The personal and the political

On the magnetic board above my desk, I have a column written by Caitlin Moran at the end of 2013, about "beliefs". (I'll link it here, but it's behind the Times paywall. Yes, I pay for it - I like the writers and as an aspiring writer myself*, I believe we should pay for content. Anyway, as you were.)

I re-read this column a lot - even though she's written far more emotion-driven, evocative pieces, this is the one I go back to, time and time again. It's a perfect example of a writer pointing out something that is so simple and obvious that when I first read it, I remember thinking "Oh God, yes! That is exactly the problem! How do we not see it?"

I'll quote some of it for context, otherwise whatever I go on to say will make even less sense than usual:

'But always, these revolutions - however many buildings burn, economies tank and people die during them - begin with a simple, ancient problem: two, or more, bunches of people who think they're right, arguing it out. Heat and shouting. Tribal loyalties. Your vote inherited from your father and your father's father ("We are of the left"; "The only way is right"). People bellowing, fists clenched, for decades at a time, over what they believe...'

'The system is no different across so many countries: it's basically people arguing that they're right, against other people who also believe they're right. This is how nations run things. On... feelings.'

'...what we need to do is stop talking about our political feelings and beliefs, like teenage girls on a sleepover, and find out, once and for all, what actually works.'

'...we "buy" our prime ministers and presidents and chancellors with less research and care than we buy an iPhone... I know which smartphone operating systems are most likely to work. I do not know which systems of economy or education or healthcare are. No one does. We all still vote, however.'

I didn't watch the leaders' debate on Thursday, because I had tickets to see Dylan Moran and I knew exactly where I'd be on the receiving end of more wisdom. I did watch Coalition this week - the Channel 4 drama about the aftermath of the general election in 2010, and "drama" though it was, the main thing I took from it was "Jesus, how is it that in 2015, we are still relying on a small group of middle/upper-class white men in suits, who all know each other from school, to do the nation's admin?"

How are we still at this point?! Is it not staggering that the last time we had a Chancellor of the Exchequer who'd actually studied Economics - which should surely be a minimum sodding requirement for that job - was in 1993? It's just... odd.  Strange that we've not made it past party politics yet. Bizarre that the people who know the systems - education, healthcare, legal - and who've worked in them for years, are not the people running them. A committee of headteachers - with decades of combined experience behind them - running our education system seems a much better fit than a lawyer, or a journalist. A group of experienced GPs, surgeons, nurses and psychiatrists consulting on how to run the NHS must surely be a better idea than getting a man who once failed to export marmalade to Japan to do it. A team of economists - from different schools of economic thought - hashing out how best to balance the books must be better than anyone we've had for the last 20-something years.

The popularity contest element doesn't help - journalists become ringmasters of the media circus surrounding general elections, asking useless things like: who do you like more? Who would you have a pint with? Who would you trust to babysit your toddler? It doesn't matter. I would definitely have a pint with Boris Johnson, but I run screaming from the idea of him running the country. (He's going to have a bash at some point, I'm sure, and people you consider to be halfway-sensible will be taken in by his ruffle-able hair and clueless-posh-boy shtick.)

I can't remember who I was talking to about 'never ever voting Conservative ever' - it could have been any number of people - but they said "all right, but can you really see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister?" As if I'd suggested Ross Kemp, or Keith Richards. I imagine - or hope - my reply was a rather shrill "yes, I can actually! Because all that matters is what Labour's policies are and whether they actually deliver, not whether Ed Miliband can look dignified while being photographed eating a sandwich. No-one looks dignified mid-mouthful - you should see me eat a pear. I go at it like a hungry spaniel."

It's no good sitting back with a sigh and going "yes, it's all very well talking about committees and things, but that's never going to happen, is it?" Change will come, I'm sure. I don't know when, but I don't think it's that far off - we will realise that we need more than what we've got. We need a better system. One that doesn't rely on inherited 'beliefs', foggy and instinctive; one that doesn't guarantee that those who are elected to lead are simply the smoothest speechmakers, the soundbite sweethearts, the photogenic buffoons. Maybe it will only be a matter of years, maybe it will be decades - but we will look back, one day, and wonder why it took us so long to ask for more.

*It's rather depressing to still be describing oneself as an "aspiring" anything at the age of 25. Blargh. 

On the Bambi bookshelf...*

 

*I'm trying to think of a name for this bit, seeing as I'm working on actually fulfilling one of my new year's resolutions, which was to read more. Suggestions less twee than this are more than welcome.

 Having finished Laurie Penny's Unspeakable Things - and I remain in awe of her prose skills and slightly irritated by her lack of facts and figures, I've moved on to the equally breezy and uplifting Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh. It's not the ideal choice for a migraine-suffering, anxious hypochondriac, especially since the first two chapters are about aneurysms and brain tumours respectively, but it's edge-of-your-seat reading. Marsh is unflinchingly honest about his work - he doesn't shy away from admitting to mistakes and moments of arrogance, and he knows how to make the most of his subject matter.

Long time, no blog

So. It's been a while. In fact, I'd sort of made the decision to abandon this blog - at least temporarily, anyway. I have a real job now, in an office, and it involves spreadsheets and phone calls, and means that there is no better time than 5.30 on a Friday evening. And I'm actually trying to write something... bigger. Which sounds counter-intuitive; who gets a full-time job and decides that their now-limited free time must be spent tackling a sizeable writing project? Oh, that's right, me. Why? Well, because if not now, when I'm supposedly young and fresh and energetic and full of half-thought-out ideas, then when? But more on that another time. I'm going to be testing it out, possibly on a different blog, so if you're interested, watch this space.

Anyway. This post is all the fault of my friend Catherine. She tagged me in one of those "make of a list of things then nominate others to do the same" Facebook statuses, and while usually I ignore them, it's such a lovely one that I couldn't not make that list.

In no particular order, here are ten books that, in the course of my reading life, have seemed terribly important and world-view-changing at some point or another.

1) Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott. Yes, I'm sure I've wanged on about this one before, but I caught the film on TV again relatively recently, and it struck me again how bloody relevant the story is. On the surface of it, you might think that the lives of four girls and their mother in Concord, Massachusetts, at the end of the American Civil War would be of little consequence to the average modern reader, but let's take Jo March, the second daughter. A tomboy, a guy's girl, when girls weren't allowed to be. An aspiring writer, who wanted to do Something Good and Important, at a time when women had very little power. An angry young woman who, upon being left at home after one sister married and another went to Europe, had a massive rant about not fitting in and wanting to run away, and who then took herself to New York and got cracking with a writing career.

And the best part of it is, Louisa Alcott didn't even want to write the book. Her publisher suggested she write something about her own life, and she wasn't keen. And then she only went and created one of the greatest families in literature. Thanks, Louisa.

2) The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz. Grosz is a psychoanalyst, and The Examined Life is a collection of patient histories. It's fascinating - I had to ration my reading of it, as each case is brief, so you can sail through the book in a day, maybe two if you're busy. It's astonishing how people will repeat the worst behaviour of their parents and relatives and remain unaware that they're doing it, until they are shown. It's a book that makes the reader more aware of themselves - something only truly good books can do.

3) Eating Myself, Candida Crew. Again, I've mentioned this one before, but it's great for anyone who's ever felt a bit weird about food. Crew explores what she calls "normal-abnormal" attitudes to food, putting forward the theory that the vast majority of [white, Western] women are just on a scale of abnormality when it comes to food and dieting. Some are more normal about it than others, but we all have our "things".

4) Ulysses, James Joyce. No, I haven't read the whole thing - I'm not entirely mad, and I've had stuff I needed to get done, to be honest - but I read bits of it for a uni module, and if James Joyce taught me one thing (other than "maybe don't write a 700-page book") it's that you can make up words that fit what you're trying to say. No-one's going to stop you. In fact, they'll probably ply you with awards and praise.

5) Running Like A Girl, Alexandra Heminsley. I'm not much of a runner - even less so since I rediscovered swimming - but Heminsley's book about how she turned herself into a marathon-runner is genuinely inspiring, and touching, and funny. Worth it for the bit where she completes the San Francisco marathon (I cried, on a bench in town, on my lunch break) and for the line "I decided to be able to". That's how you get things done.

6) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens. Another lofty choice, another hangover from my English degree. Thing is, it's wonderful. I thought it was going to be all grey and grim and muddy, like a long weekend in Yorkshire, but it made me think about society and class and whether social mobility is actually possible.

7) How To Be A Woman, by Caitlin Moran. There was no way I wasn't going to include this. There are better books about feminism, sure, but none that are as funny, or as brutally honest. Moran has helped make it OK to talk about things we previously kept to ourselves. Better still, she made it OK to joke about them. She turned Mother Feminism - originally a stern, scary headmistress-type, full of righteous anger - into the cool girl in the pub who wants to get drunk with you, tell filthy stories and become your best mate.

8) Unsticky, Sarra Manning. I should probably apologise for having something that looks a lot like chick-lit on this list, but I'm not going to. I read Manning's teen fiction when I was at school, and she started writing "grown-up" books as I reached my late teens, so I sort of think we grew up together. Her heroines are always slightly awkward and moody, with good hearts, and her love interests are always intriguing with astonishing bone structure (I think my obsession with cheekbones comes from reading too much Manning). And she's one of the few writers who can write a hot sex scene - which is important.

9) The Equality Illusion, Kat Banyard. For anyone who's ever wondered why we still need feminism, or has ever uttered the words "I don't know what feminists are complaining about" - read this book.

10) I'm agonising over the last slot on this list - I really am. There are so many books that have had an impact on me, and the vast majority of them aren't big and important works of literature. A lot of the books I've returned to, and re-read over and over and over, are just small, simple stories. The "Jill" pony books of the 1960s - a girl and her horses and her friends, living in the country and riding all the time, the worst thing that ever befell anyone was a horse going lame on show day. Anything and everything by John Niven - if I'm ever half the writer Niven is, I'll die happy. I've never come across a writer who's so skilled at making the reader empathise with such vile characters. (I'm also willing to bet that Ruby Ferguson's "Jill pony books" and "John Niven" have never been mentioned in the same paragraph, and probably never will be again.) Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette - because I have a bit of a fascination with the maligned queen, and regularly daydream about Versailles and all its mind-melting grandeur. Chavs by Owen Jones - because it's political and meticulously researched and right, and because Owen Jones is brilliant.

I can't pick one; there are too many. Each book is another little world, that either takes you away from your life for a while, or makes you feel your life more keenly - makes you understand your own "self" a little better. The best books manage to do both.