On what subject(s) are you an authority?
Some of these questions accidentally steer you into belittling yourself. Not on purpose, I think it is just where the question leads you. I start off full of hope and I sit and think about the question and write and delete and write and delete. Eventually I resign myself to the fact that I can’t answer it.
I mean I can answer the question quickly and efficiently. Nothing. Absolutely, no question, without fear or favour, no argument, nothing!
I know nothing and understand less.
Like all men I think I am an authority on driving, a specialist areas include how to park our car, other idiot drivers, and why nobody is courteous on the road anymore with special mention to bus drivers.
I am more than happy to pontificate about what is wrong with whichever government is currently ruining our country, but my beautifully structured arguments and reason collapse in the face of the very good point my learned friend just made and I guess it is my turn to get the beer.
I know about music, at least I think I do, but music is one of those things defined by taste, age and culture. My knowledge can easily be reduced to very little if I swap countries or the discussion turns to country or heavy metal, two areas of music I know very little about, – oh and I don’t want to. Or if a teenager joins in, who knows what they are ever talking about.
I know about Apple products. I know about the ones I use. I know more than the average person, but less than someone who works at a Genius Bar at an Apple Store. I imagine that is hundreds of people. So not an authority.
I don’t have a job with any authority. I don’t speak with any authority. I don’t hold any position of authority. Even my dogs only obey me if they were going that way anyway or there is the faint possibility of a biscuit.
I suppose I could make a passable attempt at addressing an audience with an air of authority. However, if there are too many people who actually know me in the audience, there would be a slight whiff of disbelief in the air, and that can undermine authority.
I would make a hopeless teacher because I am highly likely to giggle if something was funny, so I could never tell anyone off with any conviction. Not sure I could be a policeman because I can be quite gullible and believe people’s sob stories, so my arrest rate would be appalling.
Equally, I would make a terrible judge; my mind wanders when I am bored, I enjoy humming to myself if someone inadvertently says a song lyric while speaking about something. The need for coffee or a wee can easily erase my concentration. I think a judge with no authority is just a waste of my time and yours.
I am not sure I have any authority; nothing obvious. I mean, I am not totally useless; I have skills. I can clean a house. I grow things. I am creative. I am fun to have around, I think. I can be funny. I can get a gin and tonic in your hand before you have even hung up your coat.
You will notice that none of these things require any authority, and I am not an authority on any of them. I just know how to do them. I am capable. Vaguely useful. I serve a purpose.
Whistling in the Dark
There is always a song in my head. I whistle and hum and sing a line from something. An old show tune, a current ear worm hit, a song I have always loved. Music is never far from my brain.
I walk into a room, I turn on music, sit at my desk to write, and I first select the playlist. Nothing can happen without music. The first thing I do when getting in my car is attach my phone and select the music we will drive to today.
It is not an obsession; it is a need. It has always been there. I can recall standing on my father’s knees while he held my hands, and I danced to The Beatles singing “ She Loves You” pouring out of the radio. I was almost four years old. It had probably just been released. When I say I grew up with music, I quite literally mean as pop was invented, I was there.
As a survivor, it is one of my most useful tools. It has the power to soothe me and make me feel safe. It enables me to close off the world and sink into the safety of familiar music and hide away for a few minutes until my brain unscrambles and my heart rate slows down.
It often says the things I struggle to articulate. The words land in my ears, my brain quietly agrees, and I take comfort knowing someone can say what I can’t.
Sometimes it is ten house tracks in a row thumping away the fear of something as I sit in the dark and try not to feel. Or numbing myself with perfect songs so that I stop feeling too much.
Playlists of songs that unlock emotions and allow silent tears to fall that would otherwise be unshed. Emotions can get locked down and stifled, and music can unlock them and let them out.
I have a playlist I curated with a fellow survivor comrade. We just added tracks that had helped us, the brief being that if I was helped by it, someone else might be. There are probably many varied reasons why we each added the songs we did.
That playlist has become something I return to all the time. Sometimes I play it through and it soundtracks the next couple of hours. Other times I just dip into it to listen to specific songs that I need in my ears at that moment. It is here if you would like a listen. It is called Songs For Lost Boys. Because, well, you know, Peter Pan and everything Neverland.
There is a healing property to music that is universally understood by survivors. It’s okay, I know normal people get it as well. Modern tech gives us the most perfect tool that has ever existed; we can carry a phone that can access millions of songs and we can find anything we need to suit the moment.
We can have earbuds that are noiseless and cut off the world and keep us safe in a locked-down world that excludes anything scary like crowds or noise or families or disruption or chaos. At the click of a button, they are all dispersed and we can exist in our happy place of our own creation. Every song hand-picked and curated for our souls.
If I am alone and feel overwhelmed with emotions and I can’t cope and there is nobody around to talk to, I can take a cup of coffee, walk into my garden with two fluffy dogs ambling along behind me, because you know no way do they want to miss out on a possible adventure; they will curl up on a blanket beside me and I slip earbuds into my ears and fill my head with something like Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, and the panic subsides and the garden and the music returns me to a place of normality and a little tummy needs scritching and all is right with the world.
Music is more than the sum of its parts; it touches us in places we can’t reach and walks us out of darkness into the light.
Describe your most memorable vacation.
There are a few contenders for this. The holiday we had in Tunisia a year after we were married, and the mind-boggling experience of my wife boldly heading off down side alleys to explore with little regard for muggers or thieves.
The times we have been in the Caribbean and spent two weeks at a time on beautiful islands, being lazy and feeling pampered. Meeting great people and drinking too many potent exotic cocktails, and realising that might be why they were great people.
With four children, our family didn’t do holidays as such. We would turn visiting relatives into a little holiday. Or make an opportunity out of my father being a relief manager in Bournemouth for a few weeks. We upped sticks and moved to a B&B, and we played on the beach, my mother sunbathed, my father worked, and we all met for dinner.
For me, the memorable one has to be a family boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads when I was a kid. Partly because it was a full-blown, pack the car up, head off on an adventure, not coming back for ten days, actual holiday.
It was originally intended to be us and an aunt, and uncle, and two cousins all together in a ten-berth boat. They had to cancel, and good job they did, because ten of us would have been a cosy fit.
It was a delight, waking up to the smell of eggs and bacon my mother was cooking in the oh-so-dinky galley kitchen. The slightly misty rivers full of splashes of fish and the noise of birds and rustle of the reeds made everything feel exciting and unusual.
We got to stop at endless pubs, have lunch and dinner, and take afternoon breaks for a cold beer for the captain of the boat. The sense of adventure for us kids, jumping off and tying up the boat when we stopped anywhere.
There were mishaps like running aground. My father dropping his glasses overboard, and tying a bit of fishing line to a spare pair to see if they floated or sank. (Was it worth going back to look for them or would they be long gone? We didn’t go back.)
My three sisters, for some reason, each returned from a pub toilet with pieces of toilet paper as a ‘souvenir’. Nope, no idea either, and it should be noted that not one of them has ever come up with a half-decent explanation. It was just a pub. No special significance, nobody royal had ever visited, and I can’t imagine the bathrooms were anything to write home about – on paper or a piece of toilet roll.
Lolling about on the boat and waving to people as we passed, didn’t know them, it’s just what you do, nobody knows why. Playing cards and board games and whiling away the time between stops. Fishing on quiet, peaceful lakes. Taking a turn steering the boat as it chugged along.
I imagine now everyone would be staring at their phones or have headphones in and be ignoring most of what was being said. Back then there were no such things, and I only remember us kids chattering away happily and lots of laughter, and round the next corner another pub and packets of crisps and shandy and long, warm evenings.
The Theology of Dog Love
The love between a boy and his dog is one of the simplest and purest loves the boy will ever experience. We should hand out dogs to all boy survivors. It would save time and money and meet most of the basic needs. The healing would start with the first lick.
If I could, I would buy every boy survivor I ever met a dog. The breed, colour, size or name matters not a jot. What matters is that they know how to do dog love. They know that you can be covered in tears or toast crumbs or both, and they still look at you like you hung the moon.
A love that is unconditional, unflinching, and sometimes slightly slobbery.
A small, furry, soul-sniffing wag machine who thinks you’re the centre of the universe just because you have opposable thumbs and smell like biscuits.
You would never disappoint them because just your presence is enough for them. Because you have to walk them and feed them and pick up poo, you learn to put something else first. No matter how you are feeling, they need you. Being needed is a healthy thing to feel.
Whenever you come back from wherever you have been, you are greeted as if you are the most important thing that has ever been. Until you have experienced an all-body tail wag, then you do not know enthusiasm.
You learn essential skills like doing anything else with one hand because there always needs to be a hand free for tummy foofing. Within a short space of time, you adjust to being stared at with complete adoration. It is disturbing at first, and you feel slightly uncomfortable in the full glare of worship.
Every single time you leave the house, there is the distinct feeling of the possibility of a huge adventure, and anything could happen, and so many smells.
The dogma of dog love is the complete opposite of human dogma. To love unconditionally, no matter how you smell or what you have done. To always want to be with you, however you feel, because dog love only understands that you are there, and already that makes everything better.
Dogmatically following you everywhere you go, being nearby, or beside you or on you is the best day ever.
Licking your face is good and holding you down with a heavy paw on your head is strong love and you will just lie still and take it because it is what you need and they know best.
If we have a theology of dog love, we should recognise the church they build in your heart. The rituals of walking together in all kinds of weather. Learning to shake it off. Dusk or dawn, a walk just is. Whether you run or plod, it is still being on a journey together.
Biscuits are crunchy and the best kind of communion; you give them to me, I receive them, and we are all the better for it.
We assume the position of meditative prayer by allowing me to crawl into your lap and you will worship to the sound of my gentle snores. And we will not move unless the doorbell rings or I need a wee.
Maybe we need some sacred texts.
The Book of Common Woofs.— I’m a dog, are you a dog? Here is my bottom, feel free to sniff. If I run in circles, would you like to run in circles?
Paws For Thought. — Who’s that? Was that the postman? Can I smell something yummy? Are you making food?
My Life As A Dog — an autobiography. Squirrels I almost caught. Tennis balls I have ignored. Sticks I have known and loved.
Understanding the theology of dog love does not need you to learn a language, or go to school, or read books, or pass exams. You just need to hold a dog in your arms. Curl up on a bed with your arm draped over a dog. Feel its breath on your face as you sleep.
The theology of dog love is softly felt.
Dog love does not need you to leap tall buildings or walk 500 miles; showing up is enough. There is nothing you can do to receive dog love, just being you is reason for love to be shown.
In the uncomplicated world of dogs, however, you feel they have the perfect answers; this wet, slobbery tongue is for you, and this damp nose is also for you, and this wriggly, excited attack is also just for you.
Because without you, they have no reason for being. You are their world.
What is your favorite genre of music?
I don’t like these kinds of questions. The instant anybody asks me to name my top three albums, or favourite songs, I feel the pressure to narrow things down and how could I possibly restrict myself and what about all those I will have to leave out?
If I had to, I would have to say soul music. Old school soul. Motown. Atlantic. Stax. The labels alone have the power to quicken my pulse. I was born in 1960, so I was growing up with this music exploding all around me. All over the radio, spreading its glorious finger-clicking goodness.
‘Songs In The Key Of Life’ was the first album I ever chose for myself. I was sixteen, freshly working, finally earning my own money — and that’s what I spent it on. Expensive at the time, but worth every penny. But I had been obsessed with The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, since I knew what music was.
The thing is, it is hard to stick to one genre of music. There is good to be found everywhere. I like Chopin and Yo-Yo Ma, have a little thing about Dolly Parton, have favourite Taylor Swift songs and can sing along to One Direction songs.
I know every word of the Fleetwood Mac album Rumours but don’t really go for that AOR stuff normally. I adore Coldplay, U2 and REM. I think Adele, Barbara, Aretha, and Dusty have sublime voices.
I have an hour-long playlist of favourite club tracks. I have even danced to some of them in public, while sober. It was a long time ago and I promise not to attempt it now.
I think Prince, George & Stevie are musical gods; they wrote, produced and performed. They are a triple threat of musical genius and perfection.
I like the way music is one of those things that can connect people, despite age gaps or different cultures; you can usually find common ground in music. You can usually find something everyone in the car can agree on listening to.
I like curating a playlist with other people; you discover music you have never heard of and it keeps your ears fresh and tuned into current things. There are no borders to music. The universal language and maybe the one thing we can all agree on.
I like living in these times where my music and playlists can be saved in the cloud, and if my house were to burn to the ground, I would still have my music collection. There was a time I could feel slight panic at the idea of picking which albums I would try and grab before leaving the house.
I always find it weird that I grew up with music. I know we all do, but I actually grew up as music did. At the point where I was born, it was four years after Heartbreak Hotel was released. There was very little back catalogue; it was all being written around me as I grew up.
Somebody born now has a vast catalogue of music to access and play at will. Log into Spotify, and it is all there for free. I have spent a fortune on various formats of music in my lifetime. Vinyl singles, albums, cassettes, Cd’s, iTunes, and finally streaming. At one point in my life, I liked music so much that I brought a whole record shop.
My computer has 18.6k tracks of music. I am not sure how that compares to others. It sounds like more than reasonable but less than an obsession. The point is, they are not all one genre of music. There is stuff from everywhere.
Music as the soundtrack to your life, people you have loved, people you remember, people you have danced with, people who have made you laugh, people you have made music with, sang with.
People. My favourite genre of music is people. That’s my answer!