Fade to Brown

The oddest of things can provoke my mind and send it crashing the wrong way and generally off course from where I'd like it to be.

Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister from Tony Blair on Wednesday afternoon after a ten year wait. The pundits spoke of how frustrating a wait it must have been for Gordon Brown - which I suppose it must have been. However at least after waiting ten years he got what he wanted.

I grew up knowing nothing but a Conservative Government and as a youngster never quite understood why my grandfather, on my mother's side, would begin to rock in his chair, wave his newspaper and swear at the television every time Margaret Thatcher appeared on the screen.

He behaved much the same way when the Queen popped up on the tube too and would curse even more mightily if he couldn't turn the volume down before "God Save the Queen" started to blast out it's first mournful notes.

In fact my grandfather got me into a lot of bother when I was younger with this behaviour.

Other than my grandmother the family were all lapsed Catholics, my sister, who may have been about five years old at this time, was a member of the local Rainbow troop (baby Brownies) at the local protestant, Church of Scotland, church hall.

One Sunday the Rainbows were having some kind of church parade thing and all the children would march about the grounds of the church and wave flags and what not else before attending a service. Duly I was dragged along - most likely the first non-Catholic ceremony I'd ever been at and I was not entirely sure what to do. Certainly there was a lot less singing and standing up and down, kneeling and getting out the pews to go here there and wherever - which appealed to me I thought.

As the service finished the Minister unfurled a Union Jack and it was draped proudly behind the alter before the organist piped up with "God Save the Queen."

I rather loudly followed my grandfather's protocol much to the mortification of my mother as all our neighbours were packed in the pews around about us.

"Dirty Orange Bastards!" I cried at the top of my nine-year old lungs and swiftly received a clunk from the back of my mother's hand around about my ear before being marched out the back of the Old Parish.

I had no idea what I'd said I'd just copied what I'd heard my grandfather say umpteen times when I heard that song in his company but it illustrates how strongly things like religion, politics and the monarchy were debated in my family and how dearly held certain values were.

Which brings me back to Mr Blair. I was at my grandparents' house on May 1 1997 - I was staying over - and normally I'd have been tucked up in bed for at the very latest 11pm - yes I know I was 16 years old, but grandparents have rules and besides I was never a surly or rebellious teenager.

But tonight was different - I remember my grandfather being anxious but excited, he told me this could be quite an important night - I kind of figured that out myself anyway - but I didn't quite understand my grandfather's depth of feeling about the whole scenario.

We stayed up all night - right the way through the night, my granddad, my granny and I. We were hooked and got totally sucked in watching the Labour Party wipe the Tories out in Scotland and cruise to the historic landslide victory.

My grandfather was ecstatic - the grin hardly left his face all night as each Conservative loss rolled in. He cheered and done a wee dance when we watched Michael Portillo lose his seat to Stephen Twigg. I'd only seen my granddad behave like that when he was watching football.

The only disappointment about the whole event for my grandfather was that it hadn’t been Maggie Thatcher that had got the complete drubbing as she'd been politically murdered by her own sort earlier in the decade.

On the Friday of May 2^nd 1997 after having watched Tony and Cherie Blair march triumphantly along Downing Street, out and about on the streets there was a genuine feeling of change in the air.

Folk were smiling bizarrely at one another, like they'd all just been at the same orgy and had shot their load at the same time and were, quite frankly, pleased with themselves. I remember a physical feeling of freshness as if we'd had days upon days of humid heat and a thunderstorm broke clearing the air.

I remember this feeling quite well - if I close my eyes I can still summons up the feeling in my stomach and chest that I got that day. The enduring message I got from that - and at 16 years old it was quite a powerful one, was that you can achieve anything - you can overcome any difficulty and obstacle.

Tony Blair's brave new Britain provided me with fire in my belly and I genuinely did think I could achieve whatever I wanted. And if there was any doubt there were the icons of my generation supping tea and champagne with the new PM who would open the door and allow us limitless ambitions, hopes and desires.

And this is where Wednesday's handover between Blair and Brown sent my brain spiralling back to my default setting of miserable, cynical bastard. Because if I was to match up Mr Blair's reign in power with my own life it's kind of a bit shit at all the same times he was shit.

Now I'm not blaming him - not for all of it anyway - but it has made me think has my life and my outlook on it been directly correlated to Blair's premiership? Is it a bit like the way the moon affects folks behaviour?

Working in papers in the early days I had worked hard to get stories, I chased them as relentlessly as I possibly could, I put a real effort into understanding people and the people that made the world of my newspaper tick, and hopefully got under their skin enough to have got decent stories and hopefully results for those that needed them.

Some of the joys of working in a local newspaper is often you can directly and quite quickly see a difference as a result of something you've written.

Working in Government in the early days Tony made the cracking "People's Princess" speech and helped the Queen out of her PR muddle and endeared himself to the nation.

He equalised the age of consent on homosexuality, introduced a national minimum wage, helped single mothers and put Northern Ireland on the right course. He got to understand people and the people that made Britain tick.

I imagine working in Government you can see quite quickly the direct difference you have made to people's lives with the policies you implement.

It was the tail end of 2002 and early 2003 that as the Father of the Chapel (Union official) I was taking on management with the help of the NUJ as TrinityMirror tried to make redundancies and merge offices. The fire in my belly, the belief that I could achieve anything really pushed me to the fore.

At the same time Tony Blair and George W Bush were on the march to war in Iraq.

I became vocal and a damned nuisance to the company's management and fought as long and as awkward a campaign as was humanly possible against redundancies and mergers. I was getting politically active too, and as many others, was increasingly worried about the prospect of war.

It seemed we had the company on the ropes - they couldn't merge the offices - they'd breach Health and Safety laws if they put all those people into one office.

It seemed Tony Blair and George W were on the ropes - they couldn't go to war I marched with tens if not a hundred thousand in Glasgow on February 15, 2003 and nearly 10 million others did around the world - the biggest protest in world history telling them they're wrong. And besides they couldn't get a UN mandate.

TrinityMirror solved the problem on not meeting Health and Safety rules about merging the offices. They made some more people redundant so the merger would comply - regardless of how many staff they actually needed.

Tony Blair and George W Bush solved the problem of not getting a UN mandate - they eventually didn't ask for one and ignored the millions around the world telling them they were wrong and invaded Iraq anyway.

Of course that's a rather crude simplification of both scenarios but in both cases it was a reminder.

A reminder that you can make logical arguments all day long, have the whole world on your side if you like. You're not in charge - you're still the little man - and this is how we remind you of it.

So Wednesday just past rather depressed me - it was the passing of a turbulent decade - a decade of great hope and mild achievement - but ultimately dashed hopes leaving us all in a bigger mess.

In 1997 it was New Labour, New Dawn, New Britain with Mr Blair.

In 2007 it is simply New-ish Labour, New Veneers, "New Brush for my hair" with Mr Brown.

The fire in my belly is as dormant as Vesuvius, but certainly not extinct - I just hope I don't fade to Brown.

Cigarettes

Cigarettes - I gave them up last Wednesday and it's more or less 120 hours since I devoured one of my beloved Marlboro Gold 100s.

The 100s were longer than the average Marlboro Gold (really Lights but Marlboro are not allowed to call them that because that made it sound like a diet cigarette). There was a nice sleek, smooth sexual feel to slipping one out of the box and hear the paper brush against it's brother and sister smokes as it kept on coming and coming until it broke free from the packet in a climatic sort of "When Harry Met Sally" kind of way.

Great joy was taken from rushing it's camel coloured filter with the crisp, clean white inner to my mouth before enjoying the flick of the lighter and drawing long, deep and hard on the cigarette. Pulling the smoke as far down into my chest cavities as was humanly possible and then holding - Tantric like - until I just had to exhale and blow that grey, blue smoke up and out into the atmosphere and then wonder just how much that puff - indeed that particular cigarette - would contribute to my carbon footprint.

Would a pot plant purchased from B&Q once a year be quite enough to satisfy the environmentalist wheeler dealers and carbon Del Boys? Do I even contribute at all to Scotland's carbon footprint? I don't drive, I never fly and surely the emissions from a wee house like this can't matter a great deal - even though I am inclined to leave the telly on when I'm not in the room.

I am worried. Both about my own health and the environment - why else would I have given up something I enjoy so much. I enjoy smoking , a lot. But I am trained by the current climate we live in to worry about it.

Rather than just enjoy my cigarettes I would panic with every wheeze, splutter, cough and slight pang in my chest that I had caught something intractable. Every time I ventured out into the cold and the wet to enjoy a smoke I could swear I felt pneumonia coming on.

Even when the weather was pleasant and I could attempt to enjoy a smoke without the wind billowing around me and the rain soaking my cigarette until the tobacco fell away from the filter was I faced with difficulties.

Non-smokers - who had won the battle and the debate to reside indoors smoke free - were now outside complaining they couldn't get a gulp of fresh air for all the smokers camped in smoking gardens and streetside cafes enjoying a puff in the sun - perfectly legally too. Surely if smokers have to endure a Scottish winter outside they should at least be allowed some reprieve for the five minutes of summer this country is afforded without folk whingeing.

Since the joy I got from smoking was slowly being eroded by a series of measures I decided I might as well pack it in. I don't need even more worry in my life, worrying about my health, others' health, my finances, the finances of the NHS, worrying about all the cigarette doubts on the street and whether anyone will ever get round to picking them out. The wee ashtrays on the walls outside pubs and whether one day they will go up in flames as someone failed to extinguish properly and now all the butts have caught light and we have a mini-inferno on our hands.

The worry of my cigarettes harming the environment. The worry of the environment in itself . Why am I so worried about everything?

Why when I am doing the socially responsible and correct thing by not having a cigarette and then taking the bus into the city centre do I start to get pangs of worry - counting the folk on the bus to make sure there are enough folk on it to make it an environmentally viable bus? Why am I wracked with guilt when a whole squad of folk get off at Asda and then there is only me and the driver for the remainder of my trip taking me from the South Side to the city centre? Surely now my carbon footprint is fucked and I'd have been just as well to have had that bloody cigarette in the first place.

I am worried because someone, somewhere is telling me to be worried about all these things and alter my behaviour accordingly. I'm not entirely sure who, but whoever they are, they are doing a damn fine job of it.

Now I am worried about my mental health. I have just read the last paragraph and realise the extreme paranoia that is involved in the construction of a paragraph like that.

Relax, there is no need for a community psychiatric nurse. It's just the cravings for a cigarette making me feel this way, surely?

Ok, now I need some evidence that this lunacy I'm putting myself through has some benefits. A bit like a birthing mother having a quick check between her legs to make sure there actually will be a child as an end product.

I Google "benefits of quitting smoking" and get tonnes of websites telling me that within 20 minutes the healing process has begun and within two days my blood pressure and pulse rate will have dropped; the temperature of my hands and feet increased; I will have zero carbon monoxide and nicotine in my body and there's more oxygen in my blood. Thrown into the bargain is a decrease in the likelihood of having a heart attack, the re-growth of my nerve endings and my ability to taste and smell improved.

Whoopee! My own food tastes like shit, I fart a lot, my body temperature was quite high enough thank you and to be honest I'm not keen on living into my 70s or 80s with no pension and little prospect of being "turned" once a week in a piss stained bed in a state nursing home where the staff are paid about as much as what they care.

I have to check myself again, I must stop thinking like this - it's just the nicotine talking - what shall I do?

The website - the website has handy hints - that'll help me find ways of stopping me thinking about my craving for a smoke. I assumed the first website was a bit odd - so I tried a couple of other websites but they all suggested the same thing as a distraction to stop me smoking.

It seems paedophilia is one of the best ways to stop smoking. That and housework. On various websites I was advised that when I was feeling a little smoke "antsy" or "in a funk" I go borrow some kids.

A niece or nephew - one website even recommended I chap a neighbours door and asked if I could take their child out for the afternoon and get them an ice cream.

For those wondering I have contacted the Portugese Police with this information and they are drawing up a list of former smokers who were in the Santa Da Luz area around the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

Whatever will I do if I cannot kidnap a child whenever I feel the urge for a smoke?

Well it would seem I should, empty closets, scrub floors, build furniture, clean the bathroom, iron clothes, the list of chores was endless. Where is the fun in all this I ask and what if you're a single mother with three kids and a house to keep, surely you had to do all that in the first place while you were smoking - what are they going to do?

To quote the site:

"Practice smiling in the mirror, crank up the radio and dance like no-one is watching, sing at the top of your voice, walk in an old graveyard, play mini-golf, do jumping jacks, go ride a few roller coasters, colour your hair, donate blood, take a shower, talk to God, run on the spot"

Giving up smoking is clearly a license to behave like a fucking loony according to these smug, shiny former smokers and I'm dreading turning into one.