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 This is a well-worn complaint of the unpublished writer, so much so that extraterrestrial observers hear it so often they think it is a mating call.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.