Blowing away the cobwebs - new beginnings?

Wonderful weekend away. We registered our wedding on Friday morning at Woolwich Town hall and then spent Friday afternoon travelling down to and then moseying round Rye stocking up on supplies – the dearth of fizzy water down there is becoming something of a problem. Saturday was Hastings (again!) on the beach and in the Old Town and Sunday was a lazy day in Rye doing our usual haunts. Perfect.

Got red eye train back to London this morning and have been mulling something over all day. The thing is, I have started to feel like a ghoul. It started gradually but I had weaned myself off some of my worst habits over the last few years and was quite pleased that I had made progress. I used to occasionally buy gossip mags and red-top newspapers as an indulgence, but have long since given that habit up. I still flick through a News of The World when I can, but never pay hard cash. I also still log on to the Daily Hate Mail website at work but that too seemed casual. I was kidding myself but I thought that watching trash from time to time helped show that whilst I’m in touch with things, know the names of celebrities and the latest scandals etc, I’m not an actual full-on consumer of such filth. Reality is, I am rubbernecking and watching with mouth wide open and a look of distaste as if I am somehow better for being a bystander than a participant. I am not better than any of the people who buy armloads of Hellos and OKs and settle down to Britain’s got Talent of a Saturday eve. I am like an alcoholic trying to kid themselves that one wee drink isn’t a relapse, and can honestly say that I am heartily sick of myself.

I had a think about the hours that I must have wasted spectating rather than doing. The time I spend reflecting on other lives, dissing them, sneering at and criticising others, voyeuristically charting progress and claiming to be keeping abreast of current affairs. Ha! It’s a sham and I know it.

Friday night was the turning point. K had gone to bed and, rather than join him, I decided to channel hop until I was really tired. Truth be told I could have gone to bed with him but have got used to what I call my ‘guilty pleasure time’ - from when he goes to bed for about another hour or so - , when I can indulge myself and watch pure trash. My pleasure is therefore at the expense of other peoples’ misery. K got up to get a glass of water and I was glued to Sky News, spectating on the gore-fest surrounding the capture of Raoul Moat. When I told him excitedly that they were showing live footage his reaction was the opposite of mine. As he pointed out, watching a mentally ill man choose decide whether or not to commit suicide ought not to be entertainment. I was shocked – not at his comment but at how I’d been sucked in to the whole thing to the point that I could no longer divorce my own delight at seeing the coverage from my equal amount of puzzlement that the locals should describe the town as having a carnival atmosphere whilst Sky news explained their helicopter wasn’t up due to a flying exclusion zone. My heart was telling me this was wrong – a man is on the brink of killing himself and potentially others and the Sky anchors are grinning like it’s the final of big brother – and yet my head was telling me to keep watching it as it was ‘gripping.

K went back to bed and I was left to think about this. It was and still feels totally wrong, but at the time I had no concept of this fact. That is not to suggest that I consider myself innocent in the whole episode. I knew full well what I was doing but had clearly buried all the moral concerns such news raises. I was too keen to indulge myself to think about it. OJ Simpson being pursued by the LA Police Force struck me as sick, at the time. Why was this not even more disgusting to view? Had I really become so divorced from such events as to consider them entertainment now?

I am not about to solve this dilemma today, but I will have to return to the subject again because something has to change. I can’t carry on as I currently am, sneaking a peak at the ‘news’ before discussing it in depth with friends and colleagues whilst still claiming to know nothing. It’s deceptive, duplicitous and devious. Either I am a consumer of these things or I am not. Like everything I do I need to be proud of it, or not do it at all. The minute that shame comes into the equation then something is very, very wrong.