Nelson Mandela
1918 – 2013
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”
Nelson Mandela
You are currently browsing the archive for the Life as we know it category.
Tags: Loss
As a teacher of drama I am aware that I perhaps view the world – on occasion – through slightly different eyes to those not so involved.
This thought came into my head recently as the result of my having to make a trip to Loughborough, which is – for those unfamiliar with the geography of the United Kingdom – in the Midlands, approximately 90 minutes north of London by train.
Which fact is germane – since I decided to eschew my normal practice and to take public transport rather than driving. I am still somewhat unsure as to exactly what made me do so: the weather had turned colder and I had been doing a considerable amount of driving of late, so I perhaps felt that what was needed was a relatively stress-free peregrination.
Why I thought that public transport would afford such I do not know!
Our end of Berkshire is not quite on the opposite side of the capital to the Midlands, but given the transport topology of the south of England it might as well be so. I paid my customary visit to the InterWebNet to ascertain the optimal route and discovered that I would needs journey into and across London before heading northwards out into the wilds of Leicestershire. This meant leaving in the frosty dark of the early morning, driving to the station, taking two trains to get to Paddington, taking the tube (underground or metro for those not of these parts!) across the metropolis to St Pancras and then finally boarding the intercity train to Loughborough.
The morning rush hour in the home counties is no fun at all, which has a great deal to do with why I routinely drive 35 miles in to School rather than relying on public transport (assuming that I could ever afford such!). For the second leg of my journey north – from Reading to Paddington – I had a reserved seat. Unfortunately I boarded the designated carriage at the wrong end. The train was non-stop to London and the coach so packed with standing passengers that I had to abandon any hope of pushing my way down the length of it to find my place. I do hope that somebody else enjoyed it!
“All very interesting” – I hear you cry – “but what has this to do with drama?”
Well – the portion of the first year drama curriculum that covers physicality includes an element concerning personal space – that private but invisible zone that we maintain around ourselves for our physical and emotional protection. In the course of this study we are – naturally – particularly interested in the dramatic possibilities of incursions into this space, which usually occur as a result of one character attempting to impose his or her status on another. Imagining an RSM lecturing an incompetent private at particularly close quarters, or a hoodlum intimidating his victim (to take just two obviously rather extreme examples) should give some idea as to what I refer.
Needless to say – we usually guard this space jealously, and when we do allow or invite others in it is normally a clear indication of the closeness of the relationship concerned.
On the commuter train – to the contrary – all of this goes out of the window! One finds oneself crushed in extreme close proximity with others, including those of the opposite sex for whom such intrusion would normally be a cause for raising the alarm! It seems that the modus operandi in such cases is simply to pretend that the incursion is not taking place at all – which is most strange.
I have always found the London commuter experience to be a puzzle. The wealthy banker may leave his luxury domicile in the home counties – given, perhaps, a lift to the station by his trophy wife in his top-end BMW. Once in the city he sits in his luxurious office on the upper floors with a panoramic view of the capital, his needs being serviced by PAs, underlings and secretaries. In between – however – he endures the commuter crush with tens of thousands of others in what is indubitably a pretty low-order experience… and for the ‘privilege’ of so doing he pays what can only be described as an eye-wateringly extortionate toll.
Bizarre!
Tags: Drama, England, Modern life
…today we will be in Canada!
Hoo-bloomin’-ray!!
We have been whetting our appetites by making further arrangements for our celebratory visit to the Wickanninish Inn just after Christmas. We spent a happy 15 minutes on the phone to Tofino booking a table at The Pointe restaurant for my birthday dinner, as well as arranging some little well-deserved treats for us both at the Ancient Cedars Spa.
We can’t wait!
Nor – it goes without saying – can we wait so see all of our loved ones and good friends over in British Columbia.
Not long now – chaps!
Tags: British Columbia, Canada, Celebration
A couple of days ago I found myself reading online yet another article intent on delivering a good kicking to the generation of which I am still proud to be a member – the baby boomers! It would seem that there is something of an open season on the boomers, but whereas cross-generational assaults are nothing new – and are indeed normally to be considered healthy – there was something about this particular bushwhacking that finally got my goat… In fact – there were several things – and a whole herd of goats!
It has become highly fashionable to paint a picture in which the boomers – inheriting a veritable garden of Eden from what was arguably the ‘greatest generation’ – proceeded through their self-indulgence and negligence to run amok, scorching their way through the post war decades and leaving in their wake an arid wasteland of debt and desolation for the generations to come.
Well – let’s try to get some perspective here. Whereas I am unstinting in my admiration for those who lived through the depression and fought the last great war for us, we should perhaps ask ourselves why it was that they were obliged so to do at all. The boomers are far from unique in having made mistakes that have impacted on succeeding generations. Let us recall a century of political and religious extremism, of bigotry and repression and of the resultant global conflagrations. Let us remember the experiments with communism and fascism – the equal failures of socialism and of unfettered capitalism. Let us not forget the eagerness with which we rushed to create weapons that could destroy all sentient life on this fragile planet, and let us not doubt for a second that greed and self-interest are as old as civilisation itself and have caused havoc across the millennia.
Certainly we boomers were and are lucky. We are blessed in so many ways. We were not called upon to make the sacrifices that were demanded of the preceding generation. We have doubtless had it better than will those that immediately succeed us, but such generational variation has ever been the case. More to the point is the question of the purpose to which this generation has put its good fortune – of what legacy it will leave. I firmly believe that history will show that – alongside the negativity endemic in its self-absorption – this generation will be remembered for its creativity and for its espousal of good causes – even if sadly also less positively for its failure to contribute to their resolution as properly as it might.
One of the things that annoyed me most about this recent attack was that its author himself qualifies as a boomer! It seems that it has now become ‘de rigueur’ to assail one’s own generation. Now – as it happens, I don’t think that this is particularly healthy. I have no issue with the younger generations so doing… indeed – that is as it should be. When we were young we certainly rebelled against the mores and strictures of our parents’ existence and I don’t think that we expected for a minute that they would meekly cave in and bow to our youthful (lack of) wisdom. It is bad enough that some of my generation seem all too keen to be perceived as ‘cool’ by today’s ‘yoof’ – to be thought to be ‘good guys’… it is quite another thing to be giving our own generation a good kicking to save the young the trouble of having so to do.
Worse yet – the attack was not on the pitiful state in which we may indeed yet leave the world’s economies – but on our cultural hegemony. The suggestion appeared to be that all those writers, poets, musicians, film-makers, designers, thinkers and other creatives whom many of us believe to be the cream of our generation, should do the decent thing and step aside – to retire and leave the stage to the young. That’s not how it works! How are the new generations going to be able to attain the heights of achievement that did the best of us if they don’t have to fight for the right so to do?
Gentlemen – and ladies – this is not helping! The young need us to rebel against. This self-flagellation and expiation helps no-one – least of all the coming generations. If we can’t give the young something to kick against we are no use to them at all…
…and if we can’t be proud of ourselves how can we possibly expect anyone else so to be?
Tags: Luck, Modern life
Regular readers will doubtless not have missed within these postings the frequent references to those venerable institutions – the English public schools. Those without these shores – should they feel moved to investigate a little more closely – may find that any preconceptions that they hold concerning the nature of these august establishments and of the type of characters they attract – and indeed breed – are at best partial. Safe to say that the stereotype of the English public school boy – whilst indubitably having at least some basis in truth – paints a somewhat misleading picture.
Those wishing to know more would have done well to catch – on the BBC last weekend – a splendid documentary by Hannah Berryman entitled “A Very English Education”. The conceit behind the production was the revisiting of some of the subjects of a previous BBC documentary series – first shown in 1979 – which examined the daily lives of a group of young men then attending Radley College. The purported intent was to discover the effect that a public school education had on the lives of these privileged youths, and to that end the first part of the film took them back their younger days to observe and to comment – in the light of their later experiences – on these rarified schooldays spent in the bucolic Oxfordshire countryside.
The programme provided – as one might expect – a fascinating insight into the nature of such an education. As it progressed – however – it became apparent that the true heart of the piece lay elsewhere. Ms Berryman astutely withheld until the very last segment the revelation of what had become of these entitled scholars as they journeyed through life. When their fates were finally revealed – in what proved an unexpected and delicately moving series of sequences – it became apparent that the real subject of the piece was considerably broader than had first appeared – on childhood and growing up – on the nature of ambition (or lack thereof), success and failure – of family and of its echoes across the generations… In short, the stuff of life itself.
“A Very English Education” was beautifully judged and expertly made, proving far greater than its initial impression promised. You may – if you act quickly – be able to catch this excellent piece on the iPlayer. If that proves impossible this review by the Guardian’s Sam Wollaston catches the tone. Don’t read it if you have a chance to catch the programme though…
I missed the first showing and had to catch up on the iPlayer myself. That was enough to reduce me to tears, but then – I am a notorious softy!
I do not much care for the recent InterWebNet ‘meme’ that goes by the soubriquet ‘Fail’, or even (apparently in extremis) – ‘Epic fail’. This – frankly bizarre – fad would seem to comprise the sourcing of images or video clips of others’ misfortunes or mistakes, the attaching of a caption – in bold capitals – proclaiming this to represent some brand of failure and then the posting of the result onto the InterWebNet.
Being of advancing years I don’t imagine that I would be expected to ‘get the point’, but I do have to say that I find the whole notion baffling. The nearest analogue that I can think of would be the suggestion that the pratfalls and banana-skin-slips so beloved of enthusiasts of physical comedy might somehow be rendered more funny by the gratuitous presence of a small child pointing a finger and pronouncing – “Ha, ha!”…
It would seem that – in this case – less in no longer more.
I can only imagine that the subtext of this strange behaviour is the implication that the poster is – by some inverse association – superior to the object of the ridicule; an attempt – it would seem – at establishing elevated status in circumstances in which there would otherwise be no connection.
I was moved to this reverie (…and I know that the gentle reader will have been wondering to what exactly this particular rant might be attributed) by the recent disclosure of an incident that would truly have been a failure on an epic scale – and which was apparently avoided by the smallest possible margin and by sheer good fortune.
I refer – of course – to the incident which took place on 23rd January 1961 in which a USAF B-52 Stratofortress carrying two Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air over Goldsboro, North Carolina – dropping its nuclear payload in the process. The arming sequence of one of the two devices was initiated as the bomb fell from the disintegrating aircraft and three out of four safety mechanisms were found subsequently to have failed. On impact the firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device and the sole reason that a detonation did not occur was that the single remaining safety system – a simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch – remained uncompromised.
Some sceptics claim that a nuclear explosion was never actually a possibility; others that the safety mechanisms as a whole clearly operated as they should have done. All I know is that the incident was just too close for comfort and that the disaster that was so narrowly averted would have changed the course of world history – not to mention the contours of the North Carolina coast.
Some rudimentary reading on the InterWebNet suggests (though it must be borne in mind that when it comes to national security none of the sources are entirely to be trusted!) that in early sixties there was indeed a brief window during which several incidents took place by which the world came within a whisker of calamity – the Goldsboro event simply being the closest call. For much of the first decade of the nuclear age bomber-carried nuclear devices were kept safe by the simple expedient of carrying some of the components separately until the last possible moment – final assembly of the devices being effected at the point of arming. By the early sixties this practice had changed – in response to the increasing complexities of the systems concerned and the time constraints imposed by the escalation of the Cold War – and the devices were fully sealed and armed electronically.
At the height of the Cold War the Strategic Air Command (SAC) kept a number of B-52s in the air at all times to counter the possibility of a Russian first strike catching the fleet on the ground. The dangers inherent in maintaining such an airborne presence with nuclear-armed craft became all too clear as a result of the chain of incidents to which I have already alluded. The Goldsboro mishap took place less than a month after the inauguration of John F Kennedy as president of the US and inquiries subsequently initiated by that administration lead ultimately to the extensive enhancement of nuclear safety procedures – including the implementation of launch codes to verify arming and firing sequences.
The advent of the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile should thus – somewhat paradoxically – have made the world a safer place, though the later admission that the coded locks demanded for all Minutemen missiles by the then US Secretary of Defence – Robert McNamara – were subsequently set by the SAC to all zeros (00000000) so as not to hold up any prospective launch hardly inspires confidence. Those too young to have lived through this perilous era are encouraged – if they have not already done so – to grab a copy of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove‘ – which biting satire still surely goes a long way towards ensuring that the defensive strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction will ultimately be regarded as the lunatic gamble that it undoubtedly was.
With the ending of the Cold War the immediate threat has – of course – somewhat diminished, though this should not blind us to the fact that there yet exist in the world in excess of 17,000 nuclear warheads of various types.
Given mankind’s propensity for hubris perhaps this fact alone might legitimately be accorded the tag – ‘Epic fail’!
Tags: Modern life, Politics
This is my least favourite work day of the year!
Why would that be?
Is it because:
- today is the start of the new academic year and the commencement of the longest, hardest term – a grim slog through to Christmas?
- my journey to work immediately takes an extra half an hour (or more!) each way as all the schools go back and the roads fill with yummy mummies transporting their precious little darlings half a mile or so to the school gates in their Chelsea tractors?
- the phone is ringing off the hook with a thousand and one requests for assistance and all my good work over the summer at purging my mailbox is undone by the encroaching tides of fresh pleas for help?
- after enjoying the tranquility of a blissfully empty campus for eight weeks it galls now to have to share it with the returning – and irritatingly freshly bronzed – teaching staff and pupils?
- of having to queue for nearly ten minutes inside the school grounds before being able to park my car in just about the furthest possible corner of the campus from my office?
- having to get up a little earlier in the morning has brought home all too clearly that the nights are getting longer and that I will soon be rising in the dark again?
- getting home a little later shows all too clearly that the nights are drawing in and it won’t be long before my homeward journey has to be accomplished in darkness?
- the summer (well, at least we’ve had a summer this year) seems soooo short and the winter soooo desperately long?
Is it – in short – any or all of those things?
No!
It is because – after very nearly four blissful months of exquisite freedom – I have once again (sob!)… to wear a tie!!
A shocked pause so that you can join me in silent mourning!
A Google search on the phrase “I hate ties” returns 98,400 items. I’m not surprised!
I could regale you at this point with a diatribe on the iniquity of imposing on the male of the species the pitiful privations of being appareled in such pointless appurtenance – or of the unfairness of the adverse judgements that seem oft-times be made on those who prefer not so to do. I could also whinge on for a while on the theme that no woman would put up with this sort of encroachment.
Trouble is, I can already hear – in my febrile mind – the Kickass Canada Girl opining that perhaps one doth protest too much (though doubtless in somewhat pithier language!) – so I won’t…
Tags: Modern life, school, work
I cannot let pass without comment the momentous and unprecedented sequence of events that unfolded last night in the parliament of the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister, David Cameron, had – in response to the apparent use of chemical weapons against its own population by the Syrian government – recalled parliament early following the summer recess in order that it might debate and subsequently vote on a motion seeking approval in principal for a limited armed intervention.
To the obvious surprise of all concerned the motion – on being put to the vote in the Commons – was decisively rejected. The UK will thus not be involved in any armed response to the events in Syria. The repercussions of this startling development (in the UK the Prime Minister pretty much has carte-blanche to go to war on his own initiative without consulting parliament) are awaited with interest.
One fact that is abundantly clear – sufficiently so that it now comes as a shock that it was not more widely anticipated – is that the outcome of the vote was heavily influenced by the events of a decade since that saw this country committed to an ill-starred invasion of Iraq based on what turned out to be faulty intelligence. The deeply flawed nature of that process – not to mention the hideous and tragic consequences of the entire enterprise – has left a sufficiently vivid scar on the psyche of the nation that even our normally bellicose parliamentary representatives shied away from a repeat experience.
During the debate it became clear that following questions would have to be answered satisfactorily before any agreement could be reached:
- Had chemical weapons actually been used? The evidence – though circumstantial – suggests that they had, though the UN Inspectors’ report – and thus a definitive answer – has yet to be delivered.
- If they have indeed been used, was the Syrian government the culprit? Cameron admitted that it was not possible to state categorically that this was the case, but stated that – in his judgement – the weight of the (circumstantial) evidence pointed to its complicity.
- Assuming that a clear evidence trail could be established what would then be the exact aim of any armed intervention? Any action would need to be clearly defined in terms of intent and extent, and would be required to improve demonstrably the situation in Syria.
- What would be the exit strategy from any action taken? How would the international community prevent any action escalating into something even more tragic than the current situation.
Parliament clearly felt that these questions had not been adequately answered and thus withheld their consent. Given my views on violence you will not be surprised to hear that Parliament – in this case – gains my approbation.
To those who would argue:
- that we should take action to prevent the Syrian government from further use of these weapons – I would point out that no action has yet been proposed that would actually have this effect. Indeed, there is no armed response – other than invasion – that could be guaranteed so to do.
- that not to take action would be to send a signal to Assad that he can get away with such crimes against innocent civilians – I would say that we are not dealing here with a child that is testing the limits of acceptable behaviour. History – recent history – informs us that a dictator who is prepared to use such weapons against his own population will not be persuaded to stop so doing by the ingress of a few cruise missiles. It is possible to effect such an aim – as the allies did in the case of Saddam Hussein – by invasion… but look at the consequences of that course of action.
- that we should send a clear signal to the Syrian government – I would point out that a signal is only clear if the consequences of ignoring it are made evident – and if there is the credible will to enforce such consequences. Vague threats do not a clear signal make.
- that we have a moral obligation to intervene – I would ask how it is that of the many atrocities that have been perpetrated across the globe in recent decades by other dictators and other regimes we have an ‘obligation’ in this case, though apparently not in others? If it is an obligation then it must apply in all cases – and not just those that suit. If the obligation is in fact relative then the moral case is surely dubious at best.
- that not to take action would be cowardly – I would suggest that actually the opposite is true. To admit that there is no clear course of action that can be taken that would improve the situation actually requires more courage than the inverse.
- that not to take action would leave us ‘sitting on the sidelines wringing our hands’ whilst leaving the US and others take on the role of global policeman – I don’t know where to start with this one!
The suffering that we are seeing in Syria is truly shocking and terrible. The acts that are being perpetrated – as far as one can tell by both sides – are criminal and those responsible must eventually be prosecuted through the international courts. We must – however – be rigorous in the analysis of our motives for any proposed response. If our desire to pursue a course of armed retaliation is rooted in the pained belief that ‘we must do something‘, then the danger is that our true motivation is the assuaging of our own feelings of guilt and helplessness, rather than any realistic ambition to produce the most beneficial effect on the ground… which latter might in this case simply mean just doing the least possible harm!
It is a truism to state that there are no easy answers. I state it nonetheless… The one positive that I can myself draw from this perilous affair is that maybe – just maybe – we might be starting to learn some lessons from our history.
Tags: Politics, United Kingdom
Now – I know that regular readers may find this difficult to comprehend, given my normal sweet nature – but throughout this last week my mood has been distinctly – how shall I put it – tetchy!
Looking back to this time last year – as illustrated by this less than temperate post – it should be apparent that this is, to an extent, an annual phenomenon. Granted that last August was in many ways exceptional (the Kickass Canada Girl had just gone back to Canada and I was feeling abandoned and overwhelmed) it has to be said these last few days before the start of the new academic year are always fraught with difficulty. The teaching staff – having disappeared for the entire summer – pitch up again with all manner of last minute demands and requests just at our busiest time of the year. This time around we have also suffered from an apparent lack of planning and forethought (on the part of others!) which caused us to sit twiddling our thumbs (metaphorically at least) for the first part of the summer, followed latterly by a mad dash to execute a variety of complex projects for which it is far too late for there to be any reasonable hope of completion before the new term starts.
This makes me grumpy – which in turn leads to my behaviour towards others falling short of the standards to which I normally aspire. This culminated yesterday in what might be considered a mild incidence of ‘road rage’.
There is a point on my weary journey home at which a bottleneck on the motorway that I use – two lanes merging into one – inevitably causes the traffic to bunch and to slow down. The queue of vehicles shuffles forward sluggishly at this point – merging in turn in the accepted fashion (accepted in the UK at any rate!).
Or at least – that is what usually happens. Yesterday I was in the outside of the two lanes and I duly let the inside car go first and then moved to follow. The next driver in the inner lane – half a car-length behind me – had other ideas and proceeded to muscle his way forward preventing me from completing my maneuver. Forced to stop unexpectedly I glared at this inconsiderate automobilist, throwing my hands heavenwards in that time honoured gesture that is recognised the world over as meaning – “What the f*ck?”!
Normal behaviour on the part of the offender at this point is to make a show of not even being aware of one’s presence. In this case – to the contrary – the aggressor wound down his window and glared back – making gestures of his own and mouthing what I can only imagine to have been language of an ultramarine hue. He then proceeded to drive in what can only be described as a menacing manner – sometimes hovering in front of me, sometimes rather too close behind – in a fashion that suggested he was just waiting for me to come to a halt so that he might have an opportunity to leap from his motor to beat the cr*p out of me. Fortunately he had to turn off the motorway before I did, and I did not see him again.
Not pleasant – and not my doing, though I have no doubt that my mood probably exacerbated the situation.
The truth is that I do know – deep down – at least part of the reason for my present petulant frame of mind. Had our original scheme come to fruition as intended I would by now be retired and we would be busy establishing our new life in Victoria. Instead of which I find myself dragging my weary bones towards the start of another arduous academic year.
The Girl was sympathetic. “Go to work – ya hippie!”, she explained.
She had a point…
Tags: Retirement, school, work
We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.
Lord Byron
At the roughly equivalent point last year – shortly after the Kickass Canada Girl and I had returned from Provence and before she flew back to Victoria to face the as yet unanticipated storm – we met some very old friends of ours (and – in terms of longevity – of mine in particular) for a drink at a very pleasant pub in the Surrey hills. I posted concerning that rendezvous here – the subject of which being elicited by Oldest Friend’s wife’s then recent retirement.
It is a sad side-effect of busy modern lives that – although we met our friends subsequently once more before Christmas – we realised recently that we had not done so since. Indeed – we had not even spoken to them! We rectified this sorry omission at the weekend by meeting for a drink at an altogether different – but equally pleasant – pub in the Surrey hills. Much catching up was done but one major topic of our conversation was not dissimilar to that of the previous encounter, we being – quite naturally – most keen to learn how their first year of mutual retirement had gone.
This whole question is once again at the forefront of our minds and I will be posting further on the subject shortly. Given the current climate it is no surprise that many of us of advancing years find ourselves preoccupied with thoughts as to how we will live once we are no longer ‘economically active’. Being baby-boomers we are nowadays assailed routinely by (or more accurately ‘on behalf of’) those less fortunate than ourselves (for which – in this case – read ‘younger’) and lambasted by complaints (of increasing ferocity) that we are somehow stealing their birthrights and plundering their futures.
The irony is that what many of those of us with a particularly late-sixties upbringing (if not actually hippies then certainly empathisers!) thought we were doing was our bit to save the planet. We are a gentle people with left of centre persuasions. We care about the environment. We care about inequality. We care about injustice. We still want to know what’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding… Accusations of selfishness thus wound us deeply.
And yet…
Whereas it has always been in my nature to feel vaguely guilty that I earn a pretty decent salary for what doesn’t exactly seem like rocket science (to me, at any rate!) and that I have been hugely fortunate to have found myself – quite accidentally – a member of some really rather good pension schemes – and whereas on the rare occasions that I have been obliged to seek better terms and conditions the experience has left me feeling as though I had just been accused of indecent intrusion upon some innocent instance of ovis aries…
…I can’t help but observe that – of late – my demeanor in such circumstances has shifted somewhat – and I am become considerably more single minded when it comes to maximising my possible returns. I am uncomfortably aware that this is the inevitable result of the realisation that time is running out – and that once the deed is done and I am no longer gainfully employed then the opportunities to influence my standard of living become negligible.
But that don’t mean that I like it!
Tags: Friends, Pension, Retirement
Recent Comments