Catastrophes - and beginnings!

Just when you think that you have things in hand, you have a grip on your life and can make some plans - that’s when you’re in your comfort zone and catastrophe will come and smack you in the back of the head!

There was a programme on tv the other night about the catastrophes in Earth’s past, which have made the planet what it is, and paved the path to creating life. The presenter, the ubiquitous Tony Robinson, made the point that catastrophes are usually seen as unmitigatedly bad, but actually each catastrophe is a new beginning. Without the arrival of cyanobacteria, which produced the terrible poison gas, oxygen, life as we know it could not have appeared, but for the life forms to whom oxygen was lethal it was certainly a catastrophe. This ‘Catastrophe is a new beginning’ idea set me thinking about my own life, in a timely way, as Jeffery came home last night to say that he has unexpectedly been made redundant. As we have very little financial cushion, our capital being tied up in our flat, this bears all the hallmarks of catastrophe in today’s financial climate! However, we are not in despair, for we have been here before, in worse condition, and found that things did not turn out as we feared. Each time being open minded and determined to cling to our core values has led to new beginnings, in ways we could never have planned for.

In the 1970s I was in my second marriage, with 2 daughters and 2 stepdaughters, and a handsome and hard working husband, everything seemed on the up. Ha! I should have known better, first my husband turned out to be not simply a transvestite, but to want a sex change. Ok, I loved him, I felt for his pain, I would do my best to support him through this, even though it seemed an unmitigated disaster from my perspective. Could it get worse? oh yes! While he was away from home at a gender re-assessment clinic, I discovered he had been ‘interfering’ with the girls, and it had been happening for some time. I think that most people will agree that for a mother in her late 20s and her children, this qualifies as ‘catastrophe. At the time I could see no way in which there could be a new beginning in this, my whole life, on every level, was a wasteland. I was wrong. Out of the blue, not long after I had refused to allow my husband to return to the family home and had my stepdaughters taken from my care, an old friend made contact. He helped me to see a way out of my terrifying situation, helping me to find a live-in job in the Orkney Isles, where he lived, enabling me to take my vulnerable little girls to the opposite end of the UK from where my husband was, and protect them from the likelihood of meeting him again.

Orkney was instantly home, a gorgeous feast for all our senses, and a total escape from the alarming situation we had left behind. Of course, once the pressure was off, I went into reaction and had a bit of a breakdown, but my old friend and I developed a close relationship and we had 2 wonderful children together - 2 new beginnings! Catastrophe continued to dog my heels, losing my only parent just after the birth of my 3rd child, and my relationship with my old friend turning very sour, but, yet again, disaster became a new beginning when I met my present husband even as my Orkney life was falling apart around me. Our relationship was born out of coinciding catastrophes for both of us, and has evolved through a series of disasters that kicked us into ever changing world views. I am still deeply homesick for Orkney, but going backwards in life is not healthy, and I can always visit my eldest daughter and her family, who returned home to Orkney a few years ago! She, too, has found new beginnings through catastrophe, and goes from strength to strength, endlessly re-inventing herself and discovering new aspects of herself, I’m so proud of her and all my children, who all seem to be mastering the knack of finding new beginnings in the debris of disaster.

I have a special Facebook Friend who introduced me to blogging, and gave me the courage to do it myself. She is a lovely person, talented and beautiful, who has helped me understand many things about America that mystified me, but she seems to have been hit hard by the results of the recent Presidential election. While most of my American friends are celebrating, for her the result is a catastrophe, I do hope she soon finds a new beginning in her catastrophe.

We shall overcome . . . .

As a non-American, some may feel I am ill equiped to comment on the recent Presidential election, but what many Americans fail to take into account is the impact that their country has on the rest of the world - which, believe it or not, is alot bigger than the USA! As was said many years ago, when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold - but it’s actually more than just Europe, particularly now that this amazing creation, the internet, has made us a truly global society. I know, there are plenty who would argue with me on that, too, but I’m not arguing that it’s an homogenised society. The speed and accessibilty of information has changed not just our world view, but the very way we think and behave, even the way we feel. Our perceptions of reality are now enormously expanded and changeable, as the net feeds us an ever changing wealth of information, and this is what I see reflected in the election of Barack Obama as America’s next President.

World wide, the struggle for civil rights, and supply of basic human needs, has grown enormously since WW2, particularly with the advent and availability of radio and tv. It’s a truism that we don’t crave what we’ve never had, but the expasion of information accessibility has meant that more and more of those ‘at the bottom of the heap’ have realised what they are missing - that compared to the small, wealthy proportion of the population, they are grossly deprived and disempowered. This has created a powerful groundswell of discontent and anger that, sadly, the ‘haves’ appear to be oblivious to. With the advent of the net, it is much easier for the ‘have nots’ to link up and start to form action groups, and to educate themselves in their own potential and abilities. Networking groups such as Facebook and YouTube are not simply about entertainment or time wasting, as some employers are prone to see it, they are powerful tools for people to form alliances, not just locally and nationally, but worldwide, and to take action, to turn individual actions into an irresistable tide.

I believe that the election of President Obama is just the beginning - I fear that ignorant reactionaries may well attempt, or even suceed, to assassinate him, which would be an appalling tragedy, but not, I believe, the end of the movement for change. The disempowered have now discovered that they have real power, after all, and I don’t believe they will reliquish it, even without their symbolic figurehead. After the assassination of Kennedy the movement for progress and change collapsed in grief and fear, but if something dreadful ( heaven forbid) happens to Obama, I believe it would light the touch paper to an explosion of anger that would overwhelm not just America, but the world. He is only one man, with a terrifying task ahead of him, but he is the thin end of a rapidly growing wedge, that the ‘haves’ and the societally old fashioned ignore at their peril. It’s not Communism, or religious fundamentalists, of whatever stripe, that those at present in power need to beware of , it’s something they really can’t control now, because it’s gone too far - it’s the empowerment of the disempowered by the enormous expansion in connectivity that the internet has brought.

This is why I believe we are truly entering a global society, made up of a staggering variety of differing cultures, all with something to offer. Today’s young people take this connectivity for granted, and use it with a fluency and imagination that is inspiring, they socialise, and work, across national borders almost without thinking about it, it is no longer necessary to travel physically to share in a world wide society, and market. This connectivity is also why we are going to have to radically re-think the whole financial system - one nation’s financial mistakes now have an almost instant global effect, we can no longer afford any kind of insularity. Humans have come to dominate the globe through our ability be flexible, and adapt to changing situations. The net has speeded up this process of change and adaptation, or rather the necessity for it, exponentially. As has always been the case, those who are not able, or willing, to adapt as change drives through our lives, will fall by the wayside, in this new context, there will be no room for inflexibility.

Weather wisdom

Saturday night was just a bit too exciting - not the nightlife, of which there is little in the middle of a field, but the consequences of the weather. The wind was rather more than our porch awning was made to cope with, and poles snapped, allowing the porch to collapse against the caravan door - trapping us inside! Jeffery managed to force the door open, as the roof fabric ripped across, and he re-arranged the guy ropes to hold things open, while he removed the broken poles - after we had rescued all the washing, and food, stored in the porch! It was great fun, in the pitch dark, with a manic porch trying to entrap us in its folds. Yesterday my heroic husband managed to mend the poles (narrowly avoiding losing a tooth in the process) and replace them, so our porch still stands, if somewhat the worse for wear. If we continue to be beset with strong winds, I have no great hopes for its longevity, but in the meantime we hope for a dry weekend, to try and repair the rips. The episode set me thinking about other times when the weather has played havoc with my life, and made me realise how very lucky I have been in that regard - I can only recall one serious re-arrangement of life due to the weather.

In 1977, when we had first moved to Orkney, the Islands had their worst winter for many years. Orkney is a glorious place, and I am still homesick, despite having left in 1982. It is a place of sweeping vistas, awe-inspiring skies, and relentless winds - I can remember, on one occasion, having to turn my back to the wind, and put my hand over my face in order to be able to breathe out, the wind was so determined to go UP my nose! Once you have been there a little while, you either get used to, and enjoy the wind, or you have a breakdown - or leave! I learned to love the wind, but that first winter I also learned never to underestimate it, you learn quickly when you make the mistake of opening a car door with one hand and have it torn from your grip, taking skin with it, and nearly tearing the door from the car itself.

I and my children had been living in a lovely static caravan, parked in the shelter of the disused deep-litter chicken house where my partner at the time had his pottery. As winter approached, we thought that it might be wise to rent something a bit more sturdy for the winter, so we rented a bungalow from a friend. The bungalow was usually a holiday let, and was very luxurious after the caravan, it was all electric, with plenty of heating and space. We had a cosy Christmas, cooking lots of lovely Orkney produce in the spacious kitchen, and enjoying the long nights with the Aurora Borealis to make us gasp. However, come the New Year, 1978, the weather started to get worse, and finally we had warnings of severe weather on its way - and in Orkney, you take such warnings very seriously. Very shortly, we had blizzards confining us to the house, and then the power went off. This is a risk you take for granted in such windy country, and you have alternative sources of light, heat and cooking to see you through a day or two - the engineers are very experienced, and don’t take long to get things up and running again.

This time, things were different - there were impassable snow drifts even on major roads, and the phone wires were strung with HORIZONTAL icicles! All the water pipes were frozen, no-one was likely to have electricity for weeks and almost everyone was completely snowed in. Well, there was plenty of pristine snow to melt for water supplies, and the children were delighted not to be able to go to school - or anywhere, much, in fact! We had given my eldest daughter a sled for Christmas, which came into its own, carrying all sorts of supplies across the sparkling white fields, but we only had limited non-electrical heat and cooking supplies, and the bungalow was rapidly becoming a miserable place to be. The caravan had ample gas supplies, and was a smaller place to keep warm, so the sled was pressed into service to transport all our possessions back to the caravan!

It was certainly a wise move, as we were cut off for quite a long time -2 snow ploughs broke their drive chains trying to clear the road at the bottom of the drive, and eventually it was cleared with shovels and man-power! In the mean time, I had still 2 children to care for, including a little girl who was still in terry nappies at night - you have no idea how much snow it takes to wash just one nappy! We have a few pictures, still, of 2 swaddled children, and a sled, grinning in the snow, oblivious to the struggle it took to keep them warm, dry and fed!

Some years later, coincidentally when we left Orkney, in 1982, we encountered similarly determined snowy weather - we very nearly didn’t mange to get off the islands, and when we reached the mainland we had an epic journey south on the train. We rode through dramatic snowscapes, with more and more frequent weather-induced stops as we went further south. Eventually we reached Hereford - and got no further for a couple of days. The buses weren’t running and the roads outside the city were barely passable, so we were stuck in a hotel for a couple of days - the cat didn’t think much of it all! Eventually we found a taxi driver who was willing to try and take us to Hay - another epic journey! When we arrived at Jeffery’s little cottage, we found the back door completely blocked by snow - the whole alley was full to the tops of the doors, and snow drifts in the loft.

As I look back at these memories, I find I am deeply grateful. Not only did we survive, but we had fun, and we all came to have a new appreciation of how lucky we are to live in modern times, with so much protection from the dangers and discomforts that nature assault us with! What has made human beings so powerful is our resourcefulness, and these episodes make me glad to still have a bit of that left.

Fiding out about myself

For most of my life I have been unable to remember most of my childhood - I have had a few little 'snapshots' that have little or no context or connection to each other. Knowing that I didn't have the smoothest or most secure of childhoods, I have simply accepted that my mind shut out painful memories and not worried about it.

Last week we were watching a tv programme about a young anorexic, made with great sympathy and tenderness, and gentle enough in its approach to get the little girl to be trusting and eloquent about herself and her world view. Part way through I had one of those 'OH-MY-GOD' moments, when I suddenly found myself thinking "Yes, I remember doing that, that's just how it is." She was describing how she would hide food, and pretend she had eaten it, and that the idea of eating would sometimes make her feel nauseous, even actually vomit, and it was as if a light had gone on in a dark room in my head. Suddenly I was 8 years old again, sitting in the school dining room, hiding sausages on the little shelf under the edge of the table, feeling sick as I looked at the remaining food on my plate, being terrified at the idea of having to eat it.

Since that 'light bulb moment' the illumination has spread out, and linked together more and more of those little snapshots of memory, filling in many of the gaps in between. I realise that I must have been anorexic when we moved into 43 Castle Street, when I was about 7, as my mother and doctor were both concerned at how thin I was, and how little I ate, so I was prescribed some sort of 'tonic' that I had to take before meals. It was a revolting, thick, green syrup which did quite the opposite of stimulating my appetite!

I also have come to understand just how much my father's brothers and their families did to help us after my father's death. At some stage, after my father's death, but, I think, before my sister's birth, I stayed with my Uncle Herbert and Aunt Ruby and their 2 (at the time) children. They lived in the country somewhere, with (to me) a very long gravel track to the house. I vividly remember (to the extent of bringing tears to my eyes again) running down this track after my mother as she left, eventually falling on my face and skinning my elbows - I still have the scars. My poor mother had no space or strength to recognise or help me with my grief for my father, she was struggling with her own, and the basic need to carry on with the practicalities. Until we moved into 43 Castle Street we had no home, and I was left in the care of Herbert and Ruby, or David and Phyllis, several times, and then I had to share my only remaining parent with a new sister - clearly I must have felt totally deserted and rejected - certainly I was being carried away helplessly on a raging current of incomprehensible events, feeling totally abandoned.

I also remember feeling that everyone wished I had been a boy, that I would, somehow, have been more use to my mother. Somehow, in the wonky thinking of a child, I connected this with advice to 'eat up, so you get to be a big, strong girl' which wasn't really what I thought my mother wanted me to be, after all, she seemed to have plenty of time and attention for my little sister, and she was only a baby - perhaps if I didn't get 'big and strong' I would be more lovable? Looking back, and connecting the memories, i have come to the conclusion that i must have been starving myself from 6 years old till about 9. The turning point was the arrival of my stepfather, Tom Brown.

Tom was only part of our lives for 2-3 years, and I only had contact with him during the school holidays, but during that brief time, his attention was enough to turn around my picture of myself, to make me feel I was alright, and it wasn't all my fault. Sadly, he was unfaithful to my mother, and my sister hated him, so he vanished from my life as suddenly as he had arrived, and then I wasn't even allowed to mention his name. However, his impact on me was such that both my first 2 husbands looked almost exactly like him. He allowed me to 'help' him fix cars, made toys and playthings for me, and generally treated me as someone he enjoyed being with, for the first time since Daddy died, someone made me feel loved and valuable. Unknowingly, I think he literally saved my life.

Having realised that I starved myself for so long, I can now understand why my teeth were always so bad - I deprived myself of vital nutrients at a time when my body was laying down its foundations for my adult life, no wonder my health has always been dodgy. Windows of understanding continue to keep opening, following this one 'light bulb moment', and more and more memories are returning. I find myself grieving for my childhood self, and for my mother, too, I really don't know how she survived - certainly she wouldn't have without David, Phyllis, Herbert and Ruby, and I don't think I would have either, perhaps the reason I have largely cut myself off from my family is that contact with them made me uncomfortable, due to the devastating memories I had repressed in which they played such an important part.

Musings on an unappreciated youth!

"Jung said the greatest burden for the child is the unlived life of the parent.'

A recent exchange on Facebook, with my children and a granddaughter, reminded me of how easily we forget our own youth as we get older. It is far too easy to brush our own mistakes and embarrassments under our mental carpet, and behave towards our young in a painfully superior and repressive way. When I left school I really had no idea what to do with myself, I had been at boarding school since the age of 8, and left at 18 - ten years of taking no real responsibility for myself, totally unprepared to stand on my own two feet! So, my school, with my mother's support, arranged for me to go as an 'au pair' to a family in France, where I would help care for 2 little girls, and attend classes in French. Suffice to say it all went pear-shaped, and I ended up being left with the children and no money, so I took a job where I didn't need to speak French - go-go dancing in one of the new 'discos'! The whole thing went more pear-shaped still, and I ended up returning to England early and traumatised, unable to even talk to my family about what had happened. No-one was to blame for this situation, but it left me even more insecure than before, and led to many years of depression and emotional fragility - to a very real extent, a largely 'unlived life'.

This insecurity, or shame at our own behaviour (which also applies, in spades, to me!) can lead us to being overly strict and protective with our children - there's nothing like one's own memories of disaster to raise awareness of what could happen to one's children, and want to prevent it. This course of action can become a big mistake - if we think a little further, we realise that what we went through as young people made us who we are today, and that it was often our mistakes that gave us most wisdom. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do whatever we can to prepare our children to cope with the nasty things that life will undoubtedly throw at them!

If we have the courage to be honest, first with ourselves, and then with our children, about our own past and the mistakes, delights and joys therein, we have something of value to offer. I wish I had realised this years ago, then I wouldn't need to make so many apologies to my children! My own refusal to face my own culpability in the very deep lows of my life cost my children, and my partners and friends, deeply, and there is no way to go back and change that - they have paid the price of my self-delusion, too.

I have led an eventful life, to say the least, including marriage to a transexual (well, that was his self-diagnosis, he was certainly a very disturbed and unhappy transvestite, at least) experiments with mind-altering substances (several legal and far from welcome) one night stands aplenty and marital rape, but I wouldn't say that I had truly lived my life to the full - I was always far too insecure to be able to throw myself into life with the abandon I would have liked. Today I watch skateboarders and rollerblading, snowboarding and breakdancing with a wistful regret that I missed out on such fun out of mere cowardice. Now, my body is paying me back for not taking care of it, not taking exercise, smoking etc, and I can only watch, and be so proud of my children who have gone on to do so many things that I never dared. I got a bare 5 'O'levels, and I have a daughter who teaches English to high flying executives and another who got a degree (despite reading difficulties), a son who is heading into management in one of the UK's biggest up-market stores and another daughter who has brought up children saddled with real physical difficulties to be young people who thrill me with their courage and intelligence.

I'm still an odd-ball, but I'm now able to take a pride in it, and accept my own part in creating who I am and how my life happened, and what's more, my children seem to be shrugging off the burden of my unlived life. Very few of us have the right to stand in judgement, we all have something like promiscuity, drugs, drink, or just plain stupidity somewhere in our past, it's unreasonable not to allow space for our young people to have similar idiocies in theirs!

This sporting life!

I'll immediately hold up my hand and state that I'm most decidedly not a sports fan, never have been, never will be, but - and it's a surprising 'but' to me, I have been entranced by the coverage of the Paralympics that I have watched.

The whole package of supporting a team, the astounding amount of TV and general media coverage of football (soccer!) etc leaves me with my mouth open in astonishment and bewilderment. I understand, in theory, the whole thing of being part of a group identity, part of a 'tribe', and the sense of security that some people get from it, and I can certainly see the business merits of encouraging that, and I'll admit to seeing that it can do alot for giving the disadvantaged support and the incentive to fight, and overcome, their disadvantages. However, this is all theory, and in my 61 years of life, I have never been able to empathise with this obsession - though I'll admit to a few obsessions of my own!

The people involved in the Paralympics have opened my eyes - not just the athletes themselves, but the myriad of support organisations, the spectators and families and even the media themselves have exuded such unalloyed and genuine joy, that I couldn't help but be caught up in it. The normal Olympics seemed, as with most professional sport these days, to be bedeviled with anger, bitterness, back-biting competitiveness and drugs and I was deeply depressed by the whole circus, not to mention the politics associated with it all. For me, it was a great relief when it was over and the TV schedules and media generally returned to their usual nauseating gossip!

I tuned into the Paralympics to give my eyes and brain something else to do while knitting - I often watch mindless daytime TV for that purpose, and am occasionally pleasantly surprised! The sheer delight in what they were doing on the part of the athletes was a joy, and their good sportsmanship, compared to the able bodied competitors, gave me hope for the world. Knowing that, in Chinese society, there was a long-standing discomfort with disability, not to say rejection of people so afflicted, I was overwhelmed by the way the Chinese people, as a whole, had cast aside their old ways of thinking and thrown themselves into supporting, and appreciating, the achievements of the 'disabled' competitors, and spectators too, was heart warming. This dramatic change in attitudes is an example to us all, and as someone newly faced with disability challenges, I found the whole thing deeply inspiring.

There were many inspiring stories, and many of the most prominent athletes will go on to follow in the steps of people like Tanni Grey-Thompson and become famous to a degree that would have seemed impossible to disabled athletes, and disabled people generally, only a decade or so ago. At last, we are starting to treat them as people first, and disability is only the door which has opened for them, to achievement in fields they might not have otherwise considered. For me, the image that will remain is the joy and disbelief on the face of 13 year old Eleanor Simmons when she won her race in the swimming pool - what race it was, her time etc, are all irrelevant, what matters is her joy in her sport and her joy in achievement, for its own sake - that, to me, is what sport should be about. Money, politics, fame, tribalism, to me, these have all corrupted sport and the Paralympics seemed, somehow, to have put them in their place, at least temporarily.

Ripples in the pond of a life.

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth." Kahlil Gibran, 'The Prophet'

In my last blog I mentioned that I struggled at school because of my inability to see the blackboard. I finally got my first pair of spectacles at about 11, and my whole world was transformed - literally. Suddenly everything was not only clearer, but apparently much larger, too, no wonder I had seemed to be so clumsy. I had probably not helped my vision by reading voraciously, with a book barely inches from my nose, from an early age - books had been the only friends to such a shy and insecure little girl, and had been vital in my many solitary stays in the sanitorium. The ripples that spread from this one difficulty spread far, although I could read, I couldn't, as I said, see the blackboard, so I only learned what I was able to find in books, thus I became an enthusiast for history, for instance, while such subjects as arithmetic, let alone maths, remained a mystery for most of my educational life, as I never had the basic grounding - no one realised, until too late (ie once I had left school and become a parent) that my limited vision had also limited my ability to learn to such a high degree.

This whole slant to what information I could access must have had a considerable influence on who I am now, by the time I could see a blackboard, or watch a film, I was halfway through my schooling, and missing a reliable foundation in several subjects. None of my teachers seemed to be aware of the effect of my visual problems on what I had been able to learn, so I was often categorised as stupid, or by the more perceptive, who recognised that I was reasonably intelligent, as lazy. I found myself on the receiving end of a great deal of anger, from a wide variety of teachers, but particularly maths teachers, one in particular of whom frequently reduced me to tears, and on one occasion I was so frightened I wet myself! To this day, the whole idea of maths still paralyses me, at times. I was fortunate in my headmistress at St Mary's Hall, my final school, in Brighton. Miss Conrady recognised that I wasn't simply stupid, or lazy, but missing out on a basic understanding of numbers. so while my contemporaries were studying for maths 'O' levels, she gave me individual lessons in basic arithmetic. For this, I can never thank her enough, without it I could not have run the small businesses I have done, or have got my City & Guilds in Dress & Design - though this was still a considerable struggle - pattern cutting is almost all geometry, which was way beyond what Miss Conrady had equipped me with!

I have also been biased in the direction of self-teaching, as I developed the habit of answering my own questions via books, and unable to follow group practical teaching, working on things by myself until I worked it out for myself. Thus, many of the skills I have have been achieved alone, with the help of a well written and illustrated book or or two - indeed, many a library full! Even once I could see a blackboard, having been unable to partake in that kind of learning for so long, I found it difficult to get involved with the process. As I was also socially inept, not to say isolated, I couldn't turn to many of my contemporaries for support, as I mostly had no friends, and most of those I did have were struggling as much as I was.

This all leaves me wondering how many other people's lives have been distorted by these kind of unrecognised handicaps to learning, we have a major problem in this country with people leaving school, still unable to read - how much of this is down to similarly unperceived physical difficulties? How many teachers see their pupils as people like themselves, rather than a challenge to their authority? Don't misunderstand, i have great admiration for teachers, they do a vital and difficult job, but every barrel has a few dodgy apples, as this kind of dodgy apple can cause problems of a magnitude that very few are willing to recognise. Perhaps, as a society, we need to be more willing question 'experts', more willing to empathise with children as people like ourselves, but more fragile and with much less control over their own experience of life.