All things new - and bigots

All things New
I still haven't quite got my head round the fact that my life will be changing completely in the next couple of weeks. I finish working at the NMC on Wednesday 12th May and a few days later we will have moved house. I will then, after a short break, be attempting to work freelance. This next month is going to start a new chapter in my life that I still can't quite believe. I am so lucky!

I chose the 2 pictures today as they are of the same flowers but just taken using different settings on my camera. I like the contrast but also the fact that they are essentially the same just perceived differently.

Bigot-gate
Of course it will be a new beginning for the country in May as well. I haven't had time nor the inclination to blog about the general election so far. Today has proved the perfect day to change that. The campaign had been plodding along rather doggedly - there was the brief media love affair with Clegg and the Lib Dems, then the inevitable back lash. There was the leaders debates 1, and 2. I was rather interested in the sets for the debates. ITVs looked like an 1980s game show set, where the loser might get gunged and Dusty Bin would turn up to do a dance. Set 2 on Sky looked like something the BNP would design to advertise the Olympics. I'm sure the BBC will do something dramatic but tasteful tomorrow.

So the rather dull campaign was enlivened today by Gordon Brown putting his foot in it. Here is a link to the BBC's unfurling coverage of it all. In a nutshell - Gordo has been told to do more meeting and greeting of "real people" so while in Rochdale a suitably "real" woman who happened to be walking back from the shops and wants a nose at Gordon Brown, is found and given the opportunity to ask questions of the PM live on TV. Said "real" woman asks some "real" questions about all kinds of things and also tries to tell Gordo her life story, as "real" people tend to do.

We know that this "real" woman has worked for the council for 30 yrs but is retired now, her husband is dead, she has children and grandchildren, she also tells Gordo that she has done a lot for the community like "working with handicapped children." So she asks about university tuition fees, pensions, tax, the economy, looking after the vulnerable, and what is he going to do about "All these eastern Europeans, where do they all flock from?" she says that they get benefits that vulnerable people don't get.

So why is this newsworthy? Well Gordo dealt with it ok, he's firm but fair and patient. He even says she is a "good woman," what ever that means? (Makes me think of the Crucible and Good wife so and so.) Chat over, Gordo jumps in his special election limo, forgets his mic is still on, and moans petulantly that it was a "disaster" blames "Sue" for picking the woman he just had to talk to, bemoans the fact that Sky will use the interview which he thinks is a disaster and then answers a question from his aide about why it was such a disaster by saying the person he was talking to was a "bigoted woman."

So now we have "bigoted - gate" or maybe it will be "bigoted-woman-gate." This "bigoted woman" the whole country now knows as Gillian Duffy, and I am sure the cult of Gillian Duffy will grow if she doesn't stick to her plan to leave the country to go on holiday instead of casting her vote on May 6th. The media, for at least the next 48 hours will want to know what Mrs Duffy's opinions are on everything.

Naturally the media forced Gordo to apologise almost immediately and the radio apology was filmed and is really uncomfortable to watch. All Gordo's aides were out in force apologising and the good citizens of Rochdale are due to get a second visit from the PM later today so he can grovel some more. We have a real cult of apologising in this country at the moment and I don't like it one bit.

So after giving a resume of the facts and events, here are my thoughts.

I can't forgive Gordon Brown for being so stupid as to not keep his mouth shut when he is wearing a mic. But I can totally understand why he might call many of the people he has to talk to as bigoted. Most interesting for me is what his comments say about him as a person. It seems to me that Gordon Brown is mega critical on himself regarding his performance in front of the cameras, to the extent that he could not see that his exchange with Mrs Duffy had been a positive one. It was innocuous enough that the TV channels wouldn't have bothered to repeat it. Gordon couldn't see that. It also seems to me, and I'm no psychologist, that Gordon immediately blamed his aide and then Gillian Duffy for making the encounter a disaster, whilst I think deep down he thinks it is all his fault maybe everything is his fault.

I wonder if Gordo has an "It's all my fault" complex? I certainly do - it's an interesting mind set; you have to have enough of an ego to think you are important enough to have an effect on stuff but you have to have low enough self esteem to assume that your effect is often / always negative! You also have to have enough self belief to own the responsibility of everything being your fault and the energy to solve it all and make it better. It wouldn't surprise me if Gordon had such a complex but I have just made it up so it is just all my speculation :-)

Is Gordon a bully?
The media are seeing this bigot-gate as proof that Gordo is the bully depicted in Rawmsly's book and which were then animated so beautifully by Taiwanese TV! I do hope this means we are in for more Tainwanese animated news of BigotedWoman-gate. I'm sure Gordon Brown's aides have heard far worse and so have Cleggy and Dave Cameron's, but so far only GB has forgotten to take his mic off.

Is she a "bigoted woman?"
One question that was being asked on Radio 5 was what does bigoted mean? Most of the so called "neutral political commentators" thought that Mrs Duffy had said nothing offensive and was voicing the views of your average working class, northern, white woman pensioner. So they thought GB was wrong to say she was bigoted. I think these journalists don't really know what bigoted means. I think that Mrs Duffy does represent what some women of her generation and background think but not all. She tackled the Prime Minister with confidence and self belief. She clearly feels deeply about her community and in particular her family. But was she bigoted? Yes she was, and I'll explain why.

Before I deal with was she bigoted I'll tell you why I wouldn't have wanted to chat to her for very long. I personally didn't like her use of the word "handicapped" and although she is in her 60s she did work for the Council before she retired a few years back and I'd hope Rochdale Council have ceased to refer to "handicapped" children. But you never know. So I don't think its a justification to say well she's old and uses old fashioned words she didn't mean to be offensive. That argument is insulting to the thousands of people over 60 who don't use the word handicapped any more. Of course I haven't heard anyone mention the "handicapped" issue in the media.

So is she bigoted? Probably because Gordon Brown mentioned it in his apology, all the attention has been on her reference to Eastern Europeans "flocking" to the UK and claiming benefits that other vulnerable people can't get. Is that opinion bigoted? We tend to think of the word bigoted to mean someone whose opinions are extremely right wing. nationalistic, racist or sexist. But of course anyone who is determined that only their way of thinking is right and won't listen to other people's points of view are bigots as well.

I think Mrs Duffy is probably bigoted because she asserted her opinions very aggressively and argued with Gordon Brown not wanting to agree with him. Most importantly is the concept of intolerance within bigotry - not wanting to accept anyone, or any ideas that are different to your own. I think Mrs Duffy assertion that Eastern Europeans who are flocking to the UK and taking benefits that vulnerable people can't get, shows that she is willing to believe something that does reject and is intolerant of those who are different to her and reject evidence that is contrary to her point of view. I worked in a Job Centre I know who gets and who doesn't get benefits and I saw no evidence that British citizens were being beaten to benefits by Europeans. I did see British youngsters turning down jobs as being "boring," "rubbish" and "menial" that their European counter parts would take like a shot. Most of my Eastern European friends have more than one job and work all the hours they can. The last thing they want are benefits.

A word to the wise

Here is my advice to those concerned:

Gordon: always remember to remove your mic
Gordon: don't apologise if you think she really is a bigot - I think she might be a bigot
Labour politicians: don't let the journos pressure you into thinking that Mrs Duffy's opinions are those of everyone and that we all moan about Eastern Europeans taking benefit form "the vulnerable." Please use this as an opportunity to challenge such opinions
Mrs Duffy: Go on holiday, get away from the media circus it will eat you up and spit you out the other side
UK media: Please don't turn Mrs Duffy into everyone's Gran and say that her opinion is that of everyone - it isn't!


Aparently after speaking with Mrs Duffy Gordo has declared himself a "penitent sinner" so has this been Gordo's conversion on the road to Rochdale?

"what are these morris men dancers?"

I don't want to stray into my fellow blogger Margit's territory - her blog intercultural musings is superb. But today I was asked an interesting question by a Hungarian friend of mine. She wanted to know what St Georges day was about, which then lead to her interesting question about Morris Dancers.

I didn't know how to explain to her what St George's Day was, I was going to have to open up a whole can of worms. I tried to pass the buck - I knew that her boyfriend is British though I've never met him. So I said "Isn't your boyfriend British? He'll know all about it" she looked at me oddly and said "Oh he's British not English." It turns out that he's a British citizen but wasn't born here. (Just as my Boyfriend is British but not English, he's Scottish! I dread to think how he would explain what St Georges day is about!) So it was going to be down to me to explain St George's day.

I tried to explain about how in the recent past there has been a lot of "political" negativity associated with the paraphernalia of St Geoge's. (I don't want to mention them in this post they don't deserve the space but even today in Stoke the ugliest side of nationalism in politics is taking place.) I also explained about football hooliganism in the 80s being associated with the flag of St George etc. My friend thought these excuses were odd and not really relevant in 2010.

So I said that I thought that it was hard to really sum up what is English and so hard to celebrate this. She again thought this was odd as to her, England had a strong culture. I asked her how she thought being English was different to being British - after her comment about her boyfriend I was very interested to better understand her perspective.

For her Britain is best summed up by the multicultural melting pot of London, including Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and English inhabitants as well as the European, African, Asian, and world wide nations represented in London. This energetic mass of creativity, brightness and richness, for my friend, is Britain.

England and being English has a place within that but is different. So I got thinking about the journey our conversation took looking at what was being English about? This weekend I'm going to spend my time in small town England. (A concept that doesn't quite have the same romanticism as small town America) So what makes this town different to any other small town in the world?

Not much really it's a market town, has been since a charter of King John.

So straight away my Hungarian friend would say - "Ah, history and shopping!" She's right, the English history is long and rich, my little market town has been invaded by Romans, vikings, Saxons and Normans, but it seems the Saxons left the greatest mark, when looking at the place names. The market has been running for nearly 1000 years! Yep that cheap mobile phone, sim card and battery stall and the potted plants and the hippy dresses market stall are all part of a long, unmovable history.

Talk of markets some how lead on to the question about Morris Dancing - I explained as best I could what it involved and my friends question afterwards was just fantastic "And what kind of man does this Morris Dancing?" I'm sorry to say I went straight for the stereo type by saying men with beards who like drinking real ale!

Beer you can't get more English than that - I don't mean lager but real ale the warm flat stuff. We talked about how Guinness and St Patrick's day were inseparable now.

So in the end our discussion summed up England and Englishnes like this:

Shires (which my friend pronounces as sheers) her boyfriend tells her that they are far away from London and anywhere else useful!
Green, green, green everywhere, grass, trees, fields all green.
piglets, lambs, farm animals generally
markets
country houses
beer and beer gardens
history
thatched cottages
morris dancing, maypole dancing, chasing pancakes or some cheese down a hill
chip shops, though we argued that these were also British as are Chinese and Indian take-aways
Yorkshire pudding
cricket
honey sandwiches
Paddington Bear
Shakespeare and William Blake

It's a nice little list brought together by a Hungarian living in England and a reluctant English woman! I'm trying to be positive so haven't added to the main list the following:

"Get off my LAND!"
casual racism
NIMBYism
Nosy parkers
sallow faced youths looking sallow (I was once one) desperate to get out of "England"

But my friend hasn't really experienced that side of Englishness, which I am very relieved about!

Quick update

I have to apologise for not blogging as much as I'd like to over the last few weeks. Usually I'm sure I'd have been blogging about the general election and the volcanic ash cloud. Unfortunately I have just been so busy.

As I mentioned last time I blogged, we have been trying to sell our flat. We accepted an offer on Monday - which now seems like ages ago! So the next phase of "leaving London" begins. This weekend Jason and I shall be mostly viewing properties to rent in Bedfordshire! All very exciting but completely tiring. I also went back to work this week. I only have 3 weeks left and it is finally hitting me that I am leaving my job.

I was absolutely delighted though to find a new series of Monty Halls Escapes last night. This year Monty and his "ridiculous" dog have escaped to the Hebrides. Last year the series with Monty and Rubes the dog living in a Bothy near Applecross was one of my favourites. Real escapism!

Thank you

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone on this blog and Facebook who have commented or sent me messages about my last entry "Telling my story." It means so much to me to have everyone's support but also to learn that it has helped and inspired others. I know that I was inspired by reading other stories of survival, recovery and coping strategies. I feel privileged to have such supportive and kind friends.

Thank you again for all your support.

The last week has been a difficult one. We are in the process of selling our flat, we have somewhere lined up to move to but we need to sell our flat. On the morning of my birthday our plans to move were still just a distant but determined desire to move out of London. I know leaving London will help my mental health but we hadn't planned anything. Then an opportunity came up that was too good to turn down.

10 days later we have a "For Sale" sign outside the flat and instead of "resting" as my psychiatrist advised I've been cleaning, cleaning and tidying, dealing with estate agents and HIP energy assessors. Poor Jason has had to work all day and come home to cleaning and me being stressed out like I'm a soldier in a combat zone. If I have something to get on with like preparing to put our home up for sale, I do throw my self into it head first and plan it down to the last littlest detail. Not much fun to be around when I'm like that (but on the bright side, stuff does get done.)

I am trying to be sensible now though and rest like I've been instructed to. So the next couple of months are likely to be very hectic for us, and I'm back at work next week.

I hope that in a few weeks time I can give you all the good news that we are moving but until then it's just fingers crossed until we sell our flat here. Wish us luck!

Telling my story - final piece

Since January I have been attending an education recovery course run by St George's community mental health team. The aim of the course was to use writing and other art forms to express my - mental health - story. On the last session of the course, which was on Thursday we shared our final pieces of writing, our final stories.

I promised to publish my story here on my blog. Even though this is a very personal story to me and was difficult to write it has helped me immeasurably and I'm hoping that if I share it on my blog it may help other people as well.

So here it is: My story

Telling my story

In 1997 I was 23. I was in a new exciting country, Canada. I was with friends, I was young, beautiful, kind, creative and funny. I should have been having the time of my life instead...

I felt so full of pain, the searing pain of self hatred, that I wanted to die. Then, I hoped, I’d stop hurting. I was curled up feotal, on a futon in a wood cabin style room. Snow glistened off the slopes of mount Rundle, which looked down on me through the window as I lay sobbing. Sometimes I would hit myself hard, watch the bruises bloom across my skin, hoping my sorrow would fade as they did but I knew it wouldn’t. I yearned to fade away like the bruises. I wanted to be nothing, feel nothing, melt away like snow on the mountain side. No warmth, no substance, no me. Just light, no mass, no boundaries, finally free. I thought of Princess Diana saying that she wanted to dissolve away like an aspirin in a glass of water and I knew exactly what she meant.

The alternative was unbearable - to live and continue to feel the turmoil, the stifling feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair. Crippled by the vicious sting of guilt and self loathing. Everything was my fault, I’d ruined everything. I had been shamed and humiliated and I had failed.

But I didn’t die. I didn’t fade away. The sorrow and the pain didn’t go either it stayed with me, traveled back with me to Britain remaining part of me. Like a dark volcanic river of lava it would rise to the surface again and again for the next 12 years and I would learn that it was a part of me that had been with me for as long as I could remember.

The trigger in 1997 was a stressful experience when I was teaching and a brush with the nastiest, pettiest and most exploitative kind of media intrusion. But there had been triggers in the past and there would be more in the future. In the future the nature of the triggers would range from: stress at work, break up of relationships, moving house, all the usual life stresses. Mostly though, I didn’t know what the triggers were I just saw the reaction and the reactions changed too. Panic attacks, and migraines became common. I also developed fairly short term phobias relating to flying, using public transport and even one about being seen wearing my glasses in public. Sometimes I would feel paranoid about work colleagues or neighbors, what ever I felt though, it would feel too much, be totally overwhelming. Sometimes I would be full of positive energy and think that I had solved all my problems and go mad spending money. Always though, I would have the low afterwards and before, when I would be exhausted and run down, have no energy, no concentration, no will to do anything.

What I have come to accept is that I have a volcanic type of personality; I have periods of great activity, sometimes these are periods of great happiness, joy, excitement and enthusiasm for life, sometimes they can be explosions of anger and pain. The build up to these explosions will usually be filled with fear and anxiety. I also have a dormant element to my personality when I am exhausted by all the activity and I can become depressed, run down and the world slows down for me. My childhood was full of these highs and lows and as a child I just accepted that this was totally normal for me.

Of course as I grew older and stresses in my life increased this added pressure making my reactions so much more extreme. I also began to worry about my reactions, became anxious about my feelings, which added to the stress, and the vicious circle was complete.

I say I have come to terms with my personality now but how did I do that? Why did it take me nearly 13 years from the initial big break down / eruption?

There is no short answer to this. Many reasons made this road a long and meandering one.

I wasn’t ready to accept I needed help for a long time
When I did accept it, I wouldn’t seek help (well not very often) because I was scared
I still hid many aspects of my symptoms from family, and professionals because they scared me
Professional help isn’t easy to find even if you seek it
Up until 4 years ago I self medicated mainly with alcohol, not in any extreme way I just let off steam by getting drunk every few weeks
I also changed my behaviour to try to contain my emotional reactions, tried to hide and cover up my symptoms which put enormous pressure on me.

In spite of all the above I did seek help and I am really feeling the benefits of it.

I am very lucky that I have an incredibly supportive family who have always been there for me and helped me through all of the tough times. I also have a small but very strong network of friends who have helped and supported me immensely as well. But I wasn’t always able to call on them for help. I spent 5 years in an unhealthy and sometimes abusive relationship in which I was isolated from many of my friends and family. Leaving that unhealthy relationship when I was 32 was the first major step to getting myself back together. It was also one of the most difficult things I have done in my life. It was a slow process - it took me many months of determinedA effort. It was as if part of me just worked on freeing myself with out me even knowing what I was doing. I had reserves of resolve and insight inside me that I didn’t know I had.

Since then I have done many more things to release myself from many of the aspects of my life that were making me feel trapped and unhappy.

The second hardest thing I did was see my GP and tell him the truth about how I really felt. I didn’t brush over anything or put on a brave face (my happy clown face as I used to call it with my friend Lorraine, the mask I wore to convince others I was happy. It’s a sinister clown face though.) I was honest even though it hurt and I felt a failure for admitting this to my GP. He referred me to see the community mental health team and from there I haven’t looked back.

I’m still taking my medication, I’ve attended an “educational recovery course” which I am writing this piece for. Through giving myself space rather than “containing” myself, I have made some startling decisions (startling for me anyway) to work part time and to set up my own business as a freelance equality and diversity consultant. I am in a wonderful relationship with a supportive and caring partner - something I wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t made those first steps to make changes in my life. The strength I get from my partner Jason, has enabled me to have a time and space to “recover.”

The freedom that I longed for 13 years ago in Canada was there, not through death but through my own actions. I just didn’t know that I had to open up and step outside. I had to confront the thing that I was most afraid of, I had to face up to feeling weak, helpless and vulnerable. It has taken me a long time and it has been a painful and joyful journey but it was worth it. I have always had mood swings from the very energetic to the much more gentle. I am someone who one day wants to be the centre of attention in the bustle of life and who a fews days later will want to be totally alone and isolated from everything. I’m not going to change that. I have to live with it and allow myself to flourish through it. I can’t do that until I accept that is who I am and give my self time and space to explore what it means.

I have changed my life style - made my own reasonable adjustments - to accommodate my “volcanic personality” to use it for my best advantage. There will be tough times ahead but I am hopeful and I am grateful that I didn’t take the route of becoming nothing but energy and light as I longed to do in Canada. Instead I am now heading towards a future where I can feel fulfilled, in control and not have my emotions controlling me.

Rock City

I've been listening to Andrew Collins standing in for Nemone on BBC 6Music - and here's a link to the save 6Music campaign He asked yesterday for stories relating to Rock City and so I dropped him an email, now listening to the show and other people's memories of Rock City is really taking me back. Just the words "chewing gum carpet" will be enough to transport anyone back to Rock City if they've been there.

Rock City for the uninitiated is a alternative music club and venue where all the best bands indeed do play. Rock City's been going in its current form since the 1980s. My friend Lorraine was at Nottingham University from 1993 and I did my PGCE at Nottingham in 1995/6 so frequented Rock City during that time. I also went back for new year 1998 for an ill-advised night out "gothed up" with Lorraine, except we ended up looking more like French mime artists.

Rock City is hard to capture in writing so I shall just list the things that come into my mind and hope it gives you a flavour of what it was like there in the 1990s

Aging punks in PVC, doc martins and ripped hem lines
Snake bite and black Goths too cool to dance actually dancing
An area known as "the pit" Stage surfing skinny boys with floppy fringes
Grunge goth brit pop metal & sweaties indie kids
Dancing until 3 AM dark corners taxi queue

I was lucky enough to see the Cocteau Twins there and being little, Lorraine and I sidled our way to the front and spent the whole night mesmerised by Liz Fraser's out of this world singing.

Rock City is one of the best clubs and band venues I have ever been to, long may it continue!

Celebrations

For today I've chosen a picture Jason took 2 years ago when we were in Japan on holiday, it's of Harajuku in Tokyo a bustling, bewildering place on the edge of the stately and serene Yoyogi park and the Meiji shrine.

I missed the 2 year anniversary of my blog last week so it seems as good a day as any to celebrate keeping what started out as a holiday blog for 2 weeks has ended up being a blog of 2 years. I'm so glad I started my blog and kept it up. A lot has happened in the last 2 years, and it's great to have a record of it.

It's also my birthday which I have marked each year in my blog too! This year for my birthday I'm having a Scottish breakfast cooked by Jase, then going out to see Kick Ass at the cinema. I've a lovely Hotel Chocolat Easter egg to eat later as well as little cup cake birthday cakes! So a day of indulgence.

So thank you to everyone who has been following my blog over the last 2 years. I'm sure the next 2 years will be exciting and I look forward to sharing it with everyone!