life

We Are Being Trolled

I know I touched upon trolls a few days ago, but it seems to me that they are becoming more and more virulent. I was just watching the morning news, when it struck me that we are all being trolled. On the internet, a troll is someone who posts controversial or inflammatory content into a forum to get attention or stir up trouble. They deliberately wind people up for their own amusement. I see it all the time, particularly with respect to ‘debates’ like the shape of the earth, where people seem to want to argue black is white that the world is flat, just to perpetuate the debate. Their arguments are getting sillier and sillier, more and more absurd, merely to stir people up and get them to respond.

However, it seems to me that we are all now being trolled on a far broader scale. This morning note how Elon Musk has tweeted all kinds of rancid, baseless bullshit about Labour and Starmer etc; we see guys like Trump and Farage doing something similar. Isn’t it obvious that they’re just trying to wind people up and get attention. They want people to react simply to pull the focus onto them. In the press conference the PM gave earlier about the plans for the NHS, half of the questions from the media concerned Musk, simply because he had posted an idiotic tweet.

Thus people like Musk, Farage and Trump are effectively nothing more than internet trolls, and would just be ignored if we collectively had any sense. The more we fail to do so, the more we feed their craving to be the centre of attention, and the worse and more inane their spewings become.

Wrong Kind Of Mummy, Matt!

Sometimes things happen which part of me thinks are too embarrassing for me to record here, yet I feel compelled to do so because it is so amusing, or to teach myself a lesson. A good example of this would be what happened yesterday. It was Boxing Day of course, and my brother Luke, his wife Yan and my little nephew Elias came to visit me and our parents in Harlesden. We were all going to have Boxing Day lunch together.

To be honest I was feeling rather pleased with myself: I had gone to the same shop at the o2 where I got my “Make America Think Again” baseball cap and bought Luke and Yan caps with the word mummy and daddy in Chinese on them. Of course, neither I nor the lady helping me at the shop knew a word of Chinese, so I had asked her to type the words Mummy and Daddy into google translate. I thought I was being clever and multicultural.

Luke, Yan and adorable baby Elias arrived at around one yesterday. Naturally, the opening of presents was quite high on the agenda, and I was very eager to see what they would say about my gifts. I expected a mixture of shock and amusement. As soon as she caught sight of the cap I had got for her, however, Yan looked rather confused, as though something didn’t make sense. Luke’s “Daddy” hat was fine, but not Yan’s.

A few seconds passed, and then Yan made the connection. The cap said mummy, but it was the wrong kind of mummy. Total fool that I am, I had given her a cap with the Chinese word for the ancient Egyptian embalmed pharaohs written across it’s front!

When my sister in law told me this, I curled up into a ball in a strange combination of total hilarity and utter embarrassment. Only I can make such mistakes. Obviously everyone else found it just as funny, reassuring me that it was the thought which counts. Even so, I suppose it will teach me not to try to be so clever!

The Room Where Time Stops

I suppose I have a pretty strange relationship with the front room of my grandparents house in Harlesden. I vaguely remember that when I was five or six, I used to be reluctant to go in there, preferring to play in the back room or the passage next to it. The front room was slightly too smart for me and my brothers to play in.

Yet, sat in that very room with my parents as we opened our presents this morning, I couldn’t help feeling utterly astonished: on the walls around us were photographs of four generations of my family, spanning about seventy years of history. On one wall are three framed black and white  photos of my mum, aunt and uncle. Probably taken some time in the sixties, my mother looks about ten – a smiling, exuberant,  bubbly young girl.

Opposite that wall though, on a table by the front window, now stands a beautiful glass photograph of my niece and nephew which my parents opened just this morning. They  both bear the kind of cheeky, fun filled smiles that only children their age seem capable of; it’s a beautiful, beguiling picture which I found staggering when I first saw it earlier, astonished at how quickly my niece and nephew are growing.

That glass photo now sits on a table next to an electric photo frame sent by my other brother Luke, showing a montage of pictures of the newest member of our family. Elias is now around thirteen months old, and also growing rapidly. The photos reveal a young boy so full of life, for whom the world is still so boundless and captivating.

On the third wall of the room and on the mantlepiece above the old disused fireplace, are various other photos of other members of our family. There are two of my Greek Cypriot grandparents, my Yiayia and Bappou, looking just as loving and caring as I remember them to be when they lived here and we used to come to visit them. There is also one of them on their wedding day, taken before anyone here today was born. And there is also a photo of myself, my brothers and cousins – their grandchildren- as a group, probably taken when we were last all together.

Looking at the pictures on these three walls, they inevitably remind me of the unstoppable passage of time. My grandparents are no longer with us, and my brothers and cousins are in various places around the world, as far afield as Brazil. Yet here in this north London house is where that all started; where, over seven decades, three generations have been raised with warmth and love. Time, of course, can never stop,  just as my brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews should never stop heading out into the world;  but the pictures on the walls of the front room capture moments in time which bring the family together again.

Happy Retirement Mrs. Hickson

I came across some news which I think is quite astonishing last night. On my old school’s Facebook page, I saw that Chris Hickson was retiring. That was a name I hadn’t heard in a long, long time: Mrs Hickson is – or was – the Speech and Language Therapist at Hebden Green. One of my very earliest memories is of her coming to the nursery department of school to take me to her office for our weekly sessions. I must only have been four or five at the time; the sessions were one-to-one, as I was the only kid in my class who needed speech therapy.

My weekly meetings with Mrs. Hickson continued throughout my time at school. If memory serves, they were often basically just chats, where she would just encourage me to speak. This was long before I got my first communication aid, so it was obviously important to get me to talk as clearly as possible. We used to talk about absolutely anything, especially my favourite books at the time. Obviously, Mrs H would then structure exercises for me around those subjects, but I remember sessions with her being fun and engaging.

Once, getting into her office, I threw my school bag onto the floor before sitting down. I was at the age when throwing things around seemed like a fun thing to do. I remember Mrs. Hickson looking quite aghast at me: “Matthew,” She said, “What if that bag contained a communication aid? It wouldn’t be a good idea to throw it around like that if it did.” At the time I didn’t feel very concerned, but I can see now that it was the beginning of something which would become far more significant for me.

Indeed, it was with Mrs. Hickson’s help that I was given my first Lightwriter. It was a relatively primitive device, compared to the communication aids we’re using now, but it completely revolutionised my life. I was suddenly able to talk to anyone and everyone I wanted, not just people who knew me well enough to understand my speech. The first morning I got one, I remember going up to shop keepers in Macclesfield and asking them for all kinds of bizarre things. It was like a whole new world had opened up.

Obviously, it was only because I had this new ability that I could do all kinds of things which would have been difficult previously, like going to the comprehensive school next to Hebden for GCSE english classes. That then lead to me going to college, then university, and eventually moving down to London. That would simply not have been possible had I not had a communication aid: talking to anyone like Esther, Charlotte, John, or the guys over in Tesco, would have been off limits. These days I use my communication aid daily; it is essential to me. The last twenty years of my life could not have happened had I not had the ability to communicate with other people efficiently.

All that is ultimately thanks to Mrs. Hickson and her foresight. I am thus highly indebted to her. No doubt she has helped countless other young people in similar ways. Frankly, given that I left school over twenty years ago, finding out that she is only just retiring yesterday struck me as astonishing. Indeed, Mrs. Hickson had been working at Hebden since the seventies: her legacy must surely be incredible. In many ways, it is because of her that I lead the life I now do, trundling around South-East London, talking to all kinds of people; going into shops and asking for all kinds of things. I therefore wish Mrs Hickson the happiest of retirements. Most of all, I’ll always have fond memories of our weekly speech therapy sessions back at school.