This blog began in 2010 as an offshoot of my weekly newspaper columns. For a while, they ran parallel – often sharing a topic although they were written separately. The newspaper had gone off-line, and an anonymous fan kindly set up this blog.
The most popular recurring subjects of the newspaper columns were unskilled migrant workers and Cuban boat-people. By the time the blog began, those crusades had pretty much run out of steam. They actually hadn’t achieved much, in the face of hostility from our local politicians and bureaucrats.
Domestic servants have always been shamefully exploited by some employers and the Immigration authorities, who regard them as little better than slaves. By law, they are indentured servants – voluntary ones, but highly vulnerable to exploitation. Employers have the legal power to short-pay them and steal from them, and deport them if they complain about that or anything else. Countless crimes go unprosecuted because witnesses have been deported.
Only a small proportion of employers are guilty of such things, but those who do are not held accountable. The guilty ones form a formidable voting bloc, and politicians are always afraid of formidable voting blocs. Jamaican female domestic servants call their conditions of employment “near slavery”, and my columns popularized the term. The Immigration authorities and the exploiters have cleaned up their act somewhat since then, but there are still too many holdouts.
Cuban refugees on ramshackle rafts and boats cross Cayman waters on their way to Honduras, where they join a long-established underground railway up to the USA. To please the Cuban government, our British police force impounds those who physically land in Cayman, and flies them to Havana. There they are excluded from the workforce, so many of the returnees must try their luck again on the next ramshackle craft they can find.
Our Police refuse help to those who pass by – however unlikely they may be to reach Honduras alive. Denying water, food, fuel and medicine to unseaworthy boats contravenes the international law of the sea – a law that saved countless native Caymanians in the islands’ seafaring days. Police boats fend off freelance rescue-attempts; policemen onshore confiscate water etc brought down to the boats, and arrest the guilty parties.
At least, they used to do. They are more observant now of their human-rights obligations – ever since the visit (at my invitation) of a representative from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). A sympathetic reporter and I met her off the plane, and told her the truth of the situation before any government officials could get to her and lie to her. Today, our authorities turn a blind eye to breaches of the formal Memorandum of Understanding with Cuba as often as not. Ours was a meagre victory, but better than nothing.
At the time of the IOM visit, I was a member of a government-appointed Human Rights Committee. I did what I could there, always well aware that they had appointed me purely to keep me quiet. The other appointees blocked my every attempt to improve the lot of the boat people and the migrants in indentured service. As ordered, they concentrated on trivialities and technicalities. In the end, I quit in a burst of publicity.
There is a Human Rights Commission, now, that operates under the same terms of reference that the Committees did. It pretends to care, but doesn’t advance the cause. Ah well, what can you do? Cayman is the regional headquarters of MI6 (Britain’s CIA), so human rights aren’t much of a priority for our colonial administrators back in London.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Inside the rabbit-proof fence
As a boy I once watched a bull being killed at my uncle-in-law’s cattle station in Central Queensland. I have never forgotten the shock. A very large beast, it was, in a pen maybe thirty feet in diameter; a couple of dozen employees and their families leaned against the fence and watched the show.
A man with a rifle – an old Enfield .303 – waited patiently on the fence for the beast to stand still and in the right place, then shot it in the forehead. To my surprise, nothing happened. The man lowered his rifle; the bull stood immobile, as did the spectators. It was eerie. After five seconds – maybe seven or eight – the front knees wobbled slightly, then it collapsed in slow motion in a cloud of dust.
I blogged a while back [The Man from Snowy River, November 2012] about how my Dad used to kill a sheep every ten days, for meat. Dad carefully scraped out the brains – a finicky job that he hated. In my post I noted the difference in attitude between townies and bushies towards the lives and deaths of animals. There are few vegetarians in the bush.
The men of the district organized dingo drives once in a while, and occasionally took potshots at kangaroos. Dingoes were hated because they would kill or cripple sheep for fun (seemingly), and sheep were our livelihood. Kangaroos are classed as a pest – cute though they undoubtedly are – because they nibble the grass too close to the ground and leave none for the sheep. So do rabbits, which were a tremendous pest (though cute, of course) and had to be poisoned en masse in the 1950s because there were too many to shoot.
By rights there shouldn’t have been any dingoes or rabbits on the Darling Downs in Queensland. My Dad’s little patch of five thousand acres was inside both the official rabbit-proof fence and the dingo fence that stretched a thousand miles or so across the State. The whole purpose of the fences (erected and maintained by the State government to this day) was to keep the vermin out of where we lived, so I don’t understand why our men’s dingo-drives were necessary. Mind you, I never saw any bodies, though they talked of finding one or two each time.
The only other things killed in any quantity were snakes. Few of them in our neighbourhood were deadly (unless there was no antidote handy), but all were poisonous to some degree. We boys weren’t allowed to play beneath our house, which sat on two-foot stumps with tin caps over them to frustrate snakes’ attempts to get upstairs.
None ever did, to the best of my knowledge, although I used to imagine a nest of them underneath my bed at night. I slept with a sheet over my head, which I must have been just stupid enough to believe would save me.
Mum was a city-girl, who wasn’t raised to kill snakes. Her job was to pour boiling water on any she found inside the yard and wait till Dad got home. He would break their backs with a length of cable that he mysteriously called “the Kelly”. He had a good eye for snakes, and would watch them carefully while we boys ran and fetched him the Kelly.
If he hit the snake amidships, it couldn’t spring back on him. He was pretty good at it. Only once did he have to resort to shooting one. He never kept a shotgun or a rifle, but he dug out his .45 revolver issued to him during The War (along with a box of bullets) to fight off the expected Japanese invasion.
At dusk one day a snake wriggled under the tilted barrel of chook-food and hid there. Pop lay on the ground and carefully fired six shots into the darkness. Three of them hit, which impressed us immensely. We’d never seen him shoot before, and never even knew he had the gun. What a kick that thing had. POW!
A man with a rifle – an old Enfield .303 – waited patiently on the fence for the beast to stand still and in the right place, then shot it in the forehead. To my surprise, nothing happened. The man lowered his rifle; the bull stood immobile, as did the spectators. It was eerie. After five seconds – maybe seven or eight – the front knees wobbled slightly, then it collapsed in slow motion in a cloud of dust.
I blogged a while back [The Man from Snowy River, November 2012] about how my Dad used to kill a sheep every ten days, for meat. Dad carefully scraped out the brains – a finicky job that he hated. In my post I noted the difference in attitude between townies and bushies towards the lives and deaths of animals. There are few vegetarians in the bush.
The men of the district organized dingo drives once in a while, and occasionally took potshots at kangaroos. Dingoes were hated because they would kill or cripple sheep for fun (seemingly), and sheep were our livelihood. Kangaroos are classed as a pest – cute though they undoubtedly are – because they nibble the grass too close to the ground and leave none for the sheep. So do rabbits, which were a tremendous pest (though cute, of course) and had to be poisoned en masse in the 1950s because there were too many to shoot.
By rights there shouldn’t have been any dingoes or rabbits on the Darling Downs in Queensland. My Dad’s little patch of five thousand acres was inside both the official rabbit-proof fence and the dingo fence that stretched a thousand miles or so across the State. The whole purpose of the fences (erected and maintained by the State government to this day) was to keep the vermin out of where we lived, so I don’t understand why our men’s dingo-drives were necessary. Mind you, I never saw any bodies, though they talked of finding one or two each time.
The only other things killed in any quantity were snakes. Few of them in our neighbourhood were deadly (unless there was no antidote handy), but all were poisonous to some degree. We boys weren’t allowed to play beneath our house, which sat on two-foot stumps with tin caps over them to frustrate snakes’ attempts to get upstairs.
None ever did, to the best of my knowledge, although I used to imagine a nest of them underneath my bed at night. I slept with a sheet over my head, which I must have been just stupid enough to believe would save me.
Mum was a city-girl, who wasn’t raised to kill snakes. Her job was to pour boiling water on any she found inside the yard and wait till Dad got home. He would break their backs with a length of cable that he mysteriously called “the Kelly”. He had a good eye for snakes, and would watch them carefully while we boys ran and fetched him the Kelly.
If he hit the snake amidships, it couldn’t spring back on him. He was pretty good at it. Only once did he have to resort to shooting one. He never kept a shotgun or a rifle, but he dug out his .45 revolver issued to him during The War (along with a box of bullets) to fight off the expected Japanese invasion.
At dusk one day a snake wriggled under the tilted barrel of chook-food and hid there. Pop lay on the ground and carefully fired six shots into the darkness. Three of them hit, which impressed us immensely. We’d never seen him shoot before, and never even knew he had the gun. What a kick that thing had. POW!
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
On a seventy-foot yacht
Sometimes I fret about the world my granddaughters will live in. Of course they’re only young yet, and one or both may work and live in foreign countries, like their father and I have done. But wherever they live, it might not be as comfortable for them as the world Linda and I have lived in, and I wonder how they’ll cope. Will they find work easily? Will they find what health-care they need? Will they have pensions to look forward to in their old age?
They are Norwegians, and Norway has a huge “sovereign fund” that can be called on in tough times. But will it be enough? Several European nations have already reduced their state pensions, or have stolen money from private pension funds; and several US cities have already stolen money from their former employees’ trust funds.
Over-borrowing by greedy politicians has screwed everybody. Will my girls be able to find work at all? Economic commentators tell us that the whole world economy is entering a long depression, in which employment opportunities will be severely limited. High rates of inflation may destroy the value of all paper currencies. What then?
Linda and I have never worked in any one country for long enough to acquire government pension rights, and have never been forced to pay into company pension schemes. So now, we have no pensions at all. However, we also haven’t paid Income Tax since we left Canada in 1967, and working in offshore tax-havens has allowed us to salt our savings away. In effect, we financed our own pension fund, and are drawing on it now, in our retirement. (Note to self: persuade the granddaughters to find jobs in offshore tax- havens.)
The most diligent of plans and hopes will never get it 100% right, though. I recall reading a comment made by some English woman in a newspaper interview, about how she and her husband had been forced to pull in their horns financially, after they both stopped working. “He always dreamt of spending his old age on a seventy-foot yacht with a seventeen-year-old companion,” she said. “Instead, the poor old chap has had to settle for a seventeen-foot boat with a seventy-year-old companion. Hah!”
Here’s a story from fifty years ago, from my time as an auditor with Touche Ross in London... Half a dozen of us young auditors, all in our middle twenties, were standing around the office one day during elevenses, drinking coffee. I was the sole expat, and a newbie, being lauded for my reckless bravery in having struck out on my own to see the world. It was embarrassing.
“We could never do that”, one of the group said; “the company would never give us our jobs back.” “Never mind: there are plenty of other jobs”, I said. “I might not get my job back, when I get home.” “That’s all right for you”, he said: “but we’d lose all our pension rights!” They all paled at the thought.
I had no answer to that. English pensions weren’t portable in those days, and changing employers meant starting a pension programme on the bottom rung again, and walking away from however much had been paid into the old scheme. (Australia didn’t have compulsory pensions.)
Back in our Earls Court flat, my fellow wastrels and I marvelled that a bunch of 24-year-olds would worry about benefits that lay forty years and more into the future. Ah well... I wonder if those chaps today are receiving their full entitlements to their promised pensions. I wonder if any of them are spending their retirement living on a seventy-foot yacht, with or without a seventeen-year-old companion.
They are Norwegians, and Norway has a huge “sovereign fund” that can be called on in tough times. But will it be enough? Several European nations have already reduced their state pensions, or have stolen money from private pension funds; and several US cities have already stolen money from their former employees’ trust funds.
Over-borrowing by greedy politicians has screwed everybody. Will my girls be able to find work at all? Economic commentators tell us that the whole world economy is entering a long depression, in which employment opportunities will be severely limited. High rates of inflation may destroy the value of all paper currencies. What then?
Linda and I have never worked in any one country for long enough to acquire government pension rights, and have never been forced to pay into company pension schemes. So now, we have no pensions at all. However, we also haven’t paid Income Tax since we left Canada in 1967, and working in offshore tax-havens has allowed us to salt our savings away. In effect, we financed our own pension fund, and are drawing on it now, in our retirement. (Note to self: persuade the granddaughters to find jobs in offshore tax- havens.)
The most diligent of plans and hopes will never get it 100% right, though. I recall reading a comment made by some English woman in a newspaper interview, about how she and her husband had been forced to pull in their horns financially, after they both stopped working. “He always dreamt of spending his old age on a seventy-foot yacht with a seventeen-year-old companion,” she said. “Instead, the poor old chap has had to settle for a seventeen-foot boat with a seventy-year-old companion. Hah!”
Here’s a story from fifty years ago, from my time as an auditor with Touche Ross in London... Half a dozen of us young auditors, all in our middle twenties, were standing around the office one day during elevenses, drinking coffee. I was the sole expat, and a newbie, being lauded for my reckless bravery in having struck out on my own to see the world. It was embarrassing.
“We could never do that”, one of the group said; “the company would never give us our jobs back.” “Never mind: there are plenty of other jobs”, I said. “I might not get my job back, when I get home.” “That’s all right for you”, he said: “but we’d lose all our pension rights!” They all paled at the thought.
I had no answer to that. English pensions weren’t portable in those days, and changing employers meant starting a pension programme on the bottom rung again, and walking away from however much had been paid into the old scheme. (Australia didn’t have compulsory pensions.)
Back in our Earls Court flat, my fellow wastrels and I marvelled that a bunch of 24-year-olds would worry about benefits that lay forty years and more into the future. Ah well... I wonder if those chaps today are receiving their full entitlements to their promised pensions. I wonder if any of them are spending their retirement living on a seventy-foot yacht, with or without a seventeen-year-old companion.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Lady Agatha’s legacy
Crichton the butler had assumed leadership of a small group of survivors shipwrecked on a desert island; Lady Agatha was one of three sisters who hoped to snare him in marriage; and I was Lady Agatha. I was too bad an actor to be a star in The Admirable Crichton, and except for singing in the chorus in H.M.S.Pinafore in the New Hebrides in my 30s, I never trod the boards again.
Why on earth a drama teacher at an all-boys boarding school would choose a play with female characters, God only knows. We stage-females were extremely self-conscious. This was the 1950s, in the most conservative state in Australia, for goodness sake. Looking back: our director must have been a skilled persuader indeed, to keep us rehearsing for weeks without any of us drifting quietly off into the night.
Why is it, that school plays are included in the education of young children? Children’s stage skills aren’t important in later life, although there are exceptions. I encouraged Ross (my son) to volunteer for school concerts when he was young, and I wept with love and pride when at the age of four he brought the house down with his recital of The Hare and the Tortoise.
The local radio station interviewed him afterwards, but he didn’t have much to say. He liked being on stage, though, and did a fine Mowgli in The Jungle Book (Disney's version) nine years later. I coached him to identify with his character. It’s an axiom of show business that acting is all about sincerity, and that if you can fake that, you’ve got it made. True, that!
His various stage appearances did prove useful when he arrived in Mexico City, barefoot and penniless. Well, not literally barefoot and penniless, but his first job in the City was washing car engines for a dollar an hour. By a fluke of circumstance that’s far too unlikely to be worth relating, he was offered a job modelling clothes.
That morphed into catwalk shows and TV commercials at $100 an hour (!), and occasional TV interviews in Spanish. Unfortunately for his parents’ hopes of a well financed retirement, he got bored with the job after a few months and hit the hippy trail in Guatemala and points south. Ah well, what can you do?
His experience of TV interviews came in handy for me when I came under siege by Cayman’s political establishment in the year 2000. (My blog-post Confessions of a Subversive in October 2012 tells how I became persona non grata to the politicians; I won’t repeat it here.) On this occasion the Immigration Board took exception to some strong-ish criticism in my newspaper column, and invited me to explain why I shouldn’t be deported as a public nuisance.
The owners of our local TV station at this time were staunch freedom-of-speech advocates, and had me interviewed three times in a week. After watching the first one on the evening news, Ross said I must always look into the camera, not at the interviewer. Watching myself, I appreciated what a world of difference the change made.
The interviews made the political gangsters look like the bullies they were, at a time (by happy coincidence) when they were being secretly subverted in our local mini-parliament. My sound-bites may conceivably have been a factor in the success of the coup d’état. But, whether or not, my chief persecutor was fired from the Board immediately after it, and I helped her replacement draft a public apology for the threat made to me. That was nice.
Why on earth a drama teacher at an all-boys boarding school would choose a play with female characters, God only knows. We stage-females were extremely self-conscious. This was the 1950s, in the most conservative state in Australia, for goodness sake. Looking back: our director must have been a skilled persuader indeed, to keep us rehearsing for weeks without any of us drifting quietly off into the night.
Why is it, that school plays are included in the education of young children? Children’s stage skills aren’t important in later life, although there are exceptions. I encouraged Ross (my son) to volunteer for school concerts when he was young, and I wept with love and pride when at the age of four he brought the house down with his recital of The Hare and the Tortoise.
The local radio station interviewed him afterwards, but he didn’t have much to say. He liked being on stage, though, and did a fine Mowgli in The Jungle Book (Disney's version) nine years later. I coached him to identify with his character. It’s an axiom of show business that acting is all about sincerity, and that if you can fake that, you’ve got it made. True, that!
His various stage appearances did prove useful when he arrived in Mexico City, barefoot and penniless. Well, not literally barefoot and penniless, but his first job in the City was washing car engines for a dollar an hour. By a fluke of circumstance that’s far too unlikely to be worth relating, he was offered a job modelling clothes.
That morphed into catwalk shows and TV commercials at $100 an hour (!), and occasional TV interviews in Spanish. Unfortunately for his parents’ hopes of a well financed retirement, he got bored with the job after a few months and hit the hippy trail in Guatemala and points south. Ah well, what can you do?
His experience of TV interviews came in handy for me when I came under siege by Cayman’s political establishment in the year 2000. (My blog-post Confessions of a Subversive in October 2012 tells how I became persona non grata to the politicians; I won’t repeat it here.) On this occasion the Immigration Board took exception to some strong-ish criticism in my newspaper column, and invited me to explain why I shouldn’t be deported as a public nuisance.
The owners of our local TV station at this time were staunch freedom-of-speech advocates, and had me interviewed three times in a week. After watching the first one on the evening news, Ross said I must always look into the camera, not at the interviewer. Watching myself, I appreciated what a world of difference the change made.
The interviews made the political gangsters look like the bullies they were, at a time (by happy coincidence) when they were being secretly subverted in our local mini-parliament. My sound-bites may conceivably have been a factor in the success of the coup d’état. But, whether or not, my chief persecutor was fired from the Board immediately after it, and I helped her replacement draft a public apology for the threat made to me. That was nice.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Mister Cool and the snakebite
Our son and his daughters returned to their home last week, so Linda and I can get back to killing cockroaches and centipedes. Oh, and snakes. A baby snake somehow got inside the house, and Linda demolished it with a machete before it could reach a hiding place.
Ross and the girls strongly disapprove of killing animals without just cause – including all insects besides mosquitoes. Flies, roaches, centipedes and lizards all have to be caught and released outside. The ten-year-old trapped a cockroach under a tumbler, and I had to find a thin-yet-sturdy sheet of cardboard to slide underneath so the beast could be carried out to safety.
Linda and I have never felt comfortable squashing geckos and other lizards, I have to say – even those who live in the house. We tolerate their nesting-places in the secluded spots where they lay their eggs, although our principles slip a little when their pellets of poop become too intrusive. Poop in the cutlery drawer, and on our pillows? Way too intrusive!
Iguanas are lizards, technically, but they grow to six or seven feet long including the tails, and they poop more like cows. The stench is more like cows’ poop, too – embarrassing when they drop their bundles beside our underground septic-tank just outside the bathrooms. We have to explain to visitors that our tank is not overflowing, and that we are having the problem seen to. In fact it is our next-door neighbour who sees to it, in order to protect the ripening mangoes on her mango-tree.
She hires an experienced iguana-catcher, who sends his wife up all the nearby tall trees with a noose at the end of a rickety pole. She manoeuvres the noose over their heads, and he collects them on the ground and duct-tapes their mouth and legs before they can gather their wits. The wife is from Honduras, and Honduraneans love eating iguana meat.
Traditional Caymanians eat mud-crabs and turtles, and also agoutis, which are the rabbits of the region. Not snakes, though, which is surprising. After all, we are regularly assured by our authorities that all Cayman’s snakes are non-venomous, and therefore (presumably) safe to eat. I can vouch for the non-venomosity, although my one experience probably doesn’t constitute a credible statistical sample.
Here’s what happened. Two summers ago I was walking around the house checking the security of our outside back windows, filling in time until our Saturday evening flight to Norway. I caught my foot in the tendril of a weed, and tried vigorously to shake myself free. In irritation, I looked down to find that the tendril was a middling-sized snake – maybe three feet long. Struggling to get out from under, it nipped me (gently, be it said) above the ankle.
Now, then...! My early childhood was filled with the fear of snakes, in the Queensland bush where all snakes are poisonous. Linda tells people I went white with fright, but as I recall the event, I was Mister Cool from start to finish. A nurse at the Hospital reminded me that Cayman snakes were indeed non-venomous, and if I did come by she would just give me a tetanus shot and an aspirin. So I sat down and reviewed my options.
We had to check in at the airport in two hours, and the wait at the hospital would be at least two hours. Either the snake was local and non-poisonous or it was an illegal immigrant and poisonous as likely as not. I decided to wait for a clear sign of danger, before panicking. Linda dabbed some Dettol on the tiny punctures while I sat and sipped a cup of tea, on the alert for a sign. Pain or swelling would mean a trip to the Emergency Room and maybe a night or two in hospital; no pain would mean no problem.
And that’s how it was. A week later, in Ross’s forest-cabin, a nasty boil appeared on the side of my shin, for the first time in my life. But it went away again, and probably had nothing to do with the snakebite anyway.Who knows?
Ross and the girls strongly disapprove of killing animals without just cause – including all insects besides mosquitoes. Flies, roaches, centipedes and lizards all have to be caught and released outside. The ten-year-old trapped a cockroach under a tumbler, and I had to find a thin-yet-sturdy sheet of cardboard to slide underneath so the beast could be carried out to safety.
Linda and I have never felt comfortable squashing geckos and other lizards, I have to say – even those who live in the house. We tolerate their nesting-places in the secluded spots where they lay their eggs, although our principles slip a little when their pellets of poop become too intrusive. Poop in the cutlery drawer, and on our pillows? Way too intrusive!
Iguanas are lizards, technically, but they grow to six or seven feet long including the tails, and they poop more like cows. The stench is more like cows’ poop, too – embarrassing when they drop their bundles beside our underground septic-tank just outside the bathrooms. We have to explain to visitors that our tank is not overflowing, and that we are having the problem seen to. In fact it is our next-door neighbour who sees to it, in order to protect the ripening mangoes on her mango-tree.
She hires an experienced iguana-catcher, who sends his wife up all the nearby tall trees with a noose at the end of a rickety pole. She manoeuvres the noose over their heads, and he collects them on the ground and duct-tapes their mouth and legs before they can gather their wits. The wife is from Honduras, and Honduraneans love eating iguana meat.
Traditional Caymanians eat mud-crabs and turtles, and also agoutis, which are the rabbits of the region. Not snakes, though, which is surprising. After all, we are regularly assured by our authorities that all Cayman’s snakes are non-venomous, and therefore (presumably) safe to eat. I can vouch for the non-venomosity, although my one experience probably doesn’t constitute a credible statistical sample.
Here’s what happened. Two summers ago I was walking around the house checking the security of our outside back windows, filling in time until our Saturday evening flight to Norway. I caught my foot in the tendril of a weed, and tried vigorously to shake myself free. In irritation, I looked down to find that the tendril was a middling-sized snake – maybe three feet long. Struggling to get out from under, it nipped me (gently, be it said) above the ankle.
Now, then...! My early childhood was filled with the fear of snakes, in the Queensland bush where all snakes are poisonous. Linda tells people I went white with fright, but as I recall the event, I was Mister Cool from start to finish. A nurse at the Hospital reminded me that Cayman snakes were indeed non-venomous, and if I did come by she would just give me a tetanus shot and an aspirin. So I sat down and reviewed my options.
We had to check in at the airport in two hours, and the wait at the hospital would be at least two hours. Either the snake was local and non-poisonous or it was an illegal immigrant and poisonous as likely as not. I decided to wait for a clear sign of danger, before panicking. Linda dabbed some Dettol on the tiny punctures while I sat and sipped a cup of tea, on the alert for a sign. Pain or swelling would mean a trip to the Emergency Room and maybe a night or two in hospital; no pain would mean no problem.
And that’s how it was. A week later, in Ross’s forest-cabin, a nasty boil appeared on the side of my shin, for the first time in my life. But it went away again, and probably had nothing to do with the snakebite anyway.Who knows?
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Grandfathers
How important are grandfathers in children’s lives, really? How necessary are they? From my limited personal experience, the answer is “Not very”.
After all, vices and virtues are passed on - or not - via DNA, and don’t need personal interaction beyond the one-time transmissions. Nature can be inherited, but nurture can’t. And, since grandfathers are only minimally involved in their grandchildren’s nurture, their influence must be limited.
There’s always been a shortage of grandfathers in our family. I knew both of mine, though only for the first ten years or less of my life, but my parents never knew theirs. Linda knew neither of hers, and our son neither of his. That’s the downside of late matings, I guess.
My Hancock grandfather was a very gentle man, and I worshipped him. In his twenties, in the early 1900s, his job in the family’s timber-supply company west of Brisbane obliged him to negotiate tree-felling and on-site sawmilling privileges with the aborigines who lived in the area. That was his only exposure to a foreign culture, apart from short visits to China and Japan in later life, and not counting pen-friends in India and Central America.
He it was who instilled in me a strong determination to “see the world”. Without the influence of his physical presence, I might never have left Australia. So that’s one for the grandfathers.
My Barlow grandfather was an aloof English sea-captain who (according to my mother) treated his family as though they were crew. Forced to quit after his ship passed a buoy on the wrong side (!) while entering Wellington Harbour in New Zealand, he retired to his wife’s house in Toowoomba and lived off her dividend income.
Her father’s money bought my Dad’s sheep-farm out on the Downs, but he had little direct influence on Dad except to bequeath a bit of his posh English accent and his casual contempt for religion. He had no influence at all on me.
Neither of my parents knew any of their grandfathers. The sea-captain’s father lived and died in England; the other three were all English-born immigrants who died relatively young. One helped his father found the timber-supply company in Ipswich; one used his agricultural-labourers’ skills to establish a flourishing construction company, and a large hotel, in Toowoomba, the informal capital of the Darling Downs and points west.
The third one searched for gold in the southern State of Victoria, before migrating to Queensland and settling on a 160-acre “selection” in a sugar-farming district.
The Toowoomba contractor left all his children well-off, and that money helped one of the daughters to attract the sea-captain. Her Irish relatives’ rabid Catholicism brought some serious stress to our family whenever pressure was applied by some of them to convert us children to the One True Faith. Her husband kept well out of it all. (She honoured his request to bury him in the C of E section of the town cemetery, and even insisted that she be buried beside him. That insistence may or may not have sent her straight to Hell.)
Looking back, it’s apparent that in my family, at least, grandfathers’ influence didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Is this typical in families, or have others’ experiences been quite different? Grandmothers, now: that’s a whole nother thing. The hands that rock the cradle, rule the world – and as often as not those hands are grandmothers’ hands.
After all, vices and virtues are passed on - or not - via DNA, and don’t need personal interaction beyond the one-time transmissions. Nature can be inherited, but nurture can’t. And, since grandfathers are only minimally involved in their grandchildren’s nurture, their influence must be limited.
There’s always been a shortage of grandfathers in our family. I knew both of mine, though only for the first ten years or less of my life, but my parents never knew theirs. Linda knew neither of hers, and our son neither of his. That’s the downside of late matings, I guess.
My Hancock grandfather was a very gentle man, and I worshipped him. In his twenties, in the early 1900s, his job in the family’s timber-supply company west of Brisbane obliged him to negotiate tree-felling and on-site sawmilling privileges with the aborigines who lived in the area. That was his only exposure to a foreign culture, apart from short visits to China and Japan in later life, and not counting pen-friends in India and Central America.
He it was who instilled in me a strong determination to “see the world”. Without the influence of his physical presence, I might never have left Australia. So that’s one for the grandfathers.
My Barlow grandfather was an aloof English sea-captain who (according to my mother) treated his family as though they were crew. Forced to quit after his ship passed a buoy on the wrong side (!) while entering Wellington Harbour in New Zealand, he retired to his wife’s house in Toowoomba and lived off her dividend income.
Her father’s money bought my Dad’s sheep-farm out on the Downs, but he had little direct influence on Dad except to bequeath a bit of his posh English accent and his casual contempt for religion. He had no influence at all on me.
Neither of my parents knew any of their grandfathers. The sea-captain’s father lived and died in England; the other three were all English-born immigrants who died relatively young. One helped his father found the timber-supply company in Ipswich; one used his agricultural-labourers’ skills to establish a flourishing construction company, and a large hotel, in Toowoomba, the informal capital of the Darling Downs and points west.
The third one searched for gold in the southern State of Victoria, before migrating to Queensland and settling on a 160-acre “selection” in a sugar-farming district.
The Toowoomba contractor left all his children well-off, and that money helped one of the daughters to attract the sea-captain. Her Irish relatives’ rabid Catholicism brought some serious stress to our family whenever pressure was applied by some of them to convert us children to the One True Faith. Her husband kept well out of it all. (She honoured his request to bury him in the C of E section of the town cemetery, and even insisted that she be buried beside him. That insistence may or may not have sent her straight to Hell.)
Looking back, it’s apparent that in my family, at least, grandfathers’ influence didn’t amount to a hill of beans. Is this typical in families, or have others’ experiences been quite different? Grandmothers, now: that’s a whole nother thing. The hands that rock the cradle, rule the world – and as often as not those hands are grandmothers’ hands.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Let them eat mud-cakes
They say charity begins at home. Families and communities should care for their own, before other families and communities. We all tend to do that, both individually and as a community.
From cans on shop counters collecting coins for sick children in hospitals in Miami, to excessively generous medical coverage for Civil Servants and their families, Caymanians in particular are extraordinarily well cared for.
Nobody goes hungry in Cayman for more than a day. Schoolchildren receive free hot breakfasts and lunches, if their parents can’t afford to feed them, or can’t be bothered. Nobody goes homeless, even when their homes are destroyed. Then, the destroyed homes are repaired or replaced free of charge.
Families are not as diligent as they once were, in looking after their poor; but that’s a worldwide phenomenon. Sometimes, individuals who have done well from Cayman’s boom turn their backs on their less fortunate relatives, and let charities pick up the slack.
Because Cayman is a rich little place, what we regard as life’s necessities are luxuries in other places. We tend to overlook just how lucky we are, and how unlucky much of the rest of the world is. Collectively, we don’t like to see pictures of extreme poverty, and don’t want to hear about it or even know about it. We are much more comfortable with charity that begins and ends at home.
Most of Cayman’s businesses have annual budgets for donations, and many of us individuals have too. But all the budgets are overwhelmingly in favour of domestic charities, with very little set aside for anywhere beyond our shores. Foreigners in dire poverty? Huh. Let them eat mud-cakes!
The poorest of our Caribbean neighbours do eat mud-cakes, actually. Mud-cakes don’t keep children alive, but they do keep them from feeling hunger. Many children in Haiti starve to death with full stomachs, while we collect money for our local athletes to play games overseas, and for school trips up north, and for local church-building, etc.
It’s natural to favour local charities, and we shouldn’t despise it. It’s a basic tribal instinct, and we are all captives of our instincts. Caymanians support Caymanian charities; Britons support British charities. That’s how the world works. Rich Haitians support Haitian charities, up to a point.
It would be a noble thing, if we as a community were to cut back our donations to local charities and divert as much as we can to needier folk overseas. But it’s not going to happen, and it’s not realistic to expect that it will. It’s not realistic to expect that we will increase our personal charity budgets, either.
However, what we could do is withhold some of our donations from some of the less essential local “good causes”, and support some of the more serious good causes outside Cayman.
We could go a bit lighter on school trips to Disneyworld and a bit heavier on clothes and medicines for Jamaica and Haiti. A bit lighter on Christmas presents for mildly deprived local children and a bit heavier on food for desperately poor foreign children who have nothing to eat but mud.
The Haitians aren’t going anywhere; they won’t suddenly stop starving, after two hundred years of it. By next Christmas they will still be in trouble even without another earthquake or hurricane. But they are our Caribbean brothers, and we are supposed to be our brothers’ keepers.
From cans on shop counters collecting coins for sick children in hospitals in Miami, to excessively generous medical coverage for Civil Servants and their families, Caymanians in particular are extraordinarily well cared for.
Nobody goes hungry in Cayman for more than a day. Schoolchildren receive free hot breakfasts and lunches, if their parents can’t afford to feed them, or can’t be bothered. Nobody goes homeless, even when their homes are destroyed. Then, the destroyed homes are repaired or replaced free of charge.
Families are not as diligent as they once were, in looking after their poor; but that’s a worldwide phenomenon. Sometimes, individuals who have done well from Cayman’s boom turn their backs on their less fortunate relatives, and let charities pick up the slack.
Because Cayman is a rich little place, what we regard as life’s necessities are luxuries in other places. We tend to overlook just how lucky we are, and how unlucky much of the rest of the world is. Collectively, we don’t like to see pictures of extreme poverty, and don’t want to hear about it or even know about it. We are much more comfortable with charity that begins and ends at home.
Most of Cayman’s businesses have annual budgets for donations, and many of us individuals have too. But all the budgets are overwhelmingly in favour of domestic charities, with very little set aside for anywhere beyond our shores. Foreigners in dire poverty? Huh. Let them eat mud-cakes!
The poorest of our Caribbean neighbours do eat mud-cakes, actually. Mud-cakes don’t keep children alive, but they do keep them from feeling hunger. Many children in Haiti starve to death with full stomachs, while we collect money for our local athletes to play games overseas, and for school trips up north, and for local church-building, etc.
It’s natural to favour local charities, and we shouldn’t despise it. It’s a basic tribal instinct, and we are all captives of our instincts. Caymanians support Caymanian charities; Britons support British charities. That’s how the world works. Rich Haitians support Haitian charities, up to a point.
It would be a noble thing, if we as a community were to cut back our donations to local charities and divert as much as we can to needier folk overseas. But it’s not going to happen, and it’s not realistic to expect that it will. It’s not realistic to expect that we will increase our personal charity budgets, either.
However, what we could do is withhold some of our donations from some of the less essential local “good causes”, and support some of the more serious good causes outside Cayman.
We could go a bit lighter on school trips to Disneyworld and a bit heavier on clothes and medicines for Jamaica and Haiti. A bit lighter on Christmas presents for mildly deprived local children and a bit heavier on food for desperately poor foreign children who have nothing to eat but mud.
The Haitians aren’t going anywhere; they won’t suddenly stop starving, after two hundred years of it. By next Christmas they will still be in trouble even without another earthquake or hurricane. But they are our Caribbean brothers, and we are supposed to be our brothers’ keepers.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Going green
Here in Cayman, a few years ago, our supermarkets imposed a five-cents charge on plastic bags. The advertised purpose was to help save the world from plastic. Some of the cynics amongst us raised our eyebrows at the explanation – but, what can you do?
Cutting down on plastic bags is good for our souls, I guess. Self-denial of that kind is a tribute to the virtues of simpler times. It’s like after local hurricanes, when we all do without electricity and town water & sewage for a while. Forgoing our beloved plastic shopping bags doesn’t make heroes of us, but it won’t do us any harm. Indeed, logic demands that the supermarkets not stop with the shopping bags.
I bought a memory-stick for my computer last week. It was the size of my little finger, and came in a tough plastic package as big as a book. That package used more plastic than 200 shopping bags, and the plastic would stop a bullet. If the Police budget doesn’t run to Kevlar vests for everybody, they could keep a few of those plastic packages in stock to shove under their shirts when things get rough.
In fact, rather than sell us the bags for five cents apiece, why don’t the supermarkets simply divert shipments of new bags directly to Haiti, our poorest neighbour? Earth Day gimmicks aren’t a top priority in Haiti. Most of the victims of the last earthquake are still living in gutters and dying in pain. Plastic shopping bags are all that most Haitians have to keep them dry from the rain above and the filthy drains they sleep beside.
Plastic bags are all they have to keep their food safe, when they have food. When the only food they have is mud cakes, plastic shopping bags help to keep clean mud separated from mud mixed with faeces. We would be doing them a big favour by sending them all the bags we don’t use.
Anyway, we in Cayman are too few in number to make any noticeable difference to the world’s consumption of plastic. If our bag-usage is typical of our region, there must be ten billion bags a year doing the rounds throughout the Caribbean region. Why bother?
News reports tell of a gigantic floating pile of plastic and other rubbish in the ocean up between Japan and Canada, labelled The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Nobody knows for certain how big it is, but its area may well be thousands of times the area of Grand Cayman and its volume, billions of times the volume of the town dump we call “Mount Trashmore”.
Even Mount Trashmore is too big for us to do anything about. At least, it’s too big for our public sector to do anything about. There are enough engineers and other experts among Cayman’s retirees to fix it – if they could fend off the dead hand of state bureaucracy, which they can’t!
For the moment, we must settle for dealing with just the plastic shopping bags – a drop in the ocean, so to speak. Is it a futile gesture? Of course; but sometimes the world needs a futile gesture.
We are told that plastic shopping bags never disintegrate. Scientists (well, “scientists”...) tell us that they take somewhere between 400 and 1000 years to degrade. Hmph. I don’t know how anybody could know that. If you throw plastic bags on a fire they shrivel right up. Even left out in the sun they disintegrate in a lot fewer than 400-to-1000 years. Keep it real, people! That’s how “man-made global warming” scientists screwed up their act, by mixing lies with truths.
The thick plastic that can fend off bullets, though – that might last 400 years, with care. It might be a positive thing if we sent it to the Haitians. It could be that long before they become rich enough to classify it as a nuisance.
Cutting down on plastic bags is good for our souls, I guess. Self-denial of that kind is a tribute to the virtues of simpler times. It’s like after local hurricanes, when we all do without electricity and town water & sewage for a while. Forgoing our beloved plastic shopping bags doesn’t make heroes of us, but it won’t do us any harm. Indeed, logic demands that the supermarkets not stop with the shopping bags.
I bought a memory-stick for my computer last week. It was the size of my little finger, and came in a tough plastic package as big as a book. That package used more plastic than 200 shopping bags, and the plastic would stop a bullet. If the Police budget doesn’t run to Kevlar vests for everybody, they could keep a few of those plastic packages in stock to shove under their shirts when things get rough.
In fact, rather than sell us the bags for five cents apiece, why don’t the supermarkets simply divert shipments of new bags directly to Haiti, our poorest neighbour? Earth Day gimmicks aren’t a top priority in Haiti. Most of the victims of the last earthquake are still living in gutters and dying in pain. Plastic shopping bags are all that most Haitians have to keep them dry from the rain above and the filthy drains they sleep beside.
Plastic bags are all they have to keep their food safe, when they have food. When the only food they have is mud cakes, plastic shopping bags help to keep clean mud separated from mud mixed with faeces. We would be doing them a big favour by sending them all the bags we don’t use.
Anyway, we in Cayman are too few in number to make any noticeable difference to the world’s consumption of plastic. If our bag-usage is typical of our region, there must be ten billion bags a year doing the rounds throughout the Caribbean region. Why bother?
News reports tell of a gigantic floating pile of plastic and other rubbish in the ocean up between Japan and Canada, labelled The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Nobody knows for certain how big it is, but its area may well be thousands of times the area of Grand Cayman and its volume, billions of times the volume of the town dump we call “Mount Trashmore”.
Even Mount Trashmore is too big for us to do anything about. At least, it’s too big for our public sector to do anything about. There are enough engineers and other experts among Cayman’s retirees to fix it – if they could fend off the dead hand of state bureaucracy, which they can’t!
For the moment, we must settle for dealing with just the plastic shopping bags – a drop in the ocean, so to speak. Is it a futile gesture? Of course; but sometimes the world needs a futile gesture.
We are told that plastic shopping bags never disintegrate. Scientists (well, “scientists”...) tell us that they take somewhere between 400 and 1000 years to degrade. Hmph. I don’t know how anybody could know that. If you throw plastic bags on a fire they shrivel right up. Even left out in the sun they disintegrate in a lot fewer than 400-to-1000 years. Keep it real, people! That’s how “man-made global warming” scientists screwed up their act, by mixing lies with truths.
The thick plastic that can fend off bullets, though – that might last 400 years, with care. It might be a positive thing if we sent it to the Haitians. It could be that long before they become rich enough to classify it as a nuisance.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
More trouble in Paradise
Government’s financial mess has us all worried, who care what happens to Cayman. Certainly there are many, many more worried long-term immigrants than there used to be. Whenever two or three of us are gathered together, the mood is sombre. Collectively, we aren’t feeling as comfortable as we used to do about the economic future.
Of course I can’t speak for the whole community of veteran expats, or for the current community of tax-haven expats; but it’s no secret that there is a general loss of confidence in the ability of our local rulers to fix the mess. The FCO probably has the ability, but does it have the will? Its attention tends to wander, where its colonies’ internal affairs are concerned.
The loss of confidence among long-term expats may soon reach critical mass. The endemic xenophobia of a large portion of the ethnic Caymanian community is a large factor. It is oppressive, and there are no signs of its abatement. Despite some reformist mumbling in the six months since the last general election, nothing has changed. Political interference with the private sector’s independence will continue as far ahead as we can see. So will the anti-expat sentiment that drives our Islands’ immigration policy.
Let’s be honest about it. Public-sector employment will not be reduced: its heavy hand will not be lifted. State-owned enterprises will not be sold to private investors; state-operated services will not be outsourced. Corruption will not be curtailed; cronyism and nepotism will not be suppressed. The Public Debt will not be paid down to any significant degree; unfunded government pensions and medical expenses will stay unfunded. The rollover policy will come and go according to the whim of the moment.
Last month, there was a bit of a kerfuffle in Bermuda, when a local independent Commission on “Spending And Government Efficiency” (SAGE) reported its findings. Huh. They must lead sheltered lives up in Bermuda, for the findings wouldn’t have surprised anybody in Cayman. It’s an interesting read, though. Google SAGE Report Bermuda for the Report and its Executive Summary.
The FCO may well decide on a similar Commission for Cayman – although ours would NOT be truly independent. ALL our existing Commissions are overseen by a shrewdly appointed “safe pair of hands”. Our politicians and senior Civil Servants are highly skilled in the suppression of independent opinions. My own experiences on our Human Rights Committee and Vision-2008 exercise can testify to that. Actually, a perusal of SAGE Bermuda’s Executive Summary shows many similarities with Vision-2008, whose reports and recommendations have been gathering dust since January 1999.
If a SAGE Cayman Commission were to be appointed, its first job should be to substitute Cayman for Bermuda throughout the entire Bermuda report. Nine tenths of the work would thereby be done. For the remaining tenth, it could simply dust off all the relevant Vision-2008 Reports and Minutes and slot them in where appropriate.
(The Minutes recorded what was agreed and what not, at least on the two committees I composed the Minutes for. The final Reports were subjected to skulduggery, and did not always reflect what had been agreed in the Meetings.)
Sigh. I wonder whether the FCO clerks would be prepared for all the shenanigans that would lie in wait for them. Almost certainly, not. The existing waste-of-space Commissions – on Corruption, Human Rights, and Standards in Public Life – have bamboozled our colonial masters successfully; small chance that a fourth one would be any different.
Of course I can’t speak for the whole community of veteran expats, or for the current community of tax-haven expats; but it’s no secret that there is a general loss of confidence in the ability of our local rulers to fix the mess. The FCO probably has the ability, but does it have the will? Its attention tends to wander, where its colonies’ internal affairs are concerned.
The loss of confidence among long-term expats may soon reach critical mass. The endemic xenophobia of a large portion of the ethnic Caymanian community is a large factor. It is oppressive, and there are no signs of its abatement. Despite some reformist mumbling in the six months since the last general election, nothing has changed. Political interference with the private sector’s independence will continue as far ahead as we can see. So will the anti-expat sentiment that drives our Islands’ immigration policy.
Let’s be honest about it. Public-sector employment will not be reduced: its heavy hand will not be lifted. State-owned enterprises will not be sold to private investors; state-operated services will not be outsourced. Corruption will not be curtailed; cronyism and nepotism will not be suppressed. The Public Debt will not be paid down to any significant degree; unfunded government pensions and medical expenses will stay unfunded. The rollover policy will come and go according to the whim of the moment.
Last month, there was a bit of a kerfuffle in Bermuda, when a local independent Commission on “Spending And Government Efficiency” (SAGE) reported its findings. Huh. They must lead sheltered lives up in Bermuda, for the findings wouldn’t have surprised anybody in Cayman. It’s an interesting read, though. Google SAGE Report Bermuda for the Report and its Executive Summary.
The FCO may well decide on a similar Commission for Cayman – although ours would NOT be truly independent. ALL our existing Commissions are overseen by a shrewdly appointed “safe pair of hands”. Our politicians and senior Civil Servants are highly skilled in the suppression of independent opinions. My own experiences on our Human Rights Committee and Vision-2008 exercise can testify to that. Actually, a perusal of SAGE Bermuda’s Executive Summary shows many similarities with Vision-2008, whose reports and recommendations have been gathering dust since January 1999.
If a SAGE Cayman Commission were to be appointed, its first job should be to substitute Cayman for Bermuda throughout the entire Bermuda report. Nine tenths of the work would thereby be done. For the remaining tenth, it could simply dust off all the relevant Vision-2008 Reports and Minutes and slot them in where appropriate.
(The Minutes recorded what was agreed and what not, at least on the two committees I composed the Minutes for. The final Reports were subjected to skulduggery, and did not always reflect what had been agreed in the Meetings.)
Sigh. I wonder whether the FCO clerks would be prepared for all the shenanigans that would lie in wait for them. Almost certainly, not. The existing waste-of-space Commissions – on Corruption, Human Rights, and Standards in Public Life – have bamboozled our colonial masters successfully; small chance that a fourth one would be any different.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Holding hands in a movie show...
Early next month it will be 47 years since we married in Toronto, our mothers checking in by phone from Australia. The longevity has been a triumph of stubbornness, as much as anything. We were both brought up to honour our word, and that included marriage-vows.
Our child (1975) added an extra dimension to the marriage – an amendment to the contract, if you like. Even when both contracting parties positively like the prospect of such an amendment, the reality can be a nasty shock. As I blogged last September [A young man’s car], “Where two had been company, three was a crowd”.
We were children of the 1950s, when divorce was not readily granted by the state or condoned by one’s family and community. Simple incompatibility was insufficient grounds to break a sworn contract. Marriage was for life. Battered wives were not excused, unless their small children were also battered – and even child-abuse didn’t warrant a divorce in the eyes of pious Christians.
In the crowd I hung around with before I left on my travels, promiscuity was rare. A Frank Sinatra song captured the innocence of the era:
London in The Swinging Sixties opened my eyes to a whole new world. Wow. My (our) son’s generation inherited that world, and built on it. It would have been a factor in their collective decision to defer marriage beyond what used to be the standard age – and sometimes indefinitely.
When he and I had “The Talk”, it was about marriage, not about sex. He was probably rattling his pots and pans plenty in his late teens, and here in the West Indies the advice of peers carries far more weight than that of parents.
Today, I fret about my granddaughters, who are just beginning to discover boys. Fortunately or not, they live in pretty much the same blithe innocence as Linda and I did at their ages. Their home and school are at some physical remove from urban pressure, and their peers are (generally) equally innocent. Will they think that holding hands in a movie show is a big deal, or will they want to join the trail a bit further along? When neither Mum nor Dad has ever bothered with marriage, will the girls be equally wary of long-term commitment? Very likely.
Do they wish their parents had stayed together? Possibly not, you know. After all, there is more variety in their lives when there are two parental homes. In a spirit of objective enquiry they once asked Ross why he had so many ladies in his life. (They used the Norwegian word that translates as “ladies”, not the word for “women”!) More recently, they marvelled – to me, in English – at how many official and unofficial grandparents they had, who loved them. They showed no regret or wistfulness, just a wholehearted contentment with the way things were. They were counting their blessings.
Linda and I spend four weeks each year in their company – two there and two here – and would like to spend more. However, more time with us might cause scheduling difficulties during school vacations. All the Norskies would not easily give up any of their share of the pie.
Our child (1975) added an extra dimension to the marriage – an amendment to the contract, if you like. Even when both contracting parties positively like the prospect of such an amendment, the reality can be a nasty shock. As I blogged last September [A young man’s car], “Where two had been company, three was a crowd”.
We were children of the 1950s, when divorce was not readily granted by the state or condoned by one’s family and community. Simple incompatibility was insufficient grounds to break a sworn contract. Marriage was for life. Battered wives were not excused, unless their small children were also battered – and even child-abuse didn’t warrant a divorce in the eyes of pious Christians.
In the crowd I hung around with before I left on my travels, promiscuity was rare. A Frank Sinatra song captured the innocence of the era:
Holding hands in a movie show, when all the lights are low,
May not be new.
But I like it – how about you?
London in The Swinging Sixties opened my eyes to a whole new world. Wow. My (our) son’s generation inherited that world, and built on it. It would have been a factor in their collective decision to defer marriage beyond what used to be the standard age – and sometimes indefinitely.
When he and I had “The Talk”, it was about marriage, not about sex. He was probably rattling his pots and pans plenty in his late teens, and here in the West Indies the advice of peers carries far more weight than that of parents.
Today, I fret about my granddaughters, who are just beginning to discover boys. Fortunately or not, they live in pretty much the same blithe innocence as Linda and I did at their ages. Their home and school are at some physical remove from urban pressure, and their peers are (generally) equally innocent. Will they think that holding hands in a movie show is a big deal, or will they want to join the trail a bit further along? When neither Mum nor Dad has ever bothered with marriage, will the girls be equally wary of long-term commitment? Very likely.
Do they wish their parents had stayed together? Possibly not, you know. After all, there is more variety in their lives when there are two parental homes. In a spirit of objective enquiry they once asked Ross why he had so many ladies in his life. (They used the Norwegian word that translates as “ladies”, not the word for “women”!) More recently, they marvelled – to me, in English – at how many official and unofficial grandparents they had, who loved them. They showed no regret or wistfulness, just a wholehearted contentment with the way things were. They were counting their blessings.
Linda and I spend four weeks each year in their company – two there and two here – and would like to spend more. However, more time with us might cause scheduling difficulties during school vacations. All the Norskies would not easily give up any of their share of the pie.
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