Is it a blog you would wish your wife or servants to read?

Yesterday was a bad bed day. I was listening to radio programmes most of the day and yet I can only remember one thing I listened to, which was a dramatisation of Metropolis - and that was pretty confusing.

In the evening I must have woken up a bit as I watched an Andrew Davies drama that Mum had recorded for me about the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial and very much enjoyed this. They built on a fictional love affair between two of the jurors, but everything from the courtroom was as was. I’m not sure the added frills were particularly effective, rather like the wet shirt scene in the director’s version of Pride and Prejudice – although at least this time we got some full-frontal male nudity. Which is always a novelty.

I love the story of the Chatterley trial because it involved so many heroes who stuck their neck out, putting reputations and even liberty on the line (Allen Lane was prepared to go to prison) for the ordinary person’s right to read what was considered a dirty book. Not only was this victory over censorship, but over class prejudice and sexism.

And I love to hear people make an argument. Would have liked to see more of the literary megastars that turned up to testify on the book's behalf and whilst the original ban does seem extremely prudish now, I would have liked to hear someone who had a reasonable argument for the ban at the time. Instead I'm afraid the prosecution and the book's opponents were presented as being a bunch of old farts and I'm not so naïeve to imagine it was as simple as all that.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is a great book, and contains less words which we now consider swear-words than Huckleberry Finn. Slightly more sex than Huck Finn though, as I recall.

Some feminists have criticised Lawrence for being preoccupied with his thingeme-bob and supporting the idea that women can only achieve any sort of personal fulfilment in the context of sexual relations with men. I don’t think this is fair. For a start we have to remember that he is writing about two particular characters at any one time as opposed to some universal model for social and political relations between men and women. And for example, in Chatterley, Constance is not fulfilled by any kind of servitude or submission to a man - perhaps submission to her passion, which results in liberation and a complete rebellion from the patriachy. This passion happens to be for a man, but hey.

I honestly think Lawrence writes more convincingly about sexual passion than almost any other writer; he writes as if he is equally in love both with Constance and Mellors - and both the male and female characters in his other books (despite everything we know, some folks immediately read his love for his male characters as Lawrence being in love with himself) .

Disabled people also have an argument with the device of Clifford Chatterley's paralysis and the idea that this lead to Constance’s frustration and adultery. It did, but it was very much the strategy that Clifford chose which lead to the death of their marriage, not the impairment itself. In many ways, Clifford rejected her, wanting no more physical affection and pretty much opted to be an invalid. He also suggested she take a lover to provide him with an heir, so what is a girl to do?

The Secret of Happiness #3

Stuff doesn't make you happy; people and experiences do.

Everybody knows this, right? You would think.

You are a man in his fifties, becoming increasingly aware of your own mortality. In the last few years you have lost a father, a brother and a sister-in-law. It is Boxing Day. Christmas Day has been a little fraught on account of the fact that your mother-in-law has been round and you find it hard to spend time with her. But today, for the first time in about four years, you are going to have both children and both children’s partners all in the same room in a relaxed situation. It is snowing outside.

You eldest daughter and son-in-law arrive and tell you that you are going to be a grandfather for the first time. This means of course that this will be the last time that all six of you are together as adults free from the demands of small children for some time. You have a lovely Christmas dinner complete with home-made crackers. You exchange thoughtful presents; you have been given a trumpet. How are you going to choose to spend the afternoon and evening?

(A) Sitting with your family, relaxing, having a laugh with them and enjoying their company, talking about the pregnancy and plans for the year ahead or

(B) Dabbling on your computer in an another room trying to make the GPS system on your phone work, dragging your exhausted-looking son-in-law away from the others in order to assist you.

Poor Dad. I often fear that imagination skipped a generation. However, it does serve to illustrate a point. Not just about manners, because of course what he did was rude, somewhat hurtful and especially unfair on poor little Adrian, but this is about happiness and identifying opportunities for happiness when they arise. When his life flashes in front of him at the last minute, I can’t imagine the joys of his GPS system will feature. Don’t know, do have my suspicions.

Now I am not about to dismiss the value of the GPS system or any of the other stuff that we don’t actually factually need, as most items beyond food, shelter, clothing, medication and means to get to and from our place of work could be called into question. However, I do think we are all susceptible to confusing the value of stuff, especially against the value of people and pleasant experiences.

Stuff is valuable in only one of two ways. One is not really to do with happiness; money and property can offer some degree of financial security, which may relieve some concern about the future. It never makes people happy: there are always plenty of other uncertainties which cannot be appeased with cash. And indeed, almost any investment one makes is a risk and involves uncertainty in itself.

In recent generations, owning your own home has been a tick-box on the criteria for a happy, successful life, causing tremendous strife for those of my peers who, during this boom, cannot get onto the property ladder. However, whilst property is a relatively sound investment, owning your own home is little more than a nice idea; one that my great grandparents didn't consider for a moment. Did it ever make anybody happy? Not exactly.

Stuff can only actually play a role in happiness when it either enables you to connect with other people or enables you to have a pleasurable experience. And the value of a thing should only be in proportion to its absolute necessity or the amount of happiness it creates. My laptop is tremendously valuable to me because it allows me so much freedom to do so much. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to work, blog, keep in touch with many of my friends, read the news, listen to certain radio programmes and so on. I don’t know what I would do with myself. Coincidentally, at five hundred and something pounds, my laptop is one of the most expensive items I possess. However, I could easily have paid two or three times that amount for a laptop computer without doubling or tripling the happiness produced.

I could buy a diamond ring at several times the cost of my laptop and get very little pleasure out of it indeed. Even if someone bought me such a thing – and it therefore played a part of our connection, it really wouldn’t be worth it. It would just be another sparkly thing and that money would be useful elsewhere – elsewhere in our lives or elsewhere in the world. Apart from the fact that the diamond trade is well dodgy.

Yet diamond rings are supposed to bring tremendous amounts of pleasure to any woman. In fact, all amount of useless stuff is supposed to bring pleasure to women for some reason. I know I am not a total oddball, but when I think about the happy experiences, even the most romantic experiences of my life, stuff didn’t feature at all. And if you take the most sentimental woman in the world and ask her to recall romantic experiences, she may mention the odd item of jewellery given, but there will also be the picnics and evening walks and incidents that cost nothing. She is certainly not going to provide a list of gifts received.

Now this has descended into somewhat of an anti-materialist rant and I didn’t mean for that. Only it does strike me that this is the direction that so much of our time and energy goes (materialism, not ranting). And indeed, so much of our culture is built up around the myth that material wealth and stuff - whether is a magic beautifying potion, the latest fashion or a shiny new car – is going to result in our happiness. But it never did, did it? I mean, my laptop is cool, but not for its own sake. Only for your sake and for the sake of my work.

To actually seek out happiness, one must look towards the people around us and experiences to be had from life. Passive experiences of reading or listening to music, or active experiences of swimming or painting or something like this. And spending time or otherwise connecting with other people. Preferably nice people. Some people suck.

Phew, for a minute there I lost myself.

I was a little nervous, to be honest. There have been points this week when I thought I might be going mad. I tried to put that into accurate terminology, but I always find it sounds more serious when you say it how it is. Mid-week there were instances of paranoia, where I became really extremely upset about my influence on events which had absolutely nothing to do with me – only to realise that there were other explanations literally hours later. I had been over-doing things coping with everything, and I thought I might have snagged a wire loose.

Now I’m thinking it was probably a combination of things; exhaustion, meddling with my painkillers and a profoundly exaggerated startle reflex which at one point had me crying out loud and then trying to work out what noise or movement had set me off. This was further exacerbated by deteriorating co-ordination which meant that I was bumping into things all the time – and then jumping out of my skin every time I did. Then several nights running I had such terrible, violent nightmares that I would wake up early in the morning unable to get back to sleep. To say I was a nervous wreck is a cliché, but if the hat fits...

So I’ve been in bed for a few days. It has rained a lot against my window, which is nice. Rosie phoned and talked endlessly about baby matters. When I have finished the Alphabet Cards she wants me to make Tinker a cloth book about the adventures of Weird Beard. She said, “I want Weird Beard in my child’s life!”

Weird Beard was a character from our childhood, of my invention. Remember the eighties craze for Top Trumps? Well R and I made our own pack with these odd characters we drew and gave certain attributes to. I can't remember many others, but I created Weird Beard, a character with few discernible features beyond his long multicoloured magical beard. Rosie thought it was hilarious and the idea of Weird Beard became a running joke. We have since raised the subject of Weird Beard in all sorts of inappropriate circumstances.

Another thing we discussed was how to introduce Tinker to The Sacred Language of Cheese and Ham. We were on holiday in Yorkshire and were having a picnic. Only it was raining so we were stuck in the back of our parents' car. Mum had labelled our sandwiches Cheese and Ham and for some reason the car was stationary long enough for us to get immensely bored, tear up the labels and create a whole new language based on the letters of Cheese and Ham and spoken with a Yorkshire accent.

“Eh Ehcemas,” was the initial greeting, which should be answered with “Eh Ahcemes.” and so on. I must say the complexity of this language, consisting of only six different letters and a maximum of one C, A, M or S, two Hs and three Es in any given word or phrase, was rather limited. Also the fact that we developed the whole thing from scratch in the space of half an hour – probably had as much chance as Esperanto in the greater scheme of things.

I don’t really fancy making a cloth book that a baby can play with. What kind of story can you get into a book made of cloth? Instead, following the (if I say so myself) success of Kettle, I may actually attempt to make Weird Beard as a soft toy. I think he was some sort of wizard. I thought if I made his beard out of several different colour and texture fabrics… Is it possible to have some sort of pathological creativity? Is this what I do instead of making babies? Or um, writing books…?

Really I will do something useful soon.

Mind The Gap

I’ve been in bed for a few days, have got up to have a ramble.

Imfunnytoo wrote this blog last week on the subject of brain damage. She’s written several thought-provoking blogs lately, so do go over and have a read. However this particular blog started off with a family member suggesting that because Imfunnytoo isn’t so hot at maths, she must have had that part of her brain damaged as well as the cerebellum damage associated with Cerebral Palsy.

Now we know that Imfunnytoo probably has no issue with the areas of her parietal lobes associated with mathematical ability, only it just so happens that she’s not so talented at maths as other family members are. This could be to do with brain architecture – she just didn’t inherit the maths-whizz gene - or it could simply be because she wasn’t particularly interested in maths and developed her talents elsewhere. Clearly the lady has significant talents elsewhere.

This raises several issues. Imfunnytoo’s own blog focuses on whether she might be insulted to be considered “brain damaged” and I’ll leave that to her.

Another issue is the fact that non-disabled people all too often associate all our personal strengths and weaknesses with our impairment, one way or another. Usually our strengths are described as being despite our impairments, and our weaknesses - physical, cognitive and emotional - are thrown in with the package. Both are subject to exaggeration; Imfunnytoo couldn’t just be not as good as maths as other family members she had to have a cognitive impairment consistent with (more extensive) brain damage. And we’re all used to hearing how very very brave, bubbly and bright we are despite it all.

But yet another issue is this really troublesome issue of relativity. Surrounded by people who are extraordinarily good at something, the any of us could be at a disadvantage. I really do feel that when we talk about impairment and particularly those with the most stigmatised of impairments; learning difficulties, conditions like Autism and even mental ill health, there is an awful lot of mileage in considering the great diversity that exists among non-disabled people and seeing impairment as a natural part of this diversity.

The thing that baffles me is why it should be so very difficult to do this, without actually concluding that impairment doesn’t actually exist. Of course we can never know what it is really like in another person's shoes, but we can use our own experiences, imagination and powers of empathy. There are physical and biochemical differences in all our brains. We all have intellectual and emotional strengths and weaknesses. We all have to grapple with the juxtaposition of words, spoken or written and their syntax, context and meaning etc. If we think about these experiences, we can surely see the potential for having a great deal more difficulty and at least begin to guess what that must be like and how we might make life easier for one another.

Non-disabled people are particularly keen on dismissing those less tangible conditions altogether; children with ADHD are merely badly disciplined, dyslexia is an excuse of being a bit thick, people with depression just feel sorry for themselves. I don’t see it, I don’t understand it so it doesn’t really exist.

And yet, without pretending that “we’re all a little bit disabled”, impairment is an intrinsic part of the human condition and our experiences of limitation are only the extreme ends of the spectrum of limitation that we are all part of. Many people, for example, have a serious lack of imagination.

God be praised! It's a girl with a winkle!

Tinker finally makes an appear -ance! Turns out we have another nephew on the way. I think R was relieved to find that there was actually a little person inside her and she'd not just been eating too many pies. Well there it is and apparently he has a winkle. May it give him tremendous pleasure.

If I had had a winkle, I would have been called Desmond. I mean, can you imagine a blue-eyed Desmond growing up in the eighties and nineties? My Grandfather was a blue-eyed Desmond of course, but he was born in 1920. Thank God for small mercies.

I danced myself right out the womb

I will never have confidence in my ability to write books until I have finished writing the first one. Publishing is a secondary consideration, although of course I hope for that too. Unfortunately, this lack of confidence is really the main obstacle between me and the finished thing. Of course my health doesn’t help much, not much at all, especially in these late stages when progress is going to be slow anyway and I often need full concentration, far greater concentration than is required for rambling away on here. However, if I knew, if only I knew that this could be finished and it would be all right. Well, I would have a hell of a lot more stamina for it.

Soon, soon. Really soon.

Meanwhile, my alphabet cards for Tinker are a disaster. Went to a great deal of trouble to track down a great enough quantity of A3 white card at a reasonable price (as is very often the case, I looked in all the sensible places then I found the stuff on eBay). But my co-ordination… some days I can paint all right and other days I cannot colour-in. Unfortunately, until I have well and truly messed up some project or other, I don’t know what sort of day it is. Oh well, I think something can be salvaged.

Why is it that I am compelled to make so much stuff? Why can’t I just buy some alphabet cards for my niece or nephew? By the time I have bought the extra card I now need, it would probably have been cheaper and it’s not as if mine were ever going to be so fantastic.

Anyway, Rosemary is having an ultrasound scan on Thursday – in Hampshire the first scan they offer is at twenty weeks apparently. So hopefully by the end of this week I will be subjecting you to a blurry photograph of the famous foetus. I know you can’t wait. They might even be able to tell whether it is a he-tus or a she-tus, depending on its exhibitionist tendencies. This also means that Tinker is approximately half way between nothingness and somethingness.

You know foetuses cry in the womb, but because there’s no air, we can’t hear them? When I read this I wondered, what on Earth does a foetus have to cry about? It is safe and warm, has everything it needs in the way of food and drink and it doesn’t see anything scary. What’s more, it has always been there. They can hear things though, and apparently, the foetus will later remember music and voices it hears at this stage later on when it is a person. Adrian proposes to play it nothing but Bach, but I know Rosie is secretly subjecting it to Songs from The Musicals. Hmm yes, I have now answered my own question about what foetuses might have to cry about.

I don't think you want to know anything more about foetuses, do you? No? Okay. Do you want me to put another T-Rex song in your head? No? Fine, fine, please yourself. Weirdly enough, when Cosmic Dancer came to an end, the next song that randomly kicked in was Chapel of Love by the glorious Dixie Cups. You try getting that one out of your head. I know. I'm not proud.

The Secret of Happiness #2

Well, I'm still firmly wedged up my own arse so my second lesson which it would have been useful to have had instilled from birth is:

Question Actions, Not Feelings

Many years after his death, folks began to speculate that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll, may have taken some erotic as well as aesthetic pleasure in his friendship and photographic fascination with little girls. There is no evidence that he ever behaved inappropriately around children, but he clearly enjoyed the company of children whilst having no family of his own (not unlike Beatrix Potter, J. M. Barrie, Hans Christian Anderson and Louisa May Alcott – obviously all raving perverts). Bored Freudians picked up on any reference to inner turmoil or conflict in his work and concluded that he must have been a paedophile – you didn’t think that inner turmoil and conflict were part of the human condition, did you? Dodgson, or Dodgy as I like to call him, also had epilepsy, impaired hearing and a stammer, and was thus overqualified as a fictitious villain.

The whole thing is poetic; the guy was both delightful and disturbing in his writing which explored the nature of the innocent and the sinister, eccentricity and madness, wisdom and ineptitude and various other issues which we struggle with even more now than in Victorian times. Of course there must be something sinister about him! Instead of thinking about what darkness it might be within us which makes the reading sometimes uncomfortable, let’s put it all down to his own darkness. Nothing to do with us.

Now I have a great affinity with Dodgson. He was a crip, an adopted son of Whitby, he provided the title of my book and he invented the portmanteau “chortle” - surely one of the greatest words in the English language. And when I was younger, until I actually read about his alleged suppressed paedophilia and realised it was as sturdy as the other accusation laid against his memory - that he was in fact Jack The Ripper - I even had sympathy with the chap in this respect.

Not that I had a thing about children or anything nearly so problematic, but I was tormented by feelings I didn't want to have. I mistrusted people I was supposed to respect, felt contempt for those I was supposed to admire and even disliked some of those I was supposed to love. But by far my greatest problem was the grand infatuations I would develop for totally and utterly inappropriate people.

Only that wasn’t quite the problem. Infatuations ought to be fun; you get all sorts of chemical rushes, the world seems like a better place and everything you look at is blue and kind of sparkly. The problem was that I tried to resist them.

We are taught that the only healthy attachments are mutually felt. If we love one another as friends, lovers, family members or whatever, I must love you just as much, but no more, than you love me. Any imbalance in this is harmful; one of us must be obsessive or the other emotionally stunted.

I question this. For one thing, even if this were true; if there was something unhealthy about anything other than total emotional reciprocity, how the hell would we ever know about it? But most importantly, how does even a dramatic disparity actually cause harm to anyone?

For me, it wasn’t about the frustration of wanting something that I could not have; I guess it could be for some people, but not me. It was more like wanting something that I did not deserve to have. In fact, it wasn’t even that; I never exactly wanted anything in particular, I just had these feelings which were much too strong, of an inappropriate nature and perhaps most essentially, totally and utterly unrequitable.

So I felt lecherous and miserable and spent a great deal of time terrified that at some point, somehow, all this would slip out. I don’t know quite what I expected would happen then; that I might be dragged from my bed and lynched by torchlight, I don't know.

However, the essential point in all this is that it never did slip out. All that worry for nothing. Because even really big feelings do us little harm, so long as we don’t act on them. And indeed, exactly the same thing happens now with infatuations and I enjoy it, confident that the experience is mine alone. All this sin in thought stuff is nonsense; we only have so much conscious control over our thoughts, and very little control over our emotions.

And as everybody knows, the more one attempts to cast thoughts from one’s mind, the deeper they intrude (On a vaguely related subject in case anyone’s interested, here is a interesting if random article about religiosity and OCD). All we actually have a choice about is what we do and say about them – and here, usually, it is possible to keep them entirely under wraps if one so chooses.

So back to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (the Lutwidge is important; Lutwig is German for Lewis, Charles in Latin is Carolus, thus Carroll, see? Utter nonsense.). Of course I take the view that all Art should be looked upon completely separate from the Artist anyway, but even if we must lump the two together, we know of nothing that he did wrong. Maybe he was sexually attracted to children. Maybe Napolean thought he was an early incarnation of Elvis. Maybe Darwin's fascination with those Galápagos tortoises went further than it appears.

None of this actually matters a jot. It is of no consequence to anybody.

I have a sense that nobody will know what the heck I am rambling on about today. However, I do think that this is one of the most important lessons of my life so far, so there.