The Dublin Jack on Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong is patronised mostly by those seeking home-reminding pints of draught bitter and you-know-what stout. Philip, whom I had just met at a client’s, took me there on a warm April evening in 2002. He was interesting, not only because he was a young techhead with ever-changing life objectives – both qualities beyond me – but also have you ever met an Ulster-accented Chinese man? Well, he  was your man.

The pub doors were bursting, drinkers of all ages, sex and colour spilling on to the pavement. Entry was guarded by a young Irishman in a white shirt, tie and black trousers. Hands up, he stopped me.

‘Would you be having an invite?’

‘Pardon?’

‘A private party it is, in there, and only by invite.’

‘Well, we don’t have one but this is a pub, we’re bloody thirsty, and we have come a long way.’ Two out of three, but he didn’t know that, so cross fingers.

‘In that case, you must be going in. And the beer’s free,’ said the guard, looking to and fro in fear of witness to such dereliction of duty.

Free beer? And such was the case, you only had to jostle your way through the press to the counter for ready-drawn Kilkenny or Guinness, sweep off one of the many foaming glasses, and hey presto!

Outside as I handed over a pint, I asked Philip, ‘Is this a dream?’

Unblinkingly, he accepted this unheard-of occurrence phlegmatically. ‘What do you mean?’

For all his Belfast brogue he was at heart Chinese, expressionless even in the face of serendipitously gratis grog. But for me, whilst we supped outside in the tropical evening and our glasses emptied, I pondered about whether I could get back in to this Shangri-la.

‘Do you think we can try it on again?’ I asked him, who had been drinking alongside me in more or less silence.

‘Why not?’ Which was about as far as his excitement got.

‘I’ll go,’ I replied, even though it was his turn.

Barring the way was a different Hibernian, a little older, but again with the white shirt and business, ‘Would you be having an invite?’

‘Er, I was in there a little while ago.’

‘Sure, in that case, I must have let you in before.’ Yes, that was exactly what he said.

And so the beer flowed free for Philip and me, and at a might-have-been fifty Hong Kong bucks a pint, it was among the sweetest I ever tasted.

Some hours later, I took the night flight home to Sydney. I never saw Philip again and like me, I don’t suppose he came across free Guinness again.

 

Born in England on the first Christmas Day of the Great War, my first mother-in-law Gwen came into my life in 1966 (she died in 2005) when I met her daughter, my first wife. Betty, born in Australia in 1924, I first met in 1975 when asking for her first-born daughter’s hand. Betty died recently and I got to thinking about both my mothers-in-law. Why not a comparison?

Similarities

For most of their lives they were housewives, full-time mothers, both lived through the Second World War, in Betty’s case as a military dental nurse, but as for Gwen I do not know, she would have been 25 at the outbreak of WWII. Both had what might be termed successful husbands, Betty’s Ray a stock and station agent and owner of a concrete fabrication factory, and Gwen’s Francis an automotive engineer who designed the aerodynamics of Bluebird. (He went with Donald Campbell to Australia in 1964 for the ill-fated attempt on the world record.) Finally, in their own way both mothers-in-law were good cooks, from Gwen’s signal Scotch eggs to Betty’s famous recovery breakfasts at Hill Street and Prentice Avenue. And no mean feat for that generation, they both got into their nineties.

Contrasts

Betty was undoubtedly the matriarch of the family I had glimpses into, in her pomp strong and protective; Gwen was timid and submissive, especially to Francis who, tall but thin as a rake had a big booming voice that bespoke authority. Ray could never be described as submissive but he, like many, seemed to stand in Betty’s shadow. Oh, yes and I never remember religion even being mentioned at the bungalow in Rugby, quite different to the all-pervading Catholicism at Betty’s houses. Another big difference was that Gwen was strictly teetotal; my second mother-in-law was most assuredly not. Others were that Gwen had two daughters only and Betty produced eight children, but as Leslie Nielsen said in Flying High ‘that’s not important’.

Physically, Betty was tall, at least she seemed so to me, while Gwen was shorter although possibly her pronounced stoop made her so. Gwen rarely smiled, certainly I never remember her laughing, not as much as her successor, who was pretty jolly. (Round both, you had to watch your language, as you did for your own mum and dad.)

As an in-law, for what shall I remember each? For Betty her strength and generosity, for Gwen her quiet ways of handling difficulties (mostly to do with her husband), but in truth I didn’t know her as well as I did Betty, thus I am probably short-changing her.

Extra

I can’t resist something about the fathers-in-law, because long-married couples can re-shape each other. In the hour it took me to drive him once to Manilla (NSW) I learned from Ray what a long paddock was, e.g. that it doesn’t have a gate. So that’s a nice person to live with, someone who knows about long paddocks. On the other hand, one evening at the bungalow, finally Gwen and Frances went to bed leaving their daughter and me alone. Gasping for a fag but without a light, I reached down to the (faux) hearth for one of her dad’s Swan Vestas. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she cried, ‘he counts them.’

Finally

To both Betty and Gwen, may you rest in peace and I thank you for your daughters.

____________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday the 6^th of February and thrilled to be setting out for Eurotunnel, off the island and onward to Amiens. With a population of 136,000 it used to be the capital of the historical region of Picardy and sits astride the river Somme, which set against the ferocious battles fought there, is Celtic for ‘tranquillity’. Why Amiens for us? It’s an hour and a half’s drive from the Channel, nicely reachable compared with some of the other eight-hour treks into deepest Europe, getting too old for all that.

Well, the town isn’t bad, although much destroyed and rebuilt after two wars. For example, the train station (1857) was razed by German shelling in WWI, rebuilt identically, then Allied bombing destroyed it again. Now it is a thoroughly modern structure. Boasting a stunning Gothic cathedral, the biggest in France, Amiens was home to Jules Verne and where the Red Baron was brought down for the last time. We had a pleasant time attending the bars and restaurants. Pretty cold at 2-3° lots of the time but we don’t mind that.

What we did mind was the Airbnb-booked three-storey 18^th-century gîte called La maison de Sophie in the St-Leu quartier, with an arm of the river Somme flowing languidly by. It all looked lovely on the website but when we arrived we were greeted by a posse of elderly French-speaking (actually, shouting) fisherman smack bang opposite the house, drinking the time from after 8 a.m. until dark, every sodding day. Lovely. Sophie’s was poorly maintained with a broken window lock, lights not working, an unanchored safety rope on the perilous stone spiral staircase, a filthy rubbish-bin area and an eyesore of a garden. Thoroughly poor value.

A longish walk through dubious streets to the Jardin des Plantes revealed nothing in the beds, and the greenhouses were strictly accés interdit. Well, it is February. Best part, aside from the truly lovely cathedral, were two days driving up and down the Somme, visiting villages, military cemeteries and other old stuff. Most notable was the British cemetery at Crouy, where the majority of headstones showed 248 Aussie war dead. In one corner of the cemetery stood a couple of dozen German graves, suitably but sadly divided from their former enemies. And another time we were at the site of the famous Australian victory at Le Hamel, recently been made into a moving, windswept war memorial to those unfortunate lads of a faraway country.

My lasting impression of the town was one of visible homelessness and poverty, and if you are unlucky enough to be victim of those, you are not persuaded by higher liberal values but of how to make ends meet. If you think Marine Le Pen will get that for you, why wouldn’t you vote for her? Much ado à la Trump.

Home in Ampthill after five days of all this, I almost kissed the carpet John Paul II-like, with thanks for a much-desired homecoming and rebalancing of our dosha.

 

 

Possible attendance at men’s breakfast had always fostered velleity in me, until I buckled to the strenuous invitation from my Catholic deacon friend. It was to be the setting to present his epic 500-mile Camino pilgrimage; and it was going to help me a little since I was also editing his book on it. A couple of friends, to whom I had shown without comment, ‘Saturday – men’s breakfast’, in my diary, had each lifted an eyebrow, so no pressure then.

Yesterday I walked the just-over two miles to the church, located in Pope Close (yes). Under an overcast sky and wrapping-up weather of 2°, it took about half the distance for me to cognitively restructure enough to finish the second half. But by the time the unassuming modern brick and timber structure came into view I was back to steeling myself for the encounter. Inside, most of the men had arrived, happily standing about in jumpers and cardigans with mugs of the steaming proverbial. Having found my deacon to say hello, I saw with great relief that there was someone else I knew, a man who lives a street or so away from me, and importantly a fellow non-Catholic, and like me, married to one.

Half-a-dozen tables were laid out with paper tablecloths and a large plastic dispenser of tomato sauce. Pretty soon we sat down, I at a table with my neighbour, someone who works with St Vincent de Paul, and three others. After the La Faba pilgrimage prayer, a male hubbub sprang up similar to when I breakfasted at Peckham Spike* in 1965, but at that grim place tin plates of porridge ladled from dixies were slid with great force down to those at the ends of long trestle tables – keep your elbows up, boys! Here, on the other hand, three smiling women from the adjacent kitchen bore aloft salvers of sandwiches steaming with sausage and bacon, while a slim young man in a grey waistcoat walked amongst us with a coffee pot and milk jug, like an airline steward.

Thank goodness for the neighbour, a bloke I see from time to time, a few months younger than I, and formerly in the merchant navy. When the deacon started to talk and apologise for his neglecting to include music for the slides, I muttered almost to myself, ‘Well, could be a blessing.’ And the SVP-man grinned in agreement. Everyone attended to the deacon’s energetic photo and feelings presentation of his walk, while simultaneously relieving the plates of their munchy offering.

’Twas all not so bad, but then frequently things aren’t. With the presentation over, there were the usual questions that dragged things out enough to get my fingers drumming. Finally, my sailor-neighbour gave me a lift back during which, because he said he was going to Nottingham that day, I hogged the time mournfully reminiscing about picking up girls at the Sherwood Rooms dance hall, a couple of years before that other, homeless breakfast in South London. At last, my house’s warmth closed in on me wonderfully.

I’d done it! I’d survived men’s breakfast!

* see: https://vimeo.com/4042606

 

 

 

What follows is neither a how to, nor a how not to, but a one-year-on reflection on my departure from a long-established self-managing set, to which I had belonged for nine lovely years. What led me to leave? How did I do it? How do I feel now?

The set had been active for many years; I joined it in its maturity, so that I was the one to adjust my Action Learning thinking and practice to the set’s way of doing things. There were sound lessons, for I learned the strength of bringing in others’ ways, of tempering my own practice which I had ‘proved’ in other spheres. I became immersed in a way I had not done with any other group, Action Learning or not. (We met pretty well every month on a weekday for five hours.) For six months or so before I left, I had had vague feelings of not being quite settled in life generally. I never got to the bottom of them. I never took airtime to bring the feelings out, and I don’t know why I didn’t.

In coping with change we can be subject to two forces: propulsion and impulsion. The former pushes you away from something and the latter beckons you towards some new state. Of course, you rarely know in the moment that you are victim to these forces – hindsight works wonders. One of the propelling forces, I think, was that I had had my day with the group, along the lines of Ecclesiastes 3,1–4: ‘To every thing there is a season’. Impulsion? Perhaps it was a self-gift, reclaiming the time that the set took and returning it to me, not for anything specific but for the mere pleasure of ownership.

As to the how to, it took me several months to conjure up the courage to tell my fellow set members. Send them an email? Make telephone calls? I decided to announce it at the beginning of the January meeting and not to harbour it until the end, and having done that I left; ‘slunk’ might have crossed my mind. My reasons came out incoherently, it was like precipitating a divorce – as well I know. Another feeling that comes to mind is that of Arthur Mailey, the young Australian cricketer who bowled the Olympian, graceful Victor Trumper with a googly, writing: ‘I felt like a boy who had just destroyed a dove’.

And now. Aside from one email contact with one of the set, I know nothing of their doings the past year. It seems once you cut, you cut clean and forever and that seems right; that set is for Action Learning work only, and never socialises as a group although bilateral connections are common – I had several. My feelings are still the loss of intimacy with dear, intelligent, true-feeling people, but no regret at the relief of the obligation to attend.

This last Christmas morning, I attended my once-yearly Mass in a plain, 1930s church in Oakwood, led by two young Polish and French priests. As for every year, as soon as I sang the first words of the first carol, tears filled my eyes, enough to have to wipe them. I don’t know why that happens, just as I don’t really know why I left my set. But both the tears and the severance somehow feel right.