FIRST MONTH HOME

 I arrived home from hospital just before Christmas. I bought a smartphone and laptop to give myself computing on the road. My wife has settled into the care-home very well and her sister was able to visit. I changed my GP to a local surgery who have been helpful. I was getting on well with my physio when unfortunately I fell backward against a table and propably cracked a rib. So it is painkillers for a while. It is most painful when getting out of bed or a chair or twisting awkwardly. 

I was making good progress but my mobility and confidence suffered. The fall was caused by getting out of bed too quickly and losing my balance. My back and ribs were bruised by a bedside table giving me a sharp pain when sitting and lieing in bed and especially when coughing. Pain killers help. It is gradually improving so fingers crossed.

Hospital wrecked my eyesight so I have new glasses which I am getting used to.I now have to learn how to use my new smart-phone and Tablet  So a busy time ahead!

END OF 2023

 Apologies for those who did not receive a seasonal card, which means everyone. I was admitted to hospital on November 22. I was without computer or address book and flat on my back for the five weeks, uncomfortably. We placed my wife in a good care home locally where she is being safe and continues to settle. I had cared for her over seven years and could no longer do so safely. She doesn't know who I am and so does not fret.

It is hard to describe something so boring as lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling being kept awake by lights at night, snoring and nurse chatter I was next to the nurse station. At 6am we were woken up by lights on and first obs (blood pressure, blood oxygen and temperature. Then a light breakfast. I was urged to eat and drink more, bur couldn't, my stomach and lungs were restricted by the fluid. Being on water tablets I peed all night.Meds came next, then doctors did their rounds.Of the nurses, a number came from Kerela South India and were delighted tha t had been there.

As it was a teaching hospital junior doctors crowded around my be, and interviewed me about my symptoms. Two carried out the drain after being shown how, and under supervision. In excess of10 litres were drained off, I was never told how much.That reduced my size and weight -- and of course energy.

The final week was in 'intermediate care' (rehabilitation) which was disappointing. Physio led, I didn't see a physio till day 4. They had to tick off simple tasks about living at home - could I make a cup of tea, climb stairs, wash and dress mayself and walk safely with a zimmer frame. I could do all these on the main ward but was forbidden to do most without supervision on rehab. I spent more time in bed because I was forbidden to walk around. I soon rebelled and the  staff gave up on me. By Friday the allowed me home, proving handrails, chair arms, a shower seat and bed  rails to help me out of bed. I am making good progress. I am eating better and drinking better. I hope I begin to put some weight on now.

Respect.

Written on International Women's Day 2023.

The song Respect had a history in the 1960s, promoted by Otis Redding and redirected by Aretha Franklin into the feminist anthem it became. It came from the 1960s but seems tame today - when her man comes home, give the lady some respect.

All I'm askin'
(Oo) Is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit)

It led to the song Natural Woman, which was again not the feminism that would develop later:

When my soul was in the lost and found
You came along to claim it
I didn't know just what was wrong with me
'Til your kiss helped me name it
Now I'm no longer doubtful, of what I'm living for
And if I make you happy I don't need to do more
'Cause you make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like a natural woman

Today's feminism demands agency andfree choices which are free of patriarchy (that is male demands. Women musicians were freeing themselves from male demands to be pretty eye candy, subject to 'the male gaze' criticising their looks, bodies and behaviour. Violence against women was and is a consequence of these outdated male attitudes. The battle for female emancipation is renewed still, decade by decade.

Respect was a civil rights theme also. Bob Dylan's Blowing in the Wind became a civil rights anthem:

And how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

The chorus draws on the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes: all is vanity and a striving after wind. It cannot be grasped.. Such a text would be well known to Robert Zimmerman.

I had been involved as a carer to my younger siblings through the 1960s. Those years were controlled by the evangelical Christian group called Plymouth Brethren who devalued the role of women. Many of the young women I knew never really broke away. When my mother did, she said that she wished had broken away years before because she found her local church so welcoming and supportive. I as a 17 year old raised the issue of female freedoms in a Bible study public meeting (led by a preacherer ironically called Short) and was shouted at by an out of control former 'Exclusive Brethren' member, bullying of the highest order. I was taken to task by the 'oversight', the senior men because I had asked such a question. Good grief!. They were wrong and I was right. My PhD topic was about marriage and the position of women in society. My first publication in 1972 was about women in the Bible, not brilliant but at least authentic.

By the time I arrived at Manchester University, the evangelical fundamentalism I had been brought up with have been challenged and rejected. Essentially I had become an enemy to patriarchy and to coercive behaviour in general. I was slow to distance myself from evangelicalism. I remember seeing adverts for the Bahai Faith in my first university term. In that transitional period of my life I might have joined them as they have much that morally appeals to me. In terms of this item, Bahais believe in equality of the sexes and condemnation of misogyny. Their belief in the divine was less fundamentalist than I had been taught with more emphasis on mystery. Today I find this harder as I have distanced myself from divine realism (as opposed to a symbolic metaphor). I nevertheless value my later work with Bahais.

My life has always been female focused and my social and academic ambitions have been concerned with the emancipation of women, both in real life and in student work. My wife too devoted her teaching life to supporting female students and colleagues. Some are still in touch. There are some interesting stories. School teacher friends in Oldham married in the early 1970s and we agreed to drive them to their hotel. But they were interested in steam railways and had a long term connection to the Worth Valley Railway and on their wedding day the preserved locomotive 92220 Evening Star, the last steam locomotive to be built (1960) was in Haworth where a party was arranged. So of course we drove them to Haworth, where we all enjoyed the party before delivering them to their hotel. Meantime, back at the wedding, folks had decorated their own car with tin cans, only to see us drive away on our Austin A40. 50 years later they are still close friends.

In the late 1980s I was working in teacher training in Oxford, and she became deputy head of a girls' comprehensive school, a quarter of whose pupils were Asian, mostly Pakistani. We became very close to the Pakistani community. This paragraph features a close friend who has been like family now for 35 years. Though she had a teaching qualification from the Punjab, she was only allowed to work as a teaching assistant in England, working with the Equal Opportunities Centre. She registered for an MEd which she passed, and with the help of our local HMI Ron Arnold we managed to secure qualified teacher status for her in 1990. We went to Pakistan for a family wedding in 1992 and as I worked away in Birmingham that year Jean stayed with her to save her commute during the week. The school closed because of falling numbers, leaving Muslim girls with no school to go to. So this friend and Jean set up a small Muslim girls secondary school which had excellent exam results and help many girls to university courses. I supervised this friend for her PhD for which she interviewed 80 former pupils about their educational experiences and their consequences. She now was an Oxford University post.

A final story. Jean worked in Swindon College from the early 2000s until the powers that be unfairly closed the department. A colleague and friend.applied for and was offered a school post subject to references, but Jean found the request sitting unanswered in an in-tray. Enough to say that after a bit of shouting, a reply hit the post that day and the offer was confirmed. There the colleague met her husband and has been happily married now for twenty years.

I hope we have both enriched the lives of the women and girls we have met and taught and encouraged them towards independent lives with personal agency.

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.