that #ff thang #2 He Who Licketh the Skip

I’ve never had to point a firearm at someone and make the decision to pull the trigger. I hope I never will. My Granddad did. It was a decision taken, not out of anger, or fear (though he was afraid) but from duty and the instinct to live. ‘Here be man’s most monstrous’ he’d write in margins. It was horror that he could not find words to express, at first. He awoke screaming for the rest of his life and never spoke of the war if he could avoid it. Granddad died before anyone knew what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was. My Granddad was a hero.

I’m posting this a bit earlier than Friday to meet the real (not one of the squidgier variety) deadline for this week’s Weekly Blog Club. It’s such a great initiative aimed at encouraging people (especially in public & 3rd Sector) to write. Each week, there are suggested topics for any writers who are struggling to come up with something to write about, one of last week’s topics was Hero’s and it reminded me I should post this one. Anyway, I highly recommend checking them out on Twitter and visiting the site, they always have a lot of great content from some really brilliant writers.

My mate Skip’s a hero.

He’s seen darkness far worse than anything Granddad saw, but took the same action and lives with a similar consequence.

SkipLicker, to use his own description,  Is:

King of the Stickmen. Hardcore Troll. Carried a rifle once, then got shot at… Fuck off and be offended somewhere else

It’s the Hardcore Troll bit that gets some of my followers hot under the collar and not in the groovy, post-watershed way. To them, Skip’s just a Troll and Trolls are bad. mmkay? There is only one other person* I am warned about more for following and talking to on Twitter than Skip.

I like Skip, I have from the first time I read one of his blogs and chatted to him. I take people as I finds them and Skip has always been lovely to me. More than this though, Skip has a lot of very interesting things to say about a lot of different things. He is a fantastic writer with a voice that swings, often disarmingly, from sneering, acidic wit to warmth and empathy.

I’m most interested in his thoughts on war. You see, Skip’s writing a book about his experiences and, just as I think she’d approve of my granddad’s journals, I think Mary O’Hare would approve of Skip’s portrayal of war…

If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, it probably means you haven’t read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. You should rectify that situation immediately, it truly is a brilliant book. Vonnegut was writing a War book too – an anti-war book in fact, as perfectly pointless as an ‘anti-glacier’ book – he was reminiscing with an old war buddy, when the man’s wife interrupted:

“You were just babies then!” she said.
“What?” I said.
“You were just babies in the war — like the ones upstairs!”
I nodded that this was true. We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.
“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.” This wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“I — I don’t know,” I said.
“Well I know,” she said. “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be portrayed in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them. And they’ll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.”
So then I understood. It was war that made her so angry. She didn’t want her babies or anybody else’s babies killed in wars. And she thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies. – Slaughterhouse 5 – Chapter 1

I think we can be certain that wars are not even party encouraged by books or films but, just in case, Skip’s writing will have no role for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. Read this: Words in a Skip: Hang em’ High and this: Words in a skip: Holes and Me

Quite recently, Skip has been a voice of reason in the growing cycles of online ‘outrages’  following trolling and is amongst a group of interesting folk asking important questions about Freedom of Speech. One of the few things that the Left and Right of UK politics seem to agree on is the need for freedom of speech applied to some and not others. You can threaten to blow up an airport and get away with it, but don’t dare threaten an Olympic Diver…

Skip thinks you should be able to say anything you want and he’s right, I think. That is how Freedom of Speech works? I’m asking, not telling. Either everything is okay to say, or nothing is. Read this:  Words in a Skip: Frankie Says Relax and this: Words in a Skip: Sticks and Stones.

Skip suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That didn’t come from nowhere, it came from the things he saw and did at war and the things done to him in preparation for war. Skip is not alone, there are likely huge numbers of troops returning from war with mental scars invisible to the naked eye, but that are as debilitating as lost limbs. Read more of my thoughts on War and the armed forces

So there we have it, follow my mate Skip…but not literally, that probably won’t end well.

*The dubious honour of ‘Person I am warned most about on Twitter’ goes to Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero), Editor-in-Chief at The Kernal. I like him too, he’s a brilliant writer with an acerbic tongue and yes, if you’re going to tell me about the horrible things he’s said…I know. He’s said a lot of things that I find pretty awful, but I suspect a lot of them he has said because he likes to shock and, besides, he’s always been sweet with me, as I said before, I takes ’em as I finds them. Also rumour has it that he is a great deal nicer in real life than how he sometimes chooses to present himself in print.

You Know the score: If you don’t like these Thoughts, stick around, I’ve got plenty of others.

Does your life suck? Why not kick a duck to death? or: Why Balloon Releases are Dumb.

I have written and rewritten this post more times than I could count. I have compromised and compromised to avoid offence, until I realised I had become as guilty of this as the people this post criticises. I’m tired of compromise, so this is the first version that I wrote, I am unapologetic for this fact…

Okay, let’s play a game.

Let’s imagine every member of your family are inextricably struck down tomorrow. Would any of those loved ones have appreciated you honouring their memory by tipping a barrel of crude oil into the ocean? If so then each time one dies you should do exactly that, may as well, right? Of course none of us would do that, because it’s HARMFUL and DAMAGING to the ENVIRONMENT. I recently had to explain to a grown adult why the environment is important for our lives (People are hopelessly miopic, all hope is lost, we’re going to die here).

You with me so far? We’re agreed that we shouldn’t tip barrels of oil into the sea because it’s harmful and damaging to our environment and we need our environment to live? If you accept this argument, then you already know why releasing balloons is a terrible idea.

To be clear

If…..

Punching badgers = Dumb

Tipping oil in sea = Dumb

Then…

Balloon releases = Dumb

This is a post about Balloon releases and a man with the greatest beard that has ever been grown by man.

I’d followed Andy Mabbett for some time and got to know his work quite well, in encounters with him he was always friendly and courteous, so I was somewhat surprised to log on to Twitter before christmas and find him getting huge amounts of aggressive tweets from people, I was intrigued. It was more intrigueing as some of the abuse was coming from an official charity Twitter account.

Note

I will not name this charity as I promised I wouldn’t (and I don’t want to give them the coverage).

Andy’s crime was suggesting that Balloon Releases were harmful to the environment and that the charity involved should cancel theirs. Andy was Zen-Like in his calm responses to abuse, fighting blind rage with reasoned logic and science. He was always polite even when attempts were made to goad him. This is the evidence that Balloon releases are terrible: Balloons are harmful to wildlife  

Andy was totally right. The abuse he was subjected to was horrific and ludicrous throughout, if you joined the discussion at a late stage you would be forgiven for assuming that Andy was personally responsible not just for the suffering of the people abusing him, but for all the evils of the world. I found it strange that no one one was saying anything in way of support of Andy, infact general consensus seemed to be that the charity was in the right because they had the trump card of grief. Balloon Releases are okay if you’re grieving or raising awareness of some disease. To be fair, many thought Andy was right, but should keep his mouth shut, because people have a right to their grief and to express it in the way they feel best, including releasing balloons, whatever the consequences. People are idiots.

I started trying to talk to some of the people who had been abusing Andy. Following his fine lead of being polite and logical I suggested that perhaps they were looking at the issue in the wrong way. I tried to explain that Andy was not trying to take away their right to grieve, that wasn’t the issue, he was simply asking them not to do something to express their grief and remember their loved ones that was so damaging to the environment as a whole. It didn’t take long before I was being accused of all kinds of weird and wonderful things…at one point someone suggested that when I had children they hoped one died so I would feel their pain *Face Palm* I got quite a few DMs of support from people on Twitter but, again, no one was too keen to speak openly in support; my attackers were grieving after all. This made me realise some things…

Balloon Releases are Dumb

Just as pouring oil into the ocean is dumb; releasing balloons, whatever the reason, is harmful and destructive to the environment and therefore should be banned. If you are aware of the reasons why balloons are harmful to wildlife, but still proceed with organising one, you’re a selfish idiot and the same goes for venues that allow releases to take place, you can stop them. We can stop them.

Releasing a balloon will not help your grief! Once that balloon has floated off to get lodged in the throat of a cormorant, your grief will still be there, it will still hurt just as much as it did and you will still feel empty. Releasing a balloon will also not bring about a cure for any of the currently incurable diseases known to medical science, research into the disease may indeed yield a cure, but that cure is unlikely to resemble a Puffin choking to death on rubber.

Sometimes challenging wrongs makes you unpopular

The world needs people like Andy Mabbett, The rest of us will most likely not challenge things, even if we feel strongly about them, when there is a risk we may cause offence to others but, sometimes, causing offence is unavoidable and essential if you want to create positive change. He doesn’t go out of his way to upset people, but he doesn’t keep his mouth shut to avoid it either, especially when it is something he believes in. I respect this and I’d rather be counted along with Andy and be potentially seen as unpopular or argumentative, than keep my mouth shut just to keep the peace.

Volunteer Surgeons

It’s unlikely you would want a volunteer surgeon, without any background in biomedical science, to operate on you, but a lot of the Charity’s that I have seen Andy go up against have their Public Relations activity managed by volunteers without the relevant skill set for the role. The majority of the unpleasantness that I have witnessed comes from a fundamental lack of understanding on how best to deal with a vocal activist opposed to your organisations planned activity. It does not naturally follow that having an knowledge of the subject involved makes you the best person to handle the PR side of things. If Your spokesperson is basically leading a cyber-lynch mob of grieving people in attacking people politely suggesting alternatives to your planned activity, it might be time to find another spokesperson.

Further Reading

Follow Andy Mabbett on Twitter

Find out about Andy’s ‘Big Society’ Award

Virtual Ranger’s Blog: Bereaved Parents hope environmentalist chokes to death

Paul Clarke – A time and a place for everything

…Now if you’ll all excuse me, I am off punch a penguin in the spleen. That’s okay, right? I’m grieving after all.

Learning to read stone

It is around 4am, I am 19. seeking a moments peace in a night of excess, I stumble from the beach party on Newquay’s Towan beach and around to the next cove and sit beside a large rock, my back against it. I stare out to sea. I enjoy a cigarette, spend a few minutes trying to send myself a text saying: ‘You’re awesome! numsaying?’ (yes, that’s true!) and assess an enjoyable evening. I don’t know how long I’m sat there before I’m joined by someone else nor how long after that before his hand brushes me the first time, then again and then again, I look over. My new companion is gently running his hands over the stone, he has his ear pressed against it and his face is a mix of concentration and elation. I ask him what he is doing, he says: ‘trying to learn to read.’ I make plans in my head to leave soon, he carries on telling me that rocks have been around longer than anything and they’d been watching and storing their memories so they are not lost, ‘it’s all there for us to read, we just need to learn how to unlock  it’. I diplomatically ask if he’s worried about never learning to read stone and he smiles, ‘I probably won’t, but I’d still like to try, should we stop trying things because we may fail?’ I’ve never forgot that.

I’ve written every day for as long as I can remember, these days I write on a laptop, but once upon a time I wrote on paper, a lot of paper and I saved it all. I’ve recently been reading through some of my old writings, stuff going back to my early teens and it’s been both interesting and insightful. I’ve remembered lots, discovered one or two gems of phrasing, pretty much proved the words of a friend that, the only time adult men will experience the thought patterns of a teenager is if they ever suffer serious bouts of mental illness, more interesting than this though I’ve noticed trends. There are certain themes that influence my writing today that have been fairly constant and the earliest theme I found was around the evocation of earth.

Throughout the writing, whether prose or poetry frequently there is support from imagery of the earth: a short story about a man who finds he’s dying and sets about engraving so the stones won’t forget him; a poem about an  man making a book of sand, stones whispering secrets to the night, soliliquys of stones and it goes on. It appears to me an entirely subconscious decision from an early age, I certainly didn’t make the decision to go all earthy, but earthy it seems I am. In terms of the elements: Air, Wind, Water, Fire I have always felt a greater enjoyment and deeper sense of connection with Water, but imagery of water is infrequent throughout my writing.

Sometimes the things that we resent most growing up are the things we end up being most grateful for when we’re older. My parents used to take us to a range of stately homes, archaeological and heritage sites across the UK when we were growing us, sometimes I thought they were boring, but mum loved history and felt it important we see such places. I remember how much my mum loved stately homes, her usual, worry-frowned expression replaced with wonder, awe and excitement, she’d smile. I remember she would walk slowly around making sure to take everything in, read every exhibit, sign and notice, see every artefact and touch as much history as she could. Like my companion on the beach at 19 my Mum was trying to read history from the objects that were there and that saw.

It’s funny how wrong we can be, child me sometimes found it boring visiting those homes and 19 year old me thought trying to learn to read stone was a futile exercise. One of my favourite things as I’ve got older is visiting archaeological sites and I always try and touch as much as I can, searching for that deeper link to objects brimming with stories to tell. Wht not try this: next time you visit a historical site, touch as much as you can, maybe if enough of us do it, we’ll learn to read.