Proud of Me by Sarah Hagger-Holt

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Following up on the success of Nothing Ever Happens Here this is another warm hearted story – in which the teenagers Becky and Josh are getting to grips with their identities, and while sexuality plays a big part of the story it feels like it is just an authentic part of the tapestry of their lives rather than an “issue”.

Reading it over a couple of evenings in the middle of LGBT+ history month it did touch on some themes that have been at the forefront of my mind, and so I found the insight into the generational difference in relation to sexuality between Ruth & Anna and Josh & Becky really interesting.

Despite what I usually feel inside my head, I guess I need to acknowledge that I am a lot closer in age to Ruth and Anna than Josh and Becky. Although Ruth and Anna are living as a couple, bringing up children together, they still have some baggage as a result of society's negative attitudes, a bit of them that is always holding back because they are expecting to have to justify who they are.

This passage captured it well “...nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to draw attention to either. We’re normal, just like everyone else. Some things, are well, not exactly secret, more private… Just in case. In case of what, I’ve never been sure.” (p257)

I recognised that there have been times when I have been frustrated at the LGBT+ generation above me for always being so negative and angry – reading an attack into every situation. But I know we need to tread lightly around the legacy of hurt that people carry from times when there was really explicit rejection and oppression, and just how broken it left so many. Yet I am also increasingly seeing how much I have internalised a sense of shame as a consequence of the pervasive marginalise of LGBT+ experience while I was growing up. (Tom Allen’s No Shame was really helpful in opening that up for me).

The sort of Pride Group Josh and Becky are part of at school we were only just about managing when I was at University, that I had come out (a little bit) while still at Sixth Form was unusual then, even at Mildert there was only 1 openly gay guy in the year above me, 1 or 2 in the year below – we were pretty invisible… and so, without ignoring the challenges that remain, especially for those that are trans, it is refreshing to be reminded that there is some much more space for those growing up today to be themselves :-)

Another of the passages I really connected with is this one “...I know as soon as I say the words that this doesn’t feel like a phase… imagining having a boyfriend or falling in love with a guy one day feels totally bizarre. It’s like that famous photo – the one with a shark sticking out of the roof of someone’s ordinary house in Oxford. The shark makes sense, and the house makes sense, but the two of them together make no sense at all.” (p158) The shark house image is so strong, but also the point that the idea of being straight feels bizarre when you are not is kind of subversive – the overwhelming power within society of the notion that straight is “normal” need to be cut down, we are as normal as anyone else.

Although I have wittered on about sexuality, Josh’s story line around searching for their anonymous donor dad as also really richly told. It is a bit of an aside, and I hope it isn’t too much of a spoiler, but within that I found my heart racing with a shared sense of panic Josh felt when a rash of "Cancelled" sweeps across the departure boards at Manchester Piccadilly - I have been stood helpless on that very concourse when that has happened.

The Glory of the Cross by Cardinal Vincent Nichols

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This is an accessible collection of reflections on the scriptural accounts of Holy Week and Easter, and although I can’t really point to anything wrong with them, personally I found them workmanlike and not really expanding my encounter with the events they recall.

No Shame by Tom Allen

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When I saw that Tom Allen had chosen to call his book “No Shame” I was hoping for an insightful exploration – the ways in which Shame shapes us is something that I have been wrestling with more and more in the last couple of years. So with high expectations I guess I was also a little nervous, but fear not Tom delivers such a moving account it was a joy to read even when it made me cry.

Tom Allen is a similar age to me, which was sort of surprising as I assumed he was a bit younger than he is, but then to be honest I assume that I am a bit younger than it turns out I actually am, so the surprise is not that we are a similar age more that we are both that old. However I think this added to the power of his story for me – the context is the same point in time, particularly in respect to be experience of growing up gay in the late 90s.

As he puts it - “it was in a sense, illegal for me to be gay. The age of consent for same-sex couples was eighteen, two years older than for straight people. Earlier in the year, a gay pub in Soho had been nail-bombed. There was no legal protection for discrimination against gay people. We were banned from serving in the military… we couldn’t get married… Section 28 was still in force, meaning schools couldn’t say to kids that it was OK to be gay. … these rules set a tone in the world, without me realising it, and action spoke loud in the absence of positive words.” (p103)

I think I am a bit embarrassed to make that point – when many face very real material discrimination, violence even, for who they are – these feels like legal niceties, the difference in the age of consent was almost entirely academic, who was I going to have sex with at that age even if it had been legal. But this plays into the internalising of lack of self-worth – that this inferior legal status was only to be expected, that you should be grateful for the partial decriminalisation and not get above oneself asking for more. I don’t think I ever even dreamt of a day when there would be marriage equality – I am delighted that it is here, but there is a bit of me that doesn’t quite believe it.

This theme run through a lot of the book - when a teacher asks him about being bullied he recalls that “… I knew I absolutely couldn’t tell her because I didn’t want to make a fuss or make it worse. Somehow I thought I wasn’t worth it – things like this were inevitable if I didn’t hide myself well enough.” (p35) I have thought about how at Ravenscroft I did get picked on for my hair, which was a dreadful mess, but I think in a way I was actually hiding by growing my hair, if they picked on my hair they weren’t picking on me – not exactly brilliant logic but it did give me a kind of control...

He refers to always having felt like he was forty-six, having been born middle-aged, and this was another of the points of resonance, I think I have mostly been a bit wary of children and liked being with adults more. I was not so good are team games, and found the conversations of the grown ups interesting.

The struggles of a love life are especially complex when you probably don’t even like yourself, it makes being attractive to others tricky. This can lead to over investing in various “crushes”, possibly sub-consciously the more unattainable the better as that reduces the risk of actual in-your-face rejection. He captures an insight many will be familiar with when he writes that “... they’re called crushes because they crush every part of you and you can barely think or move because the crush is weighing you down.” (p52) They are consuming in your obsession for the person, and in the humiliation when there is no interest in return.

I could also relate to his account of feeling awkward in a gay bar in New York “It was one thing to feel like an outsider around straight people, it was much worse to feel like an outsider when I was surrounded by my own tribe.” (p157) We thought we would walk into a gay bar and immediately be fabulous – turns out even in a gay bar I am still painfully shy and, convinced that I am the most boring person that has ever lived, completely incapable to striking up a causal conversation with a stranger.

But it is not all doom and gloom, he talks of joy of being on a gay cruise ship, completely surrounded by other gay people of all shapes and sizes “I’d never had the luxury of being surrounded by people who were gay like me. It wasn’t ab-normal, per se – it was extra-ordinary, and being extra is seldom a bad thing.” (p190) a normalising of being gay, even if we hold on to the fact that “’Normal’ is not always something to aspire to.” It is one of the things I increasingly realise I like about our holidays in Gran Canaria, staying in a hotel where we aren’t the only same-sex couple at breakfast is surprisingly liberating. I also think this is something I found with YLGC – the mix of people, that there were gay people that were sort of ordinary, you could be gay AND wear a fleece – even in the early 2000s I needed reminding that we didn’t all have to be Elton John.

This ongoing spectre of shame, and the lurking worry that rights so recently won can be lost again, make me value the importance of Pride – I can say, along with Tom, “I’ve come to learn that the concept of Pride is perhaps best seen as a goal or even as a verb and something we are all striving for on our personal journeys – to learn that we are all valid, important, and ultimately, enough – while we hopefully work towards achieving this for other people.” (p223)

I was reading this as the first couple of episodes of Its a Sin were on the telly (I was going to say “aired” but then I remembered I am not America). I think the reflections Tom makes on it in this podcast say a lot of the things I am feeling in response to it https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/its-a-sin/id1049741444?i=1000507080231

Like Tom, I am of a generation where I know friends that are living with HIV but those even a few years older were in the midst of that initial wave where their lives have been dominated by friends dying of AIDS – and these experiences are worlds apart. Reading Tales of the City has also been unpacking this for me.

I grew up with the legacy of fear of AIDS, rather than a direct experience of it, probably not really aware of how far treatment of HIV had already come even then. I knew I wanted to have sex, I knew that having sex meant the risk of getting AIDS, there was therefore an association in my head between my sexual desire and disease – and it lingers even now.

My understanding of what gay relationships could look like was shaped disproportionally by Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain – I was trying to think of a joke to make about that, but there isn’t one really – the message was if you are lucky you might find love, but it will come with a whole heap of pain. Living life like Cinderella, if I am at the ball I am holding back, I am waiting for midnight when it will all turn to dust.

High Rise Mystery by Sharha Jackson

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A murder mystery for “younger readers” - it is an engaging whodunit, driven forward by dialogue, with the sisters Nik and Norva able to bounce their thoughts and ideas off one another.

I probably can’t really comment on whether their vernacular is authentic but it had a natural feel to it – whether that risks dating it to too specific a moment (along with some of the references to technology – will uploading something to YouTube be unforgivably old-fashioned in 5 years time?)

Although there is not a huge amount on description of place, the high rise estate setting is one your own imagination as able to take you to.

Judith Kerr Books

 

Mog and Barnaby – this is a charming caper, an enjoyable lesson that some friends are best seen in short doses, even if you do love them…

Twinkles, Arthur, and Puss – one cat with 3 identities and 3 homes – which their 3 “owners” only discover when she goes missing :-)

Mog and the V.E.T – sharing a story that any one that has taken a cat to the V.E.T will be familiar with – but interesting how often dreams are part of Kerr’s stories – Mog has a very active dream life.

Katink’s Tail – one of the rich things about Kerr’s stories is the inclusions of older people as active characters, and in this one we are left wondering if the night time adventure was a dream, or was it real?

My Henry – here again it is an older person that is the centre of the story, and there is a validation of her live of imagination, that she goes on adventures in her mind with her departed husband – reminding us not to just see someone sitting in a chair – there can be some much more going on within.

Frequencies of God – walking through Advent with RS Thomas by Carys Walsh

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There is always a danger with collection of reflections on poems that in “explaining” them (like jokes) you trample on their power – thankfully Carys Walsh avoids that providing reflections that weave some of the context in which Thomas was writing particular poems with an expansive meditation that draw out the richness of your encounter with Thomas’ words.

R.S. Thomas is not a poet of joy – and the darkness that pervades many (most?) of his poems sits well with the mood of Advent, it is a people that have walked in darkness that will see the great light. It was also the right mood for Advent 2020, with the impacts of COVID stripping away much of our usual festivity.

While reflecting on the poem Llananno Walsh writes that a place of pilgrimage is “both destination and punctuation on a longer journey. A stopping point, a junction, and a meeting place: huddled between ancient and modern… Here is a still point where time and eternity meet in a place forever giving birth to God’s presence.”

Shield by Lyndon Davies, Illustration by Penny Hallas

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The pairing of images and poems is successful – both dark and complex – layering of meanings somewhat disorienting.

The Train was on Time by Heinrich Böll

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The journey of Private Andreas, heading back toward the Eastern Front with his conviction that he is in the final days, and then hours, of his life takes you into a world become small – there is a closing in. Facing death and yet trapped in the mundane. There is an inherent comment of the futility of war.

There is an intensity to his relationships – the intimacy of the friendship with priest Paul he has left behind, the two soldiers he befriends on the train, and Olina he meets in the brothel – contrasting and yet bound together by his introspection.

It is a short but dense book – in terms of word count you could probably have got through it in an evening, but I found the emotional intensity such that I needed to space it out over a number of days, probably, accidental, reading it in “real time”.

To have a story of an ordinary German soldier is unusual for us.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2016

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The forewords of these books are often insightful – in this one AL Kennedy reflects on how we value art, and poetry, in particular – which reading towards the end of 2020 amidst the challenges of COVID had a new resonance. “The arts in the UK seem always to be apologising for themselves, having to remind funders, publishers, politicians. Media outlets and all the complicated machinery of commercial reproduction that they still have value...”

The poems I tagged from this collection were:

Kim Moore – In That Year

Damain Walford Davies – Corpus

Inua Ellams – Shame is the Cape I wear – which is especially powerful and unsettling

Marilyn Hacker – Pantoum in Wartime

Arundhathi Subramaniam – My Friends