A year has passed
And what is last
Becomes my past
Regrets join a queue
And what is new
Becomes my cue
Promises steal
And what is real
Becomes my steel
The year ahead
And what I said
Becomes my thread
Month: December 2013
The Lighthouse Award
I love this idea.
The three ways I would like to help people in 2014 are:
1. To write to and ake amends to anyone I may have hurt
2. To love those around me
3. To make my friends feel special because they are my friends
Thank you again
I decided to make an award to recognize the people who have created beautiful, heartwarming, and inspirational blogs. Their blogs bring us happiness, enlighten our hearts, and bring a little joy to our lives when we visit their pages. The work that these people have done has truly given us rays of light in a gloomy world.
Here are the rules:
- Display the Award certificate on your blog.
- Write a post and link back to the blogger that nominated you.
- Inform your nominees of their award nominations
- Share three ways that you like to help other people.
- There is no limit to the number of people that you can nominate.
- HAVE FUN!!!
———————————-
Three ways I like to help other people:
- Hold a door open for someone.
- Pay for the food of a person behind me in a supermarket
- Send someone a card or an email just to say “thank…
View original post 38 more words
Poem: Don’t Look Away
Sionnan I love you dearly
Don’t look away
I never left you
Sionnan I long to see you
Don’t look away
I am still waiting
Sionnan I long to hear you
Don’t look away
I still need you
Sionnan I long to hold you
Don’t look away
I am not leaving
Sionnan I long to kiss you
Don’t look away
I am not running
Sionnan I long to sense you
Don’t look away
I am still pleading
Sionnan I will not leave you
Don’t look away
This is your father.
Poem: Darling Great Queen
Blonde and blue-eyed
My darling great queen
Your gentleness
Shines out before you
I made a life promise
The day you were born
That never could I
Dare to leave you.
Clever and caring
My darling great queen
Your gentleness
Shines out before you
I watched as you grew
And started at school
I never thought once
I would lose you.
Learning and loving
My darling great queen
Your gentleness
Shines out before you
Ten years now have passed
My heart beats too fast
To think of that life
Gone without you.
Searching and seeking
My darling great queen
Your gentleness
Shines out before you
A grey life lived on the rim
Because my love never dims
A broken heart reaches
Northwards to you.
Poem: First Born
You were my first born
My blue-eyed son
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
You were my true north
Son of my right hand
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
You were my first joy
Son of the South
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
You were my own pride
Youngest of Jacob
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
You were my rock
Son of my sorrow
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
You were my future
Love of my soul
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
How did I wrong you?
Brave son of my loins
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
You daddy is calling
Cross the green pasture
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
So come home quickly
Time it has passed
A lifetime ago
Where are you now?
Who’s Kidnapped Father Christmas?
MY younger son Nathan is almost 12-years-old and has already developed a number of real passions in life… rugby, taekwondo and his X-Box are among his favourites.
However, he also reads insatiably and like a lot of kids his age is transfixed by zombie and ghost stories.
In his last year at primary school his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He answered: “A writer like dad”, before naïvely adding “and I won’t need any exams for that!”
Recently he was asked to enter a story writing competition at his new high school, under the title Who’s Kidnapped Father Christmas? This is his entry:
THE front door bell chimed.
Cal looked up from his X-Box, walked to his bedroom door and craned his head onto the landing to listen. Downstairs he could hear his dad open the door.
“Good afternoon, Mr Jones is it?” he could hear a voice ask.
“Yes, that’s me,” he heard his father reply.
“I am Police Constable Rogers,” continued the voice. “I am sorry to bother you sir, but we are conducting house to house enquiries about the disappearance of two young children in this neighbourhood. May I ask you to look at these photographs?”
Cal could hear a faint shuffle of paper as the police officer showed his father two pictures. There was a long pause, before his dad answered, “No, I am sorry I can’t say I recognise either of them. But my son Callum may know them.”
There was another pause before Cal heard his dad shout: “Callum, can you come down here for a moment.”
Cal dropped his X-Box controller by his door and gingerly made his way downstairs to join his dad at the front door. In front of him was a tall brown eyed policeman holding two A5 size photographs.
“Good afternoon young man,” said the policeman. “I wonder if you can help us… do you recognise either of these children?”
Cal looked at the photographs of a young boy and a girl and shook his head.
“Sorry they look like Year Five kids to me,” he said, “I am at high school.”
The police officer thanked Cal and his father and made a tick on a list on his clip board. As his dad shut the door, Cal could hear his X-Box messenger ping from his bedroom. He turned and scampered upstairs to see who was sending him a message.
It was from his best friend Ben. The message was simple, “How’s Chris getting on? Can I come over later?”
Cal put on his Turtle Beach headphones and called Ben instantly.
“Not been to see him since breakfast,” he said. “But he seems to be getting stronger by the day. He loves those Werther’s Originals sweets you brought him yesterday.”
“Does anyone suspect anything?” asked Ben.
“No, dad hasn’t been down to the old summer house since August and with the rugby I don’t think he will go back down there till after Christmas,” answered Cal. “But we had a copper at the door earlier. Have you heard about two missing primary school kids?”
“No,” said Ben. “Shall I bring some more bread and Pot Noodles over later?”
“Yeah that will be great,” said Cal, “But make sure you use the back gate.”
“Okay,” said Ben, “See you about five o’clock, should be dark by then.”
The afternoon passed slowly as 12-year-old Cal tried to reach a new level on the video game on his X-Box. He sat on his bed and took a sip of coke and thought about the strange events of the past two weeks. Chris still puzzled him. He seemed to have appeared from nowhere the day that he and Ben discovered him slumped on the park bench near the little kids’ play area. Cal remembered there was blood on his chin as if he had fallen over and bashed it. But other than that Chris was unremarkable. He was old, with a messy white beard and wore a dirty old coat and faded red trousers. And he did smell awful. It was a familiar smell like rotten meat from the back of the butcher’s shop. If Cal had to guess, Chris was at least 80.
So he and Ben had helped the old man to his feet and took him back to the old summer house at the end of Cal’s garden. On the 10 minute walk back the old man said very little except that he was hungry and very grateful.
That was two weeks ago and since then the two boys had found some new clothes from the bag his mum puts charity shop stuff in and had fed Chris on a diet of bread, soup, Pot Noodles and now Werther’s Originals sweets. They did manage to get him into the main house one afternoon while mum and dad were out and let him have a hot bath. Cal had to admit that Chris smelled a bit better after that bath. But the rotten meat smell soon came back.
Now the old man was getting stronger and although it was December and cold outside Cal knew they would soon have to ask him to leave.
At 4.45pm Cal heard his dad leave for rugby training.
Ten minutes later he crept downstairs and walked down the garden to the old summer house behind the beech hedge. He knocked on the door and told the not-so-bedraggled man that he would be back in a moment. Cal heard the back gate open and turned to see Ben appear with a Sainsbury’s bag full of Pot Noodles.
“Where the heck did you get the cash to buy that much,” asked Cal.
Ben winked and said: “Better not to know. Chris needs food and it’s not like it’s stolen or we have kidnapped Chris or anything.”
The two boys entered the summer house and handed the bag to Chris. The old man peered inside. At that moment Ben noticed that Chris had some blood on his hands and a cut to his wrist. He nudged Cal and pointed to the blood. Cal grabbed some tissue from his pocket and began to dab Chris’s wrist.
“How did that happen?” he asked.
“Dunno,” replied Chris gruffly.
Ben then noticed a large green sack in the corner of the summer house.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the sack.
“Just some of my stuff that I left in the park,” answered Chris. “Can you boys leave me be now, I need to go out for a bit.”
He seemed ungrateful but the boys left the summer house and disappeared to the main house to play on Cal’s X-Box. But as they began to climb the stairs they heard Cal’s mum gasp loudly from the living room.
“What is it mum?” Cal called.
“Come here,” his mum replied quickly.
The boys hurried into the living room where Cal’s mum watching the news channel on TV.
“Have you seen this,” said mum, “Another child has gone missing in our town. That’s three in less than two weeks,” she gasped. “You boys stay in tonight, something’s not quite right.”
“Okay, mum,” said Cal. “Is it okay if we stay in the garden and can dad give Ben a lift home when he gets back from rugby?”
“Sure, sure,” answered mum who was still transfixed to the TV. “It is saying here that at the site where each child was last seen, the police have found a small opened Christmas present. It is weird, weird, weird,” she added.
On the screen a policeman was showing the green and silver wrapping of an opened Christmas present.
Ben whispered to Cal: “Hey, do you think we had better go and tell old Chris to be careful out there, cos he was going out and who knows how dangerous it might be for an old man.”
“Yeah, good idea. Let’s go and tell him now,” answered Cal.
The boys hurried down the garden and knocked at the summer house door. There was no reply, so they knocked a bit louder. Still no answer. So Ben gently opened the wooden door and turned on the light. There was no sign of Chris.
Cal looked at the green sack that they had seen earlier.
“Hey, I wonder what is in here?” he asked.
Ben tugged at the sack and out tumbled a couple of small boxes wrapped in green and silver Christmas wrapping paper.
“Whaaaat!” exclaimed Cal, “That’s just like to ones the copper was showing on TV just now!”
“There are loads of them in this sack,” said Ben.
Cal pointed out another black sack hidden behind the green one.
“And what do you think might be in here?” he said.
“Oh man!” gasped Ben. “It is full of the Pot Noodles, stale bread and Cuppa Soups we have been giving Chris the past two weeks.”
“In that case,” said Cal, “What’s he been eating and how is he surviving. He’s just an old man, isn’t he!”
The boys were about to find out. Behind them the summer house door creaked open.
“Aha, so you thought you would do some busybody nosing around then,” said a gruff and quite menacing voice.
Cal and Ben turned to see Chris standing in the doorway wearing a dirty looking Santa Claus coat and trousers and muddy black boots. But what worried the boys was the black sack he was carrying which seemed to be moving about as if something was inside.
Chris saw the boys looking at his sack. He paused for a moment and said: “Just a little snack I picked up while I was out.”
“But you two boys are much bigger. Think I might save you both for my Christmas dinner. Although I usually eat well on Christmas Eve with all those kiddies I have to visit.
Cal and Ben tried to scream but Chris was too quick for them.
As they passed out both boys had a distinct feeling of being stuffed inside a very dark sack.
Lookin’ into the lost forgotten year of 2013
MUCH of my life has been a rollercoaster but I would never change that for a humdrum merry-go-round, even if I was offered my time over again.
The highs have been at oxygen mask altitude level while the lows have reached depths I could never have imagined.
That is life!
But nothing prepared me for 2013… the Pepsi Max Big One of all rollercoaster years, and with 13 days still to go until the New Year, anything could still happen!
My then fiancée Gill and I saw in the year with a wonderful meal, too much champagne and loving family evening as we planned our future together.
January was a whirlwind from start to finish. Highlights included planning our nuptials, buying wedding outfits and a dinner with good friends and former work colleagues Rachel, Sophie, Angela and her brilliant husband Alex. We ended the month with our own pre-wedding party couched in a distinct Mexican theme… bucket loads of chilli, Margaritas and Tequila-a-plenty and a multi-coloured Pinata called Barry, which we filled with goodies and bashed into oblivion in a shared act of joy! The assembled friends made it a night to remember.
February was a month of two halves.
Gill and my wedding, with my younger son Nathan as best man, was a day we will never forget. Despite the rain and cold outside, the warmth and love inside ensured something that would bond us together forever.
We needed that bond, because 48 hours later we discovered Gill had a hard lump in her left breast. A GP’s diagnosis of a tumour some three days later began two weeks of more tests amid mutual panic and fear. The eventual all-clear following a breast scan and negative biopsy allowed us to begin living again.
March was a blast from beginning to end. It was as much about the weather as anything else. We had planned our honeymoon for the last week of the month. It was going to be a road trip starting in the Lake District and taking in large parts of Scotland, including Galloway, Argyll and Edinburgh and finishing in York. We had carefully booked our hotels and began packing. But then came the worse spring snow in living memory. At the time, we lived near the top of Hope Mountain in North Wales and we were quickly marooned in waist deep snow and 10 foot high drifts. A two day power failure left us shivering and re-planning our honeymoon… if we had it bad, the Lake District and western Scotland was sub-arctic.
On Tuesday 26 March, we eventually managed to dig one of our cars free and begin a hastily rescheduled honeymoon taking in a more accessible Whitby, Masham, York, the Dales and Cheshire. It was cold but brilliantly unforgettable.
April was the month to plan our future as husband and wife with greater purpose. And with my son finishing primary school it seemed a good time to move. We soon found a new home – a wonderful 19th century stone cottage – in a cosy market town across the English border, which was easier commuting distance for work for us both. The rest of the month was filled with conveyancing, buying and selling furniture, early packing and working on new practicalities.
May became the first of four pivotal months in our lives. While steeped in packing and preparations for removal, something totally unexpected happened at work. In my job as a newspaper editor, that something sent my life into a complete tailspin. And to mix metaphors, the tailspin became a train crash.
While researching on-line for more information about a North Wales’ child sex abuse case I was carrying in my paper, I decided to look for any lasting details about my own abuser… the man who had ruined my life 43 years earlier.
I discovered that my abuser had died in 1996, aged 64… some five years AFTER the police had previously told me he was already dead! Had the police in 1991 cocked up? Had they identified the wrong man? I guess I will never know, but I had been denied the justice and closure I had wanted all those years earlier.
The rages and tears came again as I struggled to take back control. I was nearing breaking point.
Then on Wednesday 12 June, two days before we were due to pick up the keys for our new cottage, the breakdown occurred. I flipped and with it my whole life lay on its back kicking into a nothingness. And so began six months of medication, counselling, recuperating and… moving house! And this second pivotal month became even more pivotal. On Friday 28 June as we moved into our new home – with the removal van unpacking our belongings – Gill fell in a hidden hole in the back garden, breaking her left leg and tearing the tendons either side of her knee. Life went into auto pilot and overdrive. Ambulances, operations, hospital visits, and tending to my son’s last days at primary school and making the house habitable for my wife’s return home became a blur… but I did lose over a stone in weight.
July was the hottest on record outside, but for me, much of that month was spent cooking, unpacking, gardening, cleaning and caring for my bed-bound wife or attending final school events. The highlight was undoubtedly my son starring as Prospero in a school adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest. A close second was him passing his blue/red belt grading at Taekwondo, which means he is just two belts away from black.
Gradually as Gill regained some mobility we managed to venture out together to enjoy some summer warmth. We also delighted in finding a wonderful high school for Nathan, just a short walk from the front door of our new cottage. All the while I was slowly recovering from my breakdown.
August came too quickly and the month began with multiple cancellations of planned holiday events due to Gill’s incapacity. So it was goodbye to the annual Fairport’s Cropredy Convention music festival, farewell Steve Harley concert and so long to a planned short break in Whitby. But more sunshine, trips into the countryside and time to re-evaluate our lives and a new way forward. Plus a hectic and expensive month buying uniform and sports gear for Nathan’s new school.
September became the third of our pivotal months. I had been writing about my life experiences as a form of therapy since early July, but now decided to go public and began blogging for the first time in my life. I have been doing this now for almost three months and I am still learning a lot about the art of writing for a world-wide internet audience.
It is a steep learning curve and one thing is for sure, it is a world away from newspaper journalism where every day you have a guaranteed audience of X thousand readers who pay a hard earned buck to read your words. It is at times lonely but also very rewarding and indeed therapeutic.
But the world of blogging also gave me insight into the work of other bloggers – many from the USA and Canada – and some have become firm favourites… so much so that I have ventured forth and bought their published works. Others have become soul mates from afar due our shared experiences.
In September, I also started work on my first children’s novel The Adventures of Nathan Sunnybank and Joe Greenfield, a project I began four years earlier, but which had gathered dust on a shelf ever since.
As the month ended, decisions were starting to form about a new career path away from the bustle, back-biting and grime of 28 years of newspaper journalism.
October saw Gill return to work for the first time since her accident, my son Nathan discover rugby and me write creatively for every day of the month as my blog and book began to blossom. The blog grew like Topsy with light-hearted shorter biographical pieces in the Pardon Monsieur and Brief Encounter categories and more in-depth writing collected under a selection of headings taken from lines in Bob Dylan songs. I also began writing poetry on a regular basis for the first time in 35 years. I still have strong reservations about my ability as a poet. Some others disagree.
But deep insecurities were set aside and more chapters also grew on my novel as I started to believe in myself as a writer at large. I also gained inner strength from dozens of supportive emails and text messages from old and new friends and a ream of testimonials from former trainees and employees. Life in general was beginning to create a purpose as Gill, Nathan and I became a fully-fledged and mutually supportive family.
November became the fourth and probably most important of our pivotal months. It was the month when I finally decided to leave journalism behind. Journalism had been the largest and most consistent part of my life since I stumbled into it by accident way back in the spring of 1985.
It has often been hard work – with long unsocial hours as standard – and it has sometimes been grueling, harrowing and frightening… but it has also been immense fun.
But the decision was made and on paper at least, my last day as a newspaper editor and journalist was 30 November 2013. The next day I reformed my old writing company Time is An Ocean (another Dylan reference) and life was for real.
Meanwhile, I finished 12 chapters of my novel (I envisage 22!) and posted drafts and a synopsis to promising literary agents. Watch this space for news and positive developments.
Life has a real future and depression has been pushed into a small corner.
So we are now midway through December, I am in full mid-life crisis mode with a new sports car and a leather jacket… oh and Christmas is a week away. As a family we have already sampled one school Christmas Fair, the town’s annual Frost Festival and a mass day out to the cinema and a restaurant for Nathan and nine of his friends to celebrate his 12th birthday. Meanwhile, the boy wonder has been appointed a Year 7 ambassador and crowned as the student with most merit points in his first year at high school. We are all very proud and will continue to nurture him over the next year towards teenage-hood and increasing use of his dad’s taxi service!
From a personal perspective I am so grateful for the love of my wife and family for helping me through this rollercoaster ride and view the coming years with confidence and happiness.
So to you all… have a very Merry Christmas (or Holiday Season as you Yanks call it!) and a New Year of peace and social justice.
There’s danger on the battlefield where the shells of bullets fly
MY life should have ended in the summer of 1966 in a mess of blood spatter and body parts.
Come to that, my best friend Johnny should also have perished.
But a simple twist of fate and my father’s quick thinking saved us both.
I spent six idyllic early years of my life with my family in a spacious bungalow in the new village of Mile Oak nestled on the South Downs, near Hove. These were my growing up and playing-till-the-sun-went-down years. They were blissfully happy in their innocence and the summers were never ending. The warmth of those years will always stay with me, locked into my memories like scenes from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
My mother gave me freedom to roam on the wide open hills that surrounded us, and play at soldiers, cowboys, Wild West frontier explorers or whatever fancy captured our childish imaginations.
I had three close friends at the time, the brothers Mark and Michael, and my next door neighbour, the aforementioned Johnny. We rarely played indoors and even when the weather was wet, we ventured forth either as a group or in pairs onto our natural playground. I guess in hindsight our mothers harboured few fears for our safety, as long as we were back for lunch and tea… and definitely before it got dark.
So nothing stopped us exploring a disused isolation hospital, a chalk quarry, a tumble down witch’s cottage or a former army training ground. It was real time adventure and unbridled fun for nine and ten-year-old boys.
But it was the military training ground which took Johnny’s and my fancy this warm August day in 1966.
My dad and I had discovered the site one year earlier. It was a vast area of down land once used to train soldiers during the 1st and 2nd World Wars. There was a sand-faced firing range, some dry trenches and shooting positions and acres of other terrain, still littered with rusty bullet cartridges. Most of the land had been cultivated for farming, but eagle-eyed boys and visitors could still unearth a treasure trove of old military finds.
By the time Johnny and I ventured forth on that ominous day, I had already accrued a collection of 303 rifle bullets, smaller pistol cases, machine gun shells and noses, a few old smoke bombs and three heavy artillery casings. All had been lovingly cleaned and polished with Brasso and stored in an old chest of drawers in my father’s shed.
So, with the sun on our backs, Johnny and I walked the leisurely mile to the training ground, climbing barbed wire fences and rickety five-bar wooden gates along the way.
The field before the military area had been freshly ploughed – for the first time in our childhood memories – and we chuckled with anticipation at what the newly-turned earth might reveal. There were no bullet shells (those tended to be found nearer to the firing range) but loads of heavy artillery casings and other unfamiliar iron clad artefacts, which we inspected before deciding whether to discard, hide for later, or take home.
After half an hour of searching, we were both excited by a new and very unusual discovery. We kicked the caked earth from a metal object that could have been dropped by a flying saucer. Johnny picked it up first and we both inspected it with awe. It was a grey metal oval object the size of a cricket ball with a small saucer shaped base, a handle down one side and a looped piece of wire on top. Once we had scraped away the earth, we realised it was in almost perfect condition, except for some rusting to the wire loop.
We whooped with excitement… we had found an army radio and we had to get home to clean it and make it work!
Such was our excitement, we ran back home, taking turns to carry the new find and went straight into my dad’s asbestos garage at the end of my garden.
Quickly I opened the jaws on my dad’s bench vice and gently clamped the ‘radio’ in place. Then with a can of lubricating oil and a wire brush, Johnny and I took turns cleaning the object of our affection.
After five minutes we could make out some numbers stamped onto the base. It was then that Johnny suggested we should try and extend the aerial loop at the top and look for a switch to turn the radio on. I found a pair of my dad’s pliers and began the job.
Then it happened…
I suddenly felt the iron grip of my father as he lifted me off my feet and ran me out of the garage while simultaneously shouting in a panicked voice: “Bloody hell, what have you got here, you stupid, stupid boy!” (in actuality his expletives were a lot stronger than ‘bloody’). He threw me onto the lawn of our garden before running back into the garage to grab Johnny and repeat his rantings.
Johnny and I were both crying as my dad yelled at us to get into the house quickly and not come out until he told us. As we ran up the garden path to the kitchen door, I looked over my shoulder to see dad gingerly venture back into the garage. He wasn’t there long before joining us in the kitchen.
“I hope you realise that is a bloody hand grenade you have there in our garage!” he barked at us. “And by the looks of it you have half-taken the pin out!”
Gobsmacked, we were told to go and play in my bedroom, while dad rang 999 for the police.
Within 20 minutes two police officers arrived, chatted to my dad and to me before visiting our garage. They didn’t stay long in the asbestos building before using our telephone to call for assistance.
About two hours later, around tea-time, a khaki coloured army truck arrived and two soldiers removed the grenade from my father’s industrial vice.
Later I was told they had taken the grenade – which was indeed still live – and detonated it in a safe place.
No doubt if my father had not stepped into the garage at that precise time on that August day in 1966, I would not be writing this piece now, some 47 years later. Two young lives would have ended; it would have made a hell of a mess of my dad’s garage and with the tins of paint, petrol and paraffin stored in the building, the explosion would probably have taken out half of our street.
Thanks, Dad!
Note: The old military training ground was later fenced off and cleared of any remaining dangerous hardware. Johnny and I were banned from ever visiting it again.
I Ain’t Gonna Work on Maggie’s Farm No More (Last thoughts on Thatcher)
GETTING older gives a few new perspectives on life and self.
I was raised in the cosy middle-class environs of Sussex as the only son of a hard working father and loving mother.
I guess my father’s often right wing doctrines influenced my own, and as a teenager and college student I followed those politics quite radically.
At 21 years-old, against a typical 1970’s university backwash of Trotskyism and Marxism, I was regional vice-chairman of the Federation of Conservatives Students. I was a proud radical Tory, brushed shoulders with Michael Portillo, shared a whisky with former PM Ted Heath and fought hard in Thatcher’s election victory of 1979.
That remains the eternal shame of my youth.
But life influences and chalk face experiences over 34 years changed all that… it changed me as a person, socially, spiritually and politically.
I remember the year Thatcher was first elected, a more socially aware friend of mine warned: “There will be war in three years!”
How right she was!
In 1982 we were at war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, ostensibly to liberate islanders loyal to the British Crown, but in reality because we had discovered huge reserves of oil in the South Atlantic a few years earlier!
But it was what I discovered 14 years later as a newspaper journalist, which cast the Falklands War and Thatcher in a new light.
Not only was our prized battleship cruiser HMS Sheffield sunk while carrying nuclear depth charges, but against all international treaties to keep the South Atlantic nuclear free, Thatcher had deployed a British nuclear-armed submarine into the area.
The orders were clear: if the Argentines sunk another of our flagships, a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Cordoba was to be considered.
Just think for a minute where that might have led in 1982, at the height of the Cold War. Thatcher was prepared to risk a global Armageddon to secure her political ends.
Thankfully that scenario did not come to pass.
But it was at home where my opinions of Thatcher and her politics changed me forever.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s I lived and worked as a teacher in the small mining village of Darton near Barnsley.
Most of my pupils were the sons and daughters or miners. I played cricket each weekend with miners. My neighbours were miners. I went to football matches at Oakwell with miners. And I bought my first house from a miner.
The sound of the local pit hooter and the rattle of coal trucks woke me each morning and the coal dust got into my clothes and my life.
But what struck me then and has stayed with me ever since was the sense of community and friendship which imbued every aspect of life in that village.
If one of my charges misbehaved at school you could be sure his or her parents would know about it and he or she would be disciplined at home.
If I was ever ill in bed, a neighbour would knock at the door and ask if I needed any groceries or would leave a casserole of stew.
If the snow was deep we would all help clear each-others’ drives or pathways.
If anyone had a party in the street, the whole street would be invited, no exceptions. And those parties were real parties with Yorkshire beer, pies, gravy and puddings.
And if my girlfriend had to walk home late at night, I wouldn’t fear for her safety.
It was a time of the greatest friendship and community I have ever known.
I moved away for misled career aspirations in 1983.
One year later, Thatcher’s brutal decision to crush the trade union movement at any cost laid waste to this community and countless more like them.
It was never to recover.
For those not familiar with this time and place, watch the movie Billy Elliot or the BBC TV series Our Friends in the North to gain a little perspective.
All that was wonderful had been lost forever due to Tory greed and Thatcher’s need for unbridled power.
We had a nation divided against itself where the rich got richer while the rest fought for the scraps.
A whole street’s belief in Sunday’s roast beef
Gets dashed against the Co-op
To either cut down on beer or the kids new gear
It’s a big decision in a town called malice.
(Paul Weller)
My politics were changing fast.
In 1987 and 1988 I was in hospital in Cardiff undergoing surgery for a malignant cancer in the right shoulder and right lung.
It was a time of personal trauma, but also the making of new and lasting friendships.
Many of my new friends were former miners from the South Wales valleys. Many were suffering from lung cancer due to a lifetime working among coal dust.
But it was their tales of how Thatcher crushed the miners’ strike that will always stay with me.
Sure they blamed Scargill for getting some of the NUM tactics wrong. But it was Thatcher whom they blamed for the decimation of their lives and families.
I learned how she used MI5 and the Met Police and every dirty trick imaginable to tarnish the personal reputations of the striking miners, even down to the conspiratorial murder of a taxi driver.
When I had fully recovered from the cancer in the mid-1990s, I was prompted to travel back to my old village near Barnsley to see how things had changed.
What met me was post-apocalyptic!
All vestiges of the coal mining past had gone, the shops had steal shutters on their windows, litter blew around the main street and grey youths gathered on corners with eyes that seemed devoid of hope.
The ghost of a steam train – echoes down my track
It’s at the moment bound for nowhere –
Just going round and round
Playground kids and creaking swings –
Lost laughter in the breeze
I could go on for hours and I probably will –
But I’d sooner put some joy back
In this town called malice.
(Paul Weller)
It was a scene I later witnessed in Northumberland and County Durham where three generations of families had been unemployed since 1984.
Their former pit communities had crumbled into decay, with all manner of social problems: derelict housing, crumbling schools, drug dependency, street crime, high rates of teenage suicide and homelessness.
These villages remain, with three buses a day to their nearest towns and any chance of a better life, the lasting memory to Thatcher.
I could also ramble on about the abuse of power I discovered as a journalist with Thatcher’s henchmen… personal battles with the liars Jonathan Aitken and Jeffery Archer, the criminal ruination of anyone who stood against her, the machinations of the Duke of Argyll and Lord Willie Whitelaw and much, much more.
But then my brief story would become a book… and maybe one day it will!
For me Thatcher’s memory lies in the coal dust of the communities she destroyed.
I hold no emotion over her passing earlier this year, but I do fear that in the current Prime Minister David Cameron we are seeing Thatcher revisited.
But sadly my personal politics have moved so far to the left, that there is not one political party I feel able to vote for anymore… not even the Labour Party, whose socialist credentials were surrendered by Tony Blair almost 20 years ago.
I now feel massive empathy with Russell Brand when he recently wrote: “The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don’t think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty, when they hop a few inches left or right…
“The US government gave a trillion dollars to bail out the big five banks over the past year. Banks that have grown by 30% since the crisis and are experiencing record profits and giving their execs record bonuses. How about, hang on to your hats because here comes a naïve suggestion, don’t give them that money, use it to create one million jobs at fifty grand a year for people who teach, nurse or protect…
“If we all collude and collaborate together we can design a new system that makes the current one obsolete.
The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal.
I don’t mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don’t mind giving my life to this because I’m only alive because of the compassion and love of others. Men and women strong enough to defy this system and live according to higher laws.
This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I’d vote for that.”
A system so far from the evil of Thatcherism that I would join Brand’s journey and enjoy spending my latter years fighting for it.
Come the revolution!
Poem: Oh, Sister 1987
Peering through the haze of double sight
Bright eyes shine back at me
Warm words of comfort at this time
A countenance of hope in a bitter fight
Drifts in smothering dreams of ecstasy
Head, heart and senses scream
In a battle to restore to life
Oh Sister your presence gives hope
To a body cut open by a surgeon’s knife.
No Time to Think 