Mr Writer

As a professional writer, and a semi-professional pedant, I am enraged on a daily basis by the general illiteracy of the world around me. As a professional writer and semi-professional pedant, I am also baffled on an equally frequent basis by the total apathy displayed by the inhabitants of said world to the linguistic idiocy that surrounds them. It’s reached the point where bad grammar or spelling has become almost unremarkable – a wallpaper of ignorance that coats our society – and if you think I’m getting worked up about this, you don’t know the half of it.

It’s perhaps understandable that a local charity volunteer might insert an unwarranted apostrophe into their fundraising “menu’s”, but it’s unforgivable when one of Scotland’s largest car dealerships runs a full-page ad on the back of the Edinburgh Evening News with the word “BARGIN” proudly emblazoned across it in 72-point bold capitals. I can forgive a neighbour getting my name wrong on a hand-written note, but I must acknowledge Volvo once again (not in a good way, this time), who once sent a marketing letter to Mr ? Cumins. Even the BBC has become guilty of proofreading laziness – the recent series of Food & Drink displayed captions for “1 carrott” and “half a bottle of of Italian red wine”, while a live news interview on the Oscar Pistorius trial came from a reporter in “Petoria”. After two minutes, the on-screen Petoria caption magically vanished, possibly in response to an anguished tweet from a freelance proofreader in Glasgow.

Bad spelling has become an affliction that strikes at the heart of our society. In terms of its cause, I could blame league table-obsessed schools and their under-qualified teachers, money-obsessed colleges and universities, apathetic parenting, lazy students, disinterested employers, or the almost total lack of demand for professional proofreading services. In fact, I blame all these factors equally. Since setting myself up as a freelance copywriter six years ago, I have witnessed a shockingly low level of demand for proofreading, despite its inestimable value to any company that wants to look even vaguely professional. Company websites are frequently peppered with unnecessary errors, and even people who work in PR and advertising often struggle to write a single paragraph without some sort of grammatical cock-up. Clearly, “it’ll do” is the accepted mentality, and often from people who should damn well know better. If time-served public relations professionals can’t proofread their own press releases, what hope is there for the rest of society?

I’d like to think basic sentence construction and accurate spelling could be taken as read (get it?), but sadly, these elementary skills seem to be an optional extra these days. I don’t expect other people to proofread everything three times as I always do, but once would be nice. Amid this linguistic malaise, my ability to spot a misplaced apostrophe at ten paces is beginning to seem almost quaint and olde-worlde. It’s a situation that makes me feel profoundly sad (particularly while writing this blog post), but Grammar Pedantry Syndrome knows no boundaries, and my daily struggle against the semi-literati must continue.

Now, does anyone want to recruit a freelance copywriter what can write proper and that, innit?

The science of selling yourself short

A few days ago, there was a knock at the door. At the time I was, to use the immortal words of Run DMC, minding my own business, eating food and finger licking, but nevertheless, I bravely ventured to the front door and opened it to reveal two people whose immaculate appearance could only mean they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. And sure enough, they were. Achingly pretty, but nonetheless, preaching to the unconverted. Happily, however, they took me by surprise by handing me a leaflet, inviting me to a church event the following weekend and then simply walking away as they thanked me for my time. The front door was open for perhaps 30 seconds, and then I was back to my meal, asking my friend if he’d like to know why Christ died for our sins.

Sadly for the Witnesses, he didn’t. And even more sadly from their perspective, I didn’t visit their event and discover the good Lord. In fact, I threw their leaflet in the recycling bin (I’m a conscientious agnostic) and forgot all about it until two days later, when the phone rang. The caller display simply read “UNAVAILABLE”, which is usually an indicator of a telesales call, and sure enough, a lengthy pause was followed by the immortal words: “This…is…an…important…”, at which point I returned the phone to its charging station and thought wistfully about murdering everyone who has ever sold or supplied my landline number to a “marketing” agency. And then I started to wonder – do all these unsolicited attempts at selling or persuading people ever actually achieve anything?

I am invited, on an almost daily basis, to purchase tablets that will enhance my sexual pleasure (and sometimes hers too, which assumes that I’m (a) straight and (b) not celibate). I regularly get unwanted sales emails in my work inbox, which is annoying when I’m waiting for a contract to be returned, and the ping of my email account heralds nothing more than an invitation to buy protective boots, or a list of second-hand vans for sale in East Kilbride. If I had a penny for every time I’ve had catalogues through my door from a Jermyn Street tailor I’ve never ordered from, or a brochure from car companies I might have entered a competition to win a car from eight years ago when my old Volvo was on its last legs, I could probably afford to buy a new Volvo. In fact, if anyone from Volvo is reading this, I would be delighted to insert the word Volvo into every subsequent post on this widely-read, internationally-acclaimed (soon to be Volvo-themed) blog, and all I ask in exchange is a free Volvo V60. I’m sure the Volvo marketing people would agree that’s a small price to pay for the positive publicity it would generate.

Which leads me back rather neatly to the matter at hand. Do the attempts at publicity I’ve outlined above ever yield results? Have any of you received an email about V1agra or Ciali5 and thought “ooh, the weekend’s coming up but nothing else is. I’d hate to disappoint the wife again, so I’ll click on this mysterious web link and order myself some evening glory”? Have Jehovah’s Witnesses ever knocked on a door, rattled off the spiel about Christ dying for our sins, and seen the occupant drop to their knees in supplication? And have any of those “This is a call about PPI insurance” calls ever led to someone pressing 1 for further information? Actually, I don’t know whether 1 is the number you press for further information, because I’ve always hung up by that point, but presumably there is some sort of method whereby complete idiots can request a call back from some spotty minimum-wage spong in a call centre in Manchester.

Presumably companies find it worth the effort to publish leaflets and pay students to shove them through letterboxes, or program computers to ring random numbers with pre-recorded messages about accidents in the last five years. If it achieved nothing at all, they wouldn’t do it, would they? But equally, I don’t know a single person who has ever responded to unsolicited junk mail/cold-calling/spam emails/religious fanatics at the door. It’s something of a paradox. However, if companies, spammers, marketers and zealots are going to waste my time by trying to sell me household Gods I don’t need, take a tip from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Get it over with as quickly as you possibly can, and I shall at least be grateful for the brevity of your unwanted intrusion into my life.

Four words to choke upon

“I’ve got a cold.” Four little words that can mean so many things. Such is the variance in the way people define a “cold”, it can range from a slight sniffle through to the onset of flu, and from a two-day snotting session to the sort of festering, malevolent virus that infects its host for a full calendar month before gracelessly sloping off to ruin the life of some other poor bastard.

As you might have detected from that slight trace of bitterness, I have the latter type of cold. And as regular readers of this blog will both know, I’m not the friskiest bunny in the hutch at the best of times, so a four-week (and counting, don’t forget that bit) virus has been like a respiratory apocalypse. Thirty consecutive nights of sleeping sitting up (if at all), thirty consecutive days of thinking “I’ll be better tomorrow” and then not being…it’s enough to make you spit. The brightly coloured phlegm that you’ve just coughed up.

However, the cold itself is only part of the problem. Another, equally sizeable, piece of my misery jigsaw has been other people’s opinions on how to treat it. For instance, I have now seen three doctors about my clearly life-threatening condition. Doctor #1 gave me a nasal spray, of a type I subsequently discovered I could have bought over the counter. Over a week of twice-daily applications, it achieved precisely nothing. Doctor #2 rubbished doctor #1’s assessment that a nasal spray would ever work, and prescribed me a steroid inhaler that he claimed would refresh the parts other medications couldn’t reach. Sadly for him, I took a violent allergic reaction to it. Doctor #3, who I met in hospital while being treated for the damage doctor #2’s medication had inflicted on my nasal tissue, rubbished doctor #2’s prognosis, telling me that a steroid inhaler was inappropriate. Instead, what I really needed was another nasal spray, but not the weak and piddly type that doctor #1 had prescribed, and I don't know what she was thinking giving you that. Here’s something much stronger. This should sort you out. Has it? What do you think?

Now, it was only a month or so ago that I went on a long rant about the failings of the NHS, so I’m not going to flay that long-expired steed again. These doctors were merely giving me their opinions, and as every fule kno, opinions are like arseholes – everybody has one. In fact, doctors are like arseholes as well when they misdiagnose basic conditions and prescribe the wrong medication, but I digress. The sad truth is, everyone has an opinion on how to get over a cold, and most of them are wrong. The nice lady in the organic supermarket near my house recommended dissolving magnesium crystals in a bowl of boiling water, draping a towel over my head, and inhaling deeply for ten minutes twice a day. That didn’t work. A pharmacist told me Centrum would prevent me from catching colds in future. That really didn’t work. A loved one recommended a big glass of milk to cure a cough, but that didn’t work, because it merely increased my body’s production of the mucus I was already choking on. Numerous people online have recommended rubbing Vicks VapoRub onto the soles of my feet at night and then wearing socks to bed. I haven’t actually tried this one yet to vouch for whether or not it works, but I’m a touch sceptical. An old friend of mine once persuaded me to visit a holistic health centre and spend half an hour with my feet in a bucket of lightly bubbling water, in an attempt to draw out all the toxins and impurities in my body. Guess what? That didn’t fucking work either.

Perhaps I am now beyond medical help? Perhaps my body is so diseased and corrupted that it simply doesn’t respond to conventional medicines or treatments. Perhaps I’m suffering a slow collapse of my immune system (it certainly feels like it). Or perhaps I’m just lumbering under a really, really stubborn virus. Whatever the explanation, I can say one thing with absolute confidence - the word “cold” doesn’t do this evil infestation justice. This is more like repeated torture, with extra mucus. And a cough that could wake the dead. Which will surely be me if I’m not over this in a week’s time. If this should be my last blog post, think only this of me - my immune system is utter crap.

Many of horror

The other night, I did something very unusual. I went to see a musical. Not just any musical, either, but the 40^th anniversary tour of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. As you might correctly assume, this wasn’t my idea, but I went along anyway, displaying the same sort of naivety as a Christian in ancient Rome visiting a lion show at the local arena.

It probably goes without saying that I would rather have been eaten by lions than witness what took place at the Kings Theatre over a two-hour, two-act performance. Frankly, I’d rather have been eaten by the people on stage, and they’d probably have been well up for that. It was easily the two campest hours I’ve experienced since I pitched a tent in Go Outdoors and read a book on campanology. I have absolutely no issue with other people enjoying such a spectacle, in much the same way that I have no problem with explorers trying to climb the Andes backwards wearing flip-flops, but to continue the campanology theme, transvestite theatre really doesn’t ring my bell.

What did impress me, as I sat in the upper circle surrounded by a tsunami of timewarping women, was the utter professionalism of the show. Every prop worked the way it was supposed to, the live band played exceptionally well (particularly the drummer), and even the more unexpected moments of audience interaction failed to throw the cast off their stride. As an accomplishment, this particular performance has to be judged an unqualified success. Even though I hated what I saw, I loved the efficiency of it all, and that is probably a much greater compliment than simply going home singing Damn It Janet and having no further opinion.

You could argue that because this is the Rocky Horror’s 40^th anniversary tour, the production team have had four decades to get things right, but since every show is slightly different, and every team of participants varies from one city to the next, that’s a bit of a red herring. This particular performance gathered together a cast of twelve, a band of similar size, riggers and lighting techs (I must salute the lighting operator who turned up for work wearing a Cannibal Corpse T-shirt), costumiers and make-up artists, producers and directors, before bringing everyone together for an exhausting one-week run, sometimes involving two shows a day. The chances are that some of the people involved in the performance I witnessed were labouring under a cold, or wondering if they’d left the gas on, or having relationship problems (let’s hope the actors’ personal lives run more smoothly than those of their stage personas). Yet they all pulled together so successfully that the audience departed happily gossiping about how that bloke from X Factor has got all buff, rather than discussing the bollock that escaped during a leg-crossing routine, or the bit where Riff Raff was electrocuted by a faulty antimatter gun.

It would be churlish in the extreme, therefore, for me to conclude by saying I hated the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and advising you not to go and see it. However, it is so not my cup of tea that it’s practically Bovril. There are only so many hairy stockinged legs a chap can take, before it’s time to put away the binoculars and flee into the night. Still, I extend my utmost respect and congratulations to anyone involved in Tuesday evening’s performance, and the three ladies who were in attendance with me absolutely loved it. Mission accomplished.

Who needs enemies?

I have a friend. Actually, that’s a terrible way to start a blog, because it implies that my having a friend is somehow a remarkable occurrence, as if I’m such a loser, I deserve to spend my evenings in an onanistic frenzy, surrounded by microwaveable meal-for-one trays and empty bourbon bottles. What I really mean is I have a specific friend, although that’s hardly better, because it suggests either (a) some of my friends are unspecific, or (b) I chose this particular friend to be my friend for specific reasons.

No, when I say I have a friend, I mean I have a number of friends, but one of them deserves particular mention, because he in turn has thousands of friends on Facebook. Except if we’re being honest, he doesn’t, because even the good lord Jesus didn’t have that many proper friends – good, wholesome mates who’d go hill-walking with him, and indulge his long-winded orations. Jesus had eleven perfectly decent friends who remembered his birthday and probably told him he was a diamond geezer, but "friend" number twelve was quite happy to rat him out for thirty silver coins, which certainly isn’t my definition of friendship.

And in a rather roundabout way, that brings me to the point of today’s sermon. How do you define friendship? Facebook claims it’s anyone who is interested to know what you ate for breakfast, or how much you hate your job, or what’s currently making you LOL. You can be Facebook friends with a company that desperately wants your cash, or friends with a buxom teenager in Paolo Alto who’d love you to watch her webcam video. But I would argue that friendship is rather more profound and valuable than that, and I think Facebook’s arbitrary usage of the word “friend” has somewhat sullied the minds of its one billion users.

As is so often the case, Twitter is ahead of Facebook on this one. For the uninitiated, Twitter allows you to follow people, or be followed yourself. And not in a stalky-rapey way, either, but by following their comments and posts. Going back to the Jesus analogy, “follower” seems a far more sensible title for someone in Tanzania who stumbled across your online profile entirely by accident, but liked your post from six months ago about Top Gear, as opposed to describing them as a “friend”. In fact, do these online profiles even correlate to a real human being somewhere? Around 40 per cent of the 500 million Twitter accounts out there have never been used to send a single tweet, which begs the question what those 200 million people were doing when they signed up. If indeed they did.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I consider the tag of “friend” fit only for someone who would be there for me in a crisis. Someone I could phone up at 2am during a fit of depression and know they’d come over to play KerPlunk with me until the sun rose along with my spirits. In that respect, I consider myself a rich man indeed. Apart from my family, and my fiancé, and my fiancé’s family, I have one friend who would rush over in his slippers, another who would be here as fast as the taxi company permitted, and a third who might rightly wonder why I’d phoned him rather than any of the preceding people in this paragraph. Nevertheless, I don’t doubt he’d be willing to roll marbles with me through the small hours, so he passes my highly questionable “friend” test.

There are plenty of other people in my contacts list who might also qualify under these criteria, but since they could potentially fail the KerPlunk test, I prefer to think of them as mates, or acquaintances. Then again, perhaps the word acquaintance is too casual or devalued for people I’ve socialised with fairly regularly for the last ten years, or been on holiday with, or formerly been close to but recently lost touch with. Am I too sparing with my use of the word “friend”? Are other people too liberal? What’s a brother to think? And how do you become someone’s metaphorical, as opposed to biological, brother?

The day that never comes

Today is Pancake Day. I don’t know why I capitalised that statement, but starting a blog with the words “Today is pancake day” didn’t look right, either. Nonetheless, let us swiftly progress from this rather shaky debate about capitalisation onto the safer turf of topics you might actually want to read about, by considering the implications of this most annual of events.

So it’s Pancake Day (I’m sticking with the capitalisation - deal with it). So what? Well, did you know that today is also Red Hand Day, when countries around the world petition their governments to abolish child soldiers? I bet you didn’t know that this is Darwin Day, when we are encouraged by academics to celebrate the achievements of Charles Darwin. In America, today is National Freedom to Marry Day – an unofficial celebration of same-sex marriages, which seems quite topical in the circumstances. Tomorrow is World Radio Day, this whole week is National Science and Engineering week, oh, and let’s not forget that Thursday is Valentine’s Day, looming over the oppressed masses of singletons and couples alike, and guilting us into spending money that could otherwise go towards something far more useful, like reducing our debts.

The remorseless over-saturation of national this days and world that days has become really quite tiresome. I am a vegetarian, and proud of it, but do I celebrate National Vegetarian Week? No, I don’t. Nor do I commemorate World Vegetarian Day, or Hug a Vegetarian Day (I’m not making this up), and don’t get me started on Veggie Month. Then we have that elite group of masochists known as vegans, who get their own day, week, month, and probably a commemorative clock as well. We might as well canonise the whole bloody lot of them.

You could argue that some causes require a national day of celebration/mourning/awareness/campaigning to heighten their profile, and if it’s a genuine campaign, I would grudgingly concur. I can just about tolerate Movember, despite the tackiness of it all, because it is trying to raise awareness of something genuinely awful, by encouraging men to be less blasé about their health. But National Beard Week? Really? One glorious website has taken such banalities to new heights, declaring February to be the home of – among others - National Pistachio Day, Create a Vacuum Day, National Battery Day (that’ll be a charged occasion) and even International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day. I would gladly take my hat off to the genius who came up with such concepts, but I’m not wearing a hat. Maybe I should buy one tomorrow? Or should I wait for National Hat Day? Would it be disrespectful to buy a hat on any other day, or is the hat industry so seasonally dependent on sales on National Hat Day that non-NHD sales are always welcome?

Of course, you don’t have to dig too deeply to discover the cold, clammy hand of a marketing person behind most of these orchestrated promotional campaigns. Setting aside charity-led days, most of these occasions are a tacky attempt to flog us crap we otherwise wouldn’t want. Bonfire Night has always been a vexatious occasion (blowing things up to celebrate a criminal who tried to blow things up), but now it’s been eclipsed by Halloween. Not because Halloween is a more noble occasion, or worthier of our celebrations, but because it’s easier to sell a wider variety of more easily manufactured garbage. Especially to children, and persuading children that they must have something is every marketing man’s wet dream (not in a Savile way, I hasten to add). Ultimately, it all comes down to how much money companies can squeeze out of us, and that explains the relentless paintball bombardment of sponsored days, weeks and months. Until Thursday, the shops will be crammed with Valentine’s Day tat, but on Friday morning, they’ll be furiously clearing the shelves in preparation for Mother’s Day marketing.

Which brings me to my Dragons Den-style bright idea. Why don’t we have a National Nothing Day? A day when nothing is celebrated, no-one is commemorated, nothing is championed and nobody is enticed to buy anything whatsoever. No overpriced tat in supermarkets, no pointless and extortionate cards, no need to pretend to care about something we don’t – it could be a day to remember for everyone who is as sick of all the other themed days as I am. Except I fear this particular day will never come.

Living is a problem because everything dies

It’s commonly accepted that, once we reach adulthood, our bodies cease to grow and instead begin to decay. There is no way to circumvent this most final of destinations, and I’m fairly sanguine about the fact that the low road has no exits. What distresses me more is the ever-accelerating rate at which I’m approaching terminal velocity, to judge by my body’s swelling orchestra of noisy protest at daily life.

Why is this? Why is my frail and feeble frame increasingly plagued with aches, strains and mysterious afflictions? I consider myself to be reasonably healthy in most regards – I eat plenty of vegetables, and I don’t even have an STD – and yet my body appears to have become a repository for things that aren't quite functioning properly. As I write these very words, for instance, my right shoulder has developed a curious cramp, I’m fighting off a faint backache and my left knee hasn’t been right since I woke up a few days ago and discovered that I could hardly put my weight on it, for absolutely no apparent reason whatsoever. Maybe pixies visited me in the night and fucked up my cartilage. A fortnight ago, in the cinema, I tried to take my coat off without standing up, and managed to pull something I didn’t even know I have. I can’t drink coffee on an empty stomach without appalling intestinal spasms, colds regularly turn into chest infections, and I’m increasingly struggling to read in low light. I honestly do wonder what’s going to break/strain/fail/begin to hurt next.

It’s not just me, either. My fiancé claims she can’t remember a week without some sort of mysterious pain or physical affliction, of which her recent hospitalisation was at least a refreshingly unconventional variant. My friends, too, report increasing numbers of body fails, from sciatica and bowel issues to a growing tendency towards sighing as they sit down. I do it as well. It must be catching. Shackleton wing back chairs will surely be gracing our living rooms before this decade is out, and if you don’t know what a Shackleton wing back chair is, (a) I envy you, and (b) ask an old person who has long since lost the ability to spring vertically out of a La-Z-Boy when the doorbell rings.

I often ponder how nature has managed to do such a crap job with me and my fellow homo sapiens. We spent millions of years evolving from plankton to bipeds, and yet we go wrong with terrifying regularity. My own long-term ailments range from the mundane to the exotic - specifcally, a rare muscular disorder, which was eventually traced to Cypriot dairy produce. They didn’t mention that in the holiday brochure. However, my own complaints pale into insignificance compared to more life-threatening conditions like organ failure, or cystic fibrosis, or MS. A well-known journalist buried her husband a fortnight ago, after he’d bravely recovered from a stroke and then cancer – in the end, a simple virus finished him off.

Such a personal tragedy rather underlines my point. Thousands of people die each year from influenza, yet more from the common cold, and others shuffle off this mortal coil from seemingly innocuous trips and falls. Can’t nature do better than this? Why can’t we all live to 200 years of age, clogging up the planet and laughing contemptuously at bacteria and germs? Nature – you’re shite. Hang your head in shame. And try harder from now on.