Beware the Haters!

Last Sunday I attended a self-improvement workshop where the first slide the facilitator projected had 'Beware the Haters!' emblazoned across it.
For a moment I was puzzled. Then she explained that whenever an individual seeks to improve, grow or evolve themselves in some way, they will invoke the wrath of the 'haters', even surprisingly, among friends, lovers and families, and to be aware of this.

Apparently some people are so fearful of change or perhaps cannot bear the thought that someone they know might become happier, more fulfilled or more successful in life than they, and even worse, 'leave them behind', that they make it their business to undermine them in various ways from minor digs and put-downs to major show-downs and ultimatums. If the individual under such 'psychic attack' has a shaky or uncertain concept of their own self-worth, these detractors often succeed.

However if one had the courage to fight back, or rather, assert one's right to better oneself, and accept one is likely to lose a 'friend' or two in the process, we would be rewarded in this painful process by making room in our lives for the more positive friends we were about to attract through our new more positive way of being and accompanying vibes. Besides which, if certain individuals in our lives wished to hold us back, even through the fear that we might leave them behind or outgrow them, rather than wishing us well and offering their support, how is that 'friendly'? In what way are they a big loss to us if they are not going to behave in a friend-like manner?

She also made a valid point that if all these people emitting negative energy were to direct that same energy to focus on what they wanted in life, rather than spending all their time resenting others and what they have, dwelling on what they don't want or on what makes them unhappy, and generally letting their fears rule them, they too could take advantage of the same self-improvement benefits open to everyone and enjoy happier and more fulfilling lives.

This reminded me of a book I once read concerning cancer sufferers who had volunteered to try out a special (largely vegetarian) diet designed to boost their immune system without feeding their cancer. A number of volunteers did really well for a few weeks or months, to the point that their consultants were lengthening their prognosis by up to a year and one or two tumours were visibly arrested or shrinking on scans. Then all of a sudden the researchers started to notice that their star volunteers, mainly women, were going downhill again. They made tentative enquiries and found that the women had decided it was too much trouble to cook a special diet for themselves and eat separate food from their families. Even the woman whose family had volunteered to eat the same food as her had eventually capitulated when she realised from a few unguarded comments how much they were missing their normal diet and normal family mealtimes 'just like they used to be'.

Some had even had blatantly disparaging comments made to them by children or spouses, or scorn or doubt expressed about the diet, which had persuaded them to abandon it to win back loved ones' approval..
I found it sad that these sufferers did not receive the support from their loved ones that they should have been able to expect when they needed it most - ie to fight cancer in the way that they wished to and some of them were doing really well with. It struck me they were almost signing their own death warrants in the name of not wanting to be 'too much trouble' and upset the family and its routine. Or at least preparing themselves to leave these same families earlier than expected.

So in a sensitive situation even a mild comment or lack of support from someone who is not a witting 'hater' can cause an individual to abort what could have been a life-changing or prolonging course if they are not prepared to assert themselves in the face of challenge. This includes the natural nay-sayers who might not even realise that that's what they are doing and the effects of their behaviour.

Whilst it is harder to turn one's back on a negative member of the family than a relationship or friend, ultimately one can only win respect through stating one's own truth and doing one's best to be true to it. There are times in life where other peoples' opinions and approval are secondary, if not irrelevant in the bigger picture. And if their opinions are formed by their fears rather than the reality of a situation (ie you have no intention of abandoning them just because you seek to improve your confidence or learn a new skill etc), that is even less reason to pay them too much heed. I certainly think there is room to challenge friends and lovers on whether they are friends or lovers if they are not behaving in a friendly or loving manner. Then there's the risk of 'haters' on the internet for those who share tmi (too much information), so again, Beware the Haters!

It was interesting that so many concerns were voiced in the workshop Q & A about what others might think if a person followed their chosen path. And fair enough; 'You can't just abandon a disabled husband who needs you 24/7' as one woman in the room pointed out. 'Agreed. But you can't walk around labouring under the misapprehension that his life is more important than yours either. Your life is also of value. Equal value.' smiled the tutor. 'And even if it's only baby steps, you can find a way to live for your own sake as well. I suggest starting with ten minutes meditation each day to help you identify who you are and what you want and then, how you can find a way to combine your needs with your husband's, rather than sacrificing your needs for his. You've made a start already. You've managed to attend this workshop. The other thing to remember is that just as you are instructed to put on your own  life jacket first in a plane before helping anyone else on with theirs, you make yourself fitter to care for your husband if you look after yourself first.'

The physical needs of dependents aside, which is altogether a trickier subject since these individuals may be 100% well-meaning and loving otherwise, Quentin Crisp had an interesting maxim on the subject of living one's life to court the approval of others: 'If there were no praise and no blame, who would you be?'

I am still trying to answer that question. Amidst wondering if all the individuals in my world similarly put themselves through apoplexies worrying about what I think of them and constricting their lives to live as blamelessly as possible according to my perceived opinions of them! Answers on a postcard please. Should I worry about what you think of me, and if so, why?

The Crying Game(show)

Opinion is divided as to whether it was Gazza the footballer or the late Princess Diana who turned a nation of stiff upper lips into today's nation of quivering-lipped cry babies with all the backbone of a jellyfish.

As one who has applied to appear on some of the higher end reality shows, of the life or career transforming genre, I found it noticeable how I typically had to fill out a ten page personality questionaire as a part of the interview process with endless elements trying to ascertain by various means how emotional I was and what made me cry and, in particular, how often.

Needless to say when I confessed I didn't cry very often, any other characteristic that might have made me interesting or entertaining viewing was hastily dismissed. I came to realise TV companies are deliberately targetting the emoters, despite up to 70% of viewers now opining that they can't stand the constant crying and histrionics on TV and are beginning to turn off from such formats.

Well I am heartened to find that I am not the only one who can't take any more cringe factor on the X Factor or fake-off on the Bake-Off . As for Ruby's current antics on the Great British Bake-Off, it is nothing short of disgusting that she is turning on the waterworks to get her own way, and worse, being allowed to get away with it, unimpressed as Mary Berry looks (well as a fellow female, she does know all the tricks of the trade, even if Paul Hollywood is taken in.) Someone should also tell Ruth and her fellow over-emotional cooks that it is unhygienic to snivel unabated into one's cooking. Cookery shows should make it a disqualifier if entrants don't leave the kitchen before blubbing, not forgetting to put germy hankies away and wash their hands again before returning. Ditto spoon tasters who return said spoon to saucepan after putting it in their mouth.  And while we're on the subject, where are their hair nets? No one wants to find unwelcome ingredients in what is supposed to be competition-winning fayre.

Notwithstanding, these TV tactics are increasingly spilling over into real life. Last week for example I had a 20 year old female student in front of me weeping copiously and demanding to be released from her accommodation contract owing to the extreme damp which was making her ill. She was asthmatic she said, so it was 'dangerous' for her to remain there. I replied that the only way she could be released from her contract was to find another student with no pre-existing contracts with the university who could take over her contract. She stuck out her bottom lip. 'But how can I? It's not fit for human habitation!' she insisted. I asked her if she had reported the damp to her Hall Manager and she said that she had. I asked when they had said they would deal with it for her. She seemed vague. A male colleague affected by her tears moved to hand over the appropriate form. I stopped him, promising. 'Well you advertise your room and I will talk to your Hall Manager about getting this problem resolved. We can't have rooms with problems, whoever lives in them.' She looked unhappy, burst into further tears and left. Suspicious that a room fewer than five years old and which she had been occupying for a mere four weeks could be so damp in a Hall of Residence not previously known for that problem, I rang her Hall Manager and asked what the Maintenance team were doing about her room. She had reported no problem with her room to him. My male colleague looked stunned, but then he hadn't worked there as long as I had and seen it all. She was just another example of someone who believes that by bursting into tears or causing a huge fuss they will get their own way, never seeming to imagine that what they claim might be checked for its validity.

So not only is Britain becoming a nation of emotional incontinents, but a nation of people who use emotion as a form of manipulation, a smokescreen for untruths and even to facilitate blackmail. A friend who had fallen out of love with her needy and manipulative boyfriend tried to end it. He threatened suicide, but she insisted to him firmly but kindly that the relationship had run its course and they were obviously radically different people who would be much happier with other partners and not to be so silly. She didn't sleep for days afterwards for worry as he'd gone so far as to engrave surface nicks in his wrists with a penknife and turn up on her doorstep drunk and swathed in bandages when she'd tried to end it before, but reasoned as long as she was being bombarded with begging texts and emotive emails, he was still alive and kicking. Two weeks later, having said he couldn't live without my friend, he had found another girl. My friend was somewhat deflated by this after all his extravagant declarations, but certainly didn't cry that he'd got over her so quickly. Relief was the overriding emotion.

I fully concur with the view that we Brits were probably far too repressed in the past. But I find little authenticity in today's opposite extreme of falsely-inflated emotion and histrionics and fear it carries just as many drawbacks as the stiff upper lip, if not more, if those same individuals genuinely cannot deal with life by honest means the moment it goes even slightly wrong for them, or feel it is legitimate to resort to controlling others to get what they want through their moods. Chaotic lives and f***ed up out-of-controllers abound and are even encouraged by a surfeit of societal acceptance and,  in some cases, benefits.

Where will it end? How on earth would this nation win through another world war if one were to break out? I shudder to think.

Give me an individual with spirit and backbone as well as communication and emotional honesty any day of the week. But then I do like to have my cake and eat it...

An Oxford Education

I moved to Oxford the week after Princess Diana was killed. I had lived in Coventry for some years but my fiancé and I had split up, the jobs were getting more and more dead-end and my late grandmother’s house, in which I was temporarily living, was about to be sold. Various friends were also moving away. 

One such friend who had already made the move said one day; ‘Why don’t you move to Oxford Laura? There’s far more going on there. There’s not much culture in Coventry.’

I couldn’t disagree. I had to move anyway, so why not move to another city?

I have never looked back. Within a week I had landed an admin job in the heart of one of Oxford’s most ancient Colleges, found a pleasant house-share with a young couple who welcomed Moggins the Mog, and begun making friends. I had always written poetry but suddenly I now had somewhere I could recite it more than once or twice a year, thus more incentive to write. The Catweazle Club became a weekly fixture on a Wednesday night. 

I joined Oxford Writer’s Group, became a founder member of Back Room Poets and started making full use of the 24-hour coaches to London to attend London’s Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Cafe a couple of times a month, making a new set of London friends. An exciting new world called ‘performance poetry’ began to open up and I entered Cheltenham Literary Festival Slams, among others, making the semi-finals one year. I've taken part in OxFringe Festival shows for six years consecutively and enjoyed many an evening watching friends perform in their shows, operettas, jazz combo's, choirs or at Oxford Playhouse play-in-hand evenings. Hear the Word and Hammer and Tongue also came to join the local spoken word scene. Borders Bookshop formed a major hang out venue for the local literati for nearly a decade, hosting various groups and events in the evenings (though sadly I missed the infamous punch-up the philosophy group descended into one night on a moot point of principle) and remains much missed, though Blackwells has tried to fill its shoes in the city centre and other muse meccas such as Jericho's Beatnik Bookshop have sprung up.

On the romantic front, seven years of volunteering on a Saturday in St Giles’ Oxfam Bookshop failed to yield a single straight Oscar Wilde, but I made friends there too (including a retired don who was a contemporary and neighbour of CS Lewis), and learned a lot about second hand and antiquarian books. Forays into lonely hearts columns and early internet dating followed with mixed results and still no straight Oscar Wilde.

The eternal quest for affordable housing got me involved in Oxfordshire Community Land Trusts for many years and my appreciation of nice architecture, Oxford Civic Society.

I passed my driving test, took a C&G in Interior Design, studied The History of the English House, among other architectural subjects, and in my subsequent job at the ‘other university’ took an NVQ Level 3 in Customer Service, among much employment-related training. And did I mention the three years of Wednesday night dress-making classes at Cherwell Valley College? Suffice to say if two-dimensional fashions ever come into vogue, I possess some!

Every year Victorian Literature Day at Oxford University Further Education Department became a must. For around £40, one could partake of an Oxford University education taster in the adept hands of four experts in their field enthusiastically holding forth on their literary hero or heroine. Jenny Uglow was particularly superb on Elizabeth Gaskell, her soft mousy voice coming alive, her petite bright-eyed features transforming to resemble a latter-day Elizabeth Gaskell. It was similarly a real treat to see the doyen of Victorian Literature John Sutherland in full flow. I particularly love his cheat’s guides zeroing in on the most intriguing puzzles in Victorian literature in collections of essays variously entitled; ‘Is Heathcliff a Murderer?’ Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?’ and ‘Who Betrayed Elizabeth Bennett?’ Another lecturer whose name I now forget enthralled us with how HG Wells got his own back on the class system, of which his parents were servants in the pecking order, by dreaming up the morlocks coming up from underground (ie below stairs) to eat the eloi (the elite), avenging a boyhood of perpetual hunger and invisibility. It was wonderful to hear such talks with no coursework involved and no exams to be passed, just an optional pre-day reading list.

There are also stars to be seen for free if you can get away from work around 5pm and catch the tail end of late afternoon lectures. Such did I see the late Seamus Heaney and the late Beryl Bainbridge, in what may well have been her final public appearance. Armando Iannucci was elected visiting Media Professor by one College and duly delivered a four part weekly extravaganza on the history and future of TV comedy, liberally sprinkled with film clips to illustrate his points. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the free party afterwards in Green College observatory. Colin Dexter, having endorsed our Oxford Short Story books also became a regular fixture at Oxford Writer’s Group parties, regaling us with literary anecdotes. However I didn't feel shortchanged paying to see the likes of Alan Bennett fill the Sheldonian or Cleo Laine and the late Johnny Dankworth in action.

The Oxford Student Union is open to anyone with a friend to sign them in and I watched a number of entertaining debates in the debating chamber. Sometimes unlikely celebrities would turn up to give a talk or join in a debate, the most unlikely surely being the late Michael Jackson, who was apparently winched into the back of the building for security reasons, although I wasn't there that night. The Union bar is also a nice place to hang out in and pretty as the film set it often is.

In our office, I was twice visited by Nathaniel Parker as he looked for his coat whilst filming the Inspector Lynley Mysteries nearby and John Thaw was a familiar sight in the dying days of Morse, filming various bits of our college and others, Kevin Whately to follow in his footsteps. A remake of Brideshead Revisited claimed half the front quad for six weeks and I learned quite a bit about scenery, make up and setting up shots purely by facilitating their uninterrupted shooting. I also learned about gargoyle commission in my job and how no ‘old member’ likes their gargoyle to be too ugly!

Students? Well some are earnest and serious and you can understand how they got here, but plenty are not and you can’t. On the whole though, they do tend to have better manners than most redbrick university students (and I’ve worked at both).

Oxford is one of those places where there is always something extraordinary going on around the next corner (such as a church service on the St Giles Fair carousel) however well you feel you know it.

The only fly in the ointment is the developers’ determination to wreak the architectural destruction that Hitler failed to, having decided the city was too precious to unleash bombs on, only now in the name of profit, rather than invasion. Even the city’s historic Covered Market is perpetually under threat as a prime supermarket ‘site’. The city’s status as a ‘World Heritage Site’ seemingly affords it no protection from monstrosities such as the new Somerville College development (not what tourists board Oxford tour buses to see). As for accusations of ‘Disneyfication’, if only.  At least that would be more picturesque and demonstrate some aesthetic appreciation and respect for the city. Notwithstanding, an early member of Oxford Civic Society savoured the victory of preventing a road from being built slap bang through the middle of Christchurch Meadow in the 1950s when the architectural love affair with brutalism was in full swing. Recent members have not been so lucky in preventing the ruin of Port Meadow further out with yet more ugly student blocks despoiling the Oxford skyline (despite student blocks now being at saturation point).

The other sadness about Oxford is that whilst the snob factor may have softened over the years, it has been at the expense of the invasion of corporatism. If you are advertising an event these days for example, you will seldom find a friendly neighbourhood cafe or shop willing to let you put a poster up, not even the local tourist information, who have dispensed with their ‘What’s On’ board and insidiously re-branded themselves ‘Visit Oxford’. I would venture to suggest there is little more sense of community in the city centre these days than there was when town and gown tensions were at their height. Now mass (year round) tourism has come to join town and gown, regarded as a blessing by some and a nuisance by others, largely because the majority surging along the narrow pavements at the peril of unwary denizens are day trippers who don't stay long enough to contribute to the local economy in any meaningful way. Not that the facilities in Oxford exactly welcome them. The public toilets alone must be among the worst in Britain and there is no proper coach park or meeting point for them either.  The Ashmolean Museum and the Oxford Museum have both been hollowed out and turned into soulless white boxes for wine tasting evenings with gift shops attached, despite the existence of MAO (Modern Art Oxford), created specifically for the purpose.

Every day continues to be an Oxford education... 

As for that straight Oscar Wilde, he never did materialise, but would I suspect, have been far too much of a narcissist to notice little me, so I am far from disappointed that fate finally stepped in with an eminently more suitable suitor.

The REAL Dowager of Downton Abbey

The real dowager of Downton Abbey is not the one portrayed by Dame Maggie Smith  (above) but a humble kitchen maid from Hove who left school at 14, went into service, married a milkman and didn't receive any further education until her mid-50s when her children left home and she decided to attend the University of the Third Age to 'better herself', studying for and taking English O Levels and A levels. She began to write about her experiences in service in the 1920s and 30s, something few individuals of similar humble origins had ever thought to do, assuming no one would be interested in their humble and, to them, humdrum lives, even if they possessed the creative urge. Notwithstanding the working classes were very much brought up to respect their 'elders and betters' in those days and accept that they were not supposed to 'get ideas above their station' in life. Not this former kitchen maid, who had always been a spirited girl with a mind of her own.

Much to her surprise her books were a hit and she became a housewife superstar, almost akin to a British real life Dame Edna Everage! Older readers may remember the familiar features of Margaret Powell who was seldom off the TV in the 1970s, and made regular appearances on Housewive's Choice. 

Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins openly credited her book 'Below Stairs' as being the inspiration for their hit series 'Upstairs Downstairs' in the 1970s and now Julian Fellows (creator of Downtown Abbey) has credited both Margaret Powell as well as Upstairs Downstairs as being the inspiration for Downton Abbey, which is essentially 'Upstairs Downstairs' transplanted to a country house! And while Willy Russell does not credit Margaret Powell as the inspiration for his hit play and film 'Educating Rita', it is highly probable that she was.

After her initial success with 'Below Stairs' in 1968 there was no stopping Margaret Powell and the books poured out of her; 'Climbing the Stairs', 'The Treasure Upstairs' 'My Mother and I', 'Albert, My Consort', 'Margaret Powell's London Season', 'Margaret Powell's Cookery Book', 'Margaret Powell Down Under', 'Margaret Powell in America', 'Margaret Powell's 'Sweetmaking for Children' all followed and Margaret was in endless demand for interviews, openings and all manner of other excuses to don a party frock rather than a maid's pinny. 

My favourite of her books is 'Albert, My Consort',  the touching story of her long marriage to Albert the milkman, a disarmingly honest account of married life and all its ups and downs through wartime and beyond. I also enjoyed 'My Mother and I' where she interviews her indomitable mother about HER life in service, dating from late Victorian times! I have re-read both books recently and they paint a vivid picture of Hove in the early twentieth century. Hard to believe compared to the Hove of today.

Critics scorned Margaret's writing style as somewhat 'coarse' but they couldn't deter Margaret's millions of fans who lapped up her charming and witty candor and relished every detail of domestic life and servant's eye view she furnished. And she had a way with words all her own, so no one could accuse her of not having forged her own distinctive style. I first came across 'Below Stairs' in my grandmother's house when I was about ten and asked if I could borrow it. I quickly became hooked and before I knew it, had ordered every last Margaret Powell from the library and read it. Some of her books such as 'Climbing the Stairs' remain in print to this day, over forty years after she first wrote them. Most authors would be happy with that kind of shelf life.

Margaret's life even inspired a successful sit-com 'Beryl's Lot' which ran from 1973-77 featuring 'Beryl Humphries', a Battersea milkman's wife and mother of three, who decides as her 40th birthday approaches that she needs to broaden her horizons, which she accomplishes by enrolling on a philosophy course at night school. The series dealt with how Beryl's new ideas, attitudes and outlook affected her family, friends and neighbours.

Last week I listened as a Brighton taxi driver on Sussex radio related fond memories of picking Margaret up from her favourite pub and driving her home after her Sunday afternoon tipple each week, regular as clockwork, but always as nice as pie and 'merry', rather than drunk. Always 'a real lady' (well she'd observed enough of them during her life!) She liked to let her hair down, did Margaret, even in her 70s, but shy as she wasn't, she never let her fame go to her head. Celebrities of today could learn a lot.

Here's the characterful Margaret being interviewed by Russell Harty.  Note how the original Brighton accent has a hint of cockney about it, something noticeable in my mother's elderly Brighton relations.

Proposing a Toast to More Temperance

Recently I met an attractive and effervescent fortysomething woman at a party. Among the top in her field according to colleagues, when not working hard, she enjoyed an enviable lifestyle of designer clothes, expensive holidays and a bachelorette pad in an exclusive waterfront development, not to mention a private box each time she went to the theatre. As the evening wore on however, it transpired all was not as it seemed.

Clara* was hoovering every complimentary drink in sight except the Thames itself,  gradually becoming louder and more incoherent, when not dancing, flirting and laughing somewhat manically. Periods of moroseness and drunken confession ensued. Her drinking it seems was all down to school bullying and feelings of worthlessness.

At her age? I wondered, in some disbelief. Hadn't she heard of therapy? How did it help that she now bullied herself with booze and took over where her school bullies had left off, concurring with them in her own opinion of herself?

Another of her colleagues revealed that it was Clara's habit to keep drinking until she found a bloke to take home. If she didn't she would stay out drinking all night and give home a miss.

I was shocked that anyone would dread returning to an empty des res quite this much and that an obviously intelligent middle-aged woman would be so bent on self-destruction.

I last saw Clara entering yet another bar, eyeliner now smudged and skin like crepe, but I had had enough by this time and told her I needed to go home and catch up on my beauty sleep. A look of sheer desperation crossed her face. 'I wish I could go home, I'm so tired and my feet are killing me.' she said. 'Then why don't you?' I asked, touching her arm. 'You should go home if you're not having fun any more and it's becoming a night of diminishing returns.' 'I can't.' she replied with finality, taking a swig of cocktail as if to emphasise the point.

I felt disturbed by conflicting emotions of pity and prejudice as she was very engaging, despite her obvious problems. Yet who was I to judge someone I scarcely knew?  I suppose the warning signs were there from the start when we were introduced and she joked (or so I assumed); 'I hate grown-ups. They are so dull. I hope I never grow up;' then threw back her head and laughed. I bit my lip as I quite enjoy being a grown-up and taking adult responsibility for myself.

One other nugget of information which came to light about Clara was that her drinking had spiralled out of control at roughly the same time Tony Blair had introduced the 24-hour drinking culture, back in the day when she was an exceedingly slim and pretty girl by all accounts, and could have had her pick of the marriage and motherhood prospects she had earlier bemoaned to me as being non-existent..

Now we hear that alcohol licencing is to be extended to small businesses other than pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants.

History demonstrates however that it is only when alcohol is heavily taxed (which is should be in view of the many millions its over-consumption costs this country in crime, emergency and healthcare), and there are strict licencing laws, that there has not been a high level of alcoholism in Britain. We have never been able to display the class of our European counterparts who sip rather than glug, and who for the most part, consider drinks as meal accompaniments rather than an indulgence in their own right.

In Victorian times pubs were regulated not just out of concern for people's moral welfare, but because it was recognised that over-consumption led to serious, sometimes fatal, accidents at work. And most mills, mines and farms were dangerous enough in those days.

Sometimes it seems the laws of this land have gone backwards rather than forwards if it can so easily be forgotten that the old measures were brought in for good reasons. Good reasons that have not necessarily changed that much over one and a half centuries. And though most workplaces are call-centre safe nowadays, there is still plenty of scope for accidents among the inebriated. A 60% higher chance, to be precise. And one person is still killed every half an hour owing to drink driving in this country, a risk the Victorians didn't have to worry about, so some new risks have arisen to replace the old.

To cap it all, despite drink-driving laws GARAGES are permitted to sell alcohol! What sort of a public message is that to send out?

We have also lost the shame factor. In the olden days, people would generally try and disguise their drinking and be mortified at being seen drunken in a public place (still an offence). These days individuals (and not just of university age) brag about how they got 'slaughtered last night' and appear to find their behaviour uproariously amusing rather than pathetic, and in some cases, tragic, let alone shameful in any way. Our country is an international laughing stock (and TV Reality staple) when it ventures abroad, so out of control have our citizens become whilst on holiday. Stag and Hen nights have turned into Stag and Hen weekends and even whole weeks of continuous drinking. It is no longer unusual to find twentysomethings dying of liver disease in our hospitals or of alcohol poisoning after a particularly heavy binge. One in five pop tracks now features references to binge drinking, the likes of Katy Perry en-fashioning it to the masses as if she were on some fat retainer from the booze industry. Amy Winehouse (was there ever a more aptly named pop star?) took train wreck chic to the next level altogether, both in her art and her life.

Conversely it has just been proposed that 'drunk tanks' be introduced in every town and city where drunken people can be locked up for their own safety overnight and charged £400. But the reason Police stopped using their Police cells to house the town drunk overnight was because they were afraid the town drunk might choke on his own vomit or have a stroke or heart attack and the Police would be found liable for not recognising that he was in need of medical assistance (not within their remit to provide). Hence the inexorable rise of A & E admissions, some even deposited there by the Police. So how would 'drunk tanks' circumvent this problem? And if they couldn't, would A & E departments then be given the power to fine patients admitted for alcohol abuse? I have long advocated they be given the power to fine such admissions (£500 was my suggestion) to set up a compensation fund for all the A & E staff they attack and  resources they take away from genuine cases of accident and emergency, some of whom suffer dire consequences when the local A & E department is clogged up with alcoholics.

In Victorian times, it could be argued that people had more reason for heavy drinking than they do now. Short, often brutal lives, devoid of many of the freedoms and comforts we take for granted today, constant pains of various kinds before the advent of painkillers, and no central heating or double-glazing to keep out the cold and wet, other than the warming liquids they imbibed. Where is our excuse now? It is all very well to wring our hands over not wanting to impose a 'nanny state' but this country doesn't hesitate to tax and Big Brother its denizens in every other area of life. What's so abhorrent about setting a few limits to help individuals like Clara who have no limits of their own?

As for Clara? When not waxing lyrically about her independence and how she much loved 'getting slaughtered' whenever she could, it was noticeable how the tears of a clown and the melancholy were never far from the surface.

The Last Post...?

Four years ago I penned a posting entitled Renaissance of the Victorian Internet about how many Victorians enjoyed three postal deliveries a day - Breakfast, lunch and teatime. In most towns and cities it was possible to post a letter in the morning and receive a reply by teatime, or even by return of post! The Victorian postman would go as far as to take any waiting return letters for you if it was inconvenient for you to visit your nearest post box (of which there would be one on almost every corner in most towns and cities).. I later wrote about The Power of Postcards and how this mode of communication helped win World War I.

At the weekend my partner and I traipsed around a CITY CENTRE in ever despairing search of one of these to post a birthday card.

To our dismay we realised these icons of British life were disappearing to this likely scrapyard fate...

Finally we found one at the railway station.

Later, in Battersea's Nine Elms, we were shocked to find out the fate of the South London Sorting Office.

No oil painting of a building for sure but to be torn down within only twenty years of construction. What a scandalous waste of public money. The 'site' has now been sold to greedy developers to boost the value of Royal Mail prior to privatisation. Only a small proportion of the housing for this sacrifice will be 'affordable', presumably meaning the vast majority will be 'unaffordable'. Funny how mention of 'affordable housing' is used to gloss over innumerable moral questions and justify the non-involvement of local communities in their own future. Then again the whole of Vauxhall resembled a post-apolocolyptic wasteland, except for some shiny new conciege-minded monstrosities towering over the tube station.

Now it has come to the point where the Post Office is being sold off, despite opposition in many quarters, including from its own Parcelforce division. Small investors are expected to shun the sell-off in particular.

I don't know about you but I don't recall giving my consent for the privatisation of a public service. Small companies are already suffering in particular through an increasingly slow and unreliable postal system. Some have even gone to the wall as a result..  Only recently I had to phone Royal Mail to complain that the main letter box outside my workplace had evidently not been emptied for days and was now so full, letters were trying to drop out of it. The Victorians must be turning in their graves at what we have done to their once proud world-beating postal service.

So what's it to be? Do we take to the streets to protest or vow to start writing more letters and cards? Addictive as the internet can be, I for one am increasingly keen to keep real life real, and have just purchased a bulk consignment of notelets and stamps.

But all is not yet lost. The Post Office were forced to do an embarrassing u-turn on its ridiculous concept to rebrand itself 'Consignia' in 2001, we the public can force a u-turn on this as well. Or at least do our utmost to make it a total flop and embarrassment requiring a corrective course.

Arguing a Good Cause

Having won my schools' Debating Society shield - twice, you would have thought that I would love a good argument, but nothing could be further from the truth.

A childhood of being caught in the crossfire of two warring parents blaming each other for their respective hoarding habit consequences (among other things), which generally began with the daily ritual of my father belllowing; 'Where's the bloody car keys?' and my mother retorting; 'I don't know - you had them last!' and things going from bad to worse as they turned the house over looking for said car keys so my father wouldn't be late for work, when all along a never-used set of brass key hooks in the shape of a vintage car glinted ironically on the hall wall. 'Oh stop shouting you two!' I would sometimes hopelessly interject when the vein in my father's neck started pulsating rather too dangerously. My sister took a more aggressive stance and would eff and blind at them to stop at the top of her voice, but neither of our approaches worked and my sister grew up to be a hoarder who never dares invite anyone round to her place in her own right, presumably in a spirit of 'If you can't beat 'em, join 'em'.

Such did all the arguments revolve around the state of the house and everything lost in it (to the extent that half a dozen tubes of toothpaste would often be on the go simultaneously - each time an item was lost my mother would just buy another one and then the previous toothpastes would resurface, adding to the clutter). Picture the replication of this scenario ditto all household products for full technicolour effect, the only item not replicated being the family car whose nomadic keys created such a daily bone of contention.

I regularly marvelled at old photographs of me and my sister as toddler and baby playing on a living room carpet whose gaudy yellow chintz pattern was entirely visible (and crawlable) and once joked to my mother that if the house was ever clean and tidy again, what would she and my father talk about? They'd have to have proper conversations! She smiled and shrugged off my comment. She's always been good at letting life wash over her like that - presumably the reason she survived 44 years of marriage with my impossible father.

Still, my father effectively controlled the household through his moods so I now see it as no accident that I went on to date a couple of boyfriends who tried to control me through their moods and put downs in my late teens and early twenties, just as he had. It wasn't that I was some sort of masochist, though lack of confidence and belief that I deserved someone who treated me better undoubtedly played a part, more that I now realise I was subconsciously re-creating my psychological relationship with my father in a futile attempt to resolve what I had been unable to resolve with him. So in a way my consciousness was seeking to become emotionally healthy in its own warped way, except it had no template to go on in terms of going about it the right way, so the trial and error process took a while, eventually aided by the rise of the self-help book. On a more trivial note, such was my timidity over confrontation of any kind in those days, it took me years even to be able to take faulty goods back to the shops!

Aside from my career moves forcing me to become more assertive over the years (you soon learn that you have to be able to stand up to students and their demands and convince them university rules are there for a reason or they will walk all over you), I am now fortunate enough to enjoy a relationship which is a criticism-free zone by mutual consent, as my partner has also known more than his fair share of criticism and arguments in the past and doesn't harbour a taste for a future of more of the same.

The worst thing about arguments is how trivial and pointless so many of them are. Who cares if someone leaves a toilet seat up? Who cares from which part of the tube someone squeezes the toothpaste? Not me.
If individuals are going to argue, they should at least argue about something that actually matters, though some psychologists would argue that a lot of trivial arguments arise entirely because the 'elephant in the room' - ie the real issue - is being avoided and suppressed to the extent that a cluster of trivial issues have to break out in order to relieve the pressure cooker.

Better still, people should take the elephant in the room by the tusks while it is still a baby elephant in my view so they don't end up resorting to the physical or verbal aggression of the inarticulate. Problems only become more difficult and painful the longer they are ignored or suppressed rather than brought up and discussed as soon as they present as an issue. Emotional constipation ensues, resentment builds, emotional and physical health issues follow, the dangers of implosion or explosion then rear their ugly heads (depression is apparently anger turned inwards). Ultimately an issue which might have been solveable to begin with grows to the proportions where no one can begin to handle it anymore, let alone solve it.  Who can live like this and stay sane? Again, not me. Worse still, so many arguments even when serious, turn out to be down to a crossed wire, a mis-communication or no communication at all between parties, leading to false assumptions and misunderstandings and people not getting their needs met when in many cases all they have to do is open their mouths and ask/be willing to acknowledge and negotiate the other partys' needs in return. How many wars too might be prevented if human beings would only communicate properly I wonder?

So next time you find yourself treading on eggshells around someone, ask yourself why, and would they do the same for you if you were the moody one? And what is the elephant in the room that they are trying to hide anyway because you can bet your bottom dollar there is one, unless they turn out to have a medical reason for their behaviour such as a severe hormone imbalance.

These days I no longer fear confrontation but nor do I court it. Notwithstanding it is largely ineffective in getting anything resolved (and I've been on problem-solving courses which reiterate this), so why bother with an ineffectual tactic that just promotes circular repetitive argument where positions harden and both sides become resolute in their righteousness? At least in a Debating Society, it is structured argument where everyone gets a fair say and the audience then get to vote on the outcome. Perhaps every domestic environment experiencing difficulties should invite its local debating society along to arbitrate. I feel a new reality TV show coming on! Jeremy Kyle has had his day now anyway.

If Rats Could Talk...

Scientists are liable to claim that all animal experiments they conduct are vital for medical research.

How then do they explain the recent news stories about their efforts to disprove life after death by killing rats?

And why would they choose experimental 'models' which they cannot even agree possess a 'consciousness' to vivisect for parapsychological experiments?

How can any creature which is seemingly without a consciousness be any help to medical science whatsoever in this field?

Furthermore why does medical science seek to disprove theories of the afterlife in the first place? To depress humans who like to hope there is something better than this cynical self-seeking world afterwards, to reward them for their long-suffering in putting up with this cynical self-seeking world for a lifetime?

In the event, all these experiments actually proved was that brain activity increases immediately prior to death, which they believe may give rise to 'hallucinations' of the genre reported by humans who have had near-death experiences of travelling at speed through long white tunnels, feelings of overwhelming love and their deceased loved ones waiting to greet them (the most typical type of NDE which has previously been shown to be common to all cultures irrespective of faith or belief systems, age or gender, medication or no medication). Though why they couldn't wire up a willing dying human volunteer to find this out and even ask some useful questions of, I do not understand. There are also many thousands of pre-existing accounts of not just near-death experiences but human beings who were resuscitated or say they 'chose' to come back after up to twenty minutes clinically dead.

I look forward to the rat seance where we get to hear the sequel of this research.

Some metaphysical medical experiments impress me. Such as the one where a Christian group prayed nightly for everyone in one hospital wing but not another hospital wing for a month. So great were the recovery results in the first wing, that they were forced to revise their conscience and start praying for all patients, thus ending the experiment.

Another interesting test was a hospital where terminally-ill patients agreed to be weighed shortly before death and immediately afterwards to establish how much a soul might weigh. 21 grams apparently.

But then they didn't weigh a scientist...

It's Nuts!

On the left is lad's mag Nuts.



















On the right is women's magazine Pick Me Up.

One panders to the red-blooded young male's need for a sexy outlet of bags of silicone covered in skin. One panders to the female's recently discovered (and rather disturbing) need for red blood. Stories about rape, murder, incest and cannibalism among other salacious horrors are apparently what women want as a 'Pick Me Up'

And yet guess which one of this toxic twosome the Co-Operative supermarket have co-operated in removing from its shelves...?

Yes, that's right, the one featuring mock mammaries, come hither looks and articles about which Go Faster stripes boy racers should affix to their cars.

Although not a paid-up feminist by any means, I have long noticed women's magazines becoming increasingly abusive to women, as even if they don't focus on more human horror stories than True Detective magazine, they are encouraging women to believe that they are too fat, too old and not getting enough sex and of the right quality and variety with 'The One'. They seem deliberately designed to undermine the female self-esteem rather than build it as women's magazines of yesteryear believed was their benevolent duty to their readers. They have become one long fest of victimhood and not being good enough. I often wonder what kind of misogynists run these rags, and then, what kind of idiots buy them, but then that might be eroding the idiots', er, sisters' fragile sense of self-esteem, so I'd better not go there...

A male poet friend has even summed up this phenomenon in a frenzied comic poem called 'Fat Sex' which always brings the house down when he performs it.

It's a topsy turvy world we live in and no mistake. But let's not forget that perversion comes in many forms. As does the hypocrisy that invariably accompanies it. So if Nuts is covered up or suffers from premature ejection then the same should apply to other lurid publications unwholesome to the human soul.

On the plus side, Women's Realm seems to have weathered the fashion and has even been known to still give away the odd free knitting pattern. I believe a few Reader's Digest readers are still alive too, gawd bless 'em.

Buzzy, the Helicopter Parent

As anyone who works in University administration will know, there are few phonecalls to make your heart sink like a stone than those which begin; 'I'm phoning to complain on behalf of my son/daughter ____ ____
It's an absolute disgrace that blah blah blah and I demand blah, blah, blah!'

I'm not saying these parents never have a valid complaint and I am always perfectly patient with and polite to them but I invariably have to point out firmly that their Josh or Jocasta will have to contact us directly as THEY are the student/contract holder and not their parents. 'But Josh/Jocasta is far too busy to report this. Have you seen how much coursework he/she has? He/she is on a hospital placement studying 24/7 to be a DOCTOR, I'll have you know!' (God help us, I'm thinking at this point. I hope I am never treated by a doctor incapable of picking up a telephone and reporting a problem or asking a question!)

'Nevertheless if it's important to him/her, I am sure we will hear from them. Please do encourage them to contact us.' Sometimes the crazier parents will ring every colleague in my office to try and elicit a different response, but bottom line; students are legally adults and should be more than capable of picking up the telephone, dashing off an email or visiting the office all by themselves (we even open late on Wednesdays to assist if they are too busy during the academic day). And even if they are not, we are legally obliged to treat them as adults who are, unless they have advised us they have special needs of some kind, in which case they will be offered the appropriate support.

I get particularly riled by the parent who jumps to the conclusion that we don't care or won't do anything about their progeny's problem, and seeks to escalate it to higher powers almost immediately, without even giving us the chance to investigate or liaise with their son/daughter if it sounds too serious a matter to wait for their call. As for 'updates', these are emailed to the contract holder and it is up to them if they share the information with their parent or not.

It has been noticeable over the course of my sixteen years of university administration how the parental trend has been to grow ever more over-protective of children, to the extent they are effectively refusing to let them grow up in some cases, when their role is surely to guide and equip them to fly the nest and lead successful fulfilling lives (I remember in the late 80s, me and my friends couldn't wait to leave home and start our young lives, even if we had no clue what we were going to do.) It is within living memory that students would attend open days on their OWN, rather than the event being turned into an Ascot of competing mothers' hats and outfits. And yet the most nightmare parent (and we've had a few 'office legends') often turns out to have the nicest, politest son or daughter, who looks deeply embarrassed when standing next to the parent ranting at the front desk as if wishing the floor would swallow all strapping 6'3" of their emasculated selves up, though perhaps it is understandable that a parent might feel more protective of the 18-21 year old who still looks about 12 and we get a few of those as well. Sometimes the student will even contact us to apologise for their parents' behaviour later on, so mortified have they been by being frogmarched to our office when they had no problem from their point of view or it wasn't that important. One mother recently saw fit to rant and rave that we had not made disabled provision for her son. It turned out that her son had not registered himself with us as having a disability and had chosen of his own accord, to live in a house with steep steps to the front door and four storeys high to be with his friends, despite his walking difficulties. Far from being grateful at my offer of a new handrail outside the front door as per his mother's demand for his enhanced health and safety, he was furious that his mother had told us about his disability. I apologised to him and said that I was aware that he had not registered with us as having a disability, but felt obliged to respond to his mother's insistence that he was living in an unsafe environment (we can never ignore potential health and safety issues when flagged up).

Some youngsters decide to switch mobile numbers or not take their parents' calls whilst at university as a response to 'smotherlove', though you get the odd father who is also stricken. Students going incommunicado particularly leads to frantic parental phonecalls, but thanks to the Data Protection Act, we literally cannot hand out new phone numbers or email addresses, nor can we tell parents what their son or daughter's exam results were or whether they turned up to whatever exam, though we are happy to pass a message onto the student that their parents wish them to get in touch, or have them checked on by Student Services if there seems to be a genuine concern over their physical or mental welfare.  Notwithstanding, over-involved 'helicopter' parents have actually been linked to the rise of anxiety and depression in youngsters that our Student Services department has observed in the last few years.

I've even heard of parents turning up at job interviews with their sons and daughters nowadays and then wondering why the would-be boss didn't seem to have any confidence in the youngster's ability to work 'on their own initiative' and offer them the job. Or who telephone ahead of the interview to interrogate the HR department or boss about the terms and conditions and where their precious darling would sit. A sure recipe for having their children tied to their apron strings and financially dependent on them until at least middle-age.

Could this be one of the reasons for the rise of the 'kidult', said to spend at least the first twenty years of their adult lives in the active avoidance of assuming responsbility for themselves and playing either commitment-phobe or co-dependent when it comes to relationships?

Why have parents suddenly become so paranoid and over-protective? Don't they have lives of their own anymore? What are they going to do if their children ever do manage to break free, leave home and become people in their own right?

The most darkly comic aspect of this over-weening attitude is that these same parents who have lavished so much attention and money (if not always time) on their offspring have seldom invested the same attention to detail in teaching their offspring  the Green Cross Code or how to cycle safely so that in a moment, all that investment and obsession could be entirely wasted. The dangers of alcohol and substance abuse might also be a useful topic to educate them in. Where is the over-protection then when it is actually needed? I say 'darkly comic' as it is always an absolute tragedy when a needless death happens in real life and I was emotionally shattered for weeks last time we lost a student to a moment of foolishness involving a bicycle, the nearside of a lorry at a junction and an ipod. It is only the irony that is comic. The reality is anything but. Not that there shouldn't be some inbuilt leeway to accommodate the folly of youth and furnish the opportunity to learn from mistakes  It's just that it helps for a youngster to know the rules before breaking them. Safer too.

Before any parents threaten to sue however, I wish to make it clear that this posting by no means applies to ALL parents. Happily a large number of sane and balanced parents continue to exist, even if they insist on accompanying their sons and daughters to Open Days, but are otherwise thankfully, hands off, respectful of their adult child's need to spread their wings and learn to fly for themselves.

Four Funerals and No Wedding

This year I have attended four funerals so far.

First my father in March, then my partner's 10 year old niece who died tragically, then an ex I dated in my 20s and now my mother's cousin.

It has been a sad yet surreal time amid other big transitions in my life. Blogging has taken a bit of a back seat, though I have no intention of abandoning it. Facebook and Twitter have their uses but you can't write on them. Not properly. In fact  I find Twitter so trivially tedious I seldom log into it at all.

But what I wanted to talk about in this posting was how important I've come to realise funerals are and how badly they are often done.

They are not just a means of paying one's final respects, but of processing what has happened towards attaining some kind of 'closure' as the Americans like to call it. I was therefore shocked when the last funeral I attended lasted but a scant 19 minutes before the curtain closed around the coffin. The officiator seemed to think that wearing a long black velvet coat with a ceremonial-looking scarf excused the fact she mumbled into the microphone, hardly made eye contact with the congregation. didn't inform us what sort of service it was and scarcely had anything to say about the deceased she did not delegate to his unrehearsed family, giving the impression she had not even visited them prior to the funeral to get the measure of the man. To cap it all she had even neglected basic housekeeping announcements so that a mobile phone went off across the Crematorium chapel in the middle! - luckily to be quickly silenced. My own mother almost didn't switch hers off when I reminded her saying 'Oh, no one ever rings me on it anyway.'
I think it was supposed to be some kind of 'alternative' funeral, but apart from the wicker coffin, it was impossible to gauge what genre of send-off it was meant to be. Afterwards the 'officiator' skulked in the corner of the anti-chapel avoiding people's gaze rather than shaking hands with each mourner and thanking them for coming/commiserating on their loss like any other brand of minister would.

Was this the deceased's wishes? Did he really ask for such a brief service where no one seemed to know what they were doing except for perhaps getting his choice of music right and finding a nice poem to go in the middle?

In complete contrast my partner's ten year old niece had an extraordinary funeral and wake which seemed to consist of several days of prayers and blessings prior to the committal. Not coming from a religious background, I didn't know what was going on half the time, but couldn't fail to be intensely moved and comforted by all the Catholic ritual and amazed that the Police closed roads for the cortege to pass through and park along village streets, classmates formed guards of honour and an archbishop performed the church blessing the night before the actual funeral. Nothing was too much trouble for the undertaker and he was in evidence until late each day transporting the coffin to this venue and that and then home each night where Emily lay in repose in the dining room for people to go and talk to her or touch her or leave a little token of love such as a card or a ribbon in her white casket. After the hour and a half long funeral during which her friends took her favourite toys up to the alter and spoke about them, her mother sang a beautiful song about the flowers in May accompanied by her father on the guitar and many prayers and tributes were said, the heavy rain confined itself to all around the village, leaving the pallbearers free to carry the coffin the mile down the road to the Good Shepherd Cemetery in the bright sunshine to be committed to the flower-lined grave. The sympathy and kindness of the whole community was similarly amazing and the  family home was subsequently full of people for weeks rallying round her shattered parents and making sure they didn't have to do a thing for themselves. A child's death is always a big thing in Ireland apparently and Emily's unexpected collapse on a school sports field one Saturday morning as she was warming up to play Canogie made the national headlines and hit a national nerve. People literally came from all over to pay their respects, and a minute's silence was held for her on Canogie fields around Ireland. Emily loved being the centre of attention in life and she couldn't have had more attention in death, so although she was such a tragic loss as the youngest member of my partner's family (and his brother's only child), there was some crumb of comfort in the sheer amazingness of the almost-state funeral she had. I had only recently met her for the first time, but will remember her and how full of life she was for ever as she rode my partner's back round his parents' living room demanding to play horses even longer. She was joy personified and had the energy of three children rolled into one. The last child anyone would suspect of having such a devastating undiagnosed heart defect waiting to strike.

My ex Don's funeral was a modest affair and not as well attended as it should have been owing to the fact he had lived a life in three chapters encompassing three quite different areas of the country. Rather embarrassingly, few of the congregation seemed to know the words, even to 'All Things Bright and Beautiful, so that I almost felt like a soloist at times. However the service was at least unrushed and in the safe hands of a confident Mancunian everyman's minister, evidently well-used to the role, who performed a rare feat in delivering a warm, witty and very human tribute to all the best qualities of a man he had never met with a decidedly roguish side, going so far as to say he wished he had met Don as he felt they would have enjoyed a pint together. The Nottingham football anthem played Don in and Mungo Jerry played him out, but it was 'very Don'. The sun shone on the surprisingly pleasant Mansfield crematorium and his ex-wife hosted a 'wake' of afternoon tea on her garden lawn several miles away after.

My father's funeral was a deliberately humanist affair, further complicated by the fact he had no time for music or poetry either. Though considering he would never even acknowledge the fact he might ever die in life, his wishes were necessarily largely guesswork. My sister and I composed the eulogy with inserts from the Humanist Minister who visited our family twice and couldn't do enough. He even managed to talk my sister out of some weird excerpts from sci-fi books she wanted to insert into the service for no apparent reason. The day itself was as awkward as my father was - blowing an unfeasibly snowy gale in mid-March so that half the would-be congregation were snowed in their hillside farms (not an excuse, it made the TV news). Nevertheless we had a half-full Chapel and the service was expertly delivered by the minister, with a couple of non-religious readings finally agreed on and performed by my sister and myself. Music-wise since our father was a big fan of The Onedin Line TV series, we opted for the moving tones of Khachaturian's Spartacus. At the end we inserted a CD of Glenn Miller (the only music artiste he had ever said he could abide) cued up to play 'Moonlight Sonata',  but surprise, surprise, the CD player refused to budge despite five minutes of frantic fumbling so his willow coffin was forced to depart the chapel to silence and a long drive to the snow-blown cemetery on the outskirts of town where the gale carried on howling a blizzard around the walls, but inside restricted itself to intense arctic cold. After a few well-chosen words by the minister, his body was committed to the ground by grave diggers who evidently couldn't wait to get away and we fled to the modest reception at a historic water mill in the village where my mother had arranged vegetarian catering (a first for the local bakery, but they did us proud). Once again technology failed us as we tried to play a DVD of my father talking about his historic conservation work and how he was responsible for 'Best Kept Village' judging in Northern Ireland in a TV production from 1994, yet later back home the DVD played with no problem, as indeed did Glenn Miller's 'Moonlight Sonata' track.

Ultimately I have concluded that apart from attending a funeral, striving to be true to the person whose life is being celebrated is the most important thing as organiser of the onerous duty (though even afterwards, the argument with my mother and sister over the 'Fred Flintstone' style gravestone they favour for my father rumbles on as I point out quite rightly, that it wasn't his style and it is in fact my sister who is the archaeologist and amateur druid in the family).

Maybe those of us who can (ie adults) should all make a separate will purely for our send-off to ensure it is not a haphazard or naff package affair and that our final wishes and favourite pieces of music are in no need of guesswork or the imposition of others' notions of what we want, which often seem to have more to do with what they want.

Meantime, I have been making tentative enquiries about training to become a celebrant as I reckon I'd be pretty good at it and it seems to be the way things are going in England. Though I certainly wouldn't be seeking to put the 'fun' into funeral if I went down that road, rather re-inject the professionalism where it is lacking.

Amidst awaiting my next wedding invitation to balance the sad events out a bit, that is.

Don

I saw him in the distance, rangy and muscular under his blue plaid shirt and stonewashed jeans, his dark hair streaked with silver ruffling in the breeze, his eyes twinkling as only they could, a healthy glow to his skin. He returned my spreading grin and walked quickly towards me. We hugged the hug of old friends absent for far too long. I smelled the once-familiar scent of Embassy cigarettes on his breath and clothes.

'I suppose this means the cremation's off then?' I quipped.

'No, I've come to say goodbye Laura' he replied before seeming to vanish before my eyes.

I woke up, shocked that there was no escape from the news, even in my dreams, yet feeling oddly comforted at the same time.

Today I attended Don's funeral.

We should never have been an item. It was a fluke. A moment of weakness on my newly-dumped part. Young at heart as he was, Don was 19 years older for one thing, patently not the marrying kind, and wait for it, he had an ex-wife and five children to prove it.

But Don knew how to overcome all such misgivings. He knew how to make a girl laugh and feel good about herself, and perhaps even more importantly how to make a girl laugh at the world, and even herself and her silly habit of taking the world far too seriously. In short, he could make you forget yourself and actually notice the birdsong and the beauty of a sunset once more.

We met at the party of a friend-of-a-friend in Coventry where neither of us knew anyone and owing to a logjam in the kitchen we ended up sitting on the stairs together. I believe an invitation to the cinema ensued. I had no other invitations at the time so didn't turn him down.

Things progressed swiftly. His lovemaking was fast and furious but any customer service complaints were met with a roar of laughter. Here was a man totally secure in himself if somewhat selfish. We started meeting for the odd weekend on the Kent coast where he now lived, first in a rambling Victorian commune full of amiable middle-aged hippies near Ashford. Then eventually Don got himself a rented terraced house by the sea with no furniture in it and chatting on the stairs featured again. Every time I visited the sun seemed to be shining and we had lovely weekends walking around Dover, Folkestone and Hastings. I also accompanied Don on a couple of 'booze cruises' to France (popular at the time) to supplement his income as a recently-separated man and a memorable hovercraft trip to Calais (like being in a washing machine) where we sat on Calais beach eating warm bread, fresh tomatoes and camembert before the trip home again. We traipsed around various museums and had a highly amusing afternoon one frosty February when we came upon a group of male nudists perilously frying sausages on our descent to a secluded beach.

We enjoyed many trips in Don's £800 gold Renault car (an auction gamble) and he took me to all the local pubs and to see various down-on-their luck friends of his with whom he traded booze and cigarettes. In car boot sales and second hand shops he was ever on the hunt for overlooked Ming vases or books telling him how to spot an overlooked Ming vase (his get rich quick plan). His car was awash with language tapes (he was always trying to learn a new language) and the inevitable overflowing ash tray. I still cherish the white summer canvas bag he bought me one afternoon in old Hastings.

I always knew it wouldn't last between us and often wondered what he saw in a non-smoking, vegetarian, teetotaller with bad skin and that twentysomething judgmentalism that made me somewhat appalled that he could leave a wife and five children, though apparently she had thrown him out, having discovered a sizeable Sainsburys receipt in his pocket with another woman's shopping on it! As per life's great ironies, the young woman concerned had gone on to have three different children with three different fathers without ever once sleeping with Don. And he had it bad where *Mary was concerned. She was one of the few who had really gotten under his skin. Though according to his friends and relations this was far from the only instance of bad-boydom on his part.

I certainly didn't kid myself that I was his one and only and for the first time in my life that was fine with me. In fact I expected half the chapel to be full of weeping women with brightly coloured handkerchiefs, but actually it was just me and a pretty blonde solicitor and former colleague he had once cheered up by whisking her to Paris upon learning of her recent divorce trauma. Another friendship he had kept up as she turned out to be the last one to visit him in hospital before his unexpected death. No sign then of the mysterious French millionairess he regularly visited on Eurostar who begged him to decamp to France to live with her full-time. He described this woman as 'my soulmate' but said he could never accept her offer and become a kept man. In addition he was devoted to his five children in England whom he saw and took on holidays regularly, not to mention his octogenarian mum.

I surveyed those five children today on the sun-dappled lawn - three strapping twentysomething lads in their funeral suits, the youngest looking startlingly like Don, though they all share his mischievous ready smile, his two girls tall and elegant, one dark and one (the one expecting the first grandchild he will never see) fair. Their mother sits next to them with the elegance and grace of a woman who has long forgiven the past and is just grateful to have five happy, healthy young adults before her. A job well done. On the patio Don's mother (now 93, but elegant as a dowager and sharp as a pin) flicks through photo albums exclaiming more than once 'What did the silly bugger have to go and die for?' She's right. No mother should have to bury their child and that thought brought a frog-sized lump to my throat at the start of the service as she hobbled in, almost as large as the one I had when the curtains closed around the coffin at the end. Nearby the daughter who hasn't seen her for seventeen years tries to lurk in the shadows fearing the flick of her mother's critical tongue, the reason she left home at 14 and dodges attempts at family photographs. Even in death, she has her doubts she can ever compete with 'golden boy' Don. She is flanked by her two engaging thirtysomething daughters who annoyingly have no such problem with their indomitable nan and happily laugh along with her through the lens of generational distance. I talk to Don's mum's 'toyboy' the eightysomething *Jack, a fixture of the family for years, yet seemingly still a fish out of water in terms of the family dynamics.

The whole family together, evidently for the first time in years. Don would have loved this sunny afternoon laden with drinks and buffet sandwiches in his honour. What a shame it has taken his death to bring it about.

Apart from being annoyed by her second class treatment growing up (illustrated by how few photographs of her there seem to be in the family albums), Don's sister *Anita feels Don was slightly unhinged by his insistence on attending an approved city boarding school many miles from Coventry after their father walked out, now known for its high throughput of depressives, alcoholics and devil-may-cares. On the other hand it probably propelled him into further education and the eventual degree that hatched the first solicitor in their working class district. I remember Don was always terribly proud of having bettered himself against the odds (single mum in a council house in the 1950s/60s), though curiously went out of his way to socialise in working class pubs with out of work fishermen and ferrymen, often preferring this to the company of the chattering classes he had been so eager to aspire to.

But then Don's strong social conscience was always the most admirable thing about him, apart from his sense of humour. His career as a solicitor specialised in defending mostly hopeless cases, going where angels feared to tread, but someone had to do the unglamorous side of legal work in the name of British justice. In the last couple of years Don also rose to become leader of his local Labour party, despite or perhaps because of his cheap suits, campaigning for new work and opportunities for the deprived areas of Kent before having to step down owing to ill health. In a cruel twist of fate, he died not of the throat cancer he had contracted (and which he was making a good recovery from) but from a pulmonary embolism which formed in his leg and travelled up to his heart.

It was I who called time on our alliance. Having invited me to Lewes for Bonfire night and the weekend, I then didn't hear from Don until the next invitation, some weeks after said bonfire night, no reference to the previous. I told him firmly but politely. 'No. I'm not going to be messed about, even if it isn't terribly serious.' So that's where we left things, aside from the odd drink over the years, Christmas cards and Facebook contact. It was my most painless relationship, and more to the point, painless relationship break-up ever, and for that I thank him. I also thank Don for the courage he gave my younger and more unconfident self to just go out there, do things and enjoy life. Don loved life and I have learned to love life too. He was also not afraid to make trouble when circumstances dictated, though I am more moderate in that I try not to be the originator of any trouble in my life - just steel myself not to be afraid to finish it. Finally I thank Don for the lifetime's free legal advice he offered me as a parting gift. Sadly he being a criminal lawyer (and me not being a criminal), I never had cause to utilise this generous offer.

Moreover I never did collaborate on that autobiography Don threatened to write and asked me to help him with but I'm sure it would have made a rattling good read!

RIP o' restless Don and here's to you with a large lemonade! If you hadn't existed, someone would have had to invent you! Fond memories always. Lxx

Nanford Guest House - Britain's Worst Hotel used by Child Sex Ring

News that Nanford Guest House on Oxford's Iffley Road was a frequent venue for the 'Bullfinch' child sex ring, currently being sentenced, brought to mind that this same local guest house was also voted Britain's worst hotel by TripAdvisor in 2008, prompting various national journalists to book an overnight stay and write newspaper articles confirming how awful it was, one reporting that she had been awoken by what sounded like a body being dragged down the stairs at around 2am. She had wedged her door shut with an old fridge as the lock was dodgy and cowered under the covers for the remainder of the night.

Yet, if she truly suspected a body was being dragged down the stairs, why did she not phone the Police? It seems strange noises, dodgy characters, death traps and environmental health issues (including a resident's lounge smelling of urine) abounded back in 2008, yet no one apparently saw fit to call either the Police or the  local Environmental Health department to have the place investigated. Why not? What does it take before a supposedly intelligent  individual suspects that something very wrong is going on, possibly criminal? Not least a trained newshound ever in want of the next big scoop?

More than one Trip Advisor review advised 'Do not stay here alone' and not to stay at all unless you were desperate for accommodation.

The sex ring had been operating since 2004, four years before the Nanford won the accolade of Britain's Worst Hotel. There is more to this than meets the eye is my feeling about it.

Update 15/05/13: According to today's Oxford Mail, the emergency services tape of a rape being reported at the Nanford by a guest in the next room actually dates back to 2006, which potentially means the gang could have been caught seven years ago! Which begs the question, what have the Police been doing all this time? Did they really decide to bury their hands in the sand about investigating what was going on?