January 2007

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The only way to begin a new year is with optimism. No matter how bad it is, personally or globally, we need to believe that there will be a change, and that we can work towards change. I don’t know why our minds are so powerful, but I know that they are, and that our attitude affects much more than can be proved.

I am writing this on the last of the twelve days of Christmas – something that gets lost in our New Year celebrations, because of course the true New Year is the spring equinox on March 21st. We should still be in the spirit of Yule and the Star, a mysterious time, not to be hurried, but hey, this is the modern world, and even our festivals have to be moved on before they are ready.

I am never ready, and wish there was more peace, more quiet, less din, fewer meaningless interventions. It is possible to keep the world at bay, but every force-field takes energy, and I wish, sometimes, often, that the many, many of us, like me, did not have to put up with the idiocy of wall-to wall hyper-capitalism which cannot leave anything alone, even for a few days. There’s talk next year, in the UK, of allowing shops to stay open on Christmas Day. 

Shopping is what you do when you have stopped living.

Listen, I too like going to the market and buying food, or choosing a present for someone I love, or finding the right mirror for over the mantelpiece (I did that today), but shopping frenzy is killing us. We are deep in debt, we have horrible, useless, worthless possessions, and we spend our time in airless, graceless, out of town dumps with people we don’t know, and it’s called leisure, or pleasure. No wonder everyone is bonkers; I’d be bonkers if I had to go to Asda or Ikea.

And before anyone sends me a pious email about the ‘poor’ and how much good Asda and Tesco have done, just go and look in a ‘poor’ persons shopping trolley. I did this in Asda in Accrington, about as poor as you can get, and I should know because I was brought up there. I checked out fifty trolleys – and were they full of good value veg and cheap cuts of meat? No, they were stuffed with biscuits and ready meals – and weirdly, giant supplies of loo roll. I haven’t worked this one out yet – unless all the E-numbers and additives do something terrifying to the bowels.

What I do know is that when Asda first came to Accrington, and people stopped doing the markets and cooking their own meals, it was bad news for the poor – including us.   

There are plenty of people willing to speak on behalf of the poor – mostly marketing men on big salaries – and sometimes gob-sized ‘poor’ themselves, screaming the virtues of oven chips and turkey twizzlers. It seems not to matter that animals are factory-farmed, that even poorer workers in other countries are expected to subsidise cheap food in Britain, or that we are fat, unhealthy, and unable to cook even the simplest meals from scratch, Crap food is democracy on a plate.

This will be a good year to think about food, to buy food intelligently and compassionately, and maybe to eat less. If you can’t afford good meat twice a week, eat the best you can once a week.

Eating seasonally and locally always brings down costs. Between November and February, I buy pheasants by the brace for £5 – they feed 4 roasted, and 6 as a casserole. Serve with mash and spouts – fantastic, organic, and cheaper than Ready Meals or Take-aways.

When the shooting season ends and spring lamb comes round, that lamb is expensive – but the butcher will sell you mutton for hotpots at a quarter of the price. My mum brought me up like that – to know what to ask for in the butchers, to learn the seasons, to make good meals on little money. We really were poor – no phone, no inside loo, no car, no bank accounts, no credit, but we ate better than the nouveau poor, for one reason only – no supermarkets.

Capitalism has never benefited the poor, and it aint going to start now. Raised standards of living – so called, are a deception. Let’s not even discuss whether people are happier, more fulfilled, more contented – let’s just look at the basic bottom line – food.

I have said before that what you put on your plate and in your mouth is a political act. How you eat makes you an activist – or not. Cut the crap, cut the calories, cut capitalism.  

It’s a start…

And New Year is about beginnings.

I am settling down to finish a book, and happy in that place. Happy to have meaningful work, and something to struggle with, like landing a fish. The book is always submerged, and tricky, and won’t come out of its element, which is the unconscious place, but is has to be pulled out of the water, not to breathe its last, but because like other magical creatures, this fishy book is a shape-shifter, and once on land it will assume some other form, and make off.

It is very important to hold on to real life. You’ll know what that is for you – it isn’t the same thing for everyone.

And while it isn’t for me to suggest any new year resolutions for anyone else, I think the new year is a good time to let go of bitterness and heartache, envy, anger, you know the list – and such things have to be let go of while fully conscious, and it’s hard to do that, because we always feel justified in our dismal or destructive behaviour. We can’t help it, or it’s someone else’s fault.

Just let it go, right or wrong on your side doesn’t matter – the thing will eat you up no matter who is in the right or wrong. Stop giving it house-room.

Nelson Mandela once said, ‘You can forgive or you can forget, but you can’t do both.’

Forgive yourself and others, this year.