Buffeted by high winds

Sitting in the Lounge which we in our more plebeian years, called the Sitting Room,/ middle class people, with time on their hands "lounge about"you see whilst working class people sit ready to undertake the next task their masters have in mind ? The rain continues to pound against the window as the wind picks up strength and the trees stripped of their leaves by winter stand gauntly against a gun metal sky. The wind howls down the chimney emphasising the torment outside and we hunker down for the day, being retired one can turn ones nose up at all the things that one should do and wait for a better day.
These seasons and the savage turn of weather, yesterday was a bright clear sunny day, have their source in the Atlantic. We see on the weather forecast the isobars forming according to the pressure variances over the ocean sweeping in, bringing the weather with them and there is nothing to do but marvel at the complexity of the world we live in.
For someone living on the High Velt in South Africa largely removed from the oceanic turbulence, where every day is much as the last day, warm and sunny, the question of climate takes a back seat in our consciousness and we expect the weekend briaa to be held under a blue sky. Of course the stoic Brit' tries to make a feature out of his predicament, pointing out that in this unpredictability lies natural beauty and awe, as we feel and watch nature teaching us a lesson or two.   Poets, painters, authors, fishermen, farmers, builders, all have a view and add to the spectre of any event concerning our weather. The rain of course brings growth, the lack of sunshine develops the greens to capture what sunshine we have and so we are renowned for this "green and pleasant land" but don't tell that to the holidaymaker battling their way down the promenade buffeted by high winds at the sea side.                  

Emptiness (Buddhism style)

Emptiness in terms of the human condition  is a definition in Buddhism that gets to the root of why the philosophical basis of Buddhist reasoning is so hard to fault. Religions are generally based on faith, a creator, a maker of the world and everything in it. To believe in any of the main religions one has to believe in the permanence of everything having been created by god or by human beings. Everything has a label and we attach labels onto things which come into our conciousness. 
The labels are the result of communication and the agreement of people in general to use the same label so long as the definition we use to describe the object of our thought confirms that we are in agreement.
Language ties us into a convenient school of thought which classifies and categorises everything within our experience. 

If we begin to question this convenience as a man made artefact we then have to re-examine the very substance of the presumption of everything, not deny its existence but question the way we arrived at our our logic. If we question our logic, we question many of our presumptions about life and the labels we attach to the things around us and most importantly to ourselves.
It becomes open season to re-evaluate all our emotions, all our thoughts, all our actions which have occurred through the paradigm of "me" and shift the focus to a place where these labelled events that flow through our conciousness are not of our making, are not of us and have no permanence. In ridding ourselves of all this baggage we become empty with an infinite opportunity to build our own world, not encumbered with thing we can do little about.
Have I got it ??                         

The aged and Christmas

Christmas has been and gone once again as we tidy away the tinsel and wrapping paper for another year. For most it has been good to be forced out of our lethargy and join in the party even if it meant clocking up many miles to see family and friends. Now with only Old Years Night / New Years Day ahead the reality of the payment for our extravagance, sets in and the wild exuberance of the Christmas Present binge sits like a heavy meal on our credit account. So be it, the Chancellor would have us believe that we are doing our bit to stimulate the economy. Pity he doesn't feel the need to chase Goldman Sacks, Google and Amazon to inculcate into them to have the same national zeal to contribute their taxes. 

When you get older many of your friends lie in hospital or sadly pass away around this time, its as if they wait until another signpost, memories of better times, arrives and passes and the thought of another year ahead in ill health is too much. There have been many old people this holiday forgotten in their homes, pottering around eating meagre meals in a poorly heated, dimly lit rooms with only the TV to keep them company. How incongruous the programs are to his or her situation with their forced joviality and excessive focus on family and friends. 

Religion used to be a support, a prop for people who were tied through sickness and old age to their home. The service, the carols, the sight of the congregation, (if you had TV), people like you, a little younger but recognisable as part of the race of human-beings you had grown up amongst, not the souped up celebrity hosting a show which was the brain child of someone more adept at running Jackanory.                

Letter from America

Alister Cook pre-dates the modern blog. His "Letter from America" was a favourite of mine on "steam" radio. His description of everyday America and the people who made up that important country was a perfect specimen of the understated but accurate description of life around him seen through the eyes of a middle class Englishman living and plying his journalistic trade across the States. Sitting in our living room in England his quiet distinctive voice wove a verbal picture of a country so different from our own but which through language we felt an affinity for.
The personalities were front page news, their politicians affected our foreign policy their culture became ours and Alister Cook tried to make sense of it all, seen from the English perspective. From the American Constitution to the racial conflict in the 60s/70s. His description of the wonder of the Fall in Vermont, this attempt to explain the obsession Americans have for Baseball the dignity of Joe Louis. The painful learning process they were forced into about their lack of invincibility, learnt the hard way through the Vietnam War. His delivery was in part whimsical, projected in a measured tone, eliciting an "old world" turn of phrase, comforting in the humanity it touched as he described the texture of a complex society.  Like our enjoyment of big band swing music, the crooning lyrics of singers who's training and diction meant we could actually understand what they were singing about, this assumption that we would stop and listen to gain understanding. Foreign in the hectic "gad fly" life so many people these days call life !!               

Happy Christmas

The car is packed to the brim not an inch of space anywhere, ready for its journey west. The anticipation of Christmas dinner is beginning to take hold and with it the deep pleasure of being amongst family.
Families are flung far and wide these days the regular "must pop over to see Mom" of yesteryear is missing and the route march today has to be carefully planned.
A 25 hour plane journey is no small undertaking and we begin to rely on the phone and the marvel of internet communication with its video link to remind us what the person we are talking to looks like today. This is a virtual world come to fruition. Our lives will pass along a well worn path but never cross the people we love the most, our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, our grandchildren, each one now represented by a video image. 
Of course it is so much better than the occasional letter we used to write and the even more the occasional telephone call usually around this time of the year, rather its the scale of the atomised family setting that makes one wonder. 
The accessibility of ones friends and family is important, the arms length conversation, the tactile hug every so often makes us human and draws on the innate bonds established over many years. 

So we settle for second best and count our blessings.

Happy Christmas 

From John Marie Angela & Andrew          

Another crop of babies

This is the season when our TV screens are flooded with tragic scenes of emaciated children dying of malnutrition. Horrible pictures of not much more than baby's staring with huge eyes lost in their own misery of hunger and pain. 

It seems as if the "Maker" an old fashioned term, had felt the need to throw the whole panoply of unmitigated trauma onto a section of the human race for some unknown reason. These little mites were paying the price of man's unfaithfulness. his unwillingness to follow, to the letter, the tenets of the "Maker".   The God of love and forgiveness has another side to him it seems. 

Of course mankind is at the root of all this. His insatiable need to have sex irrespective of whether a pregnancy occurs and a child is born, irrespective of whether there is the food and shelter to support the child irrespective of anything other than a moment of lust. There is no way to stop this sexual explosion other than contraception but when the tribal custom looks on babies as a crop to grow for the future economic sustainability of the tribe then the suggestion that you limit the number of babies falls on deaf ears. And so we will continue to fill our screens with man's in-humanity to man and hope for change.          

The new aphrodesiac

Life is full of hurdles unexpected things happen and it is the way we deal with these things that makes the outcome acceptable. Part of the problem we have is that we assume so much is based on our own view, which is, itself corrupted by our many blind spots as we evaluate everything through a prism of our own making. What is true and what is false depends so much on our reading of events, events which themselves, on the surface seem to be such and such but can be so misrepresented. 

True knowledge is gained from experience and it is life's experiences that emboldens the person to believe they are knowledgeable, until of course a new experience comes along and reveals how inadequate we are, and we start, once again to try to understand who we are and why we arrived at the position we are in. It is common that we take for granted much of what goes on around us and it is only when we no longer have access to something that we miss it. 

Do we miss it because it is important to our lives or do we feel that the change of circumstances has made us realise that nothing in our world is secure, which in its self, makes us insecure.  

If also we allow sentimentality to creep in then we are at risk of becoming ever more focused on what we don't have and forget the positive aspect that a change in circumstance can bring. Unfortunately much of our resilience is dependant on the stage we are in regarding life's journey. With many years ahead and the general assumption that there is plenty of opportunity to rebuild, is different, when one is old and in the last phase of life. 

Re-igniting the desires that one had when younger is virtually impossible, the cause is lost and the spark is gone. This does not mean that one can not undertake an adventure and try to recapture the interest in the world around but youths insatiable yearning to discover new things is very different to the reflective experience when older. 

Of course this power of reflection and the need to "express ones thoughts" in many new and different circumstances could be the new aphrodisiac !!    

Symbolism

Symbolism has a part in our psyche, it represents certain values that we, as part of any society hold to be part of the foundations of who we think we are. 

The pageant of laying Mandela to rest is drawing to its final chapter as we watch the huge military transport plane carrying his body to the Eastern Cape. 

Leaving behind the modern western world in the Transvaal, it will arrive in Umtata and then by road to the village of Kunu. This is the contrast of the modern against the old traditional homeland with its tribal customs, largely held by the elderly with their beliefs of an after world and the importance of according the spirits their respect. 

The young reporter who is reporting on the events in the Eastern Cape for Al Jazeera, the middle east media channel was resiliently supportive of the tribal way of life, describing the importance of the link between the youth and the elders, the elders teaching and reminding the youngsters of their responsibility to uphold the belief and tradition of past generations. 

Like a stone worn smooth by the influence of time, older societies have a lot to tell us and warn us of the dangers of loosing our link with the past. Experience has the value of revealing the good and the bad by the evidence of the result. Too often we choose a course of action by looking at what we expect the end result to be, not mindful that things often don't turn out as we would expect with a spin off which can be disastrous. Children learn from their elders before discarding the lessons to follow their peers and the manipulative industries (cometh the ad'man) which to our shame we all fall foul but, over time the old values re-emerge.The ANC under the influence of Zuma have not extended the opportunity, usually given in an African  burial ceremony to welcome anyone who wishes to make the journey. This is particularly hurtful to the local tribesman who can't understand the fact that Prince Charles will be there but not Joshua Nicobie from the village. 

How the "great and the good" squeeze us out in all manner of ways throughout our lives, even in death. 

I see that Bishop Tutu has also been excluded.   His opposition to the ANC particularly to Zuma has produced the backlash but the slight to Tutu has caused many to think about the kleptocracy that has grown from the ideals that Mandela spent 27 years in prison for.      

          

IPSA

The issue of the increase in pay for Parliamentarians is crying out for common sense.
The body who were given the task of deciding the rate of increase IPSA have based their findings on the salaries paid to people doing comparative jobs.
I am reminded of the adage, "two wrongs don't make a right", If one looks at both commerce, industry and the public sector there has been an accelerated gap opening between the ordinary worker and the upper end of the job market.  Right across the board the executive class, including specialised groups have such as the medical profession have voted themselves substantial increases such that trying to evaluate the MP with a horse that has bolted is virtually impossible.
The job as an MP is like no other and whilst the work is judged by the voter at the ballot box, the MPs work is not judged by a peer group, such as  a board of directors perhaps (although the directors are under pressure to vote the increase through because of this very peer pressure) and any regular evaluation is impossible. 
One can not equate the work an MP does with people in industry or commerce, like the clergy it is more a calling.  IPSA, in my opinion have failed to understand this and therefore they were working on a false premise.
Representatives  of the public should be evaluated in the same way the Chancellor evaluates the general public. His message to "all of us" is that we must "tighten our belts and deflate our expectations in tune with the countries financial circumstances".
I can think of no finer epitaph for current and future Members of Parliament to have above their door.             

A misty evening

Its 5 o'clock in the evening and I have just walked up to the post box to post some Christmas cards. Its very damp, the wet mist clinging to everything, foreshortening  the world around to a ghostly indistinct image of street lamps and garden hedges. It brought back memories of my youth, setting off for a night out, dressed up in suit and tie with my posh overcoat on to stay warm (its still in use) ready to go dancing. 
Before the use of a car we always had to trudge up the road to wait for the trolley bus to take us into town. Often the weather was as it is tonight foggy and wet but it was all we knew and we accepted it as normal. Through the mist the faint light of the mud

spattered bus would emerge and we clambered on board up the stairs to the top deck. The reason for seeking the sanctuary of the top deck was that in those days the young were expected to  stand and give up their seat to any women older than themselves.   Well trained, we complied with societies notion of good manners but were able to bypass the issue by going upstairs where it was illegal to stand when the bus was in motion. 

The downside was that upstairs was also the domain of the smoker and the smoky atmosphere plus the nicotine dripping off the ceiling was unpleasant. Its funny how it took a campaign to outlaw smoking for us to really realise how obnoxious the smell of smoke is. 

We were tied to the routine of the bus timetable, last bus home, 11.00 otherwise a long, wet, 5 mile walk home. 

Our world was so different then, our aspirations were like our acceptance of the weather it was what we had grown to know. The dance was the focus of our night, the weather never stopped us, be it a Sunday out riding our bike or meeting friends to walk and talk in the evening. 

This evenings walk in the mist brought it all back.          

In memoriam

Was the rain symbolic, were the heavens weeping, were the gods unhappy at the passing of Mandela and wished to show ordinary mortals that the occasion had a wider dimension.
The so called great and the good were gathering, walking through the heavy rain into the austere environs of the FNB stadium. Leaders and past leaders, people who had been involved in the freedom movement people who had supported the anti- apartheid movement from the safety of distant countries, rock stars, fund raisers people who, we who lived there, felt were totally misguided and had been brain washed not to understand the other side of the political coin.
The white man's contribution was air brushed out, brushed aside, in fact vilified in favour of ideology. We continue to be nonplussed by the virtual silence the media brings to the mis-governance of the country !!
It was interesting how, when the various South African dignitaries were announced the crowd cheered. Winny Mandela, and the previous president Thabo Mbeki received the loudest cheer, even De Klerk had a strong acknowledgement but President Zuma when announced he was greeted by boos.
I was also intrigued by the blessing given by the four faiths Jewish, Muslim, Hinduism, and Anglican. For me the one which rang true was the Hindu in his simple description of life's journey without the complexity of the story of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran. The Jewish rabbi went into great detail quoting passages from the Old Testament much of it highly problematic and indulgent of his faith. The Muslim preacher was more to the point but was hardly inclusive. The Anglican Bishop of Cape Town was very measured, very dignified but of course also relied on biblical structure which in the end raises more questions than answers. No, I liked the Hindu who's feet were on the ground who's message was about the insignificance of our desires and the inevitability of the circle of birth and death.
I was very impressed my Mandela's wife Grace Machel. She was clearly deeply effected by his death but she was so serene and looked the picture of a First Lady, she was never caught by the camera in anything but a deep sombre mood. The speeches were, as when ever you give a politician an opportunity and a platform to practice his trade, repetitious and coming from some of them, hollow.
President Obarma made a significant appeal to keep the spirit of Mandela alive to be inclusive of the opposition view point to keep in mind the whole of society and not purely the interests of the influential. Of course the American President holds court over a political system that encourages massive influence from "special interest groups " and has done little to dismantle Guantanamo Bay, one of the most public hell holes, where a man's human rights defined by the American Constitution is flouted by sit'ing the detention camp on foreign territory.
I wonder when he pronounces on his ideals does his conscience trouble him or is that a political oxymoron ?                             

Madiba

Madiba has passed away and the world’s media is full of his life and times.

A truly iconic figure, he seemed to have gained a messianic following fed, not only by feature writers but by a list of world leaders as varied as Fidel Castro to Bill Clinton all impressed by his innate ability  to be anchored in a set of beliefs that were part of his very fibre and not the usual political make over. He was extraordinarily stubborn in his commitment, initially to the African cause and then amazingly he absorbed the whole nation in his humanity.  

If there was a moment it was when he embraced the winning South African rugby side and won over a crowd of mainly Afrikaner’s as he shook hands with Francois Pienaar the captain, who was plainly in awe of this charismatic man wearing a Springbok jersey sporting the number 6.

Behind it all, we who lived there have our own memories of living in the country during the Apartheid years, watching the events unfurl, having our fears assuaged by a largely Government controlled media,  being convinced we were an important part of a "cold war" conflict that the Communists were waging in Africa.          

South Africa was a bulwark of the West for many years, Simonstown an important base for the Royal Navy and the South African Army carrying on the fight into communist controlled states to the north.   

The Township troubles were cast as part of the communist onslaught and a fight that had to be fought. The issue of race was all around but was cast in this ideological conflict rather than the moral issue of the treatment of people based on the colour of their skin.

We employed black people and housed them in tiny rooms with the barest of amenities. We didn’t really consider them or their families in the same way as we thought of our own families, we came to a pragmatic acknowledgement that our own needs were pre-eminent and our life style was something we were not prepared to give up.

Watching a program, put together by David Dimbleby last night, we were reminded of the events that earmarked the passage of time from John Vorster through the Botha years to De Klerk. The Rivona Trial and prior to that, the arrest of Mandela, the Soweto uprising, and the reports of troubles in townships we had never heard of, as the State tried to keep the lid on the growing disharmony. We went to work and had our briaa, we gobbled our garlic prawns and glugged our Castles Larger, but had little real interest in what was happening just over the horizon.

The ANC were demonised and the leaders were persona non grata. There were rumours that certain business leaders, Anton Rupert, members of the Anglo camp had gone up to Angola to talk to these terrorists with the government blowing icy threats in their direction  of  cowardice in the face of the enemy.

We continued to party and were surprised when De Klerk announced the release of Mandela, Mandela who, oh that guy who we locked up years ago.  I visited Victor Vester Prison (trying to sell them medical packs containing sterilised equipment )  where he had been moved as part of the secret negotiation which was taking place between the ANC and President Botha. 

His release and the inter-party negotiations at Kempton Park were fascinating, even more so because we, the ordinary public were able to watch the meetings on TV, so different from the acutely secretive Afrikaner government who had always known what was best for all of us. We were now watching black men tying our heads of government in knots as the sentiment for a settlement took hold and the inevitable became clear.  

Ceril  Ramaposa was the lead man. How could a black man be so eloquent, looking the part, making the current ministers seem parochial – even dim !! Behind it all Mandela and De Klerk manoeuvring, trying to ensure their electorate had a fair share of the cake. It was a last cause for De Klerk, given the enormous disparity of the vote and the fact that the voters were lined up in terms of colour rather than the normal party promises.

Mandela the statesman who emerged from prison was a phenomenal in that he captured the world’s attention and was claimed by statesmen from all corners of the world, of all ideologies as the person they most wanted to share a platform with. Was he a terrorist, was he a freedom fighter was he a friend or did he bring our affluent house of cards tumbling down. Would we whites  have been better without him or was he inevitable and were we simply lucky to have had this peaceful giant on hand to guide us through the potential turmoil.                         

Don't knock it.

Today we turn into the month of December and close onto the celebration of Christmas. Christmas means different things to different people, ranging from sadness to happiness, from inclusiveness to exclusion, from hope to despair. Why is this season, culminating in a few specific days in which there is a collective expectancy to be rewarded by some sort of emotional happiness so important to us. The issue of Christmas, apart from its religious cogitation, pre dates the media/business hype that we are used to these days where we are now conditioned to enjoy and to spend. Our very economy is dependant on the purchasing splurge as people buy gifts for family and friends and of course the stimulation to get out to the shops brings a focus to the high street and the people shopping there. There is a happy glint in the eye, as we think of others and the things they might like to receive on Christmas Day, we move out of our own bubble and think of these others, its therapeutic in a good sense.
Of course for many, when times are hard it is difficult to find the means to fulfil the expectation and it is this expectation and our sense that we are valued by the ability to match up to society around you is the Achilles heel of this time.
It is not an easy time for the individual, the lonely, the excluded and of course, it is difficult for people remembering  past, happier Christmas's which, no matter how hard one try's, can not be recreated.  
The mawkish sentimentality of the Christmas festivity as it effects a fictional American family on TV is recreated every year ad nauseum and makes viewing nearly un-watchable,  (along with the forced conviviality of New Years Eve and peace to all men malarkey !!) But having said that I feel that the effort mankind makes to acknowledge mankind in general is worthwhile, so I won't knock it !!