ANGER
Wendy has been unwell the last few days; just shattered. She has spent lots and lots of time in bed and has sometimes wondered if she is really ill at all. Which judging by her pale face and subdued manner is rather laughably silly. She is getting better now, just in time to start work after our last four days off during the coronation weekend.
I can hardly remember what we have done but do remember Saturday morning when I reluctantly watched the telly and saw such a surreal spectacle of crowns, golden carriages, uniforms and music. It really was the sort of thing I could imagine seeing in some slightly outdated film determined to show the reality of an ancient kingdom steeped with traditions that few of us were aware really existed. In between watching telly I occasionally looked at facebook and twitter where I met an outpouring of anger and hatred, some from people I know quite well. Almost as though they would have been delighted to trigger the guillotine or light the fire at the stake, for these people they seemed to hold responsible for most of the suffering in this country.
It makes me wonder. I cannot see any logical reason for our monarchy, but if I had been invited to the coronation would have been very excited and indeed have remained excited on the few occasions I have met with Royalty, despite my sense that I shouldn’t be. I don’t mind my inconsistency particularly, I sometimes like vanity and the grey areas where we are not entirely sure of right and wrong. Being a Royal is not a job I would want and the wealth that comes with it would in no way recompense someone like me for the unbearable pressure that must come with being a public figure like they are. If I had been a prince I would have rapidly fallen apart and probably pleaded to be allowed to hide as far from the public gaze as I could.
I took Dash the dog for a walk in the middle of the coronation; a very still day, with heavy black flies hanging in the air and beautiful white terns screeching besides the mudflats but also more and more of the flowers of late spring and early summer. I don’t know many of their names but loved the white blossom of some type of hawthorny thing and the blossom
of the pear tree that lives on it’s own by the shore. This amble with Dash the dog, in slightly chill air; I finished it off by going to the photography group at Jeans Bothy, where we drank coffee and laughed and those who were getting their portraits taken acted nervously and slightly excitedly. It was a tender interlude filled with kindness. I loved every moment of it.
Yesterday Wendy recovered enough to come with me to Geilstone Gardens; we met the worker there and nattered, we took photographs of bluebells and more blossom, of grass and trees illuminated by sunshine. We sat in the chairs at the pergola and talked with a family whose tiny children wanted to pet Dash the dog but were frightened to do so. The joy when they said ‘paw’ and Dash put his foot in their hands and gazed into their eyes! I expect many people disapprove of National Trust properties like this, especially those that came into being through the money gained through exploitation and suffering.
But I must admit that I love it; especially at this time of year: the burn running through the gardens, the almost green haze of the bluebell plants and that staggering soft blueness of the bluebells.
Today, just now, I listened to a recording of a pod cast I will probably appear in. it was sometimes suggested it might be tempting to be angry about the people who have provided care for me over the last forty years and even more tempting to be angry about people who I know have harmed me in the past but here I pause and must confess I am confused.
When I was a young man, I was, I think, for me, an angry person. I am not too sure why now. Maybe my upbringing was difficult but somehow I doubt it, maybe I needed to be angry so that I could turn into whoever I now am. Compared to many of my acquaintances I was only mildly angry, but I did my fair share of occupying University Buildings in protest of what I no longer know and there, very, very angry men in sort of combat uniforms tried to convert us to the revolution. In those days Maggie Thatcher was in power and the police parked their riot vans in our street while waiting to decide which miners picket to attend and we put up our ‘Support the miners’ posters. I know I wanted justice but I had little idea what justice was and little understanding of the injustices I had experienced. I had had glimpses of it through my stay in one of the old Asylums and greedily gobbled up the critical and anti-psychiatry philosophies of the radical community development workers and social workers I knew.
When I heard people say anger was not healthy I felt even angrier as I thought for some things there is some sort of righteous anger that almost needs to be there, it was that burn for justice, or so I thought.
Is it that I am old now? Or wiser? Or maybe just more content and more cautious? I have no idea at all. I have no idea if there is any merit in what I say here. I look at the invective of twitter; the wild rage of some of the people I meet at work, some of whom seem to think I am responsible for all the suffering people like me experience and I do not understand. I now, through the sort of life so many of us have experienced, have a collection of things I could if I wanted, be very, very angry indeed about. But somehow and I cannot articulate it well; I do not think a philosophy, or movement or action that is founded on anger has a reliable or even moral base.
We are all subject to injustice in one way or another and it can be natural to respond with anger or even hatred but I fear when we use that hatred to create change, as we see it, for the better, we fatally undermine our aims.
It feels to me that hatred and bigotry and anger create more of the same. The raised voice to a challenge produces another angry voice. I do not understand how that applies when people like Putin use rage to subdue populations, I do not understand then how you can respond with anything other than anger but equally do not know how many decades upon decades of work will be needed to undo that particular harm and the consequent anger it has caused.
Once I hated my dad so much it was almost irrational. I could have hated him for all his life but I learnt not to and instead learnt to love him. There are many things I could hate but more and more I like to think of the blossom on the apple trees on todays walk at Bowling and Wendy’s hand in mine as we walked back to the car.
The work I do is about highlighting rights and sometimes poor practice but I much prefer to think most people fall into that by accident rather than by a genuine desire to harm and if they didn’t I would still hate to see their mistakes being my personal therapy for an anger of mine that has nothing to do with them at all.
(Photos: Ardmore and Geilstone. May 2023)
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