In Memoriam

 

William Henry Harrop

3 February 1930 - 16 February 1982

Today would have been my father's 80th birthday.

We still miss him.

Certainty

 

picture from www.victims.org.uk

Certainty worries me.  People who are certain frighten me.

I used to be certain.  I was 16, a vulnerable teenager brainwashed by fundamentalist Christians.  I went around telling people they would burn in hell if they didn't turn to Christ,  This did not win me many friends, as you can imagine.  Imagine saying that to your mother when she has just lost her husband? Nice.

Luckily bloody-mindedness came to my rescue.  One night I was supposed to lead a prayer meeting, but I went down with a migraine.  If you have ever had a real migraine, you will know that I was not capable of getting out of bed, let alone leading a prayer meeting!  Between attacks of vomiting, I rang the church leader who was hosting the meeting at her home to explain I could not come.  She was very angry.  She told me it was my duty to Christ to turn out. She was so certain.  So the Church and I fell out.

Since then, I have learnt that certainty breeds bigotry and violence.  The Pope is certain that gays will burn in Hell.  He doesn't want them to have equal rights.  Or rather, he wants some people to be more equal than others.  Its the thin end of the wedge. 

Anyone who holds extreme views risks this.  A fundamentalist atheist like Richard Dawkins will tell you its all religion's fault.  And he is terrifyingly certain of this.  He would ban religion just as surely as the Pope would outlaw homosexuality and the Chinese would like to eradicate the Tibetans.  His views hold just the same seeds of violence and distrust.  There are so many people who are absolutely SURE in this world that they are right. From Islamists to animal rights activists and anti-abortion campaigners.  And Jeremy Clarkson, and you just KNOW he is right about everything!

Open your mind.  This world holds a myriad of possibilities.  There is not only one answer.  Its hard on your ego to admit maybe someone else has an answer as good as yours.  But it makes the world a gentler and frankly more interesting place when you do.

Acceptance?

 

Julie Walters as Mo Mowlem in 'Mo' 

Picture Channel 4.com

Last night I watched Julie Walters' bravura performance as Mo Mowlem, the politician behind the Good Friday Agreement, whose struggle with a brain tumour was played out in public.  One of the points made by the programme was that it was impossible to say how long she'd had the tumour, which affected her behaviour and personality in profound ways.  Mo had to struggle with the question of where the tumour ended, and the real Mo began.  In the last scene, a colleague tried to explain to her, as she lay in a coma, that it really didn't matter.  That she was who she was, tumour and all.

This seems to me to be a profoundly important question.  Who would I be without the ME and the lifelong depression?  Really, the question doesn't matter.  You can't take those things away, because they are indelibly there, part of my history, and therefore part of who I am.  It only becomes and issue when you hate the illness, and believe me, there are days when I really do hate it, as if it is a separate thing, a monster I carry around with me on my back.  But it isn't.  It is part of who I am.  Accepting that is crucial.

And this is why.  Gestalt therapists talk about The Paradoxical Theory of Change.  Which basically means, that change cannot happen until you accept where you are.  You can't get to Edinburgh, my guru, R, says, unless you know you are in Norwich first.

Virginia Woolf noted in her diaries that her own depression helped to make her the writer she was.  Would I be able to produce the work I do if I had not developed the ability to dissociate, to escape from my despair into stories?  I doubt it.

Mo Mowlem's question of where the illness stops and the essential self begins is a profound one about identity.  But I think we can only deal with it by accepting that we cannot separate our essential self from the things that happen to us.

Daily Writing Prompt

Pretty flowers.  I think we need some after all that miserable weather...

I am organising, or trying to organise, a daily writing prompt email list.  The idea is that you sign up, and every day I send you a prompt to do a short (or long if you like) writing exercise from.  We have six members so far, and I am feeling quite excited about it.  Embryonic, yes, but committing to sending out a prompt every day in 2010 is a BIG commitment, especially for me, Mrs Unreliable.  It is an act of faith my new year motto - Putting Myself First - in this case, putting my writing first.  I am very excited about it, and thats a great motivator.  Cross your fingers for me, people!

In other news, the ice on the pond is finally melting, and the world has resumed its normal muddy-green tones.  The bathroom is no longer more suitable habitat for penguins.  I am praying, literally praying, every day, that we don't get snow like that again, because it was touch and go there for a while as to whether I was going out of my mind.  (I mean, more than usual!)

New Year, New Motto

Footprints in the snow

Lots of bloggers are writing about the words they have chosen to work with this new year, words to live their lives by.  I have a slogan.  Mine is:

'Putting myself first'

Now, when you read this, the word selfish probably comes into your head.  It did mine.  But thats not what its about.  Selfish is a word that has dogged me all my life.  It was the worst, absolutely the WORST thing you could be in our house when I was growing up.  No one could say anything worse to you than to call you selfish.  But then my guru, R, made me put selfish on a plinth and walk round it, examine it as a word, as an idea, find out why it was so negative for me, and whether I could salvage anything from it.

If I think about it differently, I can.  Put a hyphen in.  SELF-ish.  If you think about the SELF as being everything you are contained inside a big perspex bubble, then being SELF-ish is a way of seeing oneself holistically, emotions, body, mind, spirit.  So to be SELF-ish means to look after yourself, and consider and care for everything that is in that bubble.  Its not about excluding other people from your thinking.  Its about  getting what you need to nurture yourself and thrive.

I have a lot of 'shoulds' and 'oughts' and 'musts' in my life, probably because of this whole selfish paranoia.  So this year's journey is to break out of 'Shouldland'.  Do what I need to thrive.  Practise saying no to things that damage me.  Make a few dreams come true.  Ask for what I need.  Support myself, and in doing so, support those I love.  Because you can't do that if you are in a threadbare state yourself.  That is why I am setting out on this new journey of 'putting myself first'.  Lets see what happens....

Snow Days

The farm track that leads to our house, taken by Pat this morning.

Britain is in the midst of the big freeze, and everyone is complaining - why can't the British cope when it snows?  Other countries manage with hardly any disruption at all, so why can't we?

The man on the weather said the other day its because of our maritime climate.  The snow here is wetter and more inclined to freeze as a result.  I think its just because we don't have a culture of being prepared - the Germans swap to deep-treaded winter tyres automatically, so why don't we?  Most British people don't even remember to put antifreeze in their wiper bottles!   We are idiots when it comes to the weather.  Frankly we deserve all we get.

Pat and I have decided our only solution is to stay put and listen to the cricket on the radio.  At least it sounds sunny!  Not that we have a choice.  Even our neighbour in her Landrover is having trouble getting up the track today.  Our little Punto is firmly beached out front and thats the way it is staying.  Lets just hope the food doesn't run out before we can get out again to shop!

Happy snow days, everyone!

Christmas Post Mortem

(I promise this is presents for seven people, although it looks like enough for about three hundred.  Obscene, isn't it?

  Why do we do it? Oh, and those are cousin Nigel's feet there, in case you were wondering...)

We are home again after our annual Christmas Odyssey.  The annual present mountain has been ploughed through.  The Biggest Gut Competition has been won.  I took down the Christmas tree today, and wrapped the baubles in tissue, carefully clipped the lights back into their tidy for another year.  And while I did it, I thought of my grandfather, who used to sit back in his carver chair after he had eaten his Christmas lunch and say the same thing every year:


"It's as far away now as it'll ever be."


We were away for nearly a fortnight, and I feel rather disconnected now.  I've come back with my usual 'post-visiting other people's houses' tidying bug.   I am full of ideas for throwing STUFF* away, irritated by the fact that in this house there is not a horizontal surface that isn't covered with STUFF*.  I have lots of plans of how I am going to get organised which, like most resolutions, stand as much chance as a cat in hell. 

Oh well.  Its all over.  All that mad rush.  Now to decide what to do with the next eleven months, before it all starts again....

*STUFF. you know, stuff.   Those odds and ends that never get put away or cleaned up, you know the things.  Bits of post.  Necklaces.  Dead batteries.  Bits of ribbon.  Odd photographs separated from their folders.  Nail scissors.  Pegs.  Books.  Gloves.  Scraps of paper.  Useful cardboard tubes that are being saved for something that will never be made. Hand cream.  Newspaper crosswords.  Dust bunnies.  And lots and lots of pens, for some reason...