I’ve actually had a really good day today. I’m working on a web based business idea at the moment, trying to get something significant up and running without really having the first clue about how to do it. I’ve been bouncing around the fun bits for months now, thinking about designs and marketing campaigns and how I’m going to spend the fortune I’ll soon have amassed. Unfortunately I know that just around the corner I’m going to have to start thinking about tax and revenue structures. I’m going to have to step up the plate and work out just how far short my finances are going to fall (and we’re talking very, very short). And yet, as I begin to think about that side of things, the side that I’ve been putting off for almost a year now, I suddenly find my heart beating even faster. Not only because the more I think about it, the more confident I am that this is genuinely a good idea; but because I’ve realised that it’s the business I want to run, not just the campaign.

At 27, I’ve had an incredible life: full of adventure, excitement and a good old fashioned childhood. My pops is in the army, and until the age of 6 we moved every couple of years; I was born in Shrewsbury, moved to Germany, on to Northern Ireland (all I remember about my time near Omagh is rolling painted eggs down a hill near our house at Easter and having to check under the car for bombs every morning), North America and back to an army base in Strensall just outside York. When I think of my childhood, I think of paperchases around the forests outside of Washington DC, canoeing down the Shenandoah river and building forts with my younger brother amongst the gorse bushes in the enormous army training grounds. We travelled a lot, and saw as much of our family as we could. Surrounded as I was by variety and love, I despair at the countless children forced to grow up in poverty in inner cities, many of whom will never understand what it means to be truly free. As much as I enjoy living in the city, there’s no way I will raise my children here. I don’t want to live in fear of what might happen to them, and there’s absolutely no way I want them to feel that constant threat.

When I look at what’s happening to our country at the moment, it all seems to come back to this one point. As a nation, Britain is incredibly proud. Little over a hundred years ago, Queen Victoria ruled a huge percentage of the global population. Our empire stretched across the globe, and we sat on our island throne gazing out at what we had accomplished. Slowly but surely though our empire diminished, until there was little left beyond our shores, and all we had left to admire were ourselves. And boy did we have a lot to admire. Twice Europe descended into anarchy, and twice we stood strong while others around us fell. An entire generation grew up appreciating what unity really meant, the sort of national unity that can only really come from a collective enemy. Those too young to fight watched in terrified awe as their parents and grandparents disappeared off to fight, and there was barely a family that wasn’t touched by tragedy in some way. Everyone had played their part, and the young had a reason to be grateful to their elders.

However, as time moves on and the reality of the 2 Great Wars fade into Hollywood memory, those who remember it properly grow old and finally succumb – and everything is changing.

What do we have to be proud of today? What does it mean to be English now? I read the other day that there is a “Jade Goody : The Musical” in the pipeline. That alone is enough to make me want to turn my back on this place and leave forever. I would imagine it’s a lot easier to be proud of being English when you don’t live in England!

Bloody ‘reality’ television. Even if it can be called reality, which it can’t, it’s certainly not your reality. I just worked out that if you spend 6 hours a week (and I would imagine a lot of people spend a lot more) watching truly crappy television or reading horrendously predatory articles about other people’s problems, that 312 hours a year. Over 50 years that’s 15600 hours, or 650 days. Or almost 2 years. 2 years of your life pouring over pictures of cellulite or watching some idiotic celebrity-wannabe make a fool of themselves in the big brother house.

How depressing.

Still, at least they’re not my two years! I think I’ll spend mine meeting new people, seeing new places and experiencing new things if it’s all the same to you.




Or at least I would if I could afford it.