Tag: parents

On The Road Again

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

“See it. Say it. Sorted” says a message on the loud speaker after telling passengers to report anything suspicious. Don’t get me wrong there have been situations involving public transport in the past but the constant need to remind people of the fear they should be in, the potential that there could always be something to look out for, makes me far uneasier than any possible – I’m assuming terrorist – danger does.

I just missed my mouth slightly and spilt beer on my face mask. We can add that to the drawbacks list. I’ve never quite understood why when drinking alcohol is illegal in outdoor public places, on buses, even as a passenger in cars apparently; it is perfectly fine to drink on a train. I can only assume it has something to do with them being able to sell alcohol themselves and it being impossible to regulate train beer from carry on beer. Maybe it’s just a throwback to dining carts. I’m not complaining. Few countries in the world seem to allow such things and I see it as a genuine positive of what is already probably my favourite form of transport. I’ll take a bus if I have to, I’ll avoid the train if it’s too expensive and I’ll take the plane if it makes more practical sense but there’s still something I enjoy about a train that I’m yet to put my finger on entirely. Comfortable, fast, easy, goes through scenic areas. Maybe I should go on one of those long train journeys like the Trans-Siberian or across America, the Andes, Australia and anywhere else that begins with ‘A’.

Despite spending the last few months delivering bread and working in a bakery and pizza shop I seem a little more nervous about this virus though. The little Northumberland seaside village and the Scottish countryside of my parents feels like a little bubble I’ve stepped out of. I’ve gone south where bad things happen. I’m now in the real world. A world with dangers.

I can still only smell beer. This is going to make me paranoid. Is it me, do I stink of beer or is it simply a drop on my mask leading to a false reading. I’m not sure if I can spend the next twelve hours breathing beer fumes.

I’m on the move again then. Off to Greece. I’ve mentioned it previously but I doubt anyone reads every post every day so this is me informing you all I’m off to Greece. I had a short break in Dublin over Christmas but it does feel like I’ve not been abroad for a year now. This virus really has made us change our way of existing. I’m a little nervous actually and I’m curious how I’ll feel about it. I have a habit of wishing for the sedentary life when I travel a little too much and the travelling life when I’m in one spot for too long. Considering it has been a long time since Christmas and an even longer time since my last adventure, the wishing became a slight insanity.

It can be hard to leave though. We become comfortable and after all these years I do wonder if maybe I am getting a little old for all this. Ten years ago I did meet people in their thirties just starting out so perhaps age has little to do with it. We just experience things in a different way. I do find it harder to leave my parents each time though, especially now in this present virus related fear period. I don’t give a shit about potentially suspicious packages, I give a shit about my loved ones coming into contact with a deadly virus. Leaving them at the train station questioning whether it will be the last time I’ll see them but knowing I have to leave regardless. The truth is, life goes on. The whole world ground to a halt for a few months once already and now we just have to get on with it. It is easy to blame the economy and capitalism but it’s human nature. We can’t stand still. Sometimes it’s not always easy though.

A Fine Mob

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Our current version of a government in the UK are a concerning bunch. I have spent these last six months largely unsurprised by their bumbling attempt at government. While it is possible to give them some slack over the coronavirus handling, their response has been slow, inept and ultimately a failure. It is not just Covid-19 though, having taken us out of the EU they seem reasonably content to do absolutely nothing about creating a smooth departure and transition. Apparently negotiations are non-existent to obstinately deadlocked. Of course the EU bares some responsibility for this but you do get the feeling that this is exactly what the government wants and this is playing out perfectly for them. We crash out, become an international tax haven for the wealthy and sell our arse to the Yanks. In that case my accusation of bumbling is inaccurate, they are clearly doing a great job from their perspective.

What grabbed my eye today though and what led to this piece was that they announced there would be fines for parents whose children didn’t return to school in September when they reopen. This is a remarkably aggressive approach to something which should be handled with far more care and which exposes the underlying approach to governance they feel to be right. If you’re unable to persuade people with your argument then bully them into doing it. Telling parents they will be fined for acting potentially against their own health interests is nothing less than bullying and will have disproportionate ramifications for financially poorer sections of society. Headteachers have called them out on it as have elements of the media. This is one more step on their road to handling the return to school issue so terribly. Was it the first of June, or maybe earlier, that schools were supposed to return and teachers unions who were demonised by some, forced the government into a rethink. It’s not impossible to see another Marcus Rashford style u-turn even though governments hate to be seen doing so.

A government which seems incapable of persuading people their arguments are right will eventually have to try a new approach, aggression in the form of fines being the form this time. Whatever happened to us working together. They are merely slipping deeper into their bunker and adopting an ever more aggressive siege mentality. Whether you agree with them ideologically, it is without doubt not a way to run government and while it may help short term survival, if it carries on like this it won’t be another four years until the next election. The problem is by then they can and most likely will have done enough damage that it’ll take decades to reverse it. This is a long war. Perhaps even an indefinite one.

When Will Saturday Come

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It’s Saturday. Thought I would stumble out of bed a little hung over, not too much, just a enough to create edge. Have my breakfast which is more relaxed than the mid week one but fundamentally the same, I leave the dirty sexy breakfast for a Sunday. While eating plan all the semi-productive things I would like to accomplish for the day before leaving for the supermarket, ticking that off the list but being exhausted enough upon return that the list get scrumpled up and thrown in the fire which I made to sit in front of feeling like a wild man as the football results come in. Secretly I’ve quite enjoyed this lockdown, mainly because I’ve not really been locked down I imagine, but there are certain old habits and routines I miss. I enjoyed those semi-busy Saturdays. I long for the return of the football. And I’m currently not in the same house as the fireplace unfortunately. If that all sounds hard then don’t even get me started on the pleasures of a Sunday morning drinking coffee and reading the newspapers as my dog sits beside me and I’m surrounded by countryside. It’s pointless longing for things we cannot have but it’s good to be able to see the things we really value when they’re not there. I quite fancy a pint as well. Don’t give a shit about much us though. Although a holiday would be nice.

I miss my dog. She lives with may parents these days which is good for her because they live in the countryside and it forces them to go on walks everyday. People don’t appreciate the value of pets I don’t think. I can’t see her at the moment though because while I deliver food to my parents, I don’t let her see me because I won’t be staying and she won’t understand why I’m leaving so quickly after coming back. Poor girl. Poor me too. There are going to be some parties when this is all done. It’ll be a while until the pubs are open I reckon and people will be warned off getting together too much too soon but lets be honest, folk are going to go wild. We’re like school children at the best of times let alone when we’ve been stuck inside, away from everyone, sober and being healthy for what must feel like an eternity. I can’t wait for the outcry from the media, front pages of people having fun. Probably the same papers which will be a week earlier pushing for the end of restrictions. Theres nothing like a short memory.

I’m tired today. I was woken up early and now I need to go to work. I’m attempting to write this early now instead of tonight when I get in. It’s strange, sometimes late at night I get my best ideas. Maybe I should give up on being a morning person and accept life as a night owl. They usually seem happy. A little white and sickly maybe, but happy enough. But not tonight, this is certainly not going to be an old Saturday night. When I’m tucked up in my bed before midnight I guarantee there’ll be no nostalgia from me. I love you all. I’ll see you tomorrow. Fresh, awake, invigorated, just like an awful morning person should be.

Don’t Taste The Wasp Twice

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We as a species have an inbuilt response to new things, we fear them. There is a practical reason for that and it is rational; new is unknown and unknown could mean danger. As a species we have managed to survive, adapt and evolve to the point we’re at in our evolutionary cycle. I don’t doubt one reason for our success so far has been down to instinctively following that practical approach mentioned above. Is it instinctive though? When we are young children we try to touch or eat anything new, it appears we sense next to no danger in anything, yet as adults we have become cautious if not neurotically fearful. That would suggest we are taught to fear new and unknown things but then puppies and adult dogs mirror human growth fear patterns too. Perhaps puppies learn new can mean danger because sometimes they experience the pain of discovering new things, like the taste of a wasp, or a dogs parenting is just not something obvious to my untrained eyes. Can we then take that further and use it to explain why we are so weary of new sources of information, or even new information that may contradict our previously held beliefs.

I suppose it is probably quite a straightforward idea, we distrust new sources because they are unknown and we haven’t built up a relationship of trust with them. We reject new information because our current beliefs are known to us and with them we have so far survived to this point in life. With them we have safety and life, potentially this unknown new information may lead to danger and the taking away of either our safety or in the extreme our life. There is also the issue of narrative to take into consideration, what doesn’t fit our narrative we are likely to dismiss but I’ll not go down that avenue this time.

I was sent a link to a video on YouTube by a friend who has a differing set of ideals and beliefs about how best we should approach the world than I do. I rarely bother engaging him in discussion anymore because neither of us come close to seeing the others perspective and I always end it feeling exhausted and frustrated that I’ve wasted an evening arguing with a brick wall. When I received this video I assumed immediately it would relate to one of his points previously made, which it did, and in my mind I had already rejected it before even contemplating watching it. My initial response was to see it was a YouTube video and dismiss it as worthless. There are many useful videos on YouTube and I have taught myself how to do all sorts of things through them, but videos of a political or social nature are quite often just a pile of tosh. I had already rejected the point because of the source platform. I decided to watch it a little, not the full one hour because I have better things to do, and did some research on the speaker and his organisation. Seemingly they are of a different persuasion to me but I still watched and tried to listen to the message. After ten disagreeable minutes I gave up because I found him frustrating, it appears you can’t argue with a pre-recorded person. I do understand why angry people comment now but I still refuse to get involved in that game. Ultimately my point is that I like to think I gave the speaker the opportunity and I listened with a clear mind but it’s not easy when you already think the platform the information is on and the source of the information are unreliable and bullshit.

Absorbing new information is clearly an incredibly challenging task. We struggle to absorb anything that is new because it is unknown and potentially dangerous, and we struggle to accept anything contradictory to our present set of beliefs as it challenges what has so far kept us safe. The YouTube example above is an easy one to dismiss because the contents and the platform are like the Daily Star of video journalism but sometimes we get contradictory information from credible sources and this can be hard to accept and equally dismiss.

The more I delve into these things the more I’m starting to realise just how hard, if not impossible, it is being some kind of discerning, moral and decent person. Here I am, just like yesterday back to the fallible human. Is failure what makes us human, or perhaps the ability to recognise and improve on our past failures. It is okay to be fallible. It is unavoidable clearly, but is it only acceptable if and when we try and avoid repeat failure. Being conscious of our previous failures, accepting that they are inevitable and pushing on in the search of perfection, or at the very least an acceptable success. Don’t try and taste the wasp twice, it’s all so simple now, if only I had realised that earlier.

Death’s Eternal March

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I was thinking today about death. It is one of those things I find myself contemplating. I have heard it said that we start reflecting on death more often when our own is drawing in but I doubt the validity of that on numerous levels, especially because it would suggest everything is already written and I’m not quite willing to accept that yet. I don’t worry about death, the idea of it coming for me is not necessarily something to fear. Of course the manner of ones death needs to be taken into consideration and despite the bravado; when death feels a long way away, we never know how we will react, if we have the time to react. In regards my own, I worry more about how it would affect others, I can imagine it would destroy my parents for example. Equally my only fear of death is that of my family and the reality that I will one day have to deal with that terrifies me. To know my dog, who is five now, has perhaps ten years to live is also a scary realisation.

It is this knowledge that the life of other’s is finite that helps me to understand the whole phenomena in a way that my own potential death doesn’t. I have already experienced the death of my grandparents, as well as the trauma of losing my childhood dog, but parents are another issue and I’ve invested such an emotional bond with my dog now that I don’t know how I would deal with the loss of her either. It is scary. It also makes you realise how temporary everything is. We’re all going to die one day. That is the only certainly in life we face and it’s the one thing that can give our own lives a true sense of value.

If you’ve ever been back somewhere that you had an intense and memorable experience; let’s say a place you worked, lived or travelled through, if this has happened a few times you start to notice the only commonality is that it’s not the place you remembered anymore. The faces are different, the energy has changed and it is not the same place, other people are now experiencing their own version, as will others after them. We can’t long for the return of moments from our past because they don’t exist anymore. Just like events in time, life is transient, it is an event, it is impermanent.

Your grandparents were your age once, they experienced what you experienced, they felt the same intense emotions and sensations and now it’s you turn and soon it’ll be someone else’s. It is undeniable that there is a deep sadness to this but there shouldn’t be and this is what I am trying to get beyond because supposedly it is beautiful too. Of course understanding how temporary life is allows you to enjoy it and embrace what comes, it helps us lead a full life. The knowledge of the inevitable though makes it feel pointless, if we’re going to die one day then what is the point. The nihilists recognised this, Camus did too and called it absurdism.

Like deaths sadness when felt deep down though, this feeling of pointlessness is surely something to be overcome. The ever present knowledge of death may be what makes the human condition but so does our innate ability to overcome adversity. While death is one thing we cannot overcome, the feeling of life’s intrinsic pointlessness is one we can. Death need not be sad, we can understand this end point, it’s getting there that seems the impossible part. Let’s just hope we have the time to do so but really does it matter one way or another if we don’t.