The dictionary positively procrastinates its way through its definitions for procrastination…
…delay, put off, postpone, defer, be dilatory, use delaying tactics, stall, temporise, play for time, hesitate, vacillate, dither, be indecisive, be undecided, waver…
It’s almost as if even this great tome can’t really be bothered but to go through the motions. Simply put though, procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task which needs to be accomplished.
We’ve all been there. How often have we put off impending tasks in favour of a plethora of less urgent ones? For some, procrastination can be persistent and tremendously disruptive and has been linked to depression, low self-esteem and anxiety. For others it is just an irritating deviation from life’s more worthy endeavours. For me, it can be a troublesome vice, especially as deadlines are an all too regular feature of my daily life. There’s nothing I hate more than an open-ended deadline. It just generates the urgent need to alphabetise the CD collection and sort out the sock drawer.
The good news however is that we are not alone. It would seem that procrastination is something that has been embraced by some of history’s most able individuals. Far from it being the bane of the work-shy and the indecisive, it has in fact found favour with some notable figures from the world of art, politics and literature.
Leonardo da Vinci was a serial procrastinator. The genius of the Italian Renaissance was renowned as a daydreamer by his contemporaries. The man who painted The Virgin in the Rocks and The Last Supper, and explored almost every field available to him in both the arts and sciences, never finished a single project on time. It took him 16 years to finally getting around to finishing the enigmatic portrait of La Gioconda (Mona Lisa) and the Last Supper was only completed when his patron, Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, threatened to cut off his funding. In later years he is said to have regretted his lack of artistic fervour, even appealing to God at the end. He did leave us with a wealth of timeless masterpieces and sketches though, along with the all to apt words “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end”.
Another of life’s great procrastinators was the author, Douglas Adams, who famously quipped, “I love deadlines…I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by”. It was said that he had managed to raise the art of procrastination to a whole new level and, in spite of producing a number of iconic novels, apparently hated writing. It would seem that copious amounts of tea, long baths and days in bed were Mr Adams particular preference to avoiding putting pen to paper. Apparently publishers and editors had to lock him in rooms and glower at him to elicit the finished manuscripts. He worked on his last novel, ‘The Salmon of Doubt’, for ten years and at the time of his fatal heart attack in 2001 he still hadn’t finished the first draft.
Apparently Samuel Johnson, probably one of the greatest writers of his age and a man described as “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”, once wrote a piece on procrastination that he took so long in getting around to starting that he finished it whilst the errand boy was waiting outside to take it to press. And Samuel Taylor Coleridge, creator of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan was, by all accounts, one of the most infamous procrastinators of all time. Addicted to Opium, his life was once described as “…a never-ending squalor of procrastination, excuses, lies, debts, degradation and failure”.
Suddenly I am feeling a whole lot better!
Even ex US President Bill Clinton was considered a chronic procrastinator and was once described by Vice President, Al Gore, as “punctually challenged”. The French poet and novelist, Victor Hugo meanwhile hit upon the unique method of staving off procrastination by having his servant strip him naked and not return his clothes until he had laboured sufficiently to earn them back, whilst Herman Melville had his wife chain him to a desk while he was struggling to finish ‘Moby Dick’.
And it goes on…
The great American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright designed his most famous house in two hours, when his client phoned him to say he was coming over to see the plans. Apparently Wright calmly finished his breakfast and, in the time that it took his client to drive from Pittsburgh, produced the plans for Fallingwater, a house that today is listed as a National Historic Monument and considered one of the top places in the United States to visit before you die. Even some of Hunter S. Thompson’s most famous work began as mere procrastination. The wild exuberance of his gonzo style of journalism actually came about because he hadn’t actually written up the article that he had been commissioned to do. In an act of sheer panic, or inspired genius, he began tearing out pages from his notebook and sent them off to press with the courier who was waiting at his hotel room door. The critics loved it.
And what of Hamlet, the procrastinating Prince of Denmark? Given the simple task of avenging his father’s murder, he then proceeds to spend the next four and a half hours dithering and wavering to the point of exasperation. By the time he finally does get around to slaying Claudius, his indecisive ramblings have led to the suicide of his beloved Ophelia, the unfortunate stabbing of Polonius, the death of his own mother and the demise of Ophelia’s brother…not to mention those poor saps, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. If ever a man gave procrastination a bad name, it is surely the dillydallying Dane.
Anyway, I have procrastinated long enough. I have things to do…
Difficult to imagine now, listening to a howling storm blowing cows past the window outside my office, but just over a week ago I was standing on the summit of Mount Kenya, having successfully led a multi-national team of trekkers from over 20 different countries to the top of the second highest peak in Africa.
In spite of the fact that this wasn’t my first time to the top, the sunrise alone was worth the effort. But, more than that, the majestic landscapes of Mount Kenya National Park never fail to inspire and rejuvenate me…in spite of the altitude sickness, lack of sleep and logistical headache of getting a bunch of individuals with differing abilities to the top of a mountain in time to watch the sun come up…
At around 1745 on the 11 January 2000, the Scottish scallop dredger, Solway Harvester sank 11 miles off the coast of the Isle of Man. Aboard it were seven crew, all members of a small fishing community from the remote Machars region in Galloway, south-west Scotland. Two of them were brothers and two more just 17 years of age. The tragedy proved to be the worst maritime disaster in Manx waters in living memory and the worst in the Scottish fishing industry for over a decade. What set this incident apart though was what happened next.
Over the following days and weeks, the Isle of Man government went to extraordinary lengths to recover the boat and her crew. In the face of stiff opposition from the British government, the Manx parliament set in motion a series of events that were to have emotive and far reaching consequences on both sides of the water. Close to a million pounds was set aside to fund the operation, experts were brought in to co-ordinate the recovery and the Isle of Man police began a criminal investigation into the causes of the sinking. The boat was eventually raised and the bodies of all seven crewmen recovered and returned to their families, but it took another nine years before the official inquest was able to offer some sort of closure on the events of that tragic night.
Some 15 years ago, photographer Phil Kneen and myself embarked on a nine month journey that would eventually culminate in a very personal exhibition of words and photographs that we called, ‘Harvest’. It was conceived originally to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the sinking, in such a way as to tell the story from a completely different perspective. It was our way of paying tribute, not only to the crew of the Solway Harvester, but also to the incredible efforts made by the Isle of Man to raise the boat and recover her crew.
It was also an attempt to document the real story from the perspective of those most deeply affected by the unfolding events of 25 years ago, allowing those who lived through those few emotive weeks to tell the story in their own words. What followed was by no means a definitive account of the few short months that followed the sinking of the boat, but rather a series of personal insights that would, hopefully, give the tragedy a previously undocumented human face.
Tragic and at times divisive, it was, and probably still is, a story that over the past two decades has grown in the telling and one that has become deeply ingrained in Manx lore. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the tragedy and enter a new year, with all the possibilities and pitfalls that lie ahead, it is also a story filled with the inherent goodness of the human spirit, and one, I think, worth remembering one last time…
…The Isle of Whithorn, December 2009
We sat in the bar of the Steampacket Inn on the Isle of Whithorn, contemplating death and gazing out across a tranquil harbour bathed in late December sunshine. The scene before us had probably changed little over the past ten years. That same, somnolent setting would have been the last view of home that the crew of the Solway Harvester saw as they sailed out to meet their fate on that still January night.
It was in the early hours of the 10 January 2000, when the scallop dredger Solway Harvester slipped her moorings and pointed her bow south, heading out towards the rich fishing grounds lying off the coast of the Isle of Man. There was little to indicate what lay in wait for them out there that night and the crisp winter air foretold nothing of the horrors that lay ahead. For the families of the seven men on board though, it was to be the last time they would ever see them alive.
Over the next 24 hours the weather in the Irish Sea began to deteriorate, as the water around the boat turned from a dark foreboding mass into a screaming cauldron that threatened to engulf them. Eventually conditions became so bad that the boat’s skipper, Craig Mills, decided the time had come to head for shelter and so, on the afternoon of the 11 January, the crew hauled in their gear and the Solway Harvester headed for the safe haven of Ramsey Bay. It was the last journey they would ever make. At 17.47 a polar orbiting satellite picked up the signal from the boat’s emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB), confirming that the vessel had finally lost its battle with the growing storm and battering waves.
The ensuing search for the missing boat pitted man and machine against the unrelenting fury of the Irish Sea. Over the next few hours Mother Nature’s unbridled power held sway in spite of the best efforts of the Coastguard, the RNLI, the RAF and the Royal Navy. Douglas, Ramsey, Port St Mary and Peel lifeboats all launched into the foaming maelstrom and even the Isle of Man ferry, the Ben-my-Chree, was diverted from its scheduled sailing to help in the search. All to no avail. In spite of an exhaustive search, the boat and her seven man crew failed to materialise and the rescue effort was finally abandoned at dusk on the evening of the 12 January, after the discovery of two unopened life-rafts had shattered any last vestiges of hope that the crew would be found alive.
It took three more days to locate the Solway Harvester, but she was eventually found lying like some slumbering leviathan 11 miles off the coast of Douglas. The Royal Navy minesweeper, HMS Sandown, seconded from operational duties to help in the search for the boat, sent down a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and, as it became evident that they had found the final resting place of the boat, the mood aboard the naval vessel changed dramatically. Her captain, Ben Key, remembers vividly the silence that descended on the Operations Room as the trawler came into view. As the name Solway Harvester emerged from the enveloping gloom they were all struck by how a vessel that had been so alive and animated just a few days before could now be so silent and still. From the time of the last known communication from the boat, to the time that the EPIRB had been activated, just 18 minutes had passed. Most of the crew hadn’t even had time to get on deck.
The idea to do something to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the sinking had begun as a conversation between myself and Phil some four months previously. Sat in another pub, on another isle, the Harvest project had been born. Over the intervening weeks though what had started as a flickering light somewhere in the dark recesses of our minds had grown into an unstoppable juggernaut, one that along the way had slowed only to pick up members of the RNLI, the Manx Government, the Royal Navy and an assortment of police officials, coastguard personnel and church ministers. The response had been incredible.
We were in Whithorn that late December morning to meet up with some of the families of the lost crew, and I think the reality of what we were doing was finally sinking in. How do you ask someone about their dead son? How do you introduce yourself to a woman who was heavily pregnant when her husband drowned, and then look into the face of the nine year old boy who had never even met his father? Phil and myself had retired to the bar for a ‘planning meeting’. It was a lame excuse and we knew it. We were hoping that an infusion of strong liquor would steady the nerves prior to our first meeting with the parents of Davy Lyons, a 17 year old lad who, at the time of his death, hadn’t even been big enough to join the army!
Parents shouldn’t have to bury their children, it goes against the natural order of things, but over the course of that weekend we were to meet with three families who had done just that. Two of the boys had been just 17, inseparable friends who had a lifetime of experiences ahead of them. The other had been 22. A combined age of 56, all gone in a matter of minutes. Then there was Karen Jolly (nee Mills), whose husband Robin had been the brother of the Solway’s skipper. We sat and listened as she told us about their last Christmas together: her children, Sarah and Robbie watching from the sofa as she described the last days of the father they had barely known. The stories were heartbreaking, but it wasn’t a feeling of senseless waste that we came away from Whithorn with, but rather an indomitable mood of quiet dignity. Whilst the memories were still raw and the anger still palpable, the spirit that remained was undefeated.
Back on the Isle of Man we began the task of enlisting the support and help of those who had been involved in the recovery of the vessel from Manx waters. I think few people at the time realised what a Herculean effort it was going to be to raise the boat, but having given their word to the families of the crew that they would bring the boys home, the Isle of Man government spared no effort in making good on their promise. The Manx Parliament and the Council of Ministers gave unanimous approval, Chief Inspector Dudley Butt was tasked with investigating the sinking and John Foster, who at that time was the government’s Emergency Planning Officer, was given the somewhat daunting responsibility of facilitating the recovery operation.
The determination of the Manx government to bring the Solway Harvester home incurred the furious wrath of the British government, with Whitehall and Tynwald clashing bitterly over the unprecedented decision to raise the boat. Manx fortitude won the day however and over the next few weeks the island lay at the centre of a huge media circus, as a growing army of salvage crews, divers and support craft lay siege to the waters off the coast. Huge lifting cranes were sailed around the Scottish coast, the RAF conspired with the Manx government to help bring the families across in secret and a plan of almost military precision was undertaken to implement the job of raising the boat. It took weeks of planning and organisation and some truly heroic efforts on the part of the dive teams involved in securing the vessel and searching for the crew and, in spite of the best efforts of the Irish Sea to thwart the operation, over the following months the boat and its crew were finally brought up.
The bodies of the crew of the Solway Harvester were finally recovered on the 4 February 2000, just over three weeks after the boat had initially gone down. The families were waiting on the quayside that night as the bodies came into port, accompanied by the haunting lament of a lone piper. The coffins had been covered with a Manx flag and a Scottish Saltire and, as the bodies were placed on Victoria Pier, the final chords of Ellan Vannin drifted out across the harbour.
But it took another five months before the Solway Harvester finally made it into Ramsey. The irony of the boat’s final journey couldn’t fail to escape many that day and, as the haunting vision of the Solway Harvester sailed into the bay, an eerie silence descended on the crowds that lined the harbour. The journey home had been a long and painful one, but despite the tragedy of the loss it was also one filled with hope. It saw men and women risk their lives in atrocious conditions that fateful January night. It saw politicians stand up for what was right, rather than what was expedient. And it saw two communities come together in grief and remain together in friendship.
The Isle of Man went against every previous maritime precedent, overcame countless bureaucratic obstacles and even faced down the British government to raise the Solway Harvester and recover her crew. It is a decision that maybe not everyone agreed with at the time, but the people of Whithorn and Garlieston know that it was something their own government wouldn’t have done for them and for that they are eternally thankful. In the words of Alex Currie, who was the Church of Scotland Minister at the heart of the Whithorn community at the time of the sinking…
“…We knew that what the Isle of Man had done had gone against everything that was happening this side of the water. All we wanted was the boys back and the Isle of Man made it possible where our own government didn’t, and that’s never been forgotten.”
It has been nearly a quarter of a century now since that fateful day, but out of the tragedy there still shines that indomitable spirit that makes us who we are. And in a world that is far from perfect, that is something to celebrate and to hold on to.
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Boxing Day Tsunami, which decimated large swathes of the Indian Ocean on 26 December, 2004. I remember lying in bed that morning two decades ago, listening to radio reports of the increasingly unbelievable levels of destruction being wrought by events taking place from the coast of east Africa, to the western shores of Thailand. Little did I realise that just a few months later I would be out there myself, working with Habitat for Humanity on a series of rebuilding projects on the southern coast of Sri Lanka.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the tsunami I wrote the blog below, detailing a little something of what happened on the day and what I experienced when I went out there. Today would seem a fitting moment to revisit that chapter of my life and remember the people I met out there…
The first wave hit at 0758 that morning. There was no warning, no chance to run, not even a chance to say goodbye. It tore through buildings, trees and lives with equal savagery. The train had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, ripped from the tracks by a ten-metre wall of water that had hit the coast at some 800 kilometres per hour. Nearly 1500 people lost their lives on the train that day.
Six months later I stood before the mangled wreckage of what had once been the Galle-Colombo Express, now a twisted and permanent reminder of the Asian Tsunami that had rocked the world on 26 December 2004. An unstoppable and unquenchable wall of water, it had ripped apart the lives of millions, from the western coast of Thailand, to the shores of Somalia in eastern Africa. The human tragedy had been incalculable. Estimates put the dead at 226,000, around a third of them children, whilst nearly five million people had lost their homes, along with their access to food and drinking water. The spot I stood on, a small fishing village called Peraliya, on Sri Lanka’s south-western coast, had been one of the worst hit areas and the sense of loss and devastation still haunted the scattered remains of the village. The authorities claimed that 1,000 people had died here, but local aid workers and residents put the figure closer to 2,500. They were buried close by, next to a main road along which life continued to hurtle by at breakneck speed.
…That was nearly a decade ago. At the time the United Nations estimated that it could take up to ten years to rebuild what nature’s fury had destroyed in seconds. I often wonder what happened to that ravaged country I left behind…
I had arrived a few days before to help project manage a rebuilding programme, just one of many being set-up throughout the region by a wealth of international aid agencies and charities. In spite of the media circus that had followed in the wave’s destructive wake though, nothing could prepare me for the true scale of the disaster that awaited me. Before the tsunami, Peraliya had been a sizeable community of some 420 homes, within minutes of the first wave hitting it had been reduced to a pitiful collection of just ten forlorn looking houses. Many of its survivors still lived in tents or makeshift shelters and some, like Manjou, were crowded into small wooden shacks, around which were gathered their few remaining possessions.
Manjou could probably be described as one of the lucky ones – he had survived after all – but his story was to become an all too familiar lament during my time there. The first wave had deprived him of his home, his job and, tragically, his younger sister. The second wave hit whilst he and his two brothers were out looking for her. That was the last time he ever saw them. Manjou was swept two kilometres inland by the force of the water and by the time he returned to his village everything he had ever known was gone. He was forced now to spend his days making small wooden boats, which he sold to buy rice to feed what was left of his family.
It was people like Manjou I was out there trying to help. Working in conjunction with groups of volunteers, my job was to try to help the process of recovery and regeneration along. Six months had gone by and the international outpouring of grief, money and support had failed to materialise into anything concrete, in a very literal sense of the word. As I looked around at the job in hand I had to admit to a sense of overwhelming impotence and I wondered just how much I could do in the short time I was due to be out here. I was managing teams of complete strangers, and in some cases complete novices, people, who in the world beyond this tragedy were human resource directors and civil engineers, lawyers and post-room boys. The plan was to build small basic homes, nothing fancy, just four walls and a roof, but something that would restore some dignity back to these people’s lives, something tangible that would show them that the world hadn’t forgotten. Something they could call home.
It was hard and tiring work. The monsoons had arrived a few days before and the normally dry earth was fast becoming a quagmire and, with temperatures breaking 100°C and humidity in the high 90s, we were faced with an almost Herculean task. The resident water buffalos didn’t seem to mind though and, in spite of the heat, we were dragged along by the infectious enthusiasm of the local families, who it seems were made of sterner stuff than us. Their quiet resolve and determination and their cheerful smiles were to become a regular feature of my time there and a constant source of wonder to me. Slowly the impossible began to happen. Foundations were dug and floors laid. Walls were built and rooms began to take shape. Some of the families even took to sleeping inside the houses at night, lying amongst the shovels and trowels as if afraid that the darkness might swallow up their new homes completely.
Over the coming weeks the rains subsided, the ground dried out and the buffalos moved on. Life took on a regular routine and, as the days progressed, the task started to yield tangible results. The heat and the exhaustion were replaced by a will to succeed and the desire to help people who had by now become, if not friends, then at least part of the team. It was no longer us and them, it was now just us! My time came to an end all too quickly though and, in spite of all I had tried to do, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of frustration. I couldn’t help but wonder just how long the world would continue to help, before another disaster took centre stage and the politicians moved on to another sound bite.
Sri Lanka has long captivated the hearts and minds of visitors to its shores, from the ancient Greeks and the Romans to the Arab traders and the European colonists. Marco Polo once declared it the finest island in the world and during its turbulent history it has been known by many names – Serendib, Ceylon, The Resplendent Isle, the Pearl of the Orient and, what must surely be its most poignant epithet, the Teardrop of India. The Sri Lankan people are a resilient and resourceful race, but everywhere we went there was the constant reminder of the tsunami. We couldn’t escape it. It was etched into the walls of the buildings and the faces of the people. Ten years on and I wonder how much has changed.
The world has moved on since those tragic events of 2004. The media and the politicians have indeed found new soundbites to regale us with. Hurricane Katrina was followed by devastating earthquakes in Kashmir, China and Haiti, whilst the Japanese tsunami of 2011 brought back, all to vividly, memories of the carnage wrought across the Indian Ocean seven years previously. I never managed to get back out to Sri Lanka, but a couple of years ago I saw first hand the destruction of Port au Prince after the Haiti earthquake and it reminded me of the words of an aid worker that I had spoken to on the day I left Peraliya. She had almost single-handedly been trying to nurse the village back to life and her parting words as I boarded the bus and took one last look back at the wooden shacks and tented villages have always haunted me.
…“I need to sleep. Is there anyone out there that can help us?”
That time is nearly upon us, when people everywhere cast their troubles aside and embrace the holy trinity of crass commercialism, wanton greed and an unfathomable urge to allow some beardy, work-shy vagrant into their homes.
Yes, it’s nearly Christmas.
But before you get too carried away with the mince pies and brandy, you may want to reconsider the idea of letting the corpulent old gentleman down your chimney this year. Don’t be fooled by the fluffy white beard and jolly demeanour. Santa, it would seem, is not the jovial bringer of joy and Christmas cheer that we were brought up to believe…
As a young lad I always assumed that the worst that was likely to befall an errant child over Christmas was a possible substitution of coal for that shiny wrapped present under the tree. Saint Nicholas, after all, was the patron saint of children. He was renowned for his generosity and his penchant for handing out secret presents. To the best of my knowledge, cannibalism, kidnapping and the harassment of livestock was never mentioned! It would seem however that I, along with every other child since the early 4th century, have been cruelly misinformed. Indeed, it is little wonder that Santa is forced to spend his time holed up in some remote and frozen corner of Lapland…it is evident that the man is a magnet for the dregs of medieval folklore!
Take the Krampus for example, a bloodthirsty and slightly unhinged member of the entourage who, if you were lucky, would dish out medieval beatings with a birch rod. This was when he wasn’t kidnapping children in a burlap sack and throwing them in the river. This less than festive behaviour proved too much even for the Catholic Church (the people who brought you the Spanish Inquisition!) and the Krampus was outlawed in the 1800s. Undeterred, Santa turned to Belsnickel, who accompanied him across the Rhineland and the Dutch communities of Pennsylvania, ‘coercing’ naughty children into being good. Ragged and disheveled, the Belsnickel would roam the wilds of German-speaking Europe, handing out beatings, cakes and sweets. Now if that isn’t sending out mixed messages, I don’t know what is!…I mean, how much coercing did the children of southwestern Germany need?!
Not to be outdone by their Teutonic neighbours, Santa’s French franchise turned up with their very own Gallic enforcer, in the form of La Pere Fouettard (The Whipping Father), a suitably gastronomic bully whose impressive resume included kidnapping, murder and cannibalism. Then there is Black Peter, a Moor of somewhat dubious antecedents who apparently arrived by steamboat from Spain every year with Sinterklass, to be sent down Dutch chimneys to leave presents and, in some cases, kidnap bad children and take them back to Spain for punishment. Slave, servant or demon, Peter’s somewhat cavalier attitude towards progressive childcare, along with the sensitive matter of his racial stereotyping, has seen him in more enlightened times transformed into a chimney sweep. Political correctness wouldn’t seem to have mellowed his penchant for child kidnapping though.
My personal favourites though are the Yulemen from Iceland. Numbering thirteen in all, these mischievous creatures are relative newcomers to Santa’s malevolent horde, having worked their way up through the ranks of Icelandic medieval folklore. They first arrived on the scene back in the 1930s and over the intervening decades have been portrayed as everything from loveable rogues and annoying miscreants, to child-eating demons who hang around with a particularly large and obnoxious black cat. The offspring of a wizened old crone called Grýla, for the most part they seem to spend their time these days leaving gifts in children’s shoes, hassling sheep and peering in through windows to see what is worth stealing. A far cry from their glory days as the bogey men of Icelandic folklore, when tales of their deeds were even outlawed by Iceland’s usually less than sensitive Danish overlords.
So, still want to leave Santa that mince pie? Personally I would be more inclined towards laying a few man traps around the house, or at the very least setting a good fire in the hearth to prevent any midnight chimney incursions. And kids, when Santa asks whether you’ve been naughty or nice, you might want to give some serious consideration to your answer…
Yesterday evening I found myself watching the BBC’s new drama, ‘This Town’. Now, I’m not too sure which town the title is meant to refer to, given that the action seemed to flit between Birmingham, Coventry and Belfast, but I did find myself transported back some four decades, to a time when I still had hair and a naive belief in a brighter future.
The drama itself is set at the beginning of the 1980s, possibly one of the most pivotal decades of the 20th Century. This was the decade that brought us Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War, the rise of greed and the fall of the unions. It was a decade of remarkable contrasts, that began with IRA hunger strikes and inner cities riots and ended with the invention of the World Wide Web. These were serious times, predating the arrival of social media and the annoying banality of the ‘celebrity’ culture. Nuclear war was still a very real threat and the only bulwarks we had against the imperial machinations of Mother Russia back then were Ronald Reagan and John Rambo!
I was born in Birmingham and grew up surrounded by the best and the worst that an inner city childhood can bring. But during those early years of the 1980s I found myself living in Coventry, a city that back then came with a bad attitude and a pulsating ska soundtrack. This was the heyday of Two-Tone and bands like Madness, The Specials and Selector were making black suits and pork pie hats essential fashion accessories. Mods and skinheads were everywhere and street violence was at an all time high in the city. Meanwhile, around Britain, the inner cities were burning as copycat riots erupted across the urban landscape. And against this backdrop of inner city decay and urban fragmentation, The Specials released Ghost Town, one of the most iconic records of the decade. An anthem for a lost generation, it pretty much summed up the broken Britain of the early 1980s.
It also gave me an idea.
At the time I was studying for a degree in graphic design and was scratching around for an idea for a final year project that had some bite to it. One evening I happened upon a performance by John Cooper Clarke, a man described as “…a cross between Sid Vicious, Ken Dodd and Allen Ginsberg”. The ‘Bard of Salford’, he had an incredible talent for observation and regularly toured with the likes of the Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, the Buzzcocks and Joy Division. His poetry was cynical, witty and very hard hitting and one piece in particular, Beasley Street, really captured the mood of the time for me.
That one poem became responsible for me spending weeks trawling through the urban underbelly of Coventry and Birmingham, hunting out the homeless and the desperate. I wandered the streets with a camera, searching out people and places that most folk tended to steer well clear of. On more than one occasion I found myself running through the streets, being chased by irate tramps and hungry dogs. By the end of those first few weeks I had rolls and rolls of black and white film and hundreds of still images, which I then spent even more weeks animating together to the Beasley Street soundtrack the old fashioned way…25 frames a second!
That was over 40 years ago and many of those photos have rarely seen the light of day since. This was probably my first real attempt at any sort of serious photographic endeavour and a lot of the images reflect that. Their faults are many, but they do, I like to think, mirror the gritty reality of those early years. Looking back at them now though, it saddens me that the subsequent decades have seen little change for the better. A new century has dawned and Thatcher may be gone, but her legacy remains. Greed, apparently, is still good. Immigration and the Cold War are back with a vengeance and, with the current state of world politics seemingly drowning in a miasma of its own making, Rambo may still be the only hope we have against the Russians!
During the early part of the 19th Century there were an average of 1,800 shipwrecks a year around the coasts of Britain. The sea was terrifying and fascinating in equal measure, but, as we as an island race are all too aware, it was also very much a way of life for the people who lived and worked by its shores and on its waters. Britain’s history, culture, trade and empire had been forged by it and sacrifice to the whims of the waves was just something that coastal communities had to accept. Death at sea was seen as an act of Providence…tragic but inevitable, and nothing and no-one was exempt.
In 1824 that all changed.
That was the year that Sir William Hillary, Baronet, produced his Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck. In it he formulated the idea of a national body, funded by private individuals and annual subscriptions, that would “…extend its beneficial effects to the most distant shores, and to generations yet unborn”.
That body, which later went on to become the Royal National Lifeboat Institution is 200 years old next month and, as the year progresses, much pomp and ceremony will doubtless accompany this remarkable achievement. And why not. Over the years it has grown to become one of the most beloved and respected of national institutions, saving countless lives and extending those ‘beneficial effects’ to all who have had need to call upon it.
Since its foundation, the Institution has saved over 144,000 people and, even today, 97 % of its operational crews are still volunteers. That is an astonishing achievement for an organisation that was born in the back room of a London tavern two centuries ago.
William Hillary will, no doubt, earn a wealth of plaudits and thanks for his humanity, courage and vision. Over the course of nearly four decades he was awarded no fewer than four gold medals from the Royal Shipwreck Institution that he had helped to found and was credited (if figures are to be believed) with personally saving the lives of over 500 people from the turbulent seas around his adopted home on the Isle of Man. His obituaries in the Manx and the British press heralded his
“…unceasing endeavours to promote the honour and welfare of his country”.
However, when the BBC ran a poll a few years ago to find the 100 Greatest Britons, Hillary was nowhere to be seen. The list was filled with a rich (and at times depressingly banal) cast of characters. Everyone from Winston Churchill and Horatio Nelson, to Boy George and Guy Fawkes made the final cut. Even King Arthur made it to number 51, and he probably didn’t even exist! But of William Hillary there was no sign. Neither that day was there room for a man by the name of Henry George Blogg.
Now, I will be the first to admit, Henry’s is not the first name that comes to mind when most people are asked to compile their list of favourites. He never circumnavigated the globe or captained the 1966 England World Cup winning football team. And to the best of my knowledge he fell some way short of reaching either of the polar ice caps. What Henry did though was to eclipse the achievements of even William Hillary. In a selfless lifeboat career that spanned over five decades, Henry Bloggs was personally responsible for saving some 873 lives.
Henry Blogg was, and indeed remains, the greatest lifeboatman ever to put to sea. The most decorated volunteer in the charity’s history, Henry was awarded three Gold and four Silver medals for bravery, as well as the George Cross and the British Empire Medal. Not bad for a lad who never even learned to swim! Born in Cromer in 1876, he joined the crew in January 1894, aged 18. Over the next 53 years (38 of them as coxswain) Henry was involved in no fewer than 387 rescues, amongst coastal waters that remain, even today, amongst the most dangerous anywhere along the British coast.
The first of his gold medal rescues occurred in 1917, whilst Europe’s youth was entrenched in the mud and mire of Flanders. Over the course of some 14 hours, Henry and the crew of the Cromer lifeboat braved some of the worst weather of one of the worst winters on record, to rescue 33 men from two stricken ships. No mean feat by itself, but when you take in the conditions that they had to battle against and the fact that the average age of the crew that night was over 50 years old (two of the crew were nearing 70), the rescue takes on almost Herculean proportions.
They launched their boat four times that day, into gale force winds that exceeded 50 miles an hour and into seas that threatened to smash them like eggshells against the north Norfolk coast. All they had to rely on was brute strength, dogged determination and 14 oars, as they fought against stinging hail, icy spray and great walls of water that threatened to pitch them into the sea at any moment. It took them three hours of back-breaking effort to reach the small Greek steamer, the Pyrin, but reach it they did and 22 men (and doubtless their countless descendants) were very grateful that they had.
It was, as you can imagine, with some relief that they returned to the safety of the shore. However, the relief was short-lived. No sooner had they swapped sodden oilskins for dry clothes than news came through of a second ship in trouble. The Swedish vessel, Fernebo had struck a mine which had split her in half and the Cromer boat was the only one within reach of her that could be launched into the foaming maelstrom.
This was the dilemma facing Henry Blogg. Both he and his crew were exhausted and the conditions were by now even worse than they had been earlier. But what was the option? He pulled on wet oilskins and cork lifejacket and headed back out into a howling gale. Henry’s career as a coxswain was filled with acts of incredible selflessness, but no rescue better displayed the spirit and loyalty of the Cromer crew than this night. Battered and bruised, but unbowed, these ageing heroes followed Henry out to face down the wild North Sea for the second time in just a few hours.
Mountainous seas drove the lifeboat back against the shore as the crew struggled to row the boat out past the breakers, and their first attempt ended with them being unceremoniously dumped back on the beach. By now the sea was screaming and darkness had fallen as they began their second attempt. For half an hour they struggled to get clear of the surf and into the deeper water, but each time the sea threw them back into the shallows. Finally, to the cheers of those gathered along the shores watching, the Louisa Heartwell broke through the crest of a huge wave. But the sea hadn’t finished with them yet. Just as they thought they had made it a huge wave smashed into them, shattering five of the oars and washing another three overboard.
Defeated the crew had to head back to shore yet again.
Now, it would be at this point in a Hollywood blockbuster that the script would call for some heart-wrenching speech and an implausible plot-line that would probably involve a small child and a dog. Henry however just called for new oars. And so, for the fourth time that day, the boat was launched back into the surf. This time they made it and, as the spectators watched from the shore, the Louisa Heartwell reached the Fernebo and returned triumphantly home, bearing 11 total strangers to safety. It was by now nearly one o’clock in the morning. The crew had battled the weather on and off for nearly 14 hours and Henry Blogg had brought them all back safely.
The Cromer station won 14 RNLI medals that day. A gold for Henry, a silver for his second coxswain and bronze medals for 12 of the remaining crew. And that was just the first of Henry’s medals. Over the coming years his courage, seamanship and leadership would inspire generations to come and earn the respect and thanks of many a grateful seaman.
Henry Blogg continued as coxswain of the Cromer boat until he was 74 – 14 years beyond the statutory retirement age. He died in 1954, having outlived his wife, his son and his daughter. He was once asked how he would describe himself, to which he replied “I’m a crab fisherman”.
At the entrance to the Lifeboat College in Poole there is a memorial sculpture bearing the legend, ’With Courage, Nothing is Impossible’, taken from the Hillary family crest. It is an appropriate call to arms for the institution that Hillary spent so much of his later life fighting to create, but it is also a proud dedication to the men and women that still risk all to extend those ‘beneficial effects’ to everyone in need.
19 years ago today the scallop dredger “Solway Harvester” sank in severe gales off the coast of the Isle of Man. A decade on from the original sinking, Phil Kneen and I set out to mark the anniversary with a project that involved many of the people directly affected by the tragedy.
As we approach the second decade of its sinking, it is comforting to know that communities and people still remember the sacrifices made that night for strangers. A little more of that same spirit out there might go a long way to curing what seems to ail us these days.
With less than two months to go before I head out to Canada with Phil Kneen, I have been casting my mind back to our last collaboration together. The Harvest project occupied our thoughts for some nine months on and off and the finished result is something that I am still immensely proud of. At the time I wrote a piece about the project and, whilst I realise that it is a little out of date now, I still think it worth a second airing, if only to give Canada some idea as to what it is in for!…
We sat in the bar of the Steampacket Inn on the Isle of Whithorn, contemplating death and gazing out across a tranquil harbour bathed in late December sunshine. The scene before us had probably changed little over the past ten years. That same, somnolent setting would have been the last…
Those of us of a certain age remember well the Public Information Films of the 70s and 80s. Back then common sense was still de rigueur and words like ‘face time’ and ‘troll’ had an altogether different and more innocent meaning. During the long summer holidays my parents would rarely see me, until hunger, gravel-rash or sheer exhaustion saw me racing back home on my very fetching Raleigh Chopper.
I can remember playing “Kick-the-Can”…with a real can…for hours on end. I fell out of trees, jumped over canals and distributed more of my skin and bone across Birmingham streets than is probably healthy. But I was never bored. My admittance file at Selly Oak Hospital was about two inches thick before I had even reached 12! Doubtless these days my parents would have been prosecuted for child abuse and I would have been handed over to Social Services, but back then it was called having a childhood.
To try and save us from ourselves, the government of the day invested time and money into producing an array of Public Information Films that were aimed at keeping us, if not on the straight and narrow, then at least out of the morgue. We had cats telling us not to talk to strangers, cowled figures tempting us to a watery grave and even Darth Vader (yes really) offering us advice on crossing the road. I look back on those days with a certain thankful nostalgia, but it would appear that I had forgotten just how much danger we were apparently in.
Many of us remember Rolf Harris and The Green Cross Man attempting to instil in us a sense of social responsibility, before they both turned to the dark side. But how many can still recall Donald Pleasance as a shadowy grim reaper, tempting children to their deaths in the dark cold waters of lonely quarries and quiet riverbanks?
“Lonely Water” was made in 1973 and probably remains one of the most chilling productions to ever come out of the government’s Central Office of Information. It was like a cross between Jaws and Evil Dead! Back then we were also being run over by trains, chopped up by farm machinery and electrocuted by substations. It was tough being a kid. No “Call of Duty” for us, we were too busy avoiding outbreaks of rabies, death by incineration and strange characters hanging around the park swings. I wonder sometimes how I actually made it to adulthood!
And if you did manage to survive this ever-growing catalogue of domestic dangers…there was always nuclear war to worry about.
When the BBC ran a poll a few years ago to find the 100 Greatest Britons, the list was filled with a rich (and at times depressingly banal) cast of characters. Everyone from Winston Churchill and Horatio Nelson, to Boy George and Guy Fawkes made the final cut. Even King Arthur made it to number 51, and he probably didn’t even exist! Now, there are many reasons I am sure why the likes of Johnny Rotten, Bono and Dame Julie Andrews made the list; the latter doubtless for her unflagging cheerfulness in the face of Dick Van Dyke’s appalling cockney accent in “Mary Poppins”. But where, I ask myself, was Henry George Blogg?!
I’ll admit, Henry’s is not the first name that comes to mind when most people are asked to compile their list of favourites. He never circumnavigated the globe or captained the 1966 England World Cup winning football team. And to the best of my knowledge he fell someway short of reaching either of the polar ice caps. What Henry did though was save 873 lives, in a selfless career that spanned over five decades.
Henry Blogg was, and indeed remains, the greatest lifeboatman ever to put to sea. The most decorated volunteer in the charity’s history, Henry was awarded three Gold and four Silver medals for bravery, as well as the George Cross and the British Empire Medal. Not bad for a lad who never even learned to swim! Born in Cromer in 1876, he joined the crew in January 1894, aged 18. Over the next 53 years (38 of them as coxswain) Henry was involved in no fewer than 387 rescues, amongst coastal waters that remain, even today, amongst the most dangerous anywhere along the British coast.
The first of his gold medal rescues occurred in 1917, whilst Europe’s youth was entrenched in the mud and mire of Flanders. Over the course of some 14 hours, Henry and the crew of the Cromer lifeboat braved some of the worst weather of one of the worst winters on record to rescue 33 men from two stricken ships. No mean feat by itself, but when you take in the conditions that they had to battle against and the fact that the average age of the crew that night was over 50 years old (two of the crew were nearing 70), the rescue takes on almost Herculean proportions.
They launched their boat four times that day, into gale force winds that exceeded 50 miles an hour and seas that threatened to smash them like eggshells against the north Norfolk coast. All they had to rely on was brute strength, dogged determination and 14 oars as they fought against stinging hail, icy spray and great walls of water that threatened to pitch them into the sea at any moment. It took them three hours of back-breaking effort to reach the small Greek steamer, the Pyrin, but reach it they did and 22 men (and doubtless their countless descendants) were very grateful that they had.
It was, as you can imagine, with some relief that they returned to the safety of the shore. However, the relief was short-lived. No sooner had they swapped sodden oilskins for dry clothes than news came through of a second ship in trouble. The Swedish vessel, Fernebo had struck a mine which had split her in half and the Cromer boat was the only one within reach of her that could be launched into the foaming maelstrom.
This was the dilemma facing Henry Blogg. Both he and his crew were exhausted and the conditions were by now even worse than they had been earlier. But what was the option? He pulled on wet oilskins and cork lifejacket and headed back out into a howling gale. Henry’s career as a coxswain was filled with acts of incredible selflessness, but no rescue better displayed the spirit and loyalty of the Cromer crew than this night. Battered and bruised, but unbowed, these ageing heroes followed Henry out to face down the wild North Sea for the second time in just a few hours.
Mountainous seas drove the lifeboat back against the shore as the crew struggled to row the boat out past the breakers, and their first attempt ended with them being unceremoniously dumped back on the beach. By now the sea was screaming and darkness had fallen as they began their second attempt. For half an hour they struggled to get clear of the surf and into the deeper water, but each time the sea threw them back into the shallows. Finally, to the cheers of those gathered along the shores watching, the Louisa Heartwell broke through the crest of a huge wave. But the sea hadn’t finished with them yet. Just as they thought they had made it a huge wave smashed into them, shattering five of the oars and washing another three overboard.
Defeated the crew had to head back to shore yet again.
Now, it would be at this point in a Hollywood blockbuster that the script would call for some heart-wrenching speech and an implausible plot-line that would probably involve a small child and a dog. Henry however just called for new oars. And so, for the fourth time that day, the boat was launched back into the surf. This time they made it and, as the spectators watched from the shore, the Louisa Heartwell reached the Fernebo and returned triumphantly home, bearing 11 total strangers to safety. It was by now nearly one o’clock in the morning. The crew had battled the weather on and off for nearly 14 hours and Henry Blogg had brought them all back safely.
The Cromer station won 14 RNLI medals that day. A gold for Henry, a silver for his second coxswain and bronze medals for 12 of the remaining crew. And that was just the first of Henry’s medals. Over the coming years his courage, seamanship and leadership would inspire generations to come and earn the respect and thanks of many a grateful seaman, as well as a collection of caged birds and a Tyrolean Mountain dog called Monte.
Henry Blogg continued as coxswain of the Cromer boat until he was 74 – 14 years beyond the statutory retirement age. He died in 1954, having outlived his wife, his son and his daughter. He was once asked how he would describe himself, to which he replied “I’m a crab fisherman”.
I’ll admit, Henry’s is not the first name that comes to mind when most people are asked to compile their list of favourites. He never circumnavigated the globe or captained the 1966 England World Cup winning football team. And to the best of my knowledge he fell someway short of reaching either of the polar ice caps. What Henry did though was save 873 lives, in a selfless career that spanned over five decades.
there and back again... 