Where are all the good female characters?

A little while ago, I downloaded Amazon Prime.  I was pretty much forced to - Amazon offered me a free trail and I forgot to cancel before they loaded €50 onto my Mastercard.  These are the perils of having an account in a language you don't properly speak yet!  Unfortunately you really do need to use Amazon.de when you live in Germany - using the .co.uk version only precipitates extra delivery charges, and there isn't a magic button you can press to have it all appear in English.  

It all worked out ok though, as despite the fact that most of the shows are in German, there's still a good proportion of them that appear in their original version, or "OV".  There are loads of things actually, and they're adding to the list all the time.  I was disappointed not to find Mad Men or Community under the list of shows that I could watch without paying extra, but had heard good things about Breaking Bad, so decided to give that a go.  Which...... pretty much put paid to the next two months of my life, as I developed a dependence in no time at all.  Wow - what a piece of work that show is.  Its Wikipedia page describes it as being "considered one of the best television shows of all time" and it is a well-deserved assessment.  I was going through my Mad Men and Game of Thrones stage when everyone was watching Breaking Bad, and I wish someone had told me about it!  The writing, the story, the character development, the conflicts, the acting - even just the concept is quite brilliant.  We've been told lately that we're going through a Golden Age of television, and with shows like these it's easy to see why.  It seems that have eschewed the tired cops and robbers/doctors and nurses/legal formats, and now we have mould-breaking, unique stories about seemingly real people with real conflicts and flaws.  Mad Men is similar - you won't find "New York period drama about advertising" in the Little Golden Book of Television Clichés either, and along with other intelligent programming like House of Cards, House and the afore-mentioned Game of Thrones, the claim has been made that we've finally grown up as audiences and are watching more nuanced, sophisticated storylines with more realistic, flawed characters.  Thank God.  We have the Sopranos to thank for it, apparently.    

And yet!  

The other day, to my intense regret, I ran out of Breaking Bad.  Along with everyone else who has seen it, my head exploded with the brilliance of the last episode and the sheer poetry of it all.  I watched and re-watched the last ten minutes or so over and over, read about the development of the series, learnt about the choice of final song for the closing stages, saw interviews with the actors online, and pretty much did all the things that sad, pathetic people who are hooked on a tv show do when they can't let go.  It seemed like I would never quite be the same again, but after the appropriate mourning period I set about trying to find something else to become worryingly addicted to.  I'd probably had my fill of harrowing violence and plot twists for awhile, so decided to try "Alpha House" - a light, fluffy sitcom about the Republican Party, which surpassed expectations despite the fact that I got bored of it midway through the second season.  I went looking for something a little more substantial earlier this week however, and had quite a lot to choose from.  In the 24 hours or so following a return from a really intense tour, normally premium time for me to put my eyes on screen-saver and take in as many films and tv shows as I can, I tried in no particular order, "The Man In The High Castle" (definitely promising), "Vikings" (up and down), "Transparent" (weird), and "Secret Diary of a Call-Girl" (meh).  Eventually I decided I might want to try some legalise though, and tried both "Damages" and "The Good Wife".  They both had good casts (Damages stars Glenn Close for instance) and are both clearly aimed at a female market, and I thought that along with my Facebook feed they might contribute to further rounding out of my slovenly male personality and dragging me just that little bit more out of the patriarchy.  Much of the above television that I've seen stars male and female characters, but men were invariably the main pro/antagonists - it would be good to see what female characters could do in hard-hitting drama.  

If you haven't seen either of them, here's a brief summary.  The Good Wife: a lawyer turned housewife is forced to return to the profession to support her family after her State Attorney husband is accused of sleeping with prostitutes on the government purse.  Damages: a hotshot young female law graduate accepts a position with a prestigious New York law firm, and becomes the protégée of the ruthless, manipulative senior partner.  Not bad to start with, huh?  Plenty of room for conflict, twists and turns and general character study, right?  Well.  

Unfortunately I was met with a big, fat bunch of cliché and total lack of plausibility.  Some of it was basic television cliché (everyone in The Good Wife boasts model-esque good looks and wardrobes, even the people that work in the call centre for strippers in the second episode), but perhaps more alarmingly, a lot of it was motivated from a sexual politics standpoint that verged on the downright irresponsible, if not just really boring.  Here's a brief run-down, taken from only the first couple of episodes and a bit of forward reading in the episode guides:

  

- Damages: the young protégée is never really seen to do any real work and always has time for her family and friends, despite the fact that she'd be expected to pump out an eight-day week and take loads of work home with her  

- Both: the protagonists have the ears of senior partners and play major parts in important cases from the outset of the show, desipte the likelihood (particularly in Damages) that they would start in very junior positions 

- Both: the bad guys are always men and they always lose, no matter how much money they've got and how many platinum gold lawyers they're toting.  This is taken to extremes in only the second episode of The Good Wife when the plaintiff, an achingly glamorous rape victim, turns down a $450,000 settlement on a point of principle for a crime she can't prove 

- The Good Wife: despite her husband being caught literally with his pants down, our herione Stands By Her Man with only token moments of anger at his obvious and public betrayal.  Her house is also always immaculate and her kids are perfect angels - insert "domestic Goddess" cliché here

- Damages: despite her Ivy League education, it is revealed that the protégée is from a working-class background, 'cos y'know, that's where all New York corporate lawyers come from.        

..... I could go on.  

So much of what has been impressive about shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad is that the characters are "real" people.  In some cases they're anti-heroes, who do frankly horrible things.  Don Draper is a sexist, selfish, philandering alcoholic and a bully.  Walter White is a ruthless, violent killer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, no matter the collateral damage to his family and those around him.  These are bad men!  And yet we love them for all the horror they bring to proceedings, just as we loved Tony Soprano.  Finally we see that the messages television shows are bringing is not delivered on some pink cloud where all the protagonists are nobly motivated.  Have we grown up on that basis, though?

I'm not so sure, because it seems to me that these characters are all men.  Yes, there are plenty of "supporting" female characters in these shows that could be described as being realistic, but when it comes to genuinely plot-hinging character studies with just enough darkness, evil and menace, it's the men who portray them, and carry the shows on that basis.  We like these men because we believe in them, but we also like them because we're afraid of them.  Where are the female equivalents?  

What disappointed me so much about The Good Wife and Damages is that we saw women cast in pivotal, leading roles who were still playing the part of the "perfect" woman - or the perfect "modern" woman, at least.  The characters have it all - looks, carriage, money, great careers, power and influence, but tellingly, active and rewarding personal lives and families which they seem to maintain with ease.  They are shown in moments of domestic harmony and social and romantic bliss, and they never have an angry or impatient word for anyone, despite carrying what would be incredibly demanding workloads and working long hours.  These are women who have broken the glass ceiling perhaps a little more easily than you would expect.  We already know how difficult that is, but witness the other elements of their stories - the facile way that they're both employed, the responsibilities that are handed to them so early in their tenures, the Cinderella-story rises to influence so soon after being hired.  Answer me seriously - do women actually believe this crap?  

Maybe I'm being over-critical, though - we all like a bit of fantasy after all.  I have more concerns, though.  What frustrates me most about both of these shows is that they masquerade as feminist pieces about powerful strong women, when the opposite couldn't be more true.  Both our protagnonists are passengers, if not actual victims.  The storylines happen to them, not the other way around.  The Good Wife is forced to return to professional life after her husband publicly misbehaves, and has to deal with his rival trying to trip her up every step of the way.  She also only seems to represent women, who are also vicitims, invariably of male bad behaviour, who often seek solace from her on the basis that "she knows what it feels like".  The character in Damages is flung head-long into a maelstrom of greed, ambition, organised crime and violence when all she wanted was to augment her already already perfect life with a cushy job in a law firm.  At no stage that I have seen do either of either of these characters ever really take charge - the entire premise of the shows are that they are victims of circumstance, and inevitably, male lust and greed.  By contrast, television audiences all over the world can't get enough of chemistry teachers leading criminal double-lives, wildly hedonistic advertising executives, drug-addicted, sociopathic doctors holding entire hospitals to ransom, and forensic scientists who are vigilante serial killers in their spare time, all of whom make life-changing, devil-may-care decisions at every turn, because that's what men do.   

I don't know about you, but I know what I'd rather watch!  

As far I'm concerned, this raises some interesting thoughts about the perception of men and women within the broader community.  In the past few years, discussions on topics such as wage inequality, rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, sexism and mysogyny, fat-shaming, revenge-porn, and cat-calling have become more and more common.  You could throw in the continued criticisms of male-dominated religious institutions as well.  This has also been conducted to the backdrop of an economic crisis that (certainly if you're European) just doesn't seem to want to go away, which has affected everyone's lives on the basis of the banking sector's greed and mis-management.  It has become more and more apparent that when the world closes its eyes and thinks of the face of evil, the image that is brought to mind is one of a man, and a white man at that - something all these characters have in common.       

     

Is this why we're making television about male characters who are all bastards?  Who knows.  If so, it does seem rather ironic that the image of man has taken a beating, and what has transpired is some really good telly, and maybe even a pop-culture inspired carte blanche for men to behave even worse because that's what Don Draper would do.  Life does imitate art afer all.  It seems a shame however that the humble television show, one of our most ubiquitous and culturally influential art forms, continues to show women as largely cardboard cut-outs by comparison, even when it's clear that someone's making an effort.  Maybe we will only truly grow up when we are prepared to portray their flaws as well.  

Being Single

I'm single.  I have been for almost exactly three and a half years.  Late August 2011 to late(ish) January 2015.  This is approaching my personal record of three years eight months, which was set from December 2004 to July 2008.

Does it feel bad to look at it in such a stark "these are the vital statistics" sort of a way?  I don't know, but it certainly doesn't make for GOOD reading.  Comparing the two periods, there's no question that this one trumps the first, though - the first was pretty awful for the most part, with absolutely no rain at all for over three years of it until right towards the end care of a drunken snog with a friend.  I probably went on about three dates the entire time, all of which were awkward, truncated affairs, and I was shot down a LOT, sometimes in excrutiating circumstances by people I cared about, and I had all but given up hope of ..... anything, ever again, by the time something finally popped up.  

This time has been different, and there has been a good deal less bone-crunching loneliness, wishing my life was different, "wanting to wake up as a couple of other guys", as the line in the Bernstein musical goes.  That's not to say that it's been a picnic from start to finish - the relationship I was in left me pretty emotionally numb for probably at least two years, and there were some pretty dark days - dark days for any number of reasons above and beyond my relationship status, but dark days nonetheless.  What has changed however is that there has been a bit more precipitation here and there, a few dalliances with a few different young ladies, even if they only lasted for an evening or a night, in whatever form they happened to take.  There has definitely been enough there to tell me that I'm human, in a way that there wasn't the last time around.  

And yet, here I am - still single.    

If you allow it to, the world has a way of telling you that you're failing for any number of reasons, and it's pretty clear that if you're living a largely sexless life, that's going to be somewhere at the top of the list.  We still don't understand this stuff very well, but the nature of attainment, and having a partner, like you might "have" a pair of jeans is one of life's big rubber stamps.  Even if you're having a rotten time together, have nothing in common and fight like cats and dogs, being with someone is always seen as better than being alone, and somehow you're a better brand of human being if you can capture someone's attention for long enough to say that they're your partner.  Being "taken" trumps being single any day of the week.  Even those that are in unhappy relationships and secretly want out will attest to that - it's always a leap of faith to leave someone, because our biology tells us that we're better off with someone than alone.  Being single for lengthy periods of time marks you out as suspect, unattractive by definition, unwanted, a pariah - you only need to look at film, television and advertising to see that.  

How does that make me feel?  Well, not that great, but the key word at the start of that paragraph is "allow".  If you "allow" the world to tell you that you're failing at anything, you'll struggle with anything and everything - even if you're doing well, you can always do better, and you can carry that to the point of insanity.  My relationship status is just one of any number of things that I could decide that I'm not making the grade on, if I chose to think of things in that way.   

..... Which I don't.  The last period of singledom (or at least the second half of it) has co-incided with some of the most interesting and successful periods of my career and life to date, and I have plenty to be happy and proud of.  And yet!  At a time in my life when various of my friends are bringing their second or even third child into the world, or are maybe even into their second marriage, I remain frustratingly alone.  It also frustrates me no end that various of my single friends either don't stay that way very long, or enjoy being single in the way that the marketing tells them that they should by having various flings and casual encounters.  Even the people that have just ended relationships, the heart-broken, the people that I have literally held the hands of and comforted as they sobbed their way through break-ups, don't seem to have any trouble.  I mean Jesus, do I really have that little going for me that I can't attract SOMEONE'S attention? 

It doesn't help to get frustrated, of course.  And fortunately - perhaps unfortunately - I know my strengths.  And they do not include me throwing myself around and asking out everything that moves.  Every single time that I have attempted to be some sort of ladies' man, tried to be a little physically ..... available (not the right word, but maybe you can join the dots) at a party or a bar, taken that chance and asked out girl that I thought would probably say no anyway, the results have been the same.   A variation on the theme of "no thank you" that ranges from an embarrassed smile right up to complete toe-curling scorn.  So, generally speaking, I play a conservative game, and I do my best to "meet" women rather than "pick them up".  Which tends to make me any number of friends - or at least people I'm friendly with - and a gives me a front-row ticket to see them go home with some other guy.  It's a bit of a vicious cycle, really.  

It seems that there's nothing much else to do but wait.  Keep smiling, keep going to parties, keep making an effort online, keep being friendly with colleagues and friends of friends, and eventually I will end up in the right room at the right time with the right person who will take a shine to me.  It's happened before - just ...... not very often!  But it has happened before.  And without question, even if I do break my record from above, I know that things are much better than they were back then, anyway.  

I just wish it would hurry up, that's all!  

Cheesed off

So here I am in sunny Germany, doing another German course. I seem to remember that one of my more recent flurries of activity on this blog came when I did my first course in 2009 - I guess when you're in a strange city learning verbs and tenses, a man will turn to his old blog for a diversion. I can't imagine that there's many people that will read this now given that I post much more regularly on my professional website, but this won't go anywhere near to approaching the sort of subject material that I write about on there, so here I am.

I have been a little dismayed over the past few days with the behaviour of a few members of the fairer sex. That's not to say that I'm in any way weeping into my dacquiri about it, but it's fair to say that I'm annoyed - and more particularly, annoyed in principle, which is often the sort of annoyed that gets me writing stuff. I've been doing this course of mine, and it's been going quite well. The people are nice, the verbs and tenses have been learning themselves, I'm making a few professional contacts, the beer and the food and the coffee are good. Hooray for me. As ever with Goethe Institut courses, there are plenty of opportunities to socialise - structured activities, city trips, parties, that sort of thing. It's been a bit of fun. I had fallen in with a group from a mixture of my class and the class above me too - largely because they all live in the same Wohnung-dormitory thing.

There's a pretty girl amongst our group who I'd been seeing quite a lot of. Just my type. Petite, smart, attractive, interesting, a little bit exotic (she's Turkish) mid-ish twenties. We'd been having good chats about all sorts of things, eating lunch in the canteen, going to the odd museum, that sort of thing. Always in our small-ish group though, and never alone. The thought did cross my mind that maybe that was by design on her part, but it wasn't like I'd really gone out of my way to hammer the point home - my kamikaze days are behind me, thank God. I did take a slightly more direct approach the other day though - I was planning on going into town for a sandwich and a coffee, and on a whim I asked her if she wanted to come. She knew what I was about, and graciously declined. We chatted a bit more, said our goodbyes and that was that - shrug shoulders, oh well, better luck next time with someone else. I gave her some space for the next day or so, too - a smile and a nod here and there but not much else, one doesn't want to be too over-bearing in these situations.

As far as I could tell, I hadn't done much wrong. Liked the girl, got to know the girl, asked her out, got rebuffed, no big deal, move on. In a way I was pleased to have the question answered as I sometimes am in these situations - you don't want to die wondering.

But no. Apparently I DID do something wrong. The next time I spoke to her I was treated with complete and utter contempt - by her and one of her friends. There's a thing that women do when they want you to get out of their face, and it usually manifests in treating you like you're some sort of hell-bent psychopathic rapist stalker with bad breath and B.O. - and I got all of that and more. She even turned tail and fled the other day when she walked into a café and found me in it, as though I couldn't be trusted not to flash her or something. What this has now resulted in is that I have essentially been ejected from our little group as well, on account of the fact that her and Bitchy Friend make up about thirty percent of it.

But seriously - what the fuck? Why is this necessary? Since when is asking someone out for a sandwich a sex crime? Why the childishness and closing of ranks? Why the little power games and bitchiness? I'm a perfectly reasonable human being, and through the above bitter experience I've learnt the right and wrong way to handle these situations. Surely if anyone is to feel scorned and slighted it's me anyway - isn't it? Don't get me wrong, it would be pretty stupid for me to take offence at being turned down over something like this, but if anyone's pride has been hurt here, surely it's mine? Apparently not.

The thing is that this is nothing new for me. Going right back to when I was a spotty teenager through early adulthood and beyond, this has been a recurring theme. Regardless of whether or not I've taken rejection well or not there is the recurring pattern of ..... general unpleasantness being aimed in my direction whenever I've gone for a target and missed. It hasn't happened EVERY time mind you, but when it has it has always smacked of "I've got something over you and now I'm going to go out of my way to make you feel small just because I can."

What has happened to compound the situation since is that after several days of being rude she has decided to come back to Planet Earth and actually acknowledge my presence. Which, I have to say, is ALSO a recurring theme. "Sorry little man, you needed your time in purgatory. It was for your own good. Now the time has come for me to bring you back to the fold. You may speak to me again - only on my terms though, of course." The vanity, the self-centredness, the childishness, the bare-faced sense of entitlement - when you break it down it really does beggar belief.  This has happened to me many times in the past too, with or without the romantic ovetures, and quite often things have gone backwards and forwards like this for months - years even, whilst I, playing the fool and the ill-advised gentleman and appeaser have swallowed it like some sort of grinning idiot. My entire management career was conducted like this.

Well bollocks to it, it's not happening this time. She can go fuck herself in chocolate - her and her bitchy mate. Part of me thinks that I should be the Bigger Person and just run with it, but I'm not one for making racks for my own back anymore. I fail to see why I should deliberately choose to spend time with people who are rude and manipulative. The irony of this of course is that she will almost certainly now decide that I'm the dickhead in this situation because I'm ignoring her. I can't imagine she'll even for one solitary second consider whether her behaviour as been in any way lacking. Whatever - I've thought my thoughts and written them down, now I couldn't care less.

Women! You can't live with them - you can't live with them. And other variations on that theme.

Injuries

I bought a book yesterday. It's called "Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?" and it's a compilation of letters that have been sent to the New Scientist magazine as part of the "Last Word" column - a forum for readers to send in scientific questions that fellow readers then answer. It's great - it's full of all sorts of useless stuff, like "what time is it in the North Pole", "why does clingfilm stick to glass but not metal", "why does hot water freeze faster than cold (apparently it's true, and no-one's come up with a definitive answer yet)", "why is snot green (a personal favourite)", "what is the diameter of a bolt of lightning" and so on and so forth. It's great for train journeys to gigs - not sure it was worth €14.99 though.

It's good material for a blogger to read, because everything's bite-sized, and very little of it is straight-forward, so there's often lengthy discourse and hypothesising from the respondants. They're the sort of questions that children ask (and in fact some of them ARE asked by children, which is why I now know why sea-water is salty) to really wind their parents up at inopportune moments. Above all though, it invites people to crap on endlessly about their pet subjects with the view to convincing everyone how clever and interesting they are, as though anyone cares less (sound familiar?), and I kept getting the image of the people who asked the question writing back and saying "yeah ok, thanks, but did you have to be such a tosser about it?" Anyway, it's all very much like blogging, so it kinda puts you in the mood to write something.

It might sound a little sophomoric, but whilst I was reading all of this, and being invited to look at my world in a slightly more enquiring way, I began to consider the topic of human emotion, and emotional pain/loss in particular. I half expected someone to have written in asking for a psychological and/or physiological explanation for how broken hearts work (haven't come across it yet, but I'm only two-thirds of the way through). I came up with the following.

I've often considered that the word "injury" in its generic sense is used a little too sparingly. As a singer, I often think that it should be used to describe vocal problems more. We should be able to say "can't sing - injured", as opposed to "I have a cold/infection/nasty rash, pus-oozing nodules on my perineum, my budgie died, it's the worst thing in the world, how will I survive, waffle, waffle, waffle, why, why why?" and so forth. Not only does "injured" save everyone valuable time and patience, I think it sums up the situation quite well, too, I think. Much the same as when an athlete is injured, the injury at the very best inhibits the person from doing what they by definition are supposed to do - and often stops them from doing it completely. Consequently, an injured athlete to a point actually becomes an ex-athlete, or depending on the severity of the ailment, a temporary non-athlete. The same applies to a singer - if you can't sing, what are you, then? And this is why being injured is a rotten state to be in for either individual - it can seem like you're missing something hard to define but quintessentially YOU - and somehow you are less of yourself by consequence.

I have been feeling the same way about emotional pain, grief, and loss, and that "injured" might just as easily sum up that situation as well. When you're down, and particularly when you're down about a specific thing or person, you don't feel yourself then, either. You wander through life lacking energy or drive, and the most mundane tasks seem that much more difficult. Nothing is much fun, everything's a bit wan and colourless and essentially you are less of yourself. It can seem to both you and others that until whatever/whoever it is that was taken away returns, you won't quite be the same. The connection is not completely seamless of course - a runner with a bad hamstring can't run, a singer with layrngitis can't sing, a person with a broken heart can't - what? Live? Not really, but I guess the answer is live successfully and happily, and that's what we're all here for, after all. So it still works. And as with all other injuries, the most important thing is to give yourself time and rest. Unfortunately it's pretty difficult to rest from being you - but that's probably why emotional pain is so difficult to deal with.

There would be other benefits to thinking about it in these terms, namely that it would save everyone a lot of awkwardness. I've found that as a man, despite what the post-feminist world tells me, talking about any sort of angst or pain, no matter how genuine, is a good recipe for people to start shuffling their feet and looking for the nearest exit. As a hot-blooded, Alpha-male ever alert to the call to action, you're supposed to be off slaying mammoth and doing stock-market deals, not fannying about talking about your FEELINGS, for crying out loud. It just makes people uncomfortable. I can't count the amount of times I've witnessed women do it, though - it's just one of life's little double-standards. So I think that if we could just describe ourselves as being "injured" it would make things a whole lot easier. The below (very hypothetical) conversation might help illustrate my point:

A: Hi mate. How are you doing?
B: Not so great. Broke up with my girl over the weekend.
A: Jeez.
B: Yeah. I'm not really coping that well, to be honest. Never realised it could feel this bad! I just.... don't know why it didn't work out, you know? And now I can't eat, or sleep, I've got no energy, everything's gone to shit, I can't concentrate on my work - I wish she'd just come back to me, but she won't, and..... well, things aren't so great. It's really tough. If you've got any advice, let me know.
A: Well, you could start by getting a grip on yourself, ya big poof!!

OR

A: Hi mate. How are you doing?
B: Not so great. Carrying a bit of an injury at the moment.
A: Ah. That's no good! Went throught the same thing myself last year. Do you want to go and get drunk?
B: Great! Is there any football on?

Now doesn't that just seem easier?

The Toothpaste Files, continued.

Remember this post? My wilful boasting that after months of practice I'd finally mastered the art of brushing my teeth, Dutch style? My tips on tube storage? Saving time in the mornings? The Dutch Toothpaste Principle? Well, just when you think you've checked all the boxes of one of life's little questionnaires, bugger me if there isn't an entirely seperate section over the page that you hadn't noticed.

I haven't been sleeping very well lately. This isn't unusual - when I'm really busy performing, switching off at night is pretty difficult. The same thing happened before Christmas with the hundreds of Messiahs that I sang in, and it's happened now with the several million Passions that I've already written about. When this happens I usually have to give up on school for a bit - which is actually kinda satisfying, really - makes me feel like being a real singer, as opposed to a music student. There is another reason why getting shut-eye has been difficult, though.

Went out the other day to do a shop, as you do. Had run out of toothpaste. The fact that my flat-mate seemed to have hidden his from view was probably a tip-off that he was sick of me helping myself to his and that I should get some of my own. Visited the toiletries section of my local Albert Heijn (the Dutch equivalent of Sainsbury's although not as good), cursed the fact that they had run out of disposable razors AGAIN, and picked out a tube. It was very attractively packaged - all primary colours, called "Parodontax", and it boasted "Natuurlijk actief voor tand en tandvlees!!" in big red letters along the side of the bottle. I had no idea what that meant, but still, I was impressed - "that looks like the toothpaste of any discerning gentleman!" I cried, and added it to my shopping basket. Couldn't wait to get it home and test it out.

Went through my usual beddy-byes routine that evening- finished off my cup of hot cocoa, put my jimmy-jams on, made sure that Frederick the Bear was comfortable and in a good position to oversee my prayers on my return, and went to clean the ol' dentures. Opened the tube and squeezed a bit onto my brush. First impression was not that good to be honest - it was a sort of ugly reddish-brown colour. I don't know about you, but reddish-brown does not make my top five expected toothpaste colours - in fact maybe not even the top ten. I was willing to give it a go, though - using Dutch toothpaste had already proven to be such a growthful and rewarding experience that I wasn't going to dismiss my newest purchase on colour alone. Sadly though, worse was to come - it tasted HORRIBLE. It was SALTY.

Salty toothpaste? I mean, what the fuck???? What sort of evil mastermind thought that would be a good idea??? Just ...... THINK about that for a second.

Salty.

Toothpaste.

Those two words go together like "safari" and "suit", like "folk" and "dancing", like "parents" and "sex" like..... oh, I dunno..... "Kaspar" and "Bepke (hahahaha, in-joke)!!"

It's BAD, it's EVIL, it's all seven shades of wrong, with a few more thrown in for good measure.

And after I used it, I couldn't sleep! It was like I'd gone out and had a skinful, and helped myself to the word's biggest, saltiest kebab or Mcpolyunsaturated Fat Pizza on the way home, and then couldn't sleep because I was dehydrated, but without the fun part. And that's not the worst of it - I actually persevered with the stuff for four days, because I couldn't get to the shop! Throw in some St Matthew Passion-induced insomnia, and you have a recipe for a Kranky Karrot in the morning, I can tell you - no matter how much crappy Dutch coffee I injected intraveneously.

Thought I was getting the hang of this place. Think I've gone back to square one. They use salty toothpaste, I mean honestly. What sort of a country have a landed in???

Toothpaste!

Ladies and gentleman and far-flung followers, I have a proud announcement to make.

I understand Dutch toothpaste. That's right! It's taken me five and a half months, but I Get It Now. I'm practically a native!!

Y'see, Dutch toothpaste isn't like regular or garden-variety Australian or British toothpaste. It tends to be runnier for starters, but mostly significantly it comes in a different tube. It has a bigger, stubbier lid, and more closely resembles your average shampoo bottle.

Consider, if you will, your regular tube of toothpaste. Your everyday (well, preferably TWICE a day) tube of Colgate. It can be minty fresh, it can be gel, it can be for Extra Whitening! - that stuff doesn't matter. The important thing to consider is how it WORKS. British and Australian toothpaste works in a vacuum. When you squeeze, no air comes back in, and you make a mark in the tube that stays there. That's why, unless you're a complete arsehole, you squeeze it from the BOTTOM (those that don't will not be saved), so that next time it's all up close to the top of the tube ready to go.

Dutch toothpaste doesn't work like that. There's air in the tube, and air comes back in after you squeeze it. No matter how empty the tube, it always retains its shape. Which, if you don't understand the Dutch Toothpaste Principle, can be a right pain in the arse, because every morning you waste valuable seconds trying to get some out, particularly if it's on the empty side. It's like the almost-empty tomato sauce bottle. And we all know how annoying THAT is.

But that's just it - Dutch toothpaste IS like the almost-empty tomato sauce bottle in principle, for pretty much its entire lifespan. And what, boys and girls, do we do with almost-empty tomato sauce bottles? That's right, we store it upside down, ON ITS LID. That way, you don't have to swear and curse and shake it and wait five minutes for it all to come out in a rush and drown your bangers. If you store it upside down, it's all there, ready to go, all it takes is quick removal of the lid and there it is.

THAT'S why Dutch toothpaste has a bigger lid, and THAT'S how it works!! You store it vertically! All the time! And never EVER on its side. You read it here first.

I'm taking little steps here. Chips and mayonnaise (it's true). In fact, mayonnaise on everything. Toothpaste. In a little while I may even learn some of the language.

You know what the funny thing about Europe is? The little differences.

Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction

Everything I know about singing I learnt from cricket.

Or..... everything I know about cricket I learnt from singing.

Isn't this exciting? A post involving cricket AND Life, Love and Art. How post-modern of me. I shall have to try to make it a recurring theme.

OK. So. Cricket and singing. Might seem a bridge too far. But bear with me, 'cos all of this is true.

There are various elements of the game and the artform that are inextricably linked, as far as I'm concerned. All those fat blokes singing the same thing over and over? Cricket. Same with the sheilas with horns. All those funny little men in white with the cucumber sandwiches on the village green on British summer afternoons? Singing. And ergo with the hard, Australian men trying to kill each other in 40-degree heat. They might not know it, but it's ALL THE SAME THING. I don't think it was an accident. Pavarotti wasn't a Juventus fan - he supported Middlesex and the Bangalore Royal Challengers.

Here's why.

Cricket is a stage.

I'm not a singer that often takes a tremendous amount of inspiration from singers themselves. My knowledge of the great tenors (let alone the sopranos, mezzos and bass-baritones) is pretty lamentable, if I'm being kind. I get more of my inspiration from the the abstract. Sport. Business. Stand-up comedy (yes, really - but more on that later). And cricket is perfect to draw from, because it is often so focussed on the individual. When you've seen the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Viv Richards and Shane Warne play the game you've seen theatre of the highest calibre. They don't just walk onto the ground, they OWN it. Having long since convinced themselves and others of their genius, they exude self-belief, pride, ability. They take the focus, they take the momentum, they carry all before them and they take charge. Just like a great character actor, or singer. It is so often this quality that makes a stage performer great - and sometimes all the ability in the world just isn't enough without it.

They both require discipline, technique and mental strength.

From the cricketing side of the argument, I have four words and a date. Steve Waugh, West Indies, 1995. When you are carrying the hopes of a nation and a 6 foot 7-inch Antiguan is LITERALLY TRYING TO KILL YOU you've got to have all these things. And it's got to be instinctive. There's no time to think when Curtly Ambrose is bowling at 95 miles an hour at your throat. It's exactly the same with singing - there is no time to think when you walk onto a stage and strip yourself bare in front of several thousand people, either. There is no turning back - you're either up for it, or you're not. An old singing teacher once said to me that singing is a blood sport. He's dead right.

They both mess with your head.

Oh boy, this one's my favourite. How many fabulously talented cricketers are there that didn't ever make the most of their potential? Ramprakash. Hick. Hooper. How many times has that talented player worried himself out before he's even faced a ball? Got the yips and started bowling wides when yesterday he had it on a string? Doubt, and fear of failure are insiduous things. They creep up on you when you least expect it. I'm not good enough/I don't deserve to be here/Do I really want it after all? has gone through everyone's head at some point. It's what you do when you're there that makes the difference - and that doesn't often have much to do with ability.

You've got to have a ruthless, combative streak to succeed.

This is the easiest one of the lot. Any sport is like this - you're consistently required to perform in the face of any number of opposition whose very presence by definition is to make you fail, and sometimes in front of audiences of billions who want the same. Singing requires you to sacrifice everything. Leave your family. Friends. Move to the other side of the world. End relationships if they're not compatible with it. Maybe even give up on the idea of having children, if you're female. It's just something that you HAVE to do. Why do I sing? I have no choice but to. It's that simple. I can't not. Nothing else that matters matters as much as that, and no sacrifice is too great.

You're never bigger than the game.

Another personal favourite. All the Shane Warnes and Viv Richards and Don Bradmans in the world are never bigger than the game. None of the Roberto Alagnas, Angela Georghius or Luciano Pavarottis are, either. At every concievable level, you are part of something bigger than you. If you don't respect that, and those around you, ultimately it comes back to bite you. Be a force for the good, not the bad. Create, don't destroy. I try to keep these at the fore-front of my mind at all times. Will I be proven right? Who knows. But I'm convinced that I will be.

You've got to really want it.

Duh. This barely needs explaining. No-one made it to La Scala or a Lord's Test by just being good. Unless they were queuing up outside for tickets.



And - well, that's it, basically. I may think of more, there's bound to be a few out there. The trouble is that I don't know that many singers that are cricketers - and even fewer cricketers that are singers, so I can't really ask anyone else! I guess you'll just have to take my word for the fact that I'm right, and I really am the world's leading opinion on Love, Life, Art and Cricket.

And after all, what did you expect? Humility??? Pah - you're reading the wrong blog!

Men

OK, this is very interesting.

I've been reading Belle de Jour's blog for awhile. It might interest some to see that I'm prepared to advertise the fact that I read a blog by an ex-prostitute. I would answer that by saying that it's not WHAT she is that makes her interesting, but WHO she is. Both those terms are pretty much inter-changeable I know, but you'll understand once I've explained.

Belle is a real, honest, warts-and-all person, obviously highly intelligent, well-educated, and extremely intellectual. She has some really interesting things to say about sex, sexual identity, love, feminism, and what she thinks of societal and/or the media's views on the same. I will admit that when I first visited her site I was probably drawn there by a sense of voyeuristic interest rather than an intellectual one, but it has most definitely been the latter that has made me keep reading. I am not interested in her relationships, I'm not interested in the occasional blow-by-blow description of what she gets up to with the lights off, and neither am I interested in her show (and it's interesting that in the same post I've linked to she says that she wouldn't otherwise be, either). What I am interested in is her honesty, integrity, self-knowledge and above all willingness, without prejudice, to tell things how they are, based upon the breadth of her experience - which almost by definition is bound to be pretty eclectic.

I think that we would learn a lot by speaking more to sex-workers, and giving more people like Belle a legitimate voice. If you want to learn something about men and sex, speak to their wives. If you want to learn more, speak to prostitutes. Let's not forget that Belle described herself as a "high-class hooker" - i.e. one that caters for those that can afford it. And that doesn't just mean footballers and rock stars, either. It means your Dad. Your brother. Your boss. Middle-class men. Educated men. The so-called pillars of society.

(That's not to say that everyone visits prostitutes, of course. I haven't. But some have. And some will. If they didn't, people like Belle would have found a different line of work long ago).

What particularly interested me about this post was her closing remarks.

"Whatever else happens after this point T will always be in the category of Man to me - no, it's not simply about having the appropriate equipment. A Man does the right thing and has the right attitude and buys you a beer after a shite day and does not expect a fucking medal for emptying the rubbish. Sure they cry, but never for attention. They were my history teacher at school and my housemate at uni. They are not perfect and make no apologies for that. They are the ones played in films by Clive Owen and Shah Rukh Khan. They do what they say on the tin."

I think it might have been the Clive Owen reference that really sold me to her point. I had no idea who Shah Rukh Khan is, had to wikipedia him - but I know exactly what she means. I've seen Owen in a lot of his movies - Croupier, Gosford Park, Sin City, The Bourne Identity, Inside Man and Chidren of Men (think that's the lot), and without question what links them is directness, honesty, grounding, and unashamed masculinity. They know who they are, they know what they want, and they do it without apologising. In some cases, as is the case with the character in "Closer", this occasionally pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable, but in all cases "they do exactly what they say on the tin".

And they are Men! Male adults. Grown-ups. Mature, upright, self-aware human beings. And they don't compromise - this is not to say that they are action heroes that always know what the next move is - but they are decisive, and completely lacking in any self-consciousness. They are them, and no-one else.

Unfortunately this image has been allowed to become clouded in a post-feminist world (and this is no-one's fault, I'm not starting a gender debate here). No wonder, as Belle implies, there aren't very many of them about - it's bloody difficult! We are so self-acknowledging now, and there are so many rules, that it becomes very difficult to become a Man - or an adult at all, for that matter. Decisiveness has become ruthlessness. Self-awareness has become ego-centricity. Groundedness has become arrogance. Masculinity has become aggression. All the things that seem to make Man what he is have been re-shaped and re-named in the most pejorative way. It's no wonder Men are rare.

This segues nicely into some previously un-voiced thoughts on the Andrew Symonds affair. I think, to a point, that Symonds and his ilk are a refreshing change for the world, but don't let me make you think that he's worth emulating, or that the model I'm aspiring to is all hard-edged testosterone and physicality. What works for Clive Owen workd for Clive Owen - it might not work for you and me. What I'm looking for is honesty and forthrightness, and Symonds has very little of that. Symonds' persona is a sham. A fiction. It's not the real thing. It smacks of "I'm big, I'm Aussie, and I play cricket, therefore I must act in a certain way". No wonder he flies off the handle all the time - he can't keep up with himself! His is a classic case of over-compensation.

This is where Belle comes in again - "sure they cry, but never for attention." A good line. Again, the key word here is honesty - and integrity too, I think. This is another paradox of modern masculinity - we're SUPPOSED to talk about our feelings, and cry like big, sissy girls - but watch everyone's face drop when you do. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable is just as difficult as being prepared to stick to who you are in the face of condemnation. And there's plenty of that about - solid, grounded people are confronting. They can challenge and intimidate people just by being in the room, and people don't like it.

Belle's model of what Man is might be completely different to mine, for all I know. I'm glad that she's found something she likes, though - although it might be interesting to see if she can allow herself to do it. Falling in love for people in her line of work - or her previous line of work - is an occupational hazard to be avoided, and that's probably where her self-confessed "wall" comes from. No doubt, separating the real Belle from the working girl Belle will prove very difficult.

I'm reminded of a line that a friend uses as the sign-off on his email, and not just because of Belle. It's from The Princess Bride, of all places. "Beware! People in masks cannot be trusted".