Dead famous

It's the last day of a year that will be remembered for dead celebrities, Brexit and Trump. Let's gloss over those last two shall we (for now).

In 2016, celebs were dropping like flies, yes? Nobody was safe as one treasured household name after another trended on Twitter for the saddest of reasons. 

Except famous people weren't really all suddenly dying in one year - it's just that there were a whole load of people born after the Second World War, so right now there are more people aged 50-70 and therefore more famous people in that age bracket and therefore it seems like there are more famous people dying.

Plus, as the babies were booming, telly was invented and became popular which served to beam presenters and musicians and entertainers into everyone's living rooms. Those people who were young then became very famous very quickly and now - mostly because they're old - they are starting to die. (Either that or the David Bowie alternative race theory is spot on.) Since the Baby Boomer era, the price of an entry ticket to "fame" has dropped like post-Brexit sterling. So, if you thought 2016 was bad for celebrity deaths, it'll be nothing compared to 2046.

Of course, we don't actually know these famous people, but sometimes they and what they produce form the soundtrack or the lyrics or the laughter to our lives and that means something to us. It's a reminder of shared connections or conversations or places or moments of joy or sorrow. It's something that's become part of the story of who we are and is so much more than fame. 

So goodbye 2016 with something from a famous person who was and is part of my story.

Tap, think, lol and save

We're all writing all the time, right? We're tapping away on tiny screens, thumbs flying to patter out a status, tweet or text. Everyone's a writer and everyone's a publisher, 24 hours a day, all around the planet. 

With this multi-screen, emoji-scattered,  throwaway, snackable, bite-flippin-sized torrent of content cascading uninvited over everyone's senses it can feel more than a little futile to launch something like this. What good can spooning yet a little more into the massive digital vat possibly do?

Well for one thing it makes me feel a little bit saner. There's something therapeutic about writing just for the point of writing - better out than in and all that. 

Also, it's a repository that I (hopefully) will be able to go back to in the future and chuckle and nod at. I have a few dust-covered blogs out there that when I've re-read I've at least mildly LOL-ed.

And lastly and most importantly, it might even do a tiny bit of good in the world. I remembered the power of writing not long ago when, inspired by the Stop Funding Hate campaign, I wrote a short post on an internal forum at work which led to our advertising being withdrawn from the Daily Mail.

Now that's not going to result in the earth spinning the other way on its axis but it does mean a little bit less money going toward hatred and division and a few more people thinking and talking about the issue who weren't before. It's not often I find myself agreeing with the Queen, but she's right that "small acts of goodness" can achieve more than we might think.

So, this is my spoonful for the digital vat. Tapped out in the hope that I - and maybe one or two others - might be spurred to think, lol and save.