CYCLE 4 DAYS 8, 9, 10 & 11
I re-emerge from a WiFi hell where I was thwarted in my ambition to take my blog on the road. So I am going to try and catch up the lost days and get up to date with my journey. Day 70, my last post end with me arriving and finding my room, L30, that looked out over the front drive. The L stands for Lodge, the main building so I was close to all the amenities, which I was very glad for over the coming three days as I tired over the course of the conference. I unpacked and took stock of my room like a cat in a new room, by which time it was conference start time in the main meeting room located in the mews.
Of course the first thing I did was look around to see if there were any familiar faces, and of course there were. It always is a relief to see a colleague and friend from across the years of attending the same conference. This is the 30th of these conferences that I have attended and as a result have a small “family” of people who share a common history at this conference and I some cases from working together in various services and projects.
I’m not going to go through the whole conference blow by blow, how tedious that would be, but I shall pick out highlights for me from the the three days. It is worth pointing out that the TCTC conference is constructed as a temporary community and therefore it has spaces in it for large reflective groups and small reflective groups. So once a presentation has been ended it is often followed by an opportunity to have time with either the whole conference or in a small group to think about and discuss the issues that arise out of the presentations. This leads to an exploration of all the different things that people have taken from the session, which is of course a fascinating diversity.
The first day was about the services to children, the second day was about adult mental health and the final day focussed on the Justice and Addictions services. My own personal highlight came with the presentation by Penny Campling on the second day. She was co-author of a book called Intelligent Kindness and at the conference read four extracts from her memoir of being a psychiatrist over the past years from a junior doctor to being a consultant psychiatrist. She highlighted how institutionalised she had become and how quickly that had happened. She asked why and how we as caring professionals we managed not to mention the things that disturbed us or challenge what was going on. Of course looking back on others eras it is easy to see the cruel and insensitive practices, the question is what is it we are seeing and mentioning now? What is I that inhibits us in these situations. It reminded me of Sarah Bakewel’s book, The Existential Café, description of how Germans and others were able to ignore the rise of Nazism in the early Hitler years by minimalizing the significance of the demands on them and their compliance with new dictates against specific groups. Penny read her four extracts in a wonderfully animated and real way that really screamed for her to release her memoir as an audio book. The last extract she read was about a 25 year anniversary celebration of a therapeutic community of which I was the original therapy manager and lead for. Apart from the gratification of knowing that a therapeutic community that I was responsible for starting had survived, it was an eerie feeling hearing someone talk about an important part of my history.
One other highlight was the team from Slough with their presentation on “Enabling Town Slough”. Yes, doesn’t sound promising but it was quite uplifting. The mental health lead part of the presentation included a slide of a cow, with swishing tai, standing looking out at the audience. “What do you see” asked the presenter. “Cow in a field” came the answer. “No. It is a cow of the field!” Brilliant, it summed up so much of what the team had been working on in the town of Slough and with the clients that the service they had created was for. This is a far cry from the Slough of John Betjeman’s famous poem. https://binged.it/2NKLTPg
Another personal moment that will stay with me was the Brenchley Unit workshop, where they described their use of art and creative therapies in the treatment process. The relatively small number of us were invited to create a piece of art that we could use to introduce ourselves and who we are. I found myself using the design of one of my T shirts and the thoughts I have about the kind of time that my life now ticks by. Once completed we had the opportunity to view others work and to share why we had produced what we had. I was asked about mine opening up and what was inside. It was the first time I had explained to a group about my cancer and how my time was now measured differently. I received lovely responses from the group, but one that stuck with me was from the woman who looked at me and said “you have just told me you are dying”. I suppose I had but had not intended it to be that dramatic, after all due to this new waxy clock time I’ve no idea if its months or years. At the end of the session I tucked my art work into my bag and made off with it, not sure what I would do with it.
Outside: 
Inside
On the night of the conference dinner I enjoyed the company of the people around me and as most people went of to the post dinner Ceilidh I found my way to the bar. There I found myself with a group of old friends and colleagues, all white, middle aged, middle class men with whom I talked about my cancer and the real world admin that had created. So there we were discussing having made our Wills, sorted insurance and the complications of providing for our families. We shared the things that had taken us by surprise, such as solicitors that asked the difficult questions about what would happen if any of our beneficiaries died before we did. We had all found this tricky and been forced to consider things we would rather have not. What we had all experienced was a sort of relief and calm once we had done this difficult task. There was a sense of being able to get on with things in a sense of security. It was not long after this that I was sipping lemonade with another group of friends who entertained themselves and others in the bar by singing beautifully, performing Bette Midler impersonations of her doing Sophie Tucker stories and a performance of the cowboy sketch. The Greek guests treated us to a traditional child’s song. All of this interspersed with tales of party and conference faux pars. I went to bed latish but pleased that I had heard all of this as part of the last conference to be held at Cumberland Lodge.
The final day was difficult for me as I felt tired and had the feeling that I had had too many people in too short a time, but that is very much the chemo talking I think, although I have always found prolonged time with people difficult. I was able to identify with a lot of the presentations and workshops as they related to places that I had either worked at or had a hand in their establishment. I found myself saying little and contributing little if anything aware that there was a long journey home to be done later. At the end of the final big group reflection time a friend came across to say good bye and asked if I was alright. For some reason that did it for me and I found myself feeling tearful. Bloody hormones and unconscious processes. I think I had lost myself a bit.
The journey home was dark, slow and wet. I crawled along the M25 to the M1 and then crawled again but eventually got home. The only sensible things to do was to eat and sleep. Usually I unpack, tidy up and prepare for the next day but not this night, I sought my bed as soon as possible and wondered if I would be at the new venue for the conference next year.
Today, Thursday 14th, I woke to another wet day but knew I was going to have a visitor. A friend from York was coming to see me. So all the things that I had not done yesterday needed to be done and the house tidies. I set to and unpacked, tidied up, read my post (whoopee the winter fuel allowance is due), and ran a glitter bomb bath. My friend arrived and we sat and talked, with me talking about the conference and the latest books I am reading whilst she talked about the real world of work and family. At lunchtime we went for lunch to find that at least two of the ways out of the village were flooded, so it was a long route into town and the Cosy Club for food. A tasty lunch and more conversation. We drove back to the village and still it rained and still the village was difficult to get into. My friend had to leave in order to get back at a reasonable time, however she rang me to say the alternative route out of my village was now also closed and had had to make a long detour to get to the M1. As I type this I know that she still has not made it home and is ploughing her way up the motorway in appalling conditions. I’ve not known the village to be so affected in over 25 years.
The night has passsed, England scored seven goals in the football international and thankfully my friend has arrived home to family safely after a long and tiring journey up the motorway. My partner has had to cancel her singing lesson as the tutor would not have made it through the floods around the village. It is time to retire and hope the rain stops and tommorow brings some respite from the water.
