|
March 2001 |
|
|
Back to
|
Sunday 4 March
For once, I am glad that the week is over. Not that it is over yet, because I shall have to go in to work tomorrow morning to finish off the jobs that I did not have time to complete during the week. I don't mind that happening once in a while. What made it such a bad week was that there was a major crisis involving a colleague. I don't want to go into the details, so let's just say that on Wednesday it looked as though she would either resign or have a breakdown. In either case, I would have been left with the impossible job of picking up the pieces. Even when there is a serious crisis like that, it doesn't normally keep me awake at night. When I was Chairman of the School in the 1980s there were some very stressful times (and I blame that for the fact that I started to go bald at that time). But I always managed to switch off mentally from the job when I went home in the evening, and to forget about all the problems until the next day. But yesterday morning I woke up at about 4 a.m., and couldn't get back to sleep again. Usually if I wake up in the middle of the night, I invent some restful fantasy to indulge myself in, and then it only takes a few minutes to drift off to sleep again. For this procedure to work, the fantasy must be plausible enough for me to believe that it might actually happen. For instance, ... no, on second thoughts I don't think I want to share any of them. You'll have to make up your own. Yesterday morning I couldn't get my brain to believe any fantasy. It kept pulling me back to real life, and brooding over the impending disaster at work. I tried to tell myself that things always seem worst at night, and that there was probably nothing to fret about. But it took a couple of hours for me to get back to sleep, and the alarm went off soon after that. So I went through the day in a bleary daze. But the feared disaster never occurred, and by this afternoon the crisis seemed to be over, leaving me with nothing worse than the backlog of other jobs that I will have to clear up tomorrow. An incident like that makes me realise how lucky I am that I don't normally get wound up like that. A lot of people don't have this ability to shut down the "worry centre" in their brain. I don't know how they manage to get through life at all.
At Tim's suggestion, I have been reading the book The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, by Michael Warner. This radical queer critique of sexual ethics has created a stir because of its opposition to gay marriage. But that is just one of the themes of a wide-ranging book. Tim and QueerScribe have begun a discussion on the book, chapter by chapter, and have invited others to join in. So here goes. Chapter 1 deals with The Ethics of Sexual Shame, and starts by citing the example of the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes:
Michael Warner points out that this practice has not really caught on, anywhere in the world, in the intervening two and a half thousand years. This shows that the sense of shame, the constellation of inhibitions and taboos surrounding sexual acts, is deeply seated in human nature and cannot just be wished away. Much of Michael Warner's first chapter is taken up with a shrewd analysis of how the sense of shame has been exploited by political and religious leaders as a means of reinforcing their power over people. He then goes on to celebrate those queer activists who have neutralised the politics of shame by taking pride in "shameful" activities. He says "The lesbian and gay movement at its best has always been rooted in a queer ethic of dignity in shame", and he takes delight
He doesn't appear to advocate masturbation in the marketplace, however, and it seems to me that his strategy of overcoming shame by celebrating it and seeking dignity in it somehow fails to come to terms with the true nature of sexual shame. Not that I have anything at all against screaming drag queens, S/M workshops, or masturbation. But not in the marketplace. The problem is, how can one respect the desire of most people for some reticence and privacy to surround sexual activity, without attaching guilt and condemnation to the activities themselves? I think that Warner sidesteps this problem. The other main theme of Chapter 1 is the distinction that Warner makes between shame and stigma. Shame is something attached to particular acts; stigma is a condemnation applied to a person because of their inherent nature (in particular, because of their homosexual orientation). The idea that a person has an inborn sexual orientation is a relatively recent one, which developed in the nineteenth century. Warner presents the development of the concept of sexual orientation as though it was a conspiracy by the medical profession to stigmatise homosexuals:
He says that it was only later that gay people began to claim this inborn orientation for themselves. He cites the sexual historian Michel Foucault as his authority for this assertion. Now I am no historian, and I haven't read any of Foucault's work, so I'm in no position to challenge this. But it seems more likely to me that the notion of sexual orientation was something that was in the intellectual air of the mid nineteenth century, and that it was more or less simultaneously developed in a positive way by pioneer homosexuals, and in a negative way by hostile medics and psychologists. My only reason for thinking this is that someone pointed me to a very impressive web site on the life of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first known out-of-the-closet gay activist. As early as 1864, he was making speeches asserting that homosexuals are natural, not sinners, diseased, or criminal. The web site is well worth a visit. Well, those are my reactions to the first chapter of Warner's book. I haven't tried to engage in a discussion with what Tim and QueerScribe have to say about it. Maybe a dialogue will develop as we move on to the later chapters. ADDED SUNDAY 18 MARCH: The links to Tim's site given above are no longer valid. Tripod have deleted his site, without even informing him, apparently because he "violated their terms of service." I can't imagine what led them to that conclusion. In my opinion, Tim's site was one of the best on the net, with a level of class and distinction that you won't find elsewhere on Tripod (or anywhere else), and it certainly didn't contain any material to cause offence. For the time being, Tim's site is available here. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about Tripod and their behaviour.
Panic over, more or less. Tim's site is back where it should be. Tripod have issued an anodyne statement to the effect that it was all a big mistake, and they didn't really mean any harm. Believe it if you will.
Remember our American friends Stan and Pat? They spent a sabbatical semester in Leeds last autumn, and we invited them over to share Thanksgiving and Christmas with us. They have gone back to Texas now, but before they left they asked if we would like to have some of the possessions they acquired during the time they were here. One of these items was a small 13" TV with a built in video recorder. We already have two televisions, one of them with a digital cable connection that Mary uses, and the other one is a little portable model that I use on the odd occasions when I watch TV. But the portable TV doesn't have a video connection, so I have given it to some friends of ours and kept Pat and Stan's TV for myself. I thought that it would be useful to be able to record some of the good films that are occasionally broadcast late at night, so that I could watch them the next day. You have to realise that this is an adventurous new development for me. I have never used a video recorder before, it's the one form of technology that Mary is proficient in using and I'm not. Well it turns out that they don't broadcast as many good films as I thought they did. Pat and Stan went back to America at the beginning of January, and for at least two months after that I didn't find anything at all that I wanted to record. (Incidentally, we haven't heard much from Stan and Pat since they went home. They have been caught up in a miserable family tragedy, but that's another story.) But during the past week there have been two good films on late night TV. What's more, I succeeded in setting the timer on the video correctly both times. The first film was Rain Man, with a superb Oscar winning performance from Dustin Hoffman as an autistic man, and a highly photogenic Tom Cruise as his younger brother. Okay, I'm 13 years behind the rest of the world in seeing this movie, but I'm sure that I enjoyed it as much as I would have done if I saw it when it first came out. The other film was comparatively new: Love and Death on Long Island. Again, I had not seen the movie until now, but I did read the book by Gilbert Adair, on which it is based, several years ago. It is a "Death in Venice" type story about a widowed middle-aged author, Giles De'Ath, who goes to the cinema one afternoon intending to see an art house movie but instead finds himself watching a soft porn junk film "Hotpants College II". On the point of walking out in disgust, he is mesmerised by the lead actor (played by Jason Priestley, who is moderately good looking, but not irresistible enough to make the subsequent story convincing). De'Ath's infatuation with the actor takes him to the boy's home on Long Island, leading to an inevitable rejection. As usual when a book is made into a movie, something gets lost along the way. The film was mildly amusing and entertaining, but it didn't have the subtlety of the book (which I strongly recommend, if you haven't read it). Of course, Death in Venice is even more strongly recommended, but I'm sure you've already read that. If I stop updating here for a while, you'll know that it's because I have been watching too many films on television. Who knows, I might even start renting videos from Blockbuster. But I somehow doubt that.
The clocks have gone forward, and spring is supposedly here. But there hasn't been much sign of it yet. We had the biggest snowfall of the year on Thursday, only about three inches of it but that is quite enough to bring Leeds slithering to a halt if it comes unexpectedly. This little blizzard had not been forecast, so I knew that there would be trouble on the roads. When I woke up and saw the snow outside, I got up as fast as I could, had a quick breakfast and drove in to work early so as to beat the rush hour. Sure enough, the gritters and the snowploughs had been caught napping, and even the main roads were slushy and slippery. But they were still fairly empty, and I was at my desk soon after 7.30 a.m. Other people were not so lucky. My secretary took three hours to drive in from her home in Ilkley, a journey of about 20 miles. By lunchtime a warm front had moved over and the snow had already mostly gone. This has been a quiet, domestic weekend. François has returned my ladder and I have been working on the outside of the house, clearing the blocked gutter and replacing the outside light. The only thing wrong with the light was that the bulb had blown. But I had to replace the whole fitting because the old one had rusted solid and I could not remove the cover. I found that the local branch of Homebase was selling an outside light fixture almost identical to the old one for £4.39, including a 500 watt halogen bulb. I would have expected to pay that much for the bulb alone. Mary called me down from the ladder at tea time to announce that she had been baking some brownies. "What a domestic little housewife I am," she said, flourishing a packet of instant triple chocolate brownie mix. "What a busy home handyman I am," I replied, blowing a thick layer of dust off the electric masonry drill that hadn't been used for months if not years. There's a lot to be said for the quiet, domestic life, though I have to admit it doesn't make for riveting journal reading.
Yesterday morning I set off to drive in to work as usual. I was in the left lane of King Lane, in rush hour traffic moving slowly towards the roundabout at the junction with the Leeds Ring Road. The car in front of me moved off into the roundabout, which was free of traffic. I glanced over my shoulder to see if it was safe for me to follow. As I did so, the car in front suddenly braked and I was unable to avoid running into it. I couldn't have been travelling at more than 5 m.p.h., but there was a horrendous crunch as we collided. We both pulled over, I got out and inspected the damage and waited for the other driver to do the same. But she didn't get out of her car. She wasn't hurt, but she was obviously in a state of shock. She said she didn't want to leave her car, and she invited me to sit in her front passenger seat while we exchanged names, addresses and insurance companies. It was all very civilised, no arguing, acrimony or blaming. But it felt very odd to me to be sitting in her car as she asked me how to set about making an insurance claim. I wasn't able to help her on that, because the last time I was involved in a car accident was in 1966 and I don't remember much about that. There was only slight damage to both cars, and we were both able to drive away. When I got to the office, I phoned my insurance broker. She said that she would contact a bodywork repair shop, who would get in touch with me to arrange for the car to be repaired. I didn't phone Mary, because she likes to sleep in in the mornings and I didn't want to wake her with the news. The broker also told me that my insurance policy has some kind of protected no claims bonus, which entitles me to make two claims in any five year period without losing the bonus. So I can have another shunt in the next five years and still not have to pay for the repair. :) The receptionist from the repair shop phoned a couple of hours later, sounding very apologetic indeed. "I'm afraid I may have alarmed your wife," she said. Apparently she had phoned our home number first (contrary to instructions) and had cheerfully told Mary that she was calling about the accident to the car. So after arranging to bring the car in for repair today, I immediately phoned Mary to reassure her that the accident had not been serious. She was quite laid back about it, though. She reckoned that if it had been serious she would have heard about it sooner. Mary had lunch with Lorraine yesterday, and told her about what had happened. Lorraine said that she had been involved in two accidents just like that, at the same roundabout. Each time, another car had run into the back of hers, and each time she blamed herself (once she had changed her mind and braked suddenly at the last moment, and the other time her car stalled). Now Lorraine is the sort of person who blames herself for living. She would never assume that the other party might also be at fault. Even so, I was relieved when Mary told me about this, because I had been blaming myself for what happened yesterday. When there is a shunt like that, one normally assumes that the driver who runs into the car in front is the guilty one. But I now think that there was probably some fault on both sides. Although it was only a very minor collision, I felt very shaken by it all day, and I didn't want to write about it here yesterday evening. Instead, I spent the evening listening to the Schubert recital on Radio 3 and doing a relaxing crossword. But this evening I have had to fill in the insurance claim form, so I have had no choice but to go over the details of the accident again. In fact, the opening sentences of this entry are essentially the account of the crash that I wrote on the claim form. I still don't know long the car will be in the repair shop. But today I have been scooting around in the little courtesy car that they supplied. It is a little Vauxhall, almost new, with a manual gearshift, and it is quite fun to drive. So they can take as long as they like to repair the Volvo.
In the picture, Dad is looking off into the distance, not making any contact with the camera, and that symbolises how I feel about him. I was never really close to him. It wasn't that he was in any way hostile or unapproachable. It was just that we were not on the same wavelength, and never seemed to connect. My brother was much closer to him than I was. They shared the same interests, in canals and traction engines, and they used to go out for excursions together to county fairs and traction engine rallies. But my interests were more cerebral. I always felt a bit awkward with Dad and never knew what to say to him. Mum is looking straight at the camera, with a kind but slightly strained smile. Again, that's her all over. She was the kindest and most considerate person you could imagine. But she kept her emotions to herself, and never encouraged us to be open at an emotional level. Her own mother died when Mum was 28, several years before I was born. Her father reacted to this like a true Victorian gentleman, with a stoical stiff upper lip. Mum said that he never once wept at his wife's death, or showed any emotion in public. Mum was deeply affected by this. She admired his courage in the way he dealt with his bereavement, and she showed the same restraint in her own emotional life. I suppose my one regret is that I have inherited some of that emotional inhibition. In every other way, I am grateful for the way they brought me up. Above all, they taught me to believe in myself. Not (I hope) in a brash way, but through their own support and confidence in me, they gave me the confidence to believe that I could achieve anything that I wanted. I miss them. I wish they were still alive.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
I
think this is one of those times when a picture can say much more than
words can. The picture was taken on 1 September 1984, the day of their
50th wedding anniversary. A bit more than five years later, they were both
dead. Since I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, the only way that
I can think of them as still living is that they live on in me and the
rest of their family through the influence that they had on us. That influence
was almost entirely a good one, and I can't begin to put into words how
grateful I am for the way that they brought me up and for the stable, loving
atmosphere of our home. In fact, I find it hard to say anything about my
feelings for them, so this entry may be a short one.