To misquote the great bluegrass singer Ricky Skaggs, the single life is the life I lead. And has been for nearly three years. At my age - in my fifth decade - it is something I think about a lot. It is not a pose I have chosen. But here we are.
One thing you notice is that most of your friends are paired up. One wants the best for them of, of course, but it's difficult not to feel envy and, at times, resentment. It's so easy for A and B to be having dinner with X and Y. Pairs pair up so easily. Four, or six, are good numbers for an evening out. Throw in the complication of Z, however, and it's all that much more awkward.
There is a line, which I can't remember verbatim, from Len Deighton's wonderful Bernard Samson triple trilogy, in which Bernard, abandoned (as he thinks) by his wife, is a single man, and rues the idea, much bruited, that an "extra man" is such a useful thing for dinner parties, but finds that not to be true. He is right. You don't get invited to things to make up the numbers, you really don't. It's a fallacy, at least in my experience.
Maybe, as my best friend Pete tells me, its a factor of age. People retreat into themselves, have families and domestic priorities. Maybe that's true. But I think there's something else. It's as if the ageing singleton has some contagion which must be avoided. People don't want you looming over their happiness, as if you might taint it, somehow. You are a brooding presence, no matter how chipper and cheerful you try to come across.
Yet I can't be alone, surely. I'm 40. I don't socialise easily but with my friends I am, I hope, good company. Not naturally gregarious, but, in comfortable company, chatty and cheery. I'm not seeking partnership - I think I may be too damaged by experience for that now - but companionship, yes, I seek that out at every turn, whenever I can. Man is a social animal, as whoever-it-was said. (Aristotle, the internet tells me.) But the effort seems to fall always on the singleton. How often have I approached paired-up friends to see if they're free, only to be told, oh no, sorry, we're seeing <insert other pairing>? All too often.
Weddings are a nightmare, of course, though I'm at an age now when they're becoming rarer. (Maybe I'll have a wave of second marriages.) These days it's christenings (occasionally) or birthday parties. Whatever the event, though, turning up solo is, for someone shy like me, an absolutely nightmare. What if no-one will talk to me? Will I be left in a corner drinking tepid wine and watching other people have fun? I've been to functions like that.
This is not meant as a moan, or a cri de coeur, merely an observation, which might strike a chord with others in my situation. I can't be the only one. Maybe it's partly my own fault for being so insular, so diffident, so awkward. If I were a different person - outgoing, gregarious, self-confident - I would see opportunities rather than hurdles, perhaps. A room full of people I didn't yet know. But of course you need to be invited, and that's my beef, if I may put it in that crass way. As a middle-aged single man, you just fade out of view and out of people's minds.
My ex tells me I should try a dating website. It's kindly-meant advice, but I couldn't even face it. The idea of meeting a total stranger and establishing some spark with her is anathema to me. And, as I say, I am shop-soiled. I don't even know if I want to be part of a pair any more. There are times when I can, genuinely, relish my solitude, and the peace that comes with it, though many more when I curse it. Yearning for the past. For how things were. Turning the clock back.
Which, of course, you can never do. I must adjust to The New Reality. It would just be nice is someone asked me out for a drink. And on that maudlin, passive-aggressive note, I will end.
Saturday 24 March 2018
Monday 12 March 2018
Education
There was an interesting article in last Saturday's Times, by Clare Foges, an author and former Downing Street speechwriter, about faith schools and homeschooling. Her thesis - and I probably do her a disservice with this précis - is that faith schools promote division and 'other-ness' at a time when we should be prioritising inclusion and coherence.
I didn't go to a faith school, as such. Admittedly, when my school was founded in 1525, faith was taken as read, and when I was there, we had a religious assembly every day, just as we had done at prep school. I suppose if I had been virulently anti-Christian, they would have excused me, but I am at heart a conformist, so I went along with it. But in those days, our most illustrious old boy was the Jewish Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, so there was no whiff of the evangelical.
Anyway, the article set me thinking. I am, perhaps, more acutely attuned to the advantages or disadvantages of faith schools, as my parents are Glaswegian - my mother, as a child, was forbidden from playing with some of the other girls on the strength of the colour of their blazers - and my ex was from Northern Ireland, though she'd been at a cross-denominational school. It means, I suppose, that I know the territory. My prep school was not openly faith-based, but the headmaster was a firm Christian, and we sang hymns every morning; Friday was quirky because it was 'request day' - we could call out numbers from the hymnal and the music teacher would bang them out, somewhat inexpertly, on the piano.
The question is, therefore, are they a good thing or not? The results suggest they are. As far as I am aware, all the research indicates that faith schools produce better examination results than comparable non-denominational state schools. Certainly, in the North East, where I grew up, the highest-performing non-independent schools topped the league tables, and even some of the private schools were church-orientated. Why should that be? Is it because the attract the best and brightest teachers, pay better wages, have a better curriculum? Or is it because they can be selective about the pupils they select? I tend towards the latter view, though I think one can fuel the others.
But all of it brings you - or me, anyway - to a wider question. What are schools for? Are they merely exam factories, designed to crank out the best possible results from their consumers? Or is there a wider societal function, to prepare young people to be members of the kind of society want to have? Foges pretty clearly thinks the latter, and thinks that faith schools are an impediment to it.
I'm in two minds. I know that faith schools can sow division. When they were growing up in 1950s suburban Glasgow, my parents had virtually no Catholic friends. The power of the Orange Order was still strong, and sectarianism was rife. When I was growing up in 1980s Sunderland, I had no idea of - nor interest in - the confessional background of my friends. You could tell Sikhs, of course, by the turbans, but I vividly recall my oldest friend telling me he'd been confirmed a few years earlier, and I asked "As what?", knowing his mother was French and therefore probably Catholic. A look of doubt crept over his face and he said "I'm not really sure".
And yet, I'm a great believer in freedom. If parents want their children to be raised and educated in a specific confessional atmosphere, then so be it. If that leads to greater academic success and performance, more power to their elbow. I cannot see that it is the business of the state to say that children will not be taught in a religious context. (I have always found it deeply ironic that the United States, which enshrined separation of church and state in its constitution, has one of the most faith-based polities in the world.)
So I am conflicted. I see the dangers of children only associating within their own community. But I can't tell parents they should not do so. It's a little like single-sex schools (both of my schools were boys-only). The evidence suggests, as far as I know, that girls flourish in a girls-only environment. However, you can't have girls-only schools without also having boys-only institutions. What did it do for me? In academic terms, it was probably the right thing - there was no embarrassment or, God forgive, flirting in classes. But it left me wary of girls until I went to university, and probably to this day, at the age of 40.
I was lucky at sixth form. We were an all-boys school, but there was an all-girls school literally across the road. We co-operated on drama and music, and many of the braver boys (not me!) socialised with the girls. Some of the girls joined us for extra-curricular lessons; what was then called PSE, but I don't know what they call it now. So there was contact. We were separate but connected. And I think that was the ideal. If only faith schools could make similar arrangements.
I offer no conclusions. This is merely a spark for discussion. I know people who hold very firm views in both directions; I, though I can be very judgemental at times, find it harder to be definitive. Cohesion vs freedom. The good of society vs personal choice. I just don't know.
I didn't go to a faith school, as such. Admittedly, when my school was founded in 1525, faith was taken as read, and when I was there, we had a religious assembly every day, just as we had done at prep school. I suppose if I had been virulently anti-Christian, they would have excused me, but I am at heart a conformist, so I went along with it. But in those days, our most illustrious old boy was the Jewish Lord Chief Justice, Lord Taylor of Gosforth, so there was no whiff of the evangelical.
Anyway, the article set me thinking. I am, perhaps, more acutely attuned to the advantages or disadvantages of faith schools, as my parents are Glaswegian - my mother, as a child, was forbidden from playing with some of the other girls on the strength of the colour of their blazers - and my ex was from Northern Ireland, though she'd been at a cross-denominational school. It means, I suppose, that I know the territory. My prep school was not openly faith-based, but the headmaster was a firm Christian, and we sang hymns every morning; Friday was quirky because it was 'request day' - we could call out numbers from the hymnal and the music teacher would bang them out, somewhat inexpertly, on the piano.
The question is, therefore, are they a good thing or not? The results suggest they are. As far as I am aware, all the research indicates that faith schools produce better examination results than comparable non-denominational state schools. Certainly, in the North East, where I grew up, the highest-performing non-independent schools topped the league tables, and even some of the private schools were church-orientated. Why should that be? Is it because the attract the best and brightest teachers, pay better wages, have a better curriculum? Or is it because they can be selective about the pupils they select? I tend towards the latter view, though I think one can fuel the others.
But all of it brings you - or me, anyway - to a wider question. What are schools for? Are they merely exam factories, designed to crank out the best possible results from their consumers? Or is there a wider societal function, to prepare young people to be members of the kind of society want to have? Foges pretty clearly thinks the latter, and thinks that faith schools are an impediment to it.
I'm in two minds. I know that faith schools can sow division. When they were growing up in 1950s suburban Glasgow, my parents had virtually no Catholic friends. The power of the Orange Order was still strong, and sectarianism was rife. When I was growing up in 1980s Sunderland, I had no idea of - nor interest in - the confessional background of my friends. You could tell Sikhs, of course, by the turbans, but I vividly recall my oldest friend telling me he'd been confirmed a few years earlier, and I asked "As what?", knowing his mother was French and therefore probably Catholic. A look of doubt crept over his face and he said "I'm not really sure".
And yet, I'm a great believer in freedom. If parents want their children to be raised and educated in a specific confessional atmosphere, then so be it. If that leads to greater academic success and performance, more power to their elbow. I cannot see that it is the business of the state to say that children will not be taught in a religious context. (I have always found it deeply ironic that the United States, which enshrined separation of church and state in its constitution, has one of the most faith-based polities in the world.)
So I am conflicted. I see the dangers of children only associating within their own community. But I can't tell parents they should not do so. It's a little like single-sex schools (both of my schools were boys-only). The evidence suggests, as far as I know, that girls flourish in a girls-only environment. However, you can't have girls-only schools without also having boys-only institutions. What did it do for me? In academic terms, it was probably the right thing - there was no embarrassment or, God forgive, flirting in classes. But it left me wary of girls until I went to university, and probably to this day, at the age of 40.
I was lucky at sixth form. We were an all-boys school, but there was an all-girls school literally across the road. We co-operated on drama and music, and many of the braver boys (not me!) socialised with the girls. Some of the girls joined us for extra-curricular lessons; what was then called PSE, but I don't know what they call it now. So there was contact. We were separate but connected. And I think that was the ideal. If only faith schools could make similar arrangements.
I offer no conclusions. This is merely a spark for discussion. I know people who hold very firm views in both directions; I, though I can be very judgemental at times, find it harder to be definitive. Cohesion vs freedom. The good of society vs personal choice. I just don't know.
Saturday 3 March 2018
Ageing
I turned 40 last autumn. It really doesn't bother me (that much), though I didn't get the same adrenaline rush as when I turned 30, and felt like I was a grown-up. But that, and my father dying the next month, has made me think a lot recently about the ageing process.
I don't know why it should be, but when I read the papers - which I only really do at the weekends - I am always drawn to the column of birthdays. For some reason, I have a fascination for people's ages, whether it's to tut and say "They look a lot older than that", or to marvel that someone I thought had been dead for years is still plugging on. I felt the same when I heard that Billy Graham, that cheery old anti-semite and con artist, had been gathered unto his imaginary maker at the age of 99. I can't explain this fascination with the inexorable progress of time, but it exists, nonetheless.
I noticed it again today reading the Times magazine, which has an excellent interview with Sir Michael Caine, who will turn 85 later this year. How can that be? How can the star of Zulu, of Alfie, of The IPCRESS File, be not only a pensioner but considerably exceeding life expectancy? Money helps, of course, I suppose, and by all accounts he lives a pretty healthy lifestyle. Fair play to him: not my scene. Better to die in your cups than live on your rations, or something like that.
Anyway, whenever I saw a juicy titbit in the birth columns of the papers, I used to text my Dad. "Can you believe X is Y years old?" He would do the same. We'd also mark deaths in the same way: "RIP James Garner", or whoever it was, especially if they'd reached a ripe old age, or, conversely, had keeled over unexpectedly young.
I now wonder if that was a monstrous act of tactlessness. When my father was - eventually, after a lot of medical shortcomings - diagnosed with multiple myeloma, he knew it would kill him, short of stepping in front of the proverbial bus. My stepmother tells me he didn't want to know the details of how it would end, only whether it would be painful or squalid (answer: probably not). But here was a man in his mid- to late 60s, being confronted with the reality that he had a few years left, and, barring extraordinary luck, not more. No 85th birthday for him.
Should I have stopped with the texts? Were they painful reminders of the mortality which was closing in fast? If I'm honest, and this is shameful, it never crossed my mind. He didn't stop, either: the texts continued to flow. I like to think it was because he didn't like to make a fuss, to make a scene. He would creak and groan sometimes - one of the side effects of multiple myeloma is osteoporosis, and his back and leg gave him pain - but it was always a mutter, never a shout (at least not that I ever saw; I'm sure my stepmother saw much more pain than I did).
Maybe it even helped. I can't tell. We never talked about the end, and he never saw it coming as quickly as it did. Maybe I did the right thing in pursuing service as normal. I do hope I did.
Which brings me back, solipsistically, to myself. Forty years old. Realistically, that's beyond middle age. We're over the hump. The clock is ticking. In his last, heart-rending interview with Jeremy Paxman, when he was undergoing experimental treatment with minimal hope of success, the great Christopher Hitchens was asked if he was afraid of death. "No," he said, before qualifying that. He wasn't afraid of death: if you're as convinced an atheist as he was, how can you fear the state of simply not being? It would be absurd. What he feared, he said, was a grubby and sordid dying, a very different thing.
(He also, I think, feared a deathbed conversion to some form of theism, which is entirely understandable - think of Voltaire being asked to denounce the Devil and saying "This is no time to be making new enemies!" - but would have been anathema to his thinking, living self. Still, he was alive to the potential weakness, and explained it to Paxman.)
My father's death was the first I have ever witnessed, and I suppose it won't be the last, if I am spared. I still have a parent and two step-parents, whom I wish long and happy lives, as well as a step-grandmother. It will probably happen again.
Where is all this leading me? Maybe nowhere. Short of a trip to Dignitas - euthanasia can wait for another day - we can't choose the time or, to an extent, the manner of our passing, though I think UK doctors are still allowed to administer medication under the umbrella of the 'double effect' rule; that is, you know it will kill, but that is not the primary intention. Medical ethicists can correct me on that if I'm wrong.
I suppose the lesson for today is this: do things now. Because you never know. I had a dearly beloved colleague in the Commons who succumbed to cancer at (I think) 33. She was the brightest of bright sparks, a music DPhil and a brilliant clerk, who could do anything. I regret with all my heart that I didn't see enough of her when she was in what turned out to be her last days, but I can say I danced at her wedding. I think, often, of what she might have achieved, how her life with her husband might have turned out. Don't put things off. Carpe diem, as Robin Williams famously intones in Dead Poets' Society. Because you just never know.
I don't know why it should be, but when I read the papers - which I only really do at the weekends - I am always drawn to the column of birthdays. For some reason, I have a fascination for people's ages, whether it's to tut and say "They look a lot older than that", or to marvel that someone I thought had been dead for years is still plugging on. I felt the same when I heard that Billy Graham, that cheery old anti-semite and con artist, had been gathered unto his imaginary maker at the age of 99. I can't explain this fascination with the inexorable progress of time, but it exists, nonetheless.
I noticed it again today reading the Times magazine, which has an excellent interview with Sir Michael Caine, who will turn 85 later this year. How can that be? How can the star of Zulu, of Alfie, of The IPCRESS File, be not only a pensioner but considerably exceeding life expectancy? Money helps, of course, I suppose, and by all accounts he lives a pretty healthy lifestyle. Fair play to him: not my scene. Better to die in your cups than live on your rations, or something like that.
Anyway, whenever I saw a juicy titbit in the birth columns of the papers, I used to text my Dad. "Can you believe X is Y years old?" He would do the same. We'd also mark deaths in the same way: "RIP James Garner", or whoever it was, especially if they'd reached a ripe old age, or, conversely, had keeled over unexpectedly young.
I now wonder if that was a monstrous act of tactlessness. When my father was - eventually, after a lot of medical shortcomings - diagnosed with multiple myeloma, he knew it would kill him, short of stepping in front of the proverbial bus. My stepmother tells me he didn't want to know the details of how it would end, only whether it would be painful or squalid (answer: probably not). But here was a man in his mid- to late 60s, being confronted with the reality that he had a few years left, and, barring extraordinary luck, not more. No 85th birthday for him.
Should I have stopped with the texts? Were they painful reminders of the mortality which was closing in fast? If I'm honest, and this is shameful, it never crossed my mind. He didn't stop, either: the texts continued to flow. I like to think it was because he didn't like to make a fuss, to make a scene. He would creak and groan sometimes - one of the side effects of multiple myeloma is osteoporosis, and his back and leg gave him pain - but it was always a mutter, never a shout (at least not that I ever saw; I'm sure my stepmother saw much more pain than I did).
Maybe it even helped. I can't tell. We never talked about the end, and he never saw it coming as quickly as it did. Maybe I did the right thing in pursuing service as normal. I do hope I did.
Which brings me back, solipsistically, to myself. Forty years old. Realistically, that's beyond middle age. We're over the hump. The clock is ticking. In his last, heart-rending interview with Jeremy Paxman, when he was undergoing experimental treatment with minimal hope of success, the great Christopher Hitchens was asked if he was afraid of death. "No," he said, before qualifying that. He wasn't afraid of death: if you're as convinced an atheist as he was, how can you fear the state of simply not being? It would be absurd. What he feared, he said, was a grubby and sordid dying, a very different thing.
(He also, I think, feared a deathbed conversion to some form of theism, which is entirely understandable - think of Voltaire being asked to denounce the Devil and saying "This is no time to be making new enemies!" - but would have been anathema to his thinking, living self. Still, he was alive to the potential weakness, and explained it to Paxman.)
My father's death was the first I have ever witnessed, and I suppose it won't be the last, if I am spared. I still have a parent and two step-parents, whom I wish long and happy lives, as well as a step-grandmother. It will probably happen again.
Where is all this leading me? Maybe nowhere. Short of a trip to Dignitas - euthanasia can wait for another day - we can't choose the time or, to an extent, the manner of our passing, though I think UK doctors are still allowed to administer medication under the umbrella of the 'double effect' rule; that is, you know it will kill, but that is not the primary intention. Medical ethicists can correct me on that if I'm wrong.
I suppose the lesson for today is this: do things now. Because you never know. I had a dearly beloved colleague in the Commons who succumbed to cancer at (I think) 33. She was the brightest of bright sparks, a music DPhil and a brilliant clerk, who could do anything. I regret with all my heart that I didn't see enough of her when she was in what turned out to be her last days, but I can say I danced at her wedding. I think, often, of what she might have achieved, how her life with her husband might have turned out. Don't put things off. Carpe diem, as Robin Williams famously intones in Dead Poets' Society. Because you just never know.
Friday 2 March 2018
Let it snow
I was born in the late 1970s and grew up in the early '80s. I don't think I'm exaggerating, but we had more snow then. More white-covered Decembers and blizzardy Januaries. And, do you know what, I loved them. It's hard to pin down exactly why; partly it's an aesthetic thing - I think snow looks nice, though I have a contrary hatred for grey-brown slush which is unfortunately snow's inevitable corollary. But I also like the dampening effect snow has. When you go out in any decent amount of snowfall, which we rarely get in the UK now, there is a muffle that seems to descend on the world, a sort of silencer which makes footfall less noisy and which just seems, oh, I don't know, the lower the volume of everything. I like that.
This past week we have been going though an unusual cold snap. I read a meme on Facebook which said, more or less, "In the UK, this is called 'The Beast from the East'. In Finland, it is called 'Wednesday'." I'll come back to that. It is certainly the case that back in the mid-1980s, snow was something to be enjoyed, something which, at best, might call for your school to close. I understand that it is a different proposition for commuters who have to get to work, and I admit to shedding a small tear of pride at the story in the Daily Mail of the NHS radiographer who walked three and a half miles to do a 13-hour shift, then walked back again. She's the sort of person who - entirely vicariously - makes me fucking proud to be British, and proud to have the universal healthcare we have, whatever faults it has (and it has faults - discussion for another day).
I'm conflicted about the "snowmageddon", as one former colleague dubbed it this week. Yes, it's easy to ridicule our pitiful attempts to cope with what was, in the south of England, at least, not more than a light crust of snow. What about Canada? What about Sweden? They cope. Yet a couple of centimetres of the white stuff, and trains and cars and trucks grind to a halt. And, prima facie, it is ridiculous. We are, after all, as Len Deighton noted, about as far north as Labrador, yet we wilt at the faintest hint of properly cold weather.
Yes, but. Cold weather of the sort we've seen this week is extraordinarily rare in the UK. Maybe it's global warming, maybe it isn't - I'm not getting dragged into a Piers Corbyn-style argument about it. I'm not a scientist, so, unlike many in the public sphere, I won't speak whereof I do not know. But I have observed, over these past 40 years, that we rarely suffer severely cold weather. So it would, surely, be a ludicrous over-reaction to prepare every year for something that probably won't happen? Canada and Finland and Sweden and Norway have these conditions every year, so of course - of course - people are prepared - snow chains on tyres, well-stocked shelves, the whole nine yards. If we did that, we'd just look daft.
I have seen real cold. A few years ago, the family decided to take in the New Year in rural Vermont. It snowed heavily, and was minus 20 degrees outside (imagine my friend Hugh's delight when he discovered the Jeep he'd hired proved to be 2WD). But, up there in the Green Mountains, they know it's coming. Stowe, after all, is a popular ski resort, and they rely on the winter weather, rather than panic at its coming. I loved it. I loved standing on the snow-clad veranda with Hugh and my beloved Dad, smoking cigars late at night. But there is not here.
What's my point? I'm not sure I have one. Except for this - we just all need to calm down. As Danny says in Withnail & I, "This too will pass". Work from home if the trains are disrupted. Wear chunkier shoes (though I am wearing suede brogues with leather soles, and, you know what, I'm not dead). Choose your heaviest coat, and maybe a scarf. But it's not the end of the world.
This past week we have been going though an unusual cold snap. I read a meme on Facebook which said, more or less, "In the UK, this is called 'The Beast from the East'. In Finland, it is called 'Wednesday'." I'll come back to that. It is certainly the case that back in the mid-1980s, snow was something to be enjoyed, something which, at best, might call for your school to close. I understand that it is a different proposition for commuters who have to get to work, and I admit to shedding a small tear of pride at the story in the Daily Mail of the NHS radiographer who walked three and a half miles to do a 13-hour shift, then walked back again. She's the sort of person who - entirely vicariously - makes me fucking proud to be British, and proud to have the universal healthcare we have, whatever faults it has (and it has faults - discussion for another day).
I'm conflicted about the "snowmageddon", as one former colleague dubbed it this week. Yes, it's easy to ridicule our pitiful attempts to cope with what was, in the south of England, at least, not more than a light crust of snow. What about Canada? What about Sweden? They cope. Yet a couple of centimetres of the white stuff, and trains and cars and trucks grind to a halt. And, prima facie, it is ridiculous. We are, after all, as Len Deighton noted, about as far north as Labrador, yet we wilt at the faintest hint of properly cold weather.
Yes, but. Cold weather of the sort we've seen this week is extraordinarily rare in the UK. Maybe it's global warming, maybe it isn't - I'm not getting dragged into a Piers Corbyn-style argument about it. I'm not a scientist, so, unlike many in the public sphere, I won't speak whereof I do not know. But I have observed, over these past 40 years, that we rarely suffer severely cold weather. So it would, surely, be a ludicrous over-reaction to prepare every year for something that probably won't happen? Canada and Finland and Sweden and Norway have these conditions every year, so of course - of course - people are prepared - snow chains on tyres, well-stocked shelves, the whole nine yards. If we did that, we'd just look daft.
I have seen real cold. A few years ago, the family decided to take in the New Year in rural Vermont. It snowed heavily, and was minus 20 degrees outside (imagine my friend Hugh's delight when he discovered the Jeep he'd hired proved to be 2WD). But, up there in the Green Mountains, they know it's coming. Stowe, after all, is a popular ski resort, and they rely on the winter weather, rather than panic at its coming. I loved it. I loved standing on the snow-clad veranda with Hugh and my beloved Dad, smoking cigars late at night. But there is not here.
What's my point? I'm not sure I have one. Except for this - we just all need to calm down. As Danny says in Withnail & I, "This too will pass". Work from home if the trains are disrupted. Wear chunkier shoes (though I am wearing suede brogues with leather soles, and, you know what, I'm not dead). Choose your heaviest coat, and maybe a scarf. But it's not the end of the world.
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