FRAGMENT: The 1980s.

 The 1980s started with a job move to North Riding College, Scarborough, then affiliated to Leeds University. I was to teaching in a course on world religions, and education studies. Jean stayed at home commuting to Devizes School with a colleague, Lionel, and applied for a couple of posts in Yorkshire without success. We looked at a few houses, again without success. My knowledge of world religions was sketchy, drawn from the few school textbooks then available. This post offered me the opportunity of in depth study. In order to balance my secondary school teaching experience I studies for the Post Graduate Certificate in Early Years Education which included a dissertation in early reading. I supervised students in early years settings as well as junior and middle schools. I lodged firstly in a 'winter let' (holiday flat hired for the winter season) and in summer had a flat in the College. My study on Filey Road overlooked the harbour and castle, built-in distraction. The journey to coffee in the winter was very cold. Home was 310 miles away so I couldn't get home every weekend. Jean came over during her half term.

There were memorable events and incidents. There was a classical music series who put on fortnightly concerts. I remember a performance of Samuel Barber's Reincarnations, a composer of importance to us who had recently died. A different group went to Opera North: I remember Boheme in Leeds and Samson and Delilah in Hull, the first operas I had been to. I was in the chorus of the Gilbert and Sullivan light opera The Sorcerer in 1982, by first and last experience of performing. Our student days were to orchestral events in the Manchester Free Trade Hall. 

I applied for and accepted a similar post in Westminster College, Oxford. from April 1983 and we looked for and bid for our current house near Swindon between Oxford and Jean's job in Devizes - a restoration project that would take many years to complete. Jean became Head of Careers in her school, in  addition to her history teaching. She made close friends I am still in touch with today, but more inexplicably enemies, In retrospect I think some victimized her for her hidden disability, the brain damage I have spoken about elsewhere, the effects of which she coped with admirably. Most of my work in Oxford I focused on education, including multi-faith religious education. Biblical Studies was taught by a different team. I taught Interfaith Studies in a new degree, and developed it into a distance learning degree, M.Th, in  Pastoral Studies for church ministers. The sessions on Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism are still online. The Judaism module was co-written and does not survive online. I became Postgraduate Tutor in 1986 in charge of PGCE primary and secondary and planned an Early Years version. Course leadership was gradually delegated so my role changed in the 1990s.

During the 1980s I put together a book for university students on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. We wanted it to be written quickly so divided the 16 chapters between different writers, all university lectures or professors. It was the story of the writing of the Old Testament. I gave it the title Creating the Old Testament: The Development of the Hebrew Bible published by Basil Blackwell in 1989. One writer pulled out and I wrote the chapter on Moses in her place. Another did not write to brief, so I rewrote 'Stories of the Prophets'. My scheduled chapters were Introduction, 'The Bible and Islam' and 'Symbol and Metaphor'. 

The book followed the general pattern of Torah (Law), Prophets and Writings, with a final chapter oon the additional books in the Septuagint, the Greek translation/version. The assumption of the book was to follow the evidence rather than assuming belief, so it was a critical and not conservative text.  Thirty five years later it is still in print.

I also became involved with the union (NATFHE) Religious Studies Section which produced the journal Journal of Beliefs and Values for which I wrote and reviewed frequently. There is a list on my CV on stephenbigger.blogspot.com. 

FRAGMENT: The 1970s

 We married in the summer vacation of 1969 before Jean started her new job in Oldham Unfortunately we had already offered on a house in Marple on the edge of Greater Manchester town and country.  The view over Manchester below was stupendous. That meant a tricky commute to Oldham through Hyde and Dukinfield. A colleague lived close by so they shared lists from time to time.. She was a history teacher with some religious education. It was a bizarre school, an independent grammar school that used to be called 'Direct Grant' as opposed to Local Authority schools. The heads of departments came out of the ark and we still have Miss Roker's greening academic gown with occasional cigarette burns, all a bit of a change from the rough and tumble secondary moderns of her teaching practices where the high spot was Shite O'Brian, nicknamed for her vocabulary. Once I remember she got to school only to find she had lost her voice - not noticed earlier since our morning routine did not include conversation.

From those four years in Oldham some friendships still exist. Among her pupils were daughters of a Yorkshire TV producer who reappeared in her life unexpectedly. As she graduated in Oxford's Radcliffe Camera for her MSc in 1986, the eldest daughter graduated for her PhD and we found ourselves reminiscing with her step-mum and sister, her own mother having died a decade before.

My time was taken up with PhD research for which I had three years funding. My undergraduate work had been in critical Biblical Studies and my PhD focussed on ancient Hebrew marriage, something that had been scarcely tackled up to then (1970). That was finished in 1974 before a major wave of feminist study linking exegesis (explaining what texts say) to female experience today (hermeneutics) enabled writers to go down relevant experiential wormholes.  Times have changed and my own normal advice to my PhD candidates to to look for depth rather than breadth, contrary to the advice I was given.

When funding finished in 1973 the mortgage still had to be paid. My grant had been £600 per year, the house cost £4300 and the monthly mortgage was £22 6/8. We wanted to start a family so needed to supplement my wife's salary. Pregnancy normally meant giving up your job in those days. Pregnancy happened very quickly and I was offered a post in Buxton, a new convergence of grammar and secondary modern schools. I had not done a PGCE, which was not required then, so it was learning on the job in the deep end. The baby miscarried in November and there were no more pregnancies. Throughout the 1970s a succession of crude medical interventions were unsuccessful. IVF was first successfully performed in 1978. Discussions with the adoption services accepted our application eventually, but after four years of ineffectiveness. We offered a home to up to three siblings, any colour or condition, but they would only sanction a white baby (who never appeared). The 'service' had no further communication with us. Additionally our niece died of  meningitis aged eight in 1977. So all in all it was not a good decade.

The merging of two schools did not go well. Nor did starting a teaching career without guidance or mentors. My Head of Department had a nervous breakdown in November (I found him crying in the cloakrooms) so I was in charge of a department of one. My teaching load was around 800 pupils, one lesson a week so it was hard to build relationships, hell at report time. I had more time with pupils who did not want to be there. It was ROSLA year when the school leaving age was raised to 16 leaving a reluctant cohort imprisoned and unable to get jobs. So I looked out for teaching posts which meant I could leave mistakes behind and have GCE classes. It was rare then for an RE teacher not to be a regular churchgoer so an atheist like me did not fit in well, so my next job was in Wiltshire a local authority grammar school about to go comprehensive. That meant a major upheaval moving house and for Jean a change of job. Reflecting on those choices in retrospect, that was not a good decision. The distance from family and friends. My new school had many failings and poor leadership. Jean had opportunities for promotion in Devizes, though her line manager was misogynist which had mental health implications. 

 I was offered a term of 'schoolteacher fellowship' in in St Martin's College, Lancaster in 1979 hoping to turn my PhD thesis into a book. That did not succeed, but had other implications. The decade allowed us to see my mother's sister in Portsmouth, who we became close to, and my grandparents in Nottinghamshire, a rather longer journey. Salisbury also had a good theatre, often frequented. However, retrospective reflection contain moments of regret and none of this was easy on Jean, a guilt I now feel strongly. It left Jean at the mercy of grunting hedgehogs and an escaped tiger which made the national news. The circus came to Devizes and a tiger escaped and wandered around the school. While senior staff hid in their cloakrooms, Jean rounded up the pupils outside to bring them to safety. This is how management delegation works: never do anything you can't get some other poor soul to do.

The staff begged me to be the union rep in a school that was increasingly unhappy. That was probably a mistake and certainly brought me no benefit. The headteacher regarded me as a threat, not a supportive helper and our relationship was soured. The chance came for university level teaching, so the 1980s saw many changes.

FRAGMENT: Youth 1 - Secondary School

 I moved to a Grammar School ten miles away in 1959. It was a sparsely populated rural county with pupils from close to Lincoln (my primary school) to Grimsby and Cleethorpes to the east, a thirty mile radius. We relied on a school bus but for after school activities had to use a late service bus or on occasions a bicycle. The house system focused on villages and geographic areas. Mine was Stow, Rasen covered Market and Middle Rasen, and Hainton the area east towards Wragby. The fourth house was the Boarding House, many the sons of forces families. The latter had an advantage of being able to practice for long hours. The school had a small swimming pool, but I was never taught to swim I latterly discovered that a close work friend had lived in the school when her father was headmaster in war years, and later I had a student who had left the school two years before I started

My younger brother was born when I was 11, when my younger sister was four. My older siblings were away at Boarding Schools .I developed caring responsibilities as the oldest of three still at home..  Enough to say here that it was an emotionally turbulent time for me. My first three secondary school years are best forgotten. It was a 2 form entry school of 300 pupils and this resulted in my relegation from the top form to the bottom, after being caned for something inconsequential. Fortunately this relegation came at a time of renewed motivation and I became a compliant pupil and achieved moderate but acceptable GCEs. Previous to that I experienced physical abuse from a bullying teacher, and psychological (coercive) abuse from another. I managed to turn myself around at 14 and would like to say a teacher helped me do this, but they did not. I was not a high flier and was socially awkward, a bit of a loner. I managed to set up a study with a 6x3 foot desk and book shelves behind. These survived until my mother's death.

In terms of sport, I was competent at soccer and rugby but found some resistance from staff, ending with being the only first  soccer team member (my preferred team sport) who was not given 'colours'. I concentrated on athletics, winning the victor ludorum (winner of five disciplines) and still holding the school record for triple jump and taking part in the national championships for long jump.

Intertwining with school was church, which for me was the Plymouth Brethren (and sisters, uncaptalised). Sisters were not allowed to teach 'Brethren', much as female priests and vicars could not exist. The 'Brethren' were and are fundamentalist evangelical Christians who inhabit 'Gospel Halls'. Those that brought me up did a door-knocking ministry, much like Jehovah Witnesses, and  open air addresses. It is true these hoped for new converts, but they also consigned hearers to hell as those who had heard and rejected the message no longer had the excuse of not having heard. The Brethren I knew were authoritarian, patriarchal, believing in verbal scriptural 'inspiration' which means authored by God. They certainly did not like the kind of questions I asked. The inner tensions meant I had no friends at school, and limited relationships at church. 

The resulting confusion of loyalty led to my decision to apply to university to read Biblical Studies, and to get there I studied it for A level through a correspondence course with Wolsey Hall, Oxford as there was no one in school to teach me. I completed the two year course in nine months. and achieved an A grade. Biblical Studies in university was critical even though many of the lecturers held clerical positions (e.g. the title Rev.).  Manchester and Sheffield Universities had professors who were affiliate to the Brethren and had good critical reputations and I chose Manchester. School were convinced that I would never get a place, but I ended with a First Class degree. The course required learning Hebrew and Greek from scratch, but it was a later course on Hebrew Social Institutions by a Latvian scholar Arnold Anderson which led me to a PhD on Hebrew Marriage and Family - far too large as was common in those days. I submitted the thesis just before feminist exegesis started which would transform this particular topic over the rest of the century involving mostly women scholars.

This pushed me towards the university Christian Union in spite of the theological contradictions which came to a head during my second year which ended in our marriage. Yet some of those friendships have lasted over the next fifty years. However theologically I had moved though agnosticism to atheism, that is a rejection of literal scriptural interpretation regarding the Bible as word of God. I contributed a chapter on metaphorical and symbolical language in my edited book Creating the Old Testament (1989) which was my anti-fundamentalist manifesto. I had hoped for a university post but there were none available in the 1970s and we had a mortgage to pay, so I became a school teacher. Eventually I made my way into teacher training.

All this is ancient history now. Life is what you make of it so when doors close find some that are open. Know what you want. For me it is to work towards are fair and just society and world. And try not to be distracted.

FRAGMENT World 1 - Syria

 These fragments will be renumbered over time. Today Syria has raised its head because of the earthquakes.

We went to Syria in the mid 1980s alongside a week in Jordan. At that time it was rare for tourists to go there. The Assad family were autocratic and apt to send in heavy handed troops. It was a coach tour, since independent travel was not possible. There was a great deal of poverty with queues for bread and food. We crossed the border into a huge traffic jam at Passport Control.  The 'ghost' of D E Lawrence was evident as we visited the Crusader fortress of Krak de Chavaliers near Homs. Lawrence  had visited Syria as a student and wrote thesis on Crusader fortifications. He was remembered in Homs from his more belligerent days. Laurence supported the local insurgents against the Turkish authority on behalf of the British war effort. Homs suffered from the vengeance of the ruling Assad family, so not much changes.

Damascus was the base for visits to mosques, including one that held a head of John the Baptist, who was a Muslim prophet as well as a figure in Christianity. There are other heads. We visited a Christian monastery who gave us sips of nice wine so we bought a bottle. Having got it back to the hotel the wine was foul so we used it as disinfectant to clean the toilet.

Palmyra was better, a nice hotel with underground bathing, a 'spa' in which we were the only visitors. The Roman ruins are the best in the world, enormous in scope. Again we were the only visitors. When children took an interest, a parental voice shouted Leave them alone. But the children we met were fine and I introduce you to Maria. She was about 12-13 and was looking after four younger siblings.  I asked her if I could take their photograph, and she was delighted. Alas my Syrian slides have disappeared but I haven't given up on them. Maria would be in her 50s and I often wonder how she fared.

Syria was a tragedy then, a tragedy later, and a tragedy today in earthquake country. The tragedy was exacerbated by British and French decisions on boundaries between Syria and Turkey which robbed the Kurds of their land. Destabilized by the ISIS war, Syria is a criminally tragic place.

FRAGMENTS 2:Childhood - Flint House.

 Flint House was my home up to the age of 6. It was near the Common. It was built in the year of Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897 by Mr Flint who manufactured tarpaulins. My parents had bought a shop in the last years of the war, hardware and bicycles and bought what was a prestigious but run down house after demob. As a Warrant Officer he may have had a substantial severance.

The front had a tiny garden, although its current appearance may be a refurb building out a reception area to what is a B&B/small hotel. The back garden I remember more, my secret garden. There was a tennis court to the left, then a rose garden, a small pond with a naked lady in the middle (small boys notice these things). Then a door to the outside world, not openable by me, a shed containing dangerous chemicals which could have killed me and did kill the goldfish. These gardens were sold off after we left,  the tennis court surviving for a while, and eventually demolished to make way for housing.

Up the stairs to the house was an outdoor toilet on which I spent many happy hours reading my books. It was from this vantage point I saw a barrage balloon being taken to the Common around the time of the 1953 Coronation.

Indoors I remember the Victorian encaustic tiles in the hall that I ran my blue police car over. I had whooping cough here, my siblings had scarlet fever. There were three of us at that point born 1944,1946 and me 1948. We slept in the same room upstairs, and had a living in lady, Mrs Kyme, with a daughter Ann. I assume but cannot confirm that she was a war widow who was offered accommodation for some light household duties.

There was an indoor bathroom/toilet because I remember getting up early and making my parents a cup of (pretend) tea with water taken from the toilet since I couldn't reach the sink. I remember their horrified faces to this day.

For the Coronation my aunt had arrived from Ireland with her two daughters (father was from Dublin) and they had coronation frocks made by mother and aunt who went to sewing class. My mother's sister and daughter also were given a room but in the coronation photograph she wore ordinary clothes. Mother's sister an family moved to a wooden house my uncle built, near an RAF base where he worked. Father's sisters family moved to a council flat above a shop which became part of the family chain of hardware shops run by my uncle who had severe mental health problems. To fund all this Flint House was sold and the family, soon expanding to five children, moved to an out of town semi wholly inadequate for family needs. Four years later we all moved to a more roomy house in a village quite a way out of town.

I remember school close to Flint House as being a terrifying place. I could already read and write so copy-writing onto slates was not particularly enthusing. These were the days of 40 to a class so education was rudimentary

FRAGMENTS 1. Childhood - Santa

These accounts cover remembered events, many of which have been frequently discussed among family and friends. Though limited in scope, they raise life issues of some importance.

 This first one is about me aged 3-4. The house and context will be explored in the next item. I recounted this with one of the carers who was horrified, until I said, "Well, I was only 3!". I remember it as a discussion with my siblings, especially my older sister. I was saying, somewhat stridently, that there is no Santa Claus. Presents came from Mum and Dad. Sister said she would stay awake and prove me wrong (she didn't manage that). Mince pies were put out, which were eaten (by Dad said I). My mother indicated that I preached this far and wide, and other mothers dropped by to tell her to shut me up (no easy matter). 

How I worked all this out I do not recall but I suspect I was over aware of what was said on the radio and to the conversations around me. The wider issue of lying to children stayed with me. There is of course a magic in fantasy. Through childhood the fantasy world in Rupert Bear Annuals was a constant influence (Christmas presents) but these were obviously (to a young child) just stories. Father Christmas has a big presence in these Annuals.

My skepticism made me ambivalent to the evangelical Christianity I was brought up in. Many of my age mates there stayed with it for life, but my awkward questions were found uncomfortable and I was even by one declared a heretic who ought to be thrown out. 

Respect for children and intellectual honesty is what I have drawn out of this.

Valentine.

 Busy with tidying up and throwing away unwanted papers, I came across a Valentine Card to us both from a carer in 2020. It says:

Happy Valentines Day 2020.

A little sweet treat for you both the share.

The devotion you have to each other in the daily care shown in your beautiful home speaks volumes and is quite something to be part of.

Keep caring

Keep loving

Keet smiling

Keep laughing

Keep going

Keep well

Keep doing an amazing job Stephen in your care and love for your beautiful Jean.

If she could tell you today how much she loves and thanks you I know she would.