So glad the sun is out

I wish I could take a day trip to the sea or something, but I'm meeting Jess later to watch Godzilla for free, up at the Hackney Picturehouse. Stef says it's really good. The charity I was doing the report for is having a community event today, I'm going to pop over in a minute. Maybe I'll walk to Hackney and meet Jess there, I could do with a nice walk.

I've had my second proper batch of sauerkraut fermenting away for around eight days now, it has a real tang to it - I think I'll take it out today and start a new batch. I might make a World Cup batch as well, put it in on opening day and let it ferment until the final.

The alcohol has been out of control this week, I'll try to take a break this weekend, hold off to Monday night band practice. As I've said before I drink more than I should, but I feel like I can genuinely say that I don't usually drink to relieve stress or "drown my sorrows" - but yeah, this week I've been pretty much doing that, I have to admit. Feeling on the up now, more or less - I've been actually knuckling down and looking at jobs online, mostly public sector / non-profit comms roles. Still get occasional waves of nausea when working on my CV etc but I think this is going to be OK.

I haven't given up on the idea of developing technical skills and getting out of the creative class, but I think that's just something I'm going to have to develop on my own. I think I want to learn how to make needlepoint tapestry like Kaffe Fassett:

There's a good show of his at the American Museum in Bath right now. I like how needlepoint tapestry is reminiscent of 8-bit computer graphics.

I might start home brewing as well - I've been put off in the past by the fact that everyone's doing it, and also that there is currently loads and loads of good beer available to buy, so there's not much point in making your own. Also my flat is pretty small! But actually I guess the process is the thing, more than the product. It's become so uncool that I almost think it's now safe to do it. I like that as an alcohol control idea as well, like I'm only allowed to drink as much beer as I make or something. Probably need to find somewhere other than my flat to do it though.

Non-profit comms work, needlepoint tapestry, home brewing, drink less, start applying myself more in tai chi. That should take me through to 40.

My brother just quit his job

I love my brother!!!!

Sorry got to go, in pub.

Have a good weekend!

The Mysterious Wisdom of the Ancient Orient

"Knowing others is intelligent.
Knowing yourself is enlightened. 

Conquering others takes force.
Conquering yourself is true strength.

Knowing what it is enough is wealth.
Forging ahead shows inner resolve.

Hold your ground and you will last long.
Die without perishing and your life will endure."

- Tao Te Ching

I seem to have started talking about religion in yesterday's comments, I wasn't sure if that was going to come up in this blog.

A very long time ago I talked about being a philosophical Taoist, as opposed to a religious Taoist. I've since learned that the distinction is phoney and problematic - so-called 'philosophical' Taoism is an edited-down version of Taoism concocted by Confucians for Western audiences during the earliest periods of cross-cultural contact, with all the folky bits taken out to save embarrassment. A very rough equivalent might be reducing the Bible down to a couple of books centred around the parables of Jesus and his overall social and philosophical message while trimming out all the hard-to-swallow stuff about miracles, divinity, resurrection, prophecies etc.

'Philosophical' Taoism focuses almost entirely on two books, the Tao Te Ching and the Way of Chaung Tzu, which are more or less the central texts of real Taoism. Historically, there is a colossal amount of Orientalism embedded into the Western consumption of these books and Taoism generally - the usual Californian privileged nonsense, you know the drill: Confucius say, do whatever you feel like and don't feel bad about it. Many serious Taoist scholars pretty much take the approach that if you're not Chinese, there is really no good reason for you to claim any sort of adherence to, or membership of, the Taoist tradition, and that "Western Taoism" (for which associations and centres exist) is total bullshit and actually often patronising to the Chinese (the obvious subtext of 'philosophical' Taoism being 'we are doing it better than you, you illiterate and superstitious peasant').

Fair points all, and I don't think I would now claim to "be" a Taoist (first line of Tao Te Ching: "Tao called Tao is not Tao") - but I do claim to be a Latourian, and there is no question that reading these books, maybe ten or fifteen years ago now, had a surprising effect on me as they have many other Westerners over the years - that is, they have their own form of agency when translated not just into English, but into modern Western contexts.

This is not totally by historical mistake, either - scholarship suggests that the popularity of the Tao Te Ching across China when it first emerged during the Hundred Schools of Thought period depended in part on its delocalised, deregionalised, dehistoricised nature:

"The Tao Te Ching [...] is all but unique in early Chinese literature in that it does not contain a single reference to history or personal names of any kind. The speaker and those to and about whom he or she speaks are all equally anonymous, and the pronouncements of the text dwell in a kind of void, like so many timeless axioms, which is what they have often been compared to." - Burton Watson, introduction to the Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo translation of the Tao Te Ching (generally regarded as the best)

So while it is almost certainly "inauthentic" to become attached to the two key texts while conveniently ignoring the rest of Taoism, it's not entirely surprising that these two texts, in particular the Tao Te Ching, have had the staying power and reach they've had.

It might make more sense to think of 'Western Taoism' not as a religion or philosophy, but as a historical phenomenon or process in which certain texts interact with individual people's values, worldviews and actions. Sometimes the person's ego is too strong for the text to infiltrate and influence the person, and the text is simply absorbed into that person's psychic armoury, and/or displayed as part of the person's outward-facing social armour. This is where it gets a bit Orientalised and culturally appropriative.

But sometimes the text is strong enough to change the person over time, get in there and start rewiring. I certainly remember reading the Tao Te Ching for the first time and just thinking "yep, it all makes sense now, spiritual quest over, cheers". It didn't change my behaviour overnight ("Accept your insignificance." OK boss!) but it's slowly chipped away and will continue to do so, I expect.

There is a notion that the official lives his working life according to Confucianism and then is a Taoist in his free time and in retirement. I think maybe I was hoping to find a way to go "full Taoist", get a low-paying job at a small firm, working with my hands, developing a technical skill, no office politics or any reason to use the internet, etc. Maybe this just isn't quite the time, I'm not ready yet, the path hasn't emerged. I'm only 33.

Pretty deep in the hole here

Dawning on me that this just hasn't worked. I'm going to end up back in PR or comms, aren't I? Oh god oh god oh god. Deep breath.

Freedom achieved, followed by immediate panic

Charity report and pub article filed, no more commitments, about three or four hours of satisfied relaxation followed by a wave of total panic. The phony war is over, the real job search begins now... let's see what happens!

Sauerkraut breaking news

Just actually ate some of my sauerkraut in a meal for the first time - dumped it over some leftover chorizo and lentil stew thing Jess made. At the first bite, the thought "God is good" flashed across my mind. I think this is going to change my life.

Slow news day

I have a little radio that sits on my bathroom sink. It's analogue, and tuned to some random pirate station.

Except just now the station did an ident - it's actually tuned to Rinse FM!

The radio on my SINK... tuned to RINSE FM!!!

Enjoy the rest of your bank holiday.

New Commandments draft 3

Don't worry I'm not going to fixate on this list! I think this is now in decent shape. The ones I've taken out are not less important, it's more that I hope that by following the ones below, one will naturally be led to the others. In fact, I almost think that the coffee one alone could unlock everything. 

THE FIVE NEVERS

1. Never walk down the street holding coffee.

2. Never let anyone see you check your phone.

3. Never surf the internet to alleviate boredom.

4. Never use social media to address your loved ones all at the same time.

5. Never eat or drink in the most gentrified place in your local area.


The volunteering thing was a bit preachy, I guess. I'm hoping that the ban on going to the most gentrified place in your local area will do a lot of knock-on work - going to 'rougher' places, starting to take a more holistic view of your local area (i.e. not as a blank slate to be improved), maybe going on to then volunteer locally, if it feels appropriate. It's more about your attitude to other people near you than volunteering per se. 

I've punted on the competitive taste issue - it's hard to think of one injunction that will elegantly disrupt such behaviour. I'm hoping that the injunction on "broadcasting" and using the internet recreationally will do some of the work there. Thing is, though, I think we all do the competitive taste thing to some extent and it's not all bad, I suppose it depends on how "friendly" the competition is? Or to what extent you are able to detach yourself from your own tastes. But yeah, very complicated. 

New Commandments draft 2

Just editing down:

1. Do not walk down the street holding coffee.

2. Don't use the internet for recreation or to alleviate boredom, unless you are at work.

3. Only communicate with the people you care about directly, never address them as an undifferentiated mass. (aka Thou shall not tweet or post status updates)

4. Refrain from celebrating gentrification. Don't eat or drink in the most gentrified place on your high street.

5. Be price-sensitive: don't buy things that seem unnecessarily expensive.

6. Once a month, go eat or drink somewhere you think looks a bit rough.

7. You always look undignified when checking your phone. Never let anyone see you do it.

New Commandments draft 1

Following on from yesterday, here's my attempt at some new commandments for the cultured middle class.

1. Do not walk down the street holding coffee.

2. Don't use the internet for recreation or to alleviate boredom, unless you are at work.

3. Only communicate with the people you care about directly, never address them as an undifferentiated mass. (aka Thou shall not tweet or post status updates)

4. Never queue more than 20 minutes to eat.

5. Directly help the most deprived in your community, preferably in a way that doesn't use any of your professional skills. If you really can't spare the time, donate to a local charity and carefully read all of the literature it sends you.

6. Only read the Guardian once a week.

7. Refrain from celebrating gentrification. Don't eat or drink in the most gentrified place on your high street.

8. Be price-sensitive: don't buy things that seem unnecessarily expensive.

9. Spend time in local working class spaces and learn to be respectful towards such spaces and comfortable within them. Remember that multiculturalism includes indigenous class cultures as well as immigrant cultures.

10. You always look undignified when checking your phone. Never let anyone see you do it.

Half a thought

Don't have time to sketch this out totally, but imagine if you wanted to "fix" the cultural middle class by means of a short manifesto, or rather, a series of pledges to abstain from certain behaviours. What would you put on it? And I mean quite specific, literal pledges rather than abstract, open-to-interpretation notions. Ten Commandments type stuff. Like, "Do not tweet". The commandments are allowed to be clunky, babies are allowed to be thrown out with bathwater. They don't have to be prohibitions either, I guess you could insist that people, for example, maintain a certain proportion of serious reading to watching box sets, but that already seems to be slipping towards "self-improvement" rather than abstinence and self-negation in service of others.

The commandments have to be adopted voluntarily, so they have to resonate with people in the first instance - it's a mutual, collective exercise in self-control and self-discipline. They don't have to cover every little thing - the idea is that, once the five or ten commandments are adopted, they will serve as metaphors or principles informing all other areas of behaviour. The commandments will disrupt the fabric of an infantilised, self-obsessed culture. But they will sneak into that culture in a familiar form, like a computer virus - it will be like the 5:2 diet or "The Rules" or something. "Yes I'd love to meet for a drink, I can't drink in that pub though because the price of a pint is above the acceptable level laid out in the Commandments. Let's go to the other one, OK?".

Anyway don't have time to sketch it out, but what would go in?

19:30 update

Typing this on phone, can't edit last post.

Walked with Jess to polling booth. Stood outside polling booth for three minutes, cracked and went in intending to vote Green. As soon as I got in I regretted it, immediately felt ashamed and humiliated. Took my three ballot papers into the booth and ran the pencil down the boxes. I liked how it felt so I carried on carving languid pencil strokes over the whole surface of each paper. I was kind of in a trance, it was relaxing. I thought about drawing a cock on one of the papers but then thought of the poor volunteer counting the ballots. I drew a smiley face on each ballot instead, maybe it will cheer them up. By now I was totally calm. I folded the ballots, dropped them in a box. As I walked another guy walked in, he looked like a twitterer and I hated him in that moment.

I've always found premeditated ballot spoiling silly and twerpish, but this felt kind of OK. I realise as I type this that my account sounds a bit like accounts of people who self-harm.

Election Day liveblog

10:46

I'm planning on not voting today, partially because I went to Goldsmiths and I agree with Russell Brand, but also as an experiment to see what it feels like. The experiment is related to my theory of the governance class, I think. Have I become so conditioned to 'doing my duty' that I cannot bring myself not to vote?

I didn't bother voting in the 2012 US presidential election and that felt perfectly fine, but this is the UK, where I've voted in every possible election since obtaining citizenship in 2004 (except for the AV referendum, but that was because I moved house and couldn't sort out a postal ballot when on holiday). Reading the Guardian liveblog, I already feel slightly uneasy about not voting, I might not be able to hold out the whole day, but let's see.

For context, I am planning to not vote for:

- London MEP
- Lewisham Council
- Mayor of Lewisham

Anyway let's see how I get on.

12:02

Listening to a Michael Sandel Radio 4 show on the ethics of voting. Everything they are saying is making me feel better about not voting.

13:15

Just learned that people are now taking selfies in voting booths and posting them on Twitter. I will probably never vote again.

13:57

Reader Al from The North gets in touch BTL to say he has held his nose and voted Green. I think that is the party I would probably vote for if I were to vote, or at least the party whose policies I agree with the most, e.g. basic income, land tax - I've just finished Polanyi's The Great Transformation (which I really recommend, old school accessible sociology/history/economics in the vein of The Affluent Society or The Rise of the Meritocracy) and he has a good attack on the "fictitious commodities" of labour, land and money. The Greens seem to be going along those lines.

I guess as a small, democratically-run party they inevitably attract nutcases - apparently their annual conference narrowly avoided adding some kind of "9/11 truth" policy to their manifesto - but I suppose I shouldn't let that become too much of an issue for me, that problem sort of fixes itself as a party grows. I think it's the "green" bit that puts me off, I don't trust people who make the environment central to their politics, as I suspect it means they basically don't like humans.

There's also the problem of what they would do in power, or even in coalition. There's a new Neighbourhood Forum just set up in New Cross by some local residents, both urban planners. Their stated aim is to help New Cross residents have some say over how the area is redeveloped as capital flows in. Their manifesto is a mix of serious things like ensuring affordable housing, investment in schools etc, as well as more flighty, creative class type stuff about the built environment, re-envisaging public spaces, incentivising creative businesses etc. I don't doubt that they really care about the former, but my fear is that they will quickly realise that issues of housing and deprivation are very difficult to tackle and will just end up focusing on getting the little government grants to run small, tweetable projects that will only serve to gentrify the area and push up my fucking rent. I've already had a polite online exchange of views with the founder over his constant hyping of the area's few gentrified businesses (including one that hadn't even opened yet) as beacon for the future - ignoring that New Cross actually has a relatively stable and apparently thriving retail mix of BYO Turkish restaurants, black hairdressers etc.

Anyway my point is that if the Greens got in, I reckon they'd bottle it on basic income and land tax and just force everyone to use like eight fucking bins when recycling and call it day. I love living in Lewisham and not having to recycle, fuck Hackney.

I was feeling bad about not voting when I started writing this but now I'm back on track.

15:40

Just saw a tweet from the P-----m Liberal Club, a working men's club I belong to, reminding people to vote by linking to a Bob and Roberta Smith pro-voting art poster image. You could write a thesis on that tweet.

I started drinking there about 18 months ago when it was facing bankruptcy and had more or less become an illegal drinking den. It's basically where the remaining white working class of Peckham go to drink, the old ones anyway. I joined it just to get away from SE London gentrified wanky pubs and save some money (£2.75 a pint of mild). The club was nearly sold into flats last August, but then it was saved. You can probably guess who saved it. The club is back in the black thanks to the hard work of some local creative class types, but now there is like yoga and shit going on there and the Saturday night bingo keeps getting moved out of the hall to a side room to make way for private events like "underground" short films, craft markets, you know the drill.

I'm not saying that this is A Bad Thing, it saved the club - in fact I really don't have any criticism at all of the new people coming in, other than that they've removed one of the few remaining sanctuaries I had from their type, as they've been fairly sensitive to the situation. But I love - LOVE - how doggedly ungrateful, resentful and mistrustful most of the long-term members have been towards their "saviours". Oh you're a nice couple, a bit middle-class but you're really on our side? Hmm, where have we heard that before?

Anyway, a tweet from the Liberal Club reminding me via Bob and fucking Roberta Smith to vote, brilliant. I'm fairly certain almost all of the members will be voting UKIP.

Regarding voting as a nice harmless ritual, that's something I'd always believed (having always voted in very safe seats) until I started to think that maybe it's not so harmless if it is, in fact, just a ritual. I started to suspect that someone, somewhere, is laughing at me trooping off to do my democratic duty. This is kind of what finally gave me the resolve to quit smoking - the idea that some fat Republican prick in the American South was making millions off me killing myself - not just killing myself, but convincing myself that I was living life to the fullest, like a bon viveur, unlike all the uptight Protestant squares around me. I suppose that's the little intuition that's crept into my head - when I vote, is someone mugging me off? Is it actually degrading to vote in 2014 Britain?

16:18

Just checked Facebook (I am trying to finish that pub article but massively procrastinating) and the club tweeter has also posted that Bob and Roberta Smith poster on her personal page, writing above it "Yes! Vote-a-doodle-dandy.."

Vote-a-doodle-dandy.

(She's voting Green).

17:57

Resolve hasn't really weakened, although voting Green suddenly seems tempting. I've always thrown them a patronising 2nd preference when given the opportunity, voting for them outright would feel kind of new.

19:04

I've just convinced Jess to vote (she just got home). Will now walk with her to polling station and see if I can still resist. Our conversation went like this:

O: Did you vote?
J: No, I don't know anything about what's going on in Lewisham, what the issues are.
O: Well who do you trust to run Lewisham?
J: Labour. I'm going to vote Labour!

I should work for the Labour party.

Job searching

I said in my last post that I have a policy of not discussing my job search - to clarify, I mean that I am not discussing particular jobs applied for, industries/roles being targeted, progress in applications. The overall plan is that I will be totally silent/evasive about what I am up to, and then suddenly just announce that I'm moving to Dover to become a fireman (for example).

I will confide that I basically have no strategy at all, other than applying for London jobs first before giving up and applying elsewhere (I like the idea of living in Kent). This is more for my wife's benefit, although I would miss my London friends, my tai chi class and my band.

I have some dark patches where I basically feel that I'm already on the scrapheap, and I just want to move to a monastery. But I remind myself that this job thing is not about me, it's just a puzzle I have to solve in order to eat and have dignity. I'm trying to leave the creative class precisely because it depends too much on "passion" and identification with your job - it's no good starting to fixate on and romanticise other lines of work. I have to detach myself from the process. This is why I am not talking about it - I don't want to reinforce any embryonic attachment to a particular job opportunity or line of work. It's just a puzzle. Present myself in the right way to the right employer, and I'm all set. It's not about me.

All I am really trying to do is to provide my wife with some stability while she builds her career. Then I will live off the millions she will rake in as a professor of visual cultures!

Maths and English

Wow, leaving it late today.

I have a new policy of not discussing my job search at all, even with my wife, so I can't really talk about what I did today, but it was job search related. It involved doing very basic maths and English tests at a community college. Some of the maths was worryingly tricky - I've fucking forgotten how to do long division. The worst one was this:

"Sarah wants to watch how much fat she is eating. The recommended daily intake for women is 70g. The meal she is cooking contains 48g. What percentage of her daily intake is that? Round it to the nearest number."

Go ahead, try to do it without a computer. Maybe it will be second nature to you, I don't know. It took me like ten minutes. Got it right though.

I also had to take an ICT test, things like word processing, database programmes, presentation programmes, spreadsheets, emails. I did slightly worse than expected on this and retook it - I was particularly annoyed that I only got a Level 1 on presentation programmes rather than a Level 2, even though the whole point of me being there is to avoid ever making a fucking Powerpoint ever again, ever.

Also the beer article that broke my spirit was published today, it's had a good response.

So close to freedom

Just pinged off the executive summary of the report I'm writing for that charity. Literally one pub interview to write up and I can stop using the computer (except for my daily blog obvs).

Tried to go dancing last night at 10:30pm, there was a "world music" band at the Royal Albert. I had heard them doing a session on Cerys Matthews' 6Music show in the day, and they mentioned they were playing Deptford. We went to the cinema at 6, saw The Two Faces of January (terrible name, great-looking film but kind of unsatisfying), went home and ate, watched the Baftas and then headed out. The band had finished! We are just too European for this crowd. Went to the New Cross Inn instead for a student cocktail (Singapore Sling, 2 for £7). That place is growing on me a bit, I was put off when the prices went up. They now have a convoluted time-based pricing system - there's a board listing spirits that says things like:

House spirits - B4 8pm 2.50 / Happy Hour 1.70 / After 8pm 3.60

It's slightly wrong because happy hour is 7pm-8pm Mon-Thurs, so it should be "B4 7pm except Fri-Sun 8pm"

Same for the beer and cider, you can get a Thatchers for £2.90 before 7pm, £2 during happy hour. The Bird's Nest down the road, a genuinely good pub, does a £2.50 happy hour weekdays from 5pm-7pm, including all the new ales and craft beers the manager's brought on, great value. And Nouvelle Spice, my favourite local BYO curry house, does a £5.50 buffet from 12-5pm every day. 

Nightlife in New Cross is for losers, in other words: it's all about going out in the day. Maybe I should get a job as a baker or market porter or something.

More wushu

From the same exhibition. She was once the head coach of Yunnan Province martial arts team. Now she teaches me, she must love that!

(sorry I've gone Tumblr this weekend but it's sunny, I don't want to be hanging around in front of a computer!!)

Women sword fight

1980, Tokyo. The woman in pink is my tai chi teacher. I think she's like 17 in this.

Service update

I just posted the first new post on Fire Andy Townsend for 5.5 years, just for shits and giggles:

http://fireandytownsend.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/football-hipster-dilemma.html

Sauerkraut reboot

Tried the sauerkraut again (I'd left the jar open for a bit but Jess complained about the smell), there's something funny going on. Decided to write it off and start again.

This time I have a small white (yellow?) cabbage. Sliced it more finely this time, layered a lot of rock salt into it as I put it into a bowl, and then massaged it for 15 minutes until it had given off a decent amount of moisture. Really jammed it into the jar. I still had to top it up with a little water but not like last time. Wedged it down with some leaves.

It was quite a small cabbage so there isn't very much in the jar, I could have fit in another cabbage in but that's OK, early days. Let's see how this goes!

I have a jar of currywurst sauce from a trip to Hamburg. If I can get the sauerkraut right, I'll have to do a currywurst / sauerkraut night for a Germany game during the World Cup.

This is the Bosnia-Herzegovina team, not the German team. I am watching them play against Iran in Salvador, it's the only tickets I could get.

If I was younger and keener I'd do some kind of Bosnia vs Iran buildup blog, like reading their best poetry, eating in their restaurants, watching their best movies etc and rating them head-to-head, and then that decides which team I support on the day. I'll probably just focus on getting the sauerkraut right! But I might do the restaurant one, that's easy.

On my way to Carshalton

Took the inlaws from their B&B in Greenwich into Charing Cross today before taking them back to Oaddington. We chose the B&B as it was the same price as the Ibis hotel round the corner and we thought it would have more character. Forgot that older people don't give a shit about "character", they just want it to be spotlessly clean. B&B owner was a semi-working actor and, from the second-hand stories at least, something of a fantasist. I felt bad but as Jess explained, the oddness of the experience would serve them for months out in the countryside chatting to Jess' sisters.

As we came out of Charing Cross there were some people handing out religious leaflets. They were from the same religious sect as my inlaws so they stopped to have a chat (Jess is a bit funny about her religious upbringing so I'd feel funny naming the sect but you probably already know it). It was quite nice, they only had to say "hello sister" and the woman clicked right away. The sect has little embassies all over the UK, it must be nice to be part of that kind of network.

We had a cup of coffee in the crypt cafe at St Martins and then got on the baker loo to paddington. Her dad walks with a cane and doesn't know how to anticipate the jolt of tube trains do I had to hold him up. We've had a few nice halves of ale over the past few days while "the girls" were shopping.

It was cheaper to get them all day travel cards at Greenwich as they don't have oysters. I now have one of their travel cards do am going to carshalton to check out The Hope pub, which has won awards.

Mind has gone blank

Sneaking in my daily post as the bath fills, my mind has gone quite blank. Just stared at the page for five minutes there.

This is news in itself! I am almost finished with the charity report and just need to write up one pub article and I am free until the World Cup (technically I owe them another two or three articles, but I can let it slide).

I feel better and better, I'm waking up and not having immediate stress creep in of you-have-to-do-this entering my mind. It's amazing how the days and your mind space fills up even when you're not working. I remember keeping myself sane during the slog of my dissertation by picturing a sabbatical of exercise, hanging out in the library reading sociology journals for fun, small cups of coffee in cafes, long walks, going to lectures, spending quality time with friends, fixing my record player, properly seasoning a new wok and generally acting like an enlightened, retired German. Some of this materialised but not very much - all of this blobby life stuff enters into the day/my mind and fills it up. Booze is one part of the problem, computers/the internet another, I think. My record player is still unfixed, I bought the new wok last year but it still sits in its wrapping.

But! The intellectual, computer-driven "makework" I've lumbered myself with is almost done. It's about a month to go before the World Cup, I think I am finally going to start properly enjoying this career break.

My next step is to massively decrease computer use - once I've finished these computer-led tasks, I'll try to limit myself to one quick session a day of checking emails, writing a quick blog and that's it. Will use the spare time reading books and getting a bit more fit. Making slow progress on the alcohol front, maybe knocking off 25% at present.

Limehouse Cut

Super quick post while wife takes shower, inlaws in town today!

I decided to walk to band practice in Hackney yesterday as we were recording at Dan's house and I didn't have to carry a guitar. I took the Greenwich foot tunnel, walked up through Canary Wharf, around east Limehouse, searching for the Regents Canal. Instead I fell upon the Limehouse Cut, a straight canal that runs sort of parallel to the Regents Canal. It's fantastic! More industrial and leaner on the eye, but an interesting alternative - the Bristol to the Regent Canal's Bath, or the Glasgow to its Edinburgh.

Lots of good bits to it, but the only one I've got time to mention is a low train bridge that goes over the footpath. It carries four tracks, and you can stand under them and look at trains passing literally four or five feet above your head. The first few times, the trains passed slightly to the left or right of me - obviously I then decided to figure out in advance which track they were coming down and position myself directly underneath them. When I finally did, I literally shivered and jumped out of the way with a little squeal when the train passed directly overhead.

Anyway, the Limehouse cut. Need to go clean the bathroom.

Sauerkraut Update

To recap:

I put about two-thirds of a chopped red cabbage in a jar with a clasp and a rubber seal Thursday lunchtime. I had to top it up with water, as even after 30mins soaking in salt it hadn't given off much liquid (might sea salt be better next time?). I probably overfilled the jar, there was maybe half an inch of air space. I stuffed about four whole cabbage leaves on top to keep the chopped cabbage below the liquid line.

Over the weekend the liquid line rose and liquid started to seep out of the seal - I had to open the jar a few times to let the air/gas out, and put the jar on a plate to catch the escaping liquid (it had already stained a wooden tray thing we use as kitchen storage - red cabbage!). There was no sign of any mould at any time.

Today is four days since the start date, so I just tried it. The liquid was basically filling the jar when I opened it. I poured some away, removed the top leaves and tried a piece. It was too hard, and more sweet than briny. I put the leaves back and resealed the jar. I reckon I'll try again on Thursday.

Lessons learned: I was very hesitant at the start of the process, asking lots of questions and overthinking it. This is because I was afraid of messing up the first batch and then just giving up. I feel relaxed about it now. I had mistakenly thought of the process as being three days' effort on my part that could be wasted, in fact it was about 20 minutes of effort on my part and the rest is just the cabbage. If I end up throwing it away, it's just a 70p cabbage, I'll start again.

UPDATE: It seems I haven't been properly accounting for gas bubbles / air pockets - will go give it a good poke with a wooden spoon.

Live blogging from night bus

Getting today's blog post in early, about 1am. Can't believe how badly Poland did at Eurovision, I felt real Slavic pride there, thought eastern europe would come through. Found the winner utterly tedious, but I wonder of I am going through the transgender equivalent of old people saying they don't mind people being gay but don't make a big deal of it, don't put it in our faces etc. .,,

Saw a bit of Harry Hill era you've been framed for the first time today, his voicrovers are very good, in a similar vein to TV Burp, I feel bad for dismissing it out of hand before...

I'm going from hackney central to new cross via London bridge...

Some northerners on the bus being loud and northern, slightly aggressive towards a woman. He's from Halifax! She's from somewhere near Halifax, she's into it, it's fine.  Ah they're getting on like a house on fire. Oh he got a kiss but had to get off the bus.

This is near Hoxton station

Went for a drive in a prius today, helping a friend pick up a washing machine. Cars have changed a lot in the last five years, driving seems quit attractive nor

Alcohol update - two corona and a bottle of rose. With a lot of food. Font feel too bad now, during the sobering up phase. No booze yesterday, dinner tomorrow that I expect to be quiet. Couple, wife is nine months pregnant.

Food bank tales

Speed posting - key points from yesterday's food bank session -

1. They made us all sign indemnity waivers, people felt a bit put out. Also signed away photographic rights.

2. Old guy told me he went to Stamford Bridge after work in the 1960s and saw Peter Osgood's first team debut, scoring both goals in a 2-0 victory over Workington Town in a Cup replay

3. The same old guy was later propositioned by a drunk middle-aged client with facial tattoos, who touched his hand and asked if he could "take him home and shag him". I totally failed not to piss myself laughing.

4. Client-facing team reports a small increase in "entitled" behaviour from clients. You always get one or two fussy eaters sending stuff back, I actually quite respect that, it's dignified in some way, and we certainly don't expect them all to tearfully thank us, but it seems a growing minority of clients don't really differentiate between charitable food banks and government social services, it's all just one big blob of people who have let them down or screwed them over at some point.

Cabbage on the counter

Updates

Sauerkraut: red cabbage chopped in bowl, salted, on kitchen counter, waiting for it to wilt a little

Afrobics: revenge for colonialism, I can barely walk today

Hospital tests: all clear, also learned that I have normal cholesterol

Food bank: walking down there in an hour, looking forward to it

Thought for the Day: Jake and I were talking about jobs and life during a nice Thames walk on Bank Holiday Monday, one thought that came up and has stayed with me is, what if your talents and skills, i.e. the things you are supposed to hone and develop and thus fulfil your potential, are actually dangerous to both yourself and society? Research, conceptual thinking, writing - are these not incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands, or rather, applied to the wrong projects?

Alcohol: Tried the "5:2" line last night at my mate Dan's house, it worked although it was an easy environment, we were just working on some music. Got home and Jess had people round, so I ended up drinking half a bottle of wine and a can of Carlsberg. Left the final can in the fridge, whereas before I would have finished it out of "neatness". Baby steps!

Afrobics, vegetables, alcohol

OK I feel like those last posts on politics were like the last cleaning of old dirt from the pipes, it's just pure flow now, all new material. It might get serious but it will be present or future-oriented.

Just got back from Afrobics at Goldsmiths gym, Jess has been badgering me to go for ages. I thought I was going to die after 20 mins, I'm really out of shape. Gave up the gym about two years ago, was in my gym kit about to go do my regular routine of 3km on treadmill, light resistance training when I realised that I was never going to step on a treadmill ever again. Took up epee fencing for a while but it was on Friday nights (the Brixton Fencing Club!) so that fell apart after a while. Zumba was great for a bit (I get free classes at Goldsmiths gym) but my favourite instructor left and the other instructor mixes in all this house music and burlesque shit - keep it real! Afrobics was great though, the instructor is an African woman with a big chest and wide hips, which makes me feel more at home.

I guess I'm writing about health? Dramatically increased vegetable intake recently, feel much better for it. Trick, as always, was better planning, not buying random veg and letting it rot but buying a mix and immediately cooking it into stews, salads, etc.

Still need to sort out alcohol, I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads given my age. I quit smoking at the right time, 23, many of my friends who didn't quit by 25 will now probably smoke for life. I'm still drinking like a 26 year old. It's just so tasty and so enjoyable!

I reckon I need to cut down about 50%, but like advertising expenditure, it's hard to know which 50% to cut. I'm a bit all-or-nothing, genuinely enjoy extended periods of abstinence but find it hard to just have two - like I physically/mentally feel awful if a drinking session is "cut short". Any pro tips?

The tour finishes

Almost done, don't worry.

There Is No Alternative (that I can think of)

The Left has failed to come up with a more persuasive idea than neoliberalism. I don't say "better", I say "persuasive". It's persuasive because it denies even existing, even being an idea - certainly not an ideology. It just steadily reformats what it can - workplace relations, the welfare state - and it's never anyone's fault in particular, we just kind of had to do it.

The Left lost its head ten years ago but I don't blame it

Asking the Left to keep calm and respond in a rational, measured and constructively critical way to George W Bush, churchy Texas oilmen, Halliburton, the GWoT and a preemptive, transparently unthought-through war was a really big ask, was it not? I mean they went mental, shrill, hysterical and made all kinds of terrible decisions, but wow, there's only so much provocation you can take. Politics went kind of flat and stretched for a while there, but I don't think the Left made the first move in terms of reducing the overall level of nuance.

The Rise of the Meritocracy is a thing

I really liked Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy (and can't believe that Toby Young, that bag of shit, is his son). Disparities in "cognitive capital" are only going to increase. I think/fear the liberals will get cleverer and cleverer and the Left and conservatives will get stupider and stupider.

Being on the Left is really really difficult

It's just really difficult. There's so much more you are trying to do, so many other dimensions of the human experience (dignity, stability, social ties, culture) that you are trying to stick up for, so much Romanticism that doesn't really slide easily into the conceptual language and faux-scientific approach of liberal governance. The intuitive sense of threat you feel from the powerful leads you down so many blind alleys and next to so many bad allies. If you're middle class, you also have to constantly keep your wounds open and resist the temptation to embrace quick-fix workarounds like ethical purchases.

It's difficult, it's maybe impossible, it's beyond me.

The answer is something to do with freely deciding to restrain yourself

Of all my ruins, this is just the faintest hint of an ancient floorplan amid the grass. I think it must come from theology. We have free will because that makes it more meaningful when we choose to love God - is that how it goes? We must freely decide to give up our freedom? To hold back from pressing our advantages just because we can. To transcend rational self-interest by freely deciding to destroy the self, if you're taking a more Eastern tack. I can barely make out the contours of this argument, to be honest.

This is the end of the tour, thank you for visiting.

The tour, continued

Theory of a Governance Class

I once wondered aloud why my immediate circle spends so much time reading about politics and arguing about it in the pub when few of us are actively involved in politics in any meaningful way beyond voting. The jokey conclusion was that, as high educational achievers and Oxford men, we have been subconsciously conditioned to think that governing is our duty, and that we might at any given time be substituted into the Shadow Cabinet through some unforeseen circumstance, and had better be prepared.

In other words we are members of a governance class. These people can be found drawing up Neighbourhood Plans, sitting on the boards of local charities, chairing the organising committee, voting as a school governor whether to introduce performance-related pay. Or just doing the work of developing and sustaining the mainstream political consensus, the grown-up view on things.

We need to look really carefully about who these people are and what drives them, I think. I suspect they're a bunch of fucking liberals.

Rational argument 

I have concerns about how logical, rational argument (the stock-in-trade of clever people/the governance class) functions in politics. It's not as clever as it thinks it is. Too many edges get knocked off. In particular, it bothers me that there's a sense that once the pros are shown to have outweighed the cons, then the cons must be banished from public discussion and never brought up again. In logical argument two opposing or conflicting ideas cannot be held at the same time, when in fact I think humans do this constantly, and are no worse for it.

coming together to discuss things rationally

Privilege is a thing, sorry

I feel sorry for poor old "check your privilege", the little political meme that could. Obviously 99% of what gets attached to it is garbage. Look at the obstacles it faces though. The idea is to point out to people that their opinions and "rational, disinterested" thought processes may be blinkered by embedded assumptions and blind spots arising from their social position. I think this is a really important point, particularly in relation to deliberative democracy and the governance class. But then the R&D for this idea mostly takes place on Twitter/Tumblr, removing all nuance from discussion and making everyone who expresses an opinion on it vulnerable to being charged with the very thing being discussed. Poor "privilege".

Let me offer a more grown-up, weird, French way of looking at it, taken from Latour's Atmospheres of Democracy. He uses the metaphor of the prosthesis a disabled person uses to mitigate the incompatibility between their disability and the built environment. We all need to use such crutches, such corrective lenses, he suggests, when we assemble around issues. We need to show respect for the existence of mediation in politics and pay attention to techniques of representation.

Champagne Socialism

People think that champagne socialism is the result of middle class guilt. That's the wrong way around. Champagne socialism doesn't arise from a champagne drinker's contact with non-champagne drinkers. It arises from contact between champagne drinkers.

Champagne socialism stems from a moment, or series of moments, in which it dawns on you, the champagne drinker, that most of the other champagne drinkers don't really think an awful lot of non-champagne drinkers. That they are basically unconcerned with inequality, either gruffly shrugging it off as can't-be-helped (conservative) or constructing elaborate intellectual justifications for it with the relish of someone solving a tricky sudoku (liberal). The champagne socialism starts when you begin to suspect that a lot of other people in your social class basically don't care. It's as though there is a war you didn't even know existed and you have to choose sides.

This starts you off on an internal mental process that might lead to middle class guilt - a form of guilt by association, not such a bad thing in itself - and phony identification with the working class, which is pretty embarrassing for all concerned. But the initial instinct is a sense of ethical and moral fracture within your own class. I defend my fellow champagne socialists.

I understand the seductive appeal of liberalism and liberal rationality

It's so neat and elegant. I really do get it. And it really does have a lot of explanatory power in a lot of cases. It debunks superstition and dissolves tradition and cant with a kind of scouring acid. The mind feels clean reading stuff like Freakonomics. And most people who believe in it seem to be doing pretty well, living decent and clean and honourable lives. (Libertarian = uncouth, socially failed liberal?).

Is that elegance a kind of poison though? Does liberalism spring from being in love with your own rational faculties?

A brief tour of the rubble

I have essentially retired from politics - I probably won't vote in the European elections and quite possibly not even in the General Election. My political career ended in failure: I lost so many pub arguments with an ex-lefty college friend who broke liberal that I just gave up and retreated into a sort of embittered exile. Funny thing was, it felt like I'd seen most of it before, on Blogger, in the noughties, in the arguments we all used to have about the war, free markets, America, etc. The Decent Left, the Euston Manifesto, "if you were really left-wing, you'd actually support [war/free markets/America] because [clever-bollocks reason]". A lot of it was indeed familiar, but the practice was for nought. I held out for a bit, a few no-score draws, ten men behind the ball, but ultimately I was routed. I'm now just sitting around in the rubble.

I will give you a brief tour of the rubble. It's made up of little fragments, broken statues, charred fortifications, some ramparts offering pretty views. I've been unable to assemble the pieces into anything coherent, anything that functions, but if you are looking to construct a new worldview, you might find something of use that you are welcome to take with you. It might take a couple of posts, I'll try to break it up with some pictures.

"I'm socially liberal and economically liberal"

I don't trust this at all, it's always struck me as fishy. Same as "I'm an 18th Century Liberal" (great, you're just in time!).

The "and" is trying to do too much work. I'm not going to award you any points for being socially liberal. You don't get points just for not being racist, sexist or homophobic. So all you're really saying to me is, "I'm economically liberal". We can talk about that. But putting a rainbow decal on your economic liberalism isn't going to cut it with me.

Economic liberalism is basically about clever people making sure they are allowed to get rich

Letting clever people accumulate all the money is better than letting people whose dads stole it by force keep it, sure. But watching millionaires like Nick Clegg get all misty-eyed about liberty and the Magna Carta sticks in the craw a little.

What do you mean by "socially liberal", exactly?

That race/gender/sexuality should be no handicap to working within the liberal-rational system, or that there might be other systems and worldviews - other rationalities?

1. Left 2. Conservative 3. Liberal

I guess what I'm really ranking here is the plan for looking after the poor.

1. Some form of solidarity
2. Noblesse oblige
3. Free people pursuing their rational self-interest and it all just sort of coming out in the wash

The first one is vague, I'll grant you, but the third one is obviously a mental utopian fantasy. The second one at least involves an element of care.

There's an element of Oxbridge snobbery in the Left -> Liberal movement

Look at this picture:

Cringeworthy, right? Who wants to keep this kind of company? Even a few steps up, the Guardian columnists, social justice bloggers, "community spokespeople" - such earnestness, such self-satisfaction, so many errors made. Trenton Oldfield! Do you really want to be defending these people at dinner parties? Why can't that nice man Tony Blair come back and make us feel respectable for being lefties again?

Well I would just ask - is a 19-year-old UCL girl holding a po-faced placard and Instragramming herself really a good enough reason to go all contrarian and end up, in the name of "cleaning house", just adopting every liberal counter-argument to lefty dogma you can lay your hands on? Is that how you treat all the members of your family?

The Left is doomed barring a major and violent crisis

People just aren't really into solidarity anymore, and it's difficult for me to imagine how you construct a left politics in a post-solidarity world (other than just a guerilla, oppositional politics).

"Deliberative" democracy is a dangerous sham

I want us to be able to choose our leaders, but I don't think I really believe in the "deliberative democracy" model, where we all apparently come together in the public sphere as disinterested individuals (i.e. not representing class or other bloc interests) and see to it that the best argument carries the day. It's a dangerous fiction, dangerous even as an aspiration.

On a practical level, the clever people just get to stitch it up. But also they get to stitch it up while pretending that there are no "sides", that it's just for the common good. This is incredibly annoying. I don't see politics as a logistical problem to be solved and I don't trust clever people to take care of it just because they are clever. They cut corners.

By popular demand

This is the last stop on my tour of French sociologists, sadly, as Bourdieu, Latour and Hennion are the only ones I really tackled in any depth. But one guy who is impossible to avoid if you go to Goldsmiths is Michel Foucault.

I can only offer crumbs, half-remembered fragments. Pretend that we're in the pub.

1. His books are impenetrable, but his published lectures are lively and readable. His lectures on neoliberalism and governmentality from the College de France - I think 1979? - are a decent starting point. He admitted to an interviewer that he made his books impenetrable because it's the done thing in France.

2. A particularly famous book of his is Discipline and Punish, which opens with a graphic scene of a condemned man being quartered. It then considers Bentham's Panopticon prison. He argues that the notion of sovereignty shifted at some point in the 18th and 19th century from the sovereign king with the power of life and death, to this sort of, um, governmentality thing with the power of life. Government measuring mortality, economic statistics etc, probing and weighing the populace, figuring out the "right" level of this and that (e.g. pathologizing madness, he did a whole other book on that), and then inclucating those "right" levels or norms in us so that we, like Bentham's prisoners, discipline ourselves and our families, friends etc.

3. This shaping and discipling is very much of the body as well as the mind, he says. This notion basically underwrites a huge tranche of queer theory, with Judith Butler being the main thinker who adapted Foucault to contemporary American identity politics.

4. The notion of "governmentality", meanwhile, became a mainstay of critiques of neoliberalism - the notion that, in place of people telling us what to do, the system just sort of moulds us into atomistic entrepreneurs of the self who see everything in terms of markets - and thus provides no real tangible point of resistance, no obvious pricks to kick against. Particularly relevant to marketisation of public services - being an NHS "customer" rather than someone being cared for by the state.

5. That's all I've got time for, and pretty much all I remember. Again, not necessarily worth reading a lot of, but worth a Wikipedia because Foucault is such a big influence on the contemporary Left, i.e. there are a people on the Left whose whole mode of thought is based around Foucauldian concepts, and there are fundamental gaps between Left/Right (or particularly, Left/Liberal) arguments because of these incompatible worldviews, that I don't think gets picked up on very much.

Bruno Latour

I'm going to do at least a post a day up until the World Cup.

This is a quick one (bath filling now) on Bruno Latour, my favourite sociologist. I based my dissertation around some of his theories. I'll start with the conclusion, which is that he's really fun to watch delivering lectures. He makes being an academic look really good. Sorry I can't embed this, but check out this 3 min video - don't worry about the content, just check out his style:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x168gnv_fun-mooc-scientific-humanities_school

I've developed a serious city-crush on Paris over the last 12 months that I can't really explain, but yeah part of it I guess is the vision of being some kind of cool academic hanging out in the same bistros as Latour, Piketty etc, taking the Eurostar to deliver lectures at the LSE, drinking really good wine and eating three courses at every meal.

I'm not sure if there is any point in reading Latour if you are not a sociologist or a scientist, although Reassembling the Social is readable enough and the concepts can be easily applied to one's own interests. In fact Al's post about sauerkraut made me want to post about this - Latour's first major book was called The Pasteurisation of France. 

His main thing is about collapsing the distinction between the material and the social, and showing how our social relations are mediated by material things, which are not purely symbolic "mute intermediaries", but rather "mediators" with their own form of agency - a sort of non-intentional agency that allow them to distort, transform and mutate the "meaning" or the nature of the social relation that is flowing through them. This results in a sort of "slow sociology", where you are not allowed to explain things through concepts like "social forces" or "the rise of individualism" - it all has to be unpacked and reassembled first (hence the title).

Anyway you can Wikipedia the rest if you're interested - I just wanted to close by going back to what I wrote about Bourdieu a few posts ago. Bourdieu says our taste preferences are merely arbitrary weapons in a symbolic battlefield that is really about securing social distinction. Latour thinks this is total bullshit. The qualities of the thing itself have to have some input into how your taste is formed, he says, it's ridiculous to say otherwise. There may be symbolic attachments to certain things floating around in your head, but you can't just take the thing itself totally out of the equation.

As Latour ally Antoine Hennion argues, taste is an activity comprised of moments of attention to objects - tentative moments where we make ourselves passive to objects and allow them to work on us. He contrasts "drinking wine" with "drinking a wine" - i.e. drinking without really paying attention, versus doing that thing where you pause, sniff the wine, hold it on your tongue and have a little moment. In that moment, all of the stuff you've been told to think about wine is still there, but so is the wine itself.

It's an interesting model to use to think about taste, because it lets you account for the hipster/Guardian elements of taste without denying that we can actually genuinely like stuff.

ANYWAY what I'm taking forever to get to is that, unlike scholarship boy Bourdieu, Latour comes from a fairly privileged background - in fact, he comes from the Louis Latour winemaking family. I walked past him at the LSE after a lecture and wanted to ask him whether the wine thing was an influence on his "objects have agency too" notion - terrior, that kind of thing. But I decided not to, he was already talking to someone.

Text from my wife

"Have you thought about becoming a tree surgeon? Sam's son just did a 3 month course and was given a job for southwark council before the course ended- he works 7.30 to 2 weekdays and loves it. (He did a fine art degree at camberwell before) x"

I love being married.

Being a tree surgeon sounds OK, although I worry about chopping off my hand with a chainsaw or something, or like cutting off the branch I'm sitting on. I definitely feel like I want to work for the council, though. Something that would get me out and about would be nice as well. Maybe something to do with trains?

Frying a pork chop

I'm typing in the kitchen while frying a pork chop, I have about 18 mins. Trying to decide what to do today, a little light work on my outstanding commitments, stay at home all day watching Bruno Latour lectures on Youtube, or get out and about. It's a glorious day, I slightly hate feeling obliged to go for a walk, the sun is not my master, but I could do with a little exercise I guess, this stuff is good for you.

I walk all the time now, I love it - the Capital Ring was just a jumping off point for me. I tend to stick the Thames these days. If you want to look it up on a map, I live right next to New Cross Gate station, slightly to the east on Batavia Road. For a long time I would walk directly north up to the river, and then walk west towards civilisation, ending up at London Bridge. Or I would take the overground to Rotherhithe and walk west to Westminster Bridge, or maybe train to London Bridge and then walk to Deptford High Street and home.

But one day I went north to the river and headed east, all the way to the Thames Barrier. Fucking phenomenal. You head through Maritime Greenwich and then the whole west ridge of the Greenwich Peninsula is a deserted path with old rusting boats and shit. When you get near the top there is some actual industrial shit going on, like a fucking crane scooping up shit out of a boat and swinging it over the path, dumping it into some kind of refinery filled with these great big mounds of rubble, it's like the surface of the moon. Some good pics here. And then all the sudden you're outside the Millennium Dome!

I like to break off here and wander through the Greenwich Millennium Village, a sort of planned town they knocked up and haven't quite finished. It looks like a town in Holland or Germany, but kind of eerie because at the edge there is just wasteland where they haven't started building yet. I really want to talk to someone who lives there!

The river carries on with more industry, a yacht club, then the Thames barrier. You can cut back inland, kind of do a loop and go through Charlton. I love how the Charlton Athletic stadium just jumps out from behind a row of terraced housing. You can either get the train back from Charlton or walk all the way back into Greenwich along the A206. This is kind of a boring road but when you walk down it many times, you start to see a new frontier slowly opening up in East Greenwich for that thing I was talking about in an earlier post.

Pork chop then walk, yes that's the ticket.

Food bank

Enjoyed writing those mammoth posts yesterday but I wore myself out a bit, this one will be written in the time it takes the bath to fill!

I've been volunteering at a food bank in Forest Hill for a little over a year now - I signed up the day Thatcher died. Sort of as a gesture of surrender. I've always avoided volunteering because I was worried that I'd end up enjoying it and that it would "make me a better person". My gut instinct was that charity work should be incredibly tedious and humiliating - I can't justify this, it's just personal, maybe I can't trust myself, maybe it's something to do with the example of Jesus, drummed into me in school. But I had time on my hands and this seemed like such an unbelievably boring task that I couldn't possibly find it "fulfilling".

It was really boring the first few weeks and is still pretty boring (especially since Jess got a Friday shift in a shop and can't join me anymore), but I've really grown to like all of the middle-aged / elderly Christians who volunteer there. I talk to them about trains and cricket and shit like that, it's great. I'm pretty much the only non-Christian and the youngest there by about 20 years.

I'm part of the backroom staff, I don't actually deal with clients except when bringing out bags. It's a Trussell Trust food bank so it's all pretty well organised. Orders come in from the front, based on a fixed list. One person calls out the order item by item, the rest of us pick the items off the shelf, then it's bagged and weighed. My favourite ever job was light warehouse work so this is a bit like that.

The process is always far more slow and chaotic that it needs to be. The shelves are arranged in a horseshoe pattern, with the items arranged so as to correspond with the order of the list - i.e. top to bottom list = right to left on shelves. There are almost always more volunteers than we actually need so the back room is crowded. It seems obvious to me that a zonal marking system would make the most sense, with each volunteer stationed next to one shelf, feeding items into the centre. I was able to briefly introduce this early on, during a particularly busy day, but it fell apart and we soon reverted to the old system of bumping into each other and constantly being in each other's way. But of course I came to see that this inefficiency is part of the point - we're volunteering our time, so we don't need to be bound to imperatives of efficiency, we can just bumble around, fuck you capitalism and liberal rationality, Jesus looks kindly on us.

I also like how many of the volunteers have developed a "thing", some kind of self-appointed duty. One woman always makes sure that, if there are young children on an order, that we give full-fat milk not skimmed (clients can pick up three X three-day parcels a year - nine days of sustenance out of 365, probably not nutritionally significant.) Another guy is constantly fiddling with the items on the shelves, making sure the expiry dates are in right to left order. I'm trying to carve out a thing of discreetly checking the ethnicities of clients (it's given on the referral sheet) and using my deeply cosmopolitan Guardianista knowledge to give them culturally-appropriate food. It just passes the time.

People drop off some funny items too. Some are just amusingly posh, like pricey pates and terrines, fancy loose leaf teas etc. The other good one is when people very generously give us enormous 5kg bags of rice, or catering-sized gigantic tins of beans, that we then can't give away because they are too big. The current winner, however, is a box of bikini wax.

We've had one break-in but the biggest issue is mice - not only to they shit on the pasta, but they nibble into the milk cartons and then the milk spills out and gets all funky. I've been called in for mouse shit / gross milk cleaning detail twice now, which seems unfair because I'm not even going to Heaven.

Since I started going, food banks have been in the news a lot. It's really amusing how people seem very keen to have an opinion about them. They get under people's skin somehow, it's funny.

Theorising Gentrification Rage

In my last post I talked about how sociologists are developing increasingly niche theories and studies around the phenomenon of regeneration/gentrification, one of the major narratives of our time. Here is my attempt. 

(Like the previous post, it is not a moan about gentrification.)

Theory of gentrification rage

This theory seeks to explain why certain ways of producing space for the affluent, certain manifestations of gentrification, can make otherwise reasonable observers (such as myself) feel viscerally and disproportionately enraged, dismayed and appalled. 

I contrast this rage with the cold disapproval we might feel towards things like the bank bailout or zero-hour contracts - other instances of what critical sociologists might call capitalist or neoliberal exploitation, but can just as easily be understood as "the rich pushing other people around". (I stress from the outset that I am talking about the rage felt by observers of the process rather than its immediate victims, which is a whole different thing.)

I suggest that there are three key factors at play: an injury and two insults. The presence of one or two factors will create bemusement, cold disapproval, minor irritation etc, but when all three are combined, this explodes into full-blown gentrification rage.

1. Increased residential and commercial rents leading to economic displacement (INJURY)

This is relatively straightforward to conceptualise and quantitatively measure. The cause and effect is pretty clear. The injury can be understood as purely economic, or you can also factor in the negative social outcomes of disrupting existing community ties or dissipating "social capital".

2. Perceived pioneer or saviour complex of affluent incomers (INSULT)

These are established concepts in urban sociology. The "pioneer" complex refers to affluent newcomers who talk about and generally relate to their new area as though they've discovered an unknown land that they are very excited about, thus patronising the people who were already there. The "saviour" complex takes this one step further: affluent newcomers who believe that they are actively helping the area just by living there. 

Evidence of this is more qualitative, but still measurable. It might include a hipster cafe stressing its community credentials, ostentatious displays of local pride (e.g. "I heart Peckham" tote bags) by people who have lived locally for a relatively short time, flashy but low-commitment community projects e.g. the Big Lunch, hyperlocal blogging ("which shops would you like to see open up on Chatsworth Road? Discuss"), lots of Twittering and unfocused, uncritical enthusiasm about "exciting changes". Essentially, we’re talking about smugness.

3. Replacement of existing local businesses with "frivolous" new businesses (INSULT)

This is the innovative part of my theory and the most difficult to conceptualise and measure. I am suggesting here that the consumption practices of the affluent contain both "grown-up" and "frivolous" products and experiences. This opens a massive box of theoretical and methodological worms but I think it starts to explain why a lot of gentrification rage tends to focus on the more infantile affectations of some affluent newcomers. A certain frosted bakery item is the most obvious, if now clichéd symbol of this. People just don't seem to get quite as worked up about "grown-up" businesses opening in gentrifying neighbourhoods as they do about "frivolous" businesses. 

(a grown up business)

Operationalising the three-factor model

An empty retail unit on the high street of a socially mixed area is filled by a new business aimed at affluent newcomers. Different combinations of the three factors result in different reactions.

Rents same / grown-up business / no smug = mild surprise

Rents up / grown-up business / no smug = mild concern

Rents same / grown-up business / smug = bemusement, eye roll

Rents up / grown-up business / smug = irritation

Rents same / frivolous business / no smug = bemusement

Rents up / frivolous business / no smug = irritation

Rents same / frivolous business / smug = bemusement, eye roll

Rents up / frivolous business / smug = GENTRIFICATION RAGE

Problem: conceptualising the frivolous

This is the tricky bit. I admit that I’m basically saying that I don’t mind steakhouses, boutique hotels and Japanese restaurants opening near me, but I can’t stand poshed-up chippies, cushiony tat shops or twee cafes. A feminist rejoinder might be that my notion of the frivolous is gendered.  Bourdieu would just say my distinctions are totally arbitrary and that I’m a snob holding onto a certain Oxbridge-influenced vision of cultural quality. Hmm.

I’m still working on it, but some possible approaches of theorising the frivolous would be:

- If the expensive thing being sold is inherently expensive, like fine wine, haute cuisine or antique furniture, then it’s probably “grown up”. If they’ve taken an ordinary business like a grocers, pub, cafe or chippy and contrived a way to make it more expensive, then it’s probably frivolous (regardless of whether the end product offers value for money). It’s just a way of offering affluent people who like to think of themselves as cultured, but are not actually grown up enough to appreciate fine wine, haute cuisine etc (apologies to Swiss Toni), a chance to “Taste the Difference” in a safe, unthreatening environment.

- Along similar lines, one might ask whether the expensive thing is something that low-income people would pay for if they had the money, or if they at least recognise the thing as a legitimately high-end item or service. If so, it is probably “grown up”, or perhaps, “legitimate”. If the value/expense of the thing depends on obscure middle-class codes – elements of design and typeface, an arch knowingness, contrived scarcity/inconvenience - it is likely to be “frivolous”.

- If the business presents itself to customers in a matey, infantile manner, it’s a strong indication that it’s frivolous. If it treats you like an adult, it’s obviously grown up.

- If the business actually adds something new to the city as a whole (i.e. not just the neighbourhood) – an under-appreciated cuisine, or a genuinely new and useful product or service – it should probably get a pass.

(expensive fried chicken in Brixton)

Practical benefits of the theory

Gentrification will always piss some people off but the arguments that result from it always seem to go in circles. The tone of anti-gentrification rants is always the same, with the same litanies always deployed: ironic moustaches, the three-quid loaf, prams in pubs, soy lattes etc. They’re like a spasm.

Defenders, meanwhile, always make the same specious liberal rationalisations and faux-historical excuses: it’s just the free market, at least crime is down, can’t preserve neighbourhoods in aspic, cities thrive on change, waves of immigration, something about the Huguenots, or my personal favourite, “these terraces in Peckham were originally built for the middle classes!”

Thesis and antithesis stubbornly refuse to merge into any kind of synthesis. By isolating the factors underpinning gentrification rage and thinking about each of them in turn, perhaps both sides can move towards a more level-headed way of making sense of this thing. Some of the more gratuitous annoyances can be avoided, but also the criticism can become a bit more constructive. We may as well try, as the issue certainly isn't going away.

Postscript: frivolous people?

One might also consider whether the perceived frivolousness of the incomers themselves is a factor – not just what they consume, but also what they produce. The hate-figure in gentrification rage is sometimes a banker or lawyer, but more frequently a member of the “creative class” or a trust fund kid – i.e. people who go to work in trainers and don’t have “serious” jobs. In San Francisco, for example, the tech sector is particularly demonised – as though being priced out of your neighbourhood by an overpaid 25-year-old idiot who thinks he’s going to change the world with some meaningless app is more humiliating than being priced out by a 45-year-old evil banker or captain of industry. After all, where is there a purer mix of total frivolousness and total earnestness/smugness than in the tech sector?