Twelve Years a Resident, Fourteen Years Away

Memory and the Reason for Writing

Fourteen years begin to tell you how dull the memory really is. I suppose that is why we write things down, and probably why this blog exists as a journal of stories and experiences.

My visit to Amsterdam, both impromptu and incognito, was for the single purpose of maintaining the status of a loyalty scheme; one that gives benefits and privileges money might buy, but at a higher cost.

My preference was Paris, but Brian adamantly withstood me, fully expressing his concern for my safety, and only he could know why.

Returning After Many Years

I was tempted to let people I knew through my Holland odyssey, which began in May 2000 and ran for the twelve years I called the Netherlands home, in on the visit. To think I found a hotel in Hoofddorp, where I started my first job with AUCS Infonet 26 years ago, is quite something. I was charged city tax; Hoofddorp is over 10 miles as the crow flies from Amsterdam.

Back then, I lived in Amsterdam and commuted out to Hoofddorp by train each morning; now, all these years later, I was sleeping in the very town I once travelled out to. So much has changed, and yet other things remain the same.

Arriving in Amsterdam yesterday, I made for the public library that opened on the 7th of July 2007, intending to have a meal at Vapiano, not knowing they had closed their business in the Netherlands the year before.

Then I thought to walk up to my old apartment block in the Oostelijke Havengebied, the eastern docklands. The flat, which I bought in November 2001 and sold on the 1st of May 2012 when I handed the keys over to the new owner, was on the 7th floor and overlooked two stretches of water: IJhaven and Eersthaven.

These harbours separated my building from Java-eiland and KNSM-eiland, the two long, narrow islands that, together with my side, make up the regenerated docklands.

The Lessons Wasted on Youth

The funny thing is, for all the ten and a half years I lived there, I never once walked from the city centre. I took the tram, the bus, or rode my bicycle. If only I had known the benefits of walking back then, but this kind of knowledge is wasted on youth.

I did not have a flood of memories when I got there, but soon enough, a resident from way back then wheeled out from the garage. We both had a moment of recognition and greeted each other.

That was enough; my plan to attend my old church on Sunday was now under review, as I wondered whether I could handle the emotional overload of so many reunions. I honestly was not prepared for that.

A City Subtly Changed

Tram numbers had changed. What was once Tram 10, which had not yet been built when I first moved there, is now Tram 1. Tram 25 to IJburg is now Tram 26, with the terminus moved to the back of the central station, on the IJ River side.

Then another face I recognised, still looking good, not weathered by time and deserving of a compliment, which I gave liberally. The things you think you remember, only to realise that your memory is a bit jaded.

Even so, all these encounters encourage the recollections of people, events, and ideas that made those times significant in their different ways. For instance, I sent a message to an old friend whom I had once helped pick out gilets and outfits for his wedding, drawing on my familiarity with the outfitters around Amsterdam and my comfort with formal wear.

We had gone shopping together on Nieuwendijk, one of the city's oldest shopping streets, running north from Dam Square towards the Central Station.

Walking the Singel

Today, I went looking for a restaurant on the Singel, thinking it was further down the canal. I had walked all the way in the opposite direction before retracing my steps, only to find it was nearer the central station after all, and that I needn't have taken the tram in the first place.

After my breakfast, which had Danish bacon as it should be, but hash browns as something else entirely, I set out on a small adventure into the past. My first residence had been in the Jordaan, where I rented from June 2000 until November 2001, when I moved to the apartment I had bought in the eastern docklands.

The Jordaan place was a large garage converted into a one-bedroom apartment with two separate toilets, on Palmstraat. It was all unrecognisable now; even the old had been seriously gentrified.

The Indignities of Travel

You could easily be housebound in Amsterdam, as I saw no disabled toilets. The public toilets at the central station charged a hefty €1.10, which is just unforgivable, and there were no staff on hand to help out with failed automation. But that was yesterday.

There was a time when wearing glasses was considered a grave disability, so much so that once laser surgery for corrective eyesight became widespread, the Dutch were beating a path to every practitioner offering the service.

On toilet anxiety, today was worse, as I was far from any known facilities, and the accident happened. By the time I eventually found a toilet, my underwear had to be binned. We suffer in silence, hiding the shame that cannot be avoided because of nature or affliction. Yet we must live life as best we can, for that is the better story.

The Living Existence of a Life Story

I can boldly say Amsterdam is not about the lost, but the living existence of a life story; visited by adversity and failure, but blessed by the gift of life, the promise of a bright future, and undying hope that makes every travail transient.

Beyond my expectations, there was even an ocean liner at the passenger terminal. So much for reducing seafaring tourism; the reality bites harder than ideas in a council meeting with harebrained resolutions.

The old lady of green politics in the Netherlands of the days of yore is the mayor of Amsterdam. Femke Halsema, I doff my hat. Respect!

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Love, Distance, and a City Called Home

A Month On

Today marks a calendar month since I boarded the flight for the 13-hour, 25-minute journey back from Cape Town to Manchester, and yet the scenes from that visit still run through my mind as though the credits have not quite rolled. Already, I am planning the next one.

Cape Town represents more than a destination; the story began barely seven years ago, when Brian and I had our second rendezvous in South Africa. Soon after we met in Johannesburg in December 2018, I resolved to spend the next Easter with him.

It was a stroke of good fortune that in late February 2019, work dried up and, rather than loiter aimlessly waiting for a new posting, I took a next-day flight to Johannesburg. It was entirely unscripted, and yet it became the scene that changed everything. Brian joined me for ten days, which became the consummation of our relationship.

From Joburg to Cape Town

I did not cancel the planned Easter meeting. Some scenes, it seems, are written regardless of what comes before them. We were going to meet up in Johannesburg, fly together to Cape Town, and then return to Joburg for the end slice of our holiday.

Now, we just meet up in Cape Town and make home in apartments around the city and suburbs. It is the kind of story you return to willingly, knowing the setting well but always finding something in it you had not quite seen before. Each stay brings unforgettable memories as we work towards being together a lot more than being apart.

What Love Brings

What Brian brings into my life is immeasurable: love, care, companionship, laughter, shared experiences, and stories that make our uniquely special bond everything that matters to both of us. These are not trivial things. They are the substance of a story worth telling, and more importantly, worth living.

My heart is full, and I am blessed with such unconditional love that I pray daily to be worthy of the affection that someone expresses so wholly, freely, sincerely, and unashamedly.

Never a Dull Moment

There is never a dull moment. The way we seek out adventure, revisiting old haunts or discovering new places, gives the story its texture, the kind of detail that stops a narrative from flattening into something predictable.

So, Cape Town is a place transforming into a reality what is the stuff of impossible dreams coming true. Love transcends distance, endures difficulty, ekes out the best, and writes the stories we could never have imagined.

Cape Town, Our Home

Our minds walk through places we have registered so well that each recollection feels like more than words. It is like a film playing back, slowing just enough for us to keep up with everything, with no need to rewind or fast-forward; it is always at the right pace. Perhaps that is what love does to memory. It becomes the editor, keeping only what matters.

That is why we know Cape Town will be our home, our sanctuary, our nest, and our place. The story is far from over. We cannot wait to be together again in the Mother City; even time folds for the purpose of real love.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Long After The Sahara Was Green

Crossing Africa: An Unexpected Route

This passage over Africa was different, as the plane veered east, deviating from the typical western route over France and Spain. We headed towards Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, leaving Genoa to the east to cross the Ligurian Sea, with the islands of Corsica, France and Sardinia (Sardegna), Italy, also to the east, before making landfall over Africa at Skikda, Algeria, a coastal city whose port has been a gateway between Europe and Africa for centuries. Constantine, the dramatic "City of Bridges" perched on a limestone plateau, shows prominently on my map, but it lies much further west of our route.

Pretensions to slumber never came, and one feature of the in-flight maps was missing: the detailed "Flying over..." section that leaves me mesmerised for hours on end. It offers snippets about places up to 250 kilometres away that I may never visit, yet I remain intrigued by their histories, geography, culture, and the people who have made those places their homes.

Above the Sahara

Soon, about four hours into the flight, we were already over the Sahara Desert. I expected to see an ocean of sand without form, stretching into the horizon, but I was in for a surprise.

This place looked as if it were once verdant, the land carved through as rivers sculpt landscapes, as if Eden decided to relocate to the Amazon, took its goods, but left the house bare. I have since learnt that this intuition was remarkably accurate: the Sahara was indeed a green, fertile landscape during the African Humid Period (approximately 11,000 to 5,000 years ago), supporting rivers, lakes, forests, and diverse wildlife before orbital shifts and climate feedback mechanisms transformed it into the desert we see today.

Yet a barren landscape it is not. The circles that resembled cylindrical containers, arranged in patterns clearly indicating human intervention, were in fact irrigation systems in the desert, humanity's ingenious attempt to recreate what nature once provided across the entire region.

I did not spot an oasis from above anywhere from Algeria into Niger. This is a harsh place, where daytime temperatures can soar to totally uninhabitable levels.

Settlements and Landforms

My map showed named settlements within 50 kilometres of our flight path: Djanet, known for its proximity to the UNESCO-listed Tassili n'Ajjer plateau with its ancient rock art; Ghat, a Tuareg town near the Libyan border that has served as a trans-Saharan trade post for centuries; and Tamanrasset, the largest city in southern Algeria, as we flew towards Agadez in Niger, once a crucial caravan centre and sultanate on the trans-Saharan trade routes.

I see alpine landforms, but not of ice. These are gullies eroded by winds rather than water, dunes drawn by the hand of nature, moving as if alive, and they surely are.

A Desert Redefined

A desert is more than its definition. It offers another perspective: the presence of hardy species of flora, fauna, and animal life that thrive in what we might consider impossible conditions.

As we continued south, the landscape gradually shifted. Flying over Nigeria, I caught sight of place names that stirred something deep within me: Jos, the highland city built by tin miners; Bukuru, where I attended primary school; Rayfield, where we lived; and Vom, the veterinary centre where we took a school trip. These are places emblematic of my childhood, each one a marker of memory suspended between earth and sky.

Now, flying past Douala, Cameroon, to catch a sight of the Gulf of Guinea, I realised something striking: from over 30,000 feet, some nine kilometres in the sky, there had been no clouds above the Sahara. Not a single wisp dipping its toes in that vast expanse. I suspect I need a deeper understanding of the ecology of that extraordinary place.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

A Reckoning With Remo Secondary School at 80

A Reluctant Beginning

It is a part of my history I cannot ignore: a ploy by my parents to move me from the privileged environment of international primary schooling to experience integration into their culture, norms, and values, in order to foster independence and resilience during secondary boarding school, within the context of their tribal roots.

In the 30th year of the founding of Remo Secondary School, Sagamu, I gained admission after sitting the common entrance examinations and arrived from the north, ill-prepared, ill-equipped, and scarcely excited by the prospect. At age 10, my only options were between this school and Odogbolu Grammar School.

A Blur of Survival

The five years of being a student are a blur; I do not retain any particular friendships or bonds from that time. The people I considered friends were probably just fellow survivors trying to cope in a hostile environment, as we have scarcely maintained those connections since graduating.

If my memories are to be recalled, they would be in the names of the teachers rather than my classmates. The principal during my admission was Mrs Adebambo, a stoic lady who seemed to have eyes everywhere; you could hardly hide when not in the designated student assembly.

Yet I do remember hiding in a cavity behind the shrubs backing Falode House hostel as she walked by. I broke that myth.

Houses and Early Years

I was in Adedoyin House, and for my first three years, we took the wooden spoon at the Inter-House Sports Day. I was never a sportsman, but we cheered just for participation. Mr Abiona, I remember him as a kind housemaster; one of his sons was my classmate. The other two houses were Igimisoje and Mellor.

Remo Secondary School (RSS) was founded 80 years ago today by a Methodist missionary and community leaders as the first coeducational secondary school. Reverend William Frederick Mellor died in my first year at RSS.

Teachers Remembered

Of all the people who taught me, I remember most fondly Pascal Housenone, my mathematics teacher from the neighbouring Benin Republic. He taught me in my third form. Mr Adekoya taught English; he tarnished my school report that year by remarking that I was a truant. No one wondered why I was bothered, disinterested, and distracted in class; I preferred being in the library.

Of the malevolent lot was Mr Okonji, who earned the nickname Study-Study but was never able to enthuse us with his French lessons. He failed at imparting knowledge, relying on the cane; a sadist whose gratification was inflicting pain. With Mrs Odutuyo, the Yoruba teacher; the only lesson I learnt from her tutelage was adding diacritical marks to Yoruba; they both personified wickedness and abuse without accountability.

Collective Punishment

In my final year, we attended summer classes, and some classmates, intent on meeting girls one night, ran amok and caused damage and injury in the girls' hostel. Instead of investigating who the real culprits were, the school decided on collective punishment, expelling us from the boarding arrangements for the final year.

I remember the vice principal coming to the hostel and saying loudly that she knew these boys were not involved, but the decision had been made. That shaped my view and experience of RSS since the summer of 1980. I graduated in the Class of 1981; I have not returned since.

A Distance Maintained

I have observed activities of the RSS Old Students' Association from afar but have never been persuaded to join, as some of the leadership in the UK are reliquaries of memories I’d rather forget. For the record, I post this note.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Thought Picnic: The Ephemeral Gift of Life

A Final Gathering

My very first conversation on Microsoft Teams this morning, returning to work, left me numb with shock as I was unexpectedly told sad news that brought tears to my eyes.

Only six weeks earlier, I was in Lancaster for a leaving gathering. We had been colleagues, then he led my team before an opportunity he could not refuse arose, and he was off to a new adventure. We all wished him well.

Since I work remotely, that gathering was our first meeting; it turned out to be our last. How ephemeral life can be. It can be simultaneously resilient and enduring, yet also so transient.

In times like these, I find comfort in the words of the Bible: “How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble! We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear” [Bible Hub: Job 14:1 & Job 14:2].

Numbering Our Days

The Psalmist says, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” [Bible Hub: Psalm 90:12]. I do not make New Year's resolutions because life is already a challenge. Maintaining the routine is hard enough without stressing over unattainable goals that fizzle out in months, if not weeks.

I am grateful for each day; it is the present, which is a gift of grace. Everyone runs their race, and no one knows when they will reach the finish.

Then we are swept into the eternity of memories and dreams. At that point, we console their loved ones and cherish the indelible mark they left on us during the brief time life afforded us.

May their soul rest in peace. What a sad start to the year.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

In a year of remembering Dr Willy Legg

In a year of remembering

I never met Willy, but we had many conversations on WhatsApp and when he moved into a nursing home, there were bits of interaction when Brian went to visit him.

Last year, as Brian was about to leave for Cape Town to help me recuperate, he visited Willy and part of what transpired was Willy had a premonition and said he'll be gone before Brian returns to Bulawayo.

We were only about three weeks in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, when the news came that he had passed on. There have been snatches of memory and recollections since, many quite interesting and fond too.

I share one such memory below, which was a comment to the blog I wrote in tribute to Willy, a year ago. Unfortunately, the contributor did not leave a name.

The tortoise she birthed

To add to your fund of Willie stories: In amongst all the normal activities of being a clinical student in Harare Hospital, Zimbabwe, occasional remarkable incidents stood out.

One day, someone mentioned in the tea-room that there was an especially unusual case in the maternity unit. It was definitely worth going to see, and it involved a tortoise. Along with Willie Legg, with whom I was then sharing a house, I went to have a look at this 'most unusual case'.

In one of the small side wards holding the recently delivered mothers and their babies, we found a perfectly ordinary young mother in her bed; the adjoining bassinet contained a somewhat dusty but otherwise perfectly ordinary adult tortoise, complete with a few lettuce leaves.

Luckily, Willie spoke perfect Shona, so he asked the mother what her exact story was. She told him she had gone through her pregnancy without any real problems and had an apparently normal delivery in a district clinic. She had been greatly distressed when she was then presented, not with a swaddled baby, but a swaddled tortoise.

According to the established protocol for such things, she was transferred with her new and very obviously 'abnormal' baby to our teaching hospital, as this was a most unusual complication.

It appeared impossible to either of us that anyone could ever accept this story, so we asked the young midwife working on that ward what she thought of the story. She said, and I quote: “No, it could not possibly be true. I have examined the tortoise and noted that its umbilicus is fully healed.” I took this as a valid point, but not a completely satisfactory answer.

Naturally, we were nowhere near the end of the story, as the police were already on the case. It was soon confirmed that the clinic midwife had accepted a significant sum of money to give the newborn baby to a well-off local woman who was infertile.

The tortoise had been substituted for the baby, with the hope that this unsophisticated young mother would just accept this reptile as her unhappy lot. Luckily, this never had to happen, and justice was eventually served.

Blog - Dr William George Wykeham Legg (Willy)

Nigeria, some hail thee

Nigeria, off my mind

On the first of October, Nigeria celebrated its 65th year of independence; however, in my mind, I let the day slip away with a sense of the uneventful.

As the thought crossed my mind, I realised that, despite the heritage, childhood experiences, memories, and influences, these are all vital parts of my being, though my affinity for Nigeria has diminished to the phrase, ‘my parents are Nigerian’.

Thirty-five years after I left Nigeria for the final time, I have no desire to visit or revisit any part of the seemingly privileged, idyllic childhood I once experienced there.

Even so, I am as estranged as anyone can be from any of the relations and relationships that once contributed to what might be called a sense of identity. It was a place; it was never home.

Relating to Nigeria

The independence days of yore, when Nigeria was still a young nation, were celebrated under a series of murderous military juntas, whose many names and roles I still recall. How we endured the sweltering heat on parade grounds, ready to march before military governors taking the salute on a dais.

One cannot forget how the Nigerian anthem of that era, written in 1959 but replaced by socialist-themed lyrics in 1978, remained etched in the mind as more representative of Nigeria’s story, until it was readopted in 2024. Although I have not personally sung it again, it felt like a Nigeria I could relate to.

Belonging elsewhere

My sense of belonging today is to the land of my birth and a land of my dreams, along with a land of desire from where I found a love beyond compare, England, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Nigeria is a place I view from 10,000 metres when travelling at a land speed of 960 kilometres per hour. The moving map on the aeroplane shows cities as we traverse from the middle of the north through to the southeast into Cameroon.

As I get less encumbered by detachment, I appreciate Nigeria’s contribution without acceding to any concept of being possessed by it. It was a place I was taken to, a place where I never truly belonged.

Thought Picnic: The memories that become our stories

The burden of memory

Memories are burdens we inadvertently lift, given through some experiences we never orchestrated, the accidents in our humanity that could so easily define us.

Be it in people, dates, events, or some feeling and sense that becomes a recollection of significance, we may not be victims of circumstance, but of circumstances that might belie and present opportunity for becoming victims.

Where we choose not to be victims but victors instead, we take some sort of lesson to probably not be found in such a vulnerable position again or to ensure others do not suffer from what has become part of our story, shielded in many ways from scrutiny and accountability of the perpetrators of mischief on our person.

Sheep in wolf jaws

Childhood, something most of us reading this would have experienced can be evocative to various extents. Some of us do have the protections and safety of home and homeliness with strong family structures that extend arms to give opportunities to those who are less privileged than us.

That semblance of security can be exploited by those brought under that umbrella, easy pleasures and stolen innocence concealed in the gentility of respectable existence, exacerbated by the lack of curiosity that corrals and feeds helpless sheep into the salivating lips of ravenous wolves tended as part of the flock.

We live our memories

What many may have forgotten about rarely sinks into total amnesia of the adult who was once a child, some things are too indelible and will never be erased.

Of the scars we carry, they are marks of our living, but thankfully not bleeding sores of harms inflicted decades before. Even where we try, a memory has that grip hold, we have just refused to fold, even if what happened is left untold.

Iya Banji

From whence we came

The kind of life my parents served me created a radically different history and story from the one they had experienced. More fundamentally, what defined their childhood from the little village where they made their first friends to the unforgettable memories that they have rarely shared separates us even further.

Though I have some fond memories of visiting our hometown and meeting with cousins, grandparents, and distant relations, I find none of the affinity for the place as one parent does, and another so thoroughly reviles. I have no such identity with the place except in the compulsion and diktat of my forebears; I was last there about forty years ago.

Significantly, these people who once came out of that town and travelled the world as it was their oyster and, in the process, became successful professionals of every sort, have returned to this place to retire enjoying the good fortune of old age and the misery of watching peers and juniors pass away around them.

Balls on the road

One memory best told in our dialect of Ìjẹ̀bú, in which I have the most laughable proficiency, if any at all, finds its best delivery in my faulting but unmistakable recollection.

My mother was driving from Lagos to Ijesha-Ijebu with my aunt, who was my dad’s immediate younger sibling. She was known to us through the name of her first son, and it was evidently disrespectful of us all, because he is the first and eldest of all our maternal and paternal cousins.

As we passed from Ikenne towards Ilishan, on the home straight to Ijesha-Ijebu, the spare tyre in the undercarriage at the back of the Peugeot 504 she was driving detached and fell onto the road. Someone called in Ìjẹ̀bú that the testicles had fallen. “Wóró ẹ̀ ti jábọ́ o.”

We stopped and I went to pick up the tyre, rolled it up to the car and fixed it back to the undercarriage, securing it properly with the clip. My mum and aunt were out of the car, watching that everything was done properly. As I finished, my aunt quipped in Ìjẹ̀bú, “Well, the person of whom it has been said their testicles have fallen, now has them tied back up in the sack.” “Ọni rán fọ wóró ẹ̀ jábọ́, nà tí so padà yẹ̀n.”

In tribute and sympathy

This remains one of the lasting memories of my aunt, her great sense of humour delivered dead pan with such seriousness, yet you could not fail to get the joke, which by happenstance was also the spelling of her name, meaning who we care for together, she was no joke, by any stretch of the imagination.

A hardworking, strong, purposeful woman and a purveyor of wholesale foodstuffs, she was kind-hearted, lovely, approachable, and ever so considerate. Definitely, one of the best of my father’s siblings. She was the female leader of the Muslims of our hometown.

I learnt Monday afternoon that she had passed on, and she was interred according to Islamic rites on Sunday. Better to rewrite the feelings expressed here, unfortunate as it seems, each person has their individual issues and perspective of things, that might never be that well understood.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. (Al-Quran 2:156) “Indeed, to Allah we belong and to Allah we shall return.”

Desert Island Discs: Connecting stories

Their Interesting Stories 

I began this blog days ago after weeks of wondering how to approach the subject. Over time, it dawned on me that what I had to say might not fit into just one blog; there were simply too many interesting things to discuss before the blog began to resemble a soporific treatise. 

How people have lived their lives and how they have impacted others or humanity always fascinates me. Friday evenings represent a time to reflect on the lives of the recently departed when, on BBC Radio 4, I play back the latest episode of Last Word. 

This is a weekly obituary programme that highlights the life stories of four people, along with notable mentions of two or three others. After an introduction, people shed light on the lives of these personalities, eliciting interesting facts about who they were, what they did, and the significance of their existence among us. 

Music for Solitude 

A couple of months ago, during one broadcast, a rather unfamiliar but interesting name came up. I cannot remember which name it was, but upon searching for it, the first result was their appearance on another BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs. 

Desert Island Discs was first broadcast in January 1942. A guest is invited to imagine being a castaway on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe but with the provision of eight chosen audio recordings, the complete works of Shakespeare, and a religious book of their choice. 

This programme follows an interview format interspersed with the guest's chosen music or audio recordings. It can be quite intrusive, and the light banter allows for probing and interesting questions. Even the choices may hold intriguing stories about the person’s life. At the end, guests are asked to choose just one of the eight audio recordings to take with them, along with a luxury item, a tradition that has been in place since the late 1950s. 

Over 3,400 episodes have been recorded, but some are lost. Others can be recovered or contain fragments from episodes previously thought to be lost, sometimes as brief as two minutes, while typical episodes run around 40 minutes. 

An Event of Propinquity 

I recently started playing back the episodes from the very beginning of those that could be found, and what an experience it has been; it is like a history of popular culture told from the perspective of individuals, many of whom, including some of the earlier hosts of the show, have passed on. 

I plan to cover this in subsequent blogs, but I was inspired to complete this blog because I am now in the middle of 1971. Earlier this morning, I heard the Desert Island Discs episode featuring Clodagh Rodgers, only to log on to the BBC News website to learn that she had just passed on. [BBC News: Eurovision singer Clodagh Rodgers dies aged 78] 

It is quite remarkable how the various ideas, events, and individuals that shape history can have a significant impact, create memorable moments, or become notorious. These elements weave together to form a fabric of the human narrative that deserves greater appreciation for its instructional value or as cautionary tales. 

I have begun to take detailed notes and establish connections between different observations, sounds, and memories. These reflections may be incorporated into future blog posts.

Dreamscape: Was this old Manchester?

Back to the yesterdays of yesteryear

The wonder of dreamland and what one can discover in almost hallucinatory repose is an interesting spectacle. The other night, I walked by the University of Manchester and landed in a picturesque landscape more than 40 years ago, buildings I recognised and things that had changed.

A distinct Manchester Business School sponsored by a large conglomerate, its hoarding atop the school, so unmistakable, yet I forget. Buildings that have been replaced, old in Victorian red brick or new with the facade of brutalist architecture in stark concrete, I was somewhere I knew and did not know.

A picturesque idyll, I recall

Oxford Road was a narrow and busy tree-lined avenue, looking like a forlorn escape from the city to a remote location that you might only visit on business or purpose alone. A village road with cottages from a bygone time, now lost to the sepia of a picture found in the attic of a long-gone ancestor’s home.

I walked up the nondescript pavement that looked more like a grassy verge, dusty rather than macadamised, dust swept up by the heat of summer, all the way to St Peter's Square that had the semblance of a motor park terminus bustling with the energy of an African city station.

In the wonder of dreams

It was full of confusion, I could not find the bus I needed to board, if I could determine where I was even going. I wandered around listless and thinking about why I consciously felt I had travelled back in time from a more familiar present.

Indeed, Manchester was different back then, before I ever came to live in Manchester, but between my dream and the reality, I cannot vouch for truth in my dreams. I guess it just brought many memories to play and create a dreamscape of a time it was best I never experienced. The power of imagination in dreams sends you to times and places you never knew existed.

Childhood: When parents think they know best

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of the decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]

Childhood: Concerns, memories, and traumas

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments and one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]

Dr William George Wykeham Legg (Willy)

Sadly, it happened

As we suspected without putting words to our thoughts, a message that we received late yesterday came with the confirmation that a friend had passed on after a protracted illness.

I never met Dr William Legg, known as Willy to many; he was born in Zimbabwe and even though he travelled the world for work and his medical education, he was Rhodesian and Zimbabwean, part of a cohort of typically white Africans that apart from their distinctive appearance would pass for native in manner, tongue, and probably outlook too.

It was through Brian that I made an acquaintance with Willy, who was ever courteous, wise, and, well, naughty. I guess with the people who crossed his path due to his profession, you acquire a facility to engage anyone at any level and keep them totally at ease.

Some interactions to note

Whenever he asked Brian to pass his regards to me, there was something lewdly impolite that he also expected Brian to do, to ensure I got the message completely. Seeing my interest in not just Brian but Bulawayo too where he lived, he sent me an old hard-cover book on Bulawayo that contained language that would not pass the censure of a copywriter today.

It depicted a time and place that once was with an engaging narrative that made you want to make off to see, feel, and experience Zimbabwe. There was an expectation that we would meet as he desired to take me to the Matopos Hills, and I was more than interested as that is also where Cecil John Rhodes was buried.

A thought in closing

Alas! We never got to do that, as I have yet to visit Zimbabwe, and he had become quite increasingly frail over the last few years. While having a very active mind to the end, his body literally incapacitated him.

I have heard and read many stories about Willy. He spoke fluent Ndebele, could make chapatis from scratch, was a doctor to many, and a teacher of the medical sciences to many more.

To Brian, he was a friend, a boss, a confidante, a mentor, a father figure, and much more. It is with him that I grieve the passing of Dr William Legg. May his gentle soul rest in peace.

Lost in Moss Side

Thinking of the estates of yore

The night of the first Nigel Benn vs. Chris Eubank boxing match, I arrived at London Heathrow on a business trip to get computer kit and software for NextStep Limited, a desktop publishing outfit in which I had a 30% stake along with a majority stakeholder who was a lawyer and a director of the United Bank of Africa. This was the 18^th of November 1990 and Margaret Thatcher was on her way out. Nowadays, I get mistaken for Chris Eubank.

Totally unaware of where I was going, I had some addresses to doorstep for the week or so that I would be in the UK. Out to West Ham, I went and my former schoolmate no longer lived at that address, so I made it back into London on the tube and then the bus to Hordle Promenade North in Peckham, an estate in my total naivety at almost 10:00 PM with £1,500 in my breast pocket.

I knocked on the nondescript door for more than 10 minutes, the tumult of excited television viewers inside meant I could not be heard and then my friend who no longer lived there but was watching the boxing match with his cousins came to the door as if to leave for his home and was met with my visage. Surprise and shock, he became my host for the fortnight of my stay, his place way out in Surbiton.

Peckham over 30 years ago was a different place from what it is today, one could say the housing estates of that time, a habitue of drugs, crime, and many other vices are centuries behind what it has become. A few days over a decade after my adventurous visit, on the 27^th of November 2000, Damilola Taylor lost his life to a stabbing in a stairwell of the North Peckham Estate. In early 1991, I did live on Sumner Estate for a few months, after my second return to the UK.

A long time from Gunchester

Earlier this evening, I called an Uber cab in the middle of Moss Side in Manchester having decided to go on a wander of discovery from Hulme where I had gone shopping for some African goods. All the while, I was on the phone with Brian, but some 30 years ago, not only would I have never ventured into this locality, but the E-Class Mercedes Benz that picked me up might well have found a forcefully new owner with the driver who dared to arrive to pick his fare fighting for his life.

Such was the issue of gang violence, gun and knife crime, illicit drugs and muggings in inner city estates, the aforementioned being considered one of the most deprived residential areas in Western Europe at that time. Crime in Manchester earned the city the moniker of Gunchester and Madchester.

Even in 1996 when I first visited Manchester, I could not get a black cab to take me from the city centre to a venue in Moss Side. Once again oblivious of the situation and in my naivety, I found a cab ride in a literally battered taxicab that in the old times I would think any self-respecting horse would refuse to draw.

Things have no doubt changed, for I walked down the side of the Heineken Brewery into Moss Side, by some interesting church buildings, the bethel of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star and across the road was the Church of God of Prophecy where some churchly dressed madams of ethnic origin seemed to be gathering that I had assumptions to which Brian made an unprintable quip.

The Brotherhood of the Cross & Star in Moss Side

Church of God of Prophecy in Moss Side

I think I am lost

I went through a park with the mind that I would get to the upper reaches of Oxford Road and walk down between the University of Manchester and the Manchester Metropolitan University to get home. As I exited the park the street name looked familiar, and I imagined I was not far off known terrain.

Soon, I said to Brian, as I was regaling him with the history of Moss Side, “I think I am lost.” I pressed on up another street, thinking I would soon be in a place of safety before it dawned on me that I was indeed lost.

When I switched on my Google Maps, I had been walking further away from home the only familiar location I could see on the map was a restaurant I visited almost 11 years ago. I got there with a taxi; it was not a walk.

Unbeknownst to me, my mobile phone was also running low on battery, and it was just fortunate that I decided to call Uber because just as I sat in the taxi our journey was about to commence. My phone died.

Many notes to self

You can have your phone with you, but you must always ensure you have enough juice to embark on silly adventures for if you lose the ability to communicate or find your way, you could well be quite endangered. A dead phone is just as good as not having taken your phone with you.

While is it unlikely I would have been so totally lost in Manchester, it would have taken a loss of composure and asking the wrong person to be presented with dire circumstances and we should curtail evil imagination.

Brian who was already aware that I was lost in Moss Side did not get to speak to me until I had returned home some 15 minutes later. I could imagine he would have been beside himself with glee knowing that this usually orderly man had now got himself into a pickle, totally of my own making.

Note to self: Many to write.

Hello in There Over There

Hello in There · Bette Midler - John Prine

Looking out into the day

Life in the city presents a window of observation both literally and figuratively. If I cranked my neck looking out to the right, I would see the main road, full of traffic, the missing Venetian blinds pulled down by those who are not gentle of touch might offer a spectacle in flagrante delicto of things better kept out of view.

On occasions, where I have been asked about the weather, a predilection to Miss Havisham’s shunning of the public might suggest that one is unaware of where the sun or the clouds might have come to an agreement about what day they want to show.

Left to my own devices, I will know nothing of what happens in my city until after the event. A hermit untouched and unknown, yet conversant and connected in isolation from sensual interaction.

A part of apartment life

Then, so much information filters in like sunrays on a brilliantly sunny day. From the fourth floor of the apartment block opposite and across the street, I know they are in because they open the window that reflects a blast of light into my living room. Should I wave to them?

For the past two days, the first-floor apartment across from mine had the blinds drawn. They are on holiday one must presume for nothing in the weather of the past couple of days supports the need to shelter from enjoying the elements. They appear to be a partying lot, not that I might haphazardly identify them on the street. They are a function of the apartment in which they live, as I might have been an operatic revue of the unspeakable that excites chortles and giggles.

Old people maybe not lonesome

To the left on the second floor, at the breaking of the dawn, an old man sits at the window looking at a world that his youth once participated in with verve and vigour. The lady who sometimes sits with him might be the wife of decades of marital bliss, a companion of life and experience, with whom living out the rest of their days might stretch to a time beyond record.

The stories in those faces, the memories that fetch fresh waters from wells of existence we could not begin to fathom. They could be parents, likely grandparents, never doubt them being great grandparents, but no little girl’s face has replaced the visage that has met my gaze.

Maybe they see me when I see them, if they ever noticed; for I have watched that window from my desk for years, I could wave at them to say, “Hello! In there”.

Lever whatever forever

Some broken hearts do mend

Sometimes, I am caught in introspection and think about what makes a day significant that I might not recall. As I stepped out of the bath this morning, after my shower, two things came to the fore.

The passage of a week and what might have been a 51^st birthday but sadly a posthumous one, and almost 15 years since he passed. You are reminded that there are people who for the time they were in your life, for good or bad, and no matter the length of time, you cannot forget.

Whilst I rarely now think of Christopher Clark and less so of what could have been, for the time that I knew him and the headiness of silly that I acquired in my dealings with him, I know how just the chemistry between people can disarm, that any reasonableness is lost to deep emotional connection.

Let yourself be human

On reflection, I wonder how I got caught out, yet I am glad I allowed myself to be vulnerable, to be a fool in love, to understand that sometimes I need to break away and protect my heart as some dealings reveal the depth of your fragility. You learn tough lessons about relationships and even think you will never let go again.

Never is a funny reaction, it is for that moment most of the time than forever. I rarely ever think in the never, because, if ever something else presents, what you sever out of never is not usually the lever to whatever happens in the ever beyond the present. Putting things behind you for the possibility of being surprised and offered the opportunity to do something new must be one amazing pleasure of life.

With life there must be a readiness to enjoy, to find and understand love, to have that fragile heart handled by such caring hands and to embrace the wonderful that many miss or never see. Any other questions and there are many that course through your mind like dodgem cars in an amusement park, you’ll find the answers to, along the way.

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.