The Year-end Post from Counsellor Bob Brotchie

It’s probably fair to say 2017 was another turbulent year for humanity! Driven by their own sense of inadequacy, copycat terror was once again evident as individuals and groups tried to force those of democracy and of opposing views to cow down to the radical and extreme (non) faiths and ‘beliefs.

 

Where there is disaster, look for the helpers.

 

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I have Dashed the China Doll Mould to Smithereens

Here, we are continuing the China Doll series by resident guest author, Tim. Need I say more?


Married in 1979 we both wanted to be a good partnership, and we both wanted children. My wife wanted a football team, I was happy with the idea of two, perhaps three. Nature served us up just one, and his arrival needed help at the creation. [Read more…]

The China Doll That Got Picked Last for Teams

Once again, Tim hardly needs an introduction to this series based around the China Doll. He evokes many emotions and continues to enthral us.


I promised myself that the third piece I wrote about China Dolls would be the last. Then, as I sent the last piece to Bob for him to decide about suitability to publish this one crept into my head. The last three had ready made titles. They forced their way into my head and insisted I write them whereas, this one snuck up behind me and whispered into my ear. [Read more…]

The China Doll That Resisted Being Smashed

Resident guest author, Tim, continues his series about China Dolls.


I wonder if this will be my last piece on China Dolls?

So far I’ve talked about the smashing of the imperfect China Dolls, and the tainting of the perfect ones. As you are no doubt becoming aware, I use me as an example a lot here, though the previous post was about my three friends. I use me as an example because I know me best, and because I have enough things I’m angry about to fill a library. I’m angry about the way my three friends were treated by their parents, too. [Read more…]

Some China Dolls are Not Smashed

Resident guest author, Tim, continues on from his last post This China Doll Failed Quality Control and Must be Smashed. Read, digest and take something away.


I could quite possibly make a series about the collection and care of the China Doll. Some people seek out dolls that they deface, somehow, in order to create rejects out of perfection. Or, rather, they create their debased perfection out of true perfection.

If you’ve read This China Doll Failed Quality Control and Must be Smashed, which will open in a new tab for you, and, while not required reading, is a piece I suggest to you, you’ll learn more about me, and you’ll learn more about China Dolls; how parents can be terrifying, how some children (well, me) were afraid of their parents. Since I wasn’t smashed because I refused to show imperfection until I escaped you may have worked out that I am not writing about me this time. [Read more…]

This China Doll Failed Quality Control and Must be Smashed

We welcome back Tim, our resident guest author, who continues to enthral us.


That’s what they do in china doll factories – they smash them. Sure, we’ve heard of ‘seconds’ but that’s for plates, cups, saucers, and for the Outlet Store. China dolls are the perfect collectables; imperfection might make one unique, like a misprinted postage stamp, and thus have inherent value above the rest. Collectable china dolls are not ‘run of kiln’ or ROK items. [Read more…]

Putting the Milk into the Teapot

Resident guest author Tim, shares this thought provoking piece.


I was searching for a title for this. I had in mind ‘The unpleasant categorisation of people into boxes by idiots‘ but there’s something wrong with that.

‘Boxification’!

You’ve been put into boxes by other people all your life:

  • You’re a very naughty little girl.
  • You’re a very rude boy.

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Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda

Resident guest author Tim, shares this wonderful piece with us about hindsight. Do you suffer from hindsight?


I suffer from hindsight.

I suffer from the amazing clarity of knowing what I ought to have done, what I might have done differently, what would have happened if only they had acted in a certain way and how happy, contented, well respected, wealthy I could have been. [Read more…]

How Can Our Experience Guide Kids of the Future?

The answer is “only if they understand what we are saying.”

This page was prompted by a friend who said, yesterday:

 

In today’s Sunday Telegraph magazine an article consisted of several celebrities who from a wiser and older age wrote letters to their 16-year-old selves with warnings and advice. Would anyone like to attempt such a task? The most interesting one was from Elton John to Reg Dwight.

 

And I thought “I can try that.” My teenage self, lived in a prison of his own making. And, today, I met someone else who has lived in a prison of his own making. He was impressed that I have made a huge amount of progress at dismantling my prison cell. he has now started on his. And that reinforced my resolve to publish this letter from me as an adult to me as a lost teenager.

I wrote it last night, polished it this morning, and am publishing it this evening.


From 57-year-old Tim
19 October 2009

 

To 16-year-old Tim
19 October 1968

 

Dear Tim,

I lived through it; you know. I survived and got out the other side, but I did it wrong; or I could have done it so much better, or perhaps just differently. With luck, if you are willing to listen, you might also take some advice, just a little. I don’t expect you’ll take it all. I never did, but that’s what makes you me, if you follow me.

I wondered how on earth to start this. Would you want to hear how the story ends now, if nothing changes, or would you open your mind to other possibilities?

And I wondered what you want out of life, too. I wondered that especially because I’ve never really known. I wore blinkers. Or did I have tunnel vision? You have that now, and I know it feels good today, your today. In my today it feels like crap.

That’s why I thought you might like to know how your life turns out without this letter, and that you would judge what to do.

I turned 57 this summer. I still feel 15 inside, but I let my body get fat, and that gave me type 2 diabetes. You don’t want that. I have a good life, a wife I adore and a fine son. I’m not rich and I’m not poor. I’m retiring early and I’ve made the best fist I can of my life. I’m good at many things and I’ve missed being good at some I’d like to be good at.

If you ignore this letter, then, when you are 57, this is the letter you’ll write to 16-year-old Tim. If you do even one thing you would not have done, and do it because of what I write to you, then you may not even get a letter. What a strange thing time is.

Since you are reading this, I can tell you that you will always be good at making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But why have sows’ ears at all? You’re heading for a crashing disappointment at university where you’ll have a great time and fail your metallurgy degree, followed by a succession of pretty tough jobs for mostly uncaring employers. Yours is not to be a career, unless you do something about it. You will get a succession of jobs with a very few good ones in the mix.

Is that what you want? I thought you were heading for a career. I know you half want to be a barrister, half a schoolmaster, the “To Serve Them All My Days” RF Delderfield sort. I think the schoolmaster is wrong for so many reasons, not least of which is that you will be like a diabetic in a sweet shop. And I know that Mrs Bruce, that awful teacher at Kingswood House ensured that you were so put off singing that I am still unable to sing out loud today, and that means that, today, you are even afraid of public speaking.

What would you say when I tell you that I’ve made some of my living out of public speaking, that I enjoy it, and that I’m good at it?

If being a barrister is what you want, take the bull by the horns and learn the skill of speaking way earlier than I did. I lost my fear at 27, actually in October. You get to do it 11 years earlier. And it will open up choices for you that you never dreamed of. You could even decide to be an actor!

Of course, you’ll need contacts. Use the Old School Tie while you’re still at school. No-one ever tells you how to do this. It’s simple. Find Old Epsomians who’ll guide you, tell you about their businesses, careers and lives, and take the good parts out of their advice.

I’m ignoring the elephant in the room so far.

I know how much you look forward every day to going to school because you get to see John Bensted whom you fell for truly, madly, deeply, three years ago. I know how much loving him is a part of your life, of your very being right now, and how afraid you are that you’ll be found out by the wrong people. I know you’re scared of our parents and how you are pretty sure they’ll send you away to be cured of being queer – something I can tell you is impossible; we know that today, in 2009 – and yes, I know you don’t think you’re queer, and that you just love John. But you are queer, much as you and I have always hated that word. Your head turns for a beautiful young man but never for a beautiful young lady. You need to come to terms with who we are. It took me until I was 48 to start doing that. Nine years later I think I have it licked.

I know, because I asked her, that mother would have consulted doctors. She had no answer about how far she would have gone with that. But I have news for you, good news. You can refuse treatment. And it probably won’t come to that anyway.

You have a choice to make. Carry on as you are, hoping, wishing that John will love you back, and when you get to 2009 still be in love with him, the ghost of him, as he was in 1970 when you will see him last, or bring it to whatever conclusion it comes to by speaking to him now, in 1968.

Be logical: why would he be queer too? There’s a study by a man called Kinsey. You can look it up in the school library. Actually, you did look it up, or will… He says that 10% of people are homosexual, pretty much. So, of the 75 boys in Crawfurd, that means that six, maybe seven others are. Why on earth would you be lucky enough for him to be one of them? And what would make him be in love with you too, if he happened to be queer too? Think. It’s possible, yes. is it likely? Not a hope.

Carrying on as you are is a poor option. You lose track of him in 1970, lose him completely until 1999 when you find out how to find him. There’s some sort of universal encyclopaedia today called the Internet which you’ll find out about when its time comes for you. And you find him through his father and through a friend. In 2001 you try to arrange to meet him for a drink and he acquiesces and then refuses, so you tell him, by letter, of your love.

And he replies not one word. Nor will he ever reply. In 2009 you even find his picture as he is today in the universal encyclopaedia. He’s at the top of his profession and is well respected. At the same time you write a book about your school years and you discover, as you close the final year of the narrative, that you probably never really even liked him, and that he probably never really liked you either. Or at least you realise that no relationship ever existed.

In my life he was a fun friend to be with at school, but, after that, he was a ghost, and object of infatuation, perhaps – no, certainly – of obsession. That is not living. Nor is that loving.

I know you don’t believe me. I know how being just near him makes your heart beat faster and makes your world feel perfect, but you need an answer. You can’t move forward properly unless you have an answer, until you have an answer. And I imagine waiting until 2001 and beyond is rather a long wait, especially when you know that “answer came there none.”

What’s the worst that can happen if you take him aside and say ‘John, I am deeply in love with you.’?

Yes, it can go all round the school “Tim’s in love, Tim’s queer!” and they can sneer at you.

I have news for you. That happens in 1970 anyway over a cheeky kid called Paul Metcalfe, younger, handsome, and in another house, a boy with whom you’ve only exchanged a dozen words, if that, in your entire life. It gets written in letters a foot high on the walls of the prefects’ study. I won’t tell you who did it, you may change things, so it doesn’t happen, and you like the idiot before he writes that graffiti. It would be a shame to spoil that.

No one dies, although you think about killing yourself that day because of it. No doctors happen. No parents get involved. There’s no electric shock therapy. It’s a storm in a teacup, over before it’s started. I know. I was there.

So, what’s the difference with getting it all out into the open in 1968 instead?

I could be wrong. He really might love you as much as you love him. The thing is, I don’t know at 57 any more than you do at 16. All I know for sure is that unrequited love, especially unanswered unrequited love, is terrible. It lets you ruin a lot of the enjoyment in your life because you always wonder, always wait, always hope, even when you know it’s not ever going to happen.

John’s a nice person. He’s a gentleman. If he’s any kind of friend, then he’ll listen. So, talk to him and listen to what he says. The hard bit to understand is that you’ll be happy even if he says that he doesn’t love you, can’t love you, and wants only girls. You’ll know it was never going to be, and you’ll be able to move on. And he might want and need you like you want and need him. Might. And you might even end up as real friends, something I never achieved, and the only thing you and I wanted when we were 13.

Once you know, once you know either way, you can start to be happy.

My legacy to you is simple. I’m asking you to take control of your life. I didn’t, you see. I let it happen to me. The outcome’s been fine, but with major difficulties.

Take control of your career and your heart. If you can’t find this letter in a day or so then you’ll know you’ve done so.

And me, then? What of me?

Who knows? In the life you create for yourself, for me, I may never reach 57 or I may live to 120. I’ll have had different highs, different lows. I may be partnered with John, I may be with a different, lovely guy, I may be married to the same beautiful girl. I may be dead from unprotected sex from something yet to happen in your time called HIV which usually leads to something else called AIDS. That turns up and kills a load of folk and kills most of them before anyone even knows what’s going on. It’s just a sexually transmitted disease, but, so far, it can be managed though not cured.

So, my final piece of advice to you is always to use a condom.

With love,
from me in 2009


It says everything I wish someone had said to me at the time. I wrote it as if it could really be done, as if a letter from the future could arrive in the past. Today, 11 October 2010, I updated the letter subtly to bring it up to date, and I phonecasted it.

What do I need from a community?

Resident guest author, Tim, gives his unique perspective on our differences, commonality and the importance of community.


Sometimes I need to be part of a community of folk just like me.

Only, since I am unique, and so is he, so is she, so are you, and so, most assuredly, is my M2F transgender cousin, and my other cousin who is camp as a row of tents and a nasty homophobic bigot, I have no idea what you and I have in common. And do I have anything in common with that list of folk? [Read more…]