Everyday, for the past ten years, I have quietly celebrated the joy of a human life.
When, on February 18th 2007, I was wheeled into the operating room at King’s Hospital for a liver transplant, my life was saved. Two years earlier I had been diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and had increasingly come to live at life’s edge, with nine months on the waiting list and growing numbers of worrying attacks of encephalopathy where I lost memory and mind. But on that day, with the magnificent skill of doctors; the care, craft and kindness of nurses and co-ordinators; the tragic generosity of a donor; and the love of dear friends and family, my life was saved. I am perpetually grateful for this.
After four days in intensive care, three and a half weeks on the liver ward, and three months in a kind of recovery quarantine, my bile duct bag was removed and symbolized the end of my illness. Gradually a full life was restored. I was ‘born again’; and I breathed a quiet but very deep thank you. Every day since then has been that wonderful extra day of life that I would never have had if I had been born at any other time in history. The world of transplantation is always tinged with great sadness and great joy; and I have been fortunate for the joy.
I function on a low immune system but my health has been good. I gave up alcohol on the day of my diagnosis, and post transplant, I have continued completely without it. It is now over twelve years since I (or my partner) had any drink. I take my medications daily and go to King’s for regular checks. For a long while this has meant a visit every six months; nowadays it is a yearly visit in January. The only complication has been diabetes induced by medications; but I see a diabetic nurse every six months and follow the health guidelines. I am told I am doing very well.
I have made contact with the donor’s family indirectly through the hospital transplant coordinators; and have written to them annually to express my continuing gratitude. But confidentiality has been maintained; and there has been no face to face to contact.
Facing life threatening illness and recovering gave me cause for a lot of reflection. Indeed, in the first four months of my recovery I would write about it every day and finally produced an autobiography of my illness. It speaks of how my life was completely changed by illness; of how I struggled to make sense of it all, and especially the problems of being on a waiting list, experiencing hallucinations after the surgery, my potential dying, the challenge of living with another’s body organ, as well as the joys, almost manic, of recovery. I found this period of reflection very valuable: it gave me a record of what I had been through (much of which I would hardly be able to recall without it) and it enabled me to bring a closure to my illness. I do still think about it daily but without any sense of pain or trauma.
Since my surgery, I have lived a quiet but rich and full life. I was 60 when I had the transplant, and the illness led me to early sickness retirement from the University where I had worked for thirty years. I decided not to set my self any grand new tasks – no travelling the world or becoming a world athlete! Instead I continued with ordinary life enjoying each day as it comes.
Writing is my passion: so I write a little every day, usually in the early hours of the day. Since my recovery in 2007 I have written four books and some twenty little articles along with a range of not very good poems. I have decided I am no poet! I have also enjoyed reading more and more widely; and have continued with a little teaching and lecturing, some of which has taken me overseas to Brescia, Pisa, Kassel, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Madrid.
I support a very large number of wide ranging charities (over 40) from the British Liver Trust, Terrence Higgins. the Alzheimer’s Foundation and Help Musicians to Victims of Torture, Amnesty International, Global Justice and a local emergency Night Shelter – as well as the donor’s favourite: the Chestnut Tree House Children’s Hospital.
I also started to learn to play the piano, badly but enjoyably, which has also made me listen to music more carefully. I have developed some digital skills (running my own web site); and taken up daily exercise (gentle walking every day along a river that constantly fills me with delight). I also enjoy a little traveling: one highlight being a trip to Costa Rica. Nowadays I have the time to go the theatre a lot: usually to see musicals, especially fringe musicals. I enjoy friends and cooking; and spend very good time just enjoying living with my partner (We moved house in 2012 and now look forward to our 40th anniversary together).
I keep cheery despite all the dreadful troubles of a world that fills me with fear for the coming generations. Thinking of my transplant and all the altruism, care, knowledge, skill, kindness, generosity and love that surrounded it helps to sustain me in a very positive and ultimately hopeful view of the world. We must always look beyond the dark times.
When I started teaching at Essex in 1975, one of my main courses was Social Psychology. This year I am returning ti give four lectures on this course. 40 years on! And the subject has moved on
You can find this by clicking here
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY SC213-5-FY 2017
SUPPLEMENTARY HANDOUT FOR WEEKS 17-20, LECTURES 12-15
LECTURE AND CLASS THEMES
Lecture 12 – An Introduction to Symbolic Interactionism and the Self – Key Themes (week 17 Jan 23rd)
Lecture 13 – Making the Narrative Self and the Embodied Self: Telling stories about sickness bodies (week 18 Jan 30th)
Lecture 14 – The Intersectional Self: The Politics of Self (Week 19 Feb 6th)
Lecture 15 – The Generational Self/ The Digital Self: Historical Changes of the Self (week 20 Feb 13th
(Week 21 – Reading Week – no lecture)
This year I start a new monthly series of quotes I like from my little humanist dictionary!
January
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? George Eliot, “Middlemarch”
Progress is not an illusion; it happens but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell “Inside the Whale – Charles Dickens”
Life is for living.
Noel Coward. “In a bar on the Picollina Marina”
A poor life this, if full of care,
We have not time to stand and stare.
William Henry Davies “Leisure”
Happiness comes in on tip toe… it’s a quiet thing.
Kander and Ebb
Thanks to all the good folk at Madrid, Here are some nice photos. My handout can be found at:Lectures in Madrid, November 2016
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)
The day Jo Cox was murdered, the Daily Mail ran a shrill front page story about migrants, stoking fear and hate in the referendum campaign. The story was plain wrong — but instead of remorsefully retracting it, the Mail just buried a tiny correction in the paper.
Our democracy relies on media that tells the truth, but the Mail’s anti-EU editor, Paul Dacre, has spun a steady stream of misinformation and fear, adding to a climate where rage and xenophobia flourish. This is not what one of Britain’s biggest newspapers should do on such a significant national decision.
But there’s a chance to stop it. Rumours abound that the Mail’s owner Lord Rothermere, who is pro-Europe, sees Dacre as a growing liability, and is considering replacing him. If tens of thousands of us call him out for what he is — the Nigel Farage of newspapers — it could catch on, trigger a broad push and help end this hate media. Click to join this urgent call and share with everyone:
The Editor’s Code of Practice makes clear that newspapers should not publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, and Paul Dacre claims to be a champion of a free press. But on Dacre’s watch, the Mail has published stories that say that EU migrants are swamping the NHS, are fuelling a crime wave and that EU membership makes it easier for terrorists to get into Britain. All of which are false.
The Daily Mail at least has a responsibility to tell the truth, and allow more than one perspective in its pages, but it’s getting away with its vitriolic Brexit campaign because no one will take it on. If enough of us flood the owner with messages, we could move him to greater responsibility, and alert readers to the dangers of trusting the Mail.
This is urgent — if the Daily Mail would just tell the truth, and allow some diversity of perspectives, Brexit would be far less likely. Click to call on Dacre’s boss to bring him back into line or remove him — when enough of us sign, we’ll make it a mega story in the Mail’s rival newspapers!
Sociology: The Basics
2nd edition
will be published on May 31st
This lively and compact introduction to sociology provides a stimulating and critical guide to the ideas and debates that shape the discipline. The reader is invited to develop a sociological imagination relevant for today’s troubled world. It introduces theory, methods and the history of sociology and is packed with thought-provoking summaries, questions, quotations and activities. It also offers an engaging narrative about the role of sociology in the world showing how social change creates new challenges and how digitalism has brought new questions and methods. Weaving together discussions of the personal and the political, it links concepts and questions to vivid contemporary examples.
This welcome new edition is fully updated with the latest references and data. It engages with current pressing social challenges, such as violence and terrorism; migration; sustainability and the environment; the crisis of capitalism; and deepening social inequalities. With its comprehensive, wide ranging thematic structure, it consolidates its position as the perfect entry-point to the field – supportive of the reader new to sociology while also stimulating those already familiar with some of sociology’s ideas.
