O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!*

I said in my last post I would attempt to explain my recent absence. The question is, are we allowed to discuss depression on blogs? The truth is I was in an ugly trough betwixt and between. Hence the gap.



I don't suffer from what might be described as clinical depression, unlike a very close friend (and what hell that must be), but I used to go through regular lows in my teens and early twenties.

I thought it had all ended when, one day walking down St. Martins Lane in London, I sensed the dark cloud hovering on the horizon and knew that it would be over me for the coming twelve weeks when the happy thought occurred to me that, actually, it would all be over in twelve weeks. (My depression was pretty well organised and would last for a finite time before going off to upset some other poor soul.) Anyway, the effect was as if my fairy godmother had waved her wand and instantly dispelled the cloud. Because the first happy thought was followed by a second. If the cloud was to disappear in twelve weeks why should I bother walking under it now. With a neat sidestep, which Jonny Wilkinson, (or should that be Danny_Cipriani now?), would have approved of, I dummied the cloud and left it behind me. And it never reappeared.

When I say never, I mean not in the sense that it used to until now. Though even now it is not the same. However, in the months leading up to Christmas I was not so much under a dark cloud but certainly in the middle of a thick fog, which only in retrospect did I realise had severely obscured my vision. Looking back, I can see that I had withdrawn into a smaller and smaller shell. To a degree I can attribute it to circumstances; I was, comme d' habitude, struggling to pay the rent, struggling to earn money, and generally just struggling. My unfortunate response to such pressures is to cut myself off from everything and everyone. It is what I fondly call the whirlpool strategy of coping. The more I ignore the root cause of my problems, the more they pile up, so the more I retreat into the fog. Beautifully circular.

Clarity in the understanding of your predicament in no way helps alleviate it. Rationality and depression are as water and oil. In the middle of this smog you lose all sense of direction. Your SatNav reveals only that all roads leading to Rome are blocked. You are overwhelmed by a sense of complete helplessness and ineptitude. For anyone who has never suffered this condition, it sounds pathetic. Even to yourself it sounds pathetic. Even in the midst of the swirling tendrils enwrapping you, you understand it to be pathetic - in the pejorative sense of the word as it helps confirm your sense of worthlessness. But then you are pathetic. The word comes from the Greek, pathetikos, meaning sensitive, itself derived from pathos meaning suffering. In the context, pathetic is apposite.

There is a simple solution; action. Doing anything, and I mean literally anything, helps bring you to the surface, however, the effort required is often beyond you. The tendrils don't just enwrap and blind you but also hold and bind you. Friends may cajole and encourage but, as mentioned, you tend to cut yourself off from contact or, if forced to converse, do not admit your condition as you pretend there is no condition to admit or as yet are unaware of the depths to which you have sunk. Alternatively, if you do confess that you are not feeling totally pukka, the advice they offer seems only to reinforce the fact that they don't really understand your predicament. It is a very self-destructive cycle that skirts around being self-pitying.

I was lucky. In a way, I was saved by my desire to write. I wasn't writing and knew that the only way I would ever succeed would be to get myself into a virtuous routine. It was sufficient to encourage me to make the effort and seek out part-time work. So I got a part-time job, a very boring part-time job, nonetheless it gave my week a structure that was lacking before.

And behold! After a couple of weeks, I glanced over my shoulder and, with marked surprise, I saw clearly, for the first time, the fog from which I had but recently emerged.

* Orphelia, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

The Trials & Tribulations of Life on the Scrap Heap

This may appear as a rant but it is actually a genuine problem faced by many mature students seeking suitable employment after their graduation.

For anyone going back to full time, or even part time, education in their later years, it is a whirligig of an experience. You challenge yourself more fundamentally, taking the word education as re-education, than at any other point in your life. You must abandon all the suppositions and assumptions, recognized or not, that you have accumulated over your life and that help bolster your sense of identity and worth if you are to genuinely confront, absorb and understand the new concepts that will be presented to you as part of your university course.

Initially you feel naked and vulnerable as you strip away your armour of preconceptions. However, that is the least of the experience, it is also intellectually stimulating, physically draining and emotionally exhausting. The three years simultaneously condense and expand time; the years both stretch back endlessly and flash by with the noise of siren. The difficulty is, for most people, this period will represent the most intensely lived episode in their lives so it is not surprising that what follows post-graduation may appear grey and featureless. Many succumb to what may be loosely described as post-grad blues. Nor is this experience confined to mature students; those who leave university having arrived straight from school must also find the first years outside of academia deflating.

As a mature student, it matters not how realistic you may be about the difference a degree will make to your life, you are after all just one of thousands who graduate each year, it is still a sharp surprise that the outside world doesn’t seem to acknowledge your achievement. Your hopes of moving into a more interesting area of employment receive the cold shoulder of indifference. While you have been wrestling with Foucault or Derrida the world hasn’t even recognised your struggles with so much as a shrug; it has merely continued on its self-absorbed way.

Employers notice your degree not as the attainment of three years of effort but by the absence of three years of employment. You cannot possibly fulfil this function, firstly, because you haven’t done something similar before and, secondly, because you haven’t worked for three years.

‘Haven’t worked for three years?’ you feel like screaming. ‘Haven’t worked? Let me show you the mountains of books I have had to read, the extraordinary concepts I have had to grasp, the endless essays I have had to write and you have the effrontery to say I haven’t worked and then lard your insult by implying I don’t have the intelligence to learn your poxy procedures that a five year old could master in minutes.’

Since the Personnel Department was replaced by the HR department, any interest in the individual as an individual has been replaced by the view that the individual is merely an economic cipher. For HR, read Human Refuse.

OK, it is a rant. And for those of you who wonder why this has suddenly appeared out of the blue after such a long break in transmission, more later.

But does it tickle when you kiss?

Little did I imagine when I opened this blog with a sideways look at the planners who were responsible for naming the streets of my home city that facts would catch up with my fiction.

Anyone wandering through the streets of this city last weekend would have witnessed some strange hirsute sights. People looked like they had stepped out of another century. Or had recently arrived from the Planet Hairy.

Neither was it only the men who sported whiskers, I noted one or two women with some fine moustaches.

They had all descended on the city because Brighton was playing host to the World Beard and Moustache Championship, the first time this event has been hosted in this country.

It was to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Handlebar Club. Inaugural members included Jimmy Edwards and Frank Muir, which will probably mean nothing to most of you but they respectively achieved fame in their day as a comedian and a radio writer and raconteur. (Jimmy Edward’s figure could best be described as dumpy. I remember once watching him play polo, a sport of which he was particularly fond yet totally unsuited. He was as elegant in the saddle as a sack of potatoes on a seesaw.)

Appropriately enough, the winner, Elmar Weissar, (the gentleman to the left), came from Germany. And in the interest of maintaining the link connecting our two countries, he sported a full set in the shape of Tower Bridge.

I ask you, you couldn't make it up, could you?

(All photographs are by Andy Barker.)

You say zucchini, I say courgette.

Stuart, my permaculture friend, recently posted what sounds an absolutely delicious recipe for courgette/zucchini. I am a fan of this vegetable, especially raw, but never know how to cook them other than in a ratatouille.

However, his post reminded me that I had cut a recipe out of the Guardian Weekend supplement sometime ago. It was written by Rose Elliot though is originally an Elizabeth David recipe. (Phew, copyright issues over.) I haven’t tried it as yet but it does sound good. As Rose Elliot says, it is very buttery.

I’ll reproduce it as originally written.

Serves two to four, depending if you have it as first or main course.

900g courgettes peeled and cut into 5mm rounds. [I think the peeling is optional as in the photograph accompanying the recipe in the original article, the courgettes were au naturel.]
Salt
75g butter
450g tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp chopped parsley
Pepper
Soft breadcrumbs, for topping

Put the courgettes into a colander, sprinkle with salt and leave for at least 30 minutes. Drain and blot dry.

Heat 25g of the butter in a pan and fry half the courgettes until ‘soft and transparent looking’. Transfer the courgettes to a gratin dish and repeat with another 25g of the butter and remaining courgettes.

Melt half of the remaining butter and fry the tomatoes with the garlic, parsley and some salt and pepper until most of the liquid has reduced, leaving a ‘thickish puree but not too dry’.

Amalgamate this with the courgettes in the dish and smooth the top with a spoon. Sprinkle with a light layer of breadcrumbs and dot with the last of the butter.

Bake at 220C/425F/gas mark 7 for 25 – 30 minutes. (Vegans use five tablespoons of olive oil instead of butter.)

If anyone tries this before I do, let me know what you think.

Sun, Sea, Sweat.

Brighton! Brighton! Brighton! The place not to be on a Bank Holiday. Especially when the sun shines. Even more especially when the proceeding eight weeks have seen a continuous downpour that would bring back happy memories to Mr. & Mrs. Noah.

My daughter, her fella and my granddaughter had planned to come and see me but they have just moved into their new house. Their first home. How wonderful.

So instead of coming to treat me to Dim Sum, (ah, how I love Dim Sum), they were queuing at Ikea along with the other half of the population who didn’t come to litter Brighton’s beaches with their bodies.

Poor them! Poor me!

Actually, quite rich me. I spent ten hours on Saturday editing a thirty-five page document for Tom, my recently rediscovered benefactor. (And long may he remain so, say I.)

This was on top of other work I have been doing for him in his role as Communications Manager for an NGO. My given title for that work is Editorial Consultant. I have never been an Editorial Consultant before. It makes me feel very adult.

I doubt if it is a position I could have held earlier. I was not so much slapdash but certainly careless about detail when younger. Detail bored me. Now I find it strangely therapeutic to structure the text so it is consistent in style and detail. It is not exactly creative but there is a satisfaction to be had in resolving technicalities. It offers the simple pleasures an artisan must experience bent to some intricate task.

And, talking of artisans, I must phone my daughter to discover how she is managing with her flatpacks. Will it be the allen key that is missing this time, or a vital thingymabob?

Ramblings about Scribblings

For some time now, I have scribbled short notes on books I have read. Initially, I guess, it was as a result of my university days. It seemed a waste not to put all the knowledge gained to some positive use. It also proved a practical aide-mémoire, my memory needing all the practical aide-mémoires it can get these days. But increasingly it serves another purpose. Now that I am trying to write myself, I find myself searching under the bonnet of the work trying to figure out how it has been assembled, to discover what makes it tick.

Setting down my thoughts helps me distil the significant elements of the book. Sometimes, this proves enlightening, at others disheartening. The latter because most plots, when refined, are remarkably simple, which leaves me feeling sort of cheated. There must be more to it than that, I think. And, of course, there is. If nothing else, it emphasises the need for quality in the writing and characterisation. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is the best example that immediately springs to mind.

Can you imagine touting that plot to a publisher?

"Got a surefire winner here, Sam. Man goes fishing, catches fish."

Anyway, in between reading Proust's In Remembrance of Things er... what was it again, I have been reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.Though not finished, here are my thoughts so far.

The book has a small but well defined cast of characters. They consist of a family of father, mother (deceased) and two sisters and an intruder, namely Koyla, Ludmilla, Nadezha, Vera, and Valentina.


The narrator, Nadezha, is a left wing lecturer, her sister a committed materialist, the father an engineer with somewhat confused humanitarian principles, the absent mother a romanticist (am not totally certain of this description), and the outsider a greedy, grasping, totally unprincipled woman bedazzled by the glitter of capitalism.

The plot is uncomplicated. The mother has died two years earlier and the remainder of the family, originally from the Ukraine, have all now grown apart when, to the consternation of the sisters, the father announces his intention to marry Valentina, a blowsy Ukranian well under half his age but with the undoubted bonus of a pair of Botticellian breasts.

The story revolves around the efforts of the sisters to patch up their political differences sufficiently so as to oust the cuckoo from their familial nest.

It is a topical, dealing, as it does, with issues of immigration, though unremarkable plot. Three things, however, lift it from the ordinary; the characterisation of the protagonists; the wit of the writing; and the insertion, periodically, of texts from the short history of tractors, written by Pappa and translated with the help of Nadezha.

With this clever device, Lewycka, gives her characters an historical setting, adding a context to their petty actions without ever attempting to rationalise or analyse them. It adds depth, interest and weight to what otherwise would have been an amusing but light tale.

Times of Trouble. Times of Respite.

The edges of my blog are curling and there are definite signs of foxing on the screen - it's been that long since I posted here. However, I have either been busy or not busy and miserable. In fact, the last few weeks go down as miserable with a big capital M.

Avid readers will know that I was doing a painting job for a friend of a friend. I don’t claim to be professional painter but do pride myself on doing a good job, to which at least one of my readers can testify. In my naivety, I had imagined that the individual concerned was financially strapped. (How wrong was I? While there I discovered that she was buying a second house so her son would have somewhere to stay when he went to university. I ask you! Halls of residence are obviously not good enough for the delicate child.) So, having estimated the job would take around two week, I was careful with my time and how I spent it.

About two-thirds the way through the work I received a call saying that she didn’t want me to continue. She gave some spurious reason or other. When I went around to collect my money, she said she wasn’t happy with my work, pointing out faults I was perfectly well aware of but had left. In terms of priority and saving time, hence money, I’d calculated it would be more efficient to do all the touching up at the same time.

I explained. She didn’t listen.

She gave me a cheque for the time I had completed when I had last given her an update on the hours spent. I had worked another day since. She refused to pay for it.

“We’ll agree to disagree,” she said in her best mangerspeak voice.

“We won’t,” I replied in my best barelycontainingmyanger voice.

“Well you can always pursue it, if that’s what you wish,” she continued, now using her best patronisingmanagerspeak voice.

“Pay me the money you owe me and I might be able to afford to do so,” I riposted in my sharpest aciddrenched voice. I was rapidly running out of voices, so left. Fuming.

A week later I receive a letter from my landlord’s agent saying, as I was behind with my rent, they would be taking proceedings. Proceedings followed shortly in the form of registered mail, which I left lying around the Post Office Collection Point for a week in the hope it would be used by someone for his origami classes.

I collected it. It was exactly the same form as before, though this time from solicitors. It too warned of proceedings.

This, I thought, is very unfair. I have been playing this game of catch-up with my agent, a lovely man, for years. Now he has taken my ball and won’t return it.

More proceedings. My agent is on my doorstep.

“Tell me, David, what is the position?”


I explain the position using diagrams backed up with a short PowerPoint presentation. Briefly, it explained that he had the ball and should now return it. (I had diagnosed the principles of tennis in my presentation as an analogy.) He wavered.

“I will e-mail you,” he said. I sensed the ball was in the air again.

He hasn’t e-mailed as of yet but I shall e-mail him for I have news. (In this game, unlike tennis, it is always advisable to alert the other where you will be sending the ball. And despite the fact that I technically don’t have the ball at this moment, I can point out to him where it will be bouncing on his side of the net should he lob it back to me.)

My news equates to work. I had applied for a job and put down someone who had previously commissioned quite a lot of work from me as a reference. I phoned him to warn him. It was a vague gesture, as I knew he was now based in South Africa and I only had his UK mobile number.

Holy miracles of modern technology! He only phones me back the following day having noticed I had tried to call him.

“What are you up to?” he asks.

“Oh, this and that,” I replied nonchalant as a seal lazing on Nonchalant Beach.

“I was just thinking I might have a few days work for you.”

The nonchalant seal suddenly becomes a very eager beaver. The result is I have had more than a few days work and with more promised. Hats in the air time, followed by bouncing balls, I shouldn’t wonder.