A wise man changes his mind, a fool never - Spanish quote

I really, really, really don’t want to go there but I have too. I had decided to withold judgement, not to make rash decisons but have changed my mind. I was determined to give them the chance I felt they deserved. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I knew there would be a few hiccups and we would all have to adapt to a new way of life and I was fully prepared to be hurt. I accepted, albeit reluctantly, that I was one of the ‘bad’ guys who had grown complacent, I was someone who had got used to having it too good for too long. Admittedly it has never felt like that. I have always tried to do my best, and yes I have got things wrong on occasions, but I have never felt special or privileged. I had no idea I was a spoilt parasite who has had it their own way for far too long. But you live and learn.

I should feel contrite and I should be prepared to hold my hands up and shout ‘Yes….I am to blame….punish me’ but I fucking don’t! I have come to the conclusion that Mr Cameron’s smooth bland face is a mask and it hides the ugly countenance of Mrs Thatcher. And Mr Clegg? What is point?

Let’s look at today’s news –

School buildings scheme scrapped - by Hannah Richardson BBC News education reporter

Some schools have been revamped, others entirely rebuilt. Hundreds of school building projects are being scrapped as England's national school redevelopment scheme is axed by the government. Education Secretary Michael Gove said 719 school revamps already signed up to the scheme would not now go ahead. A further 123 academy schemes are to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. His department has been reviewing Labour's Building Schools for the Future scheme since the election. It concluded that all local authority schemes that have not reached financial close would not go ahead, saving "billions" of pounds. Michael Gove: "The whole way we build schools needs radical reform". This means 706 schools in the existing BSF programme which have reached financial close will continue, but officials will see how savings can be made within them. Another 14 projects in local authorities further down the BSF priority list would be considered to see if a small number of revamps could be brought forward. Mr Gove said: "The Building Schools for the Future scheme has been responsible for about one third of all this department's capital spending. "But throughout its life it has been characterised by massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy."

'Dysfunctional'
He called the scheme "dysfunctional" and "unnecessarily bureaucratic", with nine "meta stages". He added: "It is perhaps no surprise that it can take almost three years to negotiate the bureaucratic process of BSF before a single builder is engaged or brick is laid." Some 180 schools have been rebuilt or revamped since the programme was introduced by Labour in 2004. And building is about to start in 231 schools. But 1,100 schools have already signed up to the scheme, investing time, energy and money into drawing up plans for redevelopment, but have not reached financial close. Originally all of England's 3,500 schools were to be revamped by 2023. The plan was to replace out-dated buildings with facilities that suit modern education. But Mr Gove said the national building scheme had been beset by red-tape and delays. A review is being set up to see how capital funds can be used to rebuild schools more effectively. This is being led by the operations director of the Dixons Store Group Sebastian James and includes Professor John Hood, former vice-chancellor of Oxford University.

'Woefully run down'
Shadow education secretary Ed Balls said the decision was a "tragedy" for teachers and parents who would have benefited from new facilities. He said: "Today is a black day for our country's schools." He added that he and his Labour colleagues would fight to "save our new schools". Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said there was "no excuse for leaving schools which were promised new buildings swinging in the wind". "Poor learning environments have a negative impact on the education of children and young people. "School buildings were woefully run down prior to Labour coming to power in 1997 and while much has been done to improve them there is still a lot more to do."

Who'd have thought I'd find myself agreeing with something Mr Balls said?

More skulduggery:

Government announces cap on civil service redundancy payments Unions threaten strike action over new bill capping payments for compulsory redundancy at 12months' rather than six years' pay

The government was today accused of "bully boy tactics" over plans to reduce civil service compulsory redundancy payouts from a maximum of six years to one year's pay under a tough and "non-negotiable" new compensation scheme published by the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude.

Maude provoked an outcry from unions by announcing that a bill would be introduced to limit the cost of future payments by capping all compulsory redundancy payouts at 12 months' pay and limiting amounts for voluntary severance to 15 months' salary.

Maude said the decision had been taken "with reluctance", but it had become necessary because of the economic climate.

Unions attacked the move as "unlawful and undeserved" and raised the threat of legal and industrial action which could herald a summer of discontent.

In a speech in London today, Maude said the plans were part of a much broader reform of government that would see a smaller, more "modern and flexible" civil service. He also confirmed that sick pay would be reformed and that more would be done to weed out under-performing Whitehall staff.

Prospect, which represents over 120,000 civil servants, pledged to fight the planned changes to redundancy payouts in the courts and the House of Commons.

Dai Hudd, the union's deputy general secretary, said: "Around 600,000 staff are affected, of whom tens of thousands potentially face redundancy through no fault of their own. The government wants to rip up their rights in a way that would do justice to King John, but it will not work. These rights are protected by law and bully boy tactics will not get round that fact."

The bill will also amend a 1972 law that dictated that changes in conditions could only be implemented with union approval to force it through.

Mark Serwotka, the leader of the PCS, said his union would use "every means at its disposal to fight back".

He said: "Francis Maude's announcement today betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a contempt for his own workforce. We will be exploring the legal implications of what the announcement says.

"This is not just about our members' rights at work, it is about their ability to serve the public.

"If this so-called fair and progressive coalition government get away with this, it would lay waste to communities across the UK where people rely on the services that our members and other public servants provide."

Jonathan Baume, the FDA general secretary, said: "The way forward is for the government and all of the unions to get round the table in meaningful negotiations, without setting preconditions, so that we can end the uncertainty created when civil servants are reading headlines about cuts in government spending of up to 40%".

In a letter to the unions, Maude indicated that he would not negotiate on the compulsory redundancy terms, but was prepared to negotiate a new scheme that had improved terms for voluntary redundancies in a bid to avoid sacking people. He also suggested that he would negotiate a deal that would protect the lowest paid.

He wrote: "Our system of a permanent, politically impartial civil service is one of the jewels in our constitution and it is rightly admired throughout the world for the way it serves the elected government of the day. Sadly the huge deficit we inherited means there is a real urgency now for change. It is for this reason, and in the light of the current deadlock, that we have had to reluctantly start this process.

"Had the PCS [Public and Commercial Services Union] shown the same willingness to negotiate as the other five civil service unions then today's action might not have been necessary."

The current redundancy scheme gives maximum payouts of three years' salary though in rare instances - thought to have affected a few hundred of the 520,000 work force in the past year - people can get six and two-thirds years' their salary. Redundancy payments for civil servants in the UK cost the nation £1.8bn over the past three years. Labour attempted to change the laws to cap most payments at two years, a move approved by five of the six unions. The PCS, however, challenged it in the high court, arguing that under the 1972 act it could not be imposed without their consent. They won that challenge and the Labour scheme was thrown out. The coalition government's proposals are dramatically more stringent than the previous government's scheme. Other unions are furious that the PCS scuppered their chances of the more lenient scheme.

A written ministerial statement to parliament said: "This [current] scheme is prohibitively expensive – in some cases worth up to six and two-thirds years of salary. We believe swift action to curb its excesses is essential. We take this step without relish.

Maude added: Our ambition now is that a negotiated, sustainable and practical long-term successor to the existing scheme can be agreed – one that is flexible and appropriate for current economic climate and also fair for lower paid workers."

Tessa Jowell, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, backed the case for reforms but said this needed to be done in a way that strikes a fair balance between protecting those faced with job losses and making a contribution towards tackling the deficit.

Budget 2010: Public-sector cuts a 'declaration of war', say unions George Osborne's plan for 25% cut in departmental spending 'will decimate our public services', says Unite's Dave Prentis

No matter what your opinions are on the existing redundancy packages available for civil servants there is no escaping the fact that the package is part of their terms and conditions and it cannot be fair to, when attempts have been made by the previous and present govenments to change those conditions and been deemed illegal, to then decide to change the law to get the result you want. This is the real face of Conservatism. And indeed New fucking Labour.

There's more:

The government was tonight set on a collision course with the public sector after union leaders accused George Osborne of issuing a "declaration of war" by ruling that public-sector spending should be reduced by £83bn by 2014.

The cuts will slash an average of 25% from all department budgets – save for the NHS and overseas aid, which the coalition has protected – and that average figure will only be reduced if more than the target of £11bn can be cut from the welfare bill.

All affected public services now face a nervous summer awaiting the outcome of the comprehensive spending review, on 20 October, which will dictate the precise cuts in each area. The chancellor indicated that schools and military spending would be the first to be protected after the NHS and aid but that means that higher and adult education, the police and prisons are now even more in the firing line.

Local government also faces the triple whammy of having to cut more after already having had several years of cuts, and they have also been told they should not increase council tax next year.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said: "This is the most draconian budget in decades. This budget signals that the battle for Britain's public services has begun, with the government declaring war. Public-sector workers will be shocked and angry that they are the innocent victims of job cuts and pay freezes.

"A 25% cut in departmental public spending will decimate our public services. The budget will do nothing to restore confidence or kick-start the recovery, but will push local economies into the ground, raising the spectre of breadline Britain."

He said that for six million public-sector workers the pay freeze implemented by the chancellor would in fact feel like a cut once inflation, now running at 5.1%, and the rise in VAT was taken into account.

"Nurses, social workers, midwives, paramedics, police community support officers, housing and environmental officers who provide vital public services, are amongst those who will be hit hardest by the two-year pay freeze, and for local government workers this comes on top of this year's freeze," Prentis said.

The spending cuts will mean redundancies, which on top of the pay freeze and a review of public-sector pensions, are likely to lead to a new era of strikes and unrest in the public sector.

Some experts said that there was a lack of detail in the chancellor's speech to give the public sector any indication of the way they will be expected to make cuts.

Alan Downey, head of public sector at the accountants KPMG, said: "These are definitely the deepest cuts in modern history and certainly since the second world war. It's a different scale to the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s or the 1976 cuts. It is unprecedented and a very big deal. It was overwhelming; I can't remember a budget that had so many big and painful things in it. In that, it is a reflection of the times.

"One thing that was disappointing was that we didn't see more vision of how the cuts will be made. There was no mention of the 'Big Society' stuff that the Conservatives are so keen on. This could just mean depression and demoralisation for the public sector rather than a vision for eliminating the public-sector deficit. If local authorities could just spend only 40% of their budgets on overheads instead of 60%, that would cover most of the savings they need to make."

He said public services needed a strategy to avoid mass redundancies, which are costly to implement once compensation is taken into account. A freeze on hiring new staff and a retraining programme to redeploy existing staff was one way to avoid the worst union opposition as well mass redundancies, he suggested.

Some senior civil servants have called for a major reform of the way public services are organised, arguing that if cuts are applied to the current system its flaws will be exposed.

Lord Bichard, director of the Institute for Government, said today: "Those who run public services can do one of two things: carry on trying to run services as they do now and wait for the fallout from the budget, knowing that current flaws in their services will only become more obvious and more entrenched.

"Alternatively, ask serious questions about how a service is functioning and radically rethink its design. It will take imagination and innovation and it won't be pain-free, but doing it could help people get even better services than before and cut waste," he said.

However, the cuts were however welcomed by figures in the private sector as a way of avoiding further tax rises. Miles Templeman, director general of the Institute of Directors, said: "The economy needed faster and deeper deficit reduction and that's exactly what the chancellor has delivered.

"Equally important to the scale of deficit reduction is the way it is done. Here again the chancellor has chosen the right route, by concentrating overwhelmingly on closing the fiscal gap by lower spending instead of higher taxation."

The boys emailed me and my fellow public service workers and asked if we had any ideas that would help them save money. This was de ja vue moment as the organisation I work for asked us exactly the same thing before ignoring everything we suggested and went off and did what they wanted to do anyway. I am not going to play their games anymore. I always lose.

Boy oh Boy oh Boy

Last week my grandson brought home from nursery the school report to top all school reports. Included in the wonderful sentiments and observations made by his teachers was 'he is making excellent progress in all his learning', 'he is well mannered, popular, curious, a pleasure to teach.' 'Great sense of humour. Looking forward to having him in the school in Reception'. I jokingly said to his proud mum that this was probably the best report he is ever likely to get because boys are finding it harder to fit into the world we are creating for them.

Dipping into Ali McClure's book 'Making it Better for Boys in Schools, Families and Communities', mentioned in a previous blog, and reading the newspapers over the weekend made me feel very worried about my grandsons future.

Without any fear for the future, boys have given up their ambition Celebrity culture and the huge salaries in football or banking have undermined the motivation to study or work

Will Hutton The Observer, Sunday 4 July 2010 Article history Fathers of boys have a perennial subject of conversation. Is it us, our parenting skills or the wider society that is creating so many disaffected, troubled and disengaged young men? One friend of mine has hit on the theory that boys have lost their fear at the same time as having misplaced any sense of ambition. With the two great animators of human motivation – fear and greed (at its best, ambition) – knocked out we have a growing army of underperforming, unnecessarily idle and too often unemployed young men. Unable to motivate themselves, they just stew.

Young men's underachievement when compared with women has multiple causes – but a growing inability to find motivation, whether growing up on a social housing estate or in a top boarding school is, I think, one of them. The roots of this simultaneous collapse in ambition and loss of fear are hard to fathom and much contested, but they are there for all to see. It has been apparent in boys' GCSE and A-level results for some time. Now, as the Observer reports, it is extending into work. Graduate male unemployment on the most recent figures is rising so much faster than women's that it is more than half as high again – 17.2% compared to 11.2%.

Women graduates seem to be more useful to employers, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute. Girls are more diligent. They try harder at university. And now it seems women graduates try harder to find work – and to stay in it. High unemployment is going to be the story of the next few years and it will be men who will take the greater hit. The number of men in employment is already nose-diving, touching new lows – and worse lies ahead. Thanks to a credit crunch, a breathtaking programme of spending cuts and a stagnant world economy, the prospect is for unemployment now to rise above 3 million, only to fall very slowly, if at all – whatever the government's Panglossian forecasts.

The differing impact on men and women began to manifest itself in the 1980s. "Gizza job," intoned Yosser Hughes in the landmark TV drama the Boys from the Blackstuff; it became the emblematic expression of the age and painted the Conservatives as socially pitiless for two decades. The problems with men in the decade ahead will cast those years into the shade. Yosser is but a forerunner of an army. We will lose a generation of young men, trapped into permanent adolescence, idleness and a collapsed sense of self-worth. They will not be much use to society, the women who are looking for partners and fathers for their children, or themselves.

The question is, why? The standard left-of-centre response is that the economy needs to deliver more opportunity – the fall-back position of so many of the candidates for the Labour leadership, who want the party to rediscover social democracy or even socialism. Of course the unnecessarily aggressive programme of deficit reduction the coalition has embarked on will prove to be a strategic mistake. The budget that was allegedly to restore financial market confidence has triggered a stock market rout as investors fear prolonged economic stagnation. Of course the country needs to invent much better economic institutions than we have to support enterprise and job creation. And of course the state has to accept a much greater role in acting as employer of last resort in today's economic circumstances – a contemporary version of Roosevelt's New Deal – than the coalition government has accepted.

But calls for public action will not win popular support unless they also address the question of individual motivation. Without it public action will be seen, however irrationally, as part of the problem rather than the solution. It will be depicted as saving people, and boys and young men in particular, from the consequences of their disengagement at other people's expense. Too many families and too many people are shaking their heads over the behaviour of their sons and young men. A government that wants to win and sustain broad support needs to have plausible answers.

Affluence and a sense of entitlement with little reciprocal obligation partly explains what has happened. No rights without obligations was one of Blair's principles, and he was correct. One of the reasons that boys do not try harder is that the penalties for disengagement are so low – indeed, there are even rewards, at least in the sense that if you don't try, you can't fail. Much better to smoke dope, hang out and obsessively play computer games all day. Society is affluent enough to allow this to happen without anybody starving, and in the last resort it will provide a safety net, however threadbare and tightly means-tested. There is little fear in this de-risked universe.

The great male demotivator is the risk of loss of face – much more important to the masculine self-image of being masterful and in control than to a woman. The dynamic part of the economy is increasingly knowledge-based, and its jobs require intelligence, application and adaptability, whether in advanced manufacturing or the creative industries. For decades boys could follow their fathers into jobs that were routine and demanded little of them – in factories, offices or mines – and which did not expose them to the risk of public failure. These routine jobs are ever rarer. Boys now survey an education system and labour market where more is demanded of them – and the threat of loss of face if they don't measure up is more acute. A growing number react by refusing to take part. But what about ambition, the sheer hunger for any kind of achievement?

Here the celebrity culture along with winner-takes-all salaries such as those in football or in banking have undermined motivation. To try to work hard is a mug's game. The middle-class boy who diligently works his way up in a company or starts a business is a dupe; far better to try to make tens of millions in the City with zero risk – or not do anything. Everyone knows that investors, shareholders and governments underwrite any losses, while executives capture dynastic fortunes without risking any money of their own. City and corporate excess has become a demotivator for everyone else. Working-class boys who yearn for the same excess hope to be discovered by celebrity television, with one poll reporting that 11% of 16- to 19-year-olds are "waiting to be discovered" by a reality TV programme. An astonishing 26% think a rich career in sport, entertainment or the media is open to them. Why go down to the Jobcentre?

And if women are prospering better in this brave new world, it is because they respond to the same signals by fearfully redoubling their efforts to avoid failure. The dark side of all that female diligence and hard work is the epidemic of eating disorders and mental health problems afflicting women. Neither gender is reporting an increase in happiness. A political debate cast between madcap deficit cutters and those labour leadership candidates who want to rediscover the virtues of a backward-looking "socialism" opens up none of these issues. We badly need better.

It is right to worry about the future of our young men as boys fall behind at school and male graduates fail to find jobs, the social consequences could be profound

The Observer, Sunday 4 July 2010 Article historyBoys tend to perform worse than girls at school. Their GCSE pass rate last year was around 7% lower, although the gap has narrowed since its peak at 9% in 2000. More boys than girls drop out. Last year, 130,000 more young women than men went into higher education. On graduation, young men are finding it harder to get work.

In 2009, 17.2% of young male graduates were unemployed as compared to 11.2% of young female graduates. That reflects employers' impressions, reported in today's Observer, that young men can tend to be less focused and more complacent about their prospects, while young women are often more determined to get a job.

Youth unemployment, whether among graduates or school-leavers, is socially and economically corrosive. The transition from education to work is about more than earning a living. It is a rite of passage into adulthood that, if missed, can have a profound impact on a young person's future. But does it matter if that misfortune befalls more men than women? After all, the employment market has functioned with a vast systemic bias in their favour for most of recorded history.

It is worth noting that despite finding it harder to get a job, within three years of starting work, male graduates tend to earn more than their female peers. Declarations of male victimhood when it comes to economic opportunity are generally premature and often absurd.

None the less, it would be foolish to overlook the possibility of a long-term shift in the gender balance in the labour market. What we are seeing in the graduate jobs market might be the manifestation of many years of male under-performance at school. That means the trend will continue, with ever more men struggling to integrate into the world of work.

It doesn't require a degree in gender studies to grasp that the economic and social consequences of such a development would be profound.



Young boys killing each other no longer makes front page news. This story was buried a few pages deep -

Teenager stabbed to death at London school
A 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a fight at his school today.

The teenager suffered multiple injuries in the incident at Park Campus School in West Norwood, south London. Emergency services rushed to the scene shortly before 9am and took the boy to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Three people have been arrested by murder squad detectives investigating the teenager's death.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "A murder inquiry has been launched after the death of a 15-year-old boy in south London.

"Police were called at 8.50am to reports of a male assaulted in Gipsy Road Gardens, SE27.

"Police, London Ambulance Service and an air ambulance attended the scene to find a 15-year-old male suffering multiple stab wounds.

"He was taken to a south London hospital and confirmed dead shortly after arrival. A post-mortem will be arranged in due course.

"A second teenager was also stabbed in the arm during the incident. He has been taken to a south London hospital with minor injuries.

"Detectives from Homicide and Serious Crime Command (HSCC) are investigating. Three people have been arrested in connection with the incident."

Park Campus is a specialist school educating some of London's most troubled young people, including those with social, behavioural and emotional difficulties. Launched two years ago, it was hailed as the first school of its kind in Britain, aimed at getting young people back into mainstream education. There are around 80 pupils aged between 11 and 16 at the school, which was purpose-built to minimise the risk to young people and staff. The newly-built school is also the headquarters for Lambeth Council's "behaviour partnership service", which supports young people elsewhere.

The boy was the 13th teenager to be killed in the capital this year and the ninth to be die in a stabbing. Last year 14 teenagers were murdered in London, 10 of them stabbed to death and one shot.

Senior officers have seen some success in reducing youth violence, partly as a result of a crackdown on those carrying weapons.

Park Campus head teacher Richard Leonard said: "This is a terrible tragedy and the whole school is in shock.

"We will be providing all the support we can to pupils and their families as the school community tries to come to terms with this awful loss."

I am surprised it even made the papers. Stabbing, although not always resulting in death, are a common occurrence in some of our schools.

So why are some of our boys turning into monsters or zombies? Fingers will point at single parents, drugs, the black community, sink schools, MTV, the X Factor, footballers, food additives or as Joanna Lumleys claimed this week, the lack of opportunity for adventure. We will hear crys of 'bring back National Service/capital/corporate punishment' (delete as required). What we aren't likely to hear is the call for a change in what we teach young boys or how we teach it. What we are likely to experience are knee jerk responses that look for quick fix. Of course I want a solution, now, today, so that my grandson can grow into the man I know he is capable of becoming. Sadly it is not that simple. So it is down to us, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, to take control, to ensure that our boys are given the tools they need in order to become the men of tomorrow. No one else is going to do it for us.

'Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many.'-Buddah

Gossip is, according to Wikipedia, 'idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It forms one of the oldest and most common means of sharing (unproven) facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information transmitted. The term also carries implications that the news so transmitted (usually) has a personal or trivial nature, as opposed to normal conversation.'

However gossip, it would seem, has some ‘useful’ functions. It can:

• normalise and reinforce moral boundaries in a speech-community
• foster and build a sense of community with shared interests and information
• build structures of social accountability
• further mutual social grooming (like many other uses of language, only more so)
• provide a mating tool that allows (for example) women to mutually identify socially desirable men and compare notes on which men are better than others.
• be used as a form of passive aggression, as a tool to isolate and harm others
• provide a peer-to-peer mechanism for disseminating information in organizations

Rumour, according to Wikipedia, 'is often viewed as an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern.However, a review of the research on rumor conducted by Pendleton in 1998 found that research across sociology, psychology, and communication studies had widely varying definitions of rumor.Thus, rumor is a concept that lacks a particular definition in the social sciences. But most theories agree that rumor involves some kind of a statement whose veracity is not quickly or ever confirmed. In addition, some scholars have identified rumor as a subset of propaganda, the latter another notoriously difficult concept to define. A pioneer of propaganda studies, Harold Lasswell defined propaganda in 1927 as referring "solely to the control of opinion by significant symbols, or, to speak more concretely and less accurately, by stories, rumors, reports, pictures, and other forms of social communication". Rumors are also often discussed with regard to "misinformation" and "disinformation" (the former often seen as simply false and the latter seen as deliberately false, though usually from a government source given to the media or a foreign government). Rumors thus have often been viewed as particular forms of other communication concepts.'

For the last few months there have been some rumours circulating about Steven Gerrard and this must be very difficult for him and his family. I never thought that I would feel any sympathy for an England footballer but the rumours in circulation about him are particularly nasty. And it is not only Gerrard, both David Beckham and Wayne Rooney have had some awful rumours spread about them over the last few weeks. Someone even spread the rumour that the England team could actually play good football. Thankfully few of us fell for that one and the England team soon put that rumour to bed. The dangerous thing about most gossip and rumour is that there will always be someone who says ‘no smoke without fire’ and sometimes rumours can be very difficult to disprove.

Having just got back for an evening out and chatting with a young guy who was playing guitar for the live band that were playing a set later in the evening he said that the band was formed simply so they could use the name, 'Liquid Pigeon'. This name was dreamt up one drunken evening and they decided there and then they had to perform under that name. My friend whispered in my ear that her sons band, 'The Drummers Got A Gun', had much the same idea. On the drive home, mind reeling from all the rumours that were discussed this evening,(discussed NOT gossiped about), I wondered why Fleetwood Mac decided to call their second album ‘Rumours’.

Wikipedia:

In July 1975, Fleetwood Mac's second eponymous album was released to great commercial success, eventually selling over four million copies. The record's hit single "Rhiannon" gave the band extensive radio exposure. At the time, Fleetwood Mac's line-up consisted of guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, drummer Mick Fleetwood, keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie, bassist John McVie, and vocalist Stevie Nicks. After six months of non-stop touring, the McVies divorced, ending nearly eight years of marriage. The couple stopped talking to each other socially and discussed only musical matters. Buckingham and Nicks—who had joined the band before 1975's Fleetwood Mac and after guitarist Bob Welch had left—were having an on/off relationship that led them to fight often. The duo's arguments stopped only when they worked on songs together. Fleetwood faced domestic problems of his own after discovering that his wife Jenny, mother of his two children, had an affair with his best friend.

Press intrusions into the band members' lives led to inaccurate stories. Christine McVie was reported to be in hospital with a serious illness, while Buckingham and Nicks were declared the parents of Fleetwood's daughter Lucy after being photographed with her. The press also wrote about a rumoured return of original Fleetwood Mac members Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Jeremy Spencer for a 10th anniversary tour. Despite false reports, the band did not change line-up, although its members had no time to come to terms with the separations before recording for a new album began. Fleetwood has noted the "tremendous emotional sacrifices" made by everyone just to attend studio work. In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac crafted some new tracks in Florida. Founding members Fleetwood and John McVie chose to dispense with the services of their previous producer, Keith Olsen, because he favoured a lower emphasis on the rhythm section. The duo formed a company called Seedy Management to represent the band's interests. In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with hired engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. Production duties were shared by the three parties, while the more technically adept Caillat was responsible for most of the engineering; he took a leave of absence from Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles on the premise that Fleetwood Mac would eventually use their facilities. The set-up in Sausalito included a number of small recording rooms in a large, windowless wooden building. Most band members complained about the studio and wanted to record at their homes, but Fleetwood did not allow any moves. Christine McVie and Nicks decided to live in two condominiums near the city's harbour, while the male contingent stayed at the studio's lodge in the adjacent hills. Recording occurred in a six-by-nine-metre room which included a 3M 24-track tape machine, a range of high-quality microphones, and an API mixing console with 550A equalisers; the latter were used to control frequency differences or a track's timbre. Although Caillat was impressed with the set-up, he felt that the room lacked ambiance because of its "very dead speakers" and large amounts of soundproofing.

The record's working title in Sausalito was Yesterday's Dreams. Buckingham took charge of the studio sessions to make "a pop album". According to Dashut, while most of Fleetwood Mac came from an improvisational blues-rock background, the guitarist understood "the craft of record making". During the formative stages of compositions, Buckingham and Christine McVie played guitar and piano together to create the album's basic structures. The latter was the only classically trained musician in Fleetwood Mac, but both shared a similar sense of musicality. When the band jammed, Fleetwood often played his drum kit outside the studio's partition screen to better gauge Caillat's and Dashut's reactions to the music's groove. Baffles were placed around the drums and around John McVie, who played his bass guitar facing Fleetwood. Buckingham performed close to the rhythm section, while Christine McVie's keyboards were kept away from the drum kit. Caillat and Dashut spent about nine days experimenting with a range of microphones and amplifiers before deciding on the best methodology of recording the band. As the studio sessions progressed, the band members' new intimate relationships, formed after the various separations, started to have a negative effect on Fleetwood Mac. The musicians did not meet or socialise after their daily work at the Record Plant. At the time, the hippie movement still affected Sausalito's culture and drugs were readily available. Open-ended budgets enabled the band and the engineers to become self-indulgent; sleepless nights and the extensive use of cocaine marked much of the album's production. Chris Stone, one of the Record Plant's owners, indicated in 1997 that Fleetwood Mac brought "excess at its most excessive" by taking over the studio for long and extremely expensive sessions; he stated, "The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party till 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording".
"Trauma, Trau-ma. The sessions were like a cocktail party every night—people everywhere. We ended up staying in these weird hospital rooms ... and of course John and me were not exactly the best of friends."
—Christine McVie, on the emotional strain when making Rumours in Sausalito
Nicks has suggested that Fleetwood Mac created the best music when in the worst shape,[ while, according to Buckingham, the tensions between band members informed the recording process and led to "the whole being more than the sum of the parts". The couple's work became "bittersweet" after their final split, although Buckingham still had a skill for taking Nicks' tracks and "making them beautiful". The vocal harmonies between the duo and Christine McVie worked well and were captured using the best microphones available. Nicks' lyrical focus allowed the instrumentals in the songs that she wrote to be looser and more abstract. According to Dashut, all the recordings captured "emotion and feeling without a middle man ... or tempering". John McVie tended to clash with Buckingham about the make-up of songs, but both admit to achieving good outcomes. Christine McVie's "Songbird", which Caillat felt needed a concert hall's ambiance, was recorded during an all-night session at Zellerbach Auditorium, across San Francisco Bay in Berkeley.

Following over two months in Sausalito, Fleetwood arranged a ten-day tour to give the band a break and fan feedback. After the concerts, recording resumed at venues in Los Angeles, including Wally Heider Studios. Christine McVie and Nicks did not attend most of the sessions and took time off until they were needed to record any remaining vocals. The rest of Fleetwood Mac, with Caillat and Dashut, struggled to finalise the overdubbing and mixing of Rumours after the Sausalito tapes were damaged by repeated use during recording; the kick and snare drum audio tracks sounded "lifeless" A sell-out autumn tour of the US was cancelled to allow the completion of the album, whose scheduled release date of September 1976 was pushed back. A specialist was hired to rectify the Sausalito tapes using a vari-speed oscillator. Through a pair of headphones which played the damaged tapes in his left ear and the safety master recordings in his right, he converged their respective speeds aided by the timings provided by the snare and hi-hat audio tracks. Fleetwood Mac and their co-producers wanted a "no-filler" final product, in which every track seemed a potential single. After the final mastering stage and hearing the songs back-to-back, the band members sensed they had recorded something "pretty powerful".
In autumn 1976, while still recording, Fleetwood Mac showcased tracks from Rumours at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. John McVie suggested the album title to the band because he felt the members were writing "journals and diaries" about each other through music. Warner Bros. confirmed the release details to the press in December and chose "Go Your Own Way" as a January 1977 promotional single. The label's aggressive marketing of 1975's Fleetwood Mac, in which links with dozens of FM and AM radio stations were formed across America, aided the promotion of Rumours. At the time, the album's advance order of 800,000 copies was the largest in Warner Bros.' history.

Fleetwood Mac's main writers—Buckingham, Christine McVie and Nicks—worked individually on specific songs, but sometimes shared lyrics with each other. "The Chain" is the only track that all members, including Fleetwood and John McVie, collaborated on. All songs on Rumours concern personal, often troubled, relationships. According to Christine McVie, the fact that the lyricists were extensively focusing on the various separations became apparent to the band only with hindsight. "You Make Loving Fun" is about her boyfriend, Fleetwood Mac's lighting director, after she split from John. Nicks' "Dreams" details a breakup and has a hopeful message, while Buckingham's similar effort in "Go Your Own Way" is more pessimistic. After a short fling with a New England woman, he was inspired to write "Never Going Back Again", a song about the illusion of thinking that sadness will never occur again once feeling content with life. The lines "Been down one time/Been down two times" are in reference to the lyricist's efforts when persuading the woman to give him a chance. "Don't Stop", written by Christine McVie, is a song about optimism. She noted that Buckingham helped her craft the verses because their personal sensibilities overlapped. McVie's next track, "Songbird", features more introspective lyrics about "nobody and everybody" in the form of "a little prayer", while the song "Oh Daddy" is a direct reference to Fleetwood, who the band considered "The Big Daddy". McVie commented that the writing is slightly sarcastic and focuses on the drummer's direction for Fleetwood Mac, which always turned out to be right. Nicks provided the final lines "And I can't walk away from you, baby/If I tried". Her own song, "Gold Dust Woman", is inspired by Los Angeles and the hardship encountered in such a metropolis. After struggling with the rock lifestyle, Nicks became addicted to cocaine and the lyrics address her belief in "keeping going".

The record is included in both The Guardian's "1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die" and the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.



Dreams

Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom
Well who am I to keep you down
It's only right that you should play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness

Like a heartbeat drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost

Yeah, thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Yeah, women they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean you'll know, you'll know...

Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself
Well It's only me that wants to wrap around your dreams and
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell
Dreams of loneliness

Like a heartbeat drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
(Drives you mad,) and what you lost, (remember what you had)

Thunder only happens when it's raining
(Thunder only happens when it's...)
Players only love you when they're playing
(Players only love you when they're...)
Yeah, women they will come and they will go, (they will go...)
When the rain washes you clean you'll know...

Yeah, thunder only happens when it's raining
(Thunder only happens when it's...)
Players only love you when they're playing
(Players only love you when they're...)
Yeah, women they will come and they will go, (they will go...)
When the rain washes you clean you'll know...

You'll know, (the heartbeat drives you mad,) you'll know, (remember what you had)
You'll know...

Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not. ~Henri Frederic Amiel

I know I keep banging on about change but –

Once upon a time I worked in an amazing place doing the best job in the world. Not content with that I decided to ‘improve’ myself. The result of that improvement meant I was able to leave the job I loved in order to do jobs I was now ‘qualified’ for. Subsequently I have spent the last 5 years doing jobs that, although useful, drain my soul and provide very few rewards apart from financial. And we all know what they say about money not being everything.

The last 5 years have certainly been interesting. I have been given opportunities to learn new skills, meet new people and gain new experiences. But without realising it I became used to doing without the things that really matter to me. When this realisation dawns you start to miss something you didn’t even notice you not longer had.

Human Beings are amazingly adaptable and we are surprisingly able to deal with the impermanence that underpins our life. For most of us things are constantly changing. These changes may be so small we don’t notice them or so big we think we will never adapt to our new way of living. When the ‘cuts’ hit us and we all tighten our belts we will miss the things we used to be able to afford and we will learn to do without them. When we are bereaved we learn to live with the loss of a loved one because, well, life goes on doesn’t it? People whose health fail get used to dealing with their sick bodies, people horribly injured in accidents even get used to living in bodies that are maimed and torn. We get used to making new friends and losing touch with old ones. We accept as normal that our lives move from one stage to another, from babyhood, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age and we face the challenges each stage provide, and we deal with the changes they bring. Question: What stage is the bit between 50 and 70? It can’t be claimed to be middle age, nor is it old age. It’s like a pre old age and is the time when we can start to be more giving, caring and, contradictorily, more selfish. It is a time when perhaps work has taken a back seat and the luxury of time can be enjoyed. For others it may be the stage of life when risks no longer carry the fears they used to and we develop a ‘nothing ventured nothing gained’ attitude. But it is the intangible changes that catch us unaware and are therefore the most shocking. How did I not notice that I was being starved of something precious?

Bring on the big changes. I can deal with them. They are subconsciously prepared for. I know my parents are likely to die before me. I know that my body will weaken and one day I will be old. Really old, not just 50 and feeling old. We all know that things like illness, bereavement, and heartbreak may be waiting for us. Its the price we pay for having vulnerable bodies and open hearts. We may lose our job, our identity and our mojo. To quote a cliche 'shit happens'. It may be a stereotypical observation but as time passes widows get used to laying the table for one less, or not shopping for their husbands favourite foods, widowers get used to finding their own matching socks and people who lose their jobs get used to, when they are wakened by a shrill alarm at 6am, not wearily having to turn over to put their alarms on snooze because they don’t have a job to rush off to anymore. People who are seriously ill get used to the limitations of their physical self, they can even be accepting of feeling sick, tired and helpless. Parents get used to the empty nest when their children leave home and many are getting used to a full nest again as their off spring return to the family home after years away at university or when their relationships break up. We get used to our bodies changing as they age, and even our opinions and beliefs can change as we become more experienced and interested in new ways of living or in thinking about things. We dream of positive changes, winning the lottery, getting the perfect job, having a book published, falling in love. Like I said bring it on.

Its the unexpected, undetected changes that are the most scary and damaging to the soul. Yesterday I was struck by a change so subtle that when I was reminded of how things used to be, and given a taste of the past, I felt quenched. Just like a plant left for days out in the hot, hot sun, until the earth around it becomes parched and dry, its roots constricted and dying, the leaves slowly drooping and the flowers fading and losing any vibrancy they once had. I was suddenly given relief in the drip, drip, drip of cool clear water that eventually became a waterfall. This is how I used to spend my days...these are the things I used to care about, enjoy discussing, crave learning more about. These are the thinkers and doers I want to spend time with. This is what makes me glow and flourish. This is what I am good at. Having spent 5 years away from what I love doing it was heaven to be back in that field and partaking in stuff that really matters. Any fears that I had about changing jobs vanished and I can look forward to the next few months exploring what I can do and deciding what I should be doing.

What brought about this 'awakening'? Something dramatic? Earth shattering? Of course not, it was just the sequence of events that made me feel I was on the road to my 'spiritual home'. It started, I think, with a series of events I organised which made me realise how much I miss working directly with children. I then visited my grandsons school on Friday to meet his Reception teacher and see his classroom ready for when he starts school in September. He is so lucky to be going to a school which is newly build, well resourced, with the outside space utilised and as important as the inside space, with the emphasis on exploration and freedom to learn, with staff that seem totally committed and child centered, with classrooms that were hives of activity and for me, pure delight that the children call their teachers by their first names and the staff are committed to, and celebrate the value of, 'family service' at meal times. It was like 'coming home'.

Then yesterday, at training for my new job, reviewing a DVD made by professionals and practitioners seriously committed to the social and emotional development of children, listening to their observations and suggestions was like the spark that made me realise. I have been in the desert for far too long.

Ali McClure the author of ‘Making It Better for Boys in Schools, Families and Communities’ was the guest speaker at the training and she is really very good. Not only does she know what she is talking about she shares her knowledge and expertise is a interesting and enjoyable manner and it was wonderful hearing about all the things I care about and believe in, hearing them discussed and valued by the team I will be working in and seeing the enthusiasm from all the practitioners that were part of the audience. It took me back to the enriching experiences I had in my earlier career and I am so looking forward to working in that type of environment again. It seems I had spent so much time contemplating the big changes in my life over the last 5 years that I didn’t notice the ones that have changed who I am and what I do. I do not kid myself that I can go back. That I can recapture the care free days of being useful and enjoying myself immensely. Not now I have 'bettered myself'. I have changed. I no longer seem to fit in to the role I used to have, and despite my tendency to romance about how it was, it would no longer be enough for me. But that does not mean I still can't be useful, just in a different way. I am going home yes, but to a different home. Who wants to live happily ever after? What does that mean? How does it look? For me it will be enough to, like the wise man Tony Adams, 'to try to live usefully and walk humbly'.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness ~Seneca

An email popped into my inbox several weeks ago suggesting that I apply for a place on a weekend retreat being offered by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. After checking out the venue on their website, and being suitably impressed by the beautiful house, tranquil gardens and riverside location, I sent off an application form and a few days later I received confirmation I was allocated a place - so despite the retreat being for stressed, overworked social workers - they let me sneak in.

I then promptly forgot all about it and before I knew it the day arrived for me to pack my bag and drive up to Oxfordshire for a weekend of relaxation and silence…or so I thought.

A Journal 10/06/10 – 13/06/10

Thursday 10th June

Why oh why oh why?

What on earth has processed me apply for this? I remember the email arriving and then taking 5 minutes to fill in the application form and sending it straight off to the BKWSU and then forgetting all about it. I also remember feeling vaguely pleased to be accepted. Then nothing….until on Monday I realised this was the week. This was the week I was going off to a strange place, alone, knowing no one, cut off from my family, my friends, my lap top, my phone, the telly. I had further investigated the background of the BKWSU and although I was impressed that the founder, Baba, was a very successful business man who, on reaching the age of 60, retired and started a new life as a Spiritual Leader. Like you do. I was worried about some of his ideas, celibacy for instance, even between a married couple, and the fact that he had visions concerned me (visions are usually a bad sign) although they apparently stopped after a while. But he had championed women in a culture and society which kept women in the background and today, decades later, the organisation is still run mainly by women. I toyed with the idea of dropping out, but knowing it was over subscribed and being very keen to learn more about the theme of the weekend, ‘The Kindness Factor and Meditation’, I thought ‘what the hell, what’s the worse that could happen?’ So I’m going.

Friday 11th June

Om Shanti



The drive up here was surprisingly straightforward. The weather was fine and sunny and, apart from a suspected WW2 bomb being discovered on route (which turned out to be an innocent non exploding pipe) and several roads being closed until they discovered that fact, I arrived at around 6pm. The drive to the house from the village, along a narrow, winding county road was a long one. It seemed much longer than the mile the directions gave but I was pleased to catch a glimpse of a huge rabbit. I think it was a hare actually but how can you tell? If it was a hare it was the first I’ve ever seen. Finally arriving at the house I was warmly greeted and taken straight up to my room. The staircase leading up to my room was carpeted in a rich blue carpet, so deep it made your footsteps bounce. The staircase is known as a ‘flying staircase’ because it spirals its way up to the top of the house without any visible means of support. At the door of ‘my’ room it becomes apparent, by the shoes outside, that it isn’t to be ‘my’ room but ‘our’ room. Yes…I am sharing with 2 strangers, 1 of which is already sitting nervously on her bed. My ‘guide’ introduces us and, after putting down my bag my new roomie and I are taken down ‘Silent Reflection to slides and music’. What the fuck?



Pretty close up pictures of flowers and trees and grass. Background music. Help.

My new roomie is called V and it transpires she works for the same organisation as I do, although our paths have never crossed. V is about my age and she seems very nice. We have a lovely vegetarian meal, prepared with produce grown in the vegetable gardens and ‘lovingly prepared by our volunteers’. It certainly tasted as if it had been. After the meal we had a welcome meeting and the facilitators all seem ok….not at all cultish. I am determined not to be brainwashed. That would not be good.

The 3rd roomie came up way after bedtime (10.30pm) and it is really weird meeting someone for the first time whilst you are sitting up in bed reading. Val and I, old friends by now, do our best to make her feel welcome but it obvious she (A) is tired and keen to go to sleep. It seems A has arrived by train and bus. The bus had deposited her in the nearest village and A had walked the long and winding road to the house. Before falling asleep she mumbled ‘some man drove by and offered me a lift and I was tempted…then I remembered the prostitutes who were recently murdered in Yorkshire so I said no. Night all’

‘Om Shanti’ V and I said with a wink.

Saturday 12th June

'Look into my eyes'

There was a choice between Meditation and Meditation and Music at 7.30am and opting for the one with music I took my place in a huge airy room with panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. As does my room. My room is simply but tastefully furnished, has a double aspect and the bed is very comfortable. After a good nights sleep I am keen to get started and the meditation and music class does not disappoint. The facilitator, D, is a Japanese man of, I suppose, around 60. He may have been older. Or younger. It is hard to tell. D has the happiest face I have ever seen. He moved playfully and gracefully and we danced and skipped across the room, we stood still, we twisted and stretched and had the best time ever! D, dressed in silky pyjamas, talked to us, made us laugh and lifted our mood. We all floated down to breakfast.

At breakfast V and I got into conversation with two ladies who work together in Kent. M and J, again women in their 50s, told us they had been talked into attending by their manager and had been under the impression it was going to be like a weekend in a health farm with facials and saunas and massages. Boy, are they in for a surprise.

It’s funny the way groups form. V, J, M and I naturally fit together and we went along to the first talk….’The Inside Story’ given by Dr Sarah Eagger.

Dr Sarah Eagger is Chair of the Special Interest Group in Spirituality and Psychiatry at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She is the medical advisor to the Janki Foundation, promoting a worldwide values-based approach to healthcare. Dr Eagger gave a very worthwhile, interesting presentation and followed it up by leading a wonderful meditation session. Not surprising as she has produced a CD ‘Introducing Meditation for Peace of Mind’. Must send my sister a copy.

After a break for coffee we went off to various interactive ‘Reconnecting with Kindness’ workshops were I was paired up with a guy called T. T is the only man on the retreat and, like me, he has an interest in Buddhism. Unlike me T is loud and confident and he more or less ended up leading the group. Which wasn’t a bad thing…he said lots of sensible stuff. We had to pick a card randomly from a pack, without looking, choosing the one that drew us towards it. Tony drew ‘Confidence’. My card – ‘Detached’ - the equivalent to the Buddhist concept of non attachment- and it read 'Loving without clinging. Involved yet not dependant.’

After lunch we had free time so me and the girls decided to explore the grounds. We had to be careful to stay to the path as we made our way between the fields on the way down to the river. We had been warned about the grumpy old farmer. With ‘you will be OK if you stay on the path’ ringing in our ears we made our way down to the river….where we rehearsed our ‘act’ for this evenings entertainment.

In the information we had been sent the agenda mentioned that Saturday night was entertainment night. It also said ‘come prepared’. I wondered at the time what they meant and this afternoon, at coffee break, I found out. ‘P’, one of the facilitators come up to our table as we were finishing our homemade cookies and, with pencil poised over a sheet of paper, asked us what ‘act’ we were doing for tonight's entertainment. We all blushed, mumbled our apologies and admitted that we were a talentless bunch but we would make an appreciative audience. ‘OK, no pressure’ said P and off she went to the next table. ‘Phew, lucky escape’ someone said. ‘I know, I feel a bit guilty’ I said ‘I really can’t do anything. I can’t sing, dance or play an instrument.’ ‘Nope…us neither’. We all sat looking forlorn for a minute or two. Then I said – for some unknown reason – ‘we could do a comedy sketch’. Like what?’ J asked. ‘Oh I don’t know. Maybe we could pretend that I am an hypnotist and you three could be my ‘plants’ in the audience and I make suggestions and you act them out.’ Before I knew what was happening P was brought back to the table, my name went down on the list as ‘K – Hypnotist Extraordinaire’ and P was asking if we needed any props. Panicking I asked for a tambourine. As I said…what the fuck?

T joined us at lunch and we took him into our confidence about the act. We wanted to trick the audience into thinking it was a serious act to begin with and, after I had made my victims perform as certain farm animals, I was going to attempt a whole room ‘hypnotism’ and get everyone to sing the song ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ with a little re working of the lyrics to reflect the ‘Kindness Factor’ and to show our appreciation for the hospitality being extended to us, as by then, hopefully, the audience would be ‘in’ on our joke. T volunteered to become part of the act. He was worried his act, a rendition of Martin Luther Kings ‘I had a dream’ speech wasn’t going to show his comedic side. I could see his point. His idea was that I would call him up on stage and ask him if he knew any impressions. After insisting he didn’t I would look into his eyes, say the magic words and he would do his Frank Spencer impression, which was really very good. Then we would finish with the song. We agreed to do this but I was worried as we had no time to rehearse as we had to rush off to our various creative sessions immediately after lunch. I had put down for drama and it was led by an actress I recognise. I must Google her later as it is driving me mad trying to remember what she was in. It seemed rude to ask.

I found it hard to concentrate on the early evening session ‘The Power of Kindness’ as I was so worried about the bloody act. Having seen the room where it was to happen I was shocked to see a proper stage. And about a hundred bloody seats for the audience. I wanted to go home.

We were on second. The girls and T had spaced themselves out among the audience and I went up nervously when my name was called. Grabbing the tambourine I explained that hypnotism was a misunderstood skill and that I had developed an interest in it when I had used hypnotherapy to enable me to stop smoking. I said that contrary to popular opinion it wasn’t gullible people who made the best subjects of hypnotism but rather it was highly intelligent, strong willed people who found themselves easily put into very pleasant trances. So, I told them, tonight I knew, I was on to a winner. All these faces looked up at me and I could see that they had fell for it….hook, line and sinker! I then reassured them that I would not make anyone do anything embarrassing and they would not ‘come too’ to find themselves out on the lawn, naked, doing the Conga. I explained that when I banged my tambourine they would awake from the trance feeling refreshed - with no memory of what had happened. I then asked them to close their eyes and I did a bit of a meditation talk, asking them to imagine a field etc, until I had them become a cow. ‘Are there any cows in the house tonight? ‘MOOOO, MOOO, MOOO, mooed V, M and J. The audience, at first surprised, began to see the joke. I then described a chicken. ‘Are there any chicken in the house tonight? CLUCK, CLUCK CLUCK said lots of people….they ‘got it’! I then asked for a gentlemen volunteer and up sauntered T who then did a Frank Spencer that brought the house down. And everyone clapped thier hands, stamped their feet and shouted on cue when asked 'if you've had a great weekend shout I HAVE'. Seems I do have the power of suggestion after all! I have not laughed so much in ages.

A Trinidadian woman did a routine with drums, which drew on her upbringing in Trinidad, had me crying with laughter. The two main facilitators delivered jokes like this one:

Psychiatric helpline

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.

If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.

If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want.
Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell
you which number to press.

If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No
one will answer.

In Ns deadpan brummie accent this was very funny. They told some great social worker jokes too:

‘A social worker is facing a mugger with a gun. “Your money or your life!” says the mugger. “I'm sorry,” the social worker answers, “I am a social worker, so I have no money and no life.”
‘Two social workers were walking through a rough part of the city in the evening. They heard moans and muted cries for help from a back lane. Upon investigation, they found a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood. “Help me, I've been mugged and viciously beaten,” he pleaded. The two social workers turned and walked away. One remarked to her colleague: “You know the person that did that really needs help”

There was also poetry readings, singing and dancing. And Ts ‘I had a dream’…which has got to be the best speech ever.

Back in our room A went straight to sleep. V and I listened to the owls and swatted mosquitoes until tiredness overtook us and we fell asleep. I’m in heaven.

Sunday 13th June

Don’t stray from the path

More Meditation with music and D. The man is amazing. They should make badges with his face on. It is the essence of happiness. After breakfast we had a talk from Dr Ruth Sewell ‘From the Inside Out’. Dr Sewell is an holistic psychotherapist and nurse who has specialises in the academic study and teaching of the Intergrated Healthcare and the research of women’s emotional responses to cancer treatment, particularly breast cancer. We learnt some relaxation techniques and breathing exercises. It was blissful. The final session followed this where we shared our thoughts and experience of the weekend and everyone used words like ‘reconnecting’ ‘essence’ ‘inner child’ ‘love’ ‘happiness’ and ‘enlightenment’. We all promised to be kinder to ourselves. Not indulgently but forgivingly. Everyone talked about the laughter. We all said it has been ages since we laughed with such gusto and abandonment. We all talked about the friends we had made. The connections we had made. The hugs we had shared.



I went for a final walk in the grounds so I could take some pictures. I saw another hare, yes, it is definitely a hare. I remember once being inexplicably thrilled to see a terrapin while out on a walk alongside a river. It was sitting on the riverbank basking in the sun. Enjoying the fine weather just like me. I had seen loads in tanks. But seeing one ‘in the wild’ is completely different. Seeing the hare, hearing the owls, eating food grown from the earth at my feet, made a connection for me. A connection a townie like me finds difficult to understand but certainly appreciates.

The BKWSU offered this weekend completely free of charge. It claims part of their role is to offer a helping hand to those who work on the front line, helping vulnerable families. The aim is to nourish the spirit and the body thus enabling them to continue to help others. They certainly did that. Without brainwashing me or even once mentioning the organisation behind the BKWSU.

Today I drove 3 ladies back to London, including the elusive A. ‘You know that man you said offered you a lift that first evening? Did you see him at the retreat?’ I asked her. A thought for a second or two, ‘no, I didn’t! Good job I decided to walk’.



Sometimes it is best to stay on the long and winding road. Short cuts can be dangerous.

Om Shanti

Girlfriends

A recent report says that women should have, ideally, 4 close girlfriends.

Two might be company and three a crowd, but it seems four is perfect when it comes to friends.The average woman needs this number at any one time in her life, a study suggests.Researchers say females are becoming far more selective and will bother forming close bonds only with those they know they can trust and share experiences. Having four friends is also ideal as it makes up a group of five - which ensures no one is ever left out, the researchers say.

Tonight me and 4 of my girlfriends, well 3 girlfriends and 1 daughter, went to see Sex And The City 2. Having spent the last few weeks avoiding reading reviews of the film I finally got to make up my own mind. What was all the fuss about? Although I had avoided the critics it has been hard to escape the fact that the film has been pretty much panned. Unfairly so. It was funny – best line went to Samantha, having been lamenting her dwindling lack of sexual desire, on spotting a handsome man riding the dunes in a 4X4, sighed and said breathlessly ‘Laurence of my Labia’. It was a riot of colour, the clothes, the decor, the burnt yellows and oranges of the desert, the blues of the sea, and the cascading hues of the market. The opening scene, a gay wedding, was wonderfully OOT, with Ziegfeld Follies type male singers, swans, indoor canals and best of all….Liza Minnelli doing a Beyonce number and shaking her booty in all the right places. Sounds scary I know, but, take my word for it, it was something to behold. Hell, it is worth seeing if just for the beautiful Irish nanny who has the most perfect large and natural breasts, and for some reason refuses to ever wear a bra, cartwheel across the lawn. The four friends are closer than ever and are still what they have always been, Carrie, the writer, still observing the world she lives in and writing her weekly column. Miranda, still fiercely ambitious and wanting to progress in her career. Charlotte, still perfect and trying to create a perfect family, and Samantha, thanks to all the lotions, potions, patches, pills and hormone replacement therapy, still happily fucking her way through life with the most gorgeous men imaginable.

Carrie has finally married her Mr Big and, two years down the line, is worried their relationship has lost its spark. When Mr Big suggests they spend a couple of days a week living apart, so they could both do their own thing, she worries that it is a signal they are losing interest in each other.

Miranda, whose new boss is a misogynist and treats her appallingly, stops enjoying her job and, having been sidelined one too many times, quits her job but feels guilty that being a stay at home mum is just not enough for her.

Charlotte is finding parenthood challenging, difficult and sometimes NOT enjoyable and is filled with guilt because she sometimes resents the demands made on her by her imperfect, but perfectly normal, children. Plus she employs the cartwheeling nanny and fears, if her husabnd is seduced by the breasts, she, Charlotte, will lose the nanny.

And Samantha? Well Samantha despairs that her hormones are packing up and leaving the building.

The film does skirt its way around some serious issues, but then it is a chickflick laced with comedy and fashion and is meant to entertain not moralise. It is about women not being scared of being different, not being scared of their needs, their sexuality or their need to explore their emotions, doubts and fears. It is about women finding their voices and it celebrates their need for ‘personal space’. It recognises that wives, mothers and friends need the freedom to be who they are, not just what they are. Carrie learns that she and Mr Big are free to make their marriage one that suits them and not to feel pressurised to make it fit other people’s idea of marriage. Miranda realises that in a job were she is valued and listened too she can be the best she can be and give her son the time and attention he needs. Charlotte learns that imperfection is pretty perfect after all and Samantha, once back on the hormone replacement stuff, gets to shag her Laurence of Labia on the bonnet of a 4X4. Fucking wonderful!

These woman have been friends for many years and I would love to see a 'prequel', something that has already been done by the other female friends programme, 'Desperate Housewives'. I would love any of the friends in SATC to be my friend whereas I wouldn't want any of the DH women as a friend. When, in an email conversation yesterday with a friend, I mentioned I was going to see SATC this evening my friend said she didn't really watch it but asked me the question she said every woman asks their friends when discussing SATC- 'if you had to shag one which one would it be?' My friend said she would, if forced, 'shag the brunette, it's the princess thing'. I replied 'Samantha, she's dirty'. 'Yep, should've guessed' replied my 'friend'.

The Word Really Is Mightier

Excellent article by Polly Toynbee in yesterdays paper about David Laws. Although the article headline 'David Laws life goal was to cast people out of work' was over the top, and an unfair assumption to make, the byline 'I regret the manner of his fall, but he wasn't honest with public money, while his cuts agenda is terrifying to contemplate' is nearer the truth.

Polly writes:

Who would be a politician? As yet another Icarus falls, many would-be politicians will shy away, appalled by the British press acting as the nation's moral Taliban. Few people live without hypocrisy, with no contradictions between principle and practice, nothing embarrassing that risks exposure. David Laws had every right to hide his private life. But scrupulous honesty with public money was essential for this Savonarola about to conduct a bonfire of others' benefits, services and livelihoods.

Desire to conceal the truth about his lover may have caused the duplicity over his £40,000 rent claims, but other expenses also show him falling short. He claimed £150 a month for utilities and £200 a month for service charges until receipts began to be demanded, when his claims abruptly dropped to £37 and £25 respectively – trifling sums for a rich man, but for the lord high axeman political death. How does he take away a baby's child trust fund while being so casual about similar sums himself? How does he tell classroom assistants the loss of their job is a price worth paying?

As for the right to privacy, it doesn't exist for benefit claimants. Iain Duncan Smith and other scourges of welfare protest that single mothers cheat the system by claiming not to be living with or sleeping with anyone else. While the tax system assesses individuals, the benefits system assesses household income, demanding to know, in nosy detail, who is in your bed and how often. Snoopers are common. People live in fear of falling out with malicious neighbours. James Purnell had ads put up in bus stops in poor areas exhorting people to grass up their neighbours. No ads appeared in City wine bars calling for informers against tax frauds costing the state between 40 and 100 times more than benefit cheats.

While outrageous fraud cases do hit the headlines, most of those caught for working while claiming only do odd hours, temporary and uncertain, too risky to declare when there are long delays in reclaiming benefits. But this toughness on the poor with a reason to cheat, and laxness on tax evasion or MPs' expenses, sets politicians up for a stern dose of their own medicine.

This is the faultline between £64,000-a-year Westminster MPs and millions of people's daily lives. Britain's median income is only £24,000 – and MPs (and journalists) forget at their peril that they are in the top 10%. The oddity about British attitudes right now concerns the class fury easily aroused by hypergreed in the boardroom or the Queen demanding £6m more at a time like this. The incomes of over half the population hardly rose in the boom years, yet now those people risk paying a heavy penalty for the behaviour of bankers and City types clamouring for deeper cuts, their press diverting anger from the true cause of this catastrophe towards the "bloated" public sector.

The same Daily Telegraph that berates the public sector and castigates MPs' expenses is owned by a pair of tax exiles refusing to pay their public dues. The same owners are running a vociferous "Hands Off Our Assets" campaign against raising capital gains tax. David Cameron and George Osborne declare they are "listening" to a bullying clamour for loopholes so large that most of the rich will hardly pay more. (Only 130,000 shareholders and 250,000 second-home owners must pay, as gains of less than £10,100 a year attract no tax). Expect an outburst of public anger if the government backtracks to allow huge loopholes: Vince Cable last week on Radio 4 adamantly ruled out as unworkable any kind of "taper" arrangement.

An edgy rancour about unfairness erupts easily these days yet doesn't quite express itself as class politics. Class simmers everywhere with unfocused resentments since Labour deliberately stopped being a conduit for the inchoate indignation of the bottom half or two-thirds. After next April's budget when public employees cascade on to the dole, will this scratchy resentfulness crystallise into a political movement? Or will the sense of social injustice be skilfully channelled by government and press into outbursts against dole cheats, immigrants, overpaid public-sector chiefs, MPs and each new scapegoat of the day?

It is by no means clear if Labour's leadership candidates have an economic strategy to oppose unemployment on the scale we are about to witness. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns there will be 25% cuts in unprotected departments – a quarter of staff in schools, nurseries, colleges and universities, police, prisons, social care, child protection, street cleaning, parks, road repair. Nor will NHS jobs be preserved. The terrifying scale has not begun to sink in with the public, or politicians still claiming that the deficit is the priority: it won't be soon. The US treasury is warning Europe against the frenzied cutting each country is embarked on, risking a downward spiral when growth should come before cuts.


On resigning, David Laws said: "How much I regret having to leave such vital work, which I feel all my life has prepared me for." How odd that his relished life goal was to cast people out of work. As editor of the Orange Book that staked out new turf for Liberal Democrats as state-shrinking economic neoliberals, he called for a rejection of "soggy socialism" and breaking the NHS into a private insurance system. Laws's faction rejected the heritage of Beveridge and Keynes, the two great Liberal giants.

So perhaps Labour negotiators in the days after the election should not have been so shocked when Laws and Alexander demanded that the Tories' £6bn of cuts should be implemented this year, although they had campaigned against cuts in the election. Laws's biggest cut last week was £700m from Labour's Keynesian stimulus to kickstart manufacturing and growth.

He would have been a Tory, were it not for repugnance at section 28 social Conservatism. I regret the manner of his fall, but not the departure of one who expressed little sympathy for the lives of others being damaged by a too harsh interpretation of economic necessity.

I'm surprised but not shocked to read his expenses claims have fallen since he was required to provide receipts. It is what I have come to expect of a certain 'class'. Although I could claim certain expenses I don't. In relation to what I earn and the amount of time I would have to spend filling in the paperwork to claim the £20 odd pound a month I am entitled to it just isn't worth it. My time is better spent doing something useful for the people whose taxes pay my wages. Reading that a millionaire claims for his £60 per month is sickening - but hey, he is entitled to it so who am I to criticise? I know my place.

Polly puts what I have been feeling into perfect words:

As for the right to privacy, it doesn't exist for benefit claimants. Iain Duncan Smith and other scourges of welfare protest that single mothers cheat the system by claiming not to be living with or sleeping with anyone else. While the tax system assesses individuals, the benefits system assesses household income, demanding to know, in nosy detail, who is in your bed and how often. Snoopers are common. People live in fear of falling out with malicious neighbours. James Purnell had ads put up in bus stops in poor areas exhorting people to grass up their neighbours. No ads appeared in City wine bars calling for informers against tax frauds costing the state between 40 and 100 times more than benefit cheats.

Polly, thanks for this... sums up all that is wrong with the class based society we live in. And thanks to all the other journos and bloggers who have written informative, insightful, passionate, revealing and sometimes eye wateringly funny pieces on the political comings and goings this last month. Who ever said politics is boring?