Worst Halloween Display Ever

There's a house with a chain link fence on a corner a few blocks from where I live. The chain link fence runs across the front lawn of the place, which is unusual. The rest of the street is just regular houses, fairly well-kept lawns, trees, maybe flowers, no chain link fencing. Some of those other lawns are presently host to political campaign advertising, mostly Beto but a couple for Ted Cruz, according to the political leanings of whoever lives there. Beto is standing for the Senate on behalf of the Democratic Party, challenging Ted Cruz who currently holds the seat on behalf of the Republicans. Those dwelling within the house on the corner favour Ted Cruz, and his campaign material is secured to their chain link fence, along with a whole load of other stuff advertising their political sympathies to those who drive along North New Braunfels Avenue. Amongst the other material is a large presumably canvas banner which reads:

We have had it with Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Colin Kaepernick, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Beto O'Rourke, Socialism, and political correctness. Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.

To unpack all of this for anyone unfamilar with this array of names, Barack Hussein Obama was our last president - meaning either the president we had before the current guy, or our last president, depending how things go from hereon. The good news for our people behind the chain link fence is that he ceased to be president nearly two years ago, so I'm not sure why they've had it with him, as they put it. Maybe he regularly pisses on their lawn on his way back from the pub, which might also explain the fence.

Hillary Clinton is the wife of another former president, and she herself applied for the job at the same time as Donald Trump, but didn't get it. Again, I wouldn't like to speculate on how she's managed to upset our mysterious family. I can understand why people might not have wanted to vote for her, and it isn't that they're scared because she's a woman and she's brilliant - as one dimwit so memorably put it, but sheesh...

I don't know much about Nancy Pelosi beyond that she's a Democrat politician whose name is routinely employed as a smear in Republican campaign messages. Current campaigning against Gina Ortiz Jones here in San Antonio relies upon her association with Pelosi. Having just come back from a weekend in Houston, I noticed that one of their local Democrat candidates is also supposedly awful due to something or other to do with Pelosi, whom I therefore assume to be a malign Lovecraftian octopus entity manipulating human history from behind the scenes.

Colin Kaepernick is a football player, or at least a participant in a game which Americans call football. He famously failed to stand for the national anthem in protest of institutionalised racism. This caused the heads of certain people to explode due to toxic levels of what Orwell described as primitive patriotism.

It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the other names which have apparently struck terror into the hearts of our family behind the chain link fence.

At the risk of shooting a fish in a barrel, these neighbours of mine therefore feel - as is implicit in the last line - that their lives are jeopardised by someone who isn't president, someone who didn't get to be president, a football player, a space octopus from beyond time, a political ideology which has never had much of a foothold here in the United States, and anyone who tells them that they can't say the word n***** because it's disrespectful. This stuff is ruining their lives.

On the other hand it could be that they're just shitheads who don't fucking understand nuffink, instead pooing their pants every time some power hungry nest-feathering plutocrat waves Nancy Pelosi in their faces and growls, she's coming for your children, and she's going to force them to have abortions and gender reassignment surgery. It's always depressing to see people whose buttons can be so easily pressed by almost anyone in a nice suit claiming to be on their side.

Hopefully no-one will take offence at my use of the term shithead here. Angry Moron Who Doesn't Understand Stuff seems cumbersome, and is a little too politically correct for my liking.

The button pressing would seem to be revealed by the inclusion of Barack Obama's full name, given that the banner appears to have been commissioned from a company specialising in such things, in which case I imagine our family would have been charged by the letter, or at least the word; and Hussein, Obama's middle name, is not widely used and is therefore a superfluous inclusion unless attempting to establish an association with Saddam Hussein by means of sympathetic magic. This is the same button pressing favoured by the sort of righties who photoshopped images of Obama with a Hitler moustache, so I suppose our bunch are just passing it on. The possibility that someone behind the chain link fence owns a banner manufacturing business and got this one as a freebie seems unlikely given crude handwritten cardboard signs affixed to other parts of the fence reading God Bless the USA, Secure the Border, Keep Our Guns, and all of the usual rightie concerns for things which either aren't the problem, or are else actively contributing towards it.

Hung from the awning of the house is another home-made sign reading We Love President Trump, and in the garden there's a professionally made one pertaining to a local anti-bullying campaign. Evidently they see no contradiction there.

I was in the middle of an already lousy morning when my wife told me about the signage at the house with the chain link fence, and I found it significantly depressing. There are too many shitheads in the world as it is, and I don't like to think of them living in the town I've come to call home.

While I would agree with the shitheads that there are problems on the left, if they genuinely believe America even has a left, then they're even more shitheaded than I thought. My position is that the difference between Republican and Democrat politicians is that the Democrats at least feel a little guilty after they've shafted you. I don't trust anyone in a suit who tells me they have my best interests at heart, because historically they never have done, and if they did, it would be self-evident and would hardly need stating.

However, the bottom line is that part of being an adult is making peace with the idea that maybe not everything in the world will be exactly as would you like it to be; and if you're an adult you should have the ability to reason and to at least empathise with those in opposition to whatever you happen to believe, to at least understand where they're coming from even if you don't agree with it. That's what being a grown-up is about.

Therefore, when a stranger waves something awful in your face, explains that this awful thing wants to turn your kids into homosexuals, communists, people who can tie their own shoelaces, or whatever else gives you cause to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, when the next thing that stranger tells you is that he or she has the answer to all of your problems - the ones you've only just found out about, thanks to the testimony of this same individual - if it doesn't occur to you that you're being played like a fiddle, then you're either a very small child or a fully grown shithead.

I don't know how much more simple I can make it. It really isn't that hard to understand. No source of information - no news source if you prefer - is without some form of bias; but this simply means you have to use the power of your mind to deduce whatever may actually be going on. Living in the information age, it's not difficult to find varied accounts of any given situation or issue, and it's down to you to reach a decision based on what seems likely rather than on what seems most comforting, most consistent with your existing view of the world, and which requires the least effort expended outside your comfort zone.

If you're unable to do this, then you're a shithead.

If you're a shithead, then your opinion is of no value because you don't understand stuff, and there's no reason the rest of us should be obliged to listen to you or to take your uninformed shitheaded views into account; because when a small child tells you they've just seen a real live dinosaur, it's cute, but hopefully you won't believe in the literal truth of such a claim; which is why we hopefully don't vote for people engaging in cock-obvious attempts to goad you into hatred of whatever easy target happens to be on the table at the time.

The day after I learned about the house behind the chain link fence, I passed by the place on my way to have a root canal. I wasn't in the most buoyant of moods, but nevertheless I had to stop and take photos, just as I would have done had a real live dinosaur been reported in my neighbourhood by someone more authoritative than a small child. I cycled down a street with lawn after lawn playing host to Beto's campaign material, and there it was at the end, like a shit splatter of Info Wars taped over the end of an episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, the house which still seemingly fears that Obama is a'comin' for our guns.

I dismounted.

To my surprise, I realised that I felt sorry for the poor dumb bastards. I'm scared of all sorts of things - old age, cancer, and the likelihood of the entire planet becoming significantly less habitable during my own lifetime - but I can't imagine what it must be like to be so terrified of the rest of the human race, even one's own neighbours. I can't imagine daily existence lived in the belief that they're out to get you, with they being whatever some over-moneyed corporate saviour has you scared of this week. I can't imagine how difficult it must be making one's way through life with the comprehension and reasoning power of a typical eight-year old boy; and if this comparison seems unfair, consider that the shitheads are in power, gaining more ground across the world every day, all the cards in their hand, and the fuckers still aren't happy.

So I felt sorry for them, because what else is there?

Go Spurs Go

My wife had won tickets to watch the San Antonio Spurs playing the LA Lakers at the AT&T centre, our local sports and related entertainments arena in which one could fit the city of London several times over. The tickets were for seats costing over $300 a head and she had won them at her office, so this wasn't some old tat - the boss handing over a can of fizzy pop on Christmas Eve and telling you to keep up the good work. A few of her friends had offered to take the extra ticket. Resenting the implication that I myself might not wish to attend on the grounds of a lifelong hatred of organised sports in all of its forms, I accepted the invitation, reasoning that it would be something new and therefore interesting.

I considered the Spurs - the home team. I was already out of my depth. 'They're er— basketball, right?'

My wife nodded.

I had seen basketball on television a few times because my wife watches the occasional game if the Spurs are playing. It's the one I recall as having been called netball when I was at school in England. The girls played it, and we would sit and pretend not to watch from the English literature classroom. LeBron James plays basketball, and I know his name from when he featured on a massive poster which came free with an issue of Hip Hop Connection magazine a few years ago. I didn't hang it on my wall because I didn't know who the hell he was at the time, or why the poster should have been given away with an English music magazine. Charles Barkley also plays basketball, and I know him from the Godzilla vs. Barkley comic and because he hates San Antonio for reasons which aren't very interesting. Shaquille O'Neal used to play basketball and was apparently quite good at it, although I've heard of the guy mainly because my wife knew him from having attended the same classes at school. Finally, there's Kobe Bryant who plays basketball for the Lakers, although I'm not sure why I've heard of him; and that is the sum total of my basketball knowledge.

It transpires that our tickets also cover a parking spot, which is nice. We park and file into the arena with everyone else, finding our seats five or six rows from the front of the sloped terrace. I've been here before to watch the rodeo. From my point of view it's like Wembley Stadium were Wembley Stadium built around a small bowling green rather than a football pitch. There are screens everywhere, the largest being four of them set on each side of a huge central mount hanging down from the roof. We are sat amongst fans of both teams. I reflect that this would seem odd in England, comparing the arrangement to my admittedly limited experience of football.

'So you never get any trouble, fights breaking out between rival fans or anything?

My wife shakes her head, and I think about all of my friends who support Millwall back in London, and then the one guy who follows West Ham.

The noise is already deafening and we have thirty minutes to go. Players jump around on the court or the pitch or the trapezoid or whatever it's called, and voices blast from speakers all around as statistics appear on the screen, a featurette for each grinning player detailing height, performance, match statistics, superpowers, and which issue of The Avengers he first appeared in. Music blasts, familar songs but just ten second snatches of introduction, just long enough for one to recognise Thriller or Highway to Hell or The Final Countdown and cry out oh hell yeah or that shit's my jam right there, motherfucker! or something of the sort. It's all about the excitement of the thing without the substance of the thing itself.

The section in which we are seated apparently comes with its own team of waiters who will take our orders for burgers, fries, nachos, soda or whatever, but it's still too early for them so we make our way back up the stairs to the concession stands. My wife takes a tray of nachos and I have a burger. It is about as good as I expected it to be, better than McDonald's but nothing which would inspire a special trip. After I've eaten I am no longer hungry, so that's good.

A match or game or tournament of basketball divides into four quarters each of fifteen minutes duration. The rules are pretty much as they are with football, with nets representing goals, everything stopping for the equivalent of a penalty, and so on - football here meaning football as played with a spherical ball, not the game they call football in this country which looks to me like rugby played by Transformers.

The game begins before we've even realised, and it occurs to me that in its natural state this may be one of those games you're better off to be playing than watching. The action occurs within a very small area with players crowded together. It happens quickly and can be difficult to follow from a distance, unlike football in which events can be observed and appreciated as unfolding at a more reasonable pace from the other side of the stadium. Football has more of a narrative; and football has the additional dimension of all those wonderful songs - You're Going Home in a Fucking Ambulance, or Who Ate All the Pies?, or You Live in a Caravan - which city-dwelling Millwall fans sing to Gillingham's semi-rural supporters to the tune of Go West by the Village People, and You've Never Seen a Tree, which is the response sung to the tune of You'll Never Walk Alone. I guess that this sort of thing doesn't happen with basketball, at least not here or this evening. Audience creativity is firmly schooled by instructions and announcements from speaker and screen, efforts to hype us up into a screaming mass. High up in the rear of the stadium, someone called DJ Quake plays us the first ten seconds of every hair metal record to ever feature on the soundtrack of a Tom Cruise film, switching according to the demands of the game. The Spurs are on the attack, so he plays a looping bar of a drum break followed by three hard beats as everyone chants GO! SPURS! GO!; then the Lakers take the ball and everyone crowds around the Spurs net and we get a different beat - thump thump DE! FENCE! thump thump DE! FENCE! over and over. It's not like anyone really needs this sort of jollying along, or a Spurs fan would be unable to tell what his or her team were up to without musical cues, so I suppose it's simply that everyone likes a sing-song, that everyone likes to feel included.

Someone scores a goal - or whatever it's called in this game - and the screens flash further instructions make noise, get loud, or some other unnecessary exhortation to celebration.

ON, the screen flashes. YOUR it continues, then FEET! followed by a photograph of a heeled cowboy boot just in case anyone was left struggling with the general concept of feet. No supporter left behind.

The game appears to have stopped and some guy in a coyote costume runs about waving arms and encouraging us to make more noise. He holds up a sign which reads this is our house, which is probably the most stupid message of the evening. The coyote suit is peculiar, googly green eyes staring in different directions. I like coyotes as they are in the real world, and I like Wile E. Coyote the animated nemesis of the national bird of Texas, but this one resembles a cautionary lesson on the perils of substance abuse, or he would do were it not for the running around and the somersaults. I notice that he wears a Spurs shirt with coyote spelled out on the back, which I suppose at least reduces any possible ambiguity.

Play resumes without warning. It may have resumed a few minutes ago but we were busy making noise, getting loud, rocking out to DJ Quake up there on his wheels of steel, this time playing an entire song all the way through, which is unfortunately by the Electric Light Orchestra, the worst band of all time.

Make some noise.

Yes, we know.

This must be what it's like inside the head of a hyperactive child on a Sunny Delight and candy binge. It reminds me of Crackerjack, an English children's show from my childhood which seemed to involve a lot of screaming. Even at the age of seven I considered it headachey. Saddest of all, I would suggest that all this spectacle does the game and its players a disservice. It suggests a lack of confidence in our being sufficiently entertained by ten men bouncing a ball around for an hour. Ignore the flashing lights and distractions, and although basketball happens quickly and in a small area, watch for long enough and you begin to see the skill involved and to appreciate the game. I suppose DJ Quake and the flashing lights are here to keep it interesting to those for whom basketball is not enough in and of itself, for whom it needs to be an enveloping experience. I recall certain footballing authorities aspiring to turn the beautiful game into something for all the family, which never struck me as a necessarily worthy intention so much as an exercise in raking in more money. All football ever needed to do was appeal to those who enjoy football. It never really needed to cater to anyone who doesn't enjoy football, just as there's no need for such a thing as a vegetarian beef steak; and the same surely applies to basketball, although I'm not sure where this leaves me given that I'm sat here watching the Lakers take the lead over the Spurs. It isn't that I'm not enjoying it, but it's odd, and I might enjoy it more were I not being asked to get loud every fifteen seconds. The game seems like the least important detail of the whole.

At the end of an hour padded out to three with generic entertainment-style spectacle, the Spurs lose by 110 goals to the Lakers' 112 - or points or scores or tries or whatever it is with this game. We all leave, either happy, or happy to at least have been here, which I suppose ticks all the boxes that needed ticking. It really wouldn't have taken much to convert me, to switch my generally tepid allegiance from football as my default sport of choice, but the Spurs just couldn't manage it. To be fair, it probably wasn't their fault.

The Winningest Way to Manage Your Money

In September 2005 I got into a relationship with a female Hobbit who lived in a burrow with a circular wooden door situated off Lordship Lane, East Dulwich. I suppose, were I a better man, I would conceal her true identity by identifying the woman as, for example, Dora the Explorer or Edna Mode from The Incredibles in satirical reference to her stature and general appearance; but apparently I'm not, so Frodina Baggins will have to do.

The other major event of September 2005 was that I went to Mexico City with my friend Rob Colson. I had grown accustomed to travelling alone to Mexico, and was not sure how it would go with another person coming along for the ride; but it worked out well, and Rob and I became much closer friends than we had been before we left. When I'd first met him as an acquaintance of the artist Keith Mallinson some years before, I hadn't been quite sure what to make of him. At times he came across as abrasive, didactic and occasionally lacking in humour; but by the time we came back from Mexico we had both grown some, and I saw that my initial impression had been wildly inaccurate. We had formed a bond.

Life back in England was strange. I now had a girlfriend whilst Rob was recently parted from one. I had serious reservations about a relationship in which the other partner was repeatedly vanishing on obsessive quests for ancient rings forged by wizards in the hearts of mountains, whilst Rob was wrestling with freelance work and uncomfortable loneliness of the kind which life in London tends to accentuate. Time passed, and things became gradually but steadily worse for the both of us until suddenly Rob had a partner, a likeable girl named Ade whose claim to fame was that she'd once appeared in a Musical Youth video. Months passed and the couple announced that they were to be married. No-one was too surprised, and neither did it seem too soon for such a decision.

Frodina insisted that all four of us get together, that I cook us a meal around my place just like the couples you see on television. Her adventures in the Mist Land of the Orc-Lord had left her with a taste for matchmaking, for dabbling in people's lives, moving them around as though they were pieces on a chess board - or at least pieces on a chess board on a table next to which an orange crate had been conveniently provided for her to stand upon. She was a little too late to tamper with any significant aspect of Rob's relationship, but possibly she enjoyed the prospect of herself and Ade discussing health food and feng shui over a glass of mead as the menfolk strolled about the garden comparing golfing averages. In any case, I enjoyed cooking, and Rob apparently enjoyed my cooking, and so it was a date. I worked in the kitchen whilst Frodina helpfully criticised my uneven selection of cutlery until the happy couple arrived and we were ready to eat.

We ate at a table set outside in the garden seeing as the weather was warm. We talked about this and that until eventually we were done, and all sat smoking fags and relaxing, aside from Frodina who had never smoked and was not psychologically suited to relaxation.

'We have a favour to ask.' Rob almost laughed. I could see that he felt awkward. 'We were wondering if you could do the invitation?'

'Your wedding invitation?'

'Yeah.'

'Sure.' I was flattered, except I immediately realised I didn't actually know what I was being asked to do. 'You mean like the whole thing?'

Rob shook his head. 'Just a painting. We were thinking of one of the both of us if you could do that.'

'We're getting them done properly, so the time and date and everything will be on it,' Ade explained. 'We just need a nice picture.'

I felt happy to have been asked. I had found myself growing oddly protective of Rob over the last year or so, although I don't think he realised this, and it was an honour to be asked, to be able to do something for him and his girlfriend.

'I'll need some photographs to work from, but I'll be happy to.'

They were talking amongst themselves now, following another tangent. Rob regarded his wife to be. 'Of course my name will need to be in a much larger font as it appears in the invitation.'

'Well, you are the man after all.' Ade feigned serious consideration. 'Your name should appear at least twice as large as mine, and mine should probably be in a less impressive typeface,' - she wheeled a hand in the air - 'maybe Comic Sans, or that really crappy lettering you always used to see on newsagents' hoardings in the seventies.'

Frodina laughed because we were all laughing, and she knew that something funny had been said, and that laughter was therefore the appropriate response. This was a relief as I had doubted her ability to spot the joke, and anticipated testy remarks on the subject of equality. She often used the phrase strong woman when referring to female friends, which always struck me as redundant bordering on condescending given that it seemingly presupposed most women to be weak.

A few days later I arrive at my girlfriend's place. It is late afternoon and I have spent most of the day painting Rob and Ade, retouching the image over and over in a painstaking effort to bring it closer to how they appear in real life. The circular wooden door swings aside and I enter the burrow. I am excited and I tell Frodina that my painting is going very well.

'How much are you charging?' she asks.

I have been dreading this question, so I pause and throw myself into the answer, delivered loud enough to hopefully discourage haggling. 'I'm not charging them anything because Rob is my friend.'

She makes a noise. It is neither kindly nor indulgent. It is a long, long way from you old softie or any equivalent. It is Frodina finding that the rest of the world has once again failed to measure up to her own exacting standards.

'Is that a problem?' I know I should keep silent, but suddenly I'm quite annoyed. I'm tired of her endless judgement.

'Just because they're your friends, doesn't mean it's okay for them to rip you off.'

'How are they ripping me off?'

'You're working for free.'

'That's my choice.'

She heads for the kitchen, clearly exasperated, and when she speaks her tone rises with growing anger, turning the veiled insult into a question. 'I'd like to think I'm in a relationship with someone who is good with money, who isn't an idiot in that respect?'

'I am good with money. How am I not good with money?'

'Yet you're happy to give away art for free.'

'They're my friends. Do you not see what that means?'

I pause to consider that of the two of us, I am the one who has held down a full time job for the previous two decades, whilst Frodina lives in a house bought for her by her mother, has no regular income, and has been many thousands of pounds in debt for quite some time. I recall the occasion when we went to the large branch of Waterstones book store on Oxford Street. I purchased the new DBC Pierre novel, and Frodina spent twenty pounds on a self-help title called something like The Winningest Way to Manage Your Money with a strapline promising that your days of frittering away all those lovely pounds and pennies on shit you don't need would soon be over. I'm still surprised that the entirety of the situation as a discrete space-time event didn't collapse into a superdense irony-singularity. Of course I didn't say anything, because to draw attention to her buying yet another self-help book was to draw attention to the fact that none of them were working, which was the last thing she wanted to hear. I considered all of this but there was too much information to condense into a sentence which would in any case be wasted because I was already wrong.

I shrug. 'I like to do things for friends if I can. Rob has done plenty for me and, quite simply, I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror if I charged him for this. It would seem dishonest.'

Like a Transformer, she goes into battle mode. It is not enough to have a different view, or even to prove by some means that her view is the superior one. She will not rest until her opponent has been crushed and humiliated with every bullshit move in her psychological armoury.

I leave, and as I do so I slam the wooden lid of the burrow, causing much consternation in the shire as old Jethro Woodwyrt leaning upon the gate of the next dwelling snaps his clay pipe in half in astonishment. I walk away and it feels good.

Months later we sit through the marriage ceremony in Hampstead, then go on to a reception somewhere in Hackney. I have the chance to speak to Dave and a few of the other friends I know from the vague circle occupied by both myself and Rob, but Frodina - unable to function unless she's making somebody do something her way - requires constant attention and maintenance. It is the last time I see Dave, or Rob, or Ade. I know that everything familiar is coming to an end.

Years later, I escaped the shire and the passive-aggressive clutches of Frodina Baggins, happily leaving behind what had probably been the worst years of my life. I discovered that it hadn't worked out for Rob and Ade either, which struck me as immeasurably sadder than my own situation. I still work for free for friends because I dislike what few creative abilities I can claim for my own being reduced to commodity as something measured by the same essential value system as my ability to, for example, clean a lavatory bowl or stick a leaflet advertising pizzas through someone's letter box. Try as I might, I have never been able to see generosity as a failing, and sadly this is probably why I don't own a yacht.

Oh well.

On Punching Brick Walls

I could be wrong, and I may quite easily have conflated one bad memory with another, but as I recall it was the night of the party. The party was in Overhill Road in East Dulwich, not far from where Bon Scott, one time vocalist of the Australian hard rock band AC/DC famously and tragically cashed in his chips. I didn't know the people, although I had delivered their mail for a couple of years back when I'd been on that route. They were friends of Dora the Explorer, my girlfriend of the time. I'm not sure how she knew them.

I hadn't wanted to go to the party, because I dislike parties as a general principle. I dislike the noise, the smoke, the terrible musical preferences of other people, and my face hurting from grinning at strangers and people in whom I have either little or no interest. I am simply not a person who enjoys social situations, and typically Dora the Explorer told me that this was because I never made the effort to enjoy them, and that I needed to branch out. I was by now well accustomed to her holding four fingers aloft and telling me that I could see five, so there didn't seem to be much point in fighting over it. It was true, I conceded, that the party was in the future, and that I had no psychic ability by which I could see into said future, and I was thus unable to say with absolute conviction that I really would hate every second of the party; and so by default Dora the Explorer was right as usual.

Her name wasn't really Dora the Explorer of course, but she was short and with that same haircut, so the name will do for now. I suspect the anger issues and what we may as well refer to as short woman syndrome were possibly more pronounced than with her animated namesake, but then cartoon Dora was lucky enough to have been born in some undifferentiated third world Banana republic and was thus spared the living hell of growing up in Richmond with an expensive private education and the grim spectre of inheritance tax enforcing sale of the place in France when mother joins Bon Scott in that great big shareholder's meeting in the sky.

So we set out for the party, walking up Lordship Lane towards the Plough, or the Goose and Granite as some faceless corporate carbon blob had retitled the historic pub at the junction of Lordship Lane and Barry Road. We waited at the bus-stop, then caught a bus two-hundred yards to the corner of Overhill Road. Dora the Explorer had declared that this was a long, long way, and too far to walk, because apparently she was only two feet tall and had already walked to the shop at the end of her road that day. I couldn't be bothered to argue. I already knew I would be wrong.

My powers of precognition had been similarly acute with regards to the party. We stayed for three or four hours. I watched Dora the Explorer hand out business cards she'd had printed, advertising her services as a gardener. She had stopped turning up at the two or three regular gardens which she supposedly tended, but I guess she liked the feel of thrusting her business cards in the faces of complete strangers. She called it networking, and this made her a more successful person than the rest of us.

I failed to find interesting conversation because I couldn't hear anyone over the probably ironic seventies disco records rattling speakers arranged all about the house, and the people out in the garden were smoking joints, or partaking as they say in the business. I've always found the smell unpleasant, and the conversation which comes with it dull and repetitive, because no-one can just light one up; they must talk about it as well. I hated the party, having decided that I didn't want to enjoy myself, as Dora the Explorer later explained.

It wasn't a good evening. We weren't fully recovered from the argument which had concluded with my punching a brick wall. As stated, I'm no longer absolutely certain of the terrible party having followed this particular disagreement, but even if it didn't, it may as well have done.

She had arrived at my flat - my new flat - all dressed up and ready to go, purple backpack bulging with business cards, Overhill Road dutifully marked on the map as it sang away in the back pocket of her jungle adventure shorts. If there's a place you got to go, I'm the one you need to know...

It wasn't that I made a habit of punching brick walls, but it was something I did from time to time when experiencing significant frustration. I was almost always on my own, and I never punched too hard, just enough to vent sufficient anger as to allow me to think in a straight line once more. It seemed more dignified than throwing my head back and howling like either a wolf or Robert Plant. I had a friend who broke his guitar hand by punching a shopping centre. It had struck me as a particularly stupid thing to do, not least because the motivating frustration had, as I recall, been some idiocy entirely of his own making, either a heroin habit, or a girlfriend calling him an insulting name having discovered him to be shagging someone else on the sly. Whatever it was, it had been a situation to which poor me didn't really apply, but nevertheless that had been the thrust of his campaign. Whatever my failings, I was at least better than that.

I had moved into my new flat, smaller than the previous one and with the rent costing three times what I'd been used to. It wasn't an ideal situation, but it had been the best I could find, although quite naturally I was not entirely happy about it. As usual, Dora the Explorer's sympathy was not overwhelming. Her lips narrowed, and she flicked her hair, raising her head to regard me through school ma'am spectacles.

'Well, perhaps you should have listened to me for once.'

'Listened to you...' It felt as though I rarely had the opportunity to do anything else, and I was confused as to where I'd screwed up this time given that I'd hardly been actively seeking smaller and more expensive accommodation.

'You'd be helping both of us by moving into my spare room, but no,' and there followed a detailed list of the ways in which I had let us both down.

Dora the Explorer had a room in her house which she rented out to students from time to time. Laura, her most recent lodger, had recently left, leaving Dora the Explorer with no income other than the gardening jobs in which she had lost interest. She had suggested that I become her lodger, thus killing two birds with one stone, providing her with an income, and bringing us one step closer to living together as a couple. I tried to explain that I didn't want to move into her spare room. I had too much stuff, I was in my forties, and I had no wish to be in a relationship with my landlady. Additionally, I doubted I would be particularly easy to live with, and knew for sure that this was equally true of Dora the Explorer.

She expanded on her disappointment, and I understood that my problems had come about because I had failed to do as Dora asked. This was her understanding of the situation. This was her understanding of most situations. She began to explain how hurtful it was to know that I had no respect for her opinion, that I had failed to value her advice, taking another problem to the place in which they all came to rest. Dora would figuratively kick you in the shins, and then complain that you had not thanked her, and when finally you thanked her because it was the only thing that would shut her up, she would complain that you had not sounded sincere and ask you to say it again, and to keep saying it until she believed you.

I went over it again, why I didn't want to move into her spare room, trying as hard as I could to emphasise why it was potentially as bad an idea from her perspective as from mine. As I finished, I realised I had mistakenly reiterated the case for my defence in Mandarin Chinese, and that she hadn't understood a word. Again she explained how hurtful it was to know that I had no respect for her opinion, and that as ever I failed to value her advice.

'Shall we go to this party?' I suggested, hoping to sound breezy and enthusiastic, and that she would be so confused as to forget what we'd been talking about. Unfortunately I forgot to not speak Swahili, and my suggestion came out as yoo a lọ si yi kẹta?

She went on, her voice rising in tone as she began to resemble a tiny female Davros with a Johnny Ramone haircut. She was beginning to rant, the usual stuff about how I never listen, and how her Daleks would once and for all wipe the scourge of the Thals from the face of Skaro. She held up her hand, showing me four fingers which I knew would be five. I understood on some level that this was fucking ridiculous, and that I wasn't going to be bullied this time. An irresistible metaphorical force met a figurative moving object and I experienced a sort of mental white-out.

I had walked out into the hall and thumped the wall next to the door to the kitchen. There were a few small cracks in the plaster and my hand hurt like hell, but for a second all I could think of was how beautiful was the quiet. Then I felt awkward, ridiculous.

Dora the Explorer sat in silence. She had begun to cry.

'What's wrong?' I was amazed at how calm I felt.

'I was scared you were going to hit me.'

'I would never have done that.' This was true. The idea seemed ludicrous. I just didn't work that way, but I knew then that I had only given Dora the Explorer something new with which to beat me over the head. From that point on my terrible temper would be invoked each time we argued as a result of my failure to obey without question. She would refer to battered women, and tell me that this was not a fate she wanted for herself, thank you very much.

Next day we travelled to Richmond to meet her mother, the woman who was the alleged cause of all Dora the Explorer's problems, or at least those problems which weren't directly my own fault. I liked her mother as I had never had a good reason not to. She was small, frail, very old, and almost unfeasibly upper-class. Her face would light up with genuine affection as she finally made it to the door when her daughter came to visit, but the smile would fade as Dora the Explorer began to upbraid her about the state of the seemingly clean and tidy house, or items in the fridge which were past their sell by date. Margaret, a neighbour of similar age and horsey heritage drove us all to a nearby botanic garden somewhere past Hampton Court. We ate a civilised lunch in the restaurant.

'I say, what did you do to your hand, old thing?'

I regarded my swollen knuckles. I had made a brave attempt to affect nonchalance, to eat with one hand as though it were a conscious choice, sawing things in half with the edge of the fork.

'I had an accident at work.'

'Oh goodness! You really must be more careful, dear boy.'

The concern was unexpected but appreciated. I savoured the sensation of someone giving a shit about my well-being, these elderly matriarchs of a world I would never understand, a world which had somehow spawned the passive-aggressive control freak to whom I was betrothed. I looked around the table, at the two old women enjoying the day out and relishing the splendour of their surroundings, then at Dora the Explorer as she scowled at her food, already silently composing the usual complaints regarding service or standards; and I wondered what any of us could have done to deserve this.

My Angry Bird

'You were perfectly happy sitting on that wall,' Marian informed me, showcasing one of her stranger psychological quirks, namely the belief that reality would bend to her will if she insisted hard enough. She used to do the same thing in response to my general grousing about work at Royal Mail. I would return home after an eight hour day of carrying back-breakingly heavy weights in the pouring rain and grumble that I hated my job with what I felt was some justification.

'No,' Marian would inform me testily, 'you love your job.'

Her logic was that I loved my job because were it otherwise I would have packed it in to seek alternative employment, perhaps as a guru or working the line at a homeopathy plant. I'm still not sure if she genuinely believed that the world would change to accommodate her will if she just mantra-ed really, really hard, whether she was O'Brien in Orwell's 1984 showing four fingers whilst challenging me to deny the count of five, or whether she was simply a dangerous moron.

We were on holiday in the small coastal town of Looe in Cornwall. Marian had slipped into the local branch of Boots the chemist whilst I patiently loitered outside, sat upon a drystone wall for what ended up being forty minutes. It wasn't that she was waiting for a prescription to be filled or engaging some unfortunate member of staff in an argument, and it wasn't even a particularly capacious branch of Boots, but nevertheless she managed to spend forty minutes in the shop. I had gone in to find her after the first quarter of an hour but she had made it clear that she was not going to be pressured or rushed. At last emerging, she smiled a sardonic smile, seemingly daring me to offer comment. Marian's understanding of selfish behaviour pivoted upon the identification of those involved rather than any act in which any of their number may have been engaged. If she had for some reason broken into your house and laid a fresh bowel movement on your living room carpet, protestations would be battered down with terse rhetorical questions like oh, so I'm not allowed to break into your home and shit on the rug - is that how it works now? Whatever the situation, with Marian involved there would always be two sides to the story, the side of Marian, and the side of those being selfish and unreasonable; and so, knowing that whatever I said would be wrong, I said nothing, but even silence was no defence.

'And your problem is?'

Understanding that I had already lost, I sighed and explained that I hadn't enjoyed sitting on a wall outside Boots in Looe for forty minutes, and it would have been nice to have had some indication of how long she expected to be so that I might have at least taken a stroll down to the beach or something.

'How on Earth could I have known how long I was going to take?,' she asked, exasperated. 'I can't predict the future, Lawrence; and anyway, you were perfectly happy sitting on that wall.'

The logic of this defeated me, and I said no more.

We wandered down towards the harbour, watching seagulls, and pretending there was some purpose to our relationship; or at least I assume that's what Marian was doing. By that point I had begun to wonder what the remainder of 2008 held in store for me, and whether I could extricate myself from my girlfriend's regime and put as much distance between us as possible; but the problem was that I had foolishly moved into the spare room of her house six months before, optimistically hoping that the situation would improve, which it hadn't and I was now rapidly losing the will to live. I had got to the stage where the best I could do was to just get through each day as it came.

Deciding the morning could get no worse, I figured I may as well drop the bombshell, the thing I had been too scared to mention.

'I'm going to Coventry to stay with my mother at the weekend.'

She fell silent for a moment. I could see the storm cloud forming above her head like in a cartoon. 'And precisely when were you going to tell me this?'

'I've told you just now.' I found it peculiar that my hunch had been right. I had known this would make her furious without having any clear idea why. She was nothing if not consistent, like an old testament God with larger breasts.

'So you just spring this on me now whilst we're enjoying our holiday?'

'It's Wednesday, and I already told you I was probably going to visit my mother at the weekend.' I didn't bother to question the assertion that we had been enjoying our holiday, because I knew it would turn out that I'd enjoyed it at least as much as I'd enjoyed sitting on a wall outside a chemist for forty minutes.

'You said you were probably going to visit her. This is completely different, Lawrence!'

I gave no reply. There didn't seem to be much point. I had told her about the planned visit a week earlier, but apparently that had only been an informal notice and could therefore not be considered as official confirmation.

'So I'm not allowed to come with you?'

It seemed better to say nothing. Part of the reason I wanted to go and see my mother was that it was already difficult getting time off work without anything else, and I hadn't seen my mother in about a year, plus Marian had tagged along on my previous trip up to the Midlands and it hadn't gone well. I really needed to get away from her for just a few days.

My mother disliked Marian, although I'm not sure I was actually aware of this at the time. She later told me that her first sight of my girlfriend had been in the rear-view mirror of the car as she waited to collect us from Coventry railway station, and her loathing had been immediate and absolute based on that initial moment of horror. Unfortunately my mother's first impression turned out to be absolutely on the mark, cemented by complaints submitted concerning the sheets on the bed in my mother's spare room - clean and fresh yet somehow not up to Marian's exacting standards. My girlfriend expected, even as a guest in someone else's home, to be waited on because she was worth it.

They were both gardeners in a professional capacity to a greater or lesser degree, and I initially hoped this might provide some common ground, but Marian's attitude seemed typified when she asked my mother who she enlisted to perform manual tasks such as lifting up a heavy flower pot. Her concept of other people as pack animals was further emphasised when the three of us visited Stratford-upon-Avon for the day and Marian handed me the greetings cards she had purchased, explaining that they were heavy so I was to carry them. When we left, my mother took me aside and said, 'please don't bring her here ever again,' although I don't actually recall this, and found it amusing when later she reminded me of it. In recent times I have learned that none of my friends liked Marian, and it feels good to know that my measure of her personality during that final year had been on the money, give or take a few minor details.

Meanwhile, back in the holiday which I had just ruined, Marian appeared for a moment uncharacteristically vulnerable. 'Your mother doesn't like me, does she?'

At the time, I had somehow missed those small clues which would have either confirmed or denied this. Possibly I had blocked out any information I didn't want to hear, anything which might underscore the subconscious fear that I was in a relationship with Genghis Khan.

'I'm sure she does,' I said, somehow managing to believe it myself. 'I don't know what gives you that impression.'

We walked on in silence, heading inland along the side of the quay. After a moment I noticed I was alone. Marian had drawn to a halt a little way back and was now watching gulls in the water. This sudden unannounced cessation of forward motion was something she did often, and this time I decided to call her bluff. Instead of obediently going back or waiting, I carried on, enjoying the solitude, enjoying not having to account for every last thing.

I had arranged the holiday and called the bed & breakfast, because I always did; because just as soon as Marian made it clear that we were going to go away and have a good time even if it killed me, she would begin to wail about how she always had to do everything for herself and how just once it would be nice if I made some effort; and so I would end up having to do everything for fear of being judged as wanting, which I believe officially qualifies as Kafka-esque. I'd sat in silence for two hours as we came down to Cornwall on the train because Marian had refused to speak to me at some point for reasons I can no longer recall and may not even have understood at the time; and I think there on the quay was the point at which I stopped caring.

After ten minutes, she resumed mobility and we walked on, looking at lobster pots and boats - talking, but barely. I expect I apologised for thinking only of myself, for rushing her in Boots, for my continued efforts to ruin the holiday, for my informing her of my weekend plans with only three days official notification, for assassinating Martin Luther King, and for the terrible methods by which I had driven the white rhino to the verge of extinction. I expect I apologised because I always did, and it was the only language she really understood, and because I still had some hope of enjoying the rest of the holiday.

Five years later and at 5,000 glorious miles distance from Marian, I am able to look back and recall all that I genuinely enjoyed about that week in Cornwall - the cliffs and the sea, the sheer adventure of being in a new place, watching sea lions from a boat out in the bay, and the carrier bag of paperback gems I brought home from the wonderful Bosco Books in Shutta Road. I look back at what few photographs I managed to take before I sat on the brand new digital camera Royal Mail had given me for twenty years service, and I no longer understand the presence of that small, angry woman stood next to me in just two of those thirty-seven pictures, if ever I understood it in the first place. What endures is that I enjoyed that week in Cornwall in spite of Marian, and what didn't kill me made me very much stronger, or at least strong enough to begin work on my escape tunnel. It might be stretching a point to call it irony, but with hindsight I probably did enjoy sitting on that wall up to a point. There were better ways I could have spent the time, but for those forty minutes, the brief respite was enough.

The End of an Error

About a million years ago back in the old days when everything was better than it is now, I was a much younger man attending an art foundation course at the Mid Warwickshire College of Further Education, Leamington Spa - England, in case that wasn't obvious. To be specific, it was 1984 - the year Orwell chose to signify an oppressive state which valued ideology over people - and a local authority of some kind had elected to host a peace festival in Jephson Gardens. The peace festival, staged over a warm weekend in June, entailed stalls, food, booze, music, holding hands, people failing to have fights, and the obligatory bunch of students. I was one of those students, and along with Sarah Kennedy, Tom O'Hare, Ian Johnson, Howard Jones, and possibly a few others, we staged an art installation of sorts. We were given a tent, itself containing a small enclosure in which was mounted a painting by Ian entitled Portrait of a Minority. I'd recorded some vaguely stately sounding music which played on a loop as one stood before the painting, something to suggest mourning, the passing of some anonymous individual depicted by Ian's canvas. The catch was that members of the public had to answer a series of faintly intrusive politically loaded questions prior to being granted access to the installation, and so we all dressed like insurance salesmen in deliberate contrast to the generally woolly spirit of the event and talked visitors through the interview process. I can no longer recall what the exact point of this might have been, what we were trying to say - the commodification of art or something - but it seemed to go down fairly well, although it became difficult to remain authentically officious as the afternoon wore on and beer took its toll.

The most successful part of the event had been included as a peripheral attraction, something to keep people entertained whilst they stood around waiting to be interviewed and wondering what the hell we were playing at. Tom had spent some time churning out hundreds of screen-printed images of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on cheap paper, and these were made available on a trestle table set up in front of our tent. Kids were supplied with felt tipped pens and invited to add as many horns, Hitler moustaches, swastikas, pimples, beards and the like as they saw fit, and we pinned the funniest on the side of the tent. I may be remembering this wrong but I'm pretty sure Tom's foot thick stack of prints was all used up by the end of the first day. Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister for five years and so the kids, some of whom probably hadn't been born when she took office, went to town because it's fun to draw Hitler moustaches on authority figures, and here they were being actively encouraged to just go for it. It perhaps wasn't as deep and meaningful as the accompanying installation, but if anything it's probably the part that people still remember and still understand.

I'm old enough to recall watching the news with my grandmother - a conservative voter defined mainly by what she didn't like - as Margaret Thatcher ousted Ted Heath from the leadership position of the party; and then again when I was thirteen and the former grocer's daughter became Prime Minister. Sat at the dining room table, my grandmother smoked her fag and approved. I recognised that there was probably something worthwhile about a woman winning the election, and having said so, left it at that. As I grew older and began to acquire a more thorough understanding of the world in general, my opinion of Margaret Thatcher changed from favourable ignorance to a realisation that this woman represented all that was evil; and yes, it really was that simple.

Although I was not to realise this until much later, Margaret Thatcher reintroduced the cult of personality to British politics, the dynamic leader, the figurehead, the larger than life Iron Lady - an insult levelled at her by a Soviet journalist and adopted because it suited her so well. Doubtless it would be crass and offensive to discuss her political persona with reference to the Führerprinzip of the German National Socialists, but nevertheless her transformation from shrill housewife superstar to voice coached She-Warrior of Destiny set an unfortunate precedent, ushering in an age of elections won by image and monosyllabic sentiment rather than policy, with intellect as something to be regarded with suspicion, the province of liberals and those fancy types with all that damn book learnin'. As with America, the prevailing political philosophy - such as it was - seemed to hold that money and finance should take priority over people, because a free market would create conditions under which everything else would be just dandy providing you weren't some whining beardie communist wearing socks with sandals. I may have that wrong, because that sort of thing always did bore me rigid. Politicians throughout history have been paid more than enough to understand and care about the economy, so it would be nice to be able to trust them to just get on with it without doing anything too offensive.

Some hope.

Off the top of my head, those specific acts which characterised the general thrust of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet would be firstly - approving the order to attack the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War despite its being thirty-six miles outside of the established Maritime Exclusion Zone and thus not a legitimate military target by the agreed terms of combat. Of those aboard, 323 were killed, and there is a possibility that the vessel may have been in retreat at the time.

Then, Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, specifically a particularly unpleasant amendment stating that local authority should neither intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality, nor promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship - innocuous as any of the vague laws in Orwell's 1984 wherein no-one quite understood what was forbidden, thus fostering a climate of paranoid obeisance. Aside from the somewhat obscene idea that government should have a general say in matters of individual sexuality, or at least whether anyone is even allowed to discuss such topics, it seemed to betray an increased tendency for policies designed to appease reactionary nutcases who under other circumstances would have been told to piss off and grow up, but no - we can't have those raving lesbo-lefties forcing British kids to be gay innit blah blah blah hell in a handcart thin end of the wedge dole scroungers blah blah blah...

Then there was the poll tax; destruction of the unions; privatisation of just about anything that moved thus introducing the idea of profit margin being more important than service whilst plastering over the shortfall with endless customer satisfaction questionnaires in the hope of fostering an illusion of concern; the miners' strike which brought us the spectacle of unarmed civilians assaulted by mounted police; the refusal to respect European Community sanctions against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa whilst dubbing the opposing African National Congress a terrorist organisation; buddying up with former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and so on and so forth. Perhaps these were all complex issues which can only be fully understood and appreciated in a much wider historical context, but from where I was standing it all looked like the work of a maniac, or at the very least someone who happily facilitated maniacs, and to put my Hallmark cards on the table, I'd say as soon as you start bleating about economics, money, or the open market in terms of events that have ruined the lives of great swathes of the population, you've already lost the argument.

Whilst I would never claim my own life was ruined by Thatcher's time in office, I'm only speaking for myself here, and I'm not aware of any of the supposed benefits of Thatcherism ever trickling down so far as my own social stratum, which is unfortunate as I thought that was supposed to be the entire point - run it all for profit and everyone gets a better deal. Whilst her emphasis on self-reliance might be deemed commendable up to a point, it always struck me as slightly rich that the populace should all be expected to become thrusting self-reliant competitors overnight whilst still paying tax towards all those institutions which my father's generation fought hard to build from the ruins of the second world war - the National Health Service to name but one, and of course the Post Office - even as those same institutions were being dismantled from within in the name of economic streamlining.

I joined Royal Mail in 1988 just as it disengaged from the telephone company in the hope that healthy competition would lead to what would hopefully be a better, more efficient, profitable service. Since the 1970s, the unions had taken a bashing, and this was certainly true of the Communication Worker's Union which had been pretty much castrated by the time I joined, just in case anyone was thinking of staging a 1970s style eight week strike over unsatisfactory toilet paper because, you know - striking was always such a wizard wheeze; no pay for week after week, it was always such a hoot, honestly! We just couldn't help ourselves.

By the time I left Royal Mail in 2009, the union was in such a pathetic state that I'd considered leaving on several occasions. Management had been walking all over us for years, and the CWU representative was some guy who showed up every few months with special union deals on cheap car insurance. The problem - which is probably another much longer story - was an organisation now run according to Thatcherite ideals: competitive, businesslike, modern, moving forward and all the other low calorie adjectival landfill that has served for modern business practice since the mid-1980s, all of which amounted to a heavier workload carried by fewer people. The practicalities of doing the job had ceased to be a consideration by the late 1990s - what mattered was that we could meet arbitrary targets pulled out of the ass of some business graduate who had probably never set foot inside a sorting office, and if we couldn't then we had to find a way; and when we failed, it was because we lacked can do attitude or we weren't team players or some such motivational drivel. It was bullshit - twenty years of hard back-breaking slog and any time we squeaked out a desperate objection to supposed improvements that were actually making our jobs significantly more difficult we became the lazy, striking postmen you would read about in the newspapers.

This is the thing about hard work. I am intimately familiar with what it feels like, so I become disgruntled when enmeshed within any system which holds up hard work as a virtue in its own right like it's something I might not recognise because I'm not someone who really grafts like, you know, a bank manager or somebody who matters.

As you will perhaps have noticed by the dates given, not all of the above transpired during Margaret Thatcher's time in office. Nevertheless I attribute to her the creation of the economic and social climate in which all of this has come about. She introduced politics as broad strokes in primary colours that can be understood by those who regularly fulminate over that which doesn't affect them - the silent majority who don't know too much about such and such, but know that it isn't right and that somebody should do something; politics for people who regard intellectual as a term of abuse, the mark of a failure, someone who doesn't have what it takes to survive. Margaret Thatcher made Tony Blair, effectively destroying the opposition by obliging it to play the game by her rules. Whether directly or otherwise, Margaret Thatcher made England into a cold, callous and carnivorous country from which I am very happy to have emigrated.

Over the past few days, following her death at the age of eighty-seven, it has been suggested that I might refrain from taking delight in her passing, for such would amount to the sort of dehumanisation which has proven such an effective currency for both her and her supporters over the years. I can understand and appreciate the argument, although I'm less sympathetic towards the suggestions  telling me I should be ashamed to make unkind comments at the death of an old lady, mother, and grandmother - these suggestions coming from people who regularly fume over dole scroungers, gay marriage and asylum seekers, bitter morons who need someone to blame for matters that don't actually affect them, and because it makes them feel like something other than the useless pie-scoffing work units they've chosen to be.

I could rise above it all, but simply, I don't feel I should have to. Margaret Thatcher dehumanised herself when she took on the persona of the Iron Lady as a consolidation of her political power and by her own choice became a symbol. Sometimes it isn't simply a matter of different strokes for different folks, and there are people who constitute genuine evil - assuming we all agree that evil falls roughly somewhere between an inability to empathise and a conviction of knowing what is absolutely right for someone you've never met. As a rule I tend not to experience joy when hearing someone has died, but on this occasion I just can't help myself. It's not a conscious choice. She made it personal, like an anthropomorphic embodiment of the forces of sheer carnivorous will insinuating tendrils of misery into every avenue of human existence, and doing it over and over and over simply because that was what she did. The world can be a cold, unforgiving place full of truly vile people who see you as a means to an end at best, at worst as something to be ploughed into the soil in order to yield that precious 0.00001% increase on the profit of their cash crop of choice, and yes, it is that simple, and yes, I am really, really glad that a symbol of just about everything that is wrong with human society is pushing up the daisies; and if you can't appreciate that, I feel truly sorry for you.