International Women's day: talking point

I read an alarming statistic on Twitter this morning, it said that domestic violence killed more women in the UK, between the age of 16 & 45, each year than breast cancer. So I thought it would be fitting to share that fact on International Women's Day.
https://twitter.com/WeeMissBea/status/971516332519796737

Other alarming facts have been filtering through over the years: that the perpetrators of large scale acts of violence and terrorism often have a history of violence against women. The Manchester bomber and the Florida school shooter are the most recent examples that come to mind.

Why isn't this link being talked about more? It seems obvious - in the way that many people are aware that serial killers seem to start off by torturing animals, surely it is a gruesomely logical train of thought that someone who is capable of slaughtering their fellow humans must have shown some indication of brutality in the past. Which is why domestic violence must be treated seriously.

If you look at the historic legal implications of domestic violence, it makes sobering reading. Before 1850, a man was legally permitted to beat his wife with a stick, as long as it was no thicker than his thumb.
There are more specific and accurate stats here:
https://www.mmu.ac.uk/equality-and-diversity/doc/gender-equality-timeline.pdf
And how about violence towards children?
Even now, it's not actually illegal for parents to smack children, in England, although it is in Scotland.

I was going to go on to talk about the shocking incident that has happened recently in our neighbourhood - a ‘family annihilation’ I think they’re called, when a man (and it always seems to be a man) kills himself, after he has slaughtered his whole family. I don’t want to diminish the horror of what has happened but I don’t want to write about it; it’s too depressing.

What I’m going to do instead is share the Just Giving page of comedian, Richard Herring, who is doing stirling work toady on Twitter, replying to every single goon who asks, belligerently  - ‘When is it International Men’s Day, then??’ With the response ‘It’s the 19th of November’!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/November19th?utm_source=twitter

Extraordinary people: part 2, Lemn Sissay

Dear reader, like me, do you enjoy a ‘triumph against adversity’ story? If so then come this way, you are in for a treat!

I recently had the great honour of attending a talk given by the poet and playwright, Lemn Sissay. I'd watched a YouTube video of Sissay, reading some of his poetry, before I attended his talk, and he has an immense presence -  his energy and charisma bombard you from the stage. 

Lemn Sissay's story is certainly compelling - it is shocking, devastating and, ultimately, hopeful.

He was born in 1967. His mother was from Ethiopia and was studying in Britain when she found herself pregnant and alone. She was placed in a mother and baby unit and strong armed into giving Lemn up. He was placed in foster care, and, although his mother never signed the adoption papers, his social worker told Lemn’s foster parents to view it as an adoption. Lemn was named ‘Norman’ at the bequest of the social worker who placed him in care, also called Norman! The foster parents were fiercely religious Christians. Lemn remembers a happy, joyful early childhood, where he felt the whole world ‘smiled at him’; as described in is his interview on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06gthsz

His world was ripped apart when, aged 12, his foster parents decided that he was too naughty and gave him back into care, with no further contact. (At the talk I attended, he said that they didn’t even hug him goodbye.) He cites standard, childhood/adolescent indiscretions like staying out too late, taking biscuits from the tin without saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and smoking, for the reasons his foster parents had for viewing him as some kind of demonic force or evil Trojan horse, designed to bring their family down from within.  He went from being part of a family (the couple who'd fostered him had gone on to have 3 other biological children) with grandparents, aunts and uncles, to being placed in a series of children’s homes. He was the only black child in these homes and suffered much brutality there. The social worker who came to pick him up from the foster family pulled over into a lay-by and told him:

‘None of this is your fault.’

Lemn started writing poetry, aged 12 and at 17, when he left care, used his dole money to self-publish pamphlets of his poems. His reputation spread by word of mouth and he was picked up by a publisher, aged 20. 

He used the proceeds from his book sales to fund his search for his biological family. At 17 he had been given some of his records and found that his mother hadn’t wanted him to be adopted and that his name wasn’t Norman Mark Greenwood but Lemn Sissay.

Lemn Sissay overcame extremely difficult circumstances and the most horrendous rejections, from both his foster parents and biological family, to become a successful writer and broadcaster and the Chancellor of Manchester University. There was a picture of him in his Chancellor robes, on a screen at the talk. He grinned as he turned to it and said:

‘That’s what a care leaver looks like.’

Someone in the audience asked him how he’d got to where he is today; how he’d overcome adversity and he listed giving up drinking and undergoing therapy as the best things he had done.

It's difficult to imagine what it must feel like to be jettisoned from the family you've grown up in, by the people you called 'Mum' and 'Dad', and then to go on to have a difficult reunion with your biological mother. It must have taken enormous drive for Lemn to promote his poetry, which he sold to miners and millworkers. As well as being hopeful, his story is inspirational; demonstrating the power of perseverance!

As he says in the introduction to Gold from the Stone - Canongate Books 2016,

'I am not defined by my scars but by the incredible ability to heal.'

The talk was attended by academics, students, social workers and care leavers. It was a very emotional experience as people shared their own experiences of being in care or of fostering, themselves. It was also one of those illuminating, life-affirming events that make you glad you attended. It felt like a privilege to hear Lemn’s life story, as well as the stories of the other care leavers, and listen to him reading one of his poems. My only regret is that I didn’t wait around for the book signing!

https://www.waterstones.com/book/gold-from-the-stone/lemn-sissay/9781782119456

Extraordinary people

Dear reader, I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while; I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of a topic that doesn’t merely involve a stream-of-consciousness outpouring of thoughts and preoccupations. I really wanted to write about other people, but I realised that, even in writing about others, I’m going to be presenting them through my own filter of feelings and perceptions, but such is the nature of any kind of writing, right? Until I can get those ten thousand monkeys with typewriters onto the case, you’re just going to have to bear with me! So here we are, a potted bio of a couple of (in my opinion) surprising, extraordinary and for the most part, obscure, people.

1.
Ambalavaner Sivanandan

OK, so I’m going to be cribbing from the Guardian obituary of Ambalavaner Sivanandan a lot here, which brought him to my attention, but I was really impressed by this man’s legacy. I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never heard of him until he died. This is their summation of him:

Director of the Institute of Race Relations who helped change the way Britain thought about race

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/07/ambalavaner-sivanandan?CMP=share_btn_fb

His story is extraordinary, and has a particular resonance with me because his cultural background is so similar to my father’s. Sivanandan was a Tamil from Sri Lanka, who came to Britain in the 1950s. Hindu Tamils are in the minority amongst the majority of predominantly Buddhist, Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and, according to the article, Sivanandan dressed as a policeman and waved an unloaded gun around to protect himself and his family from a Sinhalese mob. After coming to England and witnessing the anti-black race riots in Notting Hill, he is quoted as saying:

“I knew then I was black, I could no longer stand on the sidelines: race was a problem that affected me directly. I had no excuse to go into banking or anything else that I was fitted up to do … I had to find a way of making some sort of contribution to the improvement of society.”

This quote had heavy resonance with me. No just because he strove to stick his head above the parapet and try and effect a change but because he also used the phrase 'I knew then I was black'. I have long been aware of ‘black’ as a political, rather than a factual or descriptive concept, but it was very interesting to me to hear this man describe himself as such when many of my Sri Lankan relatives are so resistant to the term to define themselves.

The statement - ‘I knew then I was black’ also struck me because it expressed something of my own childhood feelings of ‘we’re all in this together’. To put it another way, I was always shocked that one ethnic minority group would discriminate against another when surely they knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of discrimination. I felt the same about homophobia - how could someone from any minority background, who knew what it was like to be attacked, verbally or physically, be homophobic? Yes I was naive but it was all well meant and I look back on this period of naive idealism with a certain amount of fondness. (I was a genuine bleeding heart liberal from a very young age.)

But enough about me (I told you this was going to be very subjective!). Ambalavaner Sivanandan was responsible for the investigation into procedure which dubbed the police force at the time of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, as institutionally racist. Or, to quote the Guardian article:

His writing was key to ideas that later entered the mainstream with the publication of the

Macpherson report in 1999, which concluded that the flawed handling of the death of Stephen Lawrence was because of institutional racism – defined by Siva as “that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions – reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn”.

He was also responsible for many memorable aphorisms, such as “We are here because you were there” (relating to post-colonial migration) and “The personal is not political, the political is personal”

I gave the obituary to my dad to read and asked him if he’d heard of or knew Sivanandan (not as dodgy as it sounds - ‘Oh, this man’s from Sri Lanka as well, do you know him??’) Because my dad was part of a fairly large community of expats when he first arrived. Sadly, he (my dad) didn’t know him but he did tell me how to pronounce his name properly, so it was useful to broach the subject.

Siva's legacy lives on.

2.

James Barry - (Margaret Ann Bulkley)

https://www.facebook.com/StylistMagazine/videos/10157863207694572/

I was lying in bed one morning, trying to put off the inevitable hour of waking, looking through Facebook on my phone, when this video from Stylist Magazine popped up. The video is about a woman born in 1795, who, because of her gender, was barred from going to University, let alone studying medicine, and decided to pass herself off as a man so she could go to medical school. She joined the British army, became a well-respected doctor, travelled the world, was instrumental in effecting many reforms, and was the first surgeon to perform a cesarean in South Africa. The truth was only discovered after her death and the army were so ashamed that they suppressed the records for a hundred years (bloody men, eh, can’t stand to be shown up by a woman!).
The video is highly entertaining if you'd care to have a watch.

So, I think that will have to do for now - this is the first of a multi-part series of forgotten trailblazers (possibly, if I can't think of anything else to write.)
Many thanks for reading!

A Month in the Wilderness

I had great hopes of my month away from Facebook: more productive, happier, more centred (by which I think I mean less irritable), thinner!? Very great hopes indeed.
After all, the studies have shown that social media is bad for us:

http://www.openculture.com/2017/08/the-case-for-deleting-your-social-media-accounts.html

I’d even written an article about all my issues with it, unpublished (not the one you are reading now) that I hoped to sell to a magazine and get paid real money for. The intention was there. But when it came to carrying out the self-imposed digital exile, it was a lot harder than I thought.

But first the why? Why bother coming away from it at all?

I was beginning to feel that Facebook was set-up for rejection; the whole business with ‘likes’ and all that, not to mention the potential for toxic comparisons.  'Comparison is the thief of joy' and all that, so I flounced away from it in the manner of a disgruntled, sacked employee - ‘See you later losers! I’m going somewhere I’m appreciated!’

(Where - I don’t know, where can one go to feel appreciated these days?)

But, almost as soon as I deleted the app, I felt strangely dislocated. I felt that I was really missing out. Perhaps this is why Facebook is so toxic - it gives the illusion of being connected to other people, without any real contact. But, illusion or not, it’s very powerful,
because without it, I felt a real sense of isolation. 

I have to admit that, in the past, I've used Facebook to garner support; griping about things that have happened in my life. One step away from the ambivalent, attention-seeking status updates. The sort of thing that my husband and his mate so vilify - you know the sort of thing, where someone says something like - 
Worst day ever!
Prompting the
R u ok hun?
responses. 
And do you know, I did get comfort from them, the responses. Something like the digital equivalent of a gang of mates crowding round their sobbing pal in the the nightclub loos and saying;
"Forget him, babe, he ain't worth it!" 
Although I never complained about my love life on Facebook, I did have a couple of moans about other things - the train service, people making unsolicited comments about my weight after I'd had a baby, that sort of thing, and the 'likes' and the supportive comments were very reassuring. Proving that perhaps social media can be used for good as well as evil ;)  Perhaps it becomes toxic only if you use it to replace actual, human interaction. Maybe it's O.K as a supplement to said interaction...?

In a cold, depressing January, without social media, I felt like I was wearing blinkers; there was a world out there that I was cut off from. Which sounds like a massive overreaction but that is how I felt. I was missing out on the baby photos and the updates from people I genuinely like, but don't get to see very often. (I realise that there are also plenty of people you barely know, haven't seen for years and have no intention of seeing and perhaps one of you added the other to up your friends numbers, and this is where it gets a bit weird.) But, yeah, I was missing seeing the updates from the fam.

However, I’ve been on holiday before and not looked at social media for a week and didn’t feel any sense that I was missing out on anything then, so why now?

Perhaps it was because I was doing it as a New Year’s resolution so it was automatically doomed to failure. Forbidden fruit and all that. The equivalent of the New Year diet (which I swore I wouldn’t do this year). In fact, compared to Dry January or Veganuary or any of that, this was supposed to be seamless, easy, cleansing, even.

For reasons I can’t go into, this January has been even more brutal than usual. It's always an endurance test at the best of times but this has been a sad and terrible month. What is the antidote to this? 

A break from social media is supposed to make us value our real life friendships more and seek out social contact - which is good for your mental health, but the trouble with January is that everyone is either broke, laid low with some kind of virulent bug, or both! 

So a break from social media really can feel like a (partly) self-imposed exile.

How did I cope with the digital privation? And did I end up using the time more productively? Here are some of the methods I used to fill the gap.

• Reading more - I’m not talking (purportedly) mind improving, award-winning books here. I devoured classic crime novels (complete with some rather dubious class and race assumptions) and re-read books by my favourite author, Marian Keyes; I find the mood enhancing properties of her novels better than chocolate.
• Having a good house clear-out. - Well, you see, I intended to do this but was ill for over a week with some kind of bug* and I haven’t actually done anything about this yet, beyond taking some old books to a charity shop, I’ve felt too drained, but the intention was and still is there…
• Being proactive with my writing. - We-el, yes, actually, I’ve entered three writing competitions/opportunities already this year… (don’t) watch this space.
• Exercise - Ha, ha, ha! In all seriousness though, please see above re sick bug.
• Being more sociable - the intention was there, the invitations were issued and I did see a few good friends, on a few separate occasions, and salve to the soul it was. However I do appreciate that financial constraints make it tougher for January meetups to happen, plus the aforementioned bugs (sorry to go on about it), plus the weather...
• Spend more quality time with children, undiverted by screen activity. - Er, please can I refer you again to the bug.

*Which turned out to be gastritis.

In conclusion: 
I really did think that this might have been one of those smug - "I haven't looked back since I purged myself and my laptop!", posts. (Although that would have been ironic as most of the traffic to this blog comes via social media.) 
But I haven't really experienced that much difference, one way or the other. Perhaps I will feel differently after two days back on Facebook, turn tail in horror and become one of those anti-social media evangelists who bark about how insidious and toxic it all is but let’s just see shall we.

Because you’re worth it!

Do you remember a while ago I told you about the ‘Happiness Project’ they’re running at work?

http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-happiness-project.html

The most recent mini task is this:

Be kind to yourself

I’m sure you’ve seen this little phrase, floating around on mugs or on pastel-hued memes, in some form or other. Bit cheesy, bit wanky maybe but the idea behind it is sound. One of the ‘80s soul records my brother used to listen to would extort:

You can’t give love to no one else, until you learn to love yourself! (citation needed)

This is what we need to do, friends, in order to function well as a proper human being - love ourselves. Not easy though, is it.

I bore that in mind as I scooted around the supermarket yesterday (not literally, I have an unjust hatred towards adults on scooters). Usually the method I use to be ‘kind to myself’ is by eating copious amounts of chocolate (other sweet goods are welcome too, I’m not prejudiced) and indeed, Matchmakers were going half price so it seemed like kismet. But it led me to thinking, what other ways can you be kind to yourself? Some people; puritanical killjoys, health experts and ‘clean eaters’ would see excessive sugar consumption as an unhealthy way of looking after yourself, so what are the more esoteric, spiritual ways of feeling better?

Give yourself a break

Stop the negative self talk. Friends, I’ve had a cough and sore throat all week and am also suffering from a massive dose of existential angst. As I passed the mirror earlier it took a monumental effort to quieten my inner troll. After all, my jeans are tight and my hair is greasy and there’s only so much you can do with dry shampoo. I was about to launch into a full tirade of abuse then stopped; no, be kind to yourself. I said, inwardly and moved away from the mirror.

‘Step away from the mirror, ma'am, just put down the criticism and walk away!’

As women we’re supposed to be self-deprecating, it’s often perceived as a virtue. A friend of mine once defended right wing moron and uber troll, Katie Hopkins, by saying that Hopkins was quoted as saying ‘I know I look like a horse!’ So, in this person’s opinion, all can be forgiven because Hopkins puts herself down. She hates herself and thinks she’s ugly so she must be OK!  I reckon we’ve reached the crux of the problem here - the reason Hopkins is such a narrow-minded, heartless bully because she is so full of self-loathing. So, for goodness sake, let’s all not be like Katie Hopkins, let’s all give ourselves a massive pat on the back and if we can’t quite manage that, not slate ourselves. I’m just going to repeat the words of that ‘80s song:

You can’t give love to no one else, until you learn to love yourself! (citation needed)

Don’t expect perfection

Now that I’m a parent myself I can understand why my mum used to say that she wished that Christmas only came once every two years, because it’s bloody hard work. Organising costumes for Christmas plays*, remembering the money for the Christmas shop at school,  calls for volunteers at the Christmas bazaar, some kind of weird deal involving an orange (I’m a complete heathen), Secret Santa, cards, presents, food... (No wonder everyone gets pissed!)

*Children are often disappointed with things, it’s impossible to quite capture the strange, fairy tale image they have in their heads (or is that just my kids?). The Christmas costume that you've spent hours scouring the shops for, sewing sequins onto, washing and ironing at 3 in the morning, may never quite meet the bizarre image they have in their head of what a ‘funky’ star looks like, so you just have to rein in your ego,  train the little shits to say ‘thank you’ and teach them to sew, themselves!

So, I think we should take a collective vow not to expect the spoon-food, hazy advertiser’s concept of a perfect day and just - I don’t know, get shit-faced on Croft Original whilst enjoying Christmas dinner from a tin:

Postscript

Sometimes I look back on things I’ve posted and I think  - who am I to give advice? I’m frigging clueless. But I don’t see this as giving advice so much as - this is what I’m trying, I’ll let you know if it works...

Speaking Out

Every day a new face pops up, another name, a new allegation, or so it seems. A ghost train ride where more and more disturbing images pop out at you. And they don’t all look like malevolent sea slugs*, with some of them you think - Oh no, not you too, I liked you, (Or, I liked your work, anyway). You seemed like a nice guy (and they always seem to be guys) but how would I know, I never met you.

*I’ve just done an image search for sea slugs and they’re actually quite beautiful creatures, so I’m doing them a disservice by comparing Weinstein to one of them.

And then people say - why didn’t they come forward before? These women (and men), why didn’t they speak out years ago, when it first happened? Perhaps these people are lacking in empathy or the ability to formulate critical thought, or perhaps they’ve been duped by the patriarchy.

Why didn’t they come forward before? it’s because the perpetrators had power. Nobody will believe you, they would have said. ‘You’ll never work again’, the sea slug would have said. ‘Let’s not turn this into a witch hunt’, says the man who married his own (adopted) daughter.

Perhaps it’s because some forms of harassment have been masquerading as ‘banter’, harmless flirtation or just as something that happens, for all these years. Perhaps it’s because there’s a culture of victim blaming in the judiciary system and in the wider culture as a whole. What was s/he doing there? What did they expect to happen? What was she wearing? How much had she had to drink?

An open lie, and it’s so depressing because it feels like it’s everywhere - in politics (even on the side that you agree with), entertainment (where first it showed it’s ugly, un-glitzy face), at school and work and in the arts and sciences, seeping out from every crevice.

No escape, no safe place.

With the #Metoo thing - I applaud your bravery in speaking up. Not everyone is ready to share their stories and that’s understandable too.

I know fewer women it hasn’t happened to, than it has, to be honest.

Is there anything to be salvaged from all this? When it feels like it is everywhere.

Well, at least it is out in the open now, it’s better that people are coming forward because these crimes thrive on secrecy. It’s good that people are sharing their stories as it empowers others to do the same. And if not every villain is removed from post or taken to court and found guilty, at least some are; the wheels have been set in motion.

What the law defines as sexual harassment:
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/what-are-the-different-types-of-discrimination/sexual-harassment/

The ITV page of links to rape helplines:

https://www.itv.com/thismorning/rape-helplines

Comfort Zone

The landscape of my late teens is littered with unkept resolutions.

I was going to go travelling; the grape picking cliche, backpack around Europe; acquiring lots of cool friends, interesting anecdotes and, possibly, some dreadlocks along the way.  Aside from a couple of mini breaks, package holidays and (largely unsuccessful) camping trips, none of this happened.

I had resolved that I was going to go away to university, rather than live at home with my parents, and have a brilliant culture-infused, sex-drugs-music soaked, rollicking time - did this happen? Please see above.

I can’t remember all the things I’ve said I’m going to do, over the years, so I’ll just list some of them: I never learned to play an instrument, I never did the TEFL course I’d resolved to do, once I’d saved up enough money and I never ran a marathon. (Also it took me a long time and several false starts to finally quit smoking).

I’ve made my peace with this, after all, you can’t alter the past and how many of those things do I still want to do now? I can’t really drop everything and go backpacking (nor do I have any desire to, I hate roughing it) but there’s nothing stopping me from learning to play a musical instrument…

I don’t like leaving my comfort zone and when I say comfort zone, I mean zone 6!

I dislike going anywhere that requires getting more than one bus or train. (Unless I’m going on holiday). So, when I sign up to do courses and things, I usually choose places that I can get to by bus.

However, these days I am trying seize other opportunities as they come up, especially those that link into things that I’m really interested in. One on the consolations of getting older is that you can be selective about what you do; no more forcing yourself along to crappy Ann Summers parties or cheesy clubs (ones with a restrictive dress code as opposed to ones that play ironically cheesy music). But if something screams ‘possible writing/networking opportunity, I am trying to force myself to go for it.

So it was that I left my house at 6.50 on a flipping Saturday morning, to make my way to the city to attend a writing workshop, entitled Citizens of Everywhere. Said workshop had several things going for it:

1. It was being run by the editor/originator/contributor of The Good Immigrant, Nikesh Shukla.
2. It was free.
3. It was centred around something I’m passionately interested in; finding your way in the world, considering recent political shifts in Europe and the U.S.

However, I did feel pretty nervous about it.

Why?

1. I’ve said before that I feel unqualified to write about politics - would I feel totally out of my depth at the workshop? Surrounded by serious writers?
2. The location of the workshop was in a part of London I didn’t know, this may seem insignificant to a lot of people but to me it was a big deal, I have a track record for getting lost.*

So the maths indicates that there were more positives than negatives and I duly made my way to the University of Liverpool, London campus in Finsbury Square.

The competent traveller

I got my train at 7.11 am - it was pulling in as I was running down the stairs. Quick tap of the Oyster and a dramatic leap into the nearest carriage - not my usual modus operandi at all, where I try and get there early and go to the end of the platform to avoid the crowds. However, this was 7.11 am on a weekend morning, there were no crowds!

*When I couldn’t find my bus stop at Waterloo, I’m not proud to admit that I rang my husband - the ‘competent traveller’.

Maria Semple, in her latest novel Today Will be Different, talks about her theory of how one person in the relationship is always the ‘competent traveller’, the person who orders the tickets, looks up train times, makes sure that you get your train on time etc. This doesn't just refer to actual travelling, but to all practical areas of life.

I hate myself for this (a little) but, despite the fact I’m a feminist, my husband is the ‘competent traveller’ in our relationship.

My brain goes into lockdown when I try and read a map (look at google maps on my phone) this information will be immediately scrambled, it says in robot voice. Much like when a man was showing me how to load a gun, at a shooting range in America, my brain was saying - you won’t be able to understand this, so don’t even try!

I eventually found the bus stop. It was a filthy, rainy morning and everyone at the bus stop was smoking their filthy, disgusting fags (sanctimonious ex-smoker). The busses were on diversion and I worried that mine wouldn’t stop there. I was just about to ring my navigator again for advice (I’m so sorry, sisterhood) when it eventually turned up.

Plenty of time, plenty of time, I told myself.
“This bus is on diversion, please listen for further information.” The automatic announcement proclaimed.

No need to panic, I told myself.

I should really ask the bus driver if he was still stopping at Finsbury Square, I thought, and ask him where I should alight, if he wasn’t. The thing is, he was a typical central London bus driver - ie ferociously unfriendly and unapproachable, I tried to look up the diverted route on my phone. Then the announcement changed - it said the next stop - hurrah, we were back on track, however, when I googled the bus route I realised I’d actually gone way past my stop - fuck!

Google maps, rosary beads (those blue blobs that tell you where to go) more phone calls to the competent traveller. A couple of segways down wrong roads and finally, I was there, Finsbury Square! I recognised it from google maps (the function where the little yellow butter man walks the photos of the streets.)

I was fifteen minutes late but was feeling pretty fatalistic. Don’t worry, the friendly organisers told me, it hasn’t started yet - that group are going up now, go with them. I crammed myself in the lift, coat steaming and emerged into a rather pleasant suite of glass-walled seminar rooms.

We sat in a big circle, then Nikesh got us to stand up and do rock-paper-scissors ice-breakers. We moved around a lot in the workshop, which was great. In and out of different rooms and into the wide corridor, writing our contributions to written prompts on huge sheets of paper, group work on ‘found poems’ (which made me think of Dave Gorman: Modern life is Good-ish, give it a watch if you haven’t seen it) and then a bit of flash fiction, based on the concept of the ‘perfect city’ we’d created with post-it notes.

It was all good, I was glad I’d forced myself to go, glad I’d washed my hair the night before and glad I’d managed to find the place, in the end. I can see the value in forcing yourself to do things, taking different journeys, forming new neural pathways in your brain.  I no longer want to be the sort of person who always talks of doing things but never actually does them and who knows, next time I go somewhere new, maybe I’ll be able to manage it without ringing my husband!