Category Archives: Serious Stuff

Sight Seeing in London

When I like something, I tend to like it quite passionately, vocally and, as much as I try and deny this, obsessively. It is this part of my nature that probably draws me like a magnet to where I grew up (The City, London) whenever I am even vaguely close. Meeting with a friend from university this evening, I found myself, inevitably, marching back to my home turf. Like an addict looking for their next fix I found a perfectly innocuous reason to steer us in that direction – “Oh the view from the bridge is so lovely”, “We could go there for dinner, it’s only a few minutes away”.

Following my nostalgic trip into my past we wandered further along the Southbank to London Bridge, where I left my friend and began to walk off my dinner in the direction of Liverpool Street – the station that takes me home. As I set off, about to cross the eponymous bridge next to the station, I decided to put on some music, and the natural choice seemed to be the Olympics Opening Ceremony Soundtrack (when in Rome and all that). If you know me, even vaguely you will not be at all surprised by this music choice; the Olympics scores almost at the top of my obsessions.

So I set off on my walk, crossing that famous bridge, looking at the familiar sights of London – Tower Bridge, St Paul’s - juxtaposed with the jagged intrusions on my nostalgic skyline, buildings stretching into the night sky that certainly weren’t there back in my day! The whole evening had been somewhat of this theme, talking with my friend, that I see on a daily basis at uni, about the scary abyss that is life after graduation (a life without our daily catch ups!). I had talked a lot, as I often do, about life in The City and our conversation was a strange mix of past, present and future.

Although we moved from London when I was only nine, it has always felt like home to a certain extent. We moved very quickly due to my father being ill and the move has always felt, on some level, inextricably linked with his illness (which eventually killed him just a few months after we moved). London has held a strange place in my heart, both a home and a very distant memory. Like walking through your primary school years later, the familiarity of the place clanging against the nagging thought that you don’t belong there any more, that your memories belong to a new generation and are no longer your own.

This Summer, for those who have been hiding under a well insulated rock recently, London was about one thing, and for those of us directly involved in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, London was a magical place for those couple of weeks (I mean, people were talking to each other on the tube!). So as I walked through the streets that were so evocative of my past, my present (ish) was blaring through my headphones. The city that was so consumed in nostalgia, and complexities that would cost me hundreds of pounds an hour to get my head round was colliding with the city that teemed with excitement and opportunity from last Summer. As I tried to get my head around this new found perspective I found myself looking at the office buildings I was passing and contemplating my future; would I, one day, be one of the workers I saw, so nonchalantly hailing a taxi after leaving the, no doubt, hideously expensive wine bar, as I walked past, thinking about the couple of quid I was saving on avoiding the tube.

It was an odd feeling, but not an unpleasant one. It felt like something shifted tonight, not a huge, life-changing shift, but a subtle one, a difference in the way I perceive a major part of my existence. These changes happen around us all the time. Sometimes they are scary, like the change from seeing yourself as a ‘student’ to realising that the real world is approaching like a freight train. Sometimes it’s sad, like the shift from seeing your dog as a puppy with boundless energy to a greying old man (even though he’s still as lovely as ever). Sometimes though, the change feels more removed, something you observe with curiosity as it washes over you and this change I felt today was a mix of all three.

It’s funny to take a step back and see how much your life has changed. In the time since my last blog post my life has changed hugely, but it’s hard to see from my own perspective. Your life has probably not changed a huge amount in the time you’ve taken to read this blog post, but I hope you enjoyed reading it nonetheless!

Seeing As I Was Born Here…

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A few weeks ago I went to see a play my sister (an imminently graduating drama student) was in. I could quite happily wax lyrical about the phenomenal quality of the play but I’m pretty sure the previous sentence has revealed a bias that probably precludes me from giving a particularly useful review of the production. The play was all about migration, focusing, as is often the case, on illegal immigration. Immigration (the “damn immigrants” causing all manner of problems) is one of the buzz words the Daily Mail likes to use which should immediately flag it as an area that is misunderstood and sensationalised. As another Dan so eloquently put it: the previous sentence “won’t mean an awful lot if you’ve never heard of The Daily Mail, but on the plus side, you’ve never heard of The Daily Mail”. Incidentally the video I just linked to is well worth a watch!

The crux of the objections surrounding immigration is the pervasive assumption that the location of one’s birth (or even the location of one’s ancestors’ birth) somehow entitles that person to things someone else is not entitled to. The idea that being born on one side of an imaginary line drawn across the land should make someone fundamentally different to someone born 1m away is, in my opinion, absurd. Of course in the UK this argument is slightly weakened by the fact we have a stonking great stretch of water between us and our nearest neighbours (which opponents of immigration no doubt see as a good thing). The principal however is the same; why should I, by coincidence of my birth, be entitled to more than someone else born elsewhere?

There isn’t really a coherent argument against this. The only real way to argue against migration is to ask what the alternative is. Indeed, if migration laws were abandoned the situation wouldn’t exactly be pretty. There would be a mass movement of people (more so than currently) from less economically development countries into countries such as the UK and the economies of those countries would be unlikely to cope. Of course, as soon as the wealthy countries started to suffer, due to the mass immigration, the rate of immigration would slow and possibly reverse (imagine Brits being the ones needing to flee poverty…). If left long enough it is conceivable that a world without border control would be equalised economically such that people were distributed in a way that correlated with the distribution of global wealth.

Gosh. We have the solution then. Amazingly, in the ten minutes or so I’ve spent writing this blog I’ve solved the migration problem! We just need to decide as a planet (maybe some sort of big ad campaign is needed?) to remove all border controls and then we wait for everyone to shuffle around to find the point of equilibrium. Perhaps we could set up some sort of website where people can find where in the world they should head for a better life? I’m thinking Facebook style ‘liking’ would be good perhaps?

Of course, this isn’t really as feasible as it might seem I’m making out (no doubt Facebook has some pretty strict trademarking of its ‘like’ system for starters). In all seriousness though, this flippant suggestion is actually quite akin to the way the current UK government is trying to ‘marketise’ the higher education system in Britain. The idea that we should use market forces to try and equalise things such as education or, as in the case of migration, peoples entire quality of life, is deeply wrong. The underlying theory might suggest that marketisation leads to equality but as we can see from simply looking at the financial word; marketisation leads to the best off getting better off and the worst off getting even worse.

What needs to happen, in terms of disparities of equality, be it education, quality of life (one of the most prevalent causes of migration) or any form of inequity, is for the people in the most privileged positions to recognise their privilege, accept that in the vast majority of cases their privilege is due to the circumstances of their birth and nothing more, and then to take this sense of privilege and use it to help shape the world. Once the privileged start rejecting the comfort of thinking they somehow earned their privilege (although of course, if they actually did earn it then this doesn’t really apply!) then they can start to feel compelled to actually make a difference in the world and start to even out the stark divides in equality we see almost everywhere we look.

Although, of course, this would be much easier to achieve if it wasn’t for those damn immigrants!

Seeing the Point in Trans

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I am somewhat worried that during this post I’m going to want to use the phrase “I’ve been on a journey” but with the extreme level of cliché that would entail I shall do my best to avoid it.

So recently I’ve been on a journey…

Today I was asked about the point of the ‘T’ in LGBT. It was the same question I was asking myself a few months ago. I just couldn’t see the point of it, couldn’t see the similarities with LGB and although I was never transphobic as such I certainly was very trans-ignorant! Over the last few months however, I have the pleasure of spending time with some really lovely and interesting people who’ve helped change my mind about this and I now consider myself pretty good on the issue. Admittedly ’good’ is a rather bad word to describe it but hopefully it is obvious what I mean.

I still struggle to understand trans issues. In the sense that as a cisgendered person (my gender identity matches my sex) I cannot hope to understand what it’s like to be trans. In that regard I have made absolutely no progress. I still cannot understand why someone would be trans and I struggle to see what the big deal is about it. Of course this all seems somewhat contradictory to my claim of being ‘good’ with the whole trans thing.

What has changed is that I now don’t care whether I can understand it. It doesn’t matter that I don’t really see the point. What matters is that there are people out there who are trans and our current society is massively unfair to them. It annoys me to no end that straight people don’t get what it’s like to be gay. Obviously some can empathise and thankfully progress is slowly being made in terms of gay rights across the world. The problem is this took way, way, way too long. We had the mad rush of civil rights for black and ethnic people. We finally made progress in this area and although there is still a way to go the majority of people view racism as a bad thing and we bemoan our previous generations for the mistakes they made. To a much more limited degree this is happening with homophobia. Slowly it is fading and gradually the younger generation is judging previous generations for their mistakes. However, there was no natural transition. People still struggle to see the similarities between the black rights movement and the gay rights movement. People didn’t suddenly ‘get’ what it is like to be black or gay or a woman. They saw injustice and finally started to object to it after years of failure.

Effectively what I’m trying to say is that I support human rights. Now this may mean that I focus a lot of my attention on LGBT rights but that is only because it is something close to my heart that I see needs fighting for. One of the main reasons I have for doing this is because in 40 years time (or however long) when homophobia is something that the majority of people reject I don’t want to be embarrassed about what my generation did. I want to be able to say that I did all I could to fight against it. Now this is all very well and good and I am aware that I sound a little bit holier than thou (I honestly don’t mean to be) but perhaps it isn’t instantly obvious how this relates to trans issues.

The point I’m trying to make and, characteristically the point that is taking me far longer than it should to make, is that it doesn’t matter if you cannot understand something like transgenderism; if you can see people being discriminated against you should object to that. As long as the human right being fought for doesn’t hurt anyone it is worth fighting for. We shouldn’t need time to work out whether we understand or can empathise. If someone feels discriminated against and we can prevent that we should. It shouldn’t require generations of failure to finally rectify our mistakes. It is 40 years since the fight for gay rights really kicked off and we are still only just approaching the point where equality is on the horizon. We can’t afford to make the same mistakes again.

Now I don’t mean getting overly PC about stuff. We all dread the phrase “political correctness gone mad” but trans discrimination is so easy to avoid. You can avoid using gender pronouns and use someone’s name or ‘they/their etc’ instead. You can stop asking for people’s gender when it is completely unnecessary. You can accept that not everyone is cisgendered and, if you meet someone who isn’t, not question that. All of these things and more require such little effort and certainly don’t harm anyone but make such a huge difference to trans people.

You don’t need to understand why people are trans. You don’t need to see the point of it all. All you need to do is see the really easy ways you can make a positive impact in people’s lives and help make the world a more tolerant and inclusive place.

I am so glad we ‘lump’ the T into LGBT. It may not be exactly the same but it is still the same fight. It is about allowing people to live their lives as they want to and not enforcing cisgenderism on people the same way we enforced heterosexuality on people in generations past.

An Unchangeable Shade of Green

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It is interesting to consider how much of our lives we control. We are privileged (the fact that you are on the internet implies you fit within this ‘we’) to control a lot of things some people can’t. We can, for the most part, control what and when we eat or drink, where we go, what we do and to a certain degree who we are. We can, indirectly, control who runs the country, who represents us in Europe and, of course, who will win Eurovision. However, we are brilliant at ignoring all these privileged areas of control and focusing on what we cannot control.

We can’t really control what we look like, how we feel or others around us and yet that is often what we worry most about doing. There are multi-million pound industries dedicated to areas of our lives outside of our control. People will pay through the roof to tell someone their problems in a bid to control how they feel about their life. I wouldn’t have the audacity to suggest this doesn’t help people but it is interesting how desperate we are to change the unchangeable.

It is probably worth qualifying the word unchangeable with the caveat of ‘mostly’ unchangeable. You can change the way you look with serious commitment (or surgery!) and you can change the way you feel with extensive therapy. The question is; is it worth the effort?

Now obviously with the examples I’ve given above you could easily talk about people losing weight to benefit their health or indeed someone who is clinically depressed seeking treatment. However, when one considers the person who has surgery to deal with an imperfection of their appearance (as an example of an arguably non essential change) one has to ask oneself if that change is really necessary.

For the most part, the conclusion is yes. Obviously if someone can improve their quality of life then they should do so. It is just worth considering whether the improvement is due to the change made or merely the fact that the person changed something ‘unchangeable’. It is important to remember how much we do control before getting too hung up on what we can’t.

Seeing Green Without Eyes

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I just watched Derren Brown’s new show – ‘Derren Investigates’ (available on 4oD for a month) where he, in this episode, investigates a teaching method that allegedly allows the blind to see. I shan’t go into too much detail about the method that was, unsurprisingly, rebuked as complete fallacy. It basically involves using energy gathered from the urogenitary system (i.e. one’s crotch) and using it to power a ‘computer’ inside one’s head to visualise the non-material world (where do I sign up!?). This system is taught to vulnerable and often desperate people who pay hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of Euros to the teachers of the method.

The reason it concerned me is not so much the unfairness of extorting money (whether intentionally or not) for a phoney system but the fact that they tried to suggest it was scientifically rigorous. Many people throughout the word use the word science (and derivatives thereof) completely incorrectly. People mistake ‘science’, which should refer to the scientific method, with the scientific community or current theories or simply a rejection of the supernatural. The fact is, that although these things are often associated and interlinked with the scientific method they are very much secondary to it and therefore to reject the scientific method based on those things is wrong.

The scientific method, to oversimplify it slightly, is to prove something by experiment where the experiment can be repeated under the same conditions to produce the same result. There are many people who reject ‘science’ and therefore this method outright. It is of course a great shame for those people but at the end of the day there is little that can be done to convince them otherwise. The far more worrying phenomenon is pseudoscience. That is, people who believe that they are doing things scientifically when they are clearly not.

A famous case of this is the creationism vs evolution debate where creationists tried (and indeed are still trying) to force creationism to be taught as a scientific theory. It is somewhat disconcerting to know that some people believe that the world is only a few thousand years old and that God created it in 7 days but really that is down to the individual and although whole swathes of children are being educated in this way it is nothing new. What are really worrying are the people who think that ‘intelligent design’ is a scientific theory. It cannot be proven with experiment and certainly one could not repeat an experiment based on ID. To call it ‘science’ gives it credibility that it doesn’t deserve and that is really worrying.

The reason pseudoscience is more of a problem than non-science is because people believe that what they think/believe/do is logical and/or reasonable and therefore can justify doing it. Of course, people who practise non scientific things also believe this but once you have convinced someone of the merits of the scientific method they can easily see the flaws in non-science. Pseudoscience hides behind a veil of supposed logic which makes it far easier to sell (often literally) to people who often do not know any better.

Batman may wear black, but he’d look far better in green…

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I’ve just returned from seeing the Dark Knight. I’m not going to bore you, with a review of it you probably don’t want, but I would urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to go do so, even if, like I did, you think it’s not your thing. Unsurprisingly enough, I’m now going to talk about Heath Ledger’s acting. I don’t want to dwell on it too much though, as it isn’t necessarily what I want to focus on. As you are no doubt aware, the world has gone crazy about the acting of the late Heath Ledger. So, when I went to see the film, I was expecting amazing things.

I thought all the acting was fantastic, but with Ledger’s performance, I was always expecting more. I was always expecting there to come a definitive moment, when he showed why the world has gone nuts about him. That moment never came. Despite the fact that his acting was outstanding throughout, I was never quite satisfied, because I was always expecting more. I was therefore somewhat disappointed with the one thing I didn’t expect to be disappointed by. The reason for this is obvious; when something is hyped beyond all proportion, we can never be satisfied by the original. The hyperbole that has surrounded Ledger’s acting, the exaggeration of, what was, an already pretty flawless performance, meant that the original could not compare to the descriptions of itself.

It follows that when we expect something to be perfect, we are always let down. Nothing in life is perfect, we can only hope to find things so close, that we cannot see the gap.

The problem is, what follows that. By the logic that shows us optimism doesn’t work, we can argue that when you expect everything to go wrong, you will be pleasantly surprised. If you expect the worse, what you receive will be better than what you expected.

Now in this logical mindset, there is no problem at all, we get better than what we expect therefore we are always pleased with the results. However, it is not as simple as what it appears to be. If we live life pessimisticly, always expecting the worst, our lives will not be happy ones.

I don’t believe in karma. I don’t think that there is some supernatural force that punishes our wrongdoings, and rewards our good deeds, but I do believe that the ideas behind karma are vital to a good life.

First off, by thinking something bad will punish you for your bad actions, one, somewhat selfishly, is far more reluctant to do these things. By the same token, you are more likely to help others and do good things with your life. This is great, but unless you actually believe in a supernatural force then it would seem this method of living doesn’t work as the motivation to do so isn’t there.

However, a supernatural force is not required to affect your life in ways you cannot consciously perceive. If you live your life expecting the best, you will be disappointed, but your will subconsciously do things that will lead yourself in a positive direction. If you live your life expecting the worst you won’t get disappointed, but your life will spiral downwards, until the pleasing result you get from what you do, will be so close to worst case scenario you won’t even notice the difference.

The message here is that optimism works, but expecting perfection will lead to disappointment. By aiming for 99% rather than 100, you will be far more likely to achieve your goal. Oh, and most important of all, avoid hype like the plague, and see all movies the hour they come out!

For an entry on another Heath Ledger film ‘Brokeback Mountain’ , check out this post.

{insert minority here}

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I was looking in the Radio Times earlier, and I noticed that Brokeback Mountain is being shown on Channel 4. This is film that annoys me. In fact, it isn’t the film that annoys me, it is the way it has been received. It is labelled as a “gay cowboy film” when is it nothing of the sort. Just to clarify, I really liked the film, I thought it dealt with some really important issues, however, these issues had very little to do with homosexuality. The film, for those who haven’t seen it, is about two cowboys who work on an isolated mountain looking after the sheep during the winter. Set in the 1960s, it is a story of how the two fall in love. Now on the surface it is about a “gay” relationship, but when one thinks about it, the fact that they are two men is inconsequential. The story is about forbidden love, about how love knows no boundaries. The “boundary” the story chooses to explore is one of gender. However, the characters in the film were not gay (although Jake Gyllenhaal’s character may have been). They were just two men who fell in love.

The reason the reactions to this film annoy me is because this film is one of the few films of our time that actually deal with a minority well. What could have been a story about love, has been labelled a story about homosexuality, meaning it is treated as a “gay film”. Film and television are terrible at handling minority populations. There are only really two ways they have minority characters.

The first method is the use of “token” characters. They place a character in a film/show in order to demonstrate how tolerant and politicly correct they are. These characters are often extremely stereotyped and serve only to reinforce these stereotypes in people’s minds while contributing little to the story.

The second method is to have a character who does belong to a minority, and then focus on this fact whenever they appear on screen. Again, these characters are almost always stiffly stereotyped meaning these characters are often false and impossible to identify with. This is often taken a step further when the whole film or series is based on a minority group. These shows/films will often only show the worst parts of a community or focus on the differences between that community and the audience’s rather than the similarities.

What we need, and what perhaps Brokeback Mountain did, are minority characters who appear with no fanfare, or special mention, but merely as people. We need to see black people, Muslim people, gay people, without the label attached. We need to see them as people. What I want to see, is a film that has minorities in, but does not dwell on this fact, and does not place minority characters in just for the sake of it.

For an entry on another the latest (and last) Heath Ledger movie ‘The Dark Knight’, check out this post.

I’ll come up with a title later…

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Procrastination is an awkward thing. I could go into why this is now, or I could put it off till later. As with most things, I will probably end up putting it off, and this will probably end up with me failing to do it at all. The large gap between this entry and my last, is testament to my aptitude at this skill. That isn’t to say I’m unreliable, it is just to say that I often end up putting things off, and focusing on other, seemingly more important things. Now sometimes this is a good thing, neglecting my blog to focus on work and upcoming exams is certainly a good example of this. However, it is all too easy to put seemingly trivial things off, and then come to regret this, realising that the trivial things in life are often much more important than we think.

Hindsight, is another awkward thing. The idea of hindsight is one often used badly. People do not realise that if we all thought about our actions beforehand, if we really did use metaphorical telescopes to look before we leapt into the metaphorical abyss, then the notion of hindsight would be a moot one. Advising people to think before they act, warning them of what they may come to realise after the event, by quoting the importance of hindsight, is a concept dripping in irony. If we are so focused on the future, looking straight ahead, trying not to slip up, we will be unable to look behind ourselves, loosing all concept of hindsight.

I therefore have no desire to tell people that, if we always think before we act, look before we leap, spell check before we hit the print button, that we will not make mistakes, because I know that is not something which holds true. We learn from our mistakes. Clichéd as it may be, it is true. The only mistake we can ever truly make that is wholly negative, is to slip up, and then not take note of why we did so.

Hindsight should not be used as a scaremongering tool, to try and avoid mistakes at all costs. It should be used to highlight the mistakes we are making, the mistakes we have made, and with a little thinking on our parts, the mistakes we will make. We must use it to help us to prevent the same mistakes occurring again, and to ensure that we learn from each mistake we inevitably will make.

It is worth mentioning here that I am, of course, imperfect. Other than to admit to my own imperfection, I say this because you would be perfectly justified to ask what right I have to tell others what to do. The answer to that particular question is: I don’t. I have no right to preach to others, because I do not hold all the answers and to pretend I do would be extremely wrong. However, I do not wish to be tell people what to do. I merely wish to share some of my thoughts on subjects which trouble me, because in sharing my own ideas, I may help someone troubled by the same things as myself. It is very easy to judge and very easy to think a situation is easy to deal with when you are not in it, but to judge yourself, or to change the way you think is much, much harder. It is therefore very easy for me to write down ways to look at life, and philosophies for better, happier lives, but, of course, to follow my own advice is infinitely harder.

I deviate. I felt it important to remind people of what I am aiming for here before I conclude. The point that I do want to make, my musing for the day, is that we do not need to think in terms of never making mistakes, if we made no mistakes our lives would be boring and unchanging. What we do need to consider is what we are putting off in our lives that we would regret not doing if the chance faded away.

We must ensure that what we put off, what we push aside for other issues, are not things that we will regret not doing. If there are things you can think of that you should do, not the real trivial things, but the really important things in life which you, for whatever reason, are procrastinating about, you should do them, before it really is too late. Remember though, what may seam trivial now, could very soon become very meaningful. However, by the time this occurs, it may be too late to do what it was you put off.

The time has come, the blogger said, to name this other things

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Yes, it’s true, I am no longer going to be naming my blogs by their number. Partly because I want to be able to talk about other things but also because constantly coming up with number puns gets on my nerves.

I know it’s harsh of me not to let my blog get into double figures. It never got to drink, drive or even vote and worst of all it never got to have sex, but I think it will be happy being named other things, as it isn’t, let’s face it, that hard to please a personified blog.

In fact I would go as far to say it’s very easy to please something that doesn’t really have emotions, other than the emotions you give it. I think it would quite nice if life was like that. If we could wake up in the morning and decide to feel X, Y and Z, and not have to worry about the emotions such as L or S (points for guessing what they stand for). Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. We can’t switch our emotions on and off, and those who claim to be able to are just kidding themselves (or lying).

Then again, there is the theory that without sadness there is no happiness, without hate there is no love. I definitely buy into this school of thought. That isn’t to say you have to hate someone before you can love someone else, but it is true that those who have never been truly sad, can never be truly happy.

There is no way to measure emotion, we can’t express it in it’s pure form. We can attempt it with words, or music or art, but really, the emotion perceived through that is the emotion of the reader/listener/viewer, and not the emotion of the artist. In my opinion it is impossible to have two people to feel the same way about one thing. No matter how close we may think we are to feeling the same as someone else, we are unable to truly do so. This is, in my opinion, due to us constructing our interpretations of life, and therefore the emotions we feel about certain subjects, on our previous experiences. For example, if someone has never experienced death (as in bereavement rather than actually dying) then they aren’t affected by it, most children don’t think about death because they have never had any exposure to it. On the other hand, someone who has had a lot of experience of death will think about it a lot, and is likely to attach powerful emotions to subjects, that some people would consider to be very neutral.

This is the problem with emotions, we cannot control them. People try, and often fail, to do so, and often this leads to further problems. What is often the best thing to do, although somewhat counter-intuitive, is to allow the emotions to affect us in any way they want to (yes I am treating emotions like they have thoughts, as it is often the case that they appear to) and then, once we have allowed them to do this, we can move on with our lives.

I will finish by mentioning one of my favourite words; cathartic. I like it, not just because it’s one of those essay buzzwords that makes you feel smart, but because cathartic processes are very useful. It refers to the process of cleansing or purging ones emotions, and was originally used by Aristotle in his definition of Tragedy. The best way to describe it, is the feeling you get after crying, the process of crying is a cathartic one, that releases the emotions you have been harbouring. It is often the case that we bottle up our emotions and need something to spark them off, we then overflow with emotion, and normally end up crying, or shouting, or even laughing, but, no matter how bad it may seam that we have done those things, it is good that we have released the emotions we have been keeping locked away.

I know I have spoken (well typed) for quite a while, on, what some of you probably consider, a frivolous subject. However, I would ask you to just have a think about the way you handle your own emotions, and whether you could benefit from handling them differently. I made a promise to someone today that I would stop talking about nothing in my blog, and talk about ‘stuff’, and I am happy that this blog entry definitely counts as ‘stuff’. Thank you for reading what was quite a long blog entry, and, as always, comments are very, very welcome.

A break from the norm.

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I feel like doing a serious blog today. I’m not going to count this in my normal way as that would only tempt me to be funny (or try) and I don’t want everyone thinking that’s all I can do.

The reason for this seriousness is probably a conversation I had with Mr Kirton (the teacher at my school who organises the SCUBA diving). I am taking the rescue diver course very soon and we were just chatting about various things. I was asking him about the depths we are allowed to dive to; 30m recreationally, 40m for rescues. When he told me this, I suddenly had a thought; what if someone goes down deeper than 40?

The horrible truth is, that if this were to happen, you would have to leave them.

Just think about it for a second (horrifying stuff). You are diving with a buddy (you have to) who is most likely a friend, or a relative. In fact, considering that you are presumably on holiday with this person, you are most likely to be very close.

So your underwater, and at these depths it’s likely just to be the two of you, it’s dark, it’s cold and suddenly something goes wrong. It might not be sudden, but for whatever reason, your buddy falls unconscious and sinks to below 40m, or worse, they remain concious but are trapped below this depth. You, a trained rescue diver, have been told never to go below this depth for your own safety. What are you supposed to do?

You can’t help the person, they are below the depth your allowed to go. So in essence what you must do is watch your friend or relative while they either panic, or lie unconscious beneath you, until you have to return to the surface, leaving them to die. What’s worse, if they had been a few metres closer to the surface they would have probably survived with no permanent harm.

Now this is a very rare case, I hope I will never come even close to this, but it does throw up another issue. Could you really put your safety above others? I for one don’t think I could let someone die without trying to help. Honestly? I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but something tells me that instinct would take over and I would be powerless to stop myself from diving deeper.

I hope that most people will see this and have to think long and hard before deciding what they would do. To me, if you would put your own life first, without a second thought, it’s not the sort of life that’s worth keeping on this planet…