Why the wacky title?

It started with a Woody Allen quote, from Sleeper, one of his "older, funnier" films. When the resistence movement of the future into which he's been capsized try to co-opt him to be their leader, his reply is "I'm not the heroic type - I was beaten up by Quakers." This has long been just about my favourite film quote, and still makes me laugh some 30 years after seeing the film on the telly. In fact the name of this blog came some time before I had any idea what I might write in it, or even if it would ever exist at all.

But the title does have wider resonance for me. Let's get one thing out of the way first: compared to the vast majority of people in the world, even compared to most of the people in this country, my life is pretty cushy. I have a partner I love and a daughter I've adored since before she was born. We're not rolling in it, but we're pretty solvent and reasonably secure financially. Etc etc etc. As I tell my clients (I'm a counsellor/therapist, more of which anon I'm sure), no matter how many people in the world are worse off than you, your problems are real to you, and ignoring them is unlikely to benefit anyone in the long term.

Anyway. The wider resonance of the title is about being passive, being gentle, being bullied and through years of this, developing a way of behaving that eschews confrontation. You let things slide; you instinctively avoid aggressive people. You don't intervene when you see people behaving in anti-social or even bullying ways in public. And you die a little inside every time it happens. You fantasise about being a martial arts expert and dealing out fearful (but justified) vengeance to the Bad Guys. Just occasionally, you do stand up to a bully, perhaps in a very subtle, almost unnoticeable way, but it gives you a little encouragement that you can carry on like that.

[For "you" in the previous paragraph, read "I"]

It won't be all about that stuff, though. Oh no. There will be hyperbolic musical recommendations, observations about cycling, tennis, the parallel universe of gossip mags, and this whole thing called life. For as Woody Allen also said, "Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon."