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Funny how it all goes wobbly at 40
THEY say life begins at 40, but for comedian Mark Steel (right) it’s the beginning of the end.
Steel’s funny and poignant book tells the story of the collapse of his relationship with the mother of his three children and the ruptures in the Socialist Workers Party he joined 25 years ago.
His memoir of a mid-life crisis is punctuated by reflections on his fraying relationship and the trauma of its dull routine. He writes of a communication breakdown or “language of anguish”, as he calls it.
His doctor advises “give her more sex”, but nothing’s going to work and Steel is plunged into a dark abyss of introspection.
He says: “I had entered one of the most negative phases of life in which despite having a house, a partner, children and middle-aged respectability, you find yourself sleeping every night on the settee.”
Steel endures a series of sleepless nights in bedroom exile, watching inane television shows, notably George Galloway’s cat antics on Celebrity Big Brother. He “grows to admire” shopping channel presenters and even calls in to a 3am special about toothpaste. He says: “I’ve just moved into a proper home – but I haven’t got cable yet. I really miss the God Channel – that was fascinating.”
This “settee phase” sucks the radical life-blood out of Steel struggling to identify with the young man who “grew up confident that I would be part of the generation that would change the world”.
Petty bickering and in-fighting has racked the SWP since the rise of New Labour and Steel said he had lost interest in a party characterised by depleted meetings and vitriol for people who were glorified a few weeks earlier.
He says: “What has happened with Respect and the Left List is beyond parody. The worst thing is that people will not accept that it has all gone wrong.”
He had began to think the unthinkable: “Do I really belong to this rabble anymore?”
In the final chapter, titled “To dream the possible dream, to fight the beatable foe”, Steel despondently cancels his SWP membership, before taking his daughter on a shopping trip to Woolworths. But he maintains he has not abandoned his socialism. And, although his book offers no “Nobel-prize-winning solution” or “Hollywood ending”, he ends on an optimistic note.
He says: “I’ve never really been one for personal crises – I can tell you it’s pretty appalling when it happens to you. It took about three years but I’m over it now. I guess The reason I wrote this book I suppose was out of confusion. There seem to be more people than ever prepared to take a stand against what is going on – but there are fewer avenues. I hope the book can inspire people to participate – even if it is writing a letter to the local paper – because I really believe that things will only change if ordinary people come together.
“The simplest way to avoid further confusion is to withdraw from the world’s events and be thankful it isn’t you getting clobbered this time around, to abandon the project of love and hope because it only leaves you heartbroken, and to genuinely grow old.
“But that would be the most frightening outcome of all. To no longer be livid at the cruelty of dictators, the rumours of ex-lovers and the existence of vacuous celebrities, is truly to be 40.”TOM FOOT |
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