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You should go read that article on the BBC before you read my half-assed observations below. Mrs Seward says a lot of things that make a lot of sense, but the one sentence that really gave me goosebumps is this one:

“You think it is normal,” she said.

This is the problem. If you have depression, or out of control PMS, or SAD, or whatever your particular brand of crazy might be, you have, by definition, lost sight of what normal is. I don’t know anymore, whether I’m ill, or whether this is just what I am, or whether every single other person feels like this too. I want to believe it’s something abnormal, something I’ve got, not something I am: but that’s almost worse, because if that’s true, then I have no idea how to get or even ask for help.

Is it normal to sit crying over a single sock, miserable to the absolute depth of your soul about how alone it is, until you realise that at least that sock’s in the drawer, and somewhere, out there in the dark, is the *other* sock, lost? Having to flip channels every time an advert for pet food comes on which plays on your heartstrings for the sake of some wretched animal shelter charity? Getting out of bed at 6am to cancel ferry tickets because you can’t believe even a four month old child can bear to see you when you can’t bear to see yourself? Is it normal, standing two or three times a day, staring at the rack of knives in your kitchen, knowing that if you just carved a little flesh from your arms or thighs, everything would be better, or thinking that if you hadn’t given up smoking, you could have kept burning yourself? How about taking pills as catharsis? How about the absolute, unutterable shame of writing it on your blog because if you don’t say it somewhere, your head is going to explode?

How is anyone supposed to know?

1. 2008 was decidedly meh. Let’s never have another year like that.
2. Sitting on your arse waiting for things to get better only means they’re going to get worse.
3. eBay bores me. I’ve been saying this for far too long. Time to really do something very decisive about it.
4. I quit biting my nails. If I can break one life-long habit, I can break the rest of em.
5. I didn’t read nearly enough books. Remedy this next year.
6. For five days in Chicago, I was really happy. Learn from this.
7. I have no maternal instinct. I may have a materteral instinct, and I should find out for definite.
8. I like people more than I think I do (though I still prefer cats).
9. In 2009, I will have a lot more fun. That’s the closest to a new year’s resolution I’m going to get.

Beautiful photo by Stig Nygaard.

If you want an enumeration of all the reasons why this is a bad idea, that’s been done very well in the comments to Civil Service Minister Tom Watson’s remarkably open post asking for opinion on the proposal. So in brief, here’s my objection:

It won’t work.

It won’t work because the internet doesn’t work like that, because parents who were really, truly bothered would supervise their children’s surfing, and because curious adolescents want to look at porn - and wouldn’t you rather they did it in the comfort of their own homes than by having to shoplift from newsagents like my generation did?

I think there was an opportunity here. Those of us who make our livings around the internet are not very good at remembering that we’re in a tiny minority and not everyone sees it like we do. When I first told my sister-in-law I was working for an internet company, she thought I had to be either a credit card fraudster or a pornographer: not everyone updates Twitter from their iphone on the way to dconstruct. So this prospectively big debate could have been the perfect moment to talk about what the internet is, and what it can do: how it’s not just about porn and gambling, how it can be a force for democracy, for social change, how it can empower the politically disenfranchised. And how restricting that isn’t something that any of us should want to do.

But we didn’t. Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch UK and arguably one of the highest profile internetters in the UK, wrote a blog post, entitled “PWN3D!!1! Dude i totally got ur name. w00t!!!” Ahem, sorry, no. Entitled I stole the culture secretary’s twitter account.

Well, no. He didn’t. He registered an account on Twitter with the ID andyburnham. Which is the name of the culture secretary. And he put “culture secretary” as the bio. Hacking Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account this ain’t.

And though it made it to the FT, engaging in reasoned debate it ain’t either. I’m sure that people who use Twitter understood what Mike Butcher was trying to do, and the other 99.999% of the population didn’t understand or care one jot about his stunt.

I think it’s a safe bet that the Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sports doesn’t care about Twitter either, or he’d already own his name. We might guess, realistically, that Mr Burnham doesn’t have the first clue what Twitter is. But somewhere in the department of culture, media and stuff must be a group of civil servants whose job it is to know about the internet - otherwise their minister wouldn’t be making these pronouncements about it. And presumably those people know what Twitter is. So they don’t consider it important enough to have advised their minister that now he’s in the Cabinet, he ought to own his own name. In fact, they haven’t even bothered to registered the position or the department as a Twitter id - I know, because I registered @cultureminister and @DCMS this morning. Maybe Twitter isn’t quite as vital as we thought?

If we’re going to argue effectively for the non-regulation of the internet, we’ve got to look beyond our own navels; people who use Twitter are not the ones we need to convince. Let’s come up with a message that’s going to convince the 99% of the population who don’t see it our way, who think the internet is something like an extra TV channel but full of paedos and gambling. Because they - like Andy Burnham - are the ones we need to convince.

PS To Mr Burnham or anyone else at the Dept. of C, M and S - No hostages; I’ll be happy to hand over @cultureminister and @DCMS to you any time you like. I’ll ask only that you might use them now and again.

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1. Cranberry sauce is good, even if you’re not having turkey. Cranberry sauce in a jar from the supermarket (a.k.a. jam) is filthy.
2. Normally, make your own by boiling up cranberries in orange juice. One year, forget to buy orange juice and accidentally drink up last bit in the fridge. Need to be inventive.
3. Bung some cranberries in a pan. Cover with red wine. Set on Aga, at the cooler end of the hot plate (you want to reduce the wine rather than boil the fuck out of everything).
4. As the wine heats, the cranberries will pop. Take childish pleasure in this.
5. Add a good shoosh of coarsely (need I say freshly? hopefully not) black pepper to the mix. Reflect on the amazing taste combination that red wine and black pepper make.
6. Optional: as the wine gets thicker and the berries start to fall apart, add a small, finely chopped red birds eye chilli. The idea is to have little pops of chilli flavour amongst the smooth, dark-red taste.
7. Taste it now. Wish that you could actually eat something quite that sour. Add brown sugar, half a teaspoon at a time; the idea is to reduce the sour, *not* to sweeten it. Taste after each addition; when it stops making your eyes water, stop adding sugar. 1½ teaspoons was enough here.
8. It will thicken as it cools.
9. Wonder why cranberries are sold in such enormous lots. Consider what to do with the rest of them.

I do recall that my own parents played this one very well: Father Christmas was *never* true, even when I was tiny; he was a game we played, but I never for one moment thought that he was real, which left all my belief available for the Baby Jesus. Nice.

In other seasonal news, as the shopping season is now almost over, I am switching my musical loathing from the TV commercial overdose of It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas to my traditional hatred for those wretched lines from Once in Royal David’s City:

Christian children all should be
mild, obedient, good as He.

Grrr.

Last week: Teachers in England will have to act as “role models” both in and out of school under a proposed new code of conduct. … the behaviour of teachers could still be inappropriate even if it did not involve doing something illegal.

Admittedly, one is Scotland and the other is England: teacher recruitment in England could be booming for all I know, though I’d be prepared to bet it isn’t. You can only crap on a profession for so long before no one wants to do that profession any more: I thought we’d learned that lesson from the nurses.

If you can get sacked for telling the little darlings that Santa doesn’t exist, you deserve a bloody drink when you get home.