I
So I took myself off for one pint only to the local pub and this time things would be different. Rather than dropping off in similar places sporadically on lone walks, today it was specific. One local. One learning. Instead of wondering what other people thought about me, the entire environment would be subjected to my test. It is hard to underestimate the changes here. Not only the brain feels different. The head does - and physically. Pressures back and forth. Troubling. My observations drew on what has been increasingly in me for some time, ie you might get a smile and something that resembles humanity from someone who has got something to sell you. Clearly in this case it was the barman although what I am outlining is a pen picture of society in 2017. Then I sat there alone. No worries. Absolutely no emotion. I expected it, noting that my parents and some others of their generation view the world as one big happy family. That is, unless they sense people are about to turn nasty at which point they leave and block it out like it has never happened. Just as they did when young with Hitler.
But Hitler was the enemy and everyone here.....we were all in it together. That is, those of us born prior to 1945. The sentiment extends even to this day in open chat with people who are declared friends on buses and familial relations with neighbours. I'm sorry but I just don't get it. I'm no longer susceptible to the urge to view most people as ok. Yeah, they are ok and so what? So what isn't what I want to feel but what the rest of life is telling me to feel. It hardly matters if they are ok when they don't engage at all. Community is a false concept only believed in by local Tories and socialist pseud-gods. No one came over. I didn't go over to them. Worse, my instinct was that it would all have been so anodyne if one or the other had occurred. Depressing without the awkwardness of "what do you do?" "Not a lot". "Bye". It increasingly bewilders me. This thing that people are now. Fairly ok-ish and separate.
II
For years, music events blissfully blinded one and drowned out the lack of harmony. Sports events do. I am quite at ease in the middle of a crowd who are taking knives to each other, literally, because the goal posts are clear. I don't like it and will get out but not with undue alarm. In the everyday, the rules are less easy to accept. Only when one accepts them is there any confidence. Knowing how they feel and how I feel. At least we know the position. Neither gangland nor Commonwealth. Perhaps it would be different around a pub quiz. Some common identification. Perhaps it wouldn't be. Everyone so insular as to be anything other than objective re who they don't know. Me included. Whichever way, I don't rate it. They all seem so routine which suggests a sense of superiority but that is the last thing I feel. However much warm effort I would put into it - and it would be five times as much as many - there would still be a sense of hollow alienation and I don't think that is my fault. I am happier to get onto this forum which has sieved out community to a hundred people across a nation.
III
To be with a friend - that blocks out these issues. During the extremely brief moments when I had a girlfriend, it wasn't she who made all the difference. It was the way in which one was viewed and hence viewed the world when with her. One cannot emphasize enough how different it all seemed. Planets. Athalie - big spender - she went off on one of her more manageable ones and wanted to buy a sari in Croydon. Never bought it, astonishingly, but the shop staff were a revelation. You see, I was "the other half". Human beyond anything I had ever known from those who are simply service providers. But here we are today. The woman next door - she's ok - but all of the hyped up hysterical joie de vivre heaving through my living room walls - genuine - is that of her with my parents and it is on each side. Good for them. I'm happy. Less happy when I am told for the umpteenth time that it's all a problem with my outlook when I know it isn't and I get a frozen civility at best when bumping into her on occasions. One doctor was right. They don't understand you. No, weirdly for someone so insular in the past I find the main issue is that it is others who just don't see. And, of course, crucially here I am a single bloke. Look at other single blokes - possibly with the emphasis on the word bloke - and you will find very much the same. Do we believe any longer in the way professionals slice it? Do us a favour! It is as antagonising as it could be.
IV
After that point, I headed round to the fish and chip. Didn't like it last time. Knew I would think no better of it this time around. Bear in mind that everything I say here is somewhat forced beyond an emphasis from very young to mingle, to think positively about other people, to have a strong sense of, yes, community. Boy. did I do it against the odds and often it inadvertently led to good things for me but it was I feel now even in the 1980s long out of its time. In the seated area outside, I watched the kids on the playground. I watched the young Mums and Dads getting in and out of cars. How the hell do they get their money? I watched the grannies, not so very old. Closer to me in age than the age of my parents who having got where they are must be beautiful freaks. Most of these people appear less than beautiful. They have an eye for the money and sex. Divorces from generation to generation.
Not everyone will be at fault there but some people must be. And the children of these parents and grandparents appear happy enough in themselves although time will really tell. Few are as financially impoverished as might be implied although many have a resemblance to poor kids in younger days. Many are, though, troubled by emotional break-ups and the interactions between them in later life will especially reveal it. Worse, if they become professional service providers, their service provision to you and me will be framed in the only contexts they ever knew. I find that very scary actually. In fact, what scares me the most is that we long term single blokes are probably now the ones with the greatest sensitivity.
V
My inclination today is to blame past culture. With hindsight, the seventies of run down housing estates were not quite how they seemed. While it could all be romanticized from a distance artistically and historically, community for many had already acquired negative connotations. That was why in their heads people moved on to something different. It is only the rushing around that prevents them from knowing it has been replaced by nothing. It is, though, in their attitudes and faces. That thing about couples. On reflection, it can be overstated. Certainly the clarity there enables those who are selling to be more engaging and it makes life more comfortable for the general public who like shorthand labels and have chosen not to reach out beyond their immediate domain. But the greater point may be that the majority of us have not had the benefits of being in a war. When the key areas of conflict in peace time are the systemic nature of competitive business and fraught domestic relationships, why would anyone naturally consider connectivity with unknown individuals in the wider whole?
So I took myself off for one pint only to the local pub and this time things would be different. Rather than dropping off in similar places sporadically on lone walks, today it was specific. One local. One learning. Instead of wondering what other people thought about me, the entire environment would be subjected to my test. It is hard to underestimate the changes here. Not only the brain feels different. The head does - and physically. Pressures back and forth. Troubling. My observations drew on what has been increasingly in me for some time, ie you might get a smile and something that resembles humanity from someone who has got something to sell you. Clearly in this case it was the barman although what I am outlining is a pen picture of society in 2017. Then I sat there alone. No worries. Absolutely no emotion. I expected it, noting that my parents and some others of their generation view the world as one big happy family. That is, unless they sense people are about to turn nasty at which point they leave and block it out like it has never happened. Just as they did when young with Hitler.
But Hitler was the enemy and everyone here.....we were all in it together. That is, those of us born prior to 1945. The sentiment extends even to this day in open chat with people who are declared friends on buses and familial relations with neighbours. I'm sorry but I just don't get it. I'm no longer susceptible to the urge to view most people as ok. Yeah, they are ok and so what? So what isn't what I want to feel but what the rest of life is telling me to feel. It hardly matters if they are ok when they don't engage at all. Community is a false concept only believed in by local Tories and socialist pseud-gods. No one came over. I didn't go over to them. Worse, my instinct was that it would all have been so anodyne if one or the other had occurred. Depressing without the awkwardness of "what do you do?" "Not a lot". "Bye". It increasingly bewilders me. This thing that people are now. Fairly ok-ish and separate.
II
For years, music events blissfully blinded one and drowned out the lack of harmony. Sports events do. I am quite at ease in the middle of a crowd who are taking knives to each other, literally, because the goal posts are clear. I don't like it and will get out but not with undue alarm. In the everyday, the rules are less easy to accept. Only when one accepts them is there any confidence. Knowing how they feel and how I feel. At least we know the position. Neither gangland nor Commonwealth. Perhaps it would be different around a pub quiz. Some common identification. Perhaps it wouldn't be. Everyone so insular as to be anything other than objective re who they don't know. Me included. Whichever way, I don't rate it. They all seem so routine which suggests a sense of superiority but that is the last thing I feel. However much warm effort I would put into it - and it would be five times as much as many - there would still be a sense of hollow alienation and I don't think that is my fault. I am happier to get onto this forum which has sieved out community to a hundred people across a nation.
III
To be with a friend - that blocks out these issues. During the extremely brief moments when I had a girlfriend, it wasn't she who made all the difference. It was the way in which one was viewed and hence viewed the world when with her. One cannot emphasize enough how different it all seemed. Planets. Athalie - big spender - she went off on one of her more manageable ones and wanted to buy a sari in Croydon. Never bought it, astonishingly, but the shop staff were a revelation. You see, I was "the other half". Human beyond anything I had ever known from those who are simply service providers. But here we are today. The woman next door - she's ok - but all of the hyped up hysterical joie de vivre heaving through my living room walls - genuine - is that of her with my parents and it is on each side. Good for them. I'm happy. Less happy when I am told for the umpteenth time that it's all a problem with my outlook when I know it isn't and I get a frozen civility at best when bumping into her on occasions. One doctor was right. They don't understand you. No, weirdly for someone so insular in the past I find the main issue is that it is others who just don't see. And, of course, crucially here I am a single bloke. Look at other single blokes - possibly with the emphasis on the word bloke - and you will find very much the same. Do we believe any longer in the way professionals slice it? Do us a favour! It is as antagonising as it could be.
IV
After that point, I headed round to the fish and chip. Didn't like it last time. Knew I would think no better of it this time around. Bear in mind that everything I say here is somewhat forced beyond an emphasis from very young to mingle, to think positively about other people, to have a strong sense of, yes, community. Boy. did I do it against the odds and often it inadvertently led to good things for me but it was I feel now even in the 1980s long out of its time. In the seated area outside, I watched the kids on the playground. I watched the young Mums and Dads getting in and out of cars. How the hell do they get their money? I watched the grannies, not so very old. Closer to me in age than the age of my parents who having got where they are must be beautiful freaks. Most of these people appear less than beautiful. They have an eye for the money and sex. Divorces from generation to generation.
Not everyone will be at fault there but some people must be. And the children of these parents and grandparents appear happy enough in themselves although time will really tell. Few are as financially impoverished as might be implied although many have a resemblance to poor kids in younger days. Many are, though, troubled by emotional break-ups and the interactions between them in later life will especially reveal it. Worse, if they become professional service providers, their service provision to you and me will be framed in the only contexts they ever knew. I find that very scary actually. In fact, what scares me the most is that we long term single blokes are probably now the ones with the greatest sensitivity.
V
My inclination today is to blame past culture. With hindsight, the seventies of run down housing estates were not quite how they seemed. While it could all be romanticized from a distance artistically and historically, community for many had already acquired negative connotations. That was why in their heads people moved on to something different. It is only the rushing around that prevents them from knowing it has been replaced by nothing. It is, though, in their attitudes and faces. That thing about couples. On reflection, it can be overstated. Certainly the clarity there enables those who are selling to be more engaging and it makes life more comfortable for the general public who like shorthand labels and have chosen not to reach out beyond their immediate domain. But the greater point may be that the majority of us have not had the benefits of being in a war. When the key areas of conflict in peace time are the systemic nature of competitive business and fraught domestic relationships, why would anyone naturally consider connectivity with unknown individuals in the wider whole?
)
Comment