Depression – don’t just pretend to be aware, become properly Aware.

On World Mental Health Day, it’s worth noting, again, just how alone people with depression are and feel. Not everyone seems to realise this, and there is still an astonishing amount of ignorance and denial, despite a great number of awareness campaigns on depression.

Aware do incredible work in this field with their “I Am Aware” campaign, and, as their name suggests, they also encourage everyone to share the message that there is support available, that people suffering from depression need not be alone.

People are probably familiar with the great Stephen Fry’s wonderful recent quote on the symptoms of depression, and I’m sure millions ‘retweeted’ it. Still, it’s worth repeating here:

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”

Mumford & Sons…

…WHY?

“So, that novel you were writing, Johnnie…”

OK, I admit it. From both sides, mine and yours, this looks like an utter failure. I am the procrastinator’s procrastinator, I could make up excuses until the cows don’t bother their arses coming home anymore, and I could walk around daydreaming all day of being that person I always wanted to be since I was about 8 – The Novelist.

I’ve started four novels: I finished one to third draft; I half-wrote another, which expired along with the laptop it was written on (backing up, I know, I know); and I have begun two others, currently in “progress” on different computers. All of them have madly-scrawled synopses, which look, on the page, every bit as mad and unfathomable as their creator; only I know they make perfect sense – until I start to write them and try fitting all the pieces together, that is. Still, I have faith in the ideas – if not my ability to sit down for sustained periods and complete them.

Grills & Boys

Originally published in U Magazine, June 2008

Can you get the stench of burning flesh in the air? It’s that time of year again. Any day now, invitations to friends’ barbecues will come flooding in.

No one invites you to dinner during this period, no one says they’re having a few nibbles and cocktails in their garden, or in their 4’ X 3’ yard, in summer, you only ever get invites to barbecues.  And because there’s been a week of sunshine, they’ve been out in force early this year.  Apparently, it’s against the law to burn garden rubbish, but boy are you permitted to turn a small corner of your rear end into a funeral pyre for chunks of indeterminable animal offcuts.  I’m sure many of you are now wearing tops that were out on the washing line when one of your neighbours threw one of these acts of wilful fire-raising; smells yummy, your t-shirt, doesn’t it? I bet you were delighted when you first noticed what was happening. First you catch the scent of hot charcoal, then your throat and eyes begin to sting and choke, and finally you see the black plume snaking over the fence, the universally understood smoke signal meaning, “Man. Cooking. Now.”

Memoir of a Soho square

Lately, I’ve been catching up with a month’s worth of weekend supplements. It’s a nice thing to do, especially when you have very little money. All that culture, most of it out of reach and well out of the range of my rather functionless wallet.

One thing I love above all else is to read reviews of London restaurants. For the life of me, I can’t work out how I ever managed to eat out when I lived there – but it must be something to do with the fact that I had no dependents. But that’s besides the point – the restaurants that get reviewed by Messrs Rayner, Coren, Lanchester and Gill are very rarely of the type I could afford to eat in.

However, when I read AA Gill’s review of the restaurant 10 Greek Street in 6th May’s Sunday Times Style and I found myself becoming slightly emotional, for several reasons – mainly nostalgic ones.

Glory, glory! Red is the colour! Or maybe not.

Just what is it about a red shirt that gets glory seeking fans of non-local teams in such a lather? I ask this as a somewhat bewildered Scots observer of English football from an Irish perspective – if that doesn’t sound like codswallop.

I’ll try to explain what I mean, but perhaps my point was illustrated by the recent, bizarre goings on at Cardiff City. You might recall that Cardiff’s Malaysian owners seriously proposed to change the club’s first team colours from their traditional blue to red, alter their club crest, and change their nickname from The Bluebirds to The Red Dragons. Officially, the reasons given were to ”demonstrate the symbolic fusion of Welsh and Asian cultures” – but, more interestingly (or sadly), the move seemed to be more about foreign marketability.

It seems to come down to some kind of psychology. Tradition dictates that Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal have been easier to sell overseas than blue counterparts Manchester City, Everton and Chelsea. Here in Ireland, I’ve come to describe this as the “Munsterpool United” mindset.

Show Them Who’s Boss

Once upon a not-too-long ago, there lived a little man in an old, old street. For a long time, the street was mainly populated by old, old people and the little man was able to win their friendship and trust by routinely asking them about their health, their daily movements and their daily intentions. He would even ask if they had any little odd jobs he could do for them in their homes, so that he could get to know their houses, and chat away to them until nightfall. He would also volunteer to look after their properties, look after the street, and guard all and sundry in the locality against the slightest breeze from the terrifying Ill Winds of Progress.

The old, old people tolerated the little man; for, although he was a distinctly inquisitive individual, he was a handy person to have around. Surely no robber or burglar would come near the place, when, at the first sign of a strange face, his window blinds would twitch inquisitively, or he’d tramp out into his forecourt to demand to know said stranger’s particulars or intentions. He was, the old people decided, a sort of guardian; the kind of person who could be relied upon to keep the street safe, familiar and stuck in AD 1956.