I have just been reading about our 21st century malaise.
Flicking through The Saturday Times today, I found a guide (their words, not mine) to the latest and greatest of modern-day society's afflictions. Being interested in social culture and all of that and having paid for my newspaper, I read on with mild interest, some skepticism and a little agreeable head-nodding.
(You on the other hand, would have to pay for all this - no more free news online from The Times - thanks to that Rupert chap.)
Anyway, I figured that if I just shared the list, a handful of links and a few of my choice-est views on the matter, you could decide for yourself whether you wanted to go to The Times website and fork out for more learned opinions on this subject than mine. So here goes.
First up it's Decision Fatigue. Too many decisions make us tired and lower our performance levels.
No sh*t Sherlock. I did not need The Times or Roy Baumeister to tell me this although I appreciate that nothing ever changes unless we label it and make it a big issue so kudos to the man for that. I think that for me, the issue may lie in something much smaller - listening to my actual choices, you know the ones I actually make. Like when I ask for tap water with no ice, don't bring me tap water with ice in it and get annoyed when I send you away to get me what I asked for. Call me a pedant if you will but it's the small things people, the small things.
Next there's Erotic Capital. The Times calls this 'monetising what the Good Lord gave you'. Catherine Hakim calls it Honey Money and wrote a book about it.
I want to believe it's bullsh*t. Because then what's the point of employing all of those other things like charm, persuasiveness, intelligence, listening and just plain good manners?
Twitter Jitters is next. Apparently it relates to whether you are posting frequently enough. For what? I ask you. Is this a race? Is there a prize or something? And what about Twitter SPAM? I am already managing this quite well thank you in my email-slash-blogging life. And quite frankly, sometimes what starts out as a delightful trickle of tweets disintegrates into retweet rubbish and I wonder what beautiful scenery I might have enjoyed by gazing soulfully out of the train window instead.
Next cab off the rank is Weekendvy. Yes, there's another stupid word that dictionaries the world over can add to their erudite tomes in a year or so's time. The point of this is that we lie to make our weekends seem more fun / glamorous / relaxing / exciting / virtuous / wholesome than they actually are. (I sense a bit of Keeping Up With The Joneses here).
And the dunderheads who actually commissioned this research and coined this phrase (according to The Times)? Travelodge. I rest my case.
Number five is Helicopter Parent Syndrome. There are words mentioned here like Child-bothering and Teacher-bullying. Ripe for provocation. Spoiling for a fight.
But I.Am.Not.A.Parent. for a reason (many of them in fact). So no comment. Nada. Move along people - nothing to see here.
And last but not least there's Internet Stupidity. Apparently our brains have atrophied and we spend many hours wilfing (from What was I Looking For?), wandering online from link to link to link. Although I should point out here that this is not a new phenomenon. I have been doing this from room to room in my not-large flat for many years now.
And the panacea to this malingering? Well therein was the most sensible piece of advice in the whole article. Three little words. Right at the end. Read.A.Book.
So here endeth the rant from the Peanut Gallery.
Now where's my Kindle?
Oh yeah...and what do you think? (WILF WILF)
I receive a lot of innovation-type newsletters in my inbox. I love being inspired by new ideas and clever things that other people are doing. And this week ended with a real corker - Living Books.
A new public library in Surrey, Canada has come up with the brilliant idea of offering people 'on loan' - so you can book in for a coffee and a chat with a volunteer expert to bring your reading experiences to life.
Apparently this idea was born in Europe. Google, unusually, is being a little obtuse and I can't find out exactly where but there's a bit of talk about some ideas in the UK here and here. It has already been implemented in a couple of other libraries in Canada but I thought it was a great way of bringing interaction, connection and community spirit back to life in this overtly digital age.
One of my favourite movies is You've Got Mail. The Shop Around The Corner is just wonderful and I love the magic that Kathleen Kelly creates there in her enduring passion for books and reading.
Libraries are suffering as we, in this age of cheap consumerism, buy books and dispose of them at will, or even worse cannot maintain levels of concentration beyond a snippet in a newspaper or a piece of celebrity gossip in a magazine. On the other hand, I went to my local library about six months ago and was disappointed with the whole experience of both browsing and the reading 'ambience', which did not really encourage me to sit and read anything.
I think it's inspiring to find public services that seek to create relevant experiences for current and future generations to engage in. I just hope the word spreads to encourage other libraries to think a little differently before public libraries are consigned to the realms of nostalgic rememberings.
I do like a bit of theatre. I used to subscribe to the MTC when I lived in Melbourne and when I arrived in London in 2004, I promised that I would immerse myself in all the theatrical delights that this great city had to offer. This happened for a little while (as far as my dwindling Aussie Dollars would stretch anyway) until life got in the way.
Seven years later, I have finally managed to rekindle the embers and, inspired by a cheap ticket to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead a few weeks ago (which, by the way, was fabulous), I have been keeping my eyes peeled for more special offers of the 'treading the boards' kind. And that was how my trip to see Top Girls last Wednesday came about.
Marlene has left her home town to explore the world and try her luck as a career girl in the 80s. The play opens with her at dinner with friends, celebrating her promotion to Managing Director of recruitment firm Top Girls. But this is not just any dinner - her friends are women from history:
Pope Joan, who disguised as a man, is said to have been pope between 854-856
Isabella Bird, explorer
Dull Gret, the harrower of Hell
Lady Nijo, the Japanese mistress of an emperor and later a Buddhist nun
Patient Griselda, the patient wife from The Clerk's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
Statement hair, shoulder pads and much white wine abound and the dinner disintegrates into a quite ribald affair.
The rest of the play covers the period from about a year prior right up until the days following Marlene's promotion and flicks back and forth from the life Marlene left behind, epitomised by that of her sister Joyce and her daughter Angie, to her high flying role at work. There's a great sense of breaking into a man's world in these latter scenes, particularly poignant when it is suggested that Marlene has stolen something (the promotion) from someone who 'really needs it' (a man).
I remember this as an under current when I started my career in the early 90s (although things had probably progressed a little since the days of Thatcher's Britain and I was in Australia several thousand miles away). I also remember feeling quite p*ssed off at the slightly patronising tone of others in response to my 'no marriage, no kids thank you ' mantra back in the day (and the tone didn't really change until I got into my 40s). It was extraordinary to have the opportunity to revisit this time in my life, some 20 years later. How clear things become with 20-20 vision.
I often go along to plays without having any detailed knowledge of the story - I like the sense of discovery this creates rather than knowing what to expect and then having an opinion about whether it (the play) lived up to my expectation.
With Top Girls, this made the dinner scene a little confusing but as the play unfolded, the pennies dropped.
These women each represented different aspects of living in a 'man's world' - whether it was Lady Nijo, who does not see the forced attentions of the Emperor as rape or Patient Griselda, who having promised to obey her husband, amiably forgives his cruelty in taking her children away from her - and the various conversations around the table served to highlight what was 'expected of them' as women in their various societies.
So Top Girls was thought-provoking and pithy (in parts), confronting and heart-warming and a great opportunity to revisit the era of Chardonnay and shoulder pads, when women struck another blow for equality, consequences and all.
I absolutely loved it.
If you are in London, you can see Top Girls at London's Trafalgar Studios until October 29th. You should go peeps, really you should. You can click here to find out how.
Yippee!! Hooray!! It's here at last!!
Last Thursday my wi-fi router arrived!
So on the weekend I mastered the shopping (no great surprise there) and downloading, and this week, my very best new toy has unequivocally joined the ranks of Gidday's Commuting Gems.
The lovely Audrey has debuted by helping me while away the hours to and from work this week with that quintessential (and sentimental) favourite, Little Women. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy have laid bare their girlish hopes and dreams, their foolish follies and foibles all over again and have reminded me that, despite my aversion to the slightly religious under-tones, what a truly wonderful book this is.
And for 86p, I bought all four Louisa May Alcott stories: Little Women and Good Wives (the two-in-one that we all know and love), Little Men and Jo's Boys.
I'm about four chapters into Good Wives and, given that I have read this several times since first reading it before I hit my teens, I am still marvelling at how much I am loving reading this again.
And I still well-up when old Mr Laurence gives Beth the piano...
...sniff...
Flicking through The Saturday Times today, I found a guide (their words, not mine) to the latest and greatest of modern-day society's afflictions. Being interested in social culture and all of that and having paid for my newspaper, I read on with mild interest, some skepticism and a little agreeable head-nodding.
