Letters to my sons.

Dear Son,

I’m watching a program on Channel 4 regarding Wearside Jack. I was only about 9 years old when the tapes were made public and as the program discussed it contents were made available far and wide. I remember waking up early one morning, putting in my ear piece and switching on my little transistor radio. I don’t remember which radio station I was listening to but they played the Ripper Tape and I started listening to it before a huge wave of fear came over me and I had to switch it off. I remember it being very early but also light so it must have been during the summer.

Fear is a very nasty thing, even more so to a nine year old. There was no way that the person doing the murders could harm me via a tape recording broadcast on the radio but as a child logical doesn’t matter. At the time lived a couple of hours drive from where the murders had been taking place and we visited the area regularly to see family so maybe it was all a bit more real to me.

Dear Son,

you bagged your first peak two days ago (Saturday) when you successfully climbed the stairs unaided and without oxygen. I was right behind you with my arms ready if you slipped and fell but this didn’t happen. If you had been a bit bigger than a harness and a belay would be in order, but you did fine on your first free climb.

Dear Son,

I started writing this blog after the 7th July 2005 bombings in London which I had the unfortunate misfortune to witness the aftermath at Aldgate East tube station. And it is to this subject I return again. I keep returning to this subject because the justification of killing people is the root cause of all that is wrong in this world. The value of human life is nil for so many people and this worthlessness seems to start with certain individuals themselves.

Today in Iraq more suicide bombers have reeked their personal type of terror, just as they did on July 7th in London. They are so motivated in their beliefs that they are prepared to die for them – so far nothing so bad. The bit I don’t understand is why they insist on killing others. Do they know, on a personal basis, the people they are about to kill? If they did then maybe the people they have targeted are nasty murdering scum who need to be taken out to save many more lives and they are doing the majority a favour and saving lives. There is no evidence to suggest that these suicide bombers are nothing more than random killers who are interested more in the number of people they kill than the life stories of the individuals them selves.

If these suicide bombers are so intent on killing themselves, then why do they have to make others suffer? During the Vietnam war Buddhist monks protested against their oppression in the South by setting themselves on fire in Saigon. They committed ritual suicide and sent a powerful message to the world without hurting anyone except them selves. So why don’t these suicide bombers follow this example and simply set themselves on fire well away from other people?

And let us extend this principle to leaders of countries engaged in war. In the old days leaders of factions would ride at the front of their army and risk their own lives. They wouldn’t send someone else’s sons into battle and hide away along way from the front. Any person who wasn’t ready to risk their own life would find very people ready to risk their own. This may lead to a lot less wars.

Dear Son,

you can count the number of people who read this blog on one hand, doesn’t stop me from being insightful. Yesterday I wrote about Sven not having a Plan B. And guess what? I was right. Sven’s right hand man admintted as much today. You can read all about it on the BBC web site.

All I can say is : Come on the Soca Warriros.

Dear Son,

summer is on it’s way and with it the World Cup. Over the weekend Chelsea won the Premiership by beating Manchester United 3-nil but in the process of loosing Wayne Rooney managed to get injured and will, with out doubt, miss the World Cup. He is England’s best player and without him England have little chance of winning the cup, with him they have a very good chance. But it isn’t the player himself who makes the difference, it is the England manager.

The current England manager, Sven, only seems to have a Plan A when it comes to a game or a tournament. He has no Plan B, so when things go wrong he just sits in the dug-out and watches it all go wrong. This happened against Brazil when England went out of the 2002 World Cup. England were 2-1 down but Brazil had a player sent off but failed to take advantage of the extra man – they simply let Brazil get the ball and pass it around.

When Rooney departed the Euro 2004 game against Portugal injured Sven had no plan to shuffle his squad and play a different game to the strengths of the team on the pitch. England eventually lost on penalties. The game against Northern Ireland was also a tactical disaster as a team of lower league journey men turned over highly paid top flight ponces.

My earliest memory of World Cup football was my father cutting a section out of newspaper that had the times of the matches on it and sticking it to the front of the television, something completely out of character for the man. That is when I knew that something special was about to happen.

Luckily you have duel nationality so if Trinidad do well you can bask in the reflected glory in a few years time.

Dear Son,

yesterday you helped to make CD’s old technology in the Caudle household.

I bought my first CD player in 1988. It was once of the very first integrated CD’s with a cassette and radio and cost £125. In todays money, thats around £225 – but you can buy them for £40 today- the technology was new and expensive in those days. The first CD I bought was Beethoven’s 9th, I thought I was buying the 6th but misread the cover. I think the CD was £12, that would be £20 today.

I managed to blow up the CD player when I wired directly onto the battery of Camper Van. I had managed to get it working that way before but this time it took out the CD functionality. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

Since you learnt to stand up you have been using different items around the house to help you to your feet. Before you had master the art of standing on two feet you would crawl upto the CD racks in the front room and spend hours pulling CD’s out one at a time and piling them on the floor. Lately you have been pulling out a CD, inspecting the front of it and then dropping it on the floor before going for the next one.

You have been using the CD tower to help you to your feet and last night you tried to lean on it, which sent it toppleing over. Luckily I was able to grab it before it fell over but the solid metal money box on top – in the shape of a football – fell off and destroyed a plant pot.

So to stop anymore of these little mishaps all of our CD’s are in the process of being ripped to iTunes. We are then going to purchase an AirTunes device that allows us to send music to the stereo via a computer. That way we can box up all of our CD’s and remove the two CD towers from either side of the fireplace. We can also get rid of the seperate CD player and the radio. I’m not sure if we can get rid of the cassette deck, I have used it once in the last 5 years so …

I’m trying to buy an AirTunes from eBay but I’m not going to pay more than £65.74. I want a 25% discount for buying second hand and I refuse to pay a penny more. So it might be a while before we get one.

Dear Son,

Since I last wrote a good few things have happened.

On Friday 3rd March you pulled your self up and stood up for the first time. You have stood up before but always with help from either your mother or me, but this time it was all you. You pulled yourself up using a walking toy. You managed to stay up right for about 10 seconds before falling sideways and banging your head on the Digi box.

Since I last wrote about Newcastle United they have sacked Graeme Souness and gone on a 6 game unbeaten run. Glen Roeder and Alan Shearer have taken over and turned the club around, they now play with confidence and don’t give away silly goals. Souness complained that he had many injured players but Roeder has been in almost exactly the same position but has managed to win games.

The incumbent of Number 10 believes that he will be judged by God over his decision to kill thousands of Iraqi’s. When a person starts invoking God then rational discussion has ended. Invoking God is what al-Qaeda do to justify their killing. In fact God can be used to justify any action; you can use God to prove black is white, up is down and any other thing you like: correct or not.

Mathematics has certain laws that are immutable but based on logic. They are not open to interpretation, 4 = 4, always and without exception. With religion 4 equals what ever God says it equals.

Also it has been announced that “Creationism” is to be taught in science lessons. Creationists believe that the creation story in the Jewish/Christian/Muslim bible is fact, the whole universe was created in six days – each 24 hours long. They believe that the Earth is only six and a half thousand years old. Any evidence that contradicts the creation story is false and bad science.

My question to Creationists everywhere is to show me the sword guarding the Garden of Eden. The bible tells us where the Garden of Eden is:

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

Geneses Chapter 2, verses 10 to 14.

So all a person has to do is follow the rivers mentioned above back to their source and eventually you’ll come across:

… Cherubims, and a flaming sword which every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Geneses Chapter 3, verse 24

So we simply need a map and we can find some Cherbims and a flaming sword.

So far no person has ever found these Cherbims or the flaming sword: why? Because they don’t exist. The one checkable fact in the whole creation story is a load of bunk and utter rubbish. And this rubbish is being taught as fact in a science lesson.

I’ll return to this subject son, time and time again because the rubbish these right wing Nazi so-called Christians spout is dangerous and lies.

Dear Son,

Things are not good with the Toon right now.

The current manager, Graeme Souness, appears to have lost the confidence of the Chairman, the fans and possibly the players.

Souness has had 50 million pounds to spend; he has captured Michael Owen from Real Madrid and has assembled a talented squad. But Newcastle languish 14th in the Premier League only a few points above the relegation fight. How did this happen?

In his first season Souness had to sort out the dressing room and bring the unruly elements to heal. The biggest culprit of this unruliness was reported to be Craig Bellamy. Despite being a highly talented footballer he had a tendency to mouth-off when not necessary; he would win a free kick but would end up being booked as he kept haranguing the referee. Bobby Robson famously said: He could start an argument with himself.

Bellamy feigned an injury when Souness asked him to play in midfield and was soon shipped out to Celtic on loan and then sold to Blackburn at the end of the season.

Souness is in the middle of an injury crisis at the moment with eight players out injured – players who would be considered to be part of a starting line up. Some say that the manager should not be blamed for this because he didn’t set out to injure the players. But you have to ask the question: why spend 17 million on Owen when you can buy 3 very good players for the same money and have a bigger squad?

If you accept this argument then the blame has to come down to the Chairman because he signs the cheques. Instead of buying expensive he could have insisted on buying in bulk and shipping out those who languish in the reserves but will never make the grade. If a young player is not knocking on the first team door by the time they are 19, I don’t see future for them at a big club.

The arguments against Souness say that he should be able to motivate what he has to produce their very best, that is what a manager is paid to do. A good manager with ropey players will always be more successful over a season than a team of good players but a bad manager. Managers who can inspire middling players to play out of their skins week-in week-out, a good example would be Martin O’Neil. A good few years ago now when he was manager of Leicester they managed to go 2-nil down at home to Chelsea. Chelsea weren’t the power house then as they are now but they were a very good team, much better than Leicester. A couple of substitutions, lots of shouting from the side lines and Leicester scored twice and earned a draw. O’Neil could change his tactics and motivate his players to keep battling. And this is what Newcastle appear to be lacking, a person who can inspire them.

If the manager is to go then so should the Chairman, the person at the top of an organisation is responsible for everything that happens underneath. It was the Chairman who appointed Souness in the first place.

Dear Son,

today an ultra-conservative group within the Catholic church called for the film of Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” to be a given adult rating because:

Any adult can distinguish reality from fiction. But you cannot expect a child to make proper judgements.

From a group that claims the Bible is the truth, when in fact it is fiction. And since when did the Catholic church want to protect children? Since they were caught protecting child molesters and made to pay. And they don’t like paying out money! This is the same institution that sold out millions of Europeans to the Nazi party leading to millions of deaths. Before that they started the whole Islam/Christian hatred and war which still rages today.

The hopeless informed man then goes on to state:

Although the story is absurd and at times somewhat humorous, it produces a hateful image of the institution and it is well known that hateful images like this produce feelings of hatred in those who lack a critical sense.

A bit like frightening children with stories of hell and victimising lesbian and gay men. These people would rather see millions of people die from AIDS then teach sex education and condom use.

A quick look at the crimes of the Catholic church (and the whole of religion for that matter) over the centuries would reveal that the people who need shutting up and keeping away from both children and adults are the preachers of religion.

Dear Son,

tt is two weeks ago today that your Grandmother, my mother, died.

The two of you only met once, on her birthday this year, 30th July 2005. Although you both had chats on the phone – you would gurgle, make your high-pitched bird noises and laugh while Grandma talked.

Your grandmother was a fighter son, since I was nine years old she was having something removed, altered or irradiated. She fought cancer time after time and by the time of her birthday this year had just got her hair back from the chemotherapy she was having.

Living with her death has been something I have been doing since I was eleven years old and in the end it wasn’t the cancer that got her. Despite it’s best efforts over the last 24 years it was her heart that gave out in the back of an ambulance on the way to hospital.

You have kept me going this past two weeks with your spontaneous smiles. It’s as if you can sense the grief and unhappiness around you. You gorgeous smile reminds me that life goes on, that my mother wanted people to be happy and that you are my happiness. You were there to give me strength along with your mother at every turn. Even now as I’m writing this you are on the bed next to me laughing and farting and lightening my mood.

I’m sure I will continue to cry for my mother for many years to come and I will miss her and the regular chats we used to have as she listened to my problems and offered advice. She told me on more than one occasion that life was for the living and the dead could look after themselves. With that it mind we have to look after your grand dad who is now all on his own.

The one thing that I have learnt from this whole episode is never to put things off for the future if can do them now. The future may never happen.

I have created a web site dedicated to your grandmother : audrey.caudle.me.uk.