Gone are the days where I would sit at my computer - freshly-made, piping hot cup of tea at my side - and type, often whimsically, about whatever was floating through my head at the time.
I miss those days.
It all started to get a lot darker up in my old head, around the time of the Elliott Rodgers rampage. That news story lifted the rock on a peculiar (not to mention dangerous) school of thought.
Seeing into that world, however briefly, unsettled me and knocked me off track. It hit a point where every news story triggered either outrage, despair or sorrow - no middle ground, either one or a mix of the three. UKIP clumsily trying to put on their marching boots; Russia/Ukraine; mysoginy; Ireland's inhuman stand on abortion; varying Tory policies in the works; Gaza; Ferguson. All these situations broke into global recognition at the point when I was making a concerted effort to be aware of the wider world.
I made several efforts to be a decent cove and take a stand to say "Does this seem wrong to anyone else?" - to not stand by and say nothing. I didn't feel better the more I did it, though. I just felt hopeless instead. The more I read, the bleaker my outlook was becoming, because as much as I wanted to speak out, there was very little I could intrinsically do.
Before long, I was so depressed about everything that I reasoned the only thing I could do was take a step back & try to get myself on a more even keel. So I did. I backed off.
Then, the other night, The Great British Bake Off - a programme that is both filmed months in advance and edited, heavily - managed to make it look as if a woman had taken a competitor's dessert out of a freezer, causing him to bin it and walk out.*
Fucking hell, the internet erupted. For the amount of outcry about a binned Baked Alaska, you'd have thought that a white police officer had gunned down an unarmed black teenager, or that years of fermented differing religious beliefs had resulted in days of persistent bombing and gunning down children, or - I dunno - the Prime Minister was gearing up to repeal THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT.
I'm not one of the most educated people in the world, nor am I one of the most successful, but I like to think I'm the sort of person who wouldn't put a wrongheaded, badly thought-out, non-existent "controversy" ON NEWSNIGHT. I would maybe have gone for something more relevant, such as the revelations sexual abuse in Rotherham, or Russia constantly invading Ukraine. Just a thought.
I don't mind that a TV programme does a cheeky bit of editing to spice up what is essentially a food contest. I don't mind that people might take to social media to share an "Ooh, did you see that?" while it's on. What BUGS THE EVERLOVING FUCK out of me though, is that a level of outcry is reached THAT WE REALLY COULD HAVE DONE WITH WHEN *IMPORTANT* THINGS WERE HAPPENING - y'know, women dying as a result of Irish abortion laws; Robin Williams' suicide being reported in grisly, prurient detail by the press; families being bombed whilst hiding in schools; American police barging into a church being used as a triage centre during the riots in Ferguson, and confiscating medication being used to treat the effects of tear gas. THAT SORT OF THING.
I mean come on, pick your battles. The message I got the other night was "I shall maintain a dignified silence throughout the atrocities of the Middle East, Ferguson, Gaza, but YOU WATCH ME GET MY COMPLAINING HAT ON WHEN THE BBC MAKE IT LOOK LIKE SOMEONE FUCKED WITH A PUDDING!"
What a truly ridiculous week.
*The dessert was left out for forty minutes and then put in another freezer, but the freezers were having a bit of a difficult time of it. I didn't even watch this AND HERE I AM POINTING IT OUT.
Yup!
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