Shared Experience

I've recently had a couple of Mini Breaks in London, seeing shows & exhibitions. The first time was with a long standing friend, the second with my daughter. Both times the experience was all the more pleasurable because it was shared & discussed with someone with whom I have a lot in common & known a long time.

The arts stimulate imagination & thought. They make us realise the heights of creativity & skill that human beings can attain. Each one of us has a different perception & understanding of what we have seen & that is sharpened & brought into focus by sharing the experience with someone else. We are the richer through another persons perceptions.

I could go to similar things by myself, & would undoubtedly enjoy the experience & probably strike up a conversation with someone else. But there is something special about people with whom one has spent a lot of time & as a result with whom there is a close bond. There is an easy discourse & reference to previous things seen & experienced which amplifies the new. Such companions are to be treasured.

As I age I realise how important these friends are. Some are already, sadly, lost along the way. Some I lost because of misunderstandings, some because of illness & death. In my younger days I possibly did not work hard enough at retaining them because of work & family commitments. But all were, at some point, important in my life.

I do now realise that nothing is as important as people one can laugh & cry with & be truly oneself.

Memory & Mrs Thatcher

I visualise my brain as Gruyere cheese with black holes into which current & past memories disappear. In common with friends of my age, I experience the weird sensation of what I was about to do slipping out of my consciousness, so I have to re-trace my steps to try & jog the memory back into awareness. If I don't write tasks down there is every chance I will forget them. So I have a complex system of lists, a diary & and wall calendar. Disconcertingly there is every possibility that I can have a conversation and completely forget it - as though it never happened.

Similarly I have a very poor recollection of much of my childhood & adolescence. I'm not sure why this is, because many of my friends seem to remember much more & in the minutest detail. I think I was probably quite unhappy at home & at school & my brain is protecting me. We are capable of  blocking a lot out to avoid painful memories. I don't dwell on it though. The here & now is much more important & I am shaped by my past & stronger for it.

The death of Mrs Thatcher has brought her period of history back into the forefront of people's consciousness. Maybe that's a good thing because it puts today's economic stringency into context. I do remember the bloody miners strike & the images of the clashes between them & the police. I remember the wives supporting their men and the strident & extreme Arthur Scargill. I remember the 3 day week which seems far worse to me than current austerities. I remember the lights going out & the decline in manufacturing industries. They were dire times & politics & people were polarised.

Our memories are important whoever we are & wherever we live. History is written in memory. Memory of events shows patterns of cause & effect. However I do think that we shouldn't dwell in the past. We should learn & take from the past but live in the now & move forward.

I will be pleased when today's funeral of Mrs Thatcher is over. She has stirred painful memories & old divisions. When today is over I hope she will RIP & we can move on. I hope there will be no mawkish sanctifying of her memory. She doesn't warrant it.

St Francis & Margaret Thatcher

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Fortunately Mrs Thatcher will not achieve eternal life or sainthood. I doubt that St Francis would have felt much in common with her & her use of his prayer shows her arrogant & messianic, misguided, self belief. In time History will judge, but personally I find it impossible to equate the words peace, love, hope, joy & understanding with the woman I remember. 

I found it extremely difficult to hear that strident voice which brooked no opposition or alternative perspective. I also couldn't bear the way she strode along, trampling on lives. Ultimately she revealed her overweening self - absorbtion by her use of the Royal "we", seeming to think she was the alternative Queen. It wasn't enough that she meddled in & changed almost every aspect of British life, unpardonably she seemed to gloat while doing it.

I do blame her & her Consevative colleagues for the financial mess that we have been in since 2008. Without her de-regulation of finance based capitalism & the move into the credit boom we would not be where we are now. She is unique, her legacy is world wide financial bankruptcy.

At the same time she sold off the "family silver" by selling council houses & state assets to bribe gullible voters who had no concept of the long term harm that was being done. Today there is precious little social housing & young people can't afford to buy. She is unique, her legacy is generations of amoral, lets have it now at any cost, yuppies.

She presided over the destruction of traditional industry without giving any support to the people & communities whose lives were destroyed. We are now a nation of charity shops & banks. We manufacture very little. She is unique, her legacy  is jobless communities & whole families who have no hope of employment.

I think it is a great pity that out first & only female Prime Minister showed none of the female qualities that could have made her great. I do not mourn her passing. I just hope that some day the society, which she said did not exist, can recover and become fairer, kinder & more balanced.

 

Class

I've just done the BBC class test which could hardly be said to be in depth. We British would like to feel that we have moved on from rigid class boundaries & to some extent we have. But the mere fact we repeatedly focus on these sorts of things shows that we are still class ridden. While we still have a hereditary Monarchy & Aristocracy we will always be a hierarchical, class ridden society. But there is some mobility between the class boundaries.

While the rich get ever richer through inherited wealth there will always be a chasm between the rich and the poor. Perhaps everyone should be "working class" & assets above a certain level should be given to the needy, wherever they are. Or used for big global projects to protect the world we are destroying.

My father & mother had no choice but to leave school in their very early teens. My father had a limited reading age. My mother was intelligent & could probably have benefited from a good education. Both of them languished in the "working class". He was a lorry driver, then a furnace man in a copper smelting factory, ending up as a boiler man in a big department store. She worked in service, & in toy factory & a chocolate cake making factory. Their field of choice was narrow. We had lodgers to make ends meet.

My life & lifestyle is light years away from them and from my childhood because of my education & working life in a profession. Yet I still honour my roots. My beliefs about fairness & equality have been shaped by my father's strong Labour & trade union allegiance. My lifelong love of learning was derived from my mothers passionate belief that education was the key for girls as well as boys.

I left the working class behind. But you can take the girl out of the working class, but not the working class out of the woman. Not everyone can or should be the same. Everyone cannot be equal. But I would love to live in a society where everyone had equal opportunities. Where everyone could develop their full potential through their own efforts & wealth played no part in that possibility. Where everyone had access to the same high quality education & health care.

I don't think many countries have achieved that goal - except maybe the Scandinavians, who are closer than we are. Until we do, our society will be held back by the invisible dividing lines between people. Inequality will breed discontent & that discontent will fester away till something sparks off the anger of the disengaged & disempowered. It is in everyone's interest to put that right. Soon.

Friends, Neighbours, Acquaintances & Followers

What is a friend, how can you define the concept? How many real friends can anyone have - is there a limit? (To some extent the word "friend" has become debased by Facebook). Is there a time limit on real friendship? Does what we need from a friend change over time & life experience?

Pondering this I realise that I haven't retained contact with anyone from my primary school years in Birmingham. I have changed & moved on mentally & geographically. It would be nice to meet up again & reminisce about what seems, in retrospect, to have been a much simpler time. I renewed a friendship from my Grammar school after I retired & also went to a reunion last year. Although some friendships when I was at college seemed important at the time, I have lost contact with everyone.

Most of my real friendships stem from my working life. Pleasingly it didn't seem to matter that I was a Head Teacher, which can distance you from people you work with. Sadly some of those friends are now dead, three of whom I loved & still miss. Some friends are more recent, but not valued any the less. All these friends have seen me through the highs & lows, and I have, I hope, done the same for them.

Some friends I have lost contact with in difficult circumstances, which I now wish could be repaired. Sh.. happens, our lives are complicated, we all do and say things we regret. Some friendships which are lost to me will probably never be repaired, which is a shame because I do believe in dialogue & trying to see the other persons point of view.

I'm old enough & wise enough now to know that real friends need to be treasured. They are irreplaceable. I'm blessed because I have friends that I could talk to about anything & they could do the same I hope. Friends who make the effort to keep in regular contact because they really empathise with my situation, even if they haven't had the experience of "flying solo". Friends who seem to be capable of limitless thoughtful support & wonderful humour too. They are particularly valued because I haven't got any family to speak of other than my lovely daughter.

Everyone needs human interaction. It can be at many different levels. We are social animals. You can't live your life fully in a vacuum. So I thank all my friends over the years, whenever their lives intersected with mine.

Digital Life & Death

I use my computers a lot. It is possible I am addicted. I certainly cannot envisage a life without a computer. I think it is a wonderful tool which widens my knowledge, keeps me in touch with people and events, saves me time (shopping & banking), & facilitates my life.

Google is my home page & all round helpful friend. I email, search for information, Blog & have a Facebook page. I occasionally watch TV I've missed & copy favourite CD's for use in the car. I don't - ever - play games. I've got much better things to do with my time & haven't yet got to the point in my life where I need to fill time uselessly. I can Skype, but hardly ever do because I prefer the phone or email. I also don't much like the idea of people being able to see me whatever state of undress or awareness I'm in. I find the time disconnect irritating too.

I'd previously never thought about what happens to my internet life when I die, but heard an interesting programme on the radio about the legal issues that raises. Our internet life continues after death, almost like a soul. It's a permanent record & remains long after we have gone, unless we or someone else unsubscribes us & wipes every trace. It's even arguable who this internet life belongs to. Do relatives have the right to access everything on your computer? One can imagine scenarios where the friends or relatives access things that they were never meant to see or know. Some things are better left hidden.

On the other hand one might consciously want to leave something of oneself behind. The urge to leave a legacy or record of a life lived. I think that's part of the reason why I Blog. In the future Primary sources for historical fact will probably be available in a way never anticipated before. The voice of "ordinary" people will be heard, rather than that of "historians" with their own particular bias.

It's possible to be for or against a digital life. For every benefit, there is probably a downside. Technical wizardry grows exponentially in every corner of our existence. I doubt we will ever be able to turn back the clock now - unless the lights really do go out. Then we will have a problem.