Some say the mere existence of the Royal Family is an affront to democracy.  Not a bit of it; they are its upholders.  They curb the power of politicians by subsuming the cult of personality from leadership, providing an alternative focus of respect and idealisation that prevents our elected leaders becoming too big for their political boots.  So the Royal Family prevent the creation of tyrants, just by being there.  The Queen’s in her palace and all’s well with the world. 

Next year, The Queen would have been on the throne for 60 years.  She acceded in a different time; she has overseen the most amazing changes, not just in terms of historical events or our way of life, but more crucially in our attitudes to all the important things,  family, marriage, religion, sexuality.   She has stayed firm and uncompromising through it all. She is the same now as she was in 1952.  She is the moral anchor for a nation, nay half a world, that has been buffeted by the winds of change.  Not only that, but The Queen is latest in a long line that goes back to William the Conqueror;   she embodies continuity, representing a historical notion of nationhood that goes back to the very beginning.  I don’t know ho children understand history now, but when I was a boy, it all hinged around the Kings and Queens.   Like the Observer’s Book of Birds or Ian Allen’s Great Western Railway locomotives (with its 30 Kings, 6000 to 6030),  I knew the images of each King and the dates they ruled;  I still do.  Some knowledge never fades.    Our national anthem is not about the power of the state, the revolution, or even the beauty of the country, it is about the monarch – as if The Queen (or King) is the essential symbol of nation and empire.   ‘God Save The Queen’.   Quite!          

Saturday’s Guardian, an organ that hs never admired inherited privilege and power, was so critical of the whole Royal Wedding extravaganza,  though they did approve of the royal minibus fleet; the need for cuts and all that!  They reminded me of prison vans.  In a sense, I suppose, they were.      

But there is surely nothing like a Royal Wedding to reaffirm that sense of unity and commitment.  In the Church of England, it seems, the beards always have the best words.  It was the bald and bearded Bishop of London who emphasised the commitment of marriage (as opposed to just living together) as a potent symbol of unity and responsibility for family, society and the nation, while it was left up to that aging Welsh hippie, Rowan Williams to remind Kate of her responsibility to have a baby, preferably male.         

The Germans may sneer at the English for their eccentric attachment to the Windsors, but had it not been for the last century’s two great German wars, they might have still been Saxe-Coburg-Gothas and William might have been assigned a German princess.  It was the symbolic significance of the Royal Family, who refused to leave London even though the palace was bombed, as much as Churchill’s indomitable rhetoric that got us through the second war.   The Germans began to recognise the flaws in their Fuhrer quite early on.  Theirs was not a glorious endeavour; they couldn’t prevail.  Our parent’s war had right on its side.  So despite the familial dysfunction and the flurry of  royal divorces,  the Royal Family is nearly as popular now as it was in the 1950s.   80% of the population support it.  Maybe it will be different when the Queen dies; there could be a backlash to King  Charles and Queen Camilla.  Could Kate Middleton will be the one to restore it; she has that quiet sense of dignity, that stability and composure, that regal quality that could capture the nation’s affection and identification.  

Friday’s Royal Wedding is a symbol of hope, hope for William and Kate of course, but also for the rest of us, though the cynics will remind us we’ve been here before.   30 years ago, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer.  A fairy tale wedding, they called it, but it was more like one of Grimm’s.  Charles and Camilla were still exchanging tokens of their affection up until the eve of the wedding.   But apparently Prince Philip had insisted Charles choose a virgin and an aristocrat.   There were not that many around.  So Diana, the nineteen year old insecure daughter of a dysfunctional family, was selected for sacrifice.  They hardly knew each other.  It was less of a romance and more an arrangement to secure the dynasty.   The runes were not good and it ended in tragedy.  Kate and William are so different.  Theirs’ is a love match, they met at university 10 years ago, they are the same age, they were friends before they became lovers, they have lived together.  They are like us, they laugh and joke at the same things and they renew our belief in love and family at a time when cynicism is considered clever.  

The are a repository of hope.  We can only wish them well.

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It was like a metronome, every second.  Simon worked out that at this rate, she would say oh dear, 3600 times an hour,  up to 50,000 times a day,  15 million times a year.  But the mantra had some more intense variations;  ‘oh no,  oh no, oh no’ or just ‘no, no, no no’, and worse still, ‘oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please’ and then ‘oh Nick, oh Nick, oh Nick’  Anybody listening to this would be bound to think, ‘Whatever is he doing to that poor woman?’ 

Every so often she would stop and ask where we were going.

‘We going to Chatsworth mum. You know to my cottage’ and I’d make a motion with my hand as if to open the latch. 

‘Chatsworth.’, she’d say puzzled and then she would get it.

‘They brought the lambs in.’ 

‘Yes that’s right.’

‘What are we going there for?’

‘We’re going to have tea; turkey sandwiches, Christmas cake, mince pies.’

‘You going to leave me there.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘We’ll have tea and then take you back home.’

‘Home?’

‘Yes, to your flat.’

‘My flat?’

‘Yes, number 9 the Woodlands, Shore Lane.’

‘Do I live there?

‘Yes.’

‘And then you’re going to leave me to walk?’

‘No!’

And the litany would all start again, ‘oh no, oh no, please, oh please’.

It is all very tiring.  Although I am not doing anything awful to her, it feels like it.  The reality is that her life is dreadful. She has lost her identity.  She cannot remember anything from one moment to the next and so everything is alien to her, confusing. She  doesn’t know where she is or what is happening. 

And so a pleasant drive in the country is torture to her.  She has been taken out of her environment along roads she can barely remember to an unknown destination for no clear purpose.  And because she has never really been able to trust that things will be allright, she fears she will be abandoned and never find her way back.  It must be terrifying. 

When the Red Army invaded East Prussia in the winter of 1945, millions of people were forced by fear of murder and rape to flee their homes and join the columns of refugees escaping in sub zero temperatures towards the west.  That was their dreadful reality.  They didn’t know where they were going or why and many died on the way. Mum’s world must seem just as threatening.  She does not know where she is, she has no home and she sees confusion and danger everywhere.  Sometimes when I have to repeat the same facts to her for the twentieth time, it is important to realize that this an anchor point, however ephemeral, in a devastated world.

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So when the magistrate, a pleasant enough lady about my age, asked ‘Do you plead Guilty or Not Guilty?’, I looked at her with what I thought was an innocent smile and replied ‘Can I plead Don’t know?’  She stared at me, heavy lidded. Undeterred, I went on to explain that I could not remember anything about the accident.  The time from filling up with petrol in Fulwood and coming to in the ambulance has been erased.  It still is.  How wonderful it would be if everything else could be erased like that.

Warming to my theme with a degree of righteous indignation, I indicated that that particular road junction was difficult.  The independent witness had drawn attention to the tall grasses that obscured vision, the junction is at an angle and at the top of a hill, so you had to look over your left shoulder to see anybody coming up from Sheffield while cars coming the other way could disappear into dead ground. Besides I hadn’t received the prosecution witness statement.      

I was clearly perceived as being awkward.  Moi?  A doctor and therapist; a model of compliance and understanding – the very idea!  Heads edged together as the bench  decided what to do. Then with anxiety glinting in her eyes and a calm politeness that indicated caution, the good lady advised that I get a solicitor to represent me and return on the 18^th, just a week before Christmas. I bowed to the court and departed with dignity.   

Mr Johnson was about my age, somewhat overweight with bluff, friendly manner;  Rumpole of The Wicker.  He looked me in the eyes, ‘Well, doctor, there’s no point in trying to defend this.  They will screw you for every penny they can.  You can’t win.  You’re a professional, you are perceived as rich and relatively privileged.  It’s not fair, but who said society was fair?  Best to plead guilty, explain the mitigation and accept three more points on your licence. I can come and do that for you if you like. It’ll cost you seventy pounds.’  

That agreed, he expounded on how much the law bends over backwards to protect the criminal.  ‘You can stamp on somebody’s head on a Saturday night in the Wicker, spend a night in the cells, and they’ll fine you a hundred quid.  I received a parking fine of £70 for leaving my car in the road round the back. I asked the officer if I could pay him an extra ten pounds and go in and rob ASDA, because that would only incur a fine of £80. But the law doesn’t treat decent, honest middle class people very well. And you won’t get legal aid.  You’ll have to pay for everything.’  

He picked up his blackberry, stubbed at the keys with pudgy fingers but couldn’t get through.  He held it at arms length and stared at it cross eyed as if trying to hypnotise it into submission. He looked at me, sighed, jabbed at the object in his hand.   ‘And this is the magistrates court.  They’ll play me music in a minute!’   

‘But don’t these things drive you mad.  I was at my doctor’s the other day.  As soon as I came in, he started typing away on his computer.  ‘Nigel, I said, look at me, look at me!’  I could have had a heart attack while he was typing away and he wouldn’t have noticed.  And if eventually he did, he would have written his report first and only then called the ambulance!’

‘The world has changed, doctor, changed beyond recognition.  And we’re seen as dinosaurs.  Nobody seems to understand any more.  And nobody knows anything!  None of my staff know their times table.  Do you believe it?  What are seven sixes – I ask and they look at me blankly and say ‘Dunno.’  He raised his eyes to the ceiling.  

We laughed!  It was ridiculous; no point in being too serious about it.  It was fun being grumpy for a bit. I’d found a kindred spirit, a friendly ghost of Christmas past – right out of Dickens. It was going to be a good Christmas after all.

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Richard Eyre summed up the qualities of good actors.  They must be conscious of themselves but not self conscious.  They must be narcissistic on stage, but humble off it, they must live the role but then forget it.  They must have a perfect balance of good sense and warmth, rationalism and emotion.  They must captivate their audience, but then become anonymous. They must create empathy in people’s minds and leave.  They should feel the part, but never try to go beyond the feeling.

Courage is essential to a good actor, death to a bad one.  Actors must present a buoyancy of spirit even though their heart may be breaking.  Eyre described finding Ralph Richardson looking glum after rehearsal. He asked him why. He replied ‘Oh dear boy, I just learnt today that my brother has burnt to death, but’, he added thoughtfully, ‘there’s one consolation; it can’t happen again.’ 

Actors must learn to contain their emotions, avoid being too worried about their performance, work as a team and but never imagine they are the play. It’s a route that runs close to madness. The psychotic actor, seduced by celebrity and fame, can imagine that they are the stage, upon which others play out their emotions.   

It seems to me that acting is not too different to psychotherapy.  The effective  psychotherapist enters the clients world sufficiently to set up a confident and trusting therapeutic relationship  They have to understand, empathise and be compassionate, yet maintain a detachment. It’s a delicate balance that cannot be prescribed, only felt. The quality of any therapy depends on the quality of that engagement. Like the actor in relationship with the character, the therapist must maintain an observing, intelligent mind. They must not descend into their client’s abyss, they must remain on the brink, in communication, connected, yet able to see the possibilities of freedom. There is no redemption, no rescue, if both get lost.

But doesn’t the same principle apply to all relationships?  We are, after all, social creatures. We need to engage with other people but we must not become them. The joy of human relationships is that we bring our independent selves to any relationship, creating the possibility of insight, growth and the joy of discovery. Merger may seem like stability, security, but it’s stagnation.  We mustn’t seek to confine others with bonds of obligation and dependancy. 

But what of falling in love; that wonderful delusion of discovering ourselves in the other?  Therein lies a madness; a suspension of reality in the service of the dreadful seduction of the feeling.  People can fall in love with falling in love and often do. They can be completely lost in the abyss unless they maintain the observing eye of the director that can see how the play could work out. But what would happen if they fell in love with the director?     

And what about actors who play the same character for years on the radio or in television soap operas?  Norman Painter, who played Phil Archer, died last week aged 86. Three days previously, he had recorded an episode for November. He had said he wanted to die in the role. So had he become Phil Archer?. Therapy too can go on forever. The patient may get out of the abyss into the therapist’s safe house, only to find herself unable to leave. Many couples persuade themselves and others that they are in love forever. So why can this seem so boring?  Have I just become an old cynic?      

Afterwards, finding Sir Richard alone with a glass of wine, I explored the idea that  directors combine the characteristics of therapists and actors.  They work with the company as well as the play, coaxing the correcting nuance out of the actors, calming their insecurities, interpreting plot and character.  In this God-like status, I added, warming to my argument, was there not a danger that they could become the stage, upon which others play out their emotions, like the charismatic conductor of a symphony orchestra?  Perhaps I had gone too far. Eyre looked alarmed. He replied, somewhat huffily, that he never analysed what he was doing; it was intuitive.  In any case, the director is not the stage. The plays the stage.  A-ah!  I could have pursued this, but at that point, some ‘lovies’ came to the rescue and I departed, stage left!

Sir Thomas Beecham was immensely narcissistic, but he recognized the knowledge and talent of his musicians and did not attempted to impose his will  on the orchestra, merely guide it.

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It was half past nine in the evening and quite dark.  The phone rang.  It was dad.  He was very agitated.

‘There are people in my house – lots of them; men and women.  They’re sitting on my settee. I have told them to go but they won’t.’

‘Who are they dad?’

‘I don’t know.  They won’t tell me.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Oh, just talking, asking me questions, laughing.’

‘Can you let me talk to them, dad?’

‘MY SON SAYS YOU HAVE TO TALK TO HIM.’ 

‘They won’t.  Now they’ve issued me a death warrant.’

‘FUCK OFF!. GO ON. FUCK OFF!!!’.

‘Don’t worry Dad.  You just keep them talking and I’ll get the police.’

‘MY SON’S CALLING THE POLICE.’   

I phoned Toby who is an ex-policeman and runs the neighborhood watch.  He was  out, but Judith said she’d go down and look around.

Ten minutes later, she called back. ‘There’s nobody there. Nick; no cars in the drive.  And I looked through the window.  You father’s alone in the house.’

I called dad back.

‘Hello, Nick.’

‘Have those people gone.’

‘Oh yes. They’ve gone now. But they left a label.’

‘Did they?  What did it say?’

‘Oh I don’t know.  I wrote it down.’

‘Here it is.’ 

‘NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS’

Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a popular BBC television panel game with a pop and rock theme.  It has been on air since 1996 and stars Phill Jupitus and a variety of guests.

Today is dad’s birthday.  He would have been 93, but he died a month before his 91^st.   

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It was an unfortunate accident, but how accidental was it?  On reflection, I realised there  was a trail of causation. 

Accidents are often caused by mistakes, lapses in concentration or errors in perception resulting in behaviour that is clumsy or inappropriate.  Our expectations of what might happen are not only determined by what we really see or hear, but by habit – what usually happens.  Most of what happens in our lives is familiar, we go through it on auto-pilot.  We see what we expect to see, hear what we expect to hear, as long as things proceed on cue, we don’t think about what we’re doing; we just do it. 

Our thoughts and actions are so conditioned by experience that for the most part, we don’t have to pay much attention.  Training and experience have set up circuits that cause us to react automatically to a whole variety of familiar circumstances.  To take a current example, Roger Federer is a tennis playing automaton for much of his game.  Hard wired into his brain is an extensive repertoire of responses to every possible nuance of court conditions, ball trajectory, his opponents method of play, the state of the game, the weather;  he reacts without thinking and can produce the perfect cross court volley in the right situation.  He functions in the moment; things only go wrong if he regrets the last shot and worries about the next.  But for most of us, life is not a tennis match, everyday life always throws up the unexpected and unless we are alert and paying attention and able to adapt our responses, we can all too easily assume the expected and cause an ‘accident’. 

Our focus is more likely to be distracted if we are tired, upset and preoccupied about something else.  If our mind is not on the job, we ignore the cues, we expect something to be there but it isn’t.  So if we are in charge of a dangerous machine, operating equipment at work or driving a car, or even just walking down the stairs, we are more likely to make a mistake and have an accident.  My mind was so distracted by domestic worries, I was not focussed on being ‘in London’ and so my legs behaved as if I was coming down the stairs at home. 

Accidents do not always occur because of lapses or distractions.  Emotion can play its part. Desire is not only a potent cause of distraction but can make us take the most enormous risks.  Fury has to be satisfied no matter the consequences.  Guilt or shame can induce a wish for punishment or even injury and death, that is often expressed in the most foolhardy and dangerous behaviour. 

Just as we all possess an instinct for self preservation, so there is a much darker side, an urge to self destruction.  Among the various manifestations of this death wish are overindulgence in alcohol or drug abuse.  Many people use drugs or alcohol to achieve a state of oblivion, so releasing them from the normal inhibitions and calculations over risk.  I used to belong to the Night Climbers of Cambridge.  After a heavy night in the pub, my friends and I would go out and, completely unprotected by ropes or pegs, climb up the walls of the colleges, clamber over roofs and leap from one building to another.  What was that about; a confirmation of the immortality of youth, an urge for self destruction, or a desperate attempt to attract a pretty girl? 

Accidents often have a trajectory, a trail of consequences, stemming from a single  decision made for the wrong reasons and leading in some cases to injury or death.  So when a  woman accepts the invitation of her boss to dinner, drinks too much, has sex with him and then has to drive fifty miles back home in the middle of the night, all the components, tiredness, preoccupation, fear, guilt, self disgust and being in charge of a lethal machine, are assembled for a major accident.        

Accidents also have a purpose.  If you are injured, then you don’t need to do something you don’t want to, to take an exam, have an awkward meeting, take a difficult decision or own up.  The accident does the job for you, extricates you from an impossible situation, and at the same time, recruits the love and care your spouse, family and friends.   

For me, my accident allowed me time out from external distractions while providing the time and space to relax, rest, feel the confidence of being cared for at home and finish my book.  In time my tendon mended and so, for a while, did the connections with my family.

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The issue raised by Dr Martin Whyte’s paper, entitled ‘Ida; new light on Palaentology’ ,  was not so much about the validity of these claims as by how scientific discovery should be publicized. 

Ida was extracted from the Messl Lakes, fossil rich deposits of brown coal in Germany, and sold to a collector, who kept her in his private collection for 25 years before selling her on to the Museum of Oslo for a very large sum of money.  To recoup their investment, the museum engaged a team of scientists to investigate her.  They published their ‘findings’ in an on-line journal at the same time as the film and the book were released.   

The publicity of findings in other sciences;  physics, medicine and zoology, for example, depends on peer review and publication in reputable scientific journals. Some scientists and indeed some journals may wish to issue a press release on discoveries they think are particularly important, but for the most part, whether a finding is publicized is a matter of luck.  Somehow, publicity is seen as pandering to commercialism.  Science, like religion, is above all of that . 

Palaentology is different. The commercial opportunities are too great.  Fossils all too often find their way into the hands of illegal entrepreneurs who will prepare the specimens for collectors, who purchase them for large sums of money and may then, like the Oslo Museum, seek to recoup the scientific capital of the discovery.  With so much money involved, the temptation for fraudulent claims, like the Piltdown hoax of the thirties, can be too great. 

But publicity occurs in other branches of science too.  How pervasive would the philosophy of Sigmund Freud had been without the efforts of his publicist, Dr Ernest Jones?  And would we have been celebrating the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth this year were it not for his champion, Dr Thomas Huxley?  All great discoveries need to be discovered by somebody who can get them into the public arena.  Some scientists are also great self publicists.  Among contemporary examples are Baroness Susan Greenfield, Lord Winston and Richard Dawkins.  Never discount the role of PR and commerce in science, even though many scientists regard self publicists with envy and disdain and place their faith in the objectivity of peer review.

But peer review is never objective and cannot be considered a council of truth.  Think of Dr Andrew Wakefield’s proposal of a link between MMR vaccine and autism.  The data was seriously flawed but The Lancet still published it. 

And peer review can be quite corrupt.  Journals often ask authors to suggest their reviewers and, of course, they volunteer their friends.  There are often just a few people around the world working on a given research topic.  They have a self interest to ensure that their work is kept in the public eye and continues to attract funds.  Scientists often come of unspoken agreement to support each other.  Any interloper, whose work threatens to undermine this cosy arrangement, is likely to see their papers rejected for publication.  Drug companies recruit teams of ‘independent’ opinion leaders to investigate their products.  The results are nearly always presented in the best light for the company and supported through the peer review system by scientists working on the same drug.  Nobody is keen to bite the hand that feeds them grants, sponsors their journals,  underwrites their academic positions and arranges and pays for their attendance at key conferences.  Having been invited on the international merry go round, scientists would do almost anything not to fall off it. 

A few years ago, an eminent colleague of mine, Professor Juan Malagelada from Barcelona, proposed that given the exponential expansion of papers, everything should be published on the internet.  Peer review by friends and other ‘interested’ groups, would be abolished and replaced by a much more open public review, similar to the reviews and critiques of new artistic works.  In this way, he concluded, only the genuine and valuable would be quoted and rise to the surface – a kind of populist peer review.  This system is would have its abuses, of course, the publicists would continue to push their own finds.  Money would change hands as scientists would try to ensure their work gets maximum exposure.      

So maybe it’s Palaentology that’s the missing link, sitting awkwardly between arts and sciences.  As a science, Palaentology is underfunded; it needs museums and private investors to fund the field work and the high tech scientific analysis.  New findings need hyperbole to excite interest in the area.  In that regard, the subject is not unlike art critique. Indeed, many fossils are very beautiful. If Van Gogh had had to rely on peer review, his work would never had been discovered.  He needed the support of his brother and friends to bring his paintings to public attention.  In a similar way, The Museum of Oslo had to hype up Ida to get visitors though its doors and encourage other museums to spend large sums of money to loan the specimen.  Peer review is too cautious and unlikely to excite public interest.  On the other hand, the more the hype, the greater the risk of exposure.  Public appraisal can turn on a sixpence!         

Ida; New Light on Palaentology, was presented to the Chapel Allerton Cafe Scientifique by Dr Martin Whyte from Sheffield Univerisity on 22nd June. 

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Anyway the last thing I remember was filling up the car with petrol at the Tesco services in Fulwood.  It was nearly empty and cost nearly £40.  Next I was lying on the stretcher in the ambulance.  They said I was going to the Northern General.  ‘Oh No!’, I said.  So I must have lost best part of an hour.

From what I could piece together,  I had driven through the Mayfield Valley and up to the junction with the Ringinglow Road.  That was where the crash occurred.  A Ford Fiesta had run into my Corsa. Both cars were write offs.  The Fiesta must have crashed into the driver’s door.  The three lower ribs on the right side were fractured, there was grass on my clothes and  I was passing blood when I first arrived. But what happened?  Did I fall asleep?  Was I preoccupied and just pulled out? 

Post traumatic amnesia seems to have the purpose of protecting the individual of the full impact of the occasion.  But is it really purposeful.  Isn’t it just something that happens?  I wonder if the shock just wipes the memory, like a computer exposed to an electric discharge, and only afterwards we ascribe some kind of protective purpose to it. People have told me that I was asking the same questions over and over again – like, where was my computer and what happened to the other driver?.    

But the memory is not completely lost.  It is there like an undercover agent, unseen, unknown, but influencing our thoughts and actions in ways that betray its intentions.  And, of course, post traumatic amnesia can be recovered under hypnosis.        

In the meantime, I have a black hole in my universe, that sucked a hour of my life into it.  It happened once before on this very unit, when they were trying to provoke my cardiac arrhythmia and my heart stopped.  I should stop coming to the Chesterman Unit.

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