The following words I can only apologize for, they are the result of too much festive wine, too many conversations in the early hours. 

What does it mean to be single and in you're 30's?  What are the causes of this condition? I think about this often as I'm about to turn 32 and I'm still single. Its not that I can't get dates, I can, I'm just shit at them. What makes it all the more frightening is that a friend told me last night to pull my finger out because I'm only getting older. My looks wont last and I'll end up in my 40's still single and less likely to have that all important date because wrinkles are having an orgy on my face. I've quit smoking because I'd thought about that myself, I've been hitting the gym and toned up quite nicely.  I still talk shit over a coffee though. We seem to be spending so much time on the exterior. Maybe I should start reading Austen...I've always hated all that and maybe thats what needs to change. I killed my romantic self debating empiricism and economics. I've stopped watching soaps, romance movies, most TV in general and I think this might be the problem.  I have no frame of reference with other people. This is insane since I'm supposed to be a social scientist. I spent years pouring over kinship arrangements, folk tales...lives. One of the things social science does not do these days is look at our current narratives as shared narratives.  We try to read into the current economic climate, wax lyrical about feminisms, multiple family structures and deconstruct gender norms. We never watch life for how it expresses itself. Yes there are power differences between those who write, perform and broadcast Eastenders that should make us doubt its authenticity but millions of people watch it. I think I'm calling for an anthropology of the soaps.  How much could be learnt from exploring people's reactions to narratives?  Quite a lot, I think. It might also help me find a man.  Maybe I can learn something about myself by exploring subjectivities as performed for mass consumption and debate. Does the latest drama in the Vic or the Rovers Return effect how people behave? How many have become closer friends through debating the finer points of Mitchell family morality?  Who has had their romance levels increased as a result of soap born inspiration? 

What would be the narrative of the single 30's gay man? That question makes me queasy because it means I'd have to look at the pre 30's years.  Its demanding a Freudian exploration of the self to try and stop the record of singledom repeating - an effort to hit the shuffle button just as you're settled into routine. The soap 30's single gay man is still a pretty rare breed. We had Queer as Folk of course, Stuart Allen Jones, the slag of Manchester.  Well thats not me, I don't have the confidence for that. Vince? Probably, but with more wine consumption. The problem is that if you're a gay man in the soaps, your plot tends to be about finding acceptance. This means to some large degree conforming to 'heteronormativity' as a way of lowering the threat level you pose to the rest of society. A more recent example is that presented in Eastenders.  Here there are two issues of character and culture playing with - quite literally 'square' life - machismo and Islam. Syed Masood and Christian Clarke dance the dance of both sets of restrictions in their own ways whilst in reality Marc Elliott and John Partridge are anything but those stereotypes. However, so much of what it means to simply be with another man (or not) at this age is lost to these two great monoliths. Being single in your thirties is hard, and actually contravening the 'square' life of heteronormativity. 

There is something not quite 'normal' about it.  If you were a descent person, you'd have found someone already.... Its that constant suspicion of society and of ourselves that drives our singledom. Our space is waiting for us but the inability to find someone to walk into it with us makes the doors seemingly close on our own futures. Both society and ourselves are slamming those metaphorical doors shut. Is being single radically 'Queer' or just radically stupid? Do we have a choice?

Remembering a different fallen.

I wrote this piece for Goldsmiths 'Smiths' magazine in 2010.  I put it here now as the US pulls out of Iraq. So many died needlessly on all sides and its easy to forget them, this was how I got my reminder. 

After spending nearly two months on the same bus going to St Paul’s every morning and back every night I had gotten particularly sick of the caustic yet monotonous voice announcing the same stops over and over again. This particular morning however I noticed that I hadn’t even noticed the voice at all, enveloped by the News Quiz on my ipod. Sandi had drowned out bus woman, or had I simply stopped listening, had I become one of those blank public transport faces I recognised as ‘A Londoner’? Gone were the days when only a few weeks before I would nervously listen out for ‘Fetter Lane’ and walk downstairs far too early, announcing to all and sundry that I didn’t know where I was going, I was new at this, a 172 ‘newbie’. Not any more, and I comforted myself with the fact that despite my 'knowingness', I was not yet faceless. People looked at me bewildered, as I chuckled with the Radio 4 audience.

This morning the traffic was gone, the schools were out and Fleet Street was slowing down for Christmas. It was early, it was a weekend and Fleet Street is the stone park of London at the weekend, you can actually breathe here. As I walked down towards the mighty dome of St Pauls I noticed another Church on my right. St Brides, I was struck by the beauty of the spire, the wedding cake levels desperately reaching skyward from within the strangle hold of finance and big business. It could almost have been a minaret and as I stood there I expected to hear the adhan, but it never came. The gates were open and I decided to take a look. At first glance the church looked old enough, although the cement façade decorated to resemble stone blocks gave away its relative youth, but the feel was unquestionable, this was old, the gates were old, the square was old, the paving leading to it was old, and I preferred ‘old’. On inspection the church had been demolished by a bomb during the blitz and re-built due to the kindness of business and royalty alike.

The building was deserted, no tourists, no worshippers, no clergy and, beautiful. In a way you almost feel as if you are violating the space when a church is this quiet. I say hello to God in my head, to break the silence, my foot-steps ringing in the naive. As I walked down the body of the church I noticed names on the pews, people I’d never heard of, bankers, journalists, sponsorships from various companies, impersonal to me. On approach the Lady Chapel was simple, alter and a rail to pray on etc. Then I noticed the wall to the left, names again, listed in the fashion of World War memorialisation, from the blitz? But dates were wrong. They were recent. People who had died in Iraq. People from the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, and more. A friend had been fretting about his partner (a journalist) going on hostage training, being a hostage. Personal. All night vigils had been held here for John McCarthy and Terry Anderson. I saw Daniel Pearl’s name and remembered the video, fear, nausea and a palpable chill enveloped my neck. It was supposed to. Then, on the alter, just behind a gathering of anonymous faces who were quickly gathering personality, you could see him, Daniel Pearl, looking back at you. For some reason this was shocking to me, the eyes were bright, happy and young. Somehow it felt wrong to see his face, I felt ashamed, we had seen him die. There was a heat behind my eyes now, the sea of faces, old and young, that had been searching for truth, were now searching my eyes.

I heard laughter from my earphones, it cracked the silence. I gathered myself and left, faceless, ashamed, proud.