This Time it's Personal ~ part 10

I've never had children of my own but I've had step-kids twice - B when I was in my late twenties for four years or so, and Z and O now and for the last 10 years. In both cases I've found the experience difficult to say the least. I even rang the Samaritans up once because I was just so beside myself. (I wasn't suicidal. I just needed to vent.) In both cases things improved enormously once they hit adolescence and I'd say I have a very good relationship with Z and O now and by the time we broke up I got on better with B than I did with her mum. I can relate to teenagers. Make of that what you will. Partly I think it's just too late to change anything much by that age but also I think they just have a way of thinking that small children just don't. Plus they are more aware of how ridiculous they look. I can communicate with teenagers. Children just leave me baffled and infuriated.

The causes of this infuriation are many and varied but are mostly about waste and thoughtlessness. I find an apple with just one bite out of it in the bin (not even in the compost bucket, which is right next to it!) We buy fruit. They ask us to buy fruit but presumably the apple did not taste quite the way they expected or wanted so in the bin it went and it drives me nuts. I was too young to be brought up in post-war austerity but I seem to have inherited a loathing of waste from my parents who did live through that time. O leaves the telly on pause for hours while he goes and does something else, as if he can't bear to turn it off, as if he is scared it might never turn on again. Electrical goods pack up and they just accept that you just chuck them out and get a new one (though not with their money of course). Dinners get wasted. They claim not to like them but I strongly suspect they don't really know what 'don't like' means. I had a couple of things I really couldn't eat when I was a child, swede for example, but basically I ate almost everything. What they mean is they don't happen to fancy it at that precise moment, or it wasn't quite what they expected. I enjoy cooking and am pretty good at it by all accounts, and making a meal from scratch is one of the few ways I have of showing I care so this rejection was a regular source of unhappiness.
This, I really must say, has changed enormously since I've known them. Nowadays they'll eat a very wide range of things with my veggie curry well up among their favourites but it still happens occasionally and it still upsets me. I'm not trying to justify any of this. I'm just saying this is how it is.

When they were younger (I've known them since they were 6 and 7 respectively) there were regular tantrums and freak outs. O used relate to people mainly by winding them up (especially his sister) and then burst into tears when they got fed up with him. Z used to take any opportunity to throw a wobbler, shouting and screaming whenever things didn't go the way she wanted. They bickered constantly, O trying to wind Z up, and was always hugely offended when she lost her temper with him. Happy days. They never got really violent but they had absolutely no sense of how much they were affecting other people and just kept on and on until somebody lost it or they wore themselves out.
I don't know how much impact I've had on how O and Z have grown up. Probably they'd have turned out fine without me, but I like to think I've had some effect. I remember a conversation with Emma back at the start about her children (luckily she's never taken the position some single mums do, that the new man can have no part in how her children are brought up. Add to this the fact that her ex and his partner are thoroughly decent blokes and we all generally get on remarkably well, and, suffice it to say, things could have been much much worse.) The gist of this conversation was that basically there was 'nasty' and there was 'nice'. Being helpful and encouraging and calm with your children was 'nice' and being angry and disapproving was 'nasty' and of course she didn't want to be nasty to them. I pointed out that there is a third option which is 'firm'. She just wouldn't say it like she meant it in case it came over as 'nasty'. No doubt her and her ex would have worked this out for themselves sooner or later but at the time they were almost powerless in the maelstrom. If you've got one person in a dispute who is trying to be calm and reasonable and generous and another who is prepared to scream and shout and doesn't care what anybody thinks or says it's obvious who will win, every time. Until somebody is prepared to say "That's it. I'm not listening until you talk to me properly" and sound like they mean it the child will always escalate because basically, it occasionally works and what has it got to lose? Certainly not its dignity. I'm not against smacking because violence is wrong (I got smacked occasionally and I don't think it did me any harm especially) but because it's not necessary. A firm (not shrill, and especially not pleading) voice is enough. If worst comes to worst I threaten them with a lecture, and nobody wants that.

I'm lucky I guess - I'm fairly articulate and I'm good at reasoning. Not everyone is, I understand, but the main thing it seems to me is for the parent to talk like they should be heard and the children should listen. I think that's the thing. I think that's what's missing with so many difficult child/parent relationships. The parents don't really believe deep down that they should be listened to. 'What right have I to tell anyone what to do?' they say. We post-sixties generation have grown up with the feeling, deep down, that parents are old fashioned, stuffy, out of touch, and that the children are somehow naturally better, more in tune with how things should be, if we'd just leave them to it. They should be teaching us, not vice-versa. But they're not. At best they're just like anyone else - sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not, and at worst they are amoral, selfish, unreasonable (in the strictest sense of the word) and ignorant.

They don't know much. It's not their fault, they just haven't been around that long. They haven't had that many experiences, they haven't thought about things that much, they haven't had that many conversations. It's not authoritarianism and pedantry that makes us authoritative and pedagogical, it's necessity and responsibility. It's become fashionable to say that the kids are so far ahead of us these days - look at all the technology - they run rings around us, but not that much has changed. Fruit is still better for you than sweets. The French still speak French. Bees still buzz and bombs still go boom. Some things are still ugly and brutal and other things are beautiful and pleasant. Talking to other people still involves broadly the same techniques. Fairness and honesty and generosity haven't changed their meanings and none of this is hard-wired into the developing child. It has to be learned.

And actually we're not as different from them as our parents were from us. For those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies, our attitude to careers and education, technology, health and sex, race and religion, arts and science are much more like theirs than our parents were to ours. We're used to things changing all the time too, though not at quite such a rate. I don't think I have a problem with technology because of the generation I grew up in. It's just not my thing. Many of the people I grew up with love technology, and a lot of kids use it but are no more interested in it than I am. After all, I'm a bit of a luddite but I use Blogger, Flickr, excel, itunes, Lulu, Paypal, Google, Yahoo, Panda... I met my wife on line and have made more friends on line than I have in real life - real friends that I correspond with, visit and swap things with (seeds mostly). I don't do Skype, Twitter or Facebook but many people my age do - can't get them off the bloody thing. I don't do gaming either, but then I never did like games even when I was a kid, but most of the music I listen to is less than 10 years old and damn fine it is too.
So we parents (because I am one, whether I like it or not) should have the courage to stand up and say 'You have a lot to learn' and be proud of that. They know some stuff we don't (something my parents wouldn't admit) and we don't know everything but overall we know a lot more than they do and we should be able to share it. Take responsibility!

What does all this have to do with the rest of these essays?
Watch this space


to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 9

Another interesting statistic comes out of those twin studies I mentioned, which is that even identical twins raised together come out 50% different from each other. I don't know how they work out the maths but it seems plausible when you think about it. Identical twins are so obviously alike in many ways but once you get to know them they are obviously very different people - one is often more outgoing with a 'stronger' personality than the other for example. I emailed Steven Pinker - the main (or at least best known) exponent of these studies to ask him about it.
"I was particularly intrigued by something I think I heard you say (on Radio 4 - In Search of Ourselves) about accounting for the huge (50%?) difference between twins. The consensus seemed to be that it had to be put down to random events (chaos theory?) which it was agreed, is not very satisfactory. Nothing else was left. I think I have another explanation, which is that it seems to me that any pair of people who spend a large amount of time together (spouses, siblings, business partners, double acts?) tend to go to opposite poles in various ways - they take up opposite or complementary roles in the relationship. The identical twins, one of which is outgoing and assertive, the other retiring and passive is an obvious example, the active dominant selfish husband and passive self-sacrificing wife (which also happens in gay couples), good cop/bad cop, straight man/clown. It's all about how they react to each other. I'm sure you get the picture. Of course this doesn't work for twins raised apart (which we would expect, paradoxically, to be more alike)"

He wrote back "Dear Steve, It’s indeed a plausible hypothesis, and a testable one: compare siblings (particularly identical twins) who grow up together with those who grow up in different adopted families. According to the differentiation hypothesis, the ones who grow up together should be less correlated than the ones who grow up apart (an effect that is in the opposite direction to any similarity enforced by parental shaping, so it’s a particularly powerful prediction). Unfortunately, the bulk of the data suggest that there is no difference in the correlations, so it does not appear that the differentiation hypothesis is correct. For more discussion, see Judith Rich Harris’s No Two Alike, which is focused on exactly this question. Sincerely, Steve Pinker"

I've not got around to looking at the book but the whole conundrum does show up the amount of room for manouver (hate that word. The correct spelling is so idiotic so you'll have to put up with mine. Another stupid one is 'gauge'. Ech!) even between people who should be almost exactly the same. Maybe it is about souls and free will after all. The differences between me and my brother Ian were always very obvious. He always craved company and, left to his own devices, soon got very bored. When we moved to a more leafy suburban area with lots of kids down the street he immediately joined in. He had a lot of friends at school, was in the scouts and enjoyed games and sports. He was generally easier company. He was a likeable lad. Unsurprisingly there has always been this tacit comparison going on - Why can't you be more like your brother? and the feeling that really, if he can do it why can't I? I was just being difficult.

I gave this some thought very early on in my quest to find out what the heck's going on and it occurred to me quite quickly that of course, although we have the same parents (I assume) we were brought up under very different circumstances - two children, born one after the other, always are. Quite apart from obvious changes, like promotion and moving home, there is the simple fact that the first child is an only child for a time. Even if that's only for a year it's something the second child never experiences. But there's a lot more than that. Think of almost anything you do - changing a wheel, baking a cake, filling out your tax return - you are almost always better at it the second time and not just a little better - hugely better. Plus you've already got the equipment - you don't have to go out and buy a lot of stuff at a time when you may be very strapped for cash. And you know what to expect. Every child is different but broadly, if the first one is still alive you know that basically it's possible. You can do this. Of course there can be a down side. Two children costs more than one and may exacerbate an already desperate situation.
In my case I was an unplanned baby - a broken condom baby - and my family being what they are, they were worrying about everything. They'd wanted to save, get a nicer place to live, to get more security, and now here was I. Plus the birth was long and difficult and my mother was alone with me in that basement flat in Hove. My brother on the other hand was planned (to keep me company - Hah!) and popped out like a cork.

I recently heard the phrase 'Refrigerator Mums' on the radio in connection with autism and its causes. You can imagine what it means - mothers who are distant and undemonstrative (cold and hard and perhaps a bit angular and pale and a bit too clean) with their babies. The epithet has fallen into disrepute of late because it smacks too much of misogyny ('She's frigid') and its coiner said he wished he'd taken into account more of the troubles mothers have with their children and finding ways to help instead of simply blaming them. Certainly my father would admit (if he were still alive) that, confronted with the housework undone and an unresponsive wife, he was not very understanding and basically told her to snap out of it. Add to this the fact that my mother was far from stupid and had dreams of her own you can see it was a miserable situation. Other findings suggest that peri-natal depression, unwanted children and even 'not-yet' babies tend to lead to psychiatric problems later on for the child, and there is a whole realm of psychiatry called 'attachment theory' that is about what happens to people when they don't get enough affection as an infant. My mum still maintains that I pushed her away as a baby - literally - when she tried to hold me, which apparently is a classic symptom of attachment disorder (the fact that she blames me, even as a tiny infant is sort of tedious). We all know what happened to the orphans that were kept without care or attention in Romania's orphanages. Children die without love, but apparently there are measurable affects even with fairly normal and low level neglect. On top of all that apparently Dr Spock was saying you shouldn't go to a crying baby...
By the time Ian was born my dad had done a bit of reading and discovered my mum was not simply being lazy and he was by all accounts a lot more supportive.

What are we to make of all this in the light of the 50:40:10 (genetics (peer group : parent)) split mentioned before? Is it irrelevant? Can a person simply leave these early difficulties behind (it's only five years after all) or will they affect the rest of your life?


to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 8

So much for the hypothesis. What of this 'established knowledge' I'm supposed to be interpreting events in the light of?
My starting point is encapsulated in the question I keep asking - Where does this come from? All these anxieties and frustrations must come from somewhere. The fact that I was such a loner and had so much trouble with people must have a reason. This is not at all obvious though to some who would simply say 'he's just like that' or 'he's just made that way'. A lot of the time it doesn't matter and saying 'he's just made that way' can express an attitude of tolerance or broad-mindedness. 'It takes all sorts' is a phrase that often follows. Often though it implies some sort of judgement, albeit often a fairly benign one. 'It takes all sorts' we say as we smirk at other peoples' peculiarities, because of course, we are perfectly normal and what we do makes perfect sense.

Most people I suspect take this view pretty much for granted. We have some sort of essence that is just a given and can't be changed. People don't change. A leopard can't change its spots. If you asked the person what exactly it is that gives a person this basic character they might well say something about taking after their parents and some might mention genetics but I think a lot of people would say something about a soul or spirit. It won't surprise you to learn that I don't have a lot of time for this for the same reason I don't have a lot of time for the idea of god or the afterlife. If the idea of some sort of supernatural, possibly immortal soul is central to your thinking then the rest of this essay won't make a lot of sense to you but I don't want to get side-tracked. The fact is I'm just going to have to act like it's irrelevant. Maybe I'll come back to it later. Others, probably the majority, have a more woolly notion of what a soul is (or a god for that matter). They just believe there's... something. As such it explains nothing. We know nothing about it except that it answers all the questions. There is also Free Will of course but this also suffers from the problem of no one really knowing what it is, except that it seems to exist and it answers a lot of questions. I'm going to leave that on one side too.

A lot of people these days though would want to talk about genetics and psychology so I'm going to start there. Most people in the West at least know that genes exist, even if they don't know much about them, and we've all come across more or less scientific parenting advice, in self-help books, magazine articles, radio interviews and so on. Psychology is considered more of a 'soft science' which means it's a lot harder to do, not that it's just a matter of opinion. Like many of the life sciences (medicine, ecology, anthropology) it is a matter of probabilities and trends rather than the simple is/isn't answers you tend to get in chemistry and physics experiments. (Schrődinger's Cat notwithstanding). Traditionally this pair of explanations for why people turn out the way they do is summarised as the Nature/Nurture debate. Both positions can be taken to extremes (German Fascism and Soviet Communism most obviously) but lately the consensus seems to be that it's about 50:50. There have been studies done on twins to estimate their average difference in any number of characteristics - between identical twins raised separately (where all they have in common is genetics) and unrelated adopted children raised together (where all they have in common is their parenting) and the numbers come out at about 50:50, on average, and I suspect a lot of us liberal humanist, secular westerners who've thought about it at all will probably nod and say that sounds about right. All that old eugenic and behaviourist dogma goes out the window. It's a bit of both. Case closed.
Actually that's not quite what the evidence says. The surprising thing is that of that 50% nurture only 10% (on average) is parental. The rest is peer group and other social influences.

This slightly scuppers my hypothesis, and, I have to admit, put my back up a bit. As a scientist I should of course be indifferent to the results. I should simply want to know the answer but of course we all have an axe to grind. I'd been making up this story about my childhood that was mainly about my parents and now it turns out they were only minor players. It turns out it was indeed the kids at school and the telly and society at large that made up the other 40% of what I'm like.
And I've heard child psychologists, therapists and agony aunts express a similar outrage at this finding, because surely the childhood home and the family environment must play a huge role in how we turn out? On the one hand their whole careers are predicated on it but besides that, it just seems to make sense. 'Give me a boy until he is seven and I will give you back the man', or some such. Those early years are crucial, surely. Those psychologists and therapists also apparently have evidence on their sides to back up what they say, though I am in no position to critique any of it. I wish I was. So has it just become a dogma or is there a real question here?

I think I have an idea what the answer is. Remember - the original 50:40:10 hypothesis is an average, and the studies I understand are about 'normal' children and 'average' families. I'm not completely sure what either of those words mean in this context but I can imagine. I'm reminded of the term social workers use these days - the 'good-enough' parent. Instead of the old pejorative judgemental 'good' and 'bad' parenting (since most people are neither one nor t'other) they just look to see if parents are good enough - they function, they cope, generally, most of the time. Sometimes they are good, sometimes, not so much. Sometimes they get mad and do a lot of shouting, and sometimes they give the kids a big cuddle, but they hold it together. And the kids cope too, they keep it together, like their parents. They make friends, they get stuff done without too much drama, they make relationships, they find a job - they cope. With families like that the 50:40:10 makes sense. And remember, that's 60% parent altogether - the kids take after their parents (give or take a bit of rebellion here and there) because of their genes and from experience. They learn to get things done by example. They do stuff with their family, who they have a lot in common with and they use that as a stable reliable basis for dealing with all the other stuff they come across people doing in the wider world, modifying here and there as they go. Of course there are contradictions between home and outside but it is out of those contradictions that the new individual arises, making its own decisions (consciously or not) about how life should be.

But of course none of this says anything about abnormal childhoods and not good-enough parents, and that's where we're going next.
Cue credits...


to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 7

So, thinking about it, what I've tried to do over these last six postings is set out the problem. The first five were a bit chaotic but looking back on it, that's how scientific exploration works. There is a phase of observation to begin with - the explorer looks at how things appear and simply collects observations.
This stage can be summarised as 'Wow! Look at all this stuff!" It's the 'Naturalist' phase of the process.
The next stage is coming up with hypotheses - attempts at explanations of at least some of the observations - how it all fits together, what is the result of what. Ideally these are based on established knowledge - the hypotheses should be consistent with what we already know and not totally fanciful but often the established knowledge is itself tested by the new observations just as much as the new observations are illuminated by the established knowledge.
The third stage involves testing the hypotheses with experiments to see which fits best. This is always a problem in any science that studies people, and doubly so with anything psychological.

How is this relevant here? Well, that last (sixth) entry I think sets out an hypothesis - that the difficulties I still experience are a result of my unusual, almost Kaspar Hauser, infancy. I set out a story which is based on facts (I didn't meet any other children until I went to school) and which is at least plausible. It doesn't require any completely made up events (maybe I was sexually or physically abused. I don't remember anything like that but it's possible) and it fits with history - in particular - what roles boys and men were expected to fill back then, and how children were expected to behave. But it is just a story. I'm as aware as anyone of how our memories can trip us up. We are all biased. We unconsciously pick out the bits that suit our case and gloss over others, so obviously this can't have the scientific rigour of, say physics, or even ecology but I still think it's better than nothing.
I don't want to spend a lot of time here justifying myself but I think I have good reason to think that I am unusually honest with myself. I'm very aware of the limitations of my story for one very good reason. If my story is wrong, it won't work - it won't make me better. Often when people talk about psychoanalysis, which is essentially what this is, the whole language is about the subconscious trying to fool someone - be it the person whose mind is being analysed, the therapist or the concerned family and friends. We all fool ourselves some of the time, but it seems to me that most people need to fool themselves almost all the time just to survive. We tell ourselves all sorts of stories to justify our appetites, our priorities, our weaknesses, which is probably why so many people are so against personal questions or deep conversations. They don't want all that stuff unravelling. Most people I think - faced with the prospect of introspection, firstly dismiss the task as self-indulgent (some sort of Protestant work ethic type 'just bloody get on with life and stop making a fuss' kind of a thing). If they get past that they baulk at the mass of tangled emotions, impulses, motives, actions and ideas they find and just say it's all too complicated and it probably won't work anyway. Beyond that, if they try to get in there they shy at the first unpleasant revelation and prefer to go back to not knowing rather than face it.
I seem to have come out different. I seem to have an almost pathological openness. I don't seem to have a complacent view of myself to defend. My basic stance is that everything I do is questionable. Everything I do needs justification. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time wishing people would understand more and trying to explain myself to them. I also have the basic feeling that if my actions and motives are mistaken in any way, that it will be apparent to everyone and they will dismiss me with derision and contempt. My strategy therefore has always been to make my actions and motives as justified as possible, and when there is some flaw in what I have done (as there invariably is) to own up well before it is pointed out to me.

To use another engineering metaphor - if you are trying to sell someone some gadget (car, toaster, PC) it might pay you to use some shoddy parts and take some short cuts, if all you care about is taking their money and never seeing them again. But if you are making something for yourself there is no point in fooling yourself. You want it to work as well as possible for as long as possible. You use the best materials you can get hold of and do the job as well as you can, and if you can't afford the best, you want to be aware of where the weakness is so that you can allow for it and maybe put it right later. So it is with my self analysis. I really want to handle life better than I do. It's possible I could use some half-truth trick but it probably wouldn't work long term and may even cause more problems. A thought may be convenient or comforting but I know when it isn't quite right - when it is based on events that I can't really be sure happened (the physical abuse) or some quasi mystical truism ('It obviously wasn't meant to happen'). I can feel it, that niggle, and I know I'm going to have to go back and think again.

to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 6

I've been coming at this in a round about sort of a way, trying to set up the problem - get the reader intrigued by my predicament and wondering how all this could have happened. But reading back I find it's not that easy to read - even to me now a lot of what I've written seems like a disorganised rant.

So I'm going to cut to the chase. I think I am as I am because I spent the first five years of my life effectively alone with my mum living in basement flats in Hove. When I first realised this - about fifteen years ago, I was astonished. I didn't know any other children until I went to school aged five. Ian, my brother was born when I was three, partly, my parents say, so I wouldn't be an only child, but a three year old has nothing in common with a baby. Nor does a five year old with a two year old. In short, he was no help. My aunts and uncles and my parents' friends only started having kids after Ian was born. I was effectively an only child all that time. My mother did not go out and make friends with other mums up the street and there were no nursery schools or day care back then.
Of course there were other adults about. Dad was there in the evenings and weekends although he did a lot of over-time and went out a lot (table tennis, fishing, union etc) The two sets of grandparents came over perhaps once a week each and my parent's friends came over to play cards. I don't remember any except my grandmas being especially interested in a small boy. My mum certainly didn't play with me or read to me or whatever. She just wasn't like that. She'd admit it herself. She was not a cuddly mum. There was no baby talk. Dad read me bedtime stories and sang me silly songs. We didn't really go out anywhere except to the shops.
Once again - I'm not blaming anyone especially. People did not take the time to be with children back then - they didn't try to communicate with them, far less listen to what they had to say. Certainly nobody thought children were interesting - far less likeable. They were a fact of life. A bit of a nuisance. They were kept clean and fed and warm, but they were not included or consulted in those days. They were kept under control - not exactly seen-but-not-heard, but that was what it amounted to. Children were just around, which would be fine if there were several of them to run about together and make their own little social life. I just don't think it occurred to anyone that that was not the case with me. Later, when there were young children running about they seemed out of control and spoilt to me.
I'm not even complaining about this. I don't remember being especially unhappy or bored. I became very good at entertaining myself with the minimum of props. Paper and pencils, or a blackboard and chalks, some plasticine, some mud and some plastic animals in the garden, my cuddly toys for friends, but mostly, just making things up in my head, talking to myself, singing or watching the sun shine through a coleus leaf or a kaleidoscope. I was quiet and self-contained. I avoided asking things of my mum as much as possible and she in turn did what had to be done. I think she was quite depressed a lot of the time, understandably, and my dad and the grandparents were not very understanding. In short it was best not to bother her if at all possible. I remember her crying a lot and my mum and dad not talking. There was a bad atmosphere a lot of the time.
Sometimes I think part of me still lives in that small, dim, subterranean space, free to potter about and make up stories and to stay out of everyone's way. All that would have been fine except that sooner or later I would be expected to grow up and face the world.

I coped with the first five years of school well enough. I was messy and forgetful but my art and writing and interest in nature were good. Maths bewildered me and I absolutely hated PE, as much as anything because only in PE are your failures public and the other kids judge you by them. Being good at football makes you popular in a way that being good at any other subject does not. Mainly I wanted to avoid attention. I had friends but I don't think I took it for granted that they would want to spend time with me. It was always something that might change at any time and I spent a lot of my play times on my own.
Things changed when I was ten because that was when we started to get home work. This had a profound meaning to me which has stayed with me ever since, which is that when you have homework, there is never a time even on holiday when you couldn't be doing some school work. There is no longer any such thing as free time. My parents told me to get it done straight away so I'd have spare time later but I never did. I put it off as long as possible (and sometimes longer) and dashed it off as quickly as possible, not looking back in case I had to do it all over again.
The other problem was the increasing sense that as I got older I should be 'joining in' more. Dad was a great believer in the Scouts and tried to get me interested in games and sports and joining clubs. I was spending all my time reading up on whatever my latest obsession was - prehistoric animals, Second World War armoured vehicles, aquariums, house plants. I made models and collected shells, built ponds and went down to Kingston Beach to hunt in the rock-pools. I went to the library and read everything they had on the subject. I made lists and drew pictures, diagrams and maps. I was almost never bored and almost always on my own. Increasingly I think they worried that I was not like the other boys. I did not behave the way they did. I was not interested in the things they were interested in. In fact, boys just made me uncomfortable. I was never really bullied but I was decidedly wary of boys. The men in the family especially - my uncles and my dad's friends didn't know what to make of me. I was still alone, playing with my models or watching my fish, or off walking alone in the country. They didn't know what I did or why I did it. They never asked. I'm sure my feeling of being viewed with incomprehension, exasperation and embarrassment, especially by men, comes from this. The fact that I was not interested in boys' things and that I was a quiet and sensitive child probably made them think I might be queer. Actually I really liked everything about girls, but there was no way of letting them know that.
On top of all this I had dreadful allergies which made me sneeze until my nose bled and gave me thick itching welts all over my body. I now recognise that the allergies sapped my energy and my concentration but everybody thought I was sort of slow. The Piriton probably didn't help.

When I hit my teens everything got worse because there was more homework and I really wanted a girlfriend. Plus the things I'd been good at at junior school - the creative writing and the art and the nature became irrelevant. Again, schools in those days were not places where a person's strengths could be discovered and nurtured. School then was simply about doing what you were told. I don't remember a single inspiring teacher, far less one who went out of their way to encourage me, or any of us for that matter. I was in the top 10% throughout, despite my difficulties getting things done and not checking my work but there was never any sense of being someone who might achieve anything. Both my parents and teachers simply assumed I was lazy. It was the only explanation available for why a person was not doing as well as they might. I on the other hand was panicking the whole time, worrying about not getting things done but at the same time unable to think what I might do to change that. The only advice I got was 'pull your socks up'.

I passed my O levels well enough in this state and even got as far as a C in my chemistry AO that first year of sixth form but by the time the second year ended and I took my A level Chemistry and Biology I failed completely. Partly I think this was due to being with Claire, my first girlfriend - an experience which left me feeling utterly rejected and lost, but otherwise I think I simply didn't know how to approach the volume of work and as I began to feel more and more left behind, the less and less I felt able to do anything about it. I spent all my time at Claire's house being ignored by her or walking over the Downs to get away from it all. Needless to say nobody knew what to say to me or even tried. Getting angry with teenagers who don't do what they're supposed to was the only strategy back then. As far as they were concerned I just couldn't be bothered. It was the only explanation.

After that it was worse. School was hard but work was harder. At school they couldn't kick you out even if you regularly did badly but at work you were always under suspicion. Reading the sits vac in the Thursday Argus was all about fulfilling some incomprehensible and arbitrary criteria for some bloody-minded boss - people like my uncles and my dad's friends whose only interest would be in making you do what you were told and put up with it. Even if I succeeded in getting a job, all I could see was a lifetime of meaningless drudgery for money that never really made a difference, to pay for things that didn't seem to make anyone happy, till the end of my life and then what? What would it all have been for? When I did get jobs - none of them for long, I was always aware of how I was wasting my time when I could have been doing... what? Back in that small place of mine, or alone on the beach or on the hills, alone with my thoughts and my dreams and my imaginary girlfriends. I just wanted to get out. I knew I wanted to do something with my life but I couldn't even begin to imagine what. Instead I had to face being home with my family again, and their incomprehension, exasperation and embarrassment. I couldn't even get it together to sign on some weeks. I think in retrospect I was very depressed pretty much that entire time.

I did move on. At twenty three I got a job that I could stand (a part time nursing orderly at St Dunstan's), I rented a room, got a place at Brighton Poly to be a teacher (the normal refuge for people who couldn't get into uni) and I got a girlfriend. As it turned out I had trouble with my landlady (too much like mum), I really didn't know how to deal with the school kids (unsurprisingly) and my girlfriend was nine years older than me and more like a good friend than a lover, but it got me out and saved me from being much more of a loser than I might have been.
Since then I've had a lot of jobs - mostly part time and some not too bad. I've lived in a lot of different places, travelled a bit, made something of a success of academia (I never missed a deadline and was a straight 2.1 student. I got a distinction for my MSc, but my Ecology Phd fell apart after a few months.) I still find people difficult and don't make friends easily but I've had quite a lot of girlfriends. I worked out how to deal with my allergies in my mid thirties and they've hardly bothered me since.
Most recently I've met a woman on line, married her and now live with her and her two (now teenage) kids and we all get on remarkably well. I work part time as a gardener for an excellent old lady, have my own (small, unprofitable) business running a nursery and have written a couple of (unpublished) novels. Dad died a while back but I'm friends with my mum and my brother. I've come through. Like I said, I have no good reason to be unhappy, and yet...

Still, when things begin to go wrong, when things don't go according to plan, when things start to get on top of me, I'm like that thirteen year old caught not doing his homework again, or that eighteen year old not getting on with his revision again, or I'm that twenty year old not looking for work again. The temptation is always to go back into that space where I can just be in my head or with just some basic materials, and not have to deal with the world...

to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 5

In legal jargon, at least in the USA (or at least according to the American TV show The Good Wife, which is an excellent show btw, and very well-researched) there seems to be a thing called a 'Bad Fact'. This, in a court case, is not a fact that proves your guilt. It may have nothing to do with the charges, but it doesn't look good. It shouldn't affect the facts of the case but it might influence the jury. It goes to the character of the defendant, as they (apparently) say.

Life is full of Bad Facts. Last weekend I ran out of diesel. I got as far as the nursery gates, turned off the engine, unlocked the gates and couldn't start the engine again. My bro and I pushed the car into the nursery and I called the RAC out on bank holiday Monday to get her going again. I'd do it myself but last time this happened there were air-locks to deal with. But I'm a member of the RAC. I had stuff to do at the nursery. I called them out. 
On the Sunday, when it happened I was already tired from dismantling the greenhouse in the back garden. We got it done, actually, a lot quicker than I'd expected but at the time I felt pressed for time. I was down the nursery picking something up I'd forgotten so all in all I was a bit hassled. I went to the local filling station in Henfield High Street and they were out of diesel. I knew I was low when I drove back from work on the Thursday but I thought I could go to the filling station in town, but they were out of diesel even then. 
Explaining to my bro, my wife and to the RAC man, I had a small rant about how ridiculous it is for a filling station to be out of diesel. It's like a pub having no beer, or a hairdressers not being able to cut hair.  And on a bank holiday! How incredibly disorganised of them. How bloody idiotic. I pictured them at Shell, sitting on their arses, reading The Sun, not really giving a toss, actually rather enjoying their (petty mindless) power to make life difficult for the rest of us. And then the argument blossomed (in my mind) because it has occurred to me before that the fuel companies don't really care about this. They've closed a lot of the smaller local stations on minor roads, presumably because they make more money that way and the resulting 'externality' (as I believe the term is - when a company makes a change that forces us, the customers to make up the difference) is that drivers have to drive about more to go to where the filling stations are, and also think ahead more to avoid my predicament. I could go on about how customer service is a myth but I won't - you get the picture. So they don't care. They can be out of stock over a public holiday of one of their two major products and it has no effect on their bottom line so we can go fuck ourselves.
All this sort of makes sense (the case for the prosecution as it were) but for the Bad Fact that of course, I shouldn't have let the fuel in the car run down that far. Surely (say the prosecution) I must have passed at least one filling station on my way home from work that Thursday? I could have filled up then. In fact I passed (let me think) nine filling stations on the hour's drive from Heathfield to Henfield along the 272. Why didn't I fill up at one of them? Simple answer - because I assumed I'd be able to fill up in Henfield ferchrissakes! Plus I was tired and I really wanted to just get home. I'd fill up on the Saturday. It doesn't seem unreasonable. But there is another Bad Fact.
But you said 'the last time this happened'. This is not the first time is it? How many times have you had to call out the RAC because you've run out of fuel Mr Law?
Erm... four times...
Four times! This is getting to be a habit.
The car seems to be able to run for ages when the gauge shows empty. I know it's not good for the engine but sometimes I run out of money or I just want to get home. One of those instances in any case was a Landie, which paradoxically, run empty before the needle hits zero. I didn't know that at the time. I free-wheeled into Hurstpierpoint only to discover that the filling station had just that week been closed down.
But all of this could be avoided if you thought ahead more and made sure you had enough money. Everybody gets tired. It's no excuse. We aren't all sitting by the roadside on a regular basis waiting for the RAC man to deliver our fuel are we?
But shouldn't the filling stations be more reliable?
That's irrelevant. You should always be prepared for these eventualities. There is no excuse. Send him down.

Of course for almost anyone else this would be the most trivial of trivial things. They might make a joke of it or have a little rant about filling stations but that would be it. For me though it becomes yet another lesson in how useless Steve is. There are no excuses. It doesn't matter how useless other people are (in this case Shell) I should have allowed for that. And it's no good laughing it off. This is the sort of thing we mean. This is why things are the way they are. Leaving everything 'til the last minute. It's just yet another example of how you can't be trusted to do things properly. It seems trivial but it isn't because it's part of a bigger picture. It's typical of the kind of person I am. 
You might have noticed there how the 'conversation' slips from first to second person and back again - from  Parent to Child - 'we' the parents, looking down on 'me' the child, wrong again, inexcusable, untrustworthy. And it's serious. It's not a trivial matter. It never is. It's not a one-off cock-up, and it's certainly not an excusable (let alone lovable) flaw. I can't brush it off. I can't say 'well that's just the way I am'. It's not right. It's just another way I am not right. There are no mitigating circumstances. I can't blame anyone else. It's not understandable. I got it wrong. Again. As usual.
Contempt, exasperation, dismissal, derision. And shame. Let's not forget shame.

to be continued...

This Time it's Personal ~ part 4

So, where were we? Anger.
I've just read back over the last three instalments because I don't want to repeat myself too much. 

Anger - that's what it's about. Paul asked me if that last 'rant' got it off my chest. I told him it didn't. It never does. I've known a few people over the years, prone to the odd rant here and there. Like most people I sort of assume it's about expressing your views, getting it off your chest, telling everyone what you think. It's a form of self-expression - like having a certain taste in music or supporting a team. The things that get a person mad say a lot about them. It's a way of saying 'this is me, and this is what I care about. This is what I (won't) stand for.' Or else it's just blowing off steam. For me though I sense it's different. For me it's trying to convince others that there is good reason for how I feel and what I think - that I'm not just some bizarre incomprehensible dreamer. I don't expect people to agree with me, but I want them to take my opinion seriously. Really, it's a plea for understanding.

This, I know, sounds a bit pathetic. Surely a grown man like myself should feel reasonably secure in his convictions by now, after all, what is this whole blog about if it's not about telling all and sundry what's what? And at some level that's right. I do write about things I care deeply about, things I agree with and things I think are wrong. Part of me holds these views very dear, and my ability to see things the way I do, which I think is a little unusual, and which I really value. 
The problem is that at the same time I believe deep down that my way of looking at things is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how good I am at thinking things through, or how worthwhile my insights might be (or how good I am at expressing them) because most people don't see things that way. They judge a persons utterances by how well they fit with their own preconceived notions. They skim read or half-listen, picking out bits that tell them which box to put you and your views in. They judge you by your appearance, by your social aptitude, your friends, in fact by pretty much anything except what you actually say because the point is all about fitting in, not about being right. And I have never fitted in.
At some point I went from simply being a sad and bewildered misfit to being an angry outsider. At some point in my teens I think I started to feel rather than think 'why should I try to fit in?' Because that's how you get on, that's why' you might have replied, but somehow I wouldn't, or couldn't. Trying to fit in felt, and still feels, like being beaten, like being colonised. At some level, I have a deep faith in my way of seeing the world - not as infallible (far from it. Scepticism and uncertainty are crucial parts of my way of seeing things) but as worthwhile and above all, positive, but I am equally sure that my refusal to jump hoops means that what I have to say will be ignored.

It's like me trying to get my novel published. A friend asked me if I really believed my book was great. He was reacting to the fact that my attempts at approaching publishers had been somewhat faltering and brief. His point was that if you really believe in what you are doing it follows that you will have the drive to do whatever it takes to achieve it. I said yes, I really love my novel, and I do. And i believe in it. I wrote it partly because I wanted to write the sort of thing that I would want to read, if I for instance came across it in a book shop or library. And I succeeded. I know it has all sorts of flaws and as they say, no art is ever 'finished', only abandoned. But it also has some really good bits, and for what it is, my first novel, I'm very chuffed with it, and I still enjoy reading it. But the point is, I told him, that that says nothing about how anybody else will see it. My own opinions are irrelevant because deep down I really believe that people will dismiss it because it doesn't fit in. The actual quality of the book is irrelevant.

There is some truth in this. Publishers like books that fit into set genres, and they like them to be written by people they know, or at least, people they can relate to (Eng. lit. degree, journalism, Oxbridge...) or who are already famous for something (or are related to someone famous) I just don't have the connections. Even if my manuscript somehow got read, I tend to feel that it will be dismissed on some pretext. A 'friend' who I gave it to to look at just sort of gave it back to me after looking at the first page. His only comment was that he'd have liked me to use semi-colons. It sounds ludicrous but that's the sort of arbitrary, petty pretext I expect things to be judged on. Did he use the right paper? Did he refer to me in his covering letter as 'Sir'? Has he used the right font in his CV? Nothing to do with the writing. One editor I went to see simply told me it was too long and I'd have to cut it by three quarters. She hadn't read any of it. It was just the wrong size. And this of course brings us back to what I said about capitalism. The market wants a recognisable, predictable product - something resembling the latest best-seller. I'm not pretending to be a great author (hardly) but I do wonder how Proust or Joyce would have felt about these criteria being applied to their writing. Another friend told me what my dad would have told me - that you have to go through a sort of apprenticeship - doing what is expected to gain some sort of reputation before you can claim the freedom to do something original. I don't agree. That's just about status - about putting you in your place, nothing to do with creativity. Or at least, I don't want to do that (I can't) If I have to spend years writing stuff that means less to me, just following the rules, in the hope that one day I'll have enough of a reputation to write in a way that really means something to me, well, they'll have to go without. It's their loss.
But of course they won't even notice. There are all sorts of reasons why my work, assuming anyone ever looks at it, will be dismissed, but frankly it makes no odds to them whatsoever, and the reasons are irrelevant. I just don't fit in. I am on my own. They can safely ignore me without consequences.

Sometimes it feels like this dismissal (which is the best word I can think of to describe it, although it's not quite right) is deliberate, but more often it is merely thoughtless. They just don't care, or they don't notice. They're too busy. Sometimes they seem impatient, exasperated or embarrassed with me. Sometimes they seem contemptuous. Occasionally it feels malicious - like they are laughing at me - enjoying my humiliation. In any case it is the reaction I expect. 

So it doesn't matter how good my ideas are, how good my writing is. There are no mitigating circumstances - no excuses. They don't want to know. They simply want not to have to bother with me. They want to dismiss what I have done, what I think, who I am and get back to what they do, together, as adults. I still feel, often, as if I am somehow smaller than everyone else (I am a little on the short side) a child among adults. What I think doesn't matter. What I say is irrelevant. Nobody's listening. 
I used to go off somewhere quietly and do things on my own. At some point (in my early twenties I think) I began to try to explain to people why I thought the things I did and to try to get them to understand. They really didn't want to know. I tried too hard and made a fool of myself. I became resentful. They really didn't want me around then, so I went off on my own.

Emma says my reaction seems too much under the circumstances but I'd have thought that almost anybody would be angry - furious even - if people really did react that way to them on a regular basis. But of course, they don't, do they? My rational mind throws doubts on this feeling. It can't really be true can it? I sort of know, at some level that it can't really be true. 
And yet it feels so true. And somehow, as yet, the rational fact that the world cannot possibly be like that, has had no effect on the power of that feeling. They have no effect on each other. I simply feel, when I get stressed, tired or hungry that that is how the world reacts to me - with contempt, exasperation, dismissal, derision.

That's why I get angry. 


to be continued...