Two Emails
24 April

There's a slow progression going on in the back garden.

Clematis and jasmine are coming on. Hostas, lobelias and tradescantia are pushing through. Euphorbia are flowering and, glory be, there is a bud on the camellia.

Work gets no better. It's a long haul. I've put another application in for a job a Southport College and I now know that I have an interview for the Liverpool City Council job. By the time Friday arrived, I turned to Steve and remarked that Easter seemed a long way away. He looked a little non-plussed but agreed.

Ross had been away at Chester on work for the back end of the week. It was lovely to have him back again on the Saturday. In the evening, we attended a performance of the Donmar production of Mark Ravenhill's The Cut at the Liverpool Playhouse.

The main reason for attending was the chance to see Ian McKellen live on stage. He is very good, very watchable and very complete in his assumption. The cast around him were also good, particularly Jimmy Akingbola as the prisoner, Deborah Findlay as the wife and Tom Burke as the son.

But I'm afraid that the play itself really wasn't very good. Mark Ravehill is best known for Shopping and Fucking and I'm not sure that he's progressed very much further in his dramatic art.

Allegorical plays are fine; you just have to find the right level of poetic language to support them. He didn't. He would have been better making the piece specifically about state sponsored torture in 1980s South Africa and let the audience make the connections towards universality. So, it was very frustrating and, despite fine performances in support of a mediocre text, I can only give the evening two stars.

So, as ever, the main events of the week were happening elsewhere with two emails. I should love to be able to quote these in full but, owing to an upgrade on our main computer, I lost about a month's worth of email including these two. Nevertheless, I can talk about them in general.

The first came from Gill. I had asked her for some input as I seek to move towards wholeness. Her thoughts were very much towards working with my chakras and looking to release some of the negative energies stored in my body from early experiences. Her point was that the extremity of my reaction in February to possible redundancy was disproportionate to the reality. That should tell me something about how helpless, lost and frightened I felt when I was little.

However, the reality is that I survived and that I have flourished. What I need to focus on are the positive ways in which I can continue that process and not succumb to the maladaptive behaviour patterns which have dominated my life so far.

I would say that I have started on much of this already. Choosing Quaker membership is a powerful indication that I am no longer the person I was ten years ago. The fact that I have introduced regular yoga into my daily routine as a way of spiritually nourishing myself is further proof.

I also have a feeling that the extremity of my reactions was not simply down to their linkage with early events. I also believe that it is down to the fact that I am beginning to experience emotions in my body rather than simply getting hold of them in my head in a vaguely dispassionate way.

The second email was from Robert. This was basically his fair and firm statement of independence. Whilst acknowledging me as his biological father and thanking me for that, he told me that I am not a social dad to him and that, currently, he does not want any social parents.

Even a few months ago, this email would have thrown me into a panic of rejection and fear. Today, I say that if that is what he wants, so be it. He wants me as a friend. Well, that's a tribute in itself. Not many young men want their fathers as friends.

And, as a result, I feel as though I have lain down a burden. I can beat myself up about not being the ideal father I might have been twenty years ago. But I cannot change the past. And I am not the person I was twenty years ago. I have control of my choices now and they will affect the future. So, that's what I shall do. I shall work at being a supportive friend.