Three Opinions You Can Feel Free to Hate Me For

I think it’s important to stick my head above the parapet from time to time. Not too often, it can be hard work. It’s rewarding though, to stand up for things you feel. It’s even more rewarding (and even harder work) when you stand up for things you feel that other people will probably vehemently disagree with.

Most of all, though, it’s rewarding to stand up for things you feel which others will disagree with, when that things in question and utterly trivial and completely pointless.  That’s the most fun of all.

So let’s have some of that kind of fun.

Here are three trivial unimportant things that I feel which you may well disagree with and even think me a fool for not agreeing with you. Because it is in my nature to like stuff, my ‘three things’ for today all concern things I quite like that I reckon many of you will probably dislike.

Let’s see…

Love Actually
I like Richard Curtis. I think he does ‘funny’ and ‘sweet’ really well. I liked ‘Four Weddings’ very much and I’ve stuck with him since. Trish and I went to see this when it first came out, close to whatever Christmas that was, and I found it funny and touching and it put me in the mood for the holiday. It’s on telly loads and loads but I would watch it if I was sitting and it came on. I would show it to my son and say, “Here, this is quite good.” I get why people wouldn’t like it (I think) but I do. So there.

Coldplay
Ever since he marched along that rain-swept beach in the video for ‘Yellow’, I’ve liked Coldplay. I don’t run out and buy their albums but then I don’t run out and but albums generally. I don’t seek them out to listen to either but, when they come on the radio or telly, I find the music bright and smart and good. I saw them in concert on telly, from Glastonbury, I think, and I thought they put on a great show.

Okay, I’ve saved the big guns for last.

(Deep Breath)

Dan Brown
I’ve read all of Dan Brown’s books. Some are better than others. ‘The Da Vinci Code’ won me over though. I had to go to Dublin on the train one day, a three hour journey each way. I took along ‘DVC’ and opened it as the train pulled out. I finished it that evening as the train pulled back into my home station It was a complete hoot. 

It belted along from scene to scene, had just enough quasi-historical hoohah to work and it made my train journey vanish into a world of running, racing and clue-solving. What more could I want? I’m a writer but I don’t get snagged on Dan’s famous style or his ways with description and metaphor. He made the train go away. That’s why I’ll read his new one too, sometime, no rush. I’m not saying that Dan doesn’t write dodgy sentences or constantly hark back to similar scenarios in his various stories. It just doesn’t bother me. I don’t look for savoury undertones in a Magnum choc ice. I look elsewhere. 

I think people mostly knock Dan because it’s fun. The character of the superstar writer who doesn’t write very well is a comical enduring one and it’s fun to riff on, particularly when there’s obviously some truth in it. But I’ve enjoyed a bit of Dan in my time so I think it’s good for my soul not to jump on that particular wagon. I’m not saying he’s brilliant, I’m just saying I enjoyed reading some of his stuff. If I feel it, why not say it?
So there’s my three things for today.

Like I said at the start, you may well disagree. You may think me an idiot and a tasteless cretin of the highest order. That’s fine and good. As a matter of fact, it’s great. My belief is that our hope for the future lies largely in our continuing expressions of disagreement.

It’s too easy to surf along on the gentle wave of the general view of things. We’re better than that. We have to stand up for what we believe and, before that, we have to educate ourselves on what we choose to believe, just to make sure that it’s right.

We have to stand up.

And we can practise here, on these silly little things that don’t really matter at all.

Then, maybe, we’ll be better prepared when the big stuff finally comes along.

Hard to Keep Up

I find it increasingly hard to keep up with stuff.

I’m not talking about anything important here. I’m mostly just thinking about the ‘entertainment’ stuff. Books and movies and television, that sort of thing. Suddenly, there seems to be so much of it all, it’s very hard to keep up.

It seemed easier years ago. There’s at least two good reasons for that, I reckon. Firstly there really wasn’t so much stuff around. In the Seventies, we had just four or five channels of telly and they all closed down at midnight (we were lucky, we picked up BBC and UTV from our north-westerly location, others had only one channel to choose from). There seemed to be less books too, less movies. Less everything.

Secondly there was so much more time or at least there seemed to be. Whatever you didn’t get to see/read/hear/eat/smell could be caught up with a little way on down the line. No worries. Plenty of time.

There isn’t plenty of time now, not for me anyway. ‘Fifty, this year, tick-tock, tick-tock. There’s no practical deferring of stuff too far into the future. If you don’t see/hear/smell it now, it’s most likely you never will see/hear/smell it at all.

My Sky Plus box is the physical manifestation of this situation. It is the concept of deferred consumption and unfulfilled desire made flesh. I think I’ll use my Sky Plus box to illustrate my point. It’s the exact same situation with books and music and… God knows what else but the Sky Plus Box sits there and tells it clearly. When I sit down and push my Sky Plus box button and I inspect the long list of TV treats I have stored and deferred for later consumption, it is almost like a taunt, a confirmation of how little time there really is and how I really should be using it better.

It’s not easy though. Our TV has demands on it far beyond my own. The kids have things they need to see, as does Patricia. I often only get to my own things late in the evening when the house is ticking peacefully into the night. Then what happens? Of course. I fall asleep in front of some desperate catch-up exercise. Wake up, scratch, stumble off to bed. Another programme deferred back to the list.

As a writer, I should be seeing more of these telly programmes. I should be understanding the latest trends and movements in the world of popular entertainment. I really should be keeping up.

But it’s hard. It’s so hard to keep up.

I mean-

Stop.

Read back, Ken.

I’ve read this piece back now and I’m shaking my head.

The point I seem to have made, somewhere in the middle of all this, is that I should be using my time better by watching more television. What a lot of twaddle that is. I do things, I’m busy, life is full. The last thing I need is more telly.

I should be looking at the Sky Plus box another way. Perhaps it isn’t a taunt after all. Perhaps it isn’t a record of my failure. Perhaps it’s more a record of success. A measure of all the good times spent away from the dormant glare of the tellybox. Sure I might have missed a few good shows along the way but I’m living, aren’t I? Isn’t that a better thing, all in all?

Besides, failing some technological bump, my Sky Plus box will continue to curate all my missed telly for me and, maybe someday, some fine day, I will take a week off from life and watch it all. Maybe then I will feast on my ‘Borgen’ (Series One), my ‘Game of Thrones’ (Series One), my ‘Killing 3’, my ‘Punch Drunk Love’, my ‘A Prophet’… the list isn’t endless but it is long.

Will I hell! I’ll pick them off, here and there, when I can and continue the dance that is Real Life.

That’s for the best, I think.