Born on a Monday

July 19th, 1976, was a Monday.  I know that it was a Monday because that was the day that my elder daughter was born.  Alice was premature, born a month before she was expected and the first time I ever saw her, she was wrapped in foil and lying in an incubator.  

There was another new-born baby in that room; a boy who was also foil-wrapped in an incubator, receiving  constant, vigilant attention from the medical staff.

He was noticeably bigger than Alice and his name, written on the notes attached to the incubator, was Solomon and that was appropriate as he had been born on a Monday. 

I had never met anyone named Solomon before and I’ve never met one since.  It is not a common name.  I met Solomon’s mother a couple of times but I never saw his father. 

Over four days, I spent many hours looking at the two babies as they were being fussed over by the nurses.  They were both treated with boundless care and meticulous attention.  Once they left though, I supposed that things might change because, as they would both find out, life isn’t fair.

I knew exactly what sort of life Alice was going home to and I recall wondering what future awaited Solomon.  

While 20-year old Alice was at university, I read in the Evening Standard that a twenty-year old man had been found dead on a London street about seven miles from the hospital where Alice had been born. There was a photograph of the victim accompanying the story.  

The photograph was of a young black man.  I can’t remember his full name but I was startled when I saw that his first name was Solomon and Solomon, the baby who had been in the incubator next to Alice’s twenty years earlier, had also been black.  Surely, it had to be the same person.

I know absolutely nothing at all about what kind of life Solomon had experienced or in what kind of home he grew up.  The newspaper story revealed that his death was believed to be a result of feuding between gangs involved in drug dealing and so I doubt that he had experienced a stable, sheltered and financially secure upbringing. 

I thought about Solomon again three years ago when Sarah, the daughter of someone I have known for a few years, invited us to her wedding reception; not to the wedding itself, but just to the reception. 

Sarah is 31 years old and wants for nothing, materially.  When she got married, she was earning less than £30,000 a year and yet she was already well established on the property ladder.

Sarah was married in a Register office.  Only about 30 people - mainly family - were invited to the wedding.  

However, more than 100 of her friends and family, and that included Caroline and me, were invited to the Reception six days later.  There was an unconventional twist to this reception, however, in that it took place on an estate in Tuscany, some 850 miles away from the wedding venue.  

I suspect this is probably because a Register office in Milton Keynes is not very Instagrammable.  (I am told that instagrammable is the modern word for picturesque.)  

The location of the “party” is 50 miles from the nearest airport and so all guests would either have had to hire a car at the airport or pay for a costly taxi ride.  This was in addition to acquiring accommodation in central Italy for two nights at the height of the tourist season.  

I estimated that the total cost of staging this event was about £115,000.  You may be wondering how the couple could afford to spend a lot more than their joint annual salaries on what, when it came down to it, was nothing more than a social gathering. The answer is that, of course, they couldn’t. 

Sarah, desperate to impress her friends who are more interested in the moment than the meaning, wanted to have the event captured for posterity on Instagram and Facebook so that everyone can see how special she is.  Luckily, her future mother-in-law is the divorced wife of a multi-millionaire.  

She told Sarah that, as her own daughter’s wedding two years earlier had cost a lot, she would help out with at least the same amount for her son.  

What a stroke of luck for Sarah (and her parents).

I estimate that every guest had to find more than £800 to go to this party.  We didn’t go and the reason was nothing to do with the cost.  I don’t suppose that Sarah noticed my absence or cared much, even if she did.

I had what seemed to be an insoluble dilemma.  Should I to tell Sarah and her parents the real reason I wouldn’t go and upset them or, did I make up some wishy-washy excuse and so avoid bitterness and argument?  I suppose that if I were a man with the courage of my convictions, I would have told them the truth and the truth would have been something like: 

1.  Thanks for the invitation but we won’t be coming. 

2.  It’s not a wedding reception that you’ve invited us to because the wedding is taking place six days earlier.  This is nothing more than an extravagant party.  

3.  You and your future husband live within six miles of most of the invited guests.  The only possible reason that this “Reception” is in Tuscany is to impress your friends but it doesn’t impress me.  

4.  You chose the location just for the photo opportunities.

5.  ‘Extravagant’ and ‘Wasteful’ are nothing like strong enough words to describe the amount of money being spent on this display of vulgar, poor taste.

6.  So, thanks once again for the invitation but I’m afraid I will have nothing to do with it.

Of course, as I am certainly not a man with the courage of my convictions, I didn’t say anything at all like that.  I said, 

“Sorry, but I have one of my very important biannual liver check-ups on that Friday.”

Would Solomon’s life experiences have been different if, spread over his short lifetime, his mother had somehow received just a fraction of the obscene amount of money that Sarah’s mother-in-law blew in just 12 hours.  I suspect that things started to go wrong for Solomon the moment he was taken out of hospital.  

Sarah has done absolutely nothing to deserve her comfortable life.  Fate has been good to Sarah, while Solomon seemed to have never had any good fortune and almost certainly did nothing to deserve the wretched start to life that he seemed to have.

For obvious reasons, there’s no way that Alice and Solomon could have been mistakenly swapped at birth in 1976.  If they had been, my guess is that today, Solomon would be an employed family man, while Alice would be a single mother with children, dependent upon state benefits.  Both would probably still be alive.

Life isn’t fair.

147. A Lifelong Reticence

I think that I have a somewhat reserved and almost introvert personality.  Some people who know me may disagree but that’s because I am quite good at appearing to be enthusiastic when the need arises.  

As soon as that need has gone, I am very relieved and happy to go back to my usual, withdrawn nature.  I don't like to be the centre of attention.

Maybe it’s my age, but I find the urgent need that some people have to be noticed and widely known, to be inexplicable.  Those people who have a pressing desire to accumulate as large a following as they can on Twitter and Instagram and to entice thousands of subscribers on YouTube all the while screaming, “Look at me!  Look at me!” are people with whom I can feel no empathy at all.  

I’m not suggesting for a moment that they shouldn’t follow those paths if it brings them pleasure and happiness.  It is usually harmless and they obviously enjoy it but what drives them?

I feel almost the same way about people who want to sing or to act in public.  I am very glad that they have that desire as it brings enormous pleasure to millions of people, including me, but I shudder at the thought of ever being on a stage and performing myself.  I just couldn’t do it.  

When I was at school, I was forced to perform a couple of times and I hated every moment of it.  I can still remember the terror I felt and the lack of sleep I had, the night before I made my theatrical debut.

I was eight and my class had to make papier-mâché puppets during Arts and Crafts lessons. We could choose to make a water rat, a mole, a badger or a toad.  Do you see where this is going?

When they were finished, we were informed that those who had made the best puppet of each character would perform, with their creation, in a puppet show enacting a scene from “The Wind in The Willows” at the school concert.

Only two of us made moles.  Apparently, my Mole was the better one.  

Then, we had to learn our lines.  I only had one line and it consisted of just two words.  Mole, Ratty and Toad were in Ratty’s living room.  There would be a “knock on the door”; Mole would answer it and announce, “Mister Badger”.  

After a week or so, I was word-perfect but dreading the occasion even though I wouldn’t actually be seen by the audience as I would be behind a low curtain with the other three performers.

The big night came and my Mum and Dad were in the audience.  They knew how much I was dreading it but they had been very encouraging, rehearsing my line with me several times.

The knock on the door came.  I glided Mole across the space.  I opened the door and announced, “Badger!” 

I had missed out 50% of my line. 

Luckily, the only audience members to notice were my parents and Mr Sandford, my teacher and as he told me the next day, “It must be the first time ever that an actor has left out half his part and had no impact on the play whatsoever.”

The other time I performed was in the Nativity Play when I was 10.  I refused all inducements to have a role until I grudgingly accepted the non-speaking role of Second Wise Man.  I think I may have rather stolen the show.

I’ve been thinking about my reticence to perform this week because Caroline and I have been on holiday in France with Timo, our nephew and his family.  

Timo’s father is German and Timo and his brother are bi-lingual and have no idea that for some people, learning a language can be difficult.  

Timo doesn’t seem to understand that there is such a thing as self-doubt or uncertainty.  I was first aware of this five years ago when he was six. 

He had only had about 20 French lessons at school when Timo and I first went to the boulangerie in the village to buy croissants and baguettes.  I was rehearsing my ‘O’ level French but I didn’t need to have bothered. As soon as we entered the shop, Timo began jabbering in what seemed to me, to be fluent French.

“When did you learn all that?” I asked as we walked back.  “Dunno,” he said. “it just seemed right.”

At about that time, I played him at chess and won.  That was unsurprising as he’d only just learnt to play.  Instead of being upset or disappointed - or even throwing a tantrum as some children might do - he was just surprised to have lost.  He knew the moves and the rules and so he assumed that he would win.

He’s 11 now and last year, he and four school friends formed a band called “PINKY SQUEAK”.  Timo is the lead singer and does all the introductions. I wasn’t there but I have seen a video of them performing to an audience of about 200 at the end-of-year concert. Timo handled the audience like a seasoned professional.  I could never do anything like that.

As a teacher, I had to put on a bit of a show occasionally, particularly in an assembly but I hated it and when I ceased to be a Head of Year, it was a wonderful release never to have to do it again.

My reluctance to perform may possibly be traced back to the Lowestoft Schools’ Country Dance Festival, held in the Co-operative Wholesale Society Hall in my final year at Junior School.  For what seemed like weeks, we had rehearsed all the dances that there were to be.  

On the day of the event, all the boys had to wear white shirts and grey trousers.  When we got off the coach, we were all given a bright blue sash to wear over our right shoulder.  Mrs Cook came up to me and without saying a word, put some Brylcreem in my hair and combed it so that I looked like a 10-year-old Adolf Hitler.

Things were going pretty well.  I remembered all the steps and was keeping up with the tempo.  Then came “Pop Goes the Weasel”.

“You all know the words,” said the MC through his microphone, “but don’t sing them.  Dance as you’ve practised and when we get to ‘POP’, I want you all to shout it as loud as you can at the tops of your voices. I want it really loud.  There are 350 of you here and I want to be deafened.”

He went on, just in case the more stupid among us hadn’t understood.  “So, it will be: 

la di da di diddely da,

la di da di da da,

la di da di diddely da,

POP la di da da.”

The music started and I was ready.  

la di da di diddely da,

There would never have been a shout as loud as the one I was ready to unleash.

la di da di da da, 

“POP!”

I had “popped” a line too early and all on my own.  349 kids carried on dancing and all "popped" at the right time, but thirty seconds later, when the dance was finished, I was being pointed at by hundreds of sniggering, jeering children.

That was it and I vowed that it could never happen again.  It hasn’t and it won’t.