"WITH THE ANGELS"

Before we start, there is no specific criticism of any one person intended with this, I just felt that I really wanted to explain in greater depth what I thought I was actually thinking that I was referring to in an internet exchange (“Angelgate”...?) which rather spiralled away from its original intent, and about which it was suggested - very correctly - that I should really save for this blog. Sadly, what passes for my sense of humour means that I have now taken full advantage of the availability of an unlimited character count and examined the event at length and in almost tedious forensic detail, which means, ultimately, that it isn’t a particularly interesting read and is very possibly the very epitome of making a mountain out of a molehill, but I share it today for the sake of completeness - after all, I have now bloody well written the thing (albeit admittedly whilst in a foul mood on a weekend afternoon) - but also because there is nothing else. I really should point out that I am prepared to admit that I am quite probably very wrong about some of the things discussed in this particular offering. Some of the points of view being expressed are unlikely to be very widely held (apart, of course, from the first statement, that’s a given...), perhaps not even by me if you catch me on another day, but then, precisely because they are just that, a “point of view”, means that they are, I suppose, at least “valid”, if unlikely to be “popular”...

I am an idiot.

It’s true. I am. Not only that, I know that I am.

No-one with my lack of social abilities and people skills should really feel themselves qualified to comment upon the doings and sayings of anyone who is so much more “successful” at these over-rated talents, because I’m generally having to come to terms with the fact that I really don’t understand the fundamental way the world and our society works and am pretty unlikely ever to.

Of course this just proves that I am such an idiot.

I should really not dip my toe into the murky waters of “social networking”. I don’t think that I’m built to handle it successfully, and it only seems to bring me pain. I seldom buy into other people’s rather predictable assumptions about how everyone else’s family relationships must, by default, be as “happy” as theirs is, and am frequently appalled and brought to the very brink of throwing up by a lot of the cloying, gushing nonsense that flies around in these places which sometimes seems like a virtual world mostly populated by the kind of people who find a certain amount of sophistication and wit within the verses written in greetings cards.

One recent morning, instead of biting my lip and getting the hell out of there, for once, in a weak moment (perhaps because I had woken up incredibly early and in a foul mood because a cold was brewing up nicely in my system, although there is no excuse for it really), I got so irritated by one tiny little phrase that I felt the need to remark upon it, and all sorts of bother unfolded. I know. I should just have left it alone, but the devil was in me and decided to show my hand. Sadly, you see, I had had enough. Too many times I had tried to keep the bile down, but something inside me decided that I was not going to let it go. Too many times, all of those little “Repost this garbage if you have the best mother in the world” style guff had popped up and ruined my mood. Those things are precisely the kind of horrible (if well-intentioned) nonsense precisely designed to make me feel nauseous and make me want to do serious harm to myself and any electronic equipment which might just happen to be in the vicinity. That famous Charlie Brooker quote springs to mind (again…): “If I could create a virus that’d make readers’ monitors spit glass in their ungrateful eyes the moment they click  ‘post comment’, I would” (This should primarily be directed at myself, by the way).

And yet, here I am posting comments of my own every day. How very hypocritical of me…

The stupid, stupid thing is that I can always understand the sentiment behind the thought, it’s just what I occasionally see as the unutterable blandness of these little messages, and the thoughtless, perhaps even slightly pathetically easy simplicity of copying and pasting somebody else’s sentiments and passing them off as your own that I sometimes find so irritating, and it happens so often on these sites that one day, one truly regrettable day, I was bound to snap and remark upon it, probably at quite the wrong moment to quite the wrong person, and unfortunate outcomes would naturally ensue. I tend to think that, should you wish it, by all means spare a lovely thought for your loved ones every once in a while, but make it your thought and not just something you do because everybody else is. If you do love your mother, take the time to actually tell her with some words and thoughts of your own, and not just announce it to the world via some duplicated platitude that someone else has guilted you into.

Still, I’m usually open to a bit of reasoned debate. This, I now realise, was a mistake. Those places are not the forums for that sort of discussion, although, to be fair, neither is this one, either. Many is the time when I’ve thought I’ve been writing about one thing, only to find out that other people think I’m writing about something completely different. I think that I’m talking about the summertime, but it seems it was just dull old cricket that I was speaking of. I think I’m composing a theory about gender roles in society, but it seems that I was only talking about Meccano. Sometimes my basic themes are being hung on another peg, just to get me started, and yet it is only that peg that is remarked upon. Rather oddly to me, something intended as a fairly light-hearted observation about one thing explodes in my face because it just wasn’t the most appropriate place to mention it. In the end, I deleted it all and reprinted it here after the suggestion that I should save it for my blog, after all, I am now pretty sure that here at least, hardly anyone is actually listening, so I can safely and quite happily contemplate my own navel without bothering anybody else. As the following transcript demonstrates (which, I must point out, has been mildly edited to protect some identities), sometimes the rawness of the one topic completely overwhelms the intention:

In honour of Father's Day we are trying to see how many of you are willing to change your profile picture to a picture of your dad and keep it there till June 19. I did and so have several others. If you like this idea, please repost this as your status so everyone gets the word and see how many fathers show up on FB. Repost even if your father is with the angels.

"With the angels...?" Oh good grief... Can't we use the "d" word any more? (Actually come to think of it "good grief" is precisely what that expression is trying to do...) MAWH(1)

I suppose you'd rather Hamlet say "Shall I kill myself or what? I dunno."

Hardly the same thing at all. To me, "With the angels" is the kind of quasi-religious euphemistic nonsense used by grown-ups to explain to children what's happened to their pet hamsters. It's certainly not poetry. All fair enough if this posting idea was originally aimed at children, of course, but seeing as so many adults are joining in, it's just strikes me as sort of twee. What do I know? It was early... I woke up with a cold... MAWH(2)

I copied and pasted X's request not out of any misplaced sense of loyalty or any religious beliefs I hold myself as I have none... But in the general good nature it was originally posted and requested.

I along with many other people who have gone through this, lost a very dear friend and parent a few years ago and also (like X) thought it would be as good a day as any to remember this very fact... regardless of anyone else's beliefs... Live and let live is my belief system.

"And flights of angels sing thee to they rest". I'm quite happy for people to believe what they want. They can believe the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese if they like. I don't know whether my dad is dancing with "Hill's Angels", investigating with "Charlie's Angels", or riding with some "Hell's Angels" (although I suspect it's none of the above being as he's been dead for more than a quarter of a century) it doesn't make any difference to the fact that in my opinion (and it is only my opinion) "with the angels" is a very childish and banal phrase... and the only belief system being criticised here (if there is any controversial thought being made) is the one that makes our language descend into mundane cliche at every opportunity. MAWH(3) 

Like I said, I am an idiot.

I think, rather oddly, that I was most saddened at the discovery that I was being accused of wanting to dumb down the language in what I thought was a fairly reasoned analysis of what I found to be a less than eloquent phraseology. Anyone, I thought, who had read anything I had written during this past half year or so would have (I would have hoped) realised that I was of the quite opposite point of view. Equally, I have written about family on a number of occasions, but it has become increasingly clear that my daily musings are not fully read, nor is anything therein very memorable.

As I write these words so regularly, I do tend to assume that they are being read regularly, too, and with a certain amount of concentration, although my recent ventures into more detailed statistical analysis have found me discovering that this isn’t the case at all. With most visits averaging less than five seconds, I can’t imagine that what I had hoped was my attempt at finely honed phraseology is being mulled over by anyone other than the author and a very few loyal readers. Before this discovery, I tended to assume that people are tuned in, have memories and are paying attention, otherwise (as is becoming abundantly clear) it really does start to get a little pointless, and I might as well shut down all the access routes and just write the thing for myself. This might well be the most logical approach to take and may well make these mutterings slightly less of an obsession and help me to get my life back. Equally, instead of spending many night-time hours thinking about subjects and some not inconsiderable energy on honing them in my free time, I could just try and compose five lines of “funny” or “sentimental” gibberish without too much thought and then move along and get on with my day. This seems to be what our culture “likes” and prefers to read nowadays,  and my railing against the kind of sentimentalist guff that passes for the height of sophistication will all have been pointless.

People of course will always read things differently to the way you choose to write them. Ironically, I had been writing something along those very lines only the day before in my piece on “Weasel Words” that remained so unloved, but then, a lot of that particular piece had been precisely about how much I do love the fine use of words, which made the notion that I wouldn’t even more painful to bear.

These are the reasons I suspect that I genuinely don’t have any real friends whom I actually see any more, and why I really should ignore the world of FizzBok at all costs. I know that I am ultimately destined for a sad, lonely and unremembered death on some miserable future date, and the prospect of that no longer surprises me any more. After all, if people really do irritate someone like me so much, the last thing I would choose to do is slip off this mortal coil surrounded by a sea of faces all contorted in a tableau of cloying sentimentality and grief. I don’t think that it was ever very likely, anyway.

Ah, well. These things always pass and are quickly forgotten. Almost as quickly forgotten as all these musings will be. I’m sure all of my thoughts that I wrote last week have already slipped from your thoughts, if you ever read them at all. That is the way of these things, and perhaps, in the end, that’s a pretty good thing.

(1) I mistakenly thought the “good” and “grief” analogy - pointing out that the "angels" euphemism was being used to mask the darker truth - was quite a witty juxtaposition myself. Notice how I used a euphemism myself in order to attempt to make sure no-one would be offended. All to no avail, of course, but I did wonder whether the dreaded word “dead” was a FizzBok taboo at that stage... 

(2) I knew “quasi-religious” was probably a mistake when I wrote it, and bound to be misinterpreted as an attack on religious belief, rather than a criticism of the use of popularist pseudo-religious terms that sometimes passes for actual real faith. However, I still think that all that “angels” stuff is usually spouted in this context by people who only go into a church for the occasional wedding, and yet claim to be CofE on every census form without feeling brave enough to admit otherwise. Meanwhile I do believe that Shakespeare was a poet and wordsmith of the first order, and comparing that sort of Hallmark-style nonsense to Hamlet actually just strikes me as being the basis of a very woolly argument.

(3) I still think that’s a fairly rational and lucid reply under the circumstances, and really was a vague attempt to lighten the mood. Mind you, I do still think that, in that context, “With the angels” is a banal and childish phrase (in my opinion, of course…).