Eavesdropping, me?

A couple of years ago I was freelancing for a company in Spitalfields, East London. Befitting of the E1 postcode the offices were extremely funky. In the basement there was a kitchen area and three large, red leatherette, high-backed booths. A bit like an American diner.

One day a colleague and myself were having our lunch in one of the booths. We’re quietly eating when we become aware of a conversation in the booth behind ours. We can’t see them and they can’t see us.

A male voice speaks first, “So how was your weekend?”

“Not brilliant,” a female voice replies, “I was up at my parents.”

Mildly intriguing. Both my colleague and I stop chewing and instinctively lean back so we can hear better.

“Yeah, I’m still working through some issues with my dad,” continues the girl, “Stuff from my childhood.”

My eyes widen and my colleague pulls an ‘eek’ face. I flap my hands, meaning ‘shhh’, even though he hasn’t said anything.

“It’s only recently that I’ve been able to forgive him. And my mum, too, for letting it happen,” says the girl.

Letting what happen? Cripes, she must be one of Fred and Rose West’s kids. This is terrible. There’s a long silence.

Then the guy speaks, “Do you mind me asking…?”

“God no, it was all a long time ago,” she says.

I hold my breath. No way I’m missing this. I sit up as straight as I can, tilting my head so my ear is as close to the rim of the high-backed booth as possible. My colleague does the same. It looks like we’re hanging from invisible nooses.

The girl’s voice is now tinged with regret, “A friend from school’s parents were going away for the weekend and she had a party, but my dad wouldn’t let me go.” She let’s out a sad little sigh.

She wasn’t allowed to go to a party? No, no, no, that can’t be it? There must be more to the story than that? Maybe she missed out the bit about being handcuffed to a radiator from the age of four to seventeen? Or how she was forced to serve drinks topless to her dad and his mates? Puffing my cheeks out I slide back down the booth. My colleague rolls his eyes. I slowly close mine, shaking my head witheringly. We continue to eat in silence.

Now I know you shouldn’t eavesdrop, but what I always say is, if you don’t want your conversations to be overheard, use telepathy. That’s what it’s for.

I recount this story because I think there’s a good lesson to be learnt from it. And it’s about the importance of keeping things in perspective. Perhaps I’ve been too quick to judge this girl, but from what I heard it seems she has taken a fairly minor adolescent grievance and fleshed it out into a full blown ‘issue’ that apparently she is still dealing with many years later. A mountain may well have been made out of a molehill. I’ve been guilty of doing the same myself.

But one thing I’ve learnt from Guru Cohen, and my dabblings into the happy-clappy world of self-help, is to keep things in perspective. And I believe it has made a huge difference to my general wellness and state of mind over the last year.

To be frank, having a colostomy bag can sometimes be a real shitter; I have to empty it, change it, it sometimes leaks, I’ve got a yucky looking hole in my tummy, you get the picture. It would be quite easy to let it get me down. Which is why I make a real effort to keep things in perspective; it only takes a minute to empty my bag, I can practically change it in my sleep, it doesn’t leak very often, 99.999999% of the world doesn’t know I have a hole in my tummy. Whenever my stoma infringes on my life, I try not to roll my eyes or sigh or grumble or whinge or let my head go down, I just deal with it as quickly as I can and then move on and forget about it. Making a conscious effort not to dwell on the unavoidable little niggles of life with a bag and to pivot my thoughts to the positives means I’m in a much happier place.

And that is why no one will ever overhear me complaining about having to deal with ‘issues’ with my colostomy bag. I’ve got it in perspective.

Happy feet

My legs are bending and clacking straight again like a builders tape measure. Bend, straighten, bend, straighten, bend, straighten. This is me dancing. Well, the lower half anyway. The upper half is doing its own thing entirely. My arms are bent at the elbow. I know this much. But past the elbow it’s anyone’s guess. Some sort of twirling might be occurring. It’s hard to say. Perhaps windmilling is a better description. So, to recap – legs: bend, straighten, bend, straighten, bend, straighten. Arms from the elbow down: twirl, windmill, twirl, windmill. Sounds about right. I’m fairly certain if I ever danced like this in a club a 24hr vet would be called out and I would be shot with a sedative dart. Fortunately I’m in the privacy of my spare room. Blinds closed. As are my eyes. Clinging for dear life to my wildly bucking head is a pair of headphones, through which blasts Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. Perhaps better known as the theme song from Rocky. 3 minutes 53 seconds of pure testosterone-pumped cheddar. And I’m doing the full Travolta to it in my back bedroom. Legs: bend, straighten, bend, straighten, bend, straighten. Arms from the elbow down: twirl, windmill, twirl, windmill. Oh, for pity’s sake what now. Cripes. I’m triumphantly punching the air with a clenched fist, which is odd because a 37-year-old man rocking out to Survivor on his own isn’t anything to feel particularly triumphant about. I’m too English for this. I do feel ever so silly. But I’m possessed by the steady rhythmic beat of the drums, which sound like the pounding feet of Hannibal’s war elephants on the march. As I pirouette out of a deft little Northern Soul spin I remember Guru Cohen’s words, “Really go for it and dance and celebrate being well again, feel the joy and happiness just like you’re completely better, really get into it and feel those emotions, be grateful for being healthy.” So as my legs bend and straighten and my arms twirl and windmill and punch the air I focus my mind on what it would feel like to be well. I summon up the spirit of Rocky and imagine myself as victor. I try to visualise myself totally fit and free of ulcerative colitis. I try to feel it as if it were true. It’s a huge mental effort, but I start to smile, and for a fleeting moment I do feel something, and it feels good.

Every day after I’ve finish my hypnotherapy session I put my headphones on and dance to Eye of the Tiger. I no longer feel such a berk and I quite enjoy it now. I’m not sure if it’s having any effect on my UC, but my dancing is coming on in leaps and bounds, and I’ve been called back for a second audition for Grease: The Musical.

Image is everything

Thanks to an outbreak of flaky, head-to-toe eczema as a baby I missed out on being christened. I can only imagine my parents thought there was a danger I’d dissolve in the font. Or one of my limbs would break off like an over-dunked Hobnob. As a result I’m not a particularly religious man. But I do love a good church. I just think they’re amazing places; the stonework, the stained glass, the tapestries, the carpentry, the big organ thing with the giant set of panpipes sticking out the top. From nave to pulpit churches are flippin’ impressive. But if churches are still capable of wowing our 21st century eyes, imagine how mind-bendingly impressive they must have been to our ancestors, who in all probability would have never seen an IKEA, like we have. For the average medieval peasant, the local church would have been as sexy as hell. A bit like Harvey Nichols is to us now. In the wattle and daub landscape churches would have added a touch of glitz and glamour. The church knew how to create a good image. All that gold and stained glass was there to seduce us. And I guess over the centuries it worked.

What’s the matter with the truth? Everything comes in packages. If it’s in a package you can bring the devil in the house. People rely on packages. If you will wrap it up, they will take it.
Saul Bellow, ‘The Victim’

But as church congregations dwindle it seems more people are turning to the self-help section of their local bookshops for spiritual enlightenment. I don’t think this is any more right or wrong than being fed a Pringle by a middle-aged man wearing a purple dress. As John Lennon sang, ‘Whatever gets you thru the night, s’alright.’

Regular readers of Number Twos will know that recently I have been exploring alternative therapies in an attempt to rid myself of ulcerative colitis. This has taken me deep into the murky world of self-help. And whilst it continues to be a fascinating, and I think, a rewarding journey, one thing concerns me. Self-help has an image problem. It looks naff.

A majority of the books, websites and DVDs I’ve come across look cheap, tacky and poorly produced. It’s like Del Boy has twigged there might be a few quid to be made in the self-help business and has got Rodney to knock something up on his ‘puter.

Self-help looks low-rent. The moment I see faux-Michelangelo illustrations, techy brainwavey icons or dodgy quasi-religious scrolls I start to get suspicious. Much of the design and imagery is so heavy-handed and desperate to be taken seriously, for me it actually has the opposite effect. And the music in some of the films I’ve watched on youtube sounds like it’s being played on Casio keyboards rescued from the rubble of a Tandy store after a gas explosion. I assume the filmmakers were aiming for ethereal and soothing, but again, it just comes across as cheesy and bargain-basement. Sigh.

In my opinion these low production values undermine the message. Sometimes how you present something is just as important as what you present. Personally I think there are some really worthwhile ideas that fall under the umbrella of self-help, that do deserve a wider audience, but until the writers, filmmakers and designers start to consider how they package their message, many people will continue to be put off. As the church understood, get the image right and people will take notice.

Bedtime reading

Foyles sits on the edge of Soho like a bookend. Established in 1903 it is the Harrods of bookshops. In its heyday Christina Foyle held literary lunches on the premises, attended by famous writers of the time. If ever the Oxford English Dictionary were stuck for a definition of ‘intimidating’ then ‘Foyles literary lunch’ would sum it up well for me.

Recently I did something in Foyles I’ve never done before. I went downstairs to the basement floor in search of the self-help section. It’s ironic that you have to go down to find the books that will make you feel up. What immediately struck me about the self-help section is its size. The shelves are floor to ceiling with books written by gurus of every description; businessmen, entrepreneurs, doctors, hypnotists, healers, religious leaders, celebrities, sportspeople, professors, scientists, philosophers, weathergirls (probably); the selection is mind-boggling. In fact someone should write a self-help guide to self-help guides. It would probably sell.

There clearly is money to be made in the self-help business. I’ve read a few articles recently suggesting the current popularity of the genre is largely down to the credit crunch and modern life being a bit stressy and shit. There’s probably some truth in that. A couple of journalists even go as far as to actually blame the banking collapse on self-help books themselves, which they claim are responsible for psyching up city traders and making them feel invincible. At this point it all gets a bit chicken and egg and I need to lie down.

Whilst flicking idly through various books, with bombastic titles such as Want it, See it, Get it! I surreptitiously took a peek at my fellow browsers. They didn’t look desperate, unstable, depressed or haunted, like they were about to throw themselves under a tube train. Nor did they particularly look like pumped up little Gordon Gekkos. They actually appeared an incredibly normal bunch. Although I did note we were all men. Perhaps women solve their problems by talking about them, whereas men prefer to furtively underline key phrases and scribble notes in the margins of self-help books?

There’s a lot of scepticism about the self-help industry. And when you read some of the titles, like Happier Than God and Awaken The Giant Within it’s easy to see why. The style of some of the writing doesn’t help either. A couple of books I picked up read like nothing more than extended penis enlargement ads. But I decided to hold back on my cynicism. After all you don’t dismiss John Steinbeck because he happens to be on the same shelf as Danielle Steel, do you? Like any genre, there must be good self-help books and bad ones. It may be a case of not judging a book by its cover. Or even its chest-beating, testosterone-enhanced title.

On the recommendation of Guy Cohen I bought Paul McKenna’s Control Stress book. I like it, a lot of it makes sense to me and it dovetails nicely with Guy’s therapies. If you feel stress may be an issue for you I think it would be £10.99 well spent. Since my trip to Foyles I’ve started to amass a small library of self-help books and related newspaper articles. (I’ve found quite a few books in charity shops, which perhaps isn’t a good sign.) Some of the stuff I’ve read seems a little fanciful, but on the whole I find them really useful to dip into for a nugget of wisdom or a piece of fresh thinking. A few pages a day seems to help keep me focused and heading in the right direction. For me, self-help books can be a great resource if you open them with an open mind.