Mocking the Week

I was asked yesterday what I thought of the football World Cup but, being English, I didn't have much interest in the topic - well, at least not any more. It made me think, though. Has my interest in the news in general diminished since the MS came and hit me? (I almost said 'came and bit me' but that's enough reference to the Suarez nibble, no matter that it's a story you can really sink your teeth into...)

Back to the point (yes, there is one) - the answer is, I realised, that yes, my interest in the news has diminished - at least on a general level. I'm finding myself ignoring many of the supposedly newsworthy items - Mrs Rooney's luggage collection, leadership of the European union, the Golden Gate Bridge suicide net (one less place to jump from when it all gets too much), and so on. My newer news interest tends to focus only on the things that matter to me, and often to us (fellow MSers).

That's not to say that I only look at new articles on stem cell research or the latest MS-related pharmaceutical investigations. I'm also finding myself reading up on the forthcoming releases of books and music that I know will help me forget about the (expletive deleted) condition for a few minutes or hours (thank you Sir Terry Pratchett and Leah McFall, this week, respectively), and digging far deeper into such stories than I ever used to. This week has also seen me scavenging through the interweb thingy for tickets to the Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park concert later this year - no luck yet, so if anyone out there knows where I might purchase one or two... - and that sort of activity is typical of the new me.

My interests have narrowed considerably, but deepened at the same time. And you know? I rather like that. And it's saving me a small fortune in barely read newspapers and magazines.

Oddly enough it's helping me with my new, MS-tinted hopes and ambitions. I want to become a published author later this year and thanks to the new focus I have, I now just what I need to do to achieve that goal - plus, I'm all out of excuses as to why it might not happen.

The news, though, has become more and more pointless to me (not that Pointless is necessarily a bad thing - I do rather like the TV show that goes by that name). When the 'contestants' on the show Mock the Week prod light-hearted fingers at the weekly fare produced by news desks it just doesn't seem like things really are as silly as they make them sound any longer - it's more like they are simply describing all the silly, meaningless things that constitute so much of the news these days. Now if the news shows simply talked about all the things that interest me, then maybe I'd start paying more attention again Mind you to be fair, a news programme that just focused on Formula One, stem-cell research, Terry Pratchett and the Electric Light Orchestra probably wouldn't have a very wide appeal. Even among fellow MSers.

My point is, that if someone came up to me and asked me what news items took my interest last week I'd have a real job on my hands trying to come up with anything other than England's very unsurprising exit from the World Cup. Oh, and I did work out for someone that the difference in years between Fred Perry winning Wimbledon and England the World Cup - 30 years - is significantly lower than the time between Andy Murray becoming the next Wimbledon Winner and that same World Cup win - 47 years.

That probably typifies my new focus on the pointless, and it least I can still remember who the Prime Minister is - David... er, David someone, anyway. Who is probably not a member of the Whigs.

See? I'm still with it....