Vienna Blood review

Sigmund Freud was an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes long before criminal psychologists were created to bridge the gap between their two vocations. Detectives and therapists both dig beneath surface impressions to mine deeply buried nuggets of truth though in the world of entertainment the dark ‘glamour’ of murderous psychopathology usually boosts the TV ratings more than the slower-burning mishaps of insecure attachments.

Both professions team up in Vienna Blood. This BBC series pairs a young Jewish psychoanalyst Max Liebermann (played by Matthew Beard) with Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt (Jürgen Maurer) who investigate a series of grisly murders in the grand and genteel capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the early 1900s. It showcases the old world of Europe at its complacent peak shortly before the rumbling tectonic forces beneath are unleashed in the destructive madness of world war. 

Liebermann’s psychological insights echo the evolving work of his mentor, Freud, which he employs to unmask the real culprits behind the usual suspects. But his phlegmatic response to the pathological instincts of others seems to reflect a resigned acceptance of our weaknesses as a species. His recognition of our animal passions inevitably puts him at loggerheads with a Judeo-Christian world still reeling from Darwin’s religious heresy.

Liebermann’s stubborn, singular character rejects taking the paths expected of him. He’s an existentialist who refuses to play his role in bad faith. He breaks off his engagement with the beautiful Clara with whom he makes a perfect match in the eyes of his doting parents – a scandal he amplifies by instead pursuing a former patient. But he’s no romantic fool. His detached analytical mind seems resistant to the temporary raging of hormones. In the complex and elusive Amelia, he recognises a kindred spirit whom he doggedly pursues despite the obstacles placed between them by society. If everyone else thinks he’s mad, or at least maddening, he acts as if he has no choice.

When he investigates the other-worldly demise of a medium – he unflinchingly pursues a rational explanation while his peers are infected by superstitious doubt. As a doctor, he harms his prospects by specialising in the maligned new science of psychoanalysis, but for Liebermann the authentic life cannot be denied. And by rarely ingratiating himself with others, he has few friends beyond his odd-couple bromance with Rheinhardt. His diffidence perhaps reflects his dispassionate understanding of human nature and a disdain for the soothing blandishments of his peers. But if his manner betrays little passion for his fellow humans, his aesthetic sense finds a contemplative joy in their greatest works. Along with the mysteries of the mind, he loses himself in the solace and beauty of fine music and art.     

His empathy towards less privileged minorities is deepened perhaps by the latest convulsions of anti-Semitism with which he and the Jewish community are increasingly confronted. While his family is notionally accepted by society, their cultural difference marks them out as honorary members whose position is conditional on them supporting the status quo. Perhaps this experience helps Liebermann challenge the convenient labelling of a class of ‘mad, bad’ Others from whom we separate our ‘normal’ selves and to whom we deny compassion. For the alleged villains of these pieces are plucked from the ranks of the traumatised, uneducated, impoverished and unloved – scapegoats for the dark and powerful forces which society chooses not to see as the true enemies within.

Liebermann’s wistful demeanour often seems out of sync with the more mercurial emotions of those around him. Perhaps it betrays the curse of knowing too much.   

Voyages Into The Unknown

An exploration using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the experiences of returning voluntary migrants

Authors: Gareth Mason and Denise Lelitro

Abstract: This study draws on Interpretative Phenomenological Interpretation (IPA) to reflect the experience of voluntary migration and return by exploring the experiences of four British men. Voluntary migrants are understood as those who are not politically or economically driven.

The findings draw on a wide range of literature including relevant autobiographical, fictional and anthropological work to offset the lack of psychological writing on voluntary migration.
Nine major themes emerged. These include travelling as a heroic quest; growth through challenging experience; struggles re-assimilating; and the search for a more satisfying home. Home and belonging emerge as nebulous manifold concepts encompassing spiritual and emotional aspirations beyond its physical dimensions. The study identified early background and life experiences as crucial influences in the outcomes of living abroad and resettling in their native country and hopes to aid therapeutic practice by illuminating these connections.

Keywords: Migration, Abroad, Home, Return, Belonging, Identity

LITERATURE REVIEW

Mythology and religion have influenced much of the psychological writing referenced. The Bible discusses exilic themes in terms of reward or punishment such as Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden or Abraham’s call to the Promised Land.

Trials are another major theme as exemplified by mythological heroes such as Odysseus, who perhaps best exemplifies the physical and psychological struggles of adventuring far from home (Homer, 1946), or the Biblical testing of Abraham or Job. Campbell too discussed the ‘hero’s’ journey from the call to adventure to trials and transformation (1988/1949). This was supported by Jung’s transpersonal work particularly the archetypes of our Collective Unconscious (1951).

The Grinbergs (1984) suggest Biblical and mythological exile stories enshrine early societal practices to avoid conflict – such as the taboos of parricide and incest discussed by Freud (2010/1899) in the Oedipal myth. Campbell says myths personified in tribal rituals validate the individual within a cohesive society although ‘indifference, revolt or exile – break the vitalising correctives’ (1988/1949, p.383). But he also implies seekers of wisdom do not always lose their connection with society. Such individuals can uncover ‘the essence of oneself and the essence of the world: these two are one’ (p.386). He cites the ‘ascetic medieval saints and yogis of India’ (p.385) discovering a ‘universal consciousness’. A respected place may thus exist for these solitary figures – even an active role – as shaman or priest, or their modern scientific equivalents: doctors and teachers, who now draw more on scientific than sacred learning.  Jung (1948) proposed symbols ‘protect a person from a direct experience of god… but if he leaves home and family, lives too long alone, and gazes too deeply into the dark mirror, then the awful event of the meeting may befall him’ (p.59). If the quest far from home presents dangers, the changes wrought may make return problematic too.

While psychological studies on voluntary migration are limited, the Grinbergs' work (1984) is sufficiently comprehensive to include themes on both forced and voluntary migrations. Kernberg’s foreword highlights its exploration of ‘the unconscious processes activated in the individual as… [they] face the challenges of leaving one world behind and adapting to a new one’ (p.ii), and their attention to the significance of social and cultural factors, age and language. They draw heavily on Freud, Klein, Bowlby, Winnicott and Bion in discussing how defences, object relations, and attachment theory can explain conditions such as loneliness and psychosis and how migration can lead to identity crises or enlightenment.

Also discussed is Balint’s classification of people as ocnophilic or philobatic personalities (1959) defined roughly as those seeking respectively either the familiar and stable, or the new and exciting. Balint believed voluntary migrants are usually philobatic.

Mahler et al’s work on separation-individuation (2008/1975) is also referenced, explaining how attachment issues can precipitate psychosis in migrants. Elsewhere, Huntington (1981) draws on Bowlby, Bion and Winnicott to explain how separation anxiety is heightened in strange situations – a situation exemplified by migration when dislocation from a secure base exacerbates poor childhood attachments.

Madison (2010) draws on eclectic sources in exploring voluntary migration from an existential perspective. He describes intangible ideas such as Freud’s uncanny (1919) or Heidegger’s unheimlich (1962/1927) referring to respectively something frightening but familiar, and not feeling at-home. Heidegger’s concepts of dasein, authenticity and fallen-ness are also usefully explored. Madison says ‘the experience of the unheimlich discloses that we drift along in life without a foundational ground, forever cadavering towards annihilation’ (2010, p.227). Despite the grim language, this represents an interesting counterpoint to the psychoanalytic view. We understand not-being-at-home as the state from which angst calls us to recover dasein from its lost-ness in everyday thinking (Heidegger, 1962/1927). We discern a connection here with mythological ideas – such as the ‘call of conscience’, and existential migrants as ‘heroes’ (Madison, 2010). Perhaps it's no co-incidence that many young travellers boast of being ‘authentic travellers’ rather than mere ‘tourists’.

The relative dearth of specific psychological literature was partially offset by examining the escapades of some literary travellers who highlighted issues and motivations common to voluntary migration. Leigh Fermor’s hopeful pioneer set out across Europe 'like a tramp or… like a pilgrim or a palmer, an errant scholar, a broken knight… all of a sudden this was not merely the obvious, but the only thing to do’ (1977, p.12). Meanwhile, Lee highlighted the ambivalence of uprooting oneself while ‘taunted by echoes of home’ (1971, p.13).

The journalist Kapuściński (2008) explored the colourful but difficult realities presented by distant exotic lands. He was influenced by Levinas, a holocaust survivor who studied under Heidegger and Husserl, who believed ‘The Self is only possible through the recognition of the other’ (p.5). Kapuściński believed self-hood was realised by communing with the other on an individual and global level comparing difficult childhoods and later life problems with historical events affecting societal relations. He believed multicultural communities offered a more positive otherness and quotes the philosopher Tischner, who adapts the Cartesian slogan to ‘I know that I am, because I know another is’ (2006, p.209). 

Hoffman and Said wrote seminal autobiographies about emigration. Said’s memoir (1999) details the melange of influences that created his hybrid identity. His statement: ‘the achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever’ sums up its rather depressing tone. Hoffman’s work (1998/1989) evokes her struggle towards assimilation after leaving Poland for the Americas. Fjellestad (1995, p.135) says Hoffman’s story challenges the ‘romantic illusion of unity and centre and of the costs and rewards, the joys and terrors, of being thrown into a post-modern world of constantly shifting boundaries and borderless possibilities’. In describing her relationship with a lover, Hoffman says ‘we explain ourselves like texts. We learn to read each other as one learns to decipher hieroglyphs’ and with a nod to Heidegger’s unheimlich, how after the stereotypes fall away, ‘he becomes familiar, only increasing the wonderment that the familiar should be so unfamiliar, the close so far away’ (p.190).

Hoffman describes her homesickness and nostalgia for post-war Krakow, saying ‘it throws a film over everything around me, and directs my vision onwards’ (p.115). Hoffman later describes herself as visibly ‘a member of a post-war international class’ without feeling it (p.170). During psycho-analysis, she completes her understanding of the English-speaking world, integrating her Polish and American selves following the trauma of culture shock.     

METHODOLOGY

A constructionist paradigm seemed appropriate for uncovering multiple truths with its emphasis on reality being socially created rather than existing as an external singular entity (Hansen, 2004). According to Ponterotto (2005), constructionism uses a hermeneutical approach to draw out deeper meanings via reflection, particularly researcher interaction.

Ontologically, this relativistic position is subjective and influenced by individual experience and perceptions, and social environment. We accept, therefore, that results will differ if the study was interpreted by different researchers, as no single truth exists (Finlay, 2016) – the study's value drawing on the ‘thickness’ of descriptions (Ponterotto, 2005).

Epistemologically, the relationship between ‘knower and would-be-knower’ (Ponterotto, p.127), represented by participant and researcher in IPA is central. Constructionism states reality is socially created – so the dynamic is crucial. Similarly, in axiological terms, researcher values are inevitably enmeshed in the process so a personal and subjective rhetorical structure – such as IPA – that details the thoughts and feelings of both people seems appropriate (ibid).

A phenomenological method was chosen as it considers both cognitions and emotions – the embodied aspect often being overlooked in psychological theory (Smith el al, 2009). IPA was also favoured for its value in investigating identity and health issues. Furthermore, we did not plan to create theory. IPA also links interpretation with mainstream psychological thinking; to investigate cognitions and emotions where mainstream psychology treats them separately; and to look at deeper levels of reflection more than other qualitative approaches (Smith, 1996).   

The researchers’ time abroad inspired the study so we remain mindful of our influence as reflexive researchers. As bracketing is intrinsic to phenomenology, we followed Ashworth’s advice to set aside scientific theories, the truth or falsity of participants’ claims, and personal views and experiences (1996). Nonetheless, Giorgi admits: ‘Nothing can be accomplished without subjectivity so its elimination is not the solution’ (1994, p.205), while du Plock describes ‘the notion of the neutral objective researcher’ as ‘absurd’ (2016, p.16).

THE PARTICIPANTS

In keeping with IPA’s tendency to analyse small detailed purposive samples, we limited participation to four men from a relatively homogeneous demographic – the implications are discussed in the findings. Smith says: ‘IPA studies are conducted on a relatively small sample sizes, and the aim is to find a reasonably homogenous sample, so that, within the sample, we can examine convergence and divergence in some detail’ (2009, p.3). Furthermore, as the dissertation on which the paper is based was one of the author’s first IPA study, we quote Smith saying: ‘our advice to a newcomer to IPA is to try to obtain a group which is pretty homogeneous’ (p.50).

The target group were UK natives, who had lived full-time overseas for more than three years and spent over a year back in the UK to allow exploration of the ‘before and after’ periods of their experience. The field was narrowed to men between the ages of 40-45 to decrease sample variables although differences exist in time spent both overseas and back in the UK. All four are white, but colour was not a criteria. Social class was not part of the selection process while the interviews revealed significant differences in parental income, profession, and quality of upbringing.    

THE INTERVIEWEES

Findings

The Analysis

Our IPA analysis followed the five stages suggested by Smith, Flowers & Larkin (2009). Briefly, these are reading and re-reading transcripts; initial noting; developing emergent themes; connection across emergent themes; and discerning patterns across cases. Primarily, we analysed the transcripts from descriptive, linguistic and conceptual perspectives (ibid).
The master themes were identified after completing the interviews. Themes relevant only to one individual participant were discarded – some of these omissions are discussed in the conclusions. The master themes reflected patterns across the interviews – each distinguished by significant emotional or cognitive resonance. We were mindful of not lending greater weight to themes reflecting the literature review or our own experiences.

This process involved substantial re-reading of transcripts and reworking of the material. Ultimately, the emerging superordinate themes listed below reflected the chronology of the participants’ lives as revealed by the interviews although this was a natural outcome rather than planned. The first subordinate themes involved childhoods and motivation; the second, aspects of the experience abroad; and the third looked at re-assimilation into British society.

1) MASTER THEMES

Discussion

1.1) Escape from Childhood

The Grinbergs say travel can be an escape from home rather than heading towards a destination (1984). Daniel’s travelling seemed to need the complement of psychological ‘inner journeying’ (Madison, 2010) to escape the past. For Alan and Daniel, frequent movement between unsatisfying early environments combined with insecure parental attachments (Bowlby, 1960). Alan says of his home: ‘Emotionally and spiritually, there was quite a lot of discord’.

Home for Daniel appears less a place than a loving community. He says: ‘I rejected a part of the rural part of E- that we lived in because it represented such a difficult time’. When migration failed to discover what felt like a home, he seemed to experience aspects of the unheimlich (Heidegger, 1962/1927) and the uncanny (Freud, 1919).

All four subscribe to a ‘long-harboured desire’ for sustained adventure (Grinbergs, 1984, p.58). For Alan and Daniel specifically: ‘lack of containment and support may precipitate psychosis, perversion, delinquency, or drug use’ (p.127) when changing environments to heal childhood problems.

1.2) The Comfort of Strangers

Madison (2010) discusses how some – like Daniel – use travelling to re-connect and progress within the world to build up confidence. Daniel says: ‘I felt very strong about Latin American issues… I had a Latin American outlook’. Succeeding away perhaps offsets feeling failure at home. Madison also suggests some flee home to avoid feeling overwhelmed, and to achieve balance between contact and isolation, and how peer rejection can be projected onto places.
Kristeva talks about foreigners representing ‘the hidden face of our identity’ (1991, p.1) and how integrating them into our unconscious releases it from a repressed pathological state. Daniel and Alan may have felt unconsciously reassured by this. 

Meanwhile, if ‘physical space allows mental space’ (Madison, 2010, p.209), Alan embraced it saying he idealised his life overseas – a common reaction that can lead to hypomania in new arrivals – its corollary often being a later collapse (Grinbergs, 1984), which Alan’s experiences also reflect when ‘stripped almost overnight of the people… [he] spent a lot of amazing times with’.  

Perhaps the common link is the desire to self-actualise (Maslow, 1954) coupled with their rejection of a constraining tribal loyalty. All four were attracted to the exotic – perhaps their own spiritual mystery, and identity, was better matched with their chosen destination than their first homes (Madison, 2010).

1.3) The International Man

Barry and Malcolm’s international perspective is reflected by their being-at-home in more than one place as if they transcended home and foreign culture rather than being subsumed by either. Barry says: ‘I always try to see myself as an international person… I like freedom’.
Alan and Daniel perhaps took longer to achieve this due to their initial rejection of home. Madison describes how ‘dual belonging’ (2010, p.103) can resolve the tension between a strong self-identity and sense of belonging.

Alan’s national identity is less obvious as his peers share interests rather than cultures or places saying ‘British culture became a culture shock to me because I had lived a European life’. Or as Madison (2010) suggests, perhaps Alan avoids isolation by grouping with internationalists equally unattached to home countries. 

Daniel’s fragile attachment to Britain seems linked to his lack of belonging to family and early homes – an assumption Madison (2010) also identifies.

2) KINGS OF THE WILD FRONTIER

2.1) University of Life

Madison says intellectual studies – such as those later displayed by Daniel and Malcolm – are examples of ‘journeying inwards’ (2010, p.105), while early failure is identified by Alan’s admission that ‘a lot of us could have done better academically than we did’ when faced with the choice of ‘going surfing for the weekend or sitting around doing your pure maths homework’. Freud said the sublimation of studying, a mature version of displacing the libido, was ‘what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important part in civilised life’ (1930, p.79).

Daniel didn’t pursue medicine to regulate his libido, but his long-simmering intellectual frustration seems usefully channelled into study! For him ‘studying medicine is as thrilling and as much an adventure as travelling’.

Madison (2010) sees compassion for the underdog – demonstrated by all four – as a complement to a personal fight for independence, while Hoffman (1998) talks of exiles creatively reviewing life’s mysteries from abroad – perhaps enhanced by the extra time and space often available.          

2.2) Lust for Life

All were drawn to what Heidegger might describe as authentic experiences (1962/1927) and prioritising adventure over financial security (Madison, 2010). Barry says: ‘I had this something in me, which I had picked up in America, this sort of lust for life’. Daniel says: ‘there were no bounds to what I did’, while Malcolm ‘revelled in complete freedom’.
Madison’s words could apply to all four: ‘To not be free is to not be alive. In leaving I am embracing my freedom and independence through movement’ (2010, p.270). When he says ‘I have a felt direction more than a felt goal; it is a journey with no set destination, slowly I entertain that the journey is the destination’ (ibid), it particularly reflects the paths of Alan and Daniel. 

Balint (1959) might highlight the interviewees’ philobatic nature – due to their movement towards new and exciting experiences, but we feel this is balanced by their stated ocnophilic attachments to people and places, home and abroad.

2.3) The Heroic Test

The participants often described their journeys using mythological language.
With Daniel, we perceived parallels between his life stages, and the trials of the archetypal mythological hero, namely: a peripatetic childhood; uncertain ancestry beyond his adopted parents; restless ‘drifting’; his desire for ‘transformation’; a passage through ‘madness’; a ‘magical’ chosen land; and his role as teacher, and later doctor, allowing him to be ‘a part of society, actually fulfilling a useful role professionally and personally’. He sought a ‘transformative’ experience that would make him: ‘a different, more independent, more exciting, more worldly person’. Of his chosen professions, Jung’s ‘wounded healer’ (1951) suggests itself, as does the shaman who harnesses skills that set him apart. ‘It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero’, says Campbell, ‘but precisely the reverse’ (p.391).

The ‘purification of the self’ after an individual undertakes ‘the perilous journey… into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth’ could reflect Daniel’s positive transformation following a ‘manic psychosis’. Campbell describes ‘the process of dissolving, transcending, or transmuting the infantile images of our personal past’ (p.101). This chimes with Daniel’s improved interaction with the world. Daniel’s travelling ambitions also reminded me of the pleasure-seeking Peer Gynt (Ibsen, 1964/1876), whose eponymous protagonist pursues hedonistic impulses unreflectively. The ‘decadence’ of Daniel’s pleasure-seeking, however, led to disillusionment, and later, a life ‘more fulfilling than the experiences I had there’.

Malcolm’s Panglossian optimism reminded us of the protagonist Karl in Kafka’s Amerika (1996/1927). Nonetheless, he survives well, treating triumph and disaster with equal equanimity and dreams of his family ‘returning like conquering heroes’. He was also reminiscent of the footloose writers, Lee and Leigh Fermor. Leigh Fermor (1977/1947) flipped cheerfully between barns and castle turrets in his peregrinations, while Malcolm was equally at home in an anarchist squat as a millionaire’s chateau.

Barry’s attitude fits the role of Master of the Two Worlds (Campbell, 2004/1949) exercising ‘freedom to pass back and forth across the world division’ (p.229) and refers to his ‘calling’ to London and the ‘magical’ American world.

3) END OF THE DREAM

3.1) A Life more Ordinary

Page claims ‘re-entry shock is as powerful as culture shock’ (1990, p.181) and how denying these difficulties often results in disillusionment. Brislin (ibid) says re-adjusting to home is often hardest for those who integrated well overseas. Alan returns to a provincial ‘desert’ where ‘pretty much everyone had left’. The reverse condition, Postponed Depression Syndrome (Grinbergs, 1984), could be applied to Alan for his difficulties abroad after initially immersing himself successfully.

Madison (2010, p.178) identifies how returning migrants often feel ‘exotic’, but his emphasis is on visiting rather than permanent resettlement. He also suggests migrants may feel superior to those left behind, if also envious of their material gains. My interviewees tended to feel or be seen as exotic when abroad. This is reminiscent of Hoffman feeling an ‘exotic stranger’ in the US and ‘excited by my own otherness, which surrounds me like a bright, somewhat inflated bubble’ (1998, p.179). The interviews suggest the novelty of homecoming was short-lived perhaps representing a fallen-ness from a more authentic existence abroad (Heidegger, 1962/1927). Daniel laments: ‘I identified as being somebody who had lived abroad in a dangerous place that impressed people, and once that was taken away I just felt like another schmuck’.

For Daniel and Alan, return was heralded by the ‘dying’ of foreign worlds. The Grinbergs (1984) noted how returning exiles fall prey to doubt even when the homecoming is cherished. They quote the expressions coined by a Spanish journalist: ‘to be in the throes of de-exile’ and ‘the wound of return’ (Torres, 1983), and cite one returnee who said ‘I don’t feel I belong in either place’ (p.184).

Regarding Alan, the perceived negative reaction of the homeworld with his ‘long hair [and] ridiculous suntan’ was perhaps reminiscent of the reception Turkish workers reported after working in Germany when mocked as Alamanyali or German-like (Mandel, 2008).

3.2) Paradise Lost

The burning of this bridge to the dwelling place of others left Alan and Daniel caught between two worlds – a common situation identified by Madison (2010).

This sense of failure perhaps deepened early psychological fissures. Metaphorically, they return empty-handed rather than triumphantly bearing the hard-won ‘elixir’ (Campbell, 2004/1949). Daniel described his dissolution abroad almost like a personal expulsion from Eden claiming the loss of ‘a whole dimension of my character’, while Malcolm says: ‘I've left a bit of my heart in France’. The Grinbergs (1984) suggest migration can release latent pathology – something applicable to Daniel’s experiences on his outward and return journeys.

Of work, Alan was ‘sick and tired of just making money and working my balls off for other people’ at ‘what’s supposed to be a grown-up age’ and that ‘the veneer was starting to peel away’. This is similar to migrants feeling infantilised abroad where their qualifications and experience have little value (Grinbergs, 1984).

3.3) Life through a new Lens

For Daniel and Alan, something of Freud’s uncanny (1919) is glimpsed in their re-acquaintance with former worlds, previously taken for granted, while Heidegger’s unheimlich can be observed in their sense of not being-at-home (1962/1927) – even if this represents a continuation of their unsatisfying relationship with Britain.

Madison (2010) discusses how many migrants need to believe home has not changed to preserve their roots. Daniel, however, was disturbed by the lack of perceived change – referring to his dislike of ‘the millennia old inequalities’.

Alan’s wary response to the digital age echoes Heidegger’s warning that technological ‘progress’ –  epitomised by a skyline redolent with television aerials – reduces the world to a state of homelessness by ushering the public into our private homes (1961). Malcolm, however, positively reflected that ‘I've made myself over there and turned into someone who can actually operate over here’.

CONCLUSIONS

We initially expected the interviews to produce themes exclusively related to the experience of being and returning from overseas. However, issues concerned with the upbringing and background of the participants proved to be significant influences on motives for living overseas, and the quality of the overseas’ experience and resettlement.

Summary of Master themes

Under (1) Finding Home Abroad, the subordinate theme (1a) Escape from Childhood divided the participants into two camps: those running from unsatisfying home environments versus those whose secure base let them happily wander further afield. Thriving in unfamiliar territory was explored in (1b) The Comfort of Strangers; while (1c) The International Man discussed the evolution of their worldly identities.   

Within (2) Kings of the Wild Frontier, we examined a tendency to reject formal education in favour of life experience in (2a) University of Life; the embracing of adventure and hedonism in (2b) Lust for Life; while (2c) The Heroic Quest reflected the interpretation – consciously or otherwise – of identity in mythical metaphors.

(3) End of the Dream dealt with post-migration experience. (3a) Paradise Lost focussed on the repercussions of closing the chapter on a meaningful period of life; while (3b) A Life more Ordinary highlighted the anti-climax of returning to an old world after expanding one’s horizons in a new one. Finally, (3c) Life through a new Lens explored how each constructed a new existence in the UK after assimilating experiences abroad.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY

This study of voluntary migration aims to help those leaving, those left behind – and therapists – better understand its purpose and value.

Therapeutically, we identified the value of immersing oneself in the whole subjective story of the voluntary migrant. For example, Daniel and Alan reported far more emotional turmoil than their co-participants as their migration encompassed much more than their time abroad. Answering the call to adventure was perhaps one of a series of trials and life-changing experiences that helped establish their identity. The crucible of travel, if sometimes perilous, forged their authentic selves. Their experiences, spanning many years, were perhaps not dissimilar to the process of insightful therapy. Meanwhile, the study underlined how the relatively charmed upbringings of Malcolm and Barry contributed to a fulfilling overseas venture.

Cooper Marcus said ‘when we start to seek a broader home in another place, it is likely that the soul is demanding recognition’ (1995, p.252). The drive for unplanned open-ended travel often seems motivated by such intangible mystical forces. For Daniel and Alan, self-actualisation took place on the long and winding road rather than a conventional straight path.

While respecting individual choice, a therapist might usefully explore the underlying issues ­– such as the sense of belonging – that motivate such ventures. This may more directly initiate the healing process than years spent wandering away from the home world. Exploring the personal meanings of home may facilitate it. Journeying inwardly through study, self-improvement, or social activism – as demonstrated by Daniel – may be satisfying alternatives.
Returnees devaluing their experience may benefit from being reminded of the insights they have gained, which may be lost if they are pre-occupied by what they feel they have lost through absence. Otherwise, in its ignorance of their experiences, the home world is likely to reinforce this negative feeling. Furthermore, if the original home feels diminished, perhaps it is because the boundaries that enclosed it have shifted. The dizzying possibilities that now emerge may be viewed fearfully, but can also be re-viewed as symptoms of a more meaningful and authentic existence (Heidegger, 1962/1927).

The Grinbergs say ‘One never goes back, one always goes toward’ (1984, p.216). Those more changed than their home world may benefit from seeking a new more flexible environment for their expanded consciousness. Rapport and Dawson suggest migration can be a ‘creative act’ (1998, p.209) and ‘in displacement lies a route to personal empowerment’ (2003, p.51), something which all the participants grew from in different degrees.

If the wisdom gleaned abroad is made central to one’s new life, it builds on this valuable knowledge rather than wastefully bracketing if off like some invalid reality. Some may relish their experiences as little more than fireside tales, but voluntary migrants who enthusiastically embraced the other may wisely build on these foundations e.g. by using language skills, cultural knowledge or seizing entrepreneurial opportunities. Therapists can foreground these skills lest they be forgotten. 

Myriad practical factors influence the outcomes of voluntary migration such as age, gender, status, social and cultural support – along with the destination and provenance of the traveller (Brislin, 1990). Also important are access to home; ethnicity, religion, race; education, and work skills (ibid). Making potential voluntary migrants aware of how these variables may affect them could later earn them rich dividends.

But ultimately, to many voluntary migrants, fine-tuning the variables perhaps cheats the challenge of heeding the call, which for good or worse, must be braved. For both the supportive therapist of the voluntary migrant, and the often uncomprehending friends and family, this irrational but irrepressible motivation is perhaps the most important factor to accept and understand.

LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER STUDY

Some significant issues suggested by the literature were not investigated as they were not prioritised by the participants. They include loss, which was tangible during Alan’s interview, and writers such as Hoffman (1998), concerning paths not taken. Another is the isolation felt by strangers in a strange land – largely not experienced by our participants; likewise, struggles with integration which my interviewees dealt with largely well. Culture shock was articulated by Alan, but in reference to his return rather than departure.

Space considerations forced me to abandon some interesting – but less supported – themes. These included enhanced economic and social status abroad, the experiences of partners and family, or even the frustration of one’s life-changing stories being met with indifference back home. Others emerged after the interviews, relatively unexplored, such as the impact on identity of learning foreign languages; nocturnal dream worlds; re-inventing oneself in an alien environment; or psychosomatic symptoms attached to emotional trauma. Space considerations also required us to remove many participant quotes; non-psychological, but relevant literature from the review; further detail on methodology etc. which were present in the original dissertation.  

A further study could extend the age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and participant numbers. For example, the themes of Heroic Quest and Lust for Life – well supported by the participants – seem rather stereotypically male. Conversely, a single case study might reveal much by probing deeper into the psyche of one individual. As our participants were similarly-aged white men from a rich Western nation, the results are clearly skewed – we would like to see what is retained with different variables particularly when more participants further iron out the idiosyncratic differences. Even within this narrow demographic, we realise the criteria might benefit from further tightening such as the differences in the places visited, time spent there, and the age of the travellers.

The symptoms discussed, if not the causes, may be reflected by political and economic migrants and those studying or posted overseas. For them, universities and company resettlement programmes may help as do reception centres for refugees, but these options may be randomly available and mere Band-Aids for deeper individual wounds. Future migration studies may benefit from greater emphasis on the individual rather than generalised mass movements (Rapport & Dawson, 1998).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Overall, the participants with a more secure base had fewer problems abroad and in resettling. For the participants whose upbringing was more difficult being abroad might have represented an escape, but it did not necessarily compensate positively for this lack – indeed their issues were often highlighted and amplified abroad. Nonetheless, the conscious act of leaving seems to represent an attempt to overcome this adversity, which allowed them to ultimately understand, accept and grow from it. We also feel that the project benefitted from the positive experiences reported in understanding the factors behind a rewarding voluntary migration.
IPA’s value in investigating issues such as belonging and identity was also highlighted – the interviews largely underpinned these evolving themes. For example, Barry’s childhood home was a happy, nurturing place. It didn’t change, but he did, and the world of cosmopolitan cities became his natural milieu. His harmonious and accessible dual world, which home has become is now varied enough to contain his needs. For Alan, home revolved around shared activities with like-minded companions. His presence in the family home was more of an intrusion than a belonging so it is unsurprising he has grown up adaptable, independent, and unsentimental about childhood. Malcolm’s young adult home was a moveable feast founded on a liberal and nurturing home base, which allowed him to fearlessly seek new adventures elsewhere without needing to escape it. Being abroad gave Daniel the freedom to live fully and create the essence denied by early deprivation, but his travelling experiences were insufficient to make him feel he belonged. His home is now founded on a mutually loving and supportive family – what he lacked as a child.

Traditionally, we believe the lack of psychological literature on voluntary migration reflects a belief that it represents a pathological deviation from the ‘normality’ of settled life. While globalisation increasingly encourages temporary and semi-permanent freedom of movement, we feel an acceptance of migration as an on-going ‘alternative human history’ (Madison, 2010, p.222) will redress this now out-dated bias towards a sedentary life.

Given the freedom to undertake these voyages, the participants all felt compelled to leave one home, to discover another. If they had not done so, we suspect their destinies would feel unfulfilled.

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Freud, S. (1919) The Uncanny. (trans. Strachey, J.) in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud [1955]: 219: 252 Vol. XVIII [1917-1919] An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works. London: Hogarth. Giorgi, A. (1994) A phenomenological perspective on certain qualitative research methods. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology. 25 (2). 190-220. Grinberg, L. and Grinberg, H. (1984). Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Migration and Exile. Yale New Haven and London: University Press. Hansen, J.T. (2004) Thoughts on Knowing: Epistemic implications of counselling practice. Journal of Counselling & Development. 82.131-138. Heidegger, M. (1961) [1953] An Introduction to Metaphysics. (trans. Mannheim, R.). New York: Doubleday. Heidegger, M. (1962) [1927] Being and Time. (trans. Macquarrie, J. & Robinson, E.). New York: Harper & Row. Hoffman, E. (1998) [1989] Lost in Translation. London: Vintage. Homer. (1946) [8th Century BC] The Odyssey. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. Huntington, J. (1981) Migration as a part of life experience. Paper presented at the NSW institute of Psychiatry, Seminar in cross cultural therapy. Ibsen, H. (1964) [1876] Peer Gynt. New York: Signet. Jung, C. (1948) The Integration of the Personality. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Kafka, F. (1996) [1927] Amerika. London: Penguin. Kapuściński, R. (2008) The Other. Verso: Krakow. Kristeva, J. (1991) Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lee, L. (1971) As I Walked out one Midsummer Morning. London: Penguin. Leigh Fermor, P. (1977) [1947] A Time of Gifts. London: John Murray. Madison, G. (2010) Existential Migration: Voluntary migrants’ experience of not being-at-home in the world. Saarbrücken: Lap Lambert. Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (2008) [1975] The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation. New York: Basic Books. Mandel, R. (2008) Cosmopolitan Anxieties. Durham: Duke University Press. Marcus, C.C. (1995) House as a Mirror of Self – exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home. Berkley, CA: Conari Press. Maslow, A. (1954) Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper. Ponterotto, J.G. (2005) Qualitative Research in Counselling Psychology: A Primer on Research Paradigms and Philosophy of Science. Journal of Counselling Psychology. 52 (2). 126-136. Rapport, N. (2003) I am Dynamite: An alternative Anthology of Power. London: Routledge. Rapport, N. and Dawson, A. (1998) Migrants of Identity: Perceptions of Home in a World of Movement. Oxford: Berg. Said, E.W. (1999) Out of Place. London: Granta. Smith, J. (1996) Beyond the divide between cognition and discourse: using interpretative phenomenological analysis in health psychology. Psychology and Health. 11. 261-271.

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Author biography:
Gareth Mason is a UKCP psychotherapist working privately and within the NHS. He spent over 20 years working as a journalist in Britain and overseas. He is a graduate from Regent’s University's MA and Advanced Diploma programmes. Denise Lelitro is a lecturer in psychoanalytic studies at Regent’s University and has a private practice in North London.

Wine And Punishment

The fetish world has shaken off its sleazy image and emerged from its heavily fortified closet into the public domain with club nights and fashion shows for the masses. Trussed up in rubber, Gareth Mason went to the ball looking to get hot under his dog collar....

Cross-dressed in rubber clergy-wear is no way to go through life. No way to go through Brixton High Street on a Saturday night either. And is every occupant of those grid-locked cars staring at me? Paranoid? Possibly. But perhaps that’s due to the dog-collar protruding from my overcoat and the car lights reflecting off my shiny spray-on strides. Tonight, the French maid to my right agreed, the best part of the journey was arriving.

The venue is Mass, in south London’s St Matthew’s Church, for The Torture Garden (TG) Rubber Ball. This is the climax of a series of Halloween events and the regulars here just don’t fit in with the crowd from The Dog and Parrot. Once safely inside, we joined a lengthy queue snaking to the cloakroom where we shed our cloaks of respectability and emerged like contestants from some Hell-based Stars in your Eyes.

We met several other couples. Each friendly, middle class and a little nervous – all first timers. Downstairs, the entertainment centred on a couple of dim-lit rooms where large screens flashed surreal images, flanked on either side by bars, which looked down over the dance floor. Here the manic threw themselves about with sensual abandon in a sea of latex and rubber like a horny version of a sinking Titanic. Drum & Bass was the musical backdrop and I was soon persuaded that requesting something from Donna Summer’s erotic back catalogue would fall on heavily-pierced deaf ears. Break beats and hard house were the other main musical themes while the dungeon room was set to a more fitting ritualistic, tribal and experimental vibe.

The entertainment included a fashion display from the House of Harlot, a fire-eating show from Lucifire and a lower gut wrenching display of penile dexterity from Paul and Rough-A-Yella displaying unusual ways of lifting weights while inserting nails into less than obvious places. After the show, the crowd cruised back and forth like sharks seeking prey, but there were few easy pickings.

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Frustrated by the lack of action, we found our way to the dungeon in the bowels of the building. Here, one man was being flagellated rather half-heartedly by a middle-aged woman in scarlet leathers. A non-committal crowd mused close by. The man in the opposite corner had far better prospects. Big-boned and sparse on top, he was being caressed by a bevy of women – blindfolded either to heighten the erotic impact or delude himself they were the nubile beauties of his dreams. Good work for a fat, bald man. But his pleasure seemed to embarrass the audience who felt more comfortable gazing with curiosity at the streaked buttocks of the man being whipped.

My companion, a follower of the old school who we’ll call Mistress X, told me lurid tales from equivalent events a dozen years ago. ‘It was more underground then. People did more than parade themselves – they were up for a bit of action. They weren’t so passive,’ said Mistress X, ‘I remember a man in a cage shuddering with pleasure when I threw my drink in his face. At my first event, I was followed by a man dressed head to foot in rubber who could have been my grandfather. The guy with me told me to tell the rubber man to buy me a drink which he did for the rest of the evening whenever I summoned him.’

There were few inhibitions on these nights. ‘People would bunch into these booths and get up to all sorts of things. And I remember these ‘pony’ girls and boys who’d walk around on all fours dragging a cart behind them – I think they had their own club in the country. Generally, there was a lot more active role-playing, slaves being dragged around by chains – that kind of thing.’ Her abiding memory was the stentorian command of a well-spoken middle-aged man who’d noticed his wife flinch as he caned her with undisguised glee. ‘Stick it out Susan! Stick it out!’ he bellowed. We can only presume Susan bent back over and thought of England.

Many in Brixton were there to observe, lurking the dimmed corridors, seeking something not found in Battersea wine bars. Among the heavily-tattooed, androgynous and pierced which make up the hard core are people that look like...well, my estate agent or those more suited to the local rugby club drink and belch ball. Guys with regular haircuts wearing token leather cross straps on their otherwise bare chests thrust their heavily worked out pecs in our faces. Like me, I suppose, with my almost publicly wearable rubber trousers which could pass as a poor man’s leather if you could cancel the sexual undertones with, say, a big woolly jumper from Tibet.

But clearly, I was there for professional reasons and these guys weren’t selling any houses. Mistress X spoke to a 30-something Berliner – an enthusiast keen to experience a British take on erotica. He was disappointed by the lack of role-play. She spoke with him pleasantly for several minutes before curtly telling him to go away. He left without a word, grateful that someone knew the rules of the game. I was befuddled by such behaviour. Mistress X was unaccountably cold and dismissive for most of the evening before I realised she was revelling in her dominatrix role. The next day, I found out a trio of women had asked how ‘her slave’ performed. ‘What slave was that?’ I asked with genuine innocence. I almost choked on my Frosties when she told me.

In the mind of every casual new visitor is one burning question – what really goes on? There is an expectation that your £15 ticket has bought you a licence for untold thrills or at least watch other people having them. Is this the place where fantasies become reality? The hungry look in some of the prowling men seemed to be asking that question, but dress codes, which vary from drag body mutation and cybersex oriental to fantasy fetish and new flesh, tend to keep the lone predators away. If many of the men wore a mask of frustrated ambition, if not latex, the women appeared more at ease.

I’d perused the small ads in that worthy tome Skin Two – London’s Free Fetish Newspaper. There were 38 ads for men seeking women and four from women looking for men. Of the women, two were looking for dinner partners while the other pair had, politically, travelled several light years from being manacled to the kitchen sink. ‘Dominant 32-year-old blonde enjoys chaining and masking her slave who she wants to be submissive, silk-clad and able to take pain and punishment while serving her well.’ While the ‘29-year-old rubber vixen’ next down the column was after a compliant, leather-clad male to pander to her every whim.’ The men were dominant only in numbers. Typical was the ‘attractive male seeking an intelligent, stiletto-wearing woman to worship and use him as a doormat’ or the ‘well-dressed 45-year-old into corporal punishment, restraint, chains, whips and being dominated.’ You get the picture. In economic terms, it’s a beaters market.

I spotted a few snarling dominatrixes winding regally through the rubbery masses but there were far more Indians than chiefs. But clearly the floor was not about to turn into a writhing copulating mass so I asked a TG spokesman if Torture Garden was moving into mainstream respectability. He explained its ethos: ‘To us it hasn’t changed much in the last four years. We don’t do house music or sex shows. We’re not looking to attract a trendy club crowd. We are more art and show-based. Other organisations cater more for the bored suburban couples – we’re more alternative. For instance, we made a conscious attempt to incorporate body art into our dress code.’

Talking of which, my rubber trousers are safely back in the wardrobe hanging like some giant reusable condom. And if the club circuit starts to feel a little staid and conventional, I’ll know there’s an alternative where you can leave your taboos at the cloakroom. Here people of all ages, sizes and types can wallow in a highly charged sexual atmosphere which brings sensuality and exhibitionism swaggering out of the closet. What goes on afterwards is in your own hands or the small ads of mags like Skin Two. Publicly, British prurience may keep us behind our continental cousins in the sex stakes but in the dim-lit corridors of such clubs we’re staying in touch with every stiletto-shod step.

Women’s Health 1999

Stuck In The Twilight Zone

Nobody sings ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ when they’ve spent the last four hours watching dawn approach. Gareth Mason certainly doesn’t...

Staring at your bedroom ceiling at 4am while the world around you snores contentedly can be one of life’s most frustrating routines. An instinct for some can be painfully elusive to others. One in three adults suffers with sleeping problems at some stage while most peoples’ daytime lives require an energy and alertness not well served by counting battalions of leaping ewes.

We’re not all so fortunate to have compliant minds. For me, the sprightly lambs soon metamorphose into mythical cross-breeds, with the heads of ex-girlfriends and a tendency for barrack room banter. Interesting but hardly restful. No two people share the same sleep pattern and needs. Some claim to need 10 hours of uninterrupted slumber to get them through the day while others survive on a handful. Margaret Thatcher was famous for only needing a few hours before setting off for her day job. Look what she did. OK, bad example.

But our needs differ. We don’t know much about how the body falls sleep and what it does within. We do know sleep consists of two distinct phases. One is rapid eye movement (REM), where the eyes move under closed lids, the heart rate quickens and body processes speed up. These are the dream-zones which last around 20 minutes and occur up to four or five times a night. These alternate with periods of longer non-REM sleep – usually four stages – the last two being the deepest. Insomnia involves problems falling sleep, frequent waking with difficulty returning to sleep, waking too early or feeling unrefreshed afterwards.

And it’s not how long you sleep but the quality that counts. Tiredness, apathy, irritability and poor concentration are chief culprits among insomnia’s symptoms. Extreme cases result in damage to the immune system which can lead to more serious problems. Some are more prone than others. Older people usually sleep more lightly and fitfully, often missing the stage 4 of non-REM sleep altogether. Women, particularly in late pregnancy, are also more prone as are those suffering from depression. Physical problems such as arthritis or a weak bladder are common causes as are mental stresses such as those with chronic asthma who believe they will struggle to breathe when asleep.

Many of these circumstances are unavoidable and treatment is either difficult or specific to individual needs. But many others can ease or overcome the symptoms. Common aggravating factors can combine to cause sleeplessness and with a little planning and effort are within your control. Chronic suffering may have a serious and highly individual root, often several. Your GP can help pinpoint the problem with the aid of a sleep and pre-sleep diary, but often the solutions can be found yourself. Often, the doctor merely reassures the patient that the symptoms can be relieved. A more serious physical or mental problem is sometimes responsible. Physical symptoms could include heart failure, asthma, kidney disease, Parkinson’s disease and hyperthyroidism.

It’s better to get checked than paranoid. Anxiety is a more common cause. The trails of everyday life are not easy to wish away, but if you can identify them you are half-way to overcoming them. A sensible change in routine can help greatly. One final warning. While sleeping pills may help sufferers sleep in the short-term they are not usually best for longer treatment. Apart from possible side-effects, reliance can, paradoxically, encourage sleeplessness. Sleep patterns can become inverted with drowsy mornings followed by sleepy days and wakeful nights. Fine for vampires, inconvenient for ordinary mortals.

Women’s’ Health 1999

Cruising The Pennine Way

Working the Rochdale Canal one summer some 15 years ago offered Gareth Mason a glimpse into another age…

Hebden Bridge, a picturesque small town in West Yorkshire nestling up to the Pennines, gave me my first taste of canal life. Recently returned from overseas, I moved to the dales for a while where several friends of mine had happily settled away from the London smoke. Studying part-time, working the barges wasn’t really on my radar, but I was open to interesting offers.

My last experience handling a boat had been inauspicious. Our family motor-cruiser snagged a fishing net in a squall in Holland’s Zuyder Zee and we spent an hour signalling for help to the passing traffic as the sea battered us from side to side. All waved back cheerily till some more logical seafarer realised we weren’t just eccentrics happy to be caught in the eye of storm. After that, my family’s sailing life ground to a halt.

Into the valley

Fifteen years later, Calder Valley Cruising promised me a more peaceful return to the water. CVC ran trips for tourists along a stretch of the Rochdale Canal between its eastern end at Sowerby Bridge to Todmorden roughly 10 miles away, just over the Lancashire border.

The trips varied according to which of the company’s three boats were booked from the horse-drawn narrow boat, Sarah Siddons, to the 12-berth motorised Gracie and the diminutive tug-boat Oliver. Gracie was named after Gracie Fields, one of the region’s most famed daughters – the singer and entertainer whose working life began in a Rochdale cotton mill.

Oliver chugged between the locks bracketing the Marina in the heart of the town offering a brief tour between them. The larger boats travelled through the locks. Our ‘captain’ gave a commentary pointing out which local buildings had been connected with the industry – those that had once crammed in scores of workers and now housed a comfortable nuclear family. We also explained how the locks worked, the words ‘It’s like a giant bathtub…’ remain with me. I witnessed a similar tour in Panama last year though the scale of the Central American version allowed for oil tankers to be squeezed into the available space.

Oliver’s 20-minute journey passed by one of the old cotton mills, its canal-side steps reaching down to the water where goods were once loaded directly onto the barges. Rusting barbeques and childrens’ toys now fill these spaces.

Hebden Bridge’s reputation as a clothing manufacturer was encapsulated by its nickname, Trouser Town, as its water-powered weaving mills harnessed the one natural resource never likely to dry up. In the town and half-hidden in the dense woods surrounding it lie the ruins of old mills – their crumbling smokeless chimneys poking through the treelines of the surrounding valleys. Along with cotton and wool, coal, limestone, timber and salt also moved sedately through the valley before rising up and over the Pennines. In 1890, 50 barges used the Rochdale Canal daily carrying an estimated 700,000 tonnes of goods.

After thriving in the industrial revolution, Hebden Bridge fell into a long and gradual decline. But it was the canal, and later the railway, that created the town we still see. The canal carved into the boggy valley floor tamed the River Hebden though it still floods the surrounding fields as a grumpy reminder of what it could once do. But 300 years ago, the population were stranded high, if not entirely dry, on the steep hills sides of the valley through which the original pack horse route wend its way between Halifax and Burnley.

The bridge, after which the town was named, was part of this first incursion into inhospitable territory. The distinctive top and bottom houses that characterise the town were due to this limited living space with two households occupying one five-storey house, the top two floors usually facing uphill, the bottom three facing down to the valley. Looking down on all of this is the striking 400-year-old hill top village of Heptonstall, an ever-popular haunt for visitors. Aside from the vehicles passing through the town centre, the pace of life hasn’t noticeably increased for the 5,000 or so population with neither the weekend walkers nor the canal traffic exceeding the 4-mile an hour speed limit.

My Victorian past

The town’s regeneration from the 1970s has brought well-to-do commuters from Leeds and Manchester, along with a tradition for attracting a bohemian and motely crowd as likely to hail from the antipodes as the Calder Valley. My Home Counties accent identified me as part of that influx as I gave my pre-trip talk to the assembled boat passengers. If that didn’t spoil the illusion that I wasn’t really a Victorian bargeman with my ‘authentic’ waistcoat, neckscarf, and the lock key hanging from my belt, then the adidas trainers that stood in for the clogs that I usually forgot, probably did.

My default position as ‘tugman’ piloting Oliver was possibly earned by my lack of polished technique elsewhere. As the ropeman on Sarah Siddons, I consistently blotted my copybook. It seemed simple enough to flick a rope around a bollard to ease the boat to a smooth stop within the lock gates. But I had an unfortunate talent for snagging the rope on some hidden protusion of the boat. That extra few metres of rope caused the boat to slide remorsely towards the gates as if in a slow-motion scene in a horror film. It was no way to stop 50 pensioners enjoying an afternoon tea cruise. Spilled tea and scones were the least of it – one painful memory involved an octoganerian granny being catapulted through the boat’s lavatory doors with her knickers around her ankles.

Legging through the tunnel was a better bet. I could be trusted to slowly stroll upside down through the 100m stretch before hurling the rope back towards the owner of the horse without mishap. During my brief boating career, we used a giant shaggy-hoofed 17-hand Shire horse called William to tow Sarah Siddons. It could hardly be described as skittish and was bigger than ideal. One day it clopped lugubriously through the tunnel and rather than following the curve of the path continued unstoppably forward into the canal. After crashing heavily into the water, it plodded rythmically on towards the marina and into its horsebox without once breaking its metronomic stride. A model professional.  

Occasionally, I’d have an unexpected day off due to the effective absence of a canal, which for one day only morphed into a long damp damp channel after someone misunderstood the logic of keeping one gate closed when moving through the locks.  

Renaissance

The standard cruise stopped at Walkleys Clog factory, which has now moved to new premises nearby. It still provides the footware of boatmen for miles around let alone hundreds of businesses around Europe including many that have never trod a boat deck in anger. It even sells to the Dutch.

Craftsmen and women still pack the honeycombed units of the old factory selling clothes that protect their wearers from the harsh Yorkshire winter, along with hand-worked goods made from leather and glass, to jewellery and knick-knacks that are pure 21st century.

Beyond the old clog factory, the longer tours continued to Mytholmroyd and usually took place at night under the theme of dinner or world beer cruises. Private parties took place too – hen nights proving a nerve-wracking study of the Yorkshire woman at play for us callow boatmen. The forlon hired guitarrist bore the brunt of their inebriated enthusiasm. With both hands full he had little chance to defend himself as the guests swarmed around him drowning first his music and later his cries for assistance. To our shame, we turned blind eyes and deaf ears and went about our business guiltily aware that but for the grace of god…

On calmer days, the signs of life returning to the waterways were all about us, whether it was the scowling fisherman whose tranquil waters we stirred, the bad-tempered geese that guarded a section of the towpath or the growing number of narrow boats that moved their homes about the canal as their whims dictated.

Two of my friends even made the journey south to West London carrying a cargo of pumpkins for Halloween. Too bad the stock had gone rotten before they got there – it offered them a tranquil view of the English countryside unseen on the tarmac bustle of the motorway.

Several of my colleagues lived on their own boats and from time to time we travelled upstream to parties gathering revellers as we went while trying to slip past the lock-keeper as quietly as we could lest we received a lecture for breaking a myriad of canal bylaws. We arrived in style from the waterfront if some time behind the guests who came by car, bus, train, or foot.

We even developed our own boatman’s dance – a kind of twisted take on a Morris dancing. Sticks and hankerchiefs were replaced by windlasses, and white smocks gave way to leather clogs and woollen waistcoats, with our movements dictated by shakey sea legs and doses of rum. The dance, like my brief career on the canals has not been repeated in the intervening years, but I look back fondly on a summer that let me glimpse a world I thought was gone.  

One Track Mind

Gareth Mason found his cross-country habit hard to kick. But running isn’t just for schoolboys – it’s one of the best, and most accessible of sports for women too. Pull on your trainers and join him…

I became a runner through my magnificent failures elsewhere. My school liked rugby best while football was sniffily accepted as an alternative for the less fortunate. But psychotic gym teachers and mindless drills soon took their toll – let alone the kid with the crazy look in his eye every time he got the ball. My quest for schoolboy glory required fresher fields.

The leftovers, misfits and smokers were left to contest for the dubious honour of a place in the cross-country squad. The three-mile trial was an eye-opener. If my hobbies had involved more mental and physical abuse and less Subbuteo, it might have been less painful. But when staggering aimlessly from the finish line, I was informed I’d made the team.

My diminutive 12-year-old frame, and lack of ball skills, had not endeared me to the gatekeepers of the major teams. But I was surprised with the ease my hitherto rejected physique had pulled ahead of the sweaty pack. The mediocrity of our fledgling team became the key to my success. A modicum of training was enough to hurtle me up the rankings. I even managed to twist my lack of a sense of direction to my advantage. Straying from my familiar training grounds I consistently ran double the distance I’d planned. Beaches, fields, woodlands, country roads and rustic bogs were all witness to my misdirected footfalls.

After four years, I’d got lost so frequently that I ran myself blindly into the county team. Going faster required running further or harder than you did last week. Not the gentle, lolloping trot of the jogger, but rather the joys of hill training, 400m sprint intervals and the quaintly named fartlek (Swedish for fast-slow). The racing experience was an odd one. It lacked the excitement of my minor triumphs in the lower leagues of other sports. Tripping over the try line or slicing the ball into a completely different part of the net than I’d aimed at were the occasional highs to light up the otherwise low-skill tedium. Running gave you something altogether more consistent and reliable. It gave you pain.

We found many cunning and ingenious forms of experimenting with our chosen poison. An annual charity run required four foolish people to be tethered by the waist using a small stretch of rope. Somebody, whether the well-connected organisers or some meteorological deity, even provided several hours of torrential rainfall every year I competed. Being only the third fastest of the quartet it was a time of great suffering. It was a very hilly park and it went on for 24 miles. The quiet moans of the slowest still remain with me. I returned the following year. But I had grown wiser. I chose three slower companions.

Once I climbed weakly out of bed midway through a particularly virulent dose of flu to run a half-marathon. Exhausted after 400m, I scared hundreds with my haggard, crazed gurning as the metres and miles ticked away with agonising tedium. While this time I had thousands to witness my struggle, it was a rarity for interest to filter down to the finish post. Most of my greatest triumphs were accompanied by silence – and it wasn’t an awed one.

I gave up competitive running when I left school mainly because my name stopped appearing on a team sheet every Saturday morning. And I’d never got to watch Tiswas before. It may also have been due to a phenomenon I’d noticed over the past year – people kept beating me. I celebrated by going to college and taking up smoking and drinking heavily. After two years of this unhealthy living, I’d contrived to lose a stone off my already spare frame and the useful ability to run up and down the same hill for hours on end. Chastened by this decline, I shocked my body with several near-death running experiences and regained the habit of putting one foot in front of the other with vague fluency. Now dabbling with a healthy diet, I achieved the unlikely by putting some weight back on. Despite the odd hiatus, for the last five years I’ve been jogging three or four miles a few times a week. While this may be a healthy riposte to my less salubrious weekends, it’s still a working compromise.

My physical prime is likely to remain in my increasingly distant adolescence but I regularly feel the benefits over many of my more sedentary peers. Whether it’s staving off illness, requiring less sleep or surviving three floors of stairs, a little exercise really does go a long way. From the desk-bound to the flabby-thighed to those not won over by the bright lights and artificial atmosphere of the gym – all can benefit. Age is no barrier. Witness the pigeon-stepping progress of the octogenarians in the London marathon. Over half the population of our industrialised nations have sedentary lifestyles. Many would be surprised how much latent energy is pent up in those slouched office-bound bodies.

Such passive existence deludes the body into feeling tired. Exercising regularly doesn’t exhaust but invigorates. Improving your fitness by running requires a balance of restraint and persistence. Many feel that submitting your body to a Dantean hell round the park will purge your damned body of all the ills of a decadent life. Such running careers are usually brief. A little and often is the key. As your fitness improves you’ll start to get experience the strangest addiction of all. You’ll feel physically frustrated if you don’t exercise. The only real effort is slipping on a pair of running shoes. Do this a few times a week and you’ll be surprised at how far you can go.

The jogger can always be a hero in their own park. It doesn’t matter what strip of grass or road you choose to lay your trainered feet. In your dreams, you can still be entering the Olympic stadium in front of 80,000 screaming fans and in the fading light, the fat guy just ahead almost looks like Steve Ovett.

Women's Health 1998

No Pain, Stay Sane

Not everyone likes hanging out in gyms. Don’t despair says Gareth Mason, there are better (and cheaper) ways to get fit...

One of the features of Western society is its creation of successful institutions that serve little useful purpose. McDonalds, the stock exchange, public relations, young Tories, reality TV and toilet attendants, all fit this bill. In recent years, the gymnasium too has carved a lucrative niche in modern life. But is it worth building up your arms and legs if membership costs you one of them?

For many of us owning a gymnasium would be a better investment than joining one so rarely would we visit it. If our exercise bikes had meters fitted, measuring pence per revolution, we would soon break our moorings and ride straight out the door.

The secret to the gym’s brainwashing is the appropriation of perfectly natural, healthy activities such as running, walking and cycling minus the quaint old-fashioned part in which you arrive somewhere at the end of your journey. Just look at the regulars. The men range from braying, jelly-brained jocks bench-pressing PBs to the guy that hangs around the shallow end flexing his pecs for an age before swimming one length of front crawl really, really fast.

And you’re missing little in the changing rooms. Men with superfluous muscles glance contemptuously at less sculpted peers while preening themselves in the mirror lovingly. Just one sign that a healthy body does not necessarily lead to a healthy mind. The women may be subtler in manner, but if you look carefully, you can catch the obsessive glint in her eye as she gags at the sight of someone else’s cellulite. Much of all this exercise is directed towards complementing stomachs with boob-tubes, and bums with barstools, rather than making oneself feel any better. So, what’s the thinking person’s alternative to a healthier life?

A sporting chance

Why shouldn’t you enjoy getting fit? You can, of course, with a little imagination. Sport tops the list. Few people spend their leisure time playing badminton, football or hockey because they feel obliged. It makes them happy and a by-product, a mere symptom of this, is that they get fit too. Genius!

As a child, cross-country running made me fit, but it lacked the thrills and spills of the sports I really liked which usually involved hitting a ball with myriad forms of wood. As adults, we can make that choice and banish the memories of all that pain in the rain under the gimlet eye of a sadistic sports teacher. You could be taking up martial arts to just say no to muggers, touching your toes through yoga, or combining your divided love of self-defence and dancing with Capoeira.

Running may seem a drastic Route 1 to fitness but before you dismiss it cast out the images of joggers staggering red-faced through the park. A little and often is the key – swimming is even better without the stress on the joints. Ironically, exercise, like drink and drugs, can be addictive, and it’s not recommended to overdose on your first week. Entering a 10km run on January 1st may not kill you, but it may create the kind of phobia for running that you would get for whiskey, if downing a half-bottle was your first drinking experience.

Building up exercise slowly increases fitness relatively painlessly if your body isn’t pushed too far too soon. Setting small achievable goals makes it all seem worthwhile as you can see regular progress. Even Paula Radcliffe gets through her gruelling mileage by working on one small aspect of her running such as stride length, or varying the speed or distance she runs. You could try running for a certain time rather than over a certain distance. And you don’t even have to go the extra mile. Walking a few hundred metres to the next bus-stop would do for starters. And in your lunch hour, the scenery and people-watching in the park make a more colourful backdrop to the calorie crunching than the space above your boss’s head. If you’re too shy of exercise to look it straight in the eye, fine, there’s always fitness by stealth. Little changes to your routine can, by degrees, transform your physical life without feeling you’ve sold out to the sanctimonious health freaks.

And it’s much easier to kid your inner slob into an active life if mix up your new sporty habits. Try listing and losing all those 21st century labour-saving devices that have gained you time to nurture your belly in front of the telly. Why not take the stairs instead of the lift to your office? A couple of weeks on and the idea of preserving your legs before you sit down for nine hours will seem absurd.

Health through hedonism

Finally, for those rejecting all forms of organised physical activity we’re left with the ‘accidental’ kind like walking home from the pub instead of getting a cab or going to the shops instead of perusing a catalogue or surfing the internet from your armchair.

Dancing is the ideal form of accidental exercise, like sport, but with less rules. If you still want some structure to your efforts, you can always learn to Salsa, Jive or Tango first and free-form it later. Alternatively, just head for somewhere that plays the music you like and go with it. You’re getting fit with a smile on your face, not a rictus of pain! And finally, don’t worry how you shape up on the dance-floor next to the gym-addicts. They will be home with their mirrors by midnight...

Women’s Health magazine 2004

Mine Is Yours

When east meets west, just occasionally, the twain do meet…

A slap-up meal at Little Chef followed by a great night’s kip at a Travel Inn might be your idea of relaxation. If so, you’re a very lucky person. Financially speaking, that is. But if you’re not blighted by dodgy taste or the inconvenience of an average income, you may want to upgrade to a MYHotel. While the name may lack a certain exclusive grandeur – step inside and you’ll soon realise that this isn’t a brand for the masses.

Thus far, there’s only one MyHotel. So where better put it than on the bones of an old hotel (with a little design input from Conran and Partners) in Bayley Street, Bloomsbury, shadowed by the nearby Telecom Tower, within a stone’s throw of the fleshpots of Soho. Comfort and shelter may be the basic roles of a hotel, but here a virtue is made from necessity. Guests are encouraged to set the tone. Your visit, from cosy cradle to quiet grave, is in your own hands. Tipping is discouraged and all your requests are theoretically dealt with by one person. I thoughtfully resisted testing the theory at 5am.

Unsurprisingly, MYHotel’s New Age luxury perfectly matches the needs of the modern rock star. Here, an unmasked Eminem has stood out only as a model guest while the abbreviated J Lo has used her time in the Jinja room brainstorming for a suitable song for the Queen’s annual knees-up. There are 78 rooms – from the standard £150 single to the £1,000 combined studio apartment, or the top floor as it might otherwise be called.

A bar and cafe is open 24/7 for guests, and open to outsiders for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A selection of sushi starters followed by a beefsteak for lunch confirmed the kitchen as capable of knocking out first-rate dishes well beyond the sandwiches also available. Later, as a bar, it was pleasantly low key and relaxing, the staff friendly and sensitive when wanted, otherwise leaving you in peace. Yo!Sushi, the highly-rated offshoot from the original in nearby Poland Street, is a healthy ground-floor diversion boasting 150 dishes.

There are also private rooms for parties, launches and whatever else might constitute your business life. For those that think laptop, when others think fun, there’s computer and internet access in the always-open library. And if you ‘work out’ for laughs, you can hang out in the gym on one of the fancy rowing machines, treadmills or bikes – ideal indeed for agoraphobic celebs who only like the ‘idea’ of bikes or boats.

One thing you won’t get in nearby Hyde or Regent Park, is a Manuka honey wrap. Come to think of it, the odds would be long on getting a salt scrub, or even the disquieting threat of a Jinja signature. But these are pleasures, not privations, of the flesh. Jinja is the name given to a wide range of treatments running from express facials and eyebrow tints to deluxe pedicures and half-leg waxings (that’s what it says). Prices range between £12- £150.

Aside from the Bloomsbury MYHotel, which opened in March ‘99, two other branches are getting the ‘MY’ treatment in the capital with a third planned for Glasgow. Just don’t expect them to be vying for the 2010 midrange hotel chain of the year. Philosophy is one idea which crops up throughout the company literature, as is Feng Shui, both integral to its pervasive east-west theme.

The man who puts the My in this Hotel is Greek owner Andrew Thrasyvoulou, who recruited ‘world expert’ in Feng Shui, William Spear, to help charm the chi. The east, MYHotel literature tells us, is strong on ‘observant, graceful and respectful service standards’ which combine here with our local western strengths in ‘style, culture and technological drive.’ The hotel also claims to have a ‘heart’. In the old Cointreau ad, the ice of an Englishwomen melted when confronted by the calorific charms of a smooth Frenchman. Would this east-west double melt mine? Only a night within its soft-edged walls would tell.

At reception, my preferences, if not my reputation, had preceded me. These included my choice of music on CD as well as a favoured scent. In my room, a pleasant enough odour came from somewhere beyond my stuffed-up nose’s capabilities and a jazz CD sat obediently alongside the player. It seemed an adequate response to my aural and olfactory needs. My uncultured, if underperforming, snout was in fact picking up the air freshener sprayed earlier to add fragrance to my presence. It seemed I’d wrongly filled out a form for guests staying in the penthouse, which having visited briefly, I knew was a preference belittling all others.

Perched within the cityscape, you can work on a PC, watch a DVD, or lounge in a couple-sized bath, possibly all at once. You could invite Madonna around for a barbecue on the terrace. She might come. Still, further down to earth in my £330ish suite, I had few complaints. If the room sizes might marginally disappoint an oversized American, they might still provoke a Japanese visitor into an impromptu jig. A bed with pillows the size of pack horses, and a shower whose water power was only matched by the brainpower needed to use it were physical highlights.

Others might cite the safe, multichannel TV or trouser-press, or extol the calming virtues of its simple understated decor. Amid the chi-friendly, cream-coloured spaces, simple wooden furniture was offset by things chosen purely for their aesthetic role. In my room, I had not only an attractive earthenware jug, but a picture of one to boot. Otherwise, its calm low-lit corridors were only threatened by the unexpected burst of a fire alarm which had me scurrying guiltily to the window before realising that my karma was uncompromised by the cigarette in my hand. It was a smoking room, which was lucky as I couldn’t open the sash window more than two inches anyway.

Planning to rise at a respectable hour to consciously appreciate my surroundings a little longer, I was somewhat surprised to see the clock hands clustered around midday. A quick phone call and a calm, unphased voice assured me I would not be denied my coffee and power shower. You’ll have a job getting the telly out of the window but you might find out what Sting and his rockstar buddies dreams about.

Fashionline magazine 2002

Market Leader

South American street food, reasonable prices and willing smiles – Gareth Mason is still looking for the catch...

When Richard Bigg went backpacking around South America, he liked the food so much he brought it home with him. Figuratively, of course, a fact embodied in Market Place, a West End bar specialising in Latin American street food.  

Open since the new year, Market Place is the third venture for Bigg and co-owner Nigel Foster who also run the musically-infused Shoreditch-based bar restaurants Cantaloupe and Cargo. It’s found just off Oxford Street on two floors of an Edwardian building constructed with large expanses of glass and wood.

Though busy on our midweek visit, there was room to breathe, if not sit down. This is one element of street food transported too literally but after brief bar-leaning duty, a table duly emerged. The smaller upstairs bar is ideal for dropping-in – more committed visitors find their way through big, swinging wooden doors to the basement.

Here a scattering of small tables leads to a couple of low-arched alcoves at the far end with the bar running between that and the DJ’s decks. As upstairs, the decor’s best remembered for its floorboards, slatted wood walls and banquette benches. Low-lit bulbs and wall-mounted candles fit the below stairs feel. 

The crowd was fairly 18-30 but looking more for fun than their reflections. Customers came in groups of all shapes and sizes, a point extravagantly made by the brief appearance of three exceptionally small men in suits and a man at the bar so large he appeared, literally, to be propping it up.

Our evening’s soundtrack unfolded from an opening rumble of reggae through to jazz, soul, world and ambient. Music is an integral part of any Cantaloupe production and Market Place looks like a friendly pre-club venue. With slightly longer hours here, you could do worse than skip the club altogether.

With friends, Maria and Emma, we ordered from a menu numbering 26 dishes from 10 countries averaging around £4 each. The Latin theme extends beyond South America to Portugal, Spain, Cuba and Mexico. An appetite guide even translates hunger into dishes: ‘lightly peckish’ recommends one to two dishes while ‘plain greedy’ would demand five to eight.

We had fried crisp-like slices of plaintain from Brazil, chargrilled swordfish with a mango and avocado salsa and mixed salad from Cuba, chicken peri-peri from Portugal, and baked stuffed quesadillas (tortillas) from Mexico. Pumpkin soup, pork meatballs, steamed mussels and chargrilled sardines went, I regret, untested.

By its nature, food like this shouldn’t be long in the making though most stall-holders in Latin America don’t have the distraction of 200 thirsty Londoners demanding fine wines and strong beer. So we were impressed to be served in under ten minutes.

Some might miss the dribbles of excess fat down their chins, or that surplus handful of fine-sliced cabbage festooning your shirt, but here you get a sanitised version of what you might find on the streets of Lima and Medellin without the worry of whether your lily-livered western stomach could deal with it.

All things of the flesh were crisp and succulent while the dips were piquant and complementary without dominating the dish’s flavour. The mango and avocado salsa with the swordfish was a fine example.

Emma, our designated vegetarian, was happily upbeat about the coriander and cream which she spied with her quesadilla let alone the inclusion of melon, peanuts and olives in a fresh and colourful mixed salad. Fans of green salad – stay in your pastures. 

We moved into the ‘bar’ phase of the review with none of the usual ‘last orders’ frenzy of our lager in a cold climate culture. Open from 11–1am from Monday to Saturday and noon to 10.30pm on Sundays, there’s a latin appreciation of quantity, as well as quality, drinking time.
Market Place has 20-odd wines on offer from a £10 Cuvee du Baron in red and white to a £24 Pino Nero. Most are available by the glass (from £2.60) like the ‘big, fat and aromatic’ Viognier Les Jamelles or a ‘youthful and abundant Spaniard’ in the form of Vina Rey Tempranillo.

A lonely trio of draft beers contrasts a Budvar, Guinness and Weissbier while the geographical boundaries are extended yet further with Tiger and Cruzcampo bottled beers with a chilled Sake found propping up the menu.

Good measures in the cocktails (50ml for £5.50) covered half a dozen varieties, from that dangerous Brazilian seducer Caipirinha, to Raspberry Daiquiri. Only Rude Cosmo made the barest effort to sound like a sexual act.

But there was something about the evening which suggested a rum line of attack and with a barman eager for me to experiment it was hard to turn back. Maria, a veteran of South America, became misty-eyed at the mere sight of the Cuba Libre put before her.

Which brings us to service. Asking for a rum here may be as vague a question as ordering a Scotch in the highlands. But rather than provoking contempt my ignorance merely set off the cheery barman’s enthusiasm to spread the spiritual word.

And he wasn’t a rogue smiler. All evening, tell-tale flashing teeth could be glimpsed across the faces of fast-moving staff as they made sense of the surrounding chaos. And it wasn’t the psychotically polite mien of a New York waiter, it seemed quite genuine. I only just resisted a Sally Field: ‘You really like me,’ moment.

Recently, I failed to get a pub lunch in central London because I couldn’t get an answer on how long it would take to make. ‘How long is a piece of string?’ was the closest I got to useful response. He was so pleased with his philosophical wit that he repeated it with empty-headed smugness each time I patiently rephrased my question. Justice will perhaps be done in people voting with their shoes.

This should make the path to market Place a well trod one. We can only hope it continues to dare to be different.

Fashionline 2002

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Encased in a metal cage and winched slowly down into the bowels of Belgo Centraal, you could be entering a scene from Bladerunner.

The lift plants you opposite the open, steaming kitchen off which are two large rooms. On the right is a beerhall that serves snacks with the main dining room to the left. Here, stone floors and exposed brick ceilings enclose diners otherwise divided by glass, wood and steel much like an open-plan office dedicated to the good life.

The ambience is noisy and boisterous and the staff laid-back, friendly, and occasionally dressed in monk’s habits. We began with asparagus, served warm with a hollandaise sauce (£6.95) along with toasted goat’s cheese on croutons with a Roquette salad (£5.95). The asparagus was suitably delicate and the salad and its dressing more compulsively edible than green things should be. The goat’s cheese had such a rich full flavour I almost lied to Maria, my dining partner, that it was finished.

Otherwise, most starters had a seafood slant from fishcakes to Gravadlax and Lobster bisque. This being the season for lobster, we followed with a whole grilled one served with garlic butter (£15.95) for our main course along with Saucisses de sanglier et chimay (£8.95). While the lobster was good, it did little to dispel the notion that it contributes as much to good taste as a Rolls Royce ie very little, unless you ask the people that buy them. No such cynicism applies to the bangers and mash. The sausages were deliciously rich and earthy – the accompanying berry jus offered an ideal complementary tang along with the firm, whipped mash.

Mussels are prominent on the menu in platter or pots along with spit-roasted chicken variations and dishes from tuna and snapper to steak and beef. A theme runs for strong, bright flavours and the smallest excuse to cook the ingredients in beer. Talking of which, our feeble attempt to make inroads into an 80-strong beer menu began with a Delirium Tremens golden beer before touring about varieties from pale and double dark to Belgian and Trappist. While these might not render you speechless, combining them with more than a score of wines split evenly across a £10-22 band might, particularly if you helped them down with a fruity schnapps stick. This didn’t stop us delving into a Kriek sorbet – a cherry beer sorbet that answered the dubious question it asked.

We could have dabbled into Tarte au Chocolat, Brussel’s-style waffles or homemade ice-creams for between £3-4. The toilets were more Ally Macbeal than Bladerunner. While I resent paying to make nature’s call I was, at least, entertained by my treatment. This involved a man shutting me in a metallic enclosure, activating a circular fountain-style container and wafting over several airborne paper towels to me with the flourish of an artiste. All in all, Belgos makes for a memorable Belgian creation – now that is something.

E2 magazine 2001

Entering The Spirit

The first rapper may have been a New Yorker, but he wasn’t from Harlem, and he couldn’t sing. Our own witchfinder general, Gareth Mason, investigates…

‘I sense there’s a lot of red tape in your life which needs to be sorted out.’
I hadn’t expected her to be that accurate. After all, I’d spent the last ten minutes aiming my mini tape-recorder in her direction while trying to cover up the red record light. But let’s start at the beginning...

The psychic fair season not yet underway, I was deflected from my quest of exploring the weirder worlds inhabited by some of society’s more ‘inquiring minds’. Spiritualism caught my interest with the idea of communicating with the spirit world, enlightened Christian thinking and embracing of other religions. Spiritualism also preaches personal responsibility, divine judgment and immortality of the soul. It rejects Jesus as the son of god, but reveres him as a healer.

Christianity, meanwhile, warns of demons answering the medium’s call and sees its methods as heresy. If historically, the Christian churches can be blamed for profiteering from its customers, little evidence exists that the 400 churches of the Spiritualists’ National Union (SNU) are accumulating vast stores of wealth from its 20,000 UK members. Nonetheless, charlatans of the clairvoyancy world have inevitably fuelled scepticism that have made the bereaved ripe targets for abuse.  

When my copy of Psychic News popped onto my doorstep, I thought the surrealism which peppered its pages could sit happily alongside the editorial of any rural English local paper. Fundraisers for church roofs and local hospices were spliced with historical pieces and nostalgic readers’ letters. The parish-pump tone doesn’t change on closer inspection – just the nuances of the treatment. No death notices – people instead pass to the spirit realm while letters don’t bemoan cell-phone thefts – they complain that the frequencies are jamming our contact with the other side. The adverts give most away. Psychic artists offer to paint your spirit guide, regression therapy rewinds beyond the cradle to previous lives, and telephone readings can be paid for by Amex.

The movement began in 1848 at the cottage of the Fox family in the hamlet of Hydesville, New York State following a strange persistent rapping was heard. The wiliest Fox proved to be 12-year-old Kate, who forged a literal rapport with the spirit, after challenging it to rap in time to her clicking fingers. The phenomenon impressed sufficiently to attract a crowd of several hundred neighbours presumably not all there for cups of sugar. Using an alphabet system, the spirit claimed to be a pedlar murdered for his money five years earlier. It guided them to human remains buried in the cellar. A complete skeleton was later found in the walls. A religion was born.

My first visit was to a spiritualist church in north London – one of a score or so in the capital. I figured its weekly healing service was most likely to deliver some spiritual fireworks. The pews faced a flower-strewn altar and among the pamphlets sat a serenely smiling receptionist. No bibles and no pulpit for a right, most or even vaguely reverent-type of minister. As I was not consciously ill, the receptionist suggested a general physical check-up – a kind of corporeal 10,000-mile service. I was put on a waiting list to see one of three healers plying their trade on couches at the rear end of a hall notable only for its protestant simplicity.

Ten minutes later, I was lying back to the gentle sounds of Enya-esque music accompanied by light touch to my head, hip or foot. The gentle, silent demeanour of my healer contrasted with the cheerful, gossiping manner of his Irish female counterpart a few feet away. After half an hour, I was blessed and approved without any worrying damage to report. I felt indulged, but my world didn’t move nor were walls to others broached.

My next stop was the plush quarters of an organisation operating outside the SNU. It was suggested by a medium, but more for the questions it raised than answered. She laughed when she told me about it – clearly feeling it exemplified the less reputable end of the market. Around ten of us handed over £4 and settled in a room more closely resembling a business seminar than a church.

The medium bore a passing resemblance to the one featured in the movie Poltergeist. She wasted no time launching into a stream of messages from the other side. The flow filled the allotted hour before sweeping to a graceful, perfectly-paced finale. Each of us was called upon, which was fortunate, as spirits are only meant to speak when it suits them. The crowd, a mix of men and women, young and old, seemed convinced that the quick-fire names, situations and questions we were bombarded with were words from loved ones.

Many references were vague, others more pertinent. Many could have been applied to myself. The eyes of one girl widened in disbelief when told that her beloved Alsatian was sitting next to her. Her invisible dead Alsatian. I couldn’t help feeling that in England this immortal-pet angle could gain the movement a new generation of followers. A trio sat in front of me exchanged knowing, impressed glances as they sheepishly admitted: ‘Yes, I AM stubborn... I HAVE been worried... I AM going on a journey.’ The over-riding theme was that everything was going to get better and soon. I was told that ‘happiness would soon come back into my life’. It was passed by ‘a young man, a cheeky chappy with a word for everyone, late 20s, early 30s... does the name Vincent mean anything?’

Apart from winter, there’s been little wrong in my recent life. And I know no Vincents, dead or alive. Another guy, asked if he knew a George, had a different problem: ’Yes, I know several.’
But I do remember my Grandad. For it was he, she alleged, developing the reference to my red tape that was saying my paperwork problems would soon be over. With a fistful of unpaid invoices, I had indeed been banking on this. ‘He’s standing behind you,’ she added, ‘a little taller than yourself.’ I was more convinced when she looked towards me once more and asked if I was learning a foreign language. I remembered with genuine surprise the oft-carried Spanish phrasebook I’d been thumbing through on the tube. ‘Yes, I AM learning Spanish!’ But the voice was not mine. It was the turn of the girl sitting next to me.

They used to kill those accused of speaking with the dead. But since the repeal of the 1951 Witchcraft Act, working conditions for those engaged with the spirit world have improved immeasurably. Yet while the charlatans can practice with impunity, a large bunch of people also exist who believe we can speak with the dead and should be considerably nicer to each other. While my brief experiences brought no epiphany, the underlying message evoked more comfort than harm.

Fashionline 2002

How Customers Fuelled The Aviva Rebrand

Norwich Union has come a long way since it numbered Isaac Newton and Walter Scott among its customers. With a major rebrand to communicate to 50 million customers, it turned to its greatest resource for help. Gareth Mason explains…

Back in 1797, Seth Wallace, New Buckenham’s blacksmith, took out insurance against fire for his house and premises. Norwich Union’s first customer was supported by the £27 of capital raised by its founder Thomas Bignold, but two centuries later, it is the largest insurance group in the UK and the fifth largest in the world handling £359 billions of funds. With this expansion, Norwich Union was too parochial a moniker for a firm operating in 27 countries so in 2008 the company became Aviva – the name already adopted by 17 of its affiliates overseas.

Norwich Union moulded its message with the help of a research method called Customer Councils. Its partner was Branding Science a London-based research agency, which had first developed the method in the pharmaceutical industry.

Working with Aventis, which was testing a drug for treating osteoporosis, Branding Science had brought doctors and pharma staff together to build trust and understanding between two groups that often circled each other with suspicion. Peter Caley, the Branding Science managing director, who first come up with the idea for the councils felt that bringing such groups closer could only result in a win-win situation for all – a process he describes as ‘value innovation.’

Doctors were divided into four groups depending on their attitude towards diabetes treatment. Each group included a member of the Aventis marketing team. The first council was held at RAF Cosworth with the follow-up held three months later at the Royal Agricultural Hall. The results significantly influenced the direction of Aventis’s marketing.  Wanting a closer engagement with its customers, Norwich Union was attracted to this method when it met up with Branding Science at a trade fair. Initially, Customer Councils were used to communicate changes in policy for a mainly older range of customers.

Helping customers help themselves

Nigel Spencer, Head of Marketing Insight, Aviva UK picks up the story. ‘We first tested the concept in our equity release business. It’s a product aimed at retired homeowners. We found the over-70s difficult to research through traditional focus groups and telephone interviews.

‘They didn’t like the formality of a focus group and struggled to deal with complex telephone surveys. Customer Councils allowed this audience to be relaxed, comfortable, and engaged enough to talk about sensitive matters of health, inheritance, family, and money. We then used the format with IFAs specialising in equity release, showed them footage and findings from customer research and then worked with the advisers to construct products and processes to make it easier for customers to decide whether to take it up.’

The success of the program persuaded Norwich Union to use Customers Councils for its Aviva rebrand. Two waves of councils were held in London, Manchester and Newcastle between May and October in 2008. They were held respectively at Craven Cottage and City of Manchester football stadiums, and an opera house. Tours of the locations and a full meal were included.

‘The sessions were light on prompts,’ says Spencer, ‘and really facilitated discussions built around a question such as “What advice would you give to Aviva in making this change?” Later, we presented the communications plan and asked for feedback, or present TV scripts for comment, or show internal communications video. It can be summed up as a one question, 30-minute discussion with a facilitator and some Aviva people. This always included at least two senior directors such the group CEO, UK general insurance CEO, brand director, or marketing director from our main UK businesses.’

The breakdown

The councils consisted of 30 customers, 20 from Norwich Union, the rest from competitors. Each session lasted three and a half hours, alternating between whole group discussions and smaller groups. A DVD was made and circulated among Aviva’s top brass featuring highlights of the group discussion and individual customer interviews.

Spencer continues: ‘Early engagement is one big advantage and having senior decision makers sitting with customers. The councils work best when you’re not really clear of the solution yourself and want input to shape your thinking. For example, when briefing 30 customers on the rebranding to Aviva you get to test your answer when they question your reasoning. And customers very quickly see through corporate rubbish.’

The findings informed the company’s unfolding publicity.
‘On the equity release side, we ended up redesigning our product, our marketing material and our sales processes to make it more human, less threatening. This was three or four years ago and we remain the number one provider of these products by market share.

‘For the rebrand work, we built the customer feedback into our communications programme and strategy. We asked the council members to write the messages and while our marketing teams crafted it, Aviva customers wrote the heart of our communications.’

Aviva, not España

‘We wrote to all of our customers – around seven million – explaining what we were doing and why. We addressed concerns such as whether Norwich Union had failed, or been taken over by a Spanish company. This was December 2008 – soon after several big trusted financial services brands had failed. We wrote to them before our advertising campaign, directing them to a website with previews of our adverts. We had never shared information that previously would have been considered confidential.

‘We changed our approach to evolving our logo including the shift from “Norwich Union soon to be Aviva” moving to “Aviva, the new name for Norwich Union”.’

The company’s advertising drew attention to other favourable name changes such as Leningrad changing back to St Petersburg, Arpanet to Internet, and Brosnan to Craig.

‘Our TV advertising focused on the name change – establishing it in our customer minds, before explaining what Aviva stood for. Having filmed and direct customer engagement helped our PR work inside and out. We shared the insights with our business partners, brokers, and intermediaries, reassuring them the change to Aviva would help build rather than damage their business. Four months after the rebrand, recognition and awareness for Aviva matched those of the long-established Norwich Union brand and it was all underpinned by the councils’ voice.

‘The customers involved became real advocates. A man in Newcastle was so keen to contribute to a London session that he took a day’s holiday to travel down and then set off home again at 4am because his boss wouldn’t give him two days off!

‘Another thing that came out was seeing people’s confidence and sense of well-being impacted so greatly by the credit crunch. As we had got to know them as individuals you could see how much their attitude and behaviour changed. We built this change into our 2009 messaging because we saw it happen.’

It’s all in the name

Kay Martin, director of marketing services at Aviva commented on the results. ‘The TV ads that have aired since late 2008 and early 2009 were shaped around the feedback from the councils. Customers wanted to hear that the change of name was exactly that – just a name change. Our brand tracker shows that spontaneous awareness for Aviva increased to 14 per cent in January 2009 from 4 per cent in December and consideration also increased significantly up to 25 per cent from 11 per cent in December. For Norwich Union, this was a great success.’

John Kitson has the final word. He is the sales and marketing director for Aviva UK General Insurance and an enthusiastic advocate of the councils.

‘Of all the research I’ve done, probably none is more important, comprehensive or free flowing than this. We started when the rebrand was in its infancy before the recession bit hard. And then we listened to those customers while their world changed. Tracking those changes in attitude was incredibly valuable and the nuances we picked up shaped the communications strategy 100 per cent. The research insights were the foundation stones of everything we did. I've never before been involved in something so comprehensive and scientific and yet intuitive. It’s a remarkable success completely fuelled by research. That doesn’t often happen in Financial Services!’

Mike Pepp of Branding Science ran the customer councils on the Aviva rebrand. He explains their value as a marketing tool: Usually in market research, the researcher is intimately involved with the marketers having a relatively limited role. At the conclusion, the researcher gives a debriefing that summarises the key findings. The marketers miss out on the customer experience. With customer councils, they take away a much better understanding of the customer group. It is a very different encountering an angry customer than to be told that customers respond angrily to an initiative!

‘Because the marketers and customers are in the same room, the councils are an opportunity for exchange of ideas. It also transforms the moderator role to one of facilitating an encounter between a marketer and their target customers. The moderator is no longer the voice of the company, but an intermediary allowing them to access and directly inform senior members of the client company.

‘The difference in outcome from normal research is the immediacy with which marketers understand their audience. They come to have personal experience of the audience, their attitudes, and ways of expressing themselves. It’s like the difference between glancing at an A-Z of central London and spending an afternoon walking around the streets.

‘I don’t think there are any pitfalls so long as everyone is prepared to encounter customers as equals and genuinely share with them. Councils will not be productive if there is little intention to take customer opinions into account.’

Research Magazine 2010