A Day in the Life, Pripyat and all that nonsense

Today I had to wonder. There are people in Japan searching for survivors; there are people in Japan trying to douse nuclear reactors with water. There are journalists disappearing in Libya.

And what am I doing? Some research on an access dispute to a private beach.

I'm not saying for a moment I'd be volunteering to stand on the edge of a nuclear reactor with a watering can. Let's just say I've seen pictures of Pripyat, the ghost town near the Chernobyl power station in the Ukraine. I've seen the fun fair rusting away in a post nuclear time warp. I've seen the deformities.

But also it seems incongruent that I seem to have spent most of this week being bitch slapped over trivialities: I've been caught up in tedious details over budgets and interpretations by people who have had a sense of humor bypass operation.

"Hmmm Mrs. Jones. It seems your sense of humor is in the surgical waste dump. I'm sure you'll do very well without it, thank you very much."

And can you say what you really want to say? Can you take a breath and just tell them to get a life because there are people dying in Japan and Libya and Bahrain.

The world's been so crazy of late that people have even been dying in New Zealand and, I mean, nobody's supposed to die in New Zealand because it's safe and staid and stuck in the 1950s and peopel still have net curtains and the only cause of death is normally old age.

Yet against such a background of death and despair do people gain perspective? Not in my experience. They twist and they turn and get lost down blind alleys of obfuscation. And they pull me down those dark alleyes with them. Right now I could use a ball of string to get out of this maze.

It sounds like a cliche but I'd like to do something for kids. If I carry on like this I might be a contender for Miss World. Assuming I looked differently and was a different sex and all that. I'd like to do something for world peace. I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody instead of a bum.

I'd like to do something where I made a tangible difference, beyond that of causing a local authority to drop its policy manual. I'd like to say I'd helped install a water system for an impoverished village. I think I could do third world poo now; just not radiation.

I'd do anything, to be honest, to ensure I didn't become that worker in Califonia who died at his desk and his colleagues didn't notice for a couple of days. I can only assume he wasn't on the coffee rota.

Anyway I've just remembered this blog post was meant to celebrate my 100th follower. I can't thank you folks enough because I had about 20 followers this time last year. And I know I am biased in this but I have no doubt I have the most fantastic, articulate and erudite followers of any blogger out there in the crazy blogisphere.

And I also wanted to thanks Lidia for the award I received today, which I'll shove on the mantlepiece next to the three ducks on the wall and the couple of Oscars.

For Excellence in Sound Editing on a 5 minute Film about Papua New Guinea.