True Grit

Realised the blog was getting rather dreary, verging on the depressing. And if there's one thing Nash isn't, it's depressed (then again, maybe that's exactly the kind of denial that signals the onset of huge psychological traumas...but probably not. I'm thinking a bit much of this, says I). So I wanted to talk about grit.

You know grit, everyone does, especially in these hard times of freak snow storms and torrential flurries. Grit is the backbone of winter society, it allows us the mobility and freedom to move about in the world, to carry on business as usual, to maintain the stiff upper lip of British endeavour and enterprise. Grit is often under-appreciated and overused, to the point where the only social discourse about grit seems to occur when it's absent from our roads, and we realise just how much we need it. Grit is probably our only true weapon against the elements, possibly against climate change itself. It is crucial that we make our appreciation for grit paramount in the days ahead, in order for our nation to prosper as it should.

I want to invent self-gritting shoes, but I lack the technical expertise, financial requirements or the can-do attitude necessary. Anyone who steals this idea will have to answer to a sternly worded Facebook wall-post.

Stuck In A Moment...

'Tis my blog, right? Means I can talk at myself, about myself at will without recourse, correct? Class. OK, so, if some people cope with whatever troubles them through artistic endeavours or violent episodes, I'll cope with a post on this dusty old thing.

Hope all reading had a happy Christmas, and an agreeable New Year's do (somehow managed to blind myself in my left eye on NYW morning, meaning my own celebrations were sober, monoscopic and alone). The holiday has been an eye-opening one, for saddening reasons. I'm (hell, we all are) drifting away from a state that I was completely at ease with, into a set of circumstances that I don't fully know or understand. I don't know what to do about it, it's entirely out of my hands, and the groundwork necessary to maintain a status quo was necessary years ago.

I miss school an awful lot, and though uni is wonderful (and the cast of characters that I've met are an uncommonly excellent bunch of people), there was something about school that meant that I didn't have to worry about whether my relationships with my friends were being maintained. I'm not a massively social person, but I selfishly require a constant knowledge that people are there when I care to look. A poor state of mind, and I need to change it, but I've run out of time. There's friendships that are carrying on, thriving in the online cloud despite the foundation of constant contact we used to be afforded. But I can't do that, try as I might. And it doesn't stop me from missing people; it'd be a lot easier if it did.

Tried texting some people today, but occasionally the number I have is no longer valid. Nails in the coffin, I guess.

Bankers and Politicians

I like the news these days; good news is always a nice, heartwarming thing to have but bad news will guarantee a healthy audience and stir some motion in the social ocean. And boy have we had some bad news of late.

First off, I have no income, no job, no real raison d'etre at the moment; I'm in between university courses without anything to do until September. I have no mortgage woes, no pension worries, no political allegiances. I find the news to be quite riveting entertainment. It's actually a whole lot of fun to watch these tales of bitterness and money woes; I feel I shouldn't be enjoying it so much, but I do regardless. Like the Enron scandal, but for the entire world.

Every MP, banker, or general rich person in the world right now is feeling a weird, underlying guilt, even if they've "done nothing wrong"; or at least they ought to be. The environment for this crazy state of affairs has allowed them to flourish, but even within the rules so carefully guarded and upheld, everyone's now seeing that it wasn't so foolproof after all. I mean, hardly anyone's actually broken the law; it's just that everyone with the power to screw up the economy in a little way has done so, and these things accumulate. Resulting in a massive shitstorm of outcries and uproar. Everyone on the news is resigning, all the banks are saving each other from collapse, all the investors are gazing dumbfounded as the stock market does it's thing.

MPs started getting greedy, at a time when they really, really shouldn't have. Feeding the hard-to-come-by money of the taxpayer into the whole allowances model doesn't seem right to begin with, but it's understandable; after all, they do need a place to stay in London while their families chill out at the house in *enter-constituency-here*. Just, y'know, should have given them a little bit less, that's all. Maybe they don't exactly need multitudes of bedrooms in the finest neighbourhoods in the city; if we (a loose we; not really a taxpayer at the moment) are paying for their houses, surely we should be able to see what extravagances they are allowing themselves.

Greed is contagious, and greed is inevitable; but this kind of thing could have been stopped. I honestly don't think that MPs are in much money problems anyway, even if you don't count the allowances. But I'm no authority, I'm just the freeloader in Cardiff, watching the entertaining news and wondering where it's all heading.