Letters To A Kingfisher - 6

 Dear King (if may presume such intimacy?),

It has been a while and for that I apologise. It's not as though we haven't been keeping an eye on each other though. Do we be both know the other is there? You seem to watch me sometimes while I make sure to watch you often. If I shelter in the little summer house on my landing stage, where I find I can focus better on writing, I see you land and perch on the swan neck of my tiller. When you do that you are only two metres away from me. We are separated by that short distance and a pane of glass. Your colours are more glorious and bring me more joy than you will ever know. Are you shy, nervous, or are you playing a game? Do you know how much I want a good photograph of you? Although I have learned to sit and watch for extended periods I am sometimes tempted to reach for my phone to take the best photograph ever. As I move so do you. You take off and dart away down the river, hurtling mere centimetres above the surface until you reach your next perch. John the fisherman said you perched on one of his rods a couple of weeks ago. He was very pleased at your stereotypical pose. It's hard to avoid a tinge of jealousy when you share your favours so freely.

I don't know whether you and the cormorant are rivals for the same meal of fish. You, as with your cousins the herons, egrets and gulls are quite forensic in your approach to fishing. You watch, wait, dart and retrieve. I saw the moorhen making off with a small fish in its beak a couple of days ago. I didn't realise they were omnivorous until then, but I looked it up on a wildlife website and yes, they are; mainly pesca-vegetarians. I do wonder what cormorants do when they dive. Are they indiscriminate as they sweep into a shoal for lunch or do they pick off smaller fish one at a time; swallowing one before grabbing the next? Why would they hold their breath for so long if they only wanted one fish? I know when a submerged cormorant is near me because the fish scatter, many leaping to break the surface with a splash like the sound of falling dominoes, in tiny flashes of silver. In panic they will often knock into the hull as they dart to escape. Sometimes, the panic is caused by a pike and I know there are a few of those around at the moment. I've seen them reeled in by the anglers. I don't like the idea of catching fish simply for sport, but it would be untoward if I made a fuss. One of the anglers said there was a zander under my boat the other day. I didn't know they'd reached this part of the river, but I suppose it was only a matter of time since they are invasive and predatory. When someone is fishing nearby I try to show neighbourly interest without offering encouragement. It's a fine balance. For my part I prefer to watch the fish in their environment. The view into the water is only clear on still and sunny days when the sun is high over the opposite bank. Most of the time the surface is almost opaque making fish only visible when they come very near the surface or nibble at a piece of passing jetsam much of which has been discarded by nearby plantlife. When the water is dark I watch for the v-shape that breaks the surface denoting what I have always imagined to be the passage of a pike deeper down. Those v-shapes move at speed. 

There are three or four swan families that pass this way. I have kept an eye on one special family since they were eggs in the nest on the opposite bank. Eight cygnets hatched earlier in the summer and grew in their juvenile plumage. One day there were only seven. I thought one must have fallen foul of a predator, pike, mink, fox ...? Then, a few days later, there were eight cygnets again. This time they were chasing away the runt, the one that had yet to begin to develop its white feathers of adulthood. This behaviour continued for a several days and I assume the poor young thing eventually got the message and left because, now once again, there are only seven cygnets. Strangely, the cob has been absent over the past couple of weeks. Swans mate for life, but perhaps he has a bigamous family elsewhere? Perhaps he decided he needed time out from the kids. The pen is still with them. If I go out when they are near, or if I open the galley window, they come to greet me. I'd like to think it was for the conversation, but I suspect they want an easy meal. I don't make a point of feeding them, because I rarely have any scraps. They would reach up and take food from my fingers if I offered it. Yesterday, the family came by. One of the cygnets had what appeared to be a fishing float poking from its beak. I suspect it had taken a hook from a discarded fishing line. They left before I could do anything helpful. I looked up the nearest RSPCA wildlife centre and phoned. I was subjected to a many branched tree of options. By the time I got to option five I'd forgotten options two and three. I pressed the wrong button and halfway through the next speech I was cut off. I sent them an e-mail message, but have not yet had an acknowledgement or a reply. The office is not attended regularly because of the virus situation. Swans are now also victims of covid.

Stay well, my friend.

marsh

Of Things That Crash And A Sting In The Tail

I don't have a television. I don't have a television licence so I refuse to use the watch again services of the terrestrial channels. My closest interaction with terrestrial television occurs when I pay for each Doctor Who series as it comes out and download it weekly as it becomes available. Otherwise my go to source of mindless entertainment is Netflix. Many times now I have found myself caught in the spiral of watching a series until it comes to an end. Unfortunately some are just too badly written to make it. A series I am currently watching started with a promising premise - a bunch of genius young adults with mathematical, engineering, computer and problem solving skills decide they need a "human" (their affectionate term for the rest of us) to help them negotiate their way through life. In their world EQ is not the equalisation I apply to my recordings, but "emotional quotient", something that scores far less highly than each individual's IQ. Their interpreter turns out to be an attractive young mother of a child who refuses at first to interact with the outside world. This team of exceptional people, known as "Scorpion" (giving the series its title) comes into the orbit of Homeland Security and is pimped out to solve problems and save the world - a different and often unbelievable crisis featuring unlikely solutions that are written to sound quasi-plausible per episode. As I said the premise sounds interesting, but after so many episodes and so many seasons the arc of most of the stories has become predictable. I may not make it to the end if it doesn't pick up.

I'm no genius, but ideas I have a few, though mostly these days it is my own fear and lack of knowledge that prevent me from getting on with carrying them through to completion. I have a page on Bandcamp where visitors can listen to whatever music I decide to put up and they can even buy the download version should they so wish (that would, of course be marshlander.bandcamp.com)  There is a "merchandise" option and I thought that some people might like to buy one of the limited edition and remaining copies of my CD. You know, Christmas is coming and all that. However, dealing with postage costs, returns policies, codes for esoteric functions ... I look at the page with all the boxes to fill in and my heart quails, I can feel the quailing. I have blank greetings cards of the album cover with the beautiful Mark Whittle-Bruce portrait of the not so beautiful me and the same applies. More quailing.

Another brilliant idea I've wanted to implement for some time is to make videos of some of my songs. I have lots of footage of boat trips I've undertaken, but somehow using iMovie or Final Cut Pro X escapes me altogether. I fall at the first hurdle. If I decide to start a new "project" why is anything I've imported from a previous failed project still on the screen? In my imagination "new project" suggests a blank page. If I start deleting the leftovers, what am I deleting? Do I lose the video altogether or is it simply removed from the "new project"? The video I have recorded is mostly loaded on to my computer from my phone. I attempted a Facebook live stream. I was proud of myself for managing to keep a fairly coherent commentary running during the filming while I was trying to keep the boat on course and not crash into bridges. However, somehow the audio track has been chopped into unintelligible machine gun rattles of sound. I realise that an audio commentary is of limited use in a music video, but it should make sense if I want to edit together a record of a journey I've undertaken and post it here, for example. It does nothing of the sort and the video is also pretty jerky. The "mute audio" function in iMovie took a moment to find so I clicked it, but the stuttering noise persists.  What!!?

I quite like the idea of having my music collection in one small place. After much research I bought a Brennan BB1. This has the advantage of being an internet radio as well as a music player. I can use it to listen to my friends Richard Penguin, on Future Radio and Simon J on the famous ex-pirate station 242 Radio. Unfortunately it does not seem to find West Norfolk Radio, so I can't listen to yet another friend, Jane Clayton. Regarding its other main function, it looked perfectly straightforward to copy the albums I have stored on my computer to the BB1. It is not. My BB1 seems to have given up at about 250 albums. I bought a large capacity USB key that should have had enough additional capacity for my whole collection. The BB1 does not instantly recognise the music on the key, but instead shows lots of folders that need to be scrolled through before getting to any music. The key filled up a whole lot faster than I was expecting too, so I spent more money on a solid state drive. That drive is not recognised at all. There is a computer app that is supposed to be the interface between the computer and the BB1. It is supposed to make the whole process easier. It does not.

In desperation I have referred to YouTube instructional videos, my usual source of helpful knowledge, but I've yet to find one that addresses my problems. I have registered with the Brennan users forum where the uninitiated can seek help for whatever ails them. If help is there it has passed me by because even the questions appear to be asked in some secret language. This is supposed to be a consumer product, but it is seriously "nerdy" - sorry, but I cannot think of another and less emotive adjective to describe the discussions. The questions just about make sense, but the answers are riddled with the kind of jargon that leaves me reeling. Support? It does not.

There was a time when my job was to help teachers cope with new technology in music. Maybe my brain was better joined up in those days because I thought I did a reasonable job of interpreting some tricky concepts and processes. Now, the shoe is truly on the other foot and I am lost. I think I need to engage the services of a younger enthusiast, I wonder if Ralph, the twelve year-old genius from Scorpion could help. Probably not.

Of Angling Martins and Smoke Reduction

I ... barely ... dare ... move ... to ... type ....

A kingfisher, in all its gaudy gorgeousness has just landed on the swan neck of my tiller. I'm sitting in a little shed staring in wonder from barely two metres away. This is a scene that has played out many times. I know from experience that as soon as I move this monarch of pescatarianism will be off. That doesn't stop me reaching in ultra-slow-motion for my mobile phone to catch the moment ... but even that is too fast and it has gone. It will return. The kingfishers (demoted in French to les martins pêcheurs) are one of the great joys of my life. I have had many very close encounters, but have yet to manage to take a decent photograph. Any that I have taken show the bird as a smudge of that electric blue or coral chestnut against a background of green or brownish grey. I know full well that if I do stay still, so will the kingfisher. I have waited before now for a full thirty-five minutes for it to move. One of the wonders is that a bird that seems to live life at such a speed can keep it up without having to feed constantly. I guess the plentiful supply of small fish that swim around the boat (cormorants permitting) are particularly nutritious. A couple of my friends have managed to take some great photographs of kingfishers. One has even managed to take a sequence of one diving into the water and catching its dinner. I am envious of their patience and skill. Ah, I knew it would be back ...

Autumn and this young old man's heart turns to thoughts of how to stay warm when the weather changes. We have "enjoyed" a long warm season this year. I'm not sure that "enjoy" is actually the correct term since any enjoyment is clouded by thoughts of climate change as monthly temperatures continue to break all previous records.

The caricature of the liveaboard boater is of someone who travels about the waterway with lots of wood stacked on the roof. Just look at photographs of people moored on the Kennet and Avon to see what I mean. A friend once told me that trees near the Nene in Peterborough were being coppiced. Within half an hour there wasn't a branch left to be cleared as it was all piled up on top of a line of narrowboats. I've never done that. I would actually rather have better access to what is underneath anything on my roof having spent a lot of time and money fighting rusty steelwork. There is another consideration too. Fresh wood doesn't burn well and certainly does not give off as much heat as seasoned wood. It is also very smoky. Having to work out how and where to season salvaged timber in sufficient quantity to make it worthwhile is beyond my ken. My life is a constant battle with myself to become more aware of the effect I have on my immediate environment. From what I consume and how it is packaged to how I deal with the different types of waste I generate are all constantly fretted over and my systems under consideration. Mostly I devise my own worries, but sometimes these have to take into account changes in the law.

As the colder weather approaches I tussle with the knowledge that it is no longer acceptable to run on mined fossil fuels for several months of the year. It is the middle of October and I am sitting in a little shelter in the bright sun as I write. By the time the afternoon turns to twilight extra layers of clothing need to give way to some fire to warm the boat's interior. Failure to do that just makes condensation a lot worse as the only heat being generated in the boat is through my own expiration. Last winter I experimented with using heat logs - basically compressed sawdust. These seemed to work well, but they don't last very long, they are relatively expensive and the ones that were readily available from the nearest supermarket are insanely packaged in plastic. This season, although advertised in the shopping list for online shopping, they don't seem to be available yet. My biggest expense during the winter is fuel for heating. I would like to use wood exclusively, but it's not straightforward. I have considered, and often used, logs, but I don't have anywhere to store them, so I can't build a woodpile like my artist friends who live in the church across the Fen from me, my musician friends in the cob house, or P's father who has acquired that amazing French skill, where it is indeed an art form, of stacking logs immaculately. It's not as though trees are an abundant resource in the Fen as the photographs of my view from the river bank show. 

I manage to keep a little combustible material on board sufficient for a week or two at a time. The law is increasingly insisting that logs should be kiln-dried and various forms of coal are rightly being phased out. I have only ever used "smokeless" varieties of coal, but these are never truly smokeless, so I don't really understand what smokeless coal is. I want to see if I can manage without using coal at all. After all, there will come a time when I shall have to. Acknowledging this is all a work in progress, I recently bought one twenty kilogram bag of Taybrite (to which I've returned as Winterblaze is not considered truly "smokeless") and another of anthracite (which I've never used before). In the depths of winter I have usually used three to four bags of Taybrite a fortnight. These may pollute marginally less than house coal, but how do I sift information from propaganda? Every other species, most of which we have put at risk, eats its food raw and finds shelter or grows winter coats. Approaching pensionable age I don't think much of this is much of an option. Recently I found a company within the same county that claims to sell kiln-dried logs from local and sustainable sources. The drying process is also apparently sustainable. I ordered some and they took a lot longer to arrive than expected. The quantities were also smaller than I hoped and made the cost about three times what I would pay for a sack of logs bought from the village hardware supplier. It's an ongoing search for enlightenment. I'll let you know if I make any progress.

Meanwhile listen. I just heard the kingfisher.

Of Video Feary And Terpsichorean Arthropoda

Most of my friends have made far better use of lockdown time than I have. Pretty much all my musician friends have got into video, some in rather a spectacular way. Every time I have attempted to do anything with video it has not turned out well. 

I have been trying to get to grips with some very basic functions in Final Cut Pro X, which I bought years ago with high hopes. I have kept it up to date and have even attempted to follow instructional videos on YouTube. Apart from the sheer complexity of all the stuff I could do with FCPX and not really having a clue where to start, a recurring problem has been that captions and titles have not actually been rendered with the rest of any finished product. I haven't a clue why. After watching yet another "how to ..." video I had another go at putting together a little film today. Whatever I did this time, the titles appeared at the end  as I intended. Again don't ask me why.

Recording it on the boat was a bit of a challenge. I don't have a camera, so I used the PhotoBooth selfie application on my laptop computer. I didn't want the sound to be the normal computer microphone sound so I plugged in my RME Babyface audio interface along with what I consider to be my best studio microphone, an SE-X1T. I bought the mic in a sale and have rarely used it, but it does look the business. It even has a special box that needs plugging into the mains to power it, so it must be good ...

Clearly there is a mismatch with the gear I'm using. What I noticed first, even while recording, was that there was an appreciable lag between video and audio. I'd noticed this on some other people's videos as well and assumed it was a problem at the editing stage. Well, no, it is a function of recording to computer. The audio defies all the laws of known physics and and travels faster than the speed of light to get there first.

The next thing I noticed while recording was that I could not get through the whole song in one take. There was always something. Usually it was a stumble over the words, sometimes my brain took me back to an earlier version of the lyrics I no longer sing. I had the lyrics in front of me on my tablet, but I had to do it again if I spent too much time looking at them or something would catch my eye and I would be seen glancing sideways. It was too distracting for the viewer. Then there were the flies ...

This year I have left the spiders in the boat pretty much to their own devices. This is because, for a few months, I have a lot of house flies. I thought hungry spiders would help. They don't. These huge spiders are okay abseiling from the ceiling in the evening when I'm trying to read, practise, write, chat or watch something on my tablet, but they show no interest in house flies. Consequently while recording the spoken song the flies showed their appreciation of the spoken word by buzzing around my face or crawling over my head. When I viewed the video it proved so distracting I had to do another take. After about a dozen failed takes to record the piece in one I resorted to the recording studio trick of one verse at a time. Of course, I was never sitting in exactly the same position when it came to recording the next verse. It also looked bad seeing me reach for the space bar to stop the recording at the end of each verse so I had to do it again and wait before I stopped the recording. This meant that the pauses needed to to closed up in the editing. I could do that, but unlike when I'm using an audio editor when I would search for a "zero crossing" when changing the length of sections for inserting crossfades, I haven't worked out where best to make the edit. That meant an audible click between the verses too. I discovered that a transition fade would mask the unwanted noise. I think I counted six flies. I finally managed to get one of each of the verses of "In Your Place" without arthropodal formation dancing on my head, but I do perform imaginative, interpretative, but completely inappropriate, ghostly movements between verses.

I thought I would put it up on YouTube. Then I could l could put links here and on my Facebook page. I was just too excited to have got this far and have some titles to show as well and ended up posting directly to Facebook without remembering to render the video in a smaller format. The file is huge. Facebook took it and presumably has algorithms for dealing with the stupidity of people like me. 

I plan to do more of these spoken-word versions of the songs on the album and hope to do better next time. None of us should even think about holding our breaths. It is unlikely to happen very soon.

Of Revisiting Old Boat Engine Repairs

It has been ages since I've written anything boaty. I know some people like to read about the boat so this essay is about yet more repairs.

It doesn't take much to please me. Mainly I am very happy when plan simply works and even more so when it's a boat engine repair. Over the years I have had repeated issues with fluids leaking into the engine bay. Nearly every part that can be replaced in the cooling and fuel systems has been. If you've seen some of the videos I added in a previous batch of boat essays you may have shared my childish joy that I could take a trip and occasionally not break down. Of course the scariest breakdowns are the ones that happen in the middle of the river. In some places in the Fen the nearest bank could be anywhere between ten and twenty feet away. Without power one just has to wait and see which way the wind wants to blow the boat. Patience and courage are required, as well as luck hoping that there is no other vessel around to be hit by my meandering and uncontrollable fifty feet of solid steel. In most parts of this system overcrowding isn't much of an issue. I do admit to being nervous every time I go through the centre of the nearest town where boats moor on both sides in places. A few years ago I signed up to River Canal Rescue - a breakdown service for the inland waterways. I have not yet had to call them out for a waterside rescue, but it has come close a few times. Most breakdowns recently have been related to issues in the cooling system. Mostly I wait for the engine to cool down and top up the coolant and get on my way within a couple of hours. Every time I have been into the boatyard to service or repair there has been some issue with the cooling system. Repairs have been carried out and all looks fine. The following journey or two may even be without incident, but before too long there is fluid in the tray under the engine. My engine being an old BMC diesel it is, apparently, "a thing" that they leak. Like British motorbikes, they just leak. They're not proud, they're not fussy. If they can take a fluid, it will leak out somewhere ... apparently.

Starting out this boat life as a total novice I've become a little more knowledgeable about where to look when things go wrong. I've certainly become more patient. Some days I have sat with the engine running for hours, while I try to locate the leaks. As part of my most expensive level of membership, RCR undertake a reduced rate on an annual engine service. During the last one, in December, the engineer offered to help me look for leaks. He was either very kind, very bored or he didn't want to go home for some reason. He found two that I'd missed, despite my hours of observation. The Polar end cap (red arrow) was leaking slightly. This was something of a surprise because, adding this cap three or four years ago seemed to solve the overheating problem for a while. It provided a new and extended route through the cooling system. The previous arrangement did not send coolant through the entire length of the heat exchanger because this end was capped off. No wonder I kept overheating. However I have hardly worked the engine hard in the years since it was fitted, so having to replace it was a nuisance. They are not exactly cheap for a bit of rubber.

My engine with the new parts. How clean and dry is my engine tray!

Diesel leaks were also a nightmare. Several years ago The Engineer used to come to visit and seemed to enjoy working on my boat. With his help I ended up replacing most of the fuel pipes and pretty much every nut, bolt, washer and olive in the system. The fuel injection pump was removed and serviced three times by a specialist company - that's a story in itself that I have already told. I bought a complete new spill rail and all sorts of other bits. The CAV housing (green arrow), a sort of spaghetti junction for the fuel system to which the primary fuel filter is attached also needed replacing. Mine was blue like the engine. The Engineer found an old one in his workshop, which he kindly fitted for me. It was definitely not blue, but it could have been used as an aid to navigation on cloudy days. Some years further on it seems it began to disintegrate and sprang a small leak of the slow persistent variety. I could see the drips, but couldn't locate the source. It took the eagle eyes of the RCR mechanic to spot that the CAV housing seemed to have bits missing where they'd broken off. Feeling around and under the edge it was apparent that the leak was coming from that part where the rubber washer was no longer being held securely. 

The old CAV housing with the broken bit clearly visible in front.

Aluminium, copper, brass and steel ... ripe for galvanic erosion?

Having carried out the service, RCR Mechanic left me with a report suggesting that I need to replace the (barely used) Polar end cap and the (bright yellow, previously very obviously used) CAV housing. It took me a few months to get round to doing it, but doing it I have now done. I left it six months because it's been that kind of year. Firstly I don't like opening the hatch to see what I'm doing in the engine room when it's chucking it down. I'm not that keen on the cold either. February saw all my plans for the rest of the year come unravelled as I was stuck in mainland Europe. As you may have read, I eventually managed to get back to the UK and to the boat. Looking for the correct parts is tedious, so I found lots of more interesting things to do. Eventually, though, once some businesses started back, I forced myself to phone and speak to the good folk at ASAP Supplies. As usual they were very helpful even though not all the parts were in stock. £150 later though, they would send me what they had and I would have to wait for the CAV housing until the end of June when their supplies were renewed.

Last month I replaced the Polar end cap. When I took the old one off there was a lot of scale build up and I suppose it was the unevenness of this that forced the existing cap to leak. I cleaned up the heat exchanger and pipes with emery and clamped the new cap into place with the new jubilee clips I added to the shopping list. One month later the level of coolant visible in the heat exchanger is just the same. That hasn't happened before. Yay me!

With three weeks to go before the end of the month I received a notice from ASAP that my order would be completed within two days. Now that's what I call service! Another DHL delivery two days ago and I had no excuse for getting on with the other job. This is the one I wasn't looking forward to, because I knew it wouldn't be as straightforward as the YouTube video suggested. I was, of course, absolutely right. Firstly the maze of copper pipework and the steel throttle cable bracket were attached to the existing housing. None of those were going to be as malleable as the cable itself. Bits had to come off in a particular order to make it possible to remove the next nut or bolt. I managed to do this without spilling any blood (mine is what I was most concerned about) or bestowing curses on any of my tools, the engine, the boat, or indeed anyone with whom she had previously come into contact or their progeny. That is until I reached the final sleeve nut. As I searched in vain for a spanner to fit I began to remember The Engineer's words as he fitted copper and stainless steel fuel pipes back to the bright yellow CAV housing ... "Let's hope you never need to remove this ..."

The hexagonal edges of the nut had become almost smooth and circular. I completed its metamorphosis trying to remove it. Still no cursing though. I thought if I detached the pipe with the housing I could get the whole thing out and the see if the new one was actually going to fit. Fortunately it did, so I loosely assembled everything. Now what to do. Phone a friend. 

I have a friend in the next village who calls himself an engineer, but he is secretly a Mad Inventor. It is almost coincidental that he is also a really nice person and a good friend. He has several projects on the go at all times and holds a number of patents for interesting stuff that has usually served to make someone else money. He would know exactly what to do if he saw my problem. It was convenient for both of us that I head up to his house immediately. Often, if he has come to visit me, he has come by bicycle. I feel ashamed that I have always done the three or four mile journey by boat or van. The CAV housing, even with the attached fuel pipe sticking out, was still small enough to carry in my bike basket. I dragged the bike out of the boat and pumped up the tyres (they always need inflating because I use the bike so rarely). It began raining ... of course it did. Stiff upper lip and all that, carry on. I suppose it must have been close to an hour after we'd spoken on the phone that I turned into his driveway. 

There is always a lot to talk about whenever I see the Mad Inventor - the latest inventions for a start. With the aid of a vice and a special kind of wrench he managed to remove the sleeve nut from the housing and remove the pipe, without damaging it. That was the first impressive act of the afternoon. I thought he would have to rummage through assorted hardware to find exactly the right replacement for the smoothed off nut, but oh no, he had a much better plan. He wondered whether there was enough metal in the head of the nut to file it back into shape, albeit a smaller one. That, dear reader, is precisely what he achieved for his next trick with the aid of the vice, the file, callipers and years of knowing how to make do and mend. The imperial nut now needs a 12mm spanner, but it was perfectly serviceable in its original purpose. Next time I do any work on this part of the boat I shall simply need seven different spanners instead of the present tally of six.

The weather was beautiful today, so I had no excuse not to finish the job. Naturally it was nowhere near as easy as I had hoped but, to be fair, neither was it as difficult as I feared. I had to fit, dismantle and refit some of the parts a few times, because something was always in the way of refitting the next part. It came apart without too much exertion, so I knew it had to go back somehow. Then I had to bleed the fuel system to clear out the air I had introduced. I've actually managed this procedure a few times before and more or less remembered the drill. I was very encouraged to see fuel bleeding through the places I expected and, when the moment came, the engine fired up first time. I am still glowing with pride at having been able to fix something. Normally most repairs I try end in spectacular failure, tears of frustration and another expensive trip to the boatyard. Let's hope I haven't jinxed the repair by crowing about it!

Of The Lives That Matter?

Once again, one faces issues around race, privilege, power, deprivation and denial. The best I can come up with is that there are times to speak out and there are times to listen. I can relate to the weariness of having to enter “that” conversation for the umpteenth time, but I am privileged that a minority to which I belong is not immediately apparent if I, a gay white man, pass you in the street. You will pass gay men every time you step foot outside without knowing it. I can wear a metaphorical mask and avoid confrontation or conversation if I’m not in the mood. I understand the exhaustion of remaining on high alert in public situations, but again there are ways I can mitigate this. Albeit these are at a cost of something most people can take for granted. For example, I cannot hold hands with my partner or share a kiss without running the risk that someone will make a comment, when the same person would not say anything to a straight couple. What I cannot imagine, though, is the effect of having to be on high alert all day every day, if I looked different from most of the other people around me. That has to take its toll. It would inevitably affect how I live in this world. 

I think often of how ill-prepared I was for my first teaching job in the late 1970s. I am ashamed to remember that I fell into all the traps of stereotyping the “difficult” kids in my class, the ones who came from minority ethnic backgrounds; the ones who came to school with “chips on their shoulders” and were disruptive to my world, the bubble in which I was expected to operate and instructed to maintain order. In my class of thirty eleven year-olds, six would these days tick the  white British box in a questionnaire. That meant that most of the class wouldn't. Jaswinder and Mohammed found a way to connect with me. They insisted that, because I taught them English, they should teach me “Indian”. I remember those times fondly, I let them have a few minutes each day just after morning registration. I was a poor student though. I am ashamed to admit that all I learned was to count to ten in Punjabi. Conversely, Leon, Rose, and Caleb had no such way of approaching me. After all, their mother tongue may have been English, but their families were from Jamaica. I didn’t understand why some of the Afro-Caribbean pupils in the school had to be so difficult. I was only trying to do a job and help them learn. I particularly remember spending extra time with Caleb, Rose and Leon. They all found school work so hard. We didn’t make the kind of progress I thought they needed to make. They were great kids, but I didn’t value them enough to work out how to help them. 

I had a fleeting moment of success with fifteen year-old Trevor in my next school. I had found him pretty unapproachable and full of fury. I heard him rehearse a shout I'd heard many times in my previous school, "You're only picking on me because I'm black!" There seemed no point in pursuing that discussion. As in every other case I was required to apply warnings and sanctions when the rules and the norms of acceptable behaviour were being tested. Despite his quick temper, he was the best table-tennis player I have ever seen. It was a residential school and all the boys were there through unfortunate and usually very sad circumstances. One evening Trevor was the only pupil who wanted to go to the "boot room" where the table tennis table was kept. I was widely considered a “weak” member of staff and the duty leader that evening made clear it was down to me whether I thought I could cope with Trevor. My decision would determine whether he was allowed his activity of choice that night. Of course I couldn’t deny him that, but it meant his only way of getting a game would be if I played too. I was a little anxious that he could explode with frustration at my inexperience and I had no idea how I would cope. As we both expected, I was rubbish and although he went easy on me, he still thrashed me. We talked some, we played some. Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed that shift. For the next two days Trevor was an extraordinary supporter of my miserable attempts to keep order in my classes, but peer pressure forced him to give up on me and things went back to normal. I still imagine I see the disappointment in his expression as I failed to meet his expectation of how a teacher should be able to keep order.

Fast forward to the late 1980s and yet another job. I had the good fortune to meet the composer, Michael Henry who was one of the workshop leaders at a course I was attending. I was really keen to bring him to Norfolk for a music project. He was an early pioneer of computer-based composition and worked in dance music as well as in more traditional composer modes. I heard some of his work on Radio 3. I thought it would be great to see him work in some of our whiter than white secondary schools. Up to that point all the black musicians I had seen in our schools sang, danced or played drums. This was all well, good and very enjoyable, but hardly dispelled stereotype. Unfortunately the project failed to materialise because there was not sufficient interest. Most of the teachers I approached couldn't see the point of the project and it would have interrupted the tight timetabling for teaching the exam syllabus. I couldn’t raise the necessary funding either whereby I might have been able to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. I even had Norwich Arts Centre on board to host a “club night” where pupil compositions would be highlighted. It promised to be a most exciting project, but I failed to pull it off. That failure aside, my abiding memory of working with Michael was a planning meeting at his house. These were preliminary talks to discuss what we could offer to the schools, but we both had our priorities and consequently a lot of negotiating to do. I really liked him and respected his work. I was learning a lot and we were getting to grips with some very complicated planning. Then, in the middle of a conversation, he informed me that I was a racist. This came right out of the blue. I thought my past experience had taught me to leave my white privilege in my (leased!) car. I’d not considered the racist charge a possibility and his accusation hurt a lot. I asked him to expound and began to see that white privilege had got me to this point and that being stung with his insight was still a luxury in the context of his own experience. However, being irked by someone dismissing my attempts to bring diversity to Norfolk has not been enough. I have needed to have that conversation over many years and on many occasions to begin to pick at the seams of what white privilege means. The more I find out, the less I seem to know. I’m trying, but somehow we need to keep the conversations alive. We are all products of our experiences. It is easy to retreat into entrenched positions claiming we’ve done what we can and now it’s up to someone else. 

What I've tried to record so far is part of my personal journey. The following link is to an old and well-travelled blog essay. If you have the energy I commend it to you. Unusually, many of the comments that follow it are also worth reading.

http://renieddolodge.co.uk/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race/

If you've had enough reading already, Reni Eddo Lodge reads it for you and discusses the background to her essay in this talk:

She mentions the complacency we face when we try to raise discussion. One of my dearest friends told me I really didn't have anything to worry about these days. She wasn't aware that homophobia was a "thing" in our schools to anything like the degree that it was in the past. Apparently it was okay because things weren't as bad as they used to be. My response to that was to write my personal experiences of homophobia in my song, "Never Say Never". I'm sure that many women have similar experiences concerning "mansplaining" as people of colour have with "whitesplaining".

The reason for this, my own essay, is to try and put a number of points of view into one easily accessible source for a member of my family who was asking in all seriousness her social network contacts for context and background about the controversy surrounding the recent death of George Floyd. If you have lived in a bunker during lockdown and are unfamiliar with the events that led to his death in the USA look on YouTube. I shall not link the video of those events here. Unfortunately, but sadly not unexpectedly, several people attempted to shut down her enquiry. I know her well-enough to understand that she has a genuine intellectual curiosity. Other people thought she was being "racist" or putting herself in danger. They demanded she remove her request from Facebook.

The death of George Floyd has been followed by a massive response in peaceful protest, but also in unrest, violence, rioting and looting. There is a lot of discussion about "black lives matter", "all lives matter" and who gets to say what. This morning I saw a video of a songwriter performing a song about Mr Floyd's death. For me it pushed all the wrong buttons. It was a flagrant example of a white man attempting to turn a many times convicted criminal into some sort of folk hero. As a songwriter myself, I feel if I am writing from anything other than personal experience I need to do due diligence. This songwriter, as ably as he performed his song, lost every shred of credibility as far as I am concerned. I suspect that just as no one else can fairly comment on my personal experiences of being a gay man in this place at this time, my first port of call must be to listen to the people of colour who can articulate their own experiences.

However, I'll start from the outside. This video is a report by Anna Slatz, who was going about her lawful business as a journalist reporting on the unrest and looting in her home city of New York.

Here is an early response to the situation by Brandon Tatum, an ex-police officer who now has his own YouTube channel. He has added other videos on the topic. While I am not particularly in accord with his religious and political convictions he clearly has a contribution to make to this discussion: 

A friend pointed me in the direction of Candace Owens, another representative of black conservative opinion. She doesn't really become interesting to me until a few minutes in when she starts to quote statistics. Assuming there is any truth in those stats, they place the discussion in a very different place from the noise we are receiving.

Coming from yet another perspective Gary Younge places racially motivated violence within a broader context. I think I am more in accord with his suggestion that violence comes in many disguises. He also notes that more white men are killed by the police than black men, but that the proportions of the deaths as a percentage of the population are not equal.

I've already mentioned that I don't know the answers. We all have a journey of our own to undertake. I don't know the situation in the USA apart from what I see in reports. So many aspects of life there are very different. A few days ago I encountered a very articulate British voice, Akala. I found this whole interview quite riveting and have bought his book, "Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire", for further enlightenment. Sit down for an hour and have a listen to this:

Of Virtual Pride

June marks the beginning of what, in some places, is known as the Pride season. While it feels daft to have a special season for celebrating the freedoms we have to be who we are all year round, I guess the press needs some way of keeping focussed.

My feelings about the purpose of Pride (in the LGBT+ sense) are sometimes seen as anachronistic and possibly even controversial by some. Naturally to me they are not anything of the sort. I am not trying to be controversial. I do have something to celebrate and, COVID notwithstanding, the freedom to do so ... at the moment.

I was born eleven months after Alan Turing took his own life and a few years before the Wolfenden Report recommended the removal of criminal sanctions for the so-called "crime" of homosexuality activity even though it was nearly another decade before those recommendations were implemented. I grew up through the years when being gay led to prosecution and imprisonment. I actually remember the Sexual Offences Act (1967) being passed into law. Many people thought that meant the end of persecution for being gay, but what those people may not know is that the number of prosecutions for homosexual behaviour actually went up in the decade that followed. I experienced an attempted entrapment by two good looking young constables in the early 1970s. Luckily I did not take the bait. There was something that felt very wrong in that situation. They weren't in uniform, but their clothes certainly made me suspicious. They were dressed alike with exactly the same type of very shiny black shoes. I was right to be suspicious. I saw newspaper reports later of men having been caught out by pretty policemen in that exact same cottage. I found out a few years later that a teacher colleague had been caught out in an entrapment. He was charged and tried for gross indecency and, while awaiting sentencing, he committed suicide.

Although deeply in the closet at the time I was a school teacher through the years after Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government brought in the notorious Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) with its deeply insulting homophobic language. This was in the midst of the devastation brought about by the AIDS crisis; a time when many reactionary forces seemed to believe that if they left us to get on with it we would wipe ourselves out and save them the trouble. I lost friends. P. lost friends ... and his brother. Governments all round the world were slow to act and were partly responsible for too many deaths.

I have lived to see countries slowly become open to the idea that same-sex relationships could be formalised and recognised in law. I finally climbed aboard the bus when I helped campaign for equal marriage.

I have also seen that many people who want to be left alone to live their lives freely in consensual same-sex relationships are subject to the most terrible abuses depending on where they happen to live. I have marched, rallied and demonstrated on behalf of some of those people who have no voice. I have stood shoulder to shoulder with people whose dedication to human rights I greatly admire outside many embassies in London, including Iran, Nigeria, India and (several times) the Russian Federation.

I have marched among hundreds of thousands in London many times and in tiny embryonic Pride events outside the capital to see them grow year on year. Perhaps my own personal favourite Pride moment has been to lead the band at the head of the first Pride event in my local town.

I march because I can. I have had many discussions with young people who do not know the history of the struggle to get where we are. To too many of them, Pride is party time. They see my reasons for marching as if they were regarding some artefact in a museum. While there is still one person in the world oppressed for being in a sexual minority the marching and the rallying need to carry on. If we are free to celebrate what we have achieved we have a responsibility to continue to march for those who can't. The European Union seems to be very quiet while many municipalities in Poland are illegally, but with impunity, declaring themselves "LGBT-free zones". The death penalty and life imprisonment is still all that people in some countries can look forward to. I'd like to think that everyone remembers why we can dance in our Pride parties to our X-Factor wannabes, but that seems to be not always true. I cannot turn my back on my own past or the present and future of too many other people. The peace is fragile and, for that reason too, the struggle must continue.

Sadly, COVID has seen to it that there will be no marching this year. I looked back through this blog to try and capture a photograph of a past Pride to put in a discussion forum, but maybe I didn't get round to writing about them. Anyway, here are a few photographs of some of those moments.

Me 'n' P at Norwich Pride a few years ago

Performing on the bandstand at the first West Norfolk Pride. (Photograph by Sas Astro)