Hair today gone tomorrow

Today, Oscar is booked in for his first ever hair cut.  It is getting out of hand and it even annoys him sometimes and so his parents have arranged for a potentially traumatic event.

Until I escaped home, I was sent every two weeks, to have my hair cut, and in those days it was for a short back and sides. I can still smell the barbers shop and have vivid memories of sitting for what seemed hours, waiting for my turn. Every adult customer, when shorn, was asked the same question before they left. "Anything for the weekend sir?" and now and then, discrete exchanges would take place as condoms, not drugs, were traded.

The hair once scarily shortened was plastered with brylcream or something similar, and half a crown was handed over. The outside air always felt so cold and my scalp felt like sandpaper, my ears protruding like a small pair of wings. It wasn't until teenage years that I dared to rebel and insist that the barber took less off and made some attempt to create a style.

Leaving home was liberating in so many ways and I stopped visiting hairdressers altogether.  I guess that someone must have trimmed it from time to time but I have no real recollection of that and by the time I started teaching, my hair was long and blonde. It stayed that way until it started to grey.

Now there is a lot less for a hairdresser to do and I am back to regular attendance, though not every two weeks. The half crown bill has multiplied a hundred times and more and i am pretty sure that condoms are no longer available.

Big ideas

Yesterday, Oscar came round as he often does, and being a creature of habit, headed straight for the toy box and the bag of bricks that I made for him.  That and the plastic digger are his favourites and only the temptations of Toy Story and "Buzz Light tits" can distract him from this.  He usually drags me down to floor level and says something like - "Granddad build a house." or it may be a wall or a boat or a space rocket, and I can usually comply or bluff. This is usually followed by him demolishing whatever I am building, with the digger, and then we start all over again. Yesterday he floored me by asking me to build a planet.  I know that he imagines that Granddad can do anything, but I had to admit defeat on that one.

It got me to think about big ideas, and the ability of some to think, not just outside of the box but also outside of their own experiences, and just how does this come about?  Do we all have that innate talent? Is it beaten out of us from an early age by being told what we cannot do? I know that my parents had that tendency and maybe their parents before them were made constantly aware of their own limitations and those placed upon them by society and circumstances.

I look at major constructions with a sense of awe. To see something as mundane as a motorway junction from the air is an inspiration. Someone imagined it and made it happen. Skyscrapers mushroom all over the world and each one is an amazing achievement of man's ingenuity and vision. We routinely fly all over the world in fragile aluminium tubes, taking for granted the genius that went into building a device that can carry hundreds of people at great heights and speed.

The history of humanity contains records of individuals who have been inspired to create on huge scales and I admire those who have had the courage to put their visions into effect. Even those architects that built religious buildings are worthy of huge respect and admiration, even though the learning process may have been costly in human life.

We owe our children a future, and only by allowing them imagination and hope, can their minds be freed to imagine. Our education system is not doing that. We force feed them with carefully selected information, like geese being prepared for Fois Gras, and blinker them with lies and dogma. We divide them on cultural and religious grounds and brand them as successes or failures on the evidence provided by inadequate and irrelevant paper exercises.

I wish that I had sufficient vision to imagine building a planet and I hope that Oscar's imagination will not be stifled before he has a chance to grow. Who knows, we may need new planets one day.

Mark

It was november in 1968 when my brother Mark was killed. I was at college and that day is forever etched into my memory.  I remember being awoken by the sub warden knocking at my door early that sunday morning, and i could tell by his face that something was not right. He told me that there was a phone call for me and that I could take it in his flat.  I dressed hastily and lumbered down the 14 flights of stairs, not waiting for the lift, wondering what could possibly have happened. I cannot recall the chain of thoughts that passed through my mind but I do remember the overwhelming sense of dread.

As I picked up the phone, my mother's voice sounded so far away; she was having difficulty in speaking and then she told me that Mark, on his motorcycle, had been in a collision with a car on his way home the previous night, and had died immediately.  I felt a numbness and told her that I'd come home as soon as possible, knowing that I had no money for tickets.  I went back to my room, locked myself in  and collapsed onto the bed. I cried that morning more than I had ever done, and when there were no more tears I put on my coat and went for a walk in the rain. I wanted to be alone, I needed time to sort out my head and the rain seemed to help.  By the time I got back to my room, I was soaked to the skin and cried out.  Only late in the day did word get out and my friend Dave rescued me from my despair.

I have never felt so desolate as I did that day, and dismal november days like today remind me of it. Mark would be approaching his sixty first birthday now, had he not been out that night, or had ridden more carefully than he did. As it happened he was approaching his eighteenth birthday when he died.

I still think of him and what he might have become.

What's in a name?

This has been a good week. On monday night Matilda Georgie weighed in at eight pounds fifteen ounces in old money.  She is a lovely little thing and both mother and baby are doing well. It feels good to have both a grandson and a granddaughter and I am so happy for all of the family.

My great grandmother was Annie Matilda, though I suspect that had no influence on the choice of the name; in fact looking back through the family tree, it would seem that there was another Matilda in the dim and distant past.

Matilda Georgie does have a link with her brother whose name is Oscar Bailey. Their mother is a fan of the movie - It's a Wonderful Life - and the lead character - George Bailey.  We will be watching it again this festive season as we always do, but this time with a real sense of completion.

Welcome to the world Matilda - I hope that it improves as you grow older.

Strange Rash

I feel rather fed up at the moment. For years now I have had a recurring problem, an inexplicable complaint that has been described by the medical profession as ideopathic. That mean that they have no clue as to what is the cause and therefore can offer no treatment.  It is spasmodic and I can go up to  year without any occurence, but now it is back.  It starts, almost always, as a small red patch in the centre of my left palm. It itches like crazy and then rapidly spreads to both hands and often the back of my scalp. In really bad outbreaks my body gets covered in hives and nothing I can do makes any difference. I have tried quadruple doses of powerful antihistimines and they just seem to make it worse, so I just have to ride it out, hoping that it will recede soon. I also feel unwell in a way that is so hard to put into words. The itching palms is awful and keeps me awake at night, but the worst thing is when it spreads to my feet. Thankfully they are pretty well itch free right now, but I dread that coming back.  The itching is strange and subcutaneous and always gets worse at night. Last night I was up every hour, more or less on the hour, running my hands under the cold tap, and as a result I am also sleep deprived.
I have had allergy tests and they prove negative, and I can see no external event that could act as a trigger. So anyway I feel pretty crabby

Police Commissioners? Why?

Yesterday, after much deliberation, I decided to vote in the elections for local police commissioner. Not, I hasten to say, because i knew anything about the candidates, or even about the role that they will have, but because this whole scheme has been formulated by the likes of Teresa May.  I happen to live in the bowels of Tory land and I am sure that their candidate will have gained the most votes, even if it happens to be a goat with a blue tie round its neck.

Here the polling station saw a steady trickle of people exercising their right to put a cross, or two, on a scrap of paper, an expensive exercise indeed as the tax payer will be footing the bill. Today all those bits of paper will be sorted and the successful candidate given the extensive powers that HMG have seen fit to bestow upon them. This includes the powers to control budgets and to hire and fire Chief Police Officers.

I feel that the running of the police force should not become a political animal, we endured Thatcher's private army in the days of the Miner's strike and that did the police no good at all. I was brought up to respect the police force and I still do, but should it become officially a political weapon, then I think that  I and many other law abiding people will lose that respect. This is, like many governmental schemes, ill considered, and the real losers will be the police themselves.

Wild things

While awaiting the arrival of number two, I am loving spending time with grandchild number one. Walking in the "forest" is a particular pleasure. We talk about nothing and everything, while he collects sticks, kicks through the leaves and looks out for squirrels. He elects to walk rather than ride these days and only gets back into the push chair when his legs get tired. I try to tell him the names of things and he tries to memorise them, maybe one day he will be able to pass something on to another generation.

There was a time when I knew the names of most of the wildlife that I came in contact with. It was deemed important when I was a kid, to be able to identify things in case you were tempted to eat anything that was toxic.  In a time when food was scarce, being able to find free food was a great bonus, and I am sure that I could have survived in the wild had I needed to. There is a plethora of food out there and it is only because people are so well fed today that the knowledge is dwindling.

It would be nice to think that Oscar can look and see an oak or a sycamore, rather than just a tree, and to know that stinging nettles hurt and that dock leaves can give a little relief from that pain. He should know that hemlock is poisonous and that toadstools with white gills probably are too. However the most important knowledge is learned from necessity and I hope that he will never need to look for food in the wilds.

In the meantime, we have fun and at his age that is probably the most important thing. I am so happy to share that with him while I can.

Grandchild number two

Tiger, as the unborn and unknown is affectionately described by its sibling, is late. It was due over a week ago and is stubbornly hanging on, probably far too comfortable where it is, or maybe not yet prepared to emerge into the world that we have all made for it.

Tiger will be born into a world that bears little resemblance to the one that I grew up in; so much better in some ways and yet so much worse in others and it seems to be getting worse. Individual freedoms seem to be at the root of many of our problems.  Human rights legislation has, over the years, led to the improvement of conditions for so many people and yet for many, the practicalities of human rights remain intangible.  In reality we are only free to do what other people allow us to do.

Abu Qatada has been released from prison, where he has been awaiting deportation to his home country to face criminal charges.  The international court of human rights has decided that should he be sent back to Jordan, that he cannot be fairly tried, and so deportation is not possible.  His rights have been placed firmly in the driving seat and the rights of others, whose lives he has damaged, and the harm that he has the potential to do is disregarded.  He is now free to go on inciting his followers into acts of racial hatred and possibly terrorism unless he can be re-arrested and tried in this country. Even his location is kept secret and no doubt he will be asking for a change in identity, a handout of state benefits and possibly compensation for time served in prison.  He comes from a culture where human rights are limited to those who wield the power and they tend to be men. It is a society in which there is little freedom of expression, no freedom of religion and where so called "Honour Killings" are acceptable.  It is a culture that condones genital mutilation and the suppression of free thinking, and it is this culture that he and his like, are wanting to instil into this country. It is a culture that is steeped in hypocrisy, inequality and violence, that sees the west as the enemy.

I was brought up to believe that freedom comes with responsibility. When we earn the right to drive, we are expected to drive carefully and within the laws of the road.  The same principle holds for any of our so called freedoms.  Qatada will not be bound by western cultural mores and yet he will enjoy the same luxuries that others here enjoy.  Perhaps it is time that the human rights laws were re-examined.

I have no concept of the world that Tiger will grow up in. I hope that it is one where there will be more tolerance and understanding than there is now, one in which freedoms have to be earned, and one in which religious bigotry plays no part.

The little things

I went to the cinema the other night.  What a different experience it is these days. Book and pay for tickets online, choose your seat and know that there will be no scramble for space when you arrive.
It was the latest Bond Film - Skyfall, and of course therefore unmissable.
Tickets nowadays cost an arm and leg and the prices of consumables is unbelievable. Gone are the days of the bored usherettes braving the crowds at intervals, in fact by and large, gone are the intervals. Nowadays it is hot seating, with a cursory cleaning of the aisles between showings.

The show began at 5.45pm and being sticklers for good timekeeping, we took our seats at 5.35. Clearly this is not the done thing as the place was more or less empty and yet when booking, available tickets were few and far between.  For the next 25 minutes, people drifted in, armed with soft drinks and mountains of popcorn and were still doing so as the main feature began. Whatever you go to see these days, there is always someone who is late, and the same someone or someones are always those whose seats are the least accessible, and they in turn are the ones most likely to make a noise as they take their time to settle down.  On this occasion the last to come in were of course at the far end of our row. I was reminded of why I am becoming less and less fond of the majority of fellow people. So many of the values that were instilled into my generation seem to have gone by the board. It isn't just punctuality, it is also consideration for others that seems so unimportant to many.  The last concert I attended at the O2 was partly ruined by people in the same row, wandering from seat to bar and back again and then from seat to the toilet and so on.  Basic manners seem to have gone by the board, and any criticism of bad behaviour is likely to raise a violent or abusive response and so by and large we are all allowing the tail to wag the dog. We are becoming less and less civilised and this is obvious in all aspects of our lives. There is less and less respect for any sort of authority; pretty soon the job of referee in football will become untenable, the police force seems under fire from all sides and teachers have had all authority taken away from them over the years. It is not hard to  imagine the possibility of an anarchistic future.

The film was enjoyable as Bond films tend to be, and the premises both clean and comfortable, though on balance, I can see why more and more people are more likely to watch films in the comfort of their own homes and away from the population in general.