Beyond the pale

One thing that's totally beyond my comprehension is how people can go on supporting a public figure or a workmate or a spouse even if they've been guilty of the most dreadful behaviour, or a serious crime, or habitual acts of violence. Why do they not say, this isn't acceptable, I can't condone this behaviour, it's totally beyond the pale?

The person I'm thinking of obviously is Donald Trump, but there are plenty of people equally guilty of appalling behaviour but enjoying widespread support from all and sundry.

Nigel Farage, who is standing in the upcoming British general election, is known principally as one of the architects of Brexit, which according to numerous economists has been an economic disaster (sorry, Infidel). Yet still millions of people support him regardless.

But it's not just public figures who benefit in this way. Spouses are fond of saying they'll stand by their man (or woman), even if they're guilty of murder, repeated sexual harassment, massive frauds, medical negligence or whatever.

I don't understand what inspires this blind loyalty. Do they think the person has done nothing wrong? Do they believe they should support their spouse "for better or for worse"? Do they believe they should "love the sinner"? Are they defending the person against what they see as unfair persecution?

I can only assume that the person's actions are being justified in some way. They had been taught that sexual harassment was normal masculine behaviour. They committed fraud to get back at a stingy, domineering boss. And so on.

If I was guilty of some atrocious crime, I wouldn't expect Jenny to stand by me. She would be quite right to pack her bags.

When grief surprises

There's no simple logic about who you grieve over and who you don't. You might expect that serious grief is reserved for our family members, especially parents and siblings. If you grieve for other people, it's not so intense, not so all-consuming.

But it doesn't necessarily work like that.

I had no major grief when my mother and father died, as I had never been very close to them. I'd been estranged from my father for 20 years, as you know, so there was no closeness there. I wasn't close to my mother either, as we were very different, thoroughly chalk and cheese, and though it was truly sad to see her gradual mental and physical decline, I didn't grieve for her.

I've actually grieved more, or at least been more emotionally affected, by the death of people outside my family - like public figures I admired and who died at an early age. So much potential unrealised, such a shocking waste.

I was very upset when John Lennon died. He had so many creative years ahead of him still, and suddenly he was gone. Likewise Amy Winehouse, who was so amazingly talented but who was struck down in her prime.

I was stunned when Martin Lamble, drummer with Fairport Convention, who was only 19, died in a road accident on his way back from a gig in Birmingham. He was a friend of a friend and I had met him several times.

I was shaken when two people I worked with in a London bookshop both died of cancer in their thirties -  Amanda of breast cancer and Nigel of lung cancer. They were both lovely people and shouldn't have met such an early end.

Grief, and who provokes it, can surprise you.

Letting rip

I'm baffled by people who get some sort of kick out of criticising total strangers - people they've never met, maybe never heard of up till now, people they know nothing whatever about, people who have nothing to do with their own lives.

They don't care how insulting or hurtful or ignorant their criticism might be. They don't care what effect they're having on the people concerned. They don't care if what they're saying is a complete fabrication. They think it's perfectly okay to put the boot in whenever they feel like it.

I try to avoid such gratuitous attacks on people. I'm no fan of the royal family, but I don't lay into them at every opportunity*. I just ignore them. Naturally I'm aware of all the scandals involving public figures, but I don't promptly add my vitriolic comments to the usual social media pile-on. I mind my own business.

My mother was fond of making disparaging remarks about homosexuals. I used to ask her why she was so obsessed with a group of people totally unconnected with her own life, whom she'd never met, who didn't affect her life in any way, but she wouldn't listen.

There are plenty of people whose views I disagree with, whose personal behaviour appals me, whose mad ambitions alarm me, but I don't feel the need to publicly hurl abuse at them or tear them to bits. I have much more interesting things to do.

It's now routine for public figures, especially women, to get torrents of unrelenting hatred day in and day out. Why should anyone have to live with this kind of permanent denigration? I'm certainly not going to add to it.

*the racist and misogynistic abuse heaped on Meghan Markle is quite shocking.

Rough and ready

Someone accused me the other day of "undignified" behaviour. Well, frankly, I've never seen myself as especially "dignified" in the first place. I'm just a very ordinary person fumbling my way through life in a rough-and-ready fashion, probably more stupefied than dignified.

In fact I'm rather suspicious of anyone whose aim in life is to be dignified. It suggests someone who's rather stiff and starchy, rather defensive, afraid to be themself in case they do something embarrassing or stupid or laughable.

They would rather do nothing at all than see other people looking down their noses at their unseemly or uncouth conduct. They would rather be "dignified" than interesting or amusing or witty.

But surely to live your life, to be who you are, or simply to enjoy yourself, you have to risk losing your dignity every minute of the day? You have to risk the inevitable pratfalls and cock-ups that go hand in hand with spontaneity and experiment.

I associate "dignity" mainly with those public figures whose reputation seems to rest on being aloof and pompous and never saying anything candid or off-message. The only result is that hardly anyone trusts them because their "dignity" is more important to them than getting on with the job.

I also associate "dignity" with emotional repression - not showing your grief or rage or even wild excitement because it's "undignified". Bottling everything up and pretending everything's fine is more "appropriate" than letting it all spill out and maybe making other people uncomfortable.

So no, I'm probably not a very dignified person. But I'll settle for being a sometimes toe-curling plain speaker.

PS: Isn't dignity just another word for respectability? Or is it something more than that?

Poison pens

I'm constantly baffled by the army of people who dedicate themselves to making other people's lives more painful. Not just criticising them or looking down on them but actively doing everything they can to wound and torment them.

If you're a celebrity, or just someone temporarily in the headlines, as well as the normal personal problems you have to deal with there's an endless barrage of venom and abuse from complete strangers who seem to have nothing better to do than to stick a knife into someone else.

It used to be just newspaper and TV journalists who went in for gratuitous vilification. Now it's all those ordinary Joes and Julies who've taken to the internet to slag off anyone they disapprove of, often under a cowardly cloak of anonymity that makes it virtually impossible for the victim to retaliate.

I've always recoiled from such poisonous filth, and most of the time I follow a strict rule of never making a comment about public figures unless it's supportive. Groups of people, like politicians and journalists themselves, I regard as fair game because I'm not attacking anyone personally.

But what have people like Kate and Gerry McCann ever done to deserve all the rabid denigration they've received from the media and the public? All the accusations that they were irresponsible parents, that they did away with their own child, that they're just attention-seekers, and so on and so forth. What sort of cheap thrill and sick pleasure do people obtain from spewing out all this shit?

Why don't these twisted individuals concentrate on sorting out their own lives rather than poking their nasty noses into someone else's - someone they've probably never even met and have a totally false picture of? How many skeletons are hiding in their own squalid little closets?