Can alcohol take away worries?

My column in the Herald Express 20th September 2012

SOME years ago I spent a little time at Buckfast Abbey in quiet mediation. I have always enjoyed the spiritual ambiance of the abbey where somehow the detritus of daily life simply falls away. Why am I telling you this? Well, the other day I happened to be chatting to a bloke with a well-developed social conscience about the things that were happening locally. He had recently walked around our local town centres and had also the misfortune to be caught up in the drunken maelstrom that is Torquay's Strand on a Saturday night.


He asked me why I thought our town centres seemed devoid of vibrant life and totally lacking in energy.
Now that is not an easy question to answer even though many take regular pops as to why that might be.
The usual cry is that it is all down to parking meters, the weak decisions of local councillors, dull shops, out of town supermarkets et cetera et cetera. Hmm. If only it was that simple.

But his second point made me spend a little time pondering about Saturday night drunkenness. Alcohol, of course, has always been a very effective social anaesthetic and given the nature of our 'Big Society' you can see why it is becoming increasingly popular today particularly among our young folk. For that brief moment the worries of day-to-day life can be obliterated by an alcoholic daze that transcends the here and now. It is that moment of atmospheric immortality. But eventually the cruel reality of the dawning of a new day as the downward despairing spiral takes a merciless hold.

His telling of these two events is connected, although I don't think that he had actually made the connection.
They are connected by an increasingly sinister malfunction that is eating away at the fabric of our society.
What is that malfunction? Well, in truth, I think that it might be the loss of hope. Hope, after all, is said and done was the last thing left in Pandora's Box.

The closing of so many small shops in and around the town signals the loss of hope by the independent traders coupled with the dislocation of the local community. That sort of hope has an energy that cannot be seen, yet when it has gone you certainly know it.

Each of those closed shops is usually a shattered dream, a loss of work and yes, a loss of hope. Add to that the closed guest houses, businesses and other employment sources and you start to get a rather sinister toxic mix. The trouble is that once the community energy seeps away, as it did with the closing of the local Post Office, it is so hard to get back. A little like goodwill, I guess.

It saddens me that the loss of hope is also creeping through the next generation and headlines like that over one-million young people are out of work make me shiver. Just think about that. One million. The population of Torbay is around 134,000, so that is like having seven lots of Torbay made up of young people out of work. That is a disgrace.

So my friend with the well-developed social conscience asked me how we could change this feeling of hopelessness. When you are being battered by daily life that is a difficult question to answer or even fully understand.

But taking yourself out of the daily detritus in the quiet of an abbey or distant hill top does give you a chance to take stock. For me, the starting point is about identity and how we see ourselves and those around us.

The second point is the willingness to share this life journey and avoiding the selfish greediness that is very much part of our fractured community.

Now find me leadership that isn't shaped by a political agenda but will simply represent the people working toward a greater good.

Perhaps now is the time to open the windows and let the light come in.

Keep the smile!

Time to bring on the clowns…

My stuff in the Herald Express on Thursday 6th September 2012.....

I HAD wanted to sleep on one morning last week, because the past week had been very hard going, but at around 5.30am my youngest was banging around sorting his surfing kit before heading off. There was a good wave at Bantham and he with the local surfing posse was going to ride the early morning Atlantic swell.



The trouble for me these days is that once I am awake my mind starts to churn, which means finding sleep again is next to impossible. Oh, I know most of the meditation methods for clearing the mind, but you have to want to clear your mind in the first place. So it's up and out of the pit for a little early morning dog walking.

Oldway Mansion is near my house, and I love the gardens and the house for that matter. There is a little temptation to have a rant about what is happening there, but this is not the time or the place just now and, in any case, the decision has been made. Ah yes, the decision. We'll come back to that political hot potato in a while.
The weather this summer has been pathetic, but that morning the sky over the sea was a cobalt blue and the sunrise breathtakingly beautiful. As I write I can still feel the tingle! Behind me huge black clouds were massing over the hills surrounding Torbay and it seemed to me that the moment was almost metaphorical.
The precise moment in that quiet place somehow mirrored the social landscape in these troubled times and reminded me how often we lose sight of the good things because of the billowing bleak cloud of economic unrest.

This brings me neatly to our own South Devon social landscape and something which has troubled me for years. There is, in my opinion, no place for party politics in a local council and yet it has become increasingly entangled in the tattered political tapestry. Of course, we all tend to be somewhat gregarious by nature and therefore being part of the gang is curiously attractive. It therefore, by its very existence, makes it almost impossible to seek election as an independent because you simply don't have the electoral machinery to fight against hardened political foot soldiers.

Yet you will find the occasional independent councillor who has sufficient charisma to attract a following but all too often 'independents' are really hiding under the wing of a political party. I'm not going to state the obvious here, but I am sure that many readers will have a wry smile at this point.

Sadly, once you have been locally branded with a political stamp there is a belligerent unwillingness by the 'gang' to listen to those not in the flock, and that is almost sinful because the voice of the community is marginalised. Good people become excluded from the decision making process and in consequence we end up with too often a dog's dinner of an outcome. Just look around and pick out a few examples.

For those of you who have got this far I have something that I want to share. You will have become very aware, if you read the Herald Express, of the move to reduce parking charges and encourage folk to return to our beleaguered town centres. To be quite honest this is a reaction to something that shouldn't have happened in the first place, which now has me jumping up and down with frustration. Do look back and find my 'ranting' when the whole parking meter/car parking issue raised its ugly head.

You see it's not just about town centre parking charges it is about the whole community process, especially when it comes to planning and the proliferation of giant supermarkets sucking the life blood out of communities. Get hold of a copy of Robert Greenwald's DVD called Walmart and hang on to your seat.

So banging on about parking charges now is only part of the problem since the proverbial horse has already bolted. You see there has to be something other than empty shops and the tattered remnants of a high street to pull people back to town. I must admit when Gerry Cottle's Big Top Circus suddenly appeared on Paignton Green it seemed to me part of an answer since people came from miles around to see the clowns, which given what I've written is tempting the obvious political parallel. The giant Riviera Wheel in Torquay is another honeypot and so whatever our political masters decide on parking policy there has to be something more.

Anyway, I'm still tingling from that sunrise and perhaps the tingle factor is what we all need just now.

Keep the smile!