Years ago, at the Hay Festival, I asked the gardener and writer, Alys Fowler, if she had found happiness. Happiness, she said, is fleeting; she’d sought, and found, peace.

I’ve found peace; now let me tell you about the happiness I’ve felt from time to time. I’m writing this for you, Emily, with whom I’ve shared too much well-written woe and as you have been the source of at least one of my happy moments. I will talk about three sources of happiness.

For me, it’s a very physical thing. I feel a rush through my body, hairs sometimes stand on end and I may even grit my teeth in a moment of absolute joy. I can recall few if any from my early life. Perhaps I’m forgetful.

Place

Place is often a source of happiness. My first recollections of pure joy came when we moved to Swaziland. As the door of the small propellor plane swung open, I saw the red soil and felt the welcome warmth, a world away from my bleak boarding school. A real homecoming. And later, when I’d grown used to this new country, I experienced a moment of joyous exhilaration. For a twelve year-old, riding in the back of a Toyota bakkie, bouncing around with nothing more than my hands and gravity to hold me down, watching the red dust recede behind us, this was heaven.

Home makes me happy. I don’t come from anywhere: a diplomat’s brat, I was born in Iraq and brought up in Germany, Malaysia, Pakistan, Luton, Swaziland and Paris. My parents lived and work abroad – and ultimately stayed there. In the end, I chose my home, with my wife and her family. We’ve moved five times around a very small orbit and we don’t intend to move again. Home is a small, safe place where we work and relax together, live small lives and make each other happy. Safety and security are important to me.

Mountains, and specifically the worn, old peaks of Snowdonia, have been happy places for me since 1988. I’ve walked them more times than I can remember, experiencing pain, tiredness, fear, laughter, calm – and happiness – again and again. Sometimes the feelings have been in the company of friends and those I love; more often, in recent years, they’ve been when I’ve struggled up on my own. I learn more about myself each time, and like what I learn about my ageing body, my willpower and my self when I just stop talking and thinking. Almost ten years ago, during a long school summer holiday, I found myself alone and filled with quiet euphoria at the top of Yr Wyddfa. Digital photography means that I can relive this feeling whenever I want.

And that’s what’s important to me about happiness. In the moment, I promise myself that I will remember this feeling, for days when there seems to be no hope. Because happiness does come back, even after the darkest of times. I have to remember this.

People

People are a continual source of joy, even if I’ve learnt to enjoy my own company as I’ve grown older. There’s the obvious one: my wife, with whom I have the most fucking awful rows but who can make me laugh so hard and in whose company I feel comfort and completeness. When we get giddy, we almost wet ourselves, and when – as is often the case – our minds concur, I am suffused with light and warmth. I never expected to feel this, and am constantly grateful. Both of us wrote about the birth of our daughter – our shared joy and responsibility – and she has made us happy throughout her twenty-something years. We’ll say more about this when she marries next year, but for me, this selfish act of procreation – creating a life for our own fulfilment – has filled me with such pride as I’ve helped her go out into the world.

Friends are my lifesavers. When I’m at my lowest, I know that they have my back and will listen without judging, hold my hand, hug me and only say what has to be said. But they’re so much more. Knowing them and being around them is like being in one dance after another. Knowing that I can trust them with my feelings, seeing the brilliant goodness in them and anticipating wonderful meetings of mind, I find myself walking taller, feeling braver and being my best self around them. I have a few friends and treasure them. I hope that they feel some of the happiness that they give me. Emily, you are one. Your energy, your laughter and our shared purpose have made me very happy indeed. We came across one another because of our love for children.

Yes, children. I came to teaching later in life, at nearly fifty. I’d experienced the ecstasy of becoming and being my full, true self – and then the abject misery of having to dismantle all of that. I sought solace and distraction in the care and education of children, thirty at a time. It was hard: I was awful to begin with. And then it became easier and I could enjoy the company of young people who loved learning or – in some cases – would come to love it as the year progressed. I am wildly extrovert: if you’re low energy around me, so will I be; if I sense your enthusiasm, mine will grow too. I’d first experienced this as a swimming coach, with a pool of excited, wriggling children on a Saturday morning, every one of them wanting to be the fastest and best they could be.

I’ve had pretty bleak moments – a class I could hardly control and pupils for whom learning was so hard or uninteresting that I struggled to help them. The single most joyful year for me was when I taught Year 1. They’re so little, so full of love for their still-new lives, overflowing with enthusiasm and guilelessly demonstrative. I could say so much more but will always recall the excitement of ten to nine each morning as I walked onto the playground and welcomed them to another day. I made sure they knew that too.

I’m not sure what’s more important to me about this last example, people or place. Cities make me happy. Specifically, Paris and London. As a teenager in Paris, I learnt to follow my senses and curiosity around unfamiliar streets, barely engaging with anyone but eating up I everything I heard, saw, felt and smelled. I became invisible: all that mattered was what I experienced. When visiting my dad, I make sure that there’s enough time for a long walk across the city. I greedily suck up everything I can, taking new routes so I can learn more. I recommend ‘Paris Je T’aime’, which looks lovingly but honestly at each arrondissement. It’s a wonderful, cruel city.

In my first summer out of school, I fell in love with London. It’s a formidable lover because, let’s be honest, it doesn’t give a shit about you. But I love the anonymity this gives me, when among strangers, or gazing watchfully at passing crowds, or engaging in night-time conversations at lonely bus stops, or shouting at new acquaintances over the blare of music in a club, or learning about others’ lives in cafes. I cannot be away from London for long: it sustains me. And in 2010, it was the place where I was able to be all of me. That was terrifying: I was vulnerable in a way I’d not known before, open to both physical and verbal assault and the subject of such extreme scrutiny that my illusion of invisibility sometimes failed me. But on good days, walking through the city with music in my ears, a sense of the goodness inside everyone I encountered and the sight of their reciprocated smiles, I felt bloody wonderful. That’s stored away for dark days too. Yes, it’s not the stone and brick, cobbles or tarmac, concrete, glass or steel that matter to me: it’s all those millions of people I don’t know. I love that.

Purpose

Those of you who know me will recognise two textual tics here: I write in threes and love the alliterative. So I could have left it at two or called this something else. What makes me happy? Knowing and helping. As I head towards retirement, I can look back at what has motivated me and think ahead to what I’ll do before my faculties leave me. And what gives me the greatest buzz is learning, knowing and understanding stuff. I’m addicted to it. For me, it’s like the struggle up a mountain, the light-headedness of reaching the top and the calm out-of-body feeling of perceiving everything all at once.

I first realised how much this meant to me during my finals in 1986. I’d had a great couple of years where history really meant something to me, lapped up everything my tutors – especially the Duggans – had to teach me, become a hermit while I memorised it all, then walked into the examination room and opened the paper. And in that moment I realised that it didn’t much matter what the questions said: I understood my subject. I could look at it from multiple perspectives and write about it. That was a brilliant feeling. It has pervaded my careers and led me to read English in my forties. Learning, for me, is like the momentum that keeps me on a bike. So long as I can learn, life will feel full.

And finally, helping. I’ve learnt over the past couple of years that I need to be useful. I need to know that what I do is of use. I tend to look for problems to solve, people to rescue, causes to pursue. It’s got me into trouble in the past, causing me to burn out or get angry when I can’t achieve as much as I feel I ought to. But now I know how I tick, I can harness the energy I experience when what I do feels purposeful. I don’t need people to tell me I’m capable or receive thanks for what I do: it gives me pleasure to know, inside, that I’ve made a difference. This isn’t the place to blow my trumpet – but if you want to get me to do something, just frame it in those terms…

The End

We don’t talk enough about, you know, the end. But if I’m in a place where I feel secure, surrounded by people who matter to me, and know that I’ve done all I can – then that would be Heaven on Earth. That would be enough.

And you?

Today I sat on a bench, squinting in the sunshine, facing a small mound of reddish brown earth and flints, on which there were painted stones, solar-powered lights and artificial flowers, a small hand-written note encased in plastic, an ornamental hedgehog, curled up as if asleep, a large model of a bumble bee and a wooden disk with a girl’s name on it. And a single, long-stemmed cream and pink rose.

The rose was mine; was the grief?

I first heard that she had died last November. My friend and former teaching colleague called me, her tone instantly telling me that something awful had happened. It had been swift, unexpected and brutal. In one weekend, her parents had lost their only daughter. The news took away my breath for a moment.

My friend and I talked and then, when she’d hung up, I took a small, decorated card and began to write. I wrote about all the things I could remember about this child, from the year I’d spent as her teacher and the years before that when I’d briefly taught and encountered her. I wrote about all the happiness, the jokes and laughter we’d shared, the qualities I’d seen in her. This, I thought, was what I could give her parents: moments and insights that they’d not seen. I posted the card and worried that perhaps I’d remembered her wrongly, or expressed myself inadequately.

Last night was jubilant. A friend, a mother whose children I had taught was celebrating the launch of her book. You’ll know her soon enough: her writing is brilliant. Among the crowd in the packed bookshop, there were other mothers. We drank and talked and laughed. I kicked myself for not remembering one and was determined not to admit that I didn’t know another, even though we spent half an hour talking. I should have remembered the eyes.

As the other mums queued to have their books signed, she turned back to me and said thank you for the card. The eyes that I should have remembered filled with tears as she told me that she’d not yet had a chance to write to all people who’d written to her. And I slowly opened my arms, offered them to her and held her. This is what I’d wanted to do when I was writing my card. My arms are more eloquent than my my words, which, however hard I try, feel artificial.

We talked a lot. About her dog, and how her daughter had so persistently lobbied for it. About other things – our degrees, our interests, our work. And about where her daughter was now. She told me about the bee. “You’ll know where it is when you see the bee.”

We all tumbled out of the bookshop and descended into the tube station. There was a pretty hurried goodbye at the mainline station as my train was about to leave. A quick hug and I was away.

On the train, crushed up in a corner, I searched the internet for mention of her daughter. I found the memorial site, read the comments and looked at the picture. I gave some money to one of the charities on the website and put my phone down.

What was I feeling? I was still excited for our friend, the debut novelist. I was weighing up the worrying news about another pupil of mine who’s being bullied for who he is. And I felt relief that I’d finally been able to speak to this mother who had lost her daughter.

I had a terrible night: my body’s response to the Covid booster caused painful cramps and drenched me with sweat. I woke up drugged with tiredness but determined to visit that place with the bee.

I don’t know why I told the women in the flower shop about the girl. She knew our school, knew the nearby garden of rest and knew that sometimes life is really shit.

I drove to the garden, parked outside and walked in, with no idea of where she’d be. After ten minutes of reading every headstone, I texted my friend. ‘She’s right at the back, with a bee. There’s a bench nearby where you can sit.”

And that’s where I ended up, looking at the young girl’s grave and trying to make sense of what I felt.

Grief is a hole in my belly that bends me double.

Grief is a keening, wailing voice in my head.

Grief is a great, grey cloud that stops me from feeling anything.

Grief is a tension running through my arms and hands, which hang helpless to make anything better.

Grief makes no sense. How DARE I, when I still have a daughter, feel so much?

I eat grief when I encounter it, even when it’s not mine to feel. I’ve watched my father, speechless with grief as he walked from the hospital room where my mother had just died. I’ve watched my father-in-law crushed by grief at losing his wife. I feel grief every time I lie in my mother’s bed, surrounded by her belongings, as if she’d just left the room a moment before.

But those were long lives, even if they ended sooner that we’d wanted.

How can I make sense of this morning? I don’t know. But I’ll visit her again, as often as I can. And I hope to become better acquainted with her mother, as we share interests and love our dogs. And I will try to be a good friend, if I’m permitted.

This week is Art Week at school. I’ve created all manner of stimuli and art activities for the Year 2 and Year 3 pupils to enjoy. One of the mums recommended the Robots Shed as a source of inspiration. So I included the link and then watched all the videos. And while I was joining in with today’s activities, which were mostly about gathering enough ideas for the rest of the week, I drew this picture and wrote these notes. And all of a sudden, there was Adam, in a shelter, alone except for a robot whose sole purpose was to care for him and protect him. The story speaks about how it feels to be in lockdown, and about what is most important: love and physical contact.

I wrote it in bursts of 240 characters, as if I were composing it in Twitter (which I was, to begin with). And it just carried on from there. The music in this video is from the film ‘I Robot’, which is based on one of the books that my dad gave me to read when I was far too young, but which I loved. The idea of a clockwork robot (more of a wind-up robot, as I am sure that the two hundred turns are necessary to generate the electricity necessary to power Adam’s friend) comes from Natasha Pulley’s writing, which I also love.

My hands are hard from turning the wheel a hundred times and then a hundred more every day. Once upon a time, my shoulders ached and the muscles in my arms burned when I tried to wind and tighten the spring. But I am older now. I’m stronger.

Before the birds begin to sing outside our shelter, my friend is coming to life again. I can hear the tiny parts of their calculating engine clicking and turning inside their head. I see the lights in their eyes first glow, then shine, as they turn to look at me. We stand up.

“Good morning Adam,” they say. We face each other and they raise their iron arms. The machinery in their chest, hidden deep behind their steel breastplate, whirrs and sends enough pressure through the pipes to make my friend’s arms wrap around me in a hug.

Firm and comforting. When I was younger, their arms could only just cradle my head. I am now almost as tall as they are, but I’m nothing like as broad and strong. We stay here for ages. Their arms hold me and mine rest on their backplate, which I think is made of brass. It is cold and shiny.

This is the best part of the day. Eventually, they let me go and their eyes look into mine. “You look hungry,” they say. “Let’s get you fed.” I nod. This is what keeps us together. I can’t go out to feed myself; they can’t survive without my hands to wind them up every morning.

My friend moves to the door of the shelter and pushes at it. The frost has sealed it shut, but they lean against it and the door gives way. Metal screams against metal. The half-light outside seems blue. The ground is glittering, all silver and jewels.

I try to look past my friend for any sign of life but the door closes behind them. I am safe, so long as I stay inside here. I turn back to the dark corner of the shelter and find the water container. I’m thirsty, so I swig greedy mouthfuls, cold, metal-tasting, making my head ache and my throat burn.

I hope they won’t be long. I’m hungry. I search around for anything left from yesterday, but there isn’t even a scrap. I suck at the soft end of a bone. There’s taste but nothing to fill my belly. I slump down onto the bed and pull the blankets over me. On the wall, I see you and mum.

Your faces are fading. I try not to touch you but the picture falls off every now and then and I forget to hold it by the edges when I put you back in your place. It’s all I have of you. They have to be my mum and dad for now, until you come and find me.

I know you will. When the lockdown ends and we can walk outdoors, you’ll open the shelter door and smile at me and reach out to me with your arms and hold me and never let go of me. That’s the story your picture tells me every night, only I have to do the talking for you.

The door screeches open. It’s bright outside. I must have gone back to sleep. How long, I don’t know. They walk in, carrying food for me. It’s mostly meat because we’re in the middle of winter and nothing much is growing. They’ve prepared and cooked it for me outside. It smells so good.

They put the food down on the box we use as a table, then give me a long look. “You okay?” they ask me. “Couldn’t be better,” I reply, trying to be happy for both of us. “I will stop now,” they say. That’s good, because it means they won’t wind down as fast. But it means I’m alone again.

They’re still here, of course, but the lights in their eyes dim and go out, and they stand still and silent, like a piece of furniture in the shelter. I haven’t got time to be sad. I’m too hungry. I tear at the hot meat, crunch through the charred edges and chew each mouthful slowly.

I like to take my time once I have the meat in my mouth, to make the most of the flavour. The nuts, roots and berries that they bring me don’t taste anything like the food that you used to make me. But the meat reminds me of home and you and mum, before the lockdown. Before you lost me.

Suddenly there’s scratching and clawing and snarling at the door. Nails and teeth trying to get in here. It’s a wild dog or a bear and I scream before I can stop myself. They come to life and spring at the door. It bursts open and sunlight floods in. I can see the dog’s hungry eyes, and its mouth.

They are quicker than the dog. Before it can come any closer, they grip hold of its back legs, lift it into the air, swing it round and throw it as far as they can. The dog hits the ground and breaks the sticks it lands on. It yelps in fear and runs off. I don’t think it will be back any time soon.

They come back in and shut the door. “You okay?” they say again. They weren’t made for talking much, so I have to do most of the conversation. “Yes, I’m fine,” I lie. I don’t want to show how scared I am. I finish the meat and suck at just one of the bones. They will boil the rest for soup for later.

They’re still and silent again. I need to go to the toilet, so I stand up and knock on their chest. “Excuse me,” I say, “may I go to the bathroom?” Just like you and mum taught me, only we don’t have a bathroom. There’s just a place outside, and they have to guard me while I use it.

It’s through a hatch at the back of the shelter. They go out of the front door and open the hatch for me. I go to the place, only a step or two from the shelter, and sit down. They look away. We all need our privacy. That’s what you used to say. And it’s no different here in the forest.

And then there’s hammering in the sky. The air is shaking and all the branches of the trees around us are blowing this way and that. Something is above us. The place where I’m sitting goes dark. I realise that it’s because the something has got in the way of the sun. A loudspeaker voice calls out.

“Adam?”

I know I shouldn’t be, but I am terrified. I crouch down to hide and then crawl back into the shelter. The hammering gets louder and the voice keeps calling my name. I don’t know what to do. I jump onto the bed, grab you and mum from the wall and hide under the blanket. This isn’t right.

They come back into the shelter and lean over me. I can see them through the holes in the blanket. “Don’t be scared,” they tell me, but I am. I have waited so long for someone to come and find me and now I’m hiding under an old blanket in a shelter. I start to cry. “Don’t be scared,” they say again.

The door of the shelter is pulled open and the room is full of people. They – not the people – my friend is still and silent again, standing up against the wall. One of the people tries to pull the blanket away. I won’t let him. I hold onto it and screech at him to go away. There are too many of them.

The one who pulled the blanket is a man. I can see now, though he is wearing a helmet with a piece of clear plastic across his face. He kneels down and lets go of the blanket, then he lifts the plastic up from his face. It’s you. It’s dad. You came. I can’t stop crying and I hold out my arms for you.

You’re holding me in your arms, not as tightly as they do. But you’re warm and you’re soft and I’m safe now. The other people are talking to each other loudly and one is talking into a radio. Everything is loud and too crowded. I want them to leave us alone. I tell you. You tell the people. The people leave.

We won’t be long, you tell me, we’re going home. The people who have come to rescue me have to make sure there is nothing dangerous left behind when we go. “What about them?” I ask you, looking at my friend against the wall. “It’s done its job,” you tell me. “It stays here now. It’s just junk.”

You’re carrying me outside now, to the helicopter that’s landed in the clearing beside the shelter. I’m screaming and clawing at you. We can’t just leave them. They saved my life. They fed me. They kept me safe until you came to find me. “There’s no room for it,” you tell me. “Then I’ll stay,” I say.

You shake your head and laugh, but you don’t stop walking to the helicopter. A woman takes me and looks in both my eyes. She holds her fingers to my neck, as if she is checking something. And then she pulls back my sleeve and wipes my arm with something cold. I feel a sharp prick and cry out.

You’ve strapped me into a seat and the helicopter is taking off. I can’t stay awake. It must have been that sharp prick. The helicopter tilts over. I look out of the window, down at the shelter, and I see them, looking up at me. I want to see someone else beside them, someone just like them. A friend.

We never come back to the shelter but I dream about them. All the time. I see them with their friend, taking turns to wind each other up, looking after each other, keeping the shelter safe and standing face to face each morning, so they can hold each other tightly, just like they did with me.

The other day, as I was putting away some bits and pieces in our outhouse, I caught a scent and became two years old again. There are a few smells that take me back to a time before language – the real tree at Christmas, my sister’s nappies soaking in a bucket, the damp concrete of the tower block – and this, the smell of turpentine.

You were an artist, a really able one, as your watercolours remind me. When we lived in Düsseldorf in the mid-sixties, you were painting in oil. I have your painting in the kitchen, beside dad’s marquetry. Oil paintings take an age to dry, so the smell in our flat must have been around for a long time. I still have some of those oil paints, in a beautiful wooden case that dad made. And here is how it made me feel, fifty-four years later – though words cannot adequately convey such strong feelings.

Warmth, and light, and being loved, and loving someone so much that it seems now like staring into the sun. And safety, in our world, you and me.

On this day, a year ago, I was alone with you for the last time. The day was warm and the room was light. I had my arm around you and felt the heat of your body, the chill of your sweat. Your skin was so soft, your hair strangely crisp and brittle. You were still breathing, short, shallow gasps for life. I leaned into your ear and whispered to you.

There is no more you now. You are dead and I have no time for talk of an afterlife. So there is no confidence to break when I repeat what I said. I told you what you knew, that I loved you. And I reminded you that you gave me language, and I promised that I would complete the book that I’m writing and dedicate it to you.

I am not an artist, like you, nor a craftsman, like dad, however much I try. I have drawn, painted, moulded, carved and shouted in frustration at my inadequacy, just as you did, on many occasions. But I have words.

You made me and gave me language. It’s one of the reasons why I want to shout and laugh at the patriarchal origin stories in Abrahamic religions. In the beginning, before I could speak, you were.

For some reason, you were determined that I should read – and, before that, talk – at as early an age as possible. As well as my memories, I have a recording of you and dad trying to get me to respond to questions. I didn’t always meet your expectations. Beyond this, I have a powerful and not altogether pleasant recollection of a clattering plastic device, hand-held, grey, that showed me words then snatched them away, leaving me to say them to you. It left me with a precocious ability to read – the Telegraph at six and the reading age of a sixteen year-old at eight. It also left me with an anxiety to please, but I can live with that.

It was said of me at school that I could keep easy company with adults. I was even wheeled out at a reception for this reason, to talk to visitors. I owe this to you, as we talked incessantly, thick as thieves, about everything and in a very adult way, ab initio.

Your words moulded me. You would tell me, time and again, how like you I was, in looks and physical features (our longer second toes, our hips) in temperament and in intelligence. Bright, flighty, prone to fits of temper and with a tendency to laziness. I recognise these and have worked hard to capitalise on the good and mitigate the bad.

I could write on for ages and pages but won’t. I will attempt to depict three images that, though they are necessarily defined by and confined within language, are powerful enough to bring you to life when I read them.

You are in the travel agent, in your forties. You fought for this job when you came back to England and you have made a great success of it. I am so proud of you. I’m eighteen and have finished work at the nearby department store. We sit in the semi-darkness and talk, about the day, about customers, about where we want to go, what we want to do. We are honest and no one else is there.

I’m on the wall outside the boarding house. I am ten. There is no one else. All their parents and grandparents have picked them up. The road is empty, though I expect each approaching car to be you. I ache for you. There is anger somewhere in this. Why am I last? Where are you? And then you pull up, full of apologies on behalf of some road, some traffic problem and I’m with you and we are away.

I am 46. I am in a white room, on a white bed. The space is small but it is mine and I am, for the first time in years, me. At the end of the bed is a knitted cushion. You made it for me, when I told you that I was transgender, taking me in your stride and accepting me for all that I am. It’s June, ten years ago, and I am proud and we are talking – you in France and me in a room of my own. And I feel happy and loved.

Mum, so long as I name you and talk about you and write about you, so long as I live and so long as all those who carry a little part of you know what they’re carrying, you are still here.

Patricia Evelyn Wilson (née Unsworth)
27 January 1941 – 4 June 2019

Ten years ago, I walked into work as my self for the first time. I was scared but I was also bursting with pride. That pride will never go away.

8:30am

The morning has been fine. I woke at ten past five, got up at around six, showered and did half an hour’s yoga. I phoned home and began to fanny around. I have gone for an on the knee, black, sleeveless linen dress and a purple jacket. I’m wearing minimal makeup because I’m due for a facial first thing. My hair is quiet and well-behaved, as that is also due for a pampering. My voice is still a little croaky and my knees a little shaky.”

8:50am

I marched to the shopping mall with my satchel waggling on my bottom, determined at the first opportunity to get rid of it. And then to the facial.

9:00am

£75 is steep for an hour’s having your face rubbed. This so wasn’t just that. I had to lower my dress and bra straps so she could massage my head, neck and shoulders as well. And girl, did they need it. So much tension, but so many lovely rubbings and creams and oils and sprays and wraps and… Violetta was clever and thorough. I walked out of there feeling almost unable to focus, so relaxed was I. And then to the hair.

10:20am

Sage was quickly at the desk and whisking me to the chair. (Sarah) she whispered, (that’s right, isn’t it? I’ll get that changed on the computer now.) And she began to work on my hair. For today (and any other occasion when I can afford the time to mess around as much as this) I have a head of curls, my curls, teased out. We talked, as usual. Only one thing I’ll not repeat: trying to use my upper register with my head bent backward over a sink. The vocal chords, already croaky with my cold, were stretched to falsetto. But it was so good. I look so different. I had to struggle around in the loo to reapply my makeup, as I wasn’t looking my best, facial or no facial. And then on to the nails.

11:30am

LaToya is expecting her first (and, if she has anything to do with it, only) child. She has her mother’s name, Claudette, tattooed onto her right wrist, and her grandad’s onto her left wrist. She gave my nails the three-week manicure: three, four coats of clear gel. And we talked about babies and pregnancy. That was gentle, easy time. I’m pleased with the results: apparently I can paint them different colours and take the colour off again, so long as I don’t use an acetone based varnish remover. Yay! And then on to lunch.

12:10pm

I stopped on the way and bought a cheap computer bag, with handles: an easier way to carry things.

12:20pm

Jamie’s Italian wasn’t serving hot food. The gas had been cut off. So my lovely colleague Heather and I had salads. My first food of the day (I had wanted to be sure I could slip into this dress). And then I had the tiramisu (it’s very, very nice and – hell – I’m in the dress now). It was a relaxed lunch, sprinkled with gossip, family chat, growing up talk and stuff about sex (just a bit). She paid. And then we walked to the office.

2pm

I walked in, said hello to the receptionist who’d been so nice to me last week and then went to my desk, greeting people as I walked along. There, to the left of the desk, were a dozen roses that Dawn, the HR Manager had left: she is heaven-sent.

And then I walked around a lot, saying hello to people and chatting to them. Just like before, but better. Lot’s of cheery “Hello Sarah, how are you?”s So far, this is just very, very good.

4:32pm

My first pointer. I’ve been walking around the office some more, just enjoying being me, with a smile bigger than ever it was.

And as I was about to leave one floor, as I was walking towards the lift, I saw a head turn. Two men were walking past me and one turned back. I could see him trying to get his colleague’s attention, so I stopped and watched. He tapped his colleague’s arm and his colleague turned towards me: it was Dave. I know Dave, he knows me. Dave turned to his tapping, pointing colleague and I didn’t need to know what he was saying: his look said it all.

“It’s Sarah. Get over it.”

I’ve been walking around with this subject in my head for ages. Empathy makes it harder to hate, easier to care. That matters more to me than anything else.

One of the reasons I give for the importance of reading is that it helps children to develop greater empathy. I explain that this is the ability to use their imagination to occupy another’s shoes. For World Poetry Day last year, I recited – perhaps vainly – a poem that I wrote:

Being You

Let me wear your hands and hair,
ease myself into your legs and
slip your arms and shoulders on,
button up your chest and pull your face.
Let me use your eyes to check
that everything’s in place, flex
your muscles, flick your tongue
across your teeth and speak.
For then – and only then –
can I begin to understand
what being you is really like.

Angie Thomas wrote a great book, The Hate U Give. I heard her talking about it in Waterstones Piccadilly, at the UK launch. She is so clear about what she wants to convey, about how #BlackLivesMatter. I would argue that this book gives the reader a more shocking, more powerful insight into what it’s like to be a young person of colour in a car, seeing flashing blue lights behind you, than newspaper articles or TV reports. I will never walk in those shoes but, with well-written literature, I can occupy them imaginatively.

Like most people, I listened with horror to the stories of migrants whose boats capsized in the Mediterranean. But the facts can eventually numb us. Take Hasan’s story:

Syrian doctor Hasan Yousef Wahid is a survivor of the Lampedusa shipwreck in October 2013. After receiving death threats in Libya, and being denied safe access to Egypt, Tunisia and Malta, Hasan felt he had no choice but to take to the sea. Tragically, Hasan’s four young daughters disappeared during the shipwreck. ‘We are hanging on to the hope that we will find our children. All we want is to find our daughters, either dead or alive.’               (Amnesty International, 27 January 2020)

I’m writing a book. It’s an angry one, but it’s also a love story. One of the two central characters will act, I hope, as an imaginative portkey for readers. After following him for 90,000 words, they will find themselves alone in the sea, kicking as hard as they can to keep their heads above the water, hearing the cries of others around them and then, even worse, hearing nothing but the sea.

I can no longer feel the sand under my feet. In fact, I can hardly feel anything. I had fought for the highest part of the sandbank, as if dying last was a privilege for the strongest of us.

I must keep kicking, my dear zvi, for a while longer, though I know the end is near. It is so cold, but at least the cries have stopped.

Here’s an authorial intention: I want my readers to feel.

Resilience is a bucket.
Resilience is a piece of elastic.
Resilience is training for a marathon.

I’m talking in riddles and I’m avoiding any reference to better-informed sources than my own experience.

Let’s start with the last. If you’re training for a marathon, on the first day you’d have no hope of completing it. You exercise, you eat and drink well, you take care of your body and you sleep well. And by the end of your training period, you’re up for the gruelling challenge. I don’t believe that resilience is innate: it’s a capacity that can be developed, but it takes effort and insight. It also helps to have a personal trainer, and someone to cheer you along the route, returning to the analogy, because it’s easier to be resilient if you’re in good company.

Let’s pick up the piece of elastic. My resilience may have helped me to withstand all sorts of setbacks, or the earth-shaking roller-coaster of events over the past two decades. There have been times when I thought I might shatter into pieces, but I’ve surprised myself and got through them. However, if you stretch elastic for long enough, it breaks. However tough and impervious to stress we might think we are, the body has a way of telling us we’ve stretched ourselves too far. That’s where honesty and kindness come in: being honest with yourself about how tired, scared or stressed you are, before you end up in hospital. Been there, elastic snapped…

Finally, this bucket. I pride myself on being able to deal with most situations. I can get a bit shouty and needy, but that’s part of my resilience (admitting I need help or a hug). As I mentioned in my bit about courage, I become calm in danger. The same sort of thing quite often happens in situations where I am under pressure: my Vulcan takes over and I assume command, both of the situation and of myself.

But last summer, I found myself crying a lot over little things. Privately, in my lovely colleague’s classroom, with the door shut. But crying big wet tears. She told me about the bucket. It’s my resilience: for the most part, it has capacity for whatever comes along. You just pour the problem in and move on. But when something really awful happens, she said, it almost fills your bucket. Then the smallest problem becomes insurmountable. My mum had died, and that left little space in my bucket for anything else. Which is why good colleagues keep one eye on someone who’s back at work after a bereavement and appears to be okay…

So what does this tell me?

• First, resilience can be acquired and must be worked at.
• Secondly, everyone has their limit and we must watch out for warning signs
• Thirdly, however resilient we may think we are, circumstances may further limit our capacity to cope.

So let’s support one another, listen out for twanging elastic and check our buckets.

Guilt is the destroyer, more than fear.
Guilt and its bedmate, shame.
I’ve lived most of my life crippled by both.

These daily challenges are all abstractions. For me, abstract language is “coitus interruptus with the fleshy world.” It both frustrates me and tempts me into long, abstract expositions, which are usually dull. That’s why I respond to these topics with stories or anecdotes.

It was in the shopping mall at Canary Wharf, in 2009. I was out at lunchtime, just returning from a meal at Leon. As I walked up the slope towards the door of my office, I felt breathless, then a crushing pain in my chest, like a metal band had been put around my ribs. My walking slowed to a stagger. I could see people looking at me. I managed to step to one side and rest against the wall. And then, as my breathing returned to normal, thoughts raced through my head.

I was going to transition. My wife and daughter hated what I was and who I was becoming. Everything I was doing seemed to hurt them. But I had to. I’d worked through every scenario, including life apart from them. They all seemed unbearable.

Somewhere since then, I learnt that there is only so much I can bear, there is only so much I can do and there are, conversely, many things I can do. So here’s how I tackle guilt.

RECOGNISE

Guilt creeps up on you. An uneasy feeling, or a sudden wave, or a sharp pain. Sometimes it’s just frustration, of which more in a moment. Recognising it, looking it in the eye and saying, “Hold on while I think” is the first step.

THINK

This is where the Vulcan in me kicks in. I ask myself two questions:

What have I done? What did I do that caused something to be wrong or someone to suffer? This is where honesty is very useful. And a strong moral code. Even if it’s guilt about something I’ve not done, I move on to 2.

What can I do to make it better? Can I apologise? Is there anything practical I can do? Even if I’ve not done something wrong but just feel frustrated, if I can make the situation better, I’ll think of what I can do.

ACT

If I can apologise, I do it quickly, concisely and sincerely. If I can make amends, I offer to, and if the offer is taken up, I do it. If I’ve not done something wrong but can make the situation better, I do it.

REFLECT

I ask myself a third question: what can’t I do? I am only human. There are boundaries to my personal and professional life. I have to remain mentally and physically healthy. So I recognise what I cannot do: if I can influence others to do something, I will; otherwise, I move on.

DO GOOD

A great way of avoiding unnecessary guilt is to live a good life. Try to do no harm. That, I believe, makes me the best teacher I can be.