WHO are you? Don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question. I know roughly what you are: educated, pleasing to behold (at one time), mildly inebriated at this time of the morning. What I’m trying to say is: who do you think you are? Again, don’t answer. I’m the one with the microphone. One singer one yawn. If I could just get to the point, it would be this: do you think you’re in a film? And, in that movie, are you the star and everyone else an extra?
If so, welcome to the modern world. Please seek psychiatric help. For top experts have identified Main Character Syndrome as a new psychological ailment.
The motor for Main Character Syndrome is self-promotion on social media, particularly, it says here, TikTok. I must confess I’ve never clocked TikTok. It sounds like YouTube, which is as 21st century as I go. Does it involve greater interaction with people? If so, best avoided.
The problem with Main Character Syndrome is simple: surely, we all do this? We’re the main character and everyone else extras. It just depends on the genre of movie. With young persons, they’re the lead singer in the band, cockily bunging bon mots at an adoring media while having their photie took in their pants for the papers.
My own movie, on the other hand, is an Ingmar Bergman in which I’m a brooding, lonely soul trauchling pointlessly through a damp, fly-haunted landscape. Dark clouds dog my every step. In the background, a lone kazoo parps a painfully slow version of the Laurel and Hardy theme tune. The DVD is in the store’s “Existential comedy” section, marked “Final reduction”.
However, at least I can boast that I never do self-promotion. Even when – briefly – I had a literary agent it was on condition that I’d do no marketing. But self-promotion appears a widespread need nowadays. Experts say it’s healthy to have a sense of self. I disagree. I remember developing a sense of self in my late forties, looking in the mirror and exclaiming in horror: “Oh God, I’m crap!”
The problem, say boffins, comes when sense of self becomes narcissism. But isn’t everyone narcissistic in their teens, trying to discover their identity, unable to see beyond their own nose (pretty far in my case, right enough)?
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While you’d think social media films fine for extroverts, it surely gives shy people a platform on which to expose themselves in the actual presence of no one. Thus may their undiscovered genius be revealed to the world. Would I have tried it? No, ultimately, I don’t think I’d have made a YouTube or Tik Tok video. I’m horribly camera-shy anyway and, suffering from syphilis of the personality, would have feared being panned by impartial critics online.
As someone whose crippling shyness (in groups) has debilitated my life, I sometimes wonder if it’s a sort of egotism. Maybe, but not in a good way. Self-denigration is also a shy person’s trait. Friends frequently pull me up for it. Now I’m boasting about that. Now I’m denigrating myself for boasting about that. So it goes.
In the meantime, what about them, the others? Is seeing everyone else as “extras” not inevitable? Alas, in life as opposed to film, you can find yourself in that role, at a party, seminar or workshop. I’ve always been an extra at these. Wallflower for sure. Never knowingly the centre of attention. I think I’m unique among columnists in filing my column and thinking: ‘I hope nobody reads this.’ (Reader’s voice: “We don’t, unless it’s for a police investigation or a doctoral thesis on False Modesty Syndrome”).
There I go again. No wonder I don’t participate in social media. Quite capable of slating myself, thank you very much. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t started this column (Reader: “Likewise.”). It’s all me, me, me. Now it’s all me saying it’s all me. Where will it all end? Oh, thank God: here come the final credits.
The Dudley dorito
AS the world gets excited about the forthcoming Pentagon report into UFOs, it seems the spa resort of Bonnybridge, near Falkirk, has a rival as hotspot for alien visitations.
Dudley, in the West Midlands, has seen three people abducted by aliens in a week, prompting one exasperated ratepayer to put up a sign saying: “When are the council going to do something?” Not sure what department that would be. Anti-Social Behaviour? Traffic Offences? Alien Abductions? Maybe the last one.
The area is already famous for an oft-sited UFO called “the Dudley dorito” because of its triangular shape, not because it is lightly salted. Another craft was described by one observer as “the size of a full moon moving towards Wolverhampton”. That’s weird.
But the biggest mystery is why Dudley? Why Bonnybridge? Do the aliens think the White House is in Bonnybridge and the Kremlin in Dudley? If they fetched up in West Lothian and said, “Take me to your leader”, they’d be told: “Wot, Provost Buchanan?”
It’s yet more evidence that, if aliens exist, they ain’t very bright. I can’t decide whether that’s more or less worrying than if they are very intelligent.
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A broth of fresh air
I USED to be your man for making soup, particularly during years of penury. But somehow I lost the knack, and my last few efforts have consisted of my tasting it, saying “Hmm, I’ll have some of that later”, then throwing it all out shortly afterwards.
Even at the height of my souper-powers, I was never able to make the lentil soup with ham in it like my old Maw did. Is ham different nowadays? I remember I had trouble getting the shank, if that is the word, required for the project. Is it to do with the cubes and flavouring? I gave up making my own curries because all these jars you’re encouraged to use make it it taste like, er, home-made curry.
They never taught us soup-making, or anything else useful, at school, which I now see was just an exercise to keep us off the streets. However, I was delighted to read about calls for every pupil in Glasgow to be taught how to make vegetable soup by the age of 12. Throw in curries as well, and the weans will be sorted for life.
Crayfish blues
MANKIND’S interfering with nature has taken a toll on various species. Now, we’re putting crayfish at risk by polluting their water with antidepressants.
You’d think this would have had a beneficial effect and, indeed, the beasties have been coming out of their shells, clacking their claws together enthusiastically, and cutting about the ponds and streams with a hey-nonny-no. Nonny-no wonder then that this hasn’t worked out too well for them.
For the illusion of happiness has made them forget what a rotten place the planet Earth is and, in stoating aboot blissfully saying, “Hello algae, hello wee wiggly thing”, they’ve left themselves open to predators. Astacologists say this is causing a “ripple effect” in the ecosystem, meaning that one day we are all going to die.
What a life. No wonder folk take antidepressants, though I’d rather recommend a PG Wodehouse novel, couple of drams, bit of Ravel or early Genesis, School for Scoundrels DVD, and a Jonna Jinton vlog on YouTube. If doctors could write a prescription for these, the world would be a happier place. The crayfish might feel blue, but at least they’d be alive.
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