Square One

In the times before television, radio commentators at football matches would describe the pitch in terms of a grid, so as to give the listener a greater appreciation of where play was taking place. Square one was the back corner of the pitch, which is often where balls played back to the goalkeeper would go. Hence the phrase 'back to square one'.

I told that story for two reasons. One, it's a good story, and it's always nice to know the genesis of our idiomatic language. Two, this is post number one, and I wanted to start off by outlining what this 'blog' is all about.

"Reasons to be cheerful" is an old song by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. It's basically just a list of things to be cheerful about. Hopefully my posts will be more fleshed out than that, but the narrative will be the same. I hope that my blog will be an antidote to the more bitter blogs out there (of which more later), although I also promise at not point will it get too saccharine. I attempt to walk the line between bitter and saccharine like a latter-day goldilocks.

But perhaps I should start by saying 'congratulations'. For you are here. You see, reason number one is that you are reading this post. It's not an ego thing, since it's amazing that you can read anything at all. In fact, existence is Square One.

Sorry to get crude here, but every male ejaculation contains around twenty-five to thirty million sperms. Each of us is one of those. That's already pretty impressive, and it gets more so. For each of your parents, and each of their parents, the odds are thrity million to one. Now, I am of the firm opinion that big numbers in science are useless. If it's not 'the size of 100 football pitches', or 'the number of grains of sand on the planet' I'm lost. But needless to say lots of thirty-million to ones are incredibly slim odds. Not only that, but none of our direct ancestors were any of the following: killed in childhood, infertile or a virgin.

Aside from the cold hard maths of it, since you are able to access the internet, and peruse blogs, I can also assume you also have some level of leisure time and disposable income. Congratulations. You can also read English, which makes you a valuable commodity in this globalised world. You are (I am assuming) a human, and therefore, according to Aristotle, you are a political animal, capable of using rhetoric and reason to form opinions. In other words, you are in possession of a great mind. So congratulations indeed.

Given all this, you would have thought that everybody would be cheerful. But no. In the superb Arnie film, "End of Days", Father Kovak says, "Satan's greatest trick was convincing man that he didn't exist". Maybe so, but I would argue that the internet's greatest trick is convincing us it is nothing but porn. Not so. There is something far more in abundance out there. Look at the comments on any video on YouTube, or on any Facebook group, or any of the millions of writers in the blogosphere (which after much consideration, is technically a sphere, since it covers the earth, in much the same way as the stratosphere). All are filled with bile, and resentment, and a general outlook that the world is a bit shit. But I don't think that. I think there's plenty to be cheerful for. And if I say 'cheerful' rather than 'ecstatic' or 'driven wild with craziness about', it's because some of them are low-key. But, I think reason number one is pretty bloody good.

And if you disagree, well then fuck you, you ungrateful sod.