Families And How To Escape Them - Chapter Nineteen - A Rest Is As Good As A Change

My new decade started in a most unpromising and unexpected way. I was relieved when I was sacked from  a job where the pay was low and the shift work was demanding, where the sense of reward came from the close teamwork of keeping people who were near the end of their lives alive, shift by shift. If what I had hoped for was a win-win style exit, where what I got was a win-lose exit then was I really the loser? In that first few days of being out of the job I could not tell what I should be most glad for, getting the most restful sleep I'd had in ages, and enjoyed simply having more time to myself. 

Though at first being sacked seemed like a double-edged New Year gift. If two years earlier I thought that I had finally got ahead of the trends by having work that might last, in the longer term then I was right. That the job might be better for other people more than me, well what was new? I had resolved which came first? Moving address or having the new job lined up? With my doing both at the same time. I had made progress. But the work I had done left me too tired to think clearly. I had no plan, and unemployment was rising. I said as much in the closing therapy session, where over the previous five sessions the therapist had attempted to demonstrate to me that where I could not have had a plan, then I had proved in my responses to her that I had the courage to navigate even a less well planned life.

Even my being on reduced Income Support rates could not take the shine off the shift work ending so abruptly. I needed time to think, rather than be driven by the whim of strange schedules that I was in no position to refuse. One item I glad to have for being a newly minted jobseeker was the half price day time bus pass, which made my days of browsing shops in Nottingham City Centre cheaper.

With time and money being as slack as worn elastic, and close friendships being one of the items now off the ration book that had been created by the shift work I was more free, within my new economic limits, to discover Nottingham city centre. The vegetarian/whole food shops in the student sector became the place that I regularly bought my unsliced wholemeal bread. All the wholefood stores ran as collectives, a form of economics that to me seemed radical in itself. There was more than one whole food collective, but what they all had in common were shelves with idealistic left wing political lifestyle books for sale. There were always a few books on openly 'being gay and lesbian'. The stock in that section changed little. But the presence of those titles every time I went to buy my bread reminded me of the questions about homosexuality that I had not found the courage to frame, where it was clear to me that when I heard church leaders speak on the issue their words seemed to address the heterosexual majority to reassure them rather than address what the issue involved for non-heterosexual minority.

Progress with regard to my being more fully accepted as gay was going to be slow. One way I saw of trying to make progress was for me to recognise the circularity of the arguments people made against homosexuality, the better to challenge the circularity of those arguments. That way I could slowly squeeze these arguments out of my head. If the thinking was circular, then, bit by bit, I had to widen the circle, and open out the argument to change what I accepted. But that was my homework. The progress that most of the people who knew me were more keen to see was me getting nearer to being in paid work.

In a left wing book shop on one of my cheap bus journeys I found part of my answer to these circular Christian concerns. It was called 'Laughing Matters a cartoon anthology'.

It was a book of cartoons originally written for 'The Leveller' an independent monthly socialist magazine produced by the London based Leveller Collective between 1976 and 1983. The articles in the magazine focused in a wide range of subjects, reflecting the open collective nature of the contributors. Here is a slide show of the front covers of all 44 editions that the magazine ran to between 1976 and 1983. By 1990 those publications were long gone. But the cartoons that had featured in the magazine had been compiled into one stubbornly good humoured book that was a reminder of the politics that 'The Leveller' had stood for. Steve Bell, cartoonist for The Guardian, was their highest profile contributor. I had liked his cartoons between neighbourly visits, when I was working on the working class estate in the summer of 1988.

Eleven years of Margaret Thatcher was about ten years too many for me. I enjoyed Radio 4 for how it opposed an increasingly distant government, the interviews that were conducted with the government got decreasing amounts of traction with their subjects. The public knew that Margaret Thatcher had said 'There is no such thing as society' and '[mass] Unemployment was a price well worth paying [for an improved economy]'. There are other quotes she denied too. But pinning the lack of empathy in the quotes to the person who the quote belonged to, who seemed to be beyond empathy or the lack of it, had become like trying to nail a jelly. The joy in the cartoons was how the humour predated the fixity of the ism in Thatcherism, and in 1990 left me still seeing the traces of alternate possibilities. I still have my copy of 'Laughing Matters'. Some of the humour in it still make me laugh.

Oblivious of how useless it was for getting a job, I looked for voluntary work to do by myself. I was far from alone in my disposition. The churches had their numbers of young men who were economically displaced, for whom their having faith in paid work that was sustainable was just that - faith. Faith in lieu of reality. Being distant from their birth family and not being anchored in marriage and parenthood themselves, these young men presented a problem to a church and society. Both of them wanted, for convenience' sake, to slot people into fixed places that would make those so fixed not want to move from. I found a temporary place to slot into with voluntary work, in a weekend night spot run by St Nicholas Church serving espresso coffees and other non-alcoholic drinks. I am sure I volunteered partly to be able to choose the music for the sound system. It being circa 1990 the albums that had most effect and were of the moment were 'Three Feet High and Rising' by Da La Soul and 'What's Up Dog' by Was (Not Was). This was the church reaching towards the world, and standing less on ceremony. Was it outreach? Yes but weak outreach.

Spyder was a guy I liked a lot. He found me at St Nicholas' Church, off Maid Marion Way. His nickname represented how he kept his hair spiked up, punk style. He was one of the few people I met in church who understood how much what the church said about homosexuality hit the wrong note with so many gay men. He very non-judgemental and he got answered prayers, for his being willing to accept gay men at face value in their feeling  estranged, if not repelled. and worse, by stale circular arguments. His major interest was music. In his best world he would have been a professional commercial disc jockey/broadcaster. As it was he was a secret pirate broadcaster and an occasional sound man for bands who played in pubs. I remember going with him as a moral support when he was booked to set up the sound for Nazi Punk band Screwdriver. Not a gig Spyder expected to get. He got a good sound balance with their equipment in the pub by late afternoon. But later they sounded terrible. He concluded that they had changed the settings he had made with the amps. It was quite something else to witness and resist the over-raw distorted sound being absorbed by a pub packed with Nazi punks pogoing to sing-a-long choruses about how Rudolph Hess lived for thirty eight years in Spandau Prison before ending his life, aged ninety three. 

Friendship with him went the way everything else did. Decay ended it. Decay in my memory because I no longer recollect his proper first name and sir name were. Like the diary where I noted friends' first names but not their second names friendship thus later being unable to remember who they were. Even as I wanted consistency friendship became to me like The Spirit. It stayed and left when it felt like it. 

My positive and lasting memory of Spyder is of how pleased he was when I gave him the well worn-in punk/biker's jacket that I had been given just a seven years earlier. I decided that as a slightly older person, an older looking wardrobe was better for me. It fitted him perfectly, and he was pleased as Punch with it. It would not be the last trade in of what my youthful self once meant that I would be quietly happy to make.

Please left click here for Chapter Twenty.