Based on some recent events, I’ve decided to change my bank. That sentence alone should be enough to indicate which bank I’m saddled with.
It’s actually something I’ve been considering for a long time; an embarrassingly long time, in fact.
Sometime in the mid-noughties I tried to buy some plane tickets for a round-the-world trip I was taking with my then-girlfriend. The tickets were a good deal, such a good deal that the offer time was limited. I needed to purchase the tickets quick-snap, but that was cool: I had the money in my bank account, ready to go.
I tried to pay with my debit card, but the payment bounced. The travel agent informed me that I might have the wrong sort of debit card: apparently my Visa Electron still had the training wheels on. This was a little embarrassing, but since I knew I had the money (to accumulate it I had spent the past six months working sixty hour weeks for Odeon Cinemas, and those scars weren’t fading any time soon), I decided to simply go down to the bank and ask for it. It was my money, after all.
Turns out my money had been electronically transmitted... somewhere. Whatever arbitrary force had prevented the cash entering the travel agent’s account, had also deemed not to return it to mine. It now waited in a ‘holding account’, an overnight cell for errant funds.
“No problemo, muchacho,” I said to the bank manager (this is how I spoke in my late teens, apparently). “Just transfer the money back across, and we’ll try again.”
It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t transfer the money back. It wasn’t his fault that it would take three days. And there probably was a reason why this was standard practice. So I managed to keep a lid on my rising fury.
Until five months later, while I stood at a payphone in an airport in Malaysia, frantically pushing buttons to negotiate with my bank’s telephone service. I seemed to be skint, which is challenging enough at home, but proved to be even more frustrating when you don’t have a house to sleep in, or any clean clothes to wear.
Thing is, I was sure I wasn’t skint. A paycheck should have arrived in my account several days previously. Normally a delay wouldn’t be such problem, but the last time I’d eaten was also several days previously.
I was told by the automated voice on the telephone that my account had been frozen. In order to release the money I would need to first pay off the debt I owed on my credit card. The single, minor obstacle to this was fact that I didn’t have a credit card. Never had. So I vented my fury, but I doubt the robot at the end of the line cared.
This litany of small but frustrating fuck-ups continued down the years, and I often considered changing my bank. Two things kept me from ever going through with it. First, my colossal indolence, obviously. Second, well, everyone else seemed to be having the same problem. Everyone seemed to find themselves screwed over by their bank at least once a year, so it seemed like a non-issue. I didn’t want to go through all the hassle of switching accounts only to find that my new service was just as bad (and in the meantime, I’d also started a Santander account. They sucked too).
Since the mid-noughties my financial situation has changed quite significantly. It’s also got a bit more complicated: I know have several accounts with Barclays, all doing (slightly) different things. I have a current account that pays basically no interest, and a savings account that also pays basically no interest, but makes me feel guilty whenever I take money out of it. I have a joint account with my younger brother, that pays no interest, but he makes me feel guilty when I take cash out of it. So the situation is more complex, and it’ll be even more stressful and tedious to change to another bank.
Except that it’s ceased to become a question of functionality and become one of ethics. I’ll accept that another bank might be just as charmingly inefficient with my money as Barclays (hell, I’m basically assuming at this point). But I’d like them to be... well, nicer.
Again, this isn’t a completely recent development. Barclays Bank have been acting like jerks for a long time, and it’s not like I’ve been completely in the dark. When I was at uni I voted to have the university funds handled by a financial institution other than Barclays because of their support of invasive strip mining (as if there were another sort) in areas of natural beauty in Canada. I voted to give the university a big old headache, without being bothered to do the same.
It gets worse, and I’m not proud. I should have done something about this sooner. True, no bank is going to be spotless. But not all of them make money from the arms trade, something that Barclays unapologetically does.
The final straw in this? The final challenge to my disgusting laziness? The fact that Barclays couldn’t play by the established rules. Not only are they smilingly amoral in pursuit of profit, they’ve recently been exposed as immoral too.
Let’s delve into the murky world of analogy for a bit. Say the world works on essentially electronic funds, and I have no place to store said monies. My Uncle Charlie offers to store my money, and even provide some interest on it, on the condition that I occasionally use it to let him play the tables at the local casino. I’ll be able to access my money at any time, so long as he’s doing all right on the craps.
Now, truth be told, Uncle Charlie is a pretty mean gambler, so I’m content to let him hang on to the money. Most of the time he comes up holding aces, and even when he loses, the net take is enough to guarantee that my money is safe. Other people I know have left money with their uncles, and it hasn’t gone so well. Occasionally they wake up to find that their money has been gambled away.
But Uncle Charlie gambles like a pro, and that’s why I stick with him, even though he occasionally bets my money on stuff I disapprove of. Bear-baiting. Orphan-wrassling. And he sometimes can’t give me my funds straight away. There are administrative issues. I understand.
But then one day Uncle Charlie is caught cheating in the casino. He and a few of the staff have been colluding to fix one of the tables. It’s been a pretty good scam, and he’d actually been doing all right with it, till he got caught.
Now, it could be argued that Uncle Charlie has been doing me a favour. Times have been tough recently, and it’s in my interest for Uncle Charlie to make as much money as he can. This scam has kept him – and therefore my money – out of harm’s way.
Except that if he cheated once, he’ll probably cheat again. He could have been cheating this whole time. And if he got caught once, you just know he’ll get sloppy at some point.
Now I have more to worry about than bear-baiting. Now I’m concerned that as soon as Uncle Barclays, I mean Charlie, gets the sticky fingers again, he’s going to do something monumentally stupid. And get caught.
The problem is that Uncle Charlie thinks he can do basically whatever he likes. He knows that I’m not going to take my money from him and give it to someone else’s uncle. It’s too much of a hassle, plus everyone else’s uncle could be on the make too. But the only way I have to protest, to really indicate that his behaviour is unacceptable and that I can react to it... is to take my money back.
It’ll be a gradual process. But I’m planning on starting a joint account with my (now) girlfriend very soon. And I’ll be thinking carefully about who I choose to start that account with. It’ll be based on ethics, rather than smart short-term deals, and if they prove that they can keep their hands out of the cookie jar for five minutes, they’ll get the rest of my money too.
The more I think about it, the more I want to just get it over with. And the more I think about it, the more ashamed I am to realise that it’s the financial aspect, not the strip-mining, or the arms dealing, that has really galvanised my actions. But screw it. I’m doing the right thing, even if I am playing catch-up. Better late than never.
Updated only when you aren't looking.
Friday 20 July 2012
Friday 18 May 2012
Croatan / closin' on a century
Word to your mothers. I have more creative writing stylinz for you. Click the link below to read a short story I wrote named 'Croatan.' It's a bit blue, and has a sexytime scene in it later on, so if you're not a fan of ill advised sexual encounters you better not click it. You better not. Seriously. Srsly.
Croatan
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M0ICbaGITMLSiZJ32PvgODAmNB3yJxv4ySPR2ptaujs/edit
Croatan
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M0ICbaGITMLSiZJ32PvgODAmNB3yJxv4ySPR2ptaujs/edit
Friday 27 April 2012
Story (get it while it lasts): Milk / I do things
Despite my lengthening periods of absence from Verbal Slapstick I have still been doing vaguely creative things. Firstly, my grass-roots interview project London I's moves (slowly) forward. Having a full-time job negatively impacts on how often I can harass people in the street, but it ticks along. Go and have a look, and like me on facebook whynot.
I've also had an opportunity to put some non-fiction stuff on Notes from the Underground, a truly excellent creative portal. My sincere thanks to Annabel Howard for giving me the chance; hopefully I'll be able to submit some more soon. Have a poke around and you'll find me.
Finally, here's a short story I wrote. It's not very long, so I'll stick it on here rather than Google Doc'ing it. Also if you want to read it I'd suggest doing it now, as I might submit it for publication at some point and will have to remove it. Whether or not uploading it here counts as 'previous publication' is tricky, but hopefully any future editors will allow all 5 of my followers reading it first. Although to be on the safe side, please Mr/Miss/Mrs Future Editor, don't throw the book at me.
Poor Verbal Slapstick. I feel like I've been neglecting the ol' girl recently. But you haven't seen the last of me yet.
**Author's note**
I should probably state first: yes, Joey Crane is the guy I mentioned in the post before this, no, I don't fancy him.
**EDIT**
I took the story down, but you can always message me if you want to read it.
**Author's note**
I should probably state first: yes, Joey Crane is the guy I mentioned in the post before this, no, I don't fancy him.
**EDIT**
I took the story down, but you can always message me if you want to read it.
Tuesday 13 March 2012
Some notes on riding the Greyhound
It’s possibly a combination of socioeconomic factors, and the arrant distance involved, that causes some eccentricity on the long-distance Greyhound buses. America is big. Really really big. Trying to quantify it with comparison to the UK is fruitless; the culture relating to distance is so starkly dissimilar as to make any correlation hopelessly skewed. Driving from London to a far-flung location like Cornwall – just over 200 miles away – is considered a huge undertaking in Britain. 200 miles is the sort of distance that – as Bill Bryson once pointed out – most Americans will happily drive to get a taco. Even in major cities Americans will willingly drive for an hour just to get between bars.
So when Greyhound say long distance, they mean long distance. The journey from New York City to San Francisco takes around 72 hours. There are prison sentences shorter than that. Major cities are often a thousand miles apart, and the slightly annular nature of American population distribution means that routes are often torturously circuitous.
Plus, well, it’s mostly poor people that ride the bus. Many American states have little in the way of automotive legislature relating to a car’s physical state, and the ones that do are normally less rigorous than the UK. There’s nothing really comparable to an MOT, and so you occasionally see some absolute clunkers driving around. As long as a car looks OK from the outside it’s unlikely to be pulled over. The sheer scale of the American landscape –even if you live in a town of smallish population you are unlikely to live within walking or cycling distance of everything you need – means that car ownership is almost ubiquitous. You have to be pretty damn poor to ride the bus.
Every American I met who was travelling domestically was doing so by car. In Austin, TX I ran into a guy named Joey from NY whose beaten-to-shit Nissan (affectionately referred to by anyone who climbed inside as ‘Ol’ Blue’) had assumed the status of a spirit vehicle, so often was it miraculously resurrected. It looked like an idiot’s crayon drawing of a car; the sort of vehicle you’d take in to part exchange and come away clutching a Magic Tree air freshener, feeling like you got a good deal.
So riding the Greyhound involves traveling with a cross-section of the lower economic brackets of American society. For a very long time. The natural instinct to ignore everyone around you begins to sputter out after 19 hours without human contact. Add the fact that Americans are generally less reserved than British people and your outcome is that if you travel on the bus long enough, something notable will happen. It’s not that the Greyhound is intrinsically weird, it’s more that you have to spend such a long time on it that something weird is statistically likely to occur.
The drivers themselves are not immune. There is a required speech they must make at the start of each leg, for the benefit of new passengers. It details where the bus is going and what time they are expected to arrive (often to muffled comments and cries of derision), and runs through the Greyhound ‘in-flight’ policies. These mostly consist of things that are prohibited, a list which roughly runs as follows:
• No guns
• No drinking
• No drugs
• No smoking
• No smoking out of the window
• No smoking in the bathroom
• No disabling the smoke alarm in the bathroom and trying to smoke unnoticed in there, seriously guys
Drivers have to repeat the same spiel at every stop, and so begin to add their own spin and vocabulary. A wizened old black guy who sounded remarkably like Droopy listed what sorts of cellular and electronic music devices he did and didn’t have a problem with us listening to. Some of them put on accents, which you would only notice if you ride the whole journey with them.
If you are caught breaking the rules you are dropped at the side of the road in the custody of a state trooper. A vivacious and amply proportioned driver on the last leg of Roanoke, VA to Atlanta, GA would enunciate this warning and then supplement it with: “And I’ma whoop yo’ ass, too,” an offhand threat that drew occasional cheers. She drove at least ten miles below the speed limit the whole way there, “For the sake of the chillun.”
A stern and slabby old geezer behind the wheel in Alabama encouraged people to remain in sight of the bus at all times during rest stops. “If you have to go inside, you look at us out the window,” he advised. “You got 20 minutes, so you can smoke 20 cigarettes. No need to go nowhere.”
Between Phoenix and LA the aisle seat next to me was filled by a rotund guy in a heinously bright shirt that made his sombre, Eeyore-esque voice seem like a wind-up. Raymond had the diabeetus (a term that I had heard college kids say in jest but never heard spoken in truth until then), and carried himself with the resigned, slightly absent gravitas of the long sober drug addict.
Raymond had what I choose to believe was a powerful grasp of scripture. My knowledge of the Bible is essentially naught, and so for all I know the words could have come from fortune cookies, but he said them with sufficient weight and distance that they seemed universally applicable, which I suspect is the point of most scripture anyway. He dissected my life over an eight hour period and told me that either I would be saved or I wouldn’t, a remark which seemed remarkably fatalist for an evangelical, until he told me that his problem was that he knew he was already saved, and so he needed to turn me to the path of righteousness for his own peace of mind (which I thought was pretty generous of him). He was bemused to find I was in the US to mostly look at windfarms.
By the time we arrived in LA I was refereeing a three-way argument between Raymond, his son and his daughter-in-law, a position I considered overloaded with responsibility seeing as Raymond's reason for coming to LA was to reconnect with his partially estranged son. I didn't want to be the guy who clumsily blew out the flame on his rekindling relationship. I must have done OK: he gave me a packet of Ritz crackers (“I’m not supposed to eat them anyway, they could kill me”) which proved useful in dealing with the psychic fallout of a 30 hour bus ride.
Across the whole trip I spent more than a week on the Greyhound. That’s a lot longer than some other experiences that I consider life-changing or defining. I’ve been in relationships that were shorter than that. It ought to mean something, but I'm not sure if it does yet.
So when Greyhound say long distance, they mean long distance. The journey from New York City to San Francisco takes around 72 hours. There are prison sentences shorter than that. Major cities are often a thousand miles apart, and the slightly annular nature of American population distribution means that routes are often torturously circuitous.
Plus, well, it’s mostly poor people that ride the bus. Many American states have little in the way of automotive legislature relating to a car’s physical state, and the ones that do are normally less rigorous than the UK. There’s nothing really comparable to an MOT, and so you occasionally see some absolute clunkers driving around. As long as a car looks OK from the outside it’s unlikely to be pulled over. The sheer scale of the American landscape –even if you live in a town of smallish population you are unlikely to live within walking or cycling distance of everything you need – means that car ownership is almost ubiquitous. You have to be pretty damn poor to ride the bus.
Every American I met who was travelling domestically was doing so by car. In Austin, TX I ran into a guy named Joey from NY whose beaten-to-shit Nissan (affectionately referred to by anyone who climbed inside as ‘Ol’ Blue’) had assumed the status of a spirit vehicle, so often was it miraculously resurrected. It looked like an idiot’s crayon drawing of a car; the sort of vehicle you’d take in to part exchange and come away clutching a Magic Tree air freshener, feeling like you got a good deal.
So riding the Greyhound involves traveling with a cross-section of the lower economic brackets of American society. For a very long time. The natural instinct to ignore everyone around you begins to sputter out after 19 hours without human contact. Add the fact that Americans are generally less reserved than British people and your outcome is that if you travel on the bus long enough, something notable will happen. It’s not that the Greyhound is intrinsically weird, it’s more that you have to spend such a long time on it that something weird is statistically likely to occur.
The drivers themselves are not immune. There is a required speech they must make at the start of each leg, for the benefit of new passengers. It details where the bus is going and what time they are expected to arrive (often to muffled comments and cries of derision), and runs through the Greyhound ‘in-flight’ policies. These mostly consist of things that are prohibited, a list which roughly runs as follows:
• No guns
• No drinking
• No drugs
• No smoking
• No smoking out of the window
• No smoking in the bathroom
• No disabling the smoke alarm in the bathroom and trying to smoke unnoticed in there, seriously guys
Drivers have to repeat the same spiel at every stop, and so begin to add their own spin and vocabulary. A wizened old black guy who sounded remarkably like Droopy listed what sorts of cellular and electronic music devices he did and didn’t have a problem with us listening to. Some of them put on accents, which you would only notice if you ride the whole journey with them.
If you are caught breaking the rules you are dropped at the side of the road in the custody of a state trooper. A vivacious and amply proportioned driver on the last leg of Roanoke, VA to Atlanta, GA would enunciate this warning and then supplement it with: “And I’ma whoop yo’ ass, too,” an offhand threat that drew occasional cheers. She drove at least ten miles below the speed limit the whole way there, “For the sake of the chillun.”
A stern and slabby old geezer behind the wheel in Alabama encouraged people to remain in sight of the bus at all times during rest stops. “If you have to go inside, you look at us out the window,” he advised. “You got 20 minutes, so you can smoke 20 cigarettes. No need to go nowhere.”
Between Phoenix and LA the aisle seat next to me was filled by a rotund guy in a heinously bright shirt that made his sombre, Eeyore-esque voice seem like a wind-up. Raymond had the diabeetus (a term that I had heard college kids say in jest but never heard spoken in truth until then), and carried himself with the resigned, slightly absent gravitas of the long sober drug addict.
Raymond had what I choose to believe was a powerful grasp of scripture. My knowledge of the Bible is essentially naught, and so for all I know the words could have come from fortune cookies, but he said them with sufficient weight and distance that they seemed universally applicable, which I suspect is the point of most scripture anyway. He dissected my life over an eight hour period and told me that either I would be saved or I wouldn’t, a remark which seemed remarkably fatalist for an evangelical, until he told me that his problem was that he knew he was already saved, and so he needed to turn me to the path of righteousness for his own peace of mind (which I thought was pretty generous of him). He was bemused to find I was in the US to mostly look at windfarms.
By the time we arrived in LA I was refereeing a three-way argument between Raymond, his son and his daughter-in-law, a position I considered overloaded with responsibility seeing as Raymond's reason for coming to LA was to reconnect with his partially estranged son. I didn't want to be the guy who clumsily blew out the flame on his rekindling relationship. I must have done OK: he gave me a packet of Ritz crackers (“I’m not supposed to eat them anyway, they could kill me”) which proved useful in dealing with the psychic fallout of a 30 hour bus ride.
Across the whole trip I spent more than a week on the Greyhound. That’s a lot longer than some other experiences that I consider life-changing or defining. I’ve been in relationships that were shorter than that. It ought to mean something, but I'm not sure if it does yet.
Thursday 2 February 2012
Doppler
Hello! It's been a little while, but I have not been resting on my laurels. Well, I have actually, but I've managed to do at least a couple of creative things since I was last here. To whit: a short story! It's called Doppler, and it was inspired a bit by the creepy bus station outside my house, and mostly by Bret Easton Ellis. Einstein said that genius was knowing how to hide your sources, so I guess I blew that one. Genius is overrated anyway. Einstein knew that.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11O-Y477wej9aRGs9-h9v36pQDSGu7FFNDssttRLR_KA/edit
Please comment if you have an opinion. Stuff the email, just comment on this post. I have more stuff for you to look at next week. Peace.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11O-Y477wej9aRGs9-h9v36pQDSGu7FFNDssttRLR_KA/edit
Please comment if you have an opinion. Stuff the email, just comment on this post. I have more stuff for you to look at next week. Peace.
Thursday 12 January 2012
The Steep Approach
I’ve been embarking on a new project recently, which harks all the way back to this rather hopeful sounding post from days gone by. The idea discussed therein has now begun to blossom somewhat, and I have some collaborators – stalwart friends both – who are lending their skills and advice. The project goes live around the end of this month (you’ll know when I start shamelessly and relentless plugging it) and I’m rather proud of the idea, if not the execution.
Without giving a huge amount away the project consists of interviews. Interviews with strangers. Random interviews with strangers. In a bustling capital like London thousands of tiny interactions with those unknown to us happen every day – a glance, a thank you, a hushed ‘fuck off and die’ muttered under the breath – but actually sitting down and chinwagging with someone you’ve previously never clapped eyes on is rarer. It happens in Richard Curtis films and Match.com adverts, but despite a similar air of befuddlement I look nothing like Hugh Grant or Colin Firth, and I don’t even know how to play guitar.
So forcing myself to interact with strangers has given me some interesting insights into the nature of social interaction in general, but more specifically into the concepts of personal space and 'approachability.'
I had never given much credence to the concept of auras (still don’t, save for the purpose of this analogy), but there is certainly an atmosphere around people that is discernible, readable. This is obvious and second nature to all but a few of us: anyone able to read someone’s body language, detect where a conversation is going or steer around a touchy subject is doing it competently without even thinking about it.
The genesis of my project was in America, where people are famously more approachable. This is certainly true, but once a dialogue had begun American people seemed to need more management: to me at least they seemed quicker to lose patience, quicker to become suspicious or tire of a subject. Instead of being closed off and gradually opening up they often seemed immediately candid and then worried about giving too much away.
Perversely I suspect most of this comes from the natural ease with which Americans conduct their own conversations. Americans are very good at talking to strangers; they do it all the time. Their interactions are swift, and industriously handled on both sides. They were attempting to manage me: to ease me through the dialogue. The only difference: I was a strange English boy asking them personal questions, and was attempting to marshal the conversation to get the most out of them. Small wonder many felt the need to stage a retreat when I got too personal.
It’s more difficult to get stuff out of English people, but once they get talking, it’s hard to shut them up. In terms of thermodynamics, Americans are great conductors of heat, English people very poor. They stay warmed up for a good long time if you can get them comfortable.
All this is moot if you can’t find the nads to approach people in the first place, and that’s where reading people comes in. It can be nerve-wracking, going up to strangers, although now that I think about it I cannot say for sure why that should be so. I have a list of questions to ask them – so I know what I’m going to say at least – and I consider myself relatively personable. I am not particularly concerned that someone might haul out and punch me, or start screaming rape or similar. Even if they don’t want to be interviewed (as is entirely their prerogative) all I get is a polite ‘no thank you.’
My own apprehension means that I tend to gravitate towards those who give off an air of approachability. People who radiate some sense – through body language, positioning, even appearance – that they wouldn’t be terribly bothered if an oddly earnest young man sat down opposite them and asked them about their lives. For the purposes of the project they have to be alone, which makes it easier, if only because those who are alone and don’t want to be bothered are pretty easy to spot.
Then only problem is that approaching people who are themselves approachable tends to give a biased sample base. For example, they tend to be younger or older, not middle aged. Younger women are less likely to tell you to go away immediately, but are more likely to be distant. I had expected women to be less often alone than men and was surprised to find this not the case, but men are more likely to occupy themselves with something regardless of where they are. A newspaper can be a formidable shield. Elements of people’s dress can render them distant or affable (and interestingly, the eccentricity of dress has little to do with it). I’ve become very good at picking out the easiest person to talk to in a room.
Unfortunately the easiest person to talk to may not always be the most interesting, or for the purposes of my project, the most varied in terms of life experience. So I’ve learnt some useful new skills only to have to discard them. I’m much better at recognising people who might want to talk, but have to avoid that sort of person if I’m not to repeat the same sort of interview over and over.
I’m exaggerating, of course. The best thing about people in general and Londoners in particular is that everyone is unique. Talk to anyone long enough and you’re certain to hit on something interesting, so no interview is going to be wasted. And the more I force myself to talk to people the more I begin to realise that approachable or not, most people, once approached, are willing to give you the time of day, especially if you explain yourself clearly and concisely.
So what have I really learned? The same thing I learn every week on this blog. To get over myself. ‘Aura of approachability’ my bum. Just don’t be surprised when I sit down next to you.
Without giving a huge amount away the project consists of interviews. Interviews with strangers. Random interviews with strangers. In a bustling capital like London thousands of tiny interactions with those unknown to us happen every day – a glance, a thank you, a hushed ‘fuck off and die’ muttered under the breath – but actually sitting down and chinwagging with someone you’ve previously never clapped eyes on is rarer. It happens in Richard Curtis films and Match.com adverts, but despite a similar air of befuddlement I look nothing like Hugh Grant or Colin Firth, and I don’t even know how to play guitar.
So forcing myself to interact with strangers has given me some interesting insights into the nature of social interaction in general, but more specifically into the concepts of personal space and 'approachability.'
I had never given much credence to the concept of auras (still don’t, save for the purpose of this analogy), but there is certainly an atmosphere around people that is discernible, readable. This is obvious and second nature to all but a few of us: anyone able to read someone’s body language, detect where a conversation is going or steer around a touchy subject is doing it competently without even thinking about it.
The genesis of my project was in America, where people are famously more approachable. This is certainly true, but once a dialogue had begun American people seemed to need more management: to me at least they seemed quicker to lose patience, quicker to become suspicious or tire of a subject. Instead of being closed off and gradually opening up they often seemed immediately candid and then worried about giving too much away.
Perversely I suspect most of this comes from the natural ease with which Americans conduct their own conversations. Americans are very good at talking to strangers; they do it all the time. Their interactions are swift, and industriously handled on both sides. They were attempting to manage me: to ease me through the dialogue. The only difference: I was a strange English boy asking them personal questions, and was attempting to marshal the conversation to get the most out of them. Small wonder many felt the need to stage a retreat when I got too personal.
It’s more difficult to get stuff out of English people, but once they get talking, it’s hard to shut them up. In terms of thermodynamics, Americans are great conductors of heat, English people very poor. They stay warmed up for a good long time if you can get them comfortable.
All this is moot if you can’t find the nads to approach people in the first place, and that’s where reading people comes in. It can be nerve-wracking, going up to strangers, although now that I think about it I cannot say for sure why that should be so. I have a list of questions to ask them – so I know what I’m going to say at least – and I consider myself relatively personable. I am not particularly concerned that someone might haul out and punch me, or start screaming rape or similar. Even if they don’t want to be interviewed (as is entirely their prerogative) all I get is a polite ‘no thank you.’
My own apprehension means that I tend to gravitate towards those who give off an air of approachability. People who radiate some sense – through body language, positioning, even appearance – that they wouldn’t be terribly bothered if an oddly earnest young man sat down opposite them and asked them about their lives. For the purposes of the project they have to be alone, which makes it easier, if only because those who are alone and don’t want to be bothered are pretty easy to spot.
Then only problem is that approaching people who are themselves approachable tends to give a biased sample base. For example, they tend to be younger or older, not middle aged. Younger women are less likely to tell you to go away immediately, but are more likely to be distant. I had expected women to be less often alone than men and was surprised to find this not the case, but men are more likely to occupy themselves with something regardless of where they are. A newspaper can be a formidable shield. Elements of people’s dress can render them distant or affable (and interestingly, the eccentricity of dress has little to do with it). I’ve become very good at picking out the easiest person to talk to in a room.
Unfortunately the easiest person to talk to may not always be the most interesting, or for the purposes of my project, the most varied in terms of life experience. So I’ve learnt some useful new skills only to have to discard them. I’m much better at recognising people who might want to talk, but have to avoid that sort of person if I’m not to repeat the same sort of interview over and over.
I’m exaggerating, of course. The best thing about people in general and Londoners in particular is that everyone is unique. Talk to anyone long enough and you’re certain to hit on something interesting, so no interview is going to be wasted. And the more I force myself to talk to people the more I begin to realise that approachable or not, most people, once approached, are willing to give you the time of day, especially if you explain yourself clearly and concisely.
So what have I really learned? The same thing I learn every week on this blog. To get over myself. ‘Aura of approachability’ my bum. Just don’t be surprised when I sit down next to you.
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Alternate viewing
Cracked.com has ruined a lot of things I like. It’s mostly my fault: no-one is making me look at funny lists of Star Wars bloopers, but once I’ve had them shown to me I can’t un-see them. I’m now that guy, the one who points out editing gaffes or continuity errors in films, just to spread the misery around. You know, that one person who comments on the submarine scene in Raiders even though ‘no gives a crap, oh my God will you shut up about cinematic mistakes, we’re trying to watch a film, why do we even invite you over.’
Occasionally, though, Cracked drops something good in my lap. A recent article suggested a reading of The Catcher in the Rye in which the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the death of his younger brother. It’s an interesting theory; Caulfield does demonstrate some of the symptoms of PTSD (mood swings, fluctuating sexual drive, feelings of alienation etc), and equally fascinating is the fact that J.D. Salinger suffered from combat stress reaction or ‘battle fatigue,’ which is thought by many psychologists to be a precursor to PTSD. *clenches fist* Suddenly it all falls into place!
Now when I read The Catcher in the Rye I have difficulty discarding this theory, even though it came from an admittedly left-field source. It indelibly informs my understanding of the book. I can ignore it if I choose, but it’s added a new and interesting dimension to the novel (one I wish I’d heard about when I was at uni. Man, would I have looked smart).
There’s a fan theory about Ferris Beuller’s Day Off in which Ferris is merely a figment of Cameron’s imagination: his psyche’s attempt to break Cameron out of his funk and go and enjoy life a little bit. As a reading it lacks some depth (the fact that Cameron sees plenty of people interacting with Ferris elevates him from charming mental projection to full blown dissociative personality), but like all the best alternate readings once you’ve set out the ground rules you can twist the actual narrative to fit, if you want.
You can apply an alternate reading to whatever you want, even if it’s something you hate. Who’s to stop you? The Thought Police? (I’m hoping that’s not a thing yet.)
I’m not a huge fan of Jedward, but there’s a reading of Jedward that I quite like. My brother claims to have come up with it but I’m pretty sure it was Russell Howard. Anyway, my preferred decoding of Jedward states that one of them (it can be John or Edward, I don’t think anyone remembers which is which anymore), really, REALLY hates being a part of Jedward. That with each camp wave and power kick a little part of him flutters and dies. He stares at himself in the mirror, starkly lit by the sodium lamps of another Butlins dressing room, and wishes himself anywhere else. He wanted to be a surgeon, a captain of enterprise, a hostage negotiator. He dreams of filling their back page column in Heat with his informed feminist rhetoric... but instead has to fill in little coloured bubbles about what their favourite fizzy drink is, or what they dream about at night (Column answer: riding with their fans on unicorns. Real answer: holding Louis Walsh’s head under the water until the bubbles finally stop).
The cast of Made in Chelsea are not, as the show would have us believe, rich, under-educated sociopaths, who cannot either be interesting on their own, or act interesting even when prompted. Instead they are a collective of penniless orphans, given one last chance to act their way out of the workhouse, playing the parts of rich, under-educated sociopaths who cannot either be interesting on their own or act interesting even when prompted, and giving the performance of their goddamn lives.
Remember how the first series of Big Brother was pitched as a genuine psychological experiment, with scientific talking heads and everything? People immediately realised that they were happy to simply watch other people do stuff (which is, when you think about, all you basically do in your daily life anyway), and after a few seasons people were mostly watching it for Russell Brand pulling down his trousers and pants, but to begin with Big Brother was legitimate viewing. And you can do the same to almost any TV show, with a little creative thinking.
The Bachelorette is part of a super-soldier breeding programme. Tool Academy is beamed into space as a counterpoint to ‘the best of humanity’ plaque that went out with the Voyager probe, so that if aliens ever find us we don’t look too stuck up. The men in Playing it Straight are all homosexual. So is the female lead. It’s all a big gay practical joke. The kids that get booted off the island in Shipwrecked are in fact killed and eaten by the remaining cast as supplies dwindle.
The only flaw in my genius scheme to single-handedly save television is that you could just go and watch something else, something not crap, and save yourself a lot of time and effort. But I don’t watch Made in Chelsea because I like it, I watch Made in Chelsea because my flatmates like it, and I was here on the sofa first and it’s cold in my bedroom. They get irritated, and rightly so, when I pick holes in their entertainment. They know it's crap. They don’t care. I could easily go read a book. Since I can’t be bothered to get up, the least I can do is find a way to enjoy what I’m watching.
I’m not suggesting you put up with inferior entertainment forever. I’m always suggesting that you go read a book. But media is yours to enjoy, and yours to exploit and mutate. Go nuts.
Occasionally, though, Cracked drops something good in my lap. A recent article suggested a reading of The Catcher in the Rye in which the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the death of his younger brother. It’s an interesting theory; Caulfield does demonstrate some of the symptoms of PTSD (mood swings, fluctuating sexual drive, feelings of alienation etc), and equally fascinating is the fact that J.D. Salinger suffered from combat stress reaction or ‘battle fatigue,’ which is thought by many psychologists to be a precursor to PTSD. *clenches fist* Suddenly it all falls into place!
Now when I read The Catcher in the Rye I have difficulty discarding this theory, even though it came from an admittedly left-field source. It indelibly informs my understanding of the book. I can ignore it if I choose, but it’s added a new and interesting dimension to the novel (one I wish I’d heard about when I was at uni. Man, would I have looked smart).
There’s a fan theory about Ferris Beuller’s Day Off in which Ferris is merely a figment of Cameron’s imagination: his psyche’s attempt to break Cameron out of his funk and go and enjoy life a little bit. As a reading it lacks some depth (the fact that Cameron sees plenty of people interacting with Ferris elevates him from charming mental projection to full blown dissociative personality), but like all the best alternate readings once you’ve set out the ground rules you can twist the actual narrative to fit, if you want.
You can apply an alternate reading to whatever you want, even if it’s something you hate. Who’s to stop you? The Thought Police? (I’m hoping that’s not a thing yet.)
I’m not a huge fan of Jedward, but there’s a reading of Jedward that I quite like. My brother claims to have come up with it but I’m pretty sure it was Russell Howard. Anyway, my preferred decoding of Jedward states that one of them (it can be John or Edward, I don’t think anyone remembers which is which anymore), really, REALLY hates being a part of Jedward. That with each camp wave and power kick a little part of him flutters and dies. He stares at himself in the mirror, starkly lit by the sodium lamps of another Butlins dressing room, and wishes himself anywhere else. He wanted to be a surgeon, a captain of enterprise, a hostage negotiator. He dreams of filling their back page column in Heat with his informed feminist rhetoric... but instead has to fill in little coloured bubbles about what their favourite fizzy drink is, or what they dream about at night (Column answer: riding with their fans on unicorns. Real answer: holding Louis Walsh’s head under the water until the bubbles finally stop).
The cast of Made in Chelsea are not, as the show would have us believe, rich, under-educated sociopaths, who cannot either be interesting on their own, or act interesting even when prompted. Instead they are a collective of penniless orphans, given one last chance to act their way out of the workhouse, playing the parts of rich, under-educated sociopaths who cannot either be interesting on their own or act interesting even when prompted, and giving the performance of their goddamn lives.
Remember how the first series of Big Brother was pitched as a genuine psychological experiment, with scientific talking heads and everything? People immediately realised that they were happy to simply watch other people do stuff (which is, when you think about, all you basically do in your daily life anyway), and after a few seasons people were mostly watching it for Russell Brand pulling down his trousers and pants, but to begin with Big Brother was legitimate viewing. And you can do the same to almost any TV show, with a little creative thinking.
The Bachelorette is part of a super-soldier breeding programme. Tool Academy is beamed into space as a counterpoint to ‘the best of humanity’ plaque that went out with the Voyager probe, so that if aliens ever find us we don’t look too stuck up. The men in Playing it Straight are all homosexual. So is the female lead. It’s all a big gay practical joke. The kids that get booted off the island in Shipwrecked are in fact killed and eaten by the remaining cast as supplies dwindle.
The only flaw in my genius scheme to single-handedly save television is that you could just go and watch something else, something not crap, and save yourself a lot of time and effort. But I don’t watch Made in Chelsea because I like it, I watch Made in Chelsea because my flatmates like it, and I was here on the sofa first and it’s cold in my bedroom. They get irritated, and rightly so, when I pick holes in their entertainment. They know it's crap. They don’t care. I could easily go read a book. Since I can’t be bothered to get up, the least I can do is find a way to enjoy what I’m watching.
I’m not suggesting you put up with inferior entertainment forever. I’m always suggesting that you go read a book. But media is yours to enjoy, and yours to exploit and mutate. Go nuts.
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