Losing the Plot!

“Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.”

Classical scholars are unsure whether to attribute this quotation to Euripedes or Sophocles,  Dear Reader. But we know it is of ancient origin and from many perspectives the wisdom of the ancients seems to be a cut above some of the stuff spewed forth through social media these days.

It seems to me that the bulk of humanity tries very hard to do the right thing but, occasionally, we dive off the deep end and make an unwelcome splash. There are so many differing reasons which make us do this such as grief, lack of sleep, a family argument, a bad bio-rhythm, a piece of spinach stuck in our front teeth. We have all seen examples of road rage; anger flaring in unexpected places for unexpected reasons; rushes of blood to the head and such like. We all know that sometimes we take a wrong turning and later beat ourselves up for so doing.

He was so proud of his little group of hikers. They were all kitted out in their new orange anoraks, their footwear was appropriate. He was confident that they would be dry and warm if the rains and wind came. They had all been given a smattering of basic teaching in how to read a map so they had OS maps folded at the appropriate place in their new waterproof map holders which hung professionally about their necks. The wind was a breeze as they made the gentle ascent of Mam Tor in Derbyshire. It was hardly a world beater of a peak, in fact so rounded and whale like on its top that it was hard to call it a peak at all. Yet, it was Mam Tor on the map so it was there, it was the little man with a chip on his shoulder so the hiking world sighed, put on its boots, shrugged its shoulders and said, “I suppose so” and “If we have to” and summited. The teachers knew that the breeze on the way up would be a vicious and cold gale when they reached the summit and the subsequent ridge walk. Yet here was a group of teenagers being led by a group of committed teachers on an expedition which was a part of their week’s camp at Edale Outdoor Centre. At the top the wind was everything that they expected it to be so they urged the group to stuff their maps beneath their coats and marched off along the ridge. Sean announced that he had to stop for a pee. So the teacher turned his back and gave him some privacy. All too soon the boy was at his side, aghast and drenched in his own urine. Worse it had seeped through the new map-holder and drenched the map beneath. The teacher lost the plot and tore into the boy,  annoyed that the lad had not thought of the consequences of pissing into the wind but more annoyed that the new outdoor equipment had had an unwanted and unnecessary christening. Having given his  excessive blast the band of hikers continued on their way but now the mood was not the happy, bantering joy that it had once been. Eventually the teacher was surprised when one of his colleagues appeared at his side and asked him to wait behind. They stopped.

“Pete, let me ask you something. Did anybody die?”

I have thought about this lesson frequently since and thought about it as one of the best of my on the job lessons that I had over my 40+ years in teaching. My perspective was all wrong. I should have laughed it off and waited until we were back at the Outdoor Centre and joked about the fact that the lad was never going to pee into the wind again. Patted him on the back for completing an arduous walk and sent him off to get a shower. I have never really understood why I lost the plot that day. I could now seek excuses, plead all kinds of nuanced reasons, none of which could justify my poor behaviour. You will see the presence of me, I and myself in this paragraph, the presence of an ego was the real sin. Sean and his peers should have been the VIPs then. The hike was not mine, it was theirs and I had made it mine in the worst possible way.

Definitely worse happened a few years earlier when I was in charge of the Unit Group at a big London Comprehensive School. This group of teenage children were Special Needs. They came every day to the mobile classroom which was separate from the main body of the school. They were troubled children from troubled backgrounds. One day 16 year old Christine arrived at school at lunchtime, obviously very, very late.  I mounted my high horse and proceeded to lecture her about punctuality, homework and other irrelevancies. I missed every obvious clue about this child’s demeanour. I missed the fact that she was exhausted. I failed to note that one of the buckles on her shoe had fallen away making it hard for her to walk. I missed the fact that she was, at least, wearing her school uniform. I was annoyed that no explanation was forthcoming. A few days later the truth was revealed. She had been called to her sister’s place to babysit. The sister had returned home drunk at 2.00 a.m. and flung her out of the house. Christine had walked the few miles home through the streets of the London Borough of Hounslow, arrived home after 9.00 a.m. changed into her school uniform and walked the further distance to school.

Dear reader, one of the beauties of retirement is having so much time on one’s hands. But one of the curses is that one has so much time on one’s hands. Rarely but occasionally I cannot sleep because something of my past has crept into that space between wakefulness and slumber. So the Sean story has caused probably one toss and one turn and then I am asleep. But if, Friends, I am unfortunate to go down the Christine disgrace then I am condemned to some hours of sleeplessness. And, Friends, I know that this is no more than I deserve.

So looking back at the title of this blog I realise that losing the plot is part of our humanity. I also know that if we possess a modicum of humility we can admit fault. We can learn from our mistakes, resolve not to let them happen again and if also we have a smattering of wisdom allied to knowledge we can become better people.

But the reason I have picked this topic at this time is because we can recognise in our lives that we all have somebody whom we have loved and respected but that person has changed. Something has made them into something that they never were in the past. That’s fine. We all age, we all reach a peak in our lives, our own peak be it ever so humble, and then come down from the summit, trying not to slip on the way down, trying to be the same  person we were on the way up but fighting physical and mental tiredness all the way down. I think, however, there is a huge difference in selecting somebody to do a job when they are young, fit, capable and alert and then asking them to step aside when those qualities have dimmed. There is, however, no excuse for choosing somebody for a post when they have so obviously lost the plot before they have been selected. Joe Biden has become old and frail very quickly and rightly has stepped aside, his Republican counterpart, in my opinion, lost the plot long before he first painted his face orange, first donned the POTUS mantle in 2016. Reading Mary Trump’s book shows a terrible childhood built around conditional love and family values which are anything but. Her uncle never stood a chance regarding the acquisition of empathy, sympathy, gentleness, kindness, duty, patriotism, respect for women, respect for anybody, ideas of conviction. His understanding of ordinary people was never going to be based on down to earth practical experience. He was never going to ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ as George Orwell so famously was. He was condemned to lose the plot from an early age and there is nothing in his current performance to suggest he has ever found it.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

And that, friends, is what I feel about the American electorate if they should elect the Republican candidate for the second time.

Thanks for reading.