Soap opera

The way soaps are written is all the interesting bits of life are strung together and made to cover the whole time, whereas in real life it just carries on normally with the odd interesting bit. The reason I'm saying this is because blogs are another form of soap, but more like reality tv. Unless, like big brother, you deliberately make things happen, it reflects the real stuff which is mainly boring and repetitive, so that's why I tend to go off on any tangent that takes me as there's little about life here to keep a blog going full stop. The art, I suppose, is to try and take whatever you do have and make it as interesting as possible. Of course like every book or tv programme ever written that's going to have a large element of personal taste, but still really needs to be at a minimum level if you expect anyone to actually want to bother reading it very often.

So, the process is normally trying to find interest in the little things, and Kingsbury is a veritable mine of little things, and fuck all else to be honest. Let's see. We have two shopping centres (one some distance away from here), plus one in West Hendon for the hardened bargain hunters (yes, that includes me,)- don't bother about pissing off to France for the day, you could probably make a list and use all the pound shops in West Hendon Broadway, and save more than you ever would in Calais once you'd allowed for the travel savings as well.
The parks I have to say are the business, one reason I live here. I'm surrounded by them on three sides, plus a reservoir and woods, and there's also a garden centre I was at today which has enough to spend an afternoon virtually, since it's added a few extra shops and a cafe and is almost over the road except for the fence which means a long walk round the park to get to it.

When I lived here in the early 60s it was a different community altogether, I was in and out of the neighbours all the time, and everyone in the shops knew your name and vice versa. Actually a fair percentage of the shops were still here thirty years later when I returned, though the people had changed, though I discovered one man in the electrical shop was the boy who used to shout out 'papers!' every evening when we lived here the first time.

Apart from the district, my routine is so bloody predictable that if I included more I'd kill everyone with boredom after a few entries, except a few East Enders viewers who clearly get pleasure from watching televisual manure. My work is self employed and very erratic, since I lost my real job many years ago. The time since was used (among other things) to study up to a level where I could get a proper professional job. The good news was it was a success academically, but the job market in the counselling profession is similar to car mechanics in 1910. The work is required, but the market is so small and specialised the fact that in 2005 every college from Neasden school of community care (fictional) to Oxford and Cambridge (genuine) are running counselling courses, creating thousands of barely employable people. Being (I will be honest) both a very interesting and a bloody easy option, it's flooded by middle class professionals who already in many cases have a fucking good job, and then requalify (usually funded by their local authorities,) where I (or my family) had to pay for myself. They then get a shoe-in from their existing employers, and the few independent students like me are left to apply for the jobs that need to be advertised, but not actually given to, the general public.
Doctors (now no longer given the power to employ us any more) used to pick their friends and refer every patient to a few elite professionals, leaving everyone else locally to fight for the remainder. Now health authorities decide whether counsellors will be assigned to a doctor's practice (don't ask me how), and there are now very few compared to the few years since 1989 when they could choose to employ them directly.

So that's my employment. Till early 2002 my social life was more and more at one friend I'd know for 30 years, and then he upped and moved to America, and I realised I'd stopped seeing all the others and hadn't even noticed it. Soon after I met a girlfriend I was pretty serious about, so after 7 weeks she went down with depression and spent half of the next two years in hospital with no visitors. It was never the same after that though I carried on seeing her up till recently. There was no reason to gossip about her at the time, and not really fair either. The rest of the time is a regular family timetable. Mother, father (separately) and my now famous 95 year old grandma Lily, who would make one of the best ever big brother housemates as well as being far more like Hyacinth Bucket (Bouqet) than any fictional version (she said it before we ever did). There's no other family except my Aunty, who married my late uncle. No brothers, sisters or cousins, only the cat Lucy. I'm not moaning, just laying out the material available to make a blog, and why it has to be taken way way beyond everyday life here.

Of course I have the usual ambitions, the media one being the most talked about on the work side (though it's really for pleasure, the money would be a bonus), and the wish for a girlfriend I actually want to spend all my time with and vice versa. My psychic research has been able to have all the time it needed as well since losing my job, and of course will be the best key to open the media door following the work I've done over the last 15 years in it. Meanwhile I get on the computer and converse with all the intelligent and decent guys around the world who are like the best friends I have here, but further away.

Finally I just saw a small slice of my past on BBC4 last night (don't ask, not many people will have watched it), where Toby Young spoke about his magazine's rise and fall, the Modern Review, and included as a writer the other media success I knew in childhood, Will Self.
Of the two, I knew Toby far more, though I was at school with Will for three years, but two years ahead. But though they both share the profession of writers, and went to Oxford and Cambridge respectively, I didn't actually know they'd worked together though it's what I'd have expected. I hadn't seen either for years, in fact 1972 in Will's case, and I'm sure he won't know me from Adam though I did go to his house a couple of times. So for a moment I almost felt part of something as I saw two old friends on TV together talking about old times. There may be no communities left in London now, but somehow there was a little community last night on TV made up of a little of my past.