candlelight – Meditations of Neilus Aurelius

I am writing this away from home and by lamplight rather than candlelight. I am in a place that Marcus would not have known about and would not have been able to conquer, thousands of miles away from the mainland of Europe.

At present I am on a little holiday in Canada, visiting family on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I come here almost every summer. My aunt Barbara lives in a little town called Sidney by the Pacific Ocean. This afternoon, the ocean lived up its name: it was peaceful, placid and still. So was the grey heron I observed, perfectly poised on one leg in the water by the shore, as thin and elegant as a ballet dancer en pointe.

However, since I arrived a few days ago, I have been far from calm and cool and collected like Mr Heron. To begin with, dear auntie no longer has wi-fi. I find this quite irksome as I have to go down the hall to my cousin’s apartment or to a coffee shop to read my mails, check my bank and credit card accounts, What’s Ap and Messenger, see who has died recently on Wikipedia and continue with my Italian course on Duo Lingo. Not to be able to comprehensively use my I phone at a swipe has seemed like losing a limb. Of course I would have lost a small amount of money as well as a limb if, in impatience, desperation and extravagance, I had switched on mobile data on my phone thereby enabling instant Internet access.

In addition to this inconvenience, I have been able to receive texts on my phone but unable to send them. So my sense of isolation has seemed complete. I might as well have been in the far flung Northern territories like the Yukon, where they are enjoying very warm weather at the moment according to local TV here. The text situation has now been rectified but nevertheless my first text-less twenty-four hours here have been exceedingly bleak.

Over the last day or so, I have spent much of my time settling in and catching up with the family but, nevertheless, I have been constantly checking a phone that wasn’t doing anything. As a result, I have felt bereft, dare I say it, in cold turkey. I have realised how addicted I am to my phone. A prominent businessman recently commented that his mobile phone is his mistress, and a mistress to be obeyed. How right he is. We are not only addicted to instant gratification but also to instant communication. I am an impatient person, and even more so since I purchased an I phone. ‘Why haven’t they replied yet?’ I ask myself, ‘Why haven’t I got an e mail?’ I suppose, now that I am retired I have nothing else to think about.

This continual concentration on the little screen in our hand can also stop us from noticing our surroundings or the people around us. A friend recently told me that he was annoyed with people who watch movies on their phone while they are walking in the street and so slow down the people behind them. When I first tried to use google maps to find the house of a friend I was visiting, I actually bumped into a lamp post!

Headphones can make people oblivious to others around them. I have often found it amusing watching people talking into their phones in the street or on the bus or train. They look as if they are talking to themselves, sometimes quite dramatically as if they are insane. It is annoying, however, when their conversations are forced upon others sitting close to them. The other summer, I remember sitting opposite a woman on the train and being most disconcerted as she talked to her boy friend or partner on the other end of the line in graphic detail about the rampant sex they had enjoyed the night before. And this was on a crowded train on a Saturday afternoon with families sitting nearby. Private lives are becoming a thing of the past.

So I felt rather guilty this afternoon, as I observed Mr Heron, who also appeared to have lost a limb as he stood elegantly on one leg in the waves. Since arriving here, I have been so immersed in my phone trauma I have hardly noticed the tall stately pines in the creamy twilight; the driftwood on the shore, blanched white by the waves; the small islands on the horizon, like blue grey pillows on the surface of the azure sea.

As I breathed in the sweet smell of the ocean and watched a lone boat skid over the waves breaking the stillness, I decided that technology may be a wonderful tool but it is also a tyrant.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

The candlelight beside me is steady this evening as I begin to write. However I will not be writing about the small flame of a candle this time, but about a larger more vibrant light.

I have recently been back to my hometown, Redcar, which is on the North East coast in Cleveland. I was visiting my sister Ann for the weekend. Ann collected me from the station at Thirsk, a market town in North Yorkshire. As we drove towards Redcar, I could see a flare glowing in the twilight sky. It was from one of the tall narrow jets outside the local chemical works. It was a continuous stream of red and gold as it rose in the sky. The flare was stately and thin compared with the huge tubby grey chimneys belching smoke behind it. It was magnificent, yet welcoming.

We were driving on the edge of Wilton, Redcar’s main industrial area. Clearly the ICI chemical works is still in operation, but tragically the steelworks over the road has finally closed down. Many years ago, My father worked in both: British Steel (or Dorman Long as it was originally) and ICI. I remember him bringing home plastic beakers and small bowls, samples from the plastics plant he worked in at ICI.

Whenever I go into my school, I am still reminded of my hometown. One of the girders supporting the stairs to the first floor has ‘Dorman Long, Middlesbrough’ emblazoned on it. That area of the school is part of the original building, which was opened in 1959. I like to think my father shaped that girder in the blast furnaces he used to work in.

Observing the flare from my sister’s car reminded me of being on the local bus when I was a teenager on the way home from school in Middlesbrough. Often on the journey I would notice the flare. It would burn all day and all night. If I was coming home at night from Middlesbrough, from the cinema or from a rehearsal at Teeside Youth Theatre, I remember it burning brightly in the dark. It was like a beacon reminding me I was almost home. And now the flare was welcoming me home again.

At that time, of course, Teeside (as it was known then) was flourishing and quite prosperous with other light industry besides the two giants at Wilton and with Middlesbrough docks still operating.

I remember Mr Maidens my English teacher telling me that Teeside was a good place to live because there was plenty of industry to support the area and there was so much beautiful countryside round about: the coastline by the North Sea and, inland, the rolling North Yorkshire Moors. He took the class to see ‘Macbeth’ at the newly opened Forum Theatre in Billingham (where ICI’s other large works was situated). The theatre was a source of civic pride. The metal framed set for the production had been built by the local steel works. That production starred a very young Michael Gambon in the title role. I was so excited to see a live Shakespeare play, even though some of my fellow pupils weren’t really bothered and were quite boisterous. Fortunately some of us ended up in a side box away from our unruly mates, though it wasn’t all gilt and red plush like the West End, but very modern and metallic. Ever the theatre critic, at age 15, I thought Sir Michael was good but not magnetic in the role!

That was half a century ago. The area has slowly gone into decline and the steel works is no more. So now the flare is a beacon of hope – hope that the area will once again be prosperous. It is also a symbol of the warmth of the local people.

The people of Redcar have lived with an unclear future for decades. Now the nation (and indeed Europe) is living with an unclear future too. Every day the future becomes more a and more uneasy as the ‘ignorant armies’ are still ‘clashing’ in the House of Commons (to quote Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ again -as I did a few months ago). Times are even more unsettling as we witness terrorist attacks in New Zealand and Europe, and not long ago, in our own country.

The flare has reminded me of another poem – this time by W.H.Auden: ‘September 1, 1939’.

It’s set in a bar on 52nd Street in New York, where Auden was living before the imminent outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. He writes:

‘We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.’

In these fragmented times of unease, may we all be a point of light – an affirming flame – a flare of hope.

Ave atque vale until the next blog.

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And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius