Better the devil you know?

I've known L for quite a few years now. We first met in a dance class back in 2002, I think it was. I shared a flat with her in London. She's an occasional reader of this blog - very occasional - and a regular contributor of inspiration for content. Today's post will be no exception, although she might be surprised to read descriptions of her self that are bound to follow. Because as good a friend as I consider her, there are a few things about her that I would dearly love to change, and I don't just mean her obsession with the idea that she is fat because she doesn't neatly fit what she has come to believe is the perfect body shape. There are reasons why we very rarely discuss politics, and one of those reasons reared it's head today.

In many respects, we have similar backgrounds. Our father's both trained as teachers, although mine left the profession when I was still in primary school. We both went to the local state school before moving on to private secondary schools and then to university. We both know what it's like to be in a family that has to scrimp and save, that there's a difference between something you really want and something you really need. And as long as we avoid certain no-go areas of conversation (religion and politics, the twin minefields of most conversational gambits), we get along like a house on fire. But in those areas, our views are such polarised opposites that conflict is bound to arise, and I find myself compelled to challenge her on how and why she can come from where she has, yet still hold the ideas that she does. At the same time, I'm rational enough to think that there's no doubt she has similar queries about my views.

Anyone who has read this blog more than once over the many years I have been writing it now (I think there's one of you out there...) would know that my own leanings are so far to the left that I'm a virtual socialist. I get fired up about the big issues of social inequality, by prejudice, by ignorance. I admit, ironically, I'm not terribly tolerant of people who don't agree with me on these points. Luckily, L and I were friends long before I discovered her inbuilt prejudices against what she today described as "total scum".

Now don't get me wrong here. There are people in the world who would merit that description a million times over. People who lie, cheat, steal, and plenty more. But I don't think that you deserve the epithet simply for being poor and, if you're lucky, working class. Last time I checked, there wasn't a means test on the right to consider yourself a decent human being. Nor was there any reason to think that because there are people of "reduced means" living in an area, people who get their hands dirty for a living, who may not have had the same chances as you or may not have had the same inclinations as you, that it must be unworthy of your attention. Poverty certainly is no justification for being branded scum. Yet L, an otherwise rational person, is so blinded by her prejudice - and acknowledges it - that she would not consider living in an area where there were such people. Nor would she look at an area that was home to many migrants, a large gay population, or any of a wide ranging variety of groups she is prejudiced against in the abstract sense. She is capable of suspending her judgement when faced with an individual case - I think it comes more from an innate politeness that stops her from giving offence - until she actually knows a person and then is more likely to consider them on their merits. Her judgement is so irrational and arbitrary that her definitions are flexible; the English, for example, are not migrants.

Bearing in mind that this is an intelligent, well-brought up woman living in the twenty-first century. You'd be forgiven for thinking that her views were those of a ninety year old woman back in 1952. Although progressive in some ways, she holds firmly entrenched views that cannot be swayed by any logic, views that, until recently when Tony Abbot's political aspirations saw the culmination of a slow drift to the right in Australian politics, most would be wary of expressing for fear of being considered as almost a fascist. I'm not calling her a fascist - I want to make that perfectly clear - just saying that, as much as I verge on socialism, she verges on fascism, the opposite ends of the political spectrum. I might lightly banter with her on the subject of her prejudices, but I sometimes want to hit her over the head about them, until she sees how far to the right she occasionally gets. I'm sure she feels that same feeling about my leftist, pinkish politics. So we avoid the topic when we're thinking clearly. When we're not, we manage to steer into safer waters soon enough to avoid a storm. But I wonder, sometimes, if that's the right thing to do. Because my understanding is that prejudices should be challenged, especially where they appear illogical. Where people who see the world differently sit quietly by while others grow in bigotry, trouble can brew. Sure, she's my friend, but if I can't challenge my friend, what do I do when I see the same bias in a stranger? Where does it end?

On that entirely too serious note, I should probably explain the context of the statement. She has been looking to buy a house, so we were doing the rounds of the open houses today and found ourselves in an area that she was probably less familiar than she might have been. "I guess it's not likely that complete scum live around here, is it," she observed, leaving the rest of us spluttering. No, we assured her. The ones poor enough to fit her definition of scum would not be able to afford to live in the area. They, like her blogger friend, would be forced to rent something a little further out of the city, on the wrong side of the upside down river that messily divides Melbourne's suburbs from each other.

I don't think she'll be buying the house in question, but no doubt she'll end up with something in a similar area. And I can't help but think that the cafes that line the streets where she will live will be filled with a certain type of person, someone who goes out on the weekend to sit with a chai latte and read the newspaper, smugly congratulating themselves on being able to afford to boost property prices to the point where a person earning an above average wage can't get a loan to buy a vacant block of land on the fringes of the city, let alone afford to build a house on it. Patting themselves on the back because they have been fortunate to escape the "scum" of the city, even though the parts of Melbourne where they live were for decades the slums where the scum thrived. And I wonder at the vagaries of a world where two people who have so much in common can find themselves on opposite sides of a fence, staring across a yawning divide that neither one is prepared to cross; the Yarra river of ethical and political debate, and I wonder if I find myself on the right or the wrong side, and if there is any way to make her see that the world is a richer place on this side.

The Whooshing of a Deadline

Douglas Adams once said that he loved deadlines. More specifically, he loved the "whooshing" sound they made as they flew by. I'm getting a closer acquaintance with the whoosh today. My thesis draft is due on Monday, yet here I am, writing another blog entry. Interesting fact; the number of blog entries I make correlates pretty closely with the number of things on my to-do list. There's an inverse relationship between blogging and the number of days left on a deadline, as well. But somehow, on a glorious sunny spring day in Melbourne, it seems especially harsh that I have to be cooped up inside and writing about Marxism. I know, it's self inflicted. I'm not asking for sympathy. I have a feeling I wouldn't get much anyway. I'm just having a moan. Anything to keep me from examining the question of women as consumers/consumables. Yes, sounds entertaining, doesn't it.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many ways there are to procrastinate, if you really put your mind to it. I read somewhere that many perfectionists procrastinated, because they were afraid that nothing they could do would be up to standards, so it's better not to try. I must be the ultimate perfectionist, because I'm notorious for putting things off to the last second. At least this time I won't have someone nearby telling me I look dead when I surface after a weekend of no sleep. L is still safely in London, and nobody else here would tell me so bluntly except my Nana. Sorry Nana, no visits until my sleep pattern returns to normal.

All of which adds up to the fact that I should be doing something else. Anything to do with my thesis, actually, as long as it has a direct relationship. So what am I doing instead? Blogging. Playing online solitaire. Wandering through dating websites. Hell, I'm even considering housework right now, so desperate am I to avoid putting pen to paper - or hands to keyboard, at least. Maybe make a cake. Pathetic, isn't it. Meanwhile, the whoosh is getting louder...

Weekend Wreckage

I'm feeling the effects of hosting a party on Saturday night. Sure, there wasn't anything in the flat broken. The guests were better behaved than last time I hosted a dinner, and ended up cleaning up after a wasabi pea fight for a couple of weeks afterwards. Did you have any idea just how far those things can roll? And I'm sure some of them were playing a game with me and jumping out of the bin, back under the couch, because no matter how many times I moved it, there was always at least one pea underneath. In fact, there's probably still one there now. But no, the carnage wreaked wasn't on my flat.

Nor was it on my flatmate. She recovered brilliantly, as far as I'm aware. She was certainly fit enough to be seen in public yesterday, darting around the west end in a frenzy to try and get her Christmas shopping done and so avoid the worst of the seasonal retail binge. I stayed at home, afraid that leaving the house would make small children cry. Because the damage caused was very much a visible problem. And it had nothing to do with a hangover.

I was out on Friday night as well, so I had every right to be feeling the effects of a little partying. At the very least I should have been tired. But I wasn't. Instead, I was ashamed to show myself in public because of a problem I've had from time to time over the years. It seems that not only liver, kidneys, stomach and head are effected by a night of partying. The beautifying process takes a severe toll on my hair as well.

It's trivial, I know. To anyone not blessed with the horrendous mass of fur that grows from my head, it would be nothing. But, after years of attempting - and generally failing - to control my wig, on Saturday I let it have its way. In fact, I encouraged its worst tendencies. I scrunched. I teased. I fluffed. I sprayed with so much hairspray that I had to leave my room or risk suffocation. In short, I worked very hard to get myself into the correct frame of hair for an 80s party, like we were having. Then I made a token gesture at control by tying a leftover piece of my bright yellow t-shirt dress around my head in a big floppy bow.

But now my hair has tasted freedom. It has experienced the thrill of flying free, and it liked it. This morning, even smothering it with a close fitting hat did little to bring it down to earth - or at least to my scalp. Because each individual strand was making a stand, being an individual, and pulling in a slightly different direction to its neighbour. This morning, it was bigger than it was on Saturday night. And where the air went out of it over the course of the party, today, in spite of pins and elastics acting as restraints, its only gotten bigger.

I guess you need to have big hair to appreciate it. My balding brother, for instance, gets a bitter twist to his face every time I bitch about having too much and how hot it gets on my neck if I leave it down. But he's not the one who has to wrestle it under control. I'm like a lion tamer cracking the whip; half an hour with a hair dryer here, 20 minutes with irons there. I can split it into two braids and each of those will still be thicker than the average person's allowance. It's not even curly, so there's no excuse for it. That it's naturally the colour of rope doesn't help. If I grew it longer, I could do a fair Rapunzel. All I'd need is the Prince. Oh, and the tower. And loads of anaesthetic to numb my scalp, given that self-weight of my ponytail can bring on a headache if I club it up too high.

I know, I know. Somewhere out there, people are telling me that the grass is always greener. And it is. After all, I could at least sleep on my soft, billowing cushion of locks and hairspray. One friend would have spent several hours trying to get her hair down from the punkish spikes she was sporting, complete with an entire pot of wax holding it in place. So at least there's that, I guess. Oh who am I kidding. I'd shave it off in a second if I didn't think it was just grow back thicker. And probably curly, just for that extra bit of oomph. I've learned one lesson, though. Never, ever, give it a taste of what it would have been like to be running wild and free in the days of big hair. Because it will takes weeks to recover from the hangover.