Sweeping statements

Oh dear, the sweeping generali-sations people make, conveni-ently brushing all our individual differences under the carpet. In this latest case, the question of who is happier? The married or the unmarried? Those with children or without?

Professor Paul Dolan of the London School of Economics tells us that women are generally happier if they're single and childless, while the opposite applies to men.

Well, that may be true in general, but of course it all depends on the individuals and how they behave and what they expect.

Someone married to a kind, gentle, thoughtful, considerate spouse will obviously be happier than someone whose spouse is violent, domineering, arrogant and selfish.

Likewise someone who's single but poor, jobless, unhealthy and badly housed will be less happy than a single person in luckier circumstances.

Personally, I'm very happily married, but if I was married to someone who criticised me non-stop and always demanded the impossible, it would be another story.

Not to mention that Professor Dolan's conclusions are based entirely on self reporting, and people aren't necessarily truthful. He noted for example that when their spouse was present, women usually said they were happy being married, but if their husband wasn't around, they often confessed they were miserable.

I could tell Professor Dolan that I hated being married and my wife was a pain in the arse, and how would he know I was lying?

Also, whether you're happily married depends on whether you chose "the right person" in the first place and you're compatible over the long term. Obviously if you made the wrong choice and everything turns sour, then you're going to feel rotten.

So here's my sweeping generalisation - controversial research findings should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

What lies ahead

Some people like the "what if" game that involves changing the past. What if I had done this instead of that? What if I'd been more adventur-ous? But I prefer the other "what if" game that involves changing the future.

I dislike the constant uncertainty about the future and what it might bring. I dislike not knowing if my decisions will be successful or disastrous. I dislike constantly having to "wait and see".

Just think how helpful it would be if I could see into the future and adjust my plans accordingly. Nagging apprehension would be replaced by confident looking-forward. Badly-informed guesswork would be replaced by tangible facts. Life would be a lot easier. For example:

If I knew when I was going to die, I could make sure my affairs were in order, that Jenny knew all my passwords, had full access to our bank accounts, knew where to find important documents and so forth.

If I knew the country was going to be taken over by an oppressive political regime, we could up sticks and move to a more enlightened country.

If someone planning to start a business knew it would collapse with huge debts in five years' time, they could scrap their plans and do something different.

If someone knew their marriage would end in failure, they could call off the marriage and start looking for a new partner.

Of course some people would hate to know the future. They enjoy the uncertainty and surprise and the challenge of facing something totally unexpected that forces them to make big changes and reassess their life.

They relish all the speculation and prediction. They love imagining the umpteen possibilities and how likely and unlikely they may be. They're happy to accept good luck and bad luck, ups and downs, whatever life sends them.

Not me. The more certainty the better.

PS: It occurs to me that knowing what the future will bring could mean I worry more rather than less. If I knew for instance there would be a nuclear war in ten years' time, I would be worrying about how to prepare for it, how to survive it etc, whereas if I didn't know, there would be nothing to worry about.

Barca Nostra

Much controversy over an exhibit at the Venice Biennale - the hull of a ship in which between 700 and 1,100 Libyan refugees died in 2015. The critics are saying it's not a work of art, just an insensitive exploitation of a terrible human tragedy.

They say it makes no reference to the people who died or what can be done to prevent such tragedies in the future. It's merely something to be gawped at by the curious as they wonder if it's time for lunch.

Visitors oblivious to what happened on the boat were taking selfies in front of it and tweeting pictures of the adjacent café.

The artist, Christoph Büchel, argues that Barca Nostra (Our Boat) is "a relic of a human tragedy but also a monument to contemporary migration". He says the vessel has become a symbolic object, representing the victims of global turmoil and also the policies that create such wrecks.

That's as may be, but I don't think a "symbolic object" amounts to a work of art. To my mind, art has to trigger some emotional or intellectual reaction in the viewer. An empty boat stripped of any context isn't art but a mere object to be casually glanced at.

If an empty boat is a work of art, then so is my garden shed. Perhaps I could have submitted it to the Biennale as a "symbolic object" representing sweating gardeners and hard-working shed-builders. I can see it now, drawing the rapt attention of fascinated art critics.

Seriously though, if Christoph Büchel was really horrified by such a massive loss of human life, he could have found a better way of turning it into art. Like Picasso's Guernica. Or Lichenstein's Whaam! Or Käthe Kollwitz's War. They have an immediate and powerful emotional impact.

A lot more impact than an empty boat.

Not for me

Well, as you know, I'm not interested in fashion. Of any kind. I just go my own way and I really don't care what's trending. Except ice cream and chocolate of course. Fashionable things (or people) I have zero interest in:

Ripped jeans - rain gets in the holes
Beards - they just make me laugh
Fitbits - no need, I get enough exercise
Nigel Farage - a power-hungry rabble-rouser
Quinoa - looks weird and tastes of nothing
Twitter - infested with bullying and abuse
Poetry - I prefer a good novel
Energy drinks - I have plenty of energy already
Cruises - too many people, too much pollution
Botox - I don't mind the wrinkles
Porn - degrades both women and men
Marathons - too strenuous and competitive
Award ceremonies - too pompous and contentious
The Royal Family - an out-of-date waste of money
Harry Potter - wizards leave me cold
Fun drugs* - I'm having plenty of fun without them
Electric toothbrushes - no better than manual
Work-outs - I'm fit enough for my age
Video games - do nothing for me
Frappuccinos - I prefer my coffees hot

Mind you, if I was stranded on a desert island with nothing to read except the collected adventures of Harry Potter, I guess I would get stuck in. I could enjoy Hermione Granger's razor-sharp brain as I wait to be rescued.

*aka recreational drugs

Just make it up

There's a big fuss over a company that's promoting men's make-up with a video of a heavily tattooed and muscular man. The company, War Paint, has had over 2,500 Twitter comments, many critical.

Firstly, they ask, why do men need make-up anyway? Secondly, why do men and women need different make-up? And thirdly, why the tired old stereotype of a super-masculine, physically intimidating male?

Well, indeed, why do men need make-up at all? It's all part of the ongoing trend to get men as heavily addicted to beauty products as women, plastering on moisturisers, make-up, concealers, body lotions, skin cleansers and the rest.

I find all this rather baffling, and not only as an oldie who grew up in an age when men accepted the rugged natural look and saw no reason to try and change it. I've never had any problem with the way I look, and I certainly don't want to spend half an hour every morning hiding imaginary blemishes or creating some supposedly ideal, celebrity-inspired face. I've got better things to do.

Nor do I see the need for so many women to slather on make-up every day. Women minus make-up usually look just fine, yet there's this constant pressure to conceal their normal face as if it must be hideously ugly. So everywhere you go there are hundreds of artificial, heavily-disguised faces drifting past.

Of course make-up is useful to hide birthmarks, scars or bruises you would prefer not to be seen, but if all you're trying to do is hide pimples, freckles or wrinkles, why on earth bother? Not to mention the astronomical price of a tube of moisturiser or a pot of body lotion, whose ingredients probably cost about 20p.

At my age anyway the wrinkles and blemishes are so thick on the ground a lorry-load of make-up wouldn't provide much camouflage.

In any case, if I looked 20 years younger, my bus pass might arouse too much suspicion.

Rush to judgment

I'm a lot less judgmental as I get older (or I like to think so at any rate). I was horribly judgmental when I was young, only too ready to condemn other people's behaviour and tell them where they were going wrong. Everything seemed so simple, so cut-and-dried, I never doubted those instant judgments I flung at everybody.

Why were people depressed? There was no need to be, they just lacked a more positive attitude. Why were people so hard-up? Surely they could manage their finances a bit better and be nicely solvent? Why were people addicted to fags or alcohol? Couldn't they just control their cravings instead of giving in to them?

Nowadays of course remembering such sweeping opinions makes me cringe with embarrassment at my bottomless ignorance. My total unawareness of how other people think and feel and cope with life was breathtaking. Clearly I'd spent too much time with my parents' favourite reading matter, the Daily Mail.

Luckily decades of exposure to the realities of people's behaviour have demolished all those glib pronouncements and made me much more reluctant to pass comment on someone else's situation.

I can finally recognise the infinite complexities of other people's personalities, the tangled morass of needs, obligations and commitments their daily existence confronts them with, and all the myriad twists and turns of their life so far, and I realise I have barely a clue why they're the way they are or why they do what they do.

Now I just want to listen to people, to hear their own explanations of why they went downhill, why their lives went wrong, why they're struggling to cope. No sweeping judgments, no self-righteous homilies, just a sympathetic ear and the desire to understand the roots of their predicament.

You never know, I might even learn something.