21 or bust

Like many of you I am sure you have seen a variety of friends undertake 22 push ups a day and video their efforts, seems easy? Try and and you will see it takes some effort. The reason is to raise awareness that on average 22 veterans take their own lives each day - shocking isn't it.

Last week I took the funeral of two people  who likely took their own lives, I did one the previous week and have one this coming week. I say 'likely' because coroners often go for 'death by misadventure' unless they are absolutely certain.

I used to play Pontoon as a child, get as close to '21' as you can without going over. 22 or more and game over, you have lost and are out. The weird thing is that at the start of the game everyone starts exactly the same - they start at zero and the first two, mandatory, cards can never push them over the edge - it is as additional cards are chosen and played that the game gets riskier. If you continue to twist 22+ is just going to happen.

People ask me if it depressing taking funerals of those who have died by 'misadventure' and actually it isn't, it is always a privilege to stand alongside families in their time of greatest need and create a 'service' which meets their needs. So not depressing but they are often incredibly sad. The problem with suicide is that people (invariably men) feel that they have come to the end of any possible chance of hope and see no further purpose in their lives. I say 'the problem' because at each and every such funeral people talk of how much impact the person had on their lives, how glad they were to have them in their lives, how much they were loved and how much they will be missed. Every family and friend articulate just how they wish their loved one had reached out for help or talked about their situation, before it became too much and too late.

We don't know what pushes someone over the edge and it certainly isn't my place to judge and actually, after the event, it makes little difference. What '22 press ups' is about is prevention and talking about feelings, reaching out to those struggling and listening is just about the best prevention there is. Talking about suicide and the feelings that might cause it is not depressing and it may just be life saving.

So part of my reason for writing this, as well as a bit of self catharsis, is to say it and name it, "too many people, not just veterans are taking their own lives because they feel alone, worthless and without hope". It is my hope that in doing my bit to raise awareness and talking about it that it might just make a difference to someone somewhere and that someone somewhere might just be closer to us than we think.

P.S. by the way I can now actually touch bridges when I run over them!

Excrement, vomit and jumping off bridges

'If you were in a pit, with no means of escape, up to your neck in excrement and someone threw a bucket of vomit at you, would you duck?'

Eek, now that is an unpleasant image.

Now I am not for one minute suggesting belonging to the EU is like being up to your neck in excrement, nor am likening a bucket of sick to leaving. I am amazed however and left feeling slightly incredulous that much of the media, social or otherwise is having a swipe at those who voted, with best intentions to leave. It is interesting that from the demographic make-up (and I am aware that this is generalising and there are many exceptions) those who voted 'in' were generally those who are home owners, middle class, better paid, university educated, with savings/pensions etc. Those whose current position was okay, stable. Essentially those who voted in wanted the status quo because the status quo was okay for THEM. Nothing wrong with that, but that seems to be a fairly reasonable generalisation.

What about those for whom things aren't so good? What about those who don't own their own property and can never see a way of doing so? Those whose rents are skyrocketing because 'buy to lets' can charge what they want and they do? What about those on zero contract hours or feel that they have unfair competition from those willing to work for less? What about those whose benefits are being cut to the point where surviving seems impossible and they still get the blame for 'bleeding our country dry'? What about those who have become jaded by cynical politics and corrupt politicians? Those who are disenfranchised, who feel when they are asked if they would like a change feel that they have little or nothing to lose? They vote 'leave'. Years of the rich getting richer and austerity that hits the pockets of the poor to 'save the country', that all starts to add up. For those who have little, or perceive they have relatively little, change is a good thing. I really get it.

Today I ran over a bridge that crosses the M5. For the last 6 weeks I have crossed that bridge and it has been okay. For the last 6 weeks I crossed that bridge and didn't think about throwing myself off, this is different because for the 18 months before that crossing bridges had become difficult for me. Now I don't think for one moment that I would have actually done it but I kept thinking about it, the idea just kept coming into my head. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, nor worry about me or judge me - it was a thought, a thought I had no control of. Was it depression, mental illness or sadness? I don't know and I also know of the many reasons why it would have been a terrible idea, not least the poor person who would have had to scrape me off the motorway.

Jumping, ducking, leaving might seem like a good option when what we feel we might leave behind is worth less that what we actually already have.

With the pit of excrement there is no good choice, though my sister - a nurse would say she would duck every time. With the bridge there is a terrible choice, a choice I will never make and I am so glad that that is no longer present in my mind. With Brexit, I still don't know but I will not blame those who voted 'out' because they were hopeful for a brighter day and a better future, I just hope for all our sakes we can build one.

Negative splits

Today I ran, as I sometimes do. Today, as I ran, my head was full of questions and worries and concerns, like many of us I am sure. I was trying to run a negative split. Now I am not a good runner but I can always try to be better. A negative split is when the first half of your race/run is slower that the second half – you finish faster. Now in order to do this you can start artificially slowly and ‘save yourself for the finish or you start out at a pace and as you become more and more tired you just try harder. Today, when I ran, I tried to do the second and two things happened. I had to stop after 5.5 miles (I wanted to do 6) and I was absolutely wrecked and shattered by the end of it. What started with good intentions, enthusiasm and energy became increasing harder as the task before me became increasingly more and more difficult.

I voted in. I can tell you why, kind of. I am not stupid, I read the news, I can work things out but my vote was far more instinctive than it was logical. I was brought up in a very working class household on a council estate, 5 years in St Pauls, the rest in Fishponds - all Bristol. It was all wonderfully, multicultural and I am the better for all of that. My dad (yeah not father he is my 'dad') probably would have joined the communist party if there was one, he is a hardworking, honest man who was made redundant time after time at the hands of Thatcher and when Tebbit said 'get on your bike' he already had, literally cycling wherever work could be had. All of that makes it hard for me to be Conservative. But, all that said, I am not a socialist with a big 'S' and when I voted conservatively with a small 'c', it was a hunch that things are better as they are, that Europe with all its bureaucracy and red tape has, at its heart, socialist ideals that people were more important than politics. Naïve eh?

I remember as a child playing with Plasticine; that wonderful, malleable substance that was limited only by the imagination of my 4 year old mind. In my day you could only get it in grubby, greeny brown. Well actually the reality was that my Plasticine was so loved, so played with that in time the variety of colours have melted into one indistinguishable lump, a homogenised mass. The wonderful blues and dashing reds had melded with the luminous yellow and vibrant green and in their ‘gathering’, in my hands had literally become indistinguishable from each other, the colours were there but had bonded to serve what was literally a larger purpose.

Now I love colour and variety and difference and eight (or 27) little balls of colour, separated have so much potential. A house needs its yellow thatched roof to sit upon its red bricked walls, bedecked with white sashed windows on top its verdant green garden. A pink faced clown (pink = red + white forever mixed) needs a mop of yellow hair, white smile, red nose. And every time I created something bigger from the smaller balls, however hard I tried I would always leave a bit behind – green in the yellow, blue in the red - until after all my creativity – browny, greeny, homogenous unity.

There is a saying that ‘you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy’. My hunch to vote ‘in’ was that despite any protestations and determination to leave Europe for right or wrong reasons, we are European. We have become increasingly so over the past 40+ years and whatever we do to deny that ‘European-ess’ I suspect any way to delineate or redraw any of the boundaries: social, political, financial, can only be artificial.

So as I ran I wondered and pondered and worried not so much whether Brexit is a negative or positive split but whether it is in any way viable. Can we actually unroll all those little balls and when we do so what kind of Great Britain, what kind of England, what kind of Europe will we be left with.