Winging it

People who worry they're not up to the job they're doing, that they landed it by mistake and they'll soon be found out, are said to have "impostor syndrome". I think I have a very advanced case of it. I feel like an impostor virtually all the time, whatever I'm doing and however good I am at it.

However well I'm handling something, however much other people seem to appreciate it and treat me as the genuine article, I still think deep down that really I'm just fluffing my way through and sooner or later I'll fall flat on my face, announcing to all and sundry that I'm a total fraud.

I may seem very chatty and sociable but am I just hiding my secret desire to be a hermit, shutting out the world? I may seem to know everything about socialism or modern art or growing orchids but am I just cunningly glossing over all the details I'm ignorant of? I may seem thoroughly masculine but am I just taking my cue from the Pocket Dictionary of Gender Roles?

There's something vaguely unconvincing about much of my behaviour, something that doesn't quite ring true, however slick and confident the performance. I guess I'm always unconsciously comparing myself to some role model whose actions seem much more adept, much more fluent.

So what does it take to feel authentic rather than fraudulent? What's the trick? How do other people do things with total conviction, as if they haven't the slightest doubt about their competence? Or are they privately as impostor-ridden as myself, keeping their anxieties concealed just as I do?

I suppose feeling like an impostor has its benefits. The constant question-mark about how well I'm doing means I'm not so prone to arrogance or contempt. I'm less likely to scoff at other people's fumblings and stumblings when I know how close I usually am to stumbling myself. I always feel I'm walking over some treacherous surface and if I don't concentrate hard enough I'll lose my footing.

There are some things I'm wholly convinced about though. I've been an atheist since the day I was born and the idea of a supreme being has never made the slightest sense to me. You can try as hard as you like but you'll never uncover a shame-faced Bible-basher lurking in the wings.

Kiss me, kiss me

I love kissing. I love the sheer sensuality of it. And I love the different dimensions of it.

A kiss between loved ones or friends is an innocent and beautiful experience. It is affectionate, trusting, playful. It says I like you, I enjoy your company, I want to share myself with you. It says my soul wants to kiss your soul.

But a kiss is also the classic sign of an illicit relationship. An over-intimate kiss between two supposed acquaintances suggests something much deeper, something sexual.

However much you deny it, it speaks for itself. There's something going on here, something that shouldn't be going on. Or maybe something that should be going on, but it's going to hurt somebody else badly.

Then there are the kisses you don't really want to give at all. You're a bit reluctant to kiss granny or grandpa because, well, they're a bit wrinkly and funny-looking, and kissing all those wrinkles and saggy bits might feel a bit yukky. But after all, it's granny, so you overcome your squeamishness and give her a nice big kiss. And she really appreciates it.

And of course there are the people you're just dying to kiss, desperate to kiss, but you can't because they're remote celebs, or they're your boss, or your student, or you're sure they'd run a mile, or they're uptight straight men, or they just jilted you, or they're complete strangers in Sainsbury's.

There was a guy* who set out to kiss a complete stranger every day for a year - because he thought it was such a delightful and friendly thing to do. And he managed it. He recorded the reactions of all the people he kissed. Surprise, amusement, embarrassment, happiness, gratitude, flirtation. It was touching and heartwarming.

The human body is just made for kissing. The textures, the contours, the pliability. I'll happily kiss just about anywhere, from the forehead to the ankle and most spots in between. Whoever invented kissing was a genius.

* the wonderful Philip Thiel from Melbourne 

Spilling the beans

In this era of supposed personal frankness, when people gush out their intimate thoughts and feelings to any passing journalist or TV presenter, you might think that no one has anything left to hide any more, that it’s all out there for instant public consumption.

I think not. For every person who spills the beans, there are ten others who’re more reticent and still keep an awful lot to themselves. Most of us don’t trust other people to be sympathetic to our innermost secrets, be they embarrassing, weird, disgusting or just incomprehensible.

The fact is that there are plenty of people only too willing to exploit other people’s weaknesses and eccentricities for their own personal gain or entertainment, and those uninhibited souls who lay their entire life on the table for others to pick at should either have a very thick skin or be prepared for a rather painful public mauling.

Even routine oddities like fear of flying, or fear of public speaking, or a passion for pickled onions, are often concealed in case of scorn or ridicule. As for the more rarified traits like social phobia or aversion to sex or hating to be watched, very few people would be trusted with those. Maybe only our partners, who’re going to find out sooner or later anyway.

It may be that other people are more sympathetic to those things than we imagine, but we daren’t risk telling the wrong person and being treated as some kind of freak show.

It may be that our shameful secrets are not as shameful as we think. But the longer we hide something, the more we prevent others from accepting and neutralising it, the more peculiar and monstrous it becomes, until the very idea of exposing it to others is unthinkable. We convince ourselves we’re so warped that if we confess all nobody will ever speak to us again.

We probably all need a personal therapist, someone we can confide in without fear of a negative reaction, someone who’ll listen without judging, someone who’ll help us to understand what we are rather than expecting us to be normal. With the best will in the world, even the closest and most trusted friend isn’t necessarily that dispassionate and all-embracing.

Short of staff

The total chaos over providing security staff for the Olympics shows once again that the private sector is not necessarily better at running services than the public sector. It also shows what happens when workers are treated like shit - they simply don't turn up to do the job.

Thousands of workers taken on by the bloated multinational security firm G4S haven't shown up at their allotted workplaces and thousands of troops and police officers have had to fill the gaps.

This epidemic of refuseniks is hardly surprising when you see how the wretched hirelings are being treated. Many have been employed on a daily basis only, so on any given day they may be told they're not wanted. So much for security of employment.

Their pay rate hasn't been revealed, but you can be sure it's the absolute minimum the firm can get away with. There are even reports that some workers are having to pay for their own training.

Those coming from a distance are having trouble finding affordable accommodation, which presumably the firm isn't helping out with. They may also have heavy travel costs to and from the venue.

If the workers calculate that they'll be making a pittance after their costs are allowed for, or they've found a better-paid job elsewhere, then of course they're likely to not turn up at all.

This massive absenteeism could surely have been predicted by G4S on the basis of past experience, yet they claim to have had no inkling of the problem until a few weeks before the start of the Olympics.

They also claim to have been taken unawares by the administrative demands of recruiting thousands of staff, training them, vetting them and allocating them to the various Olympic sites. The complex process was way behind schedule and many workers ringing helplines either couldn't reach anyone or nobody could answer their queries.

Even the Chief Executive of G4S, Nick Buckles, has admitted the situation is "a humiliating shambles" and regrets taking on the contract.

Though I can't think why. The firm will still claim its £57 million management fee, Buckles will keep his £830,000 annual salary (or a £20 million severance package), while the debt-ridden British government (and the taxpayer) have to bail out the private sector yet again.

Pic: Rebecca Tunney, the UK gymnastics champion 

Dog fight

An acri-monious worldwide campaign to save Lennox the dog ended this week when he was put down by Belfast Council.

The council maintained Lennox was a pit-bull type dog and therefore illegal and dangerous under UK law. Owner Caroline Barnes insisted he was harmless and had never injured anyone.

A huge internet campaign to save Lennox got more and more vicious, with the council's dog wardens being subjected to death threats, slashed car tyres and ferocious verbal abuse.

The case dragged on through several expensive court hearings before the council finally got the go-ahead to put Lennox down. Caroline Barnes is still bitterly aggrieved and sees the council as heartless and inflexible.

At the last minute an American dog trainer offered to care for Lennox for the rest of his life, but the council rejected the offer, saying the dog was dangerous and had to be destroyed.

I can't see why this sympathetic offer was so firmly refused. At least Lennox would still be alive. But refused it was, adding to the family's suffering.

I have to say though that in general Caroline Barnes seems to have handled the situation very badly. Apparently she made little attempt to establish the dog's actual breed or find any other legal way of contesting the council's ruling. And she allowed her so-called supporters to alienate council staff with a terrifying hate campaign.

Also, she must have known Lennox was a pit-bull type dog, and therefore possibly illegal, when she acquired him seven years ago. So it was likely that sooner or later he would be reported to the authorities.

If she had had any sense, she would have found a dog that was indisputably legal and therefore never in danger of being put down. It would have saved an awful lot of unnecessary distress and heartbreak.

PS (July 20): An innocent animal sanctuary, Benvardin Kennels near Ballymoney, is being bombarded with threats and abuse by pro-Lennox fanatics. Benvardin say they have nothing whatever to do with Lennox and blame an incorrect American media report. 

Pic: Caroline Barnes, her daughter Brooke, and Lennox 

Reckless lives

When I look at the way some people live their lives, especially their unhealthy eating and drinking habits, I can come to only one conclusion - that they're either suicidal or they really don't care if they live or die.

How else can you explain the behaviour of someone who regularly drinks to excess, chain-smokes, eats junk food, or takes dangerous drugs, and has no interest in behaving more sensibly?

No doubt I sound absurdly moralistic and sanctimonious, but surely anyone who values their life and wants to enjoy it as long as possible would not deliberately do things that threaten to make that life not only much shorter but potentially blighted by serious illness?

When people say how much they love their family, their children, and their friends, how can they really mean it when at the same time they're behaving in ways that clearly jeopardise those relationships?

I can only conclude that at some level, in some private corner of themselves, they find life so frustrating and dissatisfying that actually they wouldn't mind it suddenly ending. So they simply don't have the motive to give up the destructive habits and adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Take someone like Amy Winehouse. If she genuinely valued her family and friends, why did she drink so heavily and give up on rehab so easily? Did she not care that she was causing her loved ones so much distress and concern as she relentlessly emptied one bottle after another?

I'm not being self-righteous here. I'm not saying I'm some perfect, saintly person because my own lifestyle is less reckless. I'm just lucky I'm not the addictive type and haven't succumbed to the things others find so attractive. I'm also lucky that my parents provided a model of behaviour that frowned on wild excesses of any kind. Their only blemish was my father's ten-a-day smoking habit.

I know people say how tough it is to break a long-standing addiction, even if you genuinely want to. But surely if you relish your life and want to prolong it, you're going to do whatever it takes to break the cycle?

Word check is not preventing a deluge of spam comments, so I've had to introduce comment moderation. Sorry about that. 

Dodgy deals

There was a riveting exchange about drug use on Question Time* between John Lydon (of the Sex Pistols) and Louise Mensch (the Tory MP).

Louise Mensch said she deeply regretted taking class A drugs when she was young as they had left her with mental health problems such as acute anxiety.

John Lydon poo-pooed her regrets and her anxiety and said there was nothing wrong with drug-taking as long as you were properly informed about them.

From his boorish and aggressive manner, and his habit of talking over everyone else, I can only conclude that his own drug use hasn't done him a lot of good.

Strangely enough, although I grew up in the sixties when drug use was widespread and a lot of my acquaintances were stuffing themselves with every hallucinogen and narcotic they could get their hands on, I hardly touched drugs at all. I tried marijuana twice and LSD twice but I didn't like the effects they had. I didn't like the idea of something taking me over and suppressing my own autonomy and identity. So that was the start and finish of my experiments with drugs.

John Lydon has a point though when he says lack of information makes drugs a lot more dangerous. If you don't know precisely what's in that substance you're shovelling into yourself (as most illegal drugs are routinely adulterated) and if you don't know what dosage you're taking, then you're asking for trouble.

I can still remember a lovely guy I met in the early seventies who was heavily into drugs. One day he took a massive cocktail of goodness knows what, and was found later dead in his bed with blood spilling out of both ears.

If he'd known exactly what he was taking, and known exactly when to stop, he might still be alive.

But when you have only the vaguest idea of what you're putting in your mouth (or arm or nose), it seems sensible to opt out. And listen to Louise Mensch.

PS: If you don't think prescription drugs are dangerous, take a look at this article on antibiotics 

* BBC TV programme about current affairs 

Grumpy, moi?

I refuse to moan and groan.
I refuse to become a grumpy old man.
I refuse to let the world's problems get me down.
I refuse to make mountains out of molehills.
I refuse to turn petty irritations into causes célèbres.
I refuse to complain about my bodily deficiencies.
I refuse to denigrate other people's lives.
I refuse to tell other people what to do.*
I refuse to rant and rave.
I refuse to demonise young people.
I refuse to be cynical.
I refuse to be paranoid.
I refuse to see the worst in people.
I refuse to be nostalgic.
I refuse to believe everything was better in the old days.
I refuse to think that I know best.
I refuse to think life's conspiring against me.
I refuse to be offended by bad manners.
I refuse to be offended.
I refuse to over-react.

I refuse to be one of those stony-faced old codgers who buttonhole me at the doctor's surgery or the bus stop and tell me the world's going to pot and nobody cares and the lunatics are running the asylum and he's glad he won't be around much longer and bloody hell, look at that, the way some people dress nowadays (Nick takes out small handgun and puts him out of his misery)

Mind you, Jenny would probably say that if you watch me closely, there's a grumpy old man much closer to the surface than I like to believe. He's just biding his time, honing his invective, but sooner or later he'll burst out of this innocent Clark-Kent exterior and wreak havoc at the number 4A bus stop.

* except for politicians and bankers, naturally. 

Fool's errand

Like many parents at that time, I guess, my mother and father were always worried that I might grow up to be homo-sexual.

In the fifties homosexuality was still a crime, homophobia was rampant (the word had still to be invented), and gay men regularly committed suicide rather than face a lifetime of concealment or persecution.

The worrying was fair enough. But my parents went further and tried actively to prevent me becoming "one of them". In those days there were all sorts of hare-brained theories about why people became gay, and they didn't realise the futility of their efforts.

After a certain age they withdrew all physical affection, be it kissing, hugging or touching. They somehow believed that too much physical affection would turn me "the other way".

They scrutinised all my friends, and any male neighbours I talked to, for any signs of inappropriate behaviour or homosexual tendencies - whatever they might be.

Then bizarrely they sent me to an all-male boarding school, seemingly unaware that such schools were notorious for routine homosexuality. As it happened, there was never a whiff of gay sex in my particular school, so luckily for them I was spared the evil tentacles of Sodom.

They continued to be suspicious of my late teenage relationships, especially my friendship with a sixty year old abstract artist. My father was convinced he was trying to seduce me, despite the total absence of sexual overtones.

Eventually I left home and they were no longer able to monitor my activities. They were probably horrified when I started supporting the Gay Liberation Front.

But I never became gay and their decades of neurotic concern were completely pointless. It was nothing but a fool's errand all along.

PS: A new report by Stonewall says homophobia is still rampant in schools. It says 55% of gay pupils experience homophobic bullying and 96% hear words like "poof" or "lezza" in the classroom. 

Back to normal

We all like to think that we never worry about being "normal", that we just do our own thing, however weird or unusual it might be. I mean, who wants to be "normal"?

Not true of course. The fact is that we're always striving to be normal, whether we're aware of it or not. We may all want to do our own thing, but we don't want to be seen as a total loony. Nor do we want to be seen as undignified, embarrassing or vulgar. In private we have a very precise image of an appropriate public persona and we stick to it meticulously.

We don't go around

Sobbing with grief and misery
Laughing hysterically
Talking to ourselves*
Wearing pyjamas, wedding dresses or pink polka-dot suits
Ranting about the state of the world
Picking our nose or farting
Pointing at fat people
Smashing car windows

Dignity is very important to us. We don't want to be viewed as a figure of fun, an emotional wreck, or someone hopelessly out-of-control. We want to appear sensible, mature, responsible - in a word, dignified. And what is being dignified but acting normally, behaving in a way that other sensible, mature individuals would expect us to?

The occasional lack of dignity in suitable circumstances is fair enough - at a funeral or a party or a divorce hearing. But we soon put a stop to it and reassert our everyday decorum. We'll happily defend the idea of eccentricity but actually most of us steer well clear of it. We may think Grayson Perry's fabulous but we're not going to greet our own neighbours dressed as a small girl with a lollipop.

We're all more normal than we like to think we are.

* The less said about that the better 

Scrambled brain

I've had a nasty infection for a week and my brain is scrambled.

I feel like Francis Gilroy in David Park's book The Truth Commissioner:

"Never before has Gilroy felt his life so full of words and so depleted of those that carry meaning. Some days it feels he's wearing a straitjacket or his brain is clamped in a vice. He wants a new way to speak; he wants whatever's still ahead of him to be lived in a different way."

Normal service may or may not be resumed in due course.

Watch this space.

Hot off the press

Once again I'm baffled by the latest publishing sensation. In this case it's a trilogy of erotic books about a wealthy businessman and a young graduate by the author E L James. They're the fastest selling paperbacks of all time, even surpassing Harry Potter.

What the attraction is I couldn't tell you, as I haven't read them. Apparently they involve BDSM* and are extremely explicit. Guardian reviewer Jenny Colgan however finds them surprisingly tame and innocent: "The sole erotic thing anyone ever does is bite or play with their bottom lip."

I daresay it's one of those situations where a book gains a racy reputation way beyond its actual content, and word of mouth and idle curiosity mean thousands of people are surreptitiously buying it to find out what all the fuss is about.

That's despite a bevy of reviewers making withering comments on the "treacly clichés", "awful descriptions", "clunky prose" and "asinine phrases". But then most book-readers aren't attracted by high-flown literary outpourings, whatever we culture vultures might think. They just want a good read on the beach.

It seems that some of the interest is rooted in the sexual politics of the three books, which revolve around a virginal woman's affair with a more experienced man keen on sexual domination. Feminists have argued fiercely about whether the heroine is liberated and free-thinking or stuck in some sexist dark age.

Groundbreaking they certainly aren't, according to Jenny Colgan. She thinks they're heavily derivative, the businessman being straight out of "Pretty Woman" and his apartment recalling Frasier Crane's penthouse - "I kept expecting Eddie to arrive and do something amusing on the expensive furniture." The flirtatious emails are lifted from Bridget Jones while the sex is indebted to Ann Rice.

What has surely boosted the trilogy's sales is the much-noted quirk that slightly embarrassing books can be read unobtrusively on e-readers, since unlike a paperback they don't broadcast the content to all and sundry. So the demure middle-aged woman on the bus can be happily enjoying the whips and handcuffs regardless of the other passengers.

But however great my curiosity, I don't think I'll be sampling Ms James any time soon. I suspect my own fantasies are far racier than anything she could have concocted.

* for those from a sheltered background, bondage domination and sadomasochism 
The three books are Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed 
PS: This review is hilarious 

Unnatural practices

Those who rant against homo-sexuality usually trot out the religious line that it's an "unnat-ural practice", unlike the entirely natural business of heterosexuality.

Lord Ken Maginnis, a prominent Northern Irish politician, cranked out this familiar smear in a radio interview recently, and was roundly condemned for it. For good measure he also described gays as "deviant" and linked them with bestiality.

But a moment's thought exposes his use of the term "unnatural" as idiotic and detached from reality.

If you use the basic yardstick that anything you come up with yourself is "natural" while anything that has to be taught you by someone else is "unnatural", then clearly Lord Maginnis has got his nappies in a bit of a knot.

Homosexuality is an excellent example of something you come up with yourself, a personal preference that you merely act upon. Religion on the other hand is an equally excellent example of something that has to be taught you by someone versed in religious concepts and principles. A child doesn't spontaneously believe in God or spout the Ten Commandments.

In which case Lord Maginnis has got everything totally upside down, and it's homosexuality that's natural while religion is profoundly unnatural.

If Lord Maginnis wants to get rid of everything that's unnatural, some rather vital activities would disappear. The entire education system for a start, plus the health service, transport of all kinds and the English language itself. He would find himself living in a cave, wearing an animal fur, and grunting. Is that natural enough for you, Mr Maginnis?

Pic: the drop dead gorgeous Ken Maginnis 

Generation game

I so take for granted my childless status that I've never thought very much about the ways in which my life differs from that of the average parent. It's only occasionally that something said by a harassed mum or bemused dad gives me an insight. For example:

1) I can never be hopelessly embarrassed by my child. I needn't worry about the grunting, shaggy-haired, sloppily-dressed, drunken young lad staggering along the pavement. He's not mine.

2) My child can never be hopelessly embarrassed by me. I can lurch around the house playing air guitar, spouting street slang or wearing bright pink pyjamas without being told to act my age and stop trying to be a teenager.

3) I don't have to keep coughing up money because my child needs tuition fees, a flat deposit, a car, tickets for Lady Gaga, new clothes for an interview or a flight home from Australia.

4) I don't have to worry that my over-suggestible offspring will end up a druggie, an anorexic, an alcoholic, a prostitute, a banker or a confidence trickster.

5) My offspring never has to worry that I'll squander the inheritance, go senile, become bedbound, fill the house with cats, take in a deranged lodger or fill the fridge with rotting food.

6) My child doesn't have to waste precious hanging-out time showing me how to fix the computer/ the iPad/ the mobile/ the lost emails. Or explaining the latest fad for corsets/ super-bling/ silly bandz/ half baldies/ vampires.

7) I don't have to provide ongoing emotional support over my child's traumatic break-up with the love of his/her life and daily threats of suicide.

8) My child doesn't have to provide ongoing emotional support as daddy and mummy go through a bitter and messy divorce with each one blaming the other for causing it.

Of course, in return for these advantages some may think I've missed out on the most wonderful and rewarding experience of my life - having children. Well, what you've never had, you never miss, as they say. And I've never had the teeniest parental urge.

I'm not entirely free of such domestic headaches though. Jenny and I are quite wayward enough to cause each other hopeless embarrassment. Or frantic worries. Or bug-eyed disbelief. But at least I don't have to fly her home from Down Under.

Memory lapses

It's really most unfair to criticise the Prime Minister for his constant amnesia over his links with the Murdoch empire and whether he knew about various corrupt/ immoral/ illegal activities that were going on.

I mean, give him a break. Okay, so his memory failed him over 20 times*. But we've all been there. We've all had memory lapses from time to time. We all have hectic lives, rushing from pillar to post, trying to keep all the balls in the air, trying to keep it all together. We can't remember every little detail.

If a media tycoon asks you to bend a few rules so he can get his hands on a tasty little business with no questions asked, you're not necessarily going to remember, are you? Especially if you're being distracted by the gorgeous, pouting Rebekah Brooks with her big hair and flirtatious glances. Obviously, a man loses his concentration in such circumstances.

Heavens above, who remembers all these trivial minutiae nowadays? There's so much to absorb and our brains are only so large. There's too much new information jostling for attention, shoving all the old stuff out of the way, pushing it down into some inaccessible corner of our grey matter. Who can retrieve all these scraps at a moment's notice?

Just last week Jenny asked me if it was true that I was seen at a notorious "house of pleasure" with a certain buxom blonde. I had to say that quite honestly I couldn't remember everything I'd done that afternoon, particularly with all the potent medication I was taking for my athlete's foot. As far as I could recall I was discussing an ambiguous passage in Deuteronomy with my local vicar. Well, it was either that or Leviticus, I'm not entirely certain.

No, I''m sure the Prime Minister is genuinely forgetful. After all, he did accidentally leave his daughter in a pub in Buckinghamshire a couple of months ago. His memory isn't what it used to be.

* when he appeared at the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press 

Imagine

Just for a change, how about giving reality the brush-off? How about letting our imaginations out to play?

Imagine a woman in the middle of a field

Imagine the field growing bigger and bigger

Imagine the sky turning pink

Imagine another woman in a small plane

Imagine a column of smoke on the horizon

Imagine a hundred white butterflies

Imagine the women are thinking of circles

Imagine the circles are growing bigger and bigger

Imagine they're buzzing like bees

Imagine they're floating like clouds

Imagine the circles have escaped

Imagine the women have escaped

Imagine the field is empty

Imagine the plane is on the ground

Imagine a thousand white butterflies

Imagine a wrinkle in the sky

Imagine the women brushing their hair

Imagine the women remembering their past

Imagine the women walking on tiptoe

Imagine their soft breath

Years and tears

Are broken relation-ships harder to cope with as you get older? Are we less resilient, less optimistic, less forgiving? Do we have more invested in them, so that failure comes as more of a blow?

Personally, I couldn't say, as my present relationship is of very long standing. I can only look at what happened when I was young, when I did in fact get over doomed relationships quite easily.

Of course that wasn't just a question of age. It was also because the relationships had been short, or half-hearted to begin with, or I had my eye on someone else anyway.

The older you are, the longer your relationships are likely to have lasted, so they're harder to end for that reason rather than age in itself. Although I think it's also true that as you age you become more dependent on relationships and feel more bereft and beleaguered if they fold. You have less confidence that you can simply bounce back and carry on.

It also comes as more of a shock if someone you've felt totally secure with for many years suddenly announces that they don't feel the same and their affections have moved elsewhere.

I think it's true too that as you get older, relationships seem more important than they did when you were young, and break-ups seem more disastrous. All around you there are happy couples and close friends enriching each others' lives in a hundred ways, and anything that depletes that precious store looks like a tragic waste.

Or can younger people be just as traumatised and shattered by broken relationships as those who're older, especially if they idealise their partners more and expect a perfect emotional harmony that's unattainable?

All I know is that I'm very blessed to have a relationship that's endured for so long, when many people are battered by one disappointment after another, forever asking themselves what went wrong and why others seem to have the magic touch.

An awful likeness

One of the worst things you can say to most people is either "You're turning into your mother" or "You're turning into your father." Given that we're all acutely aware of our parents' failings, the idea that we might be reproducing them sends a shiver down our spine.

Even if we're thinking more of our parents' virtues, we still don't want to be told that we're merely a carbon copy of a parent, we want to have our own identity and take our own route through life.

I certainly don't like to be told that I take after my father, who in my opinion had a stack of unpleasant traits I spent most of my time trying consciously to avoid. Self-righteous bullying, among other things.

It helps that he hasn't been around for 24 years. Once a parent is gone, you're no longer exposed to the character flaws you disliked, and you're less likely to copy them. And when nobody can see the two of you together any more, they're less prone to see resemblances. I'm especially fortunate since Jenny never actually met my father and knows nothing about him except what I choose to reveal. So it's extremely rare for her to utter that dread phrase "You're turning into your father."

But it says something about our underlying view of our parents that if we're told we're morphing into one of them, our reaction is invariably one of shock and horror. My God, you can't be serious? You think I'm like my mother? This is terrible! Even if we're aware of all their good points, we never say "I'm like my mother? That's fantastic. How lovely of you to say so!" No, we always assume the worst, that the other person can see some vile, hideous trait that makes us thoroughly unattractive.

But as far as I'm concerned, I'm not like my father in any way at all. Absolutely, positively not. And you can't say any different as you've never met him. So there.

Sick joke

Anna's six year old daughter Charly fought bravely against cancer for two years before she finally died. All her online followers were grief-stricken. Then they discovered the truth. Neither Anna or Charly existed, and the whole thing was an elaborate hoax*.

It seems such hoaxers are common, and they tell their stories with such convincing details that other people are completely taken in, to the extent of sending money and gifts and giving regular emotional support.

What on earth possesses people to carry out such deliberate frauds on the unsuspecting public and feel no guilt or shame at what they are doing? Are they simply desperate for attention? Do they enjoy portraying themselves as embattled victims? Do they just like the idea of fooling gullible people? Whatever the motive, they are cynically exploiting our trust in the genuineness of onliners, whom we assume to be telling the truth unless we discover otherwise.

The syndrome has been named "Munchausen by internet" after those individuals who pester health services with imaginary but cleverly-faked illnesses that call for extensive treatments and hospital admissions.

One woman called Cara, on the American west coast, conned her internet visitors that she had cancer, HIV, anorexia and heart problems. She posted pictures wearing an oxygen mask and feeding tube, and a video in which she struggled to speak. She was eventually rumbled, and vanished.

Many women fake pregnancy and childbirth, stealing ultrasound pictures and baby photos, and even using ultra-realistic dolls.

But even if the motive is attention-seeking, it's a very convoluted and laborious way of doing it. Why not just get onto a bus and start ranting and raving? Why not just go out in fancy dress? Why go to such ridiculous lengths, and why the need for such bare-faced deceit?

* Information from the Macmillan online cancer forum, which "Anna" joined. 
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PS: I've had a complaint that I haven't sufficiently acknowledged the BBC article by Jolyon Jenkins which is the source of much of the information above. I freely admit to having reused information from his article, I'm very happy to explicitly acknowledge him as the source, and I'm sorry if he got the impression the post was entirely my own work.

I also freely admit that I lift material from all sorts of media sources, as do bloggers generally, but I hope I don't give the impression that it's based on personal research. Where I use outside material, I always link to the original source, though I accept this may not be seen as explicit enough.

Dividing line

I guess we all try to steer a careful line between normality and eccentricity. On the one hand we don't want to be normal, which means boring, predictable, obvious, stereotyped and just like everyone else. On the other hand we don't want to come across as some raving loony so detached from social norms that everyone gives us a wide berth.

I don't think there's much danger of my being seen as normal, since so many of my views and feelings are way out of line with other people's, or at least other people's as depicted by newspaper headlines, cabbies and the old geezer in the supermarket.

There's a much bigger risk of my turning into a wild-eyed eccentric, frothing and fizzing about every controversial issue and becoming the local laughing-stock that nobody takes seriously. I sometimes have to rein myself in and refrain from the sort of off-the-wall opinion that makes people knit their brows in bewilderment and ask me if I'm feeling all right.

I often have to ask myself "What would a normal person do in this situation?" and then act accordingly. Or alternatively, if the thought of behaving like a normal person, even for a few minutes, makes me distinctly queasy, I just keep quiet and wait for everyone else to enlighten me as to what the normal response might be.

When I come across someone who is conspicuously, dramatically eccentric, flouting every known rule of normal conduct with manic glee, I shudder and hope fervently that my own behaviour is still well short of such lurid extremes.

It's hard to tell though. I'm eccentric enough already, what with being a feminist, a socialist, a vegetarian, a Royal Jubilee refusenik, an Olympics don't-care, a Dexter Dalwood fan. Would it take much more to propel me into the heady realms of nutterhood?

But it's all relative, isn't it? It doesn't take much to feel eccentric in this particular neighbourhood, packed as it is with God-fearing churchgoers and Union Jack-wavers. If I was camping out at some mud-drenched anti-capitalist rock festival near Stonehenge, I would probably feel completely at home - and sickeningly normal.

Footnote: I guess at the end of the day, whether I feel normal or eccentric is pretty academic, because the only thing that really matters is whether other people accept me or not....