Finished (sorta)

I woke up this morning to discover that the Archway Road had been closed. Someone had jumped from the infamous "Suicide Bridge" and one assumes the emergency services were attempting to deal with the gruesome clean-up. Archway Bridge, which crosses the A1 at a great height, used to be renowned for attracting jumpers. If the fall onto asphalt didn't kill you, one of the cars speeding up the road below would usually oblige. It become such a hot spot for suicides that the council were forced to raise the walls and then build a metal fence above it, tipped with angry-looking wrought iron barbed spikes to deter those who might get drunk and find themselves doing something they'd have regretted in the morning in the unlikely event that they'd survived the drop.

These days, only the strongest and most determined are able to scale the fence and throw themselves off, which means the death toll has dropped significantly. Inevitably someone periodically drops through the net.

I looked at my twitter feed, which was filled with concerned North Londoners describing the road as like a scene from 28 Weeks Later and wondering how they were going to get their children to exams, or get themselves into work. 

It strikes me what a deeply selfish act suicide is; not just for those who love you, but for the strangers whose lives are wrecked by discovering your body blue and pasty and hanging from a tree, or twisted and mangled on a tube track. It's so often an act designed to punish those who are left behind and I have very little sympathy for those who take the coward's way out. 

Yes, yes, you're all going to besiege me with comments about mental health, and those young lads in the US who kill themselves because they can't deal with the pain of being bullied. There will always be exceptions which prove the rule, but by in large I'll always find myself reserving my sympathy for those left behind, and those battling illnesses who are desperate to stay alive. 

On that cheery note, I can announce that today saw me finishing the mix on the White City film. It will be mastered on Monday, and that will be that for the sonic side of things. It's strange to say that I don't feel a particular sense of relief. I guess the whole experience has been so exhausting and so much of a roller-coaster ride, that I don't have the energy to feel a sense of anything. Relief would come if I could guarantee what I've delivered was any good and at the moment I have no objectivity left to make this claim seem genuine! I think a day off tomorrow will do me the world of good. And then the circus begins all over again with the filming and editing!