views from the dark side of the newsdesk

Tattie-Bogle n.

1. an object, usually in the shape of a man, made out of sticks and old clothes to scare birds away from crops

2. a person or thing that apears frightening but is not actually harmful

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2016

Mea Culpa 13 Dec 2016

Everything that’s wrong with Gerry’s life is because of me She is tied to me and I just drag her from crisis to crisis I’m a liability To her and to everyone around me I just leave a trail of pissed-off people The characteristic aroma of my life is of burnt bridges.

 

When we met I was 10-grand in debt because of my compulsive spending But she took control of my finances and after 7 years I was debt-free Now I won’t touch a credit card But it was 7 years of budgeting and going without; sacrifices she didn’t have to make She didn’t have to hook up with me.

 

Then there was the smoking 60 a day and all the ill-health it brought I stank of tobacco, I was grey, unfit and the three packets a day only added to the rest of my debt My lowest point came on Valentine’s Day, 2000 I was broke (as usual) and Gerry lent me 5 to buy her a card I spent it on a packet of fags The fall-out from that piece of prize selfishness did, at least, make me give up I’ve been clean since.

 

But the physical damage was done In September 2008 I had a stroke which left me with brain damage That was the result of 16 years of heavy smoking on top of badly managed diabetes. So I have Dysexecutive Syndrome an inability to control my impulses I have no internal editor to stop me writing or saying whatever came into my head.

 

I alienated a lot of people especially at the BBC Gerry fought for me, getting special NHS funding for the psychological help I needed but which wasn’t routinely available. I was away with the fairies for a year but Gerry took on the NHS machine and won the funding. I just kept telling her she was tilting at windmills. My ingratitude was gobsmacking. But it was at the expense of her own health; the stress left her with Chronic Fatigue, which she still battle with now.

 

So I left the BBC After 23 years only 10 people came to my leaving do because I had become so unpopular. It was embarrassing. At one annual appraisal my line manager said, “You have no idea how many people are scared of you.” I caused the alienation but I really couldn’t stop myself. I was angry all the time. I was in a very lonely place of my own making.

 

I got a job teaching at the Uni I love it Not many people are lucky enough to find two careers they love But now I’ve fucked that up The impulsivity has upset people again I just can’t see myself doing it I have no measure of what is and isn’t appropriate It’s like a type of Aspergers I think I’ve got it under control and then it creeps up on me again and eventually people start getting upset.

 

Right now, I don’t earn anywhere near what I was on at the BBC That means Gerry can’t afford to leave a job she hates She’s trapped because of me She’s ill because of me We can’t move house because of me I am a dead-weight.

 

I asked her tonight to say out loud what she really felt about the current situation She’s angry I’ve let her down It’s like living with “an out-of-control teenager.” I am selfish I drag her from one crisis to the next I have no sense of responsibility and no resilience She’s right.

 

It’s my birthday in three days I’ll be 54 But I have all the self-control and awareness of those around me as a toddler Whatever angle you look at all this, it all comes back to me I shouldn’t be here.

 

 

My Shit Day 8 Jun 2016

When mum’s elbow burst in the car I was torn between, “Mum! Your arm!” and “My upholstery!” She’d turned up at the house this morning with blood streaming from her nose, having tripped over. I was so focussed on stopping the nose bleed I didn’t notice the swelling on her elbow. When I did it was the size of a snooker ball.

 

I went for a shower before driving her home. By the time I got back it was a tennis ball. We were nearly at her house when I noticed the blood. “Where’s it coming from?” she said, crooking her arm to look. That act caused more blood to spurt out.

 

“Stop bending your fucking arm!” I shouted.

 

“What?” she said, bending her arm even more and squirting more blood across the seats and dashboard.

 

I drove straight to A&E with a pensioner giving the Nazi salute inside a blood-spattered Smart car. I pulled up behind two police officers leaning against their cruiser. They looked as I got out with my hands covered in blood and my mum bleeding profusely. The inside looked like a hit had been carried out but they didn’t do anything.

 

Anyhoo, an X-ray showed a broken elbow. She’s in hospital with a cast and faces an operation. But what about my problem? I’ve got blood spatter all over the interior of my car. What are they going to think when I take it to the valet service at Waitrose? “Can you clean up all the blood?”

 

It was only later she told me that while I was in the shower she’d fed the cats and swept the kitchen floor. Only my mum would do housework with a fucking broken arm. It occurred to me, if she did that she could have emptied the dish-washer as well.

 

Ooh, actually, I think I have the Wolf from Pulp Fiction on speed dial. He gives Nectar points now.

 

 

Busted 7 Jan 2016

It’s been a long, long time since the biggest of the Black Dogs came visiting. Today I feel in a very dark place. I had a ‘catch-up’ with my line manager today and apparently there have been comments that I don’t seem to be up to speed technically and am asking for a lot of support.

 

They are right. That’s why it has kicked me down a deep black hole. It would be easier to dismiss as plain wrong. I know it because of my brain injury. That part which assimilates technical information is fucked, to coin a medical term; nothing ‘sticks’. People explain stuff and a day later it’s gone. I can remember technical stuff that was in my head before the stroke that’s uploaded into my long-term memory. But new stuff won’t go.

 

It’s pissing people off. They have to keep explaining things to me. No one seems to understand why, they just get annoyed. And here I am trying to make an injured brain do things it can’t do. It’s like trying to pick up something with your right hand when your right arm has been cut off at the elbow.

 

Days like today I feel the limitations of my brain. And it’s invisible, that’s why people don’t understand. If I was in a wheelchair and said I couldn’t use the stairs, people wouldn’t think, “But you couldn’t use the stairs yesterday either!” They would sub-consciously make an adjustment. But when it’s invisible it’s just annoying.

 

I love teaching, and I thought I was good at it. But today I realise I am shit. I can’t grasp a core of knowledge I need. I feel as bad today as I did immediately after the stroke when I had to re-learn how to be a journalist whilst working in a newsroom. It was like being in a play where everyone else knew the words except me. That’s how I am today. Dead weight, a passenger. Useless.

 

Right now I don’t want to go through all that again. I thought teaching was my salvation. I found something I had a natural talent for and which didn’t expose my cognitive deficiency. But I was wrong.

 

And then to be told there wouldn’t be as much radio to teach next year, when I’m only on a temporary contract. I think the message was clear.

 

I’ve really had enough of all these set-backs.

 

2014

As the Journalist Said to the Bishop 6 Aug 14

IF and I say IF, the Bishop of Gloucester has done something untoward it doesn’t change what I said. I would rather be someone who thinks the best of people and is proved wrong, than someone who thinks the worst and is proved right. When I was a journalist I was the latter but in the 2 years since I left I have become the former.

 

The nature of any profession is that you tend to believe the world is made up entirely of the kind of people you deal with every day. You become a member of your job’s sub-culture. It’s all you see.

 

Given that most news stories are ‘bad’, things you grow to believe that is what the world is. Since leaving journalism I have probably become more naive, but I’m glad I have.

 

I don’t care if my sometimes Pollyanna-ish world view is subsequently stamped on. Rather that than being proved right about something bad adding another patina of cynicism to my personality. I am a happier person out of journalism. I have more time to stop and smell the flowers. So what if some turn out to be nettles there will be more flowers along in a minute.

 

Whatever happens with the Bishop of Gloucester, I’m glad I’ve lost my journalistic edge and no longer automatically call the police when someone steps down for personal reasons. One day that WILL be the genuine reason and I’ll be happy to be right.

 

2013

Skeletons 11 Nov 2013

My Dad died, aged 90, in July 2012. He was a working man in the old style Socialist, a plumber and a worker with his hands. When I worked with him on the building sites he swore like a trooper but kept his language clean at home.

 

I was never physically abused as I would define it but when he did hit me, he hit hard and it hurt. He was so talented as an artist that his art teacher offered to pay for him to go through college. But Dad saw art as somehow not a proper job and took up a plumbing apprenticeship instead.

 

He was born and brought up in rural Cornwall in the 1920s and ‘30s. Always single-minded to the point of stubbornness he refused to sing in the church choir even though he was in it; forced to go to church by his religious mother he would fold his arms and clamp his mouth shut during every service until they gave up and released him from the choir.

 

In the RAF he challenged his senior officer to court martial him for refusing to attend compulsory church parade. The RAF backed down and he was excused.

 

For my first 40 years we were at odds. He was 40 when I was born, older than most dads, and we were from different worlds. He was a rough and ready plumber who brought up in Cornwall during the depression an area of tin mines where he used to play in the arsenic-soaked drains.

 

I was an arty-farty child of the 70s who grew up with long hair, necklaces and bracelets and no interest or aptitude for physical work. I was an acorn which had fallen a long way from the tree.

 

I went for a coffee with my Mum today and she said she and Dad kept a secret and with his death she was now the sole bearer. I asked what it was and she said she couldn’t tell me. In my experience that’s all part of a ‘game’ people play; when they say they have a secret they can’t share you know they are going to. They just need to feel it was pulled from them so you have to play along.

 

As an only-child with a happy upbringing and no real traumas to talk about, I have always fantasised about some secret which makes me ‘different’ or gives me some piece of angst to flaunt. I always favoured a half-brother or sister given away before I was born. Whilst I have mostly been happy as an only-child, I have always been intrigued what another version of me would be like especially a female me.

 

Since we learned we couldn’t have children I have come to accept that I was never going to meet a mini-me. So a half-brother or sister was the best I could hope for. My mate, Dave, learned he had a half-brother and I was quite envious.

 

That wasn’t the secret.

 

For a brief moment I was actually disappointed when I learned the secret was something else entirely. Then it sunk in. Dad’s secret was so left-field, so out of a clear blue sky that had Mum asked me to guess it wouldn’t have been in my top-20.

 

Dad was a cross-dresser.

 

My Dad, a powerfully-built effing and blinding man’s man of a plumber liked dressing in women’s clothes. He ‘confessed’ this not long after I was born so this must have been in the early ‘60s. This was even before the Permissive Society and he was embedded in a self-image created in a rural back-water in the 1930s. It wasn’t as if he’d been born into Bohemian London where he hung out with Quentin Crisp and more open-minded types.

 

To him it was a guilty secret. Mum said he was ashamed. It was something bad. Not to me it isn’t. Not now in the 21st Century. I wear kilts and own a pair of 5-inch stilettoes. But back then it was different. So for nearly 50 years they carried this secret. Mum bought Dad some female clothes of his own to wear but not, I suspect, because she was showing support; I got the impression that it was more because she found the idea of his wearing her clothes distasteful.

 

She never stopped loving him. It didn’t make her feel any the less for him. She’s still deep in mourning now. But after the initial confession they hardly talked about it again. It was an embarrassment to both of them. Dad was paranoid about any colleagues on the building sites finding out.

 

I don’t know when he used to dress up. Never in my life did I pick up the slightest clue. He didn’t go out dressed up; he only used to do it at home. I didn’t ask Mum what he wore or when he did it; that would have been prurient. I don’t need that detail.

 

It has started me thinking about some of the decisions he made in life; is that why he chose manual labour over an artistic career? Was he over-compensating and trying to assert his masculinity? I know cross-dressing and being gay are two different things, but was he worried about it in those less enlightened times? Having a ‘condition’ doesn’t make you an expert; you can be as ill-informed and prejudiced as everyone else.

He would have been mortified if I knew. And you know what, I might have been. It’s one thing to be all cool and enlightened when you’re talking about it in the abstract. But could I have been so liberal-minded when it was my own Dad?

 

This revelation hasn’t changed my feelings towards him one bit. I don’t love him any the less. He was a man struggling to supress something which should be no cause of shame at all. That’s not how he saw it, though. He was embarrassed and ashamed.

 

My Dad who seemed to have such a strong and fixed sense of identity carried a polyp of uncertainty.

 

There is a photograph of me, taken when I was in my early 20s. I am wearing a taffeta ball-gown, looking coquettishly at the camera. Mum told me today she was horrified when she saw it. She thought the shameful urge had been passed on to me. I just think it’s a funny picture. Dave has it now. I have an embarrassing one of him and we joke that if either one of us becomes famous the other one will sell it to a tabloid.

 

I do have a Bohemian taste in clothes. I do buy some women’s accessories for myself mostly scarves, hats and jewellery. I do envy women’s shoes they are much more attractive than the clod-hoppers made for men. I have also bought some women’s t-shirts in a size-18 plus. And of course there are the spike-heels.

 

I wouldn’t call myself a cross-dresser, though. I just like good clothes, irrespective of which gender they were designed for.

 

Maybe that is something of my Dad’s genetic influence though. I live in a world where I can be like that and still be secure in my own identity. Dad didn’t have that. For him it was something to be ashamed of.

 

Perhaps this acorn didn’t roll that far from the tree, after all. I have reached the end of this piece loving him even more. My Dad was a lovely, kind and talented bloke. A lovely, kind and talented bloke who liked to wear women’s clothes.

 

So fucking what?

 

 

Poppycock 10 Nov 2013

We went to the Remembrance Service in Cheltenham this year. Theres usually at least one fainter and this year it was a cadet standing on one of the four corners of the Cenotaph. Almost as soon as he hit the ground another cadet marched up and took his place. Which means they must plan for a fainting. The cadet was tended by St John Ambulance but it does beg the question, if fainting is so expected is it wise to make them stand to attention for so long?


Which set me off on another train of thought; warfare is chaotic. So why does the military devote so much time making soldiers polish things and clean things, march in unison and stand stock-still for hours on end? Its almost OCD. None of thats any use against the Taliban. A Taliban who seem to do quite well in their own clothes, wearing scruffy beards, making bombs on the kitchen table and firing there guns in the air from the back of Toyota pick-ups. Has a Taliban ever fainted doing something pointless? Just wonderin.

 

 

 

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin 8 Jul 2013

This weekend I learned a former line manager of mine has pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing child pornography. It’s made me question my certainties and my loyalties. What it has made me realise is that it’s one thing to condemn someone you don’t know, when you have no emotional investment, and another when it’s someone you like and always thought of as a nice bloke.

 

The fear is that if you don’t condemn someone guilty of a crime like this you are condoning it or trivialising it. There’s an even more insidious fear that if you don’t condemn people might think you are into it yourself. Even though I am an Atheist, I suppose the easiest solution is the Christian philosophy of ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’ Does that really cover it, though?

 

In reality people cannot love the person who commits this sin. There is no league table of evil; is child pornography more evil than murder? It’s an unanswerable question because there are so many variables and conditions and exceptions and what-ifs. Just because the question exists doesn’t mean you have to answer.

 

But what about this guy? I haven’t seen him for 18 months and the chances are I won’t again; our lives don’t overlap. What if I did bump into him, though? Would I call him an evil, sick bastard? Or would I chat and not mention the case?

 

If I harangued him to his face, what good would that do? He’ll have been through the legal process, punished, put on the sex offenders’ register and (hopefully) be getting some treatment. Is repeated abuse from everyone he meets going to help?

 

Yet if I just politely chat am I giving the illusion it doesn’t matter? Am I belittling the scale of what he did? Every time we encounter child abuse there’s a pressure for us to make people know we don’t condone it and so we join the tumult.

 

I know there are people who will ask why I am tying myself in knots over this. It’s simple, they’ll say. He’s evil, he got sexual pleasure from the abuse of children, it’s a no-brainer, he should be dead to you. I can understand that particularly coming from parents. I don’t have any children and I’m sure if I did I would feel much more loathing for him.

 

But to say, you can’t understand you’re not a parent implies my view has no validity. I have never had a loved one murdered but that doesn’t mean my opinion on the death penalty doesn’t count. Equally I could say that if you have never had a connection with someone convicted of possessing child pornography you can’t know how conflicted you will feel. You can sit there and shout ‘bastard’ at the TV when it’s a stranger but when it’s someone you know, a whole set of different feelings come into play.

 

This guy was my line manager and we socialised occasionally. We had one-to-ones when I had bouts of depression and he told me about his depression. He talked about how it started when his father died unexpectedly. All those aspects of his personality aren’t erased by what he has done. But can someone who gets off on child porn still be a ‘nice bloke’?

 

To me, this guy can. Okay, I shall do the expected condemnation; what he did was evil, sick and I would never do such a thing, not me, no I’m normal I am a million miles from getting off on that perverted filth and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law.

 

But I liked him and if I met him again I would talk and shake his hand and not mention his conviction. Perhaps I’m nave; he will never erase that part of himself and will always be drawn to that material. And yet that same person could sit down with me and chat and be pleasant.

 

For the second time this week I will have to resort to a quote I always found rather twee because it actually sort of, partially resolves my moral dilemma.

 

Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.

 

 

Zombie Files 3 Jul 2013

I have just seen something which registers 9-point-0 on the Weird-Shit-O-Metre, to quote Men In Black.


Yesterday I dealt with a maggot infestation in our food caddy. It was crawling with them so I killed them instantly by pouring boiling water in it. So I had a pool of water with loads of dead maggots in the bottom.


For some reason I didnt pour it down the drain immediately and left it overnight. When I lifted the lid this evening it was full of.dead FLIES.


What the buggering flip is that all about? Surely maggots cant metamorphose into flies AFTER theyre dead? Can they? That is just not right. But I saw it the water had loads of dead flies floating in it. And they were small, as if they were baby used-to-be-maggots flies.


So did the fly survive the boiling, emerge from the dead maggot and then drown? Or did the dead maggot just turn into a dead fly?


Or are we faced with an outbreak of zombie flies?


Anyone got any suggestions? Coz at the moment whenever I hear a fly its accompanied by the Jaws music AND the Psycho music.

 

 

 

Trial by Twitter 18 Jun 2013

We now know that Charles Saatchi has been given a police caution for this assault. But what the whole incident also highlighted was the insidious trend of trial by Twitter. People made up their minds and (mostly) convicted him on the basis of some paparazzi shots in a Sunday tabloid which doesn’t have the best record of accurate reporting.

 

Anyone who suggested that there needed to be a more thorough investigation of the incident before condemning Saatchi was virtually accusedof condoning domestic violence. Refusing to rush to judgement is not the same as defending an illegal act.

 

Twitter creates a lynch mob mentality and that is dangerous. It’s vital that even the apparently obvious crimes are still tested in law because you’re in danger of ‘mission creep’; eventually more ambiguous acts are pre-judged until eventually no one has the protection of due process.

 

Some have said, the photographs were unambiguous he was clearly throttling her. Okay, yes. But if you start trial-by-Twitter gradually and very slowly the incidents which are judged are less clear-cut. Eventually it becomes the norm to judge people where the issues are more blurred and the burden of proof becomes weaker. One day, any one of us might find ourselves being judged in the social media.

 

That’s why you always have to allow people to be judged by the law. But even the law can get it wrong. And if the law can get it wrong with all its checks and balances how much more unreliable does that make trial by Twitter?

 

For me there is one case which proves you can be wrong about something which seems cast-iron true. The Birmingham Six. After the 1974 pub bombings the 6 Irishmen seemed guilty beyond doubt. There was hardly anyone who believed their innocence. And yet we were all wrong. Imagine if Twitter was around then? Imagine how certain of their guilt everyone would have been.

 

Social media circumvents the need for proof to the point where we judge someone on the most superficial evidence. Even someone subsequently found guilty or who confesses deserves a fair hearing. Twitter is not that forum.

 

The fact that in this case, Saatchi admits it was an assault, doesn’t change the fact he was prematurely judged by Twitter.

 

 

In Defence of Colin Brewer 15 May 2013

I would like to speak up for Colin Brewer, the Cornwall councillor who says some disabled babies should be put down. Not because I agree with him the views he expressed are abhorrent.

 

Like most people I was disgusted by what he said UNTIL I read a throwaway line in an article that Councillor Brewer is currently off sick due to a series of strokes.

 

As someone who has a brain injury as a result of a stroke I am also prone to causing offence by things I say because I suffer from dis-inhibition. We dont know the nature of Mr Brewers brain injury but if he has had a number of strokes his cognitive function may well be impaired in some way. I wonder if it is that which has caused him to voice unpalatable views?

 

Brain injury is invisible and people only see or hear behaviour which, to them, is unacceptable and they make judgements accordingly. That is the curse of people with a brain trauma. Offensive though his comments are, all those condemning him should, for now, back off and give him some space.

 

I hope the police officers questioning him will be sensitive to the medical condition which may be behind his remarks. I have written to Devon and Cornwall Police asking them to show some awareness of Councillor Brewers condition.

 

As a died-in-the-wool, Guardian-reading liberal leftie, I never thought I would find myself standing up for a Tory who advocated the euthanasia of disabled children. I guess theres a first time for everything.

 

 

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