140 words good, 140 characters better?

It's now self-evident: my Twitterstream is cannibalising my blog. I know several other people in the same situation, though a few, the most creative and prolific, are keeping a balance.

I like writing short, and I think there's something both satisfying and addictive about the discipline of saying something in 140 characters, while still making sense and not compromising with naff abbreviations. I do like a well-composed tweet, even as I hate the fact that it's called a tweet. But it's more than that, it's quicker - you can easily do it by text or email if you're not online -  and (unlike blogging), it's not all about you. Most Thursdays, I watch BBC Question Time on the TV while following (and sometimes contributing to) the simultaneous fury being vented on #bbcqt. It's social, and I am a social animal.

But I miss creating joella. My tweets are backed up, and paint their own picture of the last year or so, but it's not the same as the narrative arc of a blog... actually more like a narrative sine wave: trawling the archives I can see the cycles of the year and the month, the ebbing and flowing, the posts I find I have written several times over, using different words in different years, not remembering that I've said it before. Some things change, some stay the same. Memories are fallible, and it's more valuable than I thought it would be to have a record. I find I consistently underestimate my younger self. Maybe we all do.

So I need to sort it out a bit.

I don't think I will get round to retro-blogging. But in case I have a burst of enthusiasm, here are a few things I wanted to expand on rather than condense, yet somehow didn't. This was the underdocumented early spring of 2010

• BBC4's Women series 
  
• My semi-related re-reading of The Handmaid's Tale
  
• The illlusion of freedom which is car ownership
  
• The removal of the wallpaper in the hall, and the realisation that there are many ways to fill a crack
  
• The sadness I feel for the grass in the Business Park
• Choice does not equal empowerment
  
• Party fears
• My burgeoning love affair with Dr Haushcka

There. That's a start.

joella

joella

Lost message from the Hot Place

It occurred to me that it was a year ago. I figured it was time to go through my paperwork, do some sorting out. And I found a blog entry that I wrote in pencil on the back of an envelope. I decided not to post it, but I guess I kept it for a reason. I have resisted the temptation to edit retrospectively.
 

Sitting in the departure lounge in Capital City airport, premenstrual, illegally hungover, still trying to make sense of what's happening and still (mostly) failing.

I have a data-free data stick, and a data-free laptop. I still don't know if these will be taken off me. In my check-in luggage there is a data-free flip video recorder (this one of the heartbreaking bits as I had some great videos of local staff) and my camera, from which I have deleted any photos with people on them.

I still have my phone, but some people have had these taken too - and I still hadn't got round to backing my numbers up so I have copied them all out longhand across six pages of my notebook. We have rediscovered longhand, these last few days.

There are other dazed looking NGO workers scattered round the departure lounge. We stand out a mile.

Across the way, there is a fat African man in a pale suit. He is sitting in that way some men sit, legs wide apart, taking up maximum space. He has earphones in and he's singing along, off key and really pretty loud, to Amazing Grace.

There are signs all down the road to the airport bearing huge photos of the President with slogans like "wise and strongly determined".

This can of lemon drink tastes really, really weird.

joella

A salvo from the invisible demographic

You know what? If you're me, you qualify for practically nothing. I mean, there's stuff for all of us, the NHS, waste collection, public libraries, swimming pools. But all the stuff on top, the targeted things... what do I get? Pretty much fuck all. I pay full tax, and don't get any credits. I'm too old for a young person's railcard and too young for a senior railcard. I earn part time money but pay a full time union subscription. I get the bus just often enough for it to be expensive and just seldom enough not to be worth getting any kind of bus pass. I have seen my pension contributions go up, and the consequent benefits get smaller and further away. I don't get 10% off at B&Q on a Wednesday. And I don't have any children, so I've never had maternity pay or any of the things that come the way of the 'families' whose requirements the Tories are so keen to prioritise.

But I won't be voting for them anyway, obviously. As a good Marxist, I believe in to each according to their needs, and I guess I don't need much. And that's something to be happy about. But I do, every now and again, feel a bit overlooked. I work hard, and I do my bit. Who's looking out for me? Who's taking care of the people who contribute more than they get back? We're important too, you know.

And then, in 2002, came 6Music. Unbelievably, a radio station that was designed for the invisible demographic: the 30, 40 and 50 somethings whose lives have been defined and soundtracked by independent and alternative music from many decades, and the slice of the younger generation coming up behind them who want to find their tribe. I loved it immediately. It's the reason I bought a DAB radio. We listen to Freak Zone in the kitchen while cooking dinner on Sunday evenings, Nemone has taken me through many a long afternoon at work, and I've lost count of the number of live gems from the BBC archive I've happened upon and enjoyed. It's about celebrating our alternative past and giving the people who want to be part of an alternative future (and I define alternative here extremely broadly) a place to feel all right, and if that isn't a public service I don't know what is.

This is about the only thing this country has done for me this century, and now they want to bloody close it, in order to pour more wet reality-makeover-nanny-location cement down our throats, with more banal/offensive comedy, shitty quiz shows or ritual-humiliation-by-overpaid-presenters by way of 'alternative'. To say I am pissed off is putting it mildly.

Here comes the future. Please don't let it be playing Keane or I might just leave on a jet plane.

joella