ah fb

 

I have previously pinpointed the exact moment I first heard about facebook. It was when I was a contributor to Laura's excellent assemblog Sarsaparilla and one of the contributors explained the recent lack of content there... read my memory of that here if you wanna, it's coming up to 20 years I've been on it which is, like, a third of my life ffs. Speaking of my life, in many ways it remade my life. No doubt yours too, even if you have never been a member which, btw, makes you a bit of an outsider in western society, but it's OK.

I deleted fb off my phone about six months ago (but not my laptop... yet) and it made a big difference with my engagement, and the Meta bullshit re: Trump etc has made me want to completely leave (being on bluesky admittedly under Perry's name makes me appreciate how hard it is to build up a community afresh) and I'm still using it for various connections at the moment so it's going to be hard (a version of my strong resentment of the three main telephone companies here in Australia - which one do I hate the least so I can still have a telephone account? Probably Telstra, all they did was take money out of my account when I wasn't a customer and make it impossible to talk to anyone there to get it back). And then there's things like the above.

I have always had a soft spot for Jimmy Somerville. His single with June Miles-Kingston, a cover of 'Comment de dire adieu', is an absolute gem, a record I sincerely love.* I also of course could do with never hearing those Bronski Beat singles he made again because of overexposure but I fully admire him for them. Other things he's done have also really made an impact on me. But he just seems like a straight-up great guy. I tried to imagine him being rude to his PA or sullen in his manager's office or slapping a fan's autograph book to the floor or smashing a glass because someone confused him with Jimi the Human or Jimmy Hannan,** and I couldn't. So I like him. 

...And here he is, in my fb feed, uninvited but welcome, proudly showing me some ratshit thing like Brighton Beach, not the real one but the English one, where they have a beach made of kittylitter and fishtank pebbles, and I just think... fb can be so great when it connects me to a celebrity I have fond feelings for. 

I'm not going to follow him, just because I don't want to engage with fb any more than I already am, but I am going to feel a little bit better because somewhere, the algorithm thought hey, this 60 year old Australian man with a longstanding interest in pop music who likes Soft Cell and the Human League will probably want to see this post, and fuck it, I did. 

* In the old days I had a kind of pre-going out ceremony, sometimes, which by the way was semi-ironic but also semi-real, of playing some records I really liked that I thought of as my 'party records'. 'Comment te dire adieu' was one of them. Alongside 'Epic Merriment' by the Craven Fops, 'Roxy Roller' by Nick Gilder (or the Sweeney Todd version), 'All You Want to Do Is Dance' by Trevor White, 'Cool' by Pylon, 'Love by Numbers' by Ash Wednesday... I'm sure there were plenty of others but I can't recall them atm. All singles. My 'Comment tda' is a 12". 

** Or Jimmy Savile. I bet he gets that a lot, not because he's anything like Savile, but because the names sound so similar. 

killing thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was a poisonous automaton, and the very best interpretation that could be made of her behaviour and attitudes is that she was severely misguided in a way that kind of set her understanding of the universe at probably a very early age where up was down and vice-versa. 

I can’t recall why on earth I decided to purchase the audiobook of Rory Carroll’s Killing Thatcher however as I have never had a strong interest in the intricacies of the Irish struggles, etc, only an innate sympathy, not because I have anything other than antipathy for patriotism or even religious affiliations but of course I can see the ways in which a British presence in Ireland is a retrograde oppression (the worst kind of oppression). Also, British history is pox. I really should write down my motivations for getting involved in things as life almost always moves on and I forget. However, also, it doesn’t matter. 

 

It's a good book, and it’s a good example of how to make history gripping,* though of course it’s a story that would be hard to fluff – the ins and outs of the IRA plot to kill Thatcher at the Conservative conference in Brighton in 1984. Carroll appropriately paints all players (eg the IRA, the Conservatives) as equal pawns in a conflict they’ve inherited, rather than instigated although Thatcher with her robotic ‘strength’ in the face of near death (or anything) is a horrorshow who gives every impression that, if she had been killed in the bombing, she wouldn’t have noticed. The stories of others who were injured are sensitively told and naturally excruciating to hear about. 

 

As you can see I haven’t got to the end yet. I’m in part 3, which looks at the slow and steady (I’m assuming) process by which the bomber is (I’m assuming) caught. Carroll makes a good fist of turning people, whose jobs are just to be cogs in a machine, into inherently interesting and engaging people, with little biographical fragments and explanations for turns of phrase and approaches, that make you feel like you kind of know them, although you're really filling in most of the detail yourself. All these men – ok, there are two or three women – have a place in one of two power structures (UK government vs IRA) and the two power structures seemingly found/find value in keeping the battle going – as per The Wire, as per the three nations in 1984. Ultimately it’s not even my place to have sympathies but I am always going to be hostile to British imperialism (actually any imperialism). 

 

Fortunately none of this shizzle is ‘about’ me. Actually that’s probably the best bit of the whole book for me – thank Christ I wasn’t born in the British Isles! Though I have to say Ireland is one of my favourite places in the world, a superb country I want to see more of and hopefully will – quite soon. I know that’s a glib way to end but as I always say, this is my blog, not a review I wrote for Casual Supine Dickhead magazine where the glib endings have to have a cast-iron bottom. 

*as in - gripping like a thriller, as opposed to engaging like history often is