Category Archives: Old news

How I almost met Samuel L Jackson

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It’s Saturday 14 June and my husband is looking after our son. I am meeting up with a longstanding friend and very much looking forward to it. It’s one of the highlights of the summer where we do something arty, eat some nice food and share about our lives. We are professional women who are wives and mothers too. We were born in the same year and married one day apart.

This year we’re attending the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. Last year we saw The Amen Corner at The National Theatre, South Bank with Marianne Jean-Baptiste and a few years ago it was the Anish Kapoor exhibition. With her art and my therapy training we enjoy interpreting what is presented: the creative skills, the subject choice, what we imagine the artist is trying to say and how it makes us feel. It’s great to keep adding layers and affect each other’s perspective and be moved by our experience. We catch up too on being mums, about keeping boundaries, modeling how to be and our developing children.

We share our challenges and receive a fresh viewpoint from the other. Eventually after 2 hours in the exhibition and a 2- hour lunch we make our way down Piccadilly towards the tube. As promising writers – I have authored two books and she is completing a book on healing – we stop at Waterstones to browse.

Soon after leaving the shop a familiar looking tall black man walks past rather quickly. He is wearing glasses, a hat, headphones, shorts, trainers-type footwear and a Pharrell-style cardigan. Could this really be Samuel L Jackson of the Hollywood movies? I check it out with her but she does not know. Encouraged by her I speed up to find out. Just then another black man and I notice that we are both trying to follow the tall man. He confirms excitedly to me that it is Samuel. My friend is falling behind and encouraging me to continue whilst Samuel is going further away. I hesitate as am not sure if I should continue to follow him and for what purpose. I am not an agent, I don’t have a script and he probably won’t want to be interviewed for my local magazine. What will I say? “I’ve seen a few of your films.” These thoughts rush by.

We arrive at Piccadilly tube and my friend and I hug goodbye whilst Samuel dives into Lillywhites. This is not how our meet-ups usually end but there is a distracting moving target. Despite all the deep conversation I turn out to be as fickle as the next person. She leaves for her long train journey back to her family. I consider doing the same but find myself in the shop trying to make eye contact with Mr. Jackson.

He seems to look both through and around me with a determined focused expression on his face. I feel that if I get any closer he’ll have me in some martial arts brace and see it as self-defence. I am disappointed with the outcome and a little bit “how dare you ignore me”. I know I am a good person but I am not sure why I am trying to get his attention. What’s the point of a little star-dust, if that is what I seek?

Of course I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me. There are lots of people on the street watching the street dancers and performers. Why is he the only person I want to meet? If I were him I might easily do the same thing – dress ordinarily and try to walkabout like a regular person. The alternative is to have an entourage, be on show and feel unable to walk about freely.

He owes me nothing. If I pay to see his movie then I have the pleasure of seeing the movie. That’s the end of the contract. And yet still I stand outside the shop trying to decide whether to wait for a while or return home to my family and be with the people who are part of my real life.

Ten minutes later he comes out and I try to get a picture with my phone. In a flash I could see the back of his head as he walks away from me. I decide that this is the end of any encounter. It’s time to forget this and return to being present to my environment: a lovely Saturday in the summer filled with friendship, art, good food, books and now street performers and people from all over the world. I enjoy a leisurely walk to Trafalgar Square arriving near the end of a free Christian concert then getting on a train to begin the journey home. A
pleasant and eventful Saturday in London.

British Survey Results:The new 7 Classes in the U.K.

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There has been a lot of discussion around class in the U.K. this week.  Although class has been less clearly delineated over recent years there is often a hint of its influence in various encounters, whether face-to-face or through the media.  Historically people fitted into one of upper, middle or lower class groupings but this has all changed.  A recent report has identified seven classes, all with various economic and cultural expectations. For myself I find that my cultural engagement is way ahead of my economic capital!

The 7 classes are:IMG_2467

1. Elite

2 Established Middle Class

3.Technical Middle Class

4. New Affluent Workers

5. Emergent Service Workers

6. Traditional Working Class

7. Precariat

For more information on the survey, the definitions and to complete your own survey check out this BBC link .  What do you think? “Are you bothered?”

How has the end of the Olympic and Paralympic games left you feeling?

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Orbit and Olympic stadium

I remember being excited as the LONDON 2012 games approached but I wasn’t exactly sure why that was.  Could I sense the impending flow of competitiveness, national pride, personal stories of triumph and family sacrifices?  Or was I simply fed up with the negativity of naysayers and wanted to support the hardworking people trying to organise a global event?

Whether you were supporting a sport, a national team, or none in particular, you could not help but be moved by the Olympians and Paralympians.  We have seen so many people demonstrate what hard work, good coaching, focus and commitment can do.  We have become so cynical that it took a while to engage our attention.

There is so much to admire.    They encourage us to take time to explore our talents, work to get better at what we’re good at, see competition as a way to bring out the best in us, collaborate with others when we can for a team performance, set goals and work towards these, share the struggle, accept our individuality, try to overcome adversity and keep an eye on the rest of the world to give us perspective.  A wonderful reminder of what our fellow human beings are capable of.  This could help to motivate us to keep going through our own challenges and disappointments.  Many participants vowed to perform better in London than they did in Beijing and others are planning to improve for Rio; we have our own performance timelines to work towards.   We don’t need to do their best, just ours.

At the Paralympics wheelchair basketball final

I was lucky enough to get tickets for both Olympic and Paralympic events and able to absorb the atmosphere first hand. It is simply incredible to see people performing at their best and being part of the elite group in their field.  When else do we get the best in the world and have them compete to find the best of the best?

And it’s been great experiencing that community feel with people talking and laughing with strangers, smiling staff offering high 5’’s and people offering to take pictures for others.  And I even saw someone offering free hugs at a few events.

I am really pleased that Team GB performed brilliantly and Team Grenada won its first gold medal! I am left with a good feeling and a plan to get fitter and focus my energies better.  How did you feel before the games came, once they started, and now that they are over?

Will the new crime website have the same impact as school league tables?

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Last week the government introduced a new crime website – www.police.uk – where we can find out the level and type of crime on every street in the U.K.  This is meant to keep residents informed with what is going on in their area.  It should also help us to keep the police accountable for how they spend their time. This information has always been available but it was a bit more complicated to find before and less publicised.

It’s great if we all have more information so we can help our communities to be safer and better places to live.  My worry is that it will have the same impact as school league tables – www.education.gov.uk/performancetables

There were always schools of varying success but once school league tables tell you that your local school is on the bottom of a list then you will look for a school at the top of the list.  Many house moves have occurred to facilitate access to better schools.  Similarly there have always been varying amounts of crime but once these lists are compiled then the differences will be clear, and lots of individual decisions will probably lead to more low crime and high crime areas, with a lot less in between.

I hope that I am wrong and we continue to have diverse communities where we look out for our neighbours and work with the authorities to keep our communities safe.

It is true that some people have a fear of crime that is out of proportion to reality and finding that crime is lower than they think should be helpful.  However there are others who don’t want to think about the reality of crime and believe it wont happen to them and for those these statistics might increase their anxiety.  As a counsellor I know that such anxiety affects people differently and needs to be worked through.

So, how do you feel about having such information available to you?  Will it help you be more involved in your community/neighbourhood scheme?  Is it just a tool to spy on people you know in other areas of the country?  Is it all a cunning way to get us involved before more cuts?  I’d love to hear what you think about it – please leave a comment below

33 miners rescued in 20 hours! But can we give them space to recover?

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What lovely news to start this day! I was really hoping for a good ending.  So many times we are fed bad news but we are all energised by this positive story of hope and achievement in the face of adversity.  It’s an opportunity to celebrate pushing the bounds of human survival.  We are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.

From their first 17 days it is a tale of leadership and sharing when their only food was a spoon of tuna every 48 hours.  Lots of discipline and patience required so that they could collaborate for the good of all.   They created their very own motivator, counsellor and spiritual leader to help them cope physically, emotionally and spiritually.  It’s about the love of and for their families, friends and country that created this energising supportive cycle.  Of course there was also lots of hard work by highly skilled people who got the resources and political support they needed to carry out a top job.  (Somewhere in here is also the turning point for health and safety in mines in Chile, if not across the world.)

But that is the story so far.  It has all been miraculous and harmonious.  Now we come in.  How will we, through our media, start dividing the team as we offer different amounts of money to each depending on how interesting we find their story?  I imagine we don’t have the appetite for 33 stories but maybe 5 or 10?  How do we decide which human being is worth more?  Is it the youngest? Oldest? Union rep.? The new father? Etc.  It seems quite arbitrary and is a new game they need to figure out.  Yes this is a real human interest story and not something manufactured in a big house or jungle stay, so we are naturally curious.  But we could remember that they need space and time to recover from the trauma they have just experienced, and to rebuild relationships with their nearest and dearest.  Can we celebrate with them on their terms or have we got this insatiable appetite for all their news that must be fed now?