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Dec 04
2017
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Helen Whitten
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After my last blog piece about working for Alistair Horne I had several interesting emails from people who wrote to me about the influence of an encouraging boss. These people had shifted some internal and external blocks for the individuals working for them, pushed them to do more than they might have done without their influence, sometimes helped them change direction entirely. It made me reflect further on turning points – those moments where something shifts or you may take a completely new direction. Some of these happen unexpectedly and others happen because you make them happen. Perhaps, as you read this, you might remember those people or events that have changed your own life.
I am experiencing a turning point now – selling my flat near Gloucester Road. It’s been a fabulous place to be, for work and for leisure – close to the tube, the park, my grandchildren, the museums, the Albert Hall and all of London. Room in which to see clients when I was working and just about large enough to entertain a few friends or family from time to time.
It’s a wrench, letting it go. I have had a place in London since 1968 so this will be the first time I have not had some kind of pad here since then – some 50 years! I started off in flats in Rosary Gardens, Observatory Gardens, Harrington Gardens (lots of Gardens though no actual garden to be enjoyed in any of those!). There were sometimes four of us sharing, sometimes five. We were strangers to one another – finding flatshares through ads in The Times or Evening Standard. The flats in Rosary and Observatory Gardens were in the basement and there would be slugs crawling up the walls and condensation crawling down. But we had fun. I remember Harrington Gardens cost me £22 per month rental – but then I was only earning around £800 a year in 1968!
And now I have broken out in shingles. Blast! Funny how the body reminds you of the pain you are in (sometimes rather painfully, as now!). Of course I should know all about it, having written Emotional Healing for Dummies with David. I knew that it hurt to let go of this flat and yet I was too busy to stop and feel that sadness – and selling it is anyway an essential part of David and I finding a nice house in Kew. And sometimes we have to let go of one thing in order to allow in another.
As I walk these familiar streets before moving out, I remember the ‘60s, High Street Kensington and Biba, the platform boots and short skirts. The air of optimism. It feels different today – but then of course none of us knew, in 1968, how ghastly the 1970s would be with power cuts, having a meal or bath by candlelight, the three-day week. So none of us know what is around the corner now. It looks gloomy but who knows? The ‘70s doom was followed by the ‘80s high. Life often surprises us.
Reflecting more on turning points, my first one was when I was around four years old and my parents returned to the UK, having lived in Portugal for many years. My father’s family, the Bucknalls, had a long history in the cork and shipping trade in Portugal but he was advised, in 1954, that plastics would transform the cork business and he would be better advised to return to England and find a new direction. Both my parents loved their life near Lisbon. My sister, brother and I had also been very happy growing up in the sunshine and warmth of Portugal and its people. So it was a sad moment for all, I think.
We sailed home and, if my memory serves me well, my brother, aged 6, dropped his teddy bear into the water as we were leaving harbour. It says much about the Portuguese love of children that the ship stopped and a nearby fisherman pulled the sodden bear out of the water, came up the gangplank and gave it to my brother. Of course I imagine I can remember a picture of this scene but, as with much of our lives, those images could well have been planted by my parents telling of the story!
Arriving in England was a chilly experience. We stayed near Chester and my memories of those years were of beautiful countryside but grey skies and grey playgrounds with Lowry-style streets and nasty little boys in grey shorts chasing me with stinging nettles! My mother found the people incredibly kind. And, looking back on it now, this turning point must have been a really challenging time for my parents, as they adjusted the family to life in the UK.
I was probably an odd child, speaking a mix of Portuguese words interspersed with English, and not used to English ways. I hated school until I went to Knighton House in Dorset. I remember so clearly making friends on the school train with Penny Corke, with whom I am still friends, and Ali Stamp. I felt I was in heaven in the Dorset countryside with ponies in the field and pet guinea pigs or rabbits in their pens. I enjoyed life in the dormitory with its chatter, dares and midnight feasts (I wrote home to tell my parents that it was “just like Enid Blyton”) and my independence. Boarding school isn’t all bad!
And on to Cranborne Chase where I started to write poetry, became totally Beatle-mad… and then read Dr Zhivago. Boris Pasternak became my hero. I had his photograph above my desk. He sparked my interest in Russia, politics and love, and has, I think, influenced my tendency to write a personal story within a socio-political setting.
And there’s always a teacher, isn’t there, who changes one’s life? My history teacher, Miss Jones, with her red hair, feisty spirit and her love of history moved me towards studying history for A level. My mother had despaired at my continued statements about “what’s the point of history, I am only interested in the future and space travel now!” and was delighted that Miss Jones, together with my wise tutor, Countess Zamoyska, managed to pierce through this idiotic girl’s brain and help me see that history was indeed a fascinating subject.
E H Carr’s What is History caught my imagination during A level and later I was lucky enough to study under Professor Richard Overy when I finally read history, aged 39, at King’s College, London. Overy taught The History of Political Ideas. He was both scary and inspiring and I was enthralled by his lectures on Wittgenstein, Marx and Hegel.
From school I went into publishing – where I earned a pittance but loved being surrounded by books. My boss at Macmillan, Caro Hobhouse, introduced me to research when she suggested I work for the jacket design Art Director, Cherriwyn Magill, in the role of picture researcher. This gave me the opportunity for a peripatetic life where (as has been the case for the rest of my career) no day was the same. I would be out at picture libraries, museums and newspaper libraries tracking down engravings, paintings or photographs for use on Macmillan’s cover designs. And from there, as I mentioned before, to historical research and Alistair Horne.
Towards the end of my history degree my tutor at King’s observed that I was good at pastoral care of the younger students and asked whether I had thought of working with people? A personality profile suggested that I could be a teacher, counsellor or coach. But, aged 42, to change career was terrifying and I needed some qualifications. It was during my Post-graduate at Thames Valley that my lecturer in communications, Lex McKee, gave me the idea of business training – his job as a lecturer looked such fun. So I decided that would be the way I would go.
Since then within Positiveworks there have been so many people who have supported my development – my sons, Bruce Abrahams, my late brother-in-law Leo Cavendish, Shirley Conran who suggested I do all kinds of things I never thought I could! And so many more. Then, as I moved towards retirement, meeting my creative writing tutor, Chris Sparkes, whose observation “I see you like to write narrative poetry” gave me a genre, setting me off on the journey to my first poetry collection, The Alchemist’s Box. And now here I am writing my blogs and exploring life after “work”.
And, as I say goodbye to my flat, and Kensington, I wonder …what’s going to happen next, for me… for you?
Nov 09
2017
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Helen Whitten
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The historian Alistair Horne died on 25 May this year and would have been 92 today, 9 November. I worked for him for some six years as a researcher on The Official Biography of Harold Macmillan. I suspect we all have a teacher or boss to whom we feel grateful . For me this is Alistair. I learnt so much from watching him write and feel now that I would like to capture some memories of my time working for him.
I remember that it took me six years to move him from his old portable Olivetti typewriter to a word processor. As a long-established writer and journalist, he tapped away surprisingly fast with two fingers but eventually he did see the benefit of being able to erase errors and edit paragraphs without the necessity of Tippex or multiple attempts at retyping specific pages to fit into his manuscript.
It was probably the only thing I was able to teach Alistair. When I started working for him in 1983 the ad in The Times was for a researcher for an “established author”. Established, he was. A historian with many books to his name including the classics A Savage War of Peace, on the Algerian War, The Price of Glory, Verdun 1916, and The Siege of Paris. At the time I met him, he was busy recording the life of Harold Macmillan.
I had just begun to feel ready to take on a job that was more demanding than the freelance picture research I had been carrying out for Penguin and Macmillan. My younger son had recently started nursery and I had more time on my hands.
On reading the advertisement for Research Assistant, I wasn’t sure whether I was sufficiently qualified for the job. I discovered later that Alistair had received some forty applications, many of which mentioned degrees, which I did not.
I had worked for Macmillan publishers for many years, first as a PA to an editor, Caro Hobhouse, and it turned out to be Caro who was editing Alistair’s biography. In my time in the editorial and picture research departments, I had come across Harold Macmillan as he would come into the office about once a week and walk around talking to the staff, senior editors and Board members.
So when, many years later, in 1983, I called the number in The Times and discovered that it was Alistair Horne writing the biography of Harold Macmillan it felt a little like destiny. At the interview the coincidences continued. I discovered that I was to take over the role of a previous Research Assistant, Serena Booker, who had been tragically murdered in Thailand aged only 27. Serena was the youngest daughter of my prep-school headmaster, John Booker and his wife Peggy, and sister of Private Eye and Daily Telegraph journalist, Christopher Booker. I remembered Serena running around my school, a much-cherished little girl with blonde hair and a lively nature. These were sad shoes to step into.
As Alistair and I talked it turned out that his own daughters had gone to my senior school, Cranborne Chase. One topic of conversation slid easily into the next. I was hired.
I learned so much during that time with Alistair. How he did his research. The questions that needed to be asked. The facts and dates that needed to be checked. I travelled to libraries. I once met A J P Taylor at the Beaverbrook Library though I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t recognise him until I mentioned this dapper man in a bow tie who had been helpful in tracing some facts and my mother said, “Darling how could you not recognise A J P Taylor when you bump into him!” I had an interesting visit to Chartwell, and to Macmillan’s own home at Birch Grove. It was fascinating reading the original letters from the troops in war, and Macmillan’s own diaries.
I watched Alistair place into files the relevant newspaper articles, letters, torn-out notes for inclusion in appropriate chapters, ticking off information as it was used. I saw him sketch out his work by laying these out on his desk as he typed. He would, like many authors, rise early and go down the garden to his conservatory office, next to the mews garage in St Petersburgh Place, W.2. where he lived with his beautiful second wife, Sheelin.
I did my best to find the facts, file, archive and type accurately but I am sure I made some mistakes. I suspect there were times when I drove him mad with my other responsibilities as a wife and mother. He would often ring our home in the morning, forgetting that I had my two young sons to take to school. This was before mobile phones, otherwise I think my school run would frequently have been interrupted with his thoughts for the day.
My sons would also benefit from the snippets of research I did for some of Alistair’s articles. He wrote travel pieces for the newspapers and, as a keen skier, he described helicopter skiing in the Bugaboos including details on how to survive an avalanche. I told my sons that should they ever get caught in an avalanche they should first ‘swim’ in the snow to prevent the snow getting too compacted around them. Then, if stuck, spit in order to see which way their spit was pulled by gravity so as to identify which way to move. Hopefully they will never have to use his advice!
I also worked on Alistair’s book on the children evacuated during the war and specifically on the tragedy of the Benares, the boat that was torpedoed, where many evacuee children were drowned. During this period of research I heard of Alistair’s own experience of being evacuated to the USA and how much he had enjoyed his time there where he had made friends for life. I interviewed children, now adult, who had been evacuated within the UK, some of whom had had happy times, others terrible. I heard of the homesickness, of the difficulty recognising parents when they returned home, of how fathers tried to assert their authority on the family when they returned from the war, of mothers who had worked on the war effort and were then pushed back into the kitchen, and more.
And as for Harold Macmillan himself, I ended up with a sense of respect for his mind, his wit and humour. Of his determination to live longer when he overheard a nurse say “it won’t be long” and thought “Bugger that!” I was impressed that he continued to enjoy half a bottle of champagne every evening well into old age. The biography could not be published until after his death, and I recollect Alistair observing that despite a generous advance, when all the work was taken into account, he had earned very little over the long period it took him to complete the manuscript. Another salutary lesson for me – not to have high expectations of financial reward for writing!
After publication I could have continued to work for Alistair on future books but decided finally to do the History Degree I had wanted to do since I was 17. So, aged 39, I completed the UCCA forms and Alistair filled out the piece designed for the Headmaster. I am sure having his name on the form made a significant difference to my being accepted on interview both by King’s College London and LSE. I accepted the offer for King’s and had a mind-opening time, stimulated by amazing lecturers such as Professors Richard Overy, Conrad Russell and David Carpenter. Mind you, I suspect Alistair would not have approved of the ‘safe space monitors’ that have recently been introduced to King’s and other universities!
And so he was influential in setting me off on the next part of my career journey, as although I went into professional coaching and training I believe that this background in the themes of history and philosophy have stood me in good stead in helping clients achieve perspective.
Alistair kindly mentioned me in his autobiography But What do you Actually Do? When I wrote to him to thank him for the mention, we discovered another coincidence – that I was now living in the village of Ropley, Hampshire, where, it turned out, he had spent many childhood years! I have found that there are certain people who come and go in one’s life that seem to have had an almost destined course to cross one’s path. Alistair has been one of these. And I thought of him often as I was researching and preparing to write my own books.
He had the courage to grasp the opportunities of his era – being a spy, involved in intelligence-gathering in Palestine in World War II under Sir Maurice Oldfield, head of MI6, then working in Berlin where his cover was as a Daily Telegraph correspondent. He lived and worked in France for many years and later established The Alistair Horne Fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford, to support young historians. He was made a CBE in 1992 and knighted in 2003, appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1993 and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. An impressive life.
For me there are many of his books on my bookshelf and many memories that continually reaffirm my love and respect for history. I feel fortunate to have known him and worked for him – I wonder, when you think back yourselves, which of your own bosses have left their mark and influence on your life?
Oct 25
2017
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Helen Whitten
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I fear this may turn into a bit of a rant … but if you’re sitting comfortably then I’ll begin and we shall see. Equally, you can always switch off but I hope you will hang on in here and see if it makes you think about how policies are being formulated today and perhaps question what feels fair. The issues I discuss revolve around some of the news stories that have been reported in the media recently and that have made me question how minority interests can alter the way all of us are being treated, whether we like it or not.
For example, I read in the paper yesterday that Britain’s Foreign Office has said that the term “pregnant woman” should not be used in a UN treaty because it “excludes” transgender people. Well I am sorry, I have every compassion with transgender people and hope that their needs are met and supported. However, no-one has asked me (or, I suspect, many other women) how we wish to be described in any UN Treaty. As a mother I choose to describe myself as a woman, as a ‘she’ or a ‘her’. I don’t mind if others call themselves ‘ze’ or ‘it’, or any other pronoun, just so long as they understand that it is respectful of my wishes to call me a she. As a pregnant woman I would have wished to have been described as such and not as some kind of neutral person. A pregnant transgender can choose for themselves what they prefer but not impose this on me. Just let me also choose. Surely the aim of inclusion is just that. By raising the identity of one group one does not have to wipe out the identity of another.
This news comes on top of the Office for National Statistics stating that they may no longer list whether we are a man or a woman in the next census. Apparently ‘other’ is not acceptable to lobby groups as a third option and so we may all be lumped into the same box as just ‘people’. I find this somewhat offensive. Mind you, I don’t mind being offended as I believe it is good to have one’s thoughts challenged. Nor do I mind being outvoted but both need to be based on the premise that someone has asked my opinion. But they haven’t. How many people have the ONS actually asked about whether this is acceptable?
I cannot see how the government, NHS or educational establishments can plan for the future if they do not know which type of people they are planning for. How do they ensure that there are adequate ante-natal and maternity services in the future if they don’t know how many women, or indeed transgenders, may end up needing them? How can they ensure that there are adequate services to cover prostate cancer if they don’t know how many men might require them? How do boys’ or girls’ schools plan places if they are not given detailed and reliable statistics in the Census about how many boys or girls are being born? Of course transgender requirements also need to be taken into account in a more inclusive way but men and women should not be lost in the process. It’s taken centuries for women to be counted at all so I am loathe to become invisible again.
We need to promote diversity and respect for every person living in this country, whether this relates to gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, but it seems to me that those who profess to be most liberal and who demand respect for themselves are in danger of neglecting to grant respect to others. If I am willing to call you ‘ze’, please allow me to be called ‘she’.
The discussion reminds me of a friend who, at the peak of the New Age movement in the 1990s, observed that there existed a “New Age Gestapo” – eg those who thought themselves so enlightened that they treated others as lower beings if they didn’t ‘get’ what the supposedly-enlightened ones were talking about. “Oh, you’re not on the journey yet” or “ you haven’t reached that stage of enlightenment yet” they would say patronisingly. Much the same is beginning to happen with the supposedly liberal diversity initiatives today – anyone who doesn’t immediately conform to the chosen viewpoint (chosen by a small but forceful group, I believe) is called a bigot. And that approach is far from liberal. It is fascist.
This was the sort of language that was used in a BBC radio play I heard about the subject, in which a mother at a school professed some concern that a boy who decided he was a girl could immediately have access to the girls’ toilets and changing rooms. It seemed to me to be a perfectly legitimate concern but the woman in the play was judged as prejudiced and ignorant. I didn’t hear any attempt to understand or allay her concerns. Instead everyone who agreed with the transgender agenda, as it was expressed, was “right” and anyone who didn’t was “wrong” and should be put back in their box and over-ruled. This is not inclusive nor respectful. This is not integration and it is not an example of a desire to understand others. The issues raised by the transgender movement are perfectly legitimate. But just because some people believe themselves to be non-binary should not result in silencing those who wish to describe themselves as binary.
Unless all people can express themselves and be accepted in the way they prefer (though obviously not if it is inciting hatred or violence to others) then it is not reflective of true diversity. What happens to those who would rather be called a pregnant woman, or told that their baby is a boy or girl rather than a person? They are treated as if they are unenlightened, as if they are definitely not on message and therefore in some way antediluvian, rather than just someone with the perfect right to voice a different opinion.
But different opinions are not tolerated these days it seems. These reports, along with the coverage of no-platforming, where certain lecturers are silenced at university, and where students demand ‘safe spaces’ or warnings before they read violent passages of war or rape, make me wonder what has happened to reasoned debate. I read today that Cambridge University will provide students with trigger warnings about articles that may contain right-wing politics (why not also left-wing communism?), paedophiles or eating disorders. This seems an anomaly as this so-called “snowflake” generation have been exposed to more violent and sadistic movies and video games than we ever were (I read today that horror movies are the fastest growing film genre) and yet apparently can’t be exposed to certain books or plays, including Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, in case it upsets them.
How can this elite group of intelligent young people attending university possibly learn about the history of humanity if they want to whitewash the reality of the cruelty and violence that human beings have and continue to carry out? If they aren’t willing to learn from the events of the past how will they be able to identify trends that might threaten humanity in the future? And why are the Vice-Chancellors pandering to these demands when university should surely be, as Universities Minister Jo Johnson stated this week, about freedom of expression and opening the under-graduate mind to new ideas?
Minorities need to be heard and respected but my point is that this does not mean everyone else has to conform to their demands. I suspect that the majority of students understand that they need to read the nasty bits of history or literature but it is the minority lobbying for no-platforming, no-offence and gender-neutrality who seem to get their voices heard. These lobby groups are influencing government and university bodies before the rest of us have had a chance to comment. Everyone else just has to shut up, as do, it seems, those women who would rather be recorded as a “pregnant woman” or listed as a woman in the census. On the one hand we are being told that gender is not binary but the argument around this is decidedly binary – you’re on our message or you’re not.
It strikes me that to move away from these binary arguments, which only cause judgement and alienation, both young and old would benefit from practising formal debating skills. Here they would be given the task of arguing for the opposite opinion to that which they have previously attached themselves. This could enable people to realize that there are many perspectives and that there is often some good reason in the arguments of the other side that they might have closed their mind to previously. This could result in closer understanding of common ground and a truer integration of diversity. As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty:
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…
(which leads me to think, on another topical and divisive subject, that this would be an excellent exercise for Brexiteers and Remainers alike!)
So, in summary, all I am asking is that if you wish me to understand your perspective and respect your right to hold it, then please do the same with mine and don’t demand that everyone is treated the way you wish to be treated, when they individually may wish to be treated differently.
Oct 10
2017
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Helen Whitten
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Summer holidays are over but the memories can last a lifetime. We have just had one of the most relaxing holidays we have ever experienced – in Greece on the island of Lefkada. A comfortable hotel, the San Nicolas, in the sleepy fishing village of Mikros Gailos, overlooking an exquisite view of a peaceful bay surrounded by unspoilt hills and mountains. There were two tavernas where we could sit and watch the fisherman load their nets and return with lobster, bream and red mullet. It got me thinking about holidays past and recent and the ingredients that make them memorable. Inevitably each of us look for different things from travel and David and I are lucky in enjoying similar pastimes, sometimes an adventure and sometimes a simple laze in the sun. This holiday was the latter.
We relaxed, walked, swam in incredibly clear waters, and read some excellent books. For those of you who appreciate a holiday reading list I will share with you that between us we read Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, Sam Bourne’s To Kill the President, George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (more on that to come in another blog!), Peter Nicholls’ Us, Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata, Kamila Shamsi’s Home Fire, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Patrick Mcgrath’s The Wardrobe Mistress, Irvin D. Yalom’s Staring at the Sun, Robert Harris’ Lustrum, and the start of his new book Munich. What a luxury to be able to lie next to the sea in warm sunlight and have one’s mind stimulated by so many new ideas, scenes, characters and events all happening in one’s head. And nothing, absolutely nothing, in one’s Outlook diary to have to rush to or action. Heaven.
This also gave me the time to reflect on memories of holidays as a child, as a parent or travelling alone. Very recently a friend of mine happened to mention that he only ever went on holiday abroad once with his parents. It made me realize that this was the same for me. My parents took us on boating holidays on the Norfolk Broads when we were young and then we had one holiday in Brittany as a family when I was about 14. After that they sent us alone to families in France, Spain, Italy to learn the language, broaden our minds and discover how to manage travelling independently. Invaluable. As I heard someone quote once, travel is one thing you buy that actually makes you spiritually richer.
Travel was expensive in the 50s and 60s. I think today’s young have accumulated many more air miles by the time they are 20 than I did by the time I was 40. The no-frills airlines have made travel accessible to vast numbers of people so that today people see the world and mix with other cultures as a routine part of life. Previous generations did not have this luxury. I remember that when I worked as a researcher for the late Sir Alistair Horne on The Official Biography of Harold Macmillan, he told me how Harold Macmillan had commented that although the charter flights from Gatwick flew noisily over his house in Sussex, Macmillan was actually delighted whenever he saw one of those yellow Clarkson’s planes as it meant that all kinds of people who could not previously have travelled abroad were now able to do so.
Later, as a parent myself, I realized that my parents hadn’t always had as relaxing a time as they might have wished on our family holidays! A time on the Norfolk Broads when my father got our boat stuck under Potter Heigham Bridge and never forgave us children for hiding downstairs in embarrassment. Another year, taking us on the River Thames, the engine broke down just as we were heading for a weir – luckily we were saved from a nasty drop by someone throwing us a rope!
But I suspect the worst holiday for them was when I was about 13 and my brother 15. My father answered an advertisement in The Times for a holiday on a houseboat in Cornwall. The boat was dilapidated and turned out to be at the bottom of a cliff, with the nearest toilets at the top of the cliff. When the tide went out we were on mud flats and the boat tilted dramatically to one side so that everything fell off the tables and shelves. As we manoeuvred to get on or off the houseboat, we were watched by an ancient Cornish fisherman whose boat was moored next to ours. He observed us with a venomous sneer on his face. And it rained and rained. There are only so many clotted cream teas one can eat and I suspect my parents struggled, trying to amuse us teenagers. We curtailed our stay. Of course as selfish young I suspect we only thought about how bored we were and gave little heed to how difficult the whole experience must have been for our parents.
When I think back on family life, though, it wasn’t the holidays that stand out in my memory as the most enjoyable moments. It was the simple times when our parents joined us in the garden to play French Cricket, or sat by the fire with us playing Cluedo or Monopoly. But for personal development and broadening of insight, travel is life changing. I wonder what your own experience of holidays has been as a child, parent or adult? I wonder what memories my sons have of our own family hols!
So, as we return and autumn arrives, I have been pondering how I can continue to keep Greece in my mind through the winter, so that I can feel I am on holiday even when I am not. Alain de Botton explores the experience of travel in his thought-provoking book The Art of Travel. He mentions J.-K.Huysman’s novel A rebours, 1884, whose eccentric hero, the Duc des Esseintes, decides to go to England after reading Charles Dickens. He gets as far as the Gare Saint Lazaire and visits an English tavern where he enjoys roast beef and Stilton and some ale but then decides it would be too much trouble to take the train to London. After all, had he not just experienced ‘England’ in this tavern and was that not enough? Apparently the Duc never left home again!
De Botton also describes another eccentric, Xavier de Maistre, born in 1763, who wrote a description of travelling around his own bedroom. De Maistre recommended this pursuit for those who were too poor to travel or had fear of highwaymen. He wrote of how, in his pink and blue pyjamas, he took the time to notice the elegance of the furniture in his bedroom as if for the first time, his argument being that we become blind to things of everyday beauty through habituation.
It’s an interesting phenomenon that the brain files as wallpaper those views we see often. We hardly notice the pictures on the walls of our homes, don’t look often enough with detail at the scenery we pass on our way to work, hardly compute the type of architecture that surrounds us, unless we have a little more time to wander rather than ‘be on the way somewhere’. This is the key difference to me of a holiday – the time to wander, reflect.
One thing I have learnt to do, since reading The Art of Travel, is to recognize that travel is in the mind. Also that our experience of travel relates to what we focus on. We can be in a beautiful place and yet have an argument with our partner, or only notice the negative aspects of the place we are visiting.
Equally, we can be back home and imagine, from time to time, that we are on holiday. I sometimes pretend I have arrived in London for the first time as a tourist. Despite having lived there since 1967, I imagine I am seeing the architecture for the first time, hearing the sounds of a busy ‘foreign’ city anew, noticing the amazing parks and gardens, the museums and galleries. This way I can have a holiday in my mind any time I like. And from now on I shall occasionally travel back to the sunshine on the waters of Mikros Gailos bay to refresh my mind with an imaginary summer even in the depths of an English winter. Where might you go …?
Sep 21
2017
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Helen Whitten
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I have been drawn to thinking about trust this week. How does one build trust to go back on a tube if one was involved in the Parson’s Green incident? Would I be willing to book a ticket on Ryan Air or would I be concerned that they might cancel my flight? Is Putin hacking to influence the German election? What does it take to create and maintain trust, or rebuild it when it has been lost?
The definition of trust I found online is a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something”. We know from listening to politicians from around the world that words themselves do not create trust. It’s easy to say something, quite different and more difficult to do it. So, as the old phrase goes, “action speaks louder than words”. I value those members of my family, colleagues or friends who do what they say they will do, who are there for me in a reliable way. It means that they provide some kind of anchor of stability in this wild and uncertain world.
But if that is what I value and expect of others then of necessity this is what I need to provide for them too and sometimes that requires that I put a mirror up to myself and accept where I have achieved a goal of reliability and where I haven’t. I fear I can identify several moments in my life where I have disappointed myself and others. We are all fallible and of course our politicians equally so.
Self-trust also means that I need to look to myself to follow through on goals that I have identified as important to me – a daily walk, eating healthily, forgoing that extra glass of wine of an evening, going to the gym. Oh dear, can I actually trust myself when so many of these good intentions don’t get fulfilled? I suspect that many of us let ourselves down with these everyday goals don’t we? Except perhaps you, dear reader!
But trust holds us together as a human community and I have personally found it most helpful to be open to trusting others until they prove me wrong. I try not to do this in a naïve way but I would prefer to be open to believing in other people from the outset rather than being suspicious or doubtful of strangers unless they give me good reason to be so. In this internet age we actually trust an enormous amount of strangers don’t we? We share intimate facts about our lives with an inanimate object asking us to tell it one’s date of birth, relationships, age, bank details, love interests and more, depending on the website. And, as in the rest of life, most of the time it works, though inevitably, as in all other walks of life, there are charlatans and fraudsters. My neighbour in London rents his flat via Airbnb, as do thousands of people around the world. 99% of the time this works brilliantly for him, but just occasionally he gets a tenant from hell. However, as long as the majority of experience is positive then there is still a reason to trust that most of the time trusting others works.
We unthinkingly trust our car mechanic when we get into our car for a journey, seldom questioning whether they have tightened a necessary screw sufficiently. Likewise we trust the airplane engineer, the electrician, the gasman and so many other people who can influence our everyday safety. Indeed if we felt we had to doubt or check everything it would make our lives impossible.
Forgiving and forgetting when someone has betrayed trust is hard but possible. You don’t necessarily forgive totally, you certainly don’t forget, but nonetheless there comes a time when the incident recedes into distant memory and trust builds up again.
I have been thinking of those caught up at Parson’s Green. I was at that station on 7/7 just when they shut down the tube system. The terrible incidents of that day lingered in my mind for many weeks as I boarded a tube train, just as the IRA bombings made me cautious back in the 1970s. But gradually you realize that life is for living and that in fact it is a happier life when you can let go and trust. Even if you can’t expect all things to be well you can retain a sense that there is enough trust in the world to encourage us to value it as a precious quality that needs nurturing.
I hope that there will be enough politicians out there who endeavour to be trustworthy and lead the world with wisdom. But all political parties have done u-turns over manifesto promises. We can generally sniff out those we find flaky and intuit when something a politician says doesn’t add up. Nonetheless it is up to us as voters to keep them to their word when possible, not just to give in to a world of false news.
Ryan Air will have to work hard to regain trust though I wonder whether Michael O’Leary really cares. It might take months or even years for those involved in the Parson’s Green bomb to feel absolutely at ease as they board their tube for work or school.
And so now, because I prefer to be reliable, I shall leave early to go and pick up my granddaughter from school because I feel it is important to us both that I am not late. I like to think that she can trust me to be reliable.
Ultimately trust seems to be tied up strongly with morality – being honest, doing what you say you will do, being there when you say you will, not betraying confidences, keeping promises and not being creative with the truth. In this post-truth world these actions seem to me to be more important than ever.
Sep 14
2017
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Helen Whitten
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We seem to be having some kind of war on gender. This week a family removed their six-year-old son from a school because another boy was allowed to come to school in a dress. The event has led to much debate on the radio this week. Alongside this, leading department stores have announced that they will not brand clothes specifically for boys or girls but just for “kids”. A few weeks ago BBC2 transmitted a programme “No more boys and girls – can our kids go gender free?”
I wonder whether, in all this coverage, we are not losing sight of simple biology and common sense? After all, way before marketing or advertising came on the scene, men and women in tribes throughout the world have dressed differently and taken on different roles . In the animal world – and we are descended from apes after all – males and females look and act differently. They have not been to primary school, nor been bombarded with pink or blue clothes or stereotypical toys but nonetheless behave differently. Can we not celebrate our differences while at the same time supporting those in doubt?
Of course transgender children need compassion and if they are questioning their gender identity they need expert counselling. A child of six can have no understanding of the adult world and how it works, has not reached puberty, and is vulnerable to the ideas of their parents and teachers. It is one thing for a young boy to dress up in girls’ clothes, quite another to assume that this means he wants to go through all the biological restructuring and social upheaval that is implied in the transgender process. Clothes are only an outer wrapping. How can a child this young truly understand the lifelong implications of changing gender?
It seems to me that small children are becoming pawns within current ideological trends and the agendas of lobbying groups. It is very young children that are being discussed here – six or seven years old. In today’s world they are having thoroughly adult facts presented to them not only about transgender but also all the LGBT themes. Children are unlikely to have any real knowledge of heterosexual relationships but are now learning about all the complexities of human gender and sexuality at an extraordinarily young age. Call me old-fashioned but I believe this can be confusing. Is it helpful to expose all children to these questions at such a young age when we are actually talking about a small minority of people affected?
I feel we also need to take account of those families who may, for their own psychological or cultural reasons, put their children under pressure to change gender. I suspect many of us know those whose parents wanted a girl and treated a boy like a daughter or wanted a son and treated a daughter like a boy. Likewise there are many cultures where a boy is valued more greatly than a girl. Might making the transgender process too easy lead to family pressure?
Chatting to some teenagers recently I learnt from a thirteen year old that several of her friends decided that they were bisexual, only to change their minds a week or so later. She told us that it could be seen as cool and being heterosexual as dull. They spoke articulately of their disapproval of President Trump preventing transgenders from serving in the armed forces yet seemed unsure what being transgender really involved. There was tolerance but even in teenage years there was also confusion.
I think we are in danger of muddling up stereotypical beliefs about roles with biology. Of course we don’t want to treat girls as sissy princesses or tell boys they mustn’t cry but this is different from encouraging them to question their own gender. There are physical and hormonal differences. Males have XY chromosomes and females XX. Hormones such as testosterone and oestrogen impact both brain and body as well as behaviour. All this is discussed in detail by Professor Simon Baron Cohen of Cambridge University in his book The Essential Difference where he describes a spectrum.
The programme “No More Boys and Girls – can Our Kids go Gender Free?” made me question why we might want to have “no more boys or girls”? Humans procreate through males and females – do we really want to finish off the human race?
The programme made some valuable points about the shaping of expectations due to social norms – parents and teachers expecting girls to play with dolls and soft toys and boys to play with cars and guns etc. This was the same old stuff many of my generation attempted back in the 70s and 80s, mainly, I have to say, without success as even if we didn’t give our sons a toy gun they crafted them out of pieces of wood. Having unisex school uniforms with trousers might be practical but I do question the wisdom of having unisex school toilets, which I understand is the current plan.
We are different. We have different bodies that we have to learn to manage. Boys don’t experience periods, girls don’t experience teenage erections. There is biology that affects our lives. I personally would not have wanted teenage boys sharing toilets when I was a teenager managing periods for the first time. Even today as an adult I am quite glad of the respite of a female-only loo where I can take a breath and brush my hair without any interruptions.
Growing up is confusing. We can accept and celebrate all the LGBT differences but I believe we need to be careful not to overstate the likelihood of the experience when teenagers, especially, are notorious for copying their friends just for the sake of it. I recently heard of a 16 year old boy who transitioned to being a girl as he had felt unhappy with life and yet, having gone through major and unpleasant treatment, was just as unhappy afterwards. Another troubled young man became a woman and was equally troubled afterwards. Could their discontent have been with life in general rather than gender? Perhaps they were going through the usual teenage angst and depression that many of us go through? But they now have to live with the consequences of their decisions for the rest of their life.
Aren’t we possibly overemphasizing the media coverage on these topics? It is excellent that there is more knowledge and understanding of gender and sexuality than there was in my childhood but are we in danger of planting seeds of doubt that might not need to be there? There has to be a balance in how we express these issues.
Each gender contributes a different quality of behaviour, emotion and energy to our endlessly complex and wonderful world. I would feel sad if future generations felt unable to celebrate the differences they bring. Wouldn’t it also be rather dull? But, as I say, perhaps my ideas are out-dated. I do sometimes feel I am living in some kind of sci-fi new world where we are turning out robots who look the same and think the same! In the name of liberal ‘tolerance’ we seem in danger of creating automatons intolerant of the majority norms of nature.