Love Story

Tina Turner once sang "What's love got to do, got to do with it? What's love but a second hand emotion?"

Second hand emotion?!? What's all that about then? She only sings it because she thinks it rhymes with broken, which it doesn't. You remember, "Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?"?

Who needs a heart? Obviously biology isn't one of Tina's strongest subjects.

Songs about love are an absolute minefield. Climie Fisher's "Love Changes Everything" is a classic example. It's rubbish. The Beatles are one of the few bands who ever managed to pull it off. "Love, love me do, you know I love you, I'll always be true, so ple-e-e-ease, love me, do." Awesome.

The word love is bandied about far too much in my opinion, unlike the word bandied. The problem with love is definition. From nothing in tennis to commitment and an intense feeling of deep affection (there's a group of words you've probably never seen together before), love encompasses a whole trough of meanings. However, if there's a bandwagon to be jumped on you'll probably find me bounding with the best of them. Because although the meaning of love has been dissipated throughout the years, it's quite often the best word that springs to mind. Things I love include such diverse items as beef and onion pasties.

Never let it be disputed that the organ of love is the nose. Yes, nose. The sense of smell is one of the body's most underrated. The memories that a smell conjures up unlocks a plethora of past loves. Not only the smell of a loved one but also, perhaps, the smell of trees and freshly cut grass. That first kiss. Petrol. A milky cup of sweet coffee. Days at the allotment with your Dad, unscrewing the top of the flask on a cold Winter's afternoon. I used to love that. I mean I really used to love that.

Little shoes. Have you seen them? I love them too. They're so tiny and cute with their tiny laces and cute uppers. The little foot that fits inside with its cute toes. I digress.

Money can buy you beef and onion pasties and petrol and little shoes, but money can't buy you love. Money and love aren't mutually exclusive, but if you can't get something for love or money then you're buggered.

Love, undefined, boggles the mind. It's whatever, whenever and wherever you want it to be:

Love is not a piece of food
Love can sometimes be quite rude
Love is fire that burns like coal
Love: an anagram for vole

If music be the food of love then mine's a symphonic gateau with philharmonic cream.

Losers

It's that difficult "second post".

The first one was easy, it practically wrote itself, but the follow-up? It was always going to be difficult, unlike going on a diet for the first time.

With an inaugural diet there's that sense of the unusual, the romance, the challenge, the novelty, the build-up, the deadline, the unknown. Wobbling blindly but purposefully into a lighter future with every ounce of willpower you possess, determined to stride purposefully into the future, lighter. Inevitably each subsequent diet will fail for exactly the same reasons that the first diet was a comparative success. The familiarity, the tedium, the contempt. The only way you'll ever be a Slimmer of the Year is by being uber-obese and losing two thirds of your body weight. If this does happen to you don't forget to keep and old pair of trousers so a family can stand up in them.

This is the nature of slimming awards, and precisely the reason why the nature of slimming awards will decide the fate of the human race. Congratulating someone for losing 100lbs is like congratulating an alcoholic for staying on the wagon. And the idea that they should be rewarded for improving their life expectancy is slightly baffling. But. You know. Hey. I'm fat. Maybe I'm just bitter about the fact that I'm not fat enough to be a Slimmer of the Year. Losing 20lbs is a lot harder than losing 100lbs.

People want praise and recognition, of course. Flattery will get you almost anywhere. And and and why do we celebrate losers anyway? What's wrong with coming first? What's wrong with coming third? Are you answering these questions? And if you are, why?

This is ALL about The Originals. It's about The Original versus The Re-make. It's about the Prequel and The Sequel (whichever came first). It's about The Original versus The Cover Version. It's about James Bond and Doctor Who. It's about 'Live & Let Die'. It's about TV Series' and books being made into films. It's about our perception. Why is it that, in general, the older we get the more we prefer The Original? It's like a horoscope. Your Dr Who defines your era.

Me? I'm around the cusp of John Pertwee and Tom Baker, but I definitely show more Bakeresque tendencies.

Do me a favour, congratulate at least one person for one thing every day. Lie to them if you have to. It's not difficult. People ask you how you are and you tell them that you're not bad. This isn't any different. If everyone does this then the world will be a better place, and we'll all know for certain that it's full of liars and losers.

Give it a name...

I'd imagined that having a blog was strictly the realm of geeks. Well, maybe I'm right. And it was suggested to me anyway. And I'm not doing this because I want to, far from it. And I'm rubbish at things like this. I've never kept a diary. Okay, I have, but this isn't a diary. Diaries are for telling yourself stuff, not other people, right? When was the last time you asked someone to look at your diary?

I'm uncomfortable writing to order, I can do it, but I've rarely tested myself to such an extent. I tend to rely on external inspiration rather than creating my own. Manufacturing inspiration is a wonderful gift and I'm hoping that this "experiment" will add this string to my bow. But, reader, that doesn't mean you should think of yourself as a guinea pig. I want this to be something that helps us both grow. And when I say "reader" I'm hoping there will be more than one, and when I say "both" I mean "all". Just don't expect me to be adding my minute-by-minute thoughts on here. It's unlikely that I'll be waxing lyrical on my trip to the shops, although I might, especially if I meet any dragons there.

Don't get me wrong though. Some of it will try to be interesting.

We claim to agonise over decisions. Stuff we've thought about for years, things we've contemplated for months. But decisions are made in a heartbeat, a split second. Only the moment after the decision has been made is relevant. Who cares about the time before? Even deciding not to do something is a decision which begets another.

Often you become your name. It can affect your personality, like your date of birth, or the demographic of your family. There were similarities between naming this blog and naming a child. The ability to change it, the idea that the name defines it, the concept that it becomes the name, that it becomes a "thing". Sometimes the story behind the name is as dull as the name itself.

So I'll spare you it.