The reason why all the doors are purple in the Drama department at school are painted the way they are is because I happen to like purple. A few years ago when it was time for a makeover (of the facilities, not the teachers) I decided that purple would be as good a colour as any so we now have purple doors throughout. Throughout that is except for the doors that were deemed not to be on full time show and were left as the original red.
Also I have a few purple shirts and ties and quite like the purple colour of certain chocolate wrappers. Naturally I am at pains to point out to all who might listen that my liking for purple is simply just that, and nothing else and certainly has nothing to do with that hideous political grouping of racists, bigots and clock-turning-backers, UKIP. It always feels better to write that, because that is precisely what that nasty organisation is.
Recently the Lawrence Family television has decided to test my patience by choosing to display everything it shows as somewhere on the purple and yellow spectrum, instead of the more conventional multicoloured offering. This has made watching football more challenging particularly when the team in purple and yellow are playing the team in purple and yellow on a purple pitch, officiated by purple and yellow wearing referees. All the players and participants in other televisual offerings seem to have entered into the spirit too with many fellow humans choosing to wear yellow lipstick and, in the recent case of watching one of the many Fast and Furious films, driving cars that were either purple, yellow or a mixture of the two. Rather than read any deep political message into the television colours I reckon it is just on the blink and needs repairing.
However the link chocolate is a useful one in that for the I-don’t-know-how-many-years-in-a-row-now I have gone through a 40 day purge on chocolate for some reason or other. Working on the premise that it might be good for me as well as it being something that I have done regularly for many years since being inspired by one of my former students I took on the 40 day chocolate fast again this year and have very definitely decided that this year is the last. Large parts of the whole thing have really annoyed me but most especially my own stubbornness. The Magnus Magnusson Mastermind idea of having started so needing to finish has spurred me on in this entirely futile 40 days but resulted in extreme irritation. Saying no to chocolate has been the easy part, occasionally tested though when one colleague discovered a vast bar of dark mint chocolate was not to her taste and asked if could help, as has the shunning of a regular mug of milo. What has mostly caused me annoyance has been the determination to finish this entirely daft thing that I started. And now that the time has been completed I am faced with the difficulty of how to break this particularly silly fast. I have proved to myself that I can do something that I knew I could do anyway as I have done it many times before and now it feels that I should mark the ending of it in some way that celebrates that achievement albeit a pointless one. In short, what do I do now?
One thing I have certainly decided to do is to give up giving up chocolate. I am not a massive eater of the stuff, but do like it.
Something I did take on during the Lent session and chocolate fast was supporting the free press. If that sounds a bit of an extreme reaction caused by a chocolate fast then there is only a very tenuous link between the two. Also as a liberal it is one of my core principles, despite my occasional frustrations with badly informed local journalists when I was a member of the council. Here in Malaysia the main newspapers are Government controlled and need to have official licences in order to be allowed to publish. Consequently they suffer from the old “he who plays the piper ….” thing. Any non approved news media is very hush hush, one in particular being so hush hush that you can only officially access it from outside of Malaysia. I have always believed that a free press is a vital tool in making sure that politicians and public officials can be scrutinized by those whose money they are stewards of. Therefore I have started making monthly contribution to https://www.theguardian.com/uk partly as a thank you for letting me access that paper each day for unfiltered online access but also as a small way of showing my belief in the importance of a free press. I was particularly pleased with their coverage of the on-going IMDB situation in Malaysia the thought-provoking Long Read articles.
Long may a free press continue to report on and question the decisions and policies of the those in power (both those who have been given power by voters and those who have seized power from voters). Sadly no journalist has, as yet, decided how I should end my chocolate fast or suggest what to do with a dodgy TV.