Before my Life
Wrestling with Gollum
Early Days
17/12/2012 Adelaide…
Because I have lived in so many
places and countries people often ask me (although not often enough) which place
or country I have liked living in the most.
I have now got to the stage where I say that I can’t answer this question. In
fact, it is just not an appropriate question at all. To me, it seems a facile
question-like asking me which football team do I support? For me, each place had its advantages and disadvantages-and
these depended perhaps almost as much on the personal circumstances surrounding myself and
my stay in the country at that particular time, as on the environment and characteristics of
the host culture. So the experience depended on such things as whether I was young
or middle-aged, married or single, working
or not etc.
For example, I loved Ghana when
I was twenty –five, single, and doing a
job which I found very satisfying, But had I been sixty, married and either trying to bring up a family, or married
but living on my own, and doing a job that I felt was not worthwhile, it would
have been a different experience entirely. The things which I found impressive
at 25 in Ghana-might not have made such
an impression at all when I was sixty.
Of
course the question is loaded. People, naturally, want me to say that Australia
is the best place. I usually reply by listing the things I do like about
Australia; the built and non-built environment come top of the list. Australia
deserves enormous credit for the planning of the infrastructure of the country.
All of the Australian cities are much more liveable in than most cities in the
UK or Ireland. The suburbs of Adelaide are just exquisite in the spring. From
September to December there is a succession of blooms and aromas on the shrubs
and trees in Adelaide which only a poet could put in to words in a way which
does them justice.
Next
on my list of likes would be the ability
to re-invent yourself in Australia. The migrant has the opportunity to leave
behind the problems of his native country –whether they be political
persecution or lack of opportunity due to gender or social class. In Australia,
there is a chance to start again and while I think there is a glass ceiling for
first generation migrants in terms of economic mobility there are nevertheless
still some opportunities, and this ceiling has almost disappeared for the
second generation migrant pretty much whatever their colour, gender or creed.
On
the other hand, as a first generation migrant who has been here for twenty
three years, a major dislike is the absence of curiosity in the people. This is
not a unique characteristic of Australians.at all. They share this lack of
curiosity and indifference to the outsider to a greater or lesser extent with
the people of other ‘Developed’
countries in which I have lived for any length of time-namely England, Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. ( I regard the latter as two different
countries not for political reasons but because they are culturally quite different).
.Furthermore, I see this same lack of curiosity or indifference in the people I
have come to know from other ‘Developed’ countries (in which I have not lived)
such as the United States,, Canada, South Africa, The Scandanvian countries,
and the countries of Northern Europe.
I am
fascinated to note that this same indifference and lack of curiosity is indeed
now appearing in some sectors of
developing countries which could be described as almost fully ‘Developed'. I am
thinking of urban centres in countries such as Malaysia (places like Kuala
Lumpur and Kuching), China (Beijing), Japan (Tokyo) and Mexico (Mexico City)
So,
it is not a question of me picking on the Aussies
Nevertheless, it is very hard to make friends with
Australians- not because they are hostile but because they are often
indifferent and very reserved.
Where
does this reserve come from? Is it just a characteristic of the ‘Development”
process?
I
think that mostly it is, but not entirely. In the case of Australia I think
there is an additional component.The degree of “reservedness’ is greater in
australia than in many other developed countries. No doubt this stems from the
unusual history of the country and with Australia’s lack of desire or ability to engage meaningfully
with its history. There is no doubt in my mind
that the lack of interest shown by the average Aussie in the outsider or
the outside world is in part due to the appalling treatment early settlers
received at the hands of their colonial masters. While there is certainly
little or no hostility to the outsider there is a certain passive-aggression
towards him best summarised perhaps as “If my forefathers could do it without
any help-so can you, mate” the passive aggression is rarely expressed explicitly but it can be
detected in some of the xenophhobic comments in the public debate about
refugees.
It
can also be detected in the Australians’s
unwillingness to tell his personal story-or in
stories in general for that
matter. It can also be seen in his unwillingness to listen to the story of
others..
The
new migrant is treated as a ‘Tabla Rasa” by the settler. When I try to tell a story, especially my personal
story, I have felt many times this passive aggression expressed as
“You
have no story-or if you do, I am not interested in it”
I
surmise that this antipathy to history on the part of settlers must also have
its roots in the tragic origins of the settlement.
Regarding
the first Aboriginal Australians, they have every reason to be completely
disinterested in new Australians as they have seen that the new Australians
will, once integrated , most probably treat them in the same way their
forebears were treated by the first white settlers. Although sad and
disappointing, it should therefore
be no surprise that the extraordinarily
powerful tradition of hospitality shown to other Aboriginal tribes is no longer
extended by Aboriginals to recent migrants to Australia. I can not remember a
single verbal transaction initiated with myself by an Aboriginal in nearly twenty three years of
living in Australia.
On
the other hand, there is a curiosity about and tradition of hospitality towards
the outsider in developing countries, particularly in South America and Africa and the Middle-East
which most people in developed countries seem to lack. When I lived in these
places this spontaneous hospitality and generosity towards the outsider has left an indelible impression on my
memory. This is not just a question of good manners or customs it was a genuine
and spontaneous generosity of almost
spiritual proportions..
On
the contrary, in Australia, it is almost as if the outsider has somehow to earn
the respect and confidence of the Australian before he will be invited into
their home. The Australian, rather like the Englishman and to a certain extent,
the Ulsterman, is just not really prepared to take the’ risk’ of inviting you
into his home just to get to know you. They will wait until they know you very
well (at work) before they invite you. The waiting might take years–or the waiting might
never end at all. This seems so sad. After all, how can the migrant get to
know anyone if they are not invited into a home?
I
have found it difficult to get to know Australians and almost impossible to get
invited into their homes. There are exceptions of course, but they are the
exception which prove the rule. Often, I have had to invite myself. In fifteen
years in Australia we have only been invited by a handful of people into their
homes to eat. By way of contrast, within a couple of months of moving to
Colombia in 1984 we had dozens of invitations including many from people we
didn’t even know in the suburb where we lived. When I travelled in Ghana, I was
chastised by the most casual of acquaintances who had hosted me if I was even
rumoured to have returned to the same locality, and not
partaken of their hospitality. In Africa
and South America-people take the ‘risk’ of inviting you into their home in
order to get to know you. The fact is they enjoy your company for its own sake.
In fact in both these places if I called in informally to visit someone–the
host felt honoured by my visit. In Australia, as in most developed countries,
the host would feel imposed upon by my unannounced visit.
This
is the major social difference for me between cultures which are developed and
those which are developing. There is a difference in values. In the developing
country value is placed on enjoying social interaction for its own sake and honouring the needs of the visitor and his desire for social intercourse.. In
the developed country the value is more
focused on the needs of the host. The unannounced visitor is taking up the time
which the host could be putting to better use to meet his own needs-not
the needs of the visitor. The needs of the outsider and his need for social
intercourse have little value in the eyes of the inhabitant of the developed
country.
I
think this is why many outsiders have the difficult social experience they do in Australia.
Why would you call a book “Before my life?” Well, it is
because I don’t really feel that my life began until I met and married my wife.
M.
Before meeting her I had
had an interesting life with many adventures –but it was only after I
met my wife that I started really to live–and to enjoy life.
I didn’t meet M until I was thirty-two.
When I was in my late teens I remember seeing a Chinese mini-drama on
T.V. which had a powerful effect on me.
It showed what appeared to be two men wrestling in a wrestling match. As the
fight progressed the camera moved in closer to the two fighters. It looked like
the fight was evenly balanced but the two contestants were gradually becoming exhausted. They both seemed to be on the point of giving up.
Then suddenly, the two combatants disengaged from each other
to reveal to a surprised and astonished audience
that ,in fact, there was only one person wrestling with himself( (The clothing
and cloaks he was wearing had made it
appear that there were two wrestlers) I
thought this self-wrestling match was a
clever, powerful and beautiful representation of the struggle going on inside
the head of most people in life….It was a wonderful metaphor for the struggle
with oneself.
I am no expert on Shakespeare, but someone once told me, or
I read it somewhere, that one of his
many achievements was to show how human behavior was often controlled by
unconscious and irrational forces. According to this source, the witches of
Macbeth were symbols of the unconscious
conversation and conflict which takes place in our heads every minute of the
day.
I don’t know if literary experts would agree or not. But I
like the idea.
I remember precisely when I heard my first voice. It was in
1955.
I was born in 1952 and
living in a pleasant
Belfast suburb. For three years nothing seemed
to be happening to me in my life. At least nothing that I can remember.There
was no “me”.
Then one day I was born for a second time or ( “Born again”
as they are so fond of saying in
Northern Ireland)
I heard a voice…
I looked down at myself and became aware that I was dressed
in a brown coat with buttons.
“So, this I what it feels like to be three” I said to myself
.. “I seem to be quite a tall person” or words to that effect.
Heavy stuff-you’ll agree!
So began my life as a conscious
being..
I can’t remember many
voices or conversations with myself from these really early years and I
was definitely not precocious in this
respect. Many people seem to remember their early life in great detail. However,
in later years I developed a significant propensity to talk with myself,and at times
my head does seem quite noisy...
Another flashback dialogue took place to when when I was about five.
I was in the back garden of our lovely
home. For some reason I was standing in the herbaceous border when I slowly became aware of myself looking at a
wasp. Mum was in the background somewhere-keeping an eye on me.
Very heavy!
Who knows why I should
remember those precise moments?
In another flashback when I was five I remember watching my
eldest brother jumping over the hedge
between our garden and that of our neighbor.I remember saying to myself..
“R is very big because he is eleven”
Only three incidents
in five years! Perhaps life was just uneventful life in the quiet suburbs of
Belfast.
Actually, when I really put my mind to it I can think of
some other flashbacks:
One was walking to primary school–it was about half a
kilometer. This was a very long distance at that age. I was young and was scared
of one part of the walk because I had to
pass by the “sand-pit” on my way to school–and the sand–pit (which was just a
vacant block of land) contained an evil
creature called “The Earthquake” I think
this myth must have been invented by the older pupils to terrify the
younger ones. I thought the earthquake was a long sleek, sandy coloured animal
–rather like an elongated puma-a kind of hound of the Baskervilles. But I was
conscious of my anxiety as I approached the
sand-pit on my way to and from school.
Nowadays, no child would be permitted to walk to school because of the perceived fear
of paedophiles. In those days, my mum wasn’t afraid of them-or at least she didn’t
seem to think they were dangerous enough
to warrant her accompanying me to school. In fact , she was wrong there:there
were paedophiles in those times-and I met one when I was about ten:
I was cycling home from Prep school. Quite suddenly, an
elderly man in a dark blue but dishevelled pin-stripe
suit appeared out of nowhere, stepping into the road in front of my bicycle. (Isn’t it amazing how we can
remember such things so vividly? He was
waving his arms frantically above his head and lurching from side to side) I thoght
he was in distress and skidded to a stop to assist him. (I only realized later that he was drunk).
“Ullo! ullo!” he spluttered
and slurred…. Gesticulating in in an exaggerated and uncoordinated fashion. I could
smell an unusual smell (alcohol)
“Wull yuh come uhcross the road here and I’ll rub your wee
cock for yee? ” he said in his Belfast accent
Even though it all happened very quickly my instincts were good at that age.
I realised it wouldn’t be a good idea to do what he wanted.
“ N...no thanks… I’ve goddu go..”
and I took off on my
bicycle like a bat out of hell!
Somehow, it never even occurred to me to tell Mum or Dad about this incident.
I was about 10.
Gollum
As a little boy, I always seemed to be bored. I don’t really know why this was as I had
friends who lived on the same road with
whom I played to my heart was content. But
I gradually became aware that I had a ‘special friend’ who kept me
entertained. By the age of around nine I felt he was my ‘twin’ brother. Just
recently I have given him a name. I call him “Gollum”- after the strange little
creature who accompanied Frodo Baggins
everywhere in “Lord of the Rings”. Gollum was more like a brother than a
friend. Friends are helpful almost all of the time but brothers can be unhelpful
sometimes. He was a brother. I had two older biological brothers neither of whom were close to me either as a child nor as an adult. I will say more later. But Gollum
was different because he was always close to me. Not just physically. He was my
soul-mate. I could confide in Gollum –especially when I was young-in a way in
which I couldn’t with my other friends or my two big brothers. He was my helper
in the fight against loneliness and
boredom. But Gollum was different
in another very important way. He was different because he didn’t exist. He was, in fact my alter-ego.
But, although I could never see him I knew he was always
close to me somewhere inside my head.
When
I was very young , Gollum was everything that “I” was not
and everything I
wanted to be. He understood me perfectly.
Unfortunately, in later years he also became everything I did not want to be.
Yes, I found it confusing too!
At times, Gollum was an ugly little devil-but other times he could be charming and a source of solace.. It
was a love –hate relationship. At times, he was my most loyal friend, and at other
times-especially in teenage and adult years, my most treacherous and dangerous enemy!
Gollum loved to wrestle. He was my wrestling partner and we
sparred all the time.
Later on in my adult years
Gollum did some really
stupid things. I still struggle to
forgive him for them. You will hear about some of them later in the story.
15/08 2012
Now, I realize Gollum did a lot of things out of jealousy
and envy. Gollum still hates those who are successful and those who he thinks
have had it easier than he has in life-which
is just about everybody of course! He
was “Touchy” and as you will see, he was even jealous of me sometimes and tried to sabotage me. He was a sad
teenager-and sometimes could be an even sadder adult. He could be quite vicious and
there have been times when I wished he
would just disappear altogeteher..but he is
still there and we have learned to ‘bump along together’.
He has said some of the dumbest
things. I remember once when I was about fifteen he said
“You will never have a house to
live in which you can call your own”
“Never! ” I asked him….why ever not?
“….because there are so many
poor people in the world in Africa , Asia, South America etc who are deserving
of a house? Why should you deserve a house when millions of others only have a
shack to live in?”
Perhaps I was very suggestible when
I was young – but I believed him. And so I have believed for most of my life that that somehow I ‘never’ deserve to have a home.
How rational is that?
Guilty..
Another thing he told me around
about the same time ( in my teenage years) was that money was an evil thing.
One day he told me…
“Don’t go after money –it is the
root of all evil. Money doesn’t matter!”
Well, he has a point there too,
perhaps-but, Gollum, he took it to the extreme.As I approach old age I have
little money and no house! Gollum was passionate and fanatical about many
things. All my life I have eschewed being a slave to money but now as a senior
citizen, I find am paranoid about money.
I find myself leafing through the junk mail box junk mail like looking for offers on cheap burgers just to save two bucks.I
argue with M because she wants me to send her more text messages and I
complain that they cost forty cents each! I'm a tight old miser!
I am semi retired and feel I could not handle full time work any more-and
I feel guilty about not working full-time. I feel guilty and can’t enjoy myself
because I feel there are millions out there who live in misery. I still feel guilty
that I live ( even if it is renting!) in a beautiful suburb in the most
beautiful city, Adelaide I have ever
lived in. Guilty.. that I’m relatively
healthy.
Leonard Cohen says “real courage
is to stand guiltless in your predicament’. But I can’t do it.I feel guilty I
don’t work, guilty I can’t find work, guilty I don’y want to work, and guilty my
children have a harder life than I had
at their age. Guilty I’m a baby boomer who stood
idly by and watched the world and watched the world become a harder
place to survive in for my children than it was for me..Guilty for criticing
the comfortable for hiding in the faceless suburbs while turning a
blind eye to the less fortunate.
Guilty I didn’t do more to stop
all this.I feel guilty I was so lazy a young man and such a nerd. Guilty
because I know I am not the hero of my own drama one day but by the next day I
have forgotten it and I believe I am again. . Guilty because my self awareness is
futile-it doesn’t change me. Guilty I get angry about these thngs. Gollum is
always angry. Guilty…guilty…guilty…the list goes on.Guilty for not loving my
parents and brothers more. Guilty for
not being able to escape from the
quicksand of my guilt
I don’t have that courage you
talk about in your song Leonard. Neither
does Gollum.
None of this guilt is rational-but it feels real. Gollum, the fanatic, is the the master of deception
Yes, there have been times when he has done me no favours with his weird
ideas.
But, in the early days Gollum
was a great help to me. He was never far away. He was company for me when I was
lonely. He never deserted me. He has never said, like everyone else does….
“I’ve gotta go…..must rush….. I
have be somewhere…” .
Most importantly, when I felt
lost or depressed I think he gave me the
will to go on. Maybe it wasn't will -more like loody-mindedness? I don’t know.
But yes, it was, and still is a complex
rocky love–hate relationship.
He was my Jungian alter-ego. I
had two other biological brothers yes–but my real brother was Gollum. And today
we aren’t exactly bosom pals like we used to be, but we ump
along pretty well now for most of the time.
‘Tell them about the other
flashback you have about the photograph! says Gollum
“Which one?”
‘You’ve forgotten another other incident with Mum!’ Gollum
chortles on...
“Have I?”
“Yes, the photograph-tell us about the photograph!
Gollum roars with derision…he
was really enjoying himself now…
Oh..yes, I do remember now….
When I was three Mum had a photograph
of me taken. I looked pretty cute in it. Most three year olds are cute. Yes,
but I was just a little too cute. I had long, curly hair-just like girl, in fact!
“The truth will out!” sniggered Gollum…”you were the third boy , and the youngest……
and mum and dad…Gollum was in hysterics
now…… obviously had wanted a girl!
He dissolved into paroxysms of mirth. When he
had calmed down a bit I said
“You’re just speculating
Gollum”, we don’t know that is true
It was obvious to me! He
chortled.
For years I didn’t believe it
but the older I get the more I realize that my wretched twin was probably right. Mum and Dad wanted a girl
so much they even dressed me up as a
girl…in that photo
“and that’s why your Dad never
really took to you !” said Gollum, He had calmed down now but he couldn’t
help rubbing it in.
“He treated you like a girl and
then he hated you for behaving like one-
it wasn’t really fair!” he said in a
rare moment of compassion.
“They even dressed you up in a dress in that photo! And then he said
slyly
“and that’s why girls never really liked you-you were too
much like them”
I didn’t like the way this
conversation was going.
He scented blood and knew he had me on the ropes.
I knew he wouldn’t stop once he got
going like this
Gollum was doubled over and
collapsing with derision-delighting in
my discomfort.
“Even… a dress!’ he spluttered between guffaws…
Yes, even a dress.
I still have the photograph.
I found it in Mum’s effects last
year when she died.
Yes, In my teenage and adult
years Gollum became a pain but ,in my
early years he was more often than not, a
great help. He was always there for
me–even if he wasn’t helpful all the time.
17/05/2012
I dreamed about a schoolmaster
called Mitchell (now dead) whom I liked. He was unusual in that I didn’t like most of
my teachers. In my dream, Mitchel was asleep and I was waking him up. He looked at me in
surprise. He seemed angry with me about
something. He said “I have status which you have not acknowledged” a Jungian interpretation of this dream might
be that Mitchel represents Gollum. Have
I been neglecting my alter ego recently. Quite possibly-if so I apologise, Gollum.
Primary School
I don’t remember much about primary school except that it
was extremely boring. And it was during my periods of boredom that Gollum
helped me out the most. Jung thought that boredom may have been one of the
triggers which begins the process of individuation (the process in which
the individual self develops out of an undifferentiated unconscious)*.
I think Jung thought the process didn’t start until the teenage years but I think I must have been an exception.Ever since
I can remember I have got bored easily. By six or seven I think I was getting bored by both school and home life.
Most people seem to have at least some good memories of
primary school. I can’t remember a single pleasant moment I had there. Not that it was terribly unpleasant ,. If it had been I would
have remembered it. No, it was just so boring. There was no pleasure-no laughter and no joy
I remember it was always
quiet in class-all of the time. Most of the teachers had really strict
discipline except for Mrs Bloomfield who the boys thought was gorgeous. I think
the feeling was mutual on her part. She
had blond hair and smelled like heaven. She would put her pet boys on her knee
and cuddle them. I wasn’t one of the pet boys – I don’t know why. Maybe it was
because I wasn’t good enough at making Raffia mats in her class. One thing I
learned in Mrs Bloomfield’s class was that I was totally hopeless with my hands.But, like
all the boys I thought ‘Ma’ Bloomfied
was wondrous because no-one ever touched
us like that either in school or out of it.
I was an above average student I suppose –but certainly not
in the top tier of ‘high fliers’ By year five I had become a ‘pleaser’ and an
‘achiever’–both of which I have remained
at heart ever since. I remember being upset that I found it impossible to get bonus
marks for my homeworks in ‘Pop’ Mawhinney’s class.
Gollum butted in again..
“Yes, I remember it
well… everyone else seemed to get them and it annoyed you so much” you tried harder and harder at your homeworks but no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t get a
bloody bonus mark!
I remember asking
Gollum what I should do and he said I should cheat
I was taken aback at first, but Gollum had said..
“What else can you do? It’s not bloody
fair, you work just as hard as the others and are smart as well. Pop doesn’t
care–he only gives bonuses to the whizz-kids. He doesn't see you. It doesn’t matter what you do
you’ll never get a bonus mark-so why wouldn’t you cheat?”
Gollum, if not exactly
a communist (he was just a little
too selfish for that), was convinced at a very early age that, in
Northern Ireland, the dice were loaded against those who were not wealthy.
He railed on…
“People like Randal bloody Atkins- the Doctor’s son-remember him?.....such a nerd –and
a “poser” he even wrote with his left hand-he got bonus marks every bloody
day!”
So one day I did cheat: it happened like this…..
One day we had to write a poem for “Pop” for homework and
my mum wrote it.
“January brings the snow,
Makes my toes and
fingers glow
February brings the
rain
…………………. again"
Pretty good for a seven year old..
A few days later I
was working in class. ‘Pop’ had given us
some work to do so he could do some marking. He was sitting directly behind me (probably in the very act
of giving Randal a bloody bonus mark!)
When ‘Pop’ tapped me on the shoulder and said.
“This poem is terrific, Donald –did you write it yourself?”
‘Yes sir” I lied” (Gollum guffawed)
I got my bonus mark! A bad habit to learn so early in life.
That would have been about 1960. As an adult in 1974, after
I had made the fatal decision to become a teacher, I was sent back to my
primary school in order to do my observations.
Lo and behold! , 'Pop’ was still there!. I was delighted to
see that he appeared to have forgiven me for asking my mum to write my poem-or
perhaps he hadn’t ever realized it was written by my mum. Anyway, I think he
was quite flattered to see an ex-pupil of his going on to become a teacher
–but
he seemed particularly pleased to
hear that I was not staying in Northern Ireland to do my training, but going
‘across the water’ to Bristol in England.
“Quite right’ why would you want to stay in a hole like
this?
Gollum chuckeled..
I agreed with Gollum that this was an amusing turn of
phrase.But I was still a bit prudish...
It wasn’t the sort of language I had expected to hear from “Pop”
my ex-teacher, mentor and appreciator of my (Mum's)
poetry. His comment prompted me to do some immediate reflection on the relative
merits of Northern Ireland and England as places to study and live.
Not that I hadn’t
already considered the merits of leaving Northern Ireland by that time. In fact
by the time I had decided to go to Bristol to train I had made two huge
decisions. Firstly, I had decided to
leave Ireland as I felt like an outsider. I couldn’t socialize proper;ly with
anybody either within the family or outside of it. I couldn’t stand Ireland-it
was so conventional and conservative.
Gollum was practically suicidal and urging me to all sorts of weird things-incuding leaving University before completing my fourth year.
The other decision was to teach in Africa.-one
major reason being that I couldn’t face the prospect of handling
discipline issues in a Government school in the UK. I knew the Africans would be
more keen to learn. But I mustn’t get ahead of myself.
Mum and Dad didn’t show much interest in most of my school work apart from the poem
“I am not surprised –it was so bloody boring!” said Gollum.
Dad worked for the government in horticulture. It was a
good job-but not very exciting I could
gather from the little he told me about it. He didn’t talk about it much and I never really figured out what he
did in detail. I guess it was mostly a desk job advising growers of fruit and vegetables on behalf of
the government. He like to get out and about. It was a safe job –and the only
job Dad ever had.
Dad’s big thing was gardening. He would come home from work about five
thirty. Some days he would play tennis or cricket with me but most days he
would just lose himself in his garden. He was the neighbourhood king and everyone on
our road knew about the Nixon’s garden. Oddly enough he never really tried to
induct me into the secrets of gardening. I have a modest interest in gardening
but never really got the gardening bug.
Not everyone on our
road was allowed in to see our garden. No, most people on our road were lower middle class wheras we were middle
class. There was a big difference. My two brothers and myself were sent to
private school-but most other people on “The road’ went to government school or
even grammar school (which was a still notch below Private school). Only people whose children went to private
school could qualify as real friends for the Nixons. This had one unfortunate
consequence for Dad- it reduced his audience-and Dad loved an audience. People
on the road were not generally invited into our home or to see our garden. The class thing was something that only became important for me later as my local friends
on the road were sent to different schools - so they made other friends to
play with instead of me. My friends from my school lived far away so I couldn’t bring
them to my home to play The friends on the road were perceived by Mum and Dad (and
thus by me eventually) to be from a different class.
Even though they were of the same class, most of the adults on the road didn’t socialize with each other
much as far as I could see. They were classic “Nouveau Riche”suburban
bourgeoisie in that they all did different jobs.
Occasionally, the interaction was memorable though. One of
our neighbours across the road was Mr McCullogh. He was the headmaster of a
school and famous for two things–his pigeons and his quick temper. Being the headmaster
of a school he was an obvious target for teasing by the youth on the road . On
one famous halloween night my eldest brother made the mistake of hurling a firework into the pigeon loft in order to
observe the consequences. I don’t know the details as I wasn’t an eyewitness, but
somehow “cudgewedge”, as we, less than affectionately referred to him, managed
to make contact with my brother’s head with a glass bottle as the former made
for the safety of home. Outraged, Mum tore across the road and laid into
cudgewedge verbally with a stream of verbal abuse. Needless to say “Cudgewedge”
was never spoken to again by anyone in the Nixon family.
I think the feelings were mutual!
Ms Macadam was a very mild and even-tempered lady whose
classes were particularly boring–and they must have been for her too I think.
She would give us some sums to do and then leave the class to go and have a fag
or a chat or whatever she did I haven’t the slightest idea. But when she was
out she would choose someone to watch the rest of the class. The ‘Kapo’(a
Kapo was a guard in a concentration camp
in Nazi Germany who was a prisoner him or herself) would stand at the front of
the class and write the initials of
anyone who uttered a word in the corner of the blackboard.He was forced to
become a snitch for Mrs Macadam. Strangely, I was never chosen to be a Kapo- although I’m
sure Gollum would have enjoyed it. Even stranger still, none of my classsmates, not even Gollum- held the treacherous behavior of the Kapos against them
afterwards. Children are very forgiving.
Perhaps unwittingly or maybe deliberately I don’t know, , Mrs Macadam
was teaching us important lessons on group behavior, but in particular that most important lifeskill
for the twenty-first century workplace-how to dob in your friend to the boss. The
sad thing for me in the workplaces whare I have worked has been to see how many
of the Kapo-like colleagues of mine wanted to be Kapos and enjoyed the power it
gave them. It never really bothered them that they were destroying the careers of their
colleagues in their enthusiasm to advance themelves-or just survive.
Gollum roared into life
“ So what!–what else could they have done? They had to survive and protect
their own jobs!”
“Quite, Gollum, but not at someone else’s
expense-particularly mine. Sometimes I think Gollum, you would have pushed your
Grandmother off the bus to get her seat”
“That sounds like something I would have said” said Gollum.
“It sounds like something you would have done, too”
“ Grow up mate! These people wanted to be Kapos because they
had to feed themselves and their children”(just like some polish prisoners in
Auschwitz) insisted Gollum who seemed to know a bit about history..
Gollum always wanted to have the last word.
But he didn’t always win.
‘They wanted to be Kapos because they enjoyed the power” I
said
As my career progressed, I would observe with disdain time and again the treacherous sycophants in staffrooms who
curried favour with the bosses at the expense of colleagues. When I think back
now I realize that Mrs Mcadam has helped me to understand the motivation for such
behavior. There must have been many other 'Mrs Macadams' in Primary schools all
over the world teaching children how to behave like Kapos.
My best friend was David “hairy’ Hide. We used to play marbles
together at break.He was a soft and gentle soul. My first crush was Margaret
Redpath. I can still remember her freckled face perfectly. I never spoke to her
but was content just to look at her and listen to her voice. She was a soft and
gentle wee girl.
Although I was definitely too cowardly to be a real troublemaker,
I had some early brushes with authority which didn’t augur well for me. I
wasn’t a rebel but when it came to authority I just seemed to be accident
prone. I definitely came off worst in these skirmishes. For, example, one
morning just before the bell rang for roll-call at primary school, a fight
developed close to me. As the Irish love to fight, immediately the combatants
were surrounded by a circle of admiring fans cheering the combatants on..
“Roll-up!, Roll-up!
big fight!”
was the enthusiastic chant of all and sundry. The playground was
busy and very noisy.I found myself in the outer ring of the admiring spectators
of the fight watching the fight but minding my own business. Of course I was as curious as everyone
else to see the fight, but I was small and couldn’t see much so I stood on my
tip-toes peering over the shoulders of other children to try and get a glimpse
of the combatants. As luck would have
it, I was directly in the line from the Headmaster’s office to the fight. Suddenly, Mr. Lance (not his real name) appeared with his
lieutenants and after breaking up the fight sent the two combatants to his
office for disciplinary measures. That was that. Fair enough! But as he was
turning to accompany the miscreants to their painful fate in his office, he
suddenly stuck out his arm and grabbed me by the shoulder.
“You too!”
I was dumbfounded but bundled off by his lieutenants to his office. I stood meekly and trembling in the office. He was angry. I was dealt with
first. He turned to me first with a
black and menacing look.
“Hold out your hand, boy!”
Thwack! his cane down stinging my
palm. “That is for watching the fight. Now go back to class!”
I couldn’t contain my tears as I entered Mrs Macadam’s
class. I don’t know what I told her but it must have been a lie. Gollum was
furious and rushed to my aid. I could hear him muttering to himself
“ He is a thug you didn't deserve that?!'
I could never forget or understand the humiliation. Gollum
was right: what had I done to deserve it?
Sadly, as with my drunken paedophile friend I never even dreamt of telling Mum and Dad about the incident. It just
seemed like they wouldn’t be interested or they would find some way of blaming
me for Mr. Lance’s cruel behavior. That was the Nixon way-they never stood up
for each other. I was beginning to
realize that Gollum was my only true friend. Only he would defend me.
I met Mr Lance about thirty-five years later socially as he
was an acquaintance of Mum and Dad. Like Pop Mawhinney, he didn’t remember me
of course. He still had those huge, menacing teeth-like piano keys. I found it difficult to
warm to the creature. I felt sure he
would remember my face from thirty five years ago in the office.
I imagined him fixing me with a pensive look and a a finger
on his chin saying..
“ Yee..es, I think
I remember you were the naughty little boy who was watching that fight! with
his characterisitic,unforgettable and all-knowing nasal drawl. I’m a bit
surprised someone like you wants to
be a teacher!…”
To my surprise, he
seemed very affable at this meeting. He obviously couldn’t remember me from
'Adam'
On another occasion I paid an unwelcome visit to Mr Lance’s office. At break time, I
was waddling along on my own amusing myself I can’t think how. Workmen had been
digging and had sowed some grass near to our play area. The soil was
temporarily ‘out of bounds’. This upturned soil bordered the concrete play area. I was amusing myself by tiptoeing
along the edge of the concrete play area when I accidentally slipped off the
concrete and put my foot on the soil. It was clearly an accident and only one
foot transgressed on to the loose earth (which I think had been sown with grass).
somehow some 'Kapo' someone saw me and I was taken to Mr. Lance where he promptly delivered the
cane with enthusiasm to my outstretched hand. There was never any dissussion
with Mr. Lance. He was a man of few words.
Other flashbacks relate to Mum and Dad. Dad had built a lovely tree house and I
remember having breakfast in it one Sunday morning sitting on the orange boxes
we used as chairs. I remember sitting on some wet paint in the tree-house. My
lovely white shorts were probably (irretrievably)
damaged by sitting on the fresh paint. I remember flying past Mum so she wouldn’t see me, going
upstairs, and burying the shorts at the bottom of the dirty clothes box so that
Mum wouldn’t find them for a while. When, a few days later, she asked what had
happened Gollum advised me to invent some story about sitting on the tar on the road on a hot summer’s day. I was terrified of disobeying
Mum directly-particularly as I had been told by her specifically not to go into
the treehouse until the paint was dry! This little anecdote reveals quite a lot about
my personality and Mum’s. Both Gollum and I were cowards and had tried to deceive Mum. Mum could be fierce when angry and she scared the hell
out of me!
Dad was fair but distant and could also be firm. He never lost it like
Mum did, but I remember one day when I was about twelve, I was hanging about
on the garage roof smoking a cigarette when Dad called me down. He must have
smelled the smoke. He took me upstairs and made me take down my pants and
thrashed me.
Poor Dad! He didn’t like hitting me -I could see it on his
face. He soon forgot the incident, though I didn’t obviously. I felt what he did
was reasonable under the circumstances-unlike the caning by Mr Lance in Primary
school for watching the fight!
Perhaps these early experiences
influenced my perception of justice. I don’t know.But I soon started to develop an enthusiasm for
defending the weak and the persecuted-especially if it was me being persecuted!
Young friends and neighbours
Douglas Bennettt was our neighbour. He was a year older than
me but I reckoned I was middle class and Douglas lower –middle class and so I
considered myself superior as we grew up. (Mr and Mrs Bennet were never invited in to see Dad’s garden!)
‘Doogie’ was the youngest of three boys and although he was a rough diamond –he was really quite a decent and happy boy ,albeit with a few rough
edges. Like all of us he had a short temper and when riled could be ferocious:
I was always small for my age and he was much stronger than me. On one
occasion, when he was dissatisfied with me for some reason or another he spread-eagled me with my back to the gound and
then twisted my arm behind my back until
I howled with pain. He then proceeded to
deposit his spittle into my open mouth!
To be fair to Doogie, he
had probably learned this technique from his demonic brother , Peter. I forgave
Doogie a lot because he was bullied appallingly by his brothers Peter and Raymond and
I felt sorry for him.. Doogie grew up to be a policeman and was awarded a medal
for bravery when he saved a boy from drowning in a river..
25/08/2012
I still think forgive most people their transgressions pretty easily:
when we first arrived in Australia in Victoria I made one good friend within a
few months. The Aussies might have called Eamon a ‘mate’-but to me he was a real
friend. For me, there is a difference. It
seems to me that ‘mateship’ in Australia means being helpful and exchanging
favours with someone else. But to me, friendship usually involves more than this-other
things–especially the willingness to relax and spend time with a friend is important to cementing frindship. Not just playing some sport with them. In the
industrialised countries and ,sad to say, now increasingly in the industrializing countries, people just don’t seem to me to be willing to do this
anymore.
Gollum…Absolutely mate! In England, Ireland Australia, people think it is more important to use their time
doing other things than making
friendships .They’ll play sport, renovate homes, drink to excess, or work themselves until they are exhausted.
All are substitutes for intimacy. They all have convinced themselves they need to be so
bloody busy.
‘I’m sorry I gotta go’ they’ll say…
“ Where to?”
“Oh.. eh..a meeting… to meet
someone.. to wash the dishes… to pick up a child… home, out…, in….shopping…,make
a call….. somewhere….. everywhere… anywhere but stay and waste my time with you.”
“Well F*** off then if you’re too busy to build
a friendship with me then... up yours!”
Gollum was pretty upset on my behalf. This
was one of his pet topics.
Anyway... as I was saying before Gollum so
rudely interrupted..
To me Eamon was a real friend.
He was real. He was prepared to spend
time with us as a family, not just help us move house.
Gollum had calmed down and said in a rather sad and plaintive voice
“He chatted to me… laughed with me…. worked with
me and we did things together. We were like children....We just chatted about
everything.”
So rare among men in the developed world..
I agree with Gollum. An Australian, Englishman
or Irishman will indeed fix your leaking
tap or help you with a problem with your
airconditioner or car, or lend you some furniture-but, almost to a man, they won’t just hang out with you and have a chat. Its
not just that they feel that would somehow this be a complete waste of time. The fact is I think they would feel threatened by that. They seem uncomfortable unless they are doing something. They won’t jointly plan
a barbecue with you included. And it
is hard to get them to go with you as their guest on any joint activity
even a barbecue. They are always ’busy’ and ‘have to go’
somewhere.
Eamon was an exception (in
Australia)
Gollum was getting riled up
again…this time on Eamon’s behalf
“ Yeah, Eamon was a good
friend..and don’t kid yourself twin brother! Westerners think foreigners and
migrants have got nothing to offer. They
need to feel superior and they make migrants feel like they've got some contagious disease. They think
their shit doesn’t stink! They always try to make me feel they don’t need anything from me. They think
they’ve got it all and they don’t need anyone!
I could see Gollum was going just a little over the
top..
“But Gollum, don’t you see that
they are just afraid of you? Don’t
you think they are just a little bit jealous of migrants?
But Gollum was gone. He was lost in his own rage. He wasn’t listening to
me .He wasn’t listening to anyone when he was in this mood. He was consumed by
his own anger.
But Gollum was right. We have
tried in vain in Australia to find friends
who aren’t too
‘busy’ to spend time with us.
Most are totally disinterested. Australia is a lonely place for the
migrant-especially, if you don’t have many contemporaries of your own ethnicity
migrating with you at the same time. If you are in a group you can support each
other, but the ‘loan’ migrant is in a different situation. Being Irish
originally I had the advantage of being able to speak English-but, the truth is
after twenty-five years my family are all still very lonely in Australia. All of our friends are other migrants.
We are resigned to this because there
is nothing we can do about it. The ball is not in our court-it is in the court
of the hosts-the Aussies in this case. I have heard many , many similar stories
form migrants in England, Ireland, Holland, Germany and and the USA.
Eamon was the exception who
proves the rule: he is (was) the only ‘True
Blue’ Aussie male that I ever met who would spend any time with me or indeed
with us as a family. We did barbecues
together –sometimes with my family and his –but sometimes with just the two of
us.
And of course one day Eamon did
blot his copy book…
We asked him to look after our
house while we went to Queensland for a break. When we came back my bank phoned
me to ask me if I had used a particular cheque.
“No” I said. I didn’t write that cheque.
Can you come to the bank and
talk to us?
As luck would have it on the way
to the bank I bumped into Eamon
“Hi Eamon –just on the way to
the bank. Guess what? They think someone
may have stolen a cheque from my cheque book!”
Eamon’s face completely
collapsed.
He descended into confusion and
said something to the effect that he was desperately sorry but it was he who had taken the cheque!. He had seen the cheque
book in the house and had been tempted. He
implored me not to go the bank and said
he had intended to return the money and had been really short.
I was dumbfounded!
I knew it was true. He had four
children and he didn’t have much work.
‘No worries mate’ I mumbled-not
knowing where to look. ‘I’ll not go the bank’
I think I was even more embarrassed than Eamon.
I had no trouble forgiving
Eamon. I knew he had problems and in my opinion, he had given me and my family much more of himself than most people. He had
given us his time and attention. He chatted with us, visited us, and did things
together with us. That was easily worth more than the hundred dollars he had
stolen. He was a true friend.
Some years later I heard that Eamon
was tempted again later and ended up in Pentridge
prison for a while for embezzlement.
Maybe he was flawed but in my eyes he was a true friend-and I found it easy to forgive him.
Let’s get back to talking about Doogie….….
Doogie and I used to knock about a lot in the afternoons
after school playing cricket etc. He was treated with total contempt by his
elder brothers –especially Peter. Peter specialised in terrorizing Doogie when
he failed to do as the former wished, which was almost all of the time. His speciality was twisting Doogie’s arm
behind his back until Doogie, howling
like a crazed wolf, uttered the life saving words
“I submit!”.
Thus humiliated , Doogie would be left in a whimpering heap on the ground.
Mum was hypersensitive and short-tempered or to use her
own words ‘Highly-strung’ These were
both qualities which she passed on to me. However, she did not have m sense of outrage at the injustices of the world.
According to Mum, on one occasion, out of the corner of her
eye, Mum saw a fleeting image of Doogie being pursued by Peter down the garden
next door. A few moments later,
screeching and howling, Doogie reappeared being frog-marched by his brother with his arm
twisted behind his back. She saved the howling Doogie from a beating by bellowing out the window in a loud voice “Leave that boy
alone!” Fortunately (for Mum) Mrs Bennet
was nowhere to be seen. In those days bullies like Peter did what their elderly
neighbours told them to do. I’m not so sure what would happen today.
Doogie duly learned from
Peter how to deal with his annoying young sister Rosemary.
Doogie found that twisting her arm around her back had the
pleasurable effect of making Rosemary do what ever he wanted with the additional
bonus of making her screech to high heaven in agony. Rosemary was Doogies younger
sister ‘Yomie’ or “The Kid’ as she was
called by her brothers.
I didn’t have much to do with ‘The Kid’ when she was
younger. She was a year younger than me and, of course, she was lower-middle
class and not middle class.
But that all changed
one day…
As a teenager she started to climb the trees next door and
watch us playing cricket. She didn’t (not surprisingly) give her brothers too much
trouble and for many years neither I nor my friends on the road took any
interest in her whatsoever. After all, she was a girl. However, when
we became teenagers things
suddenly changed and Rosemary started to
perch herself in a tree next door to watch us playing cricket.We pretended not
to notice as we strutted our stuff on
the cricket field next door-that is to say–in our back garden.
One fine summers evening when I was about fourteen, 'Rhino' and I managed to entice “The Kid” to get
down from tree and into our garden. I have to confess that most
of the enticing was done by Rhino. In fact, I had no idea about how to go about
enticing Yomie. Rhino had an advantage: he had two sisters and he
went to a mixed school. He knew how to treat girls. I had two brothers–and was
a at an all boys school. I was clueless.
Of course it really galled me that it was
Rhino the ‘The Kid’ was primarily interested in. By this time, Rhino was
well-built and more handsome. My girlish good looks could not compete. Nevertheless, I was happy enough to tag along on the coat tails of Rhino in
order to get a little piece- my first ever
piece- of whatever I sensed Rhino was going to get from Yomie. There is a certain innocence and honesty about
sex in teenagers which I find admirable:
all three of us immediately disappeared behind the swing seat for my first ever grope.
I remember being absolutely amazed that ‘The Kid’ seemed to enjoy what we were
doing to her as much we were enjoying what we were doing to her. I was
amazed that she seemed just as keen to do to us what we were doing to her. I
remember being stunned by this revelation.
I know that Mum never
suspected that her son would do such a thing. As for a threesome Mum wouldn’t have know what it was even if it was
explained to her carefully in words of one syllable. For that matter, I don’t
think any of thr particpants of us knew
what it was before it happened. As for starting off my sex life with a
threesome-well I can hardly believe it myself.
Mum was nothing if not ‘ prim and proper’ and. like everything else, I
would never in a million years have told her about cavorting with Yomie behind
the swing-seat. No...I doubt if even the KGB could have made me admit to
it..
This brings to mind two other incidents to do with
adolescent sex which must have taken place at around the same time: one took place in Enniskillen
near Granny’s house. Joyce was attractive
and the sister of my friend Johnnie
M. One evening Joyce was persuaded by some of the neighbourhood studs
to rendezvous in a building site for a grope. I remember there was no messing
around by the lads: no kissing-that was for sissies. Just groping. This was one
of the few occasions when I remember being permitted by my brother P to socialize with the
same people he did. Being four years older than me P would usually never
be seen dead with his kid brother. But he made an exception on this occasion.
Joyce seemed up for it with any of the lads between thirteen to seventeen. She didn’t seem to
mind who was groping her. Most of it took place in the dark anyway and I’m sure
she couldn’t see who was groping her. As I was in seventh heaven groping her
friend, I remember thinking to myself. “God this is nice for me–great in fact-but
how can she be enjoying it?” Somehow I still
had the idea that only boys enjoyed sex. Girls just had to
put up with us boys wanting it. I did not appreciate that the vagina was as
sensitive sexual organ like my own. This is a belief which persisted with me well into my adulthood.
Why? Probably through ignorance– after
all I had only brothers and went to a boys only school. Maybe if I had done
Biology instead of Latin I might have understood more about the mechanics of
sex.
Gollum puts in’’’
You were just bloody chicken, mate, I remember you well. You
had your chances: but when you saw a
girl you just ran away. I saw you do it
once Cluck!, Cluck!
He was right. One of the more irritating things about Gollum is that he has
a photographic memory.
I remember the incident he is talking about very well. I was about fourteen- and it took place around
about the same time as the threesome behind the swing seat with Yomie.
In my defence, let me preface this story: these were the awful years-between fourteen and sixteen.
Legally, we were not allowed to
drink or have sex with girls. But, that
is what everyone else –including adults- seemed to do on a Saturday night. It
also seemed like a pretty good idea to Rhino and I. But, at fourteen, I looked
like twelve-and would not have been admitted to a disco. Even if I had got in I
would have been clueless as to how to approach girls. All the fourteen year old
girls were taken by sixteen year old boys, anyway.
Rhino and I were by
now typical bored teenagers with bugger all to do on a Saturday night.
What were we to do to satisfy our adolescent lust? It was really down to groping oneself. But after a
while this grew boring especially as both Rhino and I had already been introduced to the pleasures
of the ‘threesome’ by ‘The Kid”
I was accompanying ‘Rhino’ on a ‘walk’ along Church road one
evening. We were following two girls. This was unusual on the road as there
were no girls on the road –apart from the Kid-and we could see that neither of these two females was ‘The Kid’
Rhino’s instinct was
to try and catch up with them and wolf whistle at them -which he promptly did.
I was very perplexed by this crude behavior.
How could he be so crude? I almost felt like apologising to the poor girls for
Rhino’s ungentlemanly behaviour.
There was a puritan streak in me. I would understand if the girls were offended at Rhino’s loutish attitude.
I felt sure the girls wanted only to engage us in an intellectual conversation about the meaning of life. I was sure that was what they wanted....
To my astonishment, the girls however, in a swift manouever
designed to prolong the flirtation took a swift turn right down a road in front of us flashing their eyes with a coquettish glance over their shoulders as they did so.
Then, to my complete and utter disbelief the girls wolf
whistled back at us! ‘Rhino’ was
delighted and wanted to take off after
them for a snog and a grope in the bushes . But the easy going Rhino
hadn’t reckoned with the nerd from the boys only ‘Prep’ school. My response was to start running straight down the road at a tangent to the way
the girls were going! I was such a coward! This realisation that I was nervous
around girls was excrutiatingly painful for me -and came with great feelings of disappointment with myself and great shame. It is a feeling which has stayed with me in
some measure through all of my adult life.
It was easy for Rhino-he knew what to do cause he had been
practicing all day at school.
“Let’s get out of
here!” I said breathlessly.
We eventually accelerated
away and disappeared out of sight-and ‘out of danger’
So, you ran away!
said Gollum
No, it was you who ran away, I said
“Same difference”-said Gollum
I don’t really know what Rhino made of it all–or the girls.
But none of us went back to that spot on the next Saturday night.
I never saw the girls again.
I was beginning to think I was going to have problems with
girls.
I was right.
Other incidents took
place at prep school. There wasn’t much sex there of course because there were no girls. This didn’t
stop the more adventurous of the boys talking about girls though, and it didn’t
stop the more mature boys from asking me to go into the bushes with them for a
grope as a substitute for the real thing.
I didn’t dare talk about girls cause I didn’t know the first thing about them
and I was terrified of losing face in front of the other
boys. I was interested of course... so I just learned to listen to them talk or
brag. I became a follower, and not a leader in this area of my education. I
remember the exact moment when I relegated myself to a follower rather than a
leader.
It happened in school. I was listening to one guy who I considered
to be pretty odd in appearance (compared to myself, who was totally normal, of
course). I actually thought this little bugger to be downright
unattractive physically.
The problem was that from what he said he was obviously attractive enough to be snogging,
kissing and groping–and doing God knows what other things with the girls at the weekends!
It wasn’t just bragging –it was clear he knew what he was
doing!
Slowly, I had to admit to myself that no girl had
theretofore ever shown even
the slightest flicker of interest in me. With
hindsight it is easy now to to see why: M was well-built, confident, had
money to throw around, and shaved. Although I had a gigantic intellect of
course, I was small, slight, puny even,
and didn’t know how to use a razor.
For the first time I
became anxious and sad.It took me a long time to accept defeat. Surely it was
obvious to those sensible girls out there-and they all were
sensitive (weren’t they?) I mean they must all be sensitive……mustn’t they?
Surely it was obvious that I was an intellectual powerhouse who reflected on the deep and meaningful things of life? Surely it was obvious that when I opened my mouth,
they would find something profound and
attractive in my utterances – so profound and attractive that
they would queue up to get my
autograph? . I would sit around with the
girls ,and have stimulating intellectual conversations?
Surely there was more to this marvelous thing called life
than having a frantic grope with yomie
behind the swing-seat?
Gollum interjected…
“I kept telling you the answer again and again but you
wouldn’t listen he insisted..
Gollum was right: I spent years, decades even, trying to
interest girls in my mind. I was maybe forty –or even older fifty before Gollum finally made me realize that all those sweet, sensitive girls wanted not my mind, but my body! Well..
maybe not my body but any body ... well, at least M's seemed to
do. Indeed... a furtive grope with a pretentious buck toothed snob like
M would do just fine for them.!
Gollum hooted with laughter
I should have listened to Gollum when we both were
younger. If he had, He mightned hsve
turned out such a nasty piece of work himself ..
The insidious process of loss of self confidence was to poison my social relations with the opposite sex –possibly
for ever- but at least until I was well into
my thirties-until I met Maria.
The collapse began when I was about thirteen. It is the most horrible age for a boy. It took me
many years to realize that it was not insight or intelligence which turned the
girls on-it was either brawn or wit. I didn’t have the former and at fourteen, the latter was disappearing gradually due to my lack of
confidence. It was a vicious circle. I watched my confidence disappear within
the next few years like watching water going down the bathroom plughole.
It never really
reappeared until I was married when I was thirty–two and even then it was
only a temporary reappearance.
Brothers
Around primary school
and Prep school age I really didn’t have
much to do with my elder brother P.
He was four years older and only spent time with me when he was bored. We did play table
tennis occasionally. Sometimes when he was bored , he bullied me for his own amusement. He used to
take advantage of my short temper to tease me mercilessly by calling me names
and then assaulting me. The assaults were never extreme enough for me to enlist the
protection of my parents-but they were painful sometimes. Mostly, he just ignored
me. He regarded me as being of little consequence. He baited me mercilessly and
I learned to defend myself in similar
vein-but, being four years older, he was much better at it than I was!
We were of very different temperament and he had very
little , if any, filial feelings for me
at all that I can remember. He was an extrovert and thought I was a ‘sissy’. His nickname for me
was ‘worm’
I remember one time after he baited me flying into a rage. Taking
off my off my belt I and ran after him flailing
my belt wildly at him. I chased him out of the kitchen into the dining
room. He managed to close the dining room door just in time but the belt buckle hit the door and
left two deep visible dents which stayed there
for half a century-testament to
my temper and our poor relationship! The interesting thing was that I haven’t
the slightest idea what it was he said to me to provoke such a reaction! Isn’t
it strange what the human mind
remembers. It is never the content with me –it is the emotion. It is the same
today when someone asks me if I have
read a book or seen a movie. I
can not remember what it was about but
only that it was a wonderful book. I
can remember the emotion , but not the content.
My eldest brother R I can remember almost nothing about..
He was a remote and distant figure. I
know that there was a period when he, too, bullied Philip physically. Again, I
don’t remember the details. The only details I can I can remember about him related to me is that
he used to call me ‘Duff’ as a nickname ( for reasons which I never understood)
and he used to tell me off if I farted
in his presence. R was three years older than P and therefore seven
years older than I was.
Teenage neighbourhood chums
As teenagers we got up to all sorts of pranks. A lot of the
action took place in Dad’s garden, or in
the grounds of the Government school across the hedge at the bottom of the garden in the evenings.
In the evenings, my friends and I would go down to the school
and clamber up the drainpipes and all over the rooves of the local high
school-which M and Doogie attended. It was illegal and the watchman did catch us
once and threaten to Dob us in to the
police. But he somehow seemed to know that I was not really a vandal (Can you
see Ross or Chandler being a vandal?) and let us go with a
telling off and dire warnings. Besides he knew we lived in the “bourgeois” houses
next door to the school grounds-not in the estates from which the pupils of the
school were drawn. The class divisions in Northern Ireland are everywhere to be
seen..
A much more dangerous activity than climbing on the roves was shooting
at milk bottles in their their crates with home-made rifles. The rifles were
made from wood, copper pipe, and gunpowder from fireworks and fishing ‘lead
shot’ weights as bullets This was highly dangerous-which was why we did it of course! But it was good clean, fun and
we never intended to harm anyone.
We also fished for sticklebacks in the Enler river which ran
through this school at the bottom of the garden. I remember one evening being caught fishing by the headmaster and told to clear off home.
He seemed to think fishing for sticklebacks was a subversive activity. We also used to throw ‘throwing arrows’ in the
school grounds. These were arrows made form birch or beech trees.We split their
ends and put feathers in them for balance. We had competitions to see who could
throw them the furthest. It was never me. I would have remembered!
The pump house was a shack in the school grounds which
housed a back-up electrical generator. It was at an isolated location
in the school grounds and had fallen into
disuse. This was a den of illicit activities-mostly smoking and reading
pornographic magazines. My little group of friends was divided as to whether
they regarded visits to the pump house as acceptable or not. Some did, (M
and Doogie) some didn’t (Rhino and his brother A). Philosophically, I was
on the fence I think, but I went there occasionally, nevertheless! Doogie went
there all the time to meet
girls from the
Girls High school.
Rhino’s brother A was an interesting character. He was
older than the rest of us but we gave him hell because he wouldn’t do what we
all did –climb trees and play tig etc.-anything involving physical exercise. As
a result he was regarded as a wet
blanket and a killjoy. He was a grumpy
bugger. One day, when he was fourteen
all was revealed when Rhino announced that his brother A was going into
hospital to have an operation for a “hole in the heart’. We were led to
understand that the operation was dangerous. Indeed it was and A didn’t
recover from it. It explained many things –particularly his inability to
participate in all the physical activities with us –and his sudden conversion
to Christianity about a year before the
operation. He used to go to church voluntarily, which none of us could
understand as teenagers. . Sunday school was incredibly boring and,
fortunately Mum and Dad never
insisted us to go to Church.I think they
knew it was boring and that was why they didn’t go themselves. Our Methodist
Church even made the cub scouts boring. We seemed to spend all our time
dressing up in uniforms and tieing knots.
Stealing “Nicking”apples from orchards in the neighbour’s
gardens was a major relief from boredom in the summers. All the neighbour’s gardens were regarded as legitimate targets. We
were never caught-perhaps because the neighbours parents would have been too embarrassed to confront our
parents. I am sure they all knew who was nicking their apples.
Some kids on the road were ‘persona non grata’ for many
years. Myths grew up arouind these figures. Ronnie M was rumoured to have
a gang of aggressive friends who would
attempt to beat us up if given the opportunity. We therefore had to construct
defensive positions by digging holes at
the bottom of our garden in case Ronnie and his gang attacked us. These holes
were covered with grass and twigs and had bags of water inside them in order to
deter Ronnie and his gang from attacking us. In vain we waited in our bunker at
the bottom of the garden for Ronnie to attack us. He never came-but we enjoyed
many a raosted spud in the fires we lit in front of our bunker. A few years
later I met Ronnie –and he was actually a very nice fellow.
Our road had a legitimate territory which we were careful
not to stray too far from. We certainly didn’t want to meet up with the feared
‘Burns gang’ from Ardcarn or with Davie
Boyd from the Comber road-a fate worse than death!
Some
of our adult
neighbours were odd too. One night when M and I had nothing better to do
we were surprised by the view through the sitting room window of one of our
neighbours. M and I could clearly see David A, the coal merchant,
snogging
his wife. We yelled encouragement form the
road. We were about twenty metres to the window form the road and we
thought we were a safe distance away should
the happy couple take exception to our voyeurism..
On hearing us, he leapt up from the sofa,
burst out through the door, picked up the
nearest iron bar,
and hurled it at us. It
embedded itself in the bank at our feet quite quite close to us.Undaunted, we
then decided that we were far enough away from him to hurl some verbal abuse at
him with out fear of retribution.
We were mistaken.
Mr A sprinted towards us. M and I tore off us like a bat out of hell. We escaped down the
road to the school (yet again!) M went first and I followed as usual. But
A was gaining on us fast. Michael, shrewdly took a sharp left in to the dark night whereas
I kept going on the straight and narrow. After a long chase A eventually caught up with me. I was whimpering
in the door of a house when he came upon me and threatened to do all sorts of
things to me. He scared the hell out of me. Fortunately, it was only verbal abuse though and his bark turned out to
be much worse than is bite. I can’t remember a single word he said. Strange
that, considering the emotional intensity of the situation.
On another night, when Rhino and I
were
returning from the cub scouts, we had to take a short cut through the school
grounds at the bottom of our garden. In those days the school grounds were not
protected with much security.. As we approached our garden we both were sure we
saw an eerie apparition on the hill. It was the classical ‘white sheet’ ghost
apparition. Anyhow it scared the hell out of Rhino and I and we backtracked
along the comber road to take the long way home. When we got home I remember
the fear of going round to the back door of our house which wasn’t all that far
from
where the apparition had been seen. I was
petrified. It turned out to be a prank played on us by my brother
P and his friend Glover Jackson who,
knowing we would be returning through the school had wrapped themselves in a
white sheet and taken up a conspicuous position on the hill in the school
grounds!
I became a bit prudish. In my prep school days we developed a fad or slang subculture of
spelling words backwards, or at least mixing up the syllables. As my best
friend was nicknamed ‘Rhino’ we tried referring to him as ‘OnihR’ but it didn’t
roll off the tongue very well –so it became corrupted first to “Orine” and then
, since we were at that age, naturally, “Urine”. For me this was fine –as long
as we kept it low profile and within the group. But interestingly enough to Nixon watchers and other students of
personality- I had my scruples at that age – and I was not happy about ‘Urine’ being used in public.
But M had no
such scruples. One day M spotted the hapless Rhino and bellowed ‘UUUUUrine!’ at the top of his voice down the
road. Rhino was at a distance of about
50 metres within earshot of all and sundry. My response was to rush in
and have one of only two physical fist-fights
I have ever had in my life -with
M-to ‘punish’ him for his unseemly outburst. That day I learned there was a puritan streak in the Nixon psyche. I also
learned that I couldn’t fight as I came off very much the worst against
M. Meanwhile, Rhino seemed to find the whole thing amusing. I didn’t
speak to M for several days to punish him. Fighting other peoples
battels, at my own expense, was a trick Gollum taught me early on, and something I still do!
M lived across the road, His father worked in the aircraft factory in Belfast and had a
good job but he was an alcoholic and nobody really saw much of him. His mother
Maisie had a tough job bringing up M and his younger sister Rosemary more
or less on her own. Michael was a
daredevil and a bit wild because of the lack of close supervision from his Dad.
I watched, applauded and egged him on alternating between awe and envy at his
exploits. Michael needed the hero
worship and I was happy to provide it most of the time.
He was the “Gider” champion.
A gider was a Go-kart. He would make (and I would watch him make) a
gider by what appeared to me to be magic. All he needed was old pram wheels and
some planks of wood and a hammer.
Like a madman M would fly down a long inclined
driveway into the school at the bottom
of our garden and disappear through an
archway. Each time he did this, my heart missed a beat as I was sure it would
be the last time I saw him. But he always returned to perform again for his admirer.
M liked to be praised and he got most of it from me.
Another thing M was good at was making rifles.. He would get a hollow piece of copper
pipe as a gun barrel and fit it onto a wooden rifle butt made from a plank. The
open end of the pipe would back up against the wood. Gunpowder from fireworks
was placed in the barrel along with lead
shot (from fishing tackle) in front of a ‘wad’of paper. He would then drill a hole ( and I would watch) at one end
and put in the touch paper from the fireworks. I would then take over: he would
light the touch paper as I aimed at a
crate of empty milk bottles at the
school at the bottom of the garden. even in my spare time I was obsessed with
schools. I never seemed to be able to get away from them, even in my spare
time.Little did I suspect at the time that I would be in educational
institutions of one kind or another for the next fifty years!
Bang! And the milk bottles would shatter –a schoolboy’s
delight!
When I told my son , S about this recently he was horrified. He just could not get his
head around the fact hat his respectable teacher father could have indulged in
such an activity.
M and I were both great tree climbers . We would climb
those trees at the bottom of our garden and cross form one to the other at a considerable
height. I don’t think Mum and Dad never
knew the half of these exploits. We carved
our initials in the trees– still there I believe. D.N. 12th of July
1962. That would have been when I was ten years old.
In these days M was the leader and I
was the follower. Although he could do
everything
I felt superior to him because
I felt I was
middle cleass and M
was lower middle class. In othr words I was a frightful snob at ten years old.
Dad used to take us both to the public swimming baths every
Tuesday night. This was the treat of the
week. I would eat liqourice and crisps. But the thing I remember most about
these nights was the way Dad talked to M. He talked to him like he
was this 'macho' type son he had always wanted.It was becoming obvious to me
that I was not the sort of son Dad had wanted. In fact he really wanted a daughter as I think I mentioned before! I could see I
was a disappointment to him.
This made me feel that I should be like M. M was
a talker and a smiler. He did things. He was the sort of son to make an
Ulsterman proud. Pretty soon, I realised
I could never be like that so I
determined to keep reminding myself that I
was upper middle class and M wasn’t. I was better than M at school.
“M was thick” said Gollum
Yes, he was, and yet
Dad liked him better than he liked me.
I was confused.
What a different life I had as a child compared to my own
children.
Another thing M and I
had were endless pets-not just the family dog–but our own mice, rabbits and
even Bantam hens. How many kids today in suburbia understand the joy of owning
and having somebody else (Mum and Dad)
look after all these animals? I may have been
lonely, but I was always able to commune with
my bantams: Higildy , Pigildy , Bert and
Gerald. Mum had a penchant for naming them. My favourite was
‘Dosy’ as in one of the seven dwarves.
How caring and thoughtful my parents were to give us all
these animals and things! Mind you, I had a sneaking feeling that
they had the animals as much for themselves as
they did for us. Both Mum and Dad grew up in
country towns and the animals must have reminded them of their own
childhood..
4/9/2012
Would you like a seat? The youth
was sitting on the seat looking at me. I
suddenly realized he was addressing me. I was standing on a tram holdiog on to the
pole. This really brought it home to me-yes, I am now a senior citizen. What’s
more important - I look like a senior ctizen! I still think of myself as being
about thirty nine -except when I bend down, try
to put my socks on, or try to walk!
Migration and self-congratulation
I have returned from Malaysia to
Adelaide and just turned 60. I am happy to be back with M again in our
rented apartment, content just doing
some tutoring to pay for the groceries. M pays the rent in her childcare
job teaching ‘tots’ four days a week from 7.30 in the morning till five at
night with only a thirty minute unpaid lunch break. That is a very long time to be on your feet teaching
3 and 4 year olds. Of course she has applied for an endless number of jobs as
aprimary teacher in Adelaide since she returned four years ago form Borneo, and
has never got even an interview.This is
inspite of the fact that her degree from Mexico is recognized in
Australia,and that she did her Post graduate teacher traning degree in
Queensland, has taught for two years in Queensland,and has taught succesfully
in Borneo at an International school for six years across all of the early
years of primary.
Go figure!
Turn on the television or read
the ‘Australian' and you will be treated to the spectacle of Australia
politicians and their lackeys in the media endlessly congratulating themselves
on how successful Australia has been
in assimilating foreign migrants
into the economy.
Go figure!
Last night, I was at
Bridgebuilders- a volunteer organization which assists refugees where we were addressed by an experienced Burmese
accountant who had been three years in Australia trying to get a job as
an accountant without success. His message to the assembled new arrivals among whom there were
three other unemployed accountants was
“Don’t give up-I worked in aged care for three years-eventually you will get a
job”
Admirable indeed..but why did he have to wait for
three years? Why are we wasting our money bringing qualified accountants into the country if employers give preference to home grown Aussie accountants?
To look after our old people? To
wash our cars? I know of three unemployed
Mexicans who are electronic engineers-one is washing cars and the other two are
cleaning apartments.
I myself can’t get a job
teaching migrants because I don’t have some “new” teacher training certificate
called the “Certificate 4 in workplace traning”.
This is a teacher training
certificate designed for school-leaving students who want to teach English to apprenticed
Hairdressers or Warehouse workers. This is fine if you are a high school student.
But it is not fine for me.
Why was I asked to do it when I have a degree ,
two teacher tranining qualifications, two Masters degrees , an educational
doctorate , have taught people all over the world form University level to primary
for thirty-five years-and I have trained teachers to teach English? I have even trained the trainers of teachers!
The answer is very simple-money!
The Government has turned education into a business in Australia. You have to pay 1500 dollars to do this course
and be awarded the certificate. Simple!
Make a law which requires people like me
to do it-simple as that. Its a tax on experienced teachers!
Anti intellectualism
There is a thriving Xenophobia and anti-intellectualism in the
new millennium in Australia. So many Aussies don't want to see migrants getting a
fair –go even though they are all migants themselves. Nadehda Mandelstaam,
the Russian Poet’s wife, says in
her biography of her exiled husband….”It is always among the semi-educated that
fascism, chauvinism and hatred for the intelligencia take
root…anti-intellectual feelings….. are rampant in all the overstaffed
institutions where people are furiously defending their right to their
ignorance”
I imagine she is referring to the people in
the suburbs who build metal fences (to save money) they are the nouveau riche
of the bourgeoisie. They are he backbone of the Australian liberal Party-and form a sizeable part of the Australian Labour Party, too.
I suppose they are not as bad as
Stalin who shot the intellectuals or
sent them to camps to die slowly. The
Australian political class, and their lackey bureaucrats are indeed
semi-educated-and are just content to make money out of migrants . This class of lackey has infested
the suburbs where they have made themselves
very comfortable. Anything or anyone who threatens their comfortable way of
life is resisted. .
Chandler and Ross
I have always hated my
vulnerability –the fact that other people find it easy to hurt my feelings.
When I was a child I thought this
sensivivity would disappear when I became a teenager. But it didn’t. Then I
thought it would disappear when I became an ‘mature’ adult. Again it didn’t. Then
I thought it disappeard when I would get married, when I became a father, when
I retired and “mellowed” but it hasn’t gone away yet. I am still an open book.
People can torture me at will-and they do.
And when they do Gollum wants to
retaliate. I have a hard job preventing him form trying to destroy these people.
A
friend told me that I have never learned how to defend myself. He’s right. It’s just the way I am. But I
hate it-I hate being vulnerable to these people-especially the smug and the
self-important. Gollum feels like slaying them. Feelings ? What are they?
Who was
it that said... The murderous impulse in the breast? I can’t remember –but he ws
dead right –if you'll excuse the pun. (I think it was Edmund Burke)
My daughter and wife think I am
like both Chandler and Ross in “friends” Fascinating! They are right –I am certainly
high-maintence and socially inept–saying the wrong things at the wrong time. I
seem to be only able to enjoy myself with
people who are already calm and
relaxed.
Is there
ever an end to insecurity and
vanity? A few days ago I was attending a gathering of Mexicans in Adelaide,
I found myself talking to the teenage
daughter of one of them. She was a fan of the ‘friends’ program. It is
amazing that this ia a comedy drama is a program which I like and my children
liked when they were teenagers-and now this teenager, representing another
generation, likes it! What is the
formula?
Anyway, I asked her what she
thought of Chandler. She said he thought he was ‘weird’
In some ways I think I am a disappointment
to my children as a role model. I don’t think I fit he bill as their ‘Ideal
Dad’ They all seem to want different things from me..
I think I was a disappointment
to mum in the end. Mum referred to me as a ‘crazy loon’ in a poem she wrote about 4 years
before she died.(Ouch! Steady on ..Mum!)
Getting a a degree , two Masters degrees and a PHD didn’t do the trick.
Having senior positions in schools and being a University Lecturer was not
enough! A lovely wife, successful
marriage and three lovely children didn’t seem to fill the bill either! It was
not enough for Mum...To be fair to Mum she tried to stop the crazy loon from doing what he wanted-I am not
complaining-clearly but her disappointment in me was almost tangible at the end. I could
feel it.
Dad was also disappointed-I
think he wanted a joey-not a chandler.
What is it with this disappointment
thing –is it in the family DNA as a gene?
Maybe they both just wanted a
little girl.
The urge to criticize-being a pleaser
10/9/2012
Today in a lecture on
Afghanistan at 'The University of the Third Age' given by someone who
had worked and lived there I felt I had to repress the urge to challenge him at
every turn.Yesterday, at the AGM of the Irish clubI had to resist the urge to
speak when I knew my comment would be uninformed and unhelpful. I feel less and
less able to cope with people. Every transaction in daily public life is
becomeing difficult. I have never suffered fools gladly. Increasingly,, I suffer
them less and less to the point of wanting to be rude-or just walking away from people.
This desire to criticise causes me so much
anxiety –because at heart I think I am still a pleaser.
The AGM and the U#A both had
many bourgeoisie. They repel me with their obsession with rules and finding rules
to exclude people and say “No” . They are pettyfoggoing bureaucrats-and frighten
me with their callousness.They remind me of many third world cultures where I have worked. I once wrote
in my theseis in Brunei that Brunei was a ‘No’ culture. This means that if you
make a request it is nearly always
denied. This leads to a deviousness and deception in ordinary human transactions. In other words people lie to each other-and especially to anyone of status -for their own protection.The bourgeois of the Adelaide suburbs has the same mentality. Their
motto is
“Circumstances NEVER change
cases’
I feel like my life is going to
be a short one. I don’t know why-I just can’t see myself growing old-quietly
and contentedly with the slippers and the pipe –and all that.
Adelaide is beautiful
Adelaide is such a beautiful city.
Walking in the suburbs here in Clarence Park is like being in the Garden of
Eden. The trees and birds are everywhere. The smells of the shrubs as they come
in to bloom in Spring.The Eucalypts are majestic .The houses are
beautiful-those s bluestsone low-set bungalows
with the ‘swiss’ rooves that look
like they have have had the bottom
third of them removed are so soft on the eye.
I love the scale of the low set bungalow of adelaide-it is perfect for me. The
wattle fences are just delightful.
The size of the city is just right. It is
accessible-no real traffic jams-especailly now tht I am not a commuter. The
street system was well planned –the streets themselves are straight and ample
in width. The parks are glorious-their planning from the start is so obvious.
No other city that I have lived in comes even near it. All the Australian cities
are beautiful compared to the Irish or English cities! The doves, the parrots,
the Kookaburras. The cockatoos, the warblers, the magpies-it’s all the best kept
secret in the world.
Don’t come here and destroy it! The trams and trains are
all affordable now that I am a senior citizen.
I can go on about half a dozen
different walks from my apartment here in Clarence Park.
Then there are the beaches and
the hills!
Metalfencers
But…..there are two big
problems. The first one is the metalfencers. These are the barbarians who live
in the suburbs and who,to save a buck, have surrounded themselves and their
gardens with metal fences. But it is
more than just saving money the metalfencers are making a statement
Keep Out!
..and when I am inside here I
can forget about ‘you all’ and do just whatever I damn well like. The
metalfencers are an eyesore –but they can be ignored but the second problem can
not.
There are no people!
The streets are almost empty.
If only there were a few cafes
in the suburbs where people could sit, eat and drink “cheaply” while watching their children playing on
the streets Adelaide would be a paradise but this is the problem-people avoid
each other and ignore each other. They don’t want to socialize with their
neighbours.
They don’t want to learn anything form the newcomers who arrive in
the street. There is no street life and
there is no community at the local level. Of course Adelaide is not alone in
this respect. All of the Australian cities are the same in this respect.
Indeed all of the English cities and
the Irish cities are the same in my experience.
Why are they like this?
More specifically, why are the
suburbs so lifeless and devoid of human interaction? The inhabitants of the same
street treat each other with suspicion - it is like they fear catching the
plague from each other.
Is it because of urbanisation and industrialization? As soon as people had to leave home to look for work to survive the sense of 'community' broke down-and it has perhaps never recovered.
By the age of 21, 50% of Australians will have experienced a mental illness
50%!
This is one result of urbanization and industrialisation.
So...is 'Development' worth it?
The Bourgeoisie
What is a suitable name to
describe these lifeless suburbs?
The only word I can think of to
describe them is “bourgeois’. I do not mean bourgeois in the strictly Marxist
sense. I just can’t think of another word to describe the type. The people
inside seem to be devoid of friendliness. They have little curiosity either about
their neighbor or about life in general.
They seem to be preoccupied with “getting
on” in the world.
'Getting on' means getting a
bigger car, renovating the house and then moving to a better house where they can have more ‘things” in
the house. The bourgeois is acquisitive –and over-consumes the resources which should be
available to others. Although they have many acquaintances, the
bourgeois has a small circle of friends who are derived from the local community-always from work or family.
I know if I died tomorrow here
no-one in the street where I live would be in the least interested.
Contrast
this with the pre-industrial Colombian suburb where, as newcomers we lived for only two years and yet our
neighbours interacted with us–with mutual invitations to our houses and with joint activities such as playing tennis or
going on barbecues together. Sadly, these bonds of community are dying in the Colombian suburb-just as they have been extinguished in Australia.
It is the same in England and Ireland as it is in with other
bourgeois suburbs in Australia.
Only people who have lived
outside Australia understand this. One such Aussie, who had lived in
Afghanisran for many years, told us
today at her lecture that she found the streets of Adelaide lonely.
Why are the suburban bourgeoise
so secretive, suspicious and lacking in
curiosity? Because they are afraid of the world and themselves. Their lack of
curiosity is no accident-it is part of their survival mechanism. If they are
curious about the world and themselves they might find things which they would
want to change. then they might have to change-they might
have to leave their comfort zone. Their bubble of complacency might burst.
The bourgeois will go to almost
any length to avoid curiosity. Many metalfencers are bourgeois. They will
distract themselves with drink, food,
loud music, drugs, sex, cars, shopping, pets, sport, work, the internet, video
games. All of these things are good-in moderation-but pursued out of
proportion-they damage mental health and well-being.
Once addicted the bourgeois
retreats into himself. The metal fence allows him to pursue his addictions
without scrutiny of his neighbour. The bourgeois is always addicted to something.
His addiction stifles his curiosity about his neighbour and the world in
general. His addiction can be pursued without interruption in private –behind his metal fence.
The bourgeois will do anything
to hold on to his addictions and to
protect himself form criticism which might lead to him giving up his material possessions. His whole identity
is based on the status he believes his neighbor, co-workers and
acquaintances (he has few genuine friends) - perceive him to have.
11/9/2012
I went for a walk this morning
in this most beautiful city in the world. It is the best kept secret that Adelaide
is like the garden of Eden at this time of the year! Of all the places I have
lived –Adelaide is the most beautiful-and by a long chalk. Nowhere even runs it
close!
The scale is perfect.a compact
city surrounded by acres of public parks. The coast stretches north and south
and the hills are to the east. What is really special is the suburbs-the trees
and the birds and the flowers.
We are living in a flat in the
inner suburbs of Adelaide at the moment. It is just exquisite at this time of
the year. It is so bright!.
Those people back in the early nineteenth century–what foresight they had to
plan such a beautiful environment!
How ironic that today I marked
some University student papers–foreigners trying to get into university in
Australia. The title of the paper was “social isolation and it’s effects on
health” When I was marking them I reflected upon how we have felt socially
isolated in Australia since the day we arrived.
Australians are not hostile but
they are stand-offish. They have an attitude to the migrant which seems to say.
“Welcome to Australia , new
migrant… now stop whinging and get on with it”
Their hostility is manifest and sublimated
masked often by their busyness. They are always too’ busy’ to see you or talk to you–let alone go out and socialize with
you. As for inviting you into their homes –I can think of only two 'Dinky-di' Australian
families who have done that in the
twenty–two years since our arrival. That is a very long time indeed!
The same attitude to migrants is found in England or Ireland.
Perhaps some of the harshness in their
attitude in Australia comes form the way they were originally treated as migrants themselves.
Originally the British just dumped them in Australia and left them to sink or
swim. That is precisely the attitude most of them adopt to new migrants.
11/9/2012
Maria invited three of her
coworkers who work in childcare for tacos tonight at our apartment. They are all
such accomplished young women.
Interestingly, all of them are
recent migrants. One from the
Philipines. One from Japan, and another from Singapore (a Malay) . It was shocking to hear how they are treated
by their Australian colleagues at the Childcare centre. The interesting thing is
that all three have excellent English and two of them have Dinky-di Aussie
husbands. But this affords them no protection at all form the abuse of their
young Aussie colleagues.
Xenophobia is indivisible.
We have invited them to come to
the Irish club some time in Adelaide to listen to some music and have a drink.
Yesterday we invited an Ethiopian refugee and –and a chinese
migrant with his Japanese wife to go the Irish club. It was a pleasant time.
On Tuesdays I give a voluntary English class to a Bangladeshi, and Yang, and
Sofie-both Chinese.
We have a great time.
On Fridays I go to 'Bridge-builders'. This group is a social group for recent migrants-run by a Norwegian
couple.
Our other social contact is
with a couple –an Englishman and his wife-who was English and arrived here
thirty years ago when she was a child. She is the closest thing to an Australian
who we include in our social group at the moment.
We have one other genuine
couple whom we have known for many years-but even she was English when she
came out to Australia as a girl.
Australians are all migrants,
but it is so very hard to get ‘dinky-Di'
Aussies to engage with foreigners or
recent migrants whether they are English speakers or not. Baiscally most Aussies,
who are migrants themselves resent the presence of other more recent migrants.
It is not politically correct to even think that. They would deny it. But I think it is true.
When I hear these girls talking
about their work it makes me realize how tough these young women are –and they
have to be to survive here. I was shocked by some of the stories about how
they are treated. It makes me realize how soft and
sensitive I am. Compared to these women I am weak and hypersensitive-like
butter. They are so tough. Good on’em! It makes me proud of M as well. How
wonderfully well she has defended herself for all these years.
When I hear the
stories of how they are bullied at work I compare their stoicism to my constant
complaining and bitterness. I compare their assertiveness to my passive-
aggression. When I am bullied I just freeze, stunned like a Doe (perhaps a kangaroo would be more
appropriate) with my eyes wide open and stunned
in the headlights of a car. I am surprised I am bullied. It has been the
same all my life. D recently told me I have never been very good at
defending myself. The stunned Kangaroo thing is what he means!
During my walks in the ‘Garden of
Eden” I have found myself thinking what a struggle life always seems to me. I say to myself ”Why have I always found life
so difficult?” I don’t just mean ‘difficult’ I mean
grotesquely difficult sometimes! Other people seem so robust–they survive the most appalling
traumas. D told me recently that he thought I am not robust. I am only
realizing it now , after all these years, that this is true,. He is a master of
understatement.I have always considered myself robust-tough even. What an
illusion that is! I am as fragile a little flower and bend in the
slightest wind.
I seem to have a compulsion to
talk about things that are on my mind-and I tend to run off at the mouth all
the time. That is why I cannot work in a school or university any more. I
no longer function well in groups. I no
longer can work or even socialize in teams. Tutoring on a one to one
basis suits me well-although not financially. I am happy at present. I have
never been happier doing so much work (preparing for my tutorials) for so little
money.
16/9/2012
Where did this obsessive part of
my character come from? I have always been afraid of large groups and sought
solace through a small number of intense relationships These relationships
have become obsessive in certain cases
and unhealthy. I have therefore lost good friends –friends I have had for years.
This is part of me I have had great difficulty in accepting. Everything for me
is a constant struggle...
Groups frighten me. People get
ugly in groups and become capable of the most appalling betrayals of their
colleagues and friends.. Nadehda Madelstaam–wife of the Russian poet exiled by
Stalin speaks of how people betrayed each other so easily in order to survive
in Stalin’s time. When they were in exile–people would not speak to them.
People who knew them never invited them nor called them on the phone. The writers
Union which was under Stalin's control made sure they could find no
accommodation in exile-or things to buy in the shops. It was a living death. People praised Stalin for
exiling Mandelstaam in order to curry favour with the authorities so that they
would not be exiled next.
Madelstaam says of the great
purges in 1937 when neighbor denounced
neighbor and friend denounced friend.…'there was nothing people wouldn’t say
about the victims (those arrested) in order to save themselves'
When I resigned form my post in
Kilmore in Victoria we were treated in a similar way. Of course it was not as
extreme. But nevertheless we were ‘exiled’
in the local community and treated in the same way by ex-colleagues.
Colleagues never visited us or even
called on us. These were peole I had never injured or harmed in any way when I
was acting as Principal of the school. I had even helped many of them. Some people who I had known well personally
just ignored us. For a year and a half we lived in exile. Not all behaved in
this way–but the vast majority did.
People behave like cowards in groups. I
find it difficult to forgive them.
Worse still, people who witnessed intimidation
and victimisation in the workplace , although they did not take part in the
victimization often felt that had little
choice but to turn a blind eye to what was going on. Certainly, Mandelstaan thought so and said... I
can testify that no-one resisted the purges…the best anyone could do was to lie
low..”
That was my experience in many schools too.
But, in the schools what I found
most difficult to forgive was that a
victim was given no surreptitious support by the onlookers (
colleagues and friends) There were no phone calls of encouragement nor
visits to our house to offer
support. There was no KGB tapping the victims phone or photographing visitors in
our case.
I suppose not to forgive them gives then more power
over me-so I have tried , not always successfully, to forget what happened.
Mandelstaam says that fear and intimidation can never be forgotten and that all
the actors in the drama are “destroyed’ by the experience by the fear-the perpetrators, the accomplices
and the sycophants too-not just the victims.
Perhaps I would go further and
say that the perpetrators, accomplices
sycophants all come to believe their own illusion that the victim deserved what
they got in the end. Maybe this is what he meant by “doomed”
Anyone who breathes the air of
terror is doomed says mandeslstaaam. I take it to mean 'doomed' means to lose
one’s humanity.
M goes on to say that “We (the
Russian people) have lost our ability to
be spontaneously cheerful because of the fear of betrayal”
What a grotesque thought. I hope
she was wrong because she said 'and it will never come back”
I witnessed another purge at Rashid school In Dubai. We had a vicious
autocrat as Principal who sacked all of his Heads of Department and many other
teachers in one year. When rumour had it
that someone was ‘ next in the firing line’, the victim’s colleagues would not sit beside them for lunch in the canteen! There was guilt by
association. I hated this and would deliberately sit beside them to show
support, until I too was eventually sacked-guilty by association!
I have seen and heard of this repeated in
many other school staffrooms in international schools all over the world.
When we came to Adelaide form
Borneo four years ago the whole family
needed counselling to help us to adjust to life in Australia. The counsellors
did a good job-but I was surprised that they didn’t seem to feel it was
important to try to keep the family together. They seemed to me to assume
that we all wanted to strike out on our
own. Keeping the family together didn’t seem important to them.
Teachers at Cabin Hill
Prep school was not memorable. I have a montage of seemingly
unrelated memories. I remember cycling to the school come wind, rain or snow. It
was about two and a half miles and that seemed a very long way for a ten or
twelve year old. It was often very windy.
If it was raining or blowing really hard Dad might relent and let me go
on the bus as a concession. I do not remember once ever being taken to school
by my parents in a car-even though Dad worked as a civil servant quite
close to the school.It was a policy
issue for Mum and Dad.
The teachers were remote and for the most part colourless.They were
strict and mostly English-I don’t know really why. Perhaps it was ‘cultural
cringe’. In our family, we felt everything English was good –including the
people. My Mum and Dad thought that all other things being equal an Englishman
was worth more than an Irishman. That is history for you.
There was very little clour or fun involved in anything we did at Cabin Hill..
I remember ‘Bunty’ Marshall, the Latin teacher who one day smacked about a dozen of us with a ruler on the hand
for making noise before his (late) arrival to class. I didn’t mind the smack so
much as the gratuitous comment he made before he delivered it..
‘Might have known it
would be you, Nixon’.
I was mortified at this insult and never forgave him. I
certainly didn’t consider myself to have a reputation as a miscreant at that
stage in my school career.(I was about eleven). Bunty obviously did. (Gollum was
beginning to have some prelininary light skirmishes with authority and has never had a good word for
Bunty since)
“Corr” Love–a-Duck was another colorless, cold fish. He was
the history teacher-famous for teaching history in the time-honoured fashion of
dictating which lines in the book to underline, setting them to learn for
homework, and then giving a test the next day. He also gave us date sheets with
all the dates of the world events-from a British perspective. Agincourt 1485,
Battle of Edgeheill 1342, Peasants Revolt 1385. South Sea Bubble 1722 Naturally, everyone hated history. I don’t think ‘Corrlove
a duck’ cared in the slightest..
The only thing he did care about was cricket.
He was the cricket coach. I used to open
the batting for the first XI and on Father’s day I made 39 not out. Apparently
this wasn’t good enough for Corr Love-a-duck as he said in the team meeting
afterwards that my scoring rate was too slow.
I remember feeling completely deflated by this completely gratuitous criticism. It was the highest
score I had ever made for the team and he
couldn’t manage a word of praise for that! That just about summed up life for
me in thse days. My best as never going to be good enough for anyone-either at
school or at home. Gollum was getting
agitated!
.
I also remember being upset that Dad decided to thrash me all round the ground for boundaries in this
game of 'Fathers day' cricket. How could he do that to his son?
Da Hardin was a smooth talking, oily jerk. He was an Elderly
maths teacher with a plummy English accent who
drove around in his Jag Mark 10. Of
course we boys were all mightily impressed.
But one day the 'Mr.Hyde' side of his character was displayed which made me totally
lose respect for him.
There was one accident prone new boy called
Burke who was bullied mercilessly by everyone when he first arrived. One day,
to curry favour with the boys, ‘Da’ Hardin thought he would join in the fun,
so,
when the hapless Burke had committed
some minor misdemeanour, he made fun of him in front of the class at the same
time as pulling him by his sideburns and banging his head with the blackboard
duster. Burke was in tears. ‘Da’ Hardin and the boys all thought this was
hugely funny.
Hardin thought he was clever.
I didn’t – I thought Hardin was a
smarmy bully. Being good at the cricket saved
me from such bullying. The same was true at high school.
Tom “Gussy” Hall was the English teacher. He dressed in tweed
jacket and spoke like someone out of a Somerset Maugham novel-I suppose he was what might be called
today a “yuppy’. He was a pompous prig. When
I was 13, I remember him scoffing at the idea that I was reading the “Famous
Five” books by Enid Blyton. I suppose he thought I
should have been reading Dostoyevsky. As I am now an English teacher I find scoffing
in almost any circumstances to a thirteen year old as totally reprehensible. I’m happy if some of my fifteen
year old Bruneian students are
reading comics-at least it’s reading. How can you motivate people by scoffing
at them? How can you get away with it?
The headmaster, Mr Sutton, was a jovial man in the Billy
Bunter tradition.
He was strict, but not
mean, and he did not have favourites. We all respected him and liked him.
He had some
unbreakable rules. When he was speaking in assembly
if he saw you talking he would say “Nixon, would you kindly come up to my
office after Assembly please?” There would always be a stunned silence. There
was no debate or discussion: on arrival in his office the offender (myself in
this case) without fail, would be asked to bend over his sofa and would be
whacked with his cane. It hurt like hell. Sutton was smiling and joking all the
time and
I think he regarded it as
hugely funny. He never held the offence against you. Most people were whacked
at least once by ‘The Bow’ as he was known. Just the once for me.
I discovered at Cabin Hill that I was very competitive by
nature. I made this discovery during the Athletics on sports
day. I could barely control myself I was
in such a nervous a state at those races. It was unhealthy, and I can still
remember the tension.
Friends at Cabin Hill
There was Barbour who befriended me in when I was 12 while I
was waiting at a bus-stop to go to the dentist. He offered me a ‘Tuti-fruti’
and I accepted. His offer accepted, this was the beginning of a friendship which
lasted for three or four years. We did lots of things like visiting each others
houses to play cricket and rugby or make
fireworks etc etc in each other’s homes. Don’t forget Rhino and Michael and
doogie were now making new friends at their different schools and so my
friendships with them began to cool off as we didn’t see each other so often..
Travelling to Barbours was most inconvenient –I had to go by bus. in those days it would have been unthinkable for Mum or Dad to drive me there. (about 4 miles) but it was the price we upper
middle classboys had to pay if we wanted to maintain our status as private schoolers.
Barbour and I had
some delightful visits to Lough Eske in Donegal where we fished, swam in the
lake, shot at the wildlife and did other
juvenile things. Mr S the owner of the land at Lough Eske had a beautiful
daughter who was eighteen and four years
older than Barbour and I –I think her name was Diane. She was an outrageous
flirt and more annoyingly, she flirted
with Barbour more than she did with me at Lough Eske. I remember one night in the Caravan she
came to kiss us good night. Incomprehensibly,
to me at least , she seemed to fancy Barbour and kissed him lingeringly on the
lips. That she should want to kiss was gross in the first place –but to kiss a
little twerp like Barbour was incomprehensible to me when she had an
intellectual heavyweight like me right beside her. Women were unfathomable I
thought. She didn’t kiss me at all. To my horror I realized I was a coward. I
was becaming afraid of this incomprehensible thing called
‘Woman’
The friendship with Barbour came to an abrupt end around
puberty when I realized he was turning into
a
tight
and selfish little prick
who had a
high opinion of himself. He started to bully
me. Fifteen years later, I ran into him again in Belfast when I was teaching at
Methodist college. He was married but we struck up the friendship again one
summer vacation when we were both at a loose end.
I was waiting to go to Malawi..
As Barbour was out of work I introduced him
to my neighbour David G who had a business erecting Greenhouses. In fact I
got Barbour, who was out of work,
a
temporary job with David at the end of the summer.
I wasn’t pleased to hear when I returned from
Malawi that
after learning the business
Barbour had set up his own
rival businesss
and tried to buy David out! A few years later, when Barbour's own business was
booming,
he also loaned me a car for a
week when I returned from Colombia
and
he had the cheek to
charge me for it! I
was not impressed since I was the one who had basically got him back on his
feet a few years earlier. I heard that he had retired at about the age of
fifty.
At around thirteen Barbour
was a great buddy until he started to
bully me. He was selfish and a showoff and I wasn’t. He liked my excessive
openness and, at that time, lack of guile but couldn’t resist the temptation to exploit
them and.we gave up playing with each other around about the time David
C and I had become firm friends. This was to be a pattern which repeated
itself many times in my life. (Friendship with bullies)
David C
David C was in the same class as me in Cabin Hill. He
was a boarder and I was a day pupil. We used to spend a lot of time together at
break times, lunch times and after school. One of my first memories is of
playing ‘holesies’ with him outside the wooden buildings. This a game of
marbles or ‘marleys’ as we called them. Another memory is of walking around the
wooden classroom block asking each other dates on Love-a duck’s datesheets.
David got bored at week-ends and I would cycle
to school –quite a long way –two and a half miles with my burberry stuffed with
oranges to give to him. He didn’t like the food at school! Apparently I was
bored enough at home to have to want to cycle two and a half miles to school on
a Sunday. We played cricket together as well. Unfortunately , he lived in Lurgan
so I didn’t seem him in the holidays. The friendship really developed strength though,
when we went toHigh school. David and I
had something very special right from the start. Neither of us were charismatic
to others but we had started a friendship which was is still ongoing and thriving fifty years later. My
main memory of him then is the same as it is now over fifty years later -:he
was so unassuming and undemanding.
During these times I don’t remember much of my brothers.
17/9/2012
Went to a party of Mexicans last
night in Adelaide to celebrate independence day. Can’t help but observe the
opposite to the Russian attitude-they certainly still know how to enjoy
themselves spontaneously! All ages there too. It reminds me of how I have
never been able to express spontaneous joy in this way. Why? It is not because
of the purges like in Russia! Maybe it is just personality –or possibly a
combination of personality and the anglo saxon culture in Ulster-which seems
to eschew spontaneous shows of joy. In
fact Ulster culture doesn’t seem to ‘do’
joy. Anyway, it has always been that way with me ,
At a school in Belfast (Methodist College) I was a
teacher in the science department and there was a technician called M. She
was a very kindly and helpful person.
She was a bit passed her prime but still a good looker and an outrageous flirt.
The younger male members of the Biology dertment, including myself, pretended to
be disdainful of M’s flirting, but secretly we loved it. M liked to
embarrass us younger innocent lads in the Biology department. One day she
did embarrass me.
She threw a staff party in her
home (she was divorced). I was dismayed,
no staggered, no gobsmacked, and yes, appalled to see that Brian C , who was
also my boss in the boarding Department at the time (and happily married) being
lead by the hand by M up the stairs to the bedroom. Now I was a boarding
Master at the time and Brian had a reputation of being a straight , hardworking, clean
liver-in short the pillar of the community. He
did not pardon the transgressions–moral or otherwise - of those in
his care: students or staff.
This incident
says as much about me as it does about the characters in the anecdote. I was
prudish. If you had said so at the time (1979) I would certainly have denied it. I
considered myself to be a bit of a radical and of course radicals were
open-minded and could not be prudish-by definition!
It is still true today. Even an 'Aristocrat of
porn' as Leonard Cohen referred to himself, can be prudish. Any time I feel
joy, the feeling is immediately followed by a feeling of dread-almost of guilt.
The past few months I have have been the best in many years–perhaps more than
in over twenty years –since we came to
Australia. I am busy with tutoring and working harder for three students than I
did for five classes in a school! In my spare time I write and walk and visit interesting
friendships. The weather is wonderful and the environment superb.When I think
these pleasant thoughts to myself, they are immediatelty followed by thoughts
such as “maybe you are going to get ill soon… or death may come early to you!’ Maybe I should blame the church culture for this. Curiously
enough though, the church in Mexico
hasn’t had the same success in killing joy as it has in Ireland.
Socially , I am still very
timid and intoroverted –but contrast this with the macro-risk taking I
undertake –like living in the seven countries foe several years in each. Taking
such risks are not normally taken by introverts. Maybe I am really like Chandler in “Friends”.
I watch the news on the
internet-Jim Lehere’s US international news-which gives some coverage of the
elction campaign in the US. I also read the soft left Guradian newspaper from
the UK for international news. Australia dodesn’t do international news
basically. The ABC makes a few token feature programs but nobody gives a damn
about international events.
I have always attached too much
importance to friendship. Gollum says
that this has been to compensate for unsatisfactory emotional relationships with family members. Who knows?
I have always sought friendships both with too much frequency and intensity to be healthy for myself.. Since
‘Hairy’ hide at primary I have been looking for intensity. I have made firm
friendships with many adult friends. some of both males and females have been at first, idolized, only later to
be demonized resulting in a breakdown of the friendship.. I have often mistaken
intensity for affection. Most women hate intensity and I have often compensated
with bluster and bravado masquerading as wit. I try to charm
people with wit and repartee. .
18/09/2012
I write for two reasons: Firstly
I enjoy it; secondly because no-one wants to listen to my story -verbally (except Gollum). Why?
Not because it is uniteresting - but because people are too busy
chasing their tails to take any interest.
Busyness kills. Maybe when I am gone someone might just read this. I hope they enjoy it
as much as I have enjoyed myself writing it. Maybe one of my children or
grandchildren will read and publish it. I would be very happy.
The
prospect of being a wage slave in the new millenium fills me with dread and
foreboding on behalf of my children and grandchildren. I have had it easy.
Government grant for University. Dad paid for accommodation. I was only
expected to work in vacations.
Now, fees are loans to be repaid. They have to
work all the time aswell as study–and Mum and dad have no money to give them.
This is the “progress’ of the
Conservative right of centre /(Liberals
in Australia) party of the past forty years–the home of the metalfencers and
bourgeoisie: all those toadies who have skulked along to the election booth and
smudged their ‘X’ for the Conservative candidtes in the USA, UK and Australia.
Just like the Irish Civil war-brother and Father screwing their sons and daughters! The conservative is a political paedophile.
This massive irony in recent decades has been missed: the mighty bourgeoisie have
succeeded in seriously screwing
over their own children so that many won't be able to afford their own home
I realize that I am being paid now
here tutoring in my apartment in
Adelaide exactly ten times less than I was recently being paid as a
Consultant Training Fellow in Malaysia. I am also doing ten times more work than I was doing in Malaysia!–and
I am enjoying the work ten times as much here–to boot. This is
what I mean by corruption of Malaysia –the waste of taxpayer’s money–almost as
bad as the Bolsheviks.
No mass murder in Malaysia, I suppose-although there is plenty of
abuse of asylum seekers in Malaysian prisons and police stations. I have
not been happier than I am now since the
first years of marriage-before the grim struggle as a wage slave commenced for
real-around the time we left Colombia in 1986.
What about the metalfencers and
the Kulaks? Some of the Kulaks may have been exploiters of others, but even the
very worst of them didn’t deserve to be sent to the Gulags. Are we not all
potential Kulaks? I’d like to think I am not a metalfencer. They are surely to
be decried as selfish. Perhaps they can be forgiven. But they should certainly
not be encouraged. They need to be shaken out of their self–satisfied and
apathetic stupor. Sometimes the only way to free yourself of an addiction is to
go “Cold Turkey’
Maybe anyone who earns less than
a certain level of income–say 40,000 a
year, should get two votes instead of one. This would
compensate for the power of the Kulaks and the rich to influence elections.
Campbell College
I am very grateful to Mum
for preserving my school reports from Campbell College. Perusing them has been
fascinating for me. In lower secondary I seemed to start off with glowing
comments like ‘Genuine enthusiast’, ‘always cheerful’; ‘lively’; ‘dependable’.
When I showed these reports to my
colleagues recently (forty years later) as I was doing the research for these memoirs they were a source of much amusement for them.
“What happened!?” was
the general consensus.
Even my students, when I told them recently said “You sir,
always enthusiastic?”
Such comments encouraged me to start thinking about
retirement.
My English teacher in form one of Campbell College damned me
with faint praise with
“ He is a lively and enthusiastic boy who compensates with effort
for what he lacks in ability”
How mean! Even worse because he probably wasn’t even aware
he was being mean!
Even though Bryan Rob--- was a useless teacher, and was a
poor judge of character, he seemed actually to be a very kindly person.
I’ll bet the bastard doesn’t know I’ve been an English teacher
for the past twenty years!
One of the most fascinating things for me about schools is their astonishing durability
as an institution. They are the
insects of modern civilization-they seem to
have survived famines , natural
disasters, modern technology-even wars. I think ‘cockroaches’ might be a
better metaphor.
I have really come to doubt whether they are in fact of any
positive value to society at all other than to socialize and manipulate us into
being ‘good ‘citizens’. One of the first things to spring up after a nuclear
conflagration would surely be not a cockroach but a school. It worries me.
Telling entertaining stories to gain attention has been a survival strategy of mine since I
was a teenager at Campbell. It started
as keeping the lads amused in the Lower
sixth at Campbell (in Belfast). This was a full-time occupation and I put a lot
of energy into it. It was serious stuff – a matter of survival. Campbell was a private
school in Belfast.
It had the reputation of being the ‘Snobby’ school in
Protestant East Belfast. It was indeed exactly
that. Only the rich and the propertied could afford it. Mum and Dad could only
afford it because they sacrificed all their private holidays to Spain and the
rest of Europe which others had.
All the teachers had RP accents and were Oxbridge graduates
who had failed to get jobs in the English private schools. It is to the eternal credit of my parents that
they sacrificed so many holidays in Majorca in order to send my self and my two
brothers there but we certainly never really
appreciated it - and I still can’t, even
though I know that a hypersensitive nerd like myself would have been gobbled up
alive by the rough crowd in the Government schools. Campbell was a failure for me in
almost every sense.
On a personal level
the experience of Campbell for me was pretty miserable. I hated most things
about school like all normal teenagers in those days. I was handicapped by my
painful shyness. I don’t know where this lack of confidence in myself came from
but it has stayed with me. I was always the outsider. Never really part of the
‘Rugby” group or “Swats” group –but not officially a nerd either. I was a curious anomaly. I was popular enough
within a small group of ‘light’ sporting types.
And there was David C of course. If Barbour was a disappointment
David C was a true friend. Even
in those days I remember thinking “This
guy believes in me!’
“Crowhead” as I affectionately referred to him was someone
who could actually amuse me. (To this day I don’t know the origin of his
nickname). But without Crowhead I would not have survived at Campbell. He had a dry sense of humour, and
a wonderfully generous and patient nature. Starting as buddies at Prep school, the friendship thrived
and survived all through Campbell into Trinity and on and on to the present day. At Campbell we were
inseparable. We were known as the ‘terrible duo’ by some masters. Like all
young teenagers we spent most of the time laughing at others and the rest of it
laughing at and with each other.
17/09/2012
My social mode with
acquaintances currently seems to consist of
indulging in an orgy of ‘pleaser’ and self effacing behaviours in order
to reduce tension. This is my form of entertainment. I find it enervating. I
always seem to be having to resist impulses to ridicule peole sitting in front
of me. (And I thought I was going to be less judgemental with age!) Yet another
one of those beliefs that turn out to be myths or ill;usions. Like becoming
wiser, calmer, more contented, tolerant, etc. All untrue in my case.
18/09/2012
I think Mandelstaams wife was a
true heroine:she told her grueling and horrific story of moving from house to
house in exile in Russia pursued by the Cheka with a total lack of self-concern
or self-pity. How many people can go through such torment without feeling just a
little sorry for themselves?
Love and hate are so very
close-there is nothing original in saying that-but the myth that they are opposites
persists-why? I wonder.
19/09/2012
Today in Adelaide at 60 I am
still reserved. I have had to develop a
more robust persona to deal with daily
life in the family, the classroom and staffroom, but still really I only enjoy
one-to one relationships or relationships or with people in small groups. I am
still a pleaser.
I am increasingly suspicious of the behavior of humans in
groups. In my experience the group brings out the very worst in human
nature. I have seen good, scrupulous and principled people behave like cowards
in a group. Normally mild-mannered people can be seen baying for blood in large groups.
Just today I was visiting
U3A. I entered the kitchen and sat down on my own
to read my book. Gradually the room started to fill up with people who wee
preparing for some wine tasting party or something. They were making a lot of
noise and acting as if they owned the place. It was obvious to me that they
were going to have their wine-tasting in the kitchen. Fair enough.
Out of nowhere some vampire
spouts ”Which class have you come for”
I hae this directness. As if it
was any of her business.
I’m not here for a class, I
grunted pointedly
Well, we’ll have to throw you
out
Before she coiuld finish I
butted in and said
Oh No, no, no way your going to
get me to drink the devil’s milk!
They all looked a bit startled..
Are you joking/ she ventured
tentatively..
No, no, no1 I repeated
No way will I touch the stuff..
Why did the vampire have to open
her trap?
She just couldn’t resist the
temptation to tell me what to do.-could she?
She was dying to throw me out!
Most people will take the
opportunity to bully others if if they get the chance
Dartmouth and the MFV trip
Two memorable experiences indeed. Both Crowhead and I were
in the cadets –the naval section. In the summer holidays it was compulsory for
us to go on a camp. Crowhead and I found ourselves with a group of other cadets
on a boat trip to Scotland on a Motor Fishing Vessel (MFV) which was 37 feet
long. The trip from Belfast to Campbelltown across the Irish sea took 19 hours. When we
arrived we pitched tents and Crowhead and I were sharing. I managed to lose my
wallet with five pounds in it which Dad had given me as spending money. I remember
being distraught. Crowhead was very helpful. We found it and bought fish and chips to celebrate.
The trip was fun
because it was different from daily routine but the leaders did try their
utmost to take the fun out of it. I remember sleeping on the floor of the
public toilets one night. I suppose the teachers thought this was
character-building. After a week we headed home to Belfast and crossed the
Irish sea in a gale. I remember Bob Mitchell, the Captain, laughing his head off at me and everyone else
as we spewed up into the sea. “Do you want to go home and see your Mummy now,
Nixon? He was beside himself with with laughter. Crowhead and I, The 'terrible
duo’, always wanted to share a tent. Somehow,we had reached the age when this
became a suspicious activity-in the teacher’s eyes. Tom P tried to get us
to separate, but we ignored him. He was projecting his own fear of homosexuality on to us and he could
keep it as far as we were concerned.
The following year, when I was about 14, Crowhead and I
attended another week long cadet camp at Dartmouth Royal Naval College in
Devon.. We travelled to Liverpool from Belfast on the boat and then took the
train to Devon. It was a twenty four hour journey and we arrived at Dartmouth
exhausted. Immediately we found ourselves with other schoolboy cadets from all
over the country in the hands of fresh Royal Navy recruits who had just
completed their thirteen week induction course into the Royal Navy at
Dartmouth.
You can imagine that
his was not a holiday camp and the new recruits were only too pleased to put us
through for one week of what they had
been through for in the previous thirteen. On the night of our arrival we all
had to have our bunk beds inspected in the dormitory by the section commander.
As we all stood to attention beside our beds I could see the commander giving
some of the other boys a hard time.
When
he arrived at my bed he picked my tennis shoes and hurled them with an
unnecessarily dramatic flourish into the
middle of the floor. He said they were 'disgustingly filthy' and that I should
buy another pair. I remember having made a point of cleaning these shoes before
leaving Ireland. They were spotless. Besides , I didn't have any money. He then proceeded to inspect my clothes.
Opening one of my drawers he stared at my five pairs of socks (One for each
night we were going to be at Dartmouth). He then turned to me with a look of
incredulity on his face and started to shout at me with words to the effect
that how could I possibly have thought that it would be acceptable to bring an
odd numbered pair of socks (five) on camp?
I later discovered that he thought
that it was a physical impossibility to arrange an odd number pair of socks
neatly in a drawer. When I begged his pardon he resumed shouting at me pointing
out that surely it was obvious that I could not pack an odd numbered pair of
socks neatly in a drawer six or four pairs apparently would have been
acceptable –but not five.
I don’t remember how the conversation ended but the next
thing I remember was being carried out of the building by four officer cadets-one
for each arm and leg-and someone was slapping my face and saying –are you allright?
I suppose the journey and the shock had been too much for me and I had fainted into the arms of the commander
and his lieutenants.
I quickly took stock of the situation and decided to try and
turn it to my advantage. I was taken to the sick bay where a big, burly Ex
Royal Navy Doctor examined me. He asked me how I felt and had a quick grope of my balls.
I replied that I thought I had the flu and perhaps ought to
return to Ireland. He told me that all I needed was a big supper. How he could
have worked this out from feeling my balls I have no idea.
But he was right. I
felt fine after supper. This incident with the shoes and the consequent medical
examination, introduced me (once again) to sexual abuse and not for
the first or last time to the arbitrary abuse of power. I was amazed at how irrational and stupid grown men
could be. It left a deep impression on me.
Dartmouth was a bad place-for me anyway. Up at the crack of
dawn for a run before breakfast, it was rush, rush, rush-and you had to be five
minutes early everywhere because you were in such and such a division -
‘Benbow’ division-probably named after some British war hero. Everything was a
competition and you lost points for your division if you were late for any activity etc.
I managed to keep out of trouble until the penultimate
night. A nerd called Cox from another division came to me and told me I had
been ‘selected’ by Cox’s division commander to be on the welcoming committee
for the arrival of some Royal Naval vessel in the middle of the night.
I was genuinely puzzled by
this request because Cox was not in my division. So, I went to my
section commander and asked him what to do. I learned a lot in the subsequent
twenty four hours. My commander, annoyed that someone in another division had
not asked his permission for me to attend this welcoming party told me to
ignore Cox’s request. The job of the welcoming committee was to stand in a line
and blow whistles at the ship as it docked so I was quite pleased , if a little surprised by
my commanders decision. I slept like a log-as I say it was the penultimate
night.
Next morning the shit hit the fan when my absence was duly noted and I was put on ‘defaulters’ My
punishment was to miss the last night party in the officers ‘Mess’-a euphemism
for a bar. Here we juveniles were to be treated as adults by our tormenters for
the first and only time having been abused by them all week. They took out
their guitars and started to sing songs and buy us beers! Anyway, I missed the
party on the last night because I was put on defaulters .
The worst part of it
all for me was that my own commander had failed to back me up against
the other one (Cox’s commander). I felt totally betrayed. In fact , my
punishment was evil. After the party was over I had to report to my commander-‘Judas’
as he is to be known hereafter-in my full No.3. uniform. For the uninitiated ,
No.3’s a difficult uniform to put on –with all sorts of lanyards and things
which have to be put in the correct place.I had to wake up Judas and then go
back to sleep and report to him again each and every hour all night!
So that
was my last night at Dartmouth. I learned from this experience, at the early age of fourteen not to trust those
in authority. This incident has also had a lasting impression and influence on
me. If I wasn’t beforehand, I have
certainly been suspicious of those in
authority ever since.
My main job at Campbell seemed to be to amuse people. The person
I had to keep most amused was Mark R. You see, Mark was the school ‘Out-half’
on the first XV rugby team (the equivalent of a quarterback in American
Football)-and to be a friend of Mark was really worth a lot of kudos. In retrospect, the kudos of
being Mark’s friend more than compensated
for being of modest ability academically and nerdlike in some other respects.
Mark laughed at my jokes-and for that I was prepared to do
almost anything at the age of sixteen . I tried all sorts of things to foster
my friendship with Mark including smoking players No 6, wills cigars and
ultimately a Sherlock Holmes droopy Pipe with St. Bruno tobacco. This gave me a
certain air of intellectual gravitas which I needed to have to counteract the
fact that I was a nerd.
As well as being
on the first XV, Mark's Dad was a sports TV
announcer! He was the closest
thing we had to a celebrity in the school. Besides, Mark was cool and all the
guys liked him-and Ronald had a colour TV and a video machine- and the first
one to be seen in northern Ireland–by me at least.
Yes... Campbell was a school which did little for me, and I
have rarely been back in a serious capacity. The teachers were strict, for the
most part distant and disinterested-and the food was stodgy.
Its only saving
grace was the cricket. I was good at cricket. That was my saviour–because it
gave me a certain status in the eyes of the other boys and the staff.
I used to play soccer with Crowhead and some other lads
including Tim “Hawkeye” H. Tim
was an interesting person who
was as equally talented at painting as he was at Rugby. He kept the former
quiet at Campbell as painting was
regarded as an activity for sissies. Tim went to Trinity with me later in
Dublin and we shared an apartment for two years. For Tim, University was just an excuse to
paint. He was a very talented artist and went on to have a very successful
career as an artist in the USA. where he is still painting. I enjoyed verbal jousting with Tim on all topics
from religion, politics and art, science
and education. I spent many delightful weekends at his mother’s home in Wicklow
in Tim’s company and that of his mother, brother, Barry and sister Rosemary.
The soccer was illegal at Campbell officially although some
Master’s turned a blind eye to the boys playing it. Soccer was regarded as a
working class game and Campbellians certainly did not regard themselves as
working class!
20/09/2012
Tim H
Got an Email from Hawkeye this
morning. First message in years.I think it was a circular e-mail.
I lived with Hawkeye for two
years at Trinity College Dublin. He was at Campbell with me too. He is a fine
individual. Talented but direct-blunt even, Never understood or liked his
abstract painings- but I like his other ones of horses and landscapes,
portraits etc. He wrote an interesting comment below the latest creation
“Vulnerability, risk, and
awkwardness are essential to the making of these works (paintings), and they
are equally essential to their viewing”
I would go further and say that
these qualities are essential for approaching people.
Metalfencers in the suburbs do
their best to display the opposite qualities towards their
neighbour–invulnerability, complacency, closedness and contrived charm.
Tim married in the USA and his wife set up an NGO to assist orphans in a school in Ghana.
P.S. Unfortunately, when I went out to Ghana in 2014 as a volunteer with this NGO I was horrified to find that the NGO was exploiting the students it was designed to help.
Both were involved in the NGO but his wife was running the daily operations. The friendship became a casualty of my conflict with the NGO.
This was a very sad ending to my friendship with Tim
22/09/2012
More on Groups
I try avoid committees and meetings. After forty years of working with
teachers I feel like I never want to
work in any group of any sort again! My distaste for groups gives me the time
to build friendships on a bilateral basis. I have the time on my hands. People who like committees
and function well on them have less time to engage meaningfully in
friendship-building.
Strangely enough although I have
so much time now that I am not an employee, I also find my self very busy! I
do a little marking for the University–but apart from that I tutor three students –these are interesting students in
that they are all highly motivated. Two are nurses-one Peruvian and the other
Korean. These nurses have both completed nursing degrees here in Adelaide.
Their English is good –but not good enough to register as a nurse.They have to
sit another English exam which is very, very difficult. In fact, many native
speakers would not pass it.s
So, they have to come to me to get help. I find that
for one hour a week I must do several hours of preparation for each student. My
other tutee is a Russian. R is different. He is an IT professional –and has
been here for six months. He has huge intrinsic motivation to learn English and
I am really enjoying teaching him pronunciation. Again, I spend several hours a
week preaparing for his one hour of tuition! So, to misquote Churchill, “Never
in the history of mankind has so little been paid to one man for so much work!’
but I love it.
I have had an offer from a
friend in China to go teach in Beijing-but I think it would be too much for
me-20 hours contact is just too much –and then all the marking and assessment
etc.after all these years of searching for jobs I finally get an unsolicited
offer-and at sixty! I have turned it down to keep on with my tutoring!
Go figure!
22/09/2012
Shifting alliances
It’s not just the tutoring.
Being closer to the family than Beijing is important for me. It is almost
impossible for me to stop myself carrying my children over the minefields. I suppose most parents
feel the same? I can not believe that my
parents did the same for me. Was it really
so difficult to get me out of bed? Perhaps the answer is yes to both questions.
Did my parents really have to sit back
and watch me make predictable “bad choices”. Maybe they did! Things are going better now in the family than
they have for some time, but sometimes the shifting alliances between
siblings and between siblings and parents make things unpredictable. All of us
can be self-destructive at times. Maybe it is the same in any
family.
I think it was sitting with Mark R at the back of Trevor
C Geography class giggling inanely at my own witty comments and, more
importantly, making Mark giggle,
that started me on the road to an
interest in teaching, schools, and more recently, with school ‘cultures’. Let’s
face it–how many people can have actually
experienced as many school cultures as I
have as a student or a teacher! At last count–it must be over twenty schools in nine different countries.
Each
school culture was unique. In particular, it has been the concepts of authority
and leadership in these schools which came to fascinate me. I was/still am particularly
interested in how power corrupts authority and leadership. Not just the leadership
shown by managers. I mean leadership in the broadest sense within the school
culture. This might include teacher’s leadership styles with students; teachers
leadership styles with other teachers, and even students leadership styles with
other students. The whole issue of how and why people behave in the way they do
within school cultures has always intrigued me.
24/09/2012 abandonment
The whole issue of abandonment
and betrayal has always been big with me. When I was in Kilmore I was enraged by what I perceived to be abandonment by my colleagues. I can never forgive them for not
supporting us while we were on our own in Kilmore after my resignation. They never called us or called on us –not one of them! Again In Kuching I resigned from there recently
http://lifeandtimesofanoutsider.blogspot.com.au/search/label/2015%20Adelaide%20diary%209e%20Corporate%20irresponsibility%20The%20Training%20Fellows%20Projectand
and not one of
my colleagues called me, or even E-mailed me! I was actually their boss too for
a time. Perhaps I am and as a just a really lousy boss. But it is has got to be more than just that.
People are such cowards when they are in the fring line
–many of them would push their grandmothers off the bus to save themselves.
That is why Hitler and Stalin got away with it all the time. The average person
colluded with the regime. It is the same in the workplace when you have a lousy
boss.
When I tell this story to people they say "That's how it is"
Yes...I know ...but that is avoiding the question why?
Yet more on groups…
Even family relationships seem
to be damaged by groups. My own children behave toward me differently when we
are all together than when each is with me one-on-one.
Alone with me they are usually
quite congenial and cooperative.
But in a group they can change .
I am always wondering why it is like this. I hate watching skirmishes between siblings. Am I
being oversensitive? It is torture.
They seem to imagine their siblings are wearing
armour –like Ned Kelly-and can not be wounded.
How wrong they are.
Vanity fair
All is vanity and ego. What good
is your education to you when you have
not learned how to wrestle with Gollum?
Nothing to do except wait , and hope it will change.
Thinking of Christmas
25/09/2012
So, after this trip to
Adelaide, the Xmas trip to Melbourne to see the boys is
looking like this:
Four day trip ( three or four
nights)
Plane to Melbourne Mum and Dad.
Xmas dinner for all five Nixons (if J comes with us)
Individual ‘interviews’ on other
days.
In this way we will only be all together for the Xmas dinner.
Teachers and Management
at Campbell
The leadership at Stodgeville? I kept well away from it. The headmaster was
rarely ever seen. ‘Greasy’ Cook, the Headmaster was an ageing, ruddy–faced,
Oxbridge graduate who was famous for his combed back greasy hair and his almost
total physical absence from the school corridors.
However, one day, when he did
manage to venture out, he was sweeping along
the corridor with gown and tails flying when he collided with the hapless
‘Jacko’ Jackson’. Jacko was a school
prefect and senior Head of house. He wielded considerable power, but was mild-mannered
and consequently popular with the boys. He had a stammer. The collision must
have been Jacko’s fault, at least in Greasy’s eyes, as he was promptly given twelve ‘Copies’ as a punishment. The poem, ‘Upon Westminster
Bridge’, by William Wordsworth was a
punishment prefects and teachers could give to miscreants to be copied out
without error. Occasionally, if the
misdemeanour was serious two copies would be given out. The hapless Jacko got twelve copies! To me it seemed absurd that a senor figure in
the establishment like Jacko could be given copies as punishment! Wordsworth
would turn in his grave if he knew what his lovely poem was being used for at
Stodgeville. It certainly put me off poetry for life. I have always associated
it with wrongdoing.
Not that I was often in trouble. No, I was too cowardly and
avoided confrontation with the authorities. Besides I myself was a junior
‘house’ prefect, opened the batting and
was first change bowler for the first XI. I was
generally still pretty much regarded by others, and indeed myself, as
part of the establishment in those days.
However, my first taste of how to abuse power was as House Captain of
Music. In my defence, I was appointed to the position, without being consulted,
and did not enjoy it at all. The first major challenge was having to organize the house singing competition
after classes. In the afternoons two music teachers would listen to each and
every one of ‘Dobbins’ House from 13 to 18 year olds-over a hundred boys- and
then give them a mark for singing a folk song. Honest to God! Can you imagine
the humiliation for a teenager being forced to do that? Well, I could and I made
sure that I was the only one in Dobbins House that didn’t sing in the
competition! I remember making some lame excuse to the teachers for not singing
myself. I learned to lead from behind at Stodgeveille!
On the positive side Bob Mitchell was a large jovial Englishman. A farmer from Devon
and Ex-Royal Navy he was a hopeless History teacher. ‘Big Bob’ as he was
affectionately called by his devoted followers –and there were many because of
his likeable personality and the status afforded him as Rugby coach, spent the first
twenty minutes of every class ribbing us-but in a friendly way. After that he
told us to get out our notebooks and he proceeded to dictate word for word the
notes needed to be learned in order to write the required history essays in the
exams. But even this most boring of tasks he managed to make interesting for us
by distorting the pronunciation of words in amusing ways. What made him
different form the others was he took a personal interest in us. He seemed to enjoy teaching us. I remember him doing me
a favour once. He drove me to Ballycastle –a two hour drive from Belfast
because I wanted to go on the geography field trip there but I had to play
cricket for the first eleven on the Saturday. It was a really decent thing for
him to do as it was out of his way. I remember I made very few runs and was hit
all over the place including for a six that day! So, although Bob stands
indicted at the educational war crimes commission for being a plum useless
teacher there are many mitigating circumstances pertaining to his case. These
will surely be taken into account on the day of reckoning!
Bob,, the history teacher , was the only real human being in
the place. The rugby coach, and the
stereotypical ‘Macho Man” ex Royal Navy , he was, paradoxically, one of the few
teachers who had a genuine sense of humour and respect for us. He talked to us
like we were human beings. He took me seriously-and that’s what all
teenagers want. But it was too much for most of the other teachers. They were
too wrapped up in themselves in one way or another to care about individual
students-or at least, that was how it appeared to me anyway.
At Campbell, I was also impressed with a nerd-like teacher who was very sincere and kind to all
of us lower sixth ‘wasters’. Trevor
Carleton was the only one, apart from ‘Big Bob’ who spoke to us as if we were
human beings (Yes, there were two human teachers now that I come to think of
it).
Because I admired him, I became interested in his subject-geography. He
used to take us in his car to visit rocks in remote parts of the countryside
and housing estates in Belfast. As a
teacher myself I really admire him for
giving up his afternoons to drive around some of the grimmer and sometimes the grimiest housing areas of
Belfast in silence with myself and two other “Rock” nerds. Trevor was an example of
leadership by example. I even became convinced that his subject,
geography was interesting simply because he thought it was and I admired him.
It was only when I got to Trinity College that I realised that Geography was
crushingly boring and I that I wasn’t interested in it at all.
I remember how Trevor
behaved one day when he had to look after some form four students sent in to
our sixth form class presumably because the teacher was absent. The contrast
was remarkable. With us he was mild, tolerant and put up with my, sometimes
clearly audible attempts to keep Mark
entertained at the back of the class. But with the form fours the change was
draconian. He bellowed and roared at them until they were cowed into submission within five
seconds. I was fascinated by this Jekyl and Hyde like behaviour.
Perhaps, I became interested in education at this stage. But
it seems unfair to blame Trevor for it all –he was such a sincere man and I
wouldn’t like to burden him with the guilt! Before we leave Stodgeville it is
worth mentioning a few others. “The Major”
Little was the Deputy Principal and the cricket coach. In some ways he
kept himself
remote from us
boys but he was always calm and fair-minded.
The Major was the head cricket coach and he actually
accompanied us into a pub on the Cricket tour to England. This was 1969. Even
today, over forty years later, it would
surely not be politically correct to do such a thing. He didn’t like it–but he
did it. In retrospect I really admire him for having the courage to do it given
his position in the school.
‘Greasy’ was by no means the only one for whom I felt the
inclination to indict to appear before the “Educational
War Crimes Commission” There was ‘shiner’
( so-called because he was bald) Thompson who taught me A level Chemistry by lecturing to the ten of us non-stop with only the occasional pause to allow us to
copy down what was on the board-but certainly not to ask any questions. At the beginning of
the course the penalty for asking questions was the humiliation of revealing
one’s ignorance. As the weeks passed the fear of looking foolish increased
until nobody asked any questions at all as they were more and more afraid of looking foolish. The result was that I endured the two years
without understanding hardly a word he said. To my surprise I achieved a grade
C in my Exam. Perhaps this was a credit to my perseverance. But it might only have proved just how ineffective the exam was in assessing any
Chemistry skills I was supposed to have. I say this because after that two year course I did not have the most basic understanding of Chemistry.
I learned this myself several years later when I was asked
to teach chemistry at Wa secondary school in Ghana. I was a trained bio;logy
teacher –but had been asked to teach chemistry on arrival. I had never been any
good at Chemistry so I had to start from first principles again and learn the
subject. So, sorry ‘Shiner’! You stand accused of boring me to death because of
your refusal to encourage simple questions. It was obvious he didn’t enjoy the
whole thing much either.
Then there was ‘Laddy’ Eccles –the Physics teacher. A cold
fish if ever there was one. Shiner did occasionally crack a smile or grin
–usually at his own joke. But Laddy was always grim and irritable. Laddy’s M.O.
was to enter the physics lab ten minutes late, tell off everyone who was not in
their seat and then say “Ok page 25, Practical
Number 12 …pause…and then to the first unfortunate boy he laid eyes on…”Well.. what are you waiting
for Laddy?. He would then leave the room
and go into the prep room to do God only knows what only to reappear ten
minutes before the end of the class to make sure we had tidied up all the
apparatus. I don’t think Laddy ever addressed a single word to me eye to eye on
a one to one basis in the whole two years of the course. I don’t know how he went on to become a Principal - as apart form being a slack and
lazy bugger, he had no charisma.Shiner also became a Principal. It must
have been due to the fact that Campbell
was regarded as the number one college in terms of snob value in Northern
Ireland.
‘Woody’ Suthers was another waste of space. A physics teacher
Woody clearly felt teaching was beneath him .He would address us in desultory
northern English tones with his hands in his pockets. He seemed to us to be saying “ What did I do to deserve to be here teaching
you bloody bogtrotters?” Woody specialized , like many ‘Masters’ at Campbell in not saying hello or
acknowledging your existence in any shape or form when he passed you in the
corridor.
How times change! Were a teacher to do this today he might lose
his job.
There were very few other bright lights..one was ‘Bumph’ Johnstone, the geography teacher. He was a
young and a good natured Englishman –a graduate of Durham University. Bumph
wasted no time in settling in to Campbell. He very quickly, courted and married
Mavis, one of the maids in the Kitchen. Unaware of our snobbery at the time the
boys derided this choice as somehow marrying beneath him. Northern Ireland was
riddled with the class system and its associated snobbery. For that is what it
was – pure snobbery. Understandable maybe, but all the more insidious because we
were unaware of it-having absorbed it from our parents and the surrounding
culture. Bumph had a sense of humour and made us laugh. He relieved the tedium.
He was young and that made a difference. He was also a pretty average Geography
teacher letting us make our own notes on everything and rarely doing any real
teaching!
Then there was Kenny Lynch-a Bertie Wooster type figure from
Cambridge. What the hell was a man like that doing in Belfast? He was just too kind.
It was the textbook example of the new teacher being too nice to the students
and the students taking advantage and giving him hell. I’ve been there myself
in my career. Kenny was so nice that one day, the class joker, turned on the
water taps in Kenny’s classroom at
breaktime when Kenny was having his coffee in the staffroom. When Kenny arrived
back for class the door was locked. By the time he got in the floor was under
six inches of water. We all thought it
was hugely funny. Kenny lasted only a year.
Tom P inspired fear through the cruel use of his sarcasm
. He was a bully –but only if he didn’t like you. If he liked you were ok . I was terrified of him but he liked
me because I was in his ‘house’ at school, and because I was good at cricket
and ‘tried hard’ at Rugby. To give some
idea of how much power he had over me I remember cycling to his home one night
to give him an excuse note for crying off the next day’s rugby! I was terrified
of missing rugby but I earned
how to lie to Tom P. I hated the rugby more than I was afraid of him. I suppose I must have forged my Dad’s signature on the note.
The main thing with Tommy was to show enthusiasm. If you did
you were ok. He hated slackers and humiliated them mercilessly. Tom kept his
Bible on his desk and inside the cover was written the date on which he had
been “Saved”-ie ‘Born again’..In spite of this life wasn’t all plain sailing
for him. He refereed an international rugby match and went on, like most
Campbell teachers, to be Principal of a
Grammar school in Bangor. I met one of his students who later taught my son and
daughter French when we lived in Borneo. This teacher hated Tom as a student
at Bangor Grammar. Tom’s career came to an abrupt end when he was held
responsible by his board of Governors for not detecting and dealing with the
activities of his Deputy Head who was a paedophile and having an improper
relationship with a student.
Another Cambridge Graduate teaching at Campbell was
Fuller-Sessions. A young and intense man he took his teaching seriously. I
remember being interested in his English class for the first time in the fourth
form. He discussed a reading in a book called ‘The problem of suffering’. I
remember being impressed. Why do good people suffer? –it was a damn good
question. Although he was too highbrow to
totally connect with the bog trotting Irish, he
did make an effort –unlike the senior Rugby coach DBY ‘Mr Charisma’ yet another
Cambridge Graduate who, in form 5, killed any interest I had in literature with
his meaningless ‘non classes’ of English. DBY told us to go away and
read Richard the Second without explaining
even when
or where
it took place, let alone trying to give us
some historical context. He also taught us “Pride and Prejudice”. I could
understand just a little of this, so I wrote what I thoght was a stunning
character analysis of Elizabeth Bennett’
at one point I compared her personality to my own: DBY dismissed my
efforts as being ‘too emotional’ It seems that even at 14 I couldn’t control my
emotions. I hated English. I’m sure Elizabeth Bennett was regarded as too
emotional my most of her contemporaries!
Social life in my
Campbell days.
There wasn’t much. I played soccer at school in the
afternoons everyday and did my homework in the evenings. All my friends on the
road did their homework too. The weekends were boring and I occasionally went
to Barbour’s place or watched TV (soccer) with Rhino or clambered over the
school roves or occasionally fired off a home made rifle at some empty milk
bottles with Michael. Doogie and Rhino might appear at weekends for a few years
but these friendships withered away to
nothing as the years passed and they made other friendships at their state schools.
Girls were only fantasised about usually when in bed. Yomie
did not return for more after our initial wrestling match behind the swing seat.
When I was 16 things became serious. I had to show the lads
that I was a man. I was invited to go to the Stormont hotel for a drink one
Saturday night with a few of the other sixth formers. I pretended I had been
there before but took great care to hide away from the others at the table so
that I would not have to buy any drink-and run the risk of being ejected by the barman for being underage.(The
legal age was eighteen). The six of us sat at a table, and although we all paid
at the table, the two larger boys, who had more hair on their face, would buy
all the drinks so that there would be no questions asked.
By the end of the evening I had drunk one pint of Guinness,
one pint of Harp, one pint of Tenants and one pint of Younger’s Ale. All the other boys must have
known it was my first time in a pub as I had not yet realized that you don’t switch your drinks in
the same evening!
I took the bus home and threw up in the toilet. Mum and Dad
either didn’t catch on that I was drunk –or pretended not to notice. Nothing was ever
said.
Donegal
Donegal was the family holiday destination. In 1955 we
started going to a farm house in Port-na
Blagh, county Donegal, each August. There, we met several families–mainly from
Northern Ireland who had had the same
idea. Over the years many of these families kept returning to the same
farmhouse and later, to caravans at a
beach called Marble Hill. Some of them became firm friends of the Nixons and
eventually they had reunions in the winters in each other’s houses.
My social life may have been abysmal, but the adult Nixons
had a rare old time of it.
Even though the
teenagers tended to separate themselves from the parents, Donegal was very important for my social development
as, in fact, it was there that that I had at least some exposure to the
opposite sex before going to University at
the age of seventeen. I was a painfully shy teenager –a shyness which I
have never entirely overcome. It was at Donegal where I had my first real crushes
and imaginary crushes: I had to fit my crushes for the entire year into those
two weeks in Donegal!
At this age I began to realize that girls like the strangest of boys.
I couldn’t understand why they were turned on by unintelligent simpletons like
my friend Michael and not by modest 'intellectual's such as myself. It wasn’t until thirty years later
that I realized they were attracted to Michael because he was handsome in a
rugged sort of way. Up until then I had thought I had been the benchmark for
handsomeness. Not just the benchmark-the Gold standard even! It didn’t occur to me that I was actually
quite nerdy-looking.
I just couldn’t get it. All these girls seemed to want to do
was look at Michael and tumble into the bushes with him for a quick grope.
What sort of way was that to behave? That was the sort of
thing I expected boys to do-not girls. I was appalled to realize that the
girls did not seem to want to discuss
the meaning of the Universe. I was very disappointed–devastated by this
discovery!
Of course I wanted to tumble in the bushes as well-but not
until we had discussed the meaning of life and the origin of the Universe. I was devastated to discover
that not only id girls not want to talk
about the meaning of life and the Universe. Even worse they seemed to want to
go into the bushes with Michael-not me!
Michael? That pleasant but working class yobo from up the
road?
What could they possibly see in him?
It was just incomprehensible!
When I realized this
I became even more introspective as a young man. I searced feverishly for other
topics to discuss with young girls before going into the bushes with them. But
to this day I never have found what that appropriate
topic was or is. Maybe I should ask Michael wherever he is. It never occurred
to me to ask Michael about the secrets of flirting, because I knew Michael was
dumb and working class and I was
intelligent and middle class-and knew everything..
My crush was Di B. Di was smarter than me –and going to
be a Doctor..I did have one snog with her when we played spin the bottle. I
remember being quite surprised at how aggressive and sensuous her kiss was. Di
seemed such a gentle soul but she kissed like a cougar... I liked it... and I thought girls were gentle souls!
But, like all the other girls, she was more interested in
bloody Michael of course. This absolutely drove me to distraction. Couldn’t she see
Michael was thick! I began to conclude that either there was something wrong
with girls or there was something wrong
with me.
To release my frustations and get back at the world I smoked
cigarettes like a train with Michael in the toilets of the Sheephaven hotel. To
this day I don’t know whether Mum and Dad ever knew or not.
By the end of my schooling in 1969 I was still a virgin, but
I compensated for this by smoking a
drooping pipe. This gave me a certain ‘gravitas’ which I felt the girls would find irresistible.
I thought I looked like Sherlock Holmes.
My cricket gave me
some badly needed strokes from the other
boys. As well as the Pipe, I smoked a few cigarettes just to show I wasn’t a
nerd.
Waiting for Santa
Around this time -1970- I remember one Saturday night going for a walk. “Everyone else is going out to enjoy
themselves with their girlfriend or boyfriend” I thought to myself. What is
wrong with me?
I was walking past a red double decker bus. Someday , it
will happen. I’ll just meet her“the one” and I will just “know”
I looked up at the bus and saw a girl on the top deck in the
front seat looking down at me.
Maybe, if I just lock my eyes with hers, it will happen! She
will ‘know’ too and ‘it’ will start.
I kicked a stone and walked on…
I was still waiting for Santa Claus.
It was to be another sixteen years before he finally came in the form of M.
It was 1970. I was not sure that I was ‘cool’. And I
certainly wasn’t
ready for University
29/9/2012
I realize now that it is not
answers which young people want. They don’t want to be shown “the way” They
want to find the way themselves-and a
different way at that! That is why they don’t want to hang around with
their parents. Its a bit sad being a parent for this reason.
Sometimes it is just not
possible to help people. They just won’t be helped. They just can’t be helped.
Friendship requires an intensity
and focus which very few people are
prepared to render. For this reason, even intelligent people fail to sustain
friendships. People seek a myriad ways to distract themselves from achieving it.
For me, if there is divinity–it is best
embodied in the concept of true
friendship. The Divinity would behave as a true friend does. I reject
the idea that God is powerful, fearful, jealous and needs to be flattered as
Christians and Moslems would have us believe..
Trinity College
Dublin
Like Campbell, the Trinity experience was for me was pretty
miserable. It was just a continuation. To be frank, all of my personal experiences in educational
institutions
as a student have been
miserable-and quite a few of my experiences as a teacher as well! People have
always been telling me to smile. 'Be a glass half full not half empty' etc. This
started at Trinity.
In 1969 whilst still at Campbell, I applied to three Universities
–Durham (because ‘Bumph’ Johnstone my geography teacher was a graduate and
influenced me) St Andrews in Scotland (I don’t know why–perhaps because it
was far away from Belfast) and Trinity College Dublin where my brother was entering his final year. I was offered a place in
all three and chose Trinity in the end because although it was away from home –it was not too far away. I remember being very
nervous at the idea of leaving home. One of the few interactions I remember
with my brother P was him taunting
me with “Don’t you feel a bit diffident
about going to Dublin? He knew well that I was as nervous as hell about leaving
home.."
I stayed with my Spinster Auntie Bea in my first year in
Dublin. In retrospect it was a masterstroke on the part of my parents but I
didn’t think so at the time . Auntie Bea, my mum’s sister, was recovering from
a heart attack and she used to spend a lot of time in bed. Bea was a tall,
elegant, strikingly handsome woman –but a lonely old spinster and rather a sad
figure. Mum used to say she had plenty of suitors in her youth but that a
Prince wouldn’t be good enough for Bea. And Mum was probably right as usual. In
the evenings I would cycle home and she would be in bed waiting for me. She
liked me and enjoyed my company. She had a great sense of humour and I was able to practise my skills as a comedian
on her. It wasn’t difficut she giggled like a schoolgirl at everything I said. I like
her-but she could be cold and cruel.
At times she would say the most hurtful things. I remember
one time she reduced me to tears-I was very sensitive. I went to see
P, my brother, who was in an apartment on campus to look for a shoulder
to cry on and he was less than sympathetic. I was in tears and P didn’t
know what to do or where to look. He was wondering why he had to have such a
‘wus’ or a ‘ninny’for a kid brother. He
didn’t want to know me-and avoided me in College for most of the year -even though we both played on the University Cricket team. P was close to playing for Ireland. (I got a trial for Ulster schoolboys in my final year at Campbell)
After four months with Auntie Bea, I decided I must leave
Auntie Bea and strike out on my own.
In this first year I
was so lacking in self- confidence I couldn’t speak to anyone – not even male
students, let alone girls or Lecturers.
I purchased a postal correspondence course based on auto-suggestion to build up my confidence. It consisted of repeating mantras over
and over to myself such as “I am good, I am confident , I can speak to this person etc” It claimed to be
based on auto–suggestion of the
subconscious mind. This was pretty ‘avant-garde’ in 1970. I don’t know how
effective it was but, at the very least it made me feel I was doing something for a while to distract me from my almost permanent
introspective obsession with my social
ineptness.. (About fifteen years later, I remember being horrified to find that
Mum and Dad had found this correspondence course in the attic at home and read
it!)
Dad and Mum weren’t a great help with my social inadequacies.
Mum was just too embarrassed to talk about anything personal at all. Dad tried
a bit-but not much. When I was ten I
remember him giving me a book on the “facts of life” and asking me to read it
when I was sick in bed. There wasn’t much of a Q and A with Dad afterwards though!
When I was seventeen and not pulling in the birds as any
proud blue-blooded Ulster father would expect form his blue–blooded Ulster son
Dad would sometimes take matters into his own hands- and always with disastrous
results…
One night at Christmas around 1970, I was going to sleep on the
floor in a sleeping bag.(There must have been visitors in the house). I must not have been performing well socially because dad appeared beside me and stood over me, hands on
hips. He said
“Why don’t you enjoy yourself more with people.Why
don’t you speak to them. What’s wrong with you?
The direct approach didn’t have the desired effect on the
offending party. I can still remember remember everything about that
moment-the frustration in his tone of
voice, his aggressive posture with his hands on his hips-and even -the colour
of my sleeping bag; the colour of the corduroy jacket beside me on the floor.
I
didn’t sleep much that night –just wept with anger and rage. From that night on
I knew I would never live up to Dad’s expectations. Gollum was furious, and from
then on Gollum and I decided to give as good as we got from Dad.
F**k! it and “F**k ‘m!” Gollum would say...
“Yeah .. Gollum....you're right”
I felt better.
Dad did make more efforts, but not many, to engage his
hypersensitve nerd of a son. I remember one time, he was driving to Dublin and
somehow he had persuaded me to go with
him for the ride. Having made several futile attempts to engage me in
conversation he stopped the car, turned the engine off and told me what he
considered to be two funny jokes. One
was about a Mister Ree. The joke was a shaggy dog story with the punch line
based on a pun on ‘the sweet mystery of
life’.
The other was a dirty
joke–another pun with a punch line about
“Master Bates”. This was a pun on masturbation. I was absolutely horrified at
what I perceived to be his crass attempts to ingratiate himself with me. I did
my best to laugh at the appropriate time. I was mortified that Dad new what the word meant!! Poor Dad! He thought he was trying to be helpful but he had a
real hard time of it with me. I just
wasn’the sort of son he wanted. How disappointing for him!
When I was at University, I would come home to Belfast for
holidays and it seemed to me that I was
such a disappointment to him that he just sometimes just couldn’t even bear to
look at me. He was constantly critical of me-and and overbearing at times. Mum made some
attempts to defend me. She could be vicious herself –but more often in her own defense than mine.
I thought she should have defended me more against Dad-and I never really totally forgave her for that. In the end she would
give into Dad because he was too strong
for her..
Dad would sulk. He was so moody and sometimes would go for
two or three weeks at not speaking to
Mum-or myself.
Sometimes I defended
myself and rebuked him. If Mum supported me he would act so offended and
then try
so hard to make us feel guilty. Since
I couldn’t speak to anyone –girl or boy at his age, those summers were pretty tedious!
The only relief I got was from smoking. I knew about the health risks but I was
developing an “attitude” of “Who cares, I’m probably going to die anyway?”
I think I was beginning to develop a death wish. I would say to myself...“ It doesn’t matter if I smoke-I don’t think I will ever
make it in real life , anyway”
In later years my relationship with Dad improved. He only
began to respect me when I had a job, a wife and children. It was only when that happened that
I realized I had some bargaining chips. I had some power over him and wasn’t
afraid to use it to keep him in line. He loved coming to visit Maria and the
kids us in all the places I chose to live-Africa, South America, Dubai and Australia.
When in good form Dad had a sense of humour. He started a
group among his friends called “The Dundonald Flat Earth Society” to which he
would gleefully refer. He was proud of it. Towards the end of his life, I asked him why he had formed it and he explained that he had been very disappointed to learn as an
adult that most human behavior was totally irrational. He considered himself a ‘Humanist’,
eschewed churchgoing, and admired Bertrand Russel, who was an atheist
Philosopher. this was pretty cool stuff for an Ulsterman of his generation.
The lowest point in my relations with my family came at the
end of Trinity College Dublin. I was living at home and waiting to go to
Bristol to train to be a teacher.
Dad had been in silent mode for several days. He was
seriously sulking over something I had said to him. Mum had joined in on my
side and things were very tense. One day at dinner we had the most frightful
verbal altercation. P started it by baiting me about Trade Unions. P was an
arch conservative and I considered
myself left wing- radical even-in a theoretical sort of way. I say this because
I had never done anything in my life but study–up till that point. I was a vocifereous
armchair pseudo communist. Philip made some comment designed to annoy me. Mum, an
outright fascist (with a good heart and
the best of intentions of course) made some supporting comment to P and then I put
in my twopence worth in protest. All hell broke loose. Philip was offended by my
insulting rejoinder. I lost it entirely.
This was the cue for my brother to stand up from the dinner table and start grappling with me
physically. We had passed the point of no return.
Eventually, Dad had to separate us–of all things–an empty saucepan! Mum said
nothing and didn’t know where to look.
Neither Mum nor Dad said anything at the time . A few days later, when things had calmed down, both Philip and I apologized to Mum. The incident
was never referred to again by anyone- until now that is. I am the only one
alive who knows about it..
Although Mum had a very
a charming social persona -and was a superb social host, she could certainly be intense and passionate. She had reactionary right–wing views about Race
and Unions etc. She defended apartheid
in South Africa with a passion and hated
Trade Unions. She idolised Margaret Thatcher. We had many uncomfortable conversations at the
dinner table. Most of the family were active members of the moderate (Unionist/Alliance)
party but underneath it all, they were
all really staunch Unionists and the
rhetoric was pretty staunchly Unionist.
They could not see or acknowledge the reason for the violence in Northern Ireland-the
discrimination in jobs and housing against Catholics. I could see an intensity in
Mum’s political comments and rhetoric
which surprised me. I often wondered where the intensity and the
vehemence came from.
Since I was in Dublin at University I had a broader picture of the “Troubles” ‘than anybody else in the family for this,I
was regarded with suspicion by the others as a
Republican ‘sympathizer’.
I only realized
decades later that the vehemence in Mum’s attitude probably came from the tragic death of her father. Her father was in the
Irish police (R.I.C.) and murdered by
the IRA in an ambush in 1921. Mum never mentioned this incident to me until I was well into my forties. She so successfully repressed the whole experience
that I think it became the source of
many of her vehement right wing
positions she seemed to take on all political and social issues. Her father was brutally shot down in a notorious ambush on
the RIC by the IRA in County Tipperary. It is well documented in the history
books. Several other policemen died in the ambush.
It says a lot about the personality and character of Mum
that she was determined never to tell us about the death of her father when she
was three. Perhaps she was determined
not to let this death be seen by us (her
children), to unduly influence what she considered to be her “liberal” views on the events taking place in Northern Ireland at that time.(the early seventies). She saw
herself as a liberal because she derided Paisley and his extreme Unionist
party.
Perhaps she just wanted to repress the whole incident.
Perhaps his death meant less to her than I suggest. I don’t know the answer.
Friends at Trinity
At the end of the first year at T.C.D. I was so depressed I
decided to speak to my Methodist Minister Wesley G about my chronic shyness.
Wesley was a delightful old man who hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. He was very sympathetic and referred me to a
psychiatrist. I had one visit with Dr James at which nothing much happened. I
think she asked me how many O levels I’d passed. I went back to Dublin and
started visiting the psychiatrist at College. He seemed to think there was
nothing much wrong with me either. Not surprising perhaps because he seemed to be much shier than I was!
Trinity was the first place I had ever met girls. Coming
form a boy’s school and a boys only family, I was least confident of all with
girls. I soon came to realise that girls weren’t interested in much really except flirting with confident men.
They didn’t seem to realize, (If they had only asked me I would have told them)
that all these men wanted
to do was get into their pants. I wanted
to get into their pants too of course, but only after
we had had deep and meaningful discussions of things with me like education, philososphy,religion, the origin of
the Universe and cricket.
It also came as a
surprise to me that most of them were not disgusted by men’s lasciviousness and
in fact seemed, inexplicably, to encourage and even enjoy it.
I decided girls were weird and unfathomable.
I still wanted desperately to get into their pants but couldn’t. The
result was a lot of masturbation.
This didn’t stop me from plucking up enough courage to
approach my crush –Maggie D. God, Maggie was a stunner She was tall, had the most beautiful black curly hair and
sensuous cherry lips. Her voice was so sexy I almost wept when she spoke. She
didn’t speak-she whispered. I have a weakness for women who whisper.
I did weep out of frustration one day after about a year of
waiting. I had finally plucked up the courage to speak to
Maggie one day and asked to see her.( I must have been reading a particularly
powerful ‘autosuggestive’ Mantra that week). Maggie, mature and perfect girl that
she was agreed to meet me. We sat together for about half an hour while I carefully
and logically explained the reasons why she should go out with me, I needed to
go out with her before I passed out with frustration. Maggie was probably
terrified by the intensity of this unsmiling northern Irish Nerd.
Being the perfect girl that she was, she let me down gently
and let me know that she didn’t want to.
Accepting her decision with as much grace as I could, I made it to the far side
of College Park and, when I was well out
of public view, cried my eyes out for a full half hour.
It didn’t end there-the obsession I mean. I took to stalking
her at her home. I would park my car outside her home and wait for her to enter
the house in order to catch a glimpse of her. This all took place when I was only
twenty. The obsession stayed with me for
several years–even when I was in Africa. This was my introduction to the
dark side of passion.
Maggie was my only love interest in four years at Trinity-
you think that’s not much of a love life?
You’d be right - it wasn’t.
As time passed I made good friends with several males including Ken H and Philip G from Dublin, Tim
H from Wicklow and John
F from Birr. Some of them I am
still in touch with forty years later.
Anyway, sometime during my first year at Trinity College
Dublin I developed another major
obsession-education. This was the beginning of a love - hate relationship which
hasn’t ended yet.
It’s worth saying a bit more about John F because he was
really my mentor at T.C.D. He was a mature student in his late twenties. He was
a red headed son of the soil from Birr , County Offally. John was a catholic, freethinking
radical. Painfully shy, he had an intensity about him which made him passionate
about a wide range of subjects from education to religion. I was strongly
influenced by him. But the main interest
was in his theories of education. He wanted to abolish schools
and replace them with learning networks-as espoused by Ivan Illich. The
practice of education –that is –teaching in a school frightened the life out of
me because of my shyness.
In my third year,
John invited me to an ‘Encounter group’.
This was a seventies invention: a group of strangers would meet for a weekend
and sit around in a circle telling each other their most intimate and innermost
feelings towards each other. Sounded like a good idea to me. I thought this
would solve my shyness problem. Unfortunately,
the experience was very painful for me. One of the more flirtatious girls in my
group made some negative comments about me which I had a great deal of trouble
in dealing with. I had to continue seeing the group leader for several months after
the event in order to try to resolve the issues around my shyness that had surfaced during this encounter group
week-end. Insecurity and hypersensitivity, not just with girls but with all and
sundry by now were firmly entrenched
traits in my personality.
I had become a real outsider.
John eventually became a well-known academic in Ireland.
After a few years we lost touch-although not through a lack of effort on my part. John
did not take me as seriously as I took him .He was a ‘Father’ figure’. Perhaps
he became aware of this and was not comfortable with it.
Apart from Tim H, the artist, I shared rooms with
Philip G at Trinity 1974-1975. This was our final year. Philip and I had
been good friends since first year when
we had met and played cricket together for
the University cricket team. In the first year he was a quiet, thoughtful
fellow. As time went on he changed and by the fourth year Philip had become
a real go-getter. He rushed about from
place to place like there was no tomorrow. He seemed to me have lost his
ability to reflect–he just did things without thinking. I continued to think
and not do much. Philip was ambitious and went on to have a very successful career
in teaching–eventually becoming Headmaster of Kilkenny College.He visited me
in Ghana in 1975 and in Malawi a few years later.
Another person who visited me in Malawi was Ken H. I met Ken in first year at
Trinity. Sadly for Ken he had a dreadful time with his Chemistry and ended up
having to repeat his whole first year in Natural Sciences. He never quite
recovered from this and ended up taking five years to gain a General Studies degree
instead of a Natural Sciences degree. In those days there was a big difference
in the status value between a General studies degree and natural sciences
degree. It particularly irritated him (and his father as well no doubt) that he
had to stay at home and be dependent on his father at the time. Ken and I were soul-mates and we would spend days
and weeks at Lough Mask in his parent’s caravan fishing and discussing
everything under the sun, including the origin and meaning of life, girls etc!) He
was kind, generous and eccentric and I appreciated him as a friend very much.
Ken was a convinced atheist and as as rabid about his atheism as any
evangelical Christian. He entertained me
with horror stories from his days in boarding school. He was an outsider-and I
began to realize I was an outsider myself. After a brief career in teaching he became a
Principal of a school in the Kuwait
which was destroyed by Saddam Hussain’s army
when he invaded Kuwait in 1990. This traumatic event had a dramatic
effect on his career. He returned to Ireland and married the American Librarian
form his school.. After several abortive attempts to restablish himself in
education, Ken quietly retired! Ken and
Pen are very happily married and now
retired in Turkey after living in the USA.
1/10/2012
Ken sent me an e-mail today. He
has been following the re-election campaign of Obama and suggests that he is a war
criminal. Like myself Ken likes to exaggerate for dramatic effect. If Obama were a war
criminal what vocabulary could be used to describe Hitl;er, Saddam Hussein and
Stalin? Ken is a keen social critic. In recent years he has become obsessed
with the Jewish palestine issue.
Yuppies in Adelaide
Last night Maria and I were
invited to a party given by one of her workmates. They were a very interesting
group of young people.
There was a Muslim from Singapore
with a christian partner-also from
Singapore. There was a Philipina girl with her Aussie husband. Also, there was
a Japanese girl without her Aussie husband.
The Aussie husband of the
Philipina was a very opinionated and conservative young student of medical science
who believed, among other things that:
Teachers were biased against
white Australians in history
Teachers were overpaid
Teachers should be sackable more
easily
The Labour party had destroyed
Australia
Refugees should be sent home and
not allowed in to Australia.
The whites in Australia were
hard –done –by because they were asked to feel sorry for the treatment of
Aboriginals
All civlisations were built on
the skeletons of other ones (in this case those of Aboriginals)
And other things which I have
forgotten.
The most exasperating thing
about him was he was a practising catholic!
I was just appalled at the
arrogance and meanness of spirit of this repulsive young fascist
I managed to keep my cool
Keith B was a Campbellian friend who went to Trinity
with me. He was streetwise and a calm and
reliable fellow with a dry sense of humour. Like many other Campbellians I seemed
to be able to amuse him at Trnity,
although we hadn’t been friends at Campbell.. I think he thought I was naïve
and he seemed to find this endearing. I certainly was naïve. I'v e had other
friends since, and still do have them who have a similar relationship with me.
One amusing anecdote is worth mentioning. It will give you an idea of the type of
relationship we had. One night Keith and I were leaving college on foot to
return to our respective flats. I was carrying
my brief case in my left hand and Keith was to my right. We were walking
in tandem in deep conversation when I suddenly pitched headlong downwards and forwards
to my left and into the dark..
I had tumbled and crashed into the cellar of a
building and disappeared entirely from Keith’s view (and the view of everyone
else). As I picked myself up and dusted myself off I realized Keith was peering down into the
cellar from a height of several feet and was asking
me if I was ok. When I told him I was unscathed he immediately disappeared from
view and collapsed into a wild fit of hysterics from which he didn’t really
recover for several days. When I finally climbed out of the cellar I could see him
clinging to the ivy of the walls of the building to support himself and prevent
himself collapsing with laughter.
After much hilarity, we eventually went for a
drink to the student bar. But Keith
simply could not stop laughing for the rest of the evening. He was beside
himself. Over the next few days every time we saw each other, even form a
distance, he would just dissolve into hysterical fits of laughter. I think I realized then at last that
I had become ood at something- I had a talent for making
people laugh!
I haven’t seen Keith for about thirty years-but I am sure if
I met him today and mentioned that incident he would dissolve into hysterics
again.
Keith had a girlfriend called Wendy, with whom I could have
a half-sensible dialogue because, like me, she was passionate
about education. But she occasionally made insensitive remarks about me so I came to thoroughly dislike her. I was
jealous of Keith for the sex he was
having with Wendy. Everybody around me seemed to be having sex except me and my
best friends. Why did I have friends who couldn’t get any sex either? I don’t
know. Maybe we were all too intellectual to have sex.
In November of my second year Tim, Barry P (a step
brother of Tim’s from Campbell) Gary M and myself went for a weekend to County
Mayo in the west of Ireland. It is wild country. We went for a walk up a
mountain right by the sea. As we started the climb on the long sloping shoulder
of the mountain, the weather closed in and it started to rain. It was freezing
cold at the top and when we reached the
summit it started to snow and blow a howling gale. By this time we were all thoroughly
soaked and cold and realized that we had not come prepared for the winter
weather on the mountain. We just had raincoats and shoes rather than boots and
overcoats. At the summit we realized that the wind was increasing and roaring
in from the sea at our backs and that it was not feasible to go back down the
way we had ascended.
In desperation we did all the wrong things: We split up into
two groups and both groups went down the mountain by a different route on the
leeward side slithering, sliding and bumping our way down an increasingly steep
slope. At one point remember sheltering in the lee of a protuberance watching the wind
whistle through a gully – and knowing that I had to go through the gully to get
down. I waited for the fiercest gusts of wind to ebb and then lunged through
the gully just managing to maintain my balance. It was a close thing. We made
it to the bottom and somehow found that the other group had also made it. We
headed to a local pub where we were given newspapers to put round our bodies
underneath our clothes. A roaring fire and some hot whisky warmed us up. This
was followed by a couple of pints of Guinness. All our trials were soon
forgotten.
But I never forgot
the lesson. Be prepared for bad the weather in the mountains!
Gary M was another friend I had made in the genetics
department. Gary was a genuine supernerd. He was a student in the Genetics Department
and had a great mathematical and computer brain –among other things. He was
also unassuming and seemed humble with a wry sense of humour. He had a long beard and
looked a bit like Santa Claus with a black rather than a white beard. I spent
hours and hours discussing all the subjects under the sun with Gary. And that
was exactly why I liked him. He was prepared to discuss any subject at all. In
fact when I stopped talking –which was rare –he would continue the discussion
or start another one. On Saturday evenings we would spend long evenings
together in O’Neill’s pub discussing
religion, politics, Education and
philosophy over three or sometimes four pints of Guinness. Gary was a very mild
tempered young man with a bushy black beard that Santa Claus would have been
proud of in his youth- He had a sage-like demeanour and was painfully shy.
I remember him surprising me in one of our conversations
with his cynical view of human nature. He said words to the effect that humans
were vicious and basically deserved what
they got and “needed to do what they were told” For such a mild-mannered man I
was surprised at the venom with which he said this. I had not suspected that he
was a closet ‘Fascist’-but I think he was. Later on I believe Gary went on to
become Brussels bureaucrat with a fast lifestyle. Another surprise. How
changeable people are.
The first vacation in 1971 at Trinity was the time when I
took my first trip overseas. I went to Morocco on a bus trip through France and
Spain. I went on my own as it turned out
although I hadn’t planned it that way. My friend, Trevor M, had dropped out at the last minute. Trevor was
a very congenial fellow and I invited him to stay with us in Belfast for a few
days where he blotted his copy book with mum because he had body odour. To be
fair to Mum it was really serious body odour!
Trevor was also barking mad in that he was a fanatical Seventh Day
Adventist- believing, amongst other things, in the literal truth of Genesis in
the bible. I began to realize that people can and do believe anything. Trevor was a
geneticist –and the whole of genetics is based on evolution and natural
selection-which he didn’t seem to believe in.
Go figure!
I even got as far as the Sahara in Morocco. That really impressed me. My love affair with Africa began on this trip.
I was saved from
drowning on a beach by a lifeguard . I had been learning how to surf with some
friends. They had given up looking for waves, but I had stayed in the sea. I didn’t realize I was being towed out by a
current. Without my glasses I couldn’t see the shore. I waved my arm in
desperation and as fortune would have it, the lifeguard actually saw me and
swam out and dragged me in to the beach. I vomited on the beach and was thoroughly chastened by the experience
At the end of the second year at T.C.D. (1972) I spent the
summer with ‘Crowhead” in Lurgan. I do believe this kept me from going insane
at home with Mum and Dad. (It probably kept them sane too, of course-a fact
which I did not at all appreciate at the time). David was the source of
stability and he prevented me from sliding into the abyss of depression. I
remember driving home from Lurgan where he lived one night feeling elated after
an animated discussion on religion and ,
education and politics. Such discussions were my lifeblood -but also addiction at the time–my
alcohol.
Lecturers at Trinity
This would have to been one of the shortest chapters in the
diary mainly because there is not much to say about the teaching of the
lecturers except that most of them were uninspiring
and some of them were spectacularly boring. I have an image of droning Geology
and Botany Lecturers, begowned,with hands in pockets , eyes averted from their
audience, talking out loud-seemingly to
themselves, regurgitating dry textbooks of Geomorphology and Botany with barely
concealed disdain for their students. These
poor gentlemen-because there were no ladies in those days - clearly hated what they
were doing as much we did listening to them. In the end I stopped going to many
and admired my friends who had the fortitude to attend the lectures for the
page references in order to study them up later in the Library. What a waste of
everyone’s time –and the taxpayers money. And in those days as we were on
government grants!
2/10/2012
Dear old Trinity!
Today, I went tramping around
Adelaide –looking for places to advertise myself as an English Tutor.
Fairly straightforward…
Do you think!
Neither of the Public libraries
will allow advertising. This is a drastic change from the old days when a
public library was exactly that–a free public space to be used by the public
as they saw fit-not a protected space to be monitored by the control freaks who
now run the library committees….
Next, I tried the “Student Hub”
at Adelaide University.. What was conspicuous about this space was, firstly, just how crowded it was, and secondly, the fact that there were no notices permitted at all in a place where
students were eating and relaxing. Except for banks of course-which proudly
advertise themselves to the future bigspenders of the nation, while at the same
time preventing other little people like me advertising my tutoring class.The
only thing written at all on the walls was an advertisement for a bank which had it’s ATM in the middle of
the space with a queue as long as long as your arm of students waiting to use
it.
What a difference from Trinity
where there were scruffy notices everywhere on the walls of the campus. In fact,
we as students were encouraged to believe the public space was our space and to use the
noticeboards in all places on the campus. No power junkies on committees
vetting which notices should be allowed and which shouldn’t. Anyway, I found two spots-both close to photocopiers-and and put up my notices anyway! I’ll bet they
don’t last more than a few hours.
I posted a couple with
permission in the International Student Centre.
Then I went looking for the
Adelaide University English Department to post my advertisement. I found the
Bradford Business college –which kind of looked more like just that-a business
College-rather than a University department. It was separate form the main
Campus. Don’t want people to really know these foreigners actually pay our
bills!.I skulked up the bank stairs to level 2 to reception . It was pretty
empty so, when no-one was looking, I snuck in my notice among other more
official looking notices put up by the College. I imagine it won’t last long
either. But those students are potentially clients for me-mostly Asians who are
struggling to communicate in Business English.
Finally, I found the Adelaide
University English Language Department (for overseas students) in Grenfell Street. This was another clinical looking place set
well aside from the main University Campus. However, again, although it was set in a building clearly marked
“Adelaide University” it was set apart from the main Campus. There were no
notices anywhere-and the reception was manned by two young people who were younger than my children.
I approached…
“Hello, I was wondering if I
could put up an advertisement for myself as a pronunciation tutor?”
They took a long look at the
disheveled down and out who had presented himself in front of them. He looked
as though he had been tramping the streets
in desperation trying to drum up custom.
“ Eh..We are self-funded…you
mean, you would like to use our business to advertise yours?” said the male yuppy.
Oh…well I wouldn’t put it like
that.. I want to offer a specialist service to the students at the University
We are self-funded…said the male
flunkey
Oh , I thought you were a
university?
No…well, yes, but we’re
self-funded-so you want to use us to advertise your business..he insisted.
Well..yes…eh…no…
We’ll ask Tanya…said the female
lackey..
Oh yes…ask Tanya -no
worries…seeya later…I said.
I’m sure Tanya knows everything.
She must at least be older than the young
people at the front desk.
How has it come to pass that the ‘public’ spaces have been hijacked by
these corporate entities-banks mainly-to advertise their products? At the same
time they won’t let me or any other student advertise in the building?
The University allows the Banks
to advertise their products-but it does not allow little old me to advertise!.
4/10/2012
Coping with Rejection
I've been thinking recently it
would be useful to have courses in coping with rejection and failure at
schools. But, by but definition, most teachers couldn’t teach them I suppose,
because most people don’t seem to acknowledge rejection or failure to
themselves.
There would be the same problem
for parents, too who could use these
courses –parents would like to know how to get their children to cope with
failure and rejection..
The irony is that the whole of
consumer society functions on competition leading to rejection and failure.
Nobody told me this!
When I was seventeen, I remember
failing my driving test and going straight up to my bathroom and weeping! I
couldn’t handle the shame of having failed. Was that me? or was it school, the
system and the culture I was surrounded by….?
Maybe there should also be a
course on how to be alone. I still can’t handle that well.
There were some exceptions of course. There were good
lecturers: there was James K, a young man in the Geography Department who became almost orgasmically
enthusiastic about obscure topics such as “Nearest Neighbour Distances and the Network
Theory of Human Settlement patterns”
His students rather
unkindly speculated that his enthusiasm, like all enthusiasms in our opinion,
was a substitute for sex. We didn’t have
any enthusiasms or sex either ourselves-so
much for that argument!, His (enthusiasm) was contagious and by the end of
the year he had us all fooled into believing that Geography was a science and
that Human settlement patterns were predictable by mathematical calculation. To
be fair, he certainly appeared to believe it himself . I am reminded of the
famous statement attributed to Hitler that if you wanted to fool the masses you
had to tell them a really big lie–not a small one. What a load of crap ‘nearest
neighbour distances’ was.
No, James was not lying-we were just infected by his approachability and more power to his elbow for that. At least
he cared –unlike the other fossils. James
was a nice bloke–really rather shy at heart.
One of the Zoology lecturers, I can’t remember his name now,
was a hopeless lecturer but did make the occasional joke when he wasn’t hung
over. He was well-known for his friendliness with students –but generally only
when he was drinking in the Lincoln Inn on a Saturday night. When he was sober
he was pretty stiff.
Is it not fascinating that he was regarded as an oddball for
socializing so much with undergraduate students? How times have changed. Now
the oddball would be the lecturer who doesn’t socialize with his students.
Indeed it would be regarded as a professional weakness or even unprofessional
if you didn’t socialise with them! I remember his name now –it was Frank J.
Another Zoology Lecturer Brian W was an interesting case.He
was pretty boring as a Lecturer but quite personable and approachable as a person.
At the end of my third year at T.C.D. I was totally fed up with studying. I was still obsessed
with education-but only the theoretical ideas. My hero Ivan Illich, wanted to
abolish schools altogether and replace them with learning networks. I was impatient
to go to Africa to do Voluntary Service Overseas (V.S.O.). I was
seriously considering giving up University
and not doing my fourth honours year. I had
built myself up to taking the momentous decision to leave when I decided I would
ask Brian’s advice. He calmly persuaded me that it would be a foolish thing to
do. I took his advice and stayed for an enjoyable final year-and then went to
Bristol to train to be a teacher defore doing VSO in 1975.
I remember one other incident involving Brian which is noteworthy.
We were on a zoology fieldtrip in Portaferry for a few days. The evenings were
spent jollifying in the Pub and one night my friend Keith and I were returning
to our dormitory style rooms when Keith, a little the worse for wear, decided
to render some ditty in a boisterous manner at the top of his voice.
Unfortunately for the hapless Keith , normally a very quiet man, Brian W appeared at exactly the wrong moment. He tore
strips of Keith and I saw a side of
Brian which I didn’t like. He reverted to the schoolmaster mode and told Keith off as if he
were a primary school pupil. No doubt of course that Keith was out of order but
Brian was well over the top too. Keith was at least twenty-one at the time and no
free-thinking, self respecting, long haired, leftwing radical (as Keith and I
both proudly considered ourselves to be )
was going to let himself be treated like
that by a Lecturer. Not in the seventies anyway. A generally easy going Keith never forgave
him for humiliating him in public i.e. in front of me. He was really stung by Brian W's tirade and never forgave him.
George D was an exceptional man. He was a Cambridge
graduate and spoke like one (with plums in his mouth). He was extremely kind
and generous,madly eccentric in his ways and mannerisms and everyone loved
him. He was the head of the Genetics Department and also the Dean of Discipline. I was one of
only six final year Honours genetics students –and I would have to say that I
almost enjoyed my final year at Trinity. I was terrified of George –in the
sense that I was in awe of him. He was the original nutty professor.
During the
final year the students were protesting about everything from grants to the food
in the cafeteria.I took part in a ‘sit-in’ protest at the buffet one day and
George had to deal with it. As I was coming out he met me coming in. It is a
tribute to the man that he never held my participation in such ‘subversive’
activities against me in any way. At the end of the year he asked me if I
wanted to do a PhD and I declined saying I wanted to be a teacher!
He then asked
me would I like to go to Cambridge? It
was a measure of the man (myself , that is) that I also declined this offer .
This was mainly because I thought the
Cambridge PGCE program was full of failed Rugby players, which of course it
was. With the arrogance of youth I announced with disdain that I wanted to be part of the most “Progressive” PGCE program in the UK
available at that time - at Bristol University. Halcyon days!
Trinity also provided me with my first encounter with
charisma. Unfortunately not my own but someone else’s. David McConnell was a
dynamic young
Genetics lecturer from
Cornell University and
seemed to dazzle
everyone with his macho style of lecturing. He worked ‘at the cutting edge’ in
the new exciting field of DNA genetics. He was young , handsome and loquacious.
For me that was it –that was the man. But this seemed to be enough to impress
everybody –especially the girls who drooled over him in the most irritating
way.
The lectures took place at 8 in the morning in a prefabricated structure
which was freezing in winter. I remember listening to him and wondering what
all the fuss was about. Come on girls, yes he’s handsome and has a sexy voice
–but can’t you see he’s so shallow –and is really just a nerd! These were my
thoughts as I tried to unfreeze the ink form my pen and scribble down
meaningless notes. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Neither did the
girls but that didn’t seem to matter –they just wanted to hear his voice I
suppose. He was not good at answering questions-as he tended to dismiss the
questioner leaving them feel very small. I imagined him doing that to me
because I never had the nerve to ask him a question. That’s Charisma then?
I won’t mention
Hitler again –but I do feel like it.
What is it about power that attracts everyone then –especially women?
By the end of my third year there were times when I was
itching to leave trinity and go out and test myself in the real world. Other times I wanted to retreat from the world
altogether and ‘drop out’. I daydreamed the most unrealistic scenarios: going
and living in the forest meadows of the
wicklow mountains –sleeping rough was one idea;another was to go and live in
the praires in the wild west of the USA on a farm with some “frinds’with just
horses o look after and cattle to rear!
but in the end I hunhg in there and surprised everuone by doing better than I expected and getting a second class first division degree.
It was all over!
