feeling listless

War An email from Caro asked a good question and I hope she won't mind me answering it here rather thanan in person. Her question was "Hope all is well where you are. - Have you, too been advised to stock up on emergency supplies? What's the mood like?" Other than the protest I talked about the other night, the war has hardly rocked Liverpool. It occured to me in fact that if I didn't have a television or radio and didn't read the newspapers unless I spoke to anyone I would know there was a war at all. Unlike the other war which is this being endlessly compared to, the second, it isn't really effecting our real lives. Public services continue. People are still going to work, to the cinema, to the football. There hasn't been any evidence of bulk buying. Rapid Hardware hasn't had a run on plastic sheeting.

So why do i find it intensely difficult to concentrate on anything else? It's almost as though the half of my brain which should be creative and working on the projects I've promised myself I should be concentrating on is glued to the media, picking over what is happening. It is allowing me to think about other things now and then though, so although my script is going to go another weekend unedited, I am making strides into how to re-write the beginning to make it less depressing.

I don't remember the war coverage being so obsessive during the war in Afghanistan. It's as though the viewer don't dare miss anything which might be happening; like they're trying to make up for pumping us with poor propaganda last time. Only at times like this would Sophie Raworth and Philip Hayton be sharing a desk at BBC News 24. The most effective coverage I've seen so far was on EuroNews of all places -- for large parts of the hour they're showing narration free shots of the war and protests throughout the world, including shots of downtown Baghdad which I haven't seen on the main news programmes -- streets filled with intact buildings littered with the odd husk; people going about their business between the bombs. Their usual massive titles marking off 'News', 'Sport' and 'Business' replaced with just 'Iraq War' and simply 'No Comment'.

[Having watched some of the gung-ho US coverage on Fox News and MSNBC I thank the lord for the BBC. Although the group weblog I linked a couple of days ago has ceased, [update: No it hasn't .... you just have to link through from the main page to get to the new posts] is still a live feed from BBC News 24 online.]