Syllabub.net

There’s been a lot of talk recently about culture, and british-ness, and mulit-culturalism… It sometimes feels like the only things us Brits have in common is a desire to get drunk and to career from one fake holiday to the next. Whenever I travel and see local traditions it always makes me realise how little we have in this respect. So, today is Valentine’s Day where the card industry wants us to feel guilty if we don’t mark our deepest feelings with the purchase of a padded card, we’ve just had Christmas, which in a predominantly secular society is not really about gratitude, isn’t exactly spiritual, and is really about being coerced into buying stuff people don’t really need or want. Looking forward we have Shrove Tuesday next week sponsored by Jif - why would you buy fake lemon juice? Now I’m all about convenience and would typically buy rather than make filo pastry but a lemon?? Then we have Easter (Jesus died to save our souls so have a shitty chocolate egg for a fiver!), May Day, and a couple of random holidays in August that we don’t even pretend represent anything. To complete the year we send out our children onto the streets to harrass and blackmail terrified pensioners or pelt them with eggs.
This isn’t a new thing - in my lifetime it hasn’t really changed, except that lemons are possibly more widely available now and available with our without a plastic coating… So what does it mean to be British? What are we trying to teach immigrants, and our children? The honest answer is that I don’t know - we’re quick to judge and condemn the Americans but at least they know what they’re about - they have proper holidays (Labour Day, Memorial Day, etc), the American Dream, strict moral codes and a strong sense of who they are - they have fierce personal liberty enshrined in a constitution, a passion for success and hard work and a sense of patriotism - they are extraordinarily proud (and grateful) to be Americans. Are we so proud to be British? Or English, or is that European now? Most British people are united by their constant disappointment with the weather, distrust of politics and a sense of abject frustration at the state of our woeful transportation system. Massive numbers are emigrating each year to Europe, US/Canada and Australia - all places I think of as being much ‘happier’ places.

If we could easily take our friends and family with us I wonder how many of us would consider leaving?

As an economy we are much better off than we were just 20 years ago - children living in poverty have access to DVDs - often bought down the pub, more and more is spent on education and health, but it seems that people don’t feel better, happier, more fulfilled - the tidal wave from a christian society to secular consumerism has left a vacuum which we don’t seem to know how to fill - except with alcohol, recreational drugs, sugar and processed food and watching endless celebrities doing really daft things on telly.

This has taken a far more negative tone than I had envisaged but that just represents how I feel about my homeland right now. As a nation we need to really think hard about what makes us happy, makes us British and why we don’t celebrate St George’s Day (23rd April if you didn’t know).

I hadn’t even heard of this until a couple of minutes ago, but it sounds like the sort of thing that might happen so I guess I’ll play along… Apparently the rules of the game are that a fellow blogger ‘tags’ you and then you have to reveal 5 hitherto un-public facts and tag 5 more people - you can see how this could quickly get out of hand if it weren’t for the totally reliable constraint of apathy and the fact that I’m not even sure I know 5 bloggers…

Five Facts you might not know…

1. I have a black belt in Jiu Jitsu - I spent 5 years getting battered and bruised, ignoring my complete lack of any natural talent or physical coordination and for once in my life relied on sheer determination to get through, and you know what, it worked. One Saturday morning in July 1992 I walked into a room, with absolutely no idea what was going to happen other than that I probably wouldn’t like it (maybe like the opening scene in Saw), and an hour later I walked out, intact, having stopped some very determined people from hurting me very badly - with knives, broken bottles, swords (katana), chairs, and good old fists and feet - it was without a doubt the best hour of my life - I have never felt so alive, so focused and so completely committed - I am sure that in this state you could achieve anything…
2. I have walked on fire - you know the burning coals thing. I went to Hawaii for a personal development course (as you do!) and on the final day we all walked on fire - under a full moon, with drums for a soundtrack, burning torches lighting the way - 1,500 people all absolutely focused (see above) on one thing - not burning their feet - and to achieve whatever end they had committed to earlier in the week, to rid the demons, close the skeleton closet, lose the baggage and not let anything ever get in the way of their pursuit of personal fulfilment. It was an unbelievable experience and one that I would certainly recommend to anyone. And no, I didn’t burn my feet because I am way too cool for that.
3. I have done a half marathon - 13 miles in 2 hours - wasn’t really that tough - but couldn’t walk for a week afterwards. Was a great day out and have enormous respect for my sister who did a full marathon on her 40th - I have a couple of years to decide that I won’t be doing that…
4. I’ve seen the sun rise over Everest - it was very beautiful, but I was massively distracted by acute mountain sickness - the night before I had the worst headache of my life, and we woke at 3.30am and had to climb 600m vertically - I could only manage about 10 steps (literally!) before I had to stop and rest, it took forever… shame, it should have been magical but it was awful…
5. Many of my friends think I’m a good cook. What they don’t know is that I can only make about 1/2 dozen dishes and that all guests get the “World’s best risotto” the first time they’re invited for dinner. I live on my own so like to keep things fairly simple - I keep telling myself I should throw more dinner parties, maybe I will…

So - who can I tag??

Well everyone is else is doing it so I thought why not. Big thanks to Dan North for setting up my domain and hosting this for me. So - what am I going to write about - well, my big interests are around technology and software and in particular collaborative software - how to share information, ideas and work together on projects. Luckily there are dozens of new companies out there from 37signals to zoho who are producing really cool stuff - primarily aimed at small business (I work for a large corporate). Also looking at wiki’s but still haven’t quite found what I’m looking for. Use digg, techcrunch, TWIT and Inside the Net to keep up to speed.
As well as idle ramblings on the meaning of life I will primarily be commenting on new web and software developments particularly around web 2.0.