Lit

For a mercifully short period in 2007, the meeja (well, more accurately ‘the Guardian’) used the suffix ‘lit’ with abandon. Chick-Lit was, as we all know, a genre of writing that was aimed at women and would usually consist of a heroin, a bloke, some misunderstandings and a happy ending. It was, I think, a little softer and fuzzier than the shopping and fucking and more shopping novels of the 1980s. Women were more interested in reading about women like them, but in relationships. Women in relationships were too busy washing, cleaning cooking and ironing to read.

Lad-lit was a term used to describe books about blokish behaviour which was unusual in that the blokes being described did not actually exist. This is because the sort of person who wants to read about getting drunk and misbehaving is usually too drunk to focus and when they can, they read either a magazine or the instructions on a microwavable curry. Luckily, lad-lit turned very quickly into dad-lit, because all the women reading chick-lit had finally resigned themselves to not ending up with Carlos, the cruel but handsome and rich playboy from the shopping and fucking novels and instead ended up getting pissed and having some lad’s baby. The lad, now a dad, needed something to read in the delivery room and so picked up a book about a lad who turns into dad, has some comic adventures, changes a nappy and lives happily ever after with his kid and wife who, and this is the important bit, gets her figure back. Oh, but other women never stop fancying him. Possibly this is what leads us on to divorce lit.

Frankly, a lot of this was shit-lit but, with publishing costs low and people anxious to read about versions of themselves that were just a little bit more fun and with better and more hair, there was a market out there. There was also a market for misery-lit. This took two forms, the first was the memoir of an impoverished upbringing, usually in Ireland, featuring lots of people eating potatoes and being miserable. The other type was a memoir of somebody who was treated abominably as a child. The trouble with these books is that some of them should have been shelved under ‘fiction’ and all of them should have been shelved under ‘don’t read this book it will make you miserable’. Basically, if you were dating in the early 00s and you saw a book with pastel colours on the cover, all you had to be worried about was being trapped into marriage by defective contraception. If the cover had a wan faced urchin on it, you were best off legging it out of the restaurant before your date started telling you shit that would put you right off your potato based meal.

Possibly there are more types of lit out there; but that’s not all - there’s the on-line communities. Surfing the net has me pretty convinced that the internet has, along with making more porn available than any normal person could use in one lifetime, even if they stuck him in a wanking machine with a drip on his arm, provided a platform for those whose literary ambitions unfortunately exceed their talent…or grasp of spelling and grammar and basic English to publish.

Gentleman and Player is, of course, quite different and nobody could ever accuse it of being an alcohol soaked rant bi-weekly reactionist rant against petty indignities or flights of fancy about the minutia of everyday life, sadly all too often overlooked in other blogs that address matters of note, like reality tv, celebrity or just plain Star Trek. But I am wondering if it is time for a re-think about content or even maybe format. So, without being too self-referential, I am going to charge and re-charge my pipe with the very strongest Turkish tobacco mixed with my own special blend of hashish and horse shit, drop a lemon slice into a bowl of gin, slip into my very cosiest of slippers and, in this most conducive atmosphere, consider.

Eyestrain

If you’re ill, the last place you want to be is in a doctor’s waiting room. This is not just because with all the sick people in there coughing and spluttering, it’s like germ fond-du, it’s mainly because, now that everyone has private medical care, the only people in there are chavs. The sorts of unmentionable proles who eat soup with a dessert spoon at home because nobody is watching. Well, God is always watching and he despises poor table manners.

I was there not with the usual auld trouble, nor with the pox, not even with a shocking case of ennui, but with some sort of troublesome eye infection. Well, I thought it was an eye infection, the doctor said it was eyestrain.

Actually it was the second doctor who told me that. First I had to see some sort of trainee medico, Doctor Asian Babe. I was waiting for her to ask me how often I, touch myself, down there, while looking at pictures of ladies like her in their undergarments. Obviously it was inpure thoughts like this that had landed me with eyestrain.

Actually, in retrospect it was much more likely to be all the reading, watching telly, using a computer all day and most of the night and so on that had contributed but, hey, that’s modern life. The Doc told me to try and rest my eyes. Genius, how do I do that, they get really sniffy at work when you put your feet up for half an hour and snooze at your desk.

The solution to eyestrain would appear to be ‘live in the 1970s’, where everyone communicated by paper and when porn came in magazine form and really big breasts were in fashion, so you didn’t need to squint at the monitor, just squirt at the page.

On the other hand, I wondered if I could get her to prescribe me a big telly on the NHS, you know, a really vulgar one, one of those tellys that drug dealers have, something that screams ‘I have no social life, nor do I need one’.

In the end, the eyestrain just went away of its own accord, but not before I got those IT bastards at work to get me a new monitor – it’s so big that it comes with its own stand and, best of all, it’s clean. Christ along knows what my predecessor did at his desk but I swear there was a patina of stuff on it.

As for the diagnostic prowess of the modern medic, I wasn’t impressed with ‘eyestrain’. Even if it was eyestrain I’d have been a lot happier if they had wrapped it up in a little latin and given me a placebo. Since when do Doctors trust the patient. Obviously, they are fed up with people googling their symptoms, turning up with a load of opinions and self diagnosis having not been to medical school for five years, slaved every hour to pass exams, seen their family make sacrifices to ensure they get a quality education and then having the bad manners to actually be right about their malady. It must be galling to study like a bastard for years to get that white coat and some respect, only to be upstaged by a search engine.

I suppose the future of medicine is sitting in front of your computer telling a doctor your symptoms and hoping like hell he’s real and not a glove puppet or, worse still, a CGI being run by a malicious AI or, even worse than that, an actor sponsored by a pharmacy corporation. ‘Doctor, I’ve got this rash’. ‘I’m prescribing Dollman’s Vital Remedy.’ ‘But isn’t that what you prescribed for my headaches.’ ‘Oh yes, it’s very adaptable.’ ‘And when my cat had mange.’ ‘Are you sure that wasn’t your on-line vet, who looks a lot like me but with a beard?’.

Certainly it’ll mean Big Pharma is more transparent in their dealings with the patient. Up until now you’ve had to judge whether or not your GP is being bribed a little or a lot by seeing if they have a new car or just a tan in winter.