Caring For The Dead

Phil O'Donnell, a 35 year-old Scottish footballer, collapsed and died on the pitch at the weekend during a match between the team he played for, Motherwell, and Dundee United.

His death is tragic any way you view it: a fit and talented athlete; a husband and father to 4 young children; a young man. The manner of his death was traumatic: during a game of professional football, with his wife and children in attendance, along with just over 5000 other people.

His teammates, and the players from the opposing Dundee United team, are numb with shock. Football has been put into perspective; the famous quote from legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly about football being more important than life and death clearly proven to be a complete nonsense.

Tributes have been pouring in from clubs, fans and players all over the British Isles and beyond. Grown men have shed real tears. Football matches in Scotland are being postponed in his honour. Scottish newspapers and news websites have given extensive coverage to his life and given space for many managers and players to pay tribute to O'Donnell. By all accounts he was the most pleasant, kind and unassuming man you'd ever be likely to meet - famous and wealthy professional footballer or not.

I cried myself when I heard about it. I felt shock and deep sadness. My thoughts went directly to his wife and children.

Yet four other people died in Scotland at the weekend in car crashes, and another couple in violent, alcohol fuelled attacks. These people's deaths were covered in one paragraph, and outside of their nearest and dearest few people will be mourning them.

And all over the world, every second of every minute of every hour of every day, people die as a result of poverty, war, domestic violence, gang violence, traffic accidents and various other ways. Most of these people barely get a mention.

Phil O'Donnell was famous and talented. The collective outpouring of grief and commiseration is fitting and appropriate. But if only human beings could collectively care about everyone whose life is taken from them suddenly, tragically and inexplicably. If the human race could care for everyone, not just the famous and talented. If they could, wouldn't it make for a better world?

I wish Phil O'Donnell hadn't died. I wish his family and friends all the very best, now and in the future, as they attempt to come to terms with the shock and the sudden loss. And I wish his wife and children all the help, support and love they need to be able to recover and carry on with their lives. Most of all, though, I wish everyone cared for everyone else the way so many thousands of people have demonstrated they care for Phil O'Donnell.

All About The Girl

A whole year has come and nearly gone in our new home town of Falmouth. Since Toni joined me from Botswana in March 2002 we've had three months in Edinburgh, then 18 in Algarve, before three years in Lockerbie, and now 15 months in Falmouth.

Although we've not been anywhere else, apart from three trips to Scotland, one to see Hibs win the League Cup with an emphatic 5-1 victory of Kilmarnock, and one to Guildford to join Toni's and Kumali's cousins for a birth day celebration, it's been a busy and enjoyable year.

For me, my course is over. I now have an MA Professional Writing, and a book and script that I am trying to develop into something people will buy. The other highlight of the year for me has been being part of the formation and development of 'Penrhythm', a samba/reggae eclectic that was formed in February. From a group of keen beginners we have become a slick outfit that has played over a dozen gigs, including three festivals, two parades and several charity gigs for Amnesty International, Cornwall. I recommend everyone bang a drum once a week in 2008!

Toni has spent the best part of 2007 slowly continuing to regain her life and identity, watching, as we both did, her daughter ease into a full-time nursery place, make friends and take another step along the stages of separation path. As a qualified and experienced graphic designer Toni has long been interested in web design, and is now doing a weekly night class to give her a grounding in the skills and knowledge required. She also raised over £100.00 for S.O.A.P. (Save Old Age Pensioners, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe) by selling her natural, handmade soaps and donating the profits. S.O.A.P is a charitable organization, set-up to get essential groceries to pensioners in southern-Zimbabwe who have watched helpless as their hard earned pensions have become utterly worthless in the last few years.

We moved house once in Portugal and three times in Lockerbie, so it's no surprise to know we have made our first move in Falmouth. In October we moved out of the satisfactory, but dowdy house/area we found over the Internet three weeks before we made the move, into a cosy, well situated cottage we got to take our time finding and seeing for ourselves.

With the book deal/script option taking longer than I have imagined in my dreams, we are both looking for full-time work. In a place like Falmouth, and we are a bit restricted without a car, that can be a bit like Albion Rovers trying to find a goalscoring opportunity against AC Milan. But we reckon it is worth the wait. Falmouth is a great wee town to bring a child up in, and while the lack of income, for well over a year now, is a concern economically, the time it affords both Toni and I with Kumali is without doubt priceless.

Whether we had still been in lifeless Lockerbie, with me 'teaching' at the local youth abatement centre, masquerading as an FE college, or gone anywhere else, regardless of whether I'd got an MA and enhanced my belief I can earn money as a writer or not. This year has been about the girl, just as Toni and my life has been since we first discovered we were going to be parents.

Kumali has shone throughout 2007. She loves nursery, has some great friends, enjoys the beach and loves the fact that we are surrounded by cats of all colours, sizes and both sexes. Toni has had crayons, pens and paints in front of Kumali from a very early age, and Kumali has so far taken a great deal of pleasure from creating on paper. She is prolific. So much so that we have bought her a portfolio holder and she is now the main source for all the cards we send out. She also goes to an art club at the brilliant Falmouth Art Gallery every Saturday afternoon with Toni. Papa gets a chance to listen to the Hibs game live, via broadband Internet, while Kumali and Toni get the chance to get arty in all mediums. The gallery exhibit the children's work in a separate part of the gallery on a permanent basis. Kumali has had around ten of pieces of her work framed and exhibited, and was one of six children to have one piece exhibited in the main gallery amongst the main summer exhibition.

Talk about proud Papa!! It has been amazing, but then so has been and so is every day with Kumali. She is a joy and a wonder. Her talents are by no means restricted to drawing and painting; at this stage in the game they appear endless. I never thought Kumali would ever get more beautiful than she looked to me when she was newly born and swaddled in her Mama's arms. Yet she continues to look more beautiful than before with every glance I take. She is breathtakingly beautiful, and the most exquisite character I have ever come across.

And what makes her being all the more wonderful for me is the fact that I have no doubt that I learn and gain far more from her than she ever does from me. Not only am I learning things I never knew about girls, females and femininity from my young daughter, I am learning about living, growing, developing, being and having. When I'm not learning I'm laughing, as Kumali has the ability to crack me up with a smile, a look, a dance, an action or reaction. Oh, and, believe it or not, she can out-talk me - and often does!

She's like the BBC, educates, entertains and informs. It's in the Beeb's Royal Charter, it must be in Kumali's Spirit Charter. All in all, 2007 has been a good one. The greatest sadness we've encountered is the completely unnecessary and ongoing decimation of Zimbabwe and it's people. However, even that darkness, or any of the many other darknesses around the world, can't linger for long with Kumali around as it's impossible to be down hearted for long in her company.

Falmouth is good, and while sunnier climes, particularly Zimbabwe, are not yet on the horizon this is where we plan and hope to be. But, as a wise friend of mine once told me, it's not where you are that counts, it's who you're with. I know I wouldn't want to be anywhere else than with my wife and daughter.

Womenly Wise Ways

I've been reliably, and hysterically, informed, by both my wife and daughter, that the following took place in our home only a few days ago.

I was ensconced in my luxury attic conversation/study/den, music on while listening to the Hibs v Falkirk game live. Toni was downstairs cooking with Kumali.

Kumali was asked, as she often is when I am upstairs and they are downstairs, to go and tell me that food was about to be served. Kumali, as she often does, left the kitchen, wandered through the living-room and dining-room into the hall, then went two steps up from the front door to shout to me in the attic to come and eat.

I never replied. I never heard her.

A few minutes later Toni was now serving at the table and asked Kumali, "Did you tell Papa to come eat, sweetheart?"

(slightly indignant, I'm told) "Yes, I did!", replies Kumali.

"Would you go tell him again then, please?", Toni asked as she headed back into the kitchen, where music was also playing.

Kumali popped her head round the dining-room door and shouted me again to come and eat. She then waited to see if I appeared. As Toni came back from the kitchen and sat at the dining-room table, Kumali came back into the room, closed the door behind her, put her hands on her hips, drew her eyebrows in and her eyes up, then said:

"These men: they never listen to us."

Toni swears she never got it from her!

Financial Recession, Emotonal Depression

Batten down the hatches, cull the livestock. Call in the debts, secure the loans. Reign in the excesses, there's a recession rolling into town!

The 'money men' are doing their best, so as not to worry us, especially just before Spendmas, not to fall over themselves as they tell us that, well, er um ... the economy's not looking as good right now, and for the foreseeable future, as they thought it would.

They've even nearly mentioned the 'r' word: recession! My dictionary describes a recession in relation to an economy as, 'a temporary falling off of business activity, less serious than a depression.' I couldn't have put it better myself, well I could of, but they wouldn't have printed it. The key words, for me, are 'temporary', 'less serious', 'depression'.

When I look around me as an inhabitant of the British Isles, I see people well dressed, well fed, well serviced, well travelled, 'well' whatever they want that life in Britain brings. They are awash with 'things', 'coisas' as they call 'things' in Portuguese. Whatever is happening, and is going to happen, economically in the British Isles, and already we are being told that banks aren't lending, houses aren't selling, companies aren't hiring and consumers aren't spending, the vast majority of people have too much of everything already. And there is lending, selling, hiring and spending activity going on. Just not as much as normal.

And isn't that what the recession is really about? It's a recession of profit for those who profit from businesses profits. A theatre company set-up in Scotland in the 70s was so named '7:84' as it was (and is) a socialist theatre company, and 7:84 represented economic statistics at the time that stated 7% of the population owned and/or controlled 74% of the wealth. If it was set-up today it would probably have to be called 5:90.

So this recession that's coming the British Isle's way, is a recession on the profits of 5% of the population who already own and/or control 90% of the wealth. And you know who'll pay, Mr and Mrs Average. Quality country, the UK!

But it's temporary, and not as bad as a depression. My dictionary defines depression as 'a natural hollow or low-lying place; a state of low mental vitality, dejection.' Seems to me, from an emotional (or spiritual) perspective, we're already in the midst of one almighty depression. A depression all the economic boom and spend, spend, spend ideology appears to have significantly contributed to.

The samba band I play in, Penrhythm, played a gig on Friday night to raise money for an orphanage in Ecuador. There were photos of the orphanage, looking like a place we'd keep cattle, and of the children, barefoot and in rags. There were messages from them, translated into English: messages of loneliness, hunger and loss. Yet their faces carried the warmth, humility and humanity that is all too absent on the faces of those who inhabit the 'developed world'.

Maybe a financial recession would be a healthy thing, if it could shake us all out of the emotional depression. And as Leonard Cohen says, 'may the lights in the land of plenty shine on the truth someday.'

Christmas Crackers

Commercial television is becoming a major no-no for me right now. It's not much of a burden as there is little on these 'shopping' channels that takes my fancy. They rarely produce a programme that I'd like to watch, unlike the BBC who come up with the odd beauty that compels me. The latest being 'Long Way Down', which I loved.

But I digress.

What pisses me off about the commercial channels at this time of year is the harder than normal sell before, during and after programmes because Christmas is coming. There's no 'ba humbug' about it, either.

I've no problem with Christmas per se. It's the 'we will tell you how Christmas should be, what you should think, how you should behave and what you should do' that bugs the shit out of me.

Even if you avoid the telly, there's no escape. Shops, especially supermarkets, are full of it. I object to being told how to have a great Christmas. Especially as it mainly revolves around spending money, buying things and indulging in excesses of excess.

Why is Christmas time so good when you eat and drink far too much and give and recieve gifts that have all the imagination of sixties architecture?

Does anyone remember, or care, what Christmas is supposed to be about? And with religion on the wane in the western world, why does everyone celebrate Christmas with so much gusto anyway? Sure Christmas can be a great time, but so can any day of the week for me.

In days gone by what made Christmas special was that you ate food you wouldn't normally eat, got treats you wouldn't normally get, got gifts of things you had wanted for ages, and watched programmes and films you hadn't seen before on telly. In today's world of instant gratification for all, regardless of whether you can afford it or not due to credit, Christmas has lost its special appeal. At least in my eyes.

Worst of all I object to being told what to do and how to do it. The media and commercial frenzy that convinces people how Christmas is and should be sickens me.

How I wish I could afford to take my family and myself somewhere where they've never heard of Christmas this Christmas. And NO 'ba humbug' about it!