Sexual Assault in France

I was always a nervous traveller.  I expected that on a given train there would be a few murderers and rapists, as well as at least a dozen thieves.  So travelling on a train with this mindset posed its own difficulties.  Each carriage was inspected with care.  Four guys in a carriage was just asking for trouble.  Two women of stocky build could overcome me, so their carriage was risky and  should be left as well.  I usually ended up in a compartment with a tiny elderly weak lady as I would tell myself even if she were a killer, given my size and their age, I could probably take her down.  Deciding on which carriage to travel in was a major part of the first half hour of travel and I did not rush into it. 

All of this is plain weird, I know, and will seem even stranger when I tell you that I studied martial arts for years and even attended self defence classes too.  For a whole year I attended a full contact dojo on the Isle of Wight and ended up each week covered in bruises and bumps from being kicked and punched.  I can tell you there was a world of difference between someone punching at you but stopping at the skin and another kicking you from the front as if he wanted to dislocate your spine.  I learned many things, that bigger people kick you harder, thin lean men can be incredibly strong, being kicked is much worse than being punched and why women are so often badly hurt in attacks.  Our trainer told us that women are usually in placating mode when they are attacked.  They hope that by doing so their attacker will stop hurting them.  This, they continue to do even when the attacker continues to hurt them badly.  He was full of instructions about poking out eyeballs and other   gruesome techniques. 

I didn’t like any of it and decided on my own approach – that was pre attack preparation.  My carriage checking was a way of avoiding any conflict, and I felt that it made sense to put the odds in your favour.  Another pre attack policy was never to look as if you don’t know where you are going.  Vulnerability is sensed by the predator.  For years I was amazed that the world changed when I went on walks with my sister in law.  She is terrified by dogs and on spotting one almost half a mile away would begin to dance nervously behind me arms shaking, crying her distress.  It was like an irresistible invitation for any dog in the vicinity and I was constantly amazed how dogs would come from everywhere zoning in on her distress signals.  So too, in strange cities wandering around with maps and looking lost brings upon you all sorts of weirdoes.  Instead, I developed the practice of walking purposefully, as if you know where you are going even when you are lost.  Indeed, there are several major cities where I have found myself wandering lost in areas that I can remember vaguely being lost before in! 

I remember years ago going across France and my cousin decided hitch hiking was the way to speed things up, against my heated arguments.  A tiny French car stopped with a huge fat French man squeezed in behind the front steering wheel and his seat.  His stomach made a huge indent to allow for the steering wheel to fit.  His hair was positioned carefully over a bald head and kept in place by a liberal supply of sweat glistening everywhere.  We had gone only a mile or so before he pulled into a lay-by and started kissing my cousin on the mouth despite her protests.  I thought about hitting him on the back of the head with a swift chop, from the back seat, and then worried that he might stop kissing her and pull a knife or a gun.  So I opened the back door and threw both our rucksacks out onto the road instead.  My cousin extracted herself out the front door and the French fat guy took off at full speed.  We stood there, on an empty dusty road, my cousin spitting furiously on the road to clear all taste of his assault, both of us traumatised by what had happened.  Mind you to put things in perspective, I might not have unleashed a well trained karate chop on his neck (despite years of training) but my pre attack preparation served me well.  Why do you think my cousin ended up in the front seat and not me?

 Having past the half century age I no longer worry so much about train carriages and weirdoes.  Now, I concentrate on not putting my clothes on inside out and find I have become the possibly weirdest person I am ever likely to meet.  I certainly would not choose to share a train carriage or car with someone like me and that is strangely comforting in a sad odd way.

Mum

Your temperament is even

not raging hot then bitter cold

Your good nature is soothing

Ever pleasant and industrious

You have a peace within you

That others search a lifetime for

A kindness that is not ruffled

By the injustices of life

When in doubt or troubled

You apply spurs to yourself

And get going, sorting, cleaning

Making the changes without

To sort out the balance within

You want to solve the problems

Get to the core – yours or others

A good mind, a good friend

But your beauty has always left me breathless

An inner glow of goodness that the years cannot dispel

Shining clearly through the years undimmed

Enjoying life, frothy coffee

Walnuts and ice-cream, peanuts and your walk

Pacing your steps to match the daydream in your head

Seeing the beauty all around

And nourishing the beauty within

freezing white plump middle aged

Greetings dear Friend

You have been my companion through half a century.

Through anorak holidays in the rain, excitedly pumping big pennies into slot machines

And a fellow traveller in exploring Europe for the first time in our heady student days

Wherever I’ve been in good times and bad

You’ve been there, travelling across the globe to keep the link alive

Making the effort to call or write

Using every means to bridge the distance

You’ve been generous and kind

I remember my fiftieth birthday and you took me to my first spa

Soaking up the novelty of being pampered head to toe

I remember all the laughter and time together and grin

I hate how every year in April you come to the north coast and insist we enter the sea at the White Rocks in bathing suits, freezing white Plump middle aged women screaming with the pain

Why did that become a tradition I want to know! 

Bullies getting their just deserts!

In the early hours of sleepless mornings I find myself surfing the net.  Weird and wonderful things are found and then so too horrible scarring ones.  For some reason watching bullies get their just deserts is a particular favourite on mine.  As if justice being dispensed in these individual cases rights the wrongs done down through the years to all of us in some shape or other.  So here are a few of my heroes taking a stand.

The first is a bully on the subway targeting a woman passenger, a bystander finds an unusual way to bring things to an humiliating end for the bully.

The next is where a long suffering neighbour who puts up with a lot of verbal and physical abuse finally deals out justice to a thug.  By the time he actually responds you are cheering with the neighbours watching.

The last is a boxer walking with his girlfriend in a park.  Two men decide to cause trouble punching the girlfriend for no reason.  Big mistake as the boxer demonstrates his skills.

Yes, I know it is all a bit violent but in the early hours of the morning it is strange what entertains. 

Torturing flies, cruelty and making sense of it all

When my eldest son was around seven we had a visitor who dropped off her son to play with him.  As we had a large garden and an old caravan in its middle, with a forest to one side it seemed an idyllic place for children.  I could look out the kitchen window and watch my sons playing in the fields opposite.  It felt as if we were providing our three sons with freedom childhood used to allow decades ago.  It didn’t turn out exactly like that.

This boy was two years older than my eldest and had an odd world weary look about him.  As if he had already seen too much in his nine years.  But for my eldest son, who had been hounded by two inquisitive younger brothers, it must have seemed something of relief to have an older playmate at last.   They both disappeared into the caravan and seemed totally immersed in playing together.  After a couple of hours, my visitor returned and picked up our young guest.  My eldest son seemed quieter than normal and after some questioning he revealed that they had spent most of the time pulling the wings off flies!  When bored with this, flies had been pierced with drawing pins, gassed under glasses with air freshener and others drowned slowly.  I was horrified and asked him how he could do such things?  He claimed he had been a passive observer watching as his older playmate invented more gruesome methods of killing his prey.  I found myself livid beyond reason, after all they were only flies but it felt as if into an idyllic setting corruption and cruelty had crept unseen.  My son was upset at my reaction and his claim to be a passive participant was greeted with me likening him to SS guards who stood by watching others gassed the Jews.  Now, I have to confess that comparing his fly killing activities to genocide was hardly fair.  But I was disappointed in him and was overreacting as is my want at times.  Poor little chap stood listening gravely, eyes huge, as he took my comments on board.  How children suffer from parents’ stupidity!  He swore he would never be involved in such activities again and his shock at my reaction was obvious.  I do fear at times that my children may need, in the future, to invest in expensive counselling and therapy as a result of my poor parenting skills.

It was all rather unfair as after all, he was a rather kind hearted little chap who took great care of his younger brothers.  He’d appointed himself their guard and protector, probably realizing I was rather flawed in that area.  On an earlier trip to London by train he had acted as a railway platform edge monitor.  I found him, aged six, with both arms outstretched, his back to the railway lines, desperate to ensure his active younger brothers would not throw themselves off the platform into the path of an oncoming train.  On another occasion when he was four I managed to lose him and his brothers in a huge shopping mall.  After a frantic search, the crowd cleared from an area before me and I spotted him standing bravely alone, with both arms wrapped around his crying younger brothers.  Combined with this rather stoic dependable nature was an insatiable hunger for input.  He read anything and everything he could get his hands on and asked ceaseless questions of everyone.  A dear friend, Pari, re-christened  him “Whyman” after she took care of him for an afternoon and returned later exhausted by the never ending  interrogation he put her under.  He seemed to observe the world avidly around him trying to work things out and make sense of it all.  Sometimes it just didn’t make sense.

The only other children in our neighbourhood were the bin man’s two boys.  These lads were rather wild with a tendency to steal toys, slit our garden hammocks from end to end, throw stones, push small children out of trees and a perverse liking for putting dead animals on our kitchen windowsill!  As the years went by, they progressed to scratching the cars with stones, braking neighbour’s windows, intimidating the elderly in the street and then ultimately to drugs and real crime.  My eldest son observed their growing cruelty with alarm, after all, he had two vulnerable younger brothers to look out for.  But, I like to think that on some level, he managed to make some sense of it all, my poor parenting skills, unexpected cruelty in others and our own vulnerability to it all.  That, what we do, on a small tiny moral level, has consequences for who we become.  Like tiny unsure steps taken in a chosen direction, our kindness or our cruelty will shape not just our destination but our very communities.

The Amazing World we Live in

There’s something about the world we live in that is so jaw droppingly amazing you find yourself wondering how fantastic it all is.  From the tiny subatomic particles to the stars and galaxies it is pretty impressive.  How sad it is then that our educational system too often manages to take this world and its beauty and make it plain boring.  Packaging up facts to be memorised until it reaches blackboard scrapping dimensions.  Learning should have never have been left in the hands of the few.  It is far too precious and the methods of learning too varied for such restrictive hands.  Mind you, finance could have something to do with it.  I remember being involved with writing a computer aided package for educational purposes and being shocked how far behind the games industry our output was.  Then it was pointed out the vast sums being spent in the gaming industry and how miniscule the amounts used in educational packages.  You get for what you pay, as they say.  I was sent this link (see below) this week and found myself loving the way it takes you from the small to the massive.  Allowing you to get a glimpse of this wonderful world and its weirdness.  Click on start and then the planet looking icon above.  Then just slide the bar (located AT THE BOTTOM of this link) to the left or right;  Be sure to slide the bar both ways to see the very small and the very large.

The Amazing World We live In

angels whose feet walk upon this earth even as their souls are soaring through the high heavens

Our news is so often dominated by celebrities whose lives are followed by masses hungry for their latest intrigue or disaster.  Or alternatively, by our politicians, who disappoint us with their greed and corruption.  In a world where the bankers have stolen breathtaking amounts of money and even our clergy fight to free themselves from the stain of child abuse it is often hard to find news that lifts the soul.  But this week a death notice strangely left me moved.  On Page 26 of the newspaper there was a small article at the very bottom about a certain Don Ritchie from Australia who had died at the age of eighty six.  Not a celebrity, nor politician, nor clergyman, he didn’t raise money for charity, nor was he famous.  He lived near the sheer cliffs of Sydney Harbour and during five decades he managed to save between 160 lives.  People, who having lost all hope, had come to end it all by jumping off the cliffs.  Ritchie would spot would be suicides, from his home nearby, and walk to the cliff edge and smile and ask “Can I help you in some way?”  A modest man who courted neither celebrity nor praise, he helped by engaging with the desperate and often invited them back to his home for tea and a chat.  His quiet approach worked and because of Ritchie so many were saved and so many returned to thank the quiet man for his help.  As one survivor described him, “An angel who walks amongst us”.  So in this world where so much crap grabs the headlines and good men are rarely found, I’d like you to remember one Don Ritchie.