Ancient Technology

My kids would have no idea what to do with this VHS tape if they found it. And I'm glad.

I've kept it up here in the loft space since before they were born, but they've grown up thinking DVDs are a boring and ancient technology so I don't think I need to worry about them coming up here and raking through my old crap.

I've made sure it looks as boring as possible, just in case. Black casing, no label. Well, the label was peeled off at some point and it's left behind that white residue in a jagged pattern. Reminiscent of a VHS tape from the 80s or 90s, taped and re-taped a thousand times.

It makes me nostalgic to come up here and look at all my older stuff. Video game cartridges neatly arranged in boxes, alongside old football medals and trophies, and even my first guitar. No strings, but all the stickers still intact. It's become somewhat of a ritual to look through all this stuff on my birthday. But the tape, well, that only gets fished out on special birthdays.

It used to be every year, until I was ten. I'd be plopped in front of the TV and my parents would hit fast forward for a few minutes and leave the room until the machine made a clunking sound. Then they'd come back and tell me I was such a big boy now.

On my 20th birthday, my parents told me the truth. They had adopted me at a few days old. I never found out who my biological parents are. Apparently their right to privacy overrides my right to know who my parents are. They left me at a hospital, with the VHS tape duct taped to the blanket swaddling me, and a note with instructions they had to take to a specialist at the university to translate.

Since then, I've watched it on each of my "decade birthdays". My 20th, my 30th, and today on my 40th. I took my parents' TV set with me when I moved out, and I've watched it on that ever since. It's a combination CRT TV and VHS on a trolley, like the kind that used to be rolled out in school when there was a rainy day. We had to shelter in the gym hall and everyone had to sit cross-legged and watch old movies.

That’s how I sit to watch my tape today. I pull the dust cover off the TV and trolley, and plug it in. It starts as it always does, with the source name in an 80’s font fading into view in the top corner, “VHS”. And then a few seconds later, fading out of view. I insert the tape. The tapes in this machine never played automatically. It waited for an instruction. I reached forward and hit fast forward, then sit back down quickly and easily into my cross-legged position.

The two triangles pop up in the bottom left corner, and I watch as vague scenes from my early 30’s play at super-speed on the TV. Moving out of my shared flat with my buddy, Tom. Moving in with my now-wife, Michelle. Parties. Decorating. Lovemaking. The birth of our first daughter. The car accident. The stillbirth of what would have been our first son. They whiz past. Flashbulb memories. The scenes distinct, but blurred, at the same time. Things I consciously remember, and things I’d forgotten happened to me.

I have tried to pause before to see things in more detail. To try and work out how it works. The footage ends up too grainy and stretched when it’s paused. Pressing play does nothing. Stepping forward frame by frame just gives you a series of stretched and grainy images. Better to watch on fast-forward as my last decade flies in before my eyes.

There’s always more crammed in at the end compared to the start. The two weeks in hospital before we got home with our second daughter a couple of years ago is the longest. We thought we would lose her. Two children who never lived to breathe may have been more than we could take. For a short time I thought she might have inherited my curse. But breathe she did. And it’s all here, being committed to tape somehow.

As the scenes speed past, I think about how, in my 20s, I never really knew what it meant to be in your 20’s, and what being “30s” felt like. I looked at people at work in their 30’s as actual adults who had things figured out. Then I turned 30, played the tape, and realised that they were just the same as me - trying to figure things out day by day. Now I’m going to have to work out what it means to be in your 40’s.

The last scene on the tape before it comes to a halt and clunks stop is this morning, waking up to a dreadful breakfast in bed, cooked by my kids. It’s of me eating the burnt toast and overly sweet black coffee. Opening small gifts that have too much sellotape securing them. It’s over in a heartbeat.

I pack up the tape and hide it back under the old trophies and put that box back in its place. The cover goes back on the trusty TV and it’s wheeled back to the back wall where it stays. I was encouraged to make myself scarce for the last hour to give Michelle and the kids time prepare my “surprise” party. But they’ve been yelling my name for a while now, so I carefully stretch out my legs, knees creaking, and start to head down to create new tape. This is my ritual and mine alone.

My kids would have no idea what to do with this VHS tape if they found it. And I'm glad.

Note: Corey McWalter shared an idea with me almost two decades ago about a boy who had to rewind a cassette tape every year on his birthday, but he wasn't sure what to do with it. This is my take on his idea.

The Candle That Burns

The terminal quietly beeped twice to alert the operator that its latest process had been completed. Although barely distinguishable from the various other noises in the research station, the entire crew leapt up as if it was an ear-piercing critical alarm.

“The results are in, lads!”

“Stop calling us lads. You’re the only man here.”

“I call everyone lads! Now’s not the time. Look!”

The three researchers huddled around the terminal, bug-eyed. There was life in the ice core samples they had. Confirmed non-Earth life. On a non-Earth moon.

“Three hundred and fifty-seventh time lucky, eh!” cried Andrew, dancing a jig. “We’ve hit the jackpot!”

The next few hours passed in a blur as Catriona set about the task of programming the station AI to isolate and analyse the bacterial life they had extracted.

Flopping back in her seat, Isla fetched her tablet and saw the blinking blue envelope icon she had been avoiding. It was from Osiris PMG, the extrasolar corporation that had contracted them to find promising new mining locations. They needed an update. She didn’t have one. Until now.

The best lemon juice

I've been drinking more than I used to lately
but when I get there my thoughts don't die down they go crazy.

Mistakes and wins merge and spin in my mind.
Don't know what I'm searching for, or what I want to find.

I guess I'm trying to make sense of why.

I look in the mirror and think "do I really hate this guy?"

"I'm putting him through so much stress for nothing less than a salary that fails to impress and shit sleep."

Is this peak? Is this a career? Because all I have is a pot belly from comfort eating and a creeping fear that won't leave my side no matter how much I try. Or drink.

I will say this, it's made me rethink how to spend my time instead of sitting on my arse from nine until... Usually nine.

"But hey that's fine as long as it allows you to climb". But it doesn't. I was given a rope and a bundle of hope and told "figure it out yourself".

In the end I only figured out how to hang myself. A long walk but a short shelf life.

Whether a knife at your throat or a paycheck round your neck to keep you afloat, handcuffs made of gold or a misplaced sense of values to uphold, truth be told, it's really just not for me any more.

If this experience has taught me anything it's taught me everything.

I now know to stay sane, and be the person deep down I want to be again, there's a simple rule to follow.

Unless what you do sometimes makes your heart skip a beat, and the rhythm you play with your hands, mind and feet means you lose track of time, and you are so happy that it just has to be some kind of crime...

don't give all you have to give.

Squeezing the lemon of every last drop is a sour way to live.

Please keep to the right

Why do so many of my generation feel so entitled? I used to hate it. I used to think they were lazy, and unimaginitive. I used to look down on people with that attitude  because they lived as if it was easier to be lost in the garden of eden, even if it was all made of cardboard and eventually sucked them dry, than it was to find themselves.

I don't feel like that any more. The previous generation had Holden Caulfield, and mine had Neo. Someone who stepped outside the world and seen it for what it is. Someone who has seen the machines we set in place to keep ourselves comfortable. We live in a human zoo.

People feel entitled because they have done everything they were supposed to do, that they were told to do, in order to have a good life. Yet they don't. And they can feel it. They have seen actors pretending to enjoy products and widgets and trinkets in TV advertisements so much that they ape them and think that's how to live. Doing what they are told to do.

Our whole society is built on behaviour/reward. You do what you are told to do, what you are supposed to do, and you receive your reward. The problem is, for being obedient, going to school, getting good grades, going to work, putting the hours in, raising a family, getting a loan to buy a car, getting a mortgage to own a home, for all of this, the reward has been mis-sold.

Although it might seem like it in the prospectus, in the recruitment material, in the adverts, the reward for obedience isn't happiness. It's comfort. It's someone else's definition of what is a good enough standard of living for you.

So when I see people of my generation feeling entitled, I no longer feel angry at them. I feel angry for them. I feel angry for me. I spent 30 years without knowing what I know now. I was caught in a scam.

Everyone knows that in the long run, in blackjack, the house always wins. The problem with our society is that we think we can influence the house. We think that if the dealer is our friend, or someone like us, we might get a better hand. We might last longer in the game. We might end up with more for ourselves. But happiness is rarely found in quantities, and it's never in any hand you are dealt.

The reward for obedience has been mis-sold, and comfort is not the same as happiness. I don't blame people for feeling entitled any more.

Why a majority Conservative government is bad for Scotland

Here is why a Conservative government is bad, even for Scotland with our own budget and an SNP-packed Holyrood. I wrote this as a Facebook post, but it's far too big.

Political parties are made up of people who have a similar mindset on how certain things should work in an ideal world. One of the main differences is (or was) the purpose of government. This is where the left/right wing terminology comes into play.

Left wing parties such as (old) Labour, The Greens, SSP etc believe that government is fundimentally there to serve the interests of the people, and look for ways to provide more for the largest amount of people. They believe in helping people who cannot help themselves.

Right wing parties such as The Conservatives and UKIP believe that the government should not get involved in the personal lives of people, and should play as little a role as possible. They believe in helping people who help themselves.

Centrist parties include New Labour, Lib Dems and SNP. They all lean a bit more to the left or right of centre, but all believe that government has to play a role in helping both people and businesses succeed. This isn't a lazy approach. It requires leniency to businesses on some occasions and generosity to the people on others, and also knowing which to choose.

I know people with all of these views and I would not say that either is evil, or either is the "right one". I can say that without a shadow of a doubt though, that the current Conservative government is a bad thing for us.

The main reason is that their approach to economic is flawed. You don't even need to be an economist. It's even wrong if you believe in right wing politics. Our large and prolonged austerity program, where taxes are raised and spending is cut, results in less money for ordinary people like you and I, which is bad news for businesses because it means you and I have less to spend.

Because we have less to spend, and businesses suffer, we can say that the economy is shrinking, not growing. This means that the government have to borrow more money. Cuts, as they are seen in the UK, do not allow us to repay the deficit. They mean that the country has to borrow even more! The Conservative and Lib Dem government have borrowed far more in their 5 years in power than a Labour governmenf did in almost 15 years.

Where has this money gone? Well, one of the other things that brings political parties together is a belief in how public services should be provided. Aside from smaller government, the other main pillar for Right wing political parties is that they see the free market (supply and demand) as being far more efficient than publically run organisations.

Where the public (ie government) run a public service, it is run for public good. Where a public service is run by a private company, it is run for profit. Cutting public spending and replacing this hole by allowing the private sector to fill it means that jobs and services which were paid for by public money are now filled by private companies and their employees. This is seen as good for the economy by the Right, because it looks like it increases employment. This is because private firms can employ more people by paying them less. Usually it's the same people doing the same job (or more) for less pay.

An example is hospital cleaning. If you are employed by the NHS to clean hospital wards, your primary motivation will be to make sure patients have a clean ward. If you are employed by a private cleaning company who have been contracted to provide cleaning services, your main motivation will be to do your job. This will be guided by what the company want you to do. They want to increase profits, so you are going to be asked to clean a wider area in the same time as you would have been given before so that the company can see a return on investment.

We are borrowing more because we are cutting very heavily and the work still needs to be done so we pay private companies to come in and do a the same job for profit instead of public benefit. The extra money we are borrowing as a country goes into the pockets of rich people who own established businesses and is then "trickled down" to employees (ie us). Instead of a private companies profits coming from the general public spending their own money (and letting the market decide which businesses are good and bad), public money from the government is used instead.

This Conservative government are more interested in making themselves and people they see as "them" (as in, not you and I) more wealthy. They are helping people who help themselves to help themselves.

This is especially bad for Scotland because we don't spend what we put into the system. We spend what we are given based on a number of factors. We essentially get a share of money in the pot. If the pot is smaller (because the economy is shrinking and money the UK borrow is tied up in private support disguised as public spending) then Scotland gets less. The more moderate approach of the SNP of increasing spending and paying our deficit back slower, as and when the economy grows will never get a chance to see the light of day.

A majority Conservative government who have already committed to even deeper cuts (which even the IMF say are going to harm the economy, not heal it) means less money for Scotland. It means there is less money for the majority SNP government to work with, and means they can't increase public spending at the rate they would like. It means that you and I will still be worse off, despite publicly rejecting right wing politics by voting in the centrist SNP.

"Some Day" Isn't A Real Day

It feels like a prison sentence
living in this town
look around, the same glass ceiling
it really brings me down
some people don't agree
because they feel a sense of freedom
"We could leave if we wanted to,
but we don't have any reason".

David Hume said it best
when talking about free will
it only matters if you *could* do different
but many false steps were made by standing still
so why not take that challenge
see if your freedom's really true
do something unexpected,
completely out of the blue.

Or live life never asking
what could have been if i wasn't "realistic"
if I wasn't safe and "sensible"
If I wasn't so pessimistic
The fear you think you're escaping
will follow you to your grave
and you'll have lived a lonely life
if all you've done is work and save

Leaving great things for your children
is a kind and noble cause
but I promise they'll be happier
instead of hearing what could have been,
stories of what was.

Deferred Life Plan

They say good things come to those who wait
but I think that theory is up for debate.
Sit on your hands and good times will arrive?
I want my pie now, not at sixty five!
That seems like madness,
that seems like wishful thinking
and I'm slowly realising
why everyone is drinking.
But the path to the bottom of the bottle ain't sweet
and the only thing there is the taste of defeat
If you dread Monday coming and then celebrate Friday
you're wishing more than half of your life away.

When did you start your deferred life plan?
Didn't you ever have dreams?
Or do you just have a short attention span?
Look, I know it isn't that easy to start,
but if you're doing nothing now
your life and your dreams will always be miles apart,
and I know you don't believe in immortality
but that's your current rationality.
Just cos Ronan Keating said it, don't make it untrue
Tomorrow never comes...
At least that's the conclusion I've come to

When we see a hardship, some people duck their heads.
Some people wear a hat and pretend they're someone else.
Some people wear a mask, sink down low and disappear,
but some people thrive, and that's why I'm here.

A job doesn't make you happy in the long run,
having values and knowing you live by them
will make you happier than having none.
Remember what a job is for, generating income.
If your job gives you money but robs you of all your time
through worry, stress or working on your own dime
it's a crime, it's voluntary mental slavery.
But for some reason you think that's fine
because the boss will recognise your sacrifice
and reward you by allowing you to climb,
but you'll never reach him, there'll always be another one.
You'll never reach the top, there'll always be another rung.
If you're climbing the wrong ladder, you'll always come undone.

So why climb at all? You can fly! You can have it all.
Open your mind and see that there's another way.
Find someone living your dreams and live their life for a day,
ask how they got there, I bet it wasn't just wishes and prayer.
And as you stare and wonder how to live the life you want
remember you can have it all, all you need to do is make that jump.

Being A Man: A List

Here follows a list of what I feel it is to be a man.

• A man must break a heart, to truly understand the fragility of the lives he involves himself in
• A man must have his heart broken, to truly understand his own fragility
• At least once in his life, a man must fully immerse himself in a sacrificial love
• A man must have a war against an opposite for without this it is impossible to assert who he is
• A man provides
• A man recognises who is really in charge
• A man knows when to be a man and when to be human
• A man must find a love he is willing to die with or for

Thumos

GET DOWN FROM THERE, YOU'LL FALL"
they screamed at me as I climbed
higher and higher, from up here, the world looks so small
ant people scurrying about, their problems don't matter at all
Even if the revolution happens and it isn't televised,
I wouldn't care because I've got my eyes on the prize:
freedom.

"MAN WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE SUCH HEIGHTS"
they cried, but step by step I ascended despite
my fear of constantly moving up, try as they might
those people who scream
NO
can't stop me from taking flight tonight.

Then, there was silence. The kind filled with anticipation and dread
as my foot caught on the top rung of the rope ladder of success
I had almost broke through, I could see the stars shine,
but all the sympathetic cosmonauts offered no hand, nor took mine.
Down I fell and hit every obstacle I had overcome
and the indentation in the ground when I landed
means I start again even lower than where I set off from.

This depth may only be inches, but it may as well be miles,
face down in the mud I can only be concerned with my own trials
and those tiny ant people now tower above me,
as I blunder between their busy legs
"Sorry, I do not wish to bother thee"
I yell in my little, insignificant voice.
Exhausted from a whole day of this, sleep brings no rejoice.

What a fool I was to think that I could climb,
to see things only meant for the eyes of the divine
to be that one in a million who tastes the fruits of their own success.
"Sit down and shut up, you were meant for much less"
Why didn't I listen to the voices which screamed no.
Maybe then I wouldn't have fallen.
Maybe I wouldn't feel so low.

After some time spent gathering my strength
and remembering when happiness was only at arms length
my burlap sack packed with my dreams and Lucozade,
I set out to climb that rope ladder without any aid.
Even though I know I'll probably just fall again
and that the voices which scream are the voices of the safe but mundane
I'm well practised by now so without a fuss
I slowly start to climb again; a modern day Sisyphus.

Absurd Rhymes With Albatross

Of course, it doesn't. But it does rhyme with turd.

As the most curious species
and with brain power to boot
we try to swallow the whole sun
and think the face in the moon is cute.

We pretend that time's a circle
and that we can live this moment again,
we call ourselves unique, like snowflakes
then score beauty out of ten.

We praise multiple gods, and one, or none.
All three are but primitive tools
to deal with the hypocrisy of life. Example?
We teach science in Roman Catholic schools.

We take their valves to work our hearts
but "all pigs do is stink".
Being human is such an absurdity,
all the more because we can think.

Waltz

Dancing in threes, living life
step one two.

We share a heartbeat, me and you.

Sychronised steps, arm in arm
turn two three.

No thought to thinking, feeling free.

Past mistakes made we laugh off
as we spin.

Lips touch and we dance, skin to skin

Facebook Friends

The people on my Facebook are my friends,

'cept,

they're not.

They are friends of my friends

and

people I knew before;

they are people at work

but

cease to be when I leave.

You are my Facebook friends

'cause

un-friend is just so rude.

Are the people on my Facebook my friends

or

my "friends"?

A poem about people I hate

This poem's title is literal. This is just a spoken word poem about people I hate. Or more specifically, something I hate about people. Below this, you can listen to the recording hosted on SoundCloud and below that, you can read the words. There's no layout, it looks like this because it's written to be heard and not read, but this is my blog and I want to post the words. Whatever.



All my life I've been called a nerd, a loser, a geek.
Just because I love to learn.
I want to know why our calendar has seven days in the week
and why we are averse to telling people how much we earn.
Thank god or zeus or even the big bang for wikipedia
because without it I'd never be able to bore workmates
with facts and interesting titbits about who really controls the world's media
(it's not a conspiracy by the way, Noam Chomsky told me and his name holds weight in debates)
It's just fate that the curse placed upon my tiny little head is now plastered across all these fucking tshirts on little girl's chests. Slogans designed to impress because being a geek is somehow cool now?
Like I didn't get my head shoved in a fucking bin and my childhood is just one big fat cash cow?
It's like I wasn't so scared of ridicule for joining the debate club I ran away and ate lunch on the pavement on my own? Wow. I've barely told anyone about that.

Where was I? Oh yeah, tell me about your adventures in the Warhammer universe fellow geek. Tell me about the time you spend reading short stories by only Phillip K Dick and Bradbury for a whole week.
How disappointed were you that the overarching story in Asimov's I, Robot was completely missed out in the Will Smith adaptation?
Who pushed you down stairs in school because you thought superheros were cool? Were you the last in your group of friends to pull? Yes, teenagers can be cruel but I'm still being ridiculed by the exact same people who paid to see The Avengers four times because Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Junior make them drool.

Dungeons and Dragons is nothing like playing with a Barbie doll and you sound like a fool for making that comparison, but I try to take it on the chin. Because I never expect anyone to understand why I run Linux instead of Windows on my netbook, or why I continually fix my eight year old iPod instead of buying a new one.

And I'd never understand why you would mute the news or think it's boring to see a meteor caught on camera crashing down to Earth with an impact like a giant cosmic gun. That's the reason I'll never buy a tshirt that states in VERY LARGE FONT, that everyone can read that I'm a domesticated dog, on a very short lead.

Peter Pan

I like the rhythmic quality of this. I've been writing things in threes recently and I don't know why. As you can see, this is structured so that every line contains three syllables. I may have the punctuation wrong which would lead some to read this in a way I didn't intend but honestly, I think the commas and full stops, as well as the line breaks let it flow without the reader having to think of composition too much.

Everything

that I think,

I create.

Everything

that I think,

I create,

I control.

Everything

that I think,

I create,

I control,

I destroy.

Not Captain

Hook, I'm the

first Lost Boy.

Butterflies

It isn't often I'm lost for words but when you kissed me, my head was with the birds, in a cloud and I could hear my heart beating so loud I thought it would burst from my chest, then you said

"are you ready?"

Time stopped, and that's the most beautiful thing because I don't want to waste it, like seedlings in spring. Am I ready? "Of course", I said dizzy, heady from kiss and you looked at me with doe eyes, and said

"don't hurt me"

Us two alone, only moonlight exists, the sole witness to this tryst sits high above watching hands touching hands, hands touching hips. In this moment we are one (no space), an everlasting embrace.

Peninsula

I love the way the sands of time trick our mind.
How pleasing the feeling
we were young yesterday,
the notion that all we know is innate.
A smile arises when I think
of troubles, previously significant
that no longer hold any pain,
or of all the times we tried in vain.

Shifting sands of time
distort our mind in pleasing times,
distracting us from the reality
of humanity.

Absolutes are abhorrent:
hate and love are but two sides of the same coin,
with one comes the possibility of the other.

To hate and love at the same time
is absurd.
To hate and love at the same time
is human.

So you see
the paradox of humanity.
It is a struggle to remain sane

Every Atom

It's not love that tears us apart, its the heartache that does.
A troubled mind stuck in time looping ifs, buts and because,
predisposed with thoughts of who, when, why and of what was.
Heartache ruins us.

If its not love that tears us apart, the memories will.
Ruminating good and bad
then out       they        spill
to anyone sparing a shoulder or ear
and we can't stem the flow until,
heartache drains us.

Love will never tear us apart
because humans we are,
and every atom in our body was once part of a star.
What is the loss of love when life is this bizarre?
Heartache cleanses us

Borrachero Prologue

This is the first draft of the prologue of the novel I'm working on at the moment; 'Borrachero'. All feedback is appreciated and will be taken on board, unless you're correcting spelling or grammar. That stuff will be fixed when the whole novel is proofed. Thanks for reading.

The crowd outside the research wing of the hospital had grown quickly in a short space of time. Not quite with the same speed that a flashmob would come together but for the passerby, there wasn’t much difference. Signs and placards were held up by men and women wearing PETA t-shirts, proclaiming their hatred for animal testing. Among them were the dreadlocked and tie-dyed crew; the protesters who opposed capitalism as a whole and for whom the pharmaceutical industry was one big melanoma on the skin of society. Behind the front line of the protest specific that had been bussed in from far and wide and the protest ever-present were the locals who had heard of what was going down through social media. Publicly shared Facebook pages, #hospitalprotest trending on Twitter, along with Snapchat and Instagram shots being fired about by almost everyone present had made sure that anyone with even a remote interest in animal welfare, “bad” pharma or even just protesting and playing Rage Against The Machine really loud had come along to take part or spectate.

Viewed from a socio-anthropological angle, the crowd assembled outside the hospital resembled a trifle, with distinct layers clearly visible from observing dress code, behaviour and language. The only thing messing up this picture was the floaters. Men and women in the crowd with scarves and bandanas covering their faces and hoods pulled over their heads, milling amongst every layer and making comments to anyone who would listen about turning violent and doing something. These were the dark anarchistic “bad seeds” that the media loved to blame everything on whenever a protest got out of control or riots started up. At an even smaller level that academic observers would miss, there was one hooded woman who wasn’t an anarchist at all, but was using their presence to mask her own purposes. Sophie had an edge, she knew where the cameras pointed and where she could stand and spread discontent without being picked up. Despite the cameras not being advanced enough to have been equipped with face recognition, she knew that the men sitting in the CCTV control room would recognise her. She fixed the bandana covering her face and pulled her hood down tighter so that only her eyes showed and continued through the crowd.

Peaches

When I was ten years old my mum tried to commit suicide. I remember her and my dad had been arguing again. If you asked me what they had been arguing about I'd not be able to tell you with any certainty, although I would guess money and I'd probably be right. What I do remember is more important. I mean, you can only be shaped by what you remember, right? This memory shines the brightest in my mind and everything seems to be connected to it. We always have these memories; anchors of to the moments that made us the people we are, and no matter what happens in our lives the thought of past experiences that shaped us snap us back and stop us from getting too carried away. I've always thought of this as how our conscience is formed, but it must be more complex than that because whatever happens in my life, I always seem to come back to the day I fought back tears and held my mum for what felt like the longest time before dragging her home while she pretended nothing was wrong. Maybe I was crying, because I can remember tasting salt in my mouth. Whether that was from tears running down my cheek into my mouth or from the salty air coming off the sea I do not recall. Anyway, the strongest memories from that day are senses, not thoughts; that salty taste, the sound of the rushing waves and my mum's smell. Peaches.

Money was always a factor growing up. I don't suppose we were any different to any other family in the area at the time, the whole idea of the undeserving poor was everywhere in the tabloids and a trickle down economic approach from the government essentially meant those in work had to rely on the generosity of their employers to grant them more hours on a wage that barely covered living costs. No wonder there were riots on TV, days off school when we watched the teachers stand in the car park holding up signs and waving banners, and empty stomachs all over the country. When talking about this time to my parents, I'm told they were both working two jobs, sometimes three. Of course they only officially had one job, the others were undeclared and paid cash-in-hand. When you can't afford to feed yourself or your children, you're mind isn't really on the collective benefit of tax revenue or of your National Insurance contributions and pension. Your mind is on getting in enough money to make sure your heads stay just above the water of poverty, debt and the embarrassment of picking up fag ends from the street, breaking them apart and collecting the tobacco so you can roll it into one thin and crooked cigarette at home. It seems so easy now to just brush this kind of environment off as a historical tale from the Victorian age but the fact is, this happened only twenty years ago, and to people you know.

As I say, money was always tight which means that tempers were always short and emotions were high. Stress will do that to a person. Later, my mum would tell me she had to force herself to have one meal a day so she had the energy to work again the next day, because while she would go to bed, she couldn't guarantee she would sleep. She rigidly stuck to one meal a day for years so that her children and her husband could eat. The shame of pretending you gave a cashier a £20 note and creating a scene so that they relented and gave you change from a £20 instead of the £10 you both know you handed over was nothing compared to the shame of sending emaciated children into school. No matter what happened, the kids always had to have clean, white shirts, shiny shoes and trousers with no holes in the knees. Being poor was no reason to be unclean or not properly presented. On good days we got a Fray Bentos pie from a can and boiled potatoes for dinner; otherwise watered down tomato soup and bread filled our stomachs.

I would later find out that the year of my brightest memory was the year the highest number of suicides was ever recorded. It wasn't just poor people suffering from far too much stress either. I'm reluctant to think about it because of the damage they caused but the people making the decisions about which employees get more hours, who gets to keep their job and who has to be given their P45 must be have been as stressful, if not more so than the prospect of clocking in every day not knowing if it will be the last time you do so. As we are seeing in China now, suicide was a big problem for any company with a building big enough for it's employees to jump from.

In one way, I've always thought of suicide as the most selfish act a person can make. It's your life, and you can do with it what you choose, right? If you end it, that's your choice and your problem alone, right? What about the people that depend on you? Your children, your husband, your friends, your parents and your siblings? What about the guy that gets paid less than you do that has to find your body; see your mangled corpse and who can't sleep at night because whenever he closes his eyes all he can see is your legs bending in unnatural places and your forearms poking out of the skin where you have instinctively tried to brace yourself for a fall that nobody can prepare for. But that isn't fair. That's me, a fully rational creature applying my reason to your situation and taking your decision completely out of context. Everything being equal, we all have a choice in what we do and while being among other people or situations can colour the choices and make one look more attractive than another, this doesn't change the fact that we could always do otherwise. This isn't the case under extreme stress or depression. In that state the mind shuts down and not only are some options painted black, but they might as well be invisible, such is the opportunity to grab them.

This is how I try to understand the way my mum was feeling when she left the house with her cardigan flowing free in the middle of the night. Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of money, lack of hope. There's that song, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Sometimes it isn't lack of love that we are torn apart. Sometimes we are torn apart by the black hole of despair and the lack of a light at the end of the tunnel, and the jagged silhouette of the rocks one hundred feet below that look so enticing because they can extinguish the final flame that keeps you alive but tortures you at the same time. The argument raving in her mind must have been deafening because calling out to her so loud that my throat strained and my voice cracked wasn't acknowledged at all. Maybe the wind took my voice and carried it down to the rocks, and she would have only heard it moments before the rock cleaved her face in two.

Looking like a ghost, staring at the wild sea crashing against the base of the cliffs stood my mum. The woman who had given birth to me and cared for me and fed me over herself. A woman who had suffered more than I could imagine just so that I had no less than any other child I knew, and I have the nerve to consider her selfish. That's what I think now, not what I thought at the time. I don't remember what I thought then, only what I did. I remember willing my legs to move faster than they ever had before, and I remember them obliging. I ran so fast I felt like I was flying. I remember the waves crashing below and the sound of my feet moving over the changing terrain; grass, earth, rock, until finally I wasn't running any more. I was holding onto my mum with my arms wrapped around her waist. I don't remember her turning round but she must have because my face was pressed into her stomach. She looked down at me and while her mouth said she was just going for a walk, her eyes told a completely different story. I held her so tight, engulfed in the wonderful smell of peaches.

Groupthink

This is a 300 word submission for a writing post with a magazine about zombies. I'll be expanding it shortly to make it a full size article.

When is a good idea not a good idea? After surviving a few zombie attacks and coming out relatively unscathed, you and the group you are with will most likely be feeling quite positive, relative to your surroundings of course. For decades, psychological studies have shown that if your group are highly cohesive, you may start to see suggestions for future action from whoever has taken a leadership role as being unanimously good. You will become numb to critical thinking and anyone countering the 'positive' suggestions will be viewed with suspicious eyes and subconsciously branded as an outsider. Sound bad? It is. Historical events such as The Bay of Pigs invasion and the repeated refusal of three separate administrations to pull out of the Vietnam war have been judged by numerous psychological experts as the result of a cognitive bias known as groupthink.

Unchecked, this has the potential to destroy your group and in a worst case scenario could result in everyone's death. One way to stop, or at the very least stem the effects of groupthink is simply to be aware of it. Once a day, nominate a devil's advocate whose job is to criticize or pick at every decision. This is a generally successful tactic because the inner voice of doubt that groupthink silences is instead a very real external voice. So, when is a good idea not a good idea? When you fall prey to your natural cognitive biases and fail to consider the alternatives. Stay vigilant, and you might just survive.