Things Fall Apart And Come Together

I've known more Steves than I have Daves or Phils, which is saying something. Here are some Steves I have known. Steve Hewlett exploded onto the Manchester University Student Union political scene like the latest high-tech weapon of war. The first time I remember him, he stood up at the back of the crowded Main Hall in cargo pants and distinctive red anorak, hands in his pockets and a cherubic face, a halo of blond curls and spoke forcefully, articulately and critically on whatever arcane point was being painstakingly argued for and against on stage. As he spoke, his legs waggled backwards and forwards, somehow adding to his charisma. We, the student union hacks, stared. Who was this upstart fresher who knew what he was talking about? Could we get him to join our party? As it turned out, no we couldn't, because he had already given his heart to a Maoist organisation called the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) , headed by Reg Birch. Later in life, this membership e...

The past is the most seductive rabbit-hole of all. Like everybody else in these unprecedented times TM , I'm trying to work out who I am and how I got here. Yesterday a helping hand came in the form of 27 photos from 1977 or 78, a bunch of mates doing the stupid things mates did back then, the world ahead of us and the possibilities endless. Of the 21 or so of us that figure in those photos, four are dead. Howie was the first, brutally snatched by some sort of leukemia around the same time that Marc Bolan and Elvis Presley died. As a group of eighteen and nineteen year olds we trooped to a cavernous church on Merseyside for the funeral, unable to understand what had happened and quick to shake it off. There were two Duncs, blond Dunc and Dunc P, and I remembered the blond one and not the other one. The other one is no longer alive, and I have no idea how or why. DV I remember oh so well. DV because he had a Deep Voice. DV left university at the end of his second year and became a...

Because I can't, is why. When my husband so inconveniently died on September 24th, it was 12 days before my US citizenship interview. According to the unbreakable rules of the USCIS code, I was 'no longer living in marital union'. Therefore my citizenship application became null and void, and now I have to wait until May 2022 to apply. I have a Green card, so I can come and go as I please, except I can't because there's a pandemic going on, isn't there, so duh, and I'm safe and white, and old enough not to threaten the crumbling US jobs market, so I'll probably get it, unless I get arrested beforehand which I have promised to try very hard not to do. There was always a question over whether I was living in marital union anyway, since Joe had fronto-temporal dementia and had been living in a nursing home for the previous three and half years, and I hadn't. Some would question whether what Joe was doing was really living, or more existing. I fall on th...

  Right on target. Bullseye. Straight as an arrow. The similes are endless, and so is the disappointment. The disappointment is exponentially increased when yet another arrow buries itself in unyielding wood, just to the right of the target. My arrow budget is almost as high as the initial outlay on my pretty pink 'n' black camo compound bow. The camo part is pure fantasy; in no world with a breathable atmosphere would it be camouflaged, and imagine the hunting clothes. Then think of the landscape you would be hunting in. But still I try, because the satisfaction is measureless when the arrow flies true and lands quivering in the target. It's that rare sensation of having got something right. And each true arrow is equally sweet. Letting arrows fly is never boring. It's plunging into the archaic, like seeing a scorpion or hammering white hot iron. The stance - we've all seen it on the Bayeux Tapestry , or carved in stone , or painted without perspective on a dusty w...