A case of the DTs...

Tomorrow the Daily Telegraph promises a guide to photographing 'absolutely everything'. Now, I don't have an enormous amount of free time, 7 month old son and all that, so I won't get round to it myself but I would imagine that even the most dedicated of photographers would be hard pushed to take on this mammoth task. Taking photographs of absolutely everything? Cripes. If you are following the DT's guide, good luck! And apologies in advance if I don't have the time to view the results.

Welcome to the blank charade...

I had the misfortune to read a comp copy of the Daily Mail today, and found, within its tightly packed, appallingly designed and scaremongeringly sensationalist pages a warning headed: Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo that built a case against teenagers wearing dark clothes, wrist bands from Claire's Accessories and long fringes and listening to Blink 182 (!!!) on the grounds that they may commit suicide like Hannah Bond, who, the Mail suggests, would have been alive now if she hadn't discovered emo and become addicted to the internet's evil Bebo. A tragic case indeed but the Mail does Hannah's memory no favours. The only thing they get right is the sentence: "No doubt many adults would ask: 'So what?'" I must remember to have a chat with my skinny jean fixated teenage son, if I can get to him through his lengthy fringe, in order to demonstrate my new Mail-inlfuenced knowledge, without which I would never have known that "Emos like guitar-based rock with emotional lyrics". Dear oh dear.

A thousand trees...

More press clippings sort of sorted, cut out, transferred to plastic transparent wallets and snapped inside ring binders, in no particular order, original publications sliced to smithereens and hurled into a box for later disposal. Obscure, defunct publications, far-flung newspapers, dodgy trade magazine, print outs of long-since collapsed websites, even bizarre pitches to magazine editors sneaking in here and there (one to Total Football: "Let me write a feature for you about what it is to follow a perennial loser - Hull City - instead of you wasting more print on those top flight bastards that fill your pages." I don't recall ever having read Total Football, don't really feel strongly about Premiership sides getting coverage in what is, after all, a wholly appropriate publication, and hadn't followed City closely since 1982). Some memories revived and stirred along the way and a lot of newsprint on the hands. Catherine Cooper from The Stage welcomed me to the fold by telling me that the said publication rarely published a review that dared to damn a show. I got in there because my predecessor in the region, Barbara Theakston, had gone deaf but also, bizarrely, was increasingly complaining that the productions she was watching were too 'loud'.

I realised, as I got busy with my craft knife, that I miss writing for newspapers and magazines, although I'm happy to no longer be a critic and reviewer. I enjoyed working for Artscene and its editor, Vic Allen, who had, maybe even still has, the finest head of hair in journalism. Vic's briefs (no, I don't mean his pants) were truly great - if they had been written down they would have been several thousand words over the required word count. I didn't do that much for Artscene over the course of eight-ish years - little bits here, little bits there - but I always felt that the mag was important and I was honoured to be a part of it right up to its untimely demise, a victim of some brave new electronic, interactive world perceived by Arts Council England that hasn't really materialised. The Big Issue In The North, first place that paid me for the privilege of publishing my words. I remember buying a copy and running around town, bumping into people I knew and showing them the piece I'd written, with a great big grin on my face, as if I'd won the Booker prize or something. But I had always remained so excited about seeing my name between front and back covers and hadn't got so cynical and weary. The HDM, bless it. I haven't salvaged a lot from five years of hack work. But there were three columns that I'm proud of and several little bits of me that sneaked through that should have been stopped in their tracks. I loved the Mail when I turned up there, all excited to have bagged a job that meant I'd get paid for writing full-time. Then I spent all my time shunning and running from responsibility. I could have done a lot more for them if they'd let me but, well, sometimes it doesn't work out like that, does it? And the end might, when it came, not have been for such exciting reasons.

Missing presumed buried under a mound of media attention...

Am I wrong not to be getting heated under the collar about Canoe Man and his wife? If I were to take the police-orchestrated media coverage to heart, I should surely despise John and Anne Darwin, shouldn’t I? They have deceived people, they have defrauded, they have driven up insurance premiums. Why, then, am I feeling a tendency to side with the Darwins? Why do I wish them good luck? Why do I hope, against hope, that if it comes to the crunch, they get a fair trial?

Does the crime fit the media attention? I think not. There’s been something odd about this whole circus since the day John turned up and Anne withdrew a bit more coin from her under-scrutiny bulging Panamanian account. There are, are there not, ‘good’ crimes and ‘bad’ crimes? A bit of fraud never hurt anyone, did it? These people aren’t rapists, child murderers or gangsters. Yet they’re being portrayed as a 21^st century money-molesting version of Fred & Rose West (A Daily Mail report revealed that Darwin paved a concrete floor to muffle the creakings of the floorboards in the couple’s family home).

There are no greater criminals in the world than the insurance companies and mortgage lenders that want the Darwins hung, drawn and quartered for their need to get by in life by taking the extreme step of “doing a Reggie Perrin”. The insurance company and mortgage lender would sooner John had kept going through the motions of living his dull old fucking teacher’s life paying those regular instalments until the policy had reached its full term and they’d made a mint out of this couple. When the boot’s on the other foot, they don’t appreciate the big rip-off, do they? Yet my own experience of the insurance industry and financial sector would suggest that there’s only one bunch of serious, good for nuthin’ robbing bastards at work out there, and it ain’t Anne and John.

I jump the gun, though, don’t I? The Darwin’s have only been charged, not convicted. Although it’s impossible to see this through the treacle of media attention and the onslaught of self-righteous reporting by people who wish they’d had the guts to rip a corporation off for £162,000 (some of it, sadly, fuelled by Anne herself, but I think we can excuse her for not quite thinking straight, can’t we?). There doesn’t appear to be any concern that all of these splashes and repeated allegations and insights into the dull as ditchwater lives of the Darwins are, well, a tad prejudicial.

And the poor blighters can’t get bail. What, scared they’ll get through passport control using fraudulent documents, are you? The only danger these two pose is to themselves.

Fuck me, my levels of debt are heading towards the amount that these two didn’t, allegedly, get away with. And, hey, I can’t service the debts, so maybe I’ll end up ‘disappearing’. Is that the great fear, as consumerism and capitalism spiral towards an inevitable collapse, that we’ll all end up saying “fuck you” to those in control of the purse strings and try and snatch a few bob back? Is that why this couple of dullards are being made an example of? For heaven’s sake, Hitler’s had an easier ride over the last 62 years. When will it end? When they’ve actually gone and killed themselves? And then what? Will the insurance co just claw back their money? Of course they will. And watch for the “this policy does not cover canoeing in the North Sea” caveat appearing amid the many other clauses in the small print.

*I’ve not really thought any of this through. It may not make sense.

Tags: Darwin, fraud, Canoe Man, media, police