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Graham Stewart

Writing to discover what I think and believe in increasingly fractured times

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I talked about my father, so now some words about my mother

January 10, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment


Photo by Kristina Tripkovic on Unsplash

I’ve been reading Vivian Gornick’s book on essay and memoir writing. The Situation and the Story is a smart and lovely little book, full of wisdom and insight into what makes for great writing in both essays and memoirs. The book’s subtitle is “The Art of Personal Narrative”.

I have just read a section in which she discusses the life and work of Loren Eiseley and, especially, the memoir he completed shortly before his death in 1977. Eiseley’s book is called All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life. Gornick makes the book sound unmissable and it is already on my shortlist for this month’s books to buy.

It is something Gornick picks out in the book that I want to talk about in this post. After my post yesterday about my father it is almost suspicious that it is Eiseley’s relationship with his mother that caught my eye this morning when reading.

Eiseley’s description of his mother as “paranoid, neurotic, and unstable” found me nodding my head in agreement. As I have grown older I have come increasingly to realise the depth of my mother’s mental health issues, how those affected her life, and, of course, affected me as a child.

There is a sort of stigma about criticising your parents too publicly. But whereas when I was younger I would happily criticise my mother and rail at her actions and beliefs, with age has come a certain compassion and it is hard, obviously, to blame her for the things she did because she was unwell. What puzzled me as a child — and later as an adult — was that my father seemed to see no warning signs in my mother’s behaviour. In contrast, past girlfriends — and my wife, most definitely — can attest to behaviour that was not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

In the five years since my mother’s death, my father continues to talk about her as if she was a paragon of common sense, kindness, and fun. She was none of those things, except rarely. My father talks of the strength of their mutual bond and their long years of marriage. I haven’t — and of course I won’t ever — tell him of the hours my mother would spend telling me of my father’s faults. Every day for more years than I want to remember, my mother would greet me as I came in from school and start with stories that showed my father in a poor light. This did nothing, as you can imagine, for my opinion of my father and is one of the root causes for a relationship with my father that has never been more than polite.

Of the three terms for his mother used by Eiseley, it was the “neurotic” and “unstable” that immediately conjured up memories of my own mother. She may also have been paranoid but I suspect that aspect of her was easily hidden beneath her neuroses and instability. And those were the character traits that most defined her, I think. And those were the traits that made her life so small and, in the end, such a bitter thing to live through each day. The strength of her bitterness sucked my father into that same life.

It is hard to escape the lessons of a lonely childhood lived in the shadow of such a woman. Even now, with a family around me that I love and in I which I feel loved, there are times when I must resist the call of a different response to comfort and happiness. It is like a seed of misery that has to be squashed before it sprouts. There have been times in the not-too distant past when I have allowed the seed grow – through a mixture of depression and wilfulness — and it has taken me hard lessons to recover.

Surviving Covid-19 at 91

January 9, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

That’s not a palindrome

My father in pre-Covid times

I didn’t get to see my father this week. And I have tried calling him but his phone is switched off. So, I thought I would write this post about him instead.

My father is 91 years old. He is in a care home not far from where I live. He caught — and survived — Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic. That’s getting on for a year ago now, which is both strange and frightening to consider. The home called to say he had the virus but they weren’t going to tell him in case it worried him. He had a week of mild symptoms and then was fine again. When I visited him later he said he had not felt unwell at all and had no sense of being in danger. One of the lucky ones, obviously.

He enjoys the care home life. the best part is that he has everything done for him. My mother used to do everything for him, too. She died five years ago and for a year he found living a struggle. I suspected he would soon give up eating — apart from chocolate and biscuits — because he would tell me he was bored of even thinking of what to ask me to bring him from the shops. Arthritis in his hands had stopped him driving. He talked of wanting to go into a home. This, for him, was code for “I want to be looked after again.”

Our relationship has never been close and yet, as an only son, I felt it my duty to invite him to come live with us. My wife, not exactly a fan of the man, agreed that it was something we should do.

He stayed with us for two years and I don’t think any of us were happy. The happiest day of those two years for all of us was the day he left for the home.

I visit frequently for thirty minutes at a time. It is all that is allowed at the moment and it is long enough. We sit separated by a screen in a cabin in the grounds of the home. It is like visiting a prisoner but I’m not sure my father feels that the prisoner is him. My father remains, for the most part, cogent. He repeats the same questions from week to week. The best part of the slight memory loss is that he forgets how we argue about politics.

His days are spent reading the Daily Telegraph. Literally all day. He reads it more or less from cover to cover. A break for meals. The weirdest effect this generates is that he will raise an issue that is a result of Tory mismanagement, Tory policy, or the results of the years of pain and misery instigated by Thatcher and yet, when I point out the reasons for what he bemoans, he refuses to accept the root causes. His view seems to be that the world is a mess and the Tories are best placed to make it better.

You can imagine this makes conversation difficult. And this is not new. My father and I have been at loggerheads politically since I was a teenager. I think my father turned right-wing at an early age and has not deviated. He has not become more extreme but he has certainly not mellowed. He has a dry sense of humour and a notion of absurdity but his humour can turn to condescension when it comes to politics or economics. My father knows nothing of economics but thinks he is smart with money because he used to be a pensions manager for a large company. He is a perfect example of someone who accepts the right-wing myth that a national budget is the same as a household budget, with all the implications of balanced books and not spending what you don’t have. His acceptance of this ideological nonsense is the thing that most separates us.

We talk football and rugby and when we discuss Hearts or the Scotland team we are on safe ground. My father took me to my first game at Tynecastle a long, long time ago and I have followed Hearts ever since. For anyone who knows Hearts, this is a poisoned chalice that my father has given me. I forgive him for that.

There has been a new outbreak of Covid-19 at the home. The new strain, probably. They are starting to vaccinate the residents. My father has not been re-infected and it looks like the outbreak has been managed well. I received a message yesterday that the home was letting the residents mingle again and have meals together in the dining room. My father enjoys the chance to walk along the corridor to the dining room. I think it makes him feel like he’s in a hotel.

Tomorrow I will call the home and ask someone to remind him to turn his mobile back on. He worries about saving battery. I am the only person who calls him. Last time I saw him I said I had tried to call and asked him to remember to turn the phone back on. He said he would. He hasn’t.

Perhaps he’s happy not to talk to me.

Painting The Modern Water Lily

April 4, 2016 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

Water Lilies
[Image by Pamela Nhlengethwa via Unsplash]

Laura and I went to see the Painting The Modern Garden exhibition at the Royal Academy last Thursday. It’s only around for another fortnight, so we took advantage of being ‘Friends’ of the RA and booked a visit after hours. This means there are fewer bodies to each gallery and it’s possible to get close enough to the paintings to smell the flowers.

There was much to enjoy. I especially liked seeing a Klimt (who I had always associated with stately Austrian women in gold emerging from heavily patterned wallpaper rather than flowers), a Munch, a Van Gogh, and three small Paul Klee canvases all within a few feet of each other. The theme of the exhibition, as hinted at in its title, was the modern garden. Modern in the sense of the discovery of gardening among the haute bourgeoisie rather than in the sense of a path, a compost heap, and the neat lawn of more recent urban versions.

Monet loomed large, of course. In the first room, there were adjacent paintings by Renoir and Monet from the 1870s. In the former, Renoir paints Monet painting in his garden. In the latter, Monet is painting the painting he was quite possibly painting as Renoir painted him. Luckily, it was clear that no vegetation was harmed in the process. At this stage the techniques and subjects of Renoir and Monet are remarkably similar. I actually preferred the Renoirs.

Monet then moves to another house — and garden — and his painting style changes. Colours are richer and the paint is applied more thickly. Or perhaps with greater confidence. These are the paintings of Monet I most enjoy: those from the 1880s.

Then Monet moves to Giverny and he creates the pond and discovers water lilies. God, does he discover water lilies. It seems clear that Monet simply went mad in the last quarter of a century of his life. Perhaps there is some undiscovered chemical in water lilies — certainly in the hybrid species he cultivated at Giverny — which turn a person monomaniacal. His wife must have wondered what was going on.
“Claude, darling, what are you doing today?”
“Painting, my sweet.”
“What will you be painting?”
“I thought I might give the water lilies another try.”
“I see. I’ll call the doctor.”

A New LikeMinds Event, A New Film, And An Exhibition

January 11, 2016 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

It’s not quite Four Weddings and a Funeral but the end of the month is starting to look busy.

I’m looking forward to the next LikeMinds breakfast event on January 28th. The speaker at 12 Hay Hill this time will be media entrepreneur John Pearson. John is currently Chairman of Imagen but is possibly best known for his time as CEO at Virgin Radio. The fact that he has also been chairman at Shazam gives you an indication of the sort of circles in which he moves — and influences.

You can find out more about the event on the LikeMinds site and, of course, I’ll be writing up the event shortly after it happens. That report will appear — along with a video of me asking John some questions (or at least John answering my questions) — on the LikeMinds site and I’ll write a post here to let you know when it’s live.

In other news, I’ve been invited to a special screening of the new Paolo Sorrentino film — Youth — starring Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel (always a favourite except in the fucking Direct Line ads), and Rachel Weisz. The trailer looks good.

The film opens in the UK on the 29th of this month. I’ll be attending a screening on the 22nd. Get me.

The end of the month is already looking busy. I’m off to a special viewing of the new exhibition — Painting the Modern Garden — at The Royal Academy on the 27th. I’m just a cultural butterfly.

Reports on all to follow.

We See Star Wars At Last

January 5, 2016 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

We were five this festive period. My eldest has left her job in Bristol and is moving home at the end of next month. Temporarily. This has been a reminder for her of what’s in store. My younger two are both still at university but deemed us worthy of a Christmas visit.

All three are itching to leave again, of course, now that the comforts of home no longer outweigh the perceived constraints. I understand. I left home at 18 and rarely went back. One night at home was enough to have me checking train timetables and calling friends and contacts across the country who might have a spare sofa.

Isla, once of Bristol, and Sean, my only son, have wanted to see the new Star Wars film. For a variety of reasons — from assorted prior engagements to booked showings — we haven’t seen it yet. Tonight is the night, though. The film has been on long enough now at the local cinema that, at the time of writing this, only five seats have been booked. And three of those will be seeing various Stewart behinds nestling into their cushions. Laura and our other daughter — Kirstie — will be at the cinema at the same time but they’re going to the new Eddie Redmayne film: The Danish Girl. Given the choice, I would prefer to see that.

I was too old for the full flush of teenage excitement when the original Star Wars films arrived and I couldn’t bring myself to watch much more than the first half of the first of the newer films of the late 90s and into the 00s. Even the fact that these were prequels annoyed me. Three prequels, for god’s sake.

My son had computer games and books based on those latter films, of course. And for all the fact that I was more of a Star Trek fan than a Star Wars fan I felt a vague unease at the way the new films and their superior CGI and effects seemed to mask a distinct decline in story-telling. From what I could tell, some of the magic was lost: it no longer had the feel of a fable.

So I was left unexcited by the thought of a new film. At least it’s not a prequel, although it’s set long enough after the third/sixth film that I’m sure they could slot in a few prequels to the sequel (sprequels) should commercial decisions render that a winner.

This will be the final family outing of the holidays — albeit in two different screens in the once cinema — so I shall sit back and think of Tatooine. (The very first holiday Laura and I took together was to Tunisia, where we visited the village and caves where some of the original film was shot. Things come around, huh?)

I may let you know what I thought of the film but how many reviews can one person read with any level of interest? And, if you are interested, the chances are that you will have already seen the film. Or even twice, like my friend Iain.

UPDATE: Just back from the cinema. My first thought as the final credits rolled was “that was underwhelming” but now I’ve given it some time, I’m happy to awards it a big “pants”. I can’t even be bothered to justify my opinion. Suffice to say, Harrison Ford probably thinks he is well out of it now.

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