Fortunately at a young age I realised Ally was a vain, neurotic reflection of what professional women hoped they weren’t. Ten years on, I finally watched the two series I missed while on my GAP year.

It’s embarrassing how sheltered these supposedly ‘kooky’ characters were: uncomfortable dating a man living as a woman, unable to imagine a marriage without children, alienating a character that doesn’t enjoy sex. Ten years on, these are ideas that have permeated the mainstream, sure they’re not accepted universally but these are choices that intelligent, consenting adults make. How far we have come in less than 10 years.

Meanwhile, Ally turned from a confusing woman who seemed strangely skinny into one of my peers (at 38 Calista Flockhart was playing 32 with disconcerting ease). And the decisions she made did not sit well with the 21st century. Not least her lack of mobile phone.

A few years ago Lori Gottlieb wrote a brilliant article exploring whether she should have settled (‘Marry Him!‘) because a decade down the line being picky becomes a handicap rather than the romantic venture it feels when you’re young and your breasts are still perky. Ally McBeal as a character is not only childlike in her physique, she’s childlike in her perception of what makes a relationship (a plumber and a lawyer? yuck). As someone watching the series in the early days of 2012, it makes for uncomfortable viewing.

I won’t excuse my affection for the series: it has endearing and eccentric characters that make you feel less weird in the grand scheme of people around you. John Cage and Elaine Vassel can survive the 21st century, perhaps Nell too with her asexuality (and great hair) but Richard Fish, who wants money but appears not to earn it through skill, Renee who sexualises herself and everyone around her, and Ally. These stereotypes no longer recognisable have no place in a century that seeks value in the workplace, fears sexual harrassment on any corner and demands a sincerity from its women that Ally simply can’t attain. These stereotypes are so 1990s.

It makes me proud to part of the new century.

A half-life is the time it takes for a substance decaying at a certain rate to decay by half. However the half-life is determined by probability, that is over the course of many experiments the average time it takes to decay. It’s a term traditionally used by scientists but I’ve decided to borrow it.

Regret is not a term traditionally used by scientists, at least not in the workplace, because it is a more emotional than practical response. We all have them, some more than others:

Regrets I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
- My Way, Paul Anka

How many of us can say so confidently that we have so few regrets? Or express such conviction about the choices we have made?

It’s the beginning of  new year: the time for reflections and resolutions. For the analytically-minded this should mean a detailed process of looking at the things that happened in 2011, attempting to devise practical learnings from them, and putting a plan together for 2012. For the rest of us it’s a more haphazard process of deciding if we want to put ourselves under the pressure of a resolution, let alone feel the need to.

We apparently learn from our mistakes, practical things that have qualitative and quantitative impact on ours and others’ lives, but do we learn from our regrets, which are so much harder to evaluate?

Thinking about regrets I have there are three big ones: two I can and will fix over time, because they are choices that haven’t yet run themselves through the sands of time. One I cannot fix, but it happened within the last 6 months and I think perhaps it will not be a regret this time next year. The other regrets I’m trying to pin down are not so much regrets as memories of being embarrassed or frustrated, and anything before 2000 feels too long ago to be as worked up about.

In my focus group of 1, I’m starting to wonder if what begins as ‘regret’ fades to a nostalgic feeling of what if. Did Paul Anka recognise that as we take the time to look back on a life lived, the regrets we may have fade to a more subtle poignancy? Perhaps the regrets that we have felt over the course of the year decay, in which case the time we have available to learn from our regrets is already on the wane. Anka’s song goes on to say:

I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way

Going into 2012 I have made some resolutions, nice practical ones that I can qualify and quantify. But I’m wondering if perhaps the best resolution I can make is one that tries to minimise the regrets I might have over the next few months, whether because I make my choices with impunity or because I try to learn from them before their half-life kicks in.

I won’t dwell too much on this, because Andy Walton’s written something far better.

But what is it like commuting on Christmas Day? Is it busier than you might imagine? Do commuters share knowing glances that say ‘we’re in this together’? On a day that the majority of the Western world is taking as holiday, does it feel like a sacrifice or just another day?

They probably already know some of the story, but the established press, the disposable freebies, the iPad-enabled newsstands and reading over a neighbour’s shoulder will bring us all a little closer to the full tragedy of his death.

And yet only the tiny minority might express any reaction or emotion to it for the length of their commute. Sure, we’ll start talking once we’ve arrived in the office. It may not amount to the sincerity of mourning, but at least in the workplace there’s a semblance of sharing. In a commuter carriage we share silence.

In the UK depression affects 1 in 5 older people and British men are three times as likely to commit suicide as British women. Gary Speed’s death, the nature of it – suicide by a man respected in his field at the top of his profession – has caused shockwaves and, if these statistics are to be believed, has no doubt hit a very personal nerve among many people across the country.

I find it disconcerting that strangers will come together on occasions to mourn, to protest, to celebrate, but strangers brought together by this particular circumstance do not. The commute can be a lonely place, made lonelier still by the constraints of etiquette. Or is this just my experience?

Are you the worst version of yourself on your morning commute? Not every day perhaps, but on those days when tourists are dithering at the gate or the traffic is particularly bad or you’ve decided that today you would get that seat, dammit.

There’s something about how we exist in our commute that is inherently selfish. We are not expected to engage with the people around us and those who commute by car are prevented from doing so by their environment. On the commute, there is no such thing as community*.

I therefore, the prisoner for the Lord, appeal to and beg you to walk (lead a life) worthy of the [divine] calling to which you have been called [with behavior that is a credit to the summons to God's service, living as becomes you] with complete lowliness of mind (humility) and meekness (unselfishness, gentleness, mildness), with patience, bearing with one another and making allowances because you love one another. Be eager and strive earnestly to guard and keep the harmony and oneness of [and produced by] the Spirit in the binding power of peace.

Ephesians 4: 1-3

In this passage in Ephesians Paul exhorts us as individuals to take responsibility for our actions and behaviour to reflect harmony (or shared ‘oneness’) in the church as a body of people.

Well there hasn’t been harmony in the church for a long time. And in more recent years, as pressure points such as women’s ministry have become more accepted in the mainstream, you’d have to search quite hard for oneness between individuals, groups and denominations.

But what Paul seems to be saying here is that if on a personal, purely individual, level you demonstrate humility, have compassion for your neighbours and all of these high ideals, rather than worrying whether everyone else is achieving them, we would go some way to demonstrating oneness as a community of Christians.

I don’t know about you, but I find that communities (especially churches) are a hotbed of mote-checking, neighbourhood-watching, panopticon behaviour, where individuals are more concerned with others’ gifts of the spirit than their own.

Meanwhile on a daily basis, people who commute are part of a community that is built upon the precedent of the individual. There is a oneness characterised not by behaviour but by intent: commuters all want to get to work or home with a minimum of time and hassle. Sadly the unspoken etiquette elevates survival above compassion.

Maybe we only notice we’re the worst versions of ourselves, as we barge through the commuting crowds elbows akimbo, because we aren’t distracted by the individuals around us? Maybe we are actually the worst versions of ourselves when we comment loftily on others’ lack of humility, not recognising the irony of doing so.

Perhaps if we practiced what Paul preached in our commuting hours, we could learn how to translate that into the other hours of the day, when the importance of the individual makes way for the importance of teamwork.

Or maybe I’ve read Paul all wrong…

* Interestingly the ‘comm’ part of both words means ‘together’ but within 2 different contexts: ‘community’ expresses the idea of bringing people together as one, while the word ‘commute’ stems from bringing together several payments into one; the ‘commutation ticket’ being the early manifestation of the modern season ticket.

We have ALL been there. The crazy guy who hovers too close, the strange girl whose body brushes up against yours despite the lack of movement… It’s not quite sexual harassment, but it’s unwanted attention and it’s difficult to police.

But what if YOU’re the unwanted attention and you just haven’t realised?

I got thinking tonight: inspired by a conversation with a nice young man and a glimpse of myself in the glass darkly. What if I am simply not good looking enough to be engaging with this conversation? Harsh, but perhaps true.

The very people who make you feel uncomfortable now could have been the handsome people that flirted effortlessly 30 years ago. Maybe someone moved here from abroad, where chatting on public transport is an MO not an OMG. On one level a conversation on a bus is a transient thing, defined by little more than proximity and an instinct to share mindless chatter. On another, usually British, level, if someone is trying to talk to you on a bus then they must have an ulterior motive.

It is disconcerting to realise that you are that human being with an ulterior motive. Worse when you see how blatant and unsubtle you are about it. Tonight I met a nice guy and we chatted and at some point down the line he took my number, but the over-riding sensation for me is that I may be that person you avoid. It is so hard to know when you are that person whether your advances are welcome or not. I’m sure that many of the creepy men who make moments on an evening commute so unbearable don’t realise their advances are frankly repulsive.

At some point someone should have said: don’t stand so close to me.

I, being unconformist for no real reason, did not touch in. Or in fact touch out. Turns out my reason for being in Wandsworth Town was pretty inconsequential anyway and so it did not seem so bad as I made my way back to Clapham Junction… except that somehow the machine knew!

At this point I could get irate about the feat of the machines. Nasty, horrible things that will one day take over the security codes and destroy life as we know it. Or I could recognise that I was being a bit of a social pariah (aka cock) in not making my contribution to the urban transport system. Expensive as it is.

The problem is that when people like me (aka like to think they’re not cocks) decide not to make their contribution to the urban transport system, we find ourselves in a quandary. ‘Me’ eventually becoming the norm and ‘we’ the sad sucks that pay the bill.

I need to apologise. And it turns out I kind of don’t need to, since somehow the machines knew I’d passed through. But the fact I tried not to pay my way is inexcusable, no matter my excuse.

I realise it’s a little late to be talking about the Rapture. Or rather the lack of rapture. But the beauty of the whole experience is it seems we still have all the time in the world to discuss it. At least until the next prophecy…

Personally I don’t give credence to the interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, from whence this rapture stuff has arisen. In particular I don’t much like the idea that ‘We’ will be caught up, leaving our sad and broken unbelievers to lament God’s passing and look after our pets in perpetuity. It’s typical of the prosperity gospel, them/us rhetoric that makes Christianity occasionally so loathsome.

However the idea that any group of people are awaiting for something in the belief that it *will* come is pretty natural. Sure, the rapture has a religious glow about it, but in many ways how different is it from the shared belief among the crowd of people standing on platform 10 that the 8.37 to Waterloo will, eventually, arrive? And more importantly, whisk them off to the place they want nay need, to be? And how foolish must we look when it doesn’t arrive when expected and our supposedly secular hopes are briefly dashed?

Finally, scientific proof that bears out daily intuition: the longer your commute, the less happy you are.

Mark Easton of the BBC has written an excellent blog post summarising the findings by the New Economics Foundation in their most recent report Measuring our progress: The power of well-being. The report is as much an exercise in demonstrating how sustainability – financial and environmental – as a meta-narrative to social infrastructure is the way forward as an excuse for the annual ‘happiness is’ news cycle. It also says that you should get a goodly amount of sleep. And a bike.

While I do enjoy a well-written blog post / think tank report that paraphrases the proverbial papal affirmation of catholicism, I think it’s sad that it needs to be proven, quantified and presented for scrutiny. Surely it’s obvious that the longer you spend travelling into and out of work – in a limbo of neither work nor life for balance – the less happy a citizen you will be? Not to mention that an infrastructure that demands less commuting time of its worker bees and promotes better use of resources is a good idea?

Both Mark and nef’s report go into greater detail and I recommend reading them, but I do wonder what might come of this research. Perhaps we should take our placards to Parliament Square in defence of simpler rights, ones that government may be more amenable to grant: the right to pursue well-being. God knows none of our recent placards have been considered, and that’s hardly the sign of a healthy society.