St George, Justice and Karma

Much as I admire all those dedicated people who run in the London Marathon I am always slightly resentful of the fact that I am trapped in my home for the whole morning of the event, particularly when the weather promises to be good and I am itching to get out and make the most of the sunshine. I suppose of could always walk…talking of which –

Training starts in earnest next week for the ‘Race for Life’. Having participated in this fundraising event twice in the past I am keen to do it again and hopefully beat my previous ‘time’ for this 5k run/walk/crawl. I never bothered training the previous times (being much younger and more confident in my abilities) but this time my running mate and I have decided on a strict training regime. Well, my friend has, as she has invested in a reinforced ‘running bra’ and is determined to get her moneys worth, so from next week we are going walking/running/crawling three times a week. Time and Life allowing.

The Marathon weekend is a sign that summer is just over the horizon. Greenwich Park is still filled with daffodils which were late blooming this year and today it looked amazing, lush and vibrant, filled with flowers and people. Driving around town the trees hung heavy with blossom and the added splashes of colour from the red Virgin banners (Virgin are this years sponsors of the marathon) draping the streets added to the feeling of summer anticipation.

Last night I ventured into Welling, the old home of the old BNP, or National Front as it was. Welling has a long, wide high street with lots of pubs and restaurants. It was filled with flags of St George and hoards of people out celebrating St Georges Day. I was quite taken aback. Admittedly most of the revellers were young and are probably out en masse on a Friday night anyway and have just swapped their chav outfits for chainmail and swords. My friend and I went to a lovely Greek Restaurant and had the most wonderful meal in a very ambient setting while the Georges outside drunkenly slayed their dragons. Kleftiko beats sausage and mash any day. When I got home I took the dog out for a walk. It was after midnight and a couple of miles from Welling and the streets were empty. Kent mayhem, London serenity.




The Guardian has launched a 'Know Your Nation' series. They have listed Buddhism as a 'Religion' and I was sad to see there are only 144,453 Buddhists in the Nation. There are actually more Jedi Knights than Buddhists! 390,127 people claimed to be Jedi Knights after an Internet campaign. 'Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.' Yoda. Hmmm. Yoda, like a Buddhist, speaks he.

I felt sorry for the United Brethren. All four of them.

The Guardians Q&A this week put the usual Q&A questions to several party leaders, including, of course, the big 3.

When asked ‘which living person do you most despise and why?’ Nick Clegg responded ‘I used to work with an EU bureaucrat who destroyed the careers of some good colleagues’. I found this response interesting. Clegg was likely to be banking on the EU bureaucrat to be reading the interview and he must relish in being able to deliver this jibe. It was interesting also because it was a very honest answer. Compare it to Gordon Brown’s trite ‘I think hate’s quite a destructive emotion and anyway I despise regimes more than people’. Cue halo. David Cameron named name –‘Robert Mugabe’ a nice safe answer. More modern than ‘Adolf Hitler’ but the same thing. I like that Clegg personalised his hate and I can think of some (non EU) bureaucrats that I despise for exactly the same reasons as Clegg.

The Judge is the recent Shoesmith versus Haringey/Ball/Ofsted case noted that had Sharon Shoesmith, the bureaucrat charged with the failure of Haringey Council to protect Baby Peter, who was killed by his mother, her lover and a lodger, whilst under the ‘protection’ of Social Services, 'been more overtly apologetic at the press conference that followed the news of what had happened to Baby Peter she may have faced less hostility from the public.’ He continued ‘ In short periods such as these fates are sealed’. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. How many of us wish we can go back and undo a moment of ill judgement? At this press conference Shoesmith defended her staff and showed graphs of the progress made by her ‘three star’ services. Justice Foskett rejected Shoesmiths claim that she had been unlawfully dismissed after the details surrounding the case of Baby Peter became public. However he accepted that it appeared she had been treated unfairly by both Haringey and Ed Balls, Children’s Secretary, and he was critical of Balls for telling a press conference convened to announce her removal in December 2008 that Shoesmith should be dismissed without compensation. ‘It was wrong to give support to that position no matter how strongly some people might have felt about it’ the judge said. The judge also had ‘misgivings’ that that Balls had made comments about Shoemsith at the press conference when she had had no opportunity to refute them.

Oddly, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Judge found that ‘Ofsted had met its obligation of fairness’ although he did add that ‘There are strong grounds for thinking that the claimant and others whose roles might be questioned did not have a full, fair and measured opportunity to put over their position about their own personal responsibility for what was found, but that did not invalidate what Ofsted did.’ However he was, it would seem, unimpressed by Ofsted saying that ‘the court would "rapidly grind to a halt" if parties in cases regularly failed like Ofsted in their duty of candour’.

Balls still insists he acted appropriately. In a statement, Balls said ‘Eighteen months on, and following lengthy scrutiny, the judge, in his considered and extensive judgment, has found that my decision to remove Sharon Shoesmith from the post of Director of Children's Services in Haringey was, indeed, lawful and that, in directing her removal and replacement, I acted fairly and properly.’ Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted said ‘I am pleased that the judge's conclusion is clear: Ofsted's inspection process has been vindicated.’ Hmmm, the same inspection process that had previously given Haringey's Children's Services ‘three stars’? Weren't these three stars given during the regime that operated when the abuse of Baby Peter was allowed to continue?

Lynne Feathersone, Lib Dem MP for Haringey quite rightly noted that Shoesmith had to lose her job as Director of Children’s Services but argued that her High Court case had exposed evidence of a culture of ‘cover-up and secrecy’. The buck stopped at Shoesmith and it shouldn’t have done. Shoesmith was out of her depth in the role of Director of Children’s Services and was operating under a false sense of security reinforced by her graphs and 3 stars. She worked in a culture where ‘measurable’ outcomes where the holy grail. She was from a culture where graphs and grades and stars were the be all and end all. So long as a box is ticked, so long as meetings happen within the ‘guidelines’, so long as the people at the top are happy, then everything is hunky dory. Instead of showing humility and empathy at the press conference Shoesmith sealed her fate by trying to prove that it wasn’t her, or any of her team, fault that Baby Peter died. Shoesmith had been conditioned by her years as a teacher, and then as an Inspector, to form an opinion on how something looks on paper, she had rarely been asked to form a judgement on how things actually were in reality. Shoesmith wasn't even a Social Worker, her background was in teaching, and indeed she was very much respected by those in the teaching profession. Shoesmith failed to recognise that what actually mattered was what was happening on the front line and in failing to recognise this she failed Baby Peter. But who created this culture? Who decided that Teaching and Social Care could be lumped together under 'Children's Services' and someone whose expertise was in one of those fields could manage what was happening in the other? Featherstone was near to the real culprits when she said ‘After what happened to Baby Peter, Sharon Shoesmith's position was totally untenable – and rightly so. From this case we see further evidence that the culture of cover-up and secrecy goes right to the top of the Labour Government. Key facts have only come to light because of this court case, facts that the public are entitled to know.’

The comment that the Judge made concerning other high ranking Local Authority staff was interesting – he remarked ‘The manner of Shoesmith's removal will hardly inspire feelings of security among directors of children's services. The prospect of summary dismissal with no compensation and a good deal of public opprobrium is hardly likely to be an inducement for someone thinking of taking the job or, perhaps, in some circumstances, continuing in it.’ I found this prospect heart warming. Karma.

Justice Foskett concluded ‘I cannot think that any party will truly look back at how matters were handled in this case with complete satisfaction’.

No, Judge, but quite a few will look back with relief that they got away with it.

Unrequited Love

I spend another day yesterday with my mum and dad. Another few hours of learning new things about them and their relationship.

We visited my dad’s elderly Aunt Ada. Whose real name, I discovered, is Sally. Aunt Ada is 85 but looks much older. Tiny, thin, frail and crooked. Sparse hair, creamy waxen skin, strangely huge feet and just getting used to using a zimmerframe. I could barely see any trace of the woman I knew as Auntie Ada, who looked after my Gran Gran, but her voice was recognisable - if a tone or two lighter. Ada, lives in a warden controlled flat and her home, although not the same one I used to visit every week as a child, the one she lived in with her mother, was almost a replica of the one I last visited some time in the 1980s. The prints on the wall of an Edwardian child playing the piano and learning ballet are the same ones that hung on her mothers wall and the dark furniture and 1950s coffee table brought back memories of another era. There wasn’t much to show for a long lived life in terms of books, photographs or mementos. A nurse calls each day to give her injections (what for wasn’t clear) and Ada had just returned home from a stay in the hospital. She had, she said ‘stupidly fallen over in the bedroom a few weeks ago and hit her head.’ When found by a neighbour hours later she was taken to hospital and kept in for a few weeks, finally being allowed home on condition she used a zimmerframe. ‘Bloody fuss…I told them, I didn’t want any fuss’ she said with spirit. She enjoys the soaps ‘Not that EastEnders though, horrible people’ and she still reads the newspaper. I was surprised to learn that she still pays full rent and council tax as well as contributing to her care, courtesy of a pension earned for spending 50 years in a clerical job. This hardly seems fair and from reading various manifestos it would seem the Green Party are the only ones to have a fair and reasonable policy for the care of the elderly. Aunt Ada never married, she was a late baby for my Great Grandmother, from a second marriage, and she was destined to be the one that stayed home and took care of her parents until they died. No husband (or lovers, as far as I can tell) no children, no passion for travel or music or books. Just work, home, work, home, for years and years and years. If there was a love affair or any adventures they are long forgotten. Now it is just home with the occasional visitor, who visits not out of love, but out of duty. A productive life? On some levels yes, she worked hard for many years and took care of a loved one, made her mother feel safe, secure and loved. A wasted life? On some levels – yes. A life spend in the same job, in the same square mile of the city. A life spent without passion, fear, excitement, pleasure or curiosity. A life spent deaf to great music, blind to great works of art (those bloody Edwardian prints! Ugh!) and great literature. An empty life, no photographs of her wedding day, no sons, daughters or grandchildren, no pictures of places visited or places dreamt about. Oh well it is not for me to judge. Ada’s a lovely old girl and maybe contentment with life is a better achievement than a passion for life.

My mum, aged 75, said as we left ‘I don’t want to get old’. And my dad (a youthful 71) said ‘yeah, but the alternatives not great either!’

Back at my place I dug out a 9x5 black and white photograph of my mum and dad at a dinner dance. My mum looks drop dead gorgeous in her LBD and pearls and my dad a handsome dude in his sharp suit. It was decided it must have been taken in about 1962/3 and it was the first time my dad had seen it in almost 50 years. It brought tears to his eyes and he said to me ‘now you know why I fell in love with your mum at first sight. See how beautiful she was’. Mum squirmed with embarrassment ‘Alright John, that’s enough. It was a long time ago’. ‘Yes I know, he said, but that love has never gone away’.

Another picture, showing their wedding, a family group that included Aunt Ada (she does have very big feet) brought back a bitter sweet memory for my dad. 'That's the night you sang the Shirley Bassey song for me. At our reception. Can't listen to Bassey now. Upsets me' 'Why?' I asked 'was mum that bad?' 'No' he said 'she just never meant a word of the bloody song! And I knew it at the time.'

The song? 'As I love you'

I will love you as I love you
All my life
Every moment spent with you
Makes me more content with you
Just as you are
You are all I could pray for
All that you are
That's what I wake
up each day for
Every single
Touch and tingle
I adore
Every kiss from you to me
Always seems so new to me
Each one warmer
Than the one before
As I love you more
and more and more
Every single
Touch and tingle
I adore
Every kiss from you to me
Always seems so new to me
Each one warmer
Than the one before
As I love you more and more
And more


They never should have married. They were so incompatible. He loved her. She loved his mum and dad. He was always going to be miserable and insecure and she was always going to be resentful and, because of that, unkind to him. The tragedy of unrequited love, particularly a first love, is that it never goes away.

In some cases the result of unrequited love is stalking. On the whole unrequited love is a pretty noble emotion that is traditionally dealt with by being accepting and brave. Maintaining a stiff upper lip, dignity and, with grace, you should just accept it as my dad did and move on with your life. Maybe when you hear a certain piece of music or pass through a certain place or see a photograph of happier days, you may experience a welcome pang of regret, welcome because there is a bitter sweet pleasure in dealing with rejection, but on the whole you get over it - even if you do forever hold a flame for the lost love. But a worrying modern twist on unrequited love is the inability of suitors to deal with their feelings not being reciprocated.

From this weeks Guardian:

From an anonymous, 23-year-old male

Dear Carole, There is a girl in my office who joined about eight months ago, we started talking to each other and used to text each other almost the whole night after work. We went out a couple of times and I gave her a gift on her birthday. Everything was going great.

Suddenly she told me one day that she was uncomfortable talking so much and going out as her family is very reserved and she is not that fast kinda girl. We stopped talking so much.

A couple of weeks ago she started talking normally again and replying to my text messages. One day I asked her out to dinner and she gave me the excuse that her team members would feel bad if she didn't go out with them. I was very disappointed and told her in anger that she doesn't care how I feel. I said I blamed her that she used to talk to me when she was newly joined and didn't have many friends in the office and now she doesn't care for me at all.

Since that day she hasn't even spoken to me. Please help me find out what's going on in her mind. We used to be so close when she used to text me every second minute, I don't understand her sudden change in behaviour. I really love her.

Carole replies:
You need to see this from the young woman's point of view. Yes, she was friendly towards you, but I would predict that she was equally friendly to everyone else in the office, and if others had texted her she would have reciprocated just as she did with you. The reason she was friendly is not because she felt attracted to you but because she was new.

(Now up to this point I was with Carole. She is trying to get this young man to feel some empathy for the 'victim' of his love)

To avoid inbreeding, young adult female apes usually leave their birth group and join a new, unrelated group.1 Lone young females newly arrived in an established group must ingratiate themselves and work their way up the patriarchal hierarchy. For a human primate, this is no easy manoeuvre. It appears that you took advantage of this woman's social vulnerability at a time when she needed friends (not sexual partners).

(Eh?)

At first she indulged your advances. You were an unknown quantity, she was not familiar with the office culture and she didn't want to cause offence. She didn't know who held influence, so she hedged her bets and played for time. Eight months down the line this woman now knows the score. She knows your opinion of her has little or no bearing on her social rank and survival chances, and thus she is no longer prepared to indulge your attention-seeking behaviour.

(Phew, back to human office workers. Was wondering where this was going)

She tried to distance herself from you but you pursued her and kept texting. She spoke to you and tried to let you down gently by making lame excuses. This was the moment when, for both your sakes, she needed you to empathise and understand. But still you didn't get the hint and back off.

You escalated things and fell into a trap from which few men in Western society can free themselves unscathed. (Strictly patriarchal Eastern and African societies tend to accept this type of male behaviour.) You succumbed to the common male ape behaviour of coercion.2 You wanted control over her, you became angry and intimidated her in an attempt to force her into guilty submission. You have made yourself objectionable and now she is entirely justified in not talking to you and she probably has the support of her colleagues in this.

(Me thinks Carole may be a feminist)

You need to improve your mating strategies. Do you really want a girlfriend who is only your girlfriend because she has been harassed by you? would a submissive, guilty girlfriend do it for you? Your lack of self-awareness is the problem here. You alone are responsible for your feelings in this scenario and you have got to try and rise above your basic urges to save your self-respect.

(Putting responsibility back where it belongs...Go Carole!)

There is a large body of primate research on the evolutionary origins of aggressive male sexual jealousy,3 covering the strategies of rape, harassment, intimidation and monopolisation of time – referred to as "mate guarding". Males usually behave in these sexually coercive ways around fertile females they want to impregnate. These strategies can be observed in all ape species, but less so among gorillas, who live in harems with a dominant silverback male. Sexually aggressive male behaviour has evolved as an adaptation to living in multi-male, multi-female societies where there is a lot of choice in mating opportunities but also a lot of sexual rivalry.4

(Cathy and Claire Carole is NOT)

These sorts of sexually aggressive male behaviours are more often exhibited by low-status males. High-status males who have repeatedly shown kindness, and are high status due to their mix of good genes for intelligence and physical stamina, are more likely to have females soliciting them for sex rather than their having to harass or rape in order to mate.

You say you love her, and a component of love is altruism, but you don't seem to be showing much altruism here. Yes, you gave her a birthday present, but with the strings of sexual coercion securely attached. It's good to give, but don't ever give to receive. Instead notice when your giving isn't reciprocated and adapt, and if necessary cut your losses.

You could apologise to her for bullying her, but that might invite accusations of sexual harassment. Instead, I suggest you keep a respectful distance from this woman. Be friendly to her but no more so than you would be towards anyone else in the office. Do not text her again.

(so an 'I'm sorry I was a twat. It won't happen again' will result in the poor girl running screaming to HR 'He said sorry, the misogynist pig. I feel violated. Compo please)

You need to reinvent yourself, and as a young male of 23 years you can do that. Improve upon your social and intellectual skills, perhaps take up night classes in varied subjects. This way you will raise your social status and make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex. If you do so you will discover how much better it feels to be pursued by ardent females compared with how it feels to be a rejected pursuer.

Good luck.

I think what Carole means is 'Get a over it you saddo!'


Any earlier today:


Unrequited love led to kidnapping, police say
Yesterday, a young woman was allegedly kidnapped from her apartment in midtown Kansas City and held prisoner until she was able to call her sister at a McDonald's in Fairview Heights, Ill. According to court records, her abductor is a man from her hometown in Mexico, who planned to take her to New Jersey and marry her. She says she repeatedly spurned his advances and said she already had a boyfriend. Jackson County prosecutors have charged Raul Ortiz-Caseres of Mount Holly, N.J., with kidnapping.


Again....Mr Ortis-Caseres...get over it!

So glad my dad picked himself up, brushed himself down and just got on with his life. It would have been so embarrassing to cope with a kidnapping as well as everything else that followed their marriage break up.

I took a great photo of my mum and dad before they left. Mum no longer looking gorgeous and dad no longer looking handsome. They are now both round and white. But dad is still looking smitten and mum is still looking bemused.

I showed someone the photo I took of them today and I thought they were going to say how much I look like my mum so I braced myself for the inevitable feeling of depression that comment makes me feel but instead they said something strange about my dad. ‘Is he a writer’? they asked. ‘No. Why?’ ‘He looks bookish’. ‘Well’ I said ‘he used to own a book shop’. ‘Ah!’ they said 'That explains it’. Hmmm I wish it did!

The Joy (Eventually) Of Writing

One of the great things about the Internet is that it encourages people to write. I came across a site the other day that had posts from people of all ages, writing about their experiences growing up in a certain area. The writers ranged from people in their 30s to Octarians. I particularly enjoyed the writing voices of the older people. They spoke with a vibrancy, an awareness and sense of humour that was so worth the read. Or as Simon Cowell would say they were 'authentic'. These sites are a great forum for people of all ages to find a common ground and share memories and experiences. Outside of families where does this happen?

Some people have always had a writing voice. They have spent years honing their skill, experimenting with ideas and styles until they find a format that suits them and which expresses their ideas and thoughts in a way they are comfortable with, and which they feel will have the most impact on the reader. Other people may not have written since childhood when their teachers asked them, on a regular basis, to write about their themselves, their weekend, the works of Shakespeare, why America entered the Second World War and a poem about Spring, all in the space of a week. When I was in an infant class I remember being asked to produce two pages of writing about ‘What I did in the holidays’. I am not even certain I could write at that young age but I am sure I must have been able to do so as I only attended this particular school in the infant classes. I wrote my letters two inches high in order to do as the teacher asked. This was an awful school. All I remember is spelling tests, endless writing and a teacher telling me the tree I drew was too cartoon like. I don’t remember any reading books. I don’t remember many books from my Junior school either, but I know spent endless hours in the local library, just like Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’. I also remember that I couldn't wait to be able to read - I just knew that once I could I would be able to escape into another world. I am beginning to feel that way about writing. Its a journey to another world, it's just a different way of getting there.

Home Sweet Home

Last night I watched a documentary called 'We Was All One' which shows life in Bermondsey and Walworth in the 1970s and compares it to how life was in the decades before the area lost the dockyards and gained housing estates. The documentary was made by Thames Television and is available to watch on YouTube. I remember seeing it years ago and a couple of the people interviewed were grandparents and parents of some of the people I grew up with. It is a wonderful piece of social history and the old 'Marigold Girls' were wonderful. Strong, funny, tough old girls who had lived in poverty and coped in difficult times, now enjoying the odd bottle of stout or half pint of mild in the Marigold Pub, Bermondsey Street. They are funny old girls and, as they reminisce about bringing up a family in those tough times and tell stories about going 'hopping' in Kent, you are reminded that, although there is still some way to go before child poverty is eradicated (another 10 years if you are to believe Tony Blair who said back in 2000 'Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty. It will take a generation. It is a 20-year mission, but I believe it can be done.') poverty in 2010 is very different to the poverty of the pre benefit days these women raised their families in. These feisty women brought tears of laughter to my eyes with their tales. It is worth watching if only for the subtitles on the second piece of film. Someone with a limited command of the English language has attempted to subtitle the cockney accents - with some very funny results.

In one of the segments the mum of someone I know is interviewed, you can even see the girl I know, aged about 6, on a rickety old swing in the background. The family lived in Blendon Row, a truly Dickinson slum. The women all literally hung out of their windows, which over looked a tiny courtyard and gossiped. Several families shared an outside toilet and none of the dwellings had a bath. The children all played out in this grim, ugly place and everyone shared their living space with hoards of rats. The rats were almost tame, and certainly never fled when coming into contact with a human.



Compared to Blendon Row my tower block was luxurious living. Certainly when the estate was built, consisting of five tower blocks, they were luxurious compared to the slums they were replacing. It might have been a better idea to repair and modernise the old Victoria terraces they demolished to make way for the tower blocks because although the central heating, fitted kitchens and indoor bathrooms and toilets of these 20 storey high blocks of flats were very welcome, nearly all the people housed in them missed the camaraderie of slum living. Suddenly neighbours were enclosed in tight little units, windows did not overlook other windows but were vast frames for amazing views of the city, a city were people were tiny ants moving around far below. Last week I was talking to friend who had grown up with me on the estate and we remember it fondly, the nooks and crannies, the underground car park which was full of individual lock up garages, in an age when hardly anyone had a car and were destined to become 'camps' for scores of kids, the upper level of sheds, the mazes and ramps and hiding places that made our concrete jungle an adventure playground. Although a very modern sixties building the architects had gone wild with their imagination and couldn't settle on a theme so the flats were all windows, the entrance passages and lobby was decorated to resemble Aztec caves with carvings on the walls - interspersed with 3D shapes made out of, no doubt, asbestos, and the landscaping outside was cobbled walkways and walls made out of broken stones which meant all of us kids were always sporting grazes.





On Facebook I came across pictures of the Bonamy Estate, build at around the same time as my estate but consisting of low rise blocks that sprawled from Ilderton Road to Catlin Street near the Old Kent Road. It was divided into 'ways' and each 'way' was connected by a walkway on ground level. At the Catlin Street end there was a level with several shops and a pub called the 'Apple and Pears'. The flats ranged from bedsit size to six bedroomed accommodation and were huge. The estate didn't last very long, build in the late 1960s it was demolished in the 1990s because there was a problem with the concrete used to build it. Looking at photos now it looks pretty grim but on the whole the people who lived there seemed to have loved it, or at least their children did, judging by the comments made on FB. The flats were large and airy and each 'way' had its own character. Those who have commented on FB miss it and all have very happy memories of growing up there. There are some great pictures of the Silver Jubilee on the 'Bonamy Estate' FB group and you get the feeling that there was some competition between the 'ways' over who had the best street party.

Estate living has had some very bad press and I must admit that on my travels round South London I find some of them, even the brand new ones, a bit depressing. But I loved my tower block home. Like the old Bonamy dwellers I have wonderful memories of playing out in my concrete jungle. My own children, although brought up on a very different estate to the one I grew up on, loved the freedom that estate living gave them.

Some of the slum dwellers, moved away from friends and a different way of living day to day, may have disliked their pristine, rat free, fully plumbed homes and seen them instead as prisons, but their children seem to have taken to living on estates like ducks to water.

Children, it would seem, have the ability to make a playground wherever it is they find themselves. Adults, unfortunately, can only make a home in some places. It isn't only about the accommodation and whether or not it has all the mod cons, it is about the infrastructure, the community and the need for people to feel they belong.

Firsts

First tooth, first day at school, first kiss, first love, first job, first car, first child - having lived more than half my life I wonder what other firsts I have to look forward too? First set of false teeth, first hearing aid, first stroke?

Memorable firsts:

I don’t remember hanging tightly on to my mums hand as she left me at the school gates but I do remember my first school dinner time and the feeling of helplessness and vulnerability as I didn’t know where to sit or what the routine was. I remember the dinner lady insisting I ‘eat it all up’. An insistence given with a scowl - not an encouraging smile.

My first kiss happened in Hackney, across the road from the town hall where I had spent the evening at my first 'real' disco. I was thirteen and he was much older, about seventeen I suppose. It was also the first time I sampled Chinese cuisine, courtesy of the spring roll he bought me, before diving in for a snog. It wasn't nice. The kiss or the spring roll. Too greasy. My first love was Keith who looked like a cross between Joss Harknett and a chimpanzee and he smelt of putty, had the most amazing smooth skin, and the widest mouth ever. Funny what you remember. That mouth used to almost swallow me. We were an item for about 18 months during which time we went out once, to the cinema to watch the Stephen King film ‘Carrie’. The rest of the time we stayed in my room.

I never ever watch ‘The One Show’ but had occasion to see it this week and as fate would have it they were talking about the first record ‘famous’ people had purchased and Holly Johnson, of Frankie Goes To Hollywood fame, was talking about his first vinyl purchase which happened to be ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. Cue lots of Bowie clips. Hell, Keith wasn’t my first love - Bowie was!



As they were showing clips I said to my son that there was an instruction on the album cover saying 'to be played at maximum volume' and then as soon as the words had left my mouth Holly Johnson said 'and look, it says 'to be played at maximum volume' which I did.' Me too Holly.

This was also the first LP Keith had ever bought and he lent it to me and then to our friend Amanda. When it was time to be returned it slipped out of its cover as Amanda was walking across the estate and it broke into little vinyl pieces. Amanda, always full of held back tears, let go and cried for days. This period of lamenting lasted almost as long as the time she thought she was pregnant. Amanda almost had sex in 1973 and was convinced she was pregnant until finally in 1975 we were able to convince her that the baby, if there was one, would have shown its face by now. It was days before she was strong enough to tell Keith his LP was no more and he only forgave her when she replaced it. It took her weeks to do so as the LP was £2.99 and her pocket money was 50p a week. I think I threw in 25p to speed it along a little. My first record was bought in the A1 Stores in the Walworth Road. The A1 Stores were basically a light and ornament shop that sold records out back. My first purchase was ‘Puppy Love’ by Donny Osmond and it cost me 50p. There was an article about record shops in the G2 this week but it focused on the sort of record shop that only 'serious' music lovers could frequent. A kind of middle class record shop that I would have been too scared to enter. The A1 Stores was pure working class...non pretentious, down to earth and, if it were around today, you would be able to ask for the latest Lady GaGa (another huge Bowie fan, and, in my opinion, an Angel with the voice of, eh... an angel) without being made to feel like a philistine. Another working class record store was DJs on the corner of East Street/Old Kent Road, which was purely a music store and was where I bought all my 12 inches. It is now a photocopy/office supply shop.




My first flat when I left home was in East Street and my first double bed was bought in ‘Wheatland’s' on the Old Kent Road a couple of doors down from DJs.




For some reason we bought an orthopedic mattress and I used to go into the shop every week with my payment of £5. This bed, a TV, a cooker and an green onyx lighter, ash tray and cigarette case, a set bought from the A1 Store,(which has only recently closed down) was the first 'furnishing' I ever owned.

That 'Puppy Love' single was my pride and joy, and was soon followed by a copy of Wizards 'I wish it could be Christmas every day' which was a present from Keith and Steve. They had clubbed together to buy it for me for Christmas. These two records formed my entire record collection and it wasn't until I started work that I was able to afford LPs. So in 1976 I finally managed to buy 'Ziggy' and in 1978 Keith bought me Bowie's Diamond Dogs. Because of being poor and unable to buy music at will, Bowie was really the only artist I ever spent money on.

I'm reading a book called 'You Know You're Past It When' and it is full of amusing obsevations such as you know you're past it when:

You can live without sex, but not without your glasses

Your idea of a night out is sitting on the patio

You finally get your head together, but now you body is disintergrating

You like telling stories, over and over again

But it failed to mention the ultimate sign of getting old -

You know you're past it when there are no more Firsts.

The Daily Mail reported this yesterday:

Council Staff take two ‘stress sickies’ a year

‘Every council worker in England and Wales had more than two days of work with stress on average last year costing taxpayers more than £500million.’

Did they mean ‘On average every council worker in England and Wales had more than two days of work with stress last year costing taxpayers more than £500million.’

I certainly hope so as, on several readings of the opening sentence, I was feeling aggrieved that I had somehow missed out on an extra two duvet days.

We received an email at work on Thursday which said ‘given the pigeon problem in the building we will use the services of a hawk, once a week, for a year in an effort to solve the problem. The hawk will be here on Tuesday morning between 8am and 9am.’

‘Great’ I thought ‘I’ve got to come in early on Tuesday to see this’. I wandered into the office next door where C works and asked her if she had seen the email and wasn’t it exciting? ‘A hawk, C, flying around the building chasing out the pigeons. I’m just wondering about the mess. I‘m going to come in early to see it but will wear a hat just in case.’ C looked at me as if I was crazy. ‘Katie, they don’t mean in the building. They mean in the general area. You really think they are bringing a bird of prey into the building? Anyway, have you ever seen any pigeons flying around the office that need chasing out?’ There followed a debate involving all those in the office and people were split right down the middle. Some thought the same as me, others believing that the thought of a hawk in the building completely mad and surreal. My argument was strengthened by someone mentioning they has seen a pigeon flying around a room on the floor above a few weeks ago but it wasn’t enough to sway the doubters. Someone eventually took themselves off to ask our service boss if it was true that a hawk was going to be in the office on Tuesday morning. He came to ‘reassure’ us. ‘The hawk will be, hooded (for me this just added to the excitement) and used outside the building to scare away the pigeons. It will not be coming in and there is no need to be scared’. ‘Why then’ I asked ‘did the buildings manager bother to email us?’ ‘Ummm’ said our manager trying to think on his feet, ‘oh, because hardly anything happens in the building department and they just got excited about this and wanted people to know’. For the rest of the afternoon bird noises kept coming out of his office, and when ever he walked past he flapped his arms and squawked. 'Well I’m crushed.’ I said to C afterwards over a glass of wine in a local pub. ‘That would have been cool, a hooded hawk flying around the office. I’m still not convinced anyway. I’m still going to come in early on Tuesday, just in case’. ‘Me too’ said C ‘because now I think you are right.’

Stressed? Us? Well, not yet although our jobs aren’t safe and any ‘perks' that we currently enjoy are being removed - along with the support of each other as we are being relocated to the ‘jewel in the crown’ building next month. A building without character, charm or any soul. Ok, so it is unlikely to have pigeons (I have, however, heard rumours of cockroaches). It has great views, cool drinks machines and lovely places to visit in your lunch break. But the people who work there that are discouraged from any form of individuality. Music is banned. Laughter is frowned upon. Conversations are rare. Snacks at the desk are seen as a breach of conduct.It is a building meant for robots. But not robots that will do the job more effectively or with improved outcomes for the service users. Someone who works there said to me recently ‘some people have forgotten they are public servants and the very people they are meant to be serving are forgotten as they get seduced by this corporate image and bureaucratic routine’. And I am sure the stress levels of these ant like workers will increase over the coming year or so and the opening line of the Daily Mail report may be prophetic instead of just inaccurate and poorly written.

'Words are the Voice of the heart' Confucius

Blogging, as described by Wikipedia: A blog (a contraction of the term "web log" is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

Recent statistics are as follows:

Blogosphere stats

133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002

346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)

900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period

1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)

77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs

81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere

59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years

How wonderful. Millions of people writing. Millions of people using their writing Voice to record events, review, reminisce, and report. Millions of people using their writing Voice to share their thoughts, their hopes and their fears.

Share. This is where a blog differs dramatically from a diary. Most people wouldn't share their diary with their nearest and dearest never mind the 346 million people who might come across their blog! Generally diaries are for the writers eyes only and can only be shared with others after the passage of time. I only have one diary, started in 1977 and written in sporadically until the mid 80s. At the time I would have died of shame if anyone had read it and, indeed, used code for certain people and events. Now I'd be happy for my children or close friends to read it and I'd only be slightly embarrassed by my childish, immature 'unsophisticated' writing Voice. The interactive aspect of a blog is another form of sharing. Strangers are able to add their comments and feedback and links added by the writer guiding readers to another level of information is something that give blogs an additional layer of substance.

Blogging is a wonderful medium for people to find, and develop their voice. A Blogger can choose to write under their own name or they can choose to write anonymously. It doesn't even matter if it is never read by anyone else. We all have a Voice that should be heard, even if it is only by ourselves. Because sometimes our Voice will tell us something about ourselves that we never knew. Although this is a public blog I still feel the need to self censor, mainly because one day I want it to be read by my friends and family and there are always things you don't want friends and family to know! It is also important to remain anonymous to the 346 million people, one of whom may one day think 'hmmm, a Rat Diary? Whats this about?' and, from some detail I have let slip, hunt me down and, because they disagreed with something I have said... oh, I don't know...do me in. And I self censor because I am unsure if my Voice has any worth.


This is what I think
This is what I want to say
This is how I feel
This is what I want to tell you
When I find my Voice
Katie Clapton