THE HONEY DEW CAFE CHRONICLES

writing

  • Rhodes – The Arrival

    And so a journey begins, where it always begins: somewhere along the way.

    I am not sure where I am, or where I am going. I feel that gentle unease that rides with anticipation and longing, and that I know will not be assuaged by mindless reassurance and platitudes. It is, and will be what it is.

    To know and to trust, and let the feelings flow yet not dictate, that is, I believe, the way.

    Love lies at the root of it all. Love for myself, and love for all those dear to me, and all those whose paths I cross in life. Love and truth will always bring me back to where I need to be, whether that be in joy or grief, excitement or trepidation; it is all part of the journey.

    I sit here now, outside my room in the ancient town of Rhodes. So, so ancient. I can feel it in the air, in the stones beneath my feet and in the walls. I wander the lanes lost and curious, stop for coffee in the touristy centre, my mind and heart flitting from this to that like a curious yet timid bird.

    I find myself thinking how all the shops and restaurants selling their wares are just like in any other tourist town in any other country, and yes they are. Then, for a moment my mind quietens, and I realise that what I see, the restaurant billboards, the multitudinous souvenirs, are mere surface, passing moments in history to be appreciated for what they are. Yet behind all this, under all this, is an infinite universe of time. Time before and time yet to come all wrapped up in this moment.

    Below the surface there is everything. Everything that ever was and ever will be.

    And within me, there is all things. My perception, my thinking mind, purely surface. Valuable and worthy, yet purely surface.

    Beneath it all, within it all, without it all, lies the infinite. The infinite of being.

  • Leros, Day 1 – Here I Am

    I am here. I am here in Leros, and it all feels very strange.

    I arrived yesterday afternoon, a Saturday, and all feels well. It’s exciting, it’s moving, it feels profound, and I feel also, in that moment, a certain numbness. I feel capable and independent, yet alongside it is a fear, something hidden behind the numbness that is also there.

    Curious really. The ability to have so many feelings running parallel, complimentary to and opposing to each other.

    How can I feel that profoundness, and the sense of a holding of the breath moment, and numbness all at once? Yet, thank goodness, I can, and it allows me through, it allows me to move forward.

    I find the teeny car rental office down a side street, one small room, with one man running it. He is busy finishing dealing with a previous customer. He smiles, asks me to wait, hands me a bottle of water, and I enjoy the peace and calm of the moment.

    After a very relaxed transaction, during which I take in very little about the Agia Marina parking problems he is telling me about, I get my car, and head off, no idea of where I am going, grateful for the vagaries of Google maps.

    After missing a few turns down very small roads, I find the place I am staying easy enough. It is peaceful, quiet and clean. I am shown to my room which has a balcony overlooking the sea. I drop my bags and head down to the small pool bar to get a bit of lunch – Greek salad and French fries.

    All is perfect, yet a sense of unease begins to flow from within me. I head back up to my room to call Dorothy, and we have a lovely chat. She lets me share how wobbly I am beginning  to feel, and it is a great comfort.

    After the call I resolve to head out and explore a little, go to the supermarket down the road, walk over to Panteli. However, waves of anxiety begin to flow through me, and I cannot think, I cannot decide how to move. I finally phone Dorothy again. Her listening, her validation, her understanding and love, help me to accept all the more what is flowing through me.

    So, I decide to allow whatever it is I am feeling, simply to be what it is I am feeling, no judgement, no analysing; even though it is uncomfortable, I am able to cease resisting it.

    I then get myself into the car and drive. Slowly and carefully, and hey presto I find the supermarket. It is small but large enough to be comforting. Entering the supermarket I cannot even begin to think, the power of the tension within me is too strong. I decide simply to walk around; to have found the place is good enough for now. This then allows me to pick up some milk, some bananas, a couple of apples, some water, and a beer. Anything other than that was beyond my capabilities of rational thought at that moment. I headed back to the car and drove back to what was now beginning to feel like the sanctity of home, and made myself a celebratory cup of Barry’s tea.

    I am now simply feeling the energy of what is flowing through me, still uncomfortable, but less gripped by my mind. The old conundrum, of how to be aware of but not caught by what we are feeling.

    I decide I will walk toward Panteli, and see how I do. On the way I pass a restaurant that was pointed out to me when I was being show my room. It seemed so far away then. It took a 10 minute amble. It was lovely, so I booked a table for the evening.

    I continued up the hill on the road toward Panteli where I stopped and chatted with an English couple who knew their way around. After this chance meeting, I had a sense that I was in a lovely place, with nowhere more than a pleasant amble away, and all very quiet and serene.

    I let them wander off up ahead of me, and after a bit, kept on up to the top of the hill where a Taverna sits overlooking the sea. Feeling more at ease, I then chose to head home.

    I arrived back at my room feeling much calmer. I now had a sense of where I am, and how I would probably go about things during my stay, which, I hoped, would be to go with the unfolding.

    My dinner out that evening was lovely.

    They’d been a little rain on the walk up, and as I sat and looked out to sea, a magnificent, perfect rainbow arched its way from peninsula to peninsula of the bay. It stayed for a good fifteen minutes, getting brighter and stronger the whole time, until finally fading into the evening.

    It was a greeting.

    After dinner I wandered back and had a great night’s sleep.

    I am settling now, and yet I still feel that energy just below the surface. It feels old, at least the roots of it do, and I welcome it.

    My doubts have fallen away now, and I am very happy that I am here.

    It is so peaceful, and it is so hard to imagine that my father was here 83 years ago, and it would have been far from peaceful then. What was he feeling?

    He’d just been through the liberation Kastellorizo, operations in Kos, and then landed in Leros in a last desperate attempt to keep it from the Nazis. Maybe some of the tension and fear he must have felt have found their way down to me.

    I don’t know, but I do know that what I felt yesterday was real, as real and as strong as anything I can feel.

    I welcome what I feel, and I welcome what it is here to teach me.

    I am here to find my father in what ever way that is meant, and in whatever way it is that he chooses to show himself to me.

  • Leros, Day 3 – Bubble Burst

    Monday morning I set out for Lakki to meet Franco with a sense of anticipation, not knowing where any of this might lead.

    He had suggested I meet him at his office, Akmar Marina. I could not find any reference to this on Google Maps but felt confident that Lakki being a pretty small place I would find it eventually.

    I passed through the main part of town and out to what clearly was some kind of marina, and parked next to the Customs House. After wandering around I could not spot anything that looked like an office and no signs that said Akmar or anything close. I got back into my car and drove further up the quays into the port area. I parked up again and looked around. There was a ferry ticket office, a wholesaler’s warehouse and a sort of café cum canteen with a few guys hanging out, out the front. Still nothing that looked like an office.

    I decided to walk back towards the Customs House to see what I might come across, and lo and behold, right where I had originally parked there was a small building without any signs, that looked like it might be an office. I tentatively opened the door and a man looked up, smiled and said “Ah, David?”.

    He sat me down. I do not speak Greek, and he does not speak English, so he indicated I should sit and wait  for someone to come and interpret. I was in no hurry.

    After 10 minutes or so Maria, who runs the nearby War Museum, arrived. She had an Australian accent; her parents were from Leros and she had returned to live here a few years ago. The three of us talked for  good while, and it was very moving in a way that is hard for me to put my finger on. The main thing that came across was how deeply significant the Battle of Leros is for the Lerians, and how genuinely grateful they were to people like my father who had put their lives at risk to try and defend them against the invading German forces. Maria particularly expressed a genuine deep respect and admiration for my father that moved me close to tears.

    Franco showed me a couple of grainy film reels and some passages in a book that was in Greek and one in Italian which unfortunately I could not understand. He suggested I go to the library in Platanos, essentially the capital of Leros, where they have a copy of the Italian book in English that he would arrange to have them lend me, which I vowed to do.

    Franco then phoned Thanasis, a young man who runs a private museum his father had established, and passed on my mobile number to him. A few moments later Thanasis messaged me with his number. A new contact, excellent. I replied and asked if he had heard of my father which he said he had, which felt quite remarkable. Maria urged me to ask to visit his museum which was by invitation only. I said I would later. I felt more comfortable with an invitation coming unbidden. Ten minutes later he messaged and invited me to come to the museum at 6.00 pm that evening, or the following day, Tuesday. I was delighted. I wasn’t sure how my day was going to unfold, and said I would get back to him later in the day.

    Although the meeting with Franco had not really given me any new information, it had affected me deeply and I set off to the War Museum with the beginning of a far deeper sense of where I was, and how I was connected to this place through my father. Maria wished me well, and told me that as a sign of respect to my father, the entry to the museum would be free of charge.

    I went up to the museum and was greeted at the entrance by the woman overseeing it that day “… ah, you must be the man we are waiting for!”, she smiled, and then showed me in. I tried to pay, or at least make a donation but it was politely and firmly refused.

    The museum was interesting and certainly gave me a sense of the intensity of the Battle of Leros, however it left me wanting in some way. I took my time going round and watched the short film about the 52 day German bombing campaign and the invasion itself. I left feeling thoughtful but mildly dissatisfied; it felt to me that the museum lacked soul.

    As suggested I drove to Platanos to seek out the library which I duly found, but it was closed, and after asking around I got the impression that it was unlikely to open. I was not too concerned as  it did not feel vital to see an English version of the book shown to me by Franco, so I headed back to my hotel.

    I arrived back at my room feeling very positive and light. The morning had proved a good start to my Leros adventure, and I had a new contact. I made a bite to eat and was about to wash up when I was surprised by the phone in my room ringing. It was the hotel manager. The guy whose car I had hit the day before was here because he has since found a problem. My heart sank and I went down to talk with him. Apparently he now had an issue with his steering caused by the accident. I apologised profusely and gave him the contact details of the car rental company. The manager was very sympathetic and the car owner was very decent and relaxed too. They both tried their best to reassure me but I went back up to my room with my bubble thoroughly burst.

    Kostas, from the rental company, then rang me, saying the car owner had called him and I would have to meet him at a garage to assess the damage to my car. A little later he messaged me a time and place. I was now certainly in no state of mind to visit the other war museum that evening, so I messaged Thanasis to arrange to meet him at 6.00 pm the next day.

    In the late afternoon I drove off to Alinda and met Kostas and followed him to the garage. Everybody was very kind and relaxed, very much trying to put me at my ease. After a while they came up with a figure of €250 plus VAT to fix my car, and reassured me that the damage done to the other car would be covered by their insurance. I would simply have to pay the €250 and then claim it back from the booking agent, who I had insured it with.

    I left feeling unsure of myself and stressed, hoping that all he said was true. The feeling that I was somehow being watched over and guided by heavenly forces was waning.

    I got back to my room, freshened up and walked to Panteli for dinner, feeling preoccupied and a bit on edge.  A decent meal, a glass of wine and a pleasant return walk helped lift my spirits, and when I got back to my room I settled myself on my balcony with a beer feeling a little more content. All would be well.

    I then heard a ‘clack’. My phone had slipped out of my pocket onto the balcony floor. I picked it up and saw the screen had gone black the phone was completely dead. My heart sank once again. The last time this had happened with my phone it was dead for several days until I managed to get it fixed. What was I going to do?! How will I find Thanasis the next day without Google maps? How would I keep in touch with Dorothy? What about my Ryanair boarding pass? What about the PIN numbers for my cards I keep secretly on there now I can’t use Apple pay? I suddenly felt very vulnerable and span out completely.

    I messaged Dorothy from my laptop, she was kind and lovely and did her best to comfort me. I then climbed into bed to read and then hopefully sleep, praying my phone would come back to life. But I was wired, and stayed awake to well gone 2.00 am.

    It is curious, as an anxious energy had been sitting within me since I had arrived. It felt very old and very deep, and somehow connected to my dad. My god, what fear and anxiety was he feeling while he was here and during all his other exploits during the war? This is not to diminish what I was feeling, for what I was feeling was, for me, in that moment, very intense and real. But I did become aware that this journey here was a big deal for me, and that I had been carrying an inherent anxiety all my life that comes rushing forth screaming when triggered. I now ask myself “what have I inherited from those who have gone before me, and in particular from my father, passed along in my DNA?”

    I do not know, but I do know that I came here for a reason, and that this journey would be a roller coaster. Strap yourself in.

    I eventually fell into a fitful sleep.

  • Leros, Day 4 – Wheels Begin To Turn

    After a fitful and restless night I woke up the next morning just after 7.00 am, feeling very aware that my body clock would still be thinking it was more like 5.00 am. I hadn’t dropped off until gone 2.00 am, and had promised myself that there was no reason to be up and about early, hoping that would allow me to sleep for an extra couple of hours, but to no avail.

    I was feeling in a very agitated state, not helped by the fact that my phone was still completely dead, and for those first thirty minutes or so I felt very negative and down, giving myself a hard time for everything that had gone awry.

    Naturally enough, not wanting to feel that way, I fought it at first, but slowly some of the wisdom I have gained over the years began to assert itself, and I took time to simply sit with how I was feeling, and allowing it to be there without judgement or without trying to change it. I have learnt that the deep suffering I feel at times like these stems from the resistance to how I am feeling and my vain attempts to deny it or change it.

    Moving into a space of acceptance did not make me feel upbeat or jolly, that’s not the way it works, but it did allow me to move forward and begin to make helpful step by step decisions on what to do next.

    The previous day I had picked up supplies to be able to make my own breakfasts to enjoy quietly alone on the balcony. This proved to be a godsend as I did not feel like socialising, and anyway, sitting on my balcony in the early morning sunshine, looking out to sea was sublime, and helped soothe my soul.

    By 10.30 am, when the hotel breakfast period was over I was feeling a little better and knew what I needed to do next. I would go down and see Nikos, the manager, and ask him to advise me on where I could go to have my phone, hopefully, repaired. Earlier I had been strongly resisting this as I had resolved the day before to put most of the day aside for myself as I would not be meeting Thanasis at his museum until 6.00 pm and I felt I needed a rest, and I was deeply resenting having to give this up to go looking for a phone repair shop. However, now I was past the resistance and saw that this is what needed to be done. I picked up my phone and was heading towards the door when I hear a ‘bling’ and my phone magically came back to life!

    I was so happy, I had my free day back!

    I made a cup of tea and then made a note on a piece of paper of all the vital pieces of information that I kept on my phone, and resolved to ensure that I would always be very aware of this phone’s vulnerability and ensure that it would not be dropped again, and to buy a new phone when I got home.

    It being a Tuesday I had my regular midday Zoom session with the Man Program, 2.00 pm Greek time. I whiled away a pleasant few hours doing a little writing, reading and some of my favourite online puzzles; Wordle, Waffle and the Guardian crossword.

    2.00 pm rolled around and I signed into the Zoom session, that lasted about 90 minutes. It was great to stay connected with the guys while away on this soul journey. I then went for a swim in the pool and treated myself to a crepe and a coffee, enjoying sitting in the shade on a lovely sunny, warm Greek afternoon in May.

    Time rolled pleasantly by as I allowed myself to just be, which was, mildly bruised and melancholic, and then it was time to head to the Deposito Di Guerra, the museum run by Thanasis. I followed Google maps the best I could up a fairly small windy road that climbed up a hill but was unable to find the final turning off. I had clearly gone past it so eventually finding somewhere to turn around I headed slowly back towards where I had come from. I saw a motorbike coming up the other way that slowed down and then hung a sharp left and quickly disappeared from view. “That must be the turning”, I thought, and there was no way I was going to take it, as it switched back sharply, was very steep and very narrow. I had no desire to get stuck half way down and I was still nervous from my mishap on the previous Sunday. I carried on down the road and found a nice flat layby on the side of the road, so pulled over and parked.

    I walked back to the turn off I had spotted earlier and headed off down it having no real idea where I was going, but more confident now that I was on the right track. It seemed like an age, but was probably only 5 or 10 minutes until I came to a dip and saw what looked like a significant gate and a path going upwards. I looked up and saw two guys looking down smiling away raising a hand in greeting. I had found it.

    I was greeted warmly by Thanasis and his friend Nikos. Nikos, who speaks very good English, welcomed me with “So, you are David, Mike’s brother”. It took me a few seconds to take this in and he was delighted by my astonishment. It turned out of course that Nikos had been in touch with his and Thanasis’s very good friend Tony Rogers to tell him I was coming. Tony Rogers has spent many years researching the Dodecanese campaign and the Battle of Leros in particular, and had been in contact with my brother Mike over 20 years ago as Mike was the guardian of my father’s old battered leather attaché case that contained photos and papers from his war days, that had proved to be very valuable source material for a book Tony Rogers was writing at the time, Churchill’s Folly.

    It is, as they say, a small world and this exchange started the formation of a bond. I was now the keeper of my dad’s battered leather case. When my mother died back in 2020, my brother Mike, my sister Georgie and I were all together at her house to clear it for sale, and Mike brought me the case to take care of, which became the beginning of the journey I was now on.

    In November 2024 I received a letter out of the blue from John Lee, who was “…writing a book that will feature various heroic actions of your father in WWII”, and he was looking for any documents, letters or photos that I may have that would help in his research. Receiving this letter astounded me. How did he know who I was, and even more remarkable, how did he know my address? Somehow it all felt very significant.

    I emailed him and filled him in on what I had, which at this stage was of course the attaché case and a host of photographs that my mother had kept meticulously in a small bureau that I was now also looking after. Without realising it, after my mother’s death I had become the keeper of the family archives. We exchanged a few emails and we arranged for him to visit me in Cork the following February.

    John Lee duly came in February 2025 and it turned out that he had found me through the Register of Births and Deaths, as I had been the one to register my mother’s death, and as part of the registration I had given my address. I had moved since then but luckily the letter was forwarded to me by the new occupiers of my previous home.

    We spent a fascinating couple of days going through my father’s papers, and a spark was ignited within me.

    To me this was a remarkable chain of events. Even though I was the youngest child I had registered the death of my mother. I now had my dad’s attaché case, and my mother’s treasure trove of a bureau. Also, I had already embarked on a personal journey with a Men’s coach, Andy Nathan.

    Earlier in 2024 my relationship with my beloved Dorothy had foundered and we had broken up. By the time that the letter arrived we were moving towards getting back together, but I knew we still had work to do, and I knew I particularly had work to do in relation to myself and what it is to be a man. It was something I had always struggled with but not really seen as clearly as I did then. It was time for me to do something about it, and I was lucky enough to come across Andy Nathan and to start on the deeply significant journey I am now on, and am still on with Andy’s Man Program.

    About a year after receiving that letter from John Lee, I had a very clear realisation that I needed to go to Leros, and so here I was standing on a terrace in the hills of Leros meeting Thanasis and Nikos, two people who are guardians and keepers of the memories of those who gave so much on this tiny island in 1943 and beyond.

    And they knew who my father was, and they honoured him, and in opening their hearts to me, they honoured me as his son.

    So, Nikos welcomed me with a mischievous smile and Thanasis who spoke decent English but struggled a little with it, looked on smiling warmly.

    I spent over two hours at that lovely museum talking with and being shown around by Nikos. The museum itself is quite small but very special. In contrast to the municipal museum, the Deposito Di Guerra had soul. I could feel the love, honour and respect that had gone into its creation. It is a testament to all the care and effort that Thanasis’s father Ioannis had put into creating it, and Thanasis and his good friend Nikos who were now the guardians of it.

    I knew I had arrived, and at this stage I was feeling very tired. It had been quite a challenging few days emotionally and I was ready to slip away and get something to eat and go to bed.

    Nikos was delighted to hear that I would be around for another 4 days before leaving, especially as he currently had some time off from work, and he promised to contact me again very soon to arrange to show me some of the sites connected to the Battle of Leros, and those places particularly significant to my father.

    I waved goodbye and walked back to my car tired and happy. I stopped off at a tiny Taverna on my way back and had a lovely supper and a glass of wine with Phil and Liz who were staying in the same hotel as me, and happened to be eating there too.

    What a day, from the low of waking feeling agitated, tired and despondent, to the high of meeting Nikos and Thanasis, to whom my father was a legend and a hero.

    It was perfect.

  • Leros, Day 5 – First Glimpses of ’43

    I woke up reasonably early, about 6.30 am, surprised by how my body clock seems to know it’s not 4.30.

    I still have a mild agitation in my body, but things are beginning to settle now, the bothersome events around cars and phones fading into the background. I do some meditation practice, literally just sitting, allowing thoughts, worries and hopes come and go, which is remarkably difficult, yet quite illuminating when I allow myself to sit with the mild discomfort of it. After that I do some gentle yoga based stretches, now softly becoming aware that this adventure I am on is profound, and is stirring up all sorts, that will not doubt take quite some time to process.

    Then a lovely breakfast on my sunny balcony feeling grateful that I had gone to the supermarket on Monday to buy breakfast supplies despite feeling all up in heap after the car hullabaloo.

    At about ten I get a message from Nikos, apologising for not getting back to me the previous evening to make arrangements. He had nothing to apologise for, I had not expected to hear from him that quickly and was delighted to get his message suggesting that we meet that afternoon.

    I gratefully accepted the offer, and he got back to me about an hour later to say he was hoping to have his friend Markos come along, to take us into some of the remoter, less accessible parts in his four-wheel-drive, but he was unavailable. Seeing as Nikos did not have a car of his own he suggested we meet in Lakki at 4 pm and take it from there.

    This suited me perfectly as I had tentatively arranged with my niece Ella to have chat that day, and she’d just got back to me to let me know that midday would suit her perfectly. The Saturday before I had left for Leros, Ella had become a new mother with the arrival of her little boy Asher, and I had been dying to talk to her, but also knew she would need space and time to recover and to start to adjust to her new world.

    We had a wonderful chat for nearly an hour. She and her husband Tim were clearly thrilled to be parents, and she expressed with beautiful clarity and honesty the challenges around adjusting to parenthood.

    What also particularly touched me was the deep interest she showed for the journey I was on, and it was clear how much she really got how significant it was for me. The whole conversation left me feeling very much connected with life, the world, and those dearest to me.

    After our chat I made some lunch and decided I would use the rest of the day to go into Lakki to explore a little and locate the exact spot I was to meet Nikos, and do some shopping to get supplies for a couple of evening meals.

    By this stage Lakki was becoming pretty familiar to me and I found the meeting spot very easily. I parked my car and made my way up and down and across all the streets of downtown Lakki. This did not take long. On my explorations I came across the official lottery outlet and bought a ticket for that coming Friday’s Euro Jackpot, as EuroMillions is called in Greece, convinced this would be the one. I also came across a homewares shop and bought myself a mug for my morning cups of Barry’s tea, the ones supplied in my room being very small. I also popped into the local supermarket, but they did not seem to have a great range or any fresh produce, so I decided I would stop off at the larger supermarket on the way back to my hotel.

    I got back in my car feeling content and delighted with my exploration and purchases. At the supermarket on the way back I got in enough supplies to last me for the rest of the week, including the ingredients for making a big pot of spaghetti sauce that would do for two evening meals. By the time I got back, read the day’s news, did my puzzles and cooked up the sauce and washed up it was time to head off to meet Nikos.

    Perfect. I was all set for the days ahead.

    I got to Lakki and Nikos turned up right on time. We chatted and he laid out the options for our outing. There was Meraviglia up in the nearby hills where the HQ tunnel used during the Battle of Leros was; there was Partheni to the north west where my dad had led his SBS comrades to escape the island just before the surrender so they could return as needed later, or Alinda Bay, where my father would have first landed in 1943. I got the impression that Nikos being a high energy and very focused man was open to covering all three. I was not sure how able I was for that, so I decided to see how things would go and prioritise where I would like to go first.

    Despite it being a bit tricky to get to, I opted for Meraviglia. Nikos reckoned that if we took it carefully and slowly we would be able to manage it in my wee hire car, and off we went.

    The drive there was straightforward, the last stretch being up a steep, rutted unpaved road that was easy enough to navigate with care as long as no one came the other way, which Nikos thought was doubtful. Thankfully all went very smoothly and we arrived up at Meraviglia without a hitch. We parked up and got out of the car.

    Taking no heed of the ‘No Entry, Military Personnel Only’ sign, we ducked under the red and white striped barrier and headed along the rocky dusty paths through the wild thyme, beautifully aromatic in the heat of the late afternoon. Meraviglia commands an impressive view over the centre of the island, and Lakki bay in particular, which was a major naval base back in 1943. Nikos showed me around what remained of the large gun emplacements, pointing out the concrete openings that led to the ammunition tunnels, from where the ammunition would be passed to the gunners. One of these tunnels was still accessible so we were able to explore that too.

    We covered all these sites that circled the hilltop. Nikos pointed north and explained how after the 52 day aerial bombardment, the German parachuters who had landed on the large hill opposite had then made their assault up the almost impossibly inaccessible northern slopes of Meraviglia to finally overcome the defending forces on November 16th 1943. He also pointed out the spot where Lieutenant Alan Phibbs RN fought and died having set up a machine-gun post on the precarious northern slope to try and ward off the invaders. He was a friend and comrade of my father’s, recommending Phibbs for a posthumous award for his outstanding bravery on that day.

    It was quietly awe inspiring to be standing there, and imaging all that had happened in that place.

    On the way to that spot we had walked along a stony track, beneath which, Nikos told me, ran the HQ tunnel, where, he said, my father would have been very much present and active during the closing days of the Battle of Leros. We then turned back and headed off down a steep, stony slope to the entrance of the tunnels. “Your father would have been up and down this slope many, many times during those days”. A stillness came over me as I felt the presence of my dad.

    We went to the entrance of the tunnel, now closed off with a locked iron gate. Nikos described the layout of the tunnel, and showed me the spot where the British commander Brigadier Tilney would have finally surrendered to German forces. Unfortunately we were not able to go in as Nikos did not have a key, but he said if we were lucky, he might be able to get access in the coming days.

    It was a beautiful spot, bathed in sunshine, with the scent of wild thyme and the sound of goat bells trilling across the hills. Yet here, back in 1943 was mayhem, violence and heartbreak, and my father lived through it all. Something began to move inside me and an internal voice reached out to my father “I am here dad, I am here”.

    We then headed back to the car. I felt that, for me, that was enough for today. Nikos understood and we agreed that I would message him later to make arrangements to meet the next day. I dropped him off back in Lakki and headed back to my hotel, grateful for everything Nikos had showed me.

    When I got in I phoned Dorothy and we had a lovely chat. I could feel her love and support, and how she really understood the importance and significance of the journey I was on. It makes all the difference.

    After our chat, I messaged Nikos and we arranged to meet in Lakki at ten-thirty the next morning. I then cooked up some spaghetti and threw in a portion of the sauce I had made and served up a hearty meal generously topped off with grated Gouda, which I happily devoured, washed down with a cold beer.

    I cleared up, showered, and collapsed tired and happy into bed, looking forward to what the next day would bring.

  • Leros, Day 6 – A Picture Emerges

    After another very lovely breakfast on my balcony in the warm, early morning sunshine, I set off to meet Nikos in Lakki. I am feeling very pleased that I had got in breakfast supplies for the week, as most mornings so far I have been waking feeling tired and a little stretched. This trip was proving to be remarkable, and I was discovering, quite emotionally taxing, so it was good to have this quiet time to myself first thing in the morning.

    After the short drive, I pulled up at our now regular meeting spot outside the cinema that was built by the Italians during the Mussolini era. Nikos was there ready and waiting. I parked and we had a chat. I wanted to explain that my energy levels were prone to drop rapidly after a few hours of activity, thus my needing to call it a day after our exploration of Meraviglia the evening before. He totally understood and was grateful for the heads up, asking that I let him know when I had reached my limit on any given day. We were rapidly developing a good understanding.

    I decided the first place I wanted to go was Partheni. This is where my father would have led a group of SBS comrades to, through the rugged hills from Meraviglia shortly before the surrender on November 16th 1943, to make good their escape, so as to be able to return to fight another day.

    It was a pleasant, easy drive to Partheni in the north west of the island, 10 to 15 minutes at the most. Nothing is much further away than 10 minutes on Leros.

    We parked up in a small, paved parking area where there was a small church and a small building where exiles were held during the junta of 1967 to 1974, the coup bringing them to power being a hangover of the divisions formed during the struggle against the Germans in WW2.

    It is a beautiful spot, and the church is full of fascinating religious images painted by the prisoners. Very unique and different from the traditional style of the Greek Orthodox Church, they tell their own story and that of those incarcerated there. Sadly the church and the paintings were now falling into disrepair due to neglect by the municipality, something which deeply saddened Nikos. He is very much a man who believes in the preservation of the stories and places that tell of what has gone before, and he is very much a man that devotes his time to that work himself.

    After checking out the church, we walked down the path to the bay, it was such a beautiful spot. A small cove, perfectly secluded, thus allowing boats to come in and leave with a good chance of not being spotted. Strategy, making plans for high risk operations, and carrying them out was my dad’s speciality, and he would have chosen this spot as it was an area where there was no German activity during the invasion. He would then have secreted away the boats and supplies that would be needed if defeat was imminent and evacuation necessary. It was a good job he did.

    I could feel my dad in this place, and as I write this, I feel a certain pride and awe for the man he was, and what he did during that time. It is not the whole man, but it is a very important aspect of him, and one not to be ignored or forgotten. Fair play to you dad, you were quite a man.

    Whilst walking down the track that led to the beach, a young couple drove carefully past and parked on the beach looking out to sea. Two young lovers taking some time to be alone together in this quiet, secluded spot. Did they know what had happened here 83 years ago? Probably not. In how many places have any of us unknowingly stood where dramatic events have unfolded in the past?

    As we stood on the sands of this peaceful cove, Nikos spoke to me of this evacuation, and pointing back towards Meraviglia vividly described the treacherous journey it would have been during those last hours of The Battle of Leros raging on this small island.

    He also spoke of another place, east of here and far more inaccessible, where dad would have returned time and time again during the German occupation, Agios Nikolaos. Nikos was hoping that his friend might be available with his 4WD to take us there before I leave the island.

    It left me feeling quiet and sombre, and, leaving the young lovers in peace, we headed back to the car in silent companionship.

    We then drove to Alinda Bay, which is now the main tourist spot on the island, and where my father would have first cruised into back in 1943. There is a documented story of a minesweeper that had been struck and damaged during The Battle of Leros and was stranded out at sea, leaving it and its crew highly vulnerable to enemy attack. My father had boarded it and oversaw makeshift repairs to its steering gear and successfully brought it back into the relative safety of Alinda Bay, thus saving the lives of those on board at the risk of his own.

    Nikos had with him a book full of photos mainly from the German occupation. It was fascinating to see exactly where they were taken, the area not having changed massively since 1943. One of the photos was taken in the exact spot we were standing, in the background being the exact same wall, unchanged, with the now larger three trees still standing there.

    We went for a coffee and a bite to eat. It was nice to talk and get to know each other a little better, and the lives we have lived. Life is all about connection.

    After our break, I dropped Nikos back to Lakki. I was very aware that I only had two full days left before leaving on Sunday, and I wanted to make sure things didn’t just come to an end all of a sudden, so I suggested that on Saturday evening I would take him and Thanasis to dinner at the Paradisos, where I had had dinner the previous Saturday.

    Nikos was delighted with the idea, especially as Manus who runs the place was a very good friend of his. He happily accepted the invitation, and said he would contact Thanasis to see if he was free.

    We said our goodbyes, saying we would be in touch later about meeting the next day, hopefully to visit Agios Nikolaos if his friend was available.

    I arrived back at my hotel happy and contented, and then walked up to the Paradisos to book a table for the Saturday night. It is a very popular place, and even at that time of year it can be busy on a Saturday when they have live music in the evening. Manus is very enthusiastic saying Nikos is his best friend, and that he knows Thanasis too; how did I meet them? I told him why I had come to Leros, and he was even more enthused, assuring me that we would be well taken care of and have a fabulous night.

    When I get back to the hotel I get a message from Nikos to say that Markos can take us too Agios Nikolaos that evening at 7.00 pm or possibly the next evening. I feel into it for a while. These few days had already been quite remarkable for me and when thinking about heading out into the hills that evening I begin to get a sense of mild overwhelm, and decide that it would be a bridge too far for me that day.

    I message Nikos back to suggest tomorrow evening would be better for me, and perhaps we could meet for a relaxed afternoon visit to the Castle of Leros, which, perched 600 metres above Leros town had great panoramic views, especially of Alinda Bay. He replies straightaway to say he totally understood and would let Markos know that tomorrow would be better, and yes, let’s visit the castle.

    I relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, processing all that I had taken in since setting out for Leros, and in particular the last 48 hours. It was all wonderful and amazing, and also quite emotionally exhausting, and I definitely needed this downtime.

    That evening I enjoyed the rest of the spaghetti with the sauce I had made, with a couple of beers and then headed for an early night and a satisfied sleep.

    What would the next day bring?

  • Leros, Day 8 – Blue Skies Ahead

    My goodness, what a night. The weather forecast had predicted a storm to roll in during the night and into the first part of the morning. The wind was already beginning to pick up and some rain had started as I was getting ready for bed the evening before. Then during the night I was woken by a loud ‘clank’ and then a light coming on in my room. I lay there startled and wide eyed. I froze, thinking in my half-awake fear that someone had just broken into my room. I lay still and listened. All was quiet and the light went off again. The rain was lashing down and I nervously got up and went to the bathroom. No intruders. All was well.

    Now more awake I lay in bed, and then heard the clank again, and the light came back on. Figuring out that it was the emergency light above the main door by the wee galley kitchen, I then realised it was the power going out and the emergency power cutting in. I managed to drift off again, my fright in the night subsiding, but kept being woken by the emergency power cutting in at regular intervals, and the rumble of thunder.

    I finally got up at about 6.00 am and opened up the curtains and shutters, leaving the balcony door slid open and the mosquito mesh slider carefully closed. The rain was lashing down and the sea crashing into the shore as the strong winds thrashed at the trees, and thunder and lightning swirled through the hills. It was all very dramatic and exciting and somehow felt an appropriate, and fitting way to start the morning of my last full day on Leros.

    I did my usual morning meditation practice and yoga stretches and ate my breakfast in my room as the storm subsided, giving way to overcast skies and rain showers. Just after ten I messaged Nikos to say unless something changed on the HQ tunnel front that I would stay at the hotel and catch up on my writing and note taking and meet him and Thanasis at the restaurant at 7.30 that evening.

    I send the message, and there is only one grey tick which I think nothing of, assuming Nikos would get back to me in an hour or so. I decide to fiddle about and sort through my bits and pieces, getting them in order for packing. An hour goes by and there is still only one grey tick, and still only one grey tick after two hours. I am now beginning to get a little concerned especially as Nikos had had to cancel the evening before, I hoped he was okay and there was nothing wrong.

    I told myself I was being daft.

    The rain having stopped, and having trouble letting go, I headed off on a walk to Panteli to distract myself. By the time I returned at about 1.00 pm there is still only one grey tick and so feeling quite concerned at this stage I message Thanasis to ask if he knows if anything had happened with Nikos, and was he alright. He replied immediately saying he would try and contact him. He was back to me within five minutes; Nikos would contact me straight away.

    A couple of minutes later Nikos messaged “…Oh man, I have just woken up! I guess I needed some sleep!”. Phew, I was relieved, all was okay. He also told me that there was no news on the HQ tunnel, and we agreed that with some advance notice we could arrange it for my next visit, along with a trip to Agios Nikolaos, the second evacuation site that my father returned to during the German occupation.

    We confirmed our arrangements for that evening and I was delighted to hear that Thanasis would be able to make it. This all felt very good, and I was perfectly content with the way things had worked out as this trip had already gifted me way more than I had expected.

    I sat for a little while allowing myself to see and process all the things that had come up for me that morning. The catastrophising, the slipping into waiting mode once again, and the inability to let go, and more importantly seeing the part of me that judged and criticised me for all of this.

    I simply sat and observed the best I could, curious, and then moved on with the rest of my day.

    I had some lunch and started to pack. At 14:21 precisely I hear a ‘ping’, and it is a message from Nikos, and everything has changed. Not only has the blue sky reappeared, but also Nikos has received a phone call from the Reserve Guard to say they will meet us at Meraviglia at 5.00 pm and open up the HQ tunnel for us! He messages me again shortly after to say his friend Markos wants to come along and tells me to be ready and waiting to be picked up at 16:40. I thank him profusely promising to be ready on time.

    Wow! I could not believe it and feel so delighted I want to cry.

    Happy and joyful, I finish most of my packing and am ready in plenty of time, and head down to the road to meet Nikos and Markos who have already arrived, Nikos smiling away as I walk towards them. Everybody is in fine form as I climb into the back of Markos’s 4WD. Nikos introduces me to Markos and I am surprised to hear him reply with a New York accent. It turns out that he was raised in New York city moving back to Leros with his parents when he was 12. “Thus the perfect English”, I say. “Yeah, but my vocabulary is a 12 year old’s!” he replies smiling. He then tells me that after the tunnel we will go to Agios Nikolaos! Things are getting better and better, especially when he reassures me he will guide us through it all and make sure we are at the Paradisos on time that evening.

    We arrive at Meraviglia and meet a couple of guys from the Reserve Guard who are doing some maintenance work up there. It turns out that this is all very unofficial but they needed to be up there on that day anyway and wanted to help out. One of them slips off and returns shortly after to say it is now open. We walk together over the rough ridge that I had walked along with Nikos a few days before and scrambled down the slope to the entrance of the tunnel, and there it is, now with the iron grill door open, and in we go.

    It is remarkable. About 6 feet wide and 8 feet high, running from west to east. Markos guides us through, each of us with a powerful flashlight. As we pass through Markos points out the large side rooms that have been carved out of the sheer rock, where supplies would have been stored and communications would have been set up. You can still see the remnants of the walls that had been built within these caverns. Just before the tunnel curves round to the left, there is a semi collapsed shaft that goes up through the rock to the outside world, and was where there would have been an observation platform, now impossible to access but you could just about see the light coming through where the opening would have been.

    We all explore together and then the three of us pose for photos taken by a friend of Markos’s who we picked up on the way. It feels very bonding and profound to be here.

    We head back out into the daylight, and the guys described the scene as it would have been on those days leading up to November 16th 1943, when the German army finally overran the place and the British commander Brigadier Tilney was forced to surrender right there where we were standing at the entrance way to the tunnel. Markos then went back in on his own, and with the aid of skilled lighting techniques took some high quality photos and video footage.

    Whilst he was doing this I walked away from the entrance and turned to the north east, looking towards Partheni. The sun shone and the wind blew a gentle breeze, and I was very quiet and contemplative, imagining my father being ordered shortly before the surrender to evacuate the SBS guys, and then leading them across the treacherous and dangerous terrain praying not to be spotted by the enemy, to Partheni, where he had already hidden the boats and supplies they would need to make good their escape. Had they been caught on the way, being SBS and SOE, they would have been shown no mercy.

    Markos reemerged and handed me one of his powerful lights so I could take a bit of time to explore the tunnel on my own. I walked through slowly and reverently, talking softly to my dad, putting my hand on the hard rock where he may have put his hand, and stepping where he had stepped. It was a solemn moment.

    I came out of the tunnel and joined the others, it was time to go.

    We walked back to the car, stopping to thank the Reserve Guards who had made this possible, and headed off to Agios Nikolaos, dropping Markos’s friend off at her scooter on the way.

    It wasn’t far to Agios Nikolaos, nowhere is very far in Leros, but it was a beautiful and dramatic route to the remote north east of the island, and the last stretch was a stunning, slow drive along a track that clung to the side of the mountain that would have been impossible without a four-wheel drive. We came around the top of the final ridge and the track headed steeply down with a view of the sea, where would be nestled Agios Nikolaos.

    We carried on down and parked by a small church, a remarkably remote spot for a church. We had a look around this tiny structure, and went into the original section that would have been there in 1943. It was no larger than a small kitchen. There are small churches dotted all over the island, often built to give thanks for saving the lives of those in peril, particularly at sea.

    Apparently this church was given as a landmark to head for, for the soldiers and partisans wanting to evade capture by the Nazis, especially the Italian soldiers who were fearful of being shot for resisting their former allies. It was incredible and peaceful and you could see why this was the place to hide. Looking back up the valley it was a lonely spot completely cut off from the rest of the island, with only a handful of goat farmers dotted here and there, and so likely to go undetected by the occupying forces.

    In all over 900 men made it here to be rescued by my father and his team who would come in at night to this unseen and unknown bay to take them safely away to the Turkish coast. There are stories to this day of ghosts living here. It is thought that they originate from that time, when the escaping soldiers and partisans were hidden among the dense undergrowth, keeping silent and out of sight by day, and only emerging at night to get ready for and make good their escape. The few people living here would hear whispers and see shadows flitting through the bushes and trees in the dark. They believed they were ghosts.

    I could sense those ghosts in this now peaceful and remote place, and I could feel the ghost of my father within me.

    We were all quiet and thoughtfully subdued, and Markos led us back to the car. He had guided us through this incredible afternoon perfectly, making sure there was plenty of time for everything, no rush, and making sure we would make it to the Paradisos on time.

    We drove back in relative silence. Agios Nikolaos had touched us all, especially Nikos who I was surprised to hear had never been there before.

    By the time we arrived at the restaurant perfectly on time we were all chatting merrily again. It turned out that not only was Manus, the restaurant owner, Nikos’s best friend, but also Markos’s cousin. I invited Markos to join us but he had to go. I said my very grateful goodbyes and off he went. A kind and generous soul who I had never met before in my life giving me the gift of an afternoon I would never forget. What an incredible guide, what an incredible guy.

    We entered the restaurant and were greeted warmly by Manus and shown to a lovely table overlooking the sea.

    Thanasis arrived and we ordered food and wine. We talk and eat and drink. Then another bottle of wine appears on the table. We looked at each other bemused, none of us having noticed one of us ordering it. Manus points over to a man sitting on the other side of the restaurant who is smiling warmly and waving. He then comes over and placing his hand on my shoulder asks about my father. The word has got around. Nikos is delighted as it turns out he is somebody from the municipality that he had wanted to make a connection with. This has been a trip about connection.

    We finish our food and Thanasis brings out the visitor’s book for his museum and I write a full page. He also produces a brand new copy of Swastika Over the Aegean by Tony Rogers. I have been trying to get hold of a copy of this book for years, and I insist on paying the going price for it, which is considerably less than a second-hand copy goes for on eBay, and ask Nikos and Thanasis to inscribe it in Greek.

    We are all having a very merry time. Live music has struck up being played by Manus and the man who bought us the wine, and then another bottle arrives courtesy of the restaurant! We talk away having great fun, and fantasising about making a movie about the Battle of Leros with Tom Hanks, who, it turns out, has been to Leros and is very interested in the story.

    Finally it is time to go. We hug and affirm we are now friends for life, and I promise to return, and certainly with Dorothy for the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Leros on the 23rd September 2028, if not before.

    I walk back to my hotel happily drunk and put the kettle on and send a message to Dorothy to tell her how happy I am, and she then phones and we have a great chat. I make my Camomile tea and drink it sitting on the balcony listening to the crickets and the sea before falling into bed and a deep sleep.

  • The Beginning

    The bombs went off all around him as he clung to the side of the hill not knowing whether this was the end.

    This was my father, 28 years old, 1943, a commander of men on the Greek island of Leros during  World War Two. He’d been in the war since day one having signed up to the Royal Navy reserves in 1938.

    Like so many, he saw what was coming.

    But he never really saw what was coming, at least not for him.

    Years of stress and trauma that would leave him shattered at the war’s end. Shattered, unsupported, abandoned by the establishment that lauded him, and left to suck it up. Unequipped to talk about it, not even daring to admit to himself there might be something wrong. No, he was a man, men did not do that, men took a deep breath and carried on, not uttering a word to anyone, never showing weakness.

    Stride forth great warrior, and achieve, achieve, achieve.

    He was a war hero. He received the DSC for incredible acts of bravery, saving the lives of so many at the risk of his own. Enrolled into the Greek Sacred Regiment, he was nicknamed as one of the ‘Vikings of the Aegean’ by the local Greek partisans.

    Then he came home…

    My father.

    A wild character.

    He married my mother in early 1949, and they had their first child, Geoff, born in December of that year, then came my sister Georgie in 1952, my brother Mike in 1953 and me, in 1959.

    But he was wild, off the rails.

    He was a business wizard, turning deals, making connections, partying, gambling, not paying his taxes; everyone’s friend, what a character, what a man.

    Good old Frank.

    Good old Frank. He made my mum’s life hell, oh the stories she told me… I had to ask her to stop.

    Those years of childhood are misty to me, relying more on the stories of others, photos, and grainy home movies, movies and photos that make everything look so normal, a normal, well-to-do happy family.

    I have little snapshots mind you: being bounced up and down on my father’s tummy, him smiling up at me; the feeling of my father’s rough, unshaven cheek when giving him a kiss;  him taking me to see his yacht, acquired through some complex gambling debt from his buddy Sir Max Aitkin, his war had moved him into a giddy other world; …and of my mother trying to strangle him with his necktie in the kitchen when I was about 5 years old…

    Without knowing why, I was lost and confused, and scared.

    The devil used to speak to me.

    That is why I cut up the expensive silk curtains mum.

    I confess, I became wild and reckless myself, yet when I look back, I don’t really remember, I only see the mask; the nice guy, the reliable, good old Dave the guy everybody likes.

    What did everybody else see?

    Who knows?

    When my father died when I was 6 years old my world ended. He had told me, me and my sister, who was 7 years older than me, that he was going to kill himself. I did not know what he meant, what on earth can that mean.?

    I remember sitting in his lap, him in the armchair by the front door, he was crying, crying with such depth and despair, and I could do nothing. I then see the front door open and him gone, and I never saw him again.

    Did this really happen? I don’t know, but it is in me as clear as if it did, so something happened.

    Many years later, more than thirty, I was sitting in a small cottage up the side of the mountain in a remote part of Co. Leitrim, Ireland where I was living and working,  reading ‘FAMILIES and how to SURVIVE Them’ by John Cleese and Dr Robin Skynner.  What I had just read I don’t remember, but what I do remember was that I was hit by a  realisation, as a bolt from the blue. The book fell from my hand to the floor, I was stunned as I said quietly, out loud, “Oh, my god, I killed my dad”.

    My father died by suicide when I was 6 and I disappeared inside of myself. I became a quiet, withdrawn boy. I struggled at school. I was no trouble but I was not anything else either. My mother tried to bring me out of myself by signing me up to a child modelling agency, it was torture, I hated every minute of it, but I did what was expected of me. Anything to keep me safe. Then it emerged I was not doing well in my school work. It was an independent school and my mother was not willing to keep struggling with paying the fees if it was not going to get anywhere and she let me know that unless things improved I would be sent to the local state school.

    This terrified me, so I turned things around and excelled.

    Anything to survive. I got through. I went onto a Public School.

    In the background were my brothers and sister, and as far as I was concerned I was one of them. I did not relate to boys of my own age, but more with them, it was them that I would like to hang around with.

    Mike 6 years older, the Golden boy and my personal tormentor, Georgie, 7 years older, bright and intriguing with her cool friends, and then there was Geoff. 10 years older and in a band.

    A band that was going places. On TV, on tour with Gilbert O’Sullivan and Led Zeppelin, it was a giddy world. I learned to drink young, 11, getting drunk for the first time at my brother Geoff’s 21st birthday party. I met TV celebrities, even getting drunk at a BBC after show celebration dinner at a Chinese restaurant. What was I, 12, 13 , 14 maybe? Everyone thought it was funny!

    I would go with my mother during the school holidays to Ibiza and have to hang out with her expat cronies, and they would find the drunk little teenager cute.

    Geoff, though he was the one. He was the glory child, he was going places. He was the one who would try to buck me up, get me to grasp the nettle of life, but I was so afraid, and I was in awe of him.

    And then everything fell apart. The band kicked him out, he tried to remake himself  but it all unravelled.

    It was the Easter school holidays 1975. Mum was off to Ibiza again but I refused to go. I was 15 I would stay at home with my brothers. Then the phone call came, which I answered. Geoff was dead, suicide.

    Again suicide.

    This is where it ends for me, where my memory became erased. Blank.

    I then spent years thinking I was okay.

    Years of dangerous behaviour starting with drinking under age. I somehow kept afloat training to be a computer programmer, going from job to job, but the nice guy was off the rails. Driving like a mad man fuelled on alcohol, relishing the screams of the girls in the car. Riding motorbikes fast, high on Dodos and wine. Taking speed, mushrooms, Ganja, heroin even, and more alcohol; always alcohol.

    I wove through this in one form or another for years and years, always being the lovely guy, always getting away with it, but I never saw myself. I never saw how I had come to hate my father, and then to hate his surrogate, Geoff, and how I was trying to kill them by trying every which way I could to kill them within me. To kill me.

    These stories, these poems, these whatever’s that will appear here are what I promise are the raw truth as best as I can tell. It.

    These are my stories. My stories of a boy trying to become a man, a good man, strong man.

    Sure, I was always reliable, sincere, honest and trust worthy, these were all masks to help hide the rage, the lost warrior within me, the hapless hero throwing himself against the enemies guns.

    I have started to wake up now, and that is another story in itself, which will appear here.

    I invite you to stay with me as this story unfolds, in all its imperfections, and in no particular order, and with no particular moral or point to make. Just my exploration, my stories; make of it what you will. I hope through this I will learn. Learn who I was, who I am now, and who I am becoming.

    So, let us begin.

  • Harmony

    Talk now of the higher things,

    Love,

    Compassion,

    Wisdom,

    So that we may all

    Come together,

    Walking forward,

    Hand in hand,

    Whichever way

    We need to go.

    Harmony is the tune,

    Joyful difference the chorus,

    Let it be

    That we all

    In this world

    See each other,

    Smile, bow,

    And set ourselves,

    And each other,

    Free.

  • New dawn

    Three swallows,

    Then four,

    Eight,

    A multitude,

    As dawn breaks.

    A new world rises,

    Sung in

    By a host of angels,

    As we fly,

    Fly high with the swallows.

  • Reaction

    What do I know?

    Where do I react from?

    I can feel slighted, picked upon, have my nose put out of joint. Is it based on anything, or is it just old muddy water being stirred up clouding my vision?

    A lot of the time I really don’t know. I hear something, feel something, first inside and then it grows and grows, until, unless I am very sharp and clear sighted, very grounded and in tune, it spills out into the world and the merry-go-round begins.

    It always feels, of course, their fault. They said this, they did that, but what of it? And anyway in that state, and that which follows how can I know anything? The amygdala has locked and loaded, the cortisol and adrenaline are up and running, and all now is a threat to be repelled.

    Or, unfortunately, as so often is the case, to poke and aggravate even more, at times turning the relatively benign into the hostile.

    I am human, and therefore I am a reactive being.

    I react.

    The reaction is often strong.

    I start to go further off the rails until it is hard to come back.

    Oh dear.

    How to deal with this?

    Well, it starts here. By noticing, and then by reacting a little less often, or at least by noticing the reaction and seeing if I can let it ride out. Time moves very first when the adrenaline is up so alertness is required, brakes must be applied toute sweet.

    And then a breath, and another breath, and then one more.

    Only then, as the reaction subsides, can I evaluate what I have heard, or seen, and then respond. Respond from a place of wisdom and understanding.

    I fail at this often, and the fall out lingers, fingers get pointed, blame gets laid.

    However, each time I fail I can learn.  Each time I notice I have failed, I can wrap myself in love and compassion, forgive myself, forgive my perceived tormentor and vow to try again.

    This way success will grow in the bright light of failure. It probably has already, yet the depth of feeling when feeling slighted is strong and it feels there is no hope.

    There is hope.

    Is begins now.

    Today.

    It grows in every failure seen.

    It grows in every success celebrated. This is my quest, and its reward will be mine and all those I know and love.

  • Emotional Presence

    I was taking part in an online session with a men’s group that I am part of, the Man Program led by Andy Nathan. We were on week 6 of ‘The Masks Men Wear’, and looking into what Andy had named as the mask of the ‘Uninitiated Man’.

    We went in pairs to breakout rooms to examine a few questions, the crux of which was “… are you effectively forcing your partner to be the ‘Man of the House’ emotionally, so you can stay the ‘Child’… If she started acting exactly like you tomorrow – be reactive, check-out – would your family survive?”.

    Well my first reaction was, well of course not. Dorothy and I are do regular dialogues and go deep into many a difficult topic, and always come to a better place for it. Then in the course of the discussion I  had with my breakout buddy I had a quick and sudden realisation: “oh shit, yes I do!”.

    Now, this is not to say I don’t ever take the initiative and bring things forward, difficult and challenging things at times, but on the whole it is Dorothy who brings the truly sticky stuff forward, subjects I often feel uncomfortable with and feel quite defensive and resentful about.

    I realised that I often scold myself for not bringing up this and that, or even find myself saying to myself “… what about…? And, … huh, why don’t I ever challenge her on this…”, and I realised it could often be a rather childish and petulant response. What an eye opener!

    I am a pretty emotionally mature and self-reflective man, yet I still have these behaviour patterns that go way back, default modes of behaviour I hardly even notice because they are so ingrained. I only notice the reactions, not the behaviour pattern.

    It all, of course goes back to childhood, not being taught how do to things any differently, and certainly in my case not having any fatherly guidance. I was totally abandoned by my father, and then my surrogate father, and my mother was often distant, dealing with her own struggles, so a lot of the time my family operated in a purely functional, though loving, way.

    No wonder this is how I largely operate within relationships. Doing, being practical, getting things done and so forth, whilst thinking I am wonderfully emotionally available when a lot of the time I am not, and Dorothy is usually the one who has to pull us back on track when we are beginning to lose connection and are in danger of drifting apart, whilst I quietly tiptoe along thinking that as long as I don’t make any waves, and get ‘the jobs done’ all will be grand.

    But no this is not good enough, and to answer the other question, “… what if she started acting exactly like you tomorrow?” , well we would slowly drift further and further apart, until our relationship became emptier and emptier and then died altogether.

    So, now I see it, now I realise it. It does not mean that things will suddenly be oh, so easy, no, but it does mean that I now know where the work is, the work that I need to do, and will keep on needing to do.

    This journey, working with others, to work on myself to become a better man, a man that my beloved can see and trust and rely upon, feel safe with, is profound and is always ongoing, and always requiring vigilance. It requires doing the work, and it is worth it.

    Yes, at times it will make me feel uncomfortable and resentful, tired and even angry, but I am able to always return to the core of this endeavour and see why it feels that way. It feels that because something deeply ingrained, that needs to be examined and challenged is being put in the spotlight and is resisting. Bring it on. I thank Dorothy for her persistence and vigilance in bringing important things to my attention, and I thank myself for engaging with it and feeling what I feel and reflecting on it and then doing the work. I have come a long way, and the journey goes on, the journey to be the man I want to be: there, visible, reliable, strong, vulnerable, honest, a man of integrity, and to be seen as such.

  • The Fugitive

    When I was a kid, I loved TV shows whose main characters were outcasts and loners; The Fugitive, Branded, The Incredible Hulk.

    The thought of being free from everything and everyone, never having to get close but always on the move, following the lonely yet noble road, spoke to something deep inside of me. It felt safe from the pain and difficulties of life, the pain and difficulties of relationships. If I were to wander unattached, no harm could come to me, and should difficulties come my way I could simply move on, even from those I had formed a bond with, carrying the warn, comforting, glow of loss in my heart whilst I strode into the wild blue yonder with a wistful smile upon my lips.

    To an extent I lived a version of this for a good chunk of my life. In my younger adult years I would fall in and out of romantic relationships with ease, ending them while the going was good to ensure feeling safe, and not having to face myself. The one time in my late twenties I let this slip, I was devastated by the end of what became a 7 year relationship, the pain of which brought me to the darkest of places.

    I then wandered from here to there for the next twenty years, both emotionally and physically, keeping my distance, whilst also seeking connection. It was a delicate balancing act, aided by partying, weed and India.

    However, somewhere along the way I was always learning, a deeper wiser part of me would from time to time emerge and help guide me, which in time brought me to where I am now; settled, and in a loving and nourishing, committed relationship, in which I will happily spend the rest of my days. To this day, when trouble brews and difficulties arise, I can feel that desire to ‘break free’ arise. The idea that all I need do is to cut loose and move on has a powerful allure. However, I am wiser now, and I know that is a lonely path to take, and a path that ultimately will break my heart. I yearn for connection, love and mutual respect; I yearn to care about others and for them to care about me, and now I am learning that this will always involve friction, it will always involve difficulties, and it is in facing these that one comes to know oneself, to gain compassion for oneself and for others. It is how I will grow, and my relationships will deepen, it is how I will become more of the man I want to be, and others will want to know.

  • Detroit – Christmas 1978

    I was 19 years old and the shadow of Geoff’s suicide 3 years earlier was hanging over me. It was hanging over all of us. My mother, Georgie, Mike, and me. Yes, it was over all of us, but without me hardly even noticing, it was hanging over me and weighing me down. But we didn’t talk about those sort of things, so how was I to know?

    Oh, but a part of me knew, and it acted out. I had struggled through my O’ Levels with the help of my sister. I remember very little of the summer holidays after that except meeting my first ‘proper’ girlfriend. Michelle Harms. This turned out to be a nightmare relationship where I was emotionally abused and pushed into losing my virginity before I was ready, in very traumatic circumstances. It left it scars for many years to come. I then slipped into the lower-sixth in the autumn just because… what else was I going to do?

    I had no interest in school anymore, feeling eternally lost, bored and disillusioned, and soon began to play truant, commit acts of petty vandalism and be generally belligerent and uncooperative with my teachers, very rarely handing in any homework. I staggered through the winter term being tolerated by the school hierarchy, even the fearsome deputy headmaster, Mr. Stokes, went easy on me. No doubt they felt sorry for me. But nobody thought about actually talking to me about what might be going on.

    The only good thing that came out of that term was meeting Jon Medlam. His family had just moved to the area from Solihull and he joined Merchant Taylors’ School that autumn and was in my class. We quickly became friends, we seemed to ‘get each other’ and remained close friends until his very sad death from lung cancer at the age of 61. Thank heavens we remain blissfully unaware of the tragedies up ahead.

    Eventually the Christmas holidays came around and after receiving very discouraging school reports, my mother sat me down and it was agreed that if I could come up with a good alternative plan, it was time for me to leave school.

    So, all I needed was an alternative plan, great. I did some research. I decided “I want to train as a Formula One racing driver”. “No” says mother. Oh. “Well how about a professional golfer, you being a more than keen golfer yourself?” “No says mother”. Hmm.

    I spotted an advert in the Dail Mail “Train to Become a Computer Programmer, the Thing of the Future!”. My mother thought it over.  “Yes” says mother. So the die was cast and I signed up at the School of Computer Technology in Oxford Street. I was 17 years old, free of school and on my way.

    I excelled at the course. It was all very exciting. Commuting up to London every day and no longer having to endure the petty tyranny of an English public school. My friends envied me. Computers. Wow! This was 1977, and nobody knew anything much about computers except from what they saw on Tomorrow’s World. This was exciting stuff. It was almost as good as becoming an astronaut.

    I got a distinction in my City & Guilds in Computer Programming and started to look around for what to do next. In those days the next step was an HND in Computer Studies, so I applied to Hatfield College, but then I spotted a recruitment advert for the trainee computer programmer program at the London Borough of Camden. My computer programming tutor advised me to apply, saying now I had the basics, hands on experience was worth more than any college course.

    I’d had enough of classrooms and wanted to get into the real world; I applied. They had two positions available and the selection process was by competition: an exam followed by an interview for those who scored high enough. There were about two hundred people in the exam hall. I passed the exam. I had the interview. I got one of the spots. So shortly after my 18th birthday I started at the London Borough of Camden as a Trainee Computer Programmer along with the other successful candidate, Jan, a lad from Poland, whose family had fled the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union.

    I told my mum I wanted to leave home, and she helped me find a house to rent that I ended up sharing with another school friend who had left to go into the world of work, and his two brothers. That was a life lesson. My mate Frank was grand, we’d always got on, but his brothers were a pain. His older brother, Tim, was a tyrant who decided he had to be in charge of us younger folk, and his younger brother Simon, was an arrogant nuisance of a toe rag who being only 16 was still at school. Frank’s father was a doctor and  working in Switzerland at the time and saw this as a great opportunity to offload the kids so his wife could join him out there. I was outnumbered.

    What a year it was. I worked away at the London Borough of Camden and after six months graduated from Trainee Programmer to Junior Programmer. Life at the council was easy going and the path ahead was clearly laid out with structured pay increases and promotions all overseen by the union. Closed shops still existed in pre-Thatcher 1977 so my future was assured. But I was restless, which was to become a hallmark of my life.

    I started to cast around for opportunities in the more volatile but what appeared to be more rewarding and lucrative private sector. So, very much to the chagrin of some of my more stalwart council colleagues, shortly after getting my Junior Programmer wings I landed a job with a merchant bank in the City of London. I was now a Programmer, no Trainee or Junior attached.

    Meanwhile I was partying away and leading the generally raucous life style of an 18 year old with money to burn, and doing my best to torment Frank’s older brother who clearly found us insufferable. This was all only two years after Geoff’s suicide and I was doing my utmost to bury that trauma under a haze of parties, booze and my new friend, marijuana. Add into this heady mix the discovery on amphetamines, French Speckled Blues they were called, and I was flying it.

    Still, I made it to work most days and was doing well, but it was not long before I became restless again, and started to look around for an opportunity to move on. This was not so easy in the London of the seventies as most careers then required a long term commitment to one employer, many people staying with the same firm for life. Then I spotted an advert in Computer Weekly.

    An American firm called PMI was recruiting bright and promising young professionals to come and work in the USA. For the successful candidates there was the promise of unlimited opportunity, with all expenses paid for the move to the States. I was very excited and sent in my application, after several rounds of interviews I was offered a job. Wow, I was going to work in the USA! I could not believe my luck.

    So as October became November in 1978, my mum and sister took me to Heathrow, me in my brand new dark blue wool overcoat, the height of the mature man, my mother and sister sobbing their eyes out. I couldn’t wait to get through to departures. I was 19 years old.

    I flew to New York, and was collected and taken to a hotel and then joined the rest of the new bright eyed recruits for orientation where we were assigned our missions.

    It turned out that PMI was a cowboy outfit hiring gullible foreigners and American misfits who were then rented out to various corporations as contractors who paid a fortune for us. We were paid a pittance but were tied into iron-clad punitive contracts, so there was no escape. PMI, Programming Methods Incorporated, or as we, their luckless employees came to call it, PMI, Piranha Methods Incorporated.

    I was going to be sent to Detroit, Murder City as it was known as in 1978. I was assigned to Ford Motor Company in Dearborn Michigan. I was flown to Detroit and met at the airport by a PMI representative who took me to a motel in Dearborn, walking distance from the car plant. She informed me that she would take me to meet the programming department manager the next day, and presented me with a copy of my CV, which I was informed was referred to as a  Resume, to familiarise myself with. I looked through it and was surprised to find that I was fully experienced in working with machines I’d never seen before and with software I’d never heard of, and I was now apparently 25 years old! I would then have a week to find a place to live and get myself a car, as living in Detroit without a car was not an option. It was November, Detroit is cold, very cold and a long way from home. I had to grow up fast.

    But hey, at least I was away from home, and the darkness that lingered in my family. I soon found a new family, or maybe they found me, the PMI family. We’d all been taken advantage of and so we had to take care of each other. None of us worked in the same companies but we all came together for beers and pool and dope smoking. Graham, an English guy who was a sort of local supervisor took me under his wing. I remember sobbing my eyes out with homesickness and him hugging me to comfort me. When I see the image of that memory I see my brother Geoff. Geoff, my brother who I missed so much, but I did not even realise it.

    I got an apartment in Taylor ‘Tucky, thus called because most of those who lived in Taylor had originated from poor areas in Kentucky during the Great Depression, and had come to work in the car plants of Detroit. My apartment complex was government subsidised and only eligible to people who were officially classified as low-income workers in, an area known as ‘the projects’. Being a PMI employee, my salary was low enough to qualify.

    Another PMI er moved in with me, Bob Monaco, a recovering alcoholic with a predilection for gambling, from Queens in New York. 12 years my elder, yet we became good friends.

    What a place it was that I was living. I met some scary people, Vietnam vets, who like my father were totally fucked by their experiences. There was plenty of beer, whisky, marijuana, and guns. Wow! Welcome to the USA.

    I was protected by Carl. An enormous black guy who approached me one day, wearing a shell suit and chunky gold chains. I was nervous. He could see I was nervous. He then smiled and put out his hand. He saw my innocence and vulnerability, declared I was now officially his friend. It made me feel safe.

    I realised I would survive.

    I mean Detroit, 1978. What a buzz! A little middle-class, innocent white boy in the birth place of Motown, I tell you, it was a gas.

    I worked the night shift at Ford’s along with mostly black guys. The coolest dudes a 19 years old English boy could ever meet. The black guys and white guys didn’t really hang out together, but for me it was different. I became known as ‘The English Man’ and was totally welcomed and made part of the crew, going to parties and cruising round in large cars, drinking Bacardi and smoking weed, Dad’s bonhomie shing through. These guys were so cool. Wide lapelled suits and Afros. Wow! And they loved my London suits, especially the tweed. Can you imagine? How innocent. I was 19, going to the States, so I bought a tweed suit. My goodness, I love that 19 year old David.

    My first Christmas  away from home came around and I spent it with Vicky and her cousin Wayne and his wife Marylou. Vicky was part Japanese and part Cherokee, about my age and pretty wild. I had a bit of a crush on her but nothing ever came of it, which was probably for the best, however we did become firm friends. She and her family hailed from Tennessee, and her cousin Wayne was a truck driver, the real deal, just like in the movies; if it were a movie he would have been played by Johnny Depp. We arrived at their house and were warmly welcomed, good old Southern hospitality. That evening Wayne had some of his buddies around for a Christmas eve poker session. We sat around the kitchen table and bottles of Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey were put in front of each of us and off we went. I had no idea how to play poker, but apparently I knew how to drink, which seemed to impress these good old boys. After the game most of them left apart from Wayne’s cousin who stayed on to keep drinking and to drunkenly wail along to Dwayne Eddie songs while twirling a loaded 6 shooter from the holster on his hip – I kid you not. Then he and Wayne had a falling out and stumbled out into the snow and started to beat the hell out of each other while Marylou lamented “not on Christmas eve Wayne!”. They eventually collapsed into the blood spattered snow in hugs and tears and vows of everlasting loyalty. What a night, certainly not like any Christmas eve I’d ever experienced in the middle-class north-western London suburbs, but probably an evening my dad may have been more familiar with back in his war days.

    Is this what it means to be a man dad?  God help me!

    I slept, passed out, on a mattress under the Christmas tree. I was woken up the next morning by Wayne handing me a cigarette and a bottle of beer. “Merry Christmas Dave”. That was December 25th 1978.

    I’d survived once again.

    Now I look back upon it, I more than survived. I had overcome adversity and homesickness and found the resolve to  get through my first Christmas without my family around me, and what a Christmas. Not only my first Christmas away from home, but it was a Christmas without Geoff, and now, after all these years I realise how much I missed him. He had died in April 1975 and his absence at the following three Christmases was profound, but never spoken about, and there I was in the cold snows of Detroit drinking whiskey and playing poker, with gun toting, fist fighting Tennessee good ol’ boys for the fourth.

    Oh, Geoff, how you would have loved to hear that story.

    My brother and my father live on in me, and now I am able to see the strength and resilience that I inherited from them. I am also able to see I am not them and I no longer need to fear the road ahead. Their lives were their lives, their troubles, their burdens theirs alone. After all these years I finally see, and lay down what was never mine.

    Birth Right

    Hello,

    Hello all of you,

    Singing down through the ages,

    Gusts of wind from long gone times

    Playing harp strings on mountain tops 

    Drenched in the sun

    Of memories that should be gone.

    I sing to you.

    A song of now,

    And what is to come,

    I sing of you,

    With love and honour,

    And I sing what is done is done.

    Hear my song and know of

    My love, my honour,

    And know now

    That I leave you where you belong,

    And leave with you all you have endured.

    My inheritance is love and freedom,

    And I turn now to the new day’s rising sun,

    Lay down the burden that was never mine,

    And with a warm heart embrace the new love I have found.

  • My Self

    It descends like a weary fog,

    Sending doubt

    Scattering through thoughts,

    The body feeling slow,

    Heavy,

    Clumsy.


    From where it comes

    I do not know,

    How it turns clarity

    To dust,

    I do not know.

    What to trust?


    My self,

    That’s what.

    Turn to my self,

    Myself,

    Myself who loves me, I can trust myself.