Yesterday as I walked down into town, and in quite a positive mood once the wedding anniversary date is over, I started to muse about what my life had been like without Meg who I met at the age of 20. I went back to the age of 11 at which I went to boarding school for three years whilst my mother trained to be a teacher. Here life was very full because after school there was our tea, supervised homework and a lot of activities in which to engage. From the age of 14 onwards I attended the school in Leeds and as well as schoolwork then was the Old Swan Hotel at which I worked washing dishes and I acquired my first girlfriend who lived 100 yads down the road and at whose house I seemed to be at constantly. After leaving school at the age of 16, I still worked in the hotel and there was always the girlfriend. Then I started work in the scientific civil service at the age of 17 and the family moved to Leeds where I had the most incredible stroke of luck. Just walking near my house, I bumped into one of my school friends and he introduced me to the group of lads who drank one a week in a local pub and were an instant source of friends. Then a the age of 19 I moved to a civil service post in London where I was lodged in a civil service hostel for the year and helped to organise the sports and social activities for the whole of the London Hostels Association. Then at the age of 20 I went to university where I shared ‘digs’ with three other boys and soon after that I met Meg and the rest is history, The whole point of this little biographyis that from the ages of 11-20, I had never ever lived alone so it was all rather pointless trying to envisage what life had been like before Meg because I was never alone in a house wondering what to do as it were so I do not have any of those cultural resources upon which to draw. I did actually spend some time away from Meg first in a mini-sabbatical at the university in Madrid (where I lived in a hall of residence) and later for a stint in Jakarta, in Indonesia teaching my component of the De Montfort University MBA programme. But even here I was busy preparing lectures of seeing like-minded individuals for a drink so was hardly a social isolate. The whole point is that when you at work and married you do not have to work hard at social relationships because they are all around you ‘on a plate’, as it were, but at this stage of my life things have to be organised and do not happen unless a lot more conscious effort is made to plan and then to engage in them.
Turning to domestic politics, Labour’s deputy leadership contest is on the brink of becoming a two-horse race between Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell, as the other three candidates scramble for nominations. The understanding is that it needs to be a woman candidate and someone with Cabinet experience is preferred. Meanwhile, the close association of Lord Mandelson, the British Ambassador in the USA with Epstein, the convicted paedophile is receiving a lot of scrutiny and it is possible that further revelations will come out in the next few days. Some MPs are already demanding that Mandelson should be sacked and one senses that an enforced resignation is not too far distant. Actually, he is now recalled from his post but the Opposition spokesperson is arguing that a recall is not the same as a sacking and has he been sacked or not? Even at the time of his appointment, eyebrows were raised at his appointment particularly as he was jetted in over the head of an outstanding female diplomat who had been expected to become the Ambassador. Keir Starmer’s judgement is now being called into question because iwf some of Mandelson’s suspect prior affiliations were already known about, then why were the vetting procedures of the Foreign Office and presumably the Security services brushed aside? The most charitable thing to be said at this point is that Starmer did not let the row rumble on and on but he has many questions left to answer. The remainder of my morning turned out to be very interesting. I made sure that I ws down at the Methodist centre for 9.45 so that I was in plenty of time for my second Tai Chi class. This was certainly a little different to the first but equally interesting in its own way. In classes like this and the yoga class I attended a year or so back, I position myself to the front where I can observe and then copy the actions of the instructor. But there is always a bit of a dilemma because if the instructor is facing you then her left becomes your right and vice versa. I find doing a mirror image of the instructor is the best policy but I need to keep an eye on wat the rest of the class – about fourteen of us this morning – are doing. Then afterwards I had a coffee (and indulged in some cake) with the bank manager with whom I had an interesting chat last week. After he departed, I joined the chatty table and soon found myself in a fascinating conversation with a peripatetic minister who has a supervisory role if the Bromsgrove circuit of Methodist churches. He and I had some very interesting conversations, some of them on matters theological and ecumenical and established several points of contact with each other. He was sympathetic about the recent loss of Meg and his wife had her health difficulties so, to some extent, we knew each one of us was coming from. After this extended chat, I still needed to do my Aldi shopping and collect my newspaper so it was practically 2.00pm by the time I got home. Under the circumstances, I made myself a ‘quickie’ lunch of anchovies on sourdough bread served with a good dollop of 1000 Island dressing and finally got round to unpacking the shopping. After a busy morning like this, I am glad to have a quiet afternoon.