Pisstaking

Why we cannot trust MSM to give a balanced view of events and we must all become storytellers

Pisstaking, sorry ‘Breathtaking’ was the name of the ITV drama, people were talking about this week.

(Well, I wasn’t, I like Corrie, but anyway….)

‘Breathtaking’, got it?

As in, having your breath taken away. Stopping breathing.

Well, someone at ITV has a fucking dark sense of humour, eh?

I didn’t watch.

No matter how good amphibian-evoking Joanne Froggatt might have been,  I don’t think she could ever have outdone the Oscar worthy performances of Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson.

Well done Dr Rachel Clarke!

In times my colleagues have been snowed under, I’ve often thought afterwards, that what they’d really appreciate more than anything else, is a write up about how crap it was for them, you know….

And nothing helps the NHS out quite like a book and shit-posting on Twitter, does it?

(Well, apart from titting about dancing on TikTok or cosplaying a bit of Shipman getting jiggy with the meds, obviously……)

Besides, there just aren’t enough people telling us how overworked ‘our’ NHS are, how underfunded, how short of equipment they are, don’t you find?

Apart from EVERYONE, all the fucking time, always…….

Stop it Julie! You’re being facetious!

On closer inspection, I saw the tagline of the book was “the story you haven’t been told”.

Oh that story! Finally! The one about the Midazolam murders, corrupt politicians, myocarditis, ‘died suddenly’, lockdown suicides, excess deaths……..

Except it wasn’t that story.

It was…….well……the usual one.

The only story we’re ever told. Rammed down throats like cock in a brothel.

According to the synopsis, this was the ‘human’ take though, wasn’t it?

Just certain humans that thought a certain way, mind, those humans. Good humans…..

Not YOU, you conspiracy theorist monster!

Maybe I’m being harsh. Know why?

A hunger for balance.

It’s not just television that has professed to tell THE story (think THE Science….) of ‘the pandemic’. To voice what is actually, one viewpoint regurgitated and repeated, the way a fly eats its vomit.

I remember visiting museums and galleries just after the lockdowns ended. Seeing photo displays of hands touching each other through glass, the children’s drawings of sad faces. Reading carefully presented emotive accounts of how ‘the community’ felt, how ‘Covid’ had affected them.

Know what I thought?

Hang on a minute…..that’s MY community. I’m a part of it just like they are!

Who in mainstream culture is documenting what I’m feeling? Telling MY story?

In art and exhibitions, on telly…..

Where are those people like ME? Those who didn’t partake in any of the bollocks but lost stuff like businesses regardless. Some, much, much more.

People who think the way I do, may not have been in the majority but hell, we were a bloody sizeable chunk! Our accounts are just as valid as anyone else’s. They must inform the future!

And the thing that really fucks me off is that by omitting certain perspectives, they are literally rewriting history. In years to come, how will people find out about a version of events that ran alongside the official one?

The counter narrative.

When I was a little girl, there was a cartoon called ‘The Storyteller’.

I liked that programme. The quaint idea of a fella wandering olde England from town to town sharing all he knew.

Ensuring history was passed down, in the oral tradition by story and song, mouth to ear, generation to generation……

Or sometimes, storytellers relayed folk or fairytales. On the surface perhaps they seemed like fluff but these stories spoke to our shadow self as warnings, morals dwelled within them. Stories like Bluebeard taught young girls to spot red flags in dodgy, rich old single geezers whilst Hansel and Gretel warned you there was no such thing as a free lunch.

TV will always portray an official version of events, social media will censor. Websites and books can be amended and erased at will.

Unless we step up again as storytellers, go back to relaying our experiences by word of mouth and writing things down, we risk our valid lived realities being brushed under the carpet.

Who else will convey what I experienced, you experienced, be faithful to our accounts?

Who will expose the villains who peddled propaganda as wares? Capitalising on public appetite for fear?

‘Doctors’ like Dr Hillary who changed his tune more times than a juke box. Chancers like Captain Tom’s charmer of a daughter. Those like Andrew Neil and Piers Morgan who called for compulsory vaccination?

It won’t be ‘mainstream media’, that’s for sure.

There’ll be no Ms Froggatt shuffling forward to play you or your dead relative. She’ll probably be on location playing Zelensky’s beleaguered wife making borscht by candlelight in a damp shed somewhere.

You’re going to have to say your piece YOURSELF with your own voice. So find it! Not on the internet but in real life.

Trust NO-ONE to represent you.

Make sure your children or grandchildren know your take. Have them challenge sources, follow the money and question why things are presented a certain way.

You and I.

That’s all we have.

I’ll call it out as ‘Convid’ instead of ‘Covid’ as long as I am alive. Because once I don’t, my silence honours a story I disbelieve.

Our voices will NOT dry up.

Our stories will not be diluted nor washed away!

A word about the ‘mainstream’……..

The ‘main stream’ is what happens when all the other tiny streams eventually find each other and converge.

Otherwise known as………

A formidable, unstoppable river.