How did you meet your significant other?
I first met Janet on February 3rd 1987 when I started work at the Chatham A Unemployment Benefit Office. As a new member of the team I was assigned someone to work with me and show me the ropes and it was Janet. She was a good guide but I was a slow and inconsistent learner and she was baffled by how difficult it was for me to repeat the same tasks over and over again despite being shown on a number of occasions. As she was to find out in the years ahead, it takes a long while for things to stick with me, but when they do they are there for good.
Over the first three months I was there we built up a connection even if we baffled each other with our approach to work, life, politics and pretty much everything else 🤣! She was quite intrigued by my habit of bringing the cryptic crossword into the break room at times and reading a whole parade of books by RF Delderfield which I bought from the WH Smiths across the road. I was intrigued by the fact that she had stood on the terraces at Gillingham games for about a decade. I found out later that it had given her a fairly wide vocabulary that she avoided using at work!
Then, Janet announced that she had got another job and it surprised me how much it affected my mood. I was going to miss her as a colleague but I didn’t think she was going to miss trying to teach me the basics over and over again! About a month after she left she sent a thank you card to the office with a specific message for me in the form of a crossword clue! I figured out, despite the fact that the clue was wrong (!) that the answer to the clue was Miss You. I didn’t know if that just meant as a colleague, but then I was spectacularly clueless in matters of the heart!
Eventually, Janet got up the courage to ask if she could see me again. If she’d been waiting for me to do it I would never have organised anything. The message came via Wendy, one of Janet’s best friends at work who she had kept in touch with. Wendy told me that if I upset Janet by messing her around I would have her to answer to! With that warning in my head I agreed to see her at the Crispin and Crispianus pub, my local at the time, on December 17th 1987. Safe to say, things went well and next month we celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary.
What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?
When I look back at my childhood I remember the way that the year always built towards the Winter for me. I was never a fan of the summer, with the exception of cricket, and Spring and Autumn lacked landmarks to split up their otherwise unremarkable progress. Winter, and here I am talking about the real Winter season of my childhood, ran from November to February.
The season started with Guy Fawkes Night. On November 5th every year, the British people would celebrate the narrow escape the King and Parliament had from the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of Robert Catesby and his co-conspirators, including Guy Fawkes himself who had the task of planting the barrels of gunpowder below the Parliament building. Children would drag a stuffed figure of a man around in a wheelbarrow or a homemade cart and call out ‘Penny for the Guy’. Now, if I am being honest, this was already quite unusual in my childhood but it definitely happened, and it was usually children from poorer families who did it so that they could buy fireworks for their displays at home. The one thing that was definitely different is that everyone called it Guy Fawkes Night and that it was the big event to start the run up to Christmas. Halloween was barely mentioned in the South East of England. Now, Halloween, the awful American version, not the fascinating Celtic version, is dominant and Fireworks Night is now the more accessible version of Guy Fawkes Night for a country that’s lost contact with its history and, apparently, needs to import American versions of just about everything to replace the indigenous versions. I am not a massive fan of fireworks but I miss Guy Fawkes Night and we are poorer for it, as we have been for every American import from burgers to social and political movements.
Fortunately, we have kept hold of one tradition that we do better than any other country. I am speaking of Remembrance Sunday. This takes place on the Sunday nearest November 11th, sometimes on the date itself, and is one of the few serious events we have left in this country that we all share. Our reflections on the lives lost and changed beyond all recognition by war has always been deeply respectful and deeply felt. It has become more jingoistic at times, particularly in and around the Falklands War and the Middle East conflicts of years gone by, but even then the cost of war has been to the forefront of the reflections as the nation figuratively and metaphorically gather round the Cenotaph in London to pay a deserved tribute to those killed in battle at the behest of old men, and occasionally women, holed up in their rooms and fighting wars with other old men and women using the lives of young men and women to do so. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that sometimes war is unavoidable, but I also know that the servicemen and women who fight those wars are the only ones called upon to make any sacrifices. It was these men and women who we thought of every year as we wore our poppies. We have not succumbed to the triumphalism of the politicians of America or the Communist block, sometimes shared by their population and sometimes not, who often use Remembrance to make a statement about their strength rather than mourning the lives cut short or changed altogether. In the UK it is a deeply felt moment of national mourning that still prevails despite everything that has happened over my lifetime. It’s a tradition to be proud of. I remember watching it on television one year and the BBC commentator said that if the British and Commonwealth dead of all the wars since World War I were to line up in rows of three to march past the Cenotaph the end of the parade would be in Edinburgh. I really can’t imagine anywhere else other than the UK where that commentator would have made that statement.
If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why?
I have always had far more specific recall of my younger years than many others seem to have. Memories of my years up to the age of 11 are, by their very nature, somewhat episodic, but I definitely recall a number of incidents that others don’t and in detail that others can’t match. Often I will be thinking about a completely unrelated experience then I will have a memory about the person, place or time that I have recalled.
What has always intrigued me about my memories are their very specific nature. For example, I was in Australia for a few weeks as a five year old. Do I remember the sights and sounds, or the people I met? No, I remember being in a hotel in Perth watching a Fantastic Four cartoon! Why do I remember that? I think it’s because I was with other children in the TV lounge, and only ever saw that particular cartoon there. I know from pictures from that time that I saw many things in Australia that a five year old would have been fascinated by but none of those memories stuck. We came back from Australia on the S.S. Australis and I do remember specific incidents like a visit to Fiji, a trip through the Panama Canal and a stop in Acapulco. There would have been many other experiences that would have counted as amazing, but they never stuck.
Often when I used to talk to people about events in my childhood that they were present for they would look at me blankly. I know that they would have some memories of those occasions but they tended to be much hazier. What is interesting to me is that they didn’t tend to question my recall as my memory bank tended to be something that people marvelled at. I can’t say that my recall will be faultless but it will be right in the general and often right in the specifics.
I often remember bad things that I wish I didn’t but I take the rough with the smooth because I can regularly relive some memories that give me warmth and happiness.
What’s the last movie that made you cry?
Films can make me emotional, but I can’t remember the last one that made me cry. My trips to the cinema are few and far between due to cost and other people’s behaviour. In any case, I don’t watch many films that I think or know are going to be sad. I would prefer a comedy or a romantic film because I don’t enjoy the feeling of sadness that comes from a ‘weepie’ because it feels manipulative. I am more likely to cry at a TV series because I have had more time to care about the characters. Give me a TV show that I have watched regularly and I am more likely to shed a tear. However, in all but a very few cases, my reaction is quite muted. Why is this? Well, I do think that the old approach that we were brought up with of crying being something men don’t do still holds sway.
Looking back on my 70s childhood I remember the idea of male crying being very embarrassing. If you succumbed you would often be shouted at or ridiculed, so you learnt not to do it anywhere you could be seen. I think that leaves most men hardwired to repress emotions, although it is acceptable to express those emotions through football which has always seemed odd. Men who would never be seen crying over anything else will shed tears over their side losing a game or being relegated. It’s always seemed performative to me but then I never really attributed any real importance to the game until I started following Arsenal Women’s Team and the Lionesses. I definitely felt emotional seeing the Lionesses pick up back to back European Championships and also when Arsenal won the Women’s Champions League. I can’t imagine letting lose on the terraces like a lot of supporters though. Boys don’t cry was the phrase that recurred throughout childhood and it seems old habits die hard.
Side One starts off with a heavy hitter. It’s the X Factor judges walk on music, or the Old Spice advert or the song from Final Fantasy VII, depending on your cultural background! Oh, OK, it’s O Fortuna from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana!
Re-Play Classic Experience II
I absolutely love this album and I am happy to flag it up again. It’s a collection of some of the most popular pieces of classical music ever made. Click on the link and then maybe go onto Spotify or similar and revisit some of the pieces of music that have stood the test of time.
