4th January. A weekend supplement promotes '24 easy ways to be healthier this year'. Another lifestyle piece suggests that if you are on a train and a child behind you repeatedly kicks the back of your seat, then you should not remonstrate but should meditate on your own childhood.
Enough.
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I can only reproduce verbatim this hilarious message via LinkedIn from Checkatrade:
'Fancy getting more local work?'
For a monthly fee I could get 'exposure to millions of homeowners; access to the best local jobs across the UK; and exclusive savings on tools and materials'.
I wonder: do they do whiteboard markers?
And as to my skillset, the less said the better...
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Customer service. I pass these days through Canonbury Overground Station. On one day the lift up to street level was out of action. The (external) steps can be tricky. A member of staff was standing at the top of the steps (I am old school and am not using 'stood'). He was in front of the street level lift doors, which were taped off.
What was the point of this? To stop people trying to get into the lift to go down to the platform? Then it clicked. He was standing watching out for people needing assistance to get up or down. Nice touch.
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One of the most common 'New Year, New You' themes is the need for more exercise. I can recommend the following, although it is highly bespoke.
Take a four-month old, and dangle him on your knees, with the child facing you. Grasp the child under his armpits and lift him, assisted by his legs pushing down. During this, engage with eye contact and make very silly noises, causing child to giggle. After a few seconds sit the child back down. Repeat at least ten times with the child's encouragement.
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Consultant psychiatrist Max Pemberton has got a lot of coverage from a piece that many will recall from the Daily Mail and I have read in The Spectator: Mind Games - The bewildering rise of ADHD.
The question he discusses is whether the syndrome - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - is revealing so many people now diagnosed who have been undiagnosed for years, or whether it is a medical fad, although the power of the soundbite has projected Pemberton's intervention principally as pointing out recent Ofqual figures that 27% of pupils at non-selective state schools get extra time in exams, compared with 42% for those attending private schools.
If I chuck in that Pemberton combines practice with writing regularly for the Mail, you might profile him straight up as an anti towards woke snowflake left-wing middle-class parents who combine overt child empathy with dissembling interest in capitalist competitive advantage for their offspring.
That would be unfair.
Pemberton argues that ADHD is over-diagnosed, in the sense that rushed diagnoses prevent a deeper assessment of what is happening in a child's life, and that ADHD becomes a label whacked on a child. He continues by referring to powerful medications prescribed for the condition, whose effectiveness, he argues, is not clear.
Pemberton goes on to describe 'labelling theory', where a person with ADHD '...can feel they no longer need to take responsibility for their actions, struggles or difficulties. They no longer have to make an effort to change. They can become hostile to any, even helpful, criticism of their failings, and use their diagnosis to defend themselves.'
I was grabbed by this thought, whilst recognising the danger of slipping into judgemental world. It is surely perverse to think of having a 'condition' as being in a place of comfort, but if you have a medical condition then you have needs arising from this - for care; for compassion; for treatment; for support. If you don't get what you think you need, it is someone else's fault.
From this, and I know that it may not be a comfortable read, where then is the point on the subjectivity dial at which you can abrogate responsibility for, if objectively feasible, doing something to ameliorate your situation? Where is the point at which you can look contemptuously at people of my generation who were brought up on the concept of self-reliance, and argue that such a neanderthal attitude should be despised? And be comfortable in that stance, because zillions of celebrities who post on Instagram and Tik Tok have a "diagnosis', so that's ok or indeed it is virtuous to be in such company.
Taking the line one final step, and definitely risking the judgemental, where is the point at which a savvy parent suspecting ADHD in their child can turn the possibility of that condition to their advantage, through pressing for a diagnosis and using it to...ensure the child gets more time in exams. That is the elephant in the room for the statistics mentioned above.
I say 'advantage', but I could repeat my 'competitive advantage' term from above. It is easier for a parent to talk in terms of just wanting the best for their child, but securing competitive advantage is a facet of that, whether we are on the ADHD topic or more broadly talking about the smaller class sizes of private schools, or the extent of their extra-curricular facilities, or the peer group study ethic of any selective secondary school, or avoiding your child being 'dragged down' by classes with lower behavioural standards.
Reality check, though. Did I self-righteously choose for my children secondary education that was not the best for them in every sense that we could secure? Nah, you must be joking.
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That thin plastic sheet covering the spread on your Lurpak or similar. After you've opened the top do you leave it on or do you bin it? Serious first-world problem.
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Leading on from individuals declining responsibility for their own actions. A sloppy link, but anyway.
I have come across two terms covering people who have decided not to be aspirational, who have decided not to compete in society. The more extreme one is Tang Ping, an East Asian term literally meaning lying flat, denoting where a person has decided to disengage from society and to retreat back into their mind (or their online world? - not mentioned but it occurred to me). The second term is quiet quitter, which my trusty Google tells me entered the dictionary in 2022, and signifies someone who does the minimum required to retain their job, in order to prioritise life outside work.
Being aspirational was prized by my generation. Whatever a person's social/educational background, they strived to progress, to advance, to 'make something of themselves'. It was often a drive towards the pride of supporting a family. Even now when I see it, I gravitate towards the individual.
But leaving aside that I could be superficially written off as an old fart, can one not understand how the quiet quitter personality type can reasonably be a younger person of today? Leaps in technology mean that long-term secure work is harder to find. If you once hoped to own your own home, it might now be a dream in such locations as offer good job opportunities (a Londoner speaks), unless you are lucky enough to have family funding support. Even the thought of financially burdensome creatures called children could put you off the procreation path.
And we have successive Governments yearning for economic growth. If I were the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I would be worried.
Around Inauguration
- I definitely think that we should get VAR in to analyse Elon Musk's extended arm gesture. More seriously, MAGA folk are crying for compassion towards Musk in view of his Asperger's and his puppyish behaviour. The same compassion was not extended to the disabled reporter mocked by Trump in 2016.
- Trump speech and God: Consider this statement:
'Could you possibly believe that the Almighty had led this man, a God-sent man, to pass through innumerable dangers and become greater and greater, all for nothing?'
Who said this? Answer below.
- The Executive Order for withdrawing from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. 'Ooh!' says Trump, doing full Orange Toddler at present opening time.
Answer to question above:
Hermann Goering. [Source: Out of the Darkness - The Germans 1942-2022, by Frank Trentmann, P18]. The point? Always good to make the people believe that you have been sent by God.
So much more could be commented upon about the circus, but I got bored. My only remaining perverse thought was over Melania Trump taking the arm of a hotbod Guardsman to walk through to the Rotunda, and possibly thinking that she would prefer to snuggle up to this one rather than to her one.
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I adore the Franca Manca billboard outside my local branch. A recent one proclaims:
'Ditch the Desk. Scrap the Sandwich.
Lunch as it should be - Pizza & soft drink: £12.00'
So one lump of dough in place of another lump of dough. Fantastico, as Stanley Tucci probably would not say.
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To finish, from food to drink.
Dry January, and it almost was. I managed 29 days.
One of the two exception days was in the diary many weeks back, a gin distillery tour organised by one of the family. I could of course have enjoyed the tonic without the gin, but that would have been disrespectful to the distillery company.
The other was impromptu. We were heading to the Hollybush pub in Hampstead for supper - it is an impressive institution and we knew that on a Saturday evening it would be rocking with drinkers and with those eating. Perhaps I should have had greater self-discipline, but it just seemed daft not to complement the food and atmosphere with a glass of wine or two. So for an evening I ditched the sanctimonious denial. Sod it, it felt good.
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The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.