Being wrong and trying to learn.

Social media has had a number of effects on my life, but the biggest one has been how its challenged me. Not always vocally and not always personally, but one thing that I've found important to do is to look out for voices that provide different viewpoints to my own.

This is because I've been wrong a lot of times in the past. And I'll probably be wrong a lot in the future.

I've been generally lucky to have supportive, liberal, left-wing parents, who are fairly open-minded, and even luckier to have watched them become, if anything, more liberal, left-wing and open-minded as time has gone on.

At the same time, I grew up in areas that were nice, but not necessarily very diverse. A suburb of Manchester for most of my childhood and a village in rural Ireland during my teens. My secondary school was an all-boys Irish Catholic one, run by the Christian Brothers.

Being, as I was, into drama rather than sport, and, to be fair, probably being an insufferable fellow student, my school days weren't huge amounts of fun, and I looked forward to moving away from University. But I was also nervous - after all, moving to England and going to a Drama course meant that I was really quite likely to meet (whisper it...) some gay people.

It's important to realise that I didn't know any out gay people when I was growing up. Or if I did, I had absolutely no idea - hell, it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that Right Said Fred were gay. I thought they were meant to be skinheads. But where I grew up, my knowledge of gay people were primarily rumour or insults on which I was often on the receiving end. I didn't feel that I was being told that gay people were bad, or that I should be scared of them, but I was nervous. The main thing I knew about them was that they were perceived to be different.

By the age of 17, probably the two most rounded gay characters I was aware of were Simon Callow in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Uncle Monty in Withnail and I. I was also somewhat sexually confused as well - after all, I'd been called it enough that it was possible that other people saw something in me that I didnt. I didn't think I was into guys, but what if I actually was? And what would happen if I was hanging around with gay men? Along with all my other fears, I was also worried that I would be judgemental.

Flash forward a short while to me at seventeen, and my first day in university, and I was going around, meeting people. One of the first doors I knocked on was opened by someone I wasn't expecting to see. He was over six foot tall and slim, with bright pink hair. He was also dressed from neck to ankle in PVC, along with a pair of bright pink fluffy slippers.

I had never met anyone like this before. I put my hand out, probably with my jaw dropped, and he didn't shake it - he took it carefully, and introduced himself: "Hello, I'm Thom. That's Thom with a 'h'. The 'h' stands for homosexual".

While it probably didn't actually take more than a second, I remember my thought process clearly, as I was faced with someone who was far, far more out than anyone I had ever met before.

"Right, okay, this is new. What do I do? I've got, as far as I can see it, two choices. I can either freak out and walk away, and decide that's who I'm going to be, or I can decide that it doesn't matter and just be fine with it."

And what I said was "Hi, I'm Chris. Pleased to meet you." And from there, it was fine. Thom was absolutely lovely, and while we didn't become lifelong friends or anything, I think it's fair to say that we got on and were generally pleased to see each other around.

That was almost seventeen years ago, and I remember it vividly. I remember the flash of fear and the flash of feeling that I had no idea how to handle this situation, and then how quickly and how easily I realised that even slight fear of someone because they were gay was bullshit. Once I came to that first step, it stopped being something to worry about.

But I also realised how easy it would have been to have gone the other way. How easy it would have been to have seen what I saw as confirmation that here was somebody that was different to me, and that difference was negative. Personally, I think that would have been the point where I would have slipped from ignorance to hatred, and that's something I'm very glad that I didn't do.

Later, someone I shared a house with had an abortion, and while I think I successfully kept my judgement from her, I did judge her for it. I judged her for not having been sensible enough to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, and I absolutely judged her for not telling the father. I felt that she overrode his rights and put herself first, and took him out of the decision making process. I felt she treated the abortion casually and I found that idea difficult. I wasn't completely against the idea of abortion itself, but I did feel that it should be agonised over and debated and thought about, and was a big, serious step.

I look back on that and I realise how completely in the wrong my point of view was. But that realisation took me time, and took me far longer than I wish it had done.

I was raised Catholic, and anti-abortion imagery was around my upbringing. More so in the culture I was brought up in than absolutely directly in my family, but still very much there. I'd grown up with the idea that it was simply a wrong thing to do, although I ended up taking the personal viewpoint more that it was a practical choice in places, but should always be treated as a last resort.

The mistake that I made there (as if it isn't obvious) was putting my own discomfort with the idea ahead of a woman's right to make choices with regards to her own body. I was doing the same thing with the discomfort over whether or not the man involved with the pregnancy had been told.

Sometimes, a realisation is about putting things in a way that you just cannot argue with, and the line that I eventually came up with was this: My right to feel uncomfortable with a situation comes a distant second to a woman's right to make her own choices.

And lo and behold, when I came to that understanding, suddenly I was a lot less uncomfortable with the situation. Go figure.

I don't feel, looking back, that I was a horrible person, but I do feel that I was ignorant and naive. I had fairly firmly established ideas about what constituted right and wrong, and while I think that I got a reasonable amount of stuff right, it also led me to hold some beliefs that now make me very uncomfortable to have ever held at all. If you asked me if I believed in equality, I'd have said yes, and I would have meant it

So why do I now share them? Why do I share things that make me absolutely cringe to talk about? And of course, there's more, because I was young and stupid, and now I'm older and hopefully a little les stupid - at the very least, I'm more willing to listen and try to get to that understanding.

Am I saying 'Oh, you don't understand, poor me, I'm actually the victim here, with my upbringing and naivety - just leave me alone and remember how difficult it can be to be wrong'? Hell, no. If anything, I'm saying 'Get on me harder, because I know I get stuff wrong, and I want to get better at getting it right.'

Obviously, that comes with caveats - one of them being that it isn't your job or responsibility to help me out if you don't want to, and another being that it's important to remember that you may not always be right about the situation as well (and if there are two things that social media seem to increase, it's the apparent certainty of being right and the increased ability to be misunderstood - I've seen far too many arguments where I think both people were misunderstanding each other more than disagreeing).

My intention with this rather rambling blog post has been to use my own experiences to come to a more general point.  Because the important point is the ignorance. I think that ignorance and hatred are different things, although I also think that ignorance can easily lead to hatred. And hatred doesn't have many solutions. But ignorance? That can have some solutions. The light of normality can help out with a lot of them. And when you don't understand something, when you don't know how you're going to react to it, fear can come from a number of directions.

Nowadays, I tend to hold my tongue a lot more. Not because I'm scared of what I'm going to say (and anybody that knows me away from a computer screen knows that it doesn't take much for me to give my opinions about things), but because I'm more aware that there are situations where, whichever side I'm on, my voice doesn't need to be part of the conversation. Just my ears, at least for now, until I've listened more to the voices that speak with experience.

Social media is amazing for this. You can seek out people who know more about things than you do, and listen to them. Hear viewpoints different to your own and be prepared to examine your own beliefs. It's important for all of us, and I honestly think it's the best thing about the internet.

Because I'd rather have been wrong through ignorance and have the ability to change, then think I'm always right and lose that ability. Being wrong isn't the end of the world. But refusing to believe that you can be wrong? That's unlikely to be good.

Being wrong and trying to learn.

Social media has had a number of effects on my life, but the biggest one has been how its challenged me. Not always vocally and not always personally, but one thing that I've found important to do is to look out for voices that provide different viewpoints to my own.

This is because I've been wrong a lot of times in the past. And I'll probably be wrong a lot in the future.

I've been generally lucky to have supportive, liberal, left-wing parents, who are fairly open-minded, and even luckier to have watched them become, if anything, more liberal, left-wing and open-minded as time has gone on.

At the same time, I grew up in areas that were nice, but not necessarily very diverse. A suburb of Manchester for most of my childhood and a village in rural Ireland during my teens. My secondary school was an all-boys Irish Catholic one, run by the Christian Brothers.

Being, as I was, into drama rather than sport, and, to be fair, probably being an insufferable fellow student, my school days weren't huge amounts of fun, and I looked forward to moving away from University. But I was also nervous - after all, moving to England and going to a Drama course meant that I was really quite likely to meet (whisper it...) some gay people.

It's important to realise that I didn't know any out gay people when I was growing up. Or if I did, I had absolutely no idea - hell, it took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that Right Said Fred were gay. I thought they were meant to be skinheads. But where I grew up, my knowledge of gay people were primarily rumour or insults on which I was often on the receiving end. I didn't feel that I was being told that gay people were bad, or that I should be scared of them, but I was nervous. The main thing I knew about them was that they were perceived to be different.

By the age of 17, probably the two most rounded gay characters I was aware of were Simon Callow in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Uncle Monty in Withnail and I. I was also somewhat sexually confused as well - after all, I'd been called it enough that it was possible that other people saw something in me that I didnt. I didn't think I was into guys, but what if I actually was? And what would happen if I was hanging around with gay men? Along with all my other fears, I was also worried that I would be judgemental.

Flash forward a short while to me at seventeen, and my first day in university, and I was going around, meeting people. One of the first doors I knocked on was opened by someone I wasn't expecting to see. He was over six foot tall and slim, with bright pink hair. He was also dressed from neck to ankle in PVC, along with a pair of bright pink fluffy slippers.

I had never met anyone like this before. I put my hand out, probably with my jaw dropped, and he didn't shake it - he took it carefully, and introduced himself: "Hello, I'm Thom. That's Thom with a 'h'. The 'h' stands for homosexual".

While it probably didn't actually take more than a second, I remember my thought process clearly, as I was faced with someone who was far, far more out than anyone I had ever met before.

"Right, okay, this is new. What do I do? I've got, as far as I can see it, two choices. I can either freak out and walk away, and decide that's who I'm going to be, or I can decide that it doesn't matter and just be fine with it."

And what I said was "Hi, I'm Chris. Pleased to meet you." And from there, it was fine. Thom was absolutely lovely, and while we didn't become lifelong friends or anything, I think it's fair to say that we got on and were generally pleased to see each other around.

That was almost seventeen years ago, and I remember it vividly. I remember the flash of fear and the flash of feeling that I had no idea how to handle this situation, and then how quickly and how easily I realised that even slight fear of someone because they were gay was bullshit. Once I came to that first step, it stopped being something to worry about.

But I also realised how easy it would have been to have gone the other way. How easy it would have been to have seen what I saw as confirmation that here was somebody that was different to me, and that difference was negative. Personally, I think that would have been the point where I would have slipped from ignorance to hatred, and that's something I'm very glad that I didn't do.

Later, someone I shared a house with had an abortion, and while I think I successfully kept my judgement from her, I did judge her for it. I judged her for not having been sensible enough to avoid getting pregnant in the first place, and I absolutely judged her for not telling the father. I felt that she overrode his rights and put herself first, and took him out of the decision making process. I felt she treated the abortion casually and I found that idea difficult. I wasn't completely against the idea of abortion itself, but I did feel that it should be agonised over and debated and thought about, and was a big, serious step.

I look back on that and I realise how completely in the wrong my point of view was. But that realisation took me time, and took me far longer than I wish it had done.

I was raised Catholic, and anti-abortion imagery was around my upbringing. More so in the culture I was brought up in than absolutely directly in my family, but still very much there. I'd grown up with the idea that it was simply a wrong thing to do, although I ended up taking the personal viewpoint more that it was a practical choice in places, but should always be treated as a last resort.

The mistake that I made there (as if it isn't obvious) was putting my own discomfort with the idea ahead of a woman's right to make choices with regards to her own body. I was doing the same thing with the discomfort over whether or not the man involved with the pregnancy had been told.

Sometimes, a realisation is about putting things in a way that you just cannot argue with, and the line that I eventually came up with was this: My right to feel uncomfortable with a situation comes a distant second to a woman's right to make her own choices.

And lo and behold, when I came to that understanding, suddenly I was a lot less uncomfortable with the situation. Go figure.

I don't feel, looking back, that I was a horrible person, but I do feel that I was ignorant and naive. I had fairly firmly established ideas about what constituted right and wrong, and while I think that I got a reasonable amount of stuff right, it also led me to hold some beliefs that now make me very uncomfortable to have ever held at all. If you asked me if I believed in equality, I'd have said yes, and I would have meant it

So why do I now share them? Why do I share things that make me absolutely cringe to talk about? And of course, there's more, because I was young and stupid, and now I'm older and hopefully a little les stupid - at the very least, I'm more willing to listen and try to get to that understanding.

Am I saying 'Oh, you don't understand, poor me, I'm actually the victim here, with my upbringing and naivety - just leave me alone and remember how difficult it can be to be wrong'? Hell, no. If anything, I'm saying 'Get on me harder, because I know I get stuff wrong, and I want to get better at getting it right.'

Obviously, that comes with caveats - one of them being that it isn't your job or responsibility to help me out if you don't want to, and another being that it's important to remember that you may not always be right about the situation as well (and if there are two things that social media seem to increase, it's the apparent certainty of being right and the increased ability to be misunderstood - I've seen far too many arguments where I think both people were misunderstanding each other more than disagreeing).

My intention with this rather rambling blog post has been to use my own experiences to come to a more general point.  Because the important point is the ignorance. I think that ignorance and hatred are different things, although I also think that ignorance can easily lead to hatred. And hatred doesn't have many solutions. But ignorance? That can have some solutions. The light of normality can help out with a lot of them. And when you don't understand something, when you don't know how you're going to react to it, fear can come from a number of directions.

Nowadays, I tend to hold my tongue a lot more. Not because I'm scared of what I'm going to say (and anybody that knows me away from a computer screen knows that it doesn't take much for me to give my opinions about things), but because I'm more aware that there are situations where, whichever side I'm on, my voice doesn't need to be part of the conversation. Just my ears, at least for now, until I've listened more to the voices that speak with experience.

Social media is amazing for this. You can seek out people who know more about things than you do, and listen to them. Hear viewpoints different to your own and be prepared to examine your own beliefs. It's important for all of us, and I honestly think it's the best thing about the internet.

Because I'd rather have been wrong through ignorance and have the ability to change, then think I'm always right and lose that ability. Being wrong isn't the end of the world. But refusing to believe that you can be wrong? That's unlikely to be good.

The Scottish Daily Express, February 20th 1954.

I bought an original edition of the Scottish Daily Express from the 20th of February, 1954 for my Grandparents' 60th Wedding anniversary. It was a souvenir of the day that they got married (in Scotland, which is why it's that specific newspaper - they were actually more likely to read the Daily Record, but I couldn't find a copy of that).

I found it interesting reading through it, so I scanned the entire thing and thought I'd put it on here for you to read if you so desire. I couldn't quite believe that it was only 8 pages long. Newspapers now have so much more, but so much less on each page. I find myself wishing there were more papers like this now.

Some points that I found interesting - celebrity culture is nothing new. Check out Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe both prominently placed in stories. Also, an advert for cars that cost in the hundreds of pounds. My favourite story is about a girl who defied her father, which makes for a strange headline. And it turns out that even just two panels of Rupert The Bear is too much for me to pay attention to, as I found my attention wandering away immediately.

 Because I found the customer service good, and they got this out to me quickly and it was in good condition, I think that's always worth sharing - I bought it from www.greatexperiencedays.co.uk. But, anyway, I hope you enjoy. Let me know if there's anything that particularly gets your attention.

Trying To Fly (flash fiction)

What people don't realise is that every time I die, I feel it.

Every time I fall and slam into the ground, I feel it. Every time the person guiding me misjudges a gap, I feel it. Even my fat bones feel it as they snap into my insides. The one merciful thing is that, each time, it is fast.

Most of the time, I'm dead longer than I'm alive. The amount of time it takes me to start over again and their hands (whether it's the same person or a new one) assume control is sometimes longer than it takes them to drop me on the ground like they don't care or slam me, beak first into one of those green pipes.

I look at other birds, sometimes. With their working bodies, their normally shaped beaks. I envy them. They don't need help to fly. They soar. I flap when I'm told to and then I fall.

Whatever I did to deserve this punishment, I've surely paid by now. Each time, I put my frail, useless wings into someone else's hands and each time, I trust. Stupidly, I trust, like I've forgotten every time before.

It never hurts less. It never gets easier.

But I never stop looking at the sky and looking to escape.

One day, someone will take control and it will be beautiful. I will be in their hands. I imagine a young girl, who has never played before and she's a natural at it and she was made to do this in the same way that I was, and I will forget all of the pain as her presses make my useless flappy wings into something that have the motion and form of poetry as I make my way unerringly through the gaps, my ungainly bounce turned into a steady beat.

One more time, I feel it all start again, my broken bones and shattered beak restored, and from the sureness of the first touch, I feel that she has finally come for me.

My wings feel like they work for the first time as she takes control.

I push them, stubby as they are, against the weight of the air underneath and I close my eyes and she does not steer me wrong.

I fly.

Why we need to get better at talking about suicide

Today's front page of the Metro bothered me quite a lot. It told the story of a young girl who killed herself and who spent a lot of time online discussing self-harm and suicide.

I'm not going to use the girl's name here. This is already a sad story and I don't want anyone to find this by searching for it. But they talk at length about her self-harm and her life online before talking about her suicide.

I found the way this has been reported troubling for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the way they've discussed the websites that have been 'accused of promoting suicide'.

It's important to question how bad the idea of 'promoting' or 'normalising' suicidal impulses is. I think there's absolutely no question that normalising suicide in a way that trivialises it is obviously a bad thing, but normalisation is not a simple concept. It's quite a large area and it includes the idea that you may not be alone. That you're not a freak for having these thoughts. That it's not necessarily the end of the world to sometimes feel like you're at the end of your strength and you simply do not want to keep going. That you are not necessarily selfish for feeling like that.

Being able to talk to other people who feel the same, being able to have a space where you can interact with other people that are dealing with similar things that you're dealing with is, at times, an invaluable thing for those of us who feel alone and feel that all their options are bad. Sometimes, just feeling understood can save lives.

Not all are good. Some are unmoderated or have good intentions but also have trolls. But not all are bad either and treating all of them as if they're the same is not helpful. In fact, I think that it's harmful. Suicidal impulses aren't something that, societally, we're good at talking about. We need to get better at it. And blanket-criticising the sites that do allow people to talk about it is not likely to be the best way to go about this.

The second thing that troubles me is that they've made clear how she did kill herself. Again, they've not given the exact details, but it's very clear from how the story was written.

The simple fact is that describing methodology often increases more people to do the same. This is why it often isn't done. Sometimes, making it easier for people to kill themselves makes it more likely that they will. And one of the things that stops some people from killing themselves is when they don't know if a method is going to work. Because sometimes, one of the few things worse than the idea of killing yourself is the thought of trying to kill yourself but failing. After all, often the point is getting the pain to stop, not making it worse.

This can be seen in the Samaritans' media guidelines. As Jeremy Paxman says in the introduction, "inappropriate reporting or depiction can lead to ‘copycat suicides’, particularly amongst younger more vulnerable audiences. Reporting details that can
seem inconsequential and merely factual to some audiences can have a profoundly negative effect on others who might be more emotionally vulnerable."

So when you report on the front page of someone killing themselves and talking about it in a way that portrays it as successful, the chances of someone reading about it and deciding that they're going to try it that way increases. Especially young people.

This leads me to the third point that troubles me about this story. The fact that it was reported at all, let alone on the front page with a large picture of an attractive young girl and talking about the sadness of it all.

What The Metro has done, I feel, is to take a photogenic young teenage girl and plaster her over their front page primarily because she is a photogenic young teenage girl, and criticised some of the ways in which she talked about what she was going through. Sadly, many people kill themselves. Not many of them make the front page.

I don't see how this isn't glorifying suicide. I don't see how this isn't telling other teenage girls "Look. Look how beautiful she was and how tragic this was. Look how everyone now knows how she felt."

Charlie Brooker talked memorably about how mass murderers are glorified. There's a similar lesson to be taken here. When you glorify something, there may well be people who want to emulate it. When you have the research that shows that reporting methodology of suicide to back that up, putting a story like this on the front page of one of the most widely read newspapers in the UK - which is given away free at underground train stations, no less - is likely to make other people think that, if they have nothing else going right in their lives, they may at least be able to be remembered and glorified the way this girl has been on the front page.

This is a sad story. Of course it is. Suicide is always sad and when it's the suicide of someone young it's even more so. But this did not need to be a front page. For it to be a front page is difficult. It may even have been for the right reasons. But it being a front page makes it more likely that someone else will try to do what was described in the story.

We need to create more safe spaces for people to talk about suicide and suicidal impulses. We need to get better at talking about it and accept that so many people feel the need to talk about it. That, sometimes, allowing people to talk about the harm they wish to do themselves is more important than our discomfort at hearing about it.

Ghosts of Social Media

I like social media. It suits me for a number of reasons, including the fact that I'm not very good at communicating with people generally. It allows me to keep a large amount of interaction with a fairly minor amount of effort. From my point of view, it makes keeping in touch with people surprisingly easy.

But it doesn't work for everyone. In fact, I think it can make some people feel even more left out. Now, this isn't anyone's fault, and I'm not suggesting that one way is better than the other. It just struck me as something that seems to have changed that I haven't seen anyone talking about.

Facebook, twitter, tumblr, instagram and the like make it much easier to be in touch with people without putting any real effort in to specifically doing so. For the lazy and introverted yet outgoing and attention-seeking (yes, me), it's fantastic. But I can't remember the last time that I emailed someone on a personal basis. Nor can I remember the last time someone emailed me over something personal. I don't have as many people's phone numbers on my mobile as I used to - I don't need them any more as I have other ways of contacting people. More convenient ones.

I'm easy to contact, and if you use social media (especially with your real name), you'll be easy to contact as well. I see a lot more of people that are on social media, and a lot more of those friends of mine who are on social media, than I do otherwise. It's very easy to have a rough idea what's going on in people's lives.

It's so easy, in fact, that there can, sometimes, be the assumption that if someone isn't on there, they don't want to be contacted. Or that they'll turn up eventually.

After all, the rest of us are out there, broadcasting our availability and the ease with which we can be contacted. And when someone vanishes from social media, it can be more difficult to notice. After all, you get used to missing updates, but you're safe in the knowledge that they're there. And even if you do notice, there can be an element of "I haven't seen online in a while - they must be taking a break/avoiding social media/avoiding me/feeling a bit antisocial/etc". 

Meanwhile, there may be people you know that you haven't spoken to for a while, and they wonder why. Because they're not following you on social media or they signed up but don't really use it.

Direct communication happens less often. Not in the sense of direct messaging or instant messaging - they're somewhat different, not least because of the amount of times they're often prompted by knowing the other person is online. You click their profile and you have that short, easy message.

As a result, email can end up feeling quite direct. Quite demanding. "Stop what you're doing and read this message that I have sent you, which may be quite long". Much easier with social media where it's taken a little for granted that it'll be read or acknowledged or responded to or ignored in the time that suits the person using it.

Some of us have taken to communicating via a sort of post-it note system crossed with instant messenger. And less to specific, thought out messages that take more time.

The documentary "Dreams of a Life" is about a young woman who died suddenly and whose death wasn't discovered for a while. The strange thing about it is that she was outgoing and popular and knew people and saw people and went out with people and so on. When she died, some people she knew just didn't realise they hadn't heard from her in a while. When I read about it, the idea bothered me a lot, to the point where I still haven't been able to watch the documentary. I very much want to, but I suspect that it will upset me.

It used to be more difficult to be in touch with people. You had to write letters. Then you had to keep phone numbers. Then email addresses. But you still had to make that effort to be in touch with people and they had to make the effort to keep in touch with you.

Now, though, a lot of us no longer need to do that. The availability has become so easy that it's almost unusual when people don't do it. And when people stop doing it, do we always notice?

A lot of us drift in and out of each other's lives. Perhaps, now, this happens more so because we assume everyone is in a holding pattern and we no longer need to put the same effort in that we used to in order to be social.

I know a lot of people who suffer from depression. It's something I know far too well on a personal level (both my own, thankfully minor, and that of people who I care about). And when you feel down, it can be so easy to wonder who really cares. To wonder, if you were to stop being that outgoing person and withdraw and pull back, if people would notice. And if they did, whether they would take the steps to get in touch and ask and find out. Now it's so easy to be in touch, whether people would think or realise if they needed to put in more effort in order to stay in touch.

I can't honestly say that I would always realise. Even if I did, I may very well assume that whoever it was didn't want to be contacted, and an email or a phone call could feel far more intrusive. But I could see a situation where one person needs others to put more effort in to make them feel valued and those around them not even realising that this is the case any more. And it could end up with someone waiting for an email and an enquiry that's not coming because everyone else is assuming they'll make it clear when they're available to be contacted again.

This may have seemed a bit rambly. It's because I'm trying to put my finger on something that's bothering me about the situation, despite the fact that I think that social media is, overall, a marvelous thing that brings a lot of benefits. And I think it's a fairly widespread thing, but not something people have talked much about.

When it's become so easy to be in contact, can we still easily recognise when more effort needs to be put in?

Magic Falls Part 32

I am sat in the plainest room I have ever sat in. There is only a table and some chairs. They are heavy plastic. I do not have any control over whether or not I can leave. There are guards outside the door.

There is a man opposite me. He’s in his early forties. He’s slim and bearded and professional. He has not told me his name. He has been asking me the same questions over and over, trying to find different ways into what he’s trying to find out.

“How did you know about the sword?” he asks. I’ve lost track how many times he’s asked me variations of this question.

“It’s on Google Earth.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s all over the internet. There are pictures everywhere. Why is it unusual that I might know about it?”

“Because you know more.”

“I don’t know any more about why this has happened than you do.”

He looks to his left to the large mirror on the wall and then presses his finger to his ear before nodding.

“Why not just bring them in?” I ask.

“What?” He says.

“You’re blatantly talking to someone behind that mirror. This is not difficult for me to work out. You’re not even being subtle about it. If they want to talk to me, just bring them in. Let them ask directly.”

“I’ll ask the questions,” he says, before bringing his hand back to his ear. He looks to the left again and nods. 

“Okay.”

“They’re joining us?”

“Yes,” he says. He doesn’t look overwhelmingly happy, but then he doesn’t look particularly angry either.

I’m exhausted. This has been going on for days, and I’ve been confined to a cell the rest of the time. I’ve not been hurt and I’ve been treated pretty well, all things considered, but there’s absolutely no doubt about the fact that I’m their prisoner.

I’ve asked to see a lawyer, but been told that because this is a matter of security, this isn’t a typical kind of arrest. I’m pretty sure that they are making up some of the rules as they go along, but they’re not being particularly forthcoming.

Still, I have no idea why Jack betrayed me the way he did. Where I came from… when I came from… Jack was my closest ally. We had created a group together that went on to change the world. The Knights. But somehow… things had turned out differently. He had become far more influential this time around – it had happened more quickly, possibly because of the situation with his daughter (or, although I didn’t want to admit it because of ego, because this time around, he’d done it by himself, and without me holding him back).

But still, all that influence. All those people ready to believe. We’d been able to do a lot with hundreds. He had thousands just in that audience, let alone in the rest of the country. Or the world.

All that belief. All that power.

And he believed me. I know he did. He knows how important this is, and yet, somehow and for some reason, he made me go public and then he gave me up. And I didn’t know why.

The head of the department walks in. He had been introduced briefly the day beforehand, but he’d been very quiet. He’s with another man, and I still can’t work out where I know him from. I’ve been trying to work it out since I saw him in the theatre.

“Darren,” The head says, “We’re not on different sides here. You’ve got to understand that. We’re all looking for the same thing.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“We’re looking to keep everyone safe. The rules have changed. We know that and we are accepting it, but we can’t just declare anarchy in one fell swoop.” He says, calmly. “All we know about you is what we’ve been told. You’re here purely as a precaution. And so we can find out more about what’s going on.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I say to him.

“Is he telling the truth?” he asks the other man, the familiar-looking one.

“I don’t know,” he says, frowning at me with confusion.

The head turns to him. “What do you mean ‘you don’t know’?”

“I mean I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t read him.”

“You could earlier.”

“I know I could earlier. I can’t now. I don’t know why.”

I looked at him more, and then it clicked. “You’re Shane Smith,” I said. “I’ve seen you on television.”

He looks at the head and then back at me, a ghost of a smile flickering across his face. “Yes, I am.”

“Why are you – you’re a stage magician. Why are you here?”

“Why do you think he’s here?” the head asks me.

I look at the two of them for a moment before realising. “Because magic is becoming real… so if people believe in your magic…”

Shane Smith nods. “Basically. Frightened the hell out of me at first, I can tell you that. I’m a mind reader. Used to be, I only did it for the stage. Now, it’s all the time.”

“All the time?” I ask.

He looks at the head, who nods. “Yes,” Smith says. “it’s not something I can switch off.”

“So…” I ask, “What does that mean with regards to what I’m saying?”

“All I’m getting is that you’re looking for your wife. Other than that… I can’t read a thing.”

“How are you blocking him?” the head asks me, looking more concerned now.

“I’m not doing a thing,” I say. “I really don’t know anything about this.”

“But you know about the sword.”

“I’ve only seen it on – “

“We have it on good authority,” the head tells me, cutting me off. “You know a lot more about this than you’re letting on.”

“You just don’t trust us,” Shane says. “You don’t need to be a mind-reader for that.”

I look at the two of them for long moments. “Then let me go. Let me go back to what I was doing.”

“How about,” the head asks, “if we were to offer a deal?”

“What kind of deal?” I ask.

“What if, in return for you helping us with the sword in Trafalgar Square,” he asks calmly and evenly, “we tell you where your wife is?”