What Sandy Did At Half-Term (part 6 of 10)

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Wednesday Night- Uncle Simon and Aunt Libby

Uncle Simon had said, “Libby, I don’t think the world is going to collapse if a twelve-year-old girl likes to listen to Westlife now and then,” but it was too late.  Aunt Libby had already turned the car radio’s dials away from Radio One and towards the Classic Rock station.  She was determined to improve Sandy’s mind.

Libby listened for a moment or two, then let out an excited yelp.  “Steely Dan!  One of the great songs of our time!”  As she said this, she glanced behind her, as if to make sure that Sandy was taking notes for the test later.

Sandy listened to the song, which was about a guy playing Blackjack.  It was OK, but she’d really rather have been listening to Westlife.  Try telling that to Aunt Libby, though.

“Listen to the lyrics, Sandy,” said Libby, “They’re real.  Not just I-love-you-baby nursery rhymes.  This is poetry.”

“Yes, this song is much more relatable than I-love-you-baby,” said Uncle Simon, “We’ve all gone on the run after shooting a man.  I did that twice last week.”  He could say things like that in the car, because it meant Aunt Libby couldn’t kick him under the table.

Beside Sandy in the back, Cousin Finn was asleep in the car seat.  Sandy wondered what kind of music he’d like when he was older.  Maybe he wouldn’t really care one way or another- most of the boys at Sandy’s school were more into football than music.  Sandy wondered what would horrify Libby more; that, or Finn being into Britney Spears or something.  But you never knew- maybe she’d be lucky.

“Listen to the chord progressions, Sandy,” Libby instructed.  Sandy pretended to do exactly that, even though she didn’t exactly know what chord progressions were.  She’d have to ask her Music teacher when she got back to school.

The Steely Dan song ended, and, before Simon could put in any requests, another one started up.  “Nirvana!” yelled Libby, turning up the volume.

“Oh, God…” muttered Simon, not quite under his breath, “Can’t we listen to something a bit more cheerful?”

“No,” said Libby firmly.

Sandy listened.  “Hang on, I think I know this song.  We used to sing it at school, back at St Margaret’s.”  It was about a little bird who couldn’t find a warm place to sleep.  The version playing on the radio definitely made it sound less mournful and sinister than the school choir had.  The way they’d sung it, you knew for a fact that the little bird would be frozen to death by morning.

Aunt Libby nodded.  “It’s traditional” she said proudly, “They’re reinterpreting it.”

“Like a cover version?”

Aunt Libby frowned.  “Not exactly…”

“Well, what’s the difference?” asked Uncle Simon, a big grin spreading across his face.  Aunt Libby didn’t take the bait.  She glanced backwards at Finn, then turned the volume down a couple of notches so as not to wake him up.

Uncle Simon drove on in silence until they hit a red light.  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, looked out at the pavement next to them, and tutted.  “God!  Why are there so many leaves on the road?”

“Because it’s autumn,” said Libby patiently.

“Well, why don’t they clean them up, then?”

Libby raised an eyebrow.  “‘They’?”

Simon turned to her.  “You know what I…” Unfortunately, by taking the time to say this, he missed the lights changing, and the drivers behind him began to beep their horns insistently.  Simon went pink and stepped on the accelerator.

Libby could probably have dropped it, but that just wouldn’t have been her.  “You think the council should pay somebody to clean up after the trees every year?”

“I don’t see why not!” said Simon, sounding a little hurt.

“They can barely afford to have the roads gritted when it snows.  They’re not going to pay someone to, I don’t know, stand under the trees with a sack.”

Simon shook his finger at her.  “That’s not what I was talking about, and you know it.”

“Then what were you talking about?  Chopping down all the trees in town so that you don’t get offended by the sight of leaves lying around?”

“I just think somebody should clean them up, that’s all.”

“God, yes,” said Libby, with a smile, “They’re covering up all the litter.”

Simon let out an annoyed grunt, fixed his eyes on the road, and said nothing else.  After about a minute, Libby turned the volume up again.

&&&

Sandy had found out that Cousin Finn got very concerned when you pretended to cry.  All you had to do was cover your face with your hands and make sobbing noises, and he’d make an alarmed noise and pat your shoulder until you stopped.  This was a very useful tactic to stop him from pinching you or pulling your hair, as toddlers sometimes did.

Finn’s bedtime was in about ten minutes, but until then, he was sitting in the kitchen, keeping Sandy company while Simon sorted out some bills upstairs and Libby talked to whoever that was at the door.  This suited Sandy just fine.  It was always really fascinating to talk to a kid Finn’s age, and wonder which bits of what you were saying would be things they’d remember when they were older without knowing why.  For example, Sandy just spent the last few minutes explaining all the plots going on in Eastenders at the moment, in the hope that ten years from now, he’d still see Grant Mitchell as some kind of mythological hero.

Sandy heard the front door close, and an unfamiliar voice echo down the hallway.  “…wouldn’t want to put you out at all.”

“No, no,” said Libby’s voice, “God, no.  Stay as long as you like.  Did you say it was…?”

“Jaeger, love.  Like the rum!”

Libby laughed.  She opened the kitchen door, and came in with the other woman.  “Right!”  She looked at the able to check that Sandy and Finn were still sitting where she’d left them, and continued.  “Sandy, this is Mrs Jaeger, from down the road.  She’s been locked out of her house, and I said she could use our phone.”

“You’re too polite,” said Mrs Jaeger, “I locked myself out of my house- that’s the sad truth.  Let the door slam shut behind me and realised I’d forgotten the key!”  She smiled at Sandy, whose blood froze.

She knew that face.  Those yellow teeth.  That straggly grey hair.

“Sandy, was it?” asked Mrs Jaeger.

“My niece,” explained Libby, “She’s staying for the evening.”  She winked at Sandy.  “Needed some help with the baby, didn’t I, San?”

“Yeah,” said Sandy, “Hi.”  She’d forgotten that Finn was there until Libby had reminded her.  As quietly as she could, she moved her chair closer to his.  If Mrs Jaeger came anywhere near him, she’d…  Well, she didn’t know what she’d do.  Scream a lot probably.

Mrs Jaeger had turned away from them, for the moment.  “Now… Libby, wasn’t it?  I don’t mean to trouble you for more than a minute or two.  Just enough time to phone my husband, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Aw, don’t be like that.  Where does your husband work?”

“Macadam and Gould Furnishings, just around the corner.  He won’t be more than about five minutes, really.”

“Well, that’s enough time for a cup of tea.”  Libby turned away to put the kettle on.  “Come on, I’m not just going to let you make the phone call and then turf you out to wait on your doorstep.”

“Oh, well…  If you insist…”

So Aunt Libby made a cup of tea, Mrs Jaeger phoned her husband (who may or may not have actually existed), and then they talked.  They chatted like old friends about their husbands, about the news, about people they knew.  And all the time, Sandy sat at the table, next to Finn, staring into her own cup of tea and wondering exactly when Libby would have to leave the room and leave them alone with the old lady.

Finally, it happened.  Libby went outside to watch for Mrs Jaeger’s probably-made-up husband, and, as soon as she closed the door, Mrs Jaeger grinned.  “Hello, Alexandra Faith.  We didn’t get to talk last time.”

Sandy shifted up closer to Finn, who gave her a confused look before going back to playing with a spoon that somebody had left on the table after dinner.  She could have asked the old lady a million and one things- who she was, what she was up to, how she even knew where Sandy was tonight- but the question she actually ended up asking was almost boring.  “You don’t really live down the road from here, do you?”

Mrs Jaeger shrugged.  “I live wherever I like,” she said, with a touch of swagger.

Sandy looked down at the old lady’s hands.  There was that long, sharp thumbnail again.  “What do you want?”

“Well!”  The old lady grinned.  “You see, to me, you’re competition.”

“What?  Why?”  How could Sandy possibly be a threat to a woman fifty or sixty years older than her?  Especially when she hadn’t even known that woman existed until last Sunday?

Mrs Jaeger tapped her fingernails on the table, and looked thoughtfully around the room.  “How many people do you think there are like us?” she asked eventually, making eye contact with Sandy again, “Honestly?  What are the chances of any given baby being born with the gifts we have?”

(At the word “baby,” almost without realising it, Sandy shifted her chair so that she was blocking Finn from Mrs Jaeger’s sight.)

“One in a million,” the old lady answered her own question.  She paused, then added with a laugh, “So there’s about six thousand of us worldwide, give or take.  So tell me, Alexandra Faith, is there room for two of us in this kitchen?  Can I afford to take that chance?”

Sandy swallowed.  There were certain bits of what Mrs Jaeger had said- the gifts we have, about six thousand of us worldwide– that Sandy knew would seem important later, but right now, she didn’t care.  Right now, the only things she could think about were those long, dirty nails, inching closer and closer to her and Finn.

“You and your hailstones…”  The old lady leaned towards Sandy, so close that she could smell her breath.  “You’re more powerful than I thought.  But maybe not as powerful as you think you are.”

There was nothing else for it.  Sandy shut her eyes as hard as she could, and prayed that it would work.

She didn’t know how long she kept them shut.  Long enough for the muscles in her eyelids to ache with the strain of keeping them screwed up so tight.  When she finally dared to open them, Mrs Jaeger was lying with her head on the table, fast asleep.

She checked on Finn, and saw that he’d nodded off, too.  For all she knew, she’d sent Simon and Libby to sleep as well.  For all she knew, she’d managed the whole street.

Gently, she lifted Finn from his seat, and carried him out of the room.  She’d take him upstairs and put him to bed, and not come back down until it was safe.  With any luck, before Mrs Jaeger had a chance to wake up and look for them, Libby would find her and deal with her.

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Why I Like Rick from “The Young Ones”

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(The following article was originally posted on Women Make Waves in Autumn 2014.)

When Rik Mayall died earlier this year, a lot of fans comforted themselves with one of his best-known lines:

“Aha, kids, do you understand nothing? How can Rick be dead when we still have his poems?”

And Rik Mayall can’t be dead when we still have Rick from The Young Ones. Mayall’s legacy includes a long list of vibrant, memorable characters, but before anybody even thought of Lord Flashheart or Drop Dead Fred, there was a whiny, spotty little brat who thought Cliff Richard was a revolutionary leader. On one level, Rick is a typical egotistical comedy protagonist who has no idea how he comes across to others, a lot like Alan Partridge or David Brent. But The Young Ones is a deeply political show, and Rick’s alleged anarchic beliefs are central to his character. In a way, he’s a bit of a cautionary tale for anybody who wants to be politically active.

The world of The Young Ones might be a place where bricks explode when you bite them and vampires suddenly appear in your living room to try and trick you into forgetting to return your rented video player in time, but it’s also got one foot in reality. The characters frequently discuss their hatred of Margaret Thatcher. The police are shown as corrupt, racist, or just plain incompetent. University Challenge is rigged in favour of the posh kids. Casual drug use is depicted in a completely non-judgemental way, but sexist beer ads are mocked mercilessly. Thirty years later, it still feels subversive, mainly because the political aspects of the show happen alongside the sillier and more surreal humour. With The Young Ones, you’re never really prepared for what’s coming next.

People tend to use the phrase “equal opportunity offender” to mean, “I can make as many sexist and homophobic jokes as I want, because I’m so ironic and hardcore.” But to me, The Young Ones represents what that phrase should really mean- the willingness to mock the shortcomings of your own side just as readily as you would those of your enemies. So, in addition to the racist policemen and the rigged game show, we have Rick.

Rick thinks of himself as an anarchist, and spends a lot of time reminding anyone who’ll listen how much more politically sound he is than them, but he is chronically unable to put his money where his mouth is. He plans to boast to his friends about refusing to pay his TV license, but, when the inspectors show up, he tries to shift the blame to his housemates. He meets an old man in the post office and berates him about his (presumed) reactionary attitudes, but soon ends up complaining that “the country’s in such a state” because the government gives away too much foreign aid. When Vyvyan upsets him, he begins to write a letter to his MP, until Neil (whose radical beliefs are, in contrast, shown as silly but sincere) reminds him that he doesn’t have one. In general, he comes across as somebody who doesn’t know much about what it means to be an anarchist, and probably only picked the label because it seemed cool.

It’s easy to imagine Rick as a more right-wing archetype- say, a fundamentalist Christian who constantly tells everyone else that they’re going to Hell even though he’s as badly-behaved as they are- but if he was, he wouldn’t be half as interesting. When Rick says, “Neil, the bathroom’s free! Unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta!” the joke isn’t that the writers think he’s wrong. The joke is that he’s so self-satisfied about it. Later in the same episode, Alexei Sayle breaks character, talks about his real-life Marxist principles and reassures his allies that appearing on television doesn’t mean that he’s sold out… before launching into a Pot Noodle advert. The message is clear: Your beliefs are worth taking seriously, but if you start taking yourself seriously, you’re screwed.

Rik Mayall played a lot of great characters in his time, but we should probably be most thankful for Rick. Not just because he’s hilarious, but because he actually teaches the audience something. Don’t use other people’s problems as an excuse to draw attention to yourself. Don’t get so wrapped up in the superficial aspects of a movement that you forget about the substance. Don’t assume that fighting against awful, wrongheaded political opponents automatically makes you wise and virtuous. And, no matter how much they annoy you, don’t ever call your nice hippy flatmate a “fascist.”

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What Sandy Did at Half-Term (part 5 of 10)

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(Two months later, I’ve finally finished the next bit!  Sorry it took so long.)

Tuesday Night- Great-Grandma and Great-Aunt Pauline

Great Aunt Pauline was Gran’s younger sister, and her arch-nemesis.  Gran’s snide comments about Aunt Caroline were nothing compared to the grudges that could be nurtured by spending the first eighteen years of your life cooped up in the same house.  “Goes to pieces when she runs out of eyeliner,” Gran would say whenever Pauline was mentioned, “Can’t cook without a frying pan.”  Gran complained about everything Pauline did, from her perfume (“smells like a bloody bordello”) to the way she walked (“attention-seeking.”)  Luckily, their relationship had improved a bit since Great Grandma had moved in with Pauline last year, because Great Grandma took delight in winding her daughters up, and Gran and Pauline usually had to join forces to get her to stop.  So she was kind of a peacemaker, in her way.

At the moment, though, Great Grandma was behaving herself.  It was just after dinner (which, alright, had involved a lot of olive oil and burnt bits), and she was introducing Sandy to the newest cat.  “This is Billy,” she said, tickling the ginger ball of fluff under his chin.  “He’s my little boyfriend, aren’t you, Billy?”

Sandy might have been more weirded-out by that if she hadn’t heard it before.  Great Grandma referred to a lot of people and things as her boyfriends, including various actors on TV, the waiter at the Chinese down the road, and Sandy’s Cousin Finn, who was two.  Nobody else thought it was as great a joke as she did, but they all tended to smile and nod.  When you were ninety-two, you were allowed to make people feel uncomfortable.  “He’s very cute,” said Sandy, scratching the top of Billy’s head.

“He’s a lot friendlier than that one,” said Great Grandma, nodding towards Pepper, the little black cat, who was staring at them from under the table, “Won’t come near you unless you’ve got food in your hand.”

“Well, there’s only one solution to that,” said Sandy, getting up and going over to Pepper so she could stroke her.  Pepper gave her a long-suffering look, in the way that cats did, but didn’t bother to move out of the way.

Great Grandma laughed.  “Now, where’s Gus got to?” she said, looking around for the third cat.  Sandy shrugged, and turned back to Pepper.

Pepper had always been her favourite, but lately, Sandy had really started to wonder about her.  She was a black cat, after all.  Those were the kind that witches had.

Sandy had first noticed the… things that happened… just over a year ago, around the time she’d left primary school.  She’d noticed, but back then she’d still been able to tell herself that it was just her imagination.  Yeah, it had seemed like she’d known what the guy on the news was going to say before he said it, but that could have just been a lucky guess.  Yeah, it had seemed like that boy in the park had tripped over and twisted his ankle just after swearing at her, but that could have just been a coincidence.  Yeah, it had seemed like that power cut had happened just as she’d lost her temper with Gran… or that her friend Amy’s stomach cramps had eased off as soon as she’d patted her shoulder… or that all the spiders in the house seemed to turn away at the threshold of whatever room she was in…

She’d finally had to admit that something was going on last Easter, after that thing with the tree.  She still couldn’t think about it without shuddering.

I need to know what you are, that old lady had said on Sunday, but Sandy had a nasty feeling that they both knew already.  It had to do with black cats.

Pauline strode into the room, clearly on a mission.  She was wearing a leopard-print top that Sandy kind of wanted for herself, and a whole lot of gold jewellery that she didn’t (it looked heavy).  “Mum, why are there three paintings of cocker spaniels in the dining room?”

Great Grandma smiled innocently.  “They’re not all of cocker spaniels…”

“Has that salesman been to the door again?”  Pauline put her hands on her hips, trying to cut an intimidating figure.  But you couldn’t intimidate Great Grandma if your life depended on it.

“What, Alan?  Lovely young man.”

“Mum, how much did you spend on those?”

“Did you know, he spent three years in the army?  He was telling me…”

“Mum…”

Sandy stroked Pepper’s back with one hand, and lifted her chin with the other. She looked into her eyes (bright green- probably something supernatural about that, too), and thought about what she wanted to ask.  She wasn’t going to say anything out loud- Great Grandma and Aunt Pauline were still in the room, and they weren’t too busy arguing to hear.  She was just going to… think it really hard.  That would have to do.

OK, Pepper.  Go up to my room, and bring me…  Sandy thought through the things she’d brought in her suitcase.  Her pink gel pen?  No- cats were colourblind, weren’t they?  Pepper wouldn’t be able to tell which one she meant.  Alright, then, what about one of her books?  No- the last thing she wanted was a book covered in toothmarks and cat saliva.  She thought through the rest of her things, and finally came up with something.  Bring me my necklace.  The one with the red heart on the chain.  It’s on the bedside table.

Sandy let go of Pepper, and she sprang away from her and out of the room.  Even though that was exactly the result Sandy had been looking for, it made her shiver a bit.

Sandy went back to her chair to wait.

“Look, Mother,” said Pauline, rubbing her temples, “just because somebody comes to the door doesn’t mean you have to give them all your money.”

“And I don’t, dear!” said Great Grandma, maintaining a benign, sunny tone of voice because she knew that was what annoyed Pauline most, “I just thought they’d brighten the place up!”

“How?  Where were you planning to put them?  Because they’re not going in here.”

Great Grandma frowned.  “I don’t see why not.”

After a few minutes, Pepper still wasn’t back, and Sandy began to feel a strange sort of relief.  She didn’t know why.  Even if she didn’t have some kind of bizarre hold over black cats, all that other stuff had still happened.  The old lady and the hailstones on Sunday, for a start.  But at least it meant that this particular thing wasn’t happening.  At least it meant that Great Aunt Pauline’s cat was still just a normal cat, instead of a familiar out to do her bidding.  She didn’t have to deal with that, at least.

Great Grandma looked up from her crossword.  “Were you thinking of making a cup of tea, Pauline?”

“Nope,” said Pauline decisively.

There was a pause as Great Grandma considered her options.  “Sandy, were you…”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mother, she’s our guest!” snapped Pauline, “I’ll make it in a minute, alright?”

Great Grandma nodded.  “Take your time, dear,” she said sweetly.

Sandy felt a movement near her ankles, and her heart sank.  Sure enough, when she looked down, she saw Pepper standing at her feet, with her heart necklace in her mouth.  Sandy leaned down to take it… and felt a nudge at her elbow.

She looked around, and saw Billy, Great Grandma’s little orange boyfriend, standing on the arm of the chair, holding her pink gel pen.  And as she turned, she saw Gus on the windowsill, with… yes, that was definitely the Goosebumps book she’d been reading last night.  He was holding it gently by one corner, as if he’d been warned to be careful with it.

Great Aunt Pauline looked up, and saw.  “Oh, you thieving little buggers!” she said, standing up and waving her hands at the cats, “Drop it, now!  All of you!”

Pauline and Great Grandma fussed around the cats, picking up the things they’d taken, apologising to Sandy and blaming each other for not keeping an eye on them.  Sandy barely noticed.  It was all she could do not to scream.

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Kids Today

Posted on by weeks4send

(The following article was originally posted on “Women Make Waves” in Autumn 2014.)

There’s an internet post – first forwarded through e-mail, then later shared on Facebook – that congratulates the generation that grew up in the Fifties and Sixties for surviving their childhoods. They must have been really tough, argues the post, to survive doing dangerous things like playing out in the streets without adult supervision, riding in cars with no seatbelts, or eating food that hadn’t been checked for peanuts first. They must have been really tough to survive teachers who didn’t have to consider their self-esteem and parents who were actually prepared to punish them when they did something wrong.  The message of this post is clear; the way their generation was raised was the correct one, and modern children are spoilt and mollycoddled. Whether or not you agree with this, it’s true that childhood in the Fifties and Sixties was very different to childhood today. Standards change a lot over time, and it’s not surprising that people who were born into a world that worked in one way can find themselves confused and annoyed when it starts to work in another.

However, a few months ago, I saw a version of this post that was headed, “To everyone who grew up in the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties.”

That was perplexing for several reasons. For one thing, I’m almost certain that seatbelts and teachers who worried about self esteem existed even back in the Nineties. For another, the original post dates from around 2002, so I’m pretty sure it was originally written to criticise children who’d grown up in the Nineties. But the children of the Nineties are in our mid-to-late twenties now, so we’ve been deemed old enough to be included in the looking-down-our-noses-at-younger-people club. I’m sure we’re all honoured.

Well, actually, some of us are. Every other day, I see posts on my Facebook page from people in their twenties about how today’s children are growing up to be unholy hellions because their parents don’t beat them enough. Alternatively, they’re growing up to be uncultured morons because they’re not watching Dexter’s Laboratory and Bananaman like we did. It happens in real-life conversations, too; three times in the last month, somebody has told me about working in a school and being shocked at how rude and badly-behaved the children were. It’s nothing like our high school years, they say. (Meanwhile, I left a job in a secondary school earlier this year partly because it reminded me too much of my high school years. Clearly at least one of us has a faulty memory.)

It seems as though every generation can be easily convinced that the one immediately after it is made up of demons from hell. There are writings from the Roman playwright Seneca the younger in which he complains about the youth of today, who grow their hair too long and don’t listen to their teachers. So we can either conclude that the ancient Romans were paragons of virtue and wisdom and every generation since has been a slight decline (which would require us to ignore most of what Nero and Caligula got up to in their spare time), or that, just maybe, it’s not fair to judge any generation based on the way they behave as teenagers.

Oh, but we’re right this time, you say. Those kids today are dangerous. They’ve got BBMs and violent videogames and Justin Bieber. They’re a menace.

To which I reply: You do realise that’s exactly what people were saying about us ten years ago, right?

Alright, maybe not the part about Justin Bieber, but ten years ago, you couldn’t move for stories about how awful the young people of 2003 and 2004 were. When a teenage girl was arrested for indecent exposure while on holiday in Greece, the tabloids went bananas about how out-of-control modern kids were. The Mirror printed a shock report on teenagers getting drunk and flashing their breasts, and called on the parents of Britain to do something. The Daily Mail printed a photo of a group of teenagers getting on a plane, with a caption stating that the world would be better off if they all crash-landed in the sea. Then there were ASBOs. These were basically just the government’s new strategy for dealing with minor crimes, but the papers treated them as though they were a sign that everybody under the age of twenty was criminally insane. You’d see references to “ASBO youth” and “the ASBO generation” scattered here and there. When the word was accepted into the dictionary, the papers treated it as a sign of the wickedness of the modern age. The verdict was clear- the youth of that time represented a new low.

But now that the youth of that time have grown up, everybody’s changed their minds. We’ve been promoted from the worst generation ever to the last good generation before the rot set in. And, to show our gratitude for being accepted into polite society, we should all turn round and decry the awfulness of children today, in sheer glee that it’s not us anymore.

It’s lazy thinking, plain and simple. It’s egotism. It’s narrow-mindedness. It’s the refusal to accept that any childhood that isn’t absolutely identical the one we had can possibly be healthy, that what was good for us might not be good for somebody else. It’s the refusal to see anybody younger than us as a human being. It’s the refusal to consider that somebody might make mistakes because of immaturity rather than because they’re naturally evil. It’s the choice to throw something away because it’s not working exactly how we want it, rather than trying to fix it. The children who grew up in the Nineties have been asked to join this club, but if we’ve got any sense, we’ll say no. Because we’re still young enough to remember when we were the generation of demons from hell, and we’ll never solve the problem just by passing the bile onto someone else.

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Being Rude to Creepy Blokes

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(The following was originally posted to “Women Make Waves” in Autumn 2014.  Once again, sorry about the formatting.)

The best piece of safety advice I received as a child was, “It’s okay to hit, kick and scream if a stranger is trying to take you away.”  The best piece of safety advice I’ve received as an adult is, “It’s better to be rude than dead.”*  Both of them are essentially saying the same thing- if you feel that you’re under threat, don’t worry too much about being sweet, likeable, or well-behaved.  Put like that, it sounds obvious, but people- and women especially- are put under a lot of pressure to be polite at all times.  We’re told to smile sweetly at people who get on our nerves.  We’re told that swearing is unladylike.  We’re told that getting angry only makes us seem shrewish and bitchy.  The same people who warn us never to walk home alone at night are perfectly happy to tell us to make friends with total creeps.
Take my former housemate, who, on our very first conversation, made sure to ask me if I had a boyfriend, then, after I said no, asked, “So when are you going to show me your room?”  When I mentioned this conversation to my mother, she said, “Aw, why don’t you invite him in?  That’s how you make friends!”  I didn’t invite him in, no matter how often he hung around my door looking hopeful.  Once he’d got into my room, it might have been nearly impossible to get him out.
Or the two men who ran into some of my friends at midnight, and tried to convince them to come with them into a dark subway because there was a really cool nightclub on the other side of the road.  (My friends could see across the road, and there wasn’t.)  They said that they had to get home, but the men explained to them how simple it was to get to the nightclub through the subway, and that my friends didn’t need to worry because they could trust them.  For some strange reason, my friends didn’t take them up on their offer.
Or the man who, upon visiting our flat, told me and my flatmate, “Yeah, I met up with a friend of mine earlier today.  I almost said, ‘Hey, I’m going to see these two girls later on.  You should come- one for me and one for you.’  But then I thought ‘No,’ cause you’re mates, ain’t you?”  We weren’t even that- we’d met him exactly once before.  When I deleted him from Facebook a week later, he sent me a message demanding to know why.  Three hours later, when I hadn’t replied, he sent another saying, “So there’s no reason, then?”  He then sent several whiny messages to my flatmate asking why I’d deleted him, and spent the next four months or so telling all our mutual friends that I was a total bitch who forced my opinions on people.
The criticism you often hear in these situations is, “Well, if you hadn’t been so uptight, you could have made a new friend.”  But, even working on the assumption that a man who lies to tempt a woman into a dark subway is remotely interested in friendship, why would you want to be friends with somebody like that, anyway?  If you humour him instead of running away screaming, the absolute best-case scenario is that you have to put up with him for the foreseeable future, and nobody wants that.  Besides, the worst-case scenario just doesn’t bear thinking about.
The creepier somebody is, the more likely they are to try and take advantage of your better instincts.  Your instinct to be polite.  Your instinct to give people the benefit of the doubt.  Your instinct to build people up instead of knocking them down.  These are good instincts to have, and you should never lose them.  But your safety is always, always more important than some creepy stranger’s ego.
* A Google search tells me that “It’s better to be rude than dead” originates from Gavin De Becker’s The Gift of Fear. The other piece of advice comes from a child safety pamphlet whose name I’ve forgotten. If you recognise it, tell me what it is.

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The Worst Song

Posted on by weeks4send

(The following article originally appeared on the Women Make Waves website in September 2014.  Since Women Make Waves is no longer in business and the archives are more difficult to access as a result, I thought I’d collect a few of my articles here, for easy reference.)

(P.S.  Sorry about the paragraphing.  I’m not sure how to fix it.)

If you Google the words “the worst song of all time”, you’ll generally get a string of irritating novelty hits. You’ll get “Agadoo”, you’ll get “The Birdie Song”, you’ll get “Can’t Touch This”, and so on. And while there’s the occasional surprising result (seriously, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” isn’t even the worst Beatles song), by and large, you get a selection of songs that are, when all is said and done, a big joke. Songs that were funny the first time, but made everybody want to stick forks in their eyes by the seventy-fourth. It’s pop culture’s revenge- for the crime of tormenting our elders by singing Aqua over and over again, we in our turn will be tormented by the younger generation singing “What Does The Fox Say?” over and over again. It’s tough but it’s fair.
But here’s a funny thing- deep down, where it counts, none of those songs truly deserve our hatred.
No, really. They deserve our annoyance, and they deserve our disdain, but actual, genuine hatred is something different. The songs mentioned above are, basically, harmless. MC Hammer, Black Lace and the others set out to make disposable pop hits, and disposable pop hits are what they made. Besides, you only have so much hate to go round- if you waste it on a band with lyrics like, “Come on Barbie, let’s go party,” you’ll have none left over for Hitler.
But what about a band with more ambition like that? What about a band who want to teach their audience a valuable life lesson? What about a band who decide to write a song with an important social message? And what about a band who completely mishandle that message, so that their song comes out as a pile of clueless, sexist, victim-blamey tripe?
Gentle readers, I give you City High’s “What Would You Do?”
I hate this song. I hate it with the power of a thousand suns. I hate it with a passion that, to be honest, is probably a little out of proportion considering that it’s a thirteen-year-old song by a band who split up soon after its release. But it still exists. Every time I think I’ve forgotten about it, it suddenly comes on the radio and makes me want to kill things.
Although it was released in 2001, “What Would You Do?” has always made me think of the 1980s slogan “on yer bike.” The origin of this phrase was a comment made by the Conservative MP Norman Tebbit, in the aftermath of unemployment riots in the summer of 1981. In criticising the behaviour of the rioters, Tebbit said, “I grew up in the Thirties with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking ’til he found it.” Many people interpreted this as Tebbit telling the unemployed to look for work like his father did instead of complaining. Some considered this sensible advice, and adopted “on yer bike!” as a tough, no-nonsense slogan. Others responded, “Go out and look for work? Wow, what a brilliant idea- I’d never have thought of that on my own! And I certainly haven’t been doing exactly that for the last year, you insensitive bell-end!”
But the thing that jumps out at me is this- Norman Tebbit only felt he could imply what City High, twenty years later, directly stated in this song. And I think we can all agree that when an up-and-coming R&B group are less sensitive to the plight of the disadvantaged than a right-wing politician in the 1980s, something’s gone horribly wrong.
The song begins with our narrator at a wild party with plenty of booze and strippers. Please note that he went there of his own free will, and there is nothing in the lyrics or video for this song to indicate that he isn’t enjoying himself. Remember this- it will be important later.
The narrator notices that one of the strippers is a girl named Lonnie who went to school with him, so he drags her outside and demands that she explain herself. Instead of punching him in the face and stealing his wallet, Lonnie explains that she works as a stripper (and occasional prostitute) because it’s the only way she can feed her son. I’ll pause here to point out what we’ve just learned about the narrator: He objects to his old friend being a stripper, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with himself or his friends paying to be entertained by strippers. It’s alright for them to want a particular service and enjoy it when it becomes available, but wrong for Lonnie to provide it.
There are several terms for men who think like that, but the only one I can repeat in polite company is “gigantic hypocrite.”
Admittedly, you could take a more charitable view of his character and argue that he has no particular moral objection to stripping, but he remembers Lonnie as a clever girl and is surprised and disappointed that she hasn’t done more with her life. You could argue that I’d be just as surprised if I saw an old schoolfriend working in Mcdonalds when I knew she’d got A*s on all her A-levels. And I can’t deny that. But the difference is this- if I did see a genius friend working in Mcdonalds, I’d arrange to take her out for a drink and catch up on what had happened over the years, then broach the subject of her career choice politely. I wouldn’t drag her outside and demand that she justify her life to someone she hasn’t spoken to in years.
At the start of the second verse, the narrator once again fails to endear himself to me by telling Lonnie that her need to support her son is “no excuse” for her behaviour. You know, I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with her stealing his wallet anymore. At this point, it’ll pretty much have to be his kidney.
It’s that word “excuse” that gets to me- the sheer presumption on the part of the narrator that she has to excuse her method of supporting her son to someone who is essentially a complete stranger. He’s basically Angel Clare from Tess of the D’Urbervilles– a complacent man alternately taking the sexual favours that women offer him, and demanding that they explain to him exactly why this doesn’t make them massive sluts.
Instead of going with my kidney idea, Lonnie rants at the narrator, telling him, “Every day I wake up, hoping to die.” She doesn’t add, “And if I’d known I was going to run into a sanctimonious twerp like you today, I’d have wished a lot harder,” but I think it’s implied. She then tells him that she and her sister ran away from home to escape their father’s sexual abuse, before concluding, “Before I was a teenager/ I been through more shit that you can’t even relate to.” The narrator never shows any sign that he, in fact, can relate to her life, but he doesn’t let this get in the way of telling her that she’s doing it wrong.
The music video then cuts back to the narrator telling his friends the story. The music stops as one of them interrupts with, “What’s stopping (Lonnie) from going out and getting a real job?”
Well, I’d like to ask him by what standards being a stripper isn’t a real job (it requires real hours and pays real money, doesn’t it?), but otherwise he asks a valid question. There could be a number of factors- it might be that the economy’s in the toilet and the strip club’s the only place hiring; it might be that there are other jobs going, but the pay isn’t as good, or they require qualifications and experience she doesn’t have, or the hours aren’t compatible with childrearing; it might be that she lacks the motivation to look for a job, possibly because she’s clinically depressed (the “every day I wake up hoping to die” line certainly suggests this)…
“What would you do? / Get up on my feet and stop making up tired excuses”
Oh, who am I kidding? It’s because she’s lazy, obviously!
Fortunately, this part of the song isn’t spoken directly to Lonnie, which means that she’s not going to have to listen to any more pseudo-moralistic garbage, which I imagine is a relief. No, this is just something that the narrator’s friend would say to Lonnie if, hypothetically, he met her. Which he’s not going to. So it’s just the audience that has to suffer as he tells us exactly what he’d do if he was in this situation that he’s never been in and never will be in, but knows, instinctively, that he’d handle a lot better than this stupid, lazy woman.
Before we come to the general theme of this song, there is a very odd line in the final verse that I think is worth addressing: “Girl, I know if my mother can do it, baby you can do it.” Since this is the only mention of his mother, and he doesn’t elaborate or attempt to explain whether or not her situation was even remotely similar to Lonnie’s, all this line achieves is adding a creepy Madonna / whore vibe that, frankly, fits right in with the “It’s OK for me to watch strippers unless one of them is somebody I know personally, in which case it’s an affront to my morals” attitude we saw in the first verse.
This song has not one, but two, highly questionable morals. We’ll start with the horrifically sexist one, then go on to the horrifically classist one.
Moral the First: If you’re a stripper or a prostitute, you should give it up. Not because of any practical or moral reservations that you yourself might have, but because it might make a man disapprove of you.
And we can’t have that. Everyone knows that a woman must devote her life to the good opinion of males everywhere. There are many times and places in which boys are told that all women are either bad girls (who you sleep with and then dump) or good girls (who are human beings), and the first verse comes across as the narrator telling Lonnie off for blurring the line and making his head hurt. And in the final verse, the line “stop making up tired excuses” carries the disturbing implication that Lonnie should have let her son starve to death before she allowed herself to become sexually impure.
Moral the Second: If you know somebody who does something dangerous or morally questionable to support her children, it’s not because of complicated factors like a hostile job market or lack of financial support from the government or her children’s father. It’s because she’s lazy!
See also, “I’m not paying tax to support a bunch of people on the dole who can’t be bothered to get jobs!” Some people badly need to believe that the reason they’re better off than poor people isn’t that they’re luckier, but that they’re inherently better people. If they were in the poor people’s shoes, they tell themselves, they wouldn’t sit around all day watching TV and eating crisps, or whatever it is that poor people do. No, they’d go out and achieve, and earn a million pounds within a week. Because they’re better people, and that’s why they’re rich.
This is an very convenient philosophy for rich people to have. It means that they don’t have to give money to charity (because it would only go to lazy people), and they don’t have to feel guilty about blowing large amounts of it on frivolous things (because if the lazy people had money, they’d spend it on something even more frivolous). Take it far enough, and you can live a life of unbridled hedonism without even a twinge of conscience… always assuming that nothing unforeseen happens to your money.
In City High’s defence, I think they intended “What Would You Do?” to be an empowering song, telling struggling single mothers that they didn’t have to resort to jobs in the sex industry to feed their children. The trouble is that they didn’t bother to come up with any actual alternatives. If this song had ended with the narrator giving Lonnie some advice on where to look for a job, or telling her he’d see if he could get her an interview where he worked, I wouldn’t have half the problem with it that I do. But all they could offer, after two verses of smug, judgemental hectoring, were some vague platitudes about “getting up on your feet.”
Or, if you prefer, “on yer bike.”

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What Sandy Did at Half-Term (part 4 of 10)

Posted on by weeks4send

Monday Night- Aunt Joanie

In Year Four, Sandy’s class had done a topic on Ancient Greece, and Sandy had read the big illustrated book about the gods and goddesses and mythical creatures about fifty times.  The picture of Athene, the goddess of war and wisdom (grey-eyed, troubled-looking and surrounded by owls) had always made her think of Aunt Caroline, which was weird, because two pages later there was a picture of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, with her long golden curls, magnificent bosom, and expression of inner peace. That picture had always made Sandy think of Caroline’s sister, Aunt Joanie.

Actually, Joanie wouldn’t have made a bad goddess of the harvest.  She lived out in the country, in a little cottage just on the edge of a farm, and she kept a flock of fat, moody-looking chickens in a run just by her back door.  At mealtimes, when she wasn’t just cooking the chickens’ eggs, she’d make weird concoctions out of the fruits and berries she picked in the woods.  These usually tasted more of the spices in the back of Joanie’s cupboard than anything else, but Sandy had to give her points for being resourceful.

Over dinner (an apple-and-blackberry pie with plenty of cinnamon), Sandy told Joanie how things were going at school.  She told her how she’d given up answering questions in French lessons, because every time she did, Mr Marshall (who thought he was a comedian) insisted on singing, “Sandy, baby, I am feeling blue!” and that got really annoying after the third or fourth time.  Joanie said to tell him that she wasn’t named after Sandy from Grease, anyway- she was named after Sandy from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which had been her mother, Tamsin’s, favourite book. That Sandy was a lot smarter and more ruthless than the one from Grease, although less likely to sing catchy 50s-style songs, which was a bit of a drawback.

Sandy told her about the girl who sat next to her in Maths, who’d lost her calculator and tried to convince Sandy to give her hers, on the grounds that they didn’t know for sure which one had been lost.  Joanie told Sandy that Bible story about the Wisdom of Solomon, although she admitted that trying it out in this case would probably just get them both detention for getting broken calculator parts all over the classroom.

Sandy told her about the “Everyday Technology” video they’d had to watch in IT, and how angry her friend Amy had been that the dad in it had got to use various bits of technology at work, but the mum had just scanned her credit card at the supermarket and then been picked up by a speed camera.  Joanie told her about her Year Eight and Nine Geography teacher, who’d always spent the first ten minutes of the lesson screaming her lungs out at the class for not coming in quietly enough.  At first, Joanie had found this upsetting, but then she’d worked out that it meant every time she had Geography, she could bring in a CD player and listen to exactly three songs she liked without being caught.  For two whole years, she’d got away with it- the teacher was always too busy venting her spleen to notice.

“You know, Sandy, one of the biggest lies adults tell children is that they know what they’re doing,” said Joanie, finishing off her drink, “And we all do it.  Even if it’s just because we want you to feel safe.”

Sandy smiled.  “One of the biggest lies?”  If Joanie was spilling sinister adult secrets, Sandy wanted to hear as many as possible.

“Oh, yeah.  Right up there with Santa and the Tooth Fairy.”

Sandy remembered being eight, losing a tooth, putting it under her pillow, and pretending to be asleep when her granddad had snuck into the room.  “And then, the next morning, when he found out I’d seen him, he still tried to tell me it had been the tooth fairy who’d left the money,” she told Joanie, “He said, You must have fallen asleep after I left the room and missed her.”

Joanie laughed heartily.  “Do you want to help me with the washing-up?”

Sandy didn’t want to help her with the washing-up, but she knew that saying so wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she said yes.  She ended up doing the drying, while Joanie fiddled with the taps and cursed her unreliable boiler.  “I’m lucky to get two minutes of warm water in the shower every morning,” she said, looking forlornly at the stubborn sticky stains in the middle of the plate she was holding.  “And as for central heating, forget it.  Those radiators have never once been more than lukewarm since I moved in here.”

Sandy made a sympathetic noise, and thought about what she’d done with Gran’s plant on Friday afternoon.  She didn’t know if she might be able to do the same thing with Joanie’s pipes, or if it only worked on living things.  Probably worth a try, anyway.

“And you know the worst thing?” Joanie continued, “Every time Caroline visits, she finds something wrong.  She barely even has to say anything- she just gives me that sad, long-suffering look that…”  Joanie let out a huff of breath, and shook her hands in the air, calming herself down.  “Oh, I shouldn’t complain.  She only wants to help.  But God, does she interfere…”

“It’s a big sister thing,” said Sandy, as if she knew anything about that.  After all, Roma was Keeley’s big sister, and she definitely wasn’t interested in interfering in her life.  Or acknowledging her existence, if she could help it.

“I know, I know.”  Joanie started to pick the dried fruit juice off the plate with her fingernails.  “I guess if someone knew you as a little kid, they have trouble remembering that you’re not anymore.”  She looked up at Sandy and smiled.  “I know I can’t quite believe you’re in Year Eight already.”

Sandy laughed.

“Jesus, it seems like the day before yesterday that I picked you up from playgroup every Thursday and took you to see the animals.”

“Yeah,” said Sandy, “It was nice of them to put up with me all those times.  You know, the people who run the farm.”   As soon as Aunt Joanie turned away, she reached towards a cold little water droplet on the handle of one of the mugs.  There was something she wanted to try out.

“Nah, they were glad to have you.  I think they were hoping I’d let them train you up, so you’d be like those three-year-olds who can deliver lambs.”

There was a little spark, like a static shock, from Sandy’s finger.  And then the water droplet was gone, leaving behind a little wisp of steam.

“Some farmers say they can do that better than adults, you know,” Joanie continued, still scratching at the same plate, “Little hands, see?  They can reach in and make sure the lamb’s pointing the right way.”

Sandy smiled.  “Thanks for not making me deliver a lamb.”

“Hey, don’t thank me yet- I might still do it.”  She put the plate back in the basin, and added some more hot water.  “You’re going to want an after-school job one of these days, you know.”

Sandy looked at the mug, where the droplet had been, and at the water in the basin, full of congealing dishes.  “Do you want to swap?”

“Nah, that’s OK.  I think I can get these taps to behave now.”  She turned on the hot water again, and gave a satisfied nod when a little bit of steam rose from the sink.  “It’s just a matter of letting them know who’s boss.”

Sandy nodded, and carried on drying.

“They’ve still got Lady,” said Joanie, handing her a clean plate, “You know, the shire horse?”

“I was terrified of her!”  Sandy remembered a furry white mountain with massive hooves, whose neigh had always sounded more like a growl.  “I kept thinking she was going to trample me to death!”

Joanie smiled ruefully.  “Yeah, maybe you were a bit too young to be introduced to her.  She’s a perfectly nice horse, but, you know, those hooves…”

“They looked like they were made out of rock.”

“I’m glad you were so safety-conscious.  Not many four-year-olds know to be careful around horses.”

Sandy gave an exaggerated shudder.  “Demon horse,” she mumbled.  Her gaze settled on the radiator in the corner, and she wondered what she could do if she got the chance to be alone with it.

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