Work is The Curse…

Oscar Wilde said “Work is the curse of the drinking classes”, it is a typically flippant remark of his but sometimes I feel that work is the curse of my writing. In the last month or so I’ve been busy with my job, I’m an Audit Nurse, and it has left little room for anything else. My writing output has mostly been audit reports, a very dry and very unfulfilling activity. It has left me frustrated as hell.

I’ve still managed to keep up with writing my novel, a fantasy story about a boy searching for his missing mother through seven very different worlds. It’s my first real attempt at writing a novel, I feel I’ve waited far too long to start and I don’t know if it will be any good but I’ve got to keep on writing it. You see, its story has got right under my skin and I can’t stop thinking about it, working out the plot in my head, twisting and turning were my characters will go, it’s a kind of obsession but a good one.

This month will see the publication of an article I wrote, promoting testicular self-examination (sounds so exciting), for the British magazine Out in the City. The only thing is I don’t know exactly when it will be published; all they’ve told me is that it’s going to be in the September issue.

I certainly won’t let my blog be so silent for so long again, I’m not going to give up on this.

Drew.

Publish and Be…

I’ve heard it said, so many times, that you can’t fight the bigots, you just have to ignore them and eventually they’ll go away. I don’t agree, I can’t agree because I’ve seen how effective it can be to stand-up to them.

Back in July 1997 I was a Staff Nurse, working on a hospital ward, and I was on a week’s Night Duty. The ward was very quiet at night, once the patients had gone to sleep, and the patients always gave us their unwanted newspapers to read – ninety percent of the time they were tabloids. I’d rather sell my soul then actually pay money for those awful rags that make-up the British tabloids, the thought that my money going to aiding them is too much for my morals; but if someone gives me one free that eases my conscience. As awful as they are those tabloids make for fascinating reading, their stance that there’s always someone to “blame”, a villain in every story, and the blunt and inflammatory language they use. Also, I was really bored on that Night Duty.

One night, during that airless week, I opened an unwanted copy of The Sun newspaper (One of the worst all the tabloids) and read an opinion article called “It is cruel to ‘gay’ kids try sex at 16” by Anne Atkins – a “professional” vicar’s wife and right-wing Christian.

The article stated “this is not opinion: it is fact” that gay men have a life expectancy of 43 years and are 17 times more likely to be paedophiles then heterosexuals. (This is as much a “fact” as saying unicorns live in the depths of English forests and dragons roam the Walsh hills) The sheer homophobia and lies of that short opinion piece was sickening. Every short paragraph of it contained the most appalling lies, all of them designed to whip up homophobia. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach reading it.

At the time, July 1997, there was a political push to equalise the age of consent for both gay men and heterosexuals – only a few years before the gay age of consent had been lowered from 21 to 18. Months before the parliamentary debate the right-wing were crying homophobia about it; the Evangical Christians quickly added their voices.

Anne Atkins was a vicar’s wife, former actress and very poor novelist. She’d risen to notoriety only the previous year by attacking the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM), turning a two minute radio God-slot (for which she was a contributor) into homophobic propaganda – she actually claimed that accepting Lesbian & Gay Christians was causing the fall-off in the numbers of people coming forward to train as Anglican ministers, which was a lie. With this notoriety Atkins found the role of a life-time, she was the fluffy and blonde face of “Christian Morality”, her general persona was of “I’m only saying this because I care soooo much,” and it was completely untrue. Underneath she was just as bigoted, hypocritical, blinkered and truth-light as the rest of the Christian Right-Wing – trying to tell people how to live their lives without any regard to the realities of life. With Atkins there was one difference, she actually seemed to crave the fame her notoriety brought.

As I read and re-read that article I became more and more angry. In her short “career” up to that point Atkins had repeatedly used homophobia to keep her in the public eye, but this time she’d suppressed herself. This article oozed homophobia from every brief paragraph, but it was the lies there that were most shocking. Lies that painted gay men as diseased, corrupt and less then human. (Later I would find out that Atkins had based her article on a piece by Paul Cameron [I would never call the stuff Cameron produces as research, that would give it far more credit then it deserves] were he made the claims about gay men’s life expectancy and being paedophiles. Cameron’s work was no more then statistics with extreme prejudice, Cameron did not fulfil any of the requirements to measure life expectancy; all he did was a crude survey and then poured his prejudice on it. He made no attempt to reduce any of the biases in his survey. Atkins appeared to seize on this work without any attempt to analysis it) How much hate and fear must her little article have generated?

It was then I decided to do something about it.

In Britain we have the Press Complaints Commission, the body that oversees any complaints about newspapers. It is funded by the newspapers and rarely upholds the complaints it receives, it has always seemed to side with the newspapers; but complaining directly to The Sun newspaper would have been useless. So I got their Code of Practice and set about constructing my complaint. I wasn’t the only person who complained about Atkins’ article, they had a record number of complaints about it, though it still took them six months to reach their decision (!!).

I received my reply from the Press Complaints Commission on a Saturday morning, in late January 1998. Martin and I had recently started our relationship and that Saturday morning we were preparing to go out together but when I read the letter I actually jumped up and punched the air. They had found in our favour, they had found that Atkins’ article was not “factual” and she should never have claimed what she did. It was a victory, a wonderful victory for the truth. Rarely did the Press Complaints Commission uphold complaints but here it did, Atkins’ article had so blatantly breeched their Cod of Practice. The full decision can be read at: http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=MTk4MQ

I can’t say it was a glorious victory. Anne Atkins didn’t apology for her appalling article, she actually tried to paint herself as a victim in all of it, she claimed the article was re-written her a sub-editor and they had changed it (Anyone who’s had anything published knows that sub-editors do edit, often re-placing our over-writing, but never do they change the tone or emphasis). She never took responsibility for what she wrote. Atkins did claim, in the middle of all the negative publicity, that she would give up journalism to concentrate on novel writing – though this was as truthful as everything else she’d written because weeks later she was in another tabloid, using her usual homophobic tone to tell off George Michael. I certainly didn’t get any “right of reply”, though I’d have loved to have pointed out how Atkins had played fast and loose with the truth. But one important thing did come out of all of this; it stopped the rise of Anne Atkins as a moralist.

Atkins had seemed to be carving out a career as Moral Campaigner, the person who speaks out against society’s “ills”. Being found guilty by the Press Complaints Commission seemed to stop that and instead she was consigned to the bin of “Rent-a-Bigot” – dragged out to disapprove of something. I can’t claim to be responsible for this but I am sure that my fighting back helped towards it.

I would do it all again, too, even though it was a long and frustrating experience. Since I’ve started to write seriously, especially since I have been writing opinion pieces, I have found how careful and accurate you have to be; I’d never dream of being as ignorant, biased and plain slapdash as Atkins was. An opinion piece, by its nature, is an expression of the writer’s opinions but what it is based on has to be truthful, it has to be based on the truth.

Drew.

One in Ten People

To mark the 25th anniversary of Terry Higgins’ death this year, one of the first people to die from AIDS in Britain, The Terrance Higgins Trust (Who bare his name) conducted a survey into people’s attitudes and knowledge around HIV & AIDS. 10% of those who took part thought HIV could be caught from sweat, 10% thought you can get it from kissing, 12% thought you can get it from sharing cutlery. 20% thought there’s a cure for AIDS.

When I read this I was shocked, all these beliefs are false but what was more shocking is that these are basic HIV/AIDS information, not rocket science, and should be widely known by now. We’ve had twenty-five years to get our message across, what the hell has gone wrong?

I turned my horror into an opinion piece for Nursing Times magazine (it was published two days ago), with the hope that others will feel the same way that I do. I can barely believe that our health information message has gone so wrong on HIV/AIDS. But HIV is no longer a “hot potato”, the media has long ago lost interest in it, and so such of our health information is in reaction to the latest media health-scare.

I am deeply saddened by this. So often we seem to be chasing behind bad information/rise in infection rates were HIV is concerned. We’ve had over twenty-five years and we are still not winning the fight against HIV, and it makes me feel sick.

Drew.

One of Those Moments.

While growing up the images of gay men I had were limited, at best. They basically came in two types, the sexless effeminate men (you couldn’t call them queens because they were so pathetic) or the self-hating and constantly apologising “hom-o-sexuals” (“oh please forgive me for being such a pervert”), and neither of them were remotely sexual. It was the 1970’s and it was no climate to try and develop a gay identity.

As I slipped into my teens I was desperate for any kind of gay images, anything that didn’t tell me gay was bad and unnatural. I couldn’t find it anywhere on television, if it was on radio it was hidden to me, and growing up in suburban Liverpool I had no access to the first shoots of British gay publishing – the newspapers I saw, if they ever mentioned it, only ran gays as “dirty pervert” stories.

On a cold Friday night in 1981 it all finally changed. My parents were out and I had the house to myself, so I sat down to watch the television the whole night – as a teenager I was practically addicted to it. I was watching Channel 4 (back then it was still new and still broadcasting programs aimed at “minorities”, programs aimed at groups no other channel would bother with; it hadn’t turned into the Reality TV and imported programs channel it is now), it was broadcasting the first Secret Policeman’s Ball that night. In the middle of all that Oxbridge humour Tom Robinson came on and, accompanying himself on a guitar, sang Glad To Be Gay. It was like a new world opening up for me.

Gay To Be Gay was never an anthem of pride, it was always a protest song against homophobia, yet it was the first time I ever heard someone publicly stand-up for being gay, it was the first positive image of being gay I had seen and it was wonderful. Here was a gay man who was unapologetically standing up for being gay, who was saying the problem was with society’s homophobia and not with his sexuality, and he was attractive.

For two minutes I watched almost breathlessly, this wonderful moment of basking it such a positive gay image, then it was over and the Oxbridge comedy continued.

At the time I never told anyone else about what I’d seen that night. I could barely accept that I was gay, back then, I could never have admitted to seeing and let alone enjoying Tom Robinson’s performance; but I never ever forgot it.

Several years later I saw Tom Robinson live, on a very wet Sunday evening in Southport’s Floral Hall (Southport is God’s Waiting Room on the Irish Sea). Live his performance was even better, he sang all the sang of his I’d grown to love in those few years (that moment on television had made me a life long fan), and when he sang Glad To Be Gay I happily sang along too – as did the rest of the audience.

Many years later I actually met Tom Robinson. It was in Trafalgar Square, London, for a World Aids rally. He was comparing and singing at it, I was a volunteer there. I physically met him and shuck his hand, he was handsome and charming as I remember from seeing him on stage. But I never told him about seeing him television, back in 1981, and what it had meant to me; well you don’t, do you…

Drew.

Give Me A Subject Between 1 & 10

A couple of days ago I was accused of having no opinions. I’ve been accused of many things, often not true (I’m far more boring then people accuse me of), but never that. Many times I’ve been accused of being over-opinionated, as if you can have too many opinions. Certainly anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m never short of them.

Recently, I’ve started to write opinion pieces for Nursing Times, the other weekly nursing publication in Britain, and they’re not the easiest of things to write. Obviously you start with a subject, something you want to write about, my first one that was published (at the beginning of this month) was on what action is being taken against people who attack healthcare staff – in Britain it seems to be none. But it is so easy then just to fire off all your personal prejudices. “I think anyone who attacks healthcare staff should be shot,” kind of thing. I see that all the time in tabloids when C-List celebrities have columns and all they do is use it as a rant. I tried to make my opinion piece a spotlight on the subject, set out my standpoint and then challenge readers over it, was it fair that those who attack healthcare workers are rarely prosecuted. Well it seemed to work because Nursing Times published it and they’ve accepted for publication a second one I wrote. Does this mean a new career opening, God I hope so.

My last blog was about my personal experience of the July 7th London bombings. I hope I didn’t come across as a victim, God knows that I’m not. But I did want to show how terrorism affects so many lives, people far beyond those poor souls who were physically injured by the attacks; I also wanted to show that we can’t spot a terrorist just by the way they look, because so often they look like everyone else around us.

Drew.

One of The Worst Days…

Thursday, twenty-ninth of July, two thousand and five. London felt as if it had been living on its nerves for weeks. You could feel the tension in the air, and the hot weather only increased it. We were living in West London, North Kensington (I always told people I lived at Ladbroke Grove – it always had a move cosmopolitan sound to it), and I had spent that morning shopping in nearby Sheppard’s Bush.

On the seventh of July, that year, the unthinkable had happened; London had been hit by suicide bombers. London had been the victim of terrorist bombing before, in the nineteen-seventies it seemed as if the IRA had tried to bomb the heart out of London, but never before had there been suicide bombers. Suicide bombers hold a different and previously unknown terror for us. They so deeply believe in their cause and that they are right that they’ll die for it. That was something new and threatening to us, fanatical terrorists willing to die, and something very difficult to stop.

Four suicide bombers blow themselves up at the height of the London rush hour, three on different tube trains and one on a bus, killing 52 people and injuring countless others. This left London emotionally shaken, thousands and thousands of people who weren’t directly involved were left stunned and shell-shocked – myself included.

Two weeks later there was another attack on the London transport network, but this time London’s luck held. The four suicide bombers failed, their bombs went off but all they managed were loud bangs and lots of mess, and these bombers fled. One of them, as he fled from the attempt to bomb a tube train at Sheppard’s Bush, dumped an unexploded bomb in the small park at the end of my then street. We actually drove past were the unexploded bomb was left, only a couple of hours before was found – two days after those failed attacks. But the worst came on Thursday 29th July 2007.

That day I had been shopping and was returning home, at twelve-thirty, as usual I had got off the bus on Ladbroke Grove and was walking the five minutes up the road to our flat. As I turned the corner I saw the end of my road sealed off by the police, red police tap stretched right across the road and there was a large number of police there – many of them armed. I went up to one of the police officers and asked him what was happening, saying I needed to get home, he just replied that there was a “terrorist incident” and they were not letting anyone through. Moments later there was a very loud bang and the police pushed everyone right back. It was then that I was gripped by fear, real and very sharp fear. I’ve never been so afraid and so lost at the same moment. I was stood on the street, all hell breaking loss around me, and my main safe-haven, my home, was barred to me.

That afternoon and early evening was spent in a fog of shock and disbelieve. At the time I worked just around the corner from were I lived and so I went into work, though off duty, because it was the only safe place I could think of. Fortunately for me, our Mental Health Lead Nurse, Mary Murphy, was on duty. She was brilliant and just talked with me, helped to calm me, as much as I could on that strange day. Martin, my partner, rush back and seeing him was a deep relief. Just being with him was a step back to normality, as much as we could. Martin and I spent most the afternoon and early evening just wondering around our area of West London. Our comfort zone of our home was barred to us, so we walked slowly down to Sheppard’s Bush, were I had been only that morning.

Those hours we spent in limbo, before we could finally be let back into our flat, were a strange and listless time. In the area around our home everyone seemed know that there was something going on involving terrorists, everyone seemed to be on edge about it, but the further away we walked the less people seemed aware of it. At Sheppard’s Bush we sat in a pub for a few hours, killing time, and so many people around us seemed so unaware of what had happened. I wanted to shout at them that there were terrorists just up the road, that there were terrorists on our very doorstep.

One of the worst parts of it, those hours we spent wondering around, while we couldn’t be get into our home, was not knowing what was going on. All we knew was that it was a “terrorist incident”, there was police everywhere, sealing off the area around our then home and that I had heard an explosion. We had no access to the internet and everywhere we went nowhere had the news on, we were lost for information. In our twenty-four hour news culture, that day Martin and I were cut off from it. It was after seven o’clock, as we made our way back to our flat, that I found out the bare bones of what had happened. My friend Andrew called me to see if we were all right and I found out that two suspected terrorists had been arrested.

It was only when we were finally allowed back into our home that we were able to piece together what had happened. Two men, suspected of taking part in the failed attacks the week before, had been arrested. The explosion I’d heard was the police throwing smoke bombs into the flat to flush out the men. They were the men whose image, of them surrendering to the police dressed only in their underwear with their arms raised in the air, was shown around the world. The worst element was that those men had been living in the next block of flats to our own; they had been living just down the street from us. Martin recognised them, he had seen them at our local bus stop, I’d been in our local shop at the same time as them, they had been living along side of us. Terrorists had been living less then a hundred meters from our very home.

I found it difficult to relax after that, for many days. Every time I heard a police or ambulance siren I’d physically jump, my nerves pulled on edge. Every time I was outside, especially when I was on public transport, I would find myself staring at people and wondering if they too were terrorists, it didn’t matter what their race or gender was. Every time there was a mention of the arrests on the media, in the days after you couldn’t avoid it, I’d find myself physically tense up. I was physically unharmed by it all but I just could not relax, for days and days.

Four days ago the trail of those two men, and the other four men involved in those failed attacks, ended, though two of the defends the jury failed to reach verdicts on and so there’ll be a re-trail (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6284350.stm ). The two men who arrested on Thursday 29th July 2007 were found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of forty years in prison.

The experience has left a deep impression on me, one I’ll never forget, I feel less safe here in the city that I love. I’ve moved away from North Kensington, there have been no further suicide bombings in London, and I’m no longer tensing every time I hear a police siren, but I no longer feel that comfortable safeness I once felt here in London, though I certainly have no plans to leave this city.

Hollywood and television would like to give us the impression that terrorists are evil and mad, you can easily spot them by their evil stare, but in reality terrorist are just ordinary people, living ordinary lives but, for whatever reason, have extraordinary and very dangerous believes. A terrorist can look like anyone else, I know because I’ve stood at a bus stop and waited to be served in a local shop with terrorists and I never knew it.

Drew.

Based On A True Story

Last week I had an article published in Nursing Standard magazine, I seem to be getting a regular with them. This one was basically advice to nurses who have received notices telling them that their jobs are “at risk” – i.e. they’re at risk of being made redundant. It is quite a horrible thought; I live in a society that actually makes nurses redundant.

This article first started life when I worked for NHS Direct. Last year they had a “Consultation Period” when they were threatening staff with redundancy because they had over-estimated their budget (Of course the Senior Management who made the mistakes weren’t being threatened with redundancy). My colleagues were stressed out of their minds and no one knew exactly what redundancy entailed – we were NHS staff and traditionally the NHS has been short of staff, not having too many and making them redundant. During that period I learnt a lot about redundancy. I was not the only nurse to live that nightmare. I since turned that experience into an article for Nursing Standard magazine.

It’s not the best experience to write about but nurses are still facing the threat of redundancy, they shouldn’t be left without any support. I was also able to get a mention in it to my friend Sally’s website (http://www.step-in-time.net/about.htm ), she’s an excellent Life Coach and she deserves all the publicity she can get.

Drew.