We are not serious

Thanks to clicking, out of idle curiosity, on a chance link to a vaguely familiar name that came up in a computer search this week I had a vision of what might have been.
As I've mentioned once or twice, in a former life – over 30 years ago – I was involved in the world's unlikeliest clown troupe. In Belfast, at the height of “the troubles”. But in 1983, due to several devastating incidents which happened within weeks of each other, I just had to escape. It was meant to be temporary, but on the very morning I was supposed to take a plane back there to discuss a new project I had a severe panic attack of a kind I have never experienced before or since, and could not board the plane.
I later recovered the confidence to fly to visit a friend in the UK, during the year of the Miners Strike and Battle of the Beanfield, and saw a country I no longer recognised and no longer wanted to be a citizen of. To cut the story short, it was 1988 before I ventured off-island again, and then only to travel to Israel at the start of the Intifada, a two month adventure which (for reasons totally unconnected to the political situation in Israel) finally gave me the impetus to break back into a satisfying profession and life.
From the odd thing I saw on TV, I knew the Belfast projects were doing marvellous things, but never managed to get back into contact with old colleagues, even when in Belfast for a weekend of atheist subversion in 2005 and my hosts tried to help. So all these years I have wondered what happened, especially to my co-founder of the world's unlikeliest clown troupe.
Then, this week, that chance click on a vaguely familiar name revealed an astonishing story. My co-founder (then a startlingly individualistic 18 year old who, like me, left school unqualified at 16 having been told by teachers she would never amount to anything) carried on clowning, and other remarkable things. This should have been no surprise because, as I may have also mentioned, the whole point behind the clown troupe was that if you are in a hell-hole where conventional wisdom says you cannot do anything, you may as well go all out doing what you love, because even if you fail you will have had far more fun than conforming.
Then, in the late 1990's, she decided to take a B.A. in Archaeology, graduated with a first, went on to gain her Ph.D. in 2005 and to contribute to academic journals on a topic on which she is now almost Ireland's only authority. Remember again – written off as a no-hoper at school, living in a city where most of her generation were condemned to unemployment anyway according to the conventional wisdom. She's now, as far as I can gather, living happily in Galway, surrounded by other interesting and unique people and in every way defying the false logic of those who run these septic isles and think we should shut up and accept our place in their scheme of things.
It's odd enough running away to join a circus. Being one of only two people so individual they ran away from a circus is even rarer. Knowing the other one then, and knowing now that she went on to defy the odds (the norms?) for over 30 years, is an absolutely unique pleasure.

Clocking on

On August 6th, just before being dragged away reluctantly to warmer, more vibrant places for a while, I wrote that: “The optimist in me hopes I'll come back a chilled, kinder, less irritable person determined to spread only positive vibes…..”
It wasn’t just that the balance between the precious benefits of the quieter pace of life over here and the inescapable price (having to work in a sick industry which offers the only local employment) was getting out of kilter.
It wasn’t just the knowledge that (as the Manx education system is as riddled with small town prejudice and superstition as anything else) working parents with no link to the richest, thickest inbreeds need to take on the real education of our children, and treat ‘school’ as little more than a child-minding service where the kids try not to go to sleep while we’re away at work
It was also the reality kicking in that family responsibilities to relatives whose health is fast failing mean yet less time from now on for activities that actually interest me.
And the further knowledge that, even while away and theoretically on holiday, we’d probably be drawn into the lives of others whose problems dwarf our own.
Like the calm, unassuming folk who the drunk or loony always sits next to on the bus, me and the Mrs just seem to be magnets for anyone who can’t or won’t open up to ‘normal’ people or ‘proper’ family. Usually we don’t mind - and sometimes we even tap into something richer we would otherwise never have experienced - but even Nobel Peace Prize winners need a day off.
Well, I’m back on the Rock. Have been for a few days, actually, but still couldn’t bring myself round to blogging again.
Why?
Well, probably because (having studiously avoided the internet whilst away) I found nothing had moved on when finally checking back in here last week.
And I do mean nothing! Do the Toytown windbags who dominate the local media really think anything they have to say is of importance to anyone with more than a double figure IQ?
Really?
Seriously?
And probably because I have not even looked at a computer in almost three weeks yet the sky has not caved in. This brought home to me that, while 99% of anything on the Isle of Man is nonsense I didn’t miss, 99.999% of anything on the internet in general is mind-rotting twaddle exchanged between losers who seriously need to get a life instead.
And probably because the optimist in me did triumph over the blue meanies which dwell on the bad stuff, and though the problems of others did eat into time I’d rather have spent lounging under a tree reading a funny book it didn’t matter. Because the folk with problems were folk I love and want to see happier, and because I only had room for one funny book in my hand luggage anyway.
So..... chilled, kinder, less irritable, determined to spread only positive vibes?
Yes, I think so.
Mind you, I only actually go back to work tomorrow, so better give it until the weekend to be sure!

Child Safety 1, Bigotry -1

I wasn’t going to blog today, then I read this (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8648317/The-Right-Reverend-Michael-Evans.html ), laughed at the pathetic lies in the intro and opening paragraphs and cheered.
For the record, Amnesty did not, as the poorly informed or dishonest tool who wrote it insists, “come out in favour of abortion” in 2007. Amnesty had (and still has after extensive , separate and independent debates in every national section), a neutral stance on the topic.
In fact, what happened was that the Vatican led an attempt to replace neutrality and allowing individuals and local groups to make up their own minds on individual cases with a blanket anti-abortion stance. If the theo-fascists had been successful anyone imprisoned for helping women procure abortions – or even just giving sex education which included contraception advice in a conservative country – could not have been adopted as an Amnesty ‘prisoner of conscience’.
Thankfully, common decency prevailed. The Catholics lost – badly - in every vote in every debate in every country where Amnesty has a national network, and so the international secretariat did not change the policy.
The Vatican (and conservative factions of the church in particular) reacted by causing Catholic churches, schools and buildings to withdraw any facility used by local Amnesty groups, to close Amnesty groups in Catholic schools and colleges, and not to allow Amnesty workers to talk to kids in citizenship lessons or Amnesty materials to be used in any relevant course.
In doing so they added to a situation where bogus ‘human rights groups’ and ‘religious charities’ have open access to British schools, but genuine human rights material is blocked on school computer networks and informed discussion of human rights cannot take place. A situation which, ironically, has always existed on the Isle of Man anyway, making it the last part of the British Isles where young people only gain a basic knowledge of human rights, social and political activism and democracy in general by emigrating.
As for a Catholic bishop wittering about the UN convention on the rights of the child while he knows his church used the Vatican’s diplomatic immunity to block all police attempts to investigate the widespread sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests…..
Sick, sick, sick!
Still, look on the bright side. One less over-privileged professional hypocrite to worry about.
A nation’s parents and children can sleep a little easier tonight.

A New Year Resolution - of sorts

There’s an interesting debate about morality kicking off on the PTT Blog at http://ptt-blog.blogspot.com/2008/12/irresponsible-people.html. Maybe it’s a kneejerk thing (end of the year, New Year Resolutions and all that) but I was thinking about the same topic last night, albeit in a lighter-hearted way guided by re-reading an old favourite, Quentin Crisp.
I was going to announce as my big New Year Resolution that I refuse ever to take religionists or politicians seriously again.’Get a grip’, I was thinking – concerned at the way in which my posts are getting grumpier. ‘Time to lighten up, mock mercilessly, point and laugh by all means, but don’t get so wound up over the immorality and hypocrisy of people we know are just rotten through and through.’
This time last year I’d decided that in 2008 I was going to meet the religionists and politicos halfway. Join with them on earnest committees to tackle homelessness, prison conditions, poverty or whatever and maybe, just maybe, there’d be a point in the middle where we could make common cause and talk.
I now admit that was a waste of time. They were, and will always be, nothing more than two-faced, triple-crossing neanderthals out to manipulate misery for their own ends. They cannot even spell ‘humanity’, never mind celebrate or embrace it.
Sadly, middle of the road humanists are little better. Either too scared to upset the neighbours or unable to stop looking at the world unconsciously in ‘religious’ terms.
Far better to play on religionist hypocrisy and hoist them by their own petards wherever possible. Chip away relentlessly at their pretensions to the moral high ground. Poke, point, laugh, run.
Do not get involved. Do not debate in arenas which they control. Pick a time and place when the odds are stacked in your favour, let them have it full blast and vanish before the smoke clears.
'Semiotic guerilla warfare' was the phrase we idealistic young media types used to bandy around. We understand how the media works, where stories come from and how they appear in the press. We know how to use images and words, and how to dismantle myths, spread doubt where belief is testified but insecurity lurks beneath the surface.
When posting the link to my old story about Pat Kneen and the Manx Death With Dignity campaign I realised something else too. All this concern about morality and seriousness, trying to engage with pathological liars on their own terms, and I’ve lost something.
That assisted suicide campaign, despite the (literally) life or death subject matter, the brushes with corrupt local government and law and so on, was a joy from start to finish. We lost all fear and hardly ever stopped laughing, and THAT is what I want to get back to.
In 2009 I'm no longer getting serious. I'm getting happy.
I just want to laugh ignorance off the planet.