Thought Picnic: Episodes of mental health review

Our fragility in strange cases

It would appear it is open season for mental health, everyone is talking about it, and even if in my writings I have not particularly framed it in terms of extricating myself in the heat of circumstance, certain allusions have been made towards how things have been handled in adversity, in difficulty, in loneliness, or in general.

Within the body of stoicism is a lot of vulnerability and fragility, people mistakenly assume some people are made of sterner stuff to all appearances and forget that no one is essentially superhuman and inviolable, coping mechanisms are just that, the extent to which under pressure there is just that little more that comes to bear is what prevents cracking.

Too much on the grill

The last week has been heavy with absorption and management, a pilgrimage in planning and the drama of technology creating upset that one just excused oneself from interactive to consideration that life was just normal, though not being recorded. That is the stuff of watching FlightRadar24 through the night and what you are following appearing to do what is not really happening.

A bereavement at the passing of a grand old dame far away set in motion a whole series of concerns along with understanding that navigating the theoretical Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief is a world away from handling the reality of loss, grief, sorrow, arrangements, through the tussle of finality in physical with the continuity in the mental and metaphysical. The best you can do is offer support and comfort; each person has to work their situation through.

In life and in hope

A friend and another find themselves at the end of a diagnosis somewhat inconclusive but hopefully with a path towards management and recovery. My experience does not inform me any better about how to face tough decisions, I am probably just some evidence that you can get to tell a better story, and whatever you are told, you can centre yourself within the situation to ensure you get the best outcomes. It is always your body first before it is their Guinea pig, no matter how good or sure they are.

Sometimes, I get invited to convey a premise with the deft use of language in order to acquire an intended resolution. I am usually up to that challenge, but I rarely subscribe to an exercise in futility. When it is coming up against the dead hand of bureaucracies run by badly automated algorithms that have not consideration of humanity and pressure of sanction is piled on regardless. I prefer to settle at the earliest opportunity and move on. It is a greater relief for all concerned than the prolongation of uncertainty and anxiety.

The week might just end in a flourish, the discrepancy noticed at beginning of the month has been resolved. I probably would not get an apology, but there is a ticking up in the register and that would do me fine. What I need is a place of quiet, quietness, and quietude for the spirit, soul, and body to put things in perspective and a sense of calm.

Childhood: The pupils of Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, Jos - II

Nostalgia gets you here

After blogging for almost 18 years, your blogs become callouts to people in search of information, especially to do with their pasts. You bring up a search engine and would likely type in the name of your primary school or secondary school, flick through the results until one or a few references come up that takes you down memory lane.

I attended three primary schools, the Army Children’s School in Kaduna where I started, and my three memories are my first day at school when I ran out of class to meet my mother as soon as I saw her come to collect me after school, the Indian headmistress who cracked the knuckles of kids who had not cut their fingernails and that is how we all became nail biters, and when I hopped on a school bus just as my dad arrived to pick me up, we did a good tour of Kaduna before I got off.

More school memories abound

Then Corona School, Shamrock House in Bukuru, Jos, where I spent 3 memorable years and have the keenest recollections of childhood from class 3 to class 5, having jumped a class in my transfer from Kaduna to Jos. During this time, I have written a lot and have had many comments from others who have found my blogs. To that end, I have met up with some old schoolmates and even seen a picture of one of my old teachers who is now in her 90s.

We returned to Kaduna in mid-1975 where I attended the Sacred Heart Primary School for my last year, and though I was involved in a number of extracurricular activities and played the part of Pharoah in our production of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, I was absent for 4 months taking common entrance examinations in the southwest of Nigeria for secondary school admission. I returned for the last month to take exams and passed in the top half of the class.

Compiling recollections for posterity

As I have sometimes lost comments posted to my blogs, especially when I have had to migrate it from another platform, I now move some comments into blogs of their own. The many responses I get for the Corona School blogs cover a broad period of time from well before the school was on that site where I attended to long after I graduated, none of that knowledge would have been acquired with the blogs.

I wrote the first one in 2007 and then a couple more in 2008 after which I compiled in 2009 into a blog with the comments left on it. I guess it is now time to do that compilation again, because of the new comments posted and one quite recently too. All these would be cross-referenced, for the reader to get the whole story.

Blog - Rayfield, Jos - Memories of a child (May 2007)

Blog - Childhood: The pupils of Corona School, Shamrock House, Bukuru, Jos (May 2009) – The first comment compilation blog.

More comments in a blog

Once again, I thank everyone who left comments on the blogs, I have compiled the more recent ones below, so from Armstrong, Joe Miner, Julie Sanda and the anonymous poster the first compilation, I now have a guest, Brenda and Marianne whose surnames I am not too sure of and William Gardner.

My annotations and comments are in parenthesis [], the comments are edited for basic grammatical and punctuation to improve clarity without losing context or intent of the original posters.

5. Guest – 24^th May 2012

WOW! Today, I googled the Yelwa [Club] pool out of curiosity and stumbled on your blog and was brought back in time. I also was there much later (1983) through my father who was a microwave engineer (Jay Clark) I was as student with Ms. Opara as headmistress. Thank you for your blog I will continue to read your posts.

6. Brenda (Gelul) from Holland – 24^th May 2012

Wow! Amazing reading all those memories.

I remember Corona School and Hillcrest [School] too. We used to live near the Corona School. My best memory is the chopones [I don’t know what these are] this woman used to sell near the school. We loved them and cost 1 Naira [each].

Most my memories are about the food I loved, the Nigerian foods. [I] miss Nigeria loads being born there and growing up there it will for ever be in my heart.

7. Marianne [Geluk} – 25^th June 2012

[This seems to be another lady from Holland with a similar story as the last, probably the same person, I don’t know.]

So cool, I grew up there too. Corona School then Hillcrest School. I remember the swimming pool.we used to go to the club [I suppose this is Yelwa Club] loads of with my parents and we ate pep [I have no idea what this is.] & chicken with all the other people. So many cool memories, still miss it.

8. William Gardner – 24^th July 2021

I came across this super blog. No idea if it’s still reviewed [It is.], my name is William Gardner, my parents, Jim and Ina. Just to say to say I have strong memories of my time at Shamrock School in Bukuru.

My parents were from Edinburgh, Scotland and my father worked in tin mining (ATMN) [Amalgamated Tin Mines of Nigeria]. Previously served with the West African Forces during the Second World War.

He was in the British Royal Engineers and was in Kaduna and Maiduguri in 1943 before the brigade was sent to Burma until 1946. My father and mother then went to Jos in 1947. I was born there, lived in Sabin Gida (Bukuru), Harwell houses (near Rayfield) and a few other places nearby. I remember going to Shamrock School when I was 5 in 1962.

My teacher was Miss Emby, then Miss Thorogood, and my last teacher I can’t remember her name. Yes, I remember Yelwa Club, snooker, pool, Sunday curry lunch, theatre also used for Badminton. I was sent back to Scotland in 1967 and went to private school and came out to Jos twice a year.

Really loved in being on so many airplanes. I remember the leaders of ATMN and their kids. Great adventure. Mum and Dad retired in 1974.

The Childhood blogs

Nigeria: Gone is the Jos I knew

Childhood: My aunts saw red

Childhood: The fruits of a chicken napping dog

Childhood: Driving the languages of sacrifice

The masterpieces of memory

Even more memories of a child

More memories of a child

Rayfield, Jos - Memories of a child

This extraordinarily amazing woman of Ejigbo community

 A life quite interesting

There is one person I do not sing enough praises of, a kind of strangeness and then familiarity that seems to escape the purview of acknowledgement of humanity, service, motherhood, tenacity and all-round extraordinary. A prophet that is somewhat without honour in their own land.

There are stories we have heard that could be hair-raising, a childhood that seem to offer opportunity but was suffused with such guardian cruelty, yet against such no malice is borne. I watched how distraught they became when that guardian passed on and the final rites were missed by an hour.

In tribulation triumphant

Dockets of tales in a matrimony that seemed to all perfect whilst it was any but, the witnesses of tension and worse that dotted occasions of détente never so sure to survive a season, the spouse pretending to fidelity rarely not there, but we do believe the best of everyone.

In offspring sometimes affected, tainted, or traumatised by that environment, there remained such support hardly appreciated or understood, a dogged focus on protecting the brood and shaping destinies in ways sometimes unintended, yet fundamentally consequential. Here is a masterful ability quite unheralded.

Exceptionally gifted to lift

A person who has charted courses less travelled to become a symbol of relevance that set them out as one to be chosen to pioneer a project of investing in young lives to build a future. The project was tough and arduous, yet adept with skills to manage and marshal, in the pit of the fire and the cold workface, hands were calloused, and faces blackened with soot, but gems were mined that have appreciated in value year on year.

And this is not a culmination, but a journey that overnight a pilgrimage was embarked on fully sponsored by the former uncut rough diamonds whose horizons were not that clear but were given the prospect of a world beyond their locality. They have in this day become persons of means and influence, extending the hand of their mentor into places of power and significance.

Dams of gratitude bursting walls

They return season after season to that anvil of life where they were forged and moulded into implements of change and the chief blacksmith invited time and again to inspect the workmanship of exquisite and priceless provenance wrought in that forge. The power of gratitude flows like brooks into streams, into rivers, into seas and waters that lap lands all over the world.

It is in this that our person is celebrated; Mrs A. J. Akintayo, daughter, lady, woman, teacher, wife, mother, administrator, principal, businesswoman, prophetess, leader, fighter, voice, pilgrim and this list is hardly exhaustive. I salute you, enjoy your trip of a lifetime and there are more to come. You shine and we are exceedingly proud of you.

With the Class of '85 of the then Ejigbo Community High School on the 27th of July 2021
You can laugh this well if you have made lives so good. My mother is in the middle.

The presentation made by the Class of '85
to my mother as the pioneer principal of the then
Ejigbo Community High School that was founded in 1977. 

Thought Picnic: In person or at keyboard, we are people

It is all about people still

There are places on the Internet where I have pitched tents and invited people to picnic with me in the Wild West frontier of the dangerous and unpredictable climes of an ethereal or Internet world that presumes to confer some anonymity where in reality, it hardly does.

The kind of abstraction that allows you to interact from your keyboard that whoever you engage is not so much human but characters you read on the screen might easily rob you of the essential qualities of humanity from basic courtesy and consideration to sympathy, maybe empathy, and a functioning expression of emotional intelligence.

That we can forget that we are dealing with other human beings can unwttingly creep upon us making us completely unaware of what we might be doing and the harm we are causing others. Now, in general, I might pass for quite old-fashioned, and to some, it might be a failing, but my demeanour is one cultivated over decades of education and example, necessary for establishing respectful relationships.

Just a greeting then begin

Just as I cannot see myself entering a room of strangers without offering a greeting before asking a question or making a statement, the same goes for what happens online, the comportment, the respect, the courtesy is no less valid if all you do is encounter people at the tap of your keyboard keys and from what you read on your monitor.

This became an issue when I engaged someone who had time and again visited a forum where on entering he simply made a demand without a greeting. For me, it was irritating and entitled with a bearing of utter disrespect, the audacity of such an attitude was an affront that it could just from its demonstration be acceptable, but not if I had anything to do with it.

Challenging the uncouth

I addressed it suggesting the immediate demand could likely be the formality in places I have never been and how it cannot be considered proper. To which he responded that no one else had complained and I was only one out of so many making an issue of it. Whilst I agreed that I alone took umbrage, you do not need a democracy or a vote to determine the need to treat others with courtesy and respect, it should be a given without any need for prevarication or argument.

The point I was making was simple, when you enter a room of strangers, whether in a live setting or online and have any requests to make, you gain their attention respectfully and courteously with a greeting, now, if that is not a reasonable premise, we might as well all be uncultured and Barbarians. My interlocutor was having none of it, I was an irritation questioning his lien to act as he will in an open forum.

Unwelcomed for obduracy

Open as the forum was, it had clear rules and unwritten norms of courtesy that hinting and addressing were not getting across to our friend. Upping the stakes, I suggested I could both complain and kick him out of the forum. He was not backing down, daring me to do whatever I would and still making his case that a singular request for decorum was insignificant compared to the silent majority of the unperturbed. Yet, to do the right thing should not be a subject of election but one of enthusiastic intention with commensurate action.

And so, with the vested ability and authority I had in the forum, the said person was ejected though not banned, their card is marked. Any new return without a requisite greeting will be frostily met with ejection and without prior engagement. What saddens me is how people act against their best self-interests with obstinacy and obduracy. There is a moment to acquiesce and accept failings when pointed out, and with some humility you can earn the respect of others, but if you default to haughty determinism, you will always come off worse and be excluded from polite company.

That is old-fashioned society and I like it, everyday.

Essential Snobbery 101: Writing letters you hate to write

It has always mattered

I remember once asking to go on an assertiveness course; those courses exist for a reason, my manager scoffed. He said, “Akin, anyone but you needs an assertiveness course.” Whilst I seemed to doubt myself, it appeared there was no doubt that I was an effective communicator.

In my engineering class, many of my classmates did not pay heed to the need to study English, which was a necessary elective. Obviously, we had to run the gauntlet of English lecturers who came to show off their loquacious vocabulary, communicating nothing but providing the entertainment of malapropism and meaningless sesquipedalianism of words strung together without grammatical structure or purpose.

Put it all in

My view was that, regardless of what profession you were in, it was essential that you could convey your ideas in your chosen language of expression with clarity to persuade and to convince. Now, when to comes to written communication, I like to think I am better equipped to get my point across, the intent, the context, the tone, the appeal to their humanity, the veiled insult politely delivered as a slow-working poison that causes little offence whilst eliciting praise, maybe an English putdown can find a showing too.

Concision is not my strongest point, and brevity is probably only needed for telegrams; clarity in prose is what matters more to me, so that by the time the reader is done, I am both comprehended and understood with responses appropriate to my requirements.

That it might tend to flourish or the flowery is a temptation I have too often yielded to, yet as a copy editor and proofreader of other material, I would be more conservative, active, and direct.

Then a grubby email

I guess I hate writing emails that have to do with contractual negotiations; they can be emotional and easily be grubby when professional persuasion is required. In such cases, it must be in the view of a sensible seamstress, like a good skirt, long enough to cover the detail, yet short enough to keep the interest and close the matter.

Once a client wrote to demand payment on the premise that I had been overpaid, by the time I put together the whole chain of evidence that suggested otherwise, what I received was a curt thank you in response and nothing more. Too recently, I noticed an error in my remuneration, not too significant, but on a matter of principle, we had an agreement that appeared to be irregularly and unilaterally recast as something else.

Now, I say

At first, I thought it was an error at the payment processing company; their prompt and useful response suggested it was further up the chain. Grudgingly, I made the case for respecting gentlemen's agreements and signed contracts that had no indication of the variation of terms, then closed with the deployment of the polite 3^rd person singular. “As such, one is owed moneys due.”

The purposeful switch from the apparently casual and familiar to the stuffily formal was for maximum effect. If as a person well known to me, you need to be addressed with titles and formality, you can be sure we are on the business end of issues that need to be addressed with alacrity, importance, and seriousness.

What mattered was that my intervention was effective and what I have requested will be granted; the slight on their part might suggest the need for an apology, not grovelling, just the acceptance of an administrative error on their part that would be made right is enough. Effective communication matters always, and if you are not that good at it, get the training to represent and express yourself better than anyone can.

Strained trained drained

Pricey and ordinary still

After a week in London, I was ready to return home with regrets I had not booked an earlier train back home. Arriving just an hour before my train at the station, I cooled off in the lounge which had taken on a rather exclusive veneer.

The lounge is usually quite busy on Sundays, but it was quite vacant, probably since Avanti West Coast has gone for price exclusivity over market share. Now, we get shown to our seats, and refreshments are served a la carte.

Reserved then unserved

When my train was ready to board, there was already someone in my seat, his ticket did indicate the seat number, but the idea that a seat could be double-booked did not seem that right. So, I asked if it was booked on the 16:12 train. He had a seat reserved alright, but on a different train, he had to vacate my seat and that was just lucky.

A few minutes before the train departed, the train manager unilaterally declared the tarin declassified with all seat reservations invalidated. Those with 1^st Class tickets were to be compensated, but that was not the service paid for. Some ladies who were just asked to move to another carriage I advised to stay as per the notice we just heard.

Reasons most unreasoned

Engaging Avanti West Coast on Twitter, the responder suggested train declassification is usually a last resort for health and safety reasons. I begged to differ as the reason given was because trains were being cancelled and there were engineering works meaning another hour would be added to a typical London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly journey. The reason was commercial and logistical, not remotely anything to do with health or safety.

Then again, we should be used to the so-called compensation default in lieu of the services and goods paid for, it is the reality of rip-off Britain and annoying at that. I can afford the service I paid for in the first instance, I do not need pennies of compensation thrown at me to account for the inability of a setup to act professionally or aim at a modicum of excellence. They seek to get away with anything and you are to make do with the inconvenience and a handout.

Coronavirus streets in London - XXXIX

Peckham of the ethnics

Out from my hotel in the afternoon to meet my best friend at Highbury and Islington Station having realised it is the best place to get a train to Peckham Rye opened a century before I was born, we were caught in the confusion of two similarly named stations the first Dalston Kingsland was well known but Dalston Junction, where we had to change trains, was less so but got our changeover right and were soon at our destination.

Peckham is unwieldly schizophrenic, with ungentrified parts still ethnic and unreconstructed, stuck in the past of dreary and need, sounds and sights as familiar as parts of Africa you might want to avoid, some things here have never changed, you wonder, if ever.

Not a banger of taste

The restaurant I was taken to had a good menu sleeve with a menu that could do be helped with a professional touch, on the many choices on offer, we settled for the Banga soup and pounded yam. As I had never tried Banga soup before, I was in for adventure. It arrived in a clay pot, bubbling hot and ready to scald my fingers then sear my oesophagus, if we got that far.

I cannot say Banga soup was as exciting as it was made out to be, with fish, cow foot, tripe, and beef, the pleasure was lost to temperature control, and it is unlikely another attempt would be made of the fare. I was not disappointed, just not persuaded.

I used to live here

When we were done, the changeable weather could have stopped us from walking, but we started on Peckham High Street and a course of memories 30 years old came into mind. The National Westminster Bank where I opened an account, and I can still remember the Sort Code and Account Number from when the account was closed on my emigration to the Netherlands 21 years ago.

The North Peckham Estate lost to the modern development of pastel brick buildings, the Sumner Road access to Peckham Road is now a park and pedestrianised, I lived an estate to the right, it is all consigned to the history of the long forgotten, then abuse I received in my stretch jeans, I was called a ‘Bloody African’ too many times to count.

Stones on the sides

It rained a bit and soon, we were at Camberwell, the busy junction with a lot of traffic, we crossed the road towards the Oval and passed by the St Mark’s Church, we had to go into the churchyard to read the plaques on the walls. A historic place that was once notorious for being public gallows, the Wesleys, John and Charles did preach their Methodism nearby and the church that stands today was built by subscription. The father of Field Marshall Montgomery of Alamein was a vicar at the church too. [Wikipedia: St Mark’s Church, Kennington]

Old gravestones of what would have been the church cemetery are lined up against the walls of the church courtyard, this was quite all too different except in the ghosts that might have lingered since their markers were moved.

Memories of decades ago

At Archbishop Tenison’s School, named for a one-time Archbishop of Canterbury was the opportunity for a photograph that I sent to an ex, he was a teacher there over two decades ago. The Oval the cricket ground and home of Surrey County Club once sponsored by Foster’s and now by Kia.

The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is a Grade II listed building protected from developers and the oldest gay entertainment venue in South London where on Sundays in the early 90s we came to see drag acts like Lily Savage before she had a television career and dropped that persona for being himself as Paul O’Grady. When the Sunday pub hours kicked in, we decamped to another bar that served Chilli Con Carne, on which site now stands the new American embassy.

Out to Vauxhall, we veered on to the river walk by the River Thames all the way past Lambeth Bridge and Westminster Bridge with The National COVID Memorial Wall on the wall of St Thomas’ Hospital to the London Eye before parting ways at Waterloo Station. Another discovery of London that can only be experienced by walking.