control

Anthony  Hopkins

is a very good actor.  That’s all I need to know about him.   And in the interview in advance of a memoir (he’s 87) a thoughtful journalist doesn’t get much more. 

I read the piece once, yes, yes, and then I read it again.  Of course  AH  wouldn’t tell you if he ever had therapy.  Why would he ?  Why would anybody in public life who has drawn on the wellsprings of rejection, confusion, anger for  most of his life ?   The French say “Don’t spit in the soup.”  If this what  make things tick

for you, don’t  be seduced into analysis of it (pardon the pun). Or confession.  Control.

One of the illusions of success in any field is that you will be able to control what goes forward.  Or at the very least have  input into it. As life unspools

before you (whoever) realise that none of the stratagems in which you were encouraged to believe work,  much  beyond washing your neck and survival.  And you file what you do control under the mental equivalent of lock and key.  Not tangible lock and key of course, because a real lock begs to be undone by somebody, for one reason or another.  As my  lovely deep voiced neighbour Carly says “everybody has secrets.”   And a secret is only a secret if you tell it to nobody.  Or the one person you can trust.

We acknowledge now how out of control we are. 

  I am keeping BT’s last letter to me as evidence of  how not to write a letter, any letter, personal or professional, starting with chummy and ending with “how to make a complaint” – which they have just cancelled.   I rang.  The office is in a geographical area I know and the accents are not unfamiliar to me.  Ears still good.  And alongside the accent, the  young woman on the phone had a voice like a hysterical clockwork mouse.  And  (God forgive me) six sentences in, I put the phone down.  She rang back.  “’S BT” she squeaked. “I said “Yes, I’m sorry, I hung up.   I am familiar with the accent, I am the other end of the country, old and  you should not be doing that job.  You are unintelligible.  “  Phone down.  

That represents a life change for me.  I have been young, poor, unskilled, desperate – but you could hear me – in life, or on the phone.   That’s all the control I have. 

I had another model of different variety, same ailment re the delivery (cherished) of the newspaper I read.  Operator didn’t listen  – I was quiet and civil, promise.  On the third repetition, and her repeated unnecessary apology, I pointed out with force that (fourth time) a colleague of hers had asked me to call back if what happened October 25 ever happened again and it had, November 1.  

I know I have a “thing” about communication.  It’s been my life, from childhood with articulate accessible parents ,through the experience of being ill as a child, learning, learning, learning and some success.  Do I have the illusion that I am in control of it ?  Honestly ?  More than many.  But like a good carpenter, I am still practicing. And I still get it wrong.

Nora  who is  American, intellectually educated and capable, 24, whom I met at a bus stop said  unequivocally “I am terrified of where we now and what might happen …  The  working models my parents instilled into me don’t work any more.  There are no jobs …”

Did  anybody  – I hesitate to say  “in power” because that’s a relative term – think about masses of  lower down the scale jobs being axed ?  At that level – I lived  there for a long time – you don’t work, you don’t eat.  And it is happening simultaneously with the well educated, the skilled .  Let’s not hire them it is too much trouble. They are replaceable.   

How are we going to feed those who can’t work ?   How many good minds are shelfstacking in  outfits  themselves under hostile takeover from machines ?

Shoppers as opposed to  shopping addicts ( the first goes to buy, the second goes to spend) know  that you can’t have  what you want.  You can only have what   “they” want to sell you.   40 years ago  my mother said “You have only to like something for it to be withdrawn.”

No this is not a declaration  of mass victimhood but it is conjecture into what we control , really.   Not very much.  If the late great Aretha were singing now, the anthem would be called “Disrespect”    and we are being offered political roads lined with roses.  The problem is, none of them leads anywhere without immense cost and  whence you do not want to go.