Child's play isn't just for children

Few requests from my son are more of a lance in the side than the plaintive enquiry ‘Daddy, will you play me?’ He invariably asks this while I’m in the middle of an email to a solicitor or the CPS, a phone call to the clerks, drafting a skeleton argument or reviewing unused material. The inevitable reply is ‘later’ but later always seems to be tea time, bath time or bed time. 

One of the cruel ironies of the increase in working from home is that although my children see more of me that does not mean they get more of me. The obvious thing to observe here is that I shall resolve to carve out more time for the children because they’re only young once. 

Possibly less obvious is that for me sometimes playing with the children is, if not an intimidating prospect, then certainly an unsettling one. Truth is that I’m not very good at playing. Being occupied in the most ruly profession means that when the opportunity presents itself to let my imagination run riot I can’t even offer a lowly affray. 

My son’s school recently had a creative writing competition. They received well over 200 short stories and poems from the pupils which were turned into an impressively professional book. Reading this book has been like having a golden passport to the boundlessly bountiful territory of children’s imagination. A place so fertile precisely because it is unencumbered with rules and conventions and structure. 

I watched Hook with the children a few months back and while Robin Williams utterly convinces as an overgrown Peter Pan he makes the most improbable corporate lawyer. Nonetheless, the central message of the film hits pretty hard when you watch it in the thick of the competing demands of work and parenting. 

It is natural as a parent to worry about what and how we should teach our children but what should never be overlooked is what they teach us and chief among the lessons we must learn is that the imagination needs to be exercised as much as the brain and the heart. 

Children access their imagination in a completely uninhibited way. My 5 year old insists at the moment upon travelling around London wearing a robe and paper crown because every journey from home is a quest and it’s only a matter of time before the Holy Grail is found. I haven’t yet found the courage to accompany him as Lancelot but I feel that I really should. 

One thing I know in my bones is that if I do not give him this time now a time will undoubtedly come when I call him for company eliciting the certain reply ‘Sorry dad, took much on at work’.

Family Christmas

 

When we revisit childhood sites there can be a kind of temporal vertigo in which the years collapse in on themselves. This often happens on a return to school or university. Sometimes it happens in a family setting. This year my cousin kindly hosted Christmas at her home in which I spent numerous Christmases before the age of 10. It's in that life period real Christmas imprinting takes place. The template is cut against which all future Christmases are judged.

Returning to that house with children of my own but together too with my father and sister got me thinking about how families evolve both by degrees but also in leaps and bounds. There can be years in which family dynamics seem hardly to change, then there is a birth, marriage or death and suddenly the warp and weft of the family tapestry is fundamentally altered.

It can be very tempting to resist change and the big life events are an obvious challenge to that impulse but it seems to me important to remember that even in the quiet moments change is always happening. Family rituals can often obscure changes hence the disproportionate tension that can arise when a presents before lunch person marries an after luncher. Also, as often happens in life, close proximity can prevent a clear observation of developments.

Ironically it's in noticing and, even more so, in embracing change that family traditions remain vital and meaningful rather than stale retreads of what went before. Families are, of course, composed of individuals and constituent groupings but they are also or at least can be more than the sum of their parts. Christmas can be so freighted with expectation because people instinctively know this and when we gather there is inevitably an assessment of where we stand in relation to the whole but also of the whole itself.

Some families are very expressive and open about this process, some refer to it only obliquely and others leave it all unsaid but somehow manage to make their feelings known nonetheless. It certainly isn't always easy but I admire families that manage to gather and cohere. Sometimes it is necessary for people to stand apart from their family to safeguard their own wellbeing or because they are the victims of familial prejudice or even threat. But spurning family for no really good reason is perhaps a prime example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

It's precisely because you don't get to choose your family that they hold a value that a friend never can. Even closest and oldest friends don't have the time, energy or interest to engage with and assess your development in a way that your parents, siblings and relations (often maddeningly) do. When we are able to value our family, both in terms of cherishing them but also in being unabashed about taking stock, the chances are the family will value us.

The Coffee Community

 

When we are born it is guaranteed that our mother will be in attendance. These days our father might be there too, although it might be a birth partner or a relative instead. Generally though we arrive into fairly select company.

When we die it's anybody's guess who will be with us. I'd venture that most of us hope it will be quietly in our sleep with our loved one by our side. Certainly few hope for it to be a public spectacle. But death is not the saying goodbye. That is the function of funerals.

At 41 I've still been to surprisingly few funerals. Four close family members and my nanny Jane, nearly ten times as many weddings. Yesterday made it six but what made it notable for me was that I wasn't just attending the funeral I was officiating.

As a consequence of being asked to perform that role I have been giving a lot of thought to funerals. I know that some people plan them meticulously and I know that others are absolutely indifferent to the send off they receive. There are public funerals watched by millions, Princess Diana obviously springs to mind, and there are funerals that go completely unwitnessed referred to, even today, as paupers' funerals.

In my view a funeral is an extremely important occasion, much more so than a wedding, but like weddings they can be overwhelmed by folderol and frippery, completely at odds with the person whose life is being celebrated. Rituals are the punctuation of life, a public recognition that a new life has begun or that a life lived has ended. Without funerals we miss a chance to take pause for thought and make proper acknowledgment of the lives and deaths of others; we fail to accord to people the respect that every human life deserves.

I have lived near a cafe for a while now owned by two magnificent men. This cafe, as well as serving absolutely ace coffee, is the lifeblood of the community. Out-of-towners tend to suppose that London is incapable of a sense of community but anyone who has lived in London for any time will know that London is an amalgamation of villages. That said, community does not arise from sheer proximity to others. Community is not just about place it's about people too.

If you head direct from home to work and back again, indifferent to the existence of those living around you, community will not come to you and you to it. People can be slow to engage with those around them through shyness, exhaustion or suspicion. Sometimes it takes somebody to take a lead and show the way.

This coffee shop organises a street party most summers, and this isn't a curling sandwiches and a few tins of beer affair, but first rate entertainment performed from a vintage Dreamliner caravan and delicious food stalls. Carols outside the cafe at Christmas. Rotating displays of art on the walls. Interest in the lives of their customers, a place to belong and make friends. And a place, in particular, for Sylvia whose funeral it was.

I did not know Sylvia well and my connection to her was the same as it was for everyone that attended her funeral: the coffee shop. Without it, and in particular without Matt and Nick who make it what it is, I don't like to think too much about what her funeral might have been and what, no doubt, many funerals are. But organising a funeral wasn't just a one off act of benevolence on their part, they embraced Sylvia in her last years ensuring that she unequivocally had a community to be part of. What she gave in response was character and a zest for life that would put many decades her junior to shame. When you value people they value you right back.

If you'd told Sylvia that I would be MC'ing her funeral she'd probably have asked who the hell I was but for me it was one of the honours of my life. 

Look about you and see what your community is and if you can't see one take a leaf out of Matt and Nick's book.

Arthur - In Memoriam

The amalgamation of absolute horror and total bewilderment is so unsettling it can induce a feeling of disconnection from reality. I have been struck, in discussion with colleagues over the last 24 hours, most of whom have been involved in cases involving terrible things done to children, by how much of an impact the little life and dreadful, dreadful death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes has had on them and on me also. 

We see children treated as sexual objects, we see children suffering the neglect of the substance addicted, the utterly inadequate and the unwell, we see children disabled or killed in spasms of rage and frustration. But only occasionally do we see children deliberately and gleefully tortured. The bewilderment in this case stems from it being a woman who instigated and orchestrated that relentless campaign of cruelty. 

Of course we should not be bewildered, anyone who knows anything of the evil humans do and the harm they are capable of inflicting upon the weak and the defenceless will know that men, contrary to some popular opinion, hold no monopoly in wrongdoing. And yet so engrained still is the conception of women as protectors and nurturers that a case such as this is nonetheless capable of provoking a feeling of astonishment. 

It was real, it happened and the most painful truth is it will happen again. We all knew the lockdown would enable the bad things that happen behind closed doors to get worse and here is the worst example of those bad things. There will be the inevitable review into the missed opportunities to rescue Arthur and save his life. The cliché of lessons will be learned is now as empty as the response to Arthur’s plaintive and miserable cries that nobody loved him. 

We know it takes a village to raise a child, unfortunately we don’t live in villages anymore but great anonymous cities and towns where although our lives are often shared extravagantly on social media ironically the atomisation of our existences only accelerates. Undoubtedly there were agencies and institutions that should have seen what was happening to Arthur and should have stopped it. Social workers and teachers noticing and enquiring and demanding satisfaction. 

But we must not kid ourselves that the safety nets are working and how could they be? Social workers are paid badly. Their caseloads are unmanageable. The children that are experiencing the most visibly problematic parenting are not necessarily the children suffering the most dangerous and merciless cruelty. I am often relieved as a barrister that although I am exposed to terrible things it is in a very compartmentalised way. My cases have a beginning and end. A social worker’s case is a child’s whole life, existence and upbringing. 

We have agency. We are also subject to a moral imperative. Every time we cast a vote at the ballot box we can send a signal that we will not tolerate this kind of thing. If we vote for politicians that will tolerate it then that is on us. Meanwhile, it is incumbent upon every one of us to practise ceaseless vigilance. Making a nuisance of oneself is a negligible price to pay when a child’s life and future is at stake. Trust your instincts, if there’s a child at your child’s school with regular bruising make enquiry and don’t be fobbed off. If you encounter professional inertia and complacency remind that person of Arthur. 

It is very, very easy to persuade oneself that other people’s lives are other people’s business but the lives of children are everybody’s business.

'Nil Benefit' - Part 2 of my Anthony Nolan Experience

So having had my blood drawn at home and my blood pressure measured (more greens, more sleep, more physical jerks, less booze clearly required) I had a restless wait to find out whether I was a match match. Just when I thought maybe Anthony Nolan had forgotten about me I got a voicemail and an email:

Thank you for providing your latest blood samples in August 2021. Testing is now complete and we are pleased to inform you that you are compatible with the patient in need of a stem cell transplant. You’ve now been asked to donate your stem cells to give them a second chance of life.

There then followed a much longer email with many attachments and much information. The net effect of which was that I needed to go for a medical in a week and I'd be donating within a month. I was assured there would be no treadmill involved at the medical but, unsurprisingly, some very careful scrutiny of my blood.

I'm signed up for peripheral blood stem cell donation. A short course of injections over a few days then blood out of one arm through a machine harvesting the stem cells and back in the other arm. As a long time blood donor I've long lost any fear of needles, although keeping my arms immobile for 4 hours or so sounds like the perfect opportunity to finally give meditation a proper go or get fully immersed in Gotterdammerung.

The extraordinary science that enables this is so far beyond me I haven't even sought to understand it, trusting instead that there is little to worry about (unless my spleen is tender which, apparently, is not good, unhappily I have no idea where that is). Instead I have decided that this is a form of magic and I am just the magician's assistant.

The medical was pretty thorough and even included some light wrestling with the doctor which was unexpected. In fact it was the sort of thing a private doctor would probably charge an arm and a leg for so it was certainly not time wasted.

Unsurprisingly the consent forms and questionnaires are very extensive including some rather bizarre questions. Have you ever been bitten by a monkey? No. Have you ever ingested gold? Are you kidding, have you seen Salt Bae's prices!

The very last consent form necessarily listed the (unlikely) potential side effects of the donation process and the nurse had written in the section above setting out the benefit to the patient 'Nil benefit'. I didn't want to quarrel with a medical professional but the suggestion that there is no benefit to me as the donor could not be more wrong when I hope to be able to look back at this one day and feel that it serves as some small mitigation against my every mean action and ignoble thought. 

In any event it will be an experience and what is life for if not experiences?

If you're not on the stem cell register please think about signing up: https://www.anthonynolan.org/help-save-a-life/join-stem-cell-register

The Meaning of Life

What is the one thing that all parents everywhere want for their children above all other things? If your answer is not happiness I’d be genuinely interested to hear what it is. There’s a familiar expression, you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. Our children’s pain, physical and emotional, weighs on us as much, if not more sometimes, as it does on them. 

Parents can go to extraordinary and sometimes ludicrous lengths to try and protect their children from pain and life’s vicissitudes. That this is ultimately both impossible and also a profoundly poor preparation for the necessary evolution into adulthood does not stop the effort being commonplace. 

However natural it is to want happiness for your children it is profoundly misguided to teach them that it should be their goal in life. Chasing happiness is like running after a will-o’-the-wisp it usually remains tantalisingly out of reach and a huge amount of effort can be expended in its pursuit. 

Instead, if children are taught to identify what is meaningful to them they will usually find that happiness is a happy by-product of its cultivation. The other significant thing about meaningful endeavour is that it is far less susceptible to the corrupting influence of money. We all know that money can’t buy happiness but that does not stop us feeling in our weaker moments that maybe it can. The irony being that time spent meaninglessly leaves a hole in our lives and we mistakenly believe that money will fill that hole. 

Work provides purpose in life and work pays the bills. But it is a statement of the obvious that not all work is meaningful to all people. When the work itself is meaningful then the income it earns becomes almost incidental, assuming it enables a living. However, some mistakenly seek meaning in the income alone, overlooking the intrinsic value of the endeavour itself. When in fact the intrinsic value IS the value. 

Meaning isn’t solely found in labour and work can be a means to an end. Many toil at dull or repetitive jobs to enable that which is truly meaningful to them but many just toil. E. M. Forster’s mantra ‘Only Connect’ probably resonates with me more than any words in literature. Not in a vapid networking sense of the expression but in terms of genuine, real and, yes meaningful, connection. 

We all know, unless we are extremely unfortunate, how powerful are those moments in life of profound connection, friendships made, true loves met, sorrow shared, joy expressed. That for me is where meaning resides. But meaning isn’t exclusively found in people. Using one’s body to its utmost, giving oneself to artistic expression, being in and tending to nature: there is meaning in all that. For hermits it’s isolation and contemplation. Meaning is myriad as people and where meaning goes happiness is sure to follow.

Why am I?

 My grandmother was in MI6 during the war, her number was 0071. She spent some of it in Sweden. What she did there nobody in the family knows because, being the dutiful woman she was, she never spoke of it and the files are permanently embargoed. It is hardly uncommon in families with relatives that saw active service in the War that their service was not discussed, even with closest relatives, either because they weren't permitted to or because what they saw was so dreadful that a veil necessarily had to be drawn.

We are very shortly going to pass beyond living recall of WWII which, from a British perspective, means that a national experience of conflict, battle and death is going to evaporate. That sense of things so collectively and personally painful that they just couldn't be shared with those that had not perceived them will have disappeared. Sadly, of course, there remain many parts of the world where that doesn't merely remain a lived experience but a living experience too.

What has that got to do with parenting you might well ask? Well, just as some British people have an unhealthily partial understanding of British history so too do many of us have an unhelpful awareness of the lives of our parents and our parents' parents, and so on.

It is perhaps in the nature of things that it is hard to imagine the world before our arrival and harder yet to imagine it after our departure. And yet existed it did and so too did our parents unencumbered by cooking pasta and tomato sauce (again), wrestling with child seats, nagging about the state of bedrooms and pursing lips at first tattoos.

Unless people are orphans, adopted or have some peculiarly remote relationship with their parents they are likely to know the parental CV. Where and when born, education, chronology of employment, interests and hobbies. But as anyone who has ever had a hand in recruitment will tell you, judging someone by their CV is like thinking you understand what it's like to experience the Taj Mahal because you've read about it in a guidebook.

Most of us, of course, do get to experience our parents as well as knowing the key facts about them. But not all of us really get to know our parents. That may be because they're not telling but it's just as likely because we're not asking. In one key respect we can never actually know our parents and that is them without us. However the fact that it is literally impossible to experience that state isn't to say that journeying in that direction is time and energy wasted.

I sometimes think the best parents are those that are able to remain truest to their ultimate sense of self notwithstanding the arrival of a newborn (assuming, obviously, that their truest sense of self isn't a feckless drug taking dissolute). It's hardly a revelation that parenting entails self-sacrifice but if that sacrifice actually entails destruction of the self you will not teach your child how to be their own person. What is essential is having the courage and to show and share your real self with your children.

Most people, unless they're incurably incurious, reach a stage in life when they wonder why they are the way they are, some get there at 5, some at 50. In answering that enquiry it is almost always necessary to find out why your parents are the way they are. Maybe you're lucky and they've thought hard about that question and they're prepared to let you in on the secret. Maybe you're less lucky and their interior life is as secret as a clam's insides.

But just as history is public so too is it personal and knowing your parents' emotional timeline means you can progress from the who's who version of them to the why's who. Assuming they're still around, and even if they're not, it's never too late to start the treasure hunt: just don't expect them to give you the clues.