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Don’t you just hate it when you cannot get past that feeling of guilt about an action, or lack of action; comment or silence; reaction or inaction.

Apart from the standard fare of missed opportunities to correct mistakes, correct the mistakes of others, correct misunderstandings, all of which crop up on a regular basis in everyone’s lives, there are the other, persistent pangs that will not go away.

I suppose because I have a few more years than some, the potential to stack up the regrets and self-recriminations carries a heavier pay load, and I have come to terms with most of it.

But there are some that will not go away.

And amongst those are echoes from years ago, forgotten until something, or someone triggers a flood.  And here is a strange thing, the visual element seems to have faded with the time in between, the memory images are paler than they were, but the feelings are as strong as ever.

And it doesn’t seem to matter that, with hindsight, with rational re-evaluation, there is significantly less reason for feelings of guilt, they will not go away.

Distance in these instances, for me, actually brings clarity of vision, I can see the reality  of those past circumstances. I recognise the misguided assumptions about what appeared to be and what actually was.

But, no matter how clear the focus, no matter how obvious the misinterpretation at the time, the feelings of guilt will not go away.

They are unnecessary, intrusive, and annoyingly inconvenient. But I suppose they come down to a simple decision. Whether the priority for personal equilibrium trumps an ancient debt, which was never real.

And the answer is, of course it does. There is nothing to fix, there is no rebalancing to be done.

And yet the feelings of guilt will not go away.

Sorry to disappoint you all before I start, but this is not a deep and meaningful scientific examination of the public face and hidden face of the clown.

Well, maybe just one clown.

Painting the face isn’t necessary. There is no need to create a mask of bright colours to hide what is underneath. Decoration isn’t necessary.

Looking in the mirror, what we reflect back is as good a mask as anything Dulux could accomplish. Even the eyes can conceal, with practice.

So, what is shown is not necessarily what is seen. And with good reason. There is always a need to disguise the real opinion of work colleagues, committee members, strangers; just to retain civility and peace.

And also to contain, enclose, control the screams, tears and twisting pain in heart and thought.

Significant effort has been spent over so many years compartmentalising the silent screams, the voiceless shouts of whatever emotional spasm is trying to escape. And, with distractions and supportive relationships, it is always, has always been, controllable. Mostly.

Today, sat at a corner desk, a little more joky, and chatty, and not the usual grump. And  observing this, and wondering why. And feeling the pressure on the dam walls building slowly, and the silent noise grows in volume.

And looking at Instagram and Facebook to find those hooks of peace, of love, of places of comfort. And holding them tight, and feeling the pressure subside.

And losing some of the clown’s face now, because the turbulence has subsided.

Clown face is a useful tool. Because nobody needs the bloke in the corner letting the reality of his thoughts out.

Little triggers can cause big surges, but so far the makeup holds firm.

And it will continue to, even under the unexpected pressures that appear from nowhere. The face of a clown is a powerful thing.

 

Admissions first. I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, a republican. I have never been convinced by the value of the royal head of state, as it has helped to retain heredity as an unjustified route to authority and power.

Nothing personal though. I have nothing against the queen herself, or most of her extended family. With the possible exception of a son who is less than judicious in his choice of friends and party buddies, and a husband who clung to the concept of colonial superiority a bit too long.

But overall, nothing personal. The principle however has always struck me as an anachronism, and one that should have been quietly put out to gentle pasture some time ago. And this week has confirmed it.

Because, if I understand it correctly – and that could be a big if – as the head of state, there are still a few residual spanners that can be put in the works ‘at her majesty’s pleasure’.

This week, the egocentric and delusional buffoon that is our Prime Minister asked the queen to allow him to suspend parliament.

And she said yes.

Just for a moment consider what would have happened if she had said no.

Would there have been bellows of horror, declarations of a constitutional crisis? And from whom would they have come?

The Brexit brigades have based their campaign on the sovereignty of the UK, with the queen as the figure head. Would the Johnsons, Rees-Moggs and Farages cry foul in unison? Or would they be forced to think again about their charge over the precipice?

Because, republican that I am, I know the one thing that would unite this country would be an attack on the monarchy, and the queen in particular.

Even if only a temporary pause for thought, it would have been a chance to draw breath and reassess, rethink and realise that things are going too far.

And one little word was all that was needed.

But as a servant of the accepted interpretation of an unwritten constitution, the queen abided by convention, and said yes.

And so the farce charges for the edge. The opposition are struggling for consistency, and the monarchy aspect of this distorted structure we term democracy have proved their lack of value.

Nice people, mostly, but nothing else.

It’s an old cliché, and one that doesn’t hold great validity. After all, I can use a computer, and mobile telephonic device, and have been known to go ‘contactless’ with abandon. Hell, I even order shopping on line!

However, when it comes to behaviour, and reacting to specific circumstances, there is definite room for improvement.

I thought I was fairly self-aware. I thought that I had searched through the response mechanisms for those ‘learnt’ attitudes that we don’t see most of the time because they are small, and ‘harmless’. I thought that I had de-programmed myself of the twitch that wasn’t mine, but was there as an unconscious learnt reaction.

This is not meant to sound calculating. I came to the realisation a while ago that, even if the conscious thought says one thing, learned auto-responses can linger.

But I thought I had got rid of them. I thought I was okay. Never perfect, far from it, but okay.

But recently an ‘auto-response’, developed to avoid one scenario, resulted in a very different outcome.

I had, and I suppose still have deep down, a very bad temper. Because I have been aware of this, it has remained watched, and monitored, and under control. And when I became aware of the potential for it to surface, I would walk away.

And that developed into my standard response to any conflict scenario, and mainly with people I care about. Because, the mind explained, if you leave the zone, then you will not get angry. Never mind who is right, wrong, or any version of grey in between.

So, there developed an arrogant assumption that I was being protective, by retaining control, and the whole process evolved into an abstract concept of peace retention.

But old dog has learned that this particular trick is the reverse. Because it closes the door on resolution, and claims the high ground.

And that is a shock. To realise that what I thought was a lesson learned long ago is not conciliatory but a retention of control. And it is also hard to decide, honestly, whether that was the intention all along.

I don’t think it was. I hope it wasn’t. But I can’t be sure.

I do know one thing. I don’t walk away any more. Not without an explanation. Not without clarity. Because that isn’t fair. And it isn’t me. Or not the me I want to be.

Lesson learned.

A conversation last night triggered some memories of days of yore, when the world was a different place, when life, from the perspective of today, was less exposed.

Back there in them far gone 1980’s, I maintained a romantic relationship via long, cold conversations in a telephone box, and letters. Lots of letters. In envelopes, with stamps and everything.

And people where what you saw, and what they presented to you, and the rest would have to emerge at its own pace.

And the only place that you could get subjected to remote vicious and unwarranted attack was in the newspapers. And they were the main source of our information, along with a narrow selection of broadcast media.

As a result there was much that was hidden, and controlled. And many suffered at the hands of others, and couldn’t gain public awareness.

And maintaining remote contact was more problematic, and less reliable, and international incidents and crises passed many by.

There was space to hide, to be secretive, to retain a private self. But it could also be a space to conceal fear, and suffering, and repression, and subversion.

Today it is hard to get away, to be apart. It takes a conscious act of will to be disconnected from the grid that is everyone’s linked presence. And it can be done, and it can be controlled. But it needs to be a conscious decision.

There are huge positives that have arisen. More awareness, more understanding, more connections. The ability to organise, to motivate, to mobilise. Support can be found, and offered. Empathy can be raised, and linked, and interlaced across the globe.

And then there is the pressure, the constant surveillance of every element of your life, and the demand to present more and more to the world, and justify, and conform, and never disconnect.

And the ease with which distortion and partial truth can become the real and the whole. And the anonymous can attack, and attack again, and hurt, and hide.

Notwithstanding all the negatives that have arisen, the positives of real mass communication are real, and the potential even more so.

I am just glad I had the opportunity of the alternative, because a letter, in an envelope, with a stamp, is still a wonderous thing.

The older I get, the more I witness, the more I realise that it is the smaller, quieter – although not always – and non earth shattering moments that provide the best, the deepest feelings of gentle pleasure.

I have said it before, and until they slam the door in my face I shall continue to say it: I have the best friends. No two the same, in looks, in character, in approach, Except for one thing they all have in common.

They accept. They acclaim. They celebrate. They laugh, they cry, and they are honest.

Some are almost next door, some a little further down the road, some at a distance. But all are close.

And each has a pile of good, bad and indifferent thundering through on a regular basis. And each has moments of good, bad and indifferent coping, dealing and side-stepping. But each will park the moment if they see the need in another for comfort, for warmth, for a shoulder, an ear, a gin.

And it is those moments, when you see them park the world and open themselves to one in pain, in confusion, in distress, that show who they are. And there are so many moments. And they will always open.

And their capacity to support never seems to end. And give and ask for nothing back. And the sun shines, because it has no choice. Even in the heaviest storm.

So the quiet little times, a walk, a quiet reflection, silent company, reinforce my gratitude to know these people. And the not so quiet – 4 people, 8 cocktails – is a chance to revel.

Could life be any better? Well, of course. But am I content with this little galaxy of stars, definitely.

And the rest, we will sort that out too.

Even though I know it is bad for my levels of daily cheeriness, I have, as yet, been unable to stop listening to ‘Today’ on Radio 4 when I get up in the morning. And amongst all the artificially inflated angst, is thew regular financial news.

How the market is performing, reacting, adjusting to national and international actions, or inactions.  How the intricate contortions of organisations, specifically designed to exploit the intricate contortions of the financial markets, are changing their approach to twisting the picture to suit their algorithms, with money that doesn’t exist.

And it all sounds complex, which it is, and it all generates or loses ridiculously large amounts of money, which don’t exist, and apparently it is the UK’s number 1 earner. For who exactly is possibly a little less clear.

And the same ‘entrepreneurial spirit’, which we are supposed to hold in such high esteem, can be seen on the global stage, as governments, or their representatives, conspire, cajole, coerce each other over trade, tariffs, taxes. It has provided us, at the moment, with the fiasco that is the Brexit non-negotiation, an escalating trade war between the US and China, expanded sanctions by the US against Iran.

And if it was just the endlessly tiresome posturing of over-inflated egos, then we can always turn away, turn down the volume, turn off the radio.

But it isn’t. Behind each change and transfer of investment is the potential, the real potential, for businesses to decline, disappear, with the accompanying impact on real lives. And that impact expands exponentially when acted out in the global arena.

And yet the ‘real’ impact is not mentioned in the financial commentator’s announcements, and the effects felt by the lower end of the economic food chain whenever a ‘leader’ postures come a long way below the bluster and too loud national advantage justifications that are thrown out to placate the populus.

And yet, what would happen if we, the bottom feeders, said enough. If we don’t play the game. Most of us could still do what we do on a daily basis, we could still build, teach, grow, create.

All we need is an alternative method of saying “Thanks for that, would you like to try some of mine?”

And then we can ignore the idiots who think that playing Monopoly with people is an okay thing to do. Because, ass long as they can keep moving the numbers around, they will never see the lives it can damage – until the lives are their own.

There should be a simple answer. A life, any life, is worth far more than a profit margin, a bit of land, a nugget of gold, an insulted ego.

But there is no simple answer. And for many in this world, there is no answer at all. Or rather, the answer is not much, if anything.

Life always gets cheaper during conflicts, and innumerable nations seem hell bent on escalating conflicts for any number of reasons, and never the ones that are publicly stated. And when the lives on the other side of the aggressive divide are a different religion, a different race, then the value of each diminishes further.

But step away from zones of immediate conflict, and there is still a disparity of value. The antagonism and hatred generated by extremist tendencies across those countries ‘at peace’, means that there are sections in every community where fear is the mainstay. Difference is despised, demonised, denied the comfort of safety.

This year, in the US, there have now been more mass shootings than there have been days. And every victim has been innocent. Every life valued less than the influence exerted by the National Rifle Association, because every citizen has the right to be able to kill another.

The hatred is generated at the top, is stirred until it cannot be contained, and the aftermath is blamed on everything but the rhetoric and the inability to value life above power.

And here? We are less blatant perhaps, although the subtlety is rapidly fading. Human trafficking, religious and racial bigotry, the continued devaluing of women. It all reduces one life against another.

And the political buffoons denigrating Europe and Europeans. It goes on and on.

The price of a life these days? A long way below the vanity of the powerful, and the blindness of the misguided and disregarded.

And all we can do is hold each that we care for as close as we can. And retain the value of all as the same. And spread the word. One life at a time.

I suppose, everything else being equal – and that is statement in itself – the time will come when the growing list of women I know who have suffered, or are suffering with coercive control, mental and physical abuse, and the many variations of misogynistic game playing that men consider appropriate; when that growing list will stop growing. When it will stand still.

Can it really be that difficult to not be a total dick, at the very least? Can it really require too much reprogramming to realise that the behaviour you consider to be the norm, just is not?

A child is told, once, twice, three times. An adult – once should do it. Establish a marker. Flag up a warning. You are about to do or say something that is not acceptable, so stop. Not hard. Not requiring great intellect. Just basic humanity.

But it seems that we are not yet even at the stage when most men will even admit that, without any negative intentions, their standard response to any number of scenarios is not acceptable. They may consider that there is a matter of degree, but fundamentally not on is not on.

I admit that my life has been a learning curve, and I have had to reconsider and reassess past behaviour. But, strangely enough, it really doesn’t hurt to act as a human being to fellow human beings. And, to those yet to realise the humanity of it, I can assure you it is a whole lot easier than the perpetual one-upmanship that ‘masculinity’ demands these days.

Life has far too many external pressures, traps, trips and tears, to waste energy on proving even the most minor level of superiority. Especially when you are not. Accept that we are no better or worse than how we treat the next member of the human race, and things will get easier, for us all.

Until then, until then, until then!

I stopped being ashamed of being male a while ago, when I stopped being male.

I am human, and I will always stand behind every woman who is treated as less than who she is. There are far too many, and I will always be there. For those I know, and for those I don’t.

Now, about ‘everything else being equal’ ……….