarily. Can it be right to force someone to take their life before they are truly ready? If you've notice of your own death, isn't it better to be able to face it without fear of your loved ones' prosecution? Perhaps knowing that the option is there as a last resort is enough to provide a reason to carry on in the hope that things may get better. I'm aware of the pitfalls of legalised euthanasia. That's something I'll write about another time. But we need a sensible debate about the options available to the terminally and chronically ill. It's no longer a crime to end one's life. It's time to examine whether the same should be said of loving someone enough to let them die with dignity.

Plain speaking

One of the cliches of spinsterdom is that spinsters are plain, almost by definition. In this image-obsessed world, you are not going to pull a man if you look homely, let alone like the back of a bus. I can only speak for myself here, since I haven't a handy panel of top flight spinsters to consult, but I don't much care for being pressured to look like a fashion plate. I don't think they have fashion plates any more, unless we're veering into Cath Kidston territory, but that's neither here nor there. No, one of the perks of being a professional spinster is that you can dress how you please and if you choose to go bare-faced and skip the hours in front of a mirror that's fine because no-one's going to wonder if you have an ulterior motive. I never went through the pink and sparkly girly phase when I was young. I went from cars to books quite rapidly, and the dolls I did play with were used for soap operas with long-running story arcs, rather than styling nylon hair into, well, pretty much what you started with, nylon hair not being terribly easy to style with a plastic comb larger than the subject's head. I did have a half-hearted attempt at glamour in my student days, along with one or two three-quarter-hearted attempts to throw spinsterhood aside in favour of relationships with men who, it turned out, had no interest in providing the other quarter. While the allure of looking like a woman from a Vettriano painting still lingers on in the outfits I never take out of the wardrobe, I have had to resign myself to the two facts that have led me to embrace the single life: I am plain and I have terrible taste in men. And I've realised it doesn't matter. Being pretty is all very well, but once it fades you've nowhere to go. Being plain is fine, because if you're even halfway lucky your face will gain character as you get older, etched in, unless you're going to use Botox to deny your nature. Because it's true that you get the face you deserve. It's not just getting older that frightens people into jabbing poison under the skin. It's the prospect of facing themselves once the mask of youth falls away. So why bother with make-up and all the rest of the ritual? Unless you're going to spend all day staring in a mirror, you won't see what you look like and why should it matter what other people think you look like? Feel good on the inside and never mind anyone else's opinion. By all means look after your skin, but don't abuse it in the pursuit of some unattainable airbrushed image. Life is too short to roast yourself on a sunbed. Go and do something constructive instead. Be brave. Be interesting. Be yourself.

Spinster du jour

Yes, it's only a TV programme. Yes, there are terrible atrocities going on all over the world. Yes, there are probably other things I could get worked up about. I agree with you. But this is my blog and I have my soapbox right here to climb on. Will the world please leave Susan Boyle alone? I am fed up with the tone taken by most of the media: backhanded compliments and sly mockery camouflaged as admiration. Take the label that's been stuck on her, the Hairy Angel. Imagine you were a teacher or a boss and you heard one of your pupils or staff being called a name like that. You'd cry bullying and discrimination. It's not affectionate or fond. It's spiteful. "Look at the plain spinster. Who'd have thought she had a voice like that?" Why shouldn't she? And if she had a voice like a foghorn with colic, would that make her any less valid as a human being? The media must have wet themselves with joy: middle-aged spinster, living with cat, pottering along quite happily without Touche Eclat and Louis Vuitton. Were people really living like that any more in the twenty-first century? How quaint. Oh yes, let's thrust cameras into every aspect of her life, hold everything up for dissection, then lets drop her when someone else comes along to be chewed up and spat out. I hope she enjoys her time in the limelight. I hope she gets to sing in amazing places, loving every minute, because she has talent and deserves all the good fortune that talent can bring her. But I fear for her, because modern celebrity is merciless. I don't want to see her reduced to living out her life in the pages of glossy magazines, filling the hole left by Jade Goody. Enjoy her singing. Buy her records. Admire her talent and her determination. But don't snigger into your sleeve as you do so.

I don't want to be single

Strictly speaking, spinsters don't exist any more. We were abolished a few years ago. I don't know what marriage certificates say now. Single, probably. Factual, yes, but boring. I don't want to be a single. I want a label I can be proud of. As Marion Shaw said in Winifrid Holtby's South Riding, "I was born to be a spinster, and, by God, I'm going to spin." In times past, remaining unmarried was a misfortune. Women were objects with few rights. However, in this country (Britain) at least, since the earlier part of the last century this has been addressed, sometimes insufficiently, sometimes to this point of belittling men. The latter is something I'll discuss in another post. Spinsters have been, not infrequently, pigeonholed as mad old bats wearing tea cosy hats and tweeds smelling of cat. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, although it's not a compulsory uniform. Tweed can be scratchy, tea cosy hats are challenging in high summer and smelling of cat can be avoided by encouraging said cat to use a litter tray. But you can put the spin into spinster any way you choose. A quick vox pop in any British town centre would give you a few famous spinsters: Miss Marple (fictional but fiendishly intelligent), Ann Widdecombe (currently on people's Fantasy Parliament squad as the new Speaker of the House of Commons), Joan of Arc (French heroine and saint), Germaine Greer (feminist icon and part-time Big Brother contestant). The fact is, spinsters are seen as formidable. May I remind you that formidable is French for great. The term spinster is more loaded than the insipid single. It carries centuries of baggage. That weight is something to be harnessed. Modern spinsterdom is more of a calling than a curse. Marriage, cohabitation, even casual copping off on a semi-regular basis - these are not the goals of every woman. Some of us opt not to inflict ourselves on another person, opt not to compromise. It's a lifestyle choice, like having your ears pierced, only less sharp and pointy. Whatever modern culture says, being a single woman does not make you a freak. Being a perpetually single woman is perhaps a little more rare. If you're not happy with that, fine. Do something about it. But if you don't mind, if you're quite happy without a man, spin like crazy.