Now the year has become 2024, the one where I’ll soon enough be seventy years old, I thought I’d take a short break for a bit of a think. So I went out for a walk, my usual way of thinking, sat down in the Walker Art Gallery half way round, and wrote down what follows.
When I started writing this book about my life, I wasn't at all sure I'd enjoy it as much as I am. The "Who do you think you are" voice of self-doubt that's never very far from my consciousness was doing its usual job of being vehemently critical about the whole book idea.
But I started writing anyway. Twelve chapters of it so far.
At first I thought some wisdom l might be gathering from all that was emerging from some repeat tendencies I’d noticed. Like:
Getting stuck in that wrong job;
Staying too long in various places and situations;
Opting far too often for comfort and the familiar;
And even on occasions for the money or position;
At times letting my own arrogance or the flattery of others get the better of me;
Going with some poor ideas;
Taking some stupid decisions;
Then taking them again;
Well the university one at least.
And I could have gone on and given myself and my whole life a serious beating up for that list. But I'm not going to. Thanks to a moment’s exasperation last week when I was writing that last piece about Militant and the Tories and decided I didn't have the will or energy to say any more about either of them. But instead found myself writing "Time passed and I'd done what I could."
"Time passed and I'd done what I could."
And that, in fact, is the wisdom. That realisation that time has passed and I’ve been doing the best I could for most and maybe even all of it. Right up to now. And if at some of those past times I’ve been writing about I didn’t do what I’d have done today, well that's because I was doing the best I could then. With the knowledge, the wisdom and even the frailties I had at the time.
All meaning there will be no “Mea Maxima Culpa” Catholic-guilt-list of regrets coming up1 to conclude these mid-book reflections like some sacramental confession. Why would I?
Because writing, walking and contemplating my way through all these years has got me feeling more kindly about my life and actions than before. To my own surprise. And sure, it’s shown me loads of things I wouldn't do the same way now. But I didn't know or feel back then what I've come to know and feel now. So I did what I could.
And seem to have come to an understanding that feels like the settlement of a lifelong internal dispute. An acceptance that if there was ever a tendency for me to hang on to past hurts, woundings, and regrets, and I think there was, then the writing all this has granted me a degree of contentment and forgiveness sufficient to let go of all that. All that past. Knowing now I did what I could.
So though I haven’t written any of what’s to come yet, I’m expecting this is where the book will move into stories of mostly happier times. Though life and decisions still won't go right all the time of course. There’ll be still be random cracks and faultlines, even if they’re different ones from before. Because cracks and faultlines are where the stories come from aren’t they? And how the light gets in? As a much wiser man than I’ll ever be once said, sang and tipped his elegant hat to.
Coming next, the 1990s.
An altar boy memory from the Latin Mass. “Mea Maxima Culpa” meaning “Through my most grievous fault.”
Next
Read all the chapters before this one here*
A Beginning: “Do You Like Soul Music?”
1, 1954: Being Born, Walton
2, 1955/58: To Maghull, via Bootle
3, 1958/69: The 1960s, When We Were Boys
4, Still 1969: The Other Songs On The Wireless
5, An interlude: Maybe We Could Organise Hope?
6, In the early 1970s: Up The Hill
7, The Middle 1970s: Decisions
8, An interruption: About My Heart
9, A Reconsideration 1976: About Liverpool Housing Trust
10, Days In Public 1979: Dreaming Dreams In Stolen Moments
11, The 1980s: A Slow Untangling
* A paid subscription will get you to all of them, and the others still to be written.