Bad case of the birthday blues

Ahh, the 12^th August, it’s that time of year again, namely my birthday, known to some as the Glorious 12^th. Alas not known thus for being my birthday (contrary to my childhood assumptions) but instead for the opening of the grouse shooting season. Though to be fair, I have my doubts… I mean, it’s not that glorious for the poor grouse as they get shot out of the sky, undergrowth, or wherever it is the wee sods try to hide every year as summer rolls round & the toffs get out their shotguns. But hey ho, I’ve digressed already and it’s only the first paragraph.

Happy birthday me

So yes, the 12^th, and this year in all of its ingloriousness I was definitely with the grouse. I’m pleased to say that despite an absence of Scottish landowners chasing me round my house with some of the finest firearms in the glens, this birthday was distinctly sucky. Now, I’m not by nature that much of a maudlin person, I’m usually quite chipper on the whole, so I don’t want you to read this as a self-pitying blog heralding a headlong slide into depression as my body and mind decline immeasurably on their annual depreciation of value. But it must be said, this year was not a good one. There’s been a lot of change in my life over the last 18 months, primarily work wise as I switch to a new career and all of that which comes with it (primarily a lack of cash), so when my birthday came around, having got back on my feet and rolled with all the punches of recent times, I was ready to celebrate. However, like most Big Occasions, it was overhyped (or at least minorly hyped, gotta keep these things in some kind of perspective), and I was let down worse than worse than a 10 year old girl at an episode of Jim’ll Fix It.

I mean it wasn’t all bad, but certainly several factors combined to provide a meteor storm of ‘waaahs’ from Sophington Towers, namely:

1.       A  unfortunate  & unexpected series of no shows at my birthday drinks, & me sat with just 1 mate for 2 hours, at a pub table reserved for 15 until my trusty comrades in booze turned up – not so much billy no mates as billy one mate for a while (& to my mates that made it, especially the one that stuck by throughout, I am ETERNALLY grateful)

2.       A row with my dad following a long standing family difficulty

3.       My new colleagues at work only remembering my birthday at about 2pm (in their defence I am relatively new, and rather were very few of us in the office, thus heaping unfair pressure on 1 or 2 people to remember)

     And I think this one is the most crucial to the ‘waah’ inducing

4.  My one PMT day of the month which made me blub like a baby at all of the above. Lets be honest, it was mostly this really.

Not sure which one is Spanky
& which one is Dickie,
but not sure it makes a difference 

Now, after doing a quick google, it turns out that this previously unknown (to me) ‘condition’ is pretty common. It’s the birthday blues, and if you won’t blow me down with a feather, I’ve never had it before. Interesting side note, The Birthday Blues is also a 1932 film featuring 2 characters called Spanky & Dickie, and if that’s not reason to smile, I don’t know what is. But I digress… again. But apparently the birthday blues are a genuine thing, certainly according to a recent scientific study which suggested that men are prone to committing suicide on or around their birthday (certainly statistically more prone than women). And furthermore, birthdays are pretty dangerous as a whole, as out of the study of 2 million people, it emerged that people are 14 per cent more likely to die on their birthday. Woohoo to that, someone get out the candles! The study didn’t mention cause, and whether it’s the stress of organising birthday parties, or the inevitable consumption of a large amount of alcohol at such events that has such an impact, but certainly it appears that the annual birthday rumble makes for pretty dangerous times!

So perhaps I should be grateful, I mean, my mates DID turn up, my Dad and I DID make up (& he was suitably chastised), my colleagues DID realise their error, subsequently loading me up with chocolate, tart and cava in an effort to make good (they succeeded), and my mum and I had a lovely meal where I introduced her to the joys of hibiscus margaritas. So not all was bad. And furthermore, contrary to the above mentioned study I DIDN’T DIE! And surely that’s got to be a good, and dare I say, a pretty glorious thing. So this week I’m chipper. I’m celebrating the fact I’ve turned one year older, and my mortail coil still remains very firmly attached, wherever it might be. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the same can be said for the grouse.

Duck & cover grousey!

Two strikes and I'm not out

Now as we all know, there’s nothing a Londoner likes to do better than grumble. And if there’s one thing they ALWAYS grumble about it’s the transport. Despite having one of the most reliable transport networks in the world, one can always hear a faint ripple of disapproval echo up an tube platform when we find out our next train is going to be A WHOLE MINUTE delayed. What is this? 1986 East Germany?? PAH! And don’t even get me started on the grumbling induced by the discomfort of having ones nose pressed up into a businessman’s sweaty armpit once one eventually crams onto the minutely delayed, crammed train. However in recent weeks there has been a fair bit to grumble about regarding transport, specifically tube strikes.

Now, I’ve grown up in London. Lived here the vast majority of my life in fact, so let it be said I have known many a transport strike. Back in the days as a child, attempting to catch her not so reliable 221 part way to school, (and kids, these were pre-oyster card days, imagine that, we had to pay actual money! IN COINS! You freebie oyster riders don’t know how good you’ve got it), strikes seemed as common as they are now, ie not actually all that common but always generating a huge amount of media coverage, mistrust and the previously mentioned disgruntlement. And while I may have aged, and my hair may have grayed (who am I kidding – may??) one thing that has more radically changed over the years is my slightly more considered thoughts about transport strikes.

Back when I was starting out, nothing enraged me more than a strike. Who did these people think they were? Damn trade unions disrupting all my plans for school/early career/ nights out on the razz*. How dare they? Then my feelings changed… I won’t go into the whys and wherefores of it (is far too dull, trust me), but needless to say I once had need of a trade union rep, and in addition to proving their worth to me they also showed to me their worth to workers as a whole.

Obviously board of catching the bus,
this chap tried another way into the office

Let us look at this strike specifically. Yes, those striking have the city by it’s short and curlies, because they offer a vital service to this great city of ours, but they also have a very valid point to make, all hidden under the rhetoric we see pumped out. Put it like this, if your employer wanted to radically change the terms and conditions of your contract under which you joined the company, without your agreement, wouldn’t you be a little pissed off? Don’t believe those muttering about tube strikers wages and holiday allowances being better than they deserve, what that most often translates as is that tube driver’s holiday and pay isn’t as much as they’d like for themselves and they’re annoyed they have to get up an hour earlier, cramming onto a bus that is more tightly packed than a French veal truck. Because what tube workers are taking action about in this particular strike, is their right to have a life dictated not by their bosses, but by themselves and their own considerations. What’s so wrong with that? Essentially tube workers don’t want to have their jobs radically altered without even a by your leave, let alone a proper consultation, and who can blame them? If your boss demanded that you suddenly work night shifts, weekends, and whatever the heck else they wanted as they are stomping over you and your employment rights in their size nines, wouldn’t you be a little annoyed and want someone to stick up for you? Of course you would!

A penny farthing for your thoughts
on the transport disruption? 

So while the rest of the country looks on, 20% part reveling in our discomfort and 80% in their own smugness for not living in ‘that there Lundun’, remember this, we work to live, we don’t live to work. And if we live by that maxim in our own lives, surely we can’t demand any different from the man or woman who drives our train, offers assistance in the ticket hall or clears up our sick if we’ve had one too many before hitting the Victoria Line on a night out (NB that was definitely not me). The thought may not have given me much comfort on my 3 and a half hour round trip commute to work today, but at least it gave me something else ponder on instead of the aroma emanating from the armpit in front of me, and quite frankly, I consider that a blessing.

* delete as appropriate but most often the latter.

p.s images wholeheartedly appropriated from the Guardian website, apologies: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2015/aug/06/tube-london-underground-strike-live-updates