The Quiet Activist?

Icons - The Greatest Person of the Twentieth Century ( BBC TV)

It shows that I have a certain mindset: I watched aspects of this BBC TV series 'The Greatest Person' and became really involved, but only in the areas which interested me. It will come as no surprise to my brother that I didn’t watch the ‘Greatest Sportsperson’ but I did watch other episodes. For instance I saw the ‘Greatest Entertainers’ of the C20th and the ‘Greatest Leaders’ of the C20th. But the episode which I saw in real time - thus enabling me to vote online - was ‘The Greatest Activists of the Twentieth Century’.

I sense there is a pattern emerging here and it must reflect my personality. I do go to some political meetings and always seem to know the answers to political questions at our local pub quiz. Hence my appreciation of the ‘Greatest Leaders’ episode in this mini-series.

Of the four (Roosevelt, Churchill,Mandela and Thatcher) I had the least knowledge about FD Roosevelt. And it struck me that our own current Labour leadership could bring about a new deal for the impoverished and hard-working folk of England - those with little hope in their lives. This is after nine years of an austerity budget in the UK. In England, especially, public services have been cut to skeletal provision. 

But back to 'The Greatest People.' In choosing the greatest leader of C20th many would, I'm sure, vote for Winston Churchill who saw off the Nazi threat - despite other MPs' calls for appeasement - in the second world war. Of the four nominated I certainly didn’t favour Margaret Thatcher but, if I’d watched the programme in real time, my vote would have gone to Nelson Mandela. 

And this is where the pattern in my thinking starts. Mandela fought for an oppressed people and suffered greatly whilst being imprisoned. FDR was disabled through polio. Churchill was also imprisoned early in his life - but not for the 27 years Mandela endured. There is sacrifice, imprisonment, pain, disability and a care for ordinary people’s hard luck in the three leaders I favoured: FDR, Churchill and Mandela. Without Churchill where would Britain have been? But without Mandela...

Next up was the feature on entertainers. As Oliver Cromwell found - if you ban entertainment and Christmas you won’t be popular. People need fun, chance to forget their hard lives and relaxation. For David Bowie I scored highly but slightly behind Charlie Chaplin, who had a dreadful early life but later entertained others with his famous on-screen depiction of a down-on-his-luck tramp. Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’ was surely a work ahead of its time, when cinema was still in kindergarten? However, if I’d watched this BBC offering in real time my vote would have gone to Billie Holliday. Again she had a difficult, unsettled early life but rose up and out of degradation. She survived, through her own efforts, to be a great singer and brought a song about killings in the deep south to a much wider audience. Of course I’m talking about her rendering of ‘Strange Fruit', a song about the lynchings of black people in parts of the USA (after the abolition of slavery). We may not have heard of Abel Meeropol, aka Lewis Allan, who wrote the poem 'Strange Fruit' but Holliday's thin, strained voice perfectly captures the mood of the subject. My vote would have gone to her. Marilyn Monroe - like Thatcher in the category above - wouldn’t have been favoured.

Finally I did manage to watch ‘Greatest Activists’ while it was being broadcast. It brought a tear to my eye when I relearned the trials of the lives of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. The quiet dignity of Gandhi's walk to the sea to make salt is moving and astounding in its effectiveness. 

Dr King and Mahatma Gandhi fought not for greatness for themselves but, again, to lift an oppressed people out of subjugation. Likewise Emmeline Pankhurst and her warriors brought about the votes for women in 1918. She too was imprisoned for her beliefs and wanted change for others - not self-glory.

The pattern in my voting, it seems, is to favour those who have suffered themselves and brought about change for, or greater understanding of, an oppressed people. In the C20th the most oppressed were women - they were second-class citizens in the UK until 1928 when all could vote in elections - and black men, women and children the world over. Whether we look at South Africa and Mandela’s vision for ‘one man, one vote’ or the USA where Martin Luther King fought against segregation or Gandhi who wanted freedom from starvation and oppression from British rule for the Indian sub-continent, people of colour have had to fight for rights the rest of us take for granted. In the USA segregation meant African-Americans were not allowed to use public water fountains when they were thirsty nor to go to public theatres nor cinemas. That's as segregated as the Jews were in late 1930s Berlin. Although, unlike the persecution of Jews and gypsies under Nazism, African-Americans and non-whites followed signs to where they could legally walk, talk, eat and rest.

But as for the activists: FDR was disabled as was another nominated activist, Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind from the age of eighteen months. Despite her difficulties she campaigned for the rights of the disabled all her life. And Tanni-Grey Thompson, I’m glad to say, was included in the ‘The Greatest Sportspeople’. She is one of the faces of paralympic sport, fighting for the rights of the disabled to show how they too can compete and participate. 

In my own small way I have tried to work in the field of the disabled and the have-nots. I was a teacher of special needs children for over thirty years and had to overcome opposition and lack of funding in special needs education to get children the provision they needed. My charity interests concern schooling for girls in Sierra Leone. Without an education the girls may fall pregnant in their teens and be stuck doing domestic chores in a country devastated by war and ebola. Education is a liberator. And my concerns are for people of colour and those pushed to one side. Oppression of people through religion eg Jews or through political beliefs is at one horrifying level. In theory, if being persecuted you could change your religion or vote for another candidate. It's a long shot under repressive regimes but it might save your skin. (Although I know the registration of Jews in Nazi-occupied lands included knowledge of parents' and grandparents' religion. Changing to being a non-Jew was not viable. A handful of Jews in Berlin survived because they didn't register and passed themselves off as non-Jew throughout the war.) But to oppress people because of something they can never change - a disability or the colour of their skin - is an even deeper wickedness. 

The pattern in my favouring people who have fought against the oppression and suffering of others shows where my interests lie: the little tramp ie Chaplin, ‘Strange Fruit’ the lynchings of the blacks ie Billie Holliday, getting black people the vote and suffering imprisonment ie Mandela, getting women the vote and likewise enduring imprisonment ie Pankhurst. And being shot down in pursuit of freedom for the oppressed ie King and Gandhi. They died for others. 

These are the people I admire. 

Someone else can vote for the sportsmen and women! My concerns are for the have-nots. And how I admire the trailblazers who put their own lives and well-being on the line for the liberation of others. A fascinating series but it’s made me wonder whether I’m a quiet activist...If there can be such a thing! 

The View from Europe

So we’ve had the ‘meaningful vote’ which was another crushing defeat for Theresa May. I’ve tried not to write about the Brexit issue and process as it’s troubling and divisive but I’m curious about a comment made by Monsieur Macron. Following the defeat of the EU-agreed withdrawal bill last night this is what Macron commented:

"We will have to negotiate a transition period with them because the British cannot afford to no longer have planes taking off or landing at home," he said.

What on earth does he mean? Are planes a metaphor? Have we sold all our runways? Are our airports too costly to maintain? In all the Brexit confusion, comment, counter-comment and hullabaloo I find this the oddest statement.

When we were in Guernsey on June 23, 2016, the day of the EU referendum, the result came through that Britain had voted to leave the EU. Richard and I felt somewhat gutted as we’d owned property in France and felt European. 

But Guernsey isn’t in the EU and they are doing very nicely indeed. That day it was the French minister for the economy, industry and digital affairs who made another interesting comment.

He said, once Britain left the EU, ‘Britain will become small, like Guernsey.’ 

In fact Guernsey is operating very well and we were there, enjoying the beaches, the towns, the hospitality and cuisine, as he spoke those words. Can you guess who made the comment about Britain becoming small, like Guernsey? 

We didn’t know him on the world stage then. The French ministry for the economy, industry and digital affairs wasn’t top news in our papers in 2016. 

But the minister was no other than Emmanuel Macron.

I note this morning that Tusk, who seemed genuinely sad that Britain was leaving the EU, said it was a good plan to revoke Article 50.

I quote from BBC News:

European Council President Donald Tusk has hinted that the UK should stay in the EU...

"If a deal is impossible, and no-one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" he tweeted.

Dutch journalists writing in de Volkskrant liken May’s defeat to Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up parliament in 1605.

The paper says she should survive the no-confidence vote, despite the "greatest political crisis since Guy Fawkes tried to blow up parliament four centuries ago", as Brexit supporters see her as the best chance of a no-deal departure - "which is ironic, given that they tried to remove her just before Christmas".

I further quote from BBC News.

Begona Arce in Spain's El Periodico says Mrs May "achieved the impossible, by managing to unite the Conservatives with the opposition against the Brexit plan. It is a colossal failure after almost two years of negotiations".

But, to put a positive spin on the confusion, I’ll finish with the comment from Czech journalists who think, quite surreally, that we Brits are having a laugh...

The Czech Republic's Mlada Fronta Dnes has had enough (of Brexit). Over a cartoon of the Mr Bean comedy character, it complains that the British "are really overdoing it with their crazy humour!"

Maybe to laugh at the pandemonium is the only thing left to do.

With thanks to BBC News

Janus - a new year conundrum

The Christmas cards are ready to recycle, decorations packed away and the potted hyacinths are blooming. They fill the sitting room with a sweet aroma. 

I’ve managed a few walks since festive excesses forced the dial on my bathroom scales in a northerly direction. Subsequently my knee has complained. Perhaps I forgot, in my post-Christmas slumbers, to warm up before taking exercise.

Next week my routine - 9000 steps daily, weekly swimming & 3 sessions of HIIT & resistance work  - will restart. This week I’m exercising but not swimming.

And today, in my quest for new year fitness, I read we should all be eating 30g fibre daily. 

This is roughly what 30g looks like:-

■   half a cup of rolled oats - 9g fibre

■   two Weetabix - 3g fibre

■   a thick slice of brown bread - 2g fibre

■   a cup of cooked lentils - 4g fibre 

■   a potato cooked with the skin on - 2g fibre 

■   half a cup of chard (or silverbeet in New Zealand) - 1g fibre

■   a carrot - 3g fibre

■   an apple with the skin on - 4g fibre
                                                                   (BBC News)

For someone who hasn’t been weaned off carbs the above fibre-rich foods are ideal. But I rarely eat wheat-based carbs and packaged goods such as Weetabix nor wholemeal bread or potatoes. 

Every morning I do eat a cup or more of rolled oats with blueberries. As a wholemeal substitute I eat German rye bread and I’ll have to rethink the potato. That’s my new year conundrum. That’s why January is so named. Like Janus I feel pulled in two directions.

And I never buy The Daily Mail. Except for this week. Michael Mosley has placed a daily pull-out ‘The Fast 800 diet’ in the rag - for one week only. His methods and notions about ditching carbs have worked for me and his articles are very helpful and diets doable. My blood sugar and blood pressure are much better than they were when I was immobile. And his high protein/ low carb approaches have also done the business for me.

But I haven’t eaten wholemeal bread, the simple spud nor pasta since last Easter. If I am to up my fibre intake I will have to rethink. Maybe eat another apple a day, fill myself up with rye and take larger bowls of porridge. I’m happy to indulge in an extra raw carrot and we have chard growing in the garden.

It isn’t easy sticking to new year’s resolutions and I don’t want to undo my low carb regime in order to up my fibre intake. But it is a conundrum. As is buying The Daily Mail. What strange habits we foster when trying to renew ourselves. Today's Guardian front page shows that the low-carb diet may have to go to make way for higher fibre intake. It's unlike me to favour what I read in The Mail over The Guardian but I'm sticking with Michael Mosley. Low wheat, low sugar but high fibre. That's the conundrum.

Happy new year!

‘The poor aren’t my business,’ said Scrooge.

In 1843 two charity workers approached Scrooge, a wealthy man.

I’ve brought Dickens’ story gently up to date.

‘At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.’

‘Are there no childrens’ homes nor night shelters for the homeless?’ asked Scrooge.

‘Plenty of night shelters.’

‘And the food banks, are they still in operation?’

‘They are. I wish I could say they were not.’

‘Oh,’ said Scrooge. ‘From what you said at first I was afraid something had happened to stop them in their useful course.’

‘I don’t think you quite understand us, sir. A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is at Christmas time that want is most keenly felt and abundance rejoices. What can I put you down for?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You wish to be anonymous?’

‘I wish to be left alone. I support those establishments I have already mentioned. I regularly donate tins of beans - out of my own hard-earned cash, to the Trussell Trust,’ said Scrooge.

‘Go to a food bank? Some would rather die,’ said the charity worker.

‘If they would rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population. Besides. It isn’t my business.’

‘Isn’t it, Sir?’ asked the charity worker.

‘No,’ said Scrooge.

The charity workers walked away and Scrooge continued balancing his accounts.

New year’s day on February 1st? Now there’s an idea.

The winter solstice beckons: it's shortest day tomorrow. As I write the skies are overcast and beyond the inky-blue time. Now - at half past four - our steps are lit up with fairy lights and all outside is drained of colour. It will soon be night.

Seasonal festivities fall at the low time of the year, when daylight is spare and there are more dark hours than light. The blackness of night shuts us in. There’s a reason why we celebrate Christmas with candles, baubles, fairy lights and glittering decorations.

The lawn is sodden with rain and churned up like a ploughed field after badger-party-time. My last patio pelargonium was struggling to survive and is now recovering on the window ledge. Any more than 1 degree of frost and it would have died.

Overwintering broad beans are a bright green, erect and strong. Potted wallflowers are much better than last year’s crop and my baby spinach is still at the seedling stage. All is well with the world.

On Christmas Eve, on the day itself and through to Boxing Day the temperatures look set to be mild. I won’t even have to protect my plants against frost this yuletide.

And then it’ll be new year.

But what a pity we turn to a new calendar in the middle of winter, with the worst of the weather yet to come?

Who’s wonderful idea was it to start the year at January rather than four weeks later on February 1st?

Just imagine how much better we’d all feel: Christmas would still be the focus for December. Burns Night on 25th January could be another treat and, instead of cramming new year and Christmas into the same fortnight, we could look forward to new year’s eve on January 31st. By then our clocks would strike much later as the day wound down into dusk. And we’d embrace that extra hour of evening light. On February first, our new year’s day,  we could truly anticipate lighter nights and a relatively short spell of biting winter weather to come.

Couldn’t we just move new year’s celebrations on a month and start 2019 on February 1?

Then we could just get through January. It’s dismal and no way to celebrate a fresh start. It’s a quiet month. After Noel indulgences folk have to adjust to waking up in the dark, going to work and school in the dark and returning home in the dark. 

But February.

Now there’s something to truly look forward to.

Snowdrops, forsythia and crocus plants are getting ready to greet us. It’s slightly lighter in the mornings and I’ve even been known to get an hour’s digging in on a February evening.

This is the month when the world wakes up. Unlike January when everyone and every thing is still in hibernation. 

February is early spring. That’s when we should start our new year.

Ah but one can merely dream.

In five days time it will be Christmas day. I hope you all have a peaceful and heartwarming one. Thank you for reading my blogs during 2018 and, despite January being the worst month of the year, my very best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year.

These are a few of my favourite things

We have reached one of my favourite weeks in the year. It’s a time to look at the glittering displays in shops; Christmas lights twinkle at us and pretty windows cause us to pause. Baubles strung across Milsom Street, more like expensive jewllery than damp washing, sparkle in diamond-white and ruby-red. 

The sun is shining, market crowds have gone and schools haven’t broken up - it’s the best time to go Christmas shopping. And it’s good to support our high street. Do we really want pruchases to become nothing more than intensively-driven deliveries? More cardboard boxes, littering the patio, than the cat could ever hide in? Everything bought by looking at an image on a screen? Not only will we lose the chance to feel smooth velvet fabrics, lust after shiny silks or try on jackets, dresses or jeans in changing rooms, we’ll be waiting in more and more for deliveries. And we’ll be queuing more and more to return items which are the wrong size, the wrong colour or of poor quality.

If we continue to go in our local and city centre shops we can take our time and check out our purchases before we make a mistake. I can’t imagine Milsom Street becoming a ghost town. But when Christmas is over, cash registers have stopped ringing and Boxing Day sales have emptied stands, shelves and rails it’ll be January. A bleak new year - for some.

 Empty shop fronts aren’t meant to be. Like a stillborn child. Brought into the world but non-viable.

Let’s not go from one extreme: packed Saturday shops, queues to part with our hard-earned cash, no space in the changing rooms, to another: silent streets and litter in the gutters. 

Do we really want boarded-up windows? Sales notices on every shop front? More cafes or outlet stores? Much as I agree with giving donations to good causes we don’t want Bath to look like other failed town centres: every second shop taken over by a charity or temporary art exhibition. 

We are already losing pubs, and have been doing so for ten years. Former bars are now a physiotherapy practice, a snug now selling hearing aids. 2019 shouldn’t be a time to lose our favourite book shops, children’s toy shops, best boutiques or shoe shops. We don’t want to go to out-of-town furniture warehouses do we? Don’t we sometimes want to look at a set of saucepans or baking tins before we purchase them? Or a jazzy set of cappuccino cups? Or look at a newly published book in its dust jacket?  

These are a few of my favourite things ...

Does everything we want or need have to be brought to us in a van? Can’t we go out and enjoy window shopping, chatting to folks in the street, stopping to look and admire rather than just clicking ‘t&cs’ or tracking numbers?

Here’s to 2019: helping to preserve our vibrant shopping arcades, long after the Christmas shoppers have dropped and new year sales tills have stopped trilling.

I’ll light a candle

Two Christmases ago I was recovering from arranging my mother’s funeral. At exactly the wrong time we are expected to ring everyone and hold back our tears while trying to break the sadness to them. We find ourselves tending to the ones who cry back at us over the phone. We offer them soothing words. 

But it’s my mum that’s gone - not theirs. 

As soon as that’s done there's no time to absorb the emotional impact and enormity of it all.There are lists to attend to - 

we have to:- 

i) chase our loved one’s GP for a medical note stating cause of expiration

ii) make an appointment with the registrar to record and get the death certificate

iii) find a funeral director that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg

iv) have our loved one’s wishes to the fore when arranging a funeral service and hoping we haven’t got it wrong

v) live in fear of the colossal cost of the funeral as the admin assistant tots it all up on their office calculator:- the cost of the hearse, limousine - one or two? a priest or lay preacher or a celebrant, whether to have a choir, whether to meet and greet at the deceased’s house or at the chapel, deciding on a coffin or casket ... the choice of flowers. 

When the date is arranged we have to make decisions about embalming, death notices, order of service, stationery and photographs, catering - for how many? hymns, songs, eulogy, prayers, readings... it goes on and on. 

vi) And we have to try to decide if we can bear to visit our loved one in the chapel of rest - and if you don’t - knowing there will never be another opportunity.

vii) As if that isn’t enough ... taking suitable clothes to the funeral director for your loved one lying in the coffin.

Have I got it right? Is this what she would have liked? But there's no time to pause. It's on to the next task.

And so it goes.

Christmas is a particularly cruel time for arranging a funeral. And, in my case, all I wanted was to have my mum back. 

In the meantime, while you are trying to gather your thoughts and cope with the shock of bereavement, jingly bells and bright lights beckon to you ... to spend more, eat more and have fun ... more and more.

But you don’t want to. You want to be quiet, to be on your own and have a good cry. Chatting to folk or going to the Christmas market feels loud. Noise and nattering are the last things you want when you are grieving and feeling dog-tired.

And then there are the oddest of people who really have no empathy and say the unkindest of things:

‘You won’t be having to pay any more nursing home fees then.’

‘I’m glad she’s gone. I couldn’t lie in bed like that all day.’

‘I was very upset you didn’t invite me round.’

There are, of course, the kindest of people too. They are the ones you hold in your heart. 

And then there are the middling ones who, to save on postage, put a Christmas card in the same envelope as the ‘With Sympathy’ greeting.

One card has a white lily on it and the other depicts a fat, red Father Christmas and black cat sitting by a roasting fire. The message inside both cards says ‘With love from us all ...’ and a signature.

So which do I display? The ‘With Sympathy’ card or the jolly Santa?

And do I really have to write 80 Christmas cards to the same people I've just informed of a funeral?

Christmas is a time to welcome a new life. A time of happiness. But if you are recently bereaved ‘the joy to the world’ cuts across the need to grieve. No wonder our emotions are turned inside out and our bodies don’t know if it’s day or night, if it’s time to eat or sleep, to laugh or weep. 

               

This year we have time to switch on the fairy lights, wrap presents and display the nativity scene. But somehow the jollity has lost its energy. More important thoughts and feelings have replaced the Christmas card list.

I’ll light a candle to mum’s memory instead. It's fat and creamy white and swathed in ivy, laurel trimmings and sprigs of red-berried holly. 

It’s a Christmas candle - lit for mum.

(With love to Ieva).