That was then ...



with apologies to Adam Mansbach 

You have a dewy, unblemished complexion

And I am an old crone.
All the more reason, my darling,
To leave my makeup the fuck alone.

Yours is a generous nature,

To a relaxed view of possessions are prone.

When it comes to my makeup, I am the opposite,

So leave it the fuck alone.

You don’t consider it stealing,

You think of it more like a loan.
But foundation, once borrowed, is hard to return.
Leave my stuff the fuck alone.


I love you, my darling, completely,
And at you I do hate to moan.
Give me a break, get your own bloody makeup
And leave mine the fuck alone.

  

You say you never have money,

Decent brands are too costly to own.
That’s what Maybelline and No 17 are for.
Leave my makeup the fuck alone.

I’ve bought you tons of it over the years

In the hope that you’ll stick to your own.
But when it’s all gone, you just tuck into mine.
Leave it the fuck alone.


I don't check your page on facebook,
I don't eavesdrop your calls on the phone.
I don't rummage through your private belongings
So please leave mine the fuck alone.


I’ve had to ask you so often
My voice, it’s beginning to drone.
For the last time, my darling, keep your sticky little paws out of my wardrobe.
Leave the fuck alone.

 

.

My dad - Richard Overton

Even though my dad dismissed Father's Day as a bit of American nonsense dreamt up by the card industry, I am nevertheless going to post the obituary I wrote about him, when he died four years ago.

Richard Charles Overton

My father, Richard Overton, was born on 18 May 1923, in Blundellsands, a suburb of Liverpool, and grew up as the eldest of four children, his parents having lost their first child to meningitis before Richard was born.  He and his two brothers were sent to prep school at Tre-arddur Bay, Angelsey.  The Headmaster, Ioworth Williams insisted on two things: first  that the boys would learn to swim by a dip every morning in the icy waters of the North Atlantic and second that they would learn to skip.  My father took to the swimming, even though it was combined with Mrs Williams’s obligatory prophylactic of raw egg and milk, but skipping was a skill he never mastered. 

Richard moved on to Sedbergh in 1937, another school with physical rigour at its heart.  The ten mile run over the Cumbrian fells was an annual tradition to which he returned regularly over the years.  Richard flourished at Sedbergh - academically, socially and in sporting achievement.  He left both schools as head boy and with a constitution that would see him through the physical hardship of war and a career in the Colonial Service. 

Leaving Sedbergh in 1942, Richard joined the 9^th Border Regiment, and began his army career as an NCO, in charge of a group of conscripted Liverpudlians who didn't take well to the early morning starts demanded by the army.  Such was the 19 year old's difficulties in rousing his squadron, that he was reprimanded by the sergeant major.  How, the superior officer asked, did Corporal Overton expect to lead his men into battle if he couldn't even get them out of bed?  Richard was commissioned in Bangalore in l943.  His arrival in Burma coincided with the start of the 180 mile retreat to Imphal, a difficult and dangerous trek across mountainous terrain in monsoon conditions.  The soldiers were ordered to abandon all but the most basic kit, each carrying what he would need on his back, including guns and ammunition.  Richard later wrote to his mother that despite these orders he had managed to hold on to several books.  The Division suffered severe loss, but were successful in their return to the Imphal Plain which would later become the springboard for victory.

Richard 1943

On demobilisation in 1946 Richard went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study History, a lifelong passion of his.  Oxford was a divided place immediately after the war.  Students arriving straight from school must have seemed immature, untroubled and naïve to the men returning from the front, and Richard reported that some tutors too seemed ignorant and largely uninterested in the traumas these young men had been through.  He transferred to Law, before settling on the Colonial Service training in which he found his true motivation and purpose. 

Richard with the Fon of Banso January 1957

Richard joined the Colonial Service in 1950 and his first posting was to Calabar in Eastern Nigeria.  The Colonial Service offered Richard the perfect career as District Officer.  The role, broadly defined as running the colony on behalf of the Queen, in practice involved a vast miscellany of disparate and at times extraordinary activities.  One day he would be determining appeals on complicated legal questions - polygamous inheritance, custody of children or ownership of land; the next he might be returning an illegally incarcerated chimpanzee to the jungle, or hearing a village's complaint about an elephant that had been causing havoc with the banana crop. 

Richard enjoyed this job enormously, and it's not difficult to see how close a fit it was with his interests and talents.  His passion for fairness, his slowness to judge, a natural tendency to listen with patience and empathy together with his sense of humour equipped him perfectly for the judicial element of the role; his love of the outdoors and walking fitted him well for the long treks to remote stations, often for weeks at a time.  His innate courtesy and good manners and his meticulousness in matters of writing and administration qualified him for the ceremonial and official duties.

Not all tours were spent in the bush and in 1955 Richard was posted to the government headquarters in Buea, Southern Cameroons, as the colonial equivalent to Secretary to the Cabinet.  It was here he met Susan who had recently arrived as secretary to the Commissioner of the Cameroons.  They were married in November 1957 and spent the first years of their happy marriage in Mamfe, making many good and lifelong friends.

Nigerian independence signalled the end to Richard and Susan's time in West Africa and they returned to England in 1962 with two young daughters, a third born later in the year.  Richard worked for a short time in the Drapers' Chamber of Trade before taking up a post at  the Commission for the New Towns in Crawley in November1965, their newly born son completing the family.  Richard remained in this job until early retirement in 1983.   

Richard was never quite complete without a dog. When Susan first met him in Buea, he was caring for a sick dog, a fierce ugly brute (by all but Richard's accounts), which was discovered, on its death, to have been suffering from rabies.  Consequently, Richard had to undergo a long course of painful injections, administered by the wife of a close friend who happened to be the local nurse.  A costly business it turned out to be, both physically and in quantities of whisky the patient required to get through it. 

Richard and the golden retriever, Truman (1982 -97) were a familiar duo around his village, Warnham in West Sussex.  The impartiality Richard maintained in his judicial role in the Colonial Service seems to have been forgotten when it came to this animal.  Whatever the evidence to the contrary, Truman was always assumed to be on the side of the innocent.  I remember one infuriating occasion when the dog disappeared on a walk.  I spent over two hours calling and searching, but in the end was forced was to the house without him.  Dad immediately returned to the spot,  only to find the dog casually waiting for him.  Truman’s word or mine – there was no point even trying.  During the late 80s and early 90s Richard  took Truman on several long walks, including the Coast to Coast from Whitby to St Bee's.  It is typical of Richard's mixture of practicality and eccentricity that he organised, with the precision of a polar expedition, the dog's food parcels to be sent (by Susan) to a series of landladies in advance of their arrival.  And I have no doubt there were, once again, several large hard-backs in his rucksack. 

Richard and Truman

Richard believed in the right of all living things to be treated with kindness and respect, whether they be rabid dogs, hedgehogs, stray cats, stick insects, guinea pigs or, perhaps especially, birds.  An interest in ornithology began early, documented in his first letter home from prep school at the age of 7.  Upper lip remaining firm, he assured his parents of his happiness, remarking upon some "very interesting ducks" to be found near the school.  I remember many family journeys being delayed by the car sidling to a stop, often without use of indicators, as Richard, craning out the driver's side window and peering into the sky, while simultaneously reaching for his binoculars, would declare some indistinguishable dot in the heavens to be a kestrel or a buzzard, waiting until it disappeared into invisibility before resuming the journey.  He put empty beer barrels into the chestnut tree to encourage owls, and nesting boxes on carefully chosen walls to entice flycatchers.  Sometimes his passions would conflict:  the swathes of netting he placed around the lawn to stop the cricket balls getting lost in the hedge could prove lethal to hedgehogs.  A familiar sight during the autumn was Richard, after his nightly inspection, painstakingly disentangling the string from a tightly screwed up ball of prickles.

Since retirement, Richard became increasingly active in various political and environmental campaigns.  Two years ago he attended the end of the Aldermaston walk and only last year, Parkinson’s Disease making such trips very difficult, made it into central London for the CND Conference.  Despite the strongest of political feeling, he never lost sight of his priorities; categorically declaring that "one should never demonstrate on an empty stomach" he bought me a good lunch on both occasions.

Global warming and the threats to the environment were another pressing concern for Richard.  As his illness progressed, he became more lively and intense in his campaigning zeal, writing letters, attending meetings, and finding opportunities to inform and agitate.  He had been hoping to deliver a paper to the Horsham Natural History Society on global warming the day before he went into hospital in January.  His work was characterised by tireless research, reading and discussion.  However strongly he felt, Richard always expressed his opinions with respectful acceptance of a contrary view.  Ultimately optimistic about humanity and permanently questioning, Richard never lost his belief in the possibility for positive change.

Richard is survived by his wife, Susan, his four children, nine grandchildren, and his dog; he has left a deep and resonant impression on many more lives.

Born 18 May 1923, died 11 February 2007

What I am currently reading: Jane Shilling The Stranger in the Mirror

I was given this book as a present, because it’s about middle age.  I think I am its target reader.

It wasn’t an easy read.  I don’t mean that in the sense that James Joyce isn’t an easy read, or even in the sense that Lolita isn’t.  It’s not the subject matter (I am probably not alone in finding material that so nearly reflects my own situation fascinating) nor the style or structure that’s challenging, it’s more how much, and how little, she describes of herself.

A review in Mslexia Magazine commented that the book was too objective and impersonal.  I disagree.  The style is rather distancing, certainly, prone to metaphor and at times an affected.  Describing the years 20 to 50, she writes:  “Time passes, the seasons turn, the river flows idly; distracted by duty and business we fail to remark a quickening of the current…Then we look up and see that the landscape has altered…the tide has swept us downstream.” 

But the way she rails at her poor singleton son at his lax approach to his orthodontistry, admitting her continuing sense of ownership over his body; her shame and titillation at the prospect of being taken seriously as a sexual partner; her solipsistic observations on how and why she remains single, are unbearably exposing, and through her courage we are ambushed into a reflection of these same questions in our own lives.

Shilling isn’t likeable in this book.  She expects uncomfortably much from her son; she moans on about the drudgery of housework – that’s fair enough, none of us actually like it, but with Shilling, not liking housework becomes pathological.  “Angry reproaches fell from my lips like the toads and serpents from the mouth of the wicked sister in the Grimms’ fairy tale.  And I blamed my son for this, as well.  I wasn’t a harridan by nature, I screamed.  It was he who was turning me into one with his contempt for my standards, my wish to live with a degree of grace, to keep our small shared space clean and orderly.”  But it’s impossible not to admire the degree to which she allows herself to be unlikeable.

It’s difficult to have sympathy with her self-professed feminism too.  She reports having delivered “a stinging feminist lecture on the exploitation of women” and then “picking up one [her son’s] lads’ mags and discovered that half these semi-naked girls were enthusiastic volunteers, rather than professional glamour models.  So now I wasn’t quite so sure of my position on naked breasts, especially not the ones belonging to Readers’ Girlfriends”.  Let me get this right – glamour models posing in magazines in return for money – bad; readers bragging pictures of their girlfriends, for free, good.  Really? 

As I said, it’s a book that is sometimes hard to read, but it takes off and justifies itself in the last couple of chapters.  Shilling’s columnist contract has ended, she hasn’t made financial provision, she is a fifty year old woman with the best part of her working life behind her, she doesn’t know where to go, what to do next, and her son is still her dependent.  Now the crisis of middle age is given meaning; as her place in the grand scheme makes her invisible, so she must get out there,; when her biology suggests it’s time to quieten down, worldly necessity thrusts her back into the maelstrom.  She puts a sweetly brave face on it, chin-up she tells herself, as she contemplates her melancholy calculation.  “Time passes no more swiftly than it did when I was young, but I am haunted by the sense of how little of it is left.”  That’s it, that’s the point. 

What not to say

A fortnight ago I attended a course run by a man called Kenneth Cloke.  He’s well known in the mediation world, an innovator and visionary, with effortless charm and a taut tidy manner.

            He’d been up all night travelling from Edinburgh hindered by high winds and an ash cloud, but nevertheless delivered his articulate and exhaustingly interesting workshop, intricately responsive to the needs of his audience.

            He said many intriguing things during the afternoon, some of which I will drip feed into my next posts, but there was something early on that particularly struck me.  Think back, he said, to the first person you were in love with.  Imagine how different things would have been if you knew as much about relationships then as you do now.

            The point he was reaching towards was to do with how much emotion and energy we waste in arguments that can be better dealt with by a more sophisticated approach to conflict; there was also his theory that the conflict we are experiencing now is calibrated to our capability to sort it out.  But I couldn’t stop myself looking at it rather more crudely.  God yes, I thought, all those things I wish I’d said.

           

I made a shirt, one Christmas, for my first boyfriend.  There is a lot of work in a shirt; there are sleeves and yokes, collars and cuffs, plackets, pockets, buttons and holes.  It’s a very tricky business.  He’d chosen the fabric, it fitted well, it suited him; this was not your Aunty Betty’s Urangutang Christmas sweater situation, this shirt was one successful garment. 

            He didn’t thank me.  That’s all I remember.  He didn’t thank me.  He just gave me a kind of a look, hard to describe, and put it aside.  A few weeks later, I asked him why – that’s not exactly right – I accused him of ingratitude as part of my justification for ending the relationship.  He explained that thanking me would have been such an ordinary, such a predictable thing to do.  Bring on boring.

A couple of years later, a young man I knew at Oxford, in an effort to seduce me, said:  I bet no one’s ever said you are beautiful.  I still can’t think of the perfect answer to this – there'll be a verbal formula, certainly, but there's also magically turning him into a frog.  He’s a QC now. 

Then there was the Irish bloke with the beer gut and the beard, and truly surprising amounts of sex appeal.  He was the tortured type, blew raging hot and perishing cold throughout the very short time we were together, a period that culminated in our renting a remote cottage in the middle of Wales for half term, so that he could finally make his mind up whether to stay with me or go back to his previous girlfriend who’d cut up all his clothes when he left.  The entire week was seamlessly rank.  He refused to walk with me, talk to me, sleep with me, though I think perhaps we did eat the odd meal together.  We’d travelled in my car, and without securing my agreement, he bought four large bags of Welsh coal to take back to London for his fire.  He was also particularly anxious to be home for a certain time, having made arrangements to see friends, which meant leaving the cottage a whole day before we had to. 

I am very close to leaving this story out, not only because I can't conceive of an ending sufficiently humiliating and infuriating for this man, but also because I can't bear to think what a door mat I must have seemed.  I brought him home, I brought home his coal, I left the cottage a day early, when obviously I should have done none of these.  This isn't fiction, that's the trouble. 

JOHN GUMMER SAYS SOMETHING SENSIBLE SHOCK

I am about to do something I never thought I would – say something nice about John Gummer.  He’s the one who famously fed a beef burger to his unfortunate child on telly, to prove that BSE was mere tosh.  He was brilliantly captured by Steve Bell as the twit in the Hiawatha riff, called, if I remember, Running Gaga (no relation), and later in 1975, as the onlooker at the mock pieta, Thatcher as Mary with John Major’s head in her lap (isn’t he brilliant?).  Gummer wrote to the Guardian immediately, complaining that "to be forced to participate in Steve Bell's perversions is degrading." Bell said later, "I put Gummer in because he is a religious bullshitter...I have framed his letter like a commendation."  

           

Anyway, that was then, and this is now.  I heard him on the PM programme last night, and I accept that he was brought on to stick up for his friend of many years, Ken Clarke, but he was also sticking up for what Ken Clarke is trying to do with the criminal justice system, which, I believe, is the beginning of a very sensible move.

The fact is that prison doesn’t work.  As Gummer pointed out last night, Britain locks up more people than anywhere else in Europe; it has the highest reoffending rate, and we don’t feel any safer.  Gummer went on to blame the Labour Party (on the grounds that it was letting people out of prison before, but not telling anyone about it – an argument I found slightly hard to follow) and what he called the “irredeemable extremists” who run the newspapers, that'll be those guys who won the election for his party through the 80s.  Then he threw in the wrongheaded right of the present government.  

I want to get into why prison doesn’t work, and that the alternative isn’t to let everyone off, scot free, but to put in place processes that help perpetrators of crime and anti-social behaviour understand, acknowledge and find better ways to conduct their lives, is a lot more effective and satisfying both for our society generally, and usually the victims too.  But that’s for later.  For now, let’s have more John Gummers bashing the right wing press, Oxford convocation voting no confidence in the universities minister, The Archbishop of Canterbury reminding everyone that the government has no democratic mandate for the misery it’s delivering to the country.  

The blog

The blog, otherwise known as the incredible time sink.  I can't even bear to calculate, let alone tell you how many hours I have spent this week trying to compose, edit, add pictures to, save and publish just this one new biographical page.  A huge thank you owed to James Horne, whose computerly expertise and patience with luddites is massively appreciated.

I'm going to write about books I've enjoyed reading, thoughts I've enjoyed thinking, exhibitions I've seen, films I've watched, music I've sung along to, conversations I've joined in with, and possibly some made up stuff - stories right out of my head.

This is the lady that lives in the gap between the wall and painting in the room I use as a study.  Hamish made her and she was based on me.  She lives too high up to dust, which is why she is covered by a fine grey patina.

Dirge for the Ka

A week ago, my daughter crashed my car.  No one was hurt, and of course for that I am exceedingly grateful.  But the net result is a modestly expensive repairs bill to the Mini Cooper into whose back end she barged, while my insurance company says mine is not worth fixing. 

I am worn to futile tears by the utter wrongness of this.  My car, a Ford Ka, which I’ve owned from new since 2000, has been looked after as one of the family, never had a scratch until last week, and has travelled a mere 43000 miles.  Its book value might be a few hundred quid but its worth to me is far higher, and I’ll never find something so precious for that amount.  The excess on the insurance, for my 18 year old daughter to drive, is higher than what they say the car would fetch. 

This is miserable on nearly every front.  First, environmentally, it makes no sense to trash a nice little car.  The insurance company have worked out their sums on the basis of replacing the squashed bits with new ones from a Ford factory.  A patch up job wouldn’t be nearly so much.  Second, although I am loathe to trust her again, my daughter had only just passed her test, and ideally she needs to get back in the saddle, with the major lesson, which is that driving is difficult when you’re new to it, and requires 100% concentration at all times, having been well and truly learned.  Third, this car was a bit of a luxury for us, kept on only because its modest running costs were commensurate with the convenience it offered.  Now, with increased premiums, repairs and all that, this is no longer true, but we will miss the pleasure of never having to negotiate and plan in advance.  Fourth,I feel embarrassingly sentimental about it, and hate the idea of it being towed away to some car breaker’s yard.  And fifth, because there’s no getting away from the fact that the one moment of lapse will cost my child dear in future insurance, and very probably us too. 

I’ll say again, because it’s worth it, that I know we are incredibly fortunate even to be having these puny little thoughts.  Terrible, terrible things happen when new drivers have charge of a car - deaths, injuries, lives turning into nightmares from which, I’m not sure this is even melodramatic, there will be no awakening.  A bashed up Ford Ka and a few hundred quid the poorer is nothing - nothing, compared to any of that.  But I still wish I’d said no, that last time she asked to take it out.