Welcome to justthoughtsnstuff

I started posting to jtns on 20 February 2010 with just one word, 'Mosaic'. This seemed an appropriate introduction to a blog that would juxtapose fragments of memoir and life-writing. Since 1996, I'd been coming to terms with the consequences of emotional and economic abuse that had begun in childhood, and which, amongst other things, had sought to stifle self-expression. While I'd explored some aspects of my life through fiction and, to a lesser extent, journalism, it was only in 2010 that I felt confident enough to write openly about myself. I believed this was an important part of the healing process. Yet within weeks, the final scenes of my family's fifty-year nightmare started to play themselves out and the purpose of the blog became one of survival through writing. Although some posts are about my family's suffering - most explicitly, Life-Writing Talk, with Reference to Trust: A family story - the majority are about happier subjects (including, Bampton in rural west Oxfordshire, where I live, Oxford, where I work, the seasons and the countryside, walking and cycling) and I hope that these, together with their accompanying photos, are enjoyable and positive. Note: In February 2020, on jtns' tenth birthday, I stopped posting to this blog. It is now a contained work of life-writing about ten years of my life. Frank, 21 February 2020.

New blog: morethoughtsnstuff.com.

Sunday 29 October 2017

lord poulett, nightmare journey, autumn sunlight, errol morris, conspiracy theories, documents...
























On Friday, we stayed the night at the Lord Poulett pub in Hinton-St-George in Somerset. We were meeting old friends who we hadn't seen for two years. It was wonderful to catch up with them. Though the journey there was a nightmare, taking four and a half hours - involving traffic on the M5 grinding to a standstill after an accident, a protracted detour through Bristol - where did the signs for the A38 go? - and a cross country route with queues in almost all the villages (though the Mendips at sunset were beautiful!).

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The autumn sunlight spilling into the spare bedroom office this afternoon is rich and gorgeous.

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I was intrigued by a feature on the Broadcasting House programme* on Radio 4 this morning about the release of documents relating to the assassination of JFK. Paddy O'Connell asked Errol Morris**, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, whether he knew why people cling to conspiracy theories. Morris replied:

'They cling to conspiracy theories because conspiracy theories simplify the world. If the world was just utterly chaotic without rhyme or reason that in itself would be a very, very frightening thought. Conspiracies give us solace. They tell us that there were those malefactors rubbing their hands Iago-like in the wings, plotting, conniving, figuring out a way to create the malefaction in the world.'

This resonated because I've been reading some of my parents' papers recently. Over a thirty-eight year period, my Mum and, eventually, my Dad were cursed by conspiracy theories that were supposed to account for why a painting that they owned was really worth some thirty-six times the artist's market value. The conspirators were said to include the great and the good in the worlds of the art market, the racing establishment and the government.

In order to buy time so that they could prove the conspiracies, my parents spent all their money, plundered trust funds to get more cash and ran up debts of nearly a million pounds before being declared bankrupt, their assets, including the painting, realising a fraction of what was owed.

Mum was secretive about what she and Dad were up to, although it became obvious that something was very seriously wrong. Only for a short while in the early 1990s did she confide in me. This stopped because I was very doubtful about the accuracy of what she was saying. She wanted affirmation not questions.

I was struck by how reductive her theories were. All the people in them behaved in the same simplistic way, with exactly the same limited range of motives. There was no allowance for individuality. Everyone - business associate, friend or family member - was portrayed in comic-book terms. Mum could imagine the malefactors rubbing their hands in the wings. I think that believing that she could see through their plots gave her a sense of control over things she had no control over and brought her considerable solace.

Looking at my parents' documents, I am struck by their mundane clarity. In black and white one reads why sums way in excess of the painting's market value couldn't be realised. Experts, friends, family told them this again and again.

For a long time, once I suspected that my parents were in trouble, I gave them the benefit of the doubt about certain things: did they perhaps not understand what the market was doing? Did they not know how the trusts worked? But obviously they did know about these things. They simply chose to ignore them. Anyone reading the documents would realise within minutes that they were deluding themselves and needed help. But my parents knew a different story. One that they created in order to prove that the facts were wrong. The conspiracy theories were magic bullets that shot down any suggestion that they had lost everything.

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The greatest puzzle is how my Dad got sucked into the theories that Mum dreamt up. He always seemed so straightforward and sensible. Yesterday, I looked at his summary accounts for the period 1970 till just before his death in 2012. Loose leaf pages in a blue plastic ring binder. The entries are precise, measured. In 2007 he wrote the figure for that year's interest payments, £77,935.75. He would have known that he had borrowed money in order to pay this. That he was being pursued by his creditors. That he would soon be declared bankrupt. Yet he must also have had an unshakable conviction that he was, as he told me, a multi-millionaire. That he would trump his creditors and his doubters in the end.

 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09bxjzy

** https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errol_Morris

Sunday 22 October 2017

working in oxford, brian, shed roof ok
























Worked in Oxford yesterday.

A bit of a rush to start with because the bus leaves five minutes earlier on a Saturday, for some reason.

A refreshing walk in, although Storm Brian had started and it was certainly breezy. On the Thames the water was beginning to get choppy. Not that Brian ever got too bad in central and west Oxfordshire, so far as I could tell.

Even so, there were gusts - at their strongest when we were waiting for the bus home from Witney, after meeting for a delicious late - very late - lunch at the Hollybush.

This morning, I was pleased that the shed roof on the allotment was still sound - including the south pitch, which I refelted last Sunday. Harvested some smallish courgettes, a yellow round cucumber and chard.

Saturday 14 October 2017

warm, putting the allotment to bed, beetroots, christmas soup?, nicely-paced weekend























Extraordinarily warm day for mid-October. Shirt sleeves on the allotment and certainly no log fire at home.

Took down the runner and French bean wigwams, grubbed up some of the courgette and cucumber plants and dug over their ground and where the spuds had been.

There may be few more courgettes to come but mostly that's the end of the summer veg. Just some beetroots - hopefully they will last till Christmas Day and out traditional soup - and various chards (Swiss, rainbow and self-set).

A nicely-paced weekend compared with the last one - which was spent reading finals papers.

Saturday 7 October 2017

the dawn allotment























The air is thick with vapour and the lingering night.

I park my bike against the wire fence,
avoiding the pointed knots that have caught the saddle before now.

The shed roof looks safe from this side but
the covering on the far pitch has flapped over in one place
and worn bare in others.
At least it's not any worse, despite the winds.
I have a roll encrusted with sea-green grit in the sturdier shed at home
and will felt in a week or so's time
when the grubbing up and the digging are done.

I fit the battery to the strimmer and for a quarter of an hour
scythe to right and left along the paths.
An electric Poldark in scuffed jacket
and misted safety goggles.

Thank goodness for the lingering night.

--

The leaves of the cues and the Italian courgettes are brown-mottled,
though there are small fruits still -
lemon and wax-green, acid with ridges, smooth striped.
The beans are desiccated wigwams with no runners and just a few French.

Fine rain drifts across and I almost decide not to dig.
But there is a pause and I fetch the spade and
cut along the edges of where the potatoes were, in preparation.
More drifts. Another pause.
I start.
I turn over a couple of yards,
Uncovering missed spuds, slicing some.
Until St Mary's tolls eight.

I set the petering-out autumn harvest on the grass.

Click. I take a photograph and wonder what I'll write.

Tuesday 3 October 2017

the byeways of carterton























Bus home, early again.

So, another saunter down the byeways of Carterton.

Quite a chilly evening.