Home
Nov 04
2021
4 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
As many of you know, I have spent the Covid lockdown writing a novel. This is a new venture for me. I have written seven previous books, six of them non-fiction, in the area of personal and professional development, plus my collection of poetry. But writing a novel is a completely new experience. When I write non-fiction, I have a reasonably clear idea of whether I am doing a decent job of conveying my subject but with fiction, until someone else reads it, I simply haven’t a clue if it is complete rubbish or something that will engage the reader. It is a daunting project and a steep learning curve.
However, writing a novel in 2021 is even more daunting, as on top of the normal writer’s doubts, there sit the censorious voices of today’s cancel culture. So, it becomes twice as unnerving, with a feeling that the Orwellian or Stalinist thought-police are watching over my shoulder, looking for offence, seeking to accuse me of saying something that might upset or hurt someone, distorting my meaning or intention.
I wouldn’t be doing my job, though, if I bowed to these voices. Surely the point of a novel is to move you, sometimes to upset you, even to the point of tears, horror, disgust and, yes, offence? A novel can broaden your experience, take you to places you have never been in real life, place you in situations you hope you will never experience yourself. Through this medium, an author can raise the reader’s level of empathy and help them understand what it might be like to experience something different, horrific, tragic or, equally, joyful. And open doors of perception.
Dickens took his readers to places they might well have been grateful for not experiencing themselves but which raised their level of awareness for the poverty and hardship on Victorian streets. Jane Austen experienced quite a narrow social life but her powers of sharp perception of the human condition raised her readers’ awareness of the machinations of society, the ambitions, bitchiness, unrequited dreams, jealousies and rivalries that they may not have noticed without her brilliant observation. Solzhenitsyn took us to all the dark places of the Russian gulags. And, among many others, was cancelled.
I, for one, don’t want to live in a country where I feel that writers could be silenced just because a minority of people – who may not even be forced to read a particular book – should choose to feel offended by what they read.
Where is the reader’s sense of responsibility for their own response to a book, to what they read or hear? For, as the Stoics would remind us, it is not the book or situation itself that is a problem necessarily but our own response to what we are reading or experiencing that gives it meaning. The reader requires self-knowledge to become conscious of their own prejudices before accusing the writer of prejudice or bias.
The wonder of reading is to broaden the mind, to take one’s mind into different perspectives and consider the views of those who see or experience the world differently. That is why this whole concept of ‘cultural misappropriation’ makes no sense whatsoever in the arena of fiction. No author would ever be able to write anything other than a memoir, and then only from the first person, as they could be accused of speaking for others whose lives they may not understand. But none of us fully understand another person. This is what imagination and creative writing is all about.
Every author has to put themselves into other people’s shoes – if one is a female writer then we have to imagine male characters, people older than ourselves, people who come from other backgrounds, other countries, other eras, different sexual inclinations. It all takes imagination and no one is claiming that it is perfectly factual. It is a work of fiction, so one is needing to describe and imagine situations beyond one’s own experience. But in today’s world in the UK, writers are being criticised for writing about characters from other cultures, or about gays when they aren’t gay, or ethnic groups when they don’t belong to that group.
If we follow this narrow argument, we shall never have any more fiction to read. Nor thrillers, because surely those advocating for no ‘cultural appropriation’ could not expect every thriller writer to have experienced the horrific scenes they describe. And what about science fiction, or fantasy? It is ridiculous and it is a gross infringement of freedom of speech and creativity.
Which takes me back to my own novel and the concerns all this raises in me as I start to edit and finesse the book. If J K Rowling’s agent and publisher can punish her for her views about women, then I don’t have a hope in hell of getting an agent or publisher if they choose to buy into the current cancel culture of bullying and fear that insists that words such as ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ are now unacceptable. For if a publisher should read my blogs and tweets, they will see that I firmly believe such words should remain a part of the English language, both written and spoken, and they may not like that.
Then my novel is set partly in Russia, between the 1990s-2006, so will I be accused of cultural misappropriation in describing Russian characters living through that period? Inevitably I include male characters in the book. Will I be accused of writing about people and situations of which I have no personal experience? But what else do novelists do but write about people who inhabit their imagination?
I heard this week that John Updike, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, and even Shakespeare, are now facing the cancellation lists for their misogynistic views but how does it help us to treat people of previous generations, who had very different perspectives and norms, as if they were writing today? They were men of a certain age. Expecting people of bygone days to have the same cultural perspectives as we have today, does nothing to celebrate how we learn through the ages, how we are all, in our way, far more ‘woke’ than people were even two decades ago. Surely the whole progress of civilisation is to become more conscious of the subtle factors of life and humanity that were not realised before. Within this progress we cannot possibly expect that people of earlier times should have had these perspectives. It’s rather like condemning a 3-year-old for snatching a toy when we know that as we learn and develop that child will become more empathetic and aware that this is not an acceptable act.
I sincerely hope that we shall soon return to a place of common sense where people recognise the fact that it is absolutely necessary for us to be offended, insulted even, as we go through life. It can give us self-knowledge, can enhance our humility and help us understand that we may well not be perfectly correct about our opinions because there are always others who have different opinions. This could give us an insight we hadn’t noticed before. And it can develop that entirely essential skill of resilience.
So, I shall pursue the completion of my novel over the next few months and shall endeavour to silence these unelected censors looking over my shoulder …. and my own inner doubting demons too, of course!
Oct 09
2021
0
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
Universities used to be places where information and ideas were shared, in order to expand a student’s knowledge. By sharing new facts and ideas it was intended that a student broaden their perspective, understand that many people in many different parts of the world and at many different periods of history, think and have thought differently to them. The aim to be that they sharpened their own beliefs, questioned those opinions passed on to them by parents and early-years teachers, and developed cogent and coherent views that they could express articulately.
These days, students seem to want to shape the world to their own views, even though they are generally too young to have experienced much, read as much as their lecturers, travelled as much as those older than themselves. They even want to force others, including the lecturers employed to expand their knowledge, to adhere to their own views, and are unwilling to listen to other perspectives.
In this process, academics, writers, politicians and others are losing their livelihoods and their reputations. Usually at the behest of a small minority. But a small minority who shout the loudest. As Jonathan Haidt of the Heterodox Academy points out, small minorities are often better organised than the disorganised and disunited majority who disagree with them.
So, we, the majority who believe in free speech, need to get a little more organised and cohesive, in order to put a stop to experts and academics losing their jobs for saying something with which the students don’t agree. We need, as Jonathan Haidt recommends, to speak up louder and not be bullied into going along with ideas just because we can’t be bothered to stand up to them.
Surely, we do not want to live in a totalitarian system where those with alternative viewpoints are cancelled or lose their jobs? In other countries those people are slung into gulags and prisons. We have just seen the Nobel Peace Prize going to two investigative journalists, Dmitry Muratov and Maria Ressa, who are being awarded for following the route of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yet these young student bullies are doing the opposite. In the name of ‘diversity and inclusivity’ they are silencing those who disagree with them, which is the precise opposite of the meaning of diversity or inclusivity. They ought to look in a mirror more honestly from time to time and see exactly how hypocritical they are being.
The trouble is that they are using the language of the playground, doing all the things our teachers told us not to do – eg call people names, tell tales, push people out of friendship groups, shame friends and others into silence for fear of being the ‘outsider’. How come our educational establishments are being so weak to let this happen? How come the NHS and others are going along with these minorities who claim to feel ‘unsafe’, when such groups seem to be doing all they can to make others feel unsafe.
How would you feel as a lecturer or academic in a university now? Terrified, I imagine, of having your words taken out of context, or even gestures used to illustrate a point (see The Chair on Netflix). But we can’t let this happen. Academics have stirred us up for centuries, been the ones to provoke thought, creativity, ideas, innovation, analysis. We must not allow them to be silenced, and those in charge of the universities must speak up, as Sussex University’s Vice-Chancellor, Adam Tickell has done in defence of freedom of speech and of Professor Kathleen Stock, the latest victim of accusations of transphobia.
As Professor Stephen Pinker points out in his new book Rationality, our medical and scientific advances have come about through challenge, through peer review. The justice of the legal system has come about through adversarial processes. Leaders in business are developed through 360-degree feedback. But the students accusing Stock and others are not interested in such systems. “We are not up for debate” they say, calling for the sacking of lecturers who do not follow their precise way of thinking, using the antithesis of rigorous debate with phrases like “transphobic shit”, “I hope you die alone”. And these people will be running our country in a few years’ time, which is not an edifying thought.
Of course, young students have new ideas and we must listen to them. But equally they must listen too. How will they ever learn anything as they journey through life if, at such a young age, they are closed to opposite opinions? Learning comes through endeavour, challenge, and often failure. It comes from being open to different perspectives, being willing to adapt one’s view or approach through taking many viewpoints into account and then shaping who you want to be, the action you want to take.
The Stoics suggest that we should all see life as though we are in a boxing match. We should expect and welcome the daily punches and falls, recognising that these provide us with an opportunity to stop, learn, adjust our approach. This is life and it is normal to experience problems, people who irritate us, be presented with things we don’t want to do but have to do. We should not tremble or see these events as threats, and certainly not become ‘offended’ or feel ‘unsafe’ when someone articulates a view we don’t like or are unfamiliar with.
We all need to be resilient in the face of life. Other people need us to be resilient too, as resilient people will look for solutions to problems. We cannot become resilient unless we are robust enough to receive feedback, analysis, and critical thinking thereby honing ourselves to be able to articulate a viewpoint and provide the evidence to back it up.
The world has become the amazing place it is through the very diversity of thought and approach that has been experienced through the centuries. And we continue to learn daily, what is helpful and what is not. We are a far more tolerant society in every way than the world in which I grew up in the 1950s. Dictators, such as Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, who insist on just one authoritarian view, demonstrate no tolerance. If we were run by such leaders now, we would be living in a very different world, a world where academics, journalists, writers and artists are silenced, imprisoned, and potentially assassinated.
We cannot let it happen that students are given the power to sack their lecturers for holding a view with which they disagree, have misinterpreted, or misunderstood. We cannot let publishers silence writers. We, the majority who believe in the freedom of speech, must get ourselves more organised and speak up in the name of balance and debate.
Sep 28
2021
3 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
Why is the language that describes the adult female of our species being cancelled? Even the medical magazine The Lancet had a heading recently reading “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of ‘bodies with vaginas’ have been neglected”. ‘Bodies with vaginas’? Don’t they mean women? It’s women who have been neglected in medical research, and more. After all, trans men and women are a very recent phenomenon. The science didn’t exist in the past so there is no historical neglect there. It is women they are talking about, so why can’t they use the correct word?
In an interview this weekend, Sir Keir Starmer said that it is “not right” to say only women have a cervix, amid the row surrounding the Labour MP Rosie Duffield questioning whether ‘individuals with a cervix’ could include trans men. I am told by a doctor that a trans man, born a woman, will have a cervix if they have not had surgery, but that is because they have a woman’s body but are identifying as a man, therefore in biological fact are female. Trans women, born a man, do not have a cervix, as the cervix is part of a womb, which they do not have as they are male. Even if they have had surgery, the skin tissue grafted from the scrotum and other areas is biologically male.
In all these scenarios, science dictates that humans are born male or female – males with XY chromosomes and females with XX chromosomes, and only a tiny proportion with XXY. But these facts, and they are facts, are continually denied. I was pleased to note that the Health Secretary Sajid Javid and others have attacked Starmer for a “total denial of scientific fact”.
How, in an era of science and technology, can so many people deny biological facts? And where is the logic to say that should I support the use of the word woman, mother, breastfeeder rather than ‘chestfeeder’, that makes me transphobe? I have nothing against trans men or women or anyone else but why should the integration of this group involve such an intrusion on the language that is used to describe women?
It seems to me that politicians are getting their proverbial knickers in a twist on the whole subject, as a Green Party spokesperson was recorded as saying that being a woman is “an attitude”. And Jo Swinson, of the LibDems, when asked if humans are born either male or female, apparently replied “not from what I’ve read”.
It is all thoroughly disheartening and makes me feel both disenfranchised and unsupported. In my view, of course it matters that men identifying as women should not be eligible to compete in all sports against biological women. It’s totally unfair, as men are stronger. Of course, I can understand that women who have been raped should be able to choose to be examined by a biologically female clinician. Of course, I can understand that you don’t necessarily want someone in a female prison, or a girls’ changing room, or a woman’s domestic abuse refuge centre, who has a penis. There is both a visceral but also a practical sense that this is risky. Why should the sensitivities of trans groups, including trans sex offenders, trump female safety?
And why are schools and other institutions altering their changing and toilet facilities to be mixed sex before there has been a proper debate about this? The Equality Act 2010 permits services to be provided for one sex only. The act is clear that it is lawful in certain circumstances to exclude members of the opposite sex, even if they hold a gender recognition certificate. So why are these changes happening so quickly, and at a time when school children, girls in particular, are reporting a huge rise in sexual harassment experiences at or around schools? Women and girls deserve safe spaces.
Of course, you can have a male body and feel like a woman psychologically, and vice versa. And I empathise with those who feel they are in the wrong body or wish to identify and be treated as a specific sex but at the same time there is a need to accept the reality of the situation. The biological facts. I might have had plastic surgery to try to look like Marilyn Munroe, or breast enhancement, but I never would look like her, nor be her, nor would my breasts be biologically the same material as if they were naturally large. And I don’t mean this frivolously. I am suggesting that we tend to be happier in ourselves when we accept who we are and whether a trans man or woman has or hasn’t had surgery, they are nonetheless different biologically. And why can’t that be ok?
We need to be honest and realistic for everyone’s sake, and especially in order to gather accurate data on sexual biology and illness. Otherwise we cannot plan the health, education, employment and other infrastructure services we all need for the future.
The advances in science are fantastic. We are able to keep people alive way beyond previous years, heal cancers, vaccine against sickness, and provide those who wish to transition from male to female or female to male with the wherewithal to do so. And yet in all those situations there can also be ethical conundrums and they have to be worked out quietly and compassionately to ensure that everyone involved is on board.
It doesn’t help us all get along – and I presume that is what everyone wants – for this group to be cancelling our language and our identity as women. Politicians like Starmer are colluding in the conspiracy to pretend that neither the cancelling of the language used to describe women, nor the invasion of our safe spaces, matters. Nicola Sturgeon apparently said that women’s concerns on this issue are ‘not valid’. But men are also writing on this subject, uncomfortable with the fact that they may have married a woman, or have a daughter, and wish to be able to refer to them in the correct terms.
If we are to get along better, then this will require devising some way that makes both trans men and women and biological men and women feel ok. Because at the moment I am feeling offended and abused by the suggestion that calling myself a woman is in some way a ‘dog whistle’ (whatever that is, exactly). And I am not that happy to be referred to as cis-woman either, as many people are utterly confused by that term too, including me! I am a woman.
Women are not a series of orifices or physical attributes. We are not ‘menstruators’, or ‘birthing people’, or ‘bodies with vaginas, cervixes’ or what you will. We are women and we matter. We are half the human population and have been treated pretty abysmally throughout history but have finally reached a reasonably equitable position in the West (cast your eye to Afghanistan and much of the rest of the world and you will see there is still a long way to go), so I wish to maintain this position for women in the future, particularly for my granddaughters. But along comes another misogynistic group who seem to want to cancel us, put us back in the kitchen, relegate us to being a series of orifices rather than women. It won’t do.
But who, among the political apologists, is going to stand up for women’s rights here, for our safe spaces, for our privacy, for our language? It isn’t any of the politicians mentioned so far in this article. It isn’t the NHS, who are issuing guidelines to midwives and others to remove the language previously associated with females, mothers, maternity units. It isn’t the academics, as the universities are colluding with the non-facts propagated in this debate. It isn’t the schools, as very young children are being given all kinds of lessons with very dubious biological details – in fact, a 9-year-old girl attending such a class earlier this year, came home thoroughly upset and confused, and asked her father whether she was a girl or a boy. How on earth will they teach biology if a teacher can’t refer to a female or her ovaries, womb, cervix without somehow pretending that these are also the features of a trans women or men?
Joanne Cherry, QC, described this trend as deeply sinister. I agree with her. This is a form of aggression and an undermining of girls’ and women’s rights. Time to find a way through this without the heated aggression of the Twitterati. Please, please, can we have an adult debate on the subject to protect the safety, privacy needs, and identity status of girls and women? And asking for such a debate does not mean that I am a transphobe.
Aug 10
2021
1 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
Wow! Is anyone else feeling pride in the achievements of Team GB? I am not particularly into sport or athletics, nor even into being a spectator, but I was blown away by the number of medals we achieved and by watching the determination and skill of our young athletes.
Reading the press, one might be forgiven for imagining that all our young in this country are snowflakes – but no way. These young people have come through hell and highwater to be in Tokyo, to perform and to win.
I hope one of the media channels does a documentary covering the life stories of some of these people. I know that many have come through difficulties, have had to crowdfund their way through the competitions, have had broken bones, and gone through many set-backs in the course of their lives. What a wonderful example of determination, discipline, motivation and skill.
I would really like to know more about their journeys from childhood sports days to local then national competitions and on to the Olympics. There’s a lesson for us all in this, in our various walks of life, I feel.
And it takes support – from parents, teachers, coaches, grandparents. And sacrifice. No-one can do this alone.
And the modesty and sheer joy of the winners was poignant to watch. No bragging, just amazement and British understatement. A delight in having won, as if it happened ‘to’ them, rather than that they won through extraordinary effort. From that amazing young girl on her BMX, and daring skateboarders, to equestrian riders of such precision and grace, at one with their horse, to swimmers, runners, cyclists, gymnasts, sailors and more, I am just so impressed.
This is going to be a short piece but it seems so important to take a moment to feel some pride in our achievements. We don’t do it often in this country but watching the Olympics has made me feel that if these people are any kind of reflection of the young people in this country then we shall be in safer hands than I had imagined. There is more grit here than is spoken of on most days. Yet one knows that this grit exists also in our entrepreneurs and those who have been through so many different and difficult challenges over the last eighteen months of Covid.
I hope there is some general celebration of the efforts of our Olympic team, a moment of national pride in coming fourth in the league table against fierce competition. Congratulations to them all, the winners, of course, but also to all those who were beaten at the post. To have got to Tokyo at all is a huge achievement in itself. Well done!
Jul 22
2021
7 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
Who would have known that the numbers of Covid-19 cases in our country are as high as they are because we test far more than other countries? I didn’t, until my son happened to mention it to me. Try to look up those statistics and there are very few journalists who have bothered to cover the subject. Hence, we have this dreadful opinion of ourselves, without putting the statistics in context.
It seems that we test 3,322,548 per million population where France only tested 1,485,720 and Italy only 1,222,052 per million of population, with Germany only testing 776,198, as of July 14, 2021. The WHO stated at the beginning of the pandemic that countries should test, test, test. We were a little slow in starting but now, of course, the criticism is that we are testing too much. The app pings but it seems that provided you test yourself daily and have a negative result then, you do not have to isolate, so testing is key to keeping the population safe.
Similarly, we do have a high incidence of Covid-19 (partly for the reason that we test more) but actually Cyprus and Gibraltar have more incidences than we do and the Netherlands and Spain are not far behind. And, according to www.statista.com France has actually been the worst affected country in Europe during this pandemic outbreak, with 5,770,021 confirmed cases.
Our death rate per 100,000 is actually less than Italy’s (UK 191 per 100,000, Italy 211 per 100,000 as of 20 June 2021 quoted by John Hopkins University). But who would know it? I have never heard these figures quoted regularly, if at all, on the news programmes I listen to. Perhaps I listen to the wrong stations?!
The trouble with this lazy reporting, and the lack of will to put numbers into context, is that it leaves our population, and particularly our population of young people, believing that this country is dross and that does neither them nor the country any good. Sure, we have not got great leaders at the moment but that’s no reason to propagate negative narratives about us as a people. It serves no purpose other than to demoralise, and a demoralised population tends to give up or, worse, follow some charismatic leader who promises to get us out of the problem. We don’t have one at the moment but with the culture of identity politics and cancellation, we need to beware if someone emerges to make such promises. From such beginnings totalitarianism can result.
A young teenager, Alex Wilkie, on Radio 4 last week asked that people do not refer to her generation as “the lost generation” as a result of the Covid-19 impact on their education. Labels such as these do nothing to inspire such teenagers to fight for improvement, to innovate and create new enterprises, to work hard because they believe there are still opportunities to succeed, despite the pandemic. To believe in themselves. For self-belief is crucial to success in any field.
The pandemic has been a shock to the young, I believe. Their lives had, even if they didn’t know it, been relatively unchallenging compared to some other generations and other geographical regions. This is their major challenge and it could result in them feeling ‘poor me’ or victimised. But, as the stoics would say, ‘no tree becomes deep-rooted and sturdy unless strong winds blow against it’. This pandemic is the equivalent of a strong wind for our younger population and the concept is that within those storms their roots grow stronger and a tree with firm roots is less likely to blow away. This type of challenge and change can be good for developing resilience in the long term. So let’s not catastrophise the situation. Just look around the world to see many others who are suffering more, with no welfare state, no democracy, no fresh water flowing from a tap, and be grateful.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be referred to as a ‘disadvantaged child’ or ‘disadvantaged family’. Those kind of labels can limit expectations. They hardly help to make a child or family feel good about themselves. Those who berate this country for a lack of social mobility are simply reinforcing such inequalities when they stick labels on that can impact a child’s self-image.
Then the media all rounded on the UK as racist after the appalling racist tweets posted after the Euro 2020 penalties. These were dreadful but a few ghastly people exist in any population of this globe and a minority of people does not make up a whole population. It turned out from a Guardian report that only 44 of the 585,000 tweets received in the first day or so were racist, and Reuters also reported that the majority, possibly 70%, of racist tweets were generated from outside this country, possibly from a Russian bot. This was mentioned on the radio after a few days but not before we had all had the chance to feel thoroughly ashamed of ourselves, in believing we were all slung into the same racist barrel as a few of the more unsavoury people who live in our country.
Of course, none of this means we should be complacent. Of course, we need to do whatever we can to protect people in the pandemic. Of course, more needs to be done for social mobility and to ensure that racism in whatever form is stamped out and that we come together as a more united population.
And this is my point. To emphasize our weaknesses, potentially without facts being checked, does not help us get out of the mess we are in after Covid. To emphasize our divisions, as seems to be the trend at the moment, does not help us all to pull together to feel that this country, and the people within it, are worth fighting for, building businesses for, creating wealth for, creating opportunities.
I have travelled extensively in my career and also for leisure. We have so much to be grateful for in this country. I know that racism exists in every country in one form or another and one can experience it as a white person in a majority black country. I know that xenophobia, poverty, inequality also exist in other countries. It doesn’t make it right but let’s get things in perspective. There is no need to believe we are the best of the best but let’s not rush to assume, either, that we are the worst of the worst.
Of course we have to review, analyse and adapt new approaches but when people are endlessly criticised and told they are no good and that everything around them is hopeless, then why would they bother? We must give our young people, and in fact our middle-aged people too, for their lives can be very tough, hope. Without hope nothing is achieved.
Jun 25
2021
3 Responses
Comments
Helen Whitten
Posted In
Tags
On this summer night I listen to the songs of Brazil, Portugal, France and Italy and I miss abroad. The scents, the tastes, the scenes, the cultures, the difference. That is what matters. When we travel elsewhere, we learn something about life, about humanity. And mostly we learn that we are so similar. We love, we hate, we feel jealousy and empathy, and try to do the best we can. It’s the human condition.
It’s exciting, sometimes, to feel an outsider. Working in Nigeria, the Middle East, or Hong Kong, I had so much to learn about how others respond to information. How they communicate and bond, or not.
I had an apartment in Nice for many years and I would sit on the balcony in the evenings and look at the moon and recognise that we all look at the same sky, stars and moon. We are all in awe of these simple aspects of nature, wherever we are. I would watch the planes come into Nice airport, or traverse the skies over France, and think of the people able to travel across miles of the earth to see family, visit friends, or do business, and I always felt that, despite the potential environmental threat, it was a positive and exotic experience to travel. It brings us together. The view of a plane in the night sky from earth makes it look romantic. Of course, the reality of being sat in one of these cigar-shaped machines is actually pretty mundane. Until you get there…
And then you arrive. In Dubai, or Egypt, in Nashville or Sydney. And the different temperature hits you. Dubai is like being in a fan oven. Phoenix, Arizona too. The excitement of landing in a strange place, getting a taxi across town, seeing the different sights, talking to the taxi-driver about their experiences, talking to anyone one meets in business or as a tourist. Discovering. Discovering those differences of life, how they live in comparison to how we live. No one way is ‘right’.
Tonight, stuck in London, I miss it all. Lisbon, Beirut, Havana, Kerala, Moscow, Luxor, Zimbabwe, and more. The gentle Portugual of my birth, where my sister and I had planned a sentimental journey this year back to the places we remembered as children. I hope we can make that next year.
Remembering running training courses in the Middle East and Africa, knowing and respecting the fact that I must conform to their norms. And loving the differences, noticing them, and hoping I was doing ok to be myself and yet shaping myself enough to their ways.
And my dear friend Sima, who sadly died last year, used to say that I was a different Helen when I lived in Nice. A free spirit, someone new to the Helen she knew in London. I don’t know who that was exactly, and I wonder if you can connect with that feeling of being someone slightly different, slightly more free, able to let go of the old British ways, of the expectations of class or family, and try out different ways of being when you are abroad? I know my father was at his most relaxed, my mother always said, when he was abroad. My brother and sister have both lived away for more years than I have and I know that the three of us, maybe because of our early years in Portugal, thrive on being somewhere different.
Yet, speaking for myself, I also love England. The countryside and what this country offers. Maybe it’s because we are an island nation that we yearn for other spaces and places. But it pains me when so much of what we read and listen to is constantly seeking to criticise everything we do in this country. Which is not, after all, so bad. I know I would prefer to be supervised by our police officers, however flawed, than most others in the world, that I am happy with our inevitably flawed democracy rather than any kind of dictatorship. After all, only 32% or so of the French bothered to turn up at their first local elections. For a political nation celebrating democracy, that is weird, if not dangerous.
But Macron and Merkel are determined to play their political games and stop us Brits from travelling, despite the fact that it deeply hurts those in their own countries who depend on tourism. I read today that the reason that our rates of Covid look so high is that we test far more – as much as 10 times as much – as Germany, and more than France or other European nations. So, of course it looks as if we are doing badly. And we count the Covid deaths of all those who die ‘with Covid’ rather than ‘of Covid’, so they could have been hit by a bus or died of a cancer they already had, but would still be recorded as a Covid death. Statistics have to be studied hard and in detail, as Tim Harford explains frequently, if they are to be understood accurately.
But tonight, I miss the different sounds and the words of a strange language in my ear, the scents of a different country and its people, the way people dress, the fruits sold in the markets, the blossom on their trees and plants. So please, dear leaders, stop making politics the reason why we are stopped from travelling. Science ok, politics, no. People have close family abroad that they haven’t seen for months. And family is what matters in life. When you are in need, it is family who count. So, Boris, Angela and Emmanuel, recognise that the rate of vaccination in the UK is exceptionally high, get your act together, all of you, to get life back to normal and persuade your people to get vaccinated so the world is a safer place again, and we can mingle and learn from one another. I so hope we can do this again soon.
In the meantime, thank heaven, I can dream. Do you?