The adventures of a hat

This is a story which I suspect may be of no interest to anybody else. But I write my blog as much for myself as for whoever reads it, and it is one I wish to preserve and remember.

Given my propensity for losing scarves, hats and the like, it is perhaps surprising that I had managed to hold on to this hat for a remarkably long time, having been given it when we were in Corrymeela, way back in 2012. (It makes its first blog appearance here!)

I remember being very touched at the time. The hat was a gift from one of the groups we had supported. It was notable because while they bought hats for both of us, the two volunteers who worked with them, we were quite different in character and the two different hats were a very good match for each of us. It showed, I thought, an attentiveness to our different identities and a thoughtfulness to the choice. 

Plus, I just really liked it! It had certainly had a lot of wear, and has been a good many places in the ten years that followed. 

Until I lost it, back in February 2023. I thought I knew when, and figured I had left it on a bus or train that day. I was kind of sad, but resigned to not seeing it again.

I accepted it was time to get a new hat, but as winter was, hopefully, reaching its end, decided there was no immediate rush to do so.

Several months later, in June, I was back at a meeting with those I had been with that day, and was greeted with someone telling me they had my hat, but despite the best of intentions, had forgotten to bring it with them. Turns out I had not left it on the train, but at the meeting and someone had picked it up, recognised it as mine, and held on to it until they saw me again. These are not people I meet often or know well, and I was again touched that someone had identified it as mine, and intentionally kept it for me. 

I didn't mind that I wasn't to be reunited that day, it was, apart form anything else, definitely not bobble hat season, but I confess to a little spark of joy that it was not, in fact, after all, lost for good. 

She said she would post it. More months passed before we met again, some time in autumn / winter 2023 but online this time, and a few messages exchanged in the chat revealed she had indeed posted it, but that it had never arrived. Lost in the post. She felt guilty, I told her not to. It was a shame, especially after I'd had my hopes of seeing it again raised, but really not that big a deal. It seems I wasn't meant to be reunited with my hat after all.

I accepted, again, it was time to get a new hat. 

Jump forward a whole year to this week and the hat saga's happy ending. 

Earlier in the week a colleague had let me know of a parcel addressed to me that had arrived, which she offered to bring along to our meeting. I had really no idea what it could be, having come to an address we no longer use, and I was certainly intrigued. 

And there it was my long-lost hat, plus two others, with a note explaining the rest of the story. 

After the original hat going missing, she had, very generously, bought me a replacement (well two actually) but then in the interim, my 'lost in the post' hat had eventually found its way back to her, and she had posted all three on to me, and this time they made it. Almost two years after losing it, my hat and I are together again.

Just in time for winter. 

Having had to accept, twice, that my hat was lost for ever, it brought a broad smile to my face to be reunited with it after all this time.

I will be trying to take good care of it from now on and will do my best not to leave it behind anywhere else! 

The Last of England

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has been closed since 2020, first for covid, and since then for rewiring and other such things which, it turns out, in a building of its size and age, is fairly complicated. It is gradually heading towards reopening and over the summer one part of it hosted an exhibition of the "Victorian Radicals" which some of the Stories group headed to see one August afternoon. 

Once a teacher, always a teacher ... so I can never organise a trip that doesn't involve a task to do on the way around! I asked the group to each pick out their favourite piece, and we gathered at the the end to compare notes and describe what we had chosen and why. Interestingly, there were almost no duplicates: we clearly have very varied artistic tastes! 

My own choice was "The Last of England" by Ford Madox Brown. 

The painting depicts a boat setting sail, leaving England, filled with people in search of a better life in Australia, featuring in the foreground a couple with their young child, barely visible, tucked inside the mother's shawl. 

To be honest, I don't think I could really call it my "favourite", at least not aesthetically: I definitely wouldn't want it on my wall. But nonetheless, it is the one I picked out. 

It's a painting I have stood in front of many times at the museum, and pointed out to many people. I'm still not sure whether I like it, really, but I find it strangely compelling and it always draws my eye. I used to discuss it with groups of ESOL students on trips from the Sanctuary. I did so again this summer with my Stories group friends: some of whom arrived here by boat in search of safety and the promise of a better life than the ones they left behind.

The people who get into small boats to try and reach Britain's shores do so because they believe in the promise of safety, freedom and human rights to be found on the other side. They are, in my experience, not naïve about the risks involved, and yet they make a judgement that it is still worth it.  

Likewise for the family in the painting, and the thousands of others like them who got into boats to escape Britain's shores, hoping that somewhere else held the promise of a better life. They too faced grave risks but chose or felt forced to do so, leaving behind all they had ever known to travel half way round the world in an era where there was no turning back. 

For many who arrive here, I know that what they find on arrival doesn't entirely live up to what they hoped and dreamt. I suspect the same was true for many who headed to Australia and America and elsewhere in Ford Madox Brown's day.  

But here we are.

Even though I wouldn't want it on my living room wall, I picked out "The Last of England" for its reminder that people always have and always will migrate and that I believe that (while I'd like people to be able to do so in ways that are far safer) the principle of migration is something to be celebrated not stopped. I chose it for its reminder that whatever the the pain and risks it involves, people will always find the courage to follow their dreams for the promise of a better tomorrow. It is part of being human and something in which we should rejoice: shouldn't we want people to strive for the very best for themselves and their children, qualities which, in other contexts, are admired and revered? I chose it for its reminder that there will always be boats: and for those of us who are lucky enough not to have ever felt we've had no choice but to get in one in order to live our life in safety and freedom, our responsibility is to offer as warm as possible a welcome to those who have. 

Five years

Last month marked 5 years since Stories of Hope and Home became a reality. In some ways, it doesn't feel anywhere near that long, but in other ways it has already far surpassed what I dreamed it might become. 

Our exact start date is somewhat disputed... wass it the moment the vague idea was voiced aloud, the writing of the first version of our constitution, the day we opened the bank account, designed the logo, set up our social media accounts, got our first grant, or held our first meeting...? One way or another, in autumn 2019, Stories of Hope and Home came to be and by March the following year we had welcomed over 30 different participants, visited multiple schools, had several trips and parties and our first slightly bonkers residential in Wales. The tone had been set, a family was being created. 

I have said many times since that if anyone is thinking of starting an organisation focused on building community which relies on spending time together over coffee and cake, then starting six months before a pandemic may not be the ideal time ... but then again, we are still here and still going strong, so maybe it was. 

As 2020 turned the world we knew upside down, our little community supported one another through some difficult days and survived to tell the tale of the zoom era. And then with risk assessments endlessly written and rewritten, as restrictions allowed we came back together: first outdoors, then 2 metres apart, and finally with hugs allowed once more. We have never looked back.

We have shared anger and frustration as we have watched a hostile system get ever harder to face, we have created safe space that has held many tears. But we have also laughed loud and laughed often. We have danced together and built beautiful friendships. We have shared hope and joy. We have welcomed many newcomers into our fold. We have engaged with thousands of children and young people, educators and others and gently (and at times less gently) challenged perceptions and misconceptions. I am convinced we have played a part in creating change. We have become a charity, published a book, performed on stage. We have eaten so much good food and drunk an uncountable number of cups of tea. Together we have done many incredible things, and touched many lives. Of all of it, I think the greatest achievement is that we have created a community that such a diverse group of people describe as their family. 

In early September, well over a hundred people turned out to celebrate together. I looked around a room filled with good food and friendship, filled with noise and mess and a fair degree of chaos, filled with joy and laughter and a palpable sense of community, filled with people from all over the world who I know face unimaginable struggles and yet who get up and keep going, people who have the courage to speak out and make a difference, people who look out for and care about one another, people who have allowed me to be part of the most incredible family.

Among the things I did in preparation for the celebration event, was spend time looking back over the preceding years. Whether or not it was the best use of time, I spent many happy moments scrolling back through old photos and adding up past statistics. 

Statistics are only ever going to tell a tiny part of what has been, and continues to be a beautiful story, which is mainly told through snippets of shared experience, but nonetheless...

(Almost all of these numbers are already out of date!)

I think it is ok that I am more than a little bit proud of what that germ of an idea has turned into. 

My heart is full. 

And there is so much more still to come.

Getting back on track

It has been a good while since my last blogpost: September came and went without me writing anything here. A quick scroll back told me that April 2017 was the last time I didn't publish anything for a whole calendar month so it is certainly high time to polish off this one which has been a work in progress for a good while.

Needless to say, I have been busy (there is at least one other, also half-written post, to follow about some of that): but not exceptionally so by my standards, so that only offers a partial explanation for not putting pen to paper (or cursor to screen). I do know, more or less, what the explanation is, so we'll see whether this attempt to express it succeeds where my previous attempts to force the words to coalesce into something coherent have spectacularly failed.

Summer 2024 was a complicated mix. It was filled with loads of wonderful, joyful activities, with trips and visits and parties, with good food and lots of dancing. It was also marked by both good and bad news for people I care about, by hard conversations as well as jokes and laughter, and significantly, by the eruption of far-right, anti-migrant violence which rocked the country and deeply affected the communities I love.

In the midst of all that, in mid-August, I had a really lovely week in France staying with very dear friends. I was in need of a break, and I switched off, far more successfully than I had though I might manage. We did a few sort-of-touristy activities, but mostly I read good books, ate good food, and chatted endlessly about both silly and serious subjects, spending time with people I love very much. 

And then I came back.

I came back to an overflowing jobs list, populated with the things I expected to have to do, the inevitably unexpected additions, but also the things I had promised myself I would get ticked off before I went away but hadn't because everything had been put on a back-burner to deal with the fall out and impact of the riots.  

What I needed was a burst of productivity to get back on top of things, but instead I found myself feeling paralysed and overwhelmed, and lacking my usual motivation. Not to say I achieved nothing, but I definitely didn't feel like I was doing what I needed or wanted to achieve. As a person with a universal reputation for boundless energy, that hasn't been an easy thing to admit, even to myself. And while rationally I could tell myself this was not, perhaps, surprising, given how heavy the year had been; part of me definitely also felt like I was failing, not able to do what I "should".

To some extent, the life I have chosen means this is a reality I will always have to live with: I will never be able to do all that needs to be done, meet all the needs I would like to meet, solve all the problems I would like to be able to solve. Generally this is something I have made my peace with and a tension I manage relatively well: but for a few weeks in late August / September, I really struggled. There were tears in both a Birch staff meeting and my Stories supervision, as well as more than once on my sofa. I read up (again) on burnout and vicarious trauma, recognising elements of both in how I was feeling. The absence of blogposts was another symptoms of the space I was in: writing is often one of my ways of processing thoughts and emotions but my attempts to put this or anything else into words in the midst of it came to nothing. 

It was a tough few weeks: something I knew at the time but perhaps recognise even better now, from the other side. Because now? Now I am very much back on track, and I am grateful for the many things that have helped, including:

• I thrive on variety and would hate for every week to look exactly the same, but even I had perhaps hit a point where at least some semblance of return to routine, with a few fixed points has been beneficial. 
• I forced myself, at the point when I least felt like it, to re-establish, again, my routine of fairly regular morning prayer, something which always helps my equilibrium, in ways I can never explain. 
• At least some of the jobs in my jobs list, including some of those that I don't particularly enjoy have been successfully ticked off. There are still too many jobs to do, some of which I am inevitably still putting off, but it is back to feeling within the realms of achievable.
• I have also made conscious choices to take time off: ignoring the call of the jobs list and reminding myself not to feel guilty for making space for doing things I enjoy. 
• Stories of Hope and Home celebrated its fifth birthday with an incredible party and in the midst of the running around, I was able to pause and appreciate all this little project has achieved.
• A few weeks into the new academic year, every school age child in the hotel where I offer support to families is now in school: offering a sliver of normality for both them and their families.  
• Most of all, perhaps, I am surrounded by an incredible, supportive community around me who, knowingly or unknowingly, have played an important part in keeping me going and restoring my spirits.  

Onwards!