1 - Published on January 24th 2022
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EVERYTHING, AND EVERYONE, IS CONNECTED
In the summer of 2002 I spent the whole of August in Edinburgh, performing at the festival on the invitation of a comedy trio called The Giant Pineapple Boys. They were Anil and Darryl, two friends I knew from the Willesden area where I had lived for many years, and a friend of theirs named Leon. They'd been performing as a trio for a few years but wanted this particular Edinburgh run to have some musical elements to it so I joined them and we performed some rather chaotic comedy shows pretty much every night but always to a fairly well attended house. On occasion it may also have been packed, I don't recall. It was a fun month though. The Edinburgh festival is pretty manic, performers are away from home and off the leash, nights are for after shows that stretch into the early mornings and there are a lot of shenanigans. The underlying principle is what happens in Edinburgh etc. As usual I was up pretty early (not that early compared to some but still pretty early considering we wouldn't hit the sack till about 4am or later pretty much every night) and I'd take a walk around The Royal Mile or, as I had a performers pass that allowed me free entry to most events, I'd catch an early show of which, surprisingly, there were many.
Fairly early on in my stay I found the head shop. If you're not familiar with the term 'head shop' it means a place where you can buy incense, crystals, all sorts of beads, possibly some drug paraphernalia and more often than not books of a spiritual, esoteric or plain strange nature. It was on, I think, Lubbock Street just off the Royal Mile. Five will get you ten that it's not there anymore but in August 2002 it was on my daily mooch about before lunch. The Royal Mile is where most of the performers would meet and hang out and as it's probably the busiest street during the festival we'd hand out fliers, free promotional tickets and anything else that might get people to come to our show. I'd go in, have a look at the crystals and browse the books. As far as I recall all the usual suspects were there – ufo's, aliens, chakras, angels. But I was drawn to one particular book. It was an odd sized paperback called What Would Buddha Do? 101 Answers to Life's Daily Dilemmas. It was written by Franz Metcalf and it does what it says on the tin. Various daily problems viewed through the prism of Buddhist teachings. Each page is a question relating to some aspect of modern life, a quote on that subject from various Buddhist texts and an exegesis and further explanation of the situation from a Buddhist perspective. How do you discipline a child? What do you do if you know a colleague is lying? How do you wash a penguin? This book has all the answers. I'd go in every day and read a page and eventually I decided it was a book I really needed so I bought it. And I refer to it still, nearly twenty years later, almost everyday. It sits on my 'sacred' shel, right by my desk so I just have to reach over to grab it. My copy is very well thumbed, and I have learned an awful lot from it.
One of my favourites is this one (mobile phones may not display this image in the correct place so if you don't see it now scroll all the way down and you'll find it there)
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This one hit me hard. How many millennia would it take for every living things to have once been our mother or father? How many lifetimes are needed to complete that? The permutations were mind boggling. I thought to myself that's why we need eternity to get through this – every soul must have the opportunity to be everything to every other soul. How incredible, beautiful, mysterious and profoundly moving.
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My niece was married in 2011 in a massive hotel in West London, or maybe the outskirts, somewhere near Slough. Hundreds of guests, tons of food. Very colourful, as Asian weddings tend to be. People traveled from all over the world to be there. She's the only daughter of my oldest brother and I recall her childhood years very well indeed because she was a quiet 'watcher'. She had a very dry and well developed sense of humour that gave me the impression that her eyes were continually rolling in her head as she sat back and watched the madness of both the world around her and the (mostly) dysfunctional adults in her immediate family. She was always cheeky to me and of course I loved that. I'm sad to say that for much of her childhood, and that of her older brother, I was pretty absent. I was off doing my own thing and finding out who I was and where I was headed and I wanted to keep a distance between myself and the constant feeling of attrition that I experienced at large family gatherings. This changed when my family members started having kids themselves and I'd matured enough to realise that there was a real joy to be had in being around very young children whom have chosen to be members of one's family. I also watched my mum getting older and older, and more frail, which was a somewhat disturbing thing to see as she had always appeared to be a force of nature. We had never had an easy relationship but there came a point, in my 50's, where I was determined that this relationship would be healed to the best of my ability in this incarnation.
Sana'h, my niece, and her fiancee Seb asked me to perform at their wedding and specifically asked me to do a version of Human Nature, originally by Michael Jackson. He had died in 2009 and the American singer and guitarist John Mayer had played a guitar a version of this at his memorial. I thought he did a really nice version actually. The song was written by Toto's keyboard player Steve Porcaro and, because it has a nice melody and the kudos of being composed by a renowned musician, it's been covered by artists like Miles Davis so it's a well known tune. Anyway they loved it and asked me to do a version at their wedding and also to put a band together for people to dance to. I agreed although I pointed out that to the other musicians this would be a professional engagement and although I daresay they'd do it for a cut price they's still need to paid. My fee would be significantly lower, as she was my niece after all so she'd get my special 'family discount.' *
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I asked my young friend Tom to play bass, Anita to sing and on drums I asked my friend Killian, a slim and lean six footer with dark almost reddish hair, an heritage of Irish extraction and a shared acidic sense of humour. At the time of the wedding I'd known Killian for about three years, during which time we'd become very good and close friends although it was sometimes a sparky friendship, both of us being somewhat strong willed and with the added edge that due to challenging situations in his private life he could be a bit volatile. Even so, the bond, initially forged over a love of music but eventually developing into something deeper as we began to share our more metaphysical musings with each other, was strong we laughed a lot and he understood some of my more space cadet-like ways and he was a good drummer whom I enjoyed playing with so he was a natural fit for the wedding. I also knew his family quite well. His eldest son Shane was about nine or ten years old whereas Alex was about six. I enjoyed visiting them at Killian's house in Twickenham. Both boys were sweet and we'd sometimes sit and watch the telly while they played or I'd go round for something to eat and have a quick chat with them before they hit the sack.
Shane, the eldest boy, had been born at 24 weeks prematurely and was kept in an ICU on a ventilator for twelve weeks with round the clock medical care by the best doctors and nurses at Queen Charlotte's Hospital. It was a tense, heartbreaking and exhausting time for Killian and his partner Selene. Killian would travel every day to sit beside Shane's ventilator, going without sleep or just sleeping on the ward floor. I think the three months of agony not knowing whether Shane would pull through had left Killian constantly looking over his shoulder about Shane's welfare as he got older and I can't begin to imagine how a situation like that must feel for a parent.
I often think that I've been spared a great deal of pain in not being a parent. I can't imagine that I'd do anything but worry. In fact I'm certain I'd make a terrible dad. I'd be the sort that would never admonish my child but would leave all that up to the mum. Sure, I'd agree with her every time the kid stepped out of line and support her in any draconian punishments she'd mete out but secretly I'd roll my eyes and undermine her authority by giving the kid a quid every time he or she or they got shouted at. Fight The Power!
So we're at the wedding and of course it's my nieces wedding so I'm in trad garb looking crisp and I'm also to-ing and fro-ing talking to family, guests and the like. At one point I walked over to where we had set the band equipment up and the other band members were sitting chatting and nursing drinks. I was a bit bemused. Why were they sitting away from all the guests?
“What are you doing?” I said, “why are you not sitting at a table?”
They went all coy and said something about not want to impose but I was having none of it.
“Guys, ' I said, ' you're at my families do. You're MY guests and therefore part of MY family and so you're going to sit at a table and eat properly like the rest of us!”
There was general grumbling about being a bother but there was no way my friends were not going to be treated well so I went looking for a table. I saw my sister Sophie sitting with her husband David at an otherwise rather empty table. I asked her if she minded the band sitting at the table and she, of course, said no problem and was also a bit put out that they would distance themselves out of ill conceived politeness. I went back to the band and ushered them to the table. Eventually everyone was seated, more people arrived, introduced themselves and were seated. My cousin Samara sat with us. Eventually the food began to be bought out. It was a huge affair with I'd say about five hundred guests. The food was amazing and smelled delicious although the irony was that there was nothing that was strictly vegetarian as Muslim culture doesn't really understand the vegetarian mindset. My family tend to think I've gone off road at the best of times and they're still confused as to why I've turned veggie and of course I've never explained the real reason to them, or to most of my friends come to that. The scandal of the night was that I was only able to eat rice and some naan, as every other dish had meat in it. My family have never forgotten this and now when I get invited to family do's my older brother always makes a point of emphasising that there'll be heaps of vegetarian food. They've never lived down that at my niece's wedding id din't get to eat properly. This is a unforgivable error in Asian culture and one of the reasons they'll never forget it is that I'll probably keep reminding them.
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The evening was going along swimmingly and I don't recall whether it was before or after the band had played that we were at the table and I looked over at Killian. He was sitting across from my cousin Samara and was staring at her intently, his eyes a little wide and slightly crazy. It was very odd and I wondered what was going on. I wasn't sure if Samara or anyone else had clocked it, and I'm not sure what happened to distract me but I do recall I let the ball drop for a while. After some time, I don't recall how long, I looked over again at Killian again. He was still staring at her but this time I saw him suddenly go red and all the tension drain from his face. He looked at Samara.
'Now I remember where I know you from!” he exclaimed, 'You were on the team that saved my son's life!”
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You see, Samara, my cousin, is a doctor. A paediatrician in fact. She had been part of the team providing round the clock care to Shane while he spent those dreadful months in an incubator, fighting for his tiny life. He was just 855 grammes when he was born, which is just under two pounds. Premature babies dehydrate and after birth which subsequently took him down to 800 Grammes 24-25 weeks prematurely, which is nearly four months premature. His chances of survival were 40/60. The team worked day and night to save him and Killian and Selene, Shane's mother, waited by his side every night. For 3 months.
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And he made it.
With the help care and skill of a member of my family. Not a distant member. My mums brother's daughter. That's close family. So, in some odd, strange way that is just that tiny bit beyond our conscious understanding Killian's family and my family are connected, and I'm obviously connected to him as if we were, or had at sometime been, brothers.
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A few years after, and much to my regret, we lost contact for a while. I often thought about him and the boys but I had hit a brick wall in about 2017 and I was, bar work, off radar for a large part of the time between Christmas 2017 and early 2020, avoiding socialising, licking my wounds, coming to peace with my past and what I perceived as the abject failure of many of my plans and concentrating on my counselling sessions so as to give myself a decent chance of starting the healing process. For the first six weeks of 2018 I didn't even pick up the phone to call anyone or answer any calls. I went into a deep silence that was painful and full of tears. My friends did call to check on me but I'd usually hear their voicemail messages as my phone was off for most of the day and I'd turn it on just to check texts and voicemails. It was a terrible time which I'll tell you about in a bit more depth (huzzah!) when we get there later in the timeline.
Thing is, as I write this we're in the lockdown phase, end of March 2020 of the COVID 19 crisis. And Killian called me just over a week ago. We picked up where we let off, as if no time had passed since our last phone call. He said if I ever needed somewhere to stay I should go to him.
We've all been each others mothers and fathers.
I have a hunch we've all been each others sisters and brothers too.
* Joke!
