Restore Sanity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/31/rally-restore-sanity-jon-stewart-washington

“If your beliefs fit on a sign, think harder”

“Starve the Daily Show of material”

“I respectfully disagree with your opinions but I still value you as a person”

“Hide ur kidz, hide ur wivez, hide ur huzban caus they keepin fear alive in here”

“I fought the Nazis and they don’t look like Obama”

“Pasta fearing Americans”

“Frustrated Arizonans Reject Tea”

“Spelling C(o)unts. Get a brain morans”

“Cheney still sucks right?”

“I have a PHD in horribleness”

Just a selection of some of the signs seen at the Restore Sanity And/Or Fear Rally that was held in the USA yesterday.

Dependent upon who you believe, there were a quarter of a million Americans gathered together in the State capitol for the rally. This thankfully dwarfed the people who attended Glenn Beck’s rally in August.

Jon Stewart decided to rally for sanity because he wanted to demonstrate that there was sanity in the USA. He felt that the voice of reason was not getting the sort of coverage it deserved whilst other people in the country, including the scary Tea Party brigade, were getting mass coverage with their gobby, fearful form of politics effusing from their mouths.

Eclectic in the extreme, people massed together from all corners and regions of the State. They brought with them a party atmosphere and declared support for all manner of silly causes and all manner of absolute reason.

Stewart implied that there was no political purpose to this rally, that it was bipartisan and not trying to support any particular stance. All he and other organisers wished for was that a voice of reason was portrayed and that the media would have to cover this to prove that the USA was not full of redneck racists who are out for themselves and nobody else.

Sadly, just as in this country and I daresay countries throughout the world, there are far too many people who are out for themselves and nobody else. There are millions of people who do not give a toss about the world, about people, about education, about sense and reason, about the destructive way we are spreading insanity across nation after nation.

“If your beliefs fit on a sign, think harder” was one sign on the rally.

I rather like that because I couldn’t possibly fit my beliefs onto one sign or even into one manifesto. I like to think that “respect” is at the heart of my beliefs; value in others as well as an appreciation of myself but sometimes things get in the way and crazy fucked up thoughts and triggers intervene. However, it can be that simple; respect, valuing oneself, giving and receiving.

What many people have not appreciated and cannot accept is that giving is at the heart of relationships, is at the core of life, be it a relationship between two lovers or a relationship between the state and the individual within. Selflessness is important but not at the expense of the individual.

Selfishness has no place in society when it is to the detriment of others, and usually the majority.

Is this the sort of reason that Stewart was trying to show? That restoration of sanity means looking closely at the way we all interact with one another and how we give value to the thoughts and concerns of others as our greatest need?

That is certainly something that was lost in the Thatcher and Reagan years, and was continued with the subsequent leaders of our “great” nations.

“Can one govern the nation with all the right actions and really love the people?

Can one always make a decision with the right mind?”

I certainly don’t think Blair and Bush could.

Of course, this is all somewhat heavier and philosophical than the pantomime style rally of yesterday. But let us not forget that Jon Stewart is an intelligent, thoughtful man who does not write his scripts in isolation of all rational thought. He knows damn fine that he has a following that can create action, as has been proved by this rally. He genuinely does want a restoration of reason, however it is clowned up, and with that reason there has to be a genuine concern for others and a prevalence of lovingkindness that is at the core of democratic governance.

But then I was always a dreamer.

...............................................................................................................................................

So what sign would I have made for the rally if I had been fortunate enough to attend?

Would I have gone for a witty one that is probably beyond my capability? Or would I have banged the drum for the sort of education that I feel is necessary in this world? Would I have opted for a deeply philosophical one quoting people that are far more intelligent and grounded than I? Would I have made a stance against the horrors of global indifference?

Returning to the quoted placard, there are so many causes that I believe in, it would be hard to choose. Just looking at the headlines and stories covered in the Andrew Marr show today makes me want to get the paint out. Thank goodness for passion!

Perhaps that is it! Perhaps there should be a rally notice that has something to do with passion because as well as valuing, giving and respect, that is a pretty essential part of life.

Or maybe, I should just take a stance from Harriet Harman’s book of political correctness and have a banner saying “Danny Alexander is a Scot, and I respect him for that”.

But passion is important and it is the driver for something like the “Restore Sanity” rally. Stewart is clearly a passionate man. His political stance is steeped in passion as is his desire to educate the nation with his humorous take on the world.

So to conclude this short piece of writing perhaps yesterday my banner would have been something simple and vastly complicated, urging the world to consider because I’m just not witty enough to have a clever pun in mind.

“I want Passion” and let the people decide what that actually means.

Who I Think I Am Today

Libby Purves sometimes has some interesting guests on the Midweek slot on Radio Four. It’s not like the television chat shows that are full of Z list celebrities who have nothing to offer other The merely use the media of television to showcase their next piece of junk that is going to earn them a hefty and sometimes undeserved fortune.

Libby and, I assume, her producers, manage to choose a good mixture of people and the minutes of transmission usually glide along with ease as each of the guests carefully link in with one another, sometimes on a tenuous link and other times quite obviously.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a couple of people on the programme who had lost their son to a brutal murder in Surrey.

Christopher Donovan was walking home, singing an Oasis song. He was eighteen years old and was set upon by a gang who attacked him harshly and “took penalty kicks” with his head. Left for dead at the side of a street, he was hit by a passing car and dragged along the road. His parents were contacted and forthwith went to the hospital where they learned that he had severe brain damage. An hour later, he was dead.

Like Jimmy Mizzen’s parents, the Donovan’s are Christians. Vi explained how she felt when her husband, on leaving the hospital that night, said that they must forgive the perpetrators of the murder. She said that she screamed at him in disbelief that he could even utter such preposterous words let alone act on them. But she changed her mind. She explained how she was “hanging onto pain” that “took me to depths of hell.”

It did nothing to ease anything, she said. I was destroying me, she continued.

“Forgiveness has to be a choice”.

Like Jimmy Mizzen’s parents, Ray and Vi Donovan could not rest on doing nothing. They decided that it was all very well saying that they wanted forgiveness but they also needed to physically do something about it. They therefore embarked on a programme of visits to prisons, working with some troubled souls on a project called the Sycamore Tree.

http://www.pfi.org/cjr/stp

I assume it was due to their involvement in this that they were asked to participate in the judging of the annual Koestler Awards.

http://www.koestlertrust.org.uk/

ART BY OFFENDERS
Curated for the first time by victims of crime Art
by Offenders, Secure Patients and Detainees is the Koestler Trust's 49th annual UK exhibition and the third of a flourishing artistic partnership with the Southbank Centre.

The exhibition is given a powerful new perspective this year through a ground-breaking group curating project. The seven curators are people from the London area whose lives have been changed by serious offences against them or their families. With training from both the Southbank Centre and Turner Prize-winning artist, and Southbank Centre Artist-in-Residence, Jeremy Deller, the volunteers have gained curating skills, selected the exhibits from thousands and designed the look of the exhibition. They have also created contextual texts and will give talks and tours to the public, sharing their experiences of working on this project.

They duly met with five other victims of crime to sort through the 5000 entries and wheedle it down to 150. These winning pieces were then to be exhibited at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

The Koestler Awards has been running for 49 years. According to the brochure picked up at the Festival Hall, it states that,

“Every exhibit has been created by a prisoner, an offender of a community sentence, a patient in a secure psychiatric hospital, an immigration detainee or a UK citizen in custody oversees. The works here are all submitted to the 2010 Koestler Awards – a charitable scheme which has been rewarding artistic achievement across the penal and secure sector for 48 years.

This annual exhibition represents the third year of an artistic collaboration between the Koestler Trust and Southbank Centre. Each year the selection of exhibits from the Koestler Awards entries is made through a unique group curating process. This year for the first time victims of crime have been invited to curate the exhibition which represents the creativity of offenders from the perspective of people deeply affected by crime”.

“Coming to the exhibition is one day out of 365 when I feel proud of my son” comments one parent of an exhibited artist.

Tragic.

So the seven victims of crime met together to sort out which of the 5000 pieces were going to be exhibited. Ray said he wanted none of this weird art stuff and then went on to choose items that were exceptionally contemporary.

He explained his reaction to some of the pieces.

There was one painting of a prisoner’s first night in the cells, an incredible piece of art, where the artist has captured the fear of the newcomer as he walks along the long corridors with faceless or rather eyeless people staring at him as he is marched through. There is an air of intense ugliness and discomfort. You cannot see the face of the newcomer because you become him as he walks along. You become him as you look along the corridor to these anonymous people with blackened out eyes.

Ray said he liked this piece because of the emotions that it conveyed. “There was no future in their eyes; powerful”, he said.

But of course, he believes that there can be “future in their eyes” which is why he has a fundamental belief in the need for creativity as part of a character reformation. He explained how one person in prison was so violent, disruptive, aggressive – all the scariest forms of humanity in one man. Then he was given a paintbrush and some paper and he miraculously transformed overnight. It happens.

Vi reiterates this when she states “I never realised before how important art is to prisoners’ self-esteem and maybe their future”.

And of course the joy for these curators is that they too learn to appreciate art more as well. One of their fellow curators said that having done this curatoring, “Everywhere I look, I see art”.

The other joy for me is that the artistry was not restricted to just paintings. Vi mentioned that there was a piece of writing from one person who had never been able to write prior to the support that he had in prison. In trying to demonstrate what the Koestler Trust opportunity had given him he stated that it had given him dignity, self-worth and he wanted others to know that art could do this, had done this for him.

...................................................................

It was a pleasant day weather-wise yesterday; not exactly a perfect Autumn day but there seemed to be a glimmer of hope that the sunshine would finally overcome its cover.

I got off the bus at the Old GLC building, now transformed into some conglomerate hotel with no personality and no identity other than the booming sound of the quarter strikes from St. Stephen’s Tower. I assume that once in there you could be anywhere in the world.

For me, it will always be associated with London’s former glory as far as self-management is concerned. The one and only time I have ever entered into the building was when I went for my interview with the glorious and frequently misrepresented and misunderstood ILEA.

Great long corridors of solid oak; a testament to something great that no longer exists. I trust that the Marriott group did not rip these out in hasty modernisation.

The London Eye was full of tourists. No surprise there really and I am not going to complain about it either. Not here anyway because the stationing of this big wheel has breathed a new life into this area that was sadly lacking for many a decade.

It has never ceased to amaze me how few people use the river in the same was as Parisian’s use the Seine. The fact that there is mile upon mile of free walkways across the length of the Southbank seems to have escaped the notice of most Londoners and even now, it is foreign accents and languages that you here. One suspects that there are very few who actually live in London who frequent this place on a regular basis.

On days like this it is important to look, to look properly, sometimes for the first time, sometimes with new eyes, eyes that are not blackened out, eyes that are blackened but need an awakening.

For others, it was probably just a walk but I was armed with camera in the hope of finding something new, something worthwhile that would lead me in different direction.

Cameras are great like that; they are like a walking Wikipedia. You hold them in your hand and you don’t know where they are going to take you. You snap away and when you get the images home, they lead you into places you had no idea that you were going to explore.

Well, they do for me anyway.

Take the “London Pride” statue by Frank Dobson – wiki has a link of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Frank_Dobson_London_Pride_Southbank.jpg

Dobson died in 1963 and Gay Pride was borne out of the 1969 Stonewall riots, so I wondered why this piece was called “London Pride”? Was it just a coincidence or was it named in 1987 when it was brought to the Southbank by his widow? Or am I just assuming the use of the word “pride” because the sculpture is of two women, naked on a plinth? Am I assuming their sexuality?

Of course, if you are wiki-searching with a name like Frank Dobson your first port of call appears to be the Labour MP who stood for Mayor of London against Ken Livingstone; not quite what I was looking for but it brought back a few memories!

As I said, it’s always good to go for a wander in your mind and not just rest with looking.

Next along route there were the books.

There is a wonderful shop just near Notre Dame in Paris, called “Shakespeare and Company”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/07/shakespeare-and-company-bookshop-paris

It was set up probably with all the philanthropic reasons in the world but has to some extents been taken over by the world of tourism. Anyhow, when I am in Paris, I still muse away a few minutes wandering around the stalls of books that are placed out on the pathway of that particular area of the Left Bank.

Some bright spark has obviously decided to emulate this on our very own Southbank now that it has finally come to life. There’s a wide collection of books and I looked on with a casual enthusiasm to see if my eyes or my fingers would magically displace the book of my dreams.

It didn’t happen but there is always a hope that it could do so in the future.

The books were somewhat overpriced and will probably fetch the asking price because then you can go home and announce that you bought the book on the riverbank, all boho and beautiful.

There’s a price in everything.

The skateboarders and bikers were out in excessive presence too with their area of particular interest, all tagged with an incredible collection of graffiti to accompany these street-kids as they whizzed their bikes up and down the concrete pathways and slopes. Again, being somewhat cynical, I wondered whether these kids actually did live in the estates around the Southbank or whether they had been shipped in from Surrey and dressed up to look like natives for the tourists.

Poor street-performing statues! Since watching “Gavin and Stacey” when Nessa went and did her silver statue bollocks in the centre of Barry (ironic because Barry has no centre), I will never be able to take them seriously, not that I paid them that much attention beforehand. But I do admire their ability to be still and silent in a world that is sheer madness in front of them.

One couple were dressed in silver sprayed 16^th century costume. The man was moving around a little, every now and again. Clearly the codpiece is not something that likes to be in one position all the time, but the woman was totally still with her eyes closed, pretending to be reading a book.

I wonder where she really was.

A Blue Man was playing the Blues. Covered from head to toe in a glaringly bright blue, including his guitar, he strummed away and let people delve into their pockets for the small splashes of coinage with which they were willing to part with.

He nodded his head with acknowledgement and continued to play, lost in his music, looking unconcerned as to whether anyone was actually bothering to listen.

Good for him!

(I lost the photo of the Blue Man whilst trying to download this - don't quite know how to get it back. Need help!)

The Haywood Gallery offered an exhibition from a Canadian artist called Ron Terada

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/hayward-gallery-and-visual-arts/other-art-on-site/tickets/ron-terada-who-i-think-i-am-1000054

It was named “Who I think I am”.

I looked around and really searched but probably not hard enough because today I didn’t really want to think of who I think I am.

Bit too painful.

Though I still thought about it all day and as I sat in the quietened room with nothing but an image of a record player and three black bean bags, I realised that I couldn’t sit there for much longer.

Another day perhaps.

And so to the main reason why I was here, looking at that art that was mentioned on the Midweek programme a couple of weeks ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00v1qlt/Midweek_06_10_2010 14 minutes 54 seconds, if anyone wants to listen.

I am astounded that people are so in awe of such exhibitions. Not astounded that they like the art – some of it is exceptionally good but I am astounded that people are somehow shocked that art can be this transformational presence in the lives of people who are allegedly beyond change.

Just as forgiveness is choice, said Ray and Vi Donovan, then so too is making that choice to change. It is nobody else’s hands. I know.

So why are people so shocked by the incredible power of the creative?

Why are people surprised that by producing something of value, even if it is only to the person who is actually doing the painting or writing the story, can be so uplifting?

Remember what that person said about being able to write? It gave them self-worth.

I haven’t been locked in a literal prison at any point in my life but I have shut the door and encased myself in a self-imposed cell on various occasions. For years, I have been there without writing. Now, I can open up the door occasionally and get some value and some self-worth in what I produce.

I deliberately searched for this writing, and am now kicking myself for not buying the book. I shall return this week and buy it.

The man was dyslexic; properly dyslexic not the version when a middle class child hasn’t learned to read by the time they are two and a half.

He described the affliction brilliantly; how he could see all the forms of the letters and how the pictures sometimes helped to give meaning but as soon as he put the letters together into what you and I would see as a full word, they just jumped around the page, drifting below the line of writing, or twisting themselves in a direction that gave them no meaning.

He was twenty nine before he learned to read and write. Now he has a voice for the first time in his life.

What an incredible difference the world outside is going to be once the opportunity arises for him to take advantage of this new self-worth of his. Let’s hope there is a welfare system to support him by the time he leaves prison.

People wrote lovely notes on post-it notes, using words and phrases like “thank you” “art brings hope” “oasis” “grateful” “inspiring” “beautiful” “fantastic” “truly incredible”.

One comment said that it was an “emotional experience seeing all this – art rarely does this for me!”

Another said “proof that art can heal”.

Another said “I went to see 10 million sunflower seeds but this was way more inspiring”.

Hope and inspiration featured strongly.

I am not belittling these comments and I take nothing away from the feeling and the spiritual intelligence that these voyeurs were experiencing. I think it is fantastic that people should be touched in this way. I am just a little saddened that they are still shocked by it, that they still feel it is an incredible surprise that finding your own form of creativity can do so much for a person.

If only more people could see this more quickly.

This exhibition and the art within it is part of a reform programme. Art, in whatever form, has been brought to these offenders of those in captivity, to heal, to make them feel better about themselves, to be used as some form of repatriation into the world of the feeling and the concerned.

If people can see its benefits as part of a restorative programme, why can they not see the value in its preventative prospects – working on creativity in our schools before these people become the downcast and the forgotten?

Just makes you think really.

As for the art, well, there were one or two interesting pieces. There were some brilliant pieces. There were some that astounded me, some that I was indifferent to, some that I would like to have explored further.

Art is such an individual thing. It opens all sorts of avenues of thought and feeling, some that you do not want to travel into, others that you want to be amongst forever.

The fact that this exhibition just happened to be by prisoners shouldn’t really vary in that respect. I cannot like all of the pieces in the exhibition just because I feel pleased that the artist has found his or her voice. I don’t expect my readers (?) to like everything that I write. There are times when it doesn’t work, for them, even if it works for me.

I was moved to tears sometimes, but that is also about what art does to generate your current state of being.

.......................................................

What now?

Coming out of the exhibition I sat alone for a while in the vast space that is the Festival Hall.

Looking at people. Watching their lives for a short while, not meaning to intrude but just looking and sharing even if they didn’t know I was there.

I wandered across Hungerford Bridge and back on the safe territory of the Northern Bank.

I wonder why they don’t refer to the North side of the river as the North bank. Perhaps it is because the Embankment has its own name and its own importance – and of course, it is North of the River; a different experience altogether.

Back to the tourists. Whilst on the Southside, I embraced them, on the north, I loathed them.

I’ve decided that I don’t like crowds. They scare me. Well they did yesterday.

I was frightened by the masses, all chuntering away, getting in front of, behind and on my feet. Leicester Square seems to have lost its soul, if indeed it had one in the first instance.

The place is a zoo; a rowdy, tawdry zone where huge fairground attractions have sprung up demolishing any sense of the “Square” in which they have been allowed to plonk themselves. It is utterly disgusting and that is before you get to the boisterous revoltingness of the people within, let alone the excruciating experience of listening to "Careless Whisper" being murdered by a saxophonist. I mean, how can you murder an already fatally wounded song?

I’d gone there because I thought I might lose myself in the cinema. I’ve never been to the cinema at Leicester Square and thought perhaps I ought but the prices and the timings of the films put me off, let alone the content.

There were two films that I thought I would like to see but neither was available for me, so I turned instead to alcohol.

I found a bar and just sat enjoying a cocktail or two in the middle of Covent Garden, another place never to be visited other than off season and not on a weekend.

From there, I walked to Trafalgar Square, delightfully free of the flying rats, and walked down the Mall towards Victoria station where I met up with my son.

......................................................................................

I didn’t know when I got up that I would be walking in town today, and in some ways that is a pleasant experience.

I did the same this morning. I started my day in the same way. I went to the park and sat in the car.

And I waited for something to come my way.

It didn’t but that is okay. It will.

I didn’t know when I listened to the radio a couple of weeks ago, that I would find myself at the exhibition that I had heard about there. I didn’t know I would be searching Wikipedia in directions that I could not have imagined.

I wonder where Nick Clegg will take me as I explore his Desert Island Discs with him right now.

Breast Cancer in October

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

According to one website, 46,000 a year in the UK receive the devastating news that they have breast cancer. In addition to this there are further thousands of people who discover lumps in their breasts that are thankfully benign. They can get on with their lives in the relief that they do not have to contemplate months of intensive and invasive surgery and treatment to eradicate this hopelessly cruel disease. For now anyway.

According to another website, in the UK 1 in 9 or 11% of the female population are going to contract breast cancer at some point in their lives. The risk factor increases with certain modes of behaviour, like smoking, or with genetic links, like another female in the family having the disease or by a parent carrying the gene from one generation to the next.

If you drink one glass of red wine a day, you could possibly be reducing your chances of getting breast cancer. If you drink more than two units per day of wine, you increase the chance of getting it.

Talk about getting the balance right!

This October is no different from any other October. More women will receive the news that they do not want to hear. Some will be in their twenties, some in their seventies and plenty in between. Some will be able to eradicate it before it has invaded the lymph glands or the bone. Others will not be so fortunate. Some will go for years without any trace of the disease returning, and just at the point when they feel they have got rid of the little bastard, it will return, proverbially biting them on the bottom.

Some women will learn this month that secondaries have invaded their body in places where it is seemingly impossible to fight, and life sentences will be passed down with immediate effect. Others will be given a glimmer of hope; an indefinite sentence that could feasibly linger over someone for decades. Bizarrely, they are the lucky ones.

I cannot empathise. I haven’t got the disease. Not yet, though obviously having smoked for large chunks of my adult life and having a diet rather high in red meat puts me at the higher risk end of the scale.

When I say I cannot empathise, I don’t mean that in a harsh way. I don’t mean that I am unwilling to empathise because that is far from the truth. I wish to empathise. It is just I have no real experience of what it must feel like to be told that you have breast cancer, or indeed any other form of cancer.

I simply cannot imagine how I would react, how I would feel, what I would do, how I would cope.

Instead, I can sympathise with those that do, and do my best to support them and their loved ones during this devastating time.

On the 4^th October, a friend of mine sent a general message via Facebook saying “send positive thoughts, prayers, blessings, light a candle, elemental strength links or what you happen to believe to help M”.

On the 16^th October, he reiterated the request. “Radiate positive thoughts, prayers, meditations, best wishes, Reiki treatements to M in hospital medical unit again”. He continued later n the day to say “Well done NHS staff that are willing to wear name badges in A&E, I take my hat and shirt off to you all. People have mentioned and some have complained that we have so many doctors in this country from all over the world. Why do you think this is I ask? Because our NHS is the best medical service in the world”.

This morning, he has sent another message saying “M is resting comfortably in the hospice; a place of tranquillity and caring beyond our wildest dreams!”

She has but a few days left to live.

Last Saturday, I was sitting here in exactly the same position and time as I am currently, wallowing in my own self-pity. I received a text which said, “Unfortunately I had some bad news yesterday. The boxing gloves are back on for Round Two of the cancer fight! My bad back has turned not to be what I wanted it to be! A few more weeks of test and then surgery to kick start treatment. Thanks in advance for all your help”.

I spoke to her on Tuesday, having tried to phone her on Monday – not wanting to phone whilst her children were around.

She’d had a mastectomy in 2009, followed by the usual chemotherapy and radiotherapy. She’d been cleared of the disease in November last year only to find out this month that there were secondaries on her lower spine.

Apparently, she said, I can do without my spine – or certainly one vertebrae. The doctors are going to remove the offending section, pinning her together with metal sticks and just wait in the vain hope that it has not spread to further parts of her body.

She said she could cope with anything. She could bear the pain of surgery, the nuisance of radiotherapy but she couldn’t bear the prospect of more chemo, though of course will have it if it enables her to live long enough to see both of her children reach their teenage years.

On Thursday, another friend who had had breast cancer discovered that a cancer that was already known to be inoperable had spread to her brain and the only treatment on offer was for “comfort”; not a solution and certainly not an eradication.

Her life sentence has been confirmed and she is resolute and determined to manage to outlive this prediction.

All three of these women are special human beings who have a determination and strength that I fear would fail me in similar circumstances. They have all tried to continue with their lives, taking the treatment, putting themselves in the hands of the experts, travelling from hospital to hospital to get the sort of treatment and second opinions that they needed.

All three of these women will continue to strive for the very best that life offers them in however long they are given.

However long they are given? What a silly phrase. It makes it sound as though they all have a predestined outcome with a time and date as to when it will all be over.

Another friend of mine organised a sponsored walk recently to try and raise money for a hospice in my home town. His brother died of cancer a few weeks before I lost my Dad. His brother was a very special person who had been very close to me at one point in our lives.

Why did I want to support this? Because I have seen and heard about the outstanding care that people dying with cancer receive in such places and I just want to be able to do something in my own way to support more help in this area.

Another friend is one of the lucky ones that I mentioned earlier. She had a lump that was clearly irregular. After a month of doctors visits, tests, hospital checks, they found it to be benign but she still needed to have an operation to get rid of the damn thing. Last Friday her unwelcome guest was removed. The relief is palpable in every expressive tone in her voice and every line on her face.

Another friend who I spoke to last week said that she had not had her annual mammogram for over two years now since moving out of the country. I actually had a real go at her, telling her that she should not be so idiotic and complacent as to ignore this potentially life-saving check up as frequently as it was offered to her.

So there we have it. Breast Cancer Awareness Month in a nutshell!

What can you do?

Give people space, make them know that you are thinking of them, think positively, support the people closest to them in the way that they want to be supported, and not the way you think they ought to be supported.

I’ve clearly not got the balance right in some instances and have successfully intervened in others.

I want to be able to help all of these people in whatever way I can but I do not want to intrude on their grief.

My friend with the imminent vertebrae operation just wants me to talk to her. She wants to be treated normally. The friend with the life-sentence passed on her this week has said the same; grateful for the people around her who treat her as the person that she is rather than seeing her as a terminally ill patient whose brain allegedly escaped her as soon as she was diagnosed.

All of this has made me think how many more people there are out there who have their own interpretation and experiences of October’s Breast Cancer month.

In some ways, it doesn’t affect me and millions of others at all. In other ways, it is forever prevalent because of the people that it does affect.

All I do know is that if other people have similar stories of Breast Cancer Month to me, then there are many of people who are, one way or another, being shaped by this disease playing a role in their lives irrespective of whether they are the invaded, the carers, the cared for or merely a bystander.

And do we enable people to prepare enough for these situations? Our schools are full of children and young people who when asked what their biggest fear is, respond most commonly with something to do with loss, bereavement and separation.

I’m damn sure I haven’t learned how to deal with it yet, or even the threat of it.
We brush grief under the carpet with a sturdy and stoical sweeping gesture that helps nobody. We ignore the helpless feeling of insecurity that overwhelms people when they are confronted with the possibility of losing the people that they love most in the world, and we carefully wrap it all up in a pink ribbon that announces to the world that we have done the best we can.

My friend who has a couple of weeks to live is in a good place. Her partner is angry though. He has screamed viciously at people who are trying to help; frustrated and devastated by the fact that this woman who has been so significant to him over the last few years has been slowly slipping away from him, and he knows he is helpless to do anything about it.

My other friend says her partner doesn’t speak but she has the tidiest kitchen ever because all he does is keep washing up! A Taurean of a certain generation!

We need to address this, however painful it may be, enabling people to talk, to trust and respect one another whilst recognising that sometimes even the more thoughtful ones get it very, very wrong.

As for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, then long may it continue, or long may it be deemed unnecessary.

It is fine to dress everything up in a pink ribbon if it continues to highlight the problem, if it helps to eradicate this disease but let’s not stop at the fight against cancer. Let’s look at how we deal with the responses too. Let’s try and think about the wider needs to deal with the shit that life throws our way.

Where Playing the Game Doesn't Work

When a decent school has to play the game

People outside education think that league tables aren’t such a bad thing. They give an indication as to how “successful” a school is, how many pupils it churns out with the right grades, how these kids have attained.

We all know the rest of the story. It doesn’t really explain progression for all the value added stuff. It doesn’t explain anything about the state of the children when they first come through the door and the problems of hopeless social injustice that many an institution has to contend with before you can even get the children to sit long enough to experience decent teaching and learning. It doesn’t explain how children and young people flourish or decline emotionally or socially as an outcome of the schools ineptitude to create a holistic education

But that is another story.

I want to tell a short story about a school who appeared to get things right.

Academically, the baseline was low – a mere 35% of pupils getting 5 A-C grades when the present head teacher took the reins. For a mixed, multi-cultural school with a mixed socio-economic intake, that might sounds like a relatively reasonable percentage - but not really. The school should have been doing better.

Along came a good manager. He addressed the behaviour issues in school with a two pronged attack or rather a multi-pronged attack. Rightly or wrongly, he believes that ensuring the young people respect their uniform is one means of addressing behaviour. He insisted that all pupils had what some might describe as a slightly archaic uniform; blazer, tie, grey trousers, skirts below the knee, black socks only – all very conformist. In addition to this, he had strict codes of discipline around the school. He manned the corridors himself, commandeering with his very obvious presence. He insisted that the young people had to behave a certain way in the classroom and abuse to the teachers would not be tolerated. He looked at the ethos of the school, got rid of some staff that did not like to play his game and generally turned the place around.

Once he had sorted the behaviour and attendance, he then tackled the attainment. He states quite categorically that he did it this way round, and bore the consequences of little movement in the league table for the first year or two of his appointment.

Within four years, the school had gone from a relatively lowly point to having a pass rate of 75%, increasing year on year until new rules came in about achieving Maths and English which put things back a little.

Ofsted found that the school was outstanding, which it was and it wasn’t. The head teacher had played the game to an extent. He’d held onto his basic educational values but he had played the game too. He’d had a keen eye on the league tables, he’d introduced some questionable methods of developing decent behaviour and trust between staff and students but he had managed to get this “outstanding” grade.

What he did next was brave but in the knowledge that he had this Ofsted grade, he felt he could do so. He got all of his staff together a few months after the inspection and told them that what they were doing was not quite good enough. He didn’t want his school to be an examination factory. He believed fundamentally in the arts and the media, in creativity, in values, in exciting and stimulating teaching and learning. Yes, he wanted his students “to be the best we can be” but he meant it in a broader way. He told his staff he wanted to look at values; he wanted to prepare a curriculum that meant something to young people living in the 21^st Century in a multi-cultural city. He wanted them to consider the emotional intelligence of the child as much as the knowledge based curriculum.

It was exciting times. The staff were incredibly stimulated by this strike for freedom, and they planned the curriculum accordingly. Days off timetable were introduced to ensure that the “Every Child Matters” agenda was not just given lip service as well as ensuring that the main thrust of this was imbedded in all lessons taking place in school.

The children were stimulated, the work was exciting and things were looking up.

A further Ofsted graded this progression as “good” not the “outstanding” from before but the head teacher was undeterred knowing that what he was doing was for the greater good of the young people. In effect, he was encouraging a lifelong learning rather than just passing exams.

And here is the slight problem because however good a school is, however committed they are to ensuring that they excite and energise children into learning, they are slightly caught out because many things are still beyond their control. Total autonomy for schools is but a pipe dream and the Toby Young’s of this world who think they are going to get it with their Free Schools are in for a nasty shock!

This school tried hard to ensure the curriculum was exciting. This is all fine in KS3 when there is more flexibility. It becomes slightly more problematic in KS4 when exams have to be sat.

The school has worked hard in ensuring that the curriculum is as stimulating as possible but it is still constrained.

For example, the history curriculum for KS4 is relatively contemporary. It still has the ubiquitous WW2 studies but it also looks at the Cold War and the emergence of the USA as the Super Power that it is. Not bad and certainly more interesting than the perpetual discussion about the goings on in Henry VIII’s bedroom. However, they still don’t have the flexibility to teach and discuss a history that the children and young people may choose to do. How about a child who wants to look at the history of photography, or how such pictures can tell a story that no words will ever do, or the child who has an deep interest in Eastern Cultures who would quite like to study the Emperor-led system of governance adopted in Japan, let alone the potential to explore the depths of Eastern philosophy?

No chance of that in the near future either with Mr Gove hovering over schools with a diktat of facts and figures that have no place in the development of a historical mind!

So, despite the fact that they have chosen examination boards wisely, there is still a straitjacket around what they can and cannot teach.

And then there are those league tables.

And this is the real reason I am writing today.

The league tables are madness. They are insane. They have created didactic teachers out of people who never intended to teach in that manner. They are constantly nagging at the back of people’s minds as they put their lesson plans together. I suppose Gove would welcome the “healthy” competition between subject departments to get the highest number of A-stars but whilst some teachers play this pathetic game, where are the children? These are human beings we are talking about.

And if we mistakenly think that this will all stop when the league tables disappear, we are sadly mistaken because a mode of teaching and a dirty rationale has crept into the profession over the decades of nationally imposed curriculum, and it may take a generation or more to get out of this mindset that grades and tables are the most significant part of education.

This is not new. I, as have others, have long discussed these issues so why am I so concerned about it today?

Yesterday, my son, who is in his GCSE year, had to go into school. According to him, he had to complete a piece of work for his GCSE IT that was not taught properly in Year 9 (when the accelerated into the KS4 coursework). In retrospect, and with an incompetent teacher dismissed, the department realised that if they left things as they were, these children were not going to get the results that they deserved. So on a reasonable Saturday in October, they called a cohort of children into school and asked them to repeat this piece of work to the standard and maturity required.

The kids duly and dutifully complied and spent five hours of their weekend in school, as of course, did the teachers, and thank you for their commitment in doing so because here is the rubbish, the real rubbish, and the legacy of league tables and of the previous government’s inertia.

Teachers are so used to having to cram and get the children “to be the best we can be” at achieving A grades, that this has completely monopolised their teaching and their rationality. The law of ratio has escaped these teachers. Not everyone, bizarrely, can get A-stars because it is proportionate to the numbers taking the exam not the similarity of responses (allegedly).

And the real rubbish? These teachers are not actually thinking about the league tables any more. The head teacher has made it clear that he doesn’t care about them. It is the kids that he is concerned about, and sadly, ironically, this is why they were brought into school yesterday – not because of league tables but because these teachers know that the only chance these kids have is if they have as many A grades as possible.

Due to the league table method of teaching, everything has been placed in one area of learning, i.e. that of academic attainment. Even if the league tables didn’t exist, the philosophy of education behind them does, and this is why my child has to forsake his weekend to go and play ball with a school that has tried not to play the game but is restricted in doing so because it knows the rest of the school is still playing.

Those teachers gave up their weekend and will do so from now until exam time because they want to give a leg-up to their students. They want to push them into grades that may be beyond their natural reach, putting all sorts of untold pressures on them because they think this is the best thing for these pupils. This is their way to success.

I know that some of the teaching staff are still interested in league tables, despite what their head teacher says, and I am sure that he pays more than a curious glance at them but essentially, they are working these young people hard now because they know that this world will be easier for them if they are equipped with the biggest grades possible.

And it is not going to get any easier.

Andrew Rawnsley makes that clear today in the Observer, as does Will Hutton. Catherine Bennett comments on it too.

If these children want to go to university then they are going to have to get super-dooper grades to do so. With tuition fees floating into a new region of fiscal nightmares, it will only be those who have high grades and a wad of notes in their pocket who are going to succeed, and with a spending review that Hutton describes as what historians will see as “one of the great acts of economic folly”, the situation is getting graver and graver.

These teachers know this. The ardent pursuit of academia has led us to this. The current government can only implement the harshness of Lord Browne’s ideas because the previous ones left the garden gate open and guided them up that particular path.

When people ask me about the previous government and why I had “concerns” they expect me to come out with the usual diatribe about Iraq. Whilst this is always at the forefront of my mind, what with the hundreds and thousands of unnecessary deaths, it is the lack of affordable higher education that really narks me.

Education, education, and indeed education should all be free and the money should be found elsewhere. Without this fundamental point being acted upon, I am not sure that you can ever have a liberty in society. You certainly cannot have equity and the fraternity is pretty dispersed if some can and some cannot pay.

If my child wants to go into school on a Saturday because he loves learning and enjoys sharing that learning with others, then fantastic. If his teachers are so willing to facilitate that learning to the point that they gain a sense of wellbeing from doing so, then that too is pretty spectacular.

Going in because both student and teacher knows that this is the only way to succeed in life is dismal. Going in knowing that the only way to succeed in life is through an academic route is pitiful (and obviously one that I do not believe is correct).

Toby Young will be okay because he wants to play the stupid league table game, as does his followers who epitomise everything distasteful about that side of town!

He won’t care that there are compromises in learning that are unforgivable.

As Catherine Bennett pointed out last week, Gove loves Dickens and yet still cannot see the irony of the Hard Times character who announces to the world that in his pupils he wants to see,

“A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.”

Mr Gove – see that quote, that’s you, that is and it’s not a compliment!

And where does Mr. Gove think that story writing skills come from? If he loves Dickens so much, shouldn’t he be thinking how another great writer should be allowed to flourish?

It is all utter madness.

So, we are back to a good school that is trying to do the right thing, that is trying to broaden its curriculum and its opportunities for all pupils, that is trying to stand by its values in the widest sense, that understands that examination passes do not make a person, and even knowing all of this, they still have to play the game, not because of league tables any more but because they know that under the current situation, their kids do not stand a chance unless they have been given the utmost support in playing the bloody game, the wrong bloody game at that!

One day we will stop messing with these young peoples’ futures, open our eyes and see what an utter disservice we have practiced upon them.

I’m actually looking forward to the first case of litigation setting out the argument against a series of governments who had no idea how to free the mind and encourage learning.

......................................................................................................................................................

And a footnote; bless good old Windows spell-check!

I am sure others have found this but I do find it rather amusing that when checking “Ofsted” it comes up with the alternative “ousted”.

If only!

Musical Experiences

Like a piece to the puzzle that falls into place
You could tell how we felt from the look on our faces
We was spinning in circles with the moon in our eyes
No room left to move in between you and I
We forgot where we were and we lost track of time
And we sang to the wind as we danced through the night

“You have to be brave to be happy”
That’s what Carlos said. And then there was generosity and peace, passion and self-worth. There was love and kindness. There was probably trust and respect as well.
These were his words and they are ours too.

There’s no denying or escaping the reality of shared values, vision, passion and commitment to lovingkindness and getting the world to see how a smile and a dash of love could make all the difference.

He spoke of the potential in each and every one of us and that given the right circumstances, there is good in everyone and if we just unite that goodness in small every day things, the world would be a better place.
Love” or should it have been “Light and Life”?
In some ways it doesn’t really matter what the words were. It was the unity

He encouraged the audience to chant a short mantra of belief. “I am Light and Love, Light and Love” and at that moment, I assume there were many in the building who felt that light and love; who had the rhythmic beat of the bongos embedded in their brains, in tune with the pumping of their own hearts, recognising the synergy of sound that re-emphasised the words that Carlos was encouraging us to say.

Did I hear him properly? Did he say “Light and Love” or was it “Life and that was important and the positivity and the togetherness. It wasn’t even the words that was enabling that either. It was the shared joy and appreciation of the sounds we were listening to. As chanting can sometimes do, it was there to direct people to the sound and the feeling that encapsulates rather than the actual words.

However, Santana believes. And he believes that he has found something beautiful in life that he wants to share with a listening world; Light and Love.
“I’m still an old hippy” he said.
And thank goodness for that! Thank goodness there are people out there in their sixties who still have the vision, still understand the astounding effects that music can have on the psyche, still accept, albeit regretfully, that there is a world out there that still needs correcting some forty years later.

Santana was born in 1966, the same year as me.
Obviously Carlos Santana wasn’t born then – he pre-dates me chronologically!
Santana the performer first got up there and was noticed in 1966. It was as I took my first breath that he walked his intrepid steps to stardom. However, with Carlos Santana, it almost appears to be a reluctant stardom. He wants to play music before he wants to show off! He appears to want to share the passion rather than keep it all for himself and it is this that nurtures his desire to perform rather than the notion of being seen as some iconic guitarist that indeed he is.

Santana feels.
And if you are in a room with him, without being all starry eyed, you can feel too, if you open yourself up to absorb the feeling.

I count myself extremely fortunate to have experienced what I did last night.
Last year I noticed that Santana was playing at the o2 and I wasn’t sure whether to get tickets or not. Like other concerts before, I didn’t feel as though I knew enough about the artist to justify taking a valuable space from a real fan; someone who had followed Santana all of their lives. I didn’t want to be a pop tourist.
This year however, I felt that I was ‘ready’ for him. As I continue along my pathway of learning, Santana had crept surreptitiously into my playlists on Spotify, and more and more I was losing myself into the incredible synergising of heavy rock with salsa and jazz.
Tell me please, how the hell does that work?
I use the word “into” rather than “in” deliberately because you don’t just dabble at the edges of the shore when you are listening to Santana. You have to get straight into those crashing waves, well I do anyway. I’m not really one for half measures.

The man and his incredible group of musicians did not disappoint. From the moment that he stood on stage, almost creeping on without any need or desire for a roaring introduction from an anonymous maitre de booming out of the speakers, Carlos Santana dominated.
His fingers dance around that guitar board and only the incredibly reserved could not take on the rhythm and beat of this intensely passionate music.

A few months ago, I was travelling up the M1 without a CD in my car; never a good thing when the play on Radio Four is not to your liking. I switched over to Radio Two and was pleasantly surprised by two things. Firstly, the guest in the studio was a very frank and open Roger Daltry, who is always worth a listen to, and the featured album was Abraxas. I think it was this point that I really decided that Santana was for me.
Like many musical experiences, it is always wonderful to be able to share a passion but real musical learning and appreciation has to come from your soul and not the soul of another. Obviously, introductions are important and tasters need to be provided in order for a person to develop an interest of their own but sometimes it needs another trigger from an independent source to stimulate and reiterate the suggestion from another.

For me, this is what happened with Santana. I had been introduced to him, although obviously I knew about him before. In fact my first experience of Santana must have been when I saw him on the television on 13th July 1985 during Live Aid.
Following on from that, there were various mini-introductions to Santana and plenty of opportunities to listen to his music but it wasn’t until I listened to Abraxas that day that he was mine rather than me parasitically borrowing him from someone else.

In writing this piece, I do not profess to be an avid fan who knows every song, every lyric, each word, each musical form but I am perfectly able to appreciate and absorb what I hear without knowing every nuance.
Santana came onto the stage and wowed. He didn’t, as I said, make some grand gesture of appearance. He did what he does best to introduce himself to the awaiting audience.
He played his guitar.
Simple.

As if!
There is nothing simple about Santana. Here is a definite case of polar opposites. There is a complexity in playing the guitar and Carlos manages to make it look as though it is the simplest thing in the world. You watch him play and you feel as though all you would have to do is pick up the instrument and allow your fingers to skip and slide across the strings. Simple!
Even when he played “Chim Chim Cheree” he put a complexity into a song that is all too familiar.
And the clarity of each single note was exceptional, truly exceptional.
To anyone who has ever attempted to play a guitar, you know that simplicity does not just happen. Fingers fumble, pressure on the strings is either insipid or too full of strength. Balance is essential and perfecting the placement on the neck is vital for the sort of sound you want.
There is nothing simple about playing any stringed instrument and to suggest anything contrary is wrong, just plain wrong.

Within seeming minutes, Santana, the band, were bashing out “Black Magic Woman” which was a delight to have so early in the concert, especially as I was expecting this to be saved for the encore. More infamous tracks followed with each of the twelve musicians (if you include the next Mrs Santana) displaying the most incredible musical proficiency on each of their chosen instruments. The brass pairing slid the trombone into perfect position and deposited the most immense sounds out of a miked-up trumpet that brashly yet tunefully reached the ears of the audience.
The singers had their own distinct voices and ability and rocked along in tandem with the others, shaking their shakers and baring their souls in the love of the music and admiration for their leader.
The keyboard player mesmerised me. I was almost choked by the audacity of the sound that he was creating from the Hammond. Actually, that is not true. I was choked. I could feel the build up of emotive response in my throat as I listened in complete awe and envy at how his fingers made swift and perfect contact with each intended note. Tears welled and soon I had to reach to my eyes to gently mop the gathering waters waiting to cascade once more.
I really am hopeless!

Santana himself was, in some ways, as expected.
I expected nothing less than brilliance and that is what I got. Sixty three years of man walked up and down the stage, kicking his leg occasionally in the air as the music got the better of him.
He has an elegance about him which oozes as much passion as the more obvious showmanship of someone like Townshend. Quiet passion perhaps is a better phrase. Elegance implies refinement and one of the most wonderful things about Santana is that he has not allowed himself or his music to become refined; smoothed in any way.
Although I was but a mere baby in the Sixties, I would assume that the music performed by Santana now is as raw and gale-like as it was in the decade of evolving Enlightenment.
Words that I write could not possibly convey the silkiness of tone that could not possibly be described as silky by virtue of the solidity of sound. It really is quite indescribable.

For me, one of the highlights of the evening was the utter incredulity that I felt or experienced when listening to the drummers; each of them exceptional in their chosen form of percussion.
It always fascinates me when people are so dismissive of percussion players or drummers (obviously excluding Phil Collins in this!) But seriously, even the Genesis man knew how to make the most of the drums and they are the heartbeat of a band. Without the drums, the soul cannot sing.
In the Eighties and Nineties, bands had this horrible propensity for playing backing track beats that were computer generated or pre-recorded.
Horrible, horrible sounds that could not possibly match the thunderous boom of a real hand or stick on a skin.
A friend of mine suggested that I get tickets for Buddy Rich in the late Seventies or early Eighties. I was quite dismissive and wondered how on earth anyone could spend an entire evening listening to a drummer. I wish I had listened more closely to Fred. I should have gone to see the Master then as he sadly died a few years later.

Last night, I suppose I paid my silent tribute to Buddy Rich by affording the drummer’s the sort of respect that I should have given to him over thirty years ago. I listened intently and allowed my soul to be marched and tossed and thumped into submission. I walked the walk with every stamp of the hand, with every bang of the stick, with every clever, metronomic tick of the feet on the bass drum. It was utterly incredible; a word that I know I overuse as much as the word ‘brilliance’ but what more can I say?
I was pounding, they were pounding and the audience sat in stupefied hypnosis at the beat that was virtually dragging them to the stage to participate.

Of course, the audience does participate with the singing. There was a relatively young bloke sitting behind me for instance bellowing out “Into the Night” and “Maria Maria”. The woman to my left was reliving her youth and was totally absorbed in responding to the music in the way that she felt most comfortable with, which was to rock her head back and forth and take it all in.
Audience participation is quite an individual thing until the drums start, and like the Pied Piper, we all follow, unaware of the conformity because to us, the drum is beating for one person alone. It’s quite an amazing thing.

And before I finish, I must mention the audience.
One of the most blissful moments for me last night was when a whiter light appeared and flashed subtly around the audience for all to see the participation and engagement for themselves.
Clearly the audience was older than your average Green Day mob but that did not mean those congregated were all of the more mature generation. And even the oldies, could not sit still. They rocked and ‘salsa’ed without any regard for slightly less able limbs. They ignored their growing bellies and jiggled around as the only right and proper response to such music.
Some jumped up and down with hands raised in appreciation, others swayed with eyes closed, others moved from side to side but barely no-one stood still.

It makes you wonder just how much Enlightenment and love could be achieved by simply sharing musical experiences like this.
I adored watching inhibitions disappear. At one point, I looked down towards the floor where everyone was on their feet. A beer-bellied man who did not look as though he was the most passionate man in the world was swaying away with beer in one hand, utterly oblivious to anyone except the band and the music that he was responding to. He didn’t give a damn who was watching. There wouldn’t have been a problem if he was out of time because this was about his relationship with the music and nobody else mattered.
Looking around, he was not alone. There were people all over that floor lost in a world that was particular to themselves. Suddenly all that horribly pompous British reserve disappeared. Spanish Salsa and Latin Jazz had taken over their lives and they were allowing it to do so.
Shouldn’t that be happening all of the time? Shouldn’t we open up all of the time to such brilliance that can capture a part of your soul that no other form of art can do?

Yesterday, I was listening to Woman’s Hour and someone asked whether you could truly experience intense love at a time of grief. Jenny Murray asked the two people in the studio how you could possibly feel such strong emotions simultaneously. Could you, for instance, really feel a new love at precisely the same time as you were mourning for a lost love?
I think you can. It is not a shock or a surprise that this is feasible. The reason? Because if you can experience intense emotions, then you can experience intense emotions! It is the intensity and not the extreme that is important. If one experiences passion in one form, then it is probably more likely that they feel a strength of passion in another setting or with another stimulus. Hence love and grief can go hand in hand.
That is why I can open my mouth in mesmerised awe at the spectacle of something like a Santana concert whilst simultaneously crying my eyes dry.

You have to be brave to be happy, he said. Maybe there is a bravery in being able to be passionate and being unashamed in reacting to beauty in what some might say is a contradictory way.
I know one thing for definite though. Yesterday, I was very, very happy.

Light and Love is not a bad mantra, after all.