Fathers Day 2020 – A Sad Admission
Fathers Day in the UK is rolling around again. Every year since my daughter Zuzu died in July 2005 in her room in my flat in Sydney I contend with this day. This year it’s hit me in a different… Continue Reading
Disability
Shorty the Cat and Jon the Christ
Today he thought he was Christ. He wasn’t Christ but today he thought he was Christ because being Christ was a great deal more interesting than Jonathan Craig Baynes of Whitchurch Avenue. Jon wasn’t mad, he was simply bored. Very,… Continue Reading
On the Death of a Child & Trigger Warnings
The problem with Trigger Warnings is that they often exacerbate the pain than they seek to protect us from. They also propose a world where healing from many different traumas is homogenised into a synthetic mass agreement on what constitutes pain, damage, confrontation or peace. The synthesis is too simplistic and is in fact more demagogic than pedagogic: it speaks to a mass lie of consensus rather than enabling people to learn their way through their horrors. Continue Reading
On Being Questioned Over the Death of a Child – Part 1
I was living in Sydney, Australia the day that my daughter died of a combination of pneumonia, a badly administered anaesthetic following dentistry work and her disability. She died in the room next to mine. I discovered her in the morning. Continue Reading