Arachnophobia - OctoboPhobia short story

My first memory is of spiders. I am seventeen now, and don’t really remember much before I was five, but this is something I’ll never forget.  And as I look at his eyes, I remember it.

I was wearing my yellow skirt. I don’t know why that is something that sticks in my brain, but it is.  I don’t know what else I was wearing, although I was wearing socks rather than shoes. That’s definitely important.

We were visiting my grandparents in the countryside, and I was able to run around their grounds as much as I wanted.  Looking back now, it wasn’t as big as I remember, but it felt almost like its own country. Like it should be on a map somewhere. “Grandparents”, just around the same size as… I don’t know. Birmingham or somewhere I’ve never been.

It was so much bigger than where we lived. So much bigger than anywhere I’d ever been.  We didn’t even have a garden of our own. We had a small piece of land outside our flats, and there was a park down the road.

I was allowed and even encouraged to explore, as long as I stayed away from anything sharp and I didn’t eat anything I found. And, of course, as long as I didn’t go near the road by myself. I’d seen a rabbit and chased it for a bit, shouting and screaming in delight.

Then I found the shed. Not the shed they actually used, the new, larger one that was also their garage. The old shed, the one on the top end of the garden that you couldn’t see into.

I couldn’t reach the handle with enough of a grip to open it, but I could fit my fingers into the gap between the door and the wall. I pulled it, expecting it to be locked, and it opened, scraping against the ground. I had to put all of my strength into opening it enough to fit into.

There were shelves and piles of cans, old tools and jars and bottles. It was like a treasure trove, and I ignored the dust and the cobwebs as I began to explore it, opening drawers and looking around everything that I could. There was an old wooden chair that served me as a small stepladder as I searched my way around it (including finding a small stack of old magazines, hidden in a drawer, featuring naked ladies that made me feel troubled and confused as to why there would be such a thing at all, although looking back, they were likely an old secret of my grandfather’s, although that thought never crossed my mind at the time).

There was an old, cast-iron lawmower in the corner that was heavily coated in grim, dust and webs. I felt my way around it, confused as to what it was, and found a small latch that allowed me to open up the green metallic hood. It was entirely black underneath.

And then the blackness moved.

I didn’t understand what was happening at first, as the centre of the blackness vanished, and it moved outwards, up the inside of the hood, and across the lawnmower, but then it began to wave over my hand, a black sheet of thin, hair-like legs, swarming over me.

I screamed and dropped the hood, which slammed down with a crash, but what seemed like hundreds, thousands, maybe, of small black spiders crawled all over the lawnmower and the floor. I fell, trying to brush them off my hand, and more came over me as they tried to escape the now-destroyed safety of the lawnmower engine.

I could feel them all over my legs, body and hair, and I kept screaming, trying frantically to brush them all off me. I shouted and screamed as loudly as I could, even when I felt one around and then inside my mouth, which I spat out.

I must have been screaming loud enough for my parents and grandparents to hear, as it can’t have been long until they found me.

I cried and cried and cried as they brushed them all off me, and as they told me off for going into the shed, and as they stripped my clothes off, and then put me into the shower. I cried when I was put to bed that night, and I screamed again when I woke up in the night, surrounded by darkness and convinced I could feel them all over me.

Ever since then, I have never been able to bear them. Any time I see one, I know there must always be more nearby, but I always kill them. Stamp on them, roll up newspapers and squish them until they’re just a small black and red smear, or whatever I have to do.

And it’s while I look at the toddler’s eyes, I remember it.

I babysit now, usually two nights a week. It’s a good time to study or watch television or talk to my friends on snapchat. I get paid pretty well for it, and I usually like the kids. The parents are out until whatever time they’re out until, and once the kid’s asleep, I get the house to myself. Tonight, they’re at something in town, and will be out most of the night. I have the spare room, which means being paid even more to sleep, which I’m okay with.

He’s old enough to help get himself ready for bed, although I have to help with some of the trickier stuff like changing and brushing teeth properly. But he’s well behaved and actually comes to tell me that it’s his bedtime. I’ve sat for him plenty of times before.

It’s when he does that, that I look at his eyes. They’re dark brown, with black pools in the middle, and framed with thick eyelashes. He looks tired and maybe a little unwell as he tells me he’s ready for bed.

It’s as he’s saying that, that it happens. Two eyelashes, just right at the bottom of his left eye, move. 

They curl up briefly, and then flex straight again.

I am stunned into silence, not understanding what I’m looking at, but then the memory of the shed overwhelms me.

They’re not eyelashes. They’re two small black, hair-like legs.

I grab him as he leaves and turn him around to face me again, and he smiles, not seeing my actions as aggressive, and leans in to hug me.

I let him do it, and then hold him a bit further away at him again, and look at his eyes again.

This time, the eyelashes stay still. Maybe they know I’ve seen them, but I don’t let on. I have to surprise them this time, not let them surprise me. And I have to be sure.

I help him get changed, and take the opportunity to look at the rest of his skin. It takes me a while, because I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but then I see it.

His back is very slightly moving. Underneath the skin. Small waves of constant movement. It’s almost imperceptible. But once I see it’s there, I understand what is happening.

In biology, a little while ago, I learned about parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside their prey. The eggs then hatch and they devour their victim from within, controlling them beforehand.

I can’t let them know that I know. But as he puts on his pyjama top, he smiles at me before he goes to brush his teeth, and I have to look away, pretending to check something on my phone.

His open mouth, smiling at me. I can’t look at it without imagining spiders pouring out of it. Not that close to me. I can’t do it.

He goes to the bathroom, and I follow him. I steel myself, and I put a towel around him as he stands on the step and I pretend everything is okay and I put the toothpaste onto the brush, and put my hand over his as he holds it and I pretend that I can’t feel the scuttling movement underneath my hand as we brush his teeth.

I put him to bed, which still has the barriers up a bit to stop him falling out, and leave the nightlight on, and I watch him carefully while I tell him a bedtime story. Every sentence I finish, I look again at him, and each time, I see more and more movement.

He pretends to fall asleep, or rather they pretend to fall asleep, and I go downstairs.

They are in him, swarming all inside him, just waiting to come out.

I go into the kitchen and take one of the knives. I don’t know if he can be saved. I don’t know if I’m going to be trying to cut the spiders out of him without killing him too, or if he’s already dead and just pretending. But if he is, at least he won’t feel anything.

I take a deep breath and climb the stairs. I know that once I make that first cut, the spiders are going to come swarming out. Thousands of legs and bodies.

But I have to kill them all.

I hold the knife carefully and open the bedroom door. 

Agoraphobia - OctoboPhobia Short Story

She walks with a stutter. A hesitation that she can't get past. Every few steps, it's like watching a needle skip on a record.

The mall is enormous and crowded. Escalators opposite the entrances are next to six feet tall maps with "you are here" pointers proving difficult to find quickly. It clearly overwhelms her. She stands in front of the map, trying to work it out but it confuses her. She looks at it like someone trying to work out a magic eye painting.

Frustrated and upset, she has to move when someone behind her says something. She steps to the side and immediately apologises, her voice a half pitch higher than usual.

No further conversation takes place, and she watches whoever it was walk away. She's burning with embarrassment. She got in the way. Again.

She has always hated being out like this. Ever since she was a little girl, hating school not because of the subjects or the teachers but because of the lunchtimes and the schoolyard. The hundreds of loud moving elements around her shouting and screaming and playing and, once they realised she was vulnerable to this, taunting and teasing.

Ever since she was at university, having to get food with everyone else and stand outside classes with everyone else, having to go through a thousand conversations she didn't know how to have. The everyday brutality of small talk.
With people she knows, she is comfortable. More than comfortable. She is funny and confident and relaxed. She has no problem surrounding herself with friends. But she doesn't know how to make them.

She looks for safety. Always. Bedrooms, houses, cars, classrooms... in these things, she has a roof and walls that keep the rest of the world out.

A place like this? All space and people, surrounded above and below by people, moving hassled and determined people, all of whom seem to know how to do this when she doesn't? A place where she feels she stands out like a white hair where there wasn't one before? If it isn't her worst nightmare, it's certainly on the list.

But she is still young, despite how she feels sometimes when she wakes up in the night,  and she is in love.

And for love, she has come to this terrible mass of corporations, and will brave the crowds and the spaces, all to buy a gift that will make her smile, and the next time they're lying next to each other on the sofa, their long hair tangled together, she'll be able to reach to her wrist, stroke it and smile and it'll be a perfect thing they share.

For this, she is here, trying to look at the map without getting in anyone's way, frantically hoping nobody notices her.
She traces the route along the map with her finger for a moment, repeating the directions to herself and then sets in search of the shop.

The escalator gives her something to hold onto for a few scant moments, and just the feeling of stability that provides gives her some brief salvation and calm.
When she gets to the top, she begins to panic, losing herself for a moment. The scale and size of the place threatens to overwhelm her, and she looks like she's stepped into a plummeting fall, until she sees a shop she recognises from the map, and the panic fades.

She walks uncertainly, the love in her heart proving stronger than the fear in her throat.

She tries not to look into the shops as she passes. It feels like looking in on someone's living room window on a street at night, something else she tries and often fails not to do. It feels intrusive, spying on a life she can never have.

A full quarter of the mall later, it happens.

It's the toy shops, of all places. The toy shops. A run of them, with a play area outside, keeping their wares in the site of the children playing while their parents rest, letting them see other parents and children walking out with toys that they immediately want and harass and cry and end either getting or being dragged away, kicking and screaming in jealous fury.

Something happens. A stumble. A trip. A fall. And then... children laughing? Pointing? Parents rolling eyes or, even worse, offering to help.

Suddenly the centre of attention with nowhere to escape to, her breath starts to shorten. Her eyes grow wide as she stumbles to her feet, and then she blushes and reddens and cannot hold back the tears.

It has all gone wrong. Children laughing and pointing, even innocently. Reminding her, almost certainly of being the object of scorn and pity in the school playground.

The regret at her attempt to come out and find a shop is written across her face, but there is no anger and there is no blame. There is only horror and burning shame.
She flees, her foot twisted painfully and her breath catching, somewhere else. Anywhere else. But the tears in her eyes blind her and she almost trips again, staggering into a stranger.

Now, she can barely breathe at all, except for occasional ragged wheezing loud gasps, that must only attract more attention that she cannot deal with right now.

She starts to run, tears streaming down her face, in absolute terror of people. She is partly doubled over, seemingly in agony.

With so many people around, she tries to find a safe area while trying not to look at anyone, so she can try to convince herself they are not looking at her, but the pain is making her clutch her chest again.
Trying to breathe, she sees a toilet and bolts towards it awkwardly.

Once in, she storms into a cubicle and sits, one hand against the door and the other clutching herself as she tries to regulate her breathing and get through to the other side of what she must surely begin to realise is far more than a panic attack.

I whisper to her that I love her and I try to hold her as she dies, the heart attack deadly and painful.

She doesn't hear me. She doesn't feel me in the cubicle.

But she never has. Not in these last three years that I've come here every day and watched her relive the last steps of her life.

I'll be here tomorrow and every day, trying to hold her and telling her that I love her and the watch that I found on the last page on her browser history would have been so perfect.

Maybe one day, it will help. Maybe one day I can help her be at peace.

Until then, I come here each day, reliving it as she relives it.

Acrophobia - OctoboPhobia Short Story

Acrophobia

I looked down.

Standing in the elevator, I looked at the floor, not at the buttons, not at the door, and not at the display telling me how many floors we’d climbed. I tried not to think about the cable holding us up, and I tried not to think about what would happen if the cable snapped, and I tried not to think about that moment where gravity suddenly decides to reassert its claim.

A double-booking. I gripped the handle of my suitcase and, not for the first time since I’d walked into this hotel, inwardly cursed the asshole that booked my room at the travel company my employers use.

I was desperate to sit in the bar for a bit. Sit and read a book for an hour or two with a glass of good whiskey and watch life go by. Or, hell, bad whiskey, for that matter.  But that would mean getting back into the lift and feeling my stomach slowly rise as it descended.

As it slowly (hesitatingly and grindingly) made its way to the top floor, I kept looking down.

It finally stopped and the doors, with a whine that called desperately for oil, opened. I pulled my luggage behind me, and walked down, looking for my room number. It was unusual, in this day and age to have a key rather than a card, but that was an unusual thing that I had no issues with.

When I found the room, I opened the door, switched on the light and looked around. The lights were on a low setting, and most of the room looked welcoming. But the sight out of the window made me immediately feel nauseated. I could see out over the buildings across a lot of the city. I let go of my luggage and dashed across to it, and felt at the curtains to close them, when I saw something that made me feel even more uneasy.

An old fire escape. The kind that zig zagged and stepped up the entire building. The ones that ended somewhere with a ladder dangling onto the pavement below.

I pulled the curtains together and frantically looked around the room, looking for the safety card, which was on the wall next to the door. I read over it, looking for their fire regulations, and slowly let out a sigh of relief.

There was an indoor fire escape down the end of the corridor, just past the elevator. One made of thick concrete, that would take hours for fire to even touch, allowing for safe exit. And, more importantly, safe indoor exit.

The rest of the evening passed smoothly. I didn’t leave the room. I worked for a while, then made my way into the slightly stocked minibar, and had a drink while I read a bit of the novel I’d been trying to finish for the last month.

The next morning, I would make my way across town to the meeting, and then I’d get back on the train home. Tired, I decided to shower in the morning, and concentrated on reading for a bit, so I turned the lights up a bit more. I settled back onto the bed, on top of the blankets, and, for a while, was peaceful.

That peace was shattered by a shout and some scuffling in the room across from me. There was the sound of some fighting, and then the beginning of a scream, which was cut off, almost before it got started properly. It was cut off by some sharp, strange sounding smacks. Which went on for a while.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call reception? I walked quietly over to the door and looked through the spyhole.

It gave a fishbowl view of the part of the corridor in front of me as I could feel my eyelashes against the small metal and glass hole.

I watched as the man with the fire axe walked out of the room across from mine.

He was tall and powerfully built. He had dark hair and his light coloured shirt was sprayed with blood. He looked around carefully, and was clearly listening as well.

He looked back into the room, and while I strained, I couldn’t see anything beyond the door, and then he took one final look around the corridor before he turned and began to close the door behind him.

Then, briefly, he froze.

He looked back carefully, looking around the corridor one more time, looking for something that had evidently caught his attention, as he tried to work out what it was.

He was staring right at my door.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.  I just watched as he looked down towards the bottom of the door. For what felt like long, long moments that stretched out like a yawning chasm, he just looked.

Carefully, slowly, I looked down towards my feet. And it felt like the floor had been ripped away from underneath my when I realised what he saw.

The light from the room was visible underneath the door. A little strip of light, interrupted by the shadows of two feet.

I looked back to the spyhole, just as he walked right up to it, face first. I could see that he had specks of blood on his face, including a spray down his right eyelid and cheek.. Tiny, almost imperceptible, but definitely there. I couldn’t help it, but I stepped back, recoiling.

The moment I did so, the door vibrated and shook. He was clearly trying to get in.

I forgot about subtlety and ran for the phone. Grabbing the receiver with one hand, I tried to dial with my other. My hands were shaking, so it took me a moment, as the door continued to shake.

It rang, and every time it did so, it felt like an hour had passed. Eventually, it was picked up by the man on reception.

“Please, I…”

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Help me," I whispered, my breath feeling icy cold and making it painful to breathe in. "Send help… I’m on the top floor, and there’s a man…”

A heavy crack sounded from the door.

“I’m sorry, sir, the line appears to be bad.”

The door shook with the weight and violence of the crack the second time, and this time, the dull thudding sound in the middle of the crack meant that I understood what he was doing.

“Help me!” I screamed at him. “He’s outside, oh God, he’s outside.”

Another cracking thud came from the door as he swung the axe into it again.

I left the phone for a moment, and moved back so I could see the door. As heavy and thick as the wood was, it was beginning to splinter and bend in the middle. It would take him time to get in, but probably not as long as it would take the police to get here.

I picked the phone back up. “There’s someone with an axe,” I said, somehow sounding so much more calm than I felt. “He’s killed people and he’s trying to kill me. I’m on the top floor. You have to send help and then get the police here.”

Another smash at the door, and this time, I saw the very tip of the axe break through.

“Sir, I’ll… I’ll call them now. Then I’ll ring you right back.”

I put the phone down and climbed over the bed towards the window. I didn’t look out, but instead looked right down at the catch, flipping it before lifting the frame up as high as it would go.

A blast of cold, vicious air whipped against me as another crash, this time with not so much a thud as a breaking noise, came from behind me.

I lifted my foot across the window until I was straddling it. And then I put my foot down onto the fire escape.

It shifted the second I did so. It obviously hadn’t been used in years. I grabbed the window frame as my stomach dropped and I stared at the wood. I clutched it so hard I could feel my nails digging into it.

I glanced back at the door and could now see a larger crack, and through it, the colour of the wall beyond. And then I could see a blood stippled shoulder barging against the crack, as it then lengthened and widened further up the height of the door.

There was no choice. No other option.

Without looking, I shifted all of my weight onto the metal lattice platform, and the entire thing swayed a bit, and I nearly lost my balance, but it held. I leaned across and felt the railing against my hand, noticing that it was a lot more slick with sweat against the flaked, thick and sharp paint.

I could barely breathe. The wind was like being hit with thick wet, cold blankets, and I could only take air in through the shallowest of gasps. I couldn’t turn back to the room, but I couldn’t bear to look around. I couldn’t bear to see the tops of buildings around me. It was a view I could hardly stand from the ground while looking up. From here…

The railing. That was what I could concentrate on. The paint and rust as I moved, hand over hand, and shuffled across to the steps…

As I found the corner, and could feel the end of the platform with my foot, I could hear what had to be one of the final cracks from the door in my room. It wouldn’t take him long to get through now.

I had to move faster. I couldn’t slowly grasp my way down the entire length of the escape. I had to move faster.

That’s why I moved down the steps faster, not carefully feeling my way down each step, but letting myself move down as if it were a normal staircase, a regular starcase, each one just a step from the front door onto the sidewalk.

It was only four steps down when I slipped. I don’t know what it was on. But one of the metallic steps was slick, and my foot skid against it, no purchase at all.

I tried to stick out my other foot to regain my balance, but I felt it twist and snap underneath my weight, and I crashed down hard.

There weren’t too many steps, but it was enough for me to gain momentum as I slammed into the railings at the end of them.

One of the railings was eaten through with rust. It gave immediately, and I barrelled through it.

The only thing that stopped me from falling was that I’d somehow managed to grab the latticed platform. The muscles in my shoulders screamed out in pain, as gravity took hold of my ankles and pulled with all of its might.

I could hear sirens in the background. Looking up, I could see his head looking out of the window, looking down and then looking right at me.

In movies, falling always looks graceful. It looks like swimming in air. But I’ve always known that it happens so much faster. You’re not moving through something with resistance. You’re whipping down, landing before you can even take it in. It's faster than you can possibly imagine. And then it's all over.

The wind slapped me, and the rusted metal stabbed into my fingers.

I couldn’t help it.

I looked down.

Cthulhu Bread

Morisssssssssssssooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnsssssss.

Why is tiger paw bread c\alled tiger paw bread?

It should be c\alled cthulhu bread.

You can see on these photos how cthulhuy it is.

Love from Christopher Brosnahan age 35 ½ 

Wrestling with Racism

I'm a wrestling fan. Have been since I was 12. Surprisingly, this isn't often a cool thing to admit, and right now, it's particularly not.

The recent revelations about the racist remarks by Hulk Hogan have shocked a lot of people. Myself included. While I wasn't the biggest Hulk Hogan fan in the world, I can't deny that I was something of a fan, as anyone who read this piece by me in 2012 after I saw him live at Wembley Arena will remember.

This isn't a photoshop. This is from 1986.

But while the explicit racism that Hogan came out with shocked me, the idea that wrestling has been racist for some time hasn't surprised me at all. By now, a number of news websites have run with some of the more racist gimmicks and storylines that have turned up in WWE over the years.

And there have been a lot of obvious ones. A black man becomes Kamala, the Ugandan Savage. A Samoan becomes Umaga, the Samoan Savage. Two black men become Cryme Tyme, a gangsta team.  Another black man becomes a voodoo high priest, before becoming a pimp, who walks down to the ring with his 'ho train'.

Yokozuna and Mr Fuji

And another Samoan becomes a Polynesian sumo wrestler, who comes down to the ring with a Japanese mananger who plays up to the evil stereotype, often attacking opponents behind the referee's back while the commentators complain about it being "like Pearl Harbour all over again".

This is without even noticing that the list of black WWE champions starts and ends with The Rock (who is African-Samoan). This is after a storyline where black wrestler Booker T was told by evil WWE champion  "Triple H" (standing for Hunter Hearst Helmsley) that "people like you don't get to be champion", before failing to win the championship at WWE's flagship event, proving that people like him really don't get to be champion.

The same Triple H, by the way, in 1998, along with his compatriots in the "D-Generation X" stable of wrestlers, blacked up to make fun of The Rock's stable, the "Nation of Domination", which was a spoof of the Nation of Islam. Triple H and D-Generation X were, by the way, the good guys. This is a scene that WWE proudly replay as one of their funniest ever moments, usually getting a black wrestler to talk about how funny it was. They did this in their recent "Monday Night Wars"
documentary series on their network.

Triple H, second from left, is now WWE's Chief Operations Officer, by the way.

All of this is awkward, to say the least. And, for the most part, in the past.

But there's an incident that was quite minor that stood out to me that happened earlier this year, which showed just how endemically racist WWE and wrestling continues to be.

A wrestler known as Bubba Ray Dudley was a member of a decades-long popular tag team called "The Dudley Boyz" along with his 'brother' D-Von. He's held pretty much the same gimmick since the 90s, with some minor changes along the way, but left WWE years ago. He and D-Von went to a rival company called TNA.

The bandana really doesn't help, does it?

Just quickly, there's a joke here that needs explaining. Bubba Ray and D-Von were brothers despite Bubba being white and D-Von being black. The origin of the team was that they were, along with the rest of the Dudley Clan, the children of "Big Dick" Dudley, who slept around a lot. The two of them had signature 'spots' that they came up with in the year 2000. Usually, they set up a thin table and put their opponent through it. They also have the "wassup" headbutt, where Bubba Ray holds the opponent's legs apart and D-Von screams 'Wassup!" before leaping off the top rope to headbutt the opponent's crotch. They still do the 'Wassup" despite the Budweiser campaign it's based on being over for a very long time.

While I don't think this is immediately relevant to D-Von's choice to do the move, the headbutt has a long and proud racist history in wrestling. You may not be aware that it's been scientifically proven that black people and Samoans have harder skulls than white people, because it obviously hasn't. But in wrestling, it used to be a hilarious spot in a match where a white wrestler would headbutt a black wrestler, but they'd be the ones that were hurt. While I'm not sure of the origin of this, I suspect it's probably got something to do with the long dominance of boxing by black athletes. It was mostly phased out for black wrestlers but remained a traditional spot for Samoan wrestlers until relatively recently.

R-Truth, looking exactly like D-Von Dudley

Now, one of WWE's biggest annual events is the Royal Rumble, a massive multi-man match where wrestlers enter the ring every two minutes, and get eliminated by being thrown over the top rope. They usually have a few cameos and nostalgic returns, to get the crowd to react. It's usually one of their most popular and fun events.

This year, they brought back Bubba Ray, to a large cheer from the crowd. Since D-Von wasn't in the match, the assumption was that the classic moves wouldn't happen. But they did. Because a wrestler called R-Truth was available to do the moves with.

Can you guess the only thing that R-Truth and D-Von have in common, other than strange initials in their name? Yeah. They're both black.

That's it. That's all there is. That was the thinking in putting R-Truth with Bubba Ray. They didn't have the black guy he normally does the moves with, so they just threw in another black guy, because he'd do.

At the same time, three wrestlers (Kofi Kingston, Big E and Xavier Woods) have been put together in a group with a kind of gospel-soul-self-help gimmick despite having nothing at all in common. Except that they're black.

The New Day. They have so much in common.

That's one of the biggest problems with wrestling. Black wrestlers are put together because they're black. Or they're treated as interchangeable. Everybody else gets characters. Gets defined by something else.

Black wrestlers still regularly get defined by being black.

Strange as it may seem, I'm still a wrestling fan. But I want them to acknowledge the problem. I want them to stop showing wrestlers blacking up as if it's hilarious and not awful. I want them to start treating black wrestlers as individuals and not either grouped or interchangeable.

This can be owned, acknowledged and moved on. But the longer wrestling, and WWE in particular, pretends it's not been an issue, the more of an issue it's going to turn out to be.

On a similar note, if this interested you, I wrote about homophobia in wrestling a while ago. I'll have to complete the trilogy at some point and talk about their attitudes towards women...

The budget, Sky News and the BBC

If you haven't yet seen the advert for Sky's coverage of today's budget, it's unspeakably awful. And not just on the level that it's as creepy as anything I've seen. But because it represents something outright dangerous.

The advert uses the music "I've been thinking about you", as it shows various people of different ages, ethnicities and genders, as they perform all kinds of tasks, from lollipop ladies to parents to factory workers to bankers to... etc. Except all of these people have George Osborne's face superimposed on top of their own.

So far, so terrifying. And don't get me wrong - the advert is terrifying. You kind of get the idea that it's exactly how George Osborne views the world, in an even-more-disturbing Being John Malkovich kind of way.

It then ends with the tagline "He's been thinking about you" and promises live coverage of the budget on Sky News. Obviously, when you see this, your first thought is of a malevolent kind of Santa Claus figure, who is drawing up a naughty and nice list, except everybody on it is naughty unless they're rich, and instead of coal, he just turns up in your bedroom at the stroke of midnight with an axe.

But it's not the strangeness of the advert, the ineptness of the advert, or the sheer hair-raising terror of the advert that's stuck with me. It's something far more insidious.

Look at how this positions the budget and Osborne himself.

"He's been thinking about you."

This is a thoughtful budget. A budget in which our chancellor has put himself into as many people's metaphorical shoes as possible. One in which he's thought about what each person and each job needs.

And this is a chancellor that is thinking about people of different ages, ethnicities and genders. A chancellor that's genuinely tried to understand each person and their struggles.

It positions it as a thoughtful, considered budget. And it also positions it, naturally, as the right budget. Because it's thoughtful. Because it's considered. And because good old George Osborne has worked long and hard to think about the implications for each person.

This is a news advert, and it promises all the hard journalistic challenge and insight of a slow, soft candle-lit massage.

It's attempted propaganda. It positions Osborne in a specific way, and it positions the budget in a specific way, before it's even been published.

And now let's remember Osborne, just this week, outright attacking the BBC, on the basis that it needs to have its budget cut considerably. Why? Because it's online capabilities means that it's in danger of monopolising the competitive space with newspaper websites.

Obviously, some of those newspapers are owned by Rupert Murdoch. In a similar way that Sky News is. And Murdoch has clear motive to want rid of the BBC.

So, in the same week that Osborne threatens the very existence of the BBC, Sky News puts out an advert for the budget that is more an advert for the thoughtful nature of George Osborne.

This, to me, shows why we need the BBC. Why we need an independent news broadcaster. Because as much as I've sometimes wished that the BBC would be more critical of the government, they've never quite been part of a circle-jerk like this while pretending that it's about independent coverage.

The news and the government should not be quite this chummy.

London Wanderings #8 - Boston wanderings and local pride

I was recently lucky enough to be sent to Boston for a few days with work. It was my first time in America, and I wanted to try to make the most of it. After a long flight and a hectic first day, it was tempting to crash in my hotel, and not go further than the restaurant.

Instead, I took a walk. I just picked a direction and started off for a while. This is something I like to do in a new city. At least once, don’t consult any maps or GPS, but rely on your own sense of direction to see what’s around.

I ended up in a bar – the Beantown Pub, which did good grilled cheese sandwiches and better beer. It was dark, but welcoming, with baseball on the TVs and a nice thick bar, where I sat reading for a while. After a little while, I got chatting to a woman there, and we talked about London and Boston for a while.

I’d been told by a few people when I first got there that Bostonians had a reputation for being… let’s say ‘brusque’. But in my time there, I found everybody I spoke to was pleasant, talkative and polite. As the woman I was speaking to explained it, “If you act like a dick, people will treat you like a dick. But if you’re nice to people, they’ll treat you really well”.

I tend to think it’s a similar story in London. I don’t think it’s that people are intrinsically rude – it’s that there are just more people. Someone close to me was worried about visiting London, due to the occasional seizures she had. “What would happen if I had a seizure on the underground?”

It’s an understandable concern. When you’re around that many people, it can be difficult sometimes to see the good. The unpleasant or uncaring people stand out more. The person who asked me about people on the underground was worried that she would be ignored, or stepped over, or pushed out of the way. As it happens, I’ve been on the tube when people have collapsed before. And every time, someone has helped out.

You get more arseholes in London. Definitely. But you get more of everyone. And you get more of the nice people too. The numbers are just bigger. And, again, if you act like a dick towards people, they’ll act like a dick right back. But if you treat people nicely…

My new friend back in the Boston bar also explained just how big a deal the Boston Marathon is. I mean, I’d heard of it, but I hadn’t realised just how big it was. The entire city stops for the day. It’s practically a holiday. It’s a source of immense pride. She told me about the time her brother ran it, with her eyes welling up with pride.

And she told me just how much the bomb at the Boston Marathon shook the city. How it took something right at the heart of the city and killed people, and made people afraid. And often, when people are afraid, they fall apart. Often when societies are afraid, they turn on each other.

But instead, in Boston, she described seeing people talking and taking care of each other everywhere. They were quiet, but they supported each other. They went to neighbours, or they stayed together at work, or they travelled together and they sat in bars together and took care of each other.

She said it made her proud to be from Boston.

Ten years ago today, bombs went off in London. I wasn’t here at the time – I was living up north for a short while, and working in a call centre in Tadcaster of all places (next door to the Sam Smith’s brewery).

I heard about the bombs through the television in the breakout area, and I watched, numbed for a moment. I contacted people who I knew, and checked in online to make sure my friends back in London were okay.

A colleague made comments to the others in the breakout area about it only being Londoners, and hoping they’d hurt a few of them, obviously in the hope of general laughter. But instead, everyone ignored them. Some of us were angry. But after some awkward and angry silence, she just left quietly.

Along with general human empathy, she misunderstood something about London. And something about Londoners (and I’m sorry to those who think otherwise, but I’m of the opinion that if you live here and you love the place, you count). And  it’s a similar thing to  the Boston pride.

We’re a busy city, and spend so much time looking at pavements and travelling in packed tube carriages, face-first in someone else’s armpit, that it can sometimes seem that empathy is in short supply in London.

But if you look online, you’ll read many people’s stories about how they came together with neighbours and colleagues and friends. In work and in pubs and in the streets and at home. You’ll hear about how they looked out for each other and how they came together. Just like they did other times they were attacked or made frightened, by bombs or riots or threats.

It’s something I love about cities like London and Boston, and one of the things that I generally love about people.

When you attack people, they come together and support each other and look out for each other and even love each other.

That’s what makes cities like this feel like home.

Love wins. Humanity wins. People win. Even in loss, even in fear and even in grief.