Monthly Archives: May 2016

Both images are from the Hubble Telescope.
Left: The Pillars of Creation and right: The Cone Nebula.

I will, I promise, stop writing about this one day but not right now, for a number of reasons. The first is that the world, from where I’m looking, could do with some good news. While the second is that, if we look, the Wonderland is, in fact, all around us.

If you should doubt that then just pause to look at the simple things. The trees coming into bloom, the butterflies and bees doing their bit as are the newts in our pond. In fact, the pond itself is what pleases me most. My son, Matt, dug it for me a dozen or so years ago when he stayed with us. Five days of hard graft digging nearly a metre down into London clay and through the roots of a big tree. Once that was done it was just a matter of lining it and filling the hole with water. Some “starter” water from a local community garden followed along with some planting; after which we let nature take its course.  It’s wonderful to watch this small world of its own, especially at this time of year when the annual frog orgy usually takes place.

At the other end of the scale is the night sky which I looked at a few years ago with a telescope that my wife bought for me. Unfortunately, it proved not to be for me despite my fascination with the universe and its wonders. Yet, in the short time that I used it, looking at the moon and some of the planets was amazing.

Which brings me to my point. We live on a Wonderland called Planet Earth, within another Wonderland called the Solar System. This within an even wider one called the Milky Way Galaxy; along with millions of other galaxies in the Universe. This latter, as far as we know, 13.4 billion years old. Furthermore, there may be other universes and more than the four dimensions that we know of. Even I find it difficult to grasp that concept, especially when it may number as many as eleven.

So, just so that you can see the real Wonderland that we are all part of, have a look at the photos and wonder, again and again.

Over the weekend, Gaynor, Ellie and I went to Nunhead Cemetery. It’s a place that I first visited when my mum was buried there in 1947, yet never went back to until 1985. It, too, is a little piece of Wonderland; albeit for different reasons than the others that I’ve described in previous blogs. It is, if nothing else, a wonderful demonstration of the fact that nature will always win in the end. Indeed, you have only to look at the photos I took to see that.

Nunhead was one of the original seven London cemeteries that were built to cater for the Capital’s dead during the Victorian era. In the 1970’s, it was closed and left; one might say, “for dead”. Well, nature took over in the form of flora and fauna as did people who had little better to do than desecrate the graves.  As my mum was buried without a headstone, her grave was spared.

Some years ago, the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery decided to do something about the situation and the cemetery was reopened. So much so that it is now in use again; with a difference. A programme of, almost, managed decay has rescued some areas and left nature to take over others. The process has created something very special and well worth a visit.

A few years ago, with the assistance of an extremely helpful Council official (also named Mike), I identified my mum’s grave. So helpful was he that he even provided a wooden cross and hammered it in for me to mark where she was buried. I can’t even begin to describe the feeling of standing over where she lay a mere six feet away. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt so sad or so at ease.

Well, as a family, we went to look for the grave again over the weekend, with me fully expecting that the cross would have been removed. Imagine my joy to find that it hadn’t been and, once again, those feelings were back as were a few tears. Gaynor and Ellie left me for five minutes before returning so that we could all to stand together.

My intention now is to put up a headstone so that future generations will know of my mum’s existence in a way that I didn’t. Truly, a Wonderland. Go see.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to create some “little bits of Wonderland” in my life. It has been both a joy and a privilege. It also means that there are projects that I’ve rescued that will be there long after I’m gone. So, apart from a bit of self publicity, why am I writing this now?

Well, because I’m now doing some consultancy for the Lambourne End Centre for Outdoor Learning. It’s another piece of Wonderland just off the A12 in Essex. And, in case you’re wondering whether this “Wonderland” thing is a little too incestuous and self congratulatory, it isn’t. How do I know this? Well because a lorry driver delivering something today got out of his lorry and said, “This place makes me feel better about life”.

Now that is both heartening and sad. The former for very obvious reasons and the latter because the world doesn’t need to be divided into good and bad areas. I, for example, live in a very nice part of London yet, not too far away are areas where I wouldn’t like to live. Does that mean that the people who live there don’t deserve any better? I hope not because luck, or the lack of it, plays a much bigger part in life than some people care to admit.

So next time you talk about “the homeless”,  “the unemployed” or “the disabled” , stop and instead describe them as “people who are homeless”, “people who are unemployed” or “people who have a disability” and thank your lucky stars that it isn’t you. And, no, it’s not being pedantic. It’s about seeing them as people and not a category. One acknowledges their humanity and the other sees them as a problem. I know which I prefer.

I consider myself to be an optimist, albeit a slightly more cynical one these days when it sometimes seems as if the whole world is going to hell in a handcart. Well, as someone who lived through the 60’s, it does seem that way. Those days were ones of enormous cultural and social change. When drabness, uniformity, deference and social stratification gave way to colour, individualism, irreverence and greater social mobility; much of this reflected in fashion, music and attitudes to matters sexual.  They we good times to be alive for a new generation of working class youngsters who could dream of a different future to the ones that their parents and grandparents had had.

In this, I think it would be fair to say that I didn’t see the present that is society for today’s younger generation. I assumed, wrongly, that we had set out on a journey that really was different to, what had been, austere times. In my own way, I was naive. Yet, in my more considered frame of mind, I do still see that better world. Certainly today, the UK, for example, is considerably more liberal than it was. So why the thinking that has led to the straitjacket that governs much of the thinking (a generous word under the circumstances) that passes for current economic policy.

And that’s where I have to admit that my optimism takes a slight knock. I hadn’t allowed for the Thatcher’s, Osborne’s, Cameron’s and all the others who seem to think that paying those at the top more, in the belief that the money will trickle down, works. This, of course, based on the related belief that those at the top got there by dint of their unassailable talents and sheer hard work.  The corollary of that being that the rest of us lack those abilities.

Yet, I’ve worked on projects that demonstrated what a government minister at the time called”the extraordinary abilities of ordinary people”. So I know that their beliefs are based on a fallacy. So, why do they continue to operate as if they’re not? Perhaps it’s to do with a talent that they don’t seem to have, an imagination that the world really could be other than as they see it. And any idea as to how we might create it. It needn’t be that way and it would be a better world if it wasn’t.

It’s not been too great a time of late with family and friends and friends of friends dying, some friends very ill and some personal and family anxieties. That may have slowed me down although it hasn’t completely stopped me; witness the completion of my third book, “Lessons from a Chequered Life”, which will soon be available. It does, however, give me cause for thought; something that I’m doing more of these days. I suppose you could call it reflection.

Interestingly, much of this relates, not to what I have done, but to what I haven’t. Yet. And therein lays a problem which is one that many people share. Underestimating or failing to recognise your achievements for what they are. A strange situation for someone who advises others on how to be the change that they dream about. After all, isn’t my strap line, “All you have to do is try”. Well, at least I know that I don’t fall too far short in that respect. Yet, in my own case, I take for granted what I’ve done; even when I know that I never, previously, thought that I’d do whatever it was that I’ve just done. As an example, now that I’ve written three books, nearly finished a fourth and am part way through a fifth, I do think that I have to recognise my writing skills. Especially when people write such nice things about what I’ve written. I also know that I’m quite a good speaker, albeit a little marmite like.

So, I will continue to think things through. It’s a good trait in itself and one that helps provide a sense of perspective. It also, occasionally, allows you to quietly admit to yourself that you really did those things that others praise you for. And there’s my problem and that of many others; a difficulty in accepting praise. This latter not being the received wisdom when I was a child. Perhaps that’s why I do it so much to my own children and grandchildren and that’s no bad thing. So I will continue to reflect and to try. Not a bad combination, that and one that seems to serve me well.

For as long as I can remember, whenever I’ve had worries or thoughts that I needed to deal with, I have always woken up just before 4 am. So it has been this morning with the result that I’ve decided to get up and write this blog. Along, of course, with the ritual of making a cup of tea; always a source of succour for the aunts who brought me up.

Now anyone who knows me knows the circumstances of my childhood; the death of my mum when I was five and my father returning to his unit in Germany to get remarried some months later and absenting himself from my life. Yet, for most of that life I genuinely believed that none of that had had any effect. So, my mum died; well death happens to us all. I even told people that I’d had a very happy childhood, because I thought that I had. Well, I’m now at the end of a long journey that has helped me to understand the reality of what happened all those years ago and, in doing so, come to terms with it; although that expression doesn’t anywhere near do justice to the process and the result.

For many years, a particular image has come into my head and this which would frighten me, deep down. This happened again this week when I had a bad dream which featured a similar image but a much scarier one, being, I think, a predecessor of the previous one. Without going into details, I was at a funeral service in a church as a child and saw a coffin being brought in. Now, I have no way of knowing whether or not I was actually at my mum’s funeral, although this seemed real enough to be a memory. What is important is how I feel and the fact that that image now seems much less scary than it was previously.

Two weeks ago, Ellie, my youngest daughter told me that a school friend had just died at the age of twenty. That hit home and the word “death” resonated with, in this case, the implications for her parents and family. I understood what it meant for the first time; the total absence from their lives, from that moment on, of their most cherished.  Along with the lives that they might have had together.  I also feel a sadness that I haven’t had before and, in doing so, am coming to terms with the loss of that person who meant so much to that little boy all those years ago. Yes, it is sad, it is also, for me, very, very healing.

The birds in the garden are now awake and singing and it’s the dawn of a new day.

For as long as I can remember, whenever I’ve had worries or thoughts that I needed to deal with, I have always woken up just before 4 am. So it has been this morning with the result that I’ve decided to get up and write this blog. Along, of course, with the ritual of making a cup of tea; always a source of succour for the aunts who brought me up.

Now anyone who knows me knows the circumstances of my childhood; the death of my mum when I was five and my father returning to his unit in Germany to get remarried some months later and absenting himself from my life. Yet, for most of that life I genuinely believed that none of that had had any effect. So, my mum died; well death happens to us all. I even told people that I’d had a very happy childhood, because I thought that I had. Well, I’m now at the end of a long journey that has helped me to understand the reality of what happened all those years ago and, in doing so, come to terms with it; although that expression doesn’t anywhere near do justice to the process and the result.

For many years, a particular image has come into my head and this which would frighten me, deep down. This happened again this week when I had a bad dream which featured a similar image but a much scarier one, being, I think, a predecessor of the previous one. Without going into details, I was at a funeral service in a church as a child and saw a coffin being brought in. Now, I have no way of knowing whether or not I was actually at my mum’s funeral, although this seemed real enough to be a memory. What is important is how I feel and the fact that that image now seems much less scary than it was previously.

Two weeks ago, Ellie, my youngest daughter told me that a school friend had just died at the age of twenty. That hit home and the word “death” resonated with, in this case, the implications for her parents and family. I understood what it meant for the first time; the total absence from their lives, from that moment on, of their most cherished.  Along with the lives that they might have had together.  I also feel a sadness that I haven’t had before and, in doing so, am coming to terms with the loss of that person who meant so much to that little boy all those years ago. Yes, it is sad, it is also, for me, very, very healing.

The birds in the garden are now awake and singing and it’s the dawn of a new day.

I write this as a lifelong Spurs’ supporter who, last night, watched his team relinquish its hold on the Premiership title. The club have dropped four valuable points in the last two matches that they could ill afford to drop and that needs to be addressed ready for next season. One which I look forward to with genuine optimism.

This blog, however, is about the actual Champions, Leicester City and their manager. Dismissed twelve years ago as someone who couldn’t win the league, he has done just that. Replaced by a “win at all costs” mentality, in favour of someone who was then himself dismissed, Mr Ranieri has, indeed, delivered the goods. Moreover, he has done this while retaining his honesty, integrity and morality; at least according to Scott Parker in his post match comments at Stamford Bridge.

So you can operate, in what I consider to be a temple to vanity and greed so defining of our modern culture, with those values that are at such odds with just that culture. Crucially, you can do this and beat the others in the process. More importantly, what do you think are more likely to be remembered more in a hundred years’ time, Mr Mourinho’s achievements or Mr Ranieri’s?

So, this bright Tuesday morning, despite supporting the team that didn’t win the ultimate prize, I have a smile on my face. Thank you, Claude Ranieri and Leicester City Football Club.