God your spirit was good

Even though they were running out of medicines to try you on
And the possible transplant was still only on the horizon
God your spirit was good

With a face swollen by steroids
And hair thinned by chemotherapy
And a swollen all but useless right leg
God your spirit was good

I came away in mourning
For the healthy man I remember
And full, not of pride, nor of hope
But of the friendship we still share
And God your spirit was good.

Public Service and me

As you know it has been calling to work in the University sector since 1993. I have two recent reflections to make.

Firstly I have been battling all this last academic year to preserve a key programme in our raft of counselling courses. After 3 attempts in July, Autumn and February we finally appointed a new time limited member of staff. So at that point following the shuffle of tasks within the team I could plan to recruit a new cohort to the programme. I made the 'mistake' of telling a superior I intended to do this so that numbers could be tallied. All hell broke loose and suddenly the minor matter of me recruiting 6 part time students got snarled up into the mega HE changes in my institution. Programme recruitment on hold and promises of of aan early decision were made but deadlines passed other promises got made etc. Just before my recent holiday I got a meeting with the Head he said 'Yes' but on the basis that my course was subsumed into a bigger School wide one and out of my control. With a bit more ranting and raving from various quarters that was it. Well a battle not won, not lost and something salvaged.

What I am not telling you in the strain on me all this politicking took. But there's people for you, imperfect lovable - everyone with their own shadow and interpersonal history. But most of our hearts most of the time are in the right place!

Secondly, as some of you know my delight has been to explore therapy and spirituality and research and culture and healing. I dwell in this stuff and I teach around it and people come and research it with me and we talk about it. So wider society through taxation and student fees has supported me in all these years dwelling in these topics. I am profoundly grateful and have done my very best in all all my imperfectness to honour this calling and this contract.

And yes it all could have been even better if I had been just a bit more healed and savvy but maybe because of my failings and because of my colleagues failings, maybe some of this has been grit that produced the pearl? I dunno people including me are as we are.

And now as I look over the fence at life beyond working full-time here I am excited and scared. One question I regularly ask myself is: If I died today what would my regrets be if anything? There is little I haven't done yet apart from publishing a novel or two and a poetry book. I want more time with my children and grand children and yes to cycle from Vancouver to Santa Barbara! More time with friends, more time alone, more cafes, restaurants and bookshops to visit. The health to enjoy it. But who knows. I am at peace right now :)

Truthing

Truthing

When I leave
Inaccurate stories
Will be told
About me

And I must confess
I have enjoyed
Some of them

But no
I have never
Lived in a monastery
Spent a night in jail
Or slept with a best friend’s wife

I have
Seen the dawn rise gloriously
Over the motorway
In a hitched car
Slept in a park near Calais
Spent a cold night
Awake in a bus shelter in Ramsgate
Grafittied walls in Manchester and Notting Hill

Visited people
In hospitals for the criminally insane
Scary places but mostly not scary people

I have
Failed gloriously
And not so gloriously
With some mad schemes
Like the two headed match

And succeeded
Beyond my wildest dreams
At other things equally mad
Like weirdly academic writing and teaching

When I leave
Inaccurate stories
Will be told about me

Existing for now

Went to visit the family graves on Monday. This poem turned up:

Existing for now

Standing by your graves
In the pouring rain
Having one-sided conversations
And re-feeling the pain

Death does have a dominium
And as it gets more
I am reduced
For I am not an island

But even though the sea
Is washing me away
I have been here before
And I will come again

Skills four life

So I got his 'Skills 4 Life' leaflet and knew I should do something about it. Hell she would walk out on me if I didn't. But I 'd picked up this book in Oxfam and I fancied sitting down with it and a spliff for a while. There was plenty of time after all.

One spliff led to another and I was gone. I mean real gone. I mean up there in the Milky Way gone. I mean I could almost taste the cosmos if it had a taste gone and why was there a curious smell of vinegar in the air?

I must have passed out. Either that or I was hallucinating but the blow wasn't that good surely?
- Steve?
- (Oh fuck!) Barbie!
- Steve you're out of your fucking head again and don't smile at me like a god damn Tellytubbie!
- (Fuck, fuck, fuck) ...Ah sorry.
- Sorry? No bloody way!I don't suppose... No don't bullshit me, you haven't?
- Haven't what?
- Well if you don't know then of course you bloody haven't
- Oh fuck
- Fuck doesn't come anywhere near it

She stormed out. I slumped back in the armchair. Fuck I was crying. Weird.

There's theology for you

Inspirational Rush Hour Choir session last night with Carla. We were working on a pop song called ‘Imagine me’ and she joked about the drama in the song at varies points whilst getting us to express it. But I felt the pain involved in my guts and wanted to cry (that’s typical of me!) I remember listening to the Scottish band the Proclaimers singing ‘In my heart Lord, I want to be a Christian’ from the song ‘I want to be a Christian’ and wondering whether they were being ironic as no white English group would sing that way and not sound naff (think Cliff Richard for example!). However, they are Scottish and mean it. Then I think of how Neil of the Pets sings. He writes very poignant lyrics that work on several levels e.g. ‘I get along without you very well’ which is about someone in denial about a broken up love affair but it is also a song about Blair and Mandelson etc. And Neil’s voice has a languid somewhat detached quality – it’s so damn English. He often signs tongue in cheek but also meaning it at the same time so it becomes OK to be ambivalent. But basically Neil loves pop and being clever and postmodern. Me too.

And then there Al Bowlly that wonderful pre Second World War singer. He once said that when he got a new song he would carefully read through the lyrics and try and get the emotions behind the words and then sing with those feelings in mind. There is such an unEnglish tenderness about his singing which is no surprise as he wasn’t English! Try this link www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWQU6Vk12Xc

So I guess I am still just a big kid inside and that’s Ok by me but I am also a grown up and horrified by many grown up ways, I sure wish we could live better, I try and fail and end up blaming our Creator – we may aspire to being angels but we are sadly designed all too human. There’s theology for you! (Try saying that phrase with a Welsh accent)

Accentuate the positive

People sometimes think I come from Birmingham as they hear traces of my West Midlands accent from time to time – when I am tired, emotional, drunk or all 3. But I am not Brummie, indeed to suggest I am is a bit of an insult (well a lot actually), even though my maternal grand father was a Brummie. I hail from Kidderminster a small town in Worcestershire. However, when I hear a Brummie accent or hear a Wolverhampton accent or Coventry I feel at home! And I can distinguish between these accents and mine and West Worcestershire too.

At school one of my Latin teachers (yes that was 1960s Grammar School for you!) referred to the local accent we all used as being a ‘linguistic cesspool’. Thankfully my other Latin teacher was fascinated by it and talked composing a book of Kidderminster-ese.

So for example I (along with other denizens from Kidderminster) find I don’t distinguish in my speech between ‘pint’ as in pint of beer and ‘point’ as in Aston Villa just won 3 points for a victory over Man U (in my dreams). I also pronounce ‘bus’ in a strange way rather like ‘buzz’ I think, so my eldest son born on the York/Lancs border did not understand me when i said 'Bus'. I also use ‘borrow’ when I mean ‘lend’ as in ‘borrow me a quid’. What I don’t do that Brummies do do is end sentences with just – as in ‘I’ll see you just’ I love that.

I have learnt to speak more posh especially with policemen and other authority figures and know the research that says you are less likely to get a job with a Brummie accent and since most people can’t distinguish my accent from Brummie…. But this dropping of my accent was part of getting educated and part of leaving my small home town behind which was warm and smothering. So I love my freer life and I miss that damn community. So you can take this boy out of a small town but you can't take the small town out of this boy! And of course the bit of Msnchetser I live in kind of functions as a small town. Almost.