Legacy.

As I do, each morning, over breakfast, I scanned the Radio Times to see if there's anything worth bothering to put the television on for this evening. I was struck, not for the first time, how many hours of TV output consists of paying exorbitant sums to people who are famous, simply for being famous (why are they all so shallow, so grinningly empty headed?)to show us glimpses of their ridiculously, sadly, superficial, and ludicrously extravagant lifestyles. 

Holidays in beautiful surroundings, where the aim seems to be to eat pretty, exotic food, top up the sun tan, and demonstrate how pretty, and boring, they are! Or showing off the the stately homes of their empty headed friends,the descendants of robber barons in the middle ages, who have done little since but fill their coffers at the expense of their "peasants". Maybe a tour round the expensive hotels that viewers are only ever likely to see as employees?!

The vacuousness of the these programmes, and their presenters, is astonishing. Are they meant to stimulate the watchers' desires to emulate these people? To make us crave such lifestyles? Or to make us feel inadequate that we can't afford these luxuries?

The media seems to have fallen into the control of a class of people who have no ambition for mankind than that a few should destroy the environment in utter,  sybaritic, lazy luxury, whilst the rest of us look on in powerless envy!

I don't know about you, but wealth and luxury have never seemed even remotely desirable to me. I would be much more interested in programmes about rewilding the planet, how we can support positive change, about helping poor and marginalised people get a reasonable, and reliable quality of life. Programmes that show how the police force is becoming what it should be - a support for the community they serve, rather than the tool of those who would claim the best for themselves. Programmes educating viewers about different cultures, about disability, and how to reduce the negative social impact on those who are "different".

What happened to Reith's ambition that broadcasting would "inform, educate and entertain" in that order? We rarely find cause to put our television on, these days, and, while we have Netflix, I almost never use it. Life is not about being entertained, it's about leaving a positive legacy for those who follow. I grieve for the legacy we leave.

Who will buy?

Last week we watched the 1968 film of Lionel Bart's musical "Oliver". It was quite a trip down Memory Lane, and really set a wooden spoon in my subconscious! I was 21 that year, and got married for the first time in the spring. It was a very different time then, but the film sent me back to when I was 6 or 7, and we had just moved into the house were to live in till I was 18. It was a small Victorian terraced house, in Castle Street, Canterbury. About 1954. In those days there were no supermarkets,  and each major street, and the area around it were little villages in themselves, with a wide variety of shops, to meet every need, the only thing that absolutely needed us to leave the environs of Castle  Street was to go to school, the junior school being a good walk away, in Wincheap,  and the secondary school far enough that we would have taken a bus!

The memories prompted most strongly by the film, though, came as a result of the scene where Oliver sings "Who will buy?" whilst street vendors call their wares. You rarely see those kind of street vendors any more, we go to farmers markets or supermarkets to get them, not the sort of thing Deliveroo bring to the door! I am lucky to be just the age where I can vividly recall the last days of traditional street vendor, which have probably gone forever.

Clearest, probably because it was daily, was the man with a horse, towing a cart full of enormous milk churns, calling, in a growly voice "Mi-ilk!" We would run outside to meet him, with an empty jug in one hand, and an apple core, or something similar, in the other, and feed a treat to the enormous seeming horse, while the old man filled our jugs from the shiny churns, using a very long ladle.  His yard was just around the corner,  some would often go and visit the horse, who was back and white, with a long, shaggy main and enormous feathered feet. If I close my eyes I can still smell the warm, dusty, yeasty aroma of him. 

We had a branch of the famous MacFisheries in Catle Street(at the posh end!) but we also had a chap with a barrow visitvatvweekendsm cockles, whelks, mussels and other such pickled treats, we couldn't afford them, but if you hung around long enough, and didn't make a nuisance of yourself, he woukd usually take pity, and give you a handful to share!  Then there were the gypsies, who would come door to door, at different seasons, with little hand made baskets of their gleanings from the hedgerows, or beautifully made clothes pins. In spring it would be bent green wood baskets of growing primroses, to plant in your garden, late summer would see plaited baskets of ripe brambles, then similar baskets of cob or hazel nuts. Finally, at Christmas they  would bring bright berries holly, and little bunches of mistletoe, neatly tied and ready to pin over a door!

These regular callers from different worlds were part of the pattern of our lives, and part of the glue of them, too. Shared patterns, that helped us feel like a community, doing the same things,  sharing the same pleasures, at the same time. Today, we rush around, all on our own personal missions, rarely sharing these little things, and it saddens me.  I certainly wouldn't want to return to the grinding poverty of those days, but it would be nice to have more opportunity for earning small incomes like that,  and forbmorecsharing of small, inexpensive little pleasures.

Politics

I just found myself losing my cool on a Quaker group in Facebook! Not really very Quakerly, some might say, but then Jesus was often not quite so calm and collected as is, largely, expected within the Society! I made the point that all life is politics - and therefore religion is also politics, as both are beliefs put into action, and  that the economy is also politics,  so to say that such things as shopping, making electronic music etc are not politics is deluded. Apparently 'deluded' is an insult- I thought it was simply to misunderstand because one has been misled.

How quick we are to take offence when someone disagrees with us, despite the injunction in our Advices & Queries to seek that of God in others, and to listen for the truth someone else's views may have for us. This reflects a pattern becoming overwhelming in the wider world - believing that having THE TRUTH entitles one to violence, emotional, verbal or physical, towards those who disagree, to seek out insult and become outraged that our rules are not being followed by others.

Does no one know how to listen any more? To listen to comprehend, rather than to prepare one's, frequently combative, response? Can we no longer respect those who look at the world from a different perspective from ours? I am sad, tonight.

My friend, Etta Gray

 

This was my Etta, with her husband, George -laughing at me, as so often. I say 'was' because I will never see that beautiful, loving, laughing face again. She died last week, and something in me has broken.  Not just for me, but for all those other people whose hearts she held, so gently, in the palm of her hand.

She was my neighbour while I lived in Orkney, for only a couple of years, but they were probably the most difficult 2 years of my life.  Shortly before we met, and became neighbours, I had given birth to my 3rd child, and had, again, bad post natal depression. 6 months following the birth, my only parent, my mother, had died, with only about 4 months warning. To say I was in a bad place is a gross understatement!  We were such different people, but Etta's great gift was that she loved - everyone, and she wrapped me in that love, and stopped me from drowning in my pain and self judgement. She loved as one should, seeing all the frailties and foolishnesses, but accepting and forgiving them, doing all within her power to hold up the good in all she encountered.

Etta had barely left the Islands, going to mainland Scotland in her youth, where she met the lovely George, who was from Peterhead (his Peterhead dialect, combined with the Orcadian lilt he acquired, made him almost incomprehensible to we southerners, till you got the rhythm of it!) and only went to town about once a week, to do her messages, but she was wiser by far, than many I've known with the widest experience and the finest of educations.  She, and her mother, Granny, fed and nourished the whole of the world they touched, with pancakes and their love, and the world is so much a pooer place without them.

In 1981, my relationship with my partner had broken down to the point that he had convinced me I was an unfit mother, and my children would be better off without me, and I moved out of my little home next to Etta & George, and struggled to find a new sense of myself, a way forward. I remember, vividly, standing on the edge of a very high cliff, that autumn, looking down at the waves pounding the rocks below, and thinking how easy it would be to just take that step forward, and put an end to it all - I was convinced of my unsuitability as a mother, my partner (father of 2 of my 4 children) would look after the children, no one needed me at all (this wasn't mere self pity, I truly believed I was that unworthy of existence) Then Etta's face rose in my mind, how much she loved me, how disappointed in me she would be, and how hurt she would be - and I couldn't let her down. I had to fight this, for her, who, alone in my life's experience, had loved me without condition. 

After I left Orkney we didn't keep in touch much, neither of us was good at writing letters, or making chatty, gossipy phone calls, it wasn't that kind of friendship. But when I was able, I would go knock on her door, and we would put our arms around each other, and I felt safe again. I will never feel that kind of safe now - but worse, neither will George or her 3 lovely children, and their children.  Many, many hearts are wounded, and will be weeping at her graveside tomorrow.

Values.

I went to boarding school,,not because my family were rich, quite the opposite. I was the beneficiary of 19th and early 20th century philanthropy, attending schools originally founded as orphanages fir the children of Merchant Navy seamen lost at sea. By the time my father was lost off the coast of Wales on Christmas Eve 1951, they were schools, and when I was 7, a month or so before my 8th birthday, I started the summer term at the Royal Merchant Navy School, in Collington Avenue, Bexhill.

Since my father had died, my little sister had been born and I had been to many schools, as my mother travelled the country, doing any live in job she could get, and keep her daughters with her. I can't say this did my formal education much, each school seemed to be at a different stage of the curriculum on my arrival, so I still have some peculiar gaps in my understandings!

The staff at RMNS Bexhill were mostly very fine, caring people. I remember the Headmaster coming and tucking in the the new kids for the first few nights, singing us to sleep, trying his best to ease the transition for very young children.

In due course, we moved on to the senior school, at Bearwood,  near Reading. This was in a very grand mansion, donated by a newspaper magnate just after the First World War, at which time, of course, there was a very large increase in the number of Merchant Navy orphans!  One of the first things that happened was a medical check up (in the elegant Sanatorium donated by Lord Nuffield) where it was discovered that I was so severely short sighted that they were rather amazed I was doing as well as I was, academically,  as most teaching was via a blackboard in those days, and I cannot possibly have seen what was on it! Amazing what a lonely little bookworm can teach herself, if her mind is hungry enough!

Despite being the boys' favourite victim, it was a wonderful place to be, with enormous grounds in which a child could wander and feel safe, caring, if strict, staff and a solid moral structure to give children a degree of emotional security. In fact, ex pupils still return, and are devoted to the school, even now it has been sold and become the flagship school of a big public/private school chain.

And here's where the values come in. In 1961 the girls part of the school closed,  and we were dispersed, at the Merchant Navy's expense, to schools nearer to our homes. At the end if each year, the school held a Leavers Service in the beautiful St Nicholas Chapel (Nicholas being the patron saint of sailors, amongst others)

At the end of the service, those leaving were lined up at the altar rail and presented with a bible or prayer book, dedicated to us and signed by the Headmaster, with a little card inside. On the card was the statement made to all leavers by the Headmaster as these were handed out. I can still, over 50 years later,;remember it word for word, and it's values have guided me ever since.

"I charge you to remember always the great bounty you have enjoyed at Bearwood, and in the years to come, to do all you can to help others by thought, word and deed.
Remember, too, that you carry with you the good name of the Royal Merchant Navy School.
May God Almighty direct your course,  and strengthen and inspire you through all your days."

I no longer believe in any god, but those values have stayed with me, along with the gratitude for the caring and generosity of people who had no obligation towards me. Somewhere in the intervening years our society has lost touch with those values, and it is a great loss. It was a far from perfect world then, and people were no more perfect then than they are now,;but there was a great deal more compassion and generosity, and we knew that, mostly, we really *were* all in it together. Rich or poor, we could all suffer misfortune, deadly diseases and war, and there, but for the grace of fortune, any of us could go.

As a society, we have lost our sanity, our sense of balance. I do hope we find it before collective suicide is unavoidable.

Fortress Britain

Our nation's current government would have us believe we we are assailed by potential invaders from all sides. 'Migrants' crowd at our edges, determined to stream in and rob us of all our jobs, homes and wealth, Europe wants to turn us into a satellite state of a 'United States of Europe' and take away our sovereign powers, the poor, disabled and elderly of our own population are contributing nothing to the bank accounts of our nation and their lazy expectation of being supported by our hard working families is draining the nation's wealth.

What unspeakable tosh!  What is actually draining the nation's wealth is a bunch of greedy so-called business people who have no idea whatsoever how to run a long term, healthy business and are asset stripping the country for the short term gain of themselves and their mates. As Britain discovered during the war, being able to supply your own country with the basics of survival is very important, exports are great to provide extra income, but if you rely on imports for the basics, you are soon in deep trouble if an emergency arises. On our trip to the seaside today, I noticed a new 'solar farm' being erected near Bristol - great, for our energy independence and ecology, not so great, when you realise it is being erected on good farming land, that could be grazing animals or growing fruit or vegetables.  Why are we importing low quality, tasteless food from abroad (which is superficially 'cheap' but of dubious nutritional, environmental and taste quality) when we have fed ourselves well, and deliciously, from our own farms for centuries, until very recently? Because it's not profitable for those who are already so financially wealthy they've lost all contact with reality, that's why.

Some of our greatest British companies, such as Cadbury, Fry, Rowntree, now, sadly asset stripped to multinationals for the benefit of said wealthy fools, started out, not to garner wealth, but to benefit the people of this country. All those famous 'chocolate' names were companies started by Quakers, to try and create an alternative to alcohol and pubs, in a time when alcohol had become just as serious a problem, if not worse, than 'binge drinking' today. The intent was to create places to meet and socialise without alcohol, and to make chocolate fashionable instead! They treated their workers well, valuing their contribution to the business to the extent of building top quality housing and communities for them, with schools etc, rather than the squalid 'back to backs' most of the other workers of the industrial revolution were stuck in. These employers also cared for their elderly workers, instead of tossing them into the workhouse. These business methods created multinational businesses, only when they ceased to be family businesses, cleaving to moral principles did they deteriorate into mere money creators.

Our worldwide economies today are run by gamblers, playing with other people's money and lives to generate short term profits for themselves - the losses always fall on those whose money they have been gambling with, never their own. This isn't just bankers, this is the many multinationals on the stock market - they are gambling with the money and lives of their workers and customers, not their shareholders, the shareholders are pulling the strings. Only when we cease to buy the ideas, values and goods of the merely financially wealthy and greedy will we change this set up - and it IS a set up, and we are the fall guys.

If they won't think long term, and they won't, for our own sakes WE must. We cannot have a 'fortress' at all when we have sold vast swathes of it to China, America and heaven knows where else. We have sold of most of our independence already, willy nilly, because those running our country are financial and social illiterates. We, the people, need to take our country back, by being VERY conscious of where the money we spend goes, by supporting small, local businesses, by building community.  If we have community, and stand together, we are greater than those who would harvest us as 'Stock' (yes, that's how the DWP, for instance, refer to us, the citizens of this country)

Winter blues

I am miserable today. For most of the last 25 years we have lived in caravans or motorhomes,  which are small,  well insulated spaces - easy to get warm and to keep at a comfortable temperature.  This is our first really cold day since moving back into bricks and mortar,  and I am colder and more miserable than I can remember ever being in one of our little boxes on wheels.

We have central heating, and it's raised the temperature enough that we can just spread our butter, but my body has always been rubbish at dealing with temperature extremes - especially cold! My arthritic joints are aching like f@%$ and stiff as anything, and I feel miserable. I wish we could afford to go back to living in a tin box on wheels.  Isn't that ridiculous?