Is the pen mightier than the electricity?

I've started my first petition ever. I've signed a lot a petitions (usually the 'black and white' rather than 'grey area' ones), but the reason for this one is simply because I think it deserves to be in the news agenda. A lot of agenda-setting is fairly arbitrary and based on whatever news editors think is relevant. When I've spoken to editors they always say: "You just get a feel for the news." It really is arbitrary.


And that is always it. Our popular news tends to be down to the instincts and hunches of a few people who decide what the news should be. If I ruled the world, the news agenda would not be the way it is - but I don't and that is probably just as well.


So, I wanted to sign a petition against ECT - Popularly known as electro-shock therapy. The reasons for this were not because I have experienced ECT myself, but I have encountered people who have and from what they have said, it has largely been a very negative experience. They have described it as invasive and life-changing (in a bad way).


I couldn't find many petitions against it, so I've made my own. I've resisted doing so before now because I'm not a leader. But someone has to do it.


As Sondheim says in his lyrics: 'If you have no expectations, you will never have a disappointment'. And I'm not really expected any great results from this. Call it an experiment - in the same way as ECT is simply an experiment - because no-one knows what it does. And it really is barbaric and shouldn't happen.

The only other time I've gone all-out on a petition was when I took a petition against the Iraq war (just before it started) around.

Please don't send me to 'chokey' just for hoping that the pen is mightier than the electricity.


Here's the text of the petition and the link:


'Ban ECT - electroconvulsive / electroshock therapy in the UK


Electroconvulsive therapy remains highly controversial. It is also largely ineffective - it damages the human brain. It doesn't work. Those who experience ECT often talk about how it feels like a kind of torture or punishment. Many people with mental health problems feel compelled to undergo ECT as a last resort and yet they often come away from the experience feeling worse than they were before. They can also experience significant brain damage.


It is like playing Russian roulette with the human brain and is even used as a threat in some instances and contexts. It is a barbaric and ineffective treatment for mental health problems.

Academic studies which defend ECT are often influenced by those with a vested interest in the treatment. But it is the vulnerable who suffer as a result. Government is complicit in this procedure and there are many other less invasive options for those who suffer mental health problems.

Basically, it stinks.'

https://www.change.org/p/jeremy-hunt-mp-rt-hon-david-cameron-mp-david-cameron-mp-jeremy-corbyn-mp-ban-ect-electroconvulsive-electroshock-therapy-in-the-uk?recruiter=9284199&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

Review of Destiny and Dynasty

I am very proud of this review of Destiny and Dynasty kindly given by the academic, playwright and writer Dr Gëzim Alpion.

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Destiny and Dynasty

By Nick White

Amazon.co.uk, Ltd., Marston Gate, UK, 2015, pb, 179 pp

ISBN: 978-1-5023-31271-6

__________________________________________________________________

Reviewed by Gëzim Alpion

Birmingham, 31^st December 2015

Destiny and Dynasty is Nick White’s first novel. There are a couple of books by established authors which I must confess I have not had the patience to read through to the end. White’s debut is a literary gem any serious writer would dream of starting their career with.

A good book tells an interesting story; a great book makes you feel the story is written for you. I initially came across the latter type of storytelling some thirty years ago when as a student in Cairo I discovered D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, James Baldwin and Joyce Cary. What I admired most about their first literary attempts as novelists was their courage and talent to turn some of their own life experiences into art. I was equally impressed by the attention they paid to their early formative years thus showing that there is method in the Wordsworthian maxim ‘The Child is the father of the Man’.

This is not to say that White’s novel is semi/auto-biographical. Nor is the book’s main character Michael Sumner a doppelganger of sorts for some of the early heroes – Paul Morel, Stephen Dedalus, John Grimes or Evelyn Corner – penned by the above-mentioned writers. Rather, he has a life and originality of his own which explains why he is such an unusual and yet entirely believable character.

Michael emerges from the start as someone who stands out, even as a child. He has more than his fair share of misfortunes since he is twelve. This is not what makes him unusual or special, though. Misfortunes do not make those who are at the receiving end interesting figures per se. In life, as in fiction, many suffer but few overcome the harsh trials and tribulations of capricious fate that often defies logic.

Although often vulnerable, Michael is fundamentally a survivor. And he chooses to survive not by following the easy options in life. On the contrary, he takes risks even when it is almost certain that he will be hurt, at times seriously.

The intriguing thing about Michael is that he can easily lead the people he associates with and cares about as much as the reader to believe that he is an easily manipulated character. White never makes a statement that his main hero is on a quest. The reader is expected, and rightly so, to realise this for himself. What makes this realisation rather difficult at times as well as an entertaining challenge is the fact that Michael himself does not seem to have a clearly stated goal in mind. He is haunted constantly by something although we do not know what exactly from. He wants to go somewhere but we are none the wiser at any stage in the novel about his ultimate destiny. He does not want to run a church like his love interest Naomi; nor is he tempted to run away from civilisation and be a hermit like Ian. On the contrary, ne never wants to be in control and is eager to remain in touch with people even when it is clear that this more often than not will bring him trouble and sorrow rather than satisfaction and happiness.

It is clear that Michael tries hard to make sense of the senseless waste of life, which he experiences first hand with the sudden loss of his family. Nothing could have prepared him for this; not even the fateful meeting with Madame Indigo, the fortune teller, whose words, in hindsight, take a complete new and sinister meaning for this indigo child.

What makes Michael an intriguing psychological character is that he speaks through his silence. White spares us tedious psychological monologues that a less scrupulous stylist could have been tempted to employ at the detriment of the inferred aesthetic reticence.

After the family tragedy, Michael is haunted by the nightmare of falling. His challenge from then onwards is to clutch at something, anything, in the hope that his life would assume some semblance of normalcy. This never happens, but he tries constantly nevertheless.

What is intriguing about Michael, a sensitive soul as he is, is that although he creates the impression that he is impressionable and can be easily manipulated, he is always his own enigmatic self. This is apparent at various stages in the novel, even when he leaves the impression that he is under someone else’s thumb. One such case is when, against his Aunt’s expressive advice, he follows Elizabeth Ravenscroft’s counsel to get rid of his mother’s diary and his brother’s teddy bear. This more than anything else indicates that he will not be held hostage by the memory of the departed loved ones, at least not to the extent to prevent himself from enjoying life or at least keep trying. Even his infatuation with Naomi makes more sense if it is seen in this light. Rather than apparently being besotted with Naomi, Michael is in love with the idea of being in love.

While Michael obviously craves to connect, the tragedy is that he can find no trustworthy people or institutions worthy of connecting with. His manager is a heartless creature and he is not the only cruel employer in the novel. Even a religious institution like the Triumphant Life Church (TLC) is void of true feelings and solidarity. The church lacks soul. Rather than a place of worship, the TLC is in essence a business venture that was started by a crook and inherited by a knave, and which most likely will end up in the hands of an equally unscrupulous fake shepherdess. The vivid depiction of the state the TLC is in, how it operates, and how it manipulates its flock, is a heartfelt condemnation not so much of religion per se as a courageous effort to highlight the failure of institutions to fulfil their responsibility, bring people together, and forge social cohesion at a time when we continue to leave an increasingly fragmented existence.

James Ravenscroft, the head of the TLC, is a religious hypocrite and a misogynist. He is the reason why his daughter has turned into such a troubled soul, almost a Heathcliff-like creature.

Michael appears to understand from the first encounter with Naomi that something is fundamentally wrong with her. The fact that he is drawn to her to the end, however, as mentioned earlier, does not mean that he is an emotional dupe. Likewise, partly because of his own observations and partly because of the nature of the three tasks Naomi asks him to perform for her in exchange of wining his affection, it is clear that Michael is under no illusion as to what kind of church the TLC is. The fact that he falls in love with and follows doggedly a girl he knows is incapable of loving him back, and starts attending a church that is anything but a pious spiritual centre makes him sound at times like someone who does not know what he is after.

The choices Michael makes, however, odd as some of them obviously they are, are indicative of something crucial about him, something that is beyond corruptibility. He may have not found for the time being a girl who can reciprocate his love or a church where he can find solace for his troubled soul, but he will never apparently turn into a manipulative and killing misanthrope of the James and Naomi type. Nor will he apparently end up being a runner like Ian whose failure as a spouse and a father as well as the disappointment he experiences with James turn him into a quitter who escapes into the Welsh wilderness only to return back to the fold of civilisation to confront evil unsuccessfully and die an anonymous death.

Notwithstanding Michael’s importance as the main protagonist, the novel is a gallery of several memorable charters. This is mainly as a result of the original way the novelist employs the narrative which is economical and rich in its suggestiveness. The author is an astute observer of humans, nature and their interaction. This is a literary work as much as a sophisticated study on how complex, vile and lofty human beings can be. The narrative is often peppered with witty observations and humorous asides which make the novel enjoyable to read even when describing awkward moments in the characters’ lives.

Nick White has not made it easy on himself by writing such a delightful first novel. 

A picture I took earlier this year

New church ad 'banned' in cinemas

Today’s news that the Church of England has had its latest ad campaign banned by the cinema advertising authority has an irony to it.

Anyone who has seen the advert will realise that it’s harmless. In fact, it’s so anodyne that it even got a ‘U’ rating from the British Board of Film Classification before it was stopped. Compared to a lot of the horrific and gory images which flood Facebook these days it’s like banning the Countryfile calendar.

Ban the Facebook post which is titled ‘Terrorists playing football with the heads of Christians’ (which I was shockingly naive in believing was going to be a nice interfaith football match between religious leaders). Forgive the black humour as we forgive those who write black humour against us.

Of course, I’m being disingenuous – it isn’t discrimination because no faith (or political party) at all is allowed to advertise in the cinema. You can aggressively recruit young people into the army in cinema adverts. But some things are not allowed and so they are not truly ‘banned’ or ‘censored’ so much as subject to a kind of strange cinematic tradition. Like so many of the arbitrary rules which fill our lives.

You know, sometimes I feel alienated from my own culture. It shouldn’t be that way. But when a harmless advert gets stopped it simply makes you question why these rules and traditions are there.

Come to think of it – isn’t the C of E supposed to be broke? Where did it get this advertising money from? How much does it cost to advertise before the new Star Wars film? What would Han Solo do?

It all makes me want to turn to the dark side.

Think happy thoughts.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Short story - The Shade of Hades

The Shade of Hades

“Then I said, ‘Sir, may I ask you, please, to explain to me what happens when we die, when we must each give back our soul? Will we be kept at rest until the time when you begin to make your new creation, or will our torment begin immediately?’”

Apocrypha - 2 Esdras 7:75

It is said that when a person dies they do not enter heaven or hell immediately. It is said that during the time between death and the final judgment there is an interim period. They say that people are separated into two camps like the removal of goats from sheep. One group rests in paradise, as if in a walled garden, protected. The others are confined within caves in Hades or left to wander. And when this happens the soul of a person waits.

But it isn’t necessarily so. Nobody knows for sure as the way across the final river rarely has a return. 

The irony was not lost on the dead man’s soul. She certainly had no body left (souls are always female). There was a moment of joy. She had survived death – she had half-hoped, half-believed it to be possible. That was when the words came in a deep, low, fatherly voice, which held more sadness than malice.

“You only get to keep what you have given away.”

A particular judgement. A ‘chicken soup for the soul’ judgement as kitsch and trite as it was moralistic. For a moment the soul wondered if she had heard the voice once before. It seemed to her that the voice had haunted her dreams and the deep places in her life, a half-forgotten memory of a life before birth. But everyone knows there is no such thing.

And the joy was pushed aside by the tone of the voice. The man had been afraid of something like this, some kind of moralistic nightmare in the afterlife. What he hadn’t expected was the confinement. Or the thirst. Such a great thirst, as if her throat, what was left of her throat, was a dry sepulcher, blocked by a stone.

It had simply been a deep, matter-of-fact voice. If nostalgia were personified then it would have been that voice.

The cave was completely dark. Truth be told, the cave was completely dark except for some glow-in-the-dark stickers. But even though these stickers which lined the rough walls had an inner glow, the light was not enough to illuminate anything beyond the boundary of the soul’s confinement. The stickers seemed mischievous, as if they were winking somehow.The soul of the dead man knew that it was a cavern because her invisible hands fumbled and scratched at a dusty, cold, rocky floor. She could see nothing except the stickers. But she could feel.

At first there were simply tears. Feelings of regret and despair, of a life lived badly. ‘There is more shame than glory,’ thought the soul as she cried. The tears were a small mercy at the time.

Eventually her invisible hands grasped further into the darkness, reaching one of the stickers – all of the stickers had been part of a childhood gift made to another child as a birthday present (because the man had stopped giving presents when he grew up). The sticker was shaped as a cartoon ghost, part of a set of scary Halloween stickers that had once been highly sought-after in some playgrounds by a certain kind of child.

“Remember,” the sticker seemed to whisper, as if suddenly serious.

The soul of the man tried to find her body but could see nothing, even when she brought a finger close to the dim glow of the sticker. She was invisible, of that she felt sure – she thought she must simply be the memory of the man she once was. Perhaps she was a hovering orb or a butterfly. They always said that butterflies represented the soul. Except there was no flying to be done. And there was no free blue sky to soar into. There was darkness and there was confinement and there was fear.

She fell to the floor in despair. And that was when her invisible hands met something on the ground.

Coins. Handfuls of coins in a pile. The clinking of the coins echoed around the cave. The ghost of hands the ghosts of coins, the ghost of an echo.

A shifting. A movement and the soul pressed herself against a wall, still cool and rough to the touch but offering no comfort. Falling back to the ground she resumed her crawling. The soul thought back to her lifetime and fumbled around in the darkness sobbing. And then her hands touched something else on the floor. The shape was familiar. It was a packet of cigarettes and around the packet there were tens of loose cigarettes on the dusty ground. How the soul longed for one of the cigarettes - but there was no source of fire. Was there even breathing, or simply the memory of the breathing?

Still it was dark. Did time have meaning here? Did a sequence of events take place which could be formed into any kind of story? Perhaps that was what hell was – a place devoid of story. Certainly it seemed that it was a hell and it seemed as if time crouched motionless like a thief. All things had been stolen from the man. His health, his life, his friends and family. His possessions. His many, many possessions.

The soul stayed like this for perhaps a day, holding her soul-shape with crossed arms and rocking backwards and forwards. The weeping continued and the soul considered that this was her fate for a life lived badly, with regrets, with roads full of twists and never straight. That was when there were roads. Most of the time it had been climbing over all kinds of fences that should never have been climbed, ignoring warning signs and zig-zagging through places that were not straight and narrow. Or walking the wide open highways.

In life he had not been a kind or particularly generous man. He had been rich. But he had not been evil, he had never gone out of his way to harm others (although that may have happened on occasion). He had been born into a wealthy family. There had been big mistakes. He had held little faith in a God of any kind. He hadn’t even believed in an afterlife. But the past meant very little. Except that, in the perpetual present of the soul’s situation, the past now meant everything.

What kind of moralistic punishment was this? But there was no room for anger, only regret. And the thirst. And the waiting. 

Waiting.

There was no sun to mark the passage of time but there were noises in the cave. Somewhere on the other side there was a ticking. It had tormented the soul for the first day (had it been a day?) when she simply rocked and sobbed. The ticking had been like a voice saying - 'no-hope', 'no-hope', 'no-hope'. In the end the soul of the man gave up the crying and forced herself to explore the cave again. Her shadowy hands caressed the dusty floor and she hoped to find some kind of light.

There.

There, a bottle.

A bottle. In an instant the bottle was unscrewed and lifted and the liquid gulped down. The taste was of vodka and within a few moments the soul had swallowed half of the bottle. Perhaps it was only the memory of vodka. Perhaps it was only the memory of the pleasure in getting drunk, but the soul remembered and the vodka gave comfort. It was in that moment that she decided that she would try to hope in hope, if such a thing were possible.

Still there was the darkness. And the soul of the man began to ask questions. What else was in this cave with her?

Her invisible hands frantically felt further into the darkness, fumbling against furniture. There was some kind of chair. Why was there a chair? Was she to sit on it? The strange thing was that the chair felt familiar. It was then that she remembered it. It was a broken chair with a missing leg that had been taken to a charity shop when the man was upsizing. It was useless. 

And then the soul began to understand. She was in a dark cavern surrounded by the things which she had given away in her lifetime as a man. How slow she felt in this dark epiphany. That was why there were so few things.

Perhaps she slept. Time seemed to pass. Strange visions seemed to mock her in the darkness. Above all there was a sense of despair and hopelessness. That she was condemned to remain in this state forever. The didactic intensity of it all had a sting to it. The walls of the cave seemed to bulge. Perhaps it was imagination, but it was all that she had. Imagination and the ghosts of the things she had once given away.

So she stretched out her hands once more and found a notebook and pen, a gift to a business partner. To survive, even to survive as she was, she opened the blank book and ripped out some of the pages. She scrabbled around on the floor with pieces of paper. The papers blurred in and out of her consciousness like a dream – like her mind was a mobile phone screen about to fade to darkness. A timed-out mind. She felt her thoughts slipping away, falling slightly to the right as a bone may shift in a socket and she fought to retain her sense of self. What could she write? What kind of plans could be made in this state? What kind of things could she read to help her? And still nothing could be seen. Perhaps she could do something. She drew a picture of the cave as she imagined it. She listed the things that were in the cave, exploring them piece by piece. She could see nothing that was written or drawn.

There were not many things in the cave, the cigarettes, a few bottles of alcohol – given as bribes usually. The glow in the dark stickers which winked and whispered. A second hand TV and a broken lawnmower which had never worked. A few other garden implements – kitchen utensils, the stump of a tree (a gift the man regretted when tree-stumps became fashionable in gardens). But at least it was another place to sit. He had tended to only give things away when he was compelled to do so or when it had been necessary to look good. Charities had never been in the man’s thoughts. He had chosen not to make a will – perhaps if he had he would still be surrounded by all his possessions. Despite this, the man had never considered himself a miser – he merely considered himself prudent – a man of shrewd business sense.

How the soul regretted her stingy prudence now. So few things in her cave. The thought cut her – that she had been surrounded by the best in cars, houses and technology – the lair in which she had lived her life as a rich man. And now this. Now there was not enough. She had thought nothing eternal. As she thought of all this she felt that the ghosts of her hands were clenched tight as if still trying to grasp, as if still holding on to what remained. Life had been so dear and so intangible.

The soul rebelled once more against the forced morality of it all and she swore out loud. The echoes of her curse filled the almost empty cave and she began to cry once again. Biting against a God that had abandoned her in her greatest need. Kicking against the remains of a light now gone.

It was inevitable. The man had rarely prayed in his lifetime. It had been a conviction of his not to. It had always felt too much like a surrender. The man had been strong, the need to pray had rarely been there. Help had not been needed. But now the need was there. And it was now that the soul of the man prayed. She begged and pleaded for an escape. She asked to be alive again. She asked for help – anything. But there was no answer. She felt separated from God, as if he could not or would not hear her prayers. In the end she began to cry again. The tears were a small mercy.

There are those who say that tears are like a telescope or magnifying glass. Like a glass that can bring heaven closer somehow. Teardrops fell onto the ground, mixing with the dust.

And the teardrops seemed to speak in another whisper, a whisper which contained mercy, like a bottle containing water for a thirsty man.

'Deeper, dig deeper.'

The idea formed – it fell into her head with the voice of the teardrops. As if an angel had let a droplet of water fall from a fingertip into the mouth of a parched, thirsty throat.

The kitchen utensils included spoons and knives. She could dig.

Scrabbling over the dusty floor she felt for a spoon. And suddenly one was in her hand. And so the hope of hope of hope returned. Like moonlight from behind a cloud.

The digging took a long time. A very long time. She got through a lot of spoons and knives. The bottles ran out. It became a temptation to despair and fall into madness and the soul devised new, imaginative ways of keeping herself sane. She didn’t entirely succeed in this. Especially after the first hundred years.

Of course she went mad. But the tunnel which she dug away at, clump by clump gave her some small comfort, some sense of purpose. There was, at least, no physical pain. There were none of the usual needs of life. Did life continue in the world she had once known? Were people born and did they die and did they share the same fate? Could others see them, as if they were gazing into a magic pool from some paradise which she was denied?

And there were times of despair, but in that sense it did not differ to the before-time. Had the memories ever been given away? There seemed so few of them as time passed. The upward slope was easy enough to navigate. It became a metre long, then two metres and so on. The clumps of earth began to fill the cave, burying the ghosts of the things given away. The soul didn’t sleep. Or if she slept she had no memory of the sleeping.

Who knows how long it took? Who knows how full the cave was of soil from the tunnel? Time and space began to hold no meaning. The only meaning was the hope in the hope of hope.

And it took a long time before the soul broke through.

When she knew she had broken through she began to tug away clumps of earth with the echoes of her fingers. And these fingers touched other ghostly fingers. There was another soul. There was someone else. The invisible hands grasped each other thirstily. The comfort from the touch was indescribable after such a long time. Like drinking after intense thirst. And then there was a hole large enough to see something. The other soul had a light which lit up the cavern and the silhouette of the shadows which they had become. But the other soul was as ghostly as the soul of the man. 

Another shadow. Another shade. Waiting.

“One day the Venerable Macarius of Egypt was walking about the desert and found a dried-out human skull lying on the ground. Turning it over with his staff, the saint heard a sound, as though from a distance. Then Macarius asked the skull: "What manner of man wast thou?"

"I was the chief of the pagan priests that dwelt in this place," it replied. "When thou, O Abba Macarius, who art full of the Spirit of God, pray for us, taking pity on them that are in the torments of hell, we then receive a certain relief."

"And what manner of relief do ye receive?" asked Macarius. "And tell me, what torments are ye subjected to?"

"As far as heaven is above the earth," replied the skull with a groan, "so great is the fire in the midst of which we find ourselves, wrapped in flame from head to toe. At this time we cannot see each others' faces, but when thou prayest for us, we can see each other a little, and this affords us some consolation."

Eastern Orthodox

The Shade of Hades - Full trailer