Lockdown Time

Elastic Time
Time seems to exist in a multiverse in these times of Covid-19 Lockdown. I seem to have all the time in the world. And time passes like whispers in the wind. Is it April? Is it June? Was that Friday? Is this Saturday? Have I had breakfast? Did I sleep at all? Am I who I have always been? Or am I, my city, my country, my continent, my planet changing irrevocably? There have been personal earthquakes in recent times – some obvious political ones, but also natural disasters (The Year of the Flood) and personal convulsions (Beginning to Look Back). In my handwritten book of Helpful Life Quotations I can usually find something that fits most scenarios: in this case, Andy Warhol’s They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Distraction Techniques
I thought this peculiar “Lockdown” would be a perfect time to do a hundred jobs still undone: declutter shelves and cupboards, sort out books and photographs, tidy the cellar, finish writing my trilogy of novels. Instead I seem to have a problem with concentration and with not being able to stick to the easiest of plans. Freshly-crucial activities have risen to become weirdly compelling: planning shopping like a military campaign, watching Box Sets on TV, doing jigsaws, cooking, baking, cleaning, walking, Skyping, Zooming, reading, clapping, handwashing, watching and rewatching parody songs, witty memes and entertaining tiktoks. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wisely said Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time” is to say “I don’t want to.” I’m known for spending (wasting?) time imaginatively dreaming of time-travelling, lurking in Shakespeare’s language or being absorbed in the fantasy worlds of Narnia, Middle Earth, Pern, Westeros, Marvel Comics, Robin Hood and King Arthur. Why haven’t I spent more time in Wonderland during Lockdown? Why does making a Victoria Sponge suddenly seem so important?

Luxury of circumstances
In Lockdown I have the absolute privilege and luxury of living in a great house with plenty of resources. So when needed, I can marshall support easily. I can bathe in forests, stride across meadows and walk along the River Aire within minutes. I know other people are facing Lockdown under enormous pressures with vulnerable dependents, restricted movements, money worries, job worries, underlying mental and/or physical illnesses, the demands of children out of school, genuine fears about what tomorrow will bring. The distraction techniques of the latest tiktok don’t distract everybody. The endless summers of childhood only seemed endless because the “normal” world was operating within “normal” parameters and “normal” September would come around soon enough. Charles Darwin wrote: A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. Well, Darwin, my old mucker, as my bowl says, The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. If Lockdown has taught us anything, it is that Time can feel Elastic but Lockdown means nothing to Time. This too shall pass.

FOOM (Friends Of Ol' Marvel)

The Marvel Comics' Universe and the current film line-up of The Avengers

Oh, Mum, what did you do?

We all have childhood memories that we think leave a long-lasting effect. My brother and I were distraught when we came home from school one day to find my Mum had had a clear-out and decided to get rid of a huge pile of original Marvel comics…. Now, of course, they would probably be worth a fortune. So I credit that event with two things:

• my loyalty to the Marvel brand and
• my reluctance to throw anything away.

The genius of Marvel Comics’s Stan Lee was that he drew on the 1960s developing pop-psychology to present to teenagers a compelling escapist fantasy of legendary wish fulfilment. The comics spoke directly and emotionally to fans who felt marginalised, like Peter Parker in Spiderman. Stan Lee even addressed the reader from within the stories, asides just like in Shakespearean comedy. Stan Lee seemed like a childhood friend, so it’s a great joy to see him pop up in Marvel film cameos. I remember the first “club" I belonged to – Friends of Ol’ Marvel or FOOM – I wonder how many people, like me, kept hold of the club magazine….?

Arrested development?

How come I’m hooked on Shakespeare but I also love the X-Men, Spiderman, Thor, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer and The Avengers? Is my development so arrested that I can’t distinguish between Quicksilver (in the X-Men) and Hamlet (in Hamlet)? Both Quicksilver and Hamlet have father issues…. And the underlying theme of the X-Men is the same as one of the strands in Hamlet – the outsider trying to:

• fight for personal and political justice
• work out his own destiny and
• control the impulse to revenge….

Searching for father

Eclectic Tastes: The Bible, Shakespeare, Marvel….

Definition of Eclectic: not following one set of principles, ideas or systems but using many parts of different ones.

An eclectic person is someone with catholic, broad-ranging and all-inclusive tastes; someone who sees no difference between “high” culture and “popular” culture, “elegant” style and “vulgar” style. I think that’s me. I think I have eclectic tastes. Yes, I love Shakespeare, but I also love the Marvel Universe and will happily watch a superhero film the same day as reading Measure for Measure. As evidenced in the images below I think of Shakespeare as an action hero and I see nothing incongruous about Sacha Goldberger's outfits for a few of the Marvel characters. 

Reading is Reading is Reading

My appreciation of Marvel characters preceded my Mum’s notorious clearout of old comics. You see, no-one, throughout my childhood, ever told me what to read or watch. Nothing was ever censored. Picking up an encyclopedia or The Bible or The Complete Works of Shakespeare or Butler's Lives of Saints (the books on the shelf next to my Dad's chair) - they all felt the same, to me, as picking up the latest edition of Fantastic or Terrific or The Mighty World of Marvel (the UK versions of Marvel comics.) (Click the links on the titles for a trip down memory lane if you remember these comics.) I’m glad I have eclectic tastes. There are so many more things to enjoy…. Excelsior!

 

Losing yourself and finding yourself

As the late MP Jo Cox said

“…. we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

Victoria Hall, Saltaire, Saturday July 2nd 2016

• If you were there, thank you for coming.
• If you were invited and couldn’t come, get in touch soon to arrange a catch up.
• If you weren’t invited and would've liked to've come, sorry for not being included in the final list (strict budget, ya know, now we’re retired), but please get in touch soon to arrange a catch up (if you like.)
• If you weren’t invited and wouldn’t've wanted to come anyway, it’s perfectly understandable – we’re not party animals, really.
• If you’ve no idea who we are, enjoy the pictures anyway. The text below is a transcription of the speeches that were made after the lovely meal by Yorkshire caterers, GFS (click here for GFS information.)

Victoria Hall, Saltaire

What Tony said….

The seeds of our 30th wedding anniversary party were sown in April and May 2015 when we attended the weddings of our nieces Laura to Aaron and Gemma to Ollie. It struck us that getting people together to celebrate was a great idea. Family, colleagues, friends....

When we married in 1986 Sally’s Mum and Dad told us how much we could spend on the wedding (£500) and, if there was any change from the costs of the wedding, we could spend it on furniture for our first house. We therefore had a small “do” back in 1986 – and today’s “do” is to make up for our stinginess back then….









Here today on 2nd July 2016 we have

• family and friends from two continents in the room – Europe and America
• friends from Manchester where we met
• friends visiting from the Midlands and London
• colleagues from education and the national health service
• family from Harrogate
• family and friends from Wakefield and Bradford where we were born.

There are people in the room who have recently experienced fire, illness and floods so we hope, later in the evening, you all follow natural human instincts and set aside troubles by dancing to the The Baby Blues all the way from London….

A big part of my childhood was reading a book in the corner and listening to my Mum nattering about this and that to Auntie Clare or to Auntie Mary; all telling tales about family members, present and past, neighbours and friends, who said what to who and why. Part of my childish mind enjoyed the gossip and part of it relished being a bookworm.

Shakespeare's Complete Works table: Laura, Aaron, Ollie, Gemma, Julie, Jannine, Russ, Marco

I have three older brothers and we four brothers each get more girly as we get younger. My eldest brother is macho and scary; my next two brothers are increasingly feminine and weepy; and I’m probably the girliest of all. My favoured reading was never Roy of the Rovers or Biggles.  I preferred X-Men, Spiderman and Thor or, when I was listening to the matriarchs gossiping, I was usually reading cousin Ann’s copy of Bunty at Auntie Claire’s house.

So when we looked for a theme for this anniversary party, Sally and I went out for dinner last year and tried to choose books that meant a great deal to us, either jointly or individually. Every table was named for a favourite book.

Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby table: Ann, Terry, Lisa, Daniel, Mary C, Albert

• Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens’s story was the first theatre trip that we jointly thought was fantastic – the RSC touring to Manchester’s Palace Theatre
• Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons is the story of a middle-aged couple on a road trip reflecting on the poignant everyday details of their lives
• living in Bradford we each chose a Brontë novel: Sally chose Charlotte’s thunderingly feminist Jane Eyre and I picked Emily’s gothically stormy Wuthering Heights 
• Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was an easy choice because of its exquisite romance and mischievous comedy
• I picked TH White’s Once and Future King because it portrays all our hopes and ambitions even when times are tough and life’s journey is a struggle
• Sally picked Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm, the compassionate but horribly honest medical memoir, which I confess I nearly stopped reading during Chapter 3 because of the graphic description of neurosurgery
• Shakespeare’s Complete Works had to be one of our choices since so much of my life has been spent exploring its messy bottomless pit
• And, finally, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird gives us hope that the world can be a better place

Henry Marsh's Do No Harm table: Nick D, Veronica, Angela, Derek, Judy, Steve

And, for those who don’t know, sitting on our table is a special friend from America, Kerry Madden-Lunsford who has (literally) touched Harper Lee. And has written a biography of that great lady. So in the not too distant future we hope to get a tour of the Monroeville courtroom which inspired the setting for To Kill A Mockingbird. Make friends with Kerry and get yourself invited!

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre table: Jane, Kevin H, Alison, Kim, Ben, Sarah, Gail, Kevin B

Reading has given us great pleasure over the years and is a key part of our lives now and in the foreseeable future. I love the expression – “you can lose yourself in a good book.” I have come to think that you “find yourself” in a good book too. In the same way you can “lose yourself” in your family and friends and “find yourself” there too.

Thirty years ago I lost myself in Sally, but that’s where I’ve found myself too. Our best achievement has been producing our two daughters, but for now, I want to thank Sally for the details of what you are seeing and experiencing – 99% of everything that’s good about today has been arranged tirelessly by my Pearly partner, please raise a glass to Dr Sally!

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice table: Juliet, Mark, Jack, Amy, Tom, Caity, Adam

What Sally said….

When we got married 30 years ago next Tuesday (July 5th) my dad (Ray) made a short speech. Tony spoke. And then a good friend, Meera, looked me in the eye from her spot near the ‘top table’ and said “you next, Sally.” I replied “I’ve got nothing to say” but that was wrong, because those who know me well know that I always have something to say! I’ve regretted that moment in a small way since then, so here’s my chance to put it right.

Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons table: Graeme, Nick S, Sue, Brian, Emma, Tim

I’ve never been much of a party animal, more of an outgoing introvert, but seeing everyone here today is so wonderful, I get why people have big parties. It’s so amazing to see all the people we love, all the people who’ve been important to us in our lives – family, colleagues and friends – all together in one place. Thank you all for coming. I hope you enjoy yourselves and please dance later.

This might be a bit of a downer, but will you all join me and raise a toast to absent friends and family? For me, I’ll be toasting my brilliant Mum and Dad, and Tony’s lovely Mum!

TH White's The Once and Future King table: Jo, Marion, Becky, Marc, Chris, Teresa, Mick, Jess

What Graeme said….

I think that if we were to do a quick poll of all the people who know Sally and Tony, asking what was the most important thing to them, we’d get a pretty unanimous response of “Family.” So for those of us here who don’t have now, or haven’t had at some point, the surnames Allard or Johnson, I like to think that today we can call ourselves honorary Allards or Johnsons.

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights table: Emily, Alex, Harriet, Basit, Janet, Michael, Amy L, Matt B

When I think back to when I first met Tony, we were both being interviewed for what we believed to be the same job…. But that’s a whole other story! Anyway he was a fresh-faced young man of not much more than 30 (and I still had some hair!) – and he was just returning to full-time work having spent a year at home looking after baby Emily in order that Sally could establish herself in her career as a doctor, soon to be a popular GP.

Anyway I knew this was a friendship that was going to last, as we shared so many beliefs and ideals. So it wasn’t long before myself and Nick met all the family and we have, like so many of us here today, not just been passive observers over the years, but have felt like part of the Allard-Johnsons. We’ve watched Emily and Harriet grow up and become the wonderful, intelligent, socially adept, politically astute young women that are here now. And we have been involved in their lives in so many ways – personally and professionally – in the same way they have been involved in ours.

One of my measures of friendship is who I would call in an emergency…. I hope I never have to make that call, but your numbers have been at the top of my speed dial list for a very long time!

I think that you all exemplify something that the recently departed Muhammed Ali once said:

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you haven’t really learned anything.”

You lot redefine the distinction between family and friend and maybe this is because these words of Charlotte Bronte’s from The Professor are the maxim by which you conduct your relationships, both with family and friends:

“Let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.”

And it is because of that respect, affection and love that you have shown all of us here over the years that I’m going to finish with yet another nicked quotation, this time from Maya Angelou (after all, these women say it so much better than I ever could!):

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”

So Sally, Tony, thank you so much for today for this act of kindness and, Sally, I do hope that it is proving to be the perfect day that you were longing for (and I’ll try not to spoil it by making too much of an ass of myself on the dance floor later!)

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird table: Tony, Sally, Maggie, John, Michele, Mary S, Kiffen, Kerry

Cheers, to Sally and Tony, and to one and all!

Burn, bonfires, clear and bright

Bonfire night at Bolton Abbey in 2015

Fire burns and cauldron bubble

No sooner does Bowie die, but so does the elegant and gorgeously-voiced Alan Rickman, an actor I’ve long admired on both stage and screen. And both aged 69. Uncanny. Coincidental. I first got to know Alan Rickman in the RSC season where he played Achilles in Troilus and Cressida and Jacques in As You Like It. As Jacques says to conclude the “All the World’s a Stage” speech:

                             Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Alan Rickman in As You Like It and Troilus and Cressida

One fire burns out another’s burning
Memories of last November have leapt into my blog. Something about burning as a ritual of moving on, purging, cleansing... When Benvolio says “One fire burns out another’s burning,” in Romeo and Juliet, he goes on to say that

One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish....
One desperate grief cures with another's languish:
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.

Can we forget and burn away sorrows?

Ozymandias
Does Alan Rickman’s death mean Bowie’s is less painful? Should the deaths of famous people affect an ordinary person at all? The ending of Shelley's short but perfectly formed poem Ozymandias captures the sense of life's futility:

                                     Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Why pictures of 2015 bonfire night at Bolton Abbey?

Why not? Everything turns to ashes. Ashes to ashes. But from the ashes new life can spring. And will spring. A phoenix will rise. Come on, 2016, flame on!

The Human Torch from Marvel's The Fantastic 4

There And Back Again

One Ring To Rule Them All

It would be hard to resist visiting some of the film locations of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit if a dream visit to New Zealand ever happened…. My understanding is that New Zealanders have embraced the tourist, creative and employment opportunities resulting from Peter Jackson’s films of Tolkien’s works. Weta workshops are now firmly established as an international leader in 3d modeling, costuming, armour, weaponry and special effects of all kinds.

From Hobbiton to the Dead Marshes….

I imagine that travelling is a key aim for most retirees. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.” (I imagine Ian McKellen’s voice as Gandalf intoning those words….) I have been lucky over the years to travel to some unusual places: Kenya, China, Finland, Milledgeville (in Georgia, USA.) I hope that retirement will feature some further memorable experiences, before Shakespeare’s seventh age of man kicks in.

Seventh Age: "second childishness and mere oblivion."

There and back again.

It can feel uncomfortable being adrift, as Bilbo Baggins tells his nephew: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

I blogged earlier about my idea of home being where your loved ones are. I’ve always taken the subtitle of The Hobbit to heart - There And Back Again; after a journey, it’s always satisfying to return to hearth and home. Going out, coming back. Ebbing and flowing. In the middle of a holiday, it’s good to know that your slippers are waiting at home (unless you took them with you, of course.) Would New Zealand feel just too far away? Perhaps I should stick to walking along the local canal?

Into the Wild

Journeys into the wild are good for putting personal concerns into perspective. When I lived in Helsinki for a year, I undertook a road trip with two Japanese men and a son of one of them; and en route to Nordkapp we called at Hammerfest, the most northern civilian settlement with over 5,000 inhabitants.

Hammerfest in northern Norway

I’ll blog about my year in Scandanavia in the future, but what I’m remembering now is the sense of being on the edge of the world at the mercy of nature. When faced with the spread of cosmic existence, evident in the sight of the galaxy of stars in remote places like Hammerfest (or, I expect, New Zealand), human anxieties can seem insignificant. Worries can gain perspective. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that is given us.”

Cate Blanchett as Galadriel and Elijah Wood as Frodo, image created by vanderstelt-studio

The Smallest Person

Galadriel tells Frodo “Even the smallest person can change the course of history” to reassure him that he has the strength to endure on his quest. The quest goes on. Excelsior!

Beginning to Look Back

Looking Back

As 2014 ends, I can only hope 2015 and future years contain less personal trauma. I hope in future years I can compose blogs more regularly and without obscuring too much of what I am truly thinking and feeling. The images below contain (for me) total pleasure and excruciating pain. And also contain (for me) love beyond belief. And some bewilderment. The end of the year is a good time for looking back…. 

Harriet home from India/Nepal, Egypt, goodbye teaching, home from the hills and, in images below, Emily home from Dorking, Kerry and Norah on the Moors, Surrey and the South, Barr-Lancelots, the Tower of London, Fountain's Abbey, the wonderful Margaret Atwood at the Ilkley Literature Festival

Last Christmas

Between October and December 2013 everything changed – in my world, at any rate. Last Christmas felt very fragile but this Christmas, everything feels different. No doubt next Christmas will feel different again. And the one after that. Change happens.

Change and the Illusion of Time Management

Change happens. Constantly. I used to believe in Time Management. But I now think it is a redundant concept. Time cannot be Managed. All that can be managed is what you do and what you say. You give your attention to chosen actions and that attention affects naturally occurring changes, hopefully changing things in a direction you want. Anything you ignore will undergo changes anyway. Because change is a constant. Time marches on. Change happens. Constantly.

Get Everything Done: and still have time to play

So I’ve increasingly over the years tried to live by the following philosophy, espoused by my friend Jane Howson and written about eloquently by Mark Forster: you must Give Attention to the things you want to affect. You can never Manage Time; all you can do is Give Attention to what you do and what you say. Because Change will happen anyway. Give Attention to the things you want to change. As Linda Loman says in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

attention must be paid.

Resolutions

Approaching 2015 is a time to look back and a time to look forward. Next year I’ll be 55. 55 years before I was born it was 1905 - a lot of Change has happened since 1905. A lot of Change will no doubt happen in 2015.... and in the five years following.... what will 2020 be like? Time will tell. Excelsior!

I Will Survive

Relief, Fear, Uncertainty

A grim start to a new blog? But Relief, Fear and Uncertainty are my initial feelings now that I’m retired.

At first I was afraid
I was petrified

How can I survive without a full-time job? Particularly such a busy, all-consuming job? Teaching for the best part of 32 years…. In Manchester, in London, in Winchester, in Helsinki, in Stratford-upon-Avon, in Retford, in Sheffield, in Leek, in Keighley, in Wakefield, in Leeds, in Bingley and for the last 14 years at Bradford Grammar School, a large coeducational independent school, where I was Head of English and Drama.

The Likes Of Us, my final "big" school production

Retirement

    ….tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we

Unburdened crawl towards lie-ins, reading and going to the cinema in the afternoon, writing for fun, puzzling over jigsaws, walking on canal towpaths, the Yorkshire moors and dales on weekdays, focusing on health, booking holidays in school term times…. Working at living instead of living at work.

Ripeness Is All

Was it the right time to leave?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which,
Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune….

Was this the right time? This blog may partially answer that question. Life is in an unusual place at the moment. I’ve been commuting most weekends from Bradford to Dorking where my family is temporarily renting a flat.

The Temple on the Nower in Dorking

Life In A School

I will miss the working life in school: the buzz, the buildings, the banter – but most of all the people. Working in a collegiate atmosphere with people who, by and large, have the same values and aims - colleagues who have compassion, enjoy a sense of absurdity and teach their specialist subjects with depth and detail. Colleagues whose goal is to inspire teenagers, those infuriating, bizarre semi-adult beasts, creatures full of the future, full of unpredictable fun, full of hormonal bullshit.

Rat Trap an original musical I directed at Leek Westwood High School in my first teaching job

Life As A Teacher

Every day contained dozens - probably hundreds - of interactions; some interactions were like performances, some quick and intense, some combative and unsettling, some giddyingly silly; but all were involving and immediate. Will I Survive without timetables, schemes of work, planning, delivering, evaluating, monitoring, assessing, reviewing, planning, delivering, evaluating, monitoring, assessing, reviewing, planning…. And so it goes on, deadline after deadline, day after day, week after week, term after term…. But never the same in my subjects (English and Drama) and never the same because of the endless parade of humans…. Teachers, Support Staff, Students…. A cavalcade of teeming humanity.

Mikey Lord leading These are the days of our lives at Bradford Grammar School We Will Rock You

What Next?

So the aims of this blog are for me to reflect on retirement, practise writing skills and comment on whatever crops up in the moment of writing.  The only binding constant will be the words of William Shakespeare, which I expect to crop up frequently; the Complete Works of Shakespeare (and everything that surrounds those Works) are my hobby and have been for a very long time. Anyone who enjoys spotting quotations (the clues are in the labels below each blog), feel free to reveal which words belong to which play. I expect there will be no obvious “narrative arc” – just a diary of whatever crops up in my retired life. My dream is to live in retirement as a “writer” and my first step is to begin this blog and aim for five posts a month by August 2016 (I’m giving myself two years to get into the swing of it….) As the Marvel-lous Stan Lee often says…. Excelsior!