Are we Human or are we Chancers?

Are we Human or are we Chancers?

In a world that seems to combine growing individual isolation with increasing international interdependence it is hard to determine the end result of these two seemingly opposite movements.  Like two continental shelves they are moving remorselessly across our landscape and the stress and tension they engender have begun to wreak havoc in lives already shaken and uncertain.  Just as continents in conflict meet and cause huge impassable mountain ranges, so too these recent developments have caused a growing chasm between those that have and those who have not.

When living in Greece, our Albanian neighbours lived just opposite with eight of them in one small room.  They worked really hard and yet were strangely united.  It seemed strange to us that they had so little and yet shared everything.  Perhaps isolation comes from having too much.  Instead of working together to make life easier we focus on protecting what we have from those who have not.  I watched their dynamics from my balcony and wondered at our differences.  The elderly patriarch had read well and was full of wisdom.  Once writing with his finger on my kitchen table he drew a one and three noughts and said if you came from good parents it was like having a thousand.  If you had a good partner you add three more noughts and it became a million.  On he went with additions like a good job, good friends etc until he had a one with a huge row of zeros after it – a colossal sum.  Then he stood back and said if you had poor health take away the one and wiped out that first figure with the back of his hand in dramatic fashion and showed what remained – nothing – just lots of zeros .  We were mesmerised by his eloquence. 

 

Coming from the UK we observed their lives with fascination.  The eighteen year old had a colostomy bag and it seemed hard that someone should have to struggle with such a thing in such cramped circumstances.  He had to be taken to hospital in Athens for an operation.  Six relatives flew with him.  Two came from abroad, one a medical consultant to accompany him.  Suddenly, I saw that this eighteen year old had more support than most of us could dream of.  People in our affluent culture die alone too often.  What good is wealth if we live alone waiting for an exit to a world that does not care.  So perhaps the networks that matter are personal links.  

Just when I thought I had gained a new insight and respect for a culture three young Albanian men moved into the small shed in the garden of the flats.  They were rough spoken and drank a lot; they seemed very different from our friendly neighbours.  Once, when hanging out clothes I observed from the roof the three young men strolling around the yard below.  The neighbour’s young toddler, no more than two was examining a small pot at the back door of the open doorway.  One of the young men came across towards the toddler and looking around to see if anyone was watching leant over and spat directly on the child’s head.  The three of them laughed at the great joke of it.  I felt my stomach clench with horror.  Is that the problem with networks it just takes a rogue element to bring the fragile community down to basics?

My best friend lived in a more affluent neighbourhood and the single Pilipino maid who worked for the couple opposite became pregnant.  Rather than lose her job the maid promised to cope with having a baby alone and all the housework as normal.  Reluctantly, her employers agreed to give her a chance.  True to her word she worked as hard as ever and despite the growing bump managed to do all her tasks as usual.  Then the baby was born and just when it seemed impossible to cope anymore an amazing routine was established.  Every morning when her employers left to work, six Pilipino female friends would descend on the house.  While one amused the baby, another cooked and the four others worked like an industrial cleaning unit racing through the tasks while chatting, smiling and laughing with the new mother.  Then they all had tea together and left her with a spotless house, cooked food and an exhausted sleeping baby.  The unity of these women defeated even the harshness of the circumstances and their network overcame all difficulties.

In a world with more networks than ever before why the increasing individual isolation?  Why when we twitter, text, email, talk as never before are we feeling unheard?  Why when there are groups political, cultural, artistic, scientific, social and extensive media to see to their needs do we feel more powerless and alone?  For all the help lines, charities, social services and neighbourhood schemes we are at sea in unchartered waters.  Feeling bereft of the community that once nurtured us at some fundamental level.

The Chemistry of Company

A piece a short piece I wrote when back from a family gathering.  Strange how things can start out so false and come good. So glad when it does.  

 

 The Chemistry of Company

False greetings, hug, hug, kiss, kiss

Doorstep rituals have to be done

Ignoring all that is unsaid

Food carted to table on steaming plates

Glasses topped to quench the thirst

My brother hums his delight that food is here

Then as stomachs fill

The laughter spills over edges of life’s cups

Until tears fall as howls of mirth spread round the table

Bringing all to join the gales of good tales well told

It hurts the stomach to laugh so much

Hands on face to control the howls that burst through

Smiles wreath every face flushed with good humour.

Looking around the closeness, hugging tight

Family together, everything alright

Loving each one there,

Loving being there.

Lamentably Defective

This one is totally different from normal stuff I write.  But a change is good they say now and then!

Lamentably Defective

“Look at you, for God’s sake!”  His wife snorted, in disbelief.

Harold looked in the mirror and tried to see what upset his wife in the reflection there.  He had dressed in his usual clothes ready for work, tired worn dark suit, whitish shirt, safe dark mottled tie.  He had put on a lot of weight, he observed, and the suit was pulled around the middle by his spreading paunch.  His feet looked tiny, his head looked small and his middle looked barrel shaped.  He did look ridiculous, he reckoned.  He tapped his stomach and admitted, “I have put on quite a bit of weight recently”. He looked apologetically at his wife.  She replied in harsh tones, “You’ve gone to seed, Harold.  I see you; I mean I really see what you are now.  Can’t you?” She tapped the mirror in front of them. “You’re a fat failure, and the only thing I am asking myself is why I didn’t see it twenty years ago.”  Harold turned and grabbed his briefcase. Time to go to work before things turned nasty.  Her tone now was vindictive, “That’s it. Run rabbit run.”  The TV was blaring in their front room and the news announcer was bringing breaking news of another suicide bombing in the capital.  Harold’s heart sank. Not another one.  He drew closer to the TV to hear more.  The announcer was saying that a suicide bomber had tried to explode a bomb on the seventh floor of a conference centre packed with people.  Irene began clearing the table, clicking her teeth in annoyance at him.  It seemed a permanent backdrop to their lives, like the TV blasting in the corner.  Harold heard the broadcaster explain that deaths had been reduced because one of the counter terrorist movement agents of a group called Engaged had grabbed the terrorist and plunged out a nearby window, saving many lives.  A grainy photograph of the agent who had died with the terrorist clasped in her arms showed a bulky middle aged woman smiling at the camera.

There followed a discussion panel about this new group, their aims and members.  One specialist said they had started operating after the Olympic bombing.  After four hundred people died in a plaza, there had been much evidence that the loss of life could have been curtailed greatly, had security agents tackled the bombers instantly, instead of negotiating or hesitating.   There had now been fourteen occasions when bombers had been foiled by Engage in their attempts, and every time more theories had grown up over this group.  Did they have training camps, who funded them?  What nationality, to whom were they loyal?   How did they manage to be in the right place at the right time, when national Special Forces couldn’t.  How did they know where the terrorist would strike?  Harold had to go to work or Mr Johnston would be furious.  His life seemed penned in by either his wife’s anger or his boss’s.  Grabbing his bag, he hurried to the door. “Goodbye Irene”, he shouted as he fled.   She replied with a dismissive grunt.

He raced down the stairwell and into the street, moving quite fast for a large man.  As he rounded the corner, the bus was just pulling into the stop and he had to put on another burst of speed to catch it.  Hauling himself on board he could feel the sweat already.  The bus conductor smiled, “Well Harold, another day another dollar?” as he took Harold’s monthly ticket and stamped it.  Harold smiled back, “Yes, though I saw a hawk this weekend.”  The conductor was interested; he shared Harold’s interest in bird watching and replied, “That’s brilliant, it always gives me a lift to see something so beautiful.” Harold nodded and they looked at each other with warmth and understanding - a shared hobby that brought both so much pleasure. Harold listened as the bus conductor talked of his weekend.  Just a few words and then he was on to get others’ tickets, but the kindness fuelled them both.  Harold began to relax; he didn’t need much to get through the day.  Just the odd civil exchange made him feel okay about himself again, despite Irene’s barbs.  As he sat relaxing on the long journey to London city centre, he noticed a young man clamber onto the bus.  He looked anxious and was sweating more than Harold.  Harold knew instantly.  He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.  This was a bomber.  Drawing himself to his feet, Harold approached the young man from behind.  Squeezing past the bus conductor, Harold drew closer.  Sensing danger, the young man looked nervously in Harold’s direction.  Immediately, he reached under his vest and began to pull a cord attached to packages there.  Harold threw his considerable weight on top of the young man and hugged him close in a huge embrace, as if he were holding the most precious package in the world.  The young man wriggled to get free but Harold had him firmly pinned to the ground and was calling out in a loud voice, “Engaged, Engaged.”  The rest of the bus erupted in screams and there was a surge to the exits.  But barely half had left the bus before the bomb detonated.  The young baby in the pushchair three seats behind Harold survived, against the odds.  As did an elderly woman, unable to get to her feet in time to escape.  There were four casualties apart from the terrorist and Harold, but the death toll would have been much, much higher. 

That night there was more speculation as to the roots of this effective organisation Engaged, and a tearful Irene was interviewed on TV.  Distraught, she described her husband as a wonderful man, who would not hurt a fly.  When pushed as to his connection to the anti terrorist group Engaged, she professed ignorance.  At one point the interviewer said, “But you must have suspected something?”  To this Irene replied, “He just seemed ordinary, I never saw anything special.”  When the interviewer pointed out how many lives had been saved by her husband’s actions, Irene looked at him - perplexed and sullen- shrugged her shoulders and muttered, “He was just ordinary. Fat and ordinary.”  Two tears ran down her thin bitter face.

Brother Maurice

I always change the names of people in my stories.  Out of respect, really I have no intention to hurt anyone unintentionally and I have been really amazed that friends have been able to see past the name changes and spot exactly who is who in these stories.  Scary really!  But there have been a few that I did not change.  Here is one example of that.  Thankfully there are so few who read my blog, I tell myself he will not mind!

 

The Maurice

Maurice was always fair.  It’s hard to be unbiased when talking about your own brother but in my eyes he was bigger than most people.  Not in a physical way, but inside.  I remember when he was young him telling me that when people brushed past him they could sense his secret power.  He meant in a Spiderman, Superman kind of way and coming from such a scrawny fellow it was laughable!  Despite his weights and chest expanders his basic shape remained lean and unimpressive.  As a rather overweight younger sister, I used to joke, “imagine how puny he would be without the exercising!” 

But there was always something special about Maurice.  People told him things, people respected him and in all the years I knew him I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.  It was as if he was a big sponge soaking up all the badness that life threw and yet never allowing one drop of that acid to seep out or to corrode his own soul.  Maurice didn’t get into fights.  People liked him; you couldn’t really help yourself.  I liked him and it was mostly his quietness.  I’ve read that excess of speech is a deadly poison and can believe it.  Perhaps a lot of Maurice’s character came from his silent observations.  Mind you he was talkative at times like when playing you at table tennis.  Then he’d pretend to be the commentator and would crack you with his psychological ploys, “She’s looking tired!” or “It seems as if she is losing her stride in this game”, and sure enough these tones would gradually wear away at you and reduce your ability to play against him.  Of course my contact with him was limited.  First there was the age gap and then to compound matters I was a girl.  My brothers, Maurice and Karl, were close in age and were a team and I howled my loneliness all through my childhood.  Those two were close in a way that no one else could comprehend.  Football, card games, conversations, jokes - they shared confidences, experiences that I was not a party to.  They were never alone.  They always had each other.  I felt like a spectator watching on, always wanting to be a part of their relationship but never quite making the grade.  But from my vantage point I could see Maurice was an honourable person.  Such an old fashioned phrase but so apt. 

As the years have passed and I’ve travelled and lived abroad in foreign climes and met so many people from so many different places,  I’ll have to admit I’ve never met anyone who came close to Maurice.  Our lives had led quite separate paths and gone in completely different directions so that conversation between us is sometimes awkward.  I no longer know his life, what’s important to him, his experiences, his tests.  How he thinks, what is his view of life – all these are a blank to me.  It used to be that when I would visit home from abroad I would be full of goals to really link up with my brother again.  Touch base, get through the stilted chat and know him once more.  But with every passing year it would get progressively harder until somehow I felt we were on ships sailing far, far away from each other, gradually reduced to basic semaphore to communicate anything.  But when I close my eyes and think of Maurice, still to this day I feel a sweet sadness and rare privilege that he is my brother.  An honourable man in a world full of mire that somehow never managed to pollute him.  In all our family photos he always struck a ridiculous pose, shoulders raised really high as if impersonating someone bigger.  We all teased him about it.  But he has always stood tall.  Much taller than he appears. 

Now his gentle weariness worries me and makes me want to ask, “Are you happy?”  But we will not have such conversations in this life.  Communicating with flags has its limitations and anyway he would dismiss it with an anal comment and laugh.  So how shall I end this?  In life things are rarely what they seem.  We sometimes build people up only to knock them down.  I would not have that happen so I’ll not throw small stones under the feet of someone in order to watch them fall.  Sometimes our compliments are just that -  designed to bring a fall to those we feel have gotten higher than ourselves.  So I’ll finish with his faults just to protect him.  He suffers from gas and farts indescribably awful, “slow and silent deadly ones.”  He has to lie down after he eats – something to do with his stomach.  He isn’t a good conversationalist; it’s akin to wringing a quilt getting words out of him.  He’s always tired to the bone and tends to look disappointed with life and the hand he has been dealt.  His anal complex is a constant irritation and his nose is invariably blocked.  He will not throw away anything, letting old cars fall to dust rather than be parted from them.  He hates change profoundly and even changing wallpaper is a perceived threat.  Now do you want to meet him?  Well, I hope you’re lucky and do.  Everyone deserves to meet the Maurice.