Memento Mori in the Modern Workplace

The Two-Headed Fear

I usually say that I am only scared of a person with two heads, and thankfully, I have never met one. Yet in my working life, I have had many encounters with colleagues, juniors, seniors, and C-suite personnel.

In the main, they have been nice, respectful, considerate, and courteous. It is the workplace that brought us together; our backgrounds can be radically different, just as our outlooks on the world might never be the same. If we are human, humane, and accommodating of each other, it makes for a pleasant working environment.

Frustration Is No Excuse

There have been exceptions, people who think their positions give them room to misbehave and be discourteous. Usually, they get away with it, and the behaviour becomes compounded and accepted by many. Once, I was offering support to a caller at work when he began hurling expletives out of frustration.

We all get frustrated, but frustration is no excuse for abuse. I calmly told him that I did not get paid enough to take abuse at work, and informed him that I was going to put the phone down.

When he was ready to discuss the matter calmly, he could call me again. We ended that conversation, and a few minutes later, he called back, apologised, and I resolved the matter.

The Gracious Senior VP

On another occasion, a deployment for which I had provided statistics showing a high success rate just happened to brick the Senior VP’s device. His secretary was implacable, and other senior staff were running around like headless chickens. I was instructed to call the SVP to explain my actions.

I had never met him before, but he immediately acknowledged me, then said he had seen the statistics and understood that, on occasion, something might fail; it just happened to be his device. He closed with, “Take your time, I appreciate what you do.”

There have probably been other technical personnel elsewhere, in the very same position, marched out of the office simply because the screen on a manager’s computer flickered.

Things can be that brutal. I learnt early in my career that keeping users honestly informed reaped more dividends than leaving them ignorant of what might affect what they do or how they work. To inform is to liberate.

The Master of the Universe

Bring in the esteemed fellow, the one to whom no one says no. He has the ear of the CEO, and anything he says is gospel and unquestioned. To have attained that status is commendable; but unlike the generals of ancient times, who at their victory parades had a man whisper memento mori into the ear of the celebrant, this master of the universe, for all that they have achieved, yet so lacking in character, thinks they own the world and that everyone answers to them.

They seek exemption and exception in the demands they make. Aggression and coarseness are their raison d'être; nothing is ever a request. They hold Aladdin’s lamp, incessantly summoning the genie to grant any wish, and should the wish be denied, truculence becomes them.

Any resistance, even a reasonable challenge to their requirements, is met with forceful tales of woe about how they cannot get anything done because the system, the design, or the personnel are lazy, wasting time, and derelict in their duties.

The thrust of the conversation leans towards disparaging you, your work, your team, and anything else you have done professionally and diligently.

Winning the War for Peace

It is tempting to assume nothing can be done when management indulges its favoured figure. Yet such attitudes can be named and challenged, and I have done so many times, with success. The behaviour is not untouchable; it simply relies on everyone presuming that it is.

Each encounter is weighed on its own merits; sometimes you yield, and sometimes you hold firm. Where there is no point in holding the fort, and they are used to having their way, you make that allowance too, for the peace of mankind.

Yet even in those bruising encounters, you can own facts that clearly prove their position wrong, leaving them with no option but to concede the point, even if they remain unrelenting in pursuit of their self-aggrandising goals.

We do not have to win every battle when the war is for peace, for respect, for dignity, and for the recognition that in every endeavour, no matter the position, the esteem, or the remuneration, no one of us is better than another.

We are equal as human beings, deserving of the same courtesy, respect, and dignity. It is in our efforts together that we all make the organisations we work for successful.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Essential Snobbery 101: Letting Mother Help You Choose Good Friends

The Wisdom of Maternal Instinct

Mothers of my generation who happened to be in the UK during the 1960s seemed to acquire a turn of phrase associated with that exposure, which we, their children, sometimes had trouble understanding. However, with hindsight, many of their observations were insightful, intuitive, and prescient.

When your mother said, "This friend of yours is too good for my liking," whilst she was not commanding you to break the friendship there and then, she expected you to find ways of extricating yourself from that relationship.

Usually, this meant bringing new friends into your orbit and having something aspirational within those friendships against which she could compare you, urging you to do better. As our parents cannot essentially make our friends for us, they exercise a kind of judgement on our decision-making in the best interests of our protection, even if we cannot see why.

The Mirror of Association

Another saying of foreboding is, "Show me your friends, and I will show you who you are." Association becomes a marker for discernment, character, and principle. Choose and keep the wrong associations, and watch your own reputation go up in flames, even if you are neither involved nor culpable in the nefarious activities of your chosen friends.

Moral judgement, a good conscience, along with a sense of knowing when something is wrong, are instincts we should all have. Beyond that, we need to be aware of when we begin to think that status and means provide immunity for impunity, creating an aura of invincibility bordering on being untouchable. It is the most dangerous cocoon of existence in which a man can find himself.

It is in this light that I have wondered how wise counsel deserted men of wealth and power concerning Jeffrey Epstein. Firstly, the evil and wickedness he inflicted on young, vulnerable women for his pleasure and that of those he corralled into his circle of influence is unforgivable. Lives were ruined and damaged beyond any form of redemption. The most public of them, Virginia Giuffre, took her own life last year.

The Voiceless Victims

For those still living, I can only hope that they find the love and care to give them not merely the will to live, but a purpose that can help them craft a better story regardless of their past. They remain the voiceless in this atrocity, in which he gave himself the easy exit of suicide rather than be held accountable for his actions.

His accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is in prison but hardly languishing in a gulag. She probably holds a bargaining chip of influence and blackmail that could ease the severity of the punishment she truly deserves. However, apart from these two principals in this influential harem of inordinate abuse, almost rivalling the court of Caligula, no one else has faced the remote prospect of indictment, let alone prosecution.

A Global Web of Complicity

The names on Jeffrey Epstein's Rolodex and roll of shame reach into a global Who's Who of money, power, royalty, politics, and academia, touching the once respected, revered, or adored. We have begun to question our own sanity, yet one can only be in awe of how he networked to create a veneer of respectability over his disreputable and criminal enterprise. Those involved became inadvertent enablers, and within that bubble, they were mesmerised into the suspension of disbelief.

The taint of association has claimed scalps and led to disgrace in many spheres. It started with a CEO of a global bank losing his job, the marriage of the richest man in the world for over a decade collapsing, a prince losing his titles and honours, an ambassador sacked with the prospect of losing his peerage, and today, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister resigning for just being a friend of a friend.

That list is not exhaustive, but it is indicative of how a mother's observation could have saved the reputations and honour of some who have now become part of Epstein's story.

Heeding the Warning Signs

It is obvious that we need to regularly review the kinds of friendships we keep, no matter how influential, rich, and connected that person might be. I know those people my mother took exception to; there are two who never became good friends. One of them became involved in criminality in the UK, such that his history stood against his ability to practise law there.

Sometimes, I hear my mother's voice in my head. There are times I hear her in my own speaking, too. In both cases, I am glad there is that premonition to avoid some people.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Me Too, Church Too

The Peril of Fallen Leaders

The thought is scary: the number of prominent Christian leaders who saw amazing growth in their congregations and whose charisma touched lives globally have revisited what they once believed to the point of reassessing or abandoning the faith.

I am writing this having gone down the rabbit hole of a Facebook post. The author spoke of his conservative and evangelical background, 15 years of pastoring, and then realising the people he was taught to fear were just as much flesh-and-blood good people deserving of respect, courtesy, and consideration.

This led me to a podcast, The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill, a journalistic examination of the growth of a church plant in 1996 that collapsed dramatically in 2014.

A Fall From Grace

The fall of Mars Hill was not because of pastoral impropriety, but attributed to bullying, abuse, arrogance, and elements of narcissistic personality disorder found in the public figure leading the church, who resigned in 2014.

It makes you wonder about how Lucifer, in his exalted position in the presence of Almighty God, acquired that situation declared as, "Iniquity was found in him." I have agonised over how, in such a holy setting, a creature could turn wrong and take a third of the angelic host with him. How did Lucifer convince those angels of a better place than at the throne of God?

There must have been a cult following, where focus shifted from the principal or the principle to a personality.

When Personality Eclipses Purpose

The same happens in church, at work, in school, and in politics. In the Church, the focus should always be Jesus the Christ, regardless of how the vessel is used to bring the gospel and healing to the people.

Charisma can shift focus from the important, but with that comes the facility for actions that allow leaders not to be held to account and, consequently, not to be accountable for what they do.

Those who should stand up to authority are made to plead fealty with the admonition that straying out of line will be considered insubordination, rebellion, or even heresy. The leader posits as a god amongst mortals: untouchable and unassailable, infallible and literally inerrant.

It is a dangerous place to be, but this is evident in many congregations as the flock are led as sheep to the slaughter. Worse still is that these leaders do not stand alone; they are enabled and have enablers that create the myth and mystique that allows an untenable situation to thrive.

My Own Engagement With Church

In my engagement with the church, I have studiously compartmentalised things. The congregation is a meeting of people; the leadership have an onerous responsibility to "feed my sheep" according to the exhortation Jesus gave Peter before ascending to heaven.

I have participated in help or service roles but never sought leadership, even when such positions were offered because of my commitment or my knowledge of the Word.

I have not been inclined to lead and have viewed so-called leadership classes with suspicion, knowing just how power can corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Knowing my human frailties, I have consideration of how inadequacies are faltering stumbling blocks. I depend on the grace of God, knowing the things beyond me are possible with God.

The Lure of Hero Worship

Naturally, I am not given to hero worship. I have always operated from the perspective that the only person to fear is one with two heads, and I have never met one.

Subscribing to a cult of personality probably fills a void somewhere in the psyche of the followers. I do not know for sure, but I have seen the damaging effects on the victims of such settings: from those adoring prophets in tune with familiar spirits, revealing things that imitate the word of knowledge (a gift of the Spirit given as he wills to the church), to those in unsupervised congregation settings where the leaders are now celebrity superstars worshipped by their followers.

When the structures and frameworks of these cults excusing abuse collapse, what do people have left if they had long stopped looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith?

A Call to Reflect

I can only recommend you listen to the podcast because it is as revealing as it is educational. We are all working out our salvation with fear and trembling.

This blog is hardly exhaustive on the many issues that emanate from beliefs, doctrines, allegiance, and faith. This is a contribution to the broader conversation.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Opinion: Global Bystanders Giving Succour To Fellow Leaders

The Paradox of Purpose

What I want to write about and what I eventually get to write are usually different things, but I end up writing, and that is what matters. Sometimes, the thought processes involved in what might have ended up in the original material are not developed enough to constitute a coherent argument, and hence a quandary.

On some other topics, I resist the inclination to offer an opinion, not because the broadest spectrum of viewpoints has been exhausted, but because I cannot be bothered to join the fray as part of the baying and noisy crowd.

Then, I am gratified by the fact that my blog is my private playground, my personal journal, and, though it is open for interaction, conversation, and commentary with others, I exclusively curate the content and advise others to pen rejoinders in their own spaces if they cannot countenance my perspective for any reason.

When Rules Become Weapons

One thought has been percolating in my mind for days: the idea that the head of a school had put out a rule stating that anything that happens on the school grounds is part of schoolwork. Then someone decides to throw stones to break the glass windows, and that appears to pass for schoolwork, when it is entirely wrong.

Next, someone takes away someone else's lunch. The wronged cannot complain because it happened on the school grounds, and it would be passed off as schoolwork, despite the obvious injustice. Unruliness runs riot in the school community, with the authorities appearing to sanction and approve the abuse without consequence.

The Rise of Impunity

A kind of lasciviousness gains hold: an untrammelled exploitation of the weak and a perversion of order. Herein lies the inexorable rise of the playground bully, barely held to account and never held accountable, believing they have a licence to act with impunity, having gained immunity by the original pronouncement of schoolwork.

He takes another small boy in a stranglehold, stripping the child of any autonomy to the point of suffocation. Everyone on the playground cannot boldly come out to say the playground bully is wrong, out of fear of being on the receiving end of the bully's antics. Where they should have ganged up to teach the bully a lesson, the bully gains ascendancy, urged on by lethargic, cowering solipsism and doublespeak.

A Metaphor Unfolding

Behold, amongst you a metaphor of the state of the world today, and it will get worse until someone, and many, decide enough is enough. This bully has no lowest level; each time we have thought it could get no worse, he has plumbed new depths. In the traversal of the bottomless, something must catch that fall, or it will never end.

Think about it, can anyone call him to order?

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

When Technical Debate Meets Workplace Dysfunction

The Facts Always Win

In a lengthy set of exchanges on a technical forum, we tried to resolve what became an exception to the rule that proved a process was not functioning as intended or designed.

It was the second of such conversations where, again, one assumption about facilitating something could not be proven by the evidence gathered. My engineering background compels me to seek out and gather the evidence proving a point. Once I have that evidence, I can only be dissuaded with superior data.

My work life is filled with many such arguments where, as far as I am concerned, electronic data is more reliable, convincing, and conclusive. If you cannot present the evidence of the facts in play, then you are left adrift, subject to illogical premises redolent of clutching at straws.

Poorly Reading the Room

I appreciate that I can be quite forceful, but I make no apology for that. Whilst I am neither infallible nor omniscient, I am quite thorough and won't mind painstakingly reviewing whatever viewpoints I have reached if there is any doubt that the means for making those assertions are suspect.

Caught in the flow of these conversations, someone mistook the technical commentary for social banter. Taking exception, he suggested we take our liaison to a private space and, once we had consummated our tryst, we could return with the baby.

You pause and wonder what had got into them. You might take into consideration that they might have had a bad day, but to intrude and insinuate in that manner was uncalled for. The fact is, I have to countenance many impolite, uncouth, bad-mannered, and ill-disciplined people in the managerial cadre who exhibit little respect for their reports.

Another Place, Another Face

Having been a freelance consultant for three decades, I am quite likely to understand this more and better than those who have only been the archetypal corporate person. Anyone has the prerogative to shimmy and slide up or down the greasy pole in obedience and obsequious genuflection for pecuniary advantage. I have seen the best and the worst of the lot, but not at my expense.

My interlocutor was having none of it. Just one unfortunate abuse of privilege and an inadvertent level of tone can quite seriously piss people off. Our accuser was swiftly told off before a feeble apology came in response. I do not have to always be the vocal contrarian, and, likely, my card is already marked, but I am unperturbed.

There is an art to office politics and the power plays of the little-minded that amuse no end.

If the axe is dull,
And one does not sharpen the edge,
Then he must use more strength;
Wisdom is profitable to direct. Ecclesiastes 10:10

We've been at this game long enough to know where to use a dull axe, how it needs to be sharpened, when to use more strength, and wherefore the wisdom to see people for who they really are. In the same vein, all is vanity, vanity.

Desert Island Discs: Childhood Trauma and Workplace Pastoral Care

In the passing of stories

Listening to the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs has now brought me into the middle of the pandemic, the year 2020.

However, since I began this exercise way back in March, some of the people featured have passed on. I note with particular significance Yvonne Brewster, who was the first person I wrote about.

She passed away on 12th October at the age of 87 and was featured on last week's edition of BBC Radio 4's Last Word. [AkinBlog.NL: Desert Island Discs: To Be Young, Gifted and Black]

The interview format possesses an almost disarming innocence. What gets revealed shows how the context of sharing one's choice of music can inadvertently expose both vulnerability and discovery.

A spectrum of care

Whether it's the child sexual abuse suffered by Christopher Hazlewood, who founded the Paraorchestra, or the obvious abandonment of Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, born mixed race and illegitimate, housed in a convent with nuns whilst her mother visited monthly, you appreciate the kind of trauma that forms part of the history of these remarkable people.

Then there's the story Dame Sally Davies told. At the point of retiring as Chief Medical Officer, she highlighted something missing from today's teaching of vocation, the grooming of talent, and the nurturing of expertise.

On the matter of junior doctors, she observed that pastoral care was missing. Very few knew the name of a consultant; that is, if consultants could even name others they had taken under their wing.

One example stood out. She arrived for an interview in a sports car and, on arrival, ended up in a driving manoeuvre that spun her around 360 degrees.

A consultant stepped out of the department and asked if she had come for the interview. On responding in the affirmative, he called to postpone the interview until the next day, taking the time to settle her down and getting her a cup of tea.

She returned the next day, interviewed, and got the job. However, she said, without the care and consideration of that consultant, she would likely not have got the job.

Care in the workplace

By extension, that lack of pastoral care and consideration of the humanity of junior staff, when interacting with sometimes overworked middle management who are under pressure to deliver to almost impossible terms and without the time to manage effectively, diminishes the productivity of the employee in many unquantifiable ways.

This is besides the way managers use promises they would never fulfil to lure new talent onto their teams.

In the end, it is usually left to the individual to decide whether they are fulfilled in settings that barely appreciate them.

When it comes to the tussle between self-respect and being patronised to the point of feeling belittled, I would hope the former would guide the person towards seeking greener pastures whilst nipping avoidable workplace stress in the bud.

Desert Island Discs references

Desert Island Discs: Yvonne Brewster 01/04/2005

Desert Island Discs: Christopher Hazlewood 29/05/2020

Desert Island Discs: Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu 04/06/2020

Desert Island Discs: Dame Sally Davies 02/08/2019

Pastoral care in modern workplaces (AI-generated)

Then I asked AI the question, How could the lack of pastoral care be addressed in modern workplaces?

That's an excellent question that extends beyond the scope of blog editing, but I'm happy to explore it with you.

Based on the themes in your blog post, here are some thoughts on addressing the lack of pastoral care in modern workplaces:

Structural Changes

Mentorship programmes - Formalising what once happened organically. Assigning senior staff to genuinely know and support junior colleagues, not just tick boxes. The consultant who postponed Dame Sally Davies' interview demonstrated this perfectly.

Protected time - Managers need designated time for pastoral duties, separate from productivity targets. When middle management is stretched thin, human connection becomes the first casualty.

Smaller teams - The anonymity you described, where junior doctors don't even know their consultants' names, suggests units have grown too large for meaningful relationships to form naturally.

Cultural Shifts

Redefining success - Measuring managers not just on outputs, but on staff retention, development, and wellbeing. What gets measured gets valued.

Slowing down - The consultant who made tea instead of rushing to the interview understood that five minutes of humanity can change someone's trajectory. Modern workplaces resist this pause.

Accountability for promises - Your point about managers using unfulfillable promises to lure talent speaks to a deeper dishonesty. Holding leaders accountable for what they commit to would restore some trust.

Individual Actions

Modelling care - Even without systemic change, individuals can choose to be that consultant. Remembering names, checking in genuinely, postponing the interview when someone clearly needs a moment.

Choosing environments wisely - Your conclusion about self-respect guiding people towards greener pastures is crucial. Sometimes the best response to uncaring systems is to leave them.

What aspects of pastoral care do you think are most critical in your own experience?

Thought Picnic: Emotional abuse masquerading as peace making

Setting the Thought

One thing I have striven for, and perhaps never fully mastered but have always applied myself to learn, is to have good judgment coupled with the instinct to do what is right. I need to be assured that I am directing my energies towards benefit, not only for myself but also for others.

Then again, regarding the pursuit of happiness I have written about many times before, having material means and provisions is not inherently the main source of happiness; it can also be the cause of great misery.

However, if you find yourself with the opportunity and privilege to make others happy, it is quite likely that you will end up happy as well.

The Responsibility of Cultivating Relationships

You might wonder how the thoughts of the previous paragraphs are connected; I see them in the context of cultivating relationships—some enduring, others fleeting—yet all meaningful for everyone involved.

Imagine the responsibility of a pilot of an aircraft: even if one might say unwittingly, you are in charge of a vehicle worth over 100 million pounds or dollars, but more importantly, you carry a cargo of human lives that you cannot take lightly, numbering around 200.

Appreciating the weight of that responsibility instils discipline, self-control, and the importance of working with your team to ensure your duties are carried out with excellence.

In our endeavours, we may not be pilots, but we are pilots of sorts. Whether as parents, teachers, or professionals in fields like medicine, engineering, law, finance, or the humanities, there is impact, consequence, risk, and reward.

Human lives are affected, and relationships that matter can dissolve through poor judgment, bad faith, a bad attitude, bad behaviour, or simple neglect—failures to recognise and address issues in our development that become disadvantages.

A Consideration of Others

All of this hinges on the issue of consideration—not of ourselves alone, but of others—because how we involve ourselves can affect others more than we realise, often because we are solely focused on ourselves.

This year, during two nuptial preparations, I have observed a profound lack of good judgment and an absolute inability to include important people in planning, organisation, and execution.

This has left relationships strained, with attitudes ranging from nonchalance to indifference from those whose various contributions could have made the events more successful.

We should not delude ourselves with the hubris of thinking we matter more than we do to the couple beginning their lives together. However, there must be a way to address issues before resentment develops from being ignored.

It is merely emotional abuse.

Yet, for those with the greatest influence, tolerating the worst offenders while appealing to the good nature of the offended is not peace-making; it is emotional abuse, emotional blackmail, and worse.

The points I initially intended to address will have to wait for another time because the crucial issue here—emotional abuse—has now become the focal point.

Good judgment fosters the development of relationships, especially when considering how the responsibilities we have, acquire, or are imposed on us can make a significant difference in the overall happiness of all involved.

Home as you left it

Strewn yet hewn

When I returned home late in the night a week ago, it never occurred to me how if anyone had seen a dog in the window of my apartment over the weekend, they could come back on my return, point to the dog and ask how much it was.

In fact, I could have left my bathroom scales in my wine rack (I did not do that, someone else did) and expected to still find it there or carelessly left the fridge door open and met it undefeated by gravity or the rotational forces of the earth in the same position I had in my forgetfulness abandoned things.

That lack of trepidation as to the condition of my home that always seemed to leave me a total stranger in my own home after any sojourn away, was bliss. None of the disorderliness which to the mind of another was their order, or apparent disarray was due to poltergeist activity, I simply had a trusted house sitter.

Behold an earthquake

Trusted is being generous to a fault, because except for the entirely immovable things, everything moved, changed places, or just disappeared. The lack of care for the very basic things even though to his thinking he was keeping the place tidy, robbed me too many times of the enjoyment of home, yet overwhelmed to a masochist trait, I submitted myself to more abuse.

However, after a 16-hour journey back from Cape Town, still barely at 60% of my strength, I stepped into my home and though he was present, I found myself running the vacuum cleaner through my apartment before I even took my jacket off. When I opened the fridge, a hurricane had swept through it with pieces anywhere but where they should be.

That I was still finding things out of place five months later is testament to his genius that has a madness to its method, but the day after I returned, I asked him to give me back the keys to my apartment and I bought myself the unimaginable treasure of space, independence, and wallowing in the mess of my own making. I could live with that.

Peace with my pieces

The next time we saw each other, it was at a waving distance attending a funeral, I bear no animosity toward him, I consider him a friend, even if he thinks otherwise. It was a necessary intervention, rescuing myself from the throes of the unmentionable trying to articulate the indescribable.

Just to have your home unspoiled and be able to suggest the best price for the dog in the window the stranger saw the other day and get a good exchange without rummaging through the depths of Hades for the upper set of your false teeth and the missing tail of the dog. You do not want to know what I still cannot find in my own home.

At the vicarage of St Jude's Anglican Church

What a child saw

The St Jude’s Anglican Church from whence my ancestry emanates conveys a great sense of community and service, that I witnessed just over a generation ago. My first view of the church was on our return from the UK, I was a precocious boy full of opinions that never failed to find a voice, as I was observed by many who wondered about this little alien utterly different from his peers.

I had a great-grandmother and she probably had many ahead of her in age and status, it was a village that sat on the hopes that grew from the successes of its many sons and daughters educated for professional lives never stinting in their generosity to improve their town. Electrification, piper-borne water, a new church building, improved school buildings, scholarships, and much else came with their desire to lift their humble village.

A church on the lurch

Being of the Anglican faith, I returned there to be confirmed. Everything our parents did was to encourage our love of the village. The big difference is, that they had their childhood there, we only had short breaks, and what represented our innate childhood was elsewhere.

We could not cultivate our parents' childhood memories of their village; maybe if they had shared some of their hair-raising stories, we might have been intrigued and more invested. Alas!

I have for too long overlooked another issue that had surrounded the church; but a seething rage welled up in me when I caught the glimpse of a missive of mendicancy imposed on the mainly influential octogenarian parish members, many of whom have settled into retirement for decades, but the parson is unrelenting.

Vicar on a venal trail

When a parishioner passes on, despite all the dearly departed might have contributed to the town and the church, a venerable preys on the vulnerable with extraneous and outrageous demands. If the stated requirements are not met to his satisfaction, he devotes the homily that is supposed to honour the departed to excoriating and embarrassing the bereaved for not pulling their weight.

It is a merciless abuse of position that reeks with venality and these expressions are at the most charitable end of the scale. The love of money is said to be the root of all evil, to suggest that he personifies the inordinately untenable quest for filthy lucre at the expense of those in need of succour does not begin to describe the circumstances for some of the recently bereaved that I am acquainted with.

How such manifestly disreputable conduct has been allowed to thrive in that church community where the bereaved are left bereft of dignity or respect under the watch of a thriving bishopric and a congregation that seems to condone, tolerate, or just be resigned to these macabre machinations is daunting and baffling.

He has become a potentate, probably untouchable and certainly unaccountable for his excesses. This is not village talk, the reputation is known and has festered with lascivious abandon.

Better is quite expected

I am a steward at the Manchester Cathedral, at the end of last year, we had two funerals of prominent, if not national figures. The organisation of the events was to the highest professional standard, the Prince of Wales was in the congregation; I did not once see any of the bereaved being put upon, we gathered to celebrate the lives of their dearly departed and they received much Christian comfort and consolation.

They would have felt they had done well by their patron and the clergy did not insert themselves into the ceremony in any way, they gave tribute and honour and showed compassion and understanding.

Obviously, it is my hope that there is an improvement in the conduct of the venerable but by his antecedents, I find it impossible to support any fundraising activity he might champion as he has sown seeds of discord and acrimony, the people he besmirched at the funerals of their loved one still hurt from his villainy. They have received neither apology nor appreciation.

Even from England, who would have thought there was a highwayman at the gates of the temple? Yet, like a Pharisee, he brings the adulterous woman to be stoned and tithes the widows, the widowers, and the poor, to the minutest thing while preventing the adherents from the kingdom of heaven.

If anyone might have the thought, they should not remotely be persuaded of it. This is written that it might be on record. The spirit of Pontius Pilate compels me. Thank you.

Childhood: The fears and hairs that still haunt

What I heard to my hurt

My ears have a sense of betrayal of self, the sounds that syncopate with the rhythmic resonance of my ear drums taking me into worlds that I have never intended to visit. It was one such occasion when my aunt and our male valet or servant were having this conversation about the esoteric and weird, uncanny stories of the evil supernatural in the hearing of an impressionable 10-year-old.

Seeds sown into my vivid imagination would result in 2 terrifying encounters in which I believed I had seen the devil, a red-crested beastly creature at about 7 feet tall, arms raised like in surrender, but I saw terror and the spirit of fear that I never knew before took hold.

A dismissal of my experience

In the first sighting, my father dismissed my screams as some sort of juvenile exuberance and over-excitation, until late at night I woke up to a sound that brought everyone running to my rescue. My mother was both confused and perplexed by this strange change in my demeanour and as we sat in the living room this apparition appeared again.

My listening experience in the space of less than 30 minutes, the unguarded conversations of seeming adults unaware of the consequences of their discussion in the presence of a child would suggest that in the 1970s there was no knowledge of the serious safeguarding requirements to having anyone care for children and the result was a spectrum of child abuse, much of which I have written of.

In the grip of superstition beyond sense

I guess this informs why I curate what I absorb into my overactive imagination, fundamentally, I do not watch horror films, I have the capacity to imagine enough without have the stimulation of things that might go beyond my control.

Maybe I do now rationalise situations in which I find myself that I am more controlling of irrational fear, or so I think. Then I was walking up a road late at night when I realised the open field to my left was in fact a disused cemetery some gravestones displaced like a place abandoned and desecrated to the extent that the forgotten are indeed forgotten in terms of care for the place.

Between the temptation to look there and look away, I quickened my steps and still stole a few glances, for where in folklore have, I acquired the idea that a graveyard, the reliquary of the dead could be a hive of activity that would interact with the living? And yet, whatever schooled that idea into my consciousness has left it unlearnt.

I was ready to scream

Then the hairs still in their roots of my bald scalp were standing on their ends, in an excited state of sense something otherworldly. In the grip of unexplained fear, a wild guttural sound was forming in my throat and ready to explore into a torrent of the fiendish wailing of a banshee, and on the other hand, I checked myself thinking, why are you about to scream about nothing but the phantoms in your head?

It is however likely, if I had screamed I might have not only given voice to the fear, but also it would have allowed the extirpation of the tension, a release that might have brought people to enquire about the source of my discomfiture either for my embarrassment or in sympathy for hapless mental gymnastics with endearing pity for my need of some sort of help.

Time in a timeless appearance

It was not long after that, a homeless man in the recesses of a building along the way nodding to something asked for the time. A time I should have been ensconced in the warmth of my bed. The reckoning wondering is the person I told the time was homeless as pertains to the life in which we live or homeless from the displaced stones of the graveyard in an encounter I was not prepared to countenance.

If there is a lesson in this that has had lasting consequences for almost half a century, it is an admonition to parents to beware of the people they expose their children to, whether relations or employees. I doubt many parents fully appreciate what it might portend and, in my case, I might have been better helped by a child psychiatrist then being trafficked between religious and animist grottos of unlicensed practitioners of strange acts along with the rituals of reading Psalms in a language I hardly spoke into buckets of water for spiritual ablutions to ward away evil spirits.

You haven’t heard half the tale of this gruelling thing, much of which I attempt to forget as I also deign to forgive. Much as one was wronged there is grace that abounds to soothe and calm the troubled soul and it in that knowledge that I have found hope and redemption.

Related blog

Blog - Thought Picnic: A child has memories that last a lifetime

Of things that never should have happened

Relaxing by television

How do I relax when watching television at home? Everything done by Agatha Christie, I would probably watch, Miss Marple with Joan Hickson and then Geraldine McEwen in the title role being my favourites, then any other Hercule Poirot apart from Peter Suchet is pretending, even Sir Peter Ustinov’s turn did not interest me as much.

Murder, She Wrote, I have a date with Jessica Fletcher every Saturday, and I do not care how many times I have watched repeats, the same goes for Columbo on Sundays. Recently, I have taken an interest in Criminal Minds, then the easy gentile setup of Saint Marie, the location of Death in Paradise does not come with investigative overload, I could be watching a cartoon.

However, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is one television series that has me walking in both the shoes of the victim and urging the fully indicted course of justice, with all that it entails. I can identify with the victim and many times with their frame of reference, especially in cases of child sexual abuse and the difficult quest for anything that looks like justice.

Identifying with the victim

Then, I am invested in the process to ensure that abuse is fully punished to the extent of the law, the cases are rarely iron clad slam dunk, there is much mining of the recesses of memory along with the issues around the depravity that caused the crime being investigated.

However, earlier tonight, I watched an episode of Law & Order: SVU, the detail of which is references, but a snippet of a conversation at the closing of the episode was the type of playscript that anyone who has been a victim of abuse can relate to.

Detective Katriona 'Kat' Tamin: None of us protected her.

Captain Olivia Benson: I hear you. Why don't you punch out, okay? Take a few days off.

Detective Katriona 'Kat' Tamin: Please don't patronize me. This never should have happened to her.

Captain Olivia Benson: You're right. It never should've. [Read more at: https://tvshowtranscripts.ourboard.org/viewtopic.php?f=421&t=41728 - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (TV Series) Season 22, Episode 5 Turn Me on Take Me Private (2021)]

The conversation above can refer to too many instances of where protection, dismissal, advocacy, and exasperation. The bottom line is, “This never should have happened.”

Never should have happened

Looking back, there are too many things that never should have happened, things that could, should, or would have been prevented as part of what pertains to being protected, especially where the victim has no agency because of the situation and the circumstances, the vulnerable from child to adult alike.

Furthermore, where an act has been perpetrated, you wonder if there are any avenues to seek a hearing and consequently some redress. Sometimes, the situation is such that there is no way to share the incident, and it becomes internalised.

Yet, the worst part is when too little is done to deal with the issue out of the fear of shame or embarrassment, a moral failing that seeks to conceal rather than do what it right and just with the hope that the passage of time will make it pale into insignificance. It seems to, but it never does, it is usually consequential.

The insidious folding of arms and need to let bygones be bygones, otherwise, just take some time off and you’ll feel a lot better, do not rock the boat, other passengers might get seasick, so, take one for the team, the team that cannot begin to understand what you went through. That team is family, relations, your community, or colleagues. To make a fuss is to break ranks and upset the apple cart.

Do not let it happen

There are many directions to go in terms of making people responsible and accountable for their abuses, but that is further down the line. The better cause should be aware enough and ready with the courage to ensure that what never should have happened, never should have happened in the first place.

Obviously, justice in terms of apology, restitution, recompense, indictment leading to conviction and commensurate punishment can help, but why should a narrative include suffering for a better story even if one who has never suffered may find their own story not as engaging or interesting.

The UK: What can he do? How justice was served the Ekweremadus in this organ harvesting case

They are not entirely helpless

It was hardly 6 years ago that I wrote of a case of human trafficking involving Nigerian professionals fundamentally unable to check their privilege in the use and abuse of others for their benefit. The refrain of “What can she do?” was a word-for-word translation from Yoruba, “Kí ló lè ṣe?”

I dare say that there are many with much power, influence, and money in the upper stratum of society from Nigeria who exercise and demonstrate this mindset in exploitation with regard to others without means, opportunity, status, or autonomy.

Blog - The UK: What can she do? How justice was served in this Human Trafficking case

Nigeria presents a theatre for criminality wherein it might be impossible to find redress or justice. However, that sense of untrammelled impunity sometimes bedevils Nigerians who orchestrate that behaviour abroad, as different systems exist for the unlettered and underprivileged to the law not only taking their side but acting with the utmost fiery vehemence to ensure justice is done.

All emotions awry

This morning, I read of the court finding of guilt against Dr Ike Ekweremadu, a 3-time deputy senate president in Nigeria, his wife Dr Beatrice Ekweremadu, an accountant, and a Dr Obinna Obeta who had successfully procured an illegal kidney transplant under false pretences for himself, a few years ago. [BBC News: Ike Ekweremadu: Organ-trafficking plot politician and wife guilty] [The Guardian: Nigerian politician, wife, and a doctor guilty of organ trafficking to UK]

I am both conflicted and incensed by this whole charade; conflicted by the situation of having lost two close relations to chronic kidney disease where a kidney transplant might well have given them hope and life along with the enjoyment of their participation in our lives for amazing stories.

The Ekweremadus were in a desperate situation for their 25-year-old daughter who had fallen ill in 2019 and needed the kindness of a donor to rescue her from the constant trauma of dialysis and incapability due to chronic and debilitating disease.

On that score, any parent would go to the ends of the earth with all the resources they can muster to find everything possible to help their child to health. It is the means by which this is procured that begs the question and has led to the indictment and conviction of the aforementioned parties.

They marshalled people and money

Within the confines of Nigeria, a donor might well have been acquired for exploitation, their organs harvested and the person discarded as a spare part to fend for themselves, after what was a cold heartless transaction. More is demanded of donors in the UK, it has to be altruistic, with coercion or inducement and never a transaction in monetary or other terms.

Through their privileged network of family and friends of considerable clout and influence, they procured a hapless street trader whom they promised a life of opportunity without acquaintance with why they brought him to the UK to have his kidney harvested for their daughter.

It was upon enquiry about his relationship to them and the consequences of his being a donor that the medical establishment decided against proceeding with a transplant.

How they failed themselves

Rather than mollify and commit to some humane endearment of their prospect, he was left in the care of procurer-middleman Dr Obinna Obeta, who for the grace of the kidney of a donor seemed not to have the capacity of self-reflection and gratitude for the gift of life, once possessed, for which he must have felt entitled than to be grateful to anyone from donor or surgeon.

The prospective donor was mistreated that he ran away and lived rough on the streets of London before handing himself in, to the police where his plight unravelled to the detriment of the so-called privileged, powerful, and moneyed Nigerians.

Meanwhile, the Ekweremadus were already shopping for another person to exploit, from whom to harvest a kidney for their daughter in Turkey, at the time the police pounced on them.

Careless with the caring part

It is my view and hence where my anger stems from, that had the apparent donor been treated with a modicum of respect, dignity, honour, and sense of gratitude, he might well have bought into this kidney transplant transaction, himself convinced the medical personnel, gone through with the exchange, had opportunities along with long-term care and consideration from the Ekweremadus apart from the personal sense of gratitude from their daughter that would have engendered a friendship borne of the gift of life shared.

It speaks to the earlier blog that I wrote in 2017 where a doctor and a nurse could have brought someone over from Nigeria to care for their own children and still maltreat that child carer with no sense of reflection or possible consequence on their children. Sometimes, I am just left baffled at the thinking that a carer for your children would be so hopelessly indebted to you that it becomes a licence to abuse them.

Having disregard is costly

What the Ekweremadus facilitated even under desperation and duress for their daughter was both criminal and illegal, they will be consequences and hopefully, lessons for others seeking the help of strangers to learn. From the onset of their arrest through how the case was building up, I personally could not see how they could walk away unscathed as it all seemed underhand, malicious, and seedy.

The words of the Chief Crown Prosecutor present the full indictment of how class, privilege, power, influence, means, and opportunity deludes people into thinking they can get away with it and that there can be no consequences for whatever they do because the people they have brought into their enterprise have nothing but just breath in their nostrils, good enough health, and they are spare parts put on earth for the harvesting to the health and pleasure of their lives and those of their children.

She said, “The convicted defendants showed utter disregard for the victim's welfare, health and well-being and used their considerable influence to a high degree of control throughout, with the victim having limited understanding of what was really going on here.”

The disregard for another human being, no matter their status in life can bring you to utter ruin. The Ekweremadus and Dr Obeta would have that to think about as they languish in the restricted confines of His Majesty’s secure accommodations. The irony is that Dr Ike Ekweremadu helped draw up Nigeria’s laws against human trafficking – the mind boggles.

Thought Picnic: In the omerta of abuse

No perfect narrative exists

There are taboo topics that society, community, or situation makes too difficult to talk about for many reasons from not having a frame of reference in which to conceptualise and understand to the need to avoid engagement so that the horror of that reality does not inflict on our comfort.

In the matters of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, or bullying, some of which I have addressed in my almost 20 years of blogging, finding the form of words to discuss with the hope that it does not upset is one for which there is neither art, skill, nor perfection to convey silent suffering and the associated issues.

Why they suffer in silence

I would guess that is the reason that obvious and apparent victims do not share their experiences and mostly never report anything because of shame or embarrassment, worse still the default audience sits in judgement with the view that there is much more that could have been done to prevent things happening to oneself.

Yet, reporting any abuse is not as easy as making a customer complaint or reporting a theft, the violation of the person is visceral, it starts with the body, as the mind considers what has happened, and the spirit is grieved in the realisation of that truth. Maybe, the bruised body can be healed, and the conflicted mind can with time find peace, to reach into the spirit to enliven it is a whole different matter. A person must find their way just as they have to work with the dreams and imaginations that play in their heads.

Wrestling back some agency

That these taboos need to see the light of day through expression, sharing, and talking about it so that perpetrators realise that they do not hold any power over the people they violate or are emboldened to act with impunity is necessary. However, navigating the present to gain the support, sympathy and empathy needed to grow would never be an easy task.

The child abused who on mentioning it is shut down because the adults who should protect them cannot deal with it, the person who has suffered domestic abuse takes the blame for instigation rather than the abuser getting excoriated, sexual assault is seen as opportunistic and victimless that partners of victims are more hurt than the one molested, being on the receiving end of bullying considered an act and state of weakness when one is expected to fight back and put a stop to it.

Help, don’t worsen it

The long hard mile that others would never walk in the shoes of the wearer is deemed the easiest feat of endeavour. People in pain from living through it are doubly hurt by others taking on the same pain for what they never lived. It is a strange world, you begin to believe that the cruellest thing to allow to happen to yourself is to suffer pain, to be a victim, to be caught in circumstances you should have controlled but you failed to.

Whilst silence cannot be the answer, we have to find it somewhere in our human nature to consider, to appreciate, to understand, to commiserate, to empathise, to feel, and to know, that others will have experiences beyond our comprehension, if we cannot help them, we should not make it worse. Sadly, this all is part of the story of our humanity, much as we would love better stories. I do not have the answers, we should be careful of taking offence in the hurt of another.

Once again, “Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” [Romans 14:22b] The journey of self-healing is lonely, scary, unsure, and not guaranteed. You take each day as vulnerable and human with the hope that there is better ahead.