SHARP

I don't know when the world seems to be turning to chaos and madness all around us, and is full of bombs, and shootouts, and explosions, my silly little blog suddenly seems very tame and parochial in comparison to all of that stuff.

In the week of the Thatcher funeral, the Boston Bombing and manhunt, and the explosion in West, Texas, you could find me burbling on about old furniture and writing bad poetry about snow.

Somehow I suspect that I am failing to engage with society and my obsessions have become irrelevant.

I must try to become sharper, wittier, more “cutting edge” and “up-to-the-minute” and altogether more “edgy…” I need to be talking about the things that are happening in the world, even though it’s all far too depressing and there’s already far too many of us “reckoning” about stuff all over the place…

But then… Perhaps we all need a safe haven, somewhere to escape from the mainstream and the continual bombardment of rolling news and instant information about anything and everything which seems to be transforming us very quickly into the most impatient set of human beings ever to walk, run or drive across this sad and over-stretched little planet.

However, I find that I do rather enjoy the stomach-lurching excitement of rolling news occasionally, especially when a big and “important” news story is breaking. I can become a little obsessed with finding out what’s going on and how things have turned out, almost to the point of it transforming into a form of “NewsPorn” for want of a better phrase…

The same old familiar faces trying to feed a population hungry for more information whilst having absolutely nothing new to tell them; The endless hours of speculation and misinformation and repetition and “I reckons” from experts and idiots alike; The quiet desperation of being able to “go over to the weather” or when another news nugget is “just in” and able to be disseminated to the waiting masses, so that we can burble on with our own misguided and ill-informed ideas of what we “reckon” is really going on to anyone who’ll listen…

Boston, 2007

Not that it has any bearing upon anything in particular, but I went to Boston for a week once about half a decade ago… Nice place, although I struggled to find “affordable” eateries outside the harbour area, which is why the strangely named “does what it says on the tin” restaurant of “Legal Seafood” rather ironically positioned quite near to the aquarium became a bit of a favourite.

Perhaps, with this kind of insight and insider knowledge of the workings of the city, I should have been calling up the news stations and offering my expertise upon recent events. After all, they’re constantly asking questions like “Do YOU live in Boston? Have you, or anyone you know, been affected by these events? Do you have pictures or video that you’d like to share…?”

Nah, mate, I’d rather you journalists got away from your laptops and went off and did what you’re paid to do, and find out what’s really going on, rather than getting all of us ill-informed idiots to do your job for you…

Is that sharp enough of me to make my point, do you think…?