Is that an iPhone in your pocket...

I was gathering my thoughts on the news that Apple has pulled its pornographic, sorry, 'adult-themed'* iPhone apps.

My first thought was that it's a sign of how much the world has changed since ye olde webbe was invented that you can buy software that makes women's breasts wobble to put on your phone and everyone thinks it's a jolly good laugh.

I think the vast, vast majority of pornography is unpleasant-to-vile-to-worse, and distorting of sexuality, and invades women's lives in ways they generally would rather it didn't if you actually asked them, and all that stuff, but I've always thought that, and it's an increasingly marginal point of view. You see it everywhere, and if you're a fusty old feminist, you just learn to ignore it, like mosquitoes, except when it comes dangerously close to being right in your face.

Some of the comments on the news articles and blog posts I've read reporting Apple's move have been in the 'bunch of puritanical Dworkinites' vein, as you might expect. But even the commenters - men and women - who can see the point of maybe not having a free-for-all wankfest available for consumption in the office toilet or on the Clapham omnibus generally make a point of saying something along the lines of 'obviously, I have no problem with porn per se...'. To these people I say (actually, I don't, I say it to the readers of this blog, but I don't want to be out there getting Dworkin-flamed) check out the first chapter of David Foster Wallace's Consider The Lobster, and then say 'obviously' again.**

My second thought was that I don't believe Apple have suddenly decided to do the right thing by every woman who might pick up her boyfriend's iPhone and then wish she hadn't. Their spokesman said "we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable" (a bit degrading and objectionable is probably ok, as you can get that in Nuts magazine or on Channel Five any day of the week), but I get the strong impression that they are just 'protecting the brand', and if degrading and objectionable content was going to benefit the brand, they'd be there like a bear.

And that's about as far as I'd got, but luckily Jill Psmith over at I Blame the Patriarchy is a faster thinker than I am. Even if you are not a regular patriarchy blamer, you'll rarely find a more sharply written blog on this subject or indeed any other, and I can thoroughly recommend More Adventures with the Antithesis of Enlightenment as One Of Those Posts I Can Only Dream Of Writing.

Enjoy.

joella

* I hate this use of the word 'adult'.
** A more 'obviously' feminist reading list can be provided on request.

In which we acknowledge the possibility of spring, and consider that we may not live to see it

Not being funny or anything, but I fucking hate February. And this one's turning out more vicious than most. The real freeze combined with the pay freeze = less money just when you need more. The end of January wasn't quite beans on toast, but only because I had a Significant Birthday and allowances were made.

And I never quite got back into my (already not much more than desultory) exercise routine - weekly yoga, weekly-ish swimming, bit of cycling round the place - after I had that chunk cut out of my foot. It's a dangerous thing for the middle-aged to lose their routines. Disaffection spreads, and so do midriffs.

A wise woman looked at the two of us and suggested snowdrop therapy. We looked at each other and figured it was worth a go. And so it was that we bundled up late on a frosty morning and headed over to Welford Park.

A note for the under 60s: you will stand out like a sore thumb. But it is a remarkable place and I thoroughly recommend it. Snowdrops do their thing for a scant month of the year, and to dedicate your whole grounds to them takes serious class. Which they have at Welford Park, as well as lots of soup, cake and jam. Oh, and sausages. It's like a day trip to a pre-war universe.

I also got to play with the camera on my new iPhone, which is basic but which delivered some pleasing results.

But I was also wearing sunglasses (it was sunny, but also a bit hailing) because I had a headache. And I have had a headache, on and off, for the last fortnight. It's probably a virus, and the case of dark, dark red Australian wine that my dad sent me for my birthday* probably hasn't helped.

But there have been days of lying in a darkened room, necking codeine and clutching my temples, shouting at people I quite often want to shout at but normally manage not to, and general low-to-medium grade misery. I went to the doctor, who took some blood to check for various terrifying brain conditions, but said that it was probably indeed a virus and would go away in due course.

In the small bursts of energy I get when I don't think I'm dying of a terrifying brain condition, I have been doing spring anticipation activities like planting garlic, darning jumpers, changing the bed (not something that can be contemplated while there's no chance of line drying) and cleaning the oven.

And, like the birds and the bees, I wait.

joella

* The last two bottles left are both called Willy Willy. I think there's probably some Freudian reluctance stopping me opening them. But I expect I'll get over it shortly.

Accounting for taste

While I believe it's healthy not to live in a pigeonhole, I also acknowledge that rhyme and reason do not appear to figure in some of my lifestyle choices.

On one hand, I wouldn't dream of buying salad dressing in a bottle, and have four kinds of oil (three olive, one walnut), five kinds of vinegar, three kinds of mustard and two kinds of sugar to hand when I want to make some. On another, I will happily eat white bread sandwiches filled with iceberg lettuce, pickled beetroot, crisps and salad cream. On a third hand, I just bought myself a silk tunic dress in the Toast sale. On a fourth, I wear a dress about four times a year. There's a fifth hand, where I want to live naked by a Finnish lake and smoke my own fish*, and a sixth where I want to put on a lot of black eyeliner, drink a lot of Cinzano and smoke a lot of cocktail Sobranies to a backdrop of arty black and white photos and minimalist electropop.

I read serious novels, and fat books of social history and feminist politics, but then I read borderline-dodgy crime fiction, collections of comic strips, and books about growing vegetables. Top of my last.fm most-listened-to artists list are Ani DiFranco, Nick Cave, Billy Bragg and PJ Harvey, but scroll down a little and you'll find Duran Duran... scroll down a little further and you'll find Meat Loaf**.

This all confuses me sometimes. I like to think - especially at my advanced age - that I choose what to consume for a range of reasons, most of them sensible - what do I like, what can I afford, what is good for me, what is made well, what am I politically comfortable with. I got taught how to think about stuff, and I do. But then there's also what you grew up with, what you seek out in times of trouble, what you retreat to when you want comfort, and what's as much about pleasurable vice as about sensible virtue. Basically, I think it's about living with the sum of your parts.

Which is why, last night, I found myself, for the first time since the early 1980s, in a Badedas bath. It's not all Neal's Yard, this life. And amen to that.

joella

*As one of my favourite recent Twitter tags put it, #notaeuphemism

**Most of the Meat Loaf plays, I suspect***, are me standing on a chair late at night singing Modern Girl into a hairbrush or playing air guitar to Bat Out of Hell, but still.

*** I typed that, then thought, hang on, this is the internet. I don't need to suspect, it knows. And I was right.

Spotty Herberts

I basically don't buy things very often. At least, not difficult things that involve conversations with customer service people in call centres. But then I have just had a Significant Birthday, which brought with it several Significant Presents.

I am not knocking the Significant Presents, they are excellent and amazing and generally not things I would ever have bought for myself, and I feel somewhat overwhelmed at their number and Significance, but a couple of them, the Most Significant, have involved needing to talk to Spotty Herberts. Some of them a long way away and very unlikely to be called Herbert.

Spotty Herbert Encounter #1. My beloved bought me an iPhone. I didn't even know I wanted an iPhone till I got one, but already I don't know how I got by without being able to lie in bed, check my email, watch iPlayer, pop bubbles, update Facebook, renew my library books and call my mother all at the same time. He got me an Orange one (well, it's white, but you know what I mean) because I am already have an Orange contract and he thought that would be straightforward. Which it should be, right?

So I called Orange and asked them to transfer my number from my existing contract to my new contract. 'So,' said spotty Herbert, somewhere in (I'm guessing) Bangalore, 'you want to upgrade your handset to an iPhone?'. No, no, a thousand times no, I said. I already have an iPhone! I just want you to move my number. I don't want this smelly old contract anymore, I want this shiny new one, with free internet for, like, ages.

We weren't getting anywhere, and eventually he transferred me to a 'colleague', somewhere more like Aberdeen. Which was an improvement, except that she (let's call her spotty Sherbert) told me they would have to send me a new SIM card. But I already have one! I said. In fact I have two! Can't you just move the number? Or move the details from one to the other? Or something?

We can't just go changing things willy nilly, she said. We have to send you a new SIM card, and then you have to choose your animal.

I have a bad feeling about this. And about the fact that it takes 30 freaking days to send a new SIM card. This is how they make you give a month's notice on the smelly contract you didn't want in the first place EVEN THOUGH you are already paying over in the shiny corner for another contract. What a load of old shit.

So for the time being I tweet on one phone and text on another. That's convergence for you.

Spotty Herbert Encounter #2. My mother offers me perfect eyesight for my Significant Birthday, on the grounds that she didn't manage to give it to me first time round (though I think we're all clear that blind-as-bat-itis comes from the other side of the gene pool). I have never given the possibility of perfect eyesight much thought, though it's a seriously cool prospect, and I wander into Boots opticians to enquire, where spotty Sherbert looks at me as if I am mad and says 'laser what?'.

Fortunately one of her colleagues steps in and tells me that Boots sold its laser eye surgery business to Optical Express, and tells me where Optical Express is. So I go to Optical Express, where spotty Herbert says I can have an assessment straight away. Oh, I say. Well, I've got contact lenses in, can you give me something to put them in?

He checks with his colleague, who tells me that actually I can't have an assessment until I have three clear contact lens-free days. I look to spotty Herbert to take the rap, and bless him, he does, and explains that it's his first week. I make an appointment for six days later and hope that it won't be the laser-person's first week, or my eyeballs might end up in space.

The next day, I get a call from a number I don't recognise. Twice. I Google the number to find out that it's Optical Express, and that several thousand people who have no interest in laser eye surgery seem to be seriously pissed off about the calls they get from this number every single day. I start getting these calls too. I don't answer them. They don't leave a message.

On Saturday, two days before my assessment, they call again, and I am on a bus, two pints and a Steampunk exhibition up, so I answer.

Why do you want laser eye surgery? says spotty Sherbert in a thick Scottish accent (I think she might be moonlighting for Orange). Well, I say, I've been walking into things since I was 10 and I fancy a change.

'That's fantastic, that's great', she says.

Then she asks if it's ok to ask me some questions about myself to save time on the day. No, I say. I'm on a bus.

The form I fill in before my assessment includes questions about my mental health (I say it's fantastic! it's great!) and family history. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to answer such questions over the phone to someone they cannot see, who would in all likelihood greet an admission of anything from postnatal depression to paranoid schizophrenia with mindless platitudes.

ANYWAY. The man who tested my eyesight and squirted air at my eyeballs, and the other man who assessed my general awareness, suitability, and ability to absorb the information that their 'from £395 per eye' figure is a figure that applies to precisely nobody who might ever be blind enough to want to get someone to stick a laser in their eye, were all perfectly credible, professional and likeable. I was mildly annoyed that they asked me to fill in their customer service feedback survey while still not able to see very well from the strange drops they put in your eyes, but luckily I can more or less touch type. I also guess that their evil marketing people know how to Google, as do many of the people who are considering getting their eyes lasered.

I discussed the proliferation of spotty Herberts, Sherberts, and Dilberts with my dad. These things would be enough to put him off, and they are certainly enough to piss me off. But this is the 21st century, and this is our version of Adam Smith's division of labour. I think if their surgical outcome stats were not excellent, we'd know about it.

I'm thinking RyanAir. I may (and indeed I do) loathe everything about how they do business, but they're not going to hire shit pilots are they? That would be a bad business decision. I will never fly RyanAir again, but that was nothing to do with the flying bit and everything to do with the customer service bit.

Additionally, I only plan to get my eyes lasered once, and the important part of the experience is the bit where someone zaps me in a vulnerable place. And if I'm not happy just before that point, I'll be saying 'cool your lasers, I'm offski'. I once had to have my cervix lasered -- which was not (technically) an elective process, and I still remember the deal I had to make with the devil so I wouldn't shoot off the table and run like the wind. My cervix has been fine for 15 years now, so I like to think I'd know if I felt spotty S/Herbertism had penetrated too far.

Having said all that, I'm not sure I like the post-modern world much. The modern one was always a bit blurry, but while blurry can hide a multitude of sins, for sure, it can also create space to trust that people will do the right thing in the right way. To be continued.

joella