Fran Macilvey

December 21, 2020

Quiet Crises

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Quiet crises

Throughout this year, I have gained a new appreciation for those among us who soldier on: the health care workers, supermarket supervisors and the staff stacking shelves, the cohorts of recyclers, cleaners and organisers. It has been too easy, while we were taking our previously “normal” lives in our stride, to overlook the crucial parts taken by so many players in keeping our erstwhile expectations on track. I feel a sincere gratitude to those of us who get on with things, because they have little choice: a semblance of normal life has to continue.

Which has always been my mother’s rationale for keeping going, despite her increasing frailty. Recently, she was taken into hospital. On the advice of a GP, an ambulance was summoned, and asked to ferry my mother to one of the Edinburgh hospitals, where her arrival was expected. Ten hours later, an ambulance finally came to the door because my husband, coming to the scene fresh, and alarmed at my mother’s pallor, called the emergency services again; so that my mother’s case was re-prioritised; and thus, two paramedics arrived.

For our pains, and those of my mother, we received a small peroration from the lead paramedic on the use of the emergency services to summon help and a comment that he disliked the emergency ambulance being used as a taxi service.

It’s only now, after an exhausting weekend in recovery from a series of eight-, ten- and twelve-hour days in attendance on my mother, while seeing to a dozen things at once and keeping abreast of my own household’s needs, that I sense the illogicality of much of what he said: I was not at all offended that he felt the need to speak his mind; I am, however, rather puzzled by the implications.

If the ambulance service is not there to ferry sick persons about, what is it for? At what point does a sick person, unable to move, feed or toilet themselves, become an emergency? And why is it only noisy emergencies that get priority? Without re-prioritisation, would my mother still be waiting to reach her bed in the hospital as other calls were constantly prioritised above her? Must we both be in a state of collapse before someone notices our lives crumbling under the weight of accumulated impossibility? For we had no carers on hand no help manage our own quiet crises, nor hope of any. (I had had to tell my mother’s carers not to come to the house, since by then she had been expecting admission to hospital.)

In the last two weeks, I have begun to appreciate some of the complexities that underpin our public services and their organisation. I’m grateful for these insights, and can only hope that I have learned enough to carry me through the next phase of my mother’s rehabilitation. No hospital visits allowed, but phonecalls are always a route through the maze.

In this season of love and goodwill, in the midst of a million quiet crises, I wish you all well, and hope that the New Year brings us peace and joy.

Merry Christmas.

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August 3, 2020

A Great Falsehood

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A Great Falsehood

I know, now, that there is no necessary connection between having an impairment and being unhappy.

That such a great falsehood was allowed to be planted and to grow inside me for decades, occasionally leaves me feeling quite devastated. Every revelation has its downside; and while I now feel uplifted and energised by the liberation that comes with recognising this lie for what it is, I can’t escape knowing that I’ve wasted acres of time and energy trying to rationalise, and then escape from, the deeply rooted assumption I held to, that impairment and unhappiness were bound to twist together.

Paralysing childhood reasoning is much easier to dismantle and let go of, when we are allowed to talk it through and can be offered reassurance and a wider perspective. Goodness knows, we all have challenges to deal with. And we don’t all devise a twisted logic to try and make sense of the impossible.

Only now do I see, that I could have been very much happier if I’d had more considered and unconditional love. Though I’m very grateful for all my life lessons, even the hard ones, I’ve come a long road round to the obvious truth, that it is love that makes people happy and well adjusted, able to cope with whatever life throws at them: the kind of love that I now allow myself to feel, and that I try to offer to other people.

In so many ways I have been, and I am, incredibly lucky. And I wish I could have felt that luck and joy – that sheer sense of freedom – more often, when I was younger. I have come late to the realisation that none of our warped thinking matters. We are free, whatever our lot in life, to be relaxed, happy, calm and certain of our confidence and our achievements.

That feelings of freedom and happiness can flourish despite our challenges, is a wonderful lesson to harvest from a great deal of reflection.

Thanks for listening.

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May 18, 2020

Doing everything they can

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Doing everything they can

The standard accepted narrative in public is that the governments of the world are doing everything they can in the face of unprecedented threat, to tackle the Covid / economic emergency. And for those ahead of the curve – China, South Korea, New Zealand, Iceland – it does seem as if their quick and decisive action early on, their willingness to heed the signs and act on them fast, has helped these countries to get back to something like a new normal relatively soon.

But what about governments that fail to take heed? There are a few obvious examples: Brazil, Belarus, The USA Federal Government… Our Westminster Government failed to act early when it saw the crisis unfolding in January this year and spreading with startling rapidity. If I can see this happening in December as I check in every morning for my news update on my phone, it is fatuous of any government to claim that they “didn’t realise”. In fact, the evidence is increasingly that not only did they realise, but they pretended not to, downgraded the threat and tried to believe, as all scared children will, that if they put their heads under the covers, the monster in the room would not see them and go away.

But surely, with all the resources at its call, the government really should have seen this crisis coming and could have taken decisive action earlier. And arguably, their failure to do so has cost their population dearly and amounts to a failure of duty. Is this why Westminster talks about “a war” and “our courageous NHS workers fighting on the front line against an invisible enemy”? To obscure their own culpability in a situation in which they were repeatedly warned about the dangers and did too little until it was, arguably, much too late?

It is an argument no-one wants to have; and yet, the fact that the Westminster administration is offering families of health workers who have died a capital sum might suggest that someone somewhere has warned about the possibility of litigation. Let’s face it: in any civil legal action for damages – compensation – which only needs to be proved on the balance of probabilities – not only are the obvious heads of claim actionable, but also any outcome that is reasonably foreseeable as a result of the main failure.

So, if a person loses their job, breaks up with their spouse, loses their home, gets sick or dies, are these actions reasonably foreseeable as a result of the government’s failure to take reasonable steps to prevent the spread of an epidemic that they could see coming? In the UK, we were exceptionally fortunate in having had at least two months’ warning of the coming crisis. That we failed to make the most of that period of grace is, arguably, not only a shame, a pity and an awful waste, but, given the foreseeable fallout, actionable as well.

And I dread to think what the USA, noticeably more litigious in personal injury claims, will make of the hotch-potch of claims, counter-claims, advice and misinformation that is currently circulating there.

Thanks for reading.

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December 17, 2019

What I can comment on

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What I can comment on

In writing memoir, when it comes to those whose lives intersect mine, sooner or later I shall have to decide what I can comment on – carefully – and what should remain shrouded in tactful silence. This dilemma is especially challenging when we are forced to borrow aspects of experience in which we have no direct part, a process of necessary borrowing which should be resorted to very sparingly.

It may be that my parents were very loving to each other, in which case I can comment on the evidence I saw of that and how I experienced it, but not that which they experienced together in private. Compare, “My parents were passionately devoted to each other” – how would I know, and to what degree can I comment on their passion? – with “I often saw my father kiss my mother, so I grew up assuming that everyone behaved this way.” But hold your horses, it’s not evidence of love that people tend to get upset about.

So more pertinently, I may know that my parents argued a lot, and that may well have affected the atmosphere round the dining table – which I can comment on, since I experienced that atmosphere and would have drawn conclusions about it. I may have witnessed my parents having a row, and that also I can comment on; but any deeper references or even hints about the reasons why, are my parents’ reasons, and not for me to borrow.

Though I have disagreed with others on this, I do believe that the past is a foreign country, and that, in recalling the past for our own narrative we had best remember:-

~ That we can comment on what we saw or experienced;

~ We can invent or reconstruct likely conversations that took place in an attempt to replicate flavour, atmosphere and likely attitudes;

~ We should omit, in the final analysis, all references to conduct between two or more others about which we have no direct knowledge.

For example, I came to the United Kingdom from Africa when I was three. My siblings did not travel with me on that journey. I can, therefore, comment on my naïve impressions of that trip by ship and can give some idea of why I thought it happened. But I was not aware, or told, what happened to my siblings while I was away, though I can comment on feelings of unexpected estrangement with them that followed my return with my mother to Africa after several months’ absence.

Thanks for listening.

To be continued.

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December 13, 2019

Writing from our own perspectives

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Writing from our own perspectives

When we first write, we do so mainly to recall our impressions, homing in on what we remember. When we start out writing from our own perspectives, our recollections may have a very “interesting” relationship with the facts. Our version of events may be exaggerated or false, especially if we are writing of our infancy or youth. It’s not that youngsters are wrong, but they see the world from a very different angle and are necessarily concerned with their place in the world, and therefore prone to exaggerating their importance to the scheme of things. As we grow up and grow taller, our vision usually widens, and we see that what we thought was true, cannot always have been.

But since in memoir we are writing from our memories, in many cases we are right to record our own very personal impressions, because they can certainly affect our future perspectives. There is nothing wrong in writing from our own perspective. And doing so gives memoirists one of their best defences.

So far, you may have gleaned that there are two main defences to anyone who may be offended by the tone and tenor of your memories:-

~ Authenticity – When we write in our own authentic style and are as true as we can be to our own purposes, though we can be criticised by some, we still have the right to our self-expression.

~ When we write as much from our own perspective as possible, who among even our most offended acquaintances can really take exception to that? I cannot really argue with another person’s experience of life; I can’t tell them they are “wrong” in laying out their perspectives honestly. I can reassure them that there were no snakes under the bed after lights out and the bells that woke us every morning were not a spaceship’s klaxons because these are unusual fantasies; but recounting most activities, who’s to argue with another person’s point of view?

Thanks for listening.

(To be continued.)

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December 5, 2019

Stage One Writing

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Stage One writing

There are many things to consider when writing memoir. And there are things we can do, to make the disclosures we – eventually – publish, easier to live with. But that comes only after we have gone through the initial processes of writing, editing, agonising and re-writing… All of which can take a year or three.

Make a start, because the process itself will, if we approach it in a positive spirit, throw more light on what to do next.

Any writing can be broken down into several stages. The first stage, which I suppose we may characterise very approximately as “splurge”, is not intended to be read by anyone except its originator, the author. At its most useful, it is uncensored, emotive stuff thrown on the page at speed and without thought or plan. It is, in some ways, the purest form of original creation.

Stage One writing is only ever read by the author. And it seems to be particularly applicable to memoir. Therefore, in getting the first scratchings down on the page and out of our system we can be as crass, rude, unfair and unkind in what we write at that stage. Writing memoir is very often about laying our ghosts to rest. So forming something out of thoughts and long-held memories, it is a good idea to excavate hard with the feelings and let the words express themselves as they wish. Which means, we can write anything; which means in turn, that there is a tacit agreement that what we have written is not shown to anyone else.

If what we have produced on the page is “respectable” enough to be read by anyone else at this early stage in the proceedings, perhaps we have not really been honest at all. Or perhaps we really have had a wonderful life and want to share the joy. Cool.

Far too many authors are guided by the gremlin or the ghost that lives on their shoulder into thinking that they must, at all costs, and too early in the proceedings, be dignified and reasonable. Whereas, it is neither dignity nor reason that drives a person – perhaps almost insane with despair – to take that first step and start writing.

Thanks for listening.

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November 27, 2019

The dangers of writing memoir

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The dangers of writing memoir

This is a new series about the challenges that attend anyone writing memoir. In this series I will be attempting to address and soothe the largely fictional fears that stop us from writing what we want to about our lives and what has happened to us in the course of them, and more pertinently, what we may have learned through the process of growing older that has benefited us, and may, perhaps, benefit others.

Many writers seem very concerned about the risks of getting their memoirs published, and although there is definitely a good reason why many authors write under a pseudonym – perhaps it helps us to write more honestly, and it can be kinder to others to add that element of privacy – I suspect we can worry too much about the dangers of writing memoir. Our worries may be worse than they need be because we don’t quite know what aspects to consider or where to start.  

Most memoirists fret a bit, especially if family happens to be vocal, numerous or in the public eye. If I write all about this, will my family still be speaking to me once I’ve finished? Isn’t my sister going to be furious at me for washing family linen in public? What right do I have to do that? What about defamatory comments, or even, a totally unreasonable member of the family deciding to take exception to what I’ve written and threatening to sue or cut off contact? Might it be better to not go ahead? Best just forget it?

I haven’t yet met a memoirist who writes under a pseudonym only or mainly because they are concerned that if they were ever to reveal real names and places, they might be sued or disowned. I’ve no doubt there are some. Even in such cases, there are things we can do, well before publication, to ensure that any likely disputes with aggrieved others are resolved before they escalate.

Thanks for listening.

(To be continued)

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November 7, 2019

Letting dreams go

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Letting dreams go

For years now – well over a decade – I’ve had a dream of how I thought my dreams would turn out. Too personal to articulate clearly, I’ve seen in these dreams my varying paths to “success”, “happiness” and all the other achievements we want for ourselves. Who among us does not see that in our dreams?

But instead of a light, colourful anticipation, my wishes have hardened into something akin to an obsession. Instead of loving these dreams into existence, a compulsion has me in thrall. And meantime, my time has passed me by too quickly. Not without results, outcomes, ideas and considerable progress; though never quite what I have hoped for.

Immersed in the dream, I have missed so much colour, action, love; all the things I thought the dreams might bring me. Instead of which, its grip has kept much of what I sought – intimacy, adventure and joy – at bay.

So I’m letting dreams go: releasing them from the cage of my expectations. I know that if the hope is to return to me, it will do so in its own way and its own time. I cannot force the future to be what I want it to be, nor what I expect. I can only keep faith and hope for the best.

We all keep our dreams alive, but not by caging them. They will come back to us if they are meant to. Otherwise, the best we can do for them and for ourselves is to release and get on with loving ourselves better.

Thanks for listening.

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September 13, 2019

From this side of the fence

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From this side of the fence

Annoyed with her own, stupid, endless cycles of thoughtless defeat, Susie stood, gazed out of the window and thought, “I must look like one of these mad women who stare out at the world…” Abruptly she turned aside, stalked into the high hallway and pulled her thin gaberdine from its peg, slipping the sleeves along her arms, buttoning, then unbuttoning across her middle, “Fiddle! Get a move on!” Such hostility in her own voice – to herself! – filled her with exasperated sorrow, then betrayed itself as reluctance to move.

            “Well, I’m going out, and I’ll be fine, so there!”

She was fine, see? It was lovely to be outside, watching from this side of the fence, instead of up there. It was great to look at boys playing football, and to cheerfully fend off the affection of puppies out for their walks. Somehow, everything felt easier at ground level, and it all made more sense when she was walking about in the midst of it.

Her eye was drawn to a mother, bending down to wipe tears from the face of a little girl, no scolding, just a lift and a hug, while the girl nodded and then smiled. “I don’t know why we complain, these days,” she thought, “People seem much nicer to each other than… than in my day.” Memories of cold meals, chilly dining rooms and enforced politeness with the warmth of an arctic summer… The proper cutlery, table manners, but no warmth to speak of, no unguarded comments.

Susie wandered to the nearest shop and bought herself – an ice-cream! It seemed so decadent, almost indecent to eat it outside, in the eye of the public gaze where everyone could see, but then, who was watching? Susie tore at the clinging, sticky paper wrap, lifted off the top of her cornetto and sipped at the pink goo. She carefully, almost tenderly, licked the ice-cream cone until it had shrunk into a soggy paper mess, then tiptoed over to the nearest bin and gingerly tipped in the waste. No-one watched her or had a view about that. And she thought, “Why would they?” saddened by the countless occasions her own judgements had kept her indoors.

So she was wobbly on her feet, she might fall and she might make a nuisance of herself. But anyone might. She glanced up at a youngish man who’d taken a seat beside her on the bench. “Nice day, isn’t it?” he murmured, and smiled.

            “Yes, a lovely day.”

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September 11, 2019

Susie glanced at her lap

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Susie glanced at her lap

Susie glanced at her lap, then up at her computer screen. While others were tapping away at laptops and i-pads, Susie stuck with her hard-drive, monitor and keyboard. All together in one place, large, reliable and comforting. She could listen to music, answer emails from a dozen different accounts and she didn’t need to learn how to thumb text or swipe. It was a comfort, knowing that traditional typing, while no longer that hard-edged tapping, was still required on the traditional keyboard.

And yet…

She looked out of the window to the gardens below where kids were playing and screaming happily, and dog walkers, taking advantage of a shaft of hot, bright summer between the showers, were idling at the river banks, conferring about best walks or whistling to their muddy, joyous charges, “Come on, Becka…! Benjy, Heel…!!!” It would been nice to join them, if only she could – if only…

But what is so hard about climbing downstairs? Putting on a light raincoat and skiffing one step at a time out into the open air? Why was that such a challenge? Okay so the apartment where Susie lived had an old-fashioned, spiral staircase, the steps of which were so worn, they dipped in the middle; it was dark and musty; but that wasn’t the issue, not really.

It was the effort, with no guarantee that at the end of it, she might not end up slipping anyway, falling headlong into the mud, tumbling over her walking stick and making a darn nuisance of herself. Better to stay out of the way… Having decided, Susie, contrary to the last, recognised the unspoken challenge and stood up, outraged by the perfidy, the sheer nerve of her own thoughts. How dare they condemn her to live always alone, here in this – admittedly elegant – living-room?

***
(to be continued)

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