The case of the abusive co-passenger

A short and eventful journey

On the 18^th of December, last year, I was returning from a vanity trip to Paris to keep up my loyalty status with KLM/AirFrance. On arrival at Manchester Airport, I boarded the train for a 17-minute journey to Manchester Piccadilly Station. It was more eventful than I expected.

The coach I boarded was closest to the top of the platform and as the train was about to leave, it meant people were rushing onto the train through our coach. I could not put my bags away as other passengers were trying to get by. It meant, I had to lean over my seat, opposite me across the aisle, another passenger was leaning over his seat for the same reason.

It took a while for everyone to get through, but they all eventually did. It was at that point that my co-passenger on the other side accosted me and literally shouted in my face asking whether I would allow him to put his bags away. I ignored him because there was no reason to shout at me, but he continued being an irritant.

The abuse was a torrent

Then I answered him back, “If you want to address me, you do not shout at me.” He repeated what I said to ridicule me and then as he sat down he launched into a tirade of abuse. None of which I answered to until he got to say, “This is England,” and something along the lines that I needed to return to where I came from.

To which I responded, “I am English too.” Then another passenger adjured him to stop all that racist nonsense. Without pausing, he laid into the other passenger with torrents of unspeakable abuse. Meanwhile, someone else on the train had called the police and informed them of the ensuing altercation.

The train conductor came through, checked our tickets and then called me aside to ask about the fracas and whether I wanted to involve the police. The episode did not affect me that much, but I thought the man should not get away with such unwarranted and abusive behaviour, I acquiesced to having the police involved in the matter.

The goodly police acted well

When we arrived at Manchester Piccadilly Station, the police boarded the train, they invited me to state my case and got the offending passenger off the train, he was both shocked and surprised as they handcuffed him and took him away. I was taken to the police station where I was made comfortable, served tea and invited to give a statement.

Other passengers as we disembarked offered their names and addresses as witnesses to the episode, I felt buoyed by the support of all the other people who felt scandalised by the event. Going through the formalities, I was asked if I needed victim support, therapy and all sorts of help. I did not feel a victim even if I was shaken by the encounter and soon I was on my way home.

Charged and convicted

The man was kept in custody for the night and consequently charged with the offence of 'Racially / religiously aggravated harassment/alarm / distress by words/writing'. Apparently, as the case was being prepared, he committed another similar offence having not learnt the error of his ways.

The British Transport Police kept me informed of the developments through a liaison office, I was even invited to give a witness impact statement which I declined. Over months, a date was set for a court appeared and adjourned twice until it was completely resolved at the end of August.

The man pleaded guilty to the charges and he was fined £600 plus £100 legal costs, a chance encounter of unnecessarily boorish behaviour that he probably had gotten away with many times before had caught up with him and I am glad that I decided to allow the police to intervene, not so much for my sake, but to hopefully teach the man a lesson, that abusing strangers on a train may come with grave consequences and you never know which of those strangers could cause you avoidable grief.

That, I believe is the end of the matter, I will call the Witness & Case Officer later in the week to thank her for her help and support.

Thought Picnic: Never underestimate the memory of a child

The danger of remembering

Sometimes, I consider myself a dangerous man, not because I am violent and ready to do any person any harm, but because I have dangerously keen memory.

I can observe and recall, experience and relate, participate and remember such ideas, events, places, things I saw or hear, what was or not done in such detail as to find myself somewhere on the autism spectrum.

How far bad my memory goes, I cannot tell to an exact time, I do not remember the trauma of my premature birth nor the months of incubation and I probably do not want to, it serves no particular purpose, though I have been informed of certain circumstances around my nativity and consequent development, probably grist for a possible life story.

Remembering from long ago

However, there are memories from around the age of three that I can recall, not only that, some do playback as vividly as if I were watching a film, all in my mind. Those almost flashbacks seem to be readily accessible and very useful, disarmingly useful indeed.

With a memory like that, it also means I do not forget, or it is not easy for me to forget what has been committed to memory with all the accompanying activities that make that memory within recall. A sound, maybe of music, perceiving a smell of something, seeing something that looks familiar, or thoughts that churn like delving into a lucky dip basket to retrieve a moment or moments.

Long ago a child did see

Then envision the scenario where a child is neither oblivious of or unperceptive of their environment, the tension in the home, the things adults attempt to conceal from our view that we see and understand too clearly but are given no voice to express. Like I said to an uncle something ago, we the children see all these things, do not be deluded into thinking we are blind or that the passage of time would bring a blurring of the memory into forgetfulness.

Yet, people forget, they ask questions they should not ask and get answers they never expect. They raise ghosts of the past and I built out the cities in which those ghosts once lived amongst us. The instigate issues today forgetting that every comet has a long tail, just as significant as the comet itself. Indeed, if there is a backstory, it is probably going to come to the fore.

See that you never forget

Maybe, it is a gift, or it is a burden, I cannot deny it exists and I am not shy to bring it out, my silence should never be taken for the absence of context, depth, reason and attribution. The things left unsaid have probably not ripened enough for that time and place.

Yet, people forget, they stir the still waters, plumb the depths of mysteries and miseries seeking some justification which when given a construct and a provenance might well change the outcomes. I do not want to be feared and I do not want to be taken granted, I will speak to the present and speak to the memory.

Never underestimate the mind that has little capacity to forget, all the good comes with gratitude, let us not talk of the other.

When the cult of mother becomes a curse

Speaking of the oracles

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. This is a saying in Yoruba that is not that easy to translate without losing the fundamentals of meaning and context.

Òrìṣà in Yoruba is the core of the indigenous animist culture representing the supernatural, elemental spirits that are varied depictions of polytheistic deities, powerful, revered, worshipped and honoured. In the main, they traverse the early plane in legend as human and the heavenly plane as spirits, they are the mainstay of the deepest cultural identity of the Yoruba.

Only, a decade ago, I had to reflect on who the Yoruba were when I met two Cuban professors whilst on holiday who appeared to have more insight and knowledge of Yoruba myths, mythologies and legend than I ever knew. Steeped in superstition in what Lord Lugard dismissed as a ‘vague dread of the supernatural’, you probably would never understand the Yoruba without being Yoruba.

Blog - Who are the Yoruba?

The enduring hold of our oracles

I might extend that to suggest the Yoruba influence that remains strong in the practices as varied as Santería, Candomblé, Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda, and Oyotunji suggests some fundamental underpinning of the mother culture has been lost to the influx of new religions that have in most cases branded these traditions as savage, uncivilised and inherently evil.

Yet, these beliefs have sustained people for centuries and endure in the spirituality of the peoples and their descendants of the new world who were trafficked in the malevolence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Òrìṣà bí ìyá ò sí. Indicates that the mother or motherhood usually as seen from the perspective of the child is the genre of elemental spirits worthy and possibly demanding of worship, adoration and adulation.

In the cult of mother

Recently, in watching a film and a television dramatization, I was exposed to an interesting dynamic between mother and child, the blood relationship persisted to serve the purposeful hold of the Òrìṣà mother on the worshipper child, but it was progressively damaged through abuse brought on by drug addiction.

A child desires of a mother love, attention, care, protection, maybe encouragement and even guidance, but some children get little of that because the mother’s capacity to mother in a somewhat ideal mothering situation is impaired by personal struggles that distract the mother from that objective.

In the one case, as in the film, Moonlight, the mother only seemed to come to, late in life whilst in rehabilitation and she profusely apologised for being less of a mother than she could have been. It was a time of tears, of hugs and of healing.

Blog - My own #Moonlight story is not a movie

Breaking the cult of mother

In the television drama, it was the 6^th episode of the 5^th Series of Law and Order: UK, called Deal where a drug-addict mother could care less about her son, first blaming her 13-year old son who for years had been told he was responsible for her problems and then when she was owing money to her drug dealer, she sold her son to the drug dealer to abuse as he saw fit.

The Òrìṣà mother bond was kept strong with threats to kill the boy’s mother if he stepped out of line. It is not until he saw that his mother had indeed sold him that the wicked Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child hold and bond was broken.

The travails of mother and child

The Yoruba culture places great burdens of responsibility and duty on the worshipper child to serve and sacrifice to the Òrìṣà mother, which in many cases is a willing and honourable function in the life of a child who has had positive influences of the mother, mothering and motherhood.

We as child strive to do as much as we can to uphold that Òrìṣà – worshipper bond, yet, that bond can be broken, broken beyond repair by agency or acts of either or both mother and child. The addiction that belies incapacity does not have to be drugs, it could be any other activity that brings on the infirmity breaks that maternal bond.

At peace, away from mother

As I wrote in my blog on Moonlight, the case of my mother is an addiction to a syncretism that combines elements of Judaism and Christianity with African-initiated interpretations of scripture along with strange animist traditions enlivened by incantations of the Psalms, rituals and holy waters, the result of which has broken the Òrìṣà mother – worshipper child bond.

Whilst it pains me that there is no relationship of any note between us, I cannot help but see my mother through the prism of those other mother addicts with no prospect of a Moonlight ending, because somewhere down the line she sold that motherhood to her devotion, hoping my fear of it would bring me into line, like the drug dealer’s threat to the boy.

Coming to terms with this has meant that I have decided not to waste precious time trying to make peace, but as I learnt in a conversation with a dear friend, I must find ways to be at peace with myself. I write about these things because I believe I am not alone in this kind of experience, it is also my own personal therapy in resolving the deep conflicts of the heart.

Thought Picnic: Running on empty

The eyes can’t see

Almost two decades ago, I had a daring adventure that had me calling up a driving school with the aim of learning how to drive. Now, it was an unlikely prospect, but it was a demon I had to face up to. To prove to myself that I could be in control of such a vehicle which unlike a bicycle had control abstracted from direct interference.

In the back of my mind, I had another issue, I was concerned about my sight, I am short-sighted with the complication of astigmatism in one eye, which means I find it difficult to have stereo vision and by consequence, judging distance versus speed is a poorly developed skill.

I did not learn I had the astigmatic condition until I was in my 30s and it was only then that I had some corrective measures in my glasses, but the damage had been done as I learnt that this could have been corrected at childhood and it probably explains why I was so poor at tennis as a kid, I could never hit ball, because I could not anticipate as it bounced towards me.

Braking suddenly

However, the driving school tutor arrived at my door, I got in the car and we went through a few preliminary issues of concerns, intentions and safety. Critical to me was that we should not drive onto a major road, that we should only do the quiet streets of my neighbourhood. We had not driven 5 minutes when ahead of me, I saw a busy road and I slammed on the brakes.

This could have been my first accident with whiplash to boot, for unbeknownst to me, there was a fire engine behind us. I scolded the tutor for putting me in that situation and he scolded me back for stopping suddenly and endangering both of us. I was having none of it as I stepped out of the car to stop me lessons there and then.

He successfully calmed my nerves down, I got back in the car and we did another 6 days of driving, by which time, I did make it onto major roads, managed the three-point turn, but never fully mastered reversing into a parking space. I knew I could do it, but considering my limitations, I aborted that quest.

Running on empty

Now, consider one of those scenarios where you are travelling in a car on a long journey late at night and from the passenger’s seat, you notice the fuel gauge is reading to the left on E, 'Empty'. I am told it does not necessarily indicate an empty tank, there is some reserve fuel that could give you another few miles, one cannot say.

The thoughts begin to fill your mind with anxiety and trepidation, whether the car would suddenly stop in the middle of nowhere far from civilisation, maybe that light in the distance is a petrol station rather than a motel or a fast food joint, it could be that you get to the petrol station and you have no means to buy petrol, but we are getting ahead of ourselves, until then, you are running on empty.

Running on empty is a test of resilience, the demands of hope over possible disappointment coasting on despair, one is living dangerously in possibly what was an avoidable situation. We have all been there before, and if you have never had that experience ever, you probably have a perfect life, good for you.

Life after plenty

I have found myself running on empty at many stages of life, completely unaware of how much reserve fuel I have in time, in expectation, in hope and in realisation when I find, time, means and place to refill my tank and put aside the heretofore looming catastrophe.

At the time, you agonise between going at your own speed and reaching out for help, how from a life of individuality and independence do you seek assistance when you need it most? Something in the psyche fights against vulnerability defining you and in the process, you probably deny certain qualities of your humanity.

The need to show emotion, probably a moment to shed tears, finding a shoulder and readily leaning on it, meeting someone who not only listens but is able and ready to meet you at that very point of need.

For a better story

How we survive and thrive can sometimes be a mystery and there are times when people do forget that you are weak even when you seem to be strong, you have nothing much as you present a veneer of plenty, your apparent destitution will only be discovered through engagement and empathy. Running on empty is not the end of the journey even if it presages a sudden end to that journey.

I am thankful that there is some reserve, I do not know how much or for how long this journey would continue and might get to a petrol station and fill up before the car stops. Such is the feeling of a job seeker, the savings are drained, the bills pile up and privations come to the fore as you eke out subsistence from literally nothing. Running on empty is an experience in the hope it becomes a story told from a better standpoint very soon.

A storied story

When I look at my life story,
In the hope that I have more of a story,
I am amazed at the story,
Mostly unscripted, yet a story,
From the birth of my story,
Through an ever-evolving story,
My blessings are my story,
My hardships too, my story,
In my thoughts, I craft a story,
In my writing, I tell a story,
As I suffer, buds another story,
I become stories within a story,
For all I have done is a story,
I remain responsible for the story,
The mistakes that cloud our story,
The good fortune that lights the story,
With struggles of an overcoming story,
If I ever get to write a good story,
Ye all shall read of that story.

Opinion: The utter dehumanisation of Kim Wall

Responsibility is not outdated

This matter cuts to my heart that I am almost left speechless, yet, I find it is a topic on which I must comment even in the jumble of thoughts that afflict me.

A female freelance journalist researching a maverick submariner, met up with him one evening, apparently went on a submarine ride with him and unfortunately never returned home. The following morning, the submariner was rescued from his sinking submarine and as to the whereabouts of his guest, he said he dropped her off on an island the night before.

Eventually, the submarine was retrieved from the waterbed where it sunk and there was still no sign of the journalist, however, it was impossible not to hold the submariner responsible for the disappearance of the journalist, since he was last seen with her.

How you deal with accidents matter

Then, just as mystery piled on misery, a human torso washed up on a beach just as the submariner changed his story to suggest the journalist came to her demise by accident on submariner and he buried her at sea. The said torso, yet to be confirmed to be the missing journalist was apparently deliberately mutilated.

The journalist was Kim Wall, aged 30, Swedish and quite well accomplished, the submariner was Peter Madsen, aged 46 and Danish. [Independent]

This narrative disturbs and perturbs me on so many levels, accidents do happen whether by commission or omission, but most particularly, there must be a greater sense of responsibility at play. Kim Wall was the guest Peter Madsen on his possibly precarious vessel, it meant on a basic level that he had a sense of great duty to ensuring the safety of his guest and an all-consuming responsibility to ensure that he delivered safely back to shore after their meeting.

How reaction indicts you

Whatever, the accident might have been on the submarine, Peter Madsen should have come back to the surface if the submarine were submerged and immediately contacted the emergency services to come to the aid of Kim Wall to determine with certainty the mortal danger she faced after the said accident.

If Peter Madsen could not have delivered Kim Wall alive to shore, the basic sense of awareness of his responsibility should have been to bring her body back to shore and contact the police and her next-of-kin, ensuring a proper investigation of the event would lead to possibly acceptable conclusions.

I cannot speak to the state of mind of Peter Madsen, he was utterly irresponsible, his conduct extremely reprehensible, and his actions absolutely contemptible. That he did not readily assume responsibility for the safety of Kim Wal that he lied to deflect blame is not only cowardice, it presents a clear disrespect for the person and dignity of Kim Wall whether living or dead.

This was unforgivable

However, what shocks me to the core is how on Kim Wall’s death in his care, he arrogated to himself the right and authority to dispose of her body at sea without any reference or consultation with any of her family or friends. If that is not one of the greatest acts of gross inhumanity ever observed in recent times, I wonder what is.

Peter Madsen’s inability to immediately recognise the gravity of this criminality, for there is no other word to begin to broach this matter with any depth, is beyond belief. Whilst the death of Kim Wall might well have been an accident, for we do not know what happened aboard the submarine, one cannot divorce this matter from the violence against women that continues into death by the desecration of her humanity through throwing her into the sea like some dead fish.

Nothing Peter Madsen did can be found excusable, I cannot find anything defensible in the whole matter and it is necessary that justice for Kim Wall be found in visiting the full force of the law on Peter Madsen without mitigation. He was evil and grotesquely so, such as his ilk must never walk the streets where the civilised walk again, he is barely human and belongs in permanent sequestration for the safety of all. He deserves no mercy, not in the slightest.

Thought Picnic: Personal questions in the aftermath of Charlottesville

Where learning history matters

There are events in the world today that may not directly affect one, but cannot be ignored as they bring to the fore some critical issues of identity and identification in the context of residence, heritage, knowledge, history and an uncertain future.

In terms of history and knowledge, there is an understanding and appreciation of the trading of humanity as cargo for slave labour and the resulting burden of deprivation and civil rights struggle that reflects the plight of the underprivileged across the globe in terms of racial prejudice, gender inequality, wealth gaps, the voiceless minors, the sexuality minorities, the religiously oppressed and those for all sorts of reasons seemingly condemned to be the lesser of our diverse humanity.

A new angle of white privilege

The Charlottesville situation has become an instructive exemplifier of a broken society, that after so many protests and agitation in the last decade of law enforcement brutality in the senseless killing of young black people in America, it has taken the killing of a Caucasian lady in Heather D. Heyer by another Caucasian man in James Alex Fields Jr. to bring the issue of race and class into a turbulent national American if not global discussion. [Wikipedia]

African-Americans have hit the streets with Black Lives Matter, but the reality of Charlottesville shows that bizarrely and practically for anything to happen in America and possibly elsewhere in the western world, White Lives Matter in context and event first for engagement to become universal. This represents the epitome of White privilege.

A Nero on the fiddle

By consequence, it also revealed President Trump’s incapacity to reflect and consider his position as leader of a nation he intends to make great again to find the words and actions necessary to unite the whole country in all its diversity towards the purpose of greatness. Rather, he stood in the dividing line between the conflicting issues and spiritedly widened the gulf irresponsibly like Emperor Nero long before him who fiddled whilst Rome burnt down around him. [This is more metaphor of relevance than an allusion to historical fact.]

Where a man who such power should have found a way to walk in the worn shoes of the many whose soles bleed from treading the rugged roads as they flee the ravenous beasts of terrible American history roam to devour any that seek a semblance of freedom, like a cloven hoofed mule he laid a trail of dung from the beasts to people in flight exposing all to peril in senseless and unguarded verbosity.

We were once again intimated with the unfortunate observation that never in contemporary times has any man been given such great responsibility to only use the office he occupies with no inkling of duty or purpose, his breath-taking irresponsibility which has received deserved opprobrium might only well stiffen his unteachable mule-like imperviousness to reasonable discourse.

The questions that arise

However, the broader issue extends to how as a minority of many degrees this affects my status, my identity and sense of safety in a Brexit-convulsed United Kingdom. For instance, where have elements of privilege I have enjoyed by circumstance, upbringing and good fortune created both a profile and a shield against suffering what others like me do suffer?

What has given me the sense of highly-developed self-esteem that allows me to tackle racialised scenarios with the purpose to educate rather than take offence?

Why have I now begun to realise that I have in many cases endured and absorbed slight, abuse, belittlement, humiliation and denigration from people who in other circumstances besides the ones that brought us together in seemingly egalitarian settings where were it not for that, they would never have found the means to venture into my purview, but for the privilege of nature rather than upbringing?

Embracing my heritage and my humanity

Yes, I am presented with many questions I must find new answers to in the journey of self-discovery, yet, at the same time, I must not be absorbed by this quest as to lose my privileged sense of well-being, however, I hope it allows me to walk a long hard mile in the shoes of many who have never found opportunity, privilege, fortune or right as I have found to thrive everywhere I have lived.

I cannot deny who I am and the rich heritage that makes up my person, my personality and my outlook, but I have to embrace and contextualise how my own experience should engage better in either an individual or in a broader way redound to others who I may be blessed to bestow a greater sense of self-esteem and self-respect in our wonderfully amazing humanity.

There are lessons to learn from what happened in the aftermath of Charlottesville, whether that opportunity would be taken is to be left to history, I hope many are taking the better lessons to heart.