The hearts can begin to heal in Ireland, in Gibraltar, and in many souls departed. A Catholic Irish Republican leader sat at a table, in public, alongside a Protestant Unionist leader, and agreed to undertake the administration of their homeland with the blessing of a British Government.
In 1868, a Protestant soldier of the 29th Regiment of Foot, the 11th of seven daughters and five sons, born in succession to a Calne Wiltshire family of some three hundred years, set sail from Ireland on his way to Gibraltar, where in 1870 he married a Catholic from Andalusia, Spain, and after serving in Malta, Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang and Mallaca, he and his family of two sons returned to Ireland from where he was discharged and went to live in Gibraltar and in Spain.
In 1892 his eldest Gibraltar born son married a Catholic Gibraltarian of Spanish and Italian background and their eighth of eleven children, born in 1907, my mother, celebrated with me, the meeting between the first Gibraltarian Chief Minister to host on his home soil, a Spanish Government Minister, to progress common interests, also with the blessing of the British Government. Thus the aching hearts of ancestors, and those who have experienced some kind of loss as a consequence of the divides, can begin to heal.
Without knowing why I have always seemed to have empathy with the plight of those who have experienced persecution and displacement from their home lands. My earliest recollection is that at the age of fourteen, I stunned the local public librarian, by asking a member of staff, Oliver Twist style, that I wanted to read the official reports of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials on Belsen and Auschwitz, after being recommended to do so by a Jesuit history teacher. In my first job I was attached to a group of six men who had all served in the First or Second World veterans of all three branches of the armed services. I felt I understood something of the Jewish experience, and of serving under fire and under orders as a consequence.
It was my understanding of the Passion and the Sermon of the Mount, and reading Gandhi's works on non violent action including Satyagraha that let me into a prison experience of six months as a civilian offender after refusing the option to stop being a self appointed inspector of weapons of mass destruction in Essex. It was one of my companion non violent demonstrators who explained to me the meaning of empathy.
Before that I had come to know that I was different when I took the side of the Red Indians in the Westerns and in support of indigenous people in general, getting arrested for sitting down on the pavement outside of South Africa House after the Sharpville shootings, sharing a cell for the greater part of the evening with a black South African university student, at the L.S.E. and before that I studied the history of black slavery music and then spirituals, blues nd Jazz in the USA and attempted to play a clarinet like Jimmy Noone.
However everything has since become more complicated, with supporting the Northern Ireland Catholics against their oppression prior to the Troubles, but opposed to the violence of both sides and a supporter of the wish of the Protestants to maintain their beliefs and culture. Similarly while on one hand it can be argued that the UK has no moral justification for holding on to the sovereignty of Gibraltar except to protect the wishes and self governing rights and aspirations of the indigenous people, I am torn between a natural sympathy for the descendants of indigenous Gibraltarians who escaped the rape and looting of the marauding British infantry man when Britain was given the port, and who now seek to reclaim their ancestral birth land, and the historical rights of the civilizing Muslim Moors of North Africa who created and developed the southern Iberian peninsular before the still contested identity of a united kingdom of Spain was created. It all explains why I would never have made a good politician.
I also have a problem with sorting where I stand in relation to the great religious divides except to feel that the religions of the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant and the Muslim appear to have more in common than with the atheist, but where I am also by inclination on the side of atheist and agnostic when they are persecuted under the banner of a God.
It is perhaps why my heart has always been with the colourful splodgers of paint and words. John Bratby was an early hero and I encountered a young female splodger, may she forgive me for calling her that, yesterday on myspace, just as my body has always yearned for the Mediterranean sun and soil.
In 1961 it was my privilege to have as a friend a graduate who had studied art and who introduced me to the Alexandrian Quarter of Lawrence Durrell, Justine, Clea, Mountolive and Balthazar, and it was in one of the books that the author character described his joy at devouring a tin of olives after swimming naked. I have devoured olives as sweets since childhood, but it was many decades later that alone under a blistering sun that I first swam naked in a sheltered private pool, guzzling fresh Seville crushed orange, with chunks of French restaurant bread and a plate of feta cheese, olives and Italian salami, washed down by a chilled Mateus Rose and large slices of watermelon from some undisclosed land.
I had to wait until I was in my early twenties to have my first experience of the Mediterranean sun of Italy, Venice, Rome, and Sorrento and then of the Greek mainland and a couple of its islands, and then the length of the South of France coastline and then only that of Northern Spain.
I had good reason for deferring direct experience of Gibraltar and Andalusia and indeed my only visits have been concerned with the liberation of physical death and the quest for spiritual identity rather than for the natural pleasures. When the gift of Balthazar was given, my friend urged that I take up the opportunity of further education at Oxford, on the basis that it would condense what I had to say. Alas I remain a splodger of words.
Somehow yesterday, and I carry the mood into these early hours of a new day, everything came together and there is some light in what has become a very dark space and heart and souls everywhere can begin to mend. I hope the mood lingers.
In 1868, a Protestant soldier of the 29th Regiment of Foot, the 11th of seven daughters and five sons, born in succession to a Calne Wiltshire family of some three hundred years, set sail from Ireland on his way to Gibraltar, where in 1870 he married a Catholic from Andalusia, Spain, and after serving in Malta, Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang and Mallaca, he and his family of two sons returned to Ireland from where he was discharged and went to live in Gibraltar and in Spain.
In 1892 his eldest Gibraltar born son married a Catholic Gibraltarian of Spanish and Italian background and their eighth of eleven children, born in 1907, my mother, celebrated with me, the meeting between the first Gibraltarian Chief Minister to host on his home soil, a Spanish Government Minister, to progress common interests, also with the blessing of the British Government. Thus the aching hearts of ancestors, and those who have experienced some kind of loss as a consequence of the divides, can begin to heal.
Without knowing why I have always seemed to have empathy with the plight of those who have experienced persecution and displacement from their home lands. My earliest recollection is that at the age of fourteen, I stunned the local public librarian, by asking a member of staff, Oliver Twist style, that I wanted to read the official reports of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials on Belsen and Auschwitz, after being recommended to do so by a Jesuit history teacher. In my first job I was attached to a group of six men who had all served in the First or Second World veterans of all three branches of the armed services. I felt I understood something of the Jewish experience, and of serving under fire and under orders as a consequence.
It was my understanding of the Passion and the Sermon of the Mount, and reading Gandhi's works on non violent action including Satyagraha that let me into a prison experience of six months as a civilian offender after refusing the option to stop being a self appointed inspector of weapons of mass destruction in Essex. It was one of my companion non violent demonstrators who explained to me the meaning of empathy.
Before that I had come to know that I was different when I took the side of the Red Indians in the Westerns and in support of indigenous people in general, getting arrested for sitting down on the pavement outside of South Africa House after the Sharpville shootings, sharing a cell for the greater part of the evening with a black South African university student, at the L.S.E. and before that I studied the history of black slavery music and then spirituals, blues nd Jazz in the USA and attempted to play a clarinet like Jimmy Noone.
However everything has since become more complicated, with supporting the Northern Ireland Catholics against their oppression prior to the Troubles, but opposed to the violence of both sides and a supporter of the wish of the Protestants to maintain their beliefs and culture. Similarly while on one hand it can be argued that the UK has no moral justification for holding on to the sovereignty of Gibraltar except to protect the wishes and self governing rights and aspirations of the indigenous people, I am torn between a natural sympathy for the descendants of indigenous Gibraltarians who escaped the rape and looting of the marauding British infantry man when Britain was given the port, and who now seek to reclaim their ancestral birth land, and the historical rights of the civilizing Muslim Moors of North Africa who created and developed the southern Iberian peninsular before the still contested identity of a united kingdom of Spain was created. It all explains why I would never have made a good politician.
I also have a problem with sorting where I stand in relation to the great religious divides except to feel that the religions of the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant and the Muslim appear to have more in common than with the atheist, but where I am also by inclination on the side of atheist and agnostic when they are persecuted under the banner of a God.
It is perhaps why my heart has always been with the colourful splodgers of paint and words. John Bratby was an early hero and I encountered a young female splodger, may she forgive me for calling her that, yesterday on myspace, just as my body has always yearned for the Mediterranean sun and soil.
In 1961 it was my privilege to have as a friend a graduate who had studied art and who introduced me to the Alexandrian Quarter of Lawrence Durrell, Justine, Clea, Mountolive and Balthazar, and it was in one of the books that the author character described his joy at devouring a tin of olives after swimming naked. I have devoured olives as sweets since childhood, but it was many decades later that alone under a blistering sun that I first swam naked in a sheltered private pool, guzzling fresh Seville crushed orange, with chunks of French restaurant bread and a plate of feta cheese, olives and Italian salami, washed down by a chilled Mateus Rose and large slices of watermelon from some undisclosed land.
I had to wait until I was in my early twenties to have my first experience of the Mediterranean sun of Italy, Venice, Rome, and Sorrento and then of the Greek mainland and a couple of its islands, and then the length of the South of France coastline and then only that of Northern Spain.
I had good reason for deferring direct experience of Gibraltar and Andalusia and indeed my only visits have been concerned with the liberation of physical death and the quest for spiritual identity rather than for the natural pleasures. When the gift of Balthazar was given, my friend urged that I take up the opportunity of further education at Oxford, on the basis that it would condense what I had to say. Alas I remain a splodger of words.
Somehow yesterday, and I carry the mood into these early hours of a new day, everything came together and there is some light in what has become a very dark space and heart and souls everywhere can begin to mend. I hope the mood lingers.
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