Lent-ills

That’s it, I’m faking my own death. Go on admit it, who hasn’t dreamed of doing just that? I mean, it is Lent after all and where’s the fun in giving up something that makes life a little more bearable for a month; what killjoy came up with that piece of congregation control? After a month you are grateful that ‘the good lord’ somehow smiles down on your efforts and lets you eat cake again. And how typical of religion to promote the dull ache of longing for some small treat as a panacea for the ills of worldly excess, when what I really crave is not abstinence but absence.

Oh, to be able to just step off the treadmill for a while. It’s probably harder than we’d like to think but how therapeutic to just walk out of the front door one day and leave a pile of clothes on a pebble beach; build a secret, off-grid cache of, er, cash and go and live on an island somewhere until it runs out. Of course in this day and age the thing to do would be to blog about it, get a book deal, hide your original identity and become newly if discreetly famous for walking out on the world. Eventually, you could reappear as a returning hero or, better yet, turn your life and oddly ubiquitous anonymity into a mystery and an inspiration for others without any of the fuss of keeping up appearances – in fact appearances is the last thing you’d want.

I’m surprised it hasn’t happened more with politicians. I mean just imagine having to live the rest of your life as David Mellor, or Diane Abbott? Given that compared to most of us our politicians are ‘as rich as creosote', how hard would it be for them to salt something away for their vanishing day? Chris Huhne, Denis MacShane, Neil Kinnock, Jeffrey Archer, Edwina Currie… the list goes on. And on… and on. But no, politicians will always keep on turning up like evil, twisted, spawn-of-Satan pennies. Their tolerance for shame is simply staggering.

I just don’t think I could lie for a living and continue to, er, live with myself, but there are times I get really fed up with telling the truth, which is what I actually do. I spend my days delivering cold, hard facts to a largely impassive audience of students and my evenings trying to refine and improve on that delivery. I’m not sure the reward really justifies the effort that goes into it all and I know that if I just stopped doing it somebody else would step in and grab my pay packet. Ultimately I don’t think I’d be missed.

Wandering off

I’m no perfectionist but I really don’t think I have the time for both life and work at the moment so, for Lent, I’m thinking of actually giving up me for a while. Yep, to achieve a half-decent work-blog balance it’s probably best that I just put the rest of me into storage until it’s all over and done with. I somehow doubt anybody will actually notice I'm gone...

PS: Only joking! I'm still here - I have nowhere to go!