Crossing The Thin White Line

I've written frequent posts about Nigella on this blog. Originally because I quite like the cake-making queen of tease and then later because I was quite happy to acknowledge that she was good for my stats. Even now "Nigella Lawson hot" is one of my biggest referral terms and with her name once more in the headlines I'm receiving more hits than usual.

Are these new visitors seeking edification and information? Or just a nice picture of the curvy brunette spilling o-er her cups? I suspect the latter but that's by the by.

I kind of feel I owe Nigella's current predicament some kind of comment even though I'm sure she would rather I kept my nose out of it (no joke intended) as at the end of the day the accusations of cocaine abuse are nothing at all to do with me.

But of course this hasn't stopped the world and his dog offering a multitude of opinions on what are as yet unproven accusations by her embittered and estranged husband. Do you think he might be biased in his attempts to discredit her?

Part of me thinks that this story is not at all in the public interest. What goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage should stay behind those closed doors. But then I daresay Mr Saatchi would like to have used the same argument when the infamous throttling story hit the headlines. Though of course he did this in a public place not in the privacy of his own home. Or should that be "allegedly as well as"? And to be honest, domestic violence should never remain hidden away in the dark where it can be allowed to grow and spread like a virulent fungus.

But being a public figure, of course, makes almost anything at all that happens to a celeb "in the public interest". For me the idea of "public interest" has long taken on a moral dubiety but we'll leave that aside.

I hope the accusations of Nigella's cocaine use are false. I haven't read them, I must admit, or even watched the news. And yet somehow, via social media and gossip, the gist of the story has spread. I find it hard to believe that a ten year cocaine habit could have gone unnoticed and gone uncommented upon for so long. Mr Saatchi claims he has only just found out. What a truly dreadful husband he must be then. (1) Nigella turns to drugs (I surmise) to make life with him more bearable, (2) he's so dreadful he doesn't even notice and then (3) he increases his dreadfulness by bringing it to the attention of the tabloids and throws the kids into the mix at the same time. What a wonderful husband and father he must be. Even if we could waive aside the sundry acts of domestic violence.

Cocaine is a distasteful drug. It makes arseholes out of all who use it and bigger arseholes out of those who are already arseholes. Nigella has never struck me as being an arsehole. Of course, I could be wrong - I don't know her after all - and chasing the white rabbit could validate the myth of Nigella's constant munchie-runs to the fridge for midnight snacks as perpetuated by her many cookery programmes.

But I'm hoping Mr Saatchi just can't tell his icing sugar from his Esnortiar. Despite being married to Nigella for years he doesn't strike me as the kind of man who spends much time in the kitchen but would certainly have seen talcum powder being smudged across a glass topped coffee table from time to time. Any white powder at all is going to produce a big knee-jerk reaction from him.

Personally, next time I would recommend he try Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine.

After all, if Nigella has a rat in her kitchen, what's she gonna do?

Saville Row

The worst thing for me about the whole Jimmy Saville debacle isn’t the frenzied media circus that has suddenly vomited into being.

It isn’t the appallingly lazy round of jokes that, in one way or another, make pedestrian reference to any one of his ridiculous catch-phrases.

It isn’t the disapprovingly pious TV shows that show clips of Jimmy Saville from years ago when he made slyly inappropriate gags and comments to camera which the presenters of today then shake their heads and sigh censoriously about.

It’s the simple fact that, during my childhood, a time when I had no idea that such horrible things could happen, all this was allowed to happen. It was known. Known by adults from all professions and walks of life. Known by many. Suspected by many more. And no one did anything. No one did anything at the time when it would have made a difference. When it could have saved someone. It was covered up. It was brushed under the carpet because Jimmy did so much good work for charity and was a massive personality.

It was tolerated. It was, if not morally then certainly by the inaction of society, approved of. It was somehow the norm. It was the era of the lecherous uncle. The dodgy pervert at the end of the street. Mr Flasher who lived alone in the bungalow at the end of the road who’d get you if you were naughty.

And people wilfully turned a blind eye.

Well all those blind eyes as good as signed a huge permission slip for Mr Saville to do whatever the hell he liked, with who he liked and for as long as he liked.

The worst thing is all the time and money and energy currently being spent on someone who is dead and completely beyond our condemnation. All those head shakes and tuts and sneers. All those “I always felt there was something unsavoury about him” epiphanies that only serve to glorify the TV presenter spouting the sentiment. All those newspaper headlines from newspapers that chose not to run with the story back when he was alive and here on this planet and could have been brought to justice. All that violence directed at smashing a lump of inanimate, unfeeling, uncaring gravestone to make a point that Mr Saville will never get.

All this energy would be better spent being channelled into helping not just Jimmy’s victims but also the victims of all those Jimmys that are at large and still active right now. All those kids being abused outside our own little spheres of existence that we pass by in the street and keep ourselves wilfully in ignorance of when we walk to work or to the shops. It would be better spent identifying and stopping all those Jimmy Saville’s that are alive and well in every town and every city in this country of ours; better spent smashing the paedophile rings that flourish beneath the dark shadows of our middle class “not nice to talk about” ignorance rather than a dead bastard's gravestone.

A grave and a gravestone can’t hurt anybody.

You need to stop these people before they get put into the ground. Or just don’t bother.

Spare The Rod

My youngest son, Tom, started school for the very first time on Monday afternoon and our two walks home along the canal over the last 2 days when I have collected him from his afternoon sessions have possibly been the most educational part of the experience.

Sadly not in a positive way.

On Monday we encountered someone who could invariably be described as a street urchin / little ruffian / miniature yobbo / future politician mouthing off to another child in the middle of the path. His choice of language would have made a rugby player blush if not burst into tears.

I really don’t want my 4 year old hearing language like that so early in life (I’d much rather he waited until next week when he is at school full time and can gain bona fide playground experience) so I asked the little thug to stop.

In retrospect this was a bad move. In retrospect telling him to “learn some manners” probably sounded hopelessly archaic and so far outside his normal lexicon he could inevitably only respond by telling me to “eff off”. And then repeating this singularly choice phrase until we were well out of earshot.

I wasn’t impressed but hoped it was a one-off. Tom just thought the boy was “a meanie”.

Sadly we had another run-in with the same kid yesterday afternoon. This time he was thrashing an expensive looking fishing rod into the filmy soup of the canal. Any hope of walking by unmolested was blown when one of his compadres remarked “there’s that man again.” Without provocation the airways were split by another round of expletives. This time God could be heard sighing expressively from somewhere within the lofty heavens as hellish epithets were once more rained down upon the good green earth.

I’d had enough by then. Lord knows it doesn’t take much to get my goat. My goat has been got and got on so many times I’m thinking of renaming her Marianne Faithless.

I made a point of reading the name of the school that was emblazoned on the lad’s jumper. When he demanded to know what I was looking at I told him I was making a note of his school so I could ring up his headmaster and talk to him. He responded with, “you’ll have an effing job ‘cos I don’t have an effing headmaster” by which, with superior intelligence and Sherlock Holmesian mental agility, I deduced that he had a headmistress.

I also got the fishing rod waved in my face which, though it made me feel a little affronted, was also largely comical. I do hope he got my size right when he told his parents about the one that got away.

Anyway, Dr Google soon furnished me information about the school and a little humility. It proved to be a school for kids with behavioural problems and social issues. It took much of the sting out of the situation. Plainly this very angry young man has many things to be angry about.

However, it’s not right that my 4 year old should have to endure such behaviour on his walk home every night when he is right at the very start of his school career. So I rang the headmistress and explained the situation. She easily identified the boy and said she would deal with it forthwith. She explained that the school takes an active approach in engaging with their pupil’s behaviour both in and out of the classroom and she wanted to be kept informed if there was any repeat performance though she hoped her talk with him in the morning would knock it all on the head. I admitted I’d all but made up my mind to take an alternative route home with my boy anyway. We agreed that I shouldn’t have to but we could both see that constant encounters with this boy are only going to inflame the situation and make it worse. It is unfair to expect him to show a forbearance that is plainly beyond him at this current stage of his development.

So Tom and I will take a slightly longer walk home tonight. It feels unfair but I can’t help but wonder how much more unfair life is for that very angry little street urchin...

After all, his chances of finding a live fish in that canal are absolutely zero.

And somehow that feels like a damning metaphor.

No Place Of Safety

Domestic violence is an issue that we all, I’m sure, like to keep at arm’s length. It’s something that most of us don’t like to think about. I mean, hey, we know what it’s about anyway, right? We don’t want to be brought down about it. It happens but not that often and it happens to other people; people we don’t know.

Wrong.

I can guarantee that in your surprisingly wide circle of friends and acquaintances you will know several people who have experienced domestic violence in some shape or form. Several; not just one, several. Some will have been affected directly, some indirectly. Either way it leaves you feeling messed up.

My first encounter with domestic violence was when I was 18. I was young and naïve. I’m glad therefore that I was not directly involved because I would not have known what the hell to do about it. I was working at British Telecom at the time and had a friend that I shall only refer to as R. R was sparky, vivacious, funny and totally madcap. She was a couple of years older than me but seemed a lot older than that. She had an Asian boyfriend and both were heavily involved in the local band scene at the time.

One day she came into work sporting a split lip. She talked about it quite freely during a tea break. They’d been set upon, her and her boyfriend, by some white guys. If we thought she looked bad we ought to see her poor boyfriend. It had been a horrible attack. Undoubtedly racially motivated.

We all made the right sympathetic and outraged noises.

All apart from one of the older women among our colleagues who sat very quietly and said nothing.

I only know what happened next because R told me years later. While the rest of us had returned to our duties, this older colleague – let’s call her P – had sat still and asked R to wait. Once they were alone P had simply said, “You need to get out of the relationship now. He won’t change. This will not be a one-off. He will cry and he will apologize and he will swear that it will never happen again but he won’t change.”

When R finally told me the truth of what happened many years later – that her boyfriend had habitually hit her – the relationship was long dead. She’d finally left him after a couple of years. And P had been right. He had hit her again. And again. And again. Each time afterwards he had been sorry. Heart wrenchingly, heartbreakingly, genuinely (I’m sure) sorry. He had cried. He had sobbed. But he had not changed. He had not admitted that he himself needed help.

In the end he had exhausted R’s capacity for forgiveness. Thank God for that (despite the irony).

R had been lucky. She had found the courage to leave him. She had found the courage to admit to herself that it was a bad situation that could not be fixed. Found the courage to admit to me that she had lied about the racist attack to protect not just herself but also her boyfriend.

Because when you are the victim of violence you are hit with a double-whammy. Fear and guilt. And those are pretty effective weapons to keep someone silent. To keep someone complicit.

I often wonder now about P. How did she know? I was too innocent to pick up on the signs that R was undoubtedly giving out but not P. She saw the whole situation in an instant. From experience maybe? It’s hard to speculate. P was a strong character. I can’t imagine her being caught up in a relationship like that.

But why not?

It only takes falling in love with the wrong person. Nobody is born is a victim. Nobody chooses it.

But our most intimate relationships can bind us to the wrong people in ways that are very difficult to break.

And you can’t tell what someone is like just by looking at them.

You have to listen too. And even then, sometimes, that is not enough.

Today I and many other bloggers are Speaking Out about Domestic Violence. I was asked to participate in this campaign by Wanderlust and have been proud to do so. If you also wish to join the campaign or just to show your support it is not too late. Simply visit Wanderlust’s blog and sign yourself up.

Thank you for listening.