"And then he said..."

There's a meme going round where you answer questions about your life using song titles from your favourite band. I don't usually do these things, but Beloved Other Half challenged me to complete it using the immortal words of Phil Oakey and the Human League, having done so herself using the songs of that gloomy bloke from somewhere Up North.

So here goes.

1. Are you male or female:
Mister Moon and Mister Sun

2. Describe yourself:
Mirror Man

3. How do some people feel about you:
John Cleese: Is He Funny?

4. How do you feel about yourself:
(I'm only) Human

5. Describe your day:
The Dignity of Labour, Parts 1-4

6. Describe current gf/bf:
All I Ever Wanted

7. Describe where you want to be:
Sin City

8. Describe how you live:
Circus of Death (Fast Version)

9. What would you ask for if you had just one wish:
The Things That Dreams Are Made Of

10. Share a few words of wisdom:
The Stars Are Going Out

11. Now say goodbye:
(We'll Always be Together) Together in Electric Dreams

Your turn - and I won't even pick the band for you :o)

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I'm taking part in a discussion at the moment that asks people why they first joined the Lib Dems. I got so many good memories writing my answer that I thought I'd cross-post an expanded verion of it here.

I chased a Liberal leafletter down the street as a schoolboy to say “can I help?”

I delivered and canvassed for a while - particularly for the unfortunate George Binney in 1983 who achieved 20,000 votes and still got buried in a landslide - but didn't actually join until the merger debate. I was signed up into the SDP on a nod and a wink (ie, no fee, not sure the paperwork ever got sent off) so I could attend the North Herts SDP meeting to discuss which way to go, with Danny Finkelstein vs Shirley Williams as guest cheerleaders for the rival factions. We all went one way, Danny and a philosphical, sad-eyed gentleman named (I think) Pedro went the other.

The first time I think I was a real member was later as a student, at the UEA, where I fell in with a bad crowd in the Alliance Students. Those were heady days - Lembit Opik was running for NUS glory on a platform of “Students for Students” using the slogan “Like it? You'll Lembit”, a gerbil was elected as our SU general secretary, in all other respects the union was in the iron grip of the Labour Club until Richard Grayson cut their feet from under them, the Norwich skyline was smoky from the burning of Poll Tax registration forms and we held internal Alliance Students elections by means of a unique version of the secret ballot in which the candidates closed their eyes and eveybody else took part in a show of hands.

I drifted off to the Greens for a couple of years (the malign influence of my ex-fiancee), had a weird 1992 general election day helping Chris Fowler in South Norfolk and then attending the Norwich North count for the Greens, and finally defected to the Lib Dems (or whatever we were called then) at the local elections the following year - I agreed to stand as a Green, tried to withdraw, but found I was one of only a handful of Norwich Green candidates with valid nomination papers and felt compelled to go through with it. At the count in my ward, watched only by my Labour opponent, his flunkies, and my two tellers (both Labour voters) I announced I was leaving the Greens. Norwich Labour smirked until I pulled a gold rosette out of my pocket. Later that night I was thrown out of the Labour Club while enjoying a pint with an old friend in the People's Party. Things went downhill for the Norwich Labour Party thereafter :o)

Since then I've been stoutly Lib Dem (very stoutly until I joined Vince Cable's gym last year) and, in 1996-97 or so, finally read enough policy and political philosophy to understand why. So no more wobbles, and an ideological basis to my membership this last decade. I was a council candidate in 1998 and 2002, and probably will be again this year, and stood for Parliament in 2001. In 2003 I burned out and thought 'sod that for a lark', but I'm making a bit of a comeback at the moment.

But why did I originally join? Damned if I know. I think it was because I liked to support the underdog. Do you know, this leadership campaign we've just had is the first time I can ever remember supporting the favourite in anything since that night with Finkelstein and Williams?

Today I:

• Went to work in Islington in a light drizzle
• Wrote 489 words on the Dublin fashion industry
• Had a rather pleasant vegan Thai buffet lunch
• Watched the trailers for 'V for Vendetta' online
• Discovered the probable reason for my persistent backaches and occasional trapped nerves is the previously-undiscovered fact that I have a spine shaped in an improbably warped curve that could, at best, hit me with a slipped disc or two and at worst could leave me bent in a permanent s-shape before I'm old and grey
• Ate a fried egg and veggy bacon sandwich
• Watched an episode of Joss Whedon's Firefly

I'll leave you to guess which event is foremost on my mind at the moment.

I long since learned that being beaten up turns you into a coward. I proved it again tonight: it's an unpleasant feeling that leaves you bitter and twisted up inside.

It's, what? Six years since I was attacked on a train on the way back from a Susan Kramer for Mayor campaign rally. Something like that, anyway. A gang of six or seven young scamps decided to play baseball with my head, using stolen bottles of cheap sparkling wine. No particular reason for choosing me.

Call it a score draw if you like - seventeen stitches in five head wounds for me, short spells in Feltham Young Offenders' for two of them. I also, by happy coincidence, got the front page of the local papers in the week I was selected as the local Parliamentary candidate, since it coincided with the sentencing. That was quite nice.

It's not been so much fun since then.

I was entitled to quite a bit of compensation, thanks to the scarring next to one of my eyes. Not a fortune, but enough for a holiday. Or two. Possibly three, if one was at Butlins. But I couldn't bring myself to fill in the forms or have a new set of photographs taken, so that was the end of that.

And I still find rowdy groups of kids intimidating, even when there's absolutely no threat from them. Strangely, I don't find the ones that are out for trouble any more frightening, although they do make my guts burn with anger and hatred to a quite alarming extent.

I'm pretty certain I'd intervene if I thought someone else was in danger - I remember an incident which I'm pretty sure I wrote about where I thought I was going to have to - but I know there's circumstances where I would have once taken a stand that I would now walk past.

There's a bus stop on the main road where I live, and the bus route it serves comes straight out of one of the estates where the residents finally made me give up on local politics - as I often say, I couldn't see why we were flogging our guts out for them when their ambitions went no higher than producing endless ugly fatherless babies, torching cars and putting National Front stickers on lampposts.

It's frequently vandalised - sometimes completely trashed - although at the moment it's not in too bad nick. Tonight as I approached it on the way home from work there were four youths at it, waiting to head off towards the town centre. The bin by the bus stop is one of those with a metal base and a heavy plastic sleeve that slides over the top. The kids had the sleeve off and were kicking it around. I had to walk right past them to get home.

The old me would have challenged them, told them to leave the bin alone - possibly even have got angry with them. The new me walked by, as close to them as you are to your computer monitor, without saying a word.

I turned down the drive to my flats, and behind me I could hear deep hollow 'booms' as they had their fun with the bin. Behind me walked one of my neighbours, too far off to identify. He, too, had walked past without saying anything.

Beloved Other Half says I shouldn't beat myself up over it, that no-one should expect to come through what I came through and still be equipped to take action under those circumstances.

I know what I say, though…

You couldn't do this over here. Someone - probably those great defenders of children, the tabloid press - would call it a shopping catalogue for paedophiles. But over in Tampa, Florida, there's a project called the Heart Gallery that's making a real difference for kids with no families who are hoping for adoption.

Briefly, amateur and professional photographers in Hillsborough County, Tampa, take portraits of children in local foster care, display the pictures and the kids' stories in a gallery (sometimes with audio messages from the children), and invite the public along to have the hearts ripped out of their chests and get the kids adopted. It works, a lot. Something like 40 per cent of the children end up with families as a result.

People make strange decisions when it comes to adoption. I know - I'm adopted myself and I'm told the first couple who looked at me back in '68 rejected me because I was too old (five months!) and too Spanish-looking. So my first thought was that this was a bit dodgy - a sort of Darwinian selection process where the pretty get selected and the ugly and ill-favoured disappear back into the mud.

But it's not - the photos are wonderful, and they're of all sorts of children with all sorts of appearances. You'd want to give not just any of them a home, but all of them.

Apparently there are about 70 of these galleries across the US, but this one is the first to include audio messages from the kids. I can only imagine what it's like to listen to them. They must be the foster care equivalent of the 9/11 answerphone messages: for a lot of these kids, not finding an adoptive family is a kind of death - the death of opportunity, the final chance gone to lead what most of us would term a normal life with loved ones and ambitions and a realistic chance of achievement.

I heard about this over at Heck's Kitchen, where JM linked to it because her sisters are among the photographers (in fact, one is an organiser). She also linked to a great article from the local press (links at the bottom of this post, and a hat-tip to Jenny for the text that my second paragraph is ripped off from).

As I get older, I find I feel more and more strongly about adoption. Not my own adoption - I'm very relaxed about that - but about the subject itself. What that means in practice is not something I fully understand - I don't know where that particular thought process is taking me. I don't even really know how to finish this paragraph about it, so I'll just let it trail off here unsatisfyingly while I let the thoughts brew a while longer.

But I do know that I think the Heart Gallery of Tampa Bay is a bloody wonderful thing and I wish it was possible to do the same everywhere.

• The Heart Gallery of Tampa Bay
• Judy Hill at TBO.com Life: Open Heart To Special Child With Valentine
• Judy Hill at TBO.com Life: A Few Hours, A Few Gifts, Many Hopes
• Jesse Miller Photography
• Heck's Kitchen

Ugh.

It's 2am and I just woke from a bizarre nightmare in which Beloved Other Half, myself and dozens of others climbed up the wire fence that used to run alongside the access road to our flats in order to escape the floodwater surges from a tsunami that had run up the channel of the Thames. Among those around us were a Big Issue seller I sometimes chat to on Upper Street, Islington, called Tony, a minor character from the movie Notting Hill and a TV news reporter (identity unknown) who was broadcasting live, despite not having a camera crew, and who screamed “it's my Uncle Charlie's funeral” at the moment of greatest danger when we all thought we were going to be washed away.

Odd.

Can't sleep now, so I might as well try to get some work done.

Ah well. Back in London after a month away.

Wonderful time in Cornwall, just managed to skirt the edges of all the bad weather (thanks to everyone who texted / emailed to ask if we were okay). Did have a powercut one night in a storm though.

Was working in Islington yesterday so I had the whole commuting experience, lovely. It seems I've got a bit thin-skinned from all that time on a hilltop with no-one around but Beloved Other Half.

Driving to the other client today, near Wycombe, which should be easier. Then back to Islington tomorrow.

Managed 19,000 words in the novel-writing challenge I was attempting - nowhere near the 50k target but a pleasing amount anyway, especially as it took me to a natural break in the narrative. Beloved Other Half has done rather better - everyone go say 'well done' to her, okay?

How's everyone been while I was away, then?

This journal began on 7th November 2002 on DeadJournal, where one version of it is still running. In order to keep track of friends, there are now also versions on LiveJournal and Journalspace. In due course I'll shift the whole thing over to my new site at andthenhesaid.com.

So. Three years of doing this journaling / blogging thing. Seems a shame to let it fade away.

Better write something, then.

Life since my last post of more than a sentence or two

October: bloody awful month ending in a funeral.

November: spending entire month on holiday in Cornwall, trying to write a novel. Almost no internet access. Back home at the beginning of December.

Goodbye and Godspeed, Tony - see you on the other side. (Advice: don't tell Bertie about the grand you made until after he's got the first round in…)

One cup of coffee - just one - and it triggered a headache that I still can't shift. Not even one, in fact, because I didn't finish it.