AWOL

It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to blog. Some of the reasons have been because I have not wanted to write what was on my mind but many of the other reasons – the main reasons - are because I just couldn’t. 

Whatever the cause for each day I have been missing from the blogsphere, I have, in effect, been AWOL.

(The missing blogs will be posted as I get back into the swing of things along with new ones that are being created at this very moment.)

Many thanks to those who have kept visiting my blogs while I’ve been AWOL and, just for you, I will keep the entries up to date as much as I can.

The main reason for the dearth of entries has been a virus.

After joining the world in a mass celebration of family and love nearly two weeks ago, I was struck down by a pesky bug that has refused to leave me. I know that I embrace most things, but this particular one I have started to abhor.

I don’t dislike many things, but I’m not holding back in my dislike of this.

Sorry.

I wish the virus was AWOL from my body now!

Stolen identity

Every now and then I get incensed. You may have noticed it.

This time it is not just for me. I know I am often wronged, but in the main I can deal with those injustices, this time I am deeply unsettle (to put it mildly) because of the insidious creeping strategy to steal young people’s identity and disenfranchise and disenchant them with one foul swoop.

How is this done? To whom is it done?

I believe this crime is committed at school, in the shops, on the street, in youth clubs, and in homes across the country.

While in primary school, children usually retain a sense of belief in equality; they are all the same, they play together, eat lunch together and learn together.

When they are fed into the secondary school system it all changes. Many of the staff that deliver the lessons fail all the pupils because they cannot deliver information that they do not believe it. This machine of dictated and organised thinking has a fixed, out-dated model of Britain and it is devastating lives every day. The damage done at school continues throughout life. Meritocracy as an ideal is debunked at every turn, in most subjects across the spectrum. Divisions and disadvantage are taught in a formal manner and take root, like concrete boots.  

I’m talking about English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish people: British people. These British people, like me, are home but are still treated as foreigners.

When I worked in the computing and banking industries my CVs often when ahead of my interviews. There were many occasions when the interviewers – without disguise – said, in total shock, “But ... you’re black! From your CV I thought ...” I got used to it, however, the painfulness of the blows left deep marks especially as despite my outstanding qualifications and experience I didn’t get the positions I went for.

Nowadays the scenarios are being repeated, with subtle tuning changes. Some young people are told that they can’t be English because their skin colour is not white: the perpetrators of these lies (teachers and other pupils) are infrequently and ineffectively challenged. The children whose identity has been attacked are now in a state of flux. They have been taught to believe all they hear at school. Can this be right, they don’t belong here? If that is true where do they belong?

This is particularly true for those children with a mixed cultural heritage, if they try to align themselves to people darker than them they are told, “You’re not black enough”. If they try to align themselves with people lighter than them they are told, “You’re too black.”

They will eventually make their own tribe and fashion their own uniquely British identity and woe betide anyone who stands in their way. When you deny a person their identity and remove it by stealth you will be faced with uncontrollable fury.

Self identification and alignment is at the root of most wars and always comes with a heavy price – especially civil wars.

It is time all British people accepted that there is black in the Union Jack!

It’s heavy ...

Sometimes the heaviest things that I have ever carried are my thoughts.

I sometimes wonder what I should do with these weighty opinions that press down on me. When someone asks me to share them, I wonder if I really should.

Can I risk lightening my load? (It sounds silly when put like that, after all, who wouldn’t want to take pressure off themselves?)

Then I remember the phrase, “Follow your instincts, you’ll be fine!” and I do, and I am.

It’s so much lighter now.

500 blog posts

Well, there you have it. I have done over 500 posts on this particular blog. I also call them mind dumps, not sure what you call them.

I started this one in 2008. I had almost a year blog-free then I returned with tentative steps and ... I haven’t looked back since then.

Blogging has become an interesting part of my existence. I enjoy it because it is another means of self-expression.

This Living Now blog is like a selected catalogue of my life and thoughts. It has grown in frequency and detail over the past year. The other blogs that I also write have also experienced growth spurts: Happy Every Day, AskMorg and Personal Object Lessons are like my baby blogs that have grown out of this parent site. I love them all, although I do lavish different amounts of attention on them because they have – just like children – different times when they need to express themselves.  

I will continue to blog (share my personal therapy) with you all because ... well, I like it. I hope you do too.

Ruined!

That was the first word out of my mouth as I opened the washing machine door.

I have recently been following new fabric care instructions and I seem to have managed OK with them. This washload, however, was not as I’d expected it.

I’ve been through them all. You know, the tissue in the pocket wash that leads to hours of defluffing clothes, the stray coloured sock that results in a new shade to all your favourite special care items. Yes, I’ve had my wash day disasters like the rest of folk.

I have recently taken to reminding my son to empty all his pockets before he puts the clothes in the wash basket (socks never seem to find their way there – I’m always discovering them secreted in corners around his room and the house), and he has been surprisingly adept at following this simple request. So I can no longer blame the clothing disasters on him.

This one was definitely all me.

I knew something was missing for a day or so but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The minute I opened the washing machine door I had my unwanted answer.

There was my watch.

It just lay in the rubber by the door and it even had the audacity not to look clean; there were dark marks all along the strap and the hands on the face were obscured by ... well, water.

So I just exclaimed that single word that summed up my stupidity for not checking my trousers pocket, “Ruined!”

Then I was surprised as I looked past the blurred glass and saw that the second hand was moving steadily around the circle. A double-check later and I realised that it was still working and was telling the correct time!

It has not all turned out roses but the bent bracelet sections can be straightened again and, maybe, the water will evaporate from the face but even now my watch is keeping perfect ‘clean’ time.

Bags and springs

I don’t use handbags as a rule. And I didn’t use one on this occasion but when I was searching at the bottom of my shoulder bag it reminded me of the days when I used to conform to type and carried a handbag (to church, at least).

I couldn’t find anything in the bag. I was looking for something small and as I rooted around in the bottom of the bag my hand touched many familiar items but not one of them was the right one for that moment.

Although I remained pleased that I could identify things in the bag without looking at them I soon began to despair because I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for.

The multiple items I was carrying in the bag had somehow managed to undo a pen I had in there. I found the lid, the barrel and the ink refill but when I put them all together with the other pieces the pen did not work; something was still missing.

Almost immediately I realised that it was the spring and this time I emptied the bag out – to no avail.

The pen was now useless to me. I was not happy.

A few days later I had my hand in the bag again and felt something unexpected; when I pulled it out I realised that it was the lost spring. This discovered both baffled and pleased me.

I had ceased looking for it and yet it presented itself to me without great ceremony when I least expected it. I reunited the spring with the pen and was suddenly grateful that I had not yet thrown it away – as I had already deemed it useless.

When the right things are in the right place at the right time well, everything just seems to work as it is supposed to. Sometimes you just have to wait for the thing you were looking for to be discovered. It all falls into place when you least expect it to – at least it did for me and my pen!