Trout Pout and Breeze Block Bum - i love the Daily Fail!

So I sat and watched Children in need with my 7 year old son the other day. We had a lot of chats about how it is that in 2011 people end up drug addicts / homeless / alcoholics / and how children are often embroiled in these problems and suffer the most. My son asked me why no one cares and I couldn’t answer it. So I was having a sneaky look at the daily fail [again] and sure enough it’s chokka full of ground-breaking journalism. One woman wants her lips to be the size of Jessica rabbit’s lips and as such has spent thousands on lip fillers and now resembles Pete Burns … specifically Pete Burns the morning after a really heavily loaded night.. Another required a larger arse and so filled hers up with concrete until again she appears farcically dismorphic and enters a room several seconds before her arse arrives.

Poutus Troutus

Arsus Maximus

So how do we account for social responsibility? How many lives could have been saved if the money funnelled into cosmetic surgery … no heck .. the entire beauty industry is re-routed to GOS. To any of the amazing hospices around the UK / globe? To a cancer charity. To an orphanage.

If we did that, then we would all be happier. Or would we? Walking around in our hessian sack dresses using charcoal as eye liner owning nothing but knowing we will never go hungry, will never war again … it’s such a lovely utopic notion. Yet, the human hierarchy is hard coded in us, in 2000000 years of existence we’ve failed to build a society that cares for the poor, the disabled and the elderly across all boundaries. We’ve failed to redistribute the wealth to make sure that suffering is minimised for all. Across the world it’s just the same.

“I am better than you, but she is better than me”. Our sub categories are what dictate our lives. I am clever. I have 9 gcse’s grade A, I have 5 a-levels and a degree. I fit into this box. I came from a free spirited background exposed to classical music / folk music / art in all its guises. I danced, sung and acted my childhood away. I have travelled all around the world and my friends form a rich global patchwork quilt coming from all countries and religions. I have a thick mop of frizzy hair of indistinguishable colour and a grin the size of the Cheshire cat. I can call up on all the experiences I have had to enable me to forge ahead and turn misfortune and challenge into something positive. So on a sliding scale I tend to fair better in life than say someone from a socioeconomically challenged background. Someone denied education.  Someone denied an upbringing that centred on a peaceful, secure childhood. Someone exposed to an adult world when they weren’t done with being a child yet. So I’m privileged.

And yet whilst my body is the original 1976 model, I tame my frizz ball of a barnet with overpriced gunk from the hair dressers. I’m possibly addicted to benefit max lash mascara. I like to smell good. I have my own sense of style which involves an obsession with pashminas and silk scarves and shoes. I’d rather shop at Waitrose than asda. I drive a 4x4. I’m to the right of left. We own 13 guitars, multiple full sized weighted keyboards, saxaphones, mandolins, harps. I’ve spent more money on these material non-essential items than I have donated to charity. So I am no better than blubber lips and pavement arse in the daily fail.

If I had a thousand pounds and wanted to spend it on a holiday, surely by Plato’s republic I ought to simply look to whose need is greatest. Each time I would arrive at the bottom on the pile. A million starving / sick / neglected children come first don’t they?

This is the point my son was trying to make. It was mildly revolutionary if not communist the suggestion he made. If we all just had enough and not too much, then no one would suffer anymore. He doesn’t want children to suffer just because he wants a new toy.

Yet we chase happiness. I’m sure music came from banging a few rocks together around the camp fire, it accompanied stories and differed from civilisation / continent. It grew. We made instruments. I’m sure we started investing in these instruments.  Whatever its legacy … music makes us happy. Material items make us happy. Aren’t we allowed to chase happiness? Trout Pout and Breeze Block Bum … aren’t they just chasing happiness too? Shouldn’t we just accept it if they aren’t harming anyone other themselves.

At which point we hit the phone and made a large donation. He went upstairs and arrived back down clutching a £20 note … he was saving up for the new Harry Potter Nintendo DS game.

I don’t want my son to feel guilt to be in his situation. Grateful yes, but guilt no.  He has the nicest soul I’ve ever seen in a child. He knows he’s a child of the globe neither being black, white or Asian he is as ‘patchworked’ as they come and he belongs on this planet. He deserves everything he can get from it and I am solid in my knowledge that the upbringing we are giving him will in time allow him to make his part of the globe a better place to be.