2019,…and all that.

Well, I tried hard to come up with a pithy take on this pig’s ear of a year that was 2019, also the decade I suppose but found myself speechless in the end. Instead this thing popped up in my You Tube subscription from DDN, and I turned to fellow Brit and seriously honoured fellow Lancastrian, Tez Ilyas – in my humble opinion a truly brilliant, unifying voice who speaks as much for me as I hope for all of us.

These are staggeringly remarkable times, times when intellectuals are left dumbfounded, times when only a gifted comedian can make sense of what’s going on. Tez, my man, you’re so much younger than me, (say like 30 years at least?) you’re sharper, more clued in, cooler, and infinitely more handsome, but apart from all of that, and probably because of it,… I love you brother:

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And so the story goes

A quick look at Smashwords’ “trending” titles has me wondering about the company I’m keeping these days. Many book covers on there feature a “ripped” male torso, often tattooed and with titles that imply the illustrated man is a real bad-un who treats his wife/girlfriend/lover appallingly. The implication is that muscles and maltreatment are attractive to females, that Alpha male culture is alive and well, that if a man wants a svelte, blonde haired, blue eyed mate with a peachy bottom, he’d be better leaving off his cerebral development to spend more time at the gym, pumping iron or whatever else it is black hearted cads are supposed do.

I’m sorry girls, if I was never that way for you, that I was sensitive and somewhat flimsy, to say nothing of concave in the pectoral region, though, thinking back, it might explain a lot, and worse that I have been badly letting down the present Mrs Graeme by my lack of aspiration to the more simian levels of impolite society. She says not, but I fear she’s just being polite.

So it hardly seems worthwhile my putting pen to paper on yet one more story featuring an ordinary, if somwhat eccentric, oppressed guy, and a girl who rewards his kindness, to say nothing of his angsty, halting advances with her love. It hardly seems worthwhile putting out a title as vague and sexless as say: “Winter on the Hill” when there’s a chance it’ll appear on the same shelves as: “Bad boy punishes his b*&ch” and “Bullied by her Man”. It seems I’m niche, and my niche is getting narrower.

I know we’re talking about light entertainment here, fluff for kiddies maybe, people with the majority of their lives ahead of them, but still it’s worrying the type of stories they’re being told, to say nothing of the stories they’re telling others. And it’s no use me saying it’s not really like that, that I don’t actually know any cruel men, because for sure they do exist. It’s just that I instinctively distance myself from them and thereby defeat them by not entering into combat in the first place. I also stand so far ahead in time, at least from the perspective of life remaining to me, I’m as good as dead to the young for all the relevance I have, and maybe that’s the way it’s always been. My niche then, is people of a similar age and outlook to myself, which is what? Late middle age, middle income, and a Cappuccino socialist to boot? Yes, indeed, a narrowing niche.

My stories are about a man’s puzzlement at life, about looking at the crazy flow of events and trying to make sense of one’s self and others, and how in the end the events of life themselves are irrelevant, that it’s only in relation to others we truly discover our selves.

Sartre is a difficult philosopher for me, but it was he who said: “Hell is other people”, and I know exactly what he means – this line coming from his play “In Camera”. Three strangers, lately dead, find themselves in Hell. But Hell is a small, locked room and only themselves for company. Initially they await in dread the torture and the fire and brimstone of biblical telling, each eventually realising that while without the others their continued existence has no substance, it is equally the case there is no torture Hell can devise that is worse than “other people”. It’s a conclusion I’ve perhaps been fumbling towards myself, but the other way around, that if other people can be Hell – and they certainly can, especially to an introverted type like me – we can also find heaven in them. I don’t mean everybody of course, though we always do well to understand where others are coming from, their back-stories, their trials, their tribulations.

But is is worth spending the whole of 2020 on another novel, rambling towards that same conclusion?

Oh, well, go on then,…as if I could stop myself.

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Winter on the hill

Great Hill, West Pennine Moors, from the Coppice Stile House ruins

Home territory today, ghosts and all – a walk up Great Hill in the Western Pennines. At 1250 feet it’s hardly Himalayan, but a shapely dome all the same, a seductive draw for the eye and a good stretch for a misty day in late December. We start mid-morning from the cricket ground at White Coppice, by the gash of the valley of Dean Brook with its dour gritstone crags. I’m intending a straight-forward hike up the moor to the Stile House, then Drinkwaters, and on to the top, returning via the ruins of Great Hill Farm – not really a day for exploring much, just striding out in familiar territory, and thinking.

With less than year to go now, I’m wondering what it’ll be like to retire early, and as I sit here in the car, gathering a head of steam to put my boots on, I have glimpses of a possible future in the dozens of old folk out with their dogs. I’ve wondered about a dog; I’m sure they’re good company, but they make me chesty and I couldn’t pick up their shit, plus a guy I know had his hand ripped open by his daft mutt the other day. It was only playing, I’m told, but the guy forgot the rules. The dog wins or else, and all these people here look like a similarly submissive species to me. No, theirs is not my future.

So here we go, bit of an odd man out, no dog. I have the camera – also odd these days – but you can’t expect good photographs with a mobile phone on a bleak day like this.  The new Scarpas are already muddy after a few other jaunts this winter, and are living up to their promises. I’ve not been well, actually, a weird virus about a week ago that began with a fever but failed to break into anything specific. It seems to have gone now though – plenty of wind in my sails at least. There’s just this odd feeling, a presence I’ve not felt in years.

Beatrice, is that you? I thought we were done with all that.

I’m talking stories here, you understamd?  I’m talking about myths, daemons, muses.

The Stile house has gone. They’ve all gone, the farms, the homesteads, just piles of rubble now. The Stile house was at times a farm, at times a pub, or both – and that it was a pub tells us this was once not the wide-open wasteland it is today. There was a bustle on the moors with farmers, miners, carriers. But then the land was bought for water catchment and none of the leases were renewed. A way of life, a people, all of it disappeared a hundred years ago leaving the moor as we see it today – desolate and uninhabited.

It must have been hard, scratching a living from the land up here, but they managed it; they peopled the moor, lent it life, ploughed, grew crops, bred animals. It was monied men in suits, sitting in far away cities who banished them with a flourish of the pen.

The Stile house resembles nothing more than a giant tumulus now, kept company by an old thorn tree, and it’s from here we get our first glimpse of the hill, just over a mile away. Cloud-base is around a thousand feet today, so it’s in and out of view as the mist scrapes by. We’ll be in it soon enough, and if Beatrice is indeed around, as I suspect she is, that’s where she’ll find me.

It’s rained all November, all December too, thus far, so the paths are heavy going. But come spring the moor will be dry as bones, and burning again. There seems no mid-curve averaging out to life these days, only the tail ends of either extreme.

Drinkwaters Farm – West Pennine Moors

A decent track brings us to Drinkwaters farm, another ruin and welcoming with its line of fine Sycamores and its lush grass, kept green by generations of dung from the beasts they farmed here, all of this in contrast to the sour khaki of the reedy moor that does nothing now but graze sheep and catch water.

Third tree from the left, by the way. That’s me. If you want want me, centuries from now, that’s where I’ll be sitting, my back to that tree, watching the sun reach its zenith over the Round Loaf. But this is a popular spot with us locals, and I suspect I’ll have plenty for company.

We’re in the mist as soon as we set foot on the hill, and the wind carries us up. The path isn’t easy to lose, part paved now with re-purposed flagstones from derelict mills, and  already somewhat greasy from constant wet. The summit is a cross shelter amid a moat of mud, and it’s a parting of the ways.

Great Hill Farm – West Pennine Moors

We take the path south, descend towards the blank, mist-addled space from which eventually would materialise Spitlers Edge. But before then we skirt west, around the base of the hill towards Great Hill farm, and another stand of bare Sycamores coming at us from out of the mist, the low gritstone ruins moist and mossy. I wonder, was the farm a cosy place? Did its fires manage to keep out the damp? Did the lamps burn a welcome in its windows? A hundred years gone, yes, but there’s still the echo of something Romantic.

Beatrice is here too, as I knew she would be. She is Victorian tweeds and a feminine sturdiness. She is Dorothy Wordsworth, she is Emily Bronte. She is Beatrice of the Lavender and the Rose. She is the flicker of a presence, inhabiting a corner of ones inner eye, her smile the lure, the trap to reel me in.

Yes, of course,… I know she’s not really here.

I sit a while in the mist, allow the imagination to restore life; bleak midwinter, the hill to our backs, cut off from the world below, there is nothing beyond the boundary of the gateless gate. I am a traveller, passing, uncertain of his way.

“Lost?” she asks.

She knows I am. That’s why she’s come looking, to fill in the gaps for me whether I like it or not. And on reflection, I do, I think,… like it.

I drift a little, mesmerised by the mist and the isolation, and the shapeliness of the bare Sycamores and the seductive flow of thought. I’m miles from anywhere, seen not a soul on the hill, but feel perfectly at home here. Then I’m walking, heading back to the multifarious profanities of the twenty first century. Did she take my arm awhile? What did she whisper as she hung close and warm?

Returning now to White Coppice, it has begun to rain, and there’s this miserable looking guy taking shelter in the cricket pavilion. I look to nod him my acquaintance, but he’s not in the mood and I’m ready to read his sullenness as an omen of mischance, that Beatrice was not here to counsel direction after all, but caution. But then there’s a girl coming up with what looks like a holly-wreath, or it could be laurels, something oddly pagan and evergreen about it. She’s young, fresh of face, beautiful. I try a smile and she responds with a warm hello, her eyes lit, a real sense of cheer and welcome for me, this passing stranger, freshly down,…

From winter on the hill.

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Dear Sara – call me!

Hello rivendalereview.co.uk Team,

We provide comprehensive digital marketing services that range from web development to ethical SEO. Besides that, we will also suggest some traffic generated keywords as per the SEO packages. All the techniques used by us are ethical and proprietary. In case you require any additional information, it shall be our pleasure to furnish the same. With our web development and mobile app development services, we can take your business to a whole new standard.

Most of your questions should be answered within the proposal, but don’t hesitate to let me know if you need any more information, such as client references.

If you want Audit Report of your website, then we can provide you as per your request.

Best regards,
Sara W@{}s
Project Manager

Note : If you want detailed plan of our proposal, please reply with Yes.

Dear Sara,

Thank you for your email. You ask if you can call me. You seem a little forward, if you don’t mind my saying, though I do wonder, idly, yes, if I should ask you to call, wonder if indeed you could help with my present quandary, but would you really know where to begin with it? I certainly don’t. That you provide comprehensive digital marketing services, ranging from web development to “ethical” SEO, is all very well but, sadly, irrelevant to my actual needs right now. Similarly your suggestions regarding traffic generated keywords, I suspect – whilst I’m sure well intentioned – may not be of much use to me either.

I wonder, have you actually seen my website? It’s rather old, a sort of Gen 2 unpublished writers thing from the late 90’s, one I abandoned in 2011. Why? It’s a question I ask myself from time to time, especially since it costs around £15 per year to maintain it in such a sorry state of obsolecence. I’ve moved on you see, Sara? though it seems at times I am still firmly anchored in the past by these rusting barbs of lethargy and self doubt.

Are you able to help with that at all?

Forgive me, I suspect you’re very young and have yet to encounter self-doubt, at least on the scale of that faced by men of my age. The confidence of youth fades as time passes, you see? the trees, once lush in their greenery, stand bare against a cold sky and the sweet-scented meadows turn into a cloying mud that pulls and slithers at every step, so it’s hard to move in any direction. At such times the best a man can possess is the patience to abide, that and to trust the seasons of the mind will turn once more, though in the greater sense – the metaphorical sense, that is – given the state of world-affairs at present, it’s easy to doubt such things are even possible any more. Such is the fix I’m in, and Search Engine Optimisation does seem rather an inappropriate salve, wouldn’t you say? Or am I missing something important here?

I mean, you have read my stuff, right? You wouldn’t just be – dare I even say it – Spamming me would you? Sara,… tell me it’s not true! That would hardly be ethical would it? Oh, my dear,… what happened? What has brought us to such a fell pass as this?

Call me yes,… you should. Or better still, join us here, we poor scribblers at WordPress. It needn’t be like this!

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In the absence of anything else

Photo by malcolm garret on Pexels.com

I found a purse, stuffed with cash, credit and debit cards, rail card, various membership cards – everything. You know how it feels to lose something like that? You panic, don’t you? you turn the house upside down, retrace your steps,… when did you last have it? Petrol station? Supermarket? Then you find it down the back of the settee, and breathe a sigh of relief. But there looked like being no such happy ending here, and I could imagine what was going through this person’s mind.

What do you do? Well, there was a name on the credit cards, but no other ID. I asked among friends and family but no one knew the name. What now? In the olden days you’d contact the local Bobby, and they’d hold onto it down the cop-shop. The owner would call in on the off-chance and be re-united with it. But now there is no cop-shop. No local Bobby either. Not much of anything really. Instead there’s a police Lost and Found Website with a million-choice tick-boxes to navigate, and as soon as you mention credit cards it boots you out.

Then there’s this non-emergency police help-line that takes half an hour to connect and, after twenty questions from an operator speaking from a distant city, in which your actual query seems irrelevant, you get a crime number, like that’s any good to you.

All right,… perhaps even thinking of the cops in this instance was naïve, a sort of bourgeois knee-jerk to calamity, but it served to highlight how much things have changed, how much has gone. If there’s been a murder, sure, call it in and the state will see to it. But if you just need a bit of help,… well,… services are somewhat overstretched at the moment, so just use your initiative.

Right now though my glutinous initiative is somewhat slow in taking shape. Finally I go out and Sellotape a note near to where I found the purse: Mrs Suchabody. Please ring,… etc. But that’s pathetic, surely? So I go home and fret. But an hour later I get the call. Purse and grateful owner are reunited, and all ends well.

I wonder if this denudation of local services, local help, local authority, will perhaps in the longer term serve up the grass-roots transformation we so desperately need. Indeed I’ve noticed recently how the despair of neglected communities up and down the UK, since the crash, is now transforming into a rejection of national politics and the “official” support mechanisms of the state because, well, they’re so chronically under-funded, they’re useless.

People are saying, you know, this place is a mess, and it’s been decades, and no one else is going to sort it, so let’s do it ourselves. It’s called social activism and it comes out of the community-centres, the church-groups, the Facebook-groups . It’s what the original socialist movement sprang from – despair and necessity.

So you find a purse on the path. What you do about that is between your own conscience and what’s realistically doable, in the same way as there’s that homeless guy sitting in a shop doorway night and day, and kids turning up to school so hungry they’re not fit for a day’s lessons any more. Do you think the state’s going to sort that out now? No,… it looks like it’s down to the community. What is the community? We are the community, us and the people we know, the people we trust.

“There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour. My meaning, [there is no such thing as society] clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.”

Margaret Thatcher said that, as a prelude to winding back the state safety nets. And she was right in what she said, or at least there’s a sad inevitability about it,… in the absence of anything else.

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Above my paygrade – part two

In Wordsworth’s manifesto of the English Romantic movement, there is a rejection of the high flown language that passed for poetry prior to 1800. The emphasis is on plainness of speech, and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, of finding a richness of spirit and meaning in the very poorest of places. And when we view an object or a scene it is not simply the contemporary reality we see, more the multiple layers of its existence in time, as granted by imagination and history.

Thus an old watch becomes more than a timepiece, not so much the sum of the time it tells as the times it has known. There’s also something truly beautiful about mechanical watch mechanisms. They sum up all that is best in mankind, in the thousand minds and the hands of the past that came together to create such delicate, wondrous devices.

So when I find one that’s ailing and abandoned, I take a pleasure in seeing if I can get it going again, in helping it on its way. There is no purpose in this, other than a kind of defiance, and few people are appreciative of it anyway. After all, why not simply buy a new watch? Well, that may be the best policy if all you’re concerned about is telling the time,  but there is something more in restoring life to a machine created by past hands and minds. We pay homage to it and to something in ourselves. For a certain type of person – me – there is something of the soul-life in it, something Romantic.

This Accurist I’m working on is a quality piece, and comes apart nicely, easily. I’m not used to seeing gold hallmarks on a watch. They confirm the date of manufacture, while various arcane service marks tell me it’s seen some work, back in the days when watchmakers were numerous and not as expensive.

So, what’s up with it? Well, the balance won’t swing, but a few puffs from the blower brush seem to wake it up and it runs, hesitantly at first, settling down a little slow and there are significant variations in all the positions – face up, face down, crown left, crown right. Either the balance is worn or it just needs cleaning. We’ll stay positive and assume cleaning will do the trick.

I’m not going to disturb the whole mechanism, so it’s just a light strip and clean the balance. I do the pivot holes of the escapement train with a toothpick dipped in white spirit. Watchmakers will grind their teeth at the thought, but they had their chance and turned their noses at it. So,… my turn, my methods.

Then it’s oiling, and the best bit for me, a steady hand and a dropper finer than a pin. It’s just the pocket-jewel atop the balance that’s the usual challenge, trying to get the dropper through those balance coils without touching them. I do smear oil on the coils a few times, so clean it off by immersion in white spirit – the Duncan Swirl method – try again, get there finally. Then I tease it all back together and it runs – much better – much less variation in the positions. It’s still a little slow, so I leave it a day to let the new oil settle in, pick it up again tomorrow. Pleasure postponed is always worth waiting for.

Tomorrow, nudge the regulator arm, let it rest, count the beats. An error of fifteen seconds a day is the best we can hope for here, but I’m happy with a minute on a piece this old. It runs well. The beat is good, nice and flat on the trace. Keeps time. We clean the case up a bit, give it its old sparkle back. That foxing on the dial looks just right, I think, and the guy’s happy, restored to his past, to his place in time. And that he’s happy makes me happy.

Sure, it’s a good piece, and worth it. Plus, we needed each other. It’s certainly picked me up and dusted me down after a bit of a kicking and I’ve saved it from oblivion, lying useless and forgotten in a keepsake drawer. Small victories are important when you’re coming out of a dark place. Accurist, eh? They put their name on some good watches in their time.

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Above my paygrade – part one

It’s above my pay-grade really, this watch, but without me it’s dead. I know its history, and that doesn’t help. Purchased as a twenty first gift by a doting aunt in 1958, it’s seen a man through all the milestones of a long life. But you know how it goes with these old mechanical timepieces? You leave them be if they’re running okay – and it’s been running okay for sixty years – and then they stop.

It could be nothing. A bit of dirt on the escapement. If so, cleaning and oiling will sort it out. The problem is I’m just a tinkerer, some professional skill with machines, but not at this scale. I’ve done watches before, yes, made a hobby of it, so I’m not exactly clueless, but they’re mostly worthless pieces I’ve worked on. The case of this piece is gold, so I’m not expecting a cheap movement inside of it, and I’m right. Hiding, all shy under the balance wheel, the Loupe reveals the distinctive mark of a Swiss ETA.

There are still watchmakers around of course, but they’d want a hundred quid before they’d look at it, those who would even deign to touch it in the first place. I mean an Accurist is a dcent watch, but isn’t exactly an Omega is it?

So the guy was disappointed, hesitated to part with that much money, even though he still clearly valued the watch, would sooner I chanced it, he said, and no blame if I killed it. I mean, after all,… it’s dead already isn’t it?

I enjoy stripping and cleaning old watches, especially the fine oiling and the regulating. It’s a meditation of sorts – the tools, the focus, the dexterity, like Tai Chi in miniature. I’ve years of political stuff to get out my system now after a stunning defeat in the elections, one I don’t see ever being turned around in my lifetime, so I’m turning back to my hobbies for deliverance.

I’ve deleted the news apps from my phone, no longer listen to the BBC. I’ll read a book at lunchtimes at work instead of poring over current affairs online like usual. The new PM can declare nuclear war, the Labour party can appoint whatever bland centerist they like as a leader and I wouldn’t know or care. It’s an over-reaction to a profound disappointment of course, and I’ll get over it, but old watches like this fascinate me, they have character, and history, and this one is easing me back onto my feet.

Except,… I wish it didn’t have to be this particular one because it’s a fine piece and I’m feeling sullied at the moment, lacking confidence. It needs someone more competent.

But what the hell, here goes,…

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Election – the morning after

I suspect, like most of us who voted and campaigned on the Left, I’m still coming to terms with what happened last night. As the election results came in and confirmed a robust majority for the Conservative party, my initial reaction was one of shock and profound dismay. But more, there is this morning a feeling I no longer recognise my country, that indeed, both at home, and on the world’s stage, I am ashamed of what we’ve become.

My one comfort is I cannot say I did nothing, I cannot say I sat by, that I did not vote, that I did not stuff leaflets through doors, that I did not talk leftist politics on my blog. In short what I can say is that what’s coming is not my fault. But there’s no real comfort in that, and I’m sorry I could not have done more.

There was nothing wrong with what we stood for. It was just that Brexit overshadowed everything, and “getting it done” turned out to be more important to the nation’s addled psyche than anything else, plus of course an unspeakably vile media that demonised the Left’s every utterance. But the Left ran a decent, wholly positive campaign, and I’m pleased to have played my tiny part in it. As for the other lot, well, what did we expect?

My sense is that the Labour party has lost a good man in Jeremy Corbyn. It was for the ideals embodied in him that I have taken to the letterboxes over the years, and I suppose the danger now is that all those who, like me, were inspired by his more compassionate and cerebral brand of politics will turn away, tear up their membership cards, and cancel their subscriptions to the Guardian and Novara Media. But we mustn’t do that (well okay, the Guardian bears some responsibility and I’m sorely tempted).

Yet if we look back, significant changes have occured and the Left can build on those foundations. Strong, charismatic media voices are emerging, also the independent platforms to support them, though sadly, as yet, far from mainstream. Only if Labour returns now to being a Tory-lite party will I feel I have no one I can vote for, and that, I suppose, once again, is the battle now facing us – for the soul of Labour, indeed the soul of the nation. The Conservative party has no soul – no matter what bland platitudes it will utter today about healing the nation and being the people’s party – it has already demonstrated in spades its utter contempt for both.

The future? Well, the Brexit argument is lost and Brexit will happen now, at the hands of the most mendacious, vacuuous, right-wing administration this country has ever seen. The fallout of that separation will begin in January when the direction of departure is finally set and our passports turn blue. But it won’t actually be “done” for another decade. Brexit is just beginning and the only positive thing to be said about it is the incumbent administration fully owns it, must make it work and lead us all to glory as they’ve said they can.

Everyone else’s hands are clean of it.

As for the rest, who knows? The Conservative manifesto was notably light on detail, but they can pretty much do what they like with such a majority and we can only take the past decade as an indication of what that might actually mean in practice. And in practice it means more of the same, it means the brighter, more inclusive and compassionate future I had hoped for our country, and my children’s place in it, is held once more in check, but on the upside it’s all still there to fight for. Same as it always has been.

No more talk of politics for a while. I’m heartily sick of it.

On second thoughts, I’ll leave the last word to George:

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A Good Clock

It was a good clock, sitting there,
On the mantle of my childhood,
Black-cased and glossy
As a piano’s ebony key.

It was the size of my hand,
And a good weight,
With gold fingers, like daggers drawn
On a white dial, peppered with soot.

There it ticked down the years,
Gained ever so slowly,
Was drawn back now and then
To the steadying pips of the BBC.

But in memory it never falters,
Just marks time, those fingers
Imperceptibly moving, scything
A rich harvest of days.

I don’t know where it went, that clock.
I heard it had stopped, was thrown away.
Pity. I would have liked to see
If I could get going again.

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Is Facebook really evil?

Thomas Hardy, Novelist, 1840-1928

Until last week I didn’t have a Facebook account, not in my real name, anyway. As a means of harvesting mass hauls of data for nefarious mining, I’d long feared everything that was said about Facebook was true. Thus, I avoided it like the plague, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal did nothing to persuade me otherwise. Yes, Michael Graeme has an account, but that’s fine because he doesn’t exist, and he never uses it anyway.

It’s not that I felt my real self had anything to hide, more because I  value my privacy, something in the spirit of Article 12 of the International Declaration of Human Rights. Once that trust is broken we can turn the individual against themselves, render them vulnerable to manipulation, open a window on their lives that others can have no possible interest in other than to hold some sort of power over them.

But I needed to contact someone urgently, someone I’d not seen for years, someone I didn’t know that well, and who didn’t know me as Michael Graeme, so I signed up as my real self, found him on Facebook, messaged him and got in touch – all within the space of an hour. Brilliant, I thought, and maybe Facebook should be tolerated after all. It’s imperfect, yes, but when used with discretion it can truly be a force for good. Can’t it? Well, Facebook then locked me out and wouldn’t let me back in unless I gave them my mobile telephone number in order – they said – to verify my identity.

What?

Naturally I didn’t want them to have my telephone number, even though they promised not to do anything bad with it, so I dug around for an old mobile I’ve not used in a decade, one I’ve been meaning to chuck out and I gave them the number of that one instead. They texted me a code to it, which I typed into the login window, and I thought: Yea! got you there, didn’t I? But then Facebook wanted a picture of my face.

What? My face?Really?

Now, I’m sure my face will end up on a security database sometime anyway, along with name and address – if it isn’t there already – so there’s no point being overly paranoid about it, but I wasn’t going to make it as easy as that for them, so I submitted a picture of Thomas Hardy instead. But, handsome as he is, in a cerebral sort of way, to say nothing of expertly moustached, it didn’t work. They said they’d have to think about it, and I’m still locked out. I’m not that bothered, not holding my breath either.*

This latest brush with Facebook has taught me two things: one, while you can argue it’s of some utility, what we get in return for handing over our most intimate details really isn’t worth it. Just because you value your privacy, doesn’t mean you have anything to hide, and you shouldn’t have to prove it either. There are regimes now that demand a picture of your face whenever you buy a new phone. Do we really want to go down that road? And then, two, everything you’ve heard said about Facebook and everything you’ve feared, is probably true. If you don’t like the idea of a machine being able to conjure up your name and address from a picture of your face, snapped by CCTV as you go about your lawful business, then don’t sign up.

If you were to fall down in the street from a heart attack, neither the cameras nor Facebook will leap to your aid. But if you participate in a street demo about something you feel strongly, be sure your face will be matched from the file, and the machine will remember you,… for next time.

Will I get away with substituting my own face with Thomas Hardy’s? Do I think they’re as stupid as that? Is Facebook really evil? I don’t know. I admit though to feeling somewhat bewildered and pessimistic at what we’re becoming.

*Actually, after a delay of a few days, it worked. Facebook thinks I look like Thomas Hardy. I shall take that as a compliment.

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