Where Were You?

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By Radical Rhymes

I wanted to reflect on those moments where people might ask you: ‘Where were you when?’ The focus will mainly be on political or world events, even though my life has largely been dominated by sporting occasions. It would be a bit dull, I figured, to recount a series of ‘I was glued to the TV’ moments.

The only one I could describe with some feeling was the Rugby World cup win in 2003, because I was with my mum and baby son. She passed away two years ago in December and I vividly recall us both leaping to our feet and screaming the moment the ball left Jonny Wilkinson’s boot. It was the only time we woke him up without chastising each other – he was not a great sleeper at the stage… How I wish she were still here.

Anyway, back to the focus. Political and world events.

My first such event was the election of John Major in 1992. All my conscious life I’d been subjected to the ‘leadership’ of Margaret Thatcher, one of the most unfeeling and horrendous politicians in British history, in my view. A woman who derided society and unleashed a rampant individualism that has hollowed out communities and contributed to the erosion of our environment. The long term consequences of her brand of New Right thinking (Keith Joseph’s thinking) are all too apparent.

If I wasn’t yet the politically informed person I subsequently became, I felt the importance of an end to Conservative rule. The build up had all been promising, Neil Kinnock looked like a Labour shoe-in. And then there was that triumphalism just before the voting that just may have had an adverse impact on the public. It was the first election I’d watched nearly all the way through, but I was on the way to work, riding my bike through a cold mist when Major’s win was finally announced.

Desolate. Angry. I rode to work despising my fellow ‘subjects’, how could they vote for more of the same? How could they subject us young people to more of their selfishness and spite? It was an awful journey filled with despair.

There are so many subsequent moments, but the next one that I remember with some clarity was 9/11. I had come home from work, a different time, a different job, and was picking my wife up from the local library. Her workplace. The mood was sombre, and I wondered what was wrong. The TV was on above the counter, but before I could work out what had happened, one of her colleagues told me. As it happens the imagery matched her description in that very instant. It was surreal. Like a layered movie. On the one hand it looked like a sequence from a film, and on the other, it all clicked together like a montage. The disbelief and sense of dread, soon to be laced with sorrow for all the people lost and the families affected, was so incredibly profound.

This is not to dismiss all the horrors that other countries have suffered, not least those carried out by the USA and Britain, and there have been many – some of which we may never know about… But I am just replaying the most profound events in MY experience.

Next was the Brexit result. I was fitfully asleep, having gone to bed hopeful that my fellows wouldn’t make such a foolish error as to leave the biggest social, economic and political project in the world and leave us vulnerable and alone. Then my oldest son, the very same son from the rugby story, shook me awake to share the awful news. Bleary, disorientated, I couldn’t quite process it. And the days after felt like living through a disaster movie, a truly horrific numbness it took weeks to shake off. To be honest, the ramifications of that lunacy are still to become clear. Bloody Boris Johnson, what an over-privileged, incompetent, lying narcissist!

Speaking of which…

For the past two years I have found myself active in the virtual movement, The Resistance, which was configured to dethrone Donald J Trump. Trump. The archetype for sociopathic narcissists everywhere. A man so incapable that he couldn’t make a casino pay. A man given every advantage and who turned everything he touched to ash.

Actually, the day he won my son woke me up in exactly the same way. He feared that the world was ending. The following day, before I could begin my lecture on equality of opportunity in a European context, one of the US exchange students stood up and apologised for electing such a repulsive individual. We all reassured her that she wasn’t to blame and offered her OUR condolences. That touched everyone in the room.

About half way through his term I decided I couldn’t do nothing and so I began to write poetry and produce art designed, in part, to highlight the monstrous nature of having a faded reality star, a bigoted narcissist at the head of the most powerful nation on Earth. I had a breakdown, left my profession, and threw myself into helping resisters connect and provide as much critique as I could (alongside more positive efforts to help people see the best in themselves)

Then, after a protracted election process, where it slowly became obvious – amidst Trump’s increasingly ludicrous claims that Biden was cheating – it happened. The culmination of two years of hoping and striving and connecting, my oldest son yelled up the stairs that Biden had won. He was officially the President elect. In that second I was playing cricket in the bathroom with my youngest son (an artifact of covid lockdown).

It was a deeply moving experience for me, relief, delight, HOPE. I will NEVER forget that…

Radical Rhymes is a professional artist working with a range of media – predominantly animal/human portraits and landscapes – including, most recently, hand painted furniture. You can see his work on Instagram Radicalrhymes1969 or on Twitter @RhymesRadical.

For commissions, please contact him on Twitter via Direct Message or by email at: radicalrhymes@outlook.com His work is also available to buy on Etsy

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