Slapstick violence and its special place in our hearts

I went to see The Expendables II last week. I did roll my eyes a good deal, even in the first ten minutes, to the derision of my other half (“Just because I film doesn’t have subtext doesn’t mean it isn’t any good.” Yes it does.)  However soon I was laughing. Not at the script which is mostly bloody terrible. I was laughing at all the blood. There was so much of it. Scores of people died in much gore, gallons of the red stuff splashing everywhere; hilarious. It was probably due to the lack of subtext that my overactive brain began to search for something else to dissect. So I started to ponder on why it was that vast amounts of blood were making me laugh so much. Was it the sheer numbers in which these characters seemed to be dying? Was it the way they were dying? Was it because I knew they were only characters and therefore whether they lived or died didn’t matter?

It was that last question, and the separation from myself, sitting watching, and what was going on onscreen that interested me, because it gave me permission to laugh at what would have been a horrific scene if it had been real. It makes me wonder a bit about Romans and their gladiatorial spectacles or bizarre mass executions. Did they laugh at the people being disembowelled before them, or at the sheer amounts of blood, just as I laughed at the film? Or perhaps the layout of the amphitheatre acted for them the same way as the screen acted for me. Perhaps for them, the people dying where not people at all, separated by class and the distance of the theatre, they were ‘only’ gladiators, or ‘only’ slaves. At most they might be affected for a moment when a favoured or supported gladiator died, but they would be more likely to laugh than cry at the sight of a criminal who had just had his arm ripped off by a lion, running away from the same lion in an attempt not to make up more of the animal’s dinner. It’s the Black Knight syndrome, isn’t it, that famous Monty Python sketch where the protagonist has had all his limbs cut off, and is still hilarious in a blood spurting, darkly comic way.

There are various differing tastes in humour across the globe, but it says something about us that as a race we universally find slapstick violence funny. However it is reassuring to know that the proportion of violence to humour has probably decreased. To give you one example of medieval humour; Edward I was riding behind one unfortunate member of his retinue who fell off his horse and injured himself quite badly. The King laughed heartily. The man got back up, and rode on, only to fall off again, in exactly the same way, injuring himself still further. Edward I roared with laughter and gave the man a good deal of money as a reward for being the butt of such a good joke. Which is just as well because they lived in a time when a broken arm could often lead to an amputation, so at least the poor chap could have something to live on, even if he ended his days somewhat incapacitated.

At least nowadays we use actors rather than real people to act out our gorey comic tendencies because it occurs to me that if we ignored those tendencies we would be lying to ourselves. Much better to admit it, but unlike our Medieval forebears, go to help a fallen person up and then laugh at them when they are essentially ok, rather than laugh while they bleed to death, Roman style.

It makes me wonder where our sanitisation of comic savagery will lead us in the future, when there is a possibility we will be even more civilized and even more sanitized – will action films be banned? Will our future selves point and condemn us for being savage just as we point to our medieval ancestors and they in turn would have accused the ancient ‘heathen’ Romans for being barbaric?

I’m honestly not sure, not being clairvoyant (if there is such a thing.) Meanwhile I think I am going to take the advice of my other half and stop reading into simple things like action films, where there definitely isn’t any subtext. Just watch the film and laugh at the unrealistic body count.

The why behind the magpie

Recently the news broke that the post box painted gold to mark Andy Murray’s success as Olympic tennis champion had to be repainted. Apparently residents of Dunblane, where the post box is situated, have been chipping off sections of the gold paint to keep as mementos of the local hero’s achievement, to the extent that little of the original paint remained. Clearly one person had the idea and then several other residents joined in. At one point there was probably a queue, as there is outside a cinema. Were paint chipping tools shared or did each person bring their own? How long did the post box take to strip? It must have been done pretty quickly, before anyone with the post box’s welfare in mind noticed, and what an odd scene it must have been. However, it is a story that chimes exactly with the national obsession with souvenirs, whatever their shape or form.

The British have a history of collecting unusual items as souvenirs of a momentous event. On the coronation of Elizabeth I the carpet she walked on in her procession to Westminster Abbey was demolished by members of the public looking to take a piece of it home as a keepsake. It was relatively common for people to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of victims they had just seen executed, a ‘one for the family album’ syndrome, much in the way that we might buy a programme after a performance, or keep a ticket from a gig. One wonders what they did with the handkerchiefs afterwards. Was there a wall of tiny hooks, neatly catalogued? It is strange to think back to an age where whipping out a bloody handkerchief in a social situation was acceptable, even encouraged. However, a piece of a carpet and a section of gold paint aren’t exactly worlds apart. Perhaps it was reassuring or even a signal of restraint that at the Royal Wedding the happy couple were left with anything to walk over when they left the service. But the British penchant for unusual keepsakes is still alive and well in certain respects – specially designed sick bags were sold in large numbers to mark the Royal Wedding, or rather to mark the aversion some people had to its saccharine elements.

It’s not just gold paint that is the object of avarice. Street signs are often the subject of many a despairing council meeting. Beetles fans, it would seem, are particularly prone to stealing signs. The ‘Penny Lane’ sign has been the object of frequent theft. Similarly the ‘Abbey Road’ sign was often stolen until it was mounted high up, and out of reach. Presumably there is a certain prestige to running off with such an ungainly, and almost branded souvenir, something that other people will immediately recognise. Rather like the student who steals a traffic cone on a night out, and then displays it proudly in their house for the rest of the year, as a strange sort of signal to other students that might see it, an ‘I am fun’ reminder.

But the appeal of the gold paint is more in line with the appeal of a shell picked up from a beach on holiday, completely meaningless without the history behind it. Perhaps it is part of a quirkiness that is so British, the ‘what random thing can I collect that has a good story’ factor. Because we do love a good story. The stories we can tell about our lives are a reflection of who we are, and the items we collect that have value, not in themselves but in connection with the event they relate to will naturally reflect on us. Grabbing keepsakes is grabbing a stake in the action, it’s associating ourselves with it.

Not that I am condoning the vandalising of an innocent post box you understand, only pointing out how what might seem like a strange story on first glance, isn’t in fact so strange after all. However I won’t be chipping away at my nearest post box, or rustling any famous signs for the simple reason that the random things I keep remind me of landmarks in my life, rather than other peoples’. I am the proud possessor of several ticket stubs, many programmes, and even two keys to a flat where I lived in Bologna. The only reason I can think of that I insist on keeping these things is the hope that in those twilight years, where heavy living has got the better of me, I can open a folder stuffed with remembrances and use them to recall exactly what I got up to in my misspent youth.

The Olympic Opening Ceremony – who cares if you’re a ‘leftie’ or not?!

So now along with class distinction we have another distinction in Britain; did you like the Olympic Opening Ceremony or didn’t you, or rather, did you think that it was ‘leftie,’ socialist or a downright manifesto for the Labour Party?

It seems that if, like me, you liked the ceremony and didn’t really notice its ‘leftie’ connotations, you are branded as someone who will automatically vote labour in the next election, and that you endorse the spectacle as an vote winner for Ed Milliband. This is mainly due to the fact that the Industrial Revolution, that symbol of British ingenuity and achievement, was depicted in the Opening Ceremony as a bad thing, apparently. Really? While it is true that the actors playing mill owners looked on as soot stained dancers fled out of smoking dens that resembled a scene from Dante’s Inferno, I would have pegged this as stylised, but never the less realistic. The many did make the few richer. That’s not being socialist, that’s just a fact. Thousands of people died young in dreadful conditions in the Victorian equivalent of sweat shops; conditions so bad that after a period of reform successive laws were passed, with the result that working conditions were improved. Another fact. Is it really so terribly leftie to think that a realistic portrayal of the bad as well as the good, in a period that made Britain powerful, is so very bad?

But beyond this, those who make black and white political statement for or against the ceremony are missing the fundamental point; the portrayal of a black, flaming, hellish Industrial Revolution eating up and rising out of a countryside idyll is fundamentally British. Look at the art of the period, the soft depictions of rolling hills harking back to an England that seems to be slipping away. Factories are either drawn clinically and factually to show exactly what worked where, or as smoky, mysterious, often in red or orange hues but never in a positive light. The Opening Ceremony echoed these visuals perfectly.

 

Similarly there is British literature that expound this view. Hardy continually harps on about the lost traditions of a fading countryside with eldery Wessexians ruminating about the time of their grandparents. In a less wistful and more practical tone, George Elliot also  questions the values behind ‘progress.’ Even Tolkien picks up this theme, contrasting rural Hobbiton with the industrial nightmare created and represented by Saruman, a nightmare that the hobbits have to overcome twice in order to return Isengard, then their own home to its natural state of peaceful countryside.

Whether it was meant as a political manifesto or affirmation or not (I think not) on an occasion that is supposed to be about sport, can’t we just concentrate on the er…sport? The Olympics was founded to bring nations from all over the world together in the united desire to celebrate sporting talent. Let’s just do that shall we? I’m off to watch the synchronised diving.

 

 

 

Is the past tense really past it?

I’m not sure where it started. Whether it began in the written word and spread onto the radio. Or did it begin in radio or television news commentary programmes, where journalists want to bring home the vividness of the situations they are reporting? Or was it brought to the forefront with the advent of rolling, 24 hour news, the need for continual update to support the fast paced New York minute society in which we now live? Whatever it is, the present tense is now beloved of both creative writers and reporters, in fact it is beloved by everyone and used instead of the humble past, which has now been all but obliterated by the flexible present.Everything has to be done now. There is no such thing as waiting a few days, or the understanding of the phrase ‘in the fullness of time.’ It would appear therefore that this has been reflected in language. Yet in colloquial language, the past has been ignored in favour of the present for a long time. “He comes in and he says to me…so I ask her, what does she think, and she says…” Immediacy. The point being that the shift in tense is supposed to give you, the listener, the feeling that you are there. In this case it has nothing to do with a fast paced society. It’s just to resurrect the story from the realms of the past. Italians love the present tense – instead of using I am going, they simply use I go, and this also applies to certain aspects of the past tense as well. Yet they are not a nation that demands immediacy. In fact they have no concept of time as we, in English speaking west do. On the contrary, to the credit of the Italians, they very much adhere to the concept that why do something now, when you can do it later?

My personal hunch is that the increased popularity of the present has less to do with a desire to move things on, more a wish to increase empathy. By making the scene more immediate you pull people into it, you make it seem as if they were there, experiencing all the emotions that you want to draw their attention to by placing them actually in the scene, rather than directing their attention to it from the outside, from the safe distance of time. I enjoy writing in the present for exactly those reasons. So far I have limited my use of the present tense to one short story in a forthcoming small collection of short stories that is going to be appearing soon called Eye of the Beholder. In a story set in the mythical past, I used the present tense and loved using it because it somehow felt so much more poetic and suited the whimsical, almost dreamlike feel I wanted the story to have. Originally I experimented by mixing up tenses as I slipped in and out of the minds of the characters in my first book Fables and Forgotten Thoughts. But in the end I abandoned my experiments in favour of making the narrative flow, for fear that if I left it the way I wanted it to be, the narrative would jar, for fear that the text wouldn’t work. As one of my kind and ever honest friends commented, “You might think it is awfully clever, and perhaps it is, but pity your poor reader. Sometimes I didn’t understand whose mind I was supposed to be in!” What I pared Fables down to was a neat more user friendly narrative, but I only ever used the present for speech and people’s thoughts, and only ever with the disclaimer of ‘he thought,’ ‘she mused,’ ‘he exclaimed,’ ‘she murmured.’ My narrative obeys convention and sticks neatly to the confines of the past tense. Perhaps it was cowardice on my part, a desire to get it right, to not alienate the reader, a worry that my experiments with narrative consciousness would not work, would simply be bad writing, leaving confusion and frustration in their wake, rather than giving my audience the character understanding that I wanted them to have.  I can’t decide whether this decision was cowardice or prudence. Perhaps I could cheekily suggest you read the novel and find out?

Give and take

One drunken night I found myself at a pub called the Tap and Spile, which was open all night in the days before 24 hour pub licensing (though I never found out how, or why.) I found myself wedged next to a man who had obviously decided there was a familial connection between himself and John Lennon, or perhaps he had been stuck on some sort of trip since about the year 1972 and only just come out of it; either way he looked like the throwback from the sixties that he so obviously was, dressed in a long green smock, round, ill fitting glasses that were the only memorable feature of his face, and open toed, worn leather sandals. He claimed he had lived in a commune in Croatia and just got back to the UK after two months hitching his way back through Europe, mainly sleeping under the stars using his rucksack as a pillow. He had a long list of ideals rather than ideas. One was that we should all be bartering rather than using money. But he couldn’t grasp that the unadulterated ideals of the sixties were long gone, those students that stood in fields during the first festivals were now in charge of banks and insurance companies and were the politicians at the heart of the system, rather than outside it.

Bartering has now grown up and moved on in a post boom, recession ridden age; the ‘Swap Shop’ has emerged and is more popular than ever. It combines recycling and even supersedes the desire for a bargain that is popular in most people, by being completely free. You simply turn up with something you don’t want, and leave with something you do, or more usually with something that you didn’t realise that you wanted but have taken a shine to anyway. It’s great, like shopping but without the guilt of overspending, or indeed spending at all, but with all the thrill of picking up something new. While I was enjoying myself selecting items of clothing to take home, I caught myself wishing that this ‘Swap Shop’ principle could be applied to everything, but immediately I was reminded of that misguided man in the pub who couldn’t quite understand the impracticalities and problems presented by the bartering system. What would you swap for a house, for example? Or in fact anything larger or more expensive than a coffee table?

You see, I once again realised that I am well and truly of a different generation, a generation born in the eighties and nineties, post idealism, post disillusionment, I belong to the realistic generation, one of ideals certainly, but one with the desire and the practicality to attempt to realise them. Unlike our fathers and mothers we know that any protests we organise won’t work, but it doesn’t stop us having a go anyway: idealism with a practical edge. The Swap Shop epitomises this – recycling but with a hint of self indulgence, it persuades you to donate things rather than just throw them away, but it also gives you the incentive of free stuff, a little reward. And why not? It’s better to be realistic and implement a change in attitude that way, than expect everyone to become individual paragons of ecological, ethical virtue over night, and with no incentive.

So I urge you to go and find your nearest Swap Shop. I go to one that takes place every month at ORT Cafe, 500-506 Moseley Road, Birmingham, next event 10th March 12.00-16.30. If you can’t find a Swap Shop, why not start your own?

The solution to national gloom: Carnevale?

When I lived in Italy I loved the fact that during the most miserable months of the year, in most parts of the country it was customary to celebrate ‘Carnevale,’ that festival made famous by the Venetians and their masks. While the sheer hedonism of this might have become more muted over the years, and in Venice the masked balls are frequented by more Americans and Japanese than Italians, the idea still remains and carnival parties are thrown all over Italy and to my mind this is a really excellent practice. The darker and viler the weather, the more important it is to make lots of noise, enjoy oneself, and have fun, to follow the primal urge to keep the darkness at bay. What better way to do this than to don a mask and a outlandish costume, get together with some friends and toast away the dark with shared and often experimentally mixed alcoholic beverages?

You would have thought that the UK would have embraced this idea by now, particularly with the state of national gloom that clogs up the streets and lanes of this country at the moment. We are a nation that needs some light relief. Yes, I know that we have some big celebrations coming up this summer in the shape of the Jubilee and the Olympics, but rather than spending millions of pounds, what could be better than just making a mask?! Having a simple excuse for diversion rather than endless debates about the cost of both events on every media channel, so that no matter how hard we try not to think about it, there is always at the very least a small tinge of outrage at the strains that will be placed on the public purse, which gets in the way of any enjoyment we might actually feel when the Jubilee and the Olympics finally arrive. What we need is guilt free light relief.

It is often the case that times of most unease breed the most hedonistic parties, as if deliberate enjoyment were as much of a reaction as a protest. I have to confess that I would rather be dancing the night away as a big and general two fingers up at circumstance than trudging through the streets of London trying not to be kettled, (which I gather is an occupational hazard for the committed protester these days.) If we look at evidence from the time, the Ancient Romans, particularly those from the patrician or upper classes knew how to throw a good party, yet apart from Vespasian, I struggle to think of a single emperor who died of natural causes, and the constant political upheaval must have been exhausting to those involved as they dodged about trying not to be be killed, impoverished or just forgotten. That’s an extreme example of course, but in the same vein 1930s Berlin, the setting for ‘Cabaret’ and city known for its hedonism, was also a city plagued by fear and unease. Even more recently the illegal raves and parties of the early nineties drew thousands of ravers, who danced in a climate of recession unemployment and riots similar to the downturn of today.

So come on Britain, where is your zest for life? We need a general upturn in national mood to battle against the atmosphere of depression prevalent at the moment. Yes, the weather is crap, yes we are all poor, yes we don’t trust anyone from politicians to newspaper journalists to NHS workers, but all the more reason to get on our party shoes and no matter what age or sex we are, do what we all do best in this country: carry on regardless, make the best of everything and have a damn good laugh. Let’s create our own Carnevale.

Could the secret drug of ‘Limitless’ be inspired by coffee?

Napoleon loved it, Voltaire was addicted to it, drinking 50 cups a day and it is better on the continent. These are just a few facts about a substance beloved by many: coffee. I myself am a huge fan. Ever since I lived in Italy and started drinking the ‘hard stuff’ so different from the expensive drool served out by chains that dominate the UK. To me coffee is more than just a drink, it is fuel. I would actually say that some of my better creative ideas are a result of its influence, which does worry me slightly. Voltaire’s predilection for the stuff suddenly doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous after all.

For those of you who haven’t seen the film ‘Limitless’, the premise is that a drug is discovered that enables the consumer to use all aspects and parts of the brain. I have a theory that there is a division within our minds between conscious knowledge that we can access relatively easily, and unconscious knowledge that is in our minds, notwithstanding the fact that we are not aware that we possess it.  The trick is trying to tap into that source, and coffee certainly helps out there.

Admittedly, while each person’s tolerance of it is different, it is used by most to force alertness on a sluggish and unsuspecting brain. Some people just like the high. If you’ve never been affected by coffee, you’ve never had the good stuff. It gets you going as it contains a selection of different stimulants including corsetone and adrenaline which stimulates a ‘fight or flight’ response. The most obvious and well known stimulant in coffee is of course caffine. Sedation or sleep is caused in the brain when a neurotransmitter called adenosine binds to its receptor; caffine blocks these receptors, making it impossible to feel as tired, increasing activity levels by altering a natural process in the brain. Perhaps it is that alert feeling that is the answer to unlocking any creative block I might be going through at the time. For the scientists out there, you can read more here.

Caffine is not only a stimulant but a psycoactive drug. Just to put that in perspective, so are amphetamines and cocaine. It certainly goes a long way into explaining the correlation between increased verve for life in those counties with decent coffee, in compaison with countries where coffee isn’t a part of the culture. Where does the best coffee come from? Places like Brazil, Java, Colombia, places known for passions that rival their warm weather; a Milton Keynes blend just wouldn’t have the same ring to it. Our passions are very different over here, perhaps that is why we have traditionally adopted tea as a favoured drink instead; just enough caffine for a gentle buzz, but heaven forbid that we should actually get fired up about anything as a result of something a bit stronger. Not before 6pm anyway. Yet we are some of the most enthusiastic drinkers in the world. Strange.

Coffee then, apparently possess powers above and beyond normal drinks, superpowers that even alcohol, with all its devoted fans cannot aspire to. Its chemical make up goes a good way to explaining why it has inspired me on so many occasions. So if coffee actually has the power to alter the processes of the brain what does this mean for those people who drink it, people like me? If I didn’t drink coffee would my capacity for ideas shrivel and halve? Should I be worried about this? Or does coffee just access ideas that would appear eventually, only more slowly?

Do you know what? I don’t care. I have to say, I owe a good deal of my first book ‘Fables‘ to inspiration brought on by 1 euro double machiatto at my local cafe when I lived in Bologna, so sod it. I am sure I am not on my own by admitting that I have a lot to thank coffee for, while being aware of its potency. There is nothing quite like a well blended cup of the stuff, particularly at this time of year when it is grey and quite frankly despicably uninspiring outside. After all, all the best things in life are bad for you to one degree or another.

Forgetting the obvious.

News was revealed recently that stated that degeneration of the brain can begin as young as 45, rather than at the age of 60 as was previously thought. However, scientists agree that the risk of dementia can be reduced by healthy eating, not smoking and keeping blood pressure and cholesterol levels down. This is nothing new of course. In any article about super centenarians, the subjects (who have invariably hit the age of 109 plus) are asked to share the secret of maintaining their mental faculties at old age. They generally answer that they manage it by staying active and eating plain/healthy food. This is more radical than it might sound. Until recently we lived in a ‘doctor will solve everything’ age, where no matter what our maladies, we felt we could go to the doctor for a wonder drug and everything would be fine. Now the onus is on ourselves to keep active and to eat healthily, part of a new ‘do it yourself’ revolution, a movement away from the idea that a doctor or someone with a ‘professional’ status could always prescribe a little something to sort out the problems we have brought upon ourselves. Nearly everywhere you look in health news stories, you will find that the risks of suffering from the malady under discussion can be substantially reduced with healthy eating and exercise. It is all very much centred on the self, the power is within the individual.

This translates to other fields as well. Never has it been easier to make a name for yourself in, say, music, as you don’t have to go through the hallowed barriers of an often clique-ish record industry to produce a record any more, you can just record and mix one yourself, publicise it yourself and find vendors for it yourself. It is hard work, but possible. The same can be said for writing of course. The internet has made it possible for me to whiter away to you from the boundaries of relative obscurity, to reach people I have never met, and hopefully use this blog to get my work ‘out there.’ Despite the recession there is a new optimism amongst some circles, the idea that anyone can make something of themselves, the ‘do it yourself revolution’ where you can sort your health out, sort your career out, sort your life out, all by yourself.

If it is that easy, why aren’t more people doing it? Why don’t we live in a nation of innovative small businesses, and why aren’t we all toned, smiling, and smashing our way through brain teaser puzzles and foreign languages, even into our seventies? Why do we have such high levels of obesity, of unemployment? Perhaps the answer is a general lack of motivation and behind this the high number of struggling households and the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Department of Work and Pensions, in 2009/10, 22 per cent of working-age adults (7.9 million) were in households in the UK with incomes below 60 per cent of the national average after housing costs. When struggling with money, the reality is that maintaining a healthy lifestyle and enforcing it in children is going to be a mountain of a task. The last thing to be considered in this ciruumstance is setting up a small business or changing eating habits. With so many in difficulty, motivation goes into continuing with every day life, rather than necessarily taking risks to improve it. Paradoxically in this time of recession it is both hardest to find the motivation to change for the better and more necessary to do so. What better way to solve unemployment than creating new jobs? But what more difficult a time to set up a business than in a recession, when money is tight anyway? So much for the ‘keeping active’ part of the anti brain degeneration mantra.

What about the healthy eating part? This is arguably even more important, particularly in light of the fact that the population is not only living longer, but also getting older. Perhaps it is the case that the problem of dementia and brain degeneration links to a deeper, more difficult problem in society, the link between bad diet and poverty. It would seem therefore, that it is not the rather obvious message of bad diet = bad health that needs to be promoted, but an attempt to reduce poverty and unemployment. Only then will the ‘do it yourself revolution’ flourish in all levels of society, and perhaps we will be able to hang on to our mental faculties a bit longer.

Chapter One.

Click here to download Chapter One of ‘Fables and Forgotten Thoughts,’ free.

The whole book will be available in the New Year from Amazon as an e-book.

Is writing a book a symptom of madness?

The idea of blogging is a new and slightly dangerous one for me, because so much nonsense goes through my head that I wonder if I can work out exactly what is interesting or coherent enough to write about. This could be risky.

I thought I would kick off by telling you about what the process of writing is like, or at least how it was for me. The most obvious thing I can think of to compare it to is madness. It is, for instance, quite normal to spend time babbling away to oneself about people that only exist in a made up region in the realms of imagination.

For me, writing is a need, a desire to share something that goes on internally and trying to fit it to what is going on in the world around you. Sympathetic friends give you the token five minutes listening time as you ramble on about your characters as if they were real, before you realise that the look in their eyes has become a mixture between a sort of glazed boredom and mild panic. To the relief of both of you, you change the subject. It is your duty, because although they would love to sympathise properly, nothing you talk about makes any sense until they have read the book, and paradoxically that is the last thing they are capable of doing until you’ve finished it. So for the most part you keep what you are doing to yourself.

The worst part of having to do this is that you are really never sure that what you are doing is any good. There is no point in soliciting an opinion until you have finished and can present a whole picture, but by then it will also be too late. What if the finished work is utter rubbish? You will have wasted at least a year, possibly more. So it is easy to see why many never get past the half way stage. By no means would I describe myself as confident, but I am obstinate. Extremely obstinate. So I have finished. The result? Well judge for yourself. I hope that you enjoy it, because I can honestly say that my highest aim is to entertain. And you will give me an excuse to call my madness ‘creativity’.