My Weekend

Here I sit in a University owned hotel lobby having just checked out, reviewing my life I suppose, whilst waiting for the coach to take me back to the remainder of the residential weekend.

You only have to turn the news on to see signs of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and uncertainly over everything in the future.

The future is always uncertain for me, because never mind world events, where do I go from here, and how do I fit in?

There seem to be altogether too many people on the planet for there to be a stable life, global warming, energy crises, food and water in short supply, it seems like the chickens of Malthus, whose prophesies were long set aside, are finally coming home to roost, and so is there room for one more person on the planet, me?

My parents have respectfully “shuffled off” there “mortal coils” and what is their legacy? Apart from myself and my brother, do they still live in anyone else’s memory?

Not everyone can leave a concrete mark even on their own generation other than the headstone that marks there grave.

I know my mum left concrete marks in the most literal sence, in the form of ramps to buildings. I know these would have come eventually since the law now demands them, but without the pioneering efforts and the campaigning would that be law now? I do not think so.

So whilst my mum was alive I was as active in those campaigns as she was, as active as I am now in the autistic world.

My dad? I don’t know, I suppose had he and my mum not separated, my mum would not have made those changes in her life that led to that campaigning, and by implication would not have drawn me in.

I suppose too he played some part in the community during his lifetime. He worked, contributing to the economy, making the tools that supported the industrial life of Coventry’s motor city in the 60’s and 70’s. I suppose too he was a part of the war effort, as a boy messenger for the fire service during the Coventry blitz, and later on as a soldier, posted out to Egypt and Palestine. In a minor way, however you see occupying forces, and from whatever side you look at it, he was a part of that still unsettled history that is the middle east today.

He served in Palestine facing not dissimilar hazards to the armies in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had no choice, that is where he was sent, and in the process he learned a respect for the Bedouin and their language.

Back in civilian life he was part of the popular cultural movements of his generation, as a jazz musician, and later part of the folk revival, which as you can see from an earlier blog I became part of too.

Like all of us, he did bad and regrettable things in his life, I can’t say I have not done any myself, but in subtle ways a world in which he had never been, would not have been quite the same.

I know I face upheavals to come in my life. I have the prospect of kitchen and bathroom works in my flat, the disruption of which I am not looking forward to, they are the necessary improvements which should make things better for a while, before the next upheaval when I have to leave my current flat altogether as it is still scheduled for demolition around the time I will expect to be graduating as a PhD

It is like that envisaged course completion, some way off, and in a way so far off I find it hard to believe whether or not it will ever happen to me, or if something else might happen in between to cause me to leave my flat or my course of study earlier.

So why am I writing all this now.

I suppose it is reflecting on the fact that I am here at Birmingham, a year on from when I was at Birmingham last year, on a similar study weekend, planning my final assignment, and unsure where that was leading. I did not feel well a year ago, the stresses had really got to me, but I survived and moved on. For those of you who have followed my blog, it is all there to see as it happened.

So this time I am not a part of the course, I was studying. I am enjoying the temporary status of a paid lecturer instead, and nervous as to how my delivery yesterday was received. Being as I was paid for it, could I have planned it a bit better? Given it more attention? If I have another opportunity at a further study weekend I can certainly use the experience to improve on it.

In any case I thought I need to improve my ability to be more impromptu in my delivery, to be confident enough that I do not need to read from my prepared script.

If you see me in my “Whichever way” video, you will see me delivering a script, literally. I am reading off it. So I was when I first made the presentation that I later had filmed to make the video. Well I am trying to lead my life a little bit off the script now.

Perhaps there is a hidden script behind my life, and the future is already written, but I guess, nervous as I am even for the events of this afternoon, when I hope to find my flat as I left it, and not burgled, waiting as I am for the results of a brain scan I had last week, I hope that there is no melodrama waiting me. For now this actor is better off not knowing, else I could never cope with the present.

What will the world wreak tomorrow?
Tonight I have no care, and only am.
One now, one never moving instant instinct.
Continue time to turn, throw over what I feel
Return the terror, trample my delight.
For burns in my mind, memory of the light.
Outside, the blackness, shadows of the night.
Inside my soul, shines celebration of the light.

Watch this space, same time same channel ……………….