2014 - Reflections on a year

So we stand on the verge of another collection of days that we shall group loosely into something we call 'months'.  Let's have twelve of them (the months, not the days) and let's call the whole shebang a 'year'.

Yes, it's not New Year's Eve yet (that particular delight comes tomorrow) but as I shall be spending the majority of tomorrow 'out' having that 'social life' that I always dreamed of, I thought now would be as good a time as any for a reflection on the last twelve months, and some musings on the twelve months to come.

2014 - the Good Parts

It was an interesting year.  After the slow start towards the end of 2013 with the whole 'giving up working for other people' schtick and setting out on my own, I got up a bit of speed.  I did some marketing work, some admin work and some writing and editing.  At one point, I even managed nearly a whole month writing a thousand words a day (micro short stories on any subject that took my fancy).

I saw the Greatest Movie in The World Ever (TM) in Guardians of the Galaxy.  Eight times.  In three different cinemas in three completely different parts of the country, across two different formats.  All joking aside, here was a movie that made me fall in love with the whole process of creating. I can listen or read for hours about how this movie was made, what different elements went into the casting, the set design, every little bit of the minutiae.  Most importantly, it inspired me to write two shorts, and there are more writhing around in my brain meat like elusive maggots, waiting to be bagged and tagged on the page.

I was accepted into two different fiction anthologies, both to be published next year.  One was 'weird' fiction, (Reflections by Fox Spirit) so I wrote a correspondingly weird story for it. The other was horror (Chip Shop Horrors by Knightwatch Press) - not my natural comfort zone - so I wrote something horrific for it.  Apparently, both ploys worked, so look out for them in 2015.

I wrote acres of stuff for Mantic Games - background (a.k.a 'fluff') for three different universes/settings, including Topps' Mars Attacks universe.  I have lots more to carry on writing, and editing.  I met many writers over the course of editing an anthology, and making the difficult decisions of who to admit and who to turn away.  All were generous and kind to a fault about the whole thing, whether I was delivering good or bad news, making me believe that all are barking very much up the right tree (metaphorically speaking  stick with me here).

I got name-checked in the acknowledgements of three different novels, two of which were just for READING THINGS AND OFFERING OPINIONS.  Considering the two authors in question, that alone was enough to make me go all googly.  That they had asked my opinions at all was staggering enough.  That they were grateful enough for them to acknowledge them in public just sent me dribbly.  And one of them (he knows who he is) almost literally broke my will to even try sitting at a keyboard again thanks to how ridiculously cleverly plotted his stuff was.  I powered through it, but only just, so thanks John ;)

I travelled a far amount this year too, and made new and exciting friends who helped me in so many ways.  My health is improving, and more importantly my awareness of it is improving.  My belief in my own abilities grew just that little bit.  I SOCIALISED more in this one year than I think I had in the last ten.  I went to the theatre, I went to events, I met new people, I even ATE IN PUBLIC.  Truly, 2014 was a year of craziness. So thanks also to Arti, Medhia, Snarf (don't ask), Rupa, Pete, Ruth, Simon, Paul, Sue, Phil, Tim, Nikki, Liam, Ross and so many others that I can't even count. You're all wonderful.

2014 - the not so good parts

Any who have followed this blog since its inception will be aware that 2014 sucked in one big giant way.  My cousin Terry was taken away from the world far too early when he contracted bacterial meningitis which killed him in a matter of hours.  I could (and probably in future will) fill endless pages with just how good a person Terry was, how much he is missed by all who knew and loved him, and how much I regret having taken for granted that he would always be around.  Various factors throughout the span of my life contributed to ensure that Terry and I were not as well acquainted as I would like us to have been.  But I knew him enough to know the most important truths about him.  He was unfailingly kind and generous of spirit.  He was always practical, ready to find the solution to any problem.  He was loyal and patient.  He was incredibly hard working.  He never accepted any limit that the world tried to impose on him.  And he loved his wife more than anything else in the world.  It is often said in this cynical age of ours that of course people only speak well of the dead.  In Terry's case, it is genuinely because there is no ill to speak of, and nor was there ever.  In thirty years of life, I don't believe that he ever did or said one bad, selfish or unkind thing.  As I stare down the barrel of my thirty-fifth year on the planet, I can think of no finer example to follow, and I will always do my best to keep Terry in mind, wherever I am and whatever I do.

It was also a difficult year for others in my life.  My father in law, now 83, had a year of health hiccups, from his minor heart attack in May (or 'Episode of attention-seeking fakery', as we prefer to call it when he and I speak of the matter) to a suspected minor stroke shorty after Terry's passing, and the odd funny turn along the way.  Thanks to the attentions of a good GP friend, we were able to get him precisely the medical attention and investigation that he needed, which surprisingly confirmed that for his age, he's actually not in bad shape at all.  Long may that continue.

My own father managed to fall off a stepladder and do himself a fairly serious injury, smashing his shoulder into lots and lots of tiny pieces.  Some twenty-odd years younger than my father in law he may be, but I still think he should be banned from climbing any more ladders.  He disagrees, and thus the debate continues.  Needless to say, I think I'm right (but then when isn't that the case?)  Regardless, he is now a real life bionic man, with a titanium plate and several screws holding the various disparate parts of bone remaining in his shoulder together.  I am reliably informed that he will not set off airport alarms, but he will likely feel the cold more keenly in winter.  Maybe that'll remind him not to climb any more bloody ladders...

I have watched several friends struggle this year, with varying degrees of severity.  Depression is a word that gets thrown around all too freely in our supposedly all-knowing society, and covers a variety of shades from feeling a little down to wanting to just throw oneself off a bridge.  Fortunately, the ones I care for who face these issues have not gotten as far as the latter, though they are quite a way removed from the former.  I hope that I have been of some comfort to them in the dark times, and that I can look forward to sharing with them lots of brighter ones in the year to come.  If they are reading this at all, they know who they are, and hopefully they equally know that I am here for them as ever.

As to me.  It's been a year in which I have faced many challenges.  From the mundane (filling out my tax return and earning money) to the extreme (bereavement, growing up more, taking responsibility for things I had never really considered before) I think I have been more fundamentally altered by these last twelve months than by the preceding twelve years.  Life is a journey (and other such chocolate box cliches), and I am always fascinated by those moments when one becomes aware of it.  There have been a lot more of those for me this year, and I can only hope that they will have made me into a better person.

Most of all, I have learned that life is precious, and not to be taken for granted.  For whatever reason, I find myself blessed enough to be able to create words that others deem good enough to be paid for. That was my dream for so many years, and the danger there is that once you have achieved your dream, it is too easy to rest on your laurels and assume that the journey is done.  Too often this year, I have spoken about writing rather than doing it.  Too many times, I have been seduced by the idea of having been accepted for publication, rather than focusing on the next step on the journey. Yes, I am of a standard right now where I can get published and noticed.  But now is the time to improve upon that standard and get noticed more.  Now is the time to stop looking at things I watch and read and listen to, saying 'I could do better', and to actually put pen to paper and fingers to keys and DO IT.  It's an almighty cliche to be saying all these things on New Year's Eve of course (or even on the day before) but there we go - I cannot help the serendipity of timing any more than I can go back and alter the last 52 weeks in any way, much as I may like to.

I was going to say that I hoped that 2015 would be a better year.  I think that's a natural enough reaction in the wake of so much illness, death and sadness.  It would be a bigger cliche to sit here and sigh that this is just a sign of getting older - one more thing we must accept as we shuffle mercilessly onwards towards that gentleman with the scythe, waiting to keep his inevitable appointment with us all.

So I will say this: I hope that the changes wrought on me - good and bad - by the last 365 days, enable me to face the next 8,760 hours with enough grace, dignity and positivity that I shall be able to sit here 525,600 minutes from now reflecting on a year well-spent.

In the meantime, I hope that anyone who cares to read this has an absolutely amazing New Years, wherever and with whomever you spend it, and that the coming 31,536,000 seconds give you all that you work for.

Thanks

G

Remember when willpower was enough?

A few weeks ago, while speaking to my co-editor and good buddy EJ Davies, he told me about something called the Pavlok.  If you haven't heard of it, go ahead and google it.  I'll be right here, no worries.

For those who can't be bothered to google it, the Pavlok is a wrist band which is marketed as a 'personal coach on your wrist'.  It is a wristband that delivers electric shocks to the wearer, and is designed to do so whenever they are in danger of doing (or not doing as the case may be) whatever thing it is that they shouldn't (or should) be doing.  Basically, it is a negative reinforcement device, designed to apply something unpleasant in order to force the user into compliance.  Hence the clever pun-name 'Pavlok'.

My instant reaction, as a 34 year old man-child who is self employed, works from home and suffers greatly at times with regards to motivation, was that I would gladly have one.  Then I thought about it a bit more, and about the kind of pattern it represented, and I began to realise something - willpower has become something of an old-fashioned concept in modern society.

Sure, that may seem like a sweeping statement, but think about it for a second.  We don't tell smokers to quit cold turkey anymore.  We tell them that help is at hand with 'nicotine replacement therapy' and 'e-cigarettes'.  Many of the commercials aren't even subtle anymore - they flat out disparage the 'willpower method', consigning it to the dustbin of certain failure before it has even been tried.  You can see it elsewhere too.  Companies that will send you your ready prepared 'healthy meals' to your door if you want to lose weight, counting the calories so that you don't have to.  Finance that enables you to have that latest, newest shiny thing that you absolutely must have without the inconvenience of actually saving up to pay for it.

I fully accept (and in many ways appreciate) the fact that we live in an age of technology that allows us many luxuries.  We can shop, bank and transact business of all kinds without actually having to leave the house.  We can research complex subjects without the hassle of leafing through thousands of pages of dusty textbooks that may or may not be out of date.  And we can provide a crutch for those who need it, using the benefits of technology to help them overcome otherwise insurmountable personal mountains.

But are they even trying?  That's my real question.  I might have reflexively joked that the Pavlok was just what I needed in my life, but I am a grown man and I am capable of actually sitting my ass down and doing the things that I need to do if I put my mind to it.  I can even eat more healthily after a lifetime of not doing so.  I quit smoking with nary a whiff of nicotine gum, e cigs or anything else - ok so I read a book, but I hardly think that counts to the same level.

I'm not trying to bash people here.  I know better than mos the struggles that some people can have with weight loss and comfort eating and other forms of addiction.  But I worry about a society where a band that gives you electric shocks if you aren't doing whatever the thing is that you think you should be doing is the solution - surely if the thing itself is not motivation enough, that speaks to a deeper problem? I WANTED to quit smoking when I did, and so I damned well did and haven't looked back.  But all the other times, the times when I thought I probably SHOULD quit because friends and family were nagging me, I would spend a torturous few days/weeks/months without cigarettes, making everyone else's lives miserable, and then inevitably fold and light up once again.

So my point is, if you want to do more exercise, or lose some weight, or quit smoking or whatever, I think that the first thing that you really NEED to do is think really hard about whether the goal is something that you WANT or just a thing that you feel compelled to do for some other reason.  If you WANT to eat more healthily, then you will.  If you WANT to stop smoking, you will find a way.  If you WANT to lose weight, then you will look at ways of doing it, be that portion control, exercise or whatever mixture of both suits you (NB I realise that weight loss is a tricky one - again, I have experience enough to know that some people can eat as little and exercise as much as they like and still find themselves unable to shake excess weight, but my point here is that if they WANT to then they should be able to do the less eating and/or more exercising without a portable bloody generator delivering shocks to them if they don't).

Willpower alone can be tough - of course it can.  And help is not something that anyone should ever feel ashamed to seek - I speak there as someone who has suffered personally with mental issues and physical ones.  But I think the key differentiator here is 'help'.  Help to achieve some goal that you are setting yourself is one thing.  Strapping a band to your arm that will FORCE you to set off for that goal on pain of receiving an electric shock strikes me less as seeking assistance and more as just accepting from the start that you can't possibly do it and therefore abstaining all responsibility whatsoever.  And that can't be right, can it?

Nice porn only please, we're British

So, it seems that a few days ago, the UK government passed an amendment to the 2003 communications act with regards to 'Video on Demand' pornography, which essentially bans porn produced in the UK from displaying certain stuff, including:

Spanking

Caning

Aggressive whipping

Penetration by any object "associated with violence"

Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of  if consensual)

Urolagnia (known as "water sports")

Role-playing as non-adults

Physical restraint

Humiliation

Female ejaculation

Strangulation

Facesitting

Fisting

With the last three being classified by the BBFC as 'potentially life endangering'.

As one might expect, there has been an outcry from many corners about this.  The 'nanny state' telling us what is 'nice' sex and what is not, the fact that at least one of the banned acts is something that involves female pleasure and all the other objections you might expect.  What has surprised me is that there doesn't seem to be much discussion here of what is the real, underlying issue.

It's no secret that in the modern age, where any kid with a smartphone (and most seem to have them) can access the whole of that wonderful behemoth known as The Internet at their leisure, that kids are watching more porn.  That in and of itself isn't really all that worrying.  I saw my first 'rhythm magazine' before I was into double digits, age wise, and it didn't leave me with any lasting scars or any kind of odd attitudes towards women or sex.  But the point is, the vast majority of kids in the UK are still getting most of their information about sex from the playground and from porn.  Sex education in the UK is woefully inadequate to task, and more worryingly, the very parents who seem content to blame schools for lacking in their educational provision don't seem to be talking all that much to their kids about sex either.

Sex in the UK remains one of those things that simply isn't discussed in polite company.  Oh sure, we TALK about it.  God alone knows that we never seem to shut up about it, from Cosmo to Heat, from the Tabloids to TV shows covering Dogging, wife swapping and even kids going abroad to simply get laid.  It's in our advertising, in our movies, on our brands and on our cinema screens.  Endless 'edgy' pop stars warble about it in increasingly inane ways and the whole world throws its hands up in despair at anyone unhip enough to not 'get it'.  

And yet, we don't ever really speak about sex.  We talk loudly about the idealised picture of it  Young women (and men) are intimidated by the images of perfect sexuality that are rammed into their eyeballs from every direction.  They are told simply what the mechanics of sexual intercourse are at school, and how it can lead to pregnancy, but if they get more than a glance at techniques, or anything that suggests sex might be recreational as well as procreational, then they're doing bloody well.  No, We simply tell them what the mechanics are, tell them they should wait until they are much older when they will understand better, and then leave them to it.  Is it any wonder then, that they turn to the most readily available sources of education in these matters that they can find?

And herein lies the issue with certain types of pornography.  If young person sees a film in which a woman is humiliated and debased, or has stuff shoved into her that you might not normally expect a woman to have shoved into her, they don't have the contextual experience or education to know that this might be a 'niche' thing dependent on taste.  They may (and often do) simply assume that what they are seeing is just par for the course.  This may terrify them, as they look at something which doesn't do anything for them (and it follows that if we are defending people's right to be into whatever sexual practices they like then we must similarly defend people's right not to be as well) or it may cause them to simply assume that they can do things to people rather than with them.  It can lead, in short, to a very warped point of view with regards to sex.

I'm not saying that we need to ban any kind of pornography - what people want to do and watch is entirely down to them, though there is plenty of suggestion that those involved in performing in these movies can often suffer, both emotionally and physically, from the extremes of demand that are placed on them and the frequency with which this is done.  I'd like to think that if we could get over the prevailing attitude in the western world that sex is some kind of inherently shameful and harmful thing that we must protect the masses from as much as possible that this is another issue that might be addressed, but that's not really the topic for today.

But what we do need to do is stop hiding sex away from kids.  Again, I get that it's in their faces plenty in terms of TV and magazines, but it also isn't.  We don't take the time to explain to young people that there are different kinds of sexual activity, that some people like stuff which is very specific and which isn't for everyone.  We don't take the time to encourage them to explore this in a healthy and consensual way - we just hide any evidence of it from them because it might be 'harmful', we ban pornography, we shame those who engage in practices that are outside the normal, and we create and perpetuate the very problems that we then attempt, inadequately to address.

Don't get me wrong - I don't think that primary school kids need to know about bondage and S&M.  They don't NEED to know much, other than the basic mechanics required to satiate the inherent curiosity that drives every small child to ask, at some point, where babies come from.  But kids at secondary school, kids who are hitting puberty and experiencing all sorts of new and bewildering feelings and have no real idea of how to act on them - these are the kids that we should be educating.  Don't show them porn, but make them aware that sex isn't just some single track, vanilla thing.  Let them know that it's an infinite variety of orientations and tastes, and that the most important thing that they can bear in mind is respect for the other person/people they embark on that journey with.

If we could do that, then maybe we could create a world in which sex wasn't such a big and awkward issue.  And maybe then nobody would have to ban anybody's porn, which lets face it, is not that many steps removed from the police standing in your bedroom making sure that you're only having 'nice and appropriate' sex.  And who wants that?

My dog ate it and then there was a storm...

It's been a while since I last wrote a blog.  Those who have followed this from the start will understand that this is not something that I am happy about.  I can't help but feel that insistent nudge at the back of my mind that says I should be writing, and that the blog is as good a place as any to start that, and as time drags on and days become weeks and life shoves obstacles (enjoyable and not so enjoyable) between me and the keyboard, that feeling just gets worse.

Mostly, I have just been busy.  I have been catching up rather hard on what I refer to generally as 'the day job' - i.e. the part that pays most of my bills but isn't as fun.  It's not bad - mechanical and slightly maddening at times, but it's something I did for six years straight in a previous life so it's easy enough to return to and it keeps me occupied (and funded). 

I have also been busy having a social life - November has that tendency these last few years, with an annual pilgrimmage to Nottingham to see friends who have become part of my extended family and then a local show which I attend here in Reading the following weekend.  There was also a trip to the Royal Television Society to see Steven Moffat and various others talk about the latest season of Doctor Who, a trip to London to see a musical (Made in Dagenham), some cinema trips, some driving to various and sundry places and generally a whole lot of going places inbetween attempting occasionally to chain myself to a desk and get some work done.

I've always said that it is better to be busy than bored, and I stand by that.  But being busy for me can be an issue because I am not the most organised person in the world.  I am married to the most organised person in the world though, and tat helps a fair bit because without her I would never get anything done at all ever.  I actually had the pleasure of taking her with me to Nottingham this year for the first time, and introducing her in person to a whole bunch of people who had heard about her plenty but never met her.  Predictably, they all loved her (probably more than they like me) and rather less predictably she turned out to be a hell of a Cards Against Humanity player, which surprised everyone, but nobody more than me.

Nonetheless, busy usually equals a disorganised Greg, as I flail from one project to another. Because of my infamously intense but extremely short bursts of attention span, this means I will often have half a dozen things on the go and this makes for messiness when I inevitably forget one or more of them.  The one thing that I have managed to maintain over recent weeks is the eating more healthily thing.  Now, I mentioned this in the last blog and here I am a month later still getting it done.  I won't pretend that I am cooking cordon bleu every night, but I haven't eaten anything out of a microwave or a packet in a month.  There has been much more fruit and vegetable content, much more 'cooking from scratch' and much less bad stuff.  In fact, I had my first 'bad stuff' at the weekend having had a gastroscopy (worst experience of my life so far) and I decided I was entitled to a treat.

I'm quite proud of this eating better thing.  It's made me feel better within myself, both because of the actual health benefit and because I feel a sense of achievement.  It also gives me hope about other stuff.  I never thought that I would be able to break the habit of my lousy eating and actually bother myself to eat right, and yet here I am doing it.  It bodes well for the other stuff that I have never thought myself capable of - being organised, having a tidy living space, getting exercise etc.

And maybe even keeping a regular blog. We can but hope.  In the meantime, I'll just have to put up with this sore spot in the back of my mind where Terry keeps kicking me.

Doctors, Dinner and Metaphysical Musings

As anyone who has followed this blog since inception will know, it was motivated partly out of a desire to do better, spurred by the recent and tragic loss of my cousin, Terry.  The thing about extreme circumstances (apart from relationships formed in them never lasting, according to Sandra Bullock) is that it is all too easy to make all sorts of spur of the moment decisions under them which then prove difficult to stick to when life inevitably continues.  This is the truth that underpins a million abandoned diets, exercise regimes and attempts to quit smoking, drinking or any other vice.

Myself, I have suffered from IBS now for so long that I literally don't remember what it felt like to wake up in the morning and NOT have to plan my day around my stomach and whether it will be bad.  The unimaginable freedom of being able to eat before a long journey, to walk into a restaurant and order what I would LIKE to eat rather than what i think I might get away with, the heady giddiness of being offered some new food at a party and just taking a taste for the hell of it - all memories so distant that they may as well be myth.

So far so sad - it would be easy to sit here and accept the sympathy of the crowd and nod my head in agreement with various pronouncements of how tragic it was.  But let's get real here.  I eat rubbish.  I rarely eat anything that isn't heavily processed/microwaved/takeaway or some hideous combination of all three.  I eat very little if any fruit and veg, I rarely do anything so fancy as 'cook' and when I do, the extent is usually the removal of wrapping and placing something in the oven.

Partly there is a genuine reason for this - IBS is a condition that swiftly makes its sufferer a creature of habit - even more so if that sufferer happens to have OCD tendencies (that's right - I have ALL the acronyms).  What this means is that on the rare occasions that one eats something new and doesn't suffer badly at all, then one tends to eat that thing a lot.  When one conversely eats something that DOES disagree, then that thing tends to vanish forevernore from the menu - witness my decade long and counting abstinence from Pork chops for example.

But all of that is just a small part of the problem.  The rest is sheer laziness.  It isn't that I CAN'T cook - in actual fact I have always had a bit of a natural talent for following a recipe and producing the goods.  It's just that I have become increasingly lazy.  I was even before the IBS if I am honest, but the condition furnished me with the above handy excuse as well.  And thus have I proceeded.

Yesterday, at the recommendation of my current and lovely GP who is actually taking some kind of interest in making me better, I attended an appointment with a nutritionist.  This was an interesting experience. It wasn't dramatic and nor shall I make it sound so - she was very friendly and polite, though she couldn't quite hide the edge of frustration.  It wasn't that I didn't KNOW that my diet was harmful, it wasn't even as if I had no idea of how to fix it, it was quite clear that I had simply never bothered.  I had given up, resigned to a lifetime of odd eating habits and suffering.  She wasn't harsh, but she was honest.  If I wanted to have any chance at all of effecting change, I needed to be prepared to actually DO the stuff that would be recommended to me.  I had to actually be willing to take responsibility for myself and start making food and drinking water and eating fruit and all the other stuff that I clearly knew but had never bothered with so far.

Maybe it was because of the way she handled it, or the fact that I don't want to let my GP down, or the fact that I am just so sick of this half life enforced by my stomach, but something resonated.  So last night I went and bought a bag of potatoes and some fresh chicken breasts, and I cooked a simple dinner of home made mashed potato, oven roasted chicken and some tinned veg.  It won't win any awards or Michelin stars, but it was a start.  A small one, but relatively huge.  I can't remember the last time that I actually spent time PREPARING food.  By the time it was ready I was starving, the anticipation of preparation having worked up my appetite.  I tucked in and demolished the lot, and this morning I woke feeling better than I had in a while.

It isn't a miracle cure.  I don't expect to be suddenly completely better, but it's a start.  It's the sort of start that I think Terry would have respected.  The night before last, I dreamed of Terry - something I don't recall ever having done.  It was an odd dream - I was at a family gathering, which I knew somehow was about remembering him.  Then he walked in to the room, and I gave him the tightest hug.  I was so glad to see him, and to be able to tell him that I missed him.  Then the dream panned back, like a camera going out of my body and pulling back to view the scene, and I saw myself hugging thin air and muttering to myself.  I'd known even as I grabbed him for that bear hug that he wasn't there, but pulling back and seeing it like that somehow still hurt.  Not a raw, agonising pain, but a dull ache.  It made me realise two things:

1. Though rationally I understand and appreciate that Terry is gone, emotionally I still haven't accepted it.  And I'm not sure I ever will.  There have been several times since his passing when that realisation has hit me - at a party when I expected him to be standing there in a group, watching a race on TV and going to text him about an incident.  His number is still on my phone with his name there, and I can't bring myself to get rid of it.  Doing so would be accepting something on a level that I am just not ready for.

2. Though he's gone, he's still very much there with that kick up the arse ready for his cousin as and when its required.  I am not a believer in the symbolism or meaning of dreams in and of themselves, but clearly Terry was on my mind that night, and the following morning too.  I think that was what motivated the change.  That was what made me sit there and say all the things I said to the nutritionist, and make the promises I did, and more importantly start to keep them.  Terry was right there, in the back of my mind, telling me to just man up and get on with it.

Who am I to argue?

An uncharacteristic moment of weakness

Generally I am a pretty sorted out guy.  I work for a living, pay my taxes, have a loving and wonderful wife, a great bunch of friends and generally feel that my life is pretty sweet.  Occasionally though, very very rarely when I am least expecting it, I will have a slight moment of...I'm trying to find an appropriate word and regret isn't quite it, nor is remorse.  I may be getting ahead of myself here, but that is mostly because the actual nub of what I wish to say - the very thing that I wish to let spill from my mind to the keyboard and push off into the ether like a message in a bottle, feels so terrifically pathetic and weak to me, that I struggle to even type it.  Let's begin at the beginning (at least the quick version).

I have never had any kind of relationship with my mother.  I don't mean that usual kind of push me-pull you affair that most people have with their parent, where they love them but feel simultaneously infuriated by their little foibles.  I don't speak of that affectionate exasperation that so often colours the relationship of one generation with the next.  My mother was damaged long before I arrived on the scene, and likely remains so to this very day.  Something fundamental broke within her at a very early age, and I don't think that anything that anybody - myself included - ever did was going to repair it.

For a start, my mother is a Misandrist, in the very truest sense of that word.  I grew up being told tales of every man in her life - from her Father to her first husband to my own father - generally doing awful things and living up to her extremely low expectation of the gender as a whiole.  I myself was lumped into that category.  I recall vividly going away for a few days aged 17 with a friend, having only recently started going out with a girl in my year at college.  Flush with the first bloom of this new infatuation, I was told by my mother "If you meet any nice girl who fancies a bit, don't be silly, you crack on with it." "But Mum", I replied, "What about Lorna?".  "Don't be daft," came the instant reply, "all men are bastards Gregory, don't break the mould."

Gregory. My given birth name, sure.  But used now only by her and my beloved Grandmother, who can frankly call me whatever she likes because she is so magnificent.  Nobody else calls me it or ever has.  I don't really know why - I always suspected that people are just inherently vocally lazy and prefer shortened versions of names, but I have been told by several people (my wife foremost amongst them) that I just don't seem like a Gregory.  Whatever the truth, if anyone does ever call me by the name (my grandmother excepted of course) I bridle at it to this day.  It's not just the association with an unhappier time, it really doesn't feel like my name.  I am Greg, and that is the end of it.

And make no mistake, it was an unhappier time.  It is difficult to describe my childhood without sounding as if I exaggerate.  It is also inherently difficult for me to not feel as if I am somehow exaggerating my own issues, that I am complaining when I have little to complain about.  I was always fed and clothed.  I always had a roof over my head.  I grew up around animals and the great outdoors.  I never wanted for toys and books.  But I also recall one occasion in 19 years of living at home when I got a hug from my own mother.  It was the day that I saw my cat accidentally trodden to death by a horse (which wasn't anywhere near as comical as it might now read) I was 15, and inconsolable.  And for a full five minutes, my mother turned into a human being and actually held me in her arms as I wailed.  Other memories, worse memories, are far more prevalent and ingrained.  Being told that my parents could have had a much better life had I never been born.  Being made the butt of innumerable arguments between my parents. Being shouted at, belittled and punished if I so much as looked in the wrong way at her (or was perceived to have done so).  Her little dog which was trained by her to attack myself and my father whenever we were near my mother - to her own great amusement.  Even the particular night when she went to poke me as I walked past her, to encourage said dog to bite me, and I knocked her hand away, causing the dog to miss and bite her.  As much trouble as that dog caused me, I felt sorry for it that evening as it was ignored, sitting there wondering what it had done wrong.  Of course, by the time my father came home, I had 'held her down while the dog savaged her' and I ended up punished as usual.

Mostly I don't think on these things, nor any of the other stuff that occurred to me in those years at home.  I mean, it's always there and I certainly live with the influences, but I don't consciously brood on it.  It is a thing, it happened and now it doesn't.  I haven't spoken to mother in years, haven't seen her since early January 2000.  But very occasionally, an image or a song or a smell will take me back to a memory - good or bad - that will make me think of her, and of the relationship that we never had.  It isn't regret, as I said at the beginning, because you can't regret something that never happened, nor can you miss it.  My mother was never maternal with me - it just wasn't in her.  She fed and clothed me, and made sure I was generally ok, but there was never any warmth or anything I would describe as love between us.  The day I left home - a day that I had been counting down to for years - she cried, though I suspect as much because she knew that her life would soon change for the worse as any other reason.  Sure enough, my father left shortly after I did, and she became that bitter, lonely old woman that she'd been practising to be for most of her life.

I don't even know if most of the things that she told me about her past which might explain her being the way she is were true - my mother has a very fractious relationship with the truth.  Whether it is true that her first husband beat her I will never know.  Whether the things that she claimed happened to her as a young girl at the hands of various men I will also never know.  There are so many blanks and so many question marks that I essentially gave up trying many years ago to discover anything about her.  She lives in a fantasy world, seemingly more with each passing year, and the vague impressions I am able to garner at distance from her occasional internet ravings and other sources all indicate the problem getting worse year on year.  One day, I suspect I will simply receive a call telling me she has passed, and I honestly don't see what reaction I will have beyond a shrug.

But why a moment of weakness?  Because I am a sentimental soul, and very occasionally I sit and think about the relationship that people are supposed to have with their parents and more specifically about the relationship that boys are supposed to have with their mothers.  I am very lucky in that I have a whole legion of women I have now throughout my life who are happy to 'adopt' me - perhaps seeing in me some need for 'mothering' that even I myself remain unaware of in any conscious sense.  But I can't help but think sometimes that I am a compassionate person too, and that I would have had a great deal of love to give to my mother had she only been able to receive it.  I think that terribly melodramatic and melancholic thought from time to time and it makes me sad.  It cuts at something very deep within me, and I am not sure that it is something that all the surrogate mothers in the world will ever truly solve.

It also makes me sad that I never got to know huge swathes of my family (on my father's side) until I was 19 because my mother did not like them.  I had met them of course, and was vaguely aware of them in some ill-defined distance, but I never really had the opportunity to really know them until much later.  I wonder now if I had had that opportunity whether I would have seen a lot more of Terry, and whether that might have eased some of the burden of guilt at his passing, with all the things left unsaid and undone that shouldn't have been.  I feel that perhaps I should be angry at my mother for this, but in all honesty the main emotion that I feel when thinking of her is pity.  She was bright enough, and perhaps had she trodden a different path in life she might have been happier and better.  Maybe me and that other her would have been close - maybe we would have shared ideas and thoughts and feelings.

I am more than happy with the man that I grew to be.  I am pretty sure that she is not.  Then again, having not seen me since I was 19 years old, perhaps I presume too much on her part there.  The last time we spoke, roughly 8 years ago, the conversation ended much as it had begun - with her telling me that I was an awful person, and that she would simply hang up and never speak to me again.  I changed my number to help her keep that promise, and though I get the occasional email from her every few years with some cryptic nonsense attached, mostly we simply exist quite separately from each other.

Had she been a touchy-feely mother and I a happy, carefree child, then I think I would have been much different.  I wouldn't have appreciated the plight of the lonely and the awkward as much.  i would not have felt such easy sympathy with the displaced and the unhappy.  I would not have felt so driven to help those who are distressed. I would have been less self-sufficient.  In my weaker moments like this though, I reflect that perhaps I might also have been more relaxed and confident.  maybe I might have been more at ease with compliments, more free to feel my feelings without the mountain of critical self analysis that instantly follows my every emotive response (and in many cases precedes them). The truth is that I will never know.  It isn't regret.  It isn't even sorrow.  It's just a moment when I wonder what might have been if things had been different.  It's a moment that will sucker punch me emotionally, and leave me temporarily questioning myself before normality asserts itself.

I don't know how many people read this blog, nor even if anyone will read this entry, but these are the things that I had to say today, and I feel - if not better - at least a little released for having said them.  But for those who do stop by - please understand that this is not a cry for help.  Please don't assume that I am in trouble or in need of help.  I am aware even as I write all of this just how melodramatic and awful it may sound, but this is simply me talking to myself in textual form.  It's almost a kind of therapy, helping me through my moment of weakness.  It's ok.  I am here, I am happy and I am alive.  And everyone needs to be a little maudlin from time to time.

Out of the mouths of babes

So yesterday, another gun was fired in another school in the US. Another young person became a murderer, before turning the gun on himself.

Statistically, this makes over 80 of these incidents to have taken place in that country in the last twenty years. In a nation like the United States, where guns are just a normal factor of everyday life, and where one state is bigger than the whole country that we in the UK live in, it becomes difficult to make direct comparisons. Guns have not been commonplace in the UK for many years. In 1996, when Thomas Hamilton broke into Dunblane Primary School in Scotland and shot dead sixteen children and one teacher, the government moved swiftly to ban the private ownership of functioning handguns altogether. The move is seen by man gun enthusiasts as heavy-handed, yet it cannot be denied that there have been no more school shootings in the UK since that day, so one can argue that the changes had the desired effect, and then easily point to the US and ask why they don't see the sense and do similar.

But there is one very key difference between Dunblane and the majority of the 'school shootings' that take place in America (and it's a depressing enough indictment of the situation that the shorthand phrase 'school shooting' is now common parlance). The majority of these incidents in the United States involve children. The first quote that instantly struck me reading about this latest horror was from the cousin of Jaylen Ray Fryberg, the 14 year old shooter, who said this:

“He was heartbroken and didn’t know what to do. Jaylen wasn’t a bad kid, he just made a mistake,”

Apparently, the incident related to a 'dispute over Jaylen's girlfriend'. The minutiae of this dispute need not detain us. The hearts of teenagers are young and inexperienced. They feel love, hatred and every other emotion in a pure and unalloyed form, untempered by the bitter experience that comes with the advancement of years. They are not able to sit and reflect on past experience of feelings of affection, betrayal or anything similar. They are packed full of hormones and feeling dozens of new and often conflicting emotions each and every day. When a teenager cries that the adults around them 'do not understand' then they are both literally and figuratively absolutely correct. Adults all too soon forget that crazy whirlwind of feelings and thoughts that is the teenage years. Puberty is not a kind or gentle process, and many the unkind word or thoughtless deed is done by one under its thrall. Most of us are lucky enough to live to regret these outbursts, going to family and friends in later life and if not actually apologising then at least making right with them. Jaylen Ray Fryberg no longer has that luxury, thanks to the way that the gun laws of the US operate.

Honestly, you can dress it up any which way that you like. You can say that it is the constitutional right of US citizens to bear arms and you would be correct, except that you must also realise that this document was drafted at a time when large parts of the US were relatively uncharted wilderness. A time when pioneering families tried to carve their living out of a landscape full of wild animals, the displaced and angry native peoples, and lawless bands of rogues. A gun WAS a necessary right if you were one of the white people busily establishing your 'new world'. The constitution was also trhe same document that in its original form allowed for slavery amongst other things. It is, at base, a piece of paper from a different era, and to tell me that because it says you must all have guns this is a sacrosanct right is to tell me that we should also be stoning unfaithful women to death in the street - you know, the way that you are saying is unacceptable in all those countries that you go to war against?

You might instead try the argument that if we ban or attempt to restrict the ownership of guns then we are stripping you of your ability to defend yourself against armed criminals. Couple of things here. First, there is the concept of 'escalation', poetically expressed by Sean Connery in The Untouchables:

"They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."

Or more appropriately to the current context, if all the criminals are aware that you're all packing pistols, then they will pack semi automatics. If you upgrade to semi automatics, they will go full auto, and so on and so forth.

My second issue with the defence argument is that it fails to take account of the fact that if guns are harder to get hold of then surely LESS criminals will have them rather than more. If it's as easy as opening a bank account to pick up a semi automatic rifle, then surely there will be more people who have them for less than honorable intentions than if it's a strict, vetted process requiring appropriate licensing, testing and proof of adequate storage? I mean, it just stands to statistical reason - if it is harder to get guns, then it is harder for EVERYONE to get guns?

All of this is sort of window dressing that fails to address the main problem though. If it is so commonplace to have guns lying around in people's houses, then it becomes incredibly easy for children to get hold of them. School shootings are so common in the US because of this one fact. Regular adults do not solve their issues with people by shooting them. Crimes of passion happen, sure. Men and women are driven by the anger or terror of loss to do stupid things, usually to the person who is the object of their affection/ire and/or person/s important to them. What they do not generally do is walk into crowded areas and start shooting. What they do not usually do is walk into a school and shoot people because someone broke up with them, or someone picked on them for a long time.

Teenagers who perform these acts are generally characterised as 'loners' or people who don't quite fit in. The two boys responsible for the Columbine shooting, which seems to have started this horrible new phase in US history, were characterised as outsiders who didn't fit in with their peers. They wore different clothes and listened to alternative music. A whole generation of metal fans and people who wore other than Abercrombie and Fitch and GAP fashions came to be viewed with suspicion, in a similar though less extreme fashion to how anyone dressed in middle eastern garb came to be viewed after 9/11. But the only thing that truly unites all of these people is their youth. Their relative lack of experience and of the strength and wisdom that age brings. Do not misunderstand me - I do not mean to patronise youth, nor to imply that there are no young people who are wise and sensible. But the fact remains that caught midst the whirlpool of emotion and change that is puberty, teenagers are more prone to react impulsively, driven by emotion more than by rationality. I know that was my experience, and I know that it was many years and much experience before I was able to temper that.

So forget about your constitutional right to bear arms America. Forget about the scaremongering that if your guns are properly regulated, then scary gunmen (presumably of some 'ethnic' origin who 'hate freedom') will all come to your house and shoot you full of holes before raping your daughters/wives and taking all your stuff. Forget about the rhetoric that tells you the nasty aggressive government just wants to take all your shiny, shiny guns away so that they can more effectively control you. Just ask yourselves some very simple questions:

Would you not prefer that your children could live to regret that stupid thing that they did or said in the heat of their inflamed passions?

Would you not rather that stupid thing was a silly rant, or throwing some mud, or even a bit of a fist fight?

Would it not be easier for them to bear that humiliation, and for you to be there to comfort them and see them through it?

Isn't it preferable to be helping them get through that difficult outburst than to be putting flowers on their grave?

And how would you feel, if your child wasn't the gunman, but the victim? What kind of nerve would it strike within you if it was your son or daughter who made a simple teenaged mistake and received a bullet for it? Or worse still, if they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire of a youthful spat made a million times worse by the use of a firearm?

"Jaylen wasn't a bad kid. He just made a mistake." These are not the words that should form an epitaph. They are the words that should explain a minor misdemeanour. Some childish infraction in the heat of the moment that can be rectified and made right.

Kids who aren't bad are able to make these kinds of terminal and horrific mistakes because the state of gun law in America enables them to easily lay hands to lethal weapons. It takes a second to pull a trigger. One heated, unthinking second. It can leave damage that lasts generations.

As a human being and a citizen of the world, I am begging you America - think about what is really important, and do the right thing.

Rose tinted screens

It's been to few days since my last entry - I blame this on a combination of me contracting a nasty bout of man flu which resulted in me being dizzy, full of mucus and unable to think straight for a few days, combined (rather inconveniently) with the fact of my beloved wife's birthday.  I try and take lessons from life wherever I can, and the one presented by this combination of events was that my general preference for doing things at the last possible moment is no longer going to wash. It was cute when I was in my late teens and early to mid twenties, when my body was more or less invincible to anything as mundane as illness or fatigue and I could run around at a million miles an hour at the last moment and get everything done, but now as a man approaching my mid thirties, and falling prey to all the usual maladies and shortcomings that are presented, I need to plan.  I need to finally adopt some kind of structure and order to my life, and to start taking better care of myself as well.  It's all so very very dull.

This tangentially brings me to the subject matter of today's blog - the different ways in which we perceive things as we grow older.  Rose tinted glasses is a phrase often used to describe that act of looking back and remembering things from our youth as much better than they in actual fact were.  We've all I'm sure had that experience of watching a beloved show from our childhood only to find that it leaves us cold with terrible acting and ridiculous special effects.  We've all eaten something that we fondly recall as the height of tastebud pleasure from our youth and spat it out in disgust.  There are certain things that fundamentally alter about us as we move through life, and these things in turn alter our perceptions and tastes, moving us on to positions and opinions unthinkable years before.

So far so ordinary - we all are aware of this - we even have a twee little commonly used phrase to describe it.  What interests me as I get older is that it isn't something exclusive to things from many years ago.  I recall for instance going through old emails when I was about to leave my last job, and happening across one I'd written scarcely two and a half years previously.  It was an email to a solicitor who had been less than helpful, and I remember at the time being immensely pleased with myself as I wrote it, deploying my gargantuan wit and splendid intelligence to mock this solicitor. I recall also the way that my skin crawled and I felt so terribly ashamed of myself as I viewed that email two and a half years later. It wasn't just a feeling of 'oh, that was a bit strong' - I literally
cringed at what I had written, and more importantly at the person I had been.  It really made me think about how others perceive us, and about how we perceive ourselves.  About how even a little bit of distance can make us totally re-evaluate things.

I see it in sillier ways too.  The other night for example, I sat down to watch the movie Resident Evil with Milla Jovovich.  I have long been a defender of the first few entries into this franchise, though even I had lost patience by the fourth installment, which was frankly terrible.  Up until very recently - 2 nights ago in fact - I would have told you that Resident Evil, while not especially faithful to the videogame it drew it's roots and title from, was an intelligent and fun take on the zombie movie genre, and one of the better videogame to movie adaptations out there.  Sat there two nights ago watching it, I wondered what my younger self had been thinking.  I couldn't get into it.  I mean, yes - the dialogue was laughable, the whole idea is absurd and the effects were as out of date as you'd expect twelve year old effects to be.  But it wasn't especially any of that which grated - I can happily watch hammy old episodes of Doctor Who, I can ignore and even embrace the terrible effects of shows like Red Dwarf and movies like the original Godzilla.  But I think that now as someone who edits and reviews fiction as well as writing it, and therefore has begun to gather a more comprehensive understanding of narrative, structure and plot, I can't help but pick apart anything I watch on those levels, and it's on those levels that Resident Evil fails utterly.

I mean, let's start with the fact that Jovovich plays one half of a 'fake married couple' who live in a mansion atop the secret underground base maintained by the evil umbrella corporation.  They are employees of umbrella, they are there to ensure security.  The first lines of dialogue spoken to Jovovich by Colin Salmon's character are 'Report! Report now!'.  And then hoes on to explain that 'The Hive' has enacted some kind of security lockdown and as part of this, deployed knockout gas into the mansion which had the effect - among others - of temporary amnesia.  So the security response of this secret base, in times of emergency, is to knock out and wipe the memories of the two security personnel on the surface immediately, such that when the cavalry arrive, they will be precisely less than useless? And this makes any kind of sense how?

That's one example - I could list dozens more but you get the point.  I know at this stage, there will be people yelling at me 'why can't you just enjoy the film for what it is Greg?' It's a valid question - Resident Evil never made any pretensions at being great drama. It was never made with an eye on awards or the respect of its peers.  It's a schlock horror action movie vehicle for the director's wife to star in. I get that, and I have happily enjoyed far sillier movies. I think that my issue is that most of the sillier movies are supposed to be comedies.  Whatever else you say about Resident Evil, it isn't supposed to be a comedy.  It's supposed to be an action/horror film, and it fails on either level - the horror is predictable and dull and the action is...well, much the same as the horror.  When you aren't being entertained enough by what a movie is doing, you (or at least I) inevitably start to pull it apart as you watch.  Man of Steel is another movie where I recently re-watched it and found myself hideously bored when I wasn't in a cinema watching it for the first time and distracted by the big screen, loud speakers and first watch haze.  Watching it again on a small screen, all of its flaws (and boy are there a lot of them) became painfully obvious.  I don't even mean THAT ending that everyone got themselves so tied in knots about - it's a lot more fundamental than that.  It's just a really poorly written excuse for a movie - a series of scenes that the director obviously wanted to make, loosely tied together by plot and dialogue that literally exists only to push the camera on to that next big scene.  There is no organic or natural sense to any of it, and that means I can't help but sit there and pick it to pieces.

It isn't just films and TV - I find that some of the books and music that I loved only a few years ago now just don't work for me. I guess maybe it's just an age thing and I'm analyzing it too much, but it's fascinating to experience this and be aware of it.  This drastic, almost seismic shift in the way that I have perceived things makes me wonder if anything is ever truly fixed.  There are plenty of things from my youth that endure as passions to this day - the musical version of War of the Worlds for example.  But I wonder if they truly are the exception to the rule, or whether I just haven't had long enough to grow out of them yet.  It's a puzzler for sure, but one that I happily embrace.  A few weeks ago I sat down  and watched Jane Eyre with my wife for the first time ever.  I vaguely knew the plot (it being my wife's favourite story ever) but I had never read it nor actually seen one of the countless adaptations of it.  I watched the Timothy Dalton version and it was excellent.  I was genuinely moved and enjoyed the whole thing.  I know that even last year, I would have sat there bored and resentful.  Now I can see a value to it - a quality that has survived over so many years to shine through even today.

As a writer just starting out on the journey of writing, an observation like that is simultaneously inspiring and terrifying.  Inspiring in that there is always that tiny optimistic glimmer of hope that I might actually manage a similar feat on any scale at all, and write something that future generations might look upon and take something from.  Terrifying in the challenge and responsibility that potentially places before me.  Even now, I look at thing a I wrote a few years ago with disdain, all too painfully aware of the faults and shortcomings.  I wonder then, whether I will ever be satisfied with anything I produce, or if there will always be some future version of me that will one day scan through my most painstakingly crafted works and tut and shake my head.  I don't know, but perversely, I look forward to finding out.

A vexed question

Largely, I avoid football, footballers and anything to do with either, but anyone who has eyes and any kind of social media access cannot have failed to see over the last few days the ongoing furore concerning one Ched Evans.  Evans was a footballer playing for Sheffield United and his country, until he was convicted of rape in 2012 and sent to prison.  Now it seems, he is to be released, and the question of him being re-signed by his former club and continuing his career is causing mass upset.  No less a luminary than Judy Finnegan herself has waded in on Loose Women, saying publicly that she felt he had served his time and should therefore be allowed to resume his career.  Unfortunately in the course of making this opinion clear, she also happened to say that the rape 'was not violent' and that the victim 'had been very drunk'.  This was enough for a lot of people to pounce on her via the magic of twitter and FB, declaring her to be 'disgusting' and 'victim-blaming' and asserting that it is women like her who stop victims of rape from reporting their attacks to the police for fear of being disbelieved or even ridiculed.

Now just hang on a second here.  I would like to know at precisely what point we became a society where this kind of hysteria was acceptable.  I didn't know anything about this case, but ten minutes or so of googling threw up some very interesting facts that I am not sure anyone of these people screaming their lungs out for Judy's blood has bothered to acquaint themselves with.

- The victim in question claims not to remember anything of the attack.  Not one solitary detail.  From her account, she recalls being in a club and then basically waking up in a hotel room the next day with her clothes scattered about the place.  No idea how she had got there or what had happened.

- There were actually two men present for the 'attack'.  Evans and his friend Clayton McDonald.  It was McDonald who had brought the victim back to the hotel room - booked by Evans - and who had, according to the accounts of both - initially had sexual intercourse with the victim.  Evans then appeared later and apparently when asked (though they are both unclear as to by whom) whether Evans could join in, they received an affirmative from the victim.

- Neither man ejaculated during the intercourse, meaning that there was no DNA evidence.  This, combined with the total lack of violence (which doesn't lessen a charge of rape, but would provide some physical evidence to link an individual to the crime) means that the only reason that the two men were on trial and one was convicted was that they volunteered the information that they had engaged in intercourse with the victim.  Remember, her claim is that she cannot recall ANYTHING that happened from her leaving the club.

- The Night Porter at the hotel was listening at the door while the sexual activity was going on. His testified that he had gone to listen at the door as he was concerned that the maximum occupancy for the room was being exceeded.  This apparent virtuous intent led to him hearing what sounds like several minutes worth of the encounter, which he describes as 'ooh and ahs' and at one point, a male voice 'playfully' asking for oral sex.  He describes nothing that suggests anything other than consensual sexual activity taking place.  Also, bear in mind that having gone and listened, he did not report the incident to the police.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not for one moment suggesting that Evans is a paragon of virtue.  In fact, his night had been derailing long before he detoured to have sex with the victim - he had in fact been in a taxi en-route to the police station to give a witness statement on behalf of his brother who had been involved in an altercation with a young woman in the street.  Upon hearing that his friend had 'picked up a bird', he asked the taxi taking him to the station to re-route to the hotel so that he could 'have a look at the girl'.  Upon obtaining his own keycard for the room and walking in to see Clayton and the victim having sex, Evans (in a relationship at the time which continues to this day) decided to join in and have sex with her also.  Having both had sex with her, they left the building and went to his house where they spent the night.  These are not the actions of gentlemen, nor of men we would wish for our young boys to look up to.

But are they the actions of rapists?  I think that's a valid question, yet the prevailing public wisdom seems to be that they were charged and are therefore guilty.  Why was only Evans convicted? Both men were there, both freely admit to having sex with the victim.  If she was 'too intoxicated to consent' to sex with Evans, why not also with McDonald?

Rape is possibly the worst crime.  There is no restitution, no justice that can be served.  There is nothing that can be done that will heal the victim or make them feel any better.  There is no compensation that will take away the nightmares, the awful feeling of violation and the burning distrust of the intentions of any man ever.  This is where people who would differentiate between violent rape and 'date-rape' often get the wrong end of the metaphorical stick entirely.  A mad stranger in a mask with a knife dragging a woman into an alleyway is a terrifying and horrific experience.  The rape will scar her and stay with her for life, but the man who attacked her was a monster - a beast emerging from the dark to prey on her.  When a woman is raped by a friend, or even a lover, there is something else that breaks inside her - the cold realisation hits her that ANY man could be her rapist,  Any normal, everyday acquaintance could be waiting to force himself upon her at any moment.  She must therefore guard herself against all men in her life, no matter how long she has known them and how harmless and friendly they might seem. Her faith in an entire gender is shattered, possibly forever, and there is little if anything that she can do.

It is also the worst crime because of its very often intangible nature.  In so many cases, it will come down to the word of one person against the other.  Again, violence can be an indicator that makes a conviction easier, but when confronted with former lovers, who can be physically proven to have had sex, but with one claiming rape and the other consent, how do you decide?  How do you objectively PROVE, with no witnesses, and no evidence other than that sex has occurred, that rape was what happened?  Do we simply assume that the woman must be telling the truth because why else would she say it?  Does this not presume an awful lot?  Is it fair or right in a criminal justice system which otherwise relies entirely on the twin foundational principles of innocence until guilt is proven and guilt being proven beyond all reasonable doubt to simply exclude this one crime?  Is it actually fair to have such an often intangible and difficult crime be tried on the same principles as other crimes? I cannot honestly say - I don't believe that there is any possible way in which cases of rape can be dealt with 'fairly' - rape isn't a fair crime.  It's not even a sex crime in the true sense of the word.  It's a power crime.  It's an assertion of will on another.  It's why men rape other men in prisons - not because they feel any sexual desire for them, but to assert their dominance over them.  It is a crime that only a patriarchal society such as our own could produce.  A crime that takes agency away from another in the name of simply asserting one's position.

I don't know whether Ched Evans did or did not rape that young woman.  I do know that he seems to have voluntarily admitted to having sex with her.  This in spite of the fact that he was in a relationship which he must have expected to be affected by such admission.  And in spite of his position as a professional sportsperson.  I suspect that when he and McDonald came forward to volunteer this information, they didn't expect to be arrested and charged with rape.  Now, whether that expectation was due to them actually genuinely not having committed rape, or not understanding the definition of a rape, or because they expected the patriarchal system to side with two professional footballers over the word of a drunken young woman, is a question open for debate.  And debate is at the root of a problem like rape.  If we don't talk about this crime, how can we hope to educate the following generations about it?  If we shout down any who voice any opinion other than the popular one on any rape case, how can we be sure that all of the facts are being properly addressed?  

Most important of all, if a man has been charged, convicted and served his sentence, why is it right that he continue to be punished upon completion of that sentence?  Why do so many people feel that Evans should not be allowed to 'resume his old life'? People are claiming that by doing so, the wrong message is being sent out to young women, but how is this the case?  Evans was convicted of rape.  He served his custodial sentence for that crime.  The time between that crime occurring and his being sentenced was relatively short.  Plus, do you really think that there will ever be a newspaper article or online article ever written about him again that doesn't at some point use the words 'convicted rapist'?  He hasn't got away with anything - he has served the state-sanctioned sentence for the crime for which he was convicted.  Starting a petition to stop him resuming his old career once that sentence has been served is just mob justice, and that's not justice at all.  We punished this man because he was found to have contravened the law of the land.  It is therefore somewhat rich to expect to be able to punish him some more when that same law has decreed that his time has been served.

I recognise that victim blaming is a thing.  I understand that it doesn't matter what a woman wears or how drunk she is or anything else, that rape is still rape.  I fully comprehend that it is not up to a woman 'not to be raped' but up to men to just not be raping.  But I am a little tired of 'victim-shaming' being thrown around like some kind of debate-ending grenade every time the conversation turns towards us thinking about the other side of a story and questioning the majority opinion.  Judy Finnegan said that a man who has served his time should be allowed to resume his life.  That she even mentioned the inebriation of the victim was ill-advised at best and downright stupid at worst, but to hail her as a 'victim-shamer' in order to try and shout down her actual point, which I feel was at least valid enough to merit discussion, is just silly.  We won't solve the issue of rape with this kind of mob mentality any more than we would by stopping all young girls from drinking.  And that's a fact.

The difficult third post

Musicians often talk about the 'difficult second album' - that phenomenon that means that after a stunning debut, they struggle to recapture that same energy and fire in the follow up.  I have always struggled for consistency in my blogging, my ADHD sensibility meaning that I can rarely concentrate on any one thing long enough to maintain something so complex.

The death of my cousin has fundamentally changed something in me though - possibly permanently.  I have been lucky these last 34 years in that death has never really struck too close to home for me.  A couple of years ago my wife's uncle died, which was very sad of course but he was of an age where such things are not expected but are at least reconcilable to a certain degree.  Her niece, aged 33, died last year very suddenly, and that was a much more difficult death to reconcile for her friends and family. coming as it did from nowhere.  But I hadn't really known her all that well, so while it was again sad and tragic, it didn't have the same immediacy of impact for me as it did for my wife, who had grown up alongside her.

I never got the opportunity to know Terry (or indeed much of my extended family) very well growing up, for reasons too long-winded and dull to go into here.  Aged 19 though, I left home and began the journey of gradually exploring this odd notion that there were a large number of people in the world who actually genuinely and unconditionally loved me just because I was there.  It's a notion that I have done my best to come to terms with and accept as normal over the last fifteen years, but still one that I feel I am growing into.  Nonetheless, I had been close enough to Terry and his sisters and parents that his death was a personal thing.  It was a gut punch that took the wind from my sails and made me simply disappear for a few days, logging off from the world in both a real and a digital sense.  I suspended my social media accounts, I didn't do any work which required human interaction, I just wanted the world in general to pause and leave me alone for a while.

Of course, I spoke with my family, being there for them as best I could.  It wasn't an easy thing to make that first phone call, and I'd be lying if I said that it got easier with each subsequent one.  Talking about death is not something that society really adequately provides us for here in the West.  Talking about the sudden death of one so young, when no real sense can be made of it, is something that I don't believe anyone can ever ne REALLY prepared for. But we talked, and we cried.  At the funeral last week, we cried some more, and then we laughed as we recalled happy memories, and looked at the picture of Terry's beaming, guileless smile staring out at us all from a beautiful picture of him on his wedding day.  Undoubtedly the happiest day of his life, for I know that his wife meant the world and more to him.

As I said before, I am very conscious of the fact that Terry, were he here. would be telling us all that though it was all very sad, we needed to get on with it.  So whereas I don't intend to spend every blog post that I write moving forwards talking about him, it is a fact that each post I write forms its own little memorial.  Each one is me remembering that Terry was a man who did things that needed to be done. Who didn't prevaricate or stutter but simply identified the need and then addressed it in the most practical way.

I don't know that I will ever get used to the fact of him not being here.  At his funeral and the party afterwards, I kept expecting him to suddenly appear.  Earlier today, I sat and watched a Touring Car race, and there were incidents in it that I instinctively reached for the phone to text him about before realisation poured all over me again like a cold shower, and the gap inside me left by his passing yawned wide open once again.  All those opportunities never taken.  All those things that we talked about doing but I never got around to arranging.  No more.

I made a start this weekend, going to London on a 45 minute tube journey first thing on Saturday and spending a great day out around the city with a friend.  I even got a filet o fish from McDonalds on the way to my train and ate it on the way home.  It might sound like the most normal thing in the world, but I just described three things that I wouldn't have even contemplated, much less done only a few weeks ago.  But times change.  A death reminds us that we are all equal and all equally fleeting. We can sit and worry about what might or might not be, or we can seize the day and try and live with whatever the result.

So now that's three blog posts done.  It is time for me to try and move forward.  I won't always write about him, but he will be in lockstep with me through each line, pushing me to write as much as he pushes me to do everything else I intend to do.

Thanks Terry.  Thanks for basically being you, and for helping me to see how I can be a better me.

Giving something back

It's amazing to me sometimes just how many lessons the world around you and all the people in it have to teach you if you just take the trouble to actually listen.  Yesterday, I attended the funeral of my cousin Terry, and it was a very mixed day - sadness at the fact that we were there to mark the loss of one so young, and so tragically taken away from us, mixed with the happiness of celebrating having been lucky enough to have known him, the silliness of the things we did to honour his fun-loving side (Hawaiian shirts being worn by half the attendees and the Top Gun theme belting out as we filed out of the church after the service) and the warmth that can only come from when you are in a room surrounded by those who unconditionally and completely love you, without question or comment.

Many things were said about Terry over the course of the day.  My Uncle gave a heartfelt speech in which he told us of his pride as he had learned so many more positive deeds and influences that his son had achieved in the world in the days following his death, reinforcing just how modest and self-effacing a young man he had been.  My Aunt finished her own speech with a quote which she said summed up the kind of sentiment that Terry himself would have used - "Don't be sad that it's over.  Be glad that it happened."  Terry's sister delivered a beautiful and moving eulogy, in which she recounted all of her most fond memories of growing up with her little brother, inlcuding his obsessive perfectionism as he lambasted the walls of her house for not being straight enough to accomodate his handiwork.  It was, all told, a fine reflection of the man that my cousin was, and the legacy that he has left behind for the rest of us.

Today, I have been dealing with responding to the submissions to a fiction anthology of which I am the commissioning editor.  Specifically, I have been dealing with the ones that I have to reject.  Now, I had decided early on in the process that wth these rejected individuals, I wanted to give each of them some specific feedback.  As a writer myself, as well as a human being, I know well the crushing emptiness that accompanies the feeling of putting oneself out there in whatever way - be it a writjng submission, a competition entry or even a job application - and getting no response at all.  Worse even than a rejection, is that feeling that your efforts, however eranestly made, did not even merit the indignity of a simple 'no thanks'.  I wanted to give these people, at the very least, the feeling that someone had read their efforts, had attenpted to engage and understand them, and wanted to try and help them improve and do better.  It is a task that I have been slowly working my way through now for several weeks, a few entries at a time.  It is long work, opening each entry in my file, reading through it again to remind myself, and then justifying - to me as much as to them - exactly why I am deciding to deny them this opportunity.  There has been the occsional one that confounded me - switching from a no to a yes over the course of a re-read, and that in and of itself was reason enough to continue, loughing through the pile little by little.

Today, inspired by the number of times I heard yesterday how freely Terry would give of his time and knowledge to anyone who asked, I settled down and had a marathon session, powering through 10 of these entries and sending an individualised feedback email to all of them.  It felt good.  It felt like something that Terryw ould have approved of, but more than that it was a reminder of how privileged I am.  Less than eighteen months ago, it was me sending in my efforts to be pored over and rejected at will.  Only a few years ago, I recall well the sting of sending a story pitch that I was convinced was an absolute winner to an anthology, only to receive a rejection, albeit a personal, short one.  Writing, to paraphrase the glorious Chuck Wendig, is bleeding.  It's taking a part of yourself and literally squeezing it dry into the page, wrenching a very real and integral part of your soul out and pinning it to the page like a moth under glass for the world to gawp at.  It is the most important skill of an author to be able to separate their ego from their work, whilst simultaneously being the hadest thing to do.  I was lucky - I had the help of several authors who were happy enough to let me loose with my red pen on their work as they wrote it, and kind enough to feed back to me on exactly what of my suggestions they would use and what they wouldn't, and more importantly WHY.  They gave of their time, returning me the the 'favour' I did them with my own paltry feedback tenfold, by helping me to hone and refine my own abilities until I could go from 'aspiring' to 'actual'.

And though I had not really defined it to myself in these terms before today, I realised as I worked and all those fine words I heard yesterday continued to echo around my head, that I had instinctively been trying to pay that kindness forward.  To ensure that those who were rejected didn't just receive the anonymity of a no with no reason why.  That they would not feel disheartened and decide to simply give up.  I gave them reasons, I gave them detail.  Most important, I tried to give them guidance - not a list of dos and don'ts so much as a sense of what they might like to consider in their own work and that of others. A suggestion here and there as to a different way that they might approach something, and encouragement that they might continue and develop further in future.

In the weeks that I have been doing this, I have had many responss from these poor rejected souls, and nearly every one has been positive, expressing gratitude for my having taken the time to give them individual feedback and telling me that they will take it on board and use it.  One even asked if he could keep in touch with me going forward, so that I could see his future work and exchange ideas.  Another told me that he was just about to start a creative writing course, and that my feedback would be very helpful to him as a jumping off point for that.  Today alone, I have had responses from two individuals - one an English Teacher and the other an Editor and author himself - both positive, grsteful for the feedback and though admitting that it stung in places, agreeing with it all and affirming that they will keep honing.

Up until today, I had thought that I was doing this just to be nice.  Now today, in light of all that has happened recently, and in light of the promises I made to the spirit of my cousin in the last week, I see it differently.  It is not a chore to sit and write these detailed messages to these hopefuls.  It is a privilege.  It reminds me of how far I have come.  It reminds me that others deserve all of the same breaks and chances that I got.  It reminds me that the most important thing that you can do in life is give back to others that which you received.

I face the rest of the messages I have to compose and send, no longer with a sense of trepidation, or obligation.  I face them with a sense of excitement, that I might influence a whole bunch of people to pursue a dream that little bit more.  A sense that I might just make a difference in the lives of others.  And it feels good.

Younger than me, better travelled than me, and far braver than me.  I wonder if you will ever run out of lessons for me to learn, if only I take the time to stop and listen.

Thanks Cuz.

I need to talk about Terry...

I've been a freelance writer (amongst other things) for just over a year now.  In that time, I have written and publsihed several things for various people, and I take a great deal of pride in the fact that in some small way, I am beginning to live a dream that I held for many years before actually getting off my backside and doing something about it. 

However, the thing about writing is that it is something that you need to do constantly.  And the thing about the modern world is that it is full of things that are designed to make actually doing any writing a very difficult thing.  Spend ten hours or more of your day sat at a PC with an internet connection and a creative brain and it's all too easy to get distracted, to lose your focus and go off on a series of ever increasingly vague tangents, until you suddenly realise that it's 7:30 pm and you have wasted a good chunk of your day looking at what amounts to nonsense.

I have had two or three blogs the last five years, and I have maintained (haha!) them with varying degrees of commitment.  I tended to find that I would blog about stuff that truly exercised me, and that meant that the content was inconsistent, both in tone and frequency.  Some of it was loud and ranty.  Some of it was sensible.  Some of it was vaguely amusing.  I flatter myself that most of it was reasonably good, but it isn't representative of me, Greg D Smith, freelance writer and general wordsmith of fortune (thanks David Guymer for that one).  So I decided that a new blog was in order - one to refect this new, handsomer, older and wiser version of me.

However.  None of that, dear reader, is what I especially wish to tell you about today.  What I want to talk about (as anyone paying attention to the title may have noticed) is Terry.  Specifically, my cousin, Terry Benbow.

Terry was family, so I will forgive a certain amount of cynicism on the part of the reader when I say that he was a truly brilliant young man.  He grew up in a generation told it was entitled to go to university, yet decided against this, instead opting for the practicality of a trade and taking on an apprenticeship in carpentry.  During that apprenticeship, he lived at home, paying his way as best he could with what little he earned, always keenly aware of his duty to his family and loved ones.  Later, he established his own business, and traded successfully for some years.  He then decided to go into business with his father, my uncle.  Through their contacts in the motorpsort world, and their own hard-won experience and knowledge, they established a successful business working in composite repairs and design, servicing all levels of the motorsport industry around the world.  In his personal life, Terry met and fell in love with his future wife, an American lady to whom he was utterly devoted.  When they did marry, they faced a battle that lasted an age, just to get the UK establishment to accept that their marriage was genuine.  They fought right to the bitter end, and won the right to be recognised, and to live together in the UK as man and wife, at the last possible moment.  Standing in front of a tribunal at the end of so many endless months of maddening bureaucracy, they finally got the one thing they had fought so long for, and were able to begin the process of happily married life.

Terry travelled the world, both professionally and personally.  He went to the states, all over Europe and even across Asia.  He was an accomplished sailor.  He worked with a team at the Le Mans 24 hour race.  He worked in the short-lived A1 GP series, and he worked alongside my uncle in many other motorsport disciplines.  For a young man of 31 years, he had seen and done three or four times what men twice his ever will.

And he was a practical man.  He was never one to feel sorry for himself, or to sit and procrastinate over things.  Life would throw challenges at him, and he would simply meet them.  There was always a solution, and that solution usually involved bloody hard work - a thing which Terry was never afraid of.

You have no doubt noticed that I am using 'was' a lot to talk about Terry.  It isn't difficult to work out why that might be.  Terry was taken from his wife, family and friends by a vicious condition, felled so swiftly by the merciless and silent killer that there was simply nothing that could be done.  Bacterial meningitis took a fit, active and healthy young man and snatched him from us all in 24 hours.  To say that it was a shock is the understatement to end all understatement.  Bad enough that a young husband, brother, son, grandson, cousin, nephew and friend was gone so suddenly.  Worse still when that individual touched quite so many lives, was so well-loved by so many people, and left such a gaping void in the world behind him.

Even in death, Terry has continued to surpass any expectation one might have of an 'ordinary' person.  Brief examination of his records showed that he had registered as an organ donor no less than three times.  Flying around the world so often, and working in so many different countries routinely, he had wanted to be absolutely sure that should the worst happen, he could still give more.  Thanks to that amazing foresight, that wisdom so unusual in a man so young, six lives were saved by donation of his healthy organs, the disease that killed him having confined itself solely to his brain.  Six more human beings get to live, and love, and wake up each new day thanks to one amazing young man.  But Terry wasn't quite finished yet.

It turned out, on his last full day alive Terry had been at Silverstone, watching a race.  Also there was one of his good friends, and their young daughter.  The day after Terry passed, his friend's daughter came down with all-too-familiar symptoms - a sore throat, a headache, nausea.  The two and half year old was rushed to hospital by anxious parents, who insisted that she be checked for bacterial meningitis.  Checked she was, and bacterial meningitis she had.  Because they had acted so swiftly, the hospital were able to treat accordingly, and the little girl will make a full recovery.  Another life saved.  Another family spared.

I didn't see Terry all that often, but that never really mattered.  He was the kind of easygoing personality that was always happy to see you, and would measure you by your deeds and words.  He wasn't a softie - those who earned his ire would know about it - but he was never vindictive or petty.  He just...was.  He and I shared a passion for motorsport - though his was deeper and more long-held than my own - and one of my lasting memories will always be of him accompanying my wife and I to the 2011 Goodwood Festival of Speed.  It was a superb day, made all the better by sharing it with a man who worked and lived and breathed motorsport (and was even able to point out a scetion of a contemporary race car that his own company had manufactured) and I am glad that we took that chance.  Others, like the often-mooted road trip to Le Mans, will never come to be, though I hope that one day soon I will attend myself and raise a glass in his memory.

Terry lived life with passion in everything that he did.  Not the most gifted dancer, but definitely the most enthusiastic.  Keen on Hawaiian shirts (the brighter and more ludicrous the better, and worn with no sense of irony whatsoever).  A committed and loving husband.  A hardworking professional.  A devoted brother and son.  A good man.

It shouldn't be this way.  Men like Terry should not be taken away from us all so soon, when they have so much more to give to the world.  If I can take anything from this senseless event, it is only that were Terry here with me now, he would be giving me a friendly but firm kick up the backside and telling me to get on with it.  He'd agree that it was very sad, and that it shouldn't have happened.  But he wouldn't dwell, and he'd encourage others not to as well.  He'd sit there and say 'don't think about what you want to do - just get on and do it'. 

And that's why I needed to open this blog with a post talking about Terry, because it's thanks to him that it's opened.  This is Terry, telling me 'stop sitting there telling people you're a writer and keep bloody writing.  Don't wish that you had a blog, set one up and bloody write it.'

I'm not given to grand promises or sweeping statements generally.  I can't promise that this will be a blog that is updated daily, and that the content that does come will always be wise and fascinating, or even of any import.  But I can say that it will act as a reminder to me that sitting around and wishing that you could do a thing isn't going to get that thing done.  Only doing it is.

So thanks Terry - even now, you're showing me the way.  The world is a significantly emptier place without you in it.  I will do my best to try and live by your example, and myabe, if I'm really lucky, I will manage to fill a tiny portion of that void.  I hope that I make you proud.

Love you, cuz.