Glasses

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

I‘ve got glasses. I have wanted to wear glasses since I was a teenager (I used to cheat and wear a pair with plain glass in), so I was pleased to find out a month ago that I actually needed them.

I’m only supposed to use them when I’m concentrating on a screen, so I wear them when I’m at my desk or looking at the internet at home, but not for meetings or reading. Except that I really like wearing them, and so I find myself leaving them on when I don’t need to, like when I’m on the phone, or when I’m cooking (last night, I opened the oven while I was wearing them. Don’t do this).

I can’t work out quite why I like wearing them so much. It’s not that I can see better in them – they stop me from getting headaches rather than noticeably improving my vision. It’s more like a layer of protection; something that insulates me from the real world. Putting them on is like putting on my dressing gown.

So that’s kind of weird. And I half-worry that by wearing them too much I’m letting my eyes get lazy and hastening the day when I will actually need to wear glasses in order to see things, except that now I write that down even I can tell that it sounds kind of silly. Maybe I should write down everything I worry about, so I can see how silly it is. Only then – well, we’d be here forever, and I don’t know about you but I’ve got Stuff To Do.

Phew

On By Laura MorganIn Football

We watched the first half of yesterday’s game at home, then we had to take a taxi to an industrial estate in Bermondsey, where we were rehearsing the music for a wedding we’re playing at later this month. It was raining heavily. I like to think it’s always raining heavily on industrial estates in Bermondsey.

The taxi driver took the scenic route, and it was already wildly optimistic of us to assume we’d make it in fifteen minutes, so it was about halfway into the second half before we got the TV at the studio working and were able to watch the rest of the game. I don’t think I’ve ever felt my heart beating so fast as it did in the few minutes after Wednesday scored the equaliser. By the end it wasn’t even really football; just a group of desperate men endlessly knocking the ball out of play. It wasn’t fun to watch.

Once the game was over, we went into the rehearsal room and played better than we’ve ever played before. I feel bad for Wednesday, but they’ll be back. And at least this result gives us the best chance of remaining a going concern, which was my main hope for the end of the season. Oh, football, you break my heart but I still love you.

Down to the wire

On By Laura MorganIn Football

So. Crystal Palace’s survival in the Championship (what we used to call Division One, and before that Division Two – do keep up) will be determined by the outcome of our last game of the season – against the other relegation candidates, Sheffield Wednesday, at Hillsborough this Sunday.

We could have guaranteed safety by beating West Brom at Selhurst Park last night, but we could only manage a 1-1 draw, which under usual circumstances we would have thought a good result. These are not usual circumstances, though: the club went into administration in January and was docked ten points. Without the deduction, we’d have been basking in mid-table obscurity, like we do every other season.

As far as football goes, it hasn’t been a terrible season, you see. We’re not Portsmouth, which is why we still have a chance of staying up. Two chances, in fact: Wednesday are two points behind us, so a draw will be enough for us, whereas they need a win. When Portsmouth went into administration earlier in the season, they were docked nine points. Had our penalty been the same as theirs, last night’s draw would have been enough for us, because we’d be on 49 points to Wednesday’s 46, with a much better goal difference. They’d have needed to beat us by eighteen goals or more to stay up.

It’s OK, I’m not bitter.

As it is, if we are relegated this weekend the club’s unfortunate financial position means we’re unlikely to come straight back up again next year. We’ll become a third-tier club. It’s unthinkable! And that’s assuming the club survives at all, the alternative to which I’m genuinely not thinking about because it’s too horrible. But if it were to happen, the points deduction and subsequent relegation will have been the final nail in the club’s coffin, which rather makes me wonder what the purpose is of penalising already-struggling clubs in this way. After all, it’s the fans, not the the chairmen, or even the players, who stick around after the dust has died down and contemplate the mess that wasn’t of their making.

If you need me on Sunday, I’ll be hiding in a corner somewhere, feeling sick.

Air rage

On By Laura MorganIn TV and radio

When we awoke on Thursday morning to the news that flights across northern Europe had been grounded because of a cloud of ash from an erupting  Icelandic volcano, nobody was quite sure what to think. It was inconvenient, certainly, but it was also kind of exciting. Invisible volcanic ash in the sky!

For a couple of days, the radio news switched between election stories and volcano stories, and somebody (I thought it was Jon Snow on Twitter, but I can’t find a reference) pointed out how unusual it was for a news story this big to have nothing to do with any human agency; with nobody knowing or able to affect what would happen next. There were mutterings about the might of mother nature.

Then, yesterday, broadcasters got bored of talking about nature and decided they needed somebody to blame. A representative from an airline was invited on to the radio to explain that his colleagues had been running test flights all weekend, and the planes had been coming back unharmed. A presenter on the Today programme (I was a bit asleep, so I’m not sure who, sorry) crossly asked Lord Adonis (the transport secretary, not a classical superhero) why UK airspace wasn’t open yet, if it was safe to fly. Lord Adonis explained that the Met Office’s test flights, identical to the airlines’ except that they had instruments with which to measure the density and distribution of volcanic ash in the atmosphere, showed that it was not yet safe to send planes up. This morning, the programme was asking whether the government had mishandled events and acted too hastily in banning all flights.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be stranded than dead. Air travel is one of the areas in which it’s never ever OK not to err on the side of caution, and were flights to be allowed in and out of the UK sooner than expected, the same sniping presenters and pressmen would have been asking whether the government had acted too hastily in allowing flights and putting travellers’ safety at risk.

So they can’t win. And I am once again faintly depressed by the press’s need to automatically challenge every decision the authorities make, just for the sake of it. Challenge political decisions by all means, or at least ask for them to be explained. But nobody has acted with anything other than good and honest intentions here. The various meteorologists, engineers and elected representatives whose responsibility it is to come up with a plan have been in constant discussions since this thing started, and personally I am happy to assume that (a) they know their jobs better than I do, and (b) none of them has a vested interest in wrecking the livelihoods of airline workers or in sending unwitting air passengers on flights of doom.

Unfortunately the Today programme isn’t designed to give us information so much as to create controversy where none exists, so this story has become a fight when it didn’t need to.

Of course, there are thousands of people undergoing inconvenience and expense because they’re stuck somewhere they don’t want to be, and the effect on some businesses is potentially huge, and there are people missing weddings and funerals, and maybe not getting home in time to see someone before they die. It’s not any fun. But although as individuals we feel a sense of injustice when bad things happen to us for no reason, as a society we need to be able to see that there is no reason, rather than desperately seeking a scapegoat. And the press, especially the publicly funded and accountable BBC, has a duty not to succumb to hysteria, but to take a measured view of what the situation actually is.

On a more selfish note, I find myself entranced by the sight of a London sky without vapour trails. As it happens we are having an unusually clear and dry April, so the effect is even more pronounced. The sky above Brixton has never looked like this in my lifetime, and it probably never will again:

(Sorry for slightly crappy photo, it was taken with my slightly crappy phone.)

Emma

On By Laura MorganIn Books, Newspapers and magazines1 Comment

As I approached the entrance to Brixton tube yesterday morning, I had a train of thought which went like this:

Please don’t try to give me a copy of Stylist magazine, please don’t try to give me a copy of Stylist magazine…you bastard! Why didn’t you try to give me a copy of Stylist magazine? Is it because you think I look like a MAN?

After I stopped reading Stylist for the fun of spotting the typos (it gets old quite quickly), I started reading it for the content, but that only lasted a week because it’s full of exortations to spend lots of money on really stupid things, and I am going through one of my periodic phases of disgust at the amount of stuff I have. When I moved from north London to south London three years ago under dramatic circumstances, I left everything behind. Well, almost everything – I kept my clothes, my books and my piano. I moved into a rented room in Brixton and felt the peculiar lightness that comes with leaving everything behind, including most of your responsibilities. I have new responsibilities now, ones I chose myself rather than picking up by accident, but I still don’t have that much stuff. I don’t need any new stuff.

So Stylist magazine isn’t for me. Sometimes I pick up a copy of Metro and read the celebrity gossip, the Nemi cartoon (I am the only person in the world who likes it, but I like it enough to make up for all those other people) and the football pages, along with anything else that catches my eye, but that lasts for less than half of my commute. So I read my book. At the moment, my book is Emma, and it’s the first Jane Austen I’ve attempted as an adult. And it’s sweet and funny and I’m enjoying it, but good grief, everything that happens is flagged up at least fifty pages in advance. And then there’s a hundred pages where actually nothing happens at all. I think it’s the perfect example of style overcoming substance.

Blossom

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing, Reasons to be cheerful

As I left home this morning – not really looking where I was going, my head full of work and the Today programme – I was stopped in my tracks (not literally, I’m not a nutter) by the sight of a blossom tree in full bloom opposite my estate, rejoicing in full sun against an icy-blue London sky. There’s something about blossom, isn’t there? It feels like nostalgia, but I don’t think it is, because it’s felt like nostalgia for as long as I can remember.

I was quite a serious child; my thoughts weighed down by the solemn duties of being the eldest, the complexities of assimilation from my middle-class home into the more robust environment of a Penge primary school, and the ceaseless quest for clandestine chocolate-eating opportunities. So some of my most distinct childhood memories aren’t rooted in the moment, but in the escape from the moment: those few seconds where the world goes away and you feel you’re somewhere else entirely, somewhere all your own. That’s where blossom took me then, and it’s where it takes me now. Snow makes me giddy, sunshine makes me happy, autumn leaves make me wistful and happy at the same time. But seeing blossom is as close as I can imagine to a religious experience.

It’s something about transience, I suppose. The most beautiful things are the ones that don’t last, which is why I’m happier looking at a sunset or a rainbow than I am a painting (because if you’re looking at a painting, how do you know when it’s time to stop? – no, I don’t know why I did an art history degree either).

But it’s also aesthetic. I just can’t think of anything prettier than a blossoming tree. So for all my moaning about the cold winter, I’m still glad to live in a country where the weather changes with the seasons, because sometimes, nothing in the world could make me happier than this:

Taking up space

On By Laura MorganIn Navel gazing

Further to last week’s confession that I feel more important when I weigh more, I noticed an article in this morning’s Metro which says that taller women earn more money. I wonder if there’s something about taking up more of the room that makes women more likely to be assertive? It’s obviously not a hard-and-fast rule (my aunt, who is four feet nine and a third, is very assertive), but there might be something to it nonetheless. And in my experience a lack of assertiveness is the single biggest reason women don’t do as well professionally as they might – a fact which comes to mind as I mournfully regard the number of women (one) working at management level in my department.

Although it is all about context. I might feel more important in London when I weigh half a stone more, but were I to make my living in Hollywood, where the most important women are generally the tiniest ones, I expect I’d look at it differently. Perhaps I will add “Be glad you don’t work in Hollywood” to my morning mantra. Not that I have a morning mantra. I’m not some freaking hippy.

Coded messages

On By Laura MorganIn Football

There’s a man who stands outside Brixton station some days – not every day – and tells the commuters about god. I’ve never spoken to him, because he’s not of the school of street preaching that encourages audience participation (he is more of a thousand yard stare man), and I’ve never really thought much about him, but I have vaguely noticed that he always, without exception, wears an Arsenal hat. I assumed it was just his hat. Hey, some people like to wear hats. I like to wear hats, and I have a selection that sees me through all the seasons. But some people have one hat.

Yesterday, though, I suddenly wondered whether there wasn’t more to his hat than I had thought. If you are a street preacher, how do you decide when it’s time to do a little street preaching? Does the urge rise within you unbidden, or does something have to happen that goads you into going out and praying at the people of Brixton? And what that might be? No way of knowing, of course – unless! Is the hat a clue? Arsenal, you see, went out of the Champions’ League on Tuesday night in a trouncing by Barcelona. And on Wednesday morning there he was, glaring at the sky and telling us about Jesus. Could his praying patterns possibly be football-related? After all, you wouldn’t wear an Arsenal hat every day, whatever the weather, if you didn’t care, would you?

So I’m going to start following the fortunes of Arsenal FC (the things I do for you) and I’ll report back if there does seem to be a correlation between their ups and downs and those of the sermoniser of SW9.

(Edit: There was another whole bit here before, but it was about work, and on reflection I think it was ill-advised. I’ll tell you all about work another day.)

Starbucks (again)

On By Laura MorganIn Food, Reasons to be cheerful

My unfashionable fondness for Starbucks was reinforced today. I went in this morning and picked out a cheese and marmite panini (panino?), which I handed across the counter so they could toast it for me. A few minutes later one of the staff emerged from the steam and handed one piping hot package to me, and another to a man in a suit standing behind me. The suit looked like a bacon man, and as I left the shop I peered inside my bag to check I hadn’t accidentally got his bacon sandwich, which it turned out I had (an advantage to worrying about nearly everything is that sometimes you discover a problem before it’s too late to fix it).

The suit had disappeared, but I went back into the shop, explained, and handed over the rogue bacon bun. They made me a new sandwich, which you would expect, but they also said sorry (several times), and gave me a voucher for a free drink at any Starbucks, to make up for it. Since I only drink tea and I can get that for free in the office I will be passing the voucher on to someone more likely to make use of it, but it was the thought that counted. Tiny bits of good customer service like that are enough to make me unswervingly loyal to a brand, just as I am with Virgin since they replied to my complaint about our TV service going kaput for two days by calling me, giving me a refund and passing on the name and extension number of someone whom I could call back directly if the problem reappeared. YES. Thank you, Virgin. I like you even better than Starbucks, and I like them loads.

Belly

On By Laura MorganIn Books, Navel gazing

I am losing weight. I think it’s because now that it’s light on my commute, I am walking to and from Brixton tube every day rather than taking the bus. It’s barely a mile away, but I suppose it adds up.

Anyway, looking at myself sideways-on in the mirror this morning (I do this a lot; I am pretty certain I know what I look like from every angle better than anyone else, with the possible exception of the beloved), I noticed that the curve of my belly has shrunk, and that unless I slump a bit, it doesn’t really stick out any more.

Well, that’s OK: I am officially overweight anyway (though I think I look fine), so it doesn’t matter if I lose a few pounds. And yet, I am a bit sad about my belly not being curvy any more.  Not as sad as I would be if my bum shrank, but close.

In my women’s group a few months ago we talked about weight and size and body image, having first read Fat Is A Feminist Issue and Lessons From The Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting And Declare A Truce With Your Body. The subsequent discussion was really interesting and raised all sorts of questions I hadn’t thought about before, including my own realisation that when I am thin, I assume nobody is going to take me seriously, and when I am fatter, I think I seem more important and worthy of consideration. At the time I wasn’t sure what that was about, but on reflection I think it might just be that when I put on weight I wear more sensible clothes, so I feel like a grown-up.

So maybe I should just dress more sensibly all the time! Except that without my miniskirts and heels I wouldn’t feel like me. There was a time in my life when I did dress sensibly, because I thought I needed to be a sensible person – and I hated it (it passed). It’s a tricky one, which I shall put aside for consideration another day, when I don’t have lots of work to do. Meanwhile, the sun is shining and I may celebrate the discovery that I’m not going to go overdrawn this month with the purchase of an unwisely revealing summer dress.