Friday 20 September 2024

We Write A Poem

Our friend Geoff Hardy disappeared at the end of April - our, because he was your friend too, whether you knew him well, a little, or had never met him. Geoff was friend to a society, a man in search of greater justice, fairness, acceptance, love, and joy. He was generous with his enthusiasm, his righteous anger, his sense of fun. We miss him.

Fred D'Aguiar, who Geoff taught at Charlton Boys School in London in the 1970s, has written a sequence of poems of celebration and loss, and we launched Ghost Particles [Fair Acre Press] at the Hive in Shrewsbury in early September. The poetry is moving, sparse, laden with deep sorrow and deeper gratitude for all Geoff was. Fred asks...

Must
you be 
dead 
for all 
there is 
for me 
to say 
to you 
to be 
said?



It sometimes goes like this, that we want a chance to say something to the one we miss unbearably, the one who is no longer there to hear it. We wish to repeat what we knew and said in his lifetime, or what we were too shy to say, or didn't even realise we had to say. 

At a memorial celebration of Geoff's life at Shrewsbury Town's football ground a couple of days after the reading, many of us wrote a poem together. We did it like this - each writing a line of memory, or emotion, or observation at the beginning of the event. The poet part of me then wove the lines together, finding as I did so that what the community knows about Geoff rings both particular and communal - we knew him individually, we knew him collectively. 

The poem is epic - long - a bit unwieldy. It breaks the line limits for competitions, magazine entries - steps outside the bounds of convention. Geoff would have liked that about it, and, as Fred said, he would have liked its call and response nature, the chance for voice. Here it is. It's for all of us, whatever the losses we are feeling. 

GEOFF’S TABLE – after Edip Cansever

Written on 8th September 2024 by family and friends

 

Friends and Family of Geoff,

filled with gratitude and the gladness of knowing him,

put our sorrows and memories on the table.

We put there Geoff’s energy and courage to be different, the fire in his belly,

his endless enthusiasm for confronting the status quo,

his always being led by his convictions and values,

challenging hubris with sparkling wit.

And we lay on the table his advice to stay right to the end

because you never know who’s too shy to come and talk.

 

We place there the personal and the political,

Geoff’s fierce empathy for those without agency.

the memory of him, a young student

in his Afghan Coat, tentative of his brave future.

On the table we put Geoff’s inspiration of others,

his ability to motivate and his unshakeable opinions.

We set there all the groups he was involved with:

his candidacy for the Green Party,

the early days of the Gay Teachers’ Group,

memories of pink triangles in Jersey,

Shropshire Fights Back, SAND,

and Shropshire Co-op members group.

the presentations he delivered at schools

during LGBT History Month.

 

Memories of the 1982 Channel 4 lost Video

starring Geoff & Peter, Arthur & Rosie,

the copy of the Shropshire Star  -- the one in which

he objected to a columnist’s homophobic comments,

Geoff’s power of persuasion, his knowledge,

the sheer length of time he spent fighting for rights,

solidarity, universality, all sugared with hope –

we put them on the table along with his wry smile,

his challenge to long-held entrenched opinions,

his ramblings in meetings that always came to the point eventually

 

We put on the table Geoff’s eclectic taste in music

his hands playing the piano, all those Proms,

music as an expression of his soul.

We remember him by, ‘Calling all Angels’,

and every year, ‘ The Moon in June’

(Geoff - possibly the only surviving Soft Machine fan).

 

We place Geoff’s love of the arts on the table:

films from around the world, and books, and poetry,

films, and Fred’s poetry, and supporting young artists,

the films he selected with Peter for the best film festival,

singing, and seeing Geoff and Peter in the audience, smiling.

We cry with Shrewsbury Town Crier, ‘Oh Gay, Oh Gay!’

 

We put on the table Geoff’s talking with his hands,

those expansive gestures – his hands always moving,

his slapping his hands in emphasis,

his expressive, creative, strong hands, his caring so much.

And the notes of his voice, his calm voice,

the radiance of his voice, the sounds of the trains

on the bridge at Shrewsbury Railway Station,

the chink of tea cups, drinking out of exquisite china.

And over the table echoed, ‘FABULOUS!’


We place on the table the communal garden by the river Severn,

windfall apples in autumn, Jakob’s vegetarian feast,

soya bean casserole and Caribbean fish curry,

dinner at Bistro Jacques for Gary’s birthday,

long evenings of shared suppers planning the Rainbow Film Festival,

no business talk meals, garlic chutney, a fruit bowl, fish pie,

cups of tea, plain chocolate, lunches in the market café,

tea and friendship in the kitchen, discussing Alan Watts,

late night discussions over a glass of wine,

the chat and the chat, and the endless chat –

all those delicious curries and coffee, those teacups and saucers,

the most diverse selection of herb tea bags,

and glasses half full of red wine knocked over by buzzing, flapping hands,

and being last to leave a house-warming party

generosity of spirit and the chat, and the chat,

brief roadside talks turning into hour long conversations,

and inspiration, guidance, endless compassion and passion.

 

We put on the table specific memories:

There is a feeling I get when I look to the West

when my hell gets too much and the only thing to give me peace

is a nice egg curry and bottles of beautiful wine

 in the company of Aunty Geoffrey and Uncle Peter – treasures never forgotten.

We put Aunty Geoff on the table, and the book he gave called

“What happens to your body as you grow” –

amongst other books a book that made me and my brother giggle at a lot,

all while he had a glint in his eye.

We place on the table the shelter Geoff gave

at a time when we needed refuge,

his encouraging laughter and optimism,

his kindness, courage and inclusivity.

The cape that sailed towards me on Shaftesbury Avenue

(it had been years, who else could it be?), blue shoes

and old friends meeting on the Charing Cross Road

leading to a lifetime in the Shropshire Hills,

Geoff’s sense of freedom as his skirt swooshed on the tube –

that’s him there, a boy walking past,

Him calling my name as he passed on a bike – ‘hello!’

wise words given to me at just the right moment –

welcoming my queer daughter into the LGBTQ+ community,

I know Geoff because he was an English teacher and I was a French teacher,

Another Geoff, told by his mother, “Why can’t you be more like Geoff Hardy!”

We place all these personal memories on the table.

 

We place there how Geoff was a positive in times of stress,

that flower and a thank you written on a sticky note,

his warmth and a smile that we now carry as a gift.

A box of sequins, laughter, and a welcome to the community.

We place on the table talking over the hedge in the morning,

a constant neighbour in sun and rain.

We put on the table his care for those he knew and hardly knew

his commitment to being the first to fight for people in need

 

On the table we place Geoff’s passion for caring,

his healing hands, his healing light and stories,

hands to heal the body and mind, his giving of support.

On the massage table Geoff would gently place Jean and Cedric

for their essential oil massage.

Next to them, all the massages given under Geoff’s hands,

his fingers, knuckles and elbows in the right places,

fingers of power that magicked pain away,

the massage oil, and a welcoming smile,

ironing out our tensions, muscles, and feelings,

words of wisdom given, whether wanted or not.

 

Nous mettons sur la table la maison devant la riviere,

riz tres bon a manger, et beaucoup de theirs dan sa maison

et surtout le si adorable Peter, son compagnon et ses

deux amis Hattie et Mike

 

We place on the table a stall in the Market Square,

stalls draped with rainbow flags,

train journeys, bicycle clips and no helmet,

flags and smiley faces, wonderful stories,

rainbow badges and roses in full bloom,

emails packed with love and encouragement,

a filing cabinet full of his letters,

evening primroses from the garden from his hands,

the name of every plant in the number 19 garden,

his Scavenger Hunt Winner medal (and Crunchie!),

British Sign Language, sounds of a bicycle bell,

eggs bought at the side of the road in half dozens

to take home for neighbours; an ability to put people at ease,

generosity and a sense of humour, tight hugs of love,

and his hidden talent: dancing at those SAND discos.

All these wonderful things we put on the table.

 

We put on the table our regrets, the bicycle ride we didn’t take,

that we hadn’t known Geoff better ,

and Will I ever have as much time to give Geoff as he gives me?

 

We place on the table the postcards of Geoff and Peter’s many adventures

we place Geoff and Pete’s love on the table too, their being together forever,

their welcoming others to that table together,

especially those finding it hard to find their place

all those memories of an open house and open heart:

“Just follow it, and do it,” and,

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

The encouragement of a dream, a young life, a pathway.

The ability to turn around anything that I could say into a new idea.

 

On top of the pile, we place the way Geoff was unashamedly himself,

his pride in his notoriety, his open-mindedness.

his wicked sense of humour, and his brave courage.  

 

On the table we put the first times we saw Geoff, the last times,

We put on the table a bridge, the bridge that was Geoff,

link between so many people, so many groups.

 

We look at the table – it wobbles a bit but does not complain.

It is dependable, warm, and generous.

And then, above all, we see this:

Geoff’s love for Peter was the table he put things on.

 



Photos - John Rinaldi




Saturday 27 July 2024

I Disappoint My Friend

I missed parkrun today, Saturday. I lounged about instead, got up late. Very late, in fact. You see, I've listened to my friend Paul Francis, and to his disappointment.

I enjoy being read - it's one of the reasons I write, and I particularly enjoy being read by an attentive and thorough reader, and those of you who know Paul will know him to be among the most assiduous of readers. These blog posts are a call into the space between me and you, a wish for connectedness - and so when Paul responded to my last post (I Personal Best) by writing to me privately by email (he is also considerate) I listened carefully. 

He spoke convincingly about how my obsession with a particular run time was out of kilter with the spirit of why I run which is, he said, nothing to do with my concentration on that arbitrary number of running the 5K of parkrun in under 30 minutes. 

Paul, you're right. I run parkrun because it has made the rest of my life better. I'm fitter, more confident in my body, linked into running communities of friendship and mutuality. And last week, after some blood tests, I also found out that running has stabilised my blood sugar levels without me having to give up lemon almond cake and Garibaldi biscuits. My test results showed I'm now post-pre-diabetic - not close to diabetic at all, in fact.

So, since being listened to by Paul and listening to him in turn, I've ditched my latest target (to reach 150 parkruns by my 60th birthday), and this morning I shooed away the target-driven voice, which has been nibbling at my ankles since I thought the unnecessary goal up. 

I'm wondering if Paul will write to me again, about this post, to point out my used of a mixed metaphor. I hope so. It'll prove he's still listening.








Saturday 8 June 2024

I Personal Best

[If running stats bore you, look away now.]

I love parkrun. I love the weekly routine of it: same time, same route, same format, same mental reckonings about the results, same feeling of smugness post-event as I contemplate the rest of my weekend. I even like listening to the same album - Jools Holland's Piano - as I amble along. It begins with birdsong, and its mood is cheerful. I know roughly where I need to be on the course according to the track that's playing.

I've reached this equilibrium after a shaky start at my first parkrun in 2016: the one in which I lurched, without any warm up, around the Quarry and by the time I got home, had to crawl upstairs to my flat on hands and knees. 

After that experience, I bought better trainers, and came up with the following internal monologues in an attempt to prevent further reckless behaviour: "It's just good that I'm up and out on a Saturday morning in the sun / rain / wind / heat, and that I'll finish the course without needing an ambulance. This is a run not a race. A personal worst is a different type of achievement. One day, I won't be able to move - enjoy moving!" I've used these mantras to run 133 parkruns, some of them in Wales, Poland, and Australia.

I stand by all these phrases, and my lack of ambition to change. But recently, thanks to regular running with my buddy Julia, at Shropshire Shufflers I've been managing a new thought: "It'd be good to run 5K in under 30 minutes before I'm 60." Julia has a watch which tells her what our pace is, and she brought round some ginger beer when I was showing her my photos of Australia recently.

I'll turn 60 in 24 Shrewsbury parkruns' time. Ages away. But significantly, today's course was the final occurrence of the current route.  From next week, we'll be tested by an additional uphill section in a course that's intended to make things safer for everyone by slowing most of the c.700 participants down at the start. 

The new thought has been taking effect. My time of 30:49 last week was a marked improvement, and fastest since 2017. All week I've been mulling over the ambition to try knocking another minute off my time, and the cautious part of me has been warning that it'd be hard to manage such a big change.

But I did. Parkrun this morning was 9am as usual, same place, same beautiful park, same large crowd. I chose the same music, and I made it round in 29:30. The only thing that was different was that I ran a bit faster. And that I'm drinking ginger beer to celebrate. 









Monday 27 May 2024

I Write In Red

Red for the strawberries, ripening on my allotment, sweet brightness against straw. Red for the runner bean flowers. Red for the radishes huddled up close. Red, just about, for the rhubarb. Red for my face after Saturday on my allotment - for the heat and exertion. Red for the ants I disturbed, and avoided. Red for hope for the tiny green baby tomato I spotted - the first of this season. 

Red for Man Utd, club of the moment, team of my colleague and friend, Tim. Red for our endless football banter. Red for the ribbons on the FA cup. Red for the crowd. Red for the fans heard rowdy and loud around Shrewsbury on Saturday evening. Red for painting the town. Red for my glass of wine. Red for my Arsenal scarf, hanging limp but avenged. Red for the roar of football. Red for its disappointments, red for the joys. 





Sunday 19 May 2024

I Integrate Some Things...

... more specifically, my work role. I was enabled to do this at a conference at the University of Central Lancashire this week. Understanding came to me as it always does: relationally, emotionally, experientially; and specifically in the company of two colleagues from other universities.

A lot has happened since 2007 when I met Jill and Chris at the first Authenticity to Action conference in Grange-over-Sands. There I heard about, and signed up to, DUCIE, a support network for Developers of User and Carer Involvement in higher Education. DUCIE (mostly Jill and Chris) ran regular meetings for mutual support roughly twice a year. In the old days, we travelled to each others' universities. More recently, meetings have been online, so the sense of connectedness on seeing people in person in Preston was heightened. 

The Service User and Carer Participation role has held a unique, and loosely defined, place in universities. Whenever DUCIE's met, we've compared notes on work which is pioneering. We've always found common ground. Those conversations have been a source of comfort, consolation, and confidence, particularly when I've felt isolated and out of my depth.

Among all the other aspects of my lecturer role (teaching, marking, writing, tutoring, interviewing, degree management...) participation development work has been my driving passion. It relates to my commitment to ensuring people with lived experience of health and social care services have an equal say in how future professionals are educated: what students of social work, in particular, learn and how they learn it. 

Participation has become my specialist subject but, though I've written book chapters about it, I often struggle to articulate what it is. It's a way of being though it's shown in ways of doing. Participation in higher education is both institutionalised (a requirement of professional bodies like the Nursing and Midwifery Council) and runs counter to much of academic culture. It subverts hierarchies of knowledge and power which place the value of empiricism (social science-y stuff) above phenomenology (what we feel we have experienced - our stories of what it was like). DUCIE members have all met with considerable resistance. Being in the company of those who understand this, and have experienced it over a long period of time, felt like a homecoming.

Erik Ericson's stage theory tells us that the final task of our psychosocial development is to manage the tension between despair and ego identity that comes in the final chapter of our lives - in other words, to look back and make sense of what we've been up to. He says this starts around age 65 (he was going by old-style male retirement age, I suppose). Whatever. This theory came to mind during those 48 hours in Preston as I looked back on my work in the company of Jill and Chris - as we shared memories, laughter, sorrows, failures, successes. They enabled me to a deeper realisation of what I've been doing, and to a sense of wholeness in relation to my work's varied adventures. 

The thought-feeling I took home with me from Preston is this: I've been part of something.


Me in 2011, looking at my audience, which included Jill, Chris, and other participation workers. Photo by Jill. She shared it on the big conference screen during a presentation on Thursday, which was a surprise, a smiley one.

Monday 29 April 2024

I Burble On About Running / Butter

The best thing, among the other best things, about being a late starter is that I don’t have a history of running times, triumphs or disasters - completing my second ever timed 10K yesterday, all I had to compare myself with was the first one. As it wasn’t 30 degrees this time, and most of the hills were in a downwards direction, I ran faster. More importantly, I ran with J. - my running friend. I’ve never had a running friend before, at least, not one with whom I’ve actually gone running regularly, twice a week, chatting. 

My other running friends have become breakfast friends. I with D. on Saturday discussing butter as we ate eggs on toast - our conversation was something along the lines of everything being improved by it: everything food, D. clarified (the sentiment, not the butter). With D’s confident endorsement of something I’ve always known and discussed at length with my longest-serving friend, I enjoyed my toast even more. 

The thing is, I got excited earlier in the week by an email. It was marketing from Candlestick Press, famous for its commitment to publishing poetry in the form of ‘not greetings cards’. They’ve published ‘Ten Poems About Bikes, Dogs, Breakfast’, about XYZ. The email was advertising their latest pamphlet. ‘At last,’ I thought ‘Ten Poems About Butter’.

After yesterday’s 10K in which I clocked a lifetime personal best, J., a skilled listener, suggested hot chocolate. As we neared the order point, I asked ‘Are you going to have cream and a flake?’ I asked the question more in the style of, ‘I couldn’t possibly justify having cream and a flake, could I, given that I’ve just been making observations about my menopausal tummy?’ Cream is a couple of levels above butter on my list of life’s indulgences - not everything is improved by cream, but a few things you wouldn’t want to put butter on are. J. heard what I was really asking - something along the lines of ‘I’d really like cream and a flake but I’m not sure I’m allowed.’ ‘Of course,’ J. answered, ‘and marshmallows,’ as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

When I re-read the Candlestick email later on yesterday, poised to order a full fat poetry pamphlet, I read more carefully this time, ‘Ten Poems About Butterflies.’ Well, at least the landscape is clear for my own work. I fancy writing my way through a Butter Phase.






Thursday 18 April 2024

I Deter Slugs

Sometimes, a conversation has the effect of a tin opener - one of those old-style ones which involves puncturing the can with a sharp blade, running it round the lid without the assistance of wheels or cogs. This type of opener leaves ragged edges, and a sense of jeopardy. I wonder if that is how my Longest-Serving Friend's courgette plants felt after being eaten by slugs overnight last Thursday - it certainly left her feeling ragged, so as I was going to stay for the weekend, I took wine and flowers.

These thoughts - the being opened up by a conversation and the destructive potential of slugs - came together as I planted baby broad bean plants on my allotment this morning. They are not directly comparable situations, and yet something about that conversation came back to me as I thought about holes, and how to protect the broad bean plants from slugs. 

I don't know if it was the effect of either the wine or the flowers, but last weekend my Longest-Serving Friend found the motivation to try again with courgettes, and had the idea of cutting the bottoms out of flower pots to use as shields around the next lot of plants. We imagined the slugs trying to gain purchase, perhaps hurling themselves at the plants, but slipping down the plastic sloping pot sides. Ha!

The conversation I had, the one that's making me think of tin openers, happened ages ago, but it's stuck with me as a painful unkindness. It was about the holes in me and how they are irreparable. In therapy, I learned to use the metaphor of woundedness about these holes, and also learned, with skilful help, how to take care of myself. 

Not wanting to use slug pellets to deter slugs (bad for birds, bad for hedgehogs) I followed my Longest-Serving Friend's example today and made collars out of plastic cups to shield the broad bean plants I've been growing from seed. I cut out the bases, and I made sure to leave a ragged edge. Something about doing this - about being outside on my allotment, pottering about in the sunshine, planting broad beans, and trying to protect them, helped me feel complete.