A beautiful boy, a book, a play and an ink pad

Posted on October 29, 2023 by sarasiobhan

Connor died. He should be alive.

The book

The book I wrote about what happened was launched at Doughty Street Chambers six years ago with a kick ass panel and audience. I wore a red scarfy thing knitted by the mum of one of Connor’s teaching assistants. My Life My Choice members including their President, Michael Edwards, sat in the front row and cheerfully chipped in.

Writing the book was an exercise in witnessing. I’d written this blog for years. Writing joy, love, laughter, critique, commentary (and devastation). The book was a way of trying to make sense of the responses to Connor’s death, documenting the brutality of the processes and bullshit (or worse) families face when someone dies in state ‘care’. It was written before some of these processes ended [they never end].

An ink pad

I was uncomfortable at the thought of being asked to sign copies (what do you write?) and made a stamp to avoid this. The tiny ink pad still works. I didn’t stamp or sign many copies in the end. Rich, Rosie, Will, Owen, Tom and George Julian had complimentary copies. I sent a copy to Michael’s sister down Dorset way. He persuaded the publisher to produce a talking book version at the launch.

The play

Steve Unwin began to talk about a play before lockdown. He loved the book and started work to bring it to the stage. We met in Oxford. There was further discussion, draft scripts, potential news, updates and undates. I approached this in the same way I dealt with the book. As a kind of interested bystander with a stamp and an ink pad. Vaguely surprised when the play was mentioned, passing on updates to family and friends with caveats. This may not happen.

A few months ago Steve shared the most recent version of the script (a corker) and news the play, Laughing Boy, is on next spring at Jermyn Street Theatre followed by a week at Bath. Wow. A meeting was held with Stella Powell-Jones and David Doyle (Artistic Director and Executive Producer) in a London pub to talk about the important stuff.

How to get this right. That was the discussion. With Thai curry.

Earlier this week, the copy and image was shared for comment. The reassurance I felt after the meeting was cemented. The image is inspired by a #JusticeforLB quilt patch and the text spot on.

The announcement was made on Thursday lunchtime. The Lonely Londoners in Feb/March followed by Laughing Boy in April/May. I was at a writing retreat at Gladstone’s Library distracted by the beauty of the mushrooms as details bounced around social media.

So many messages and posts. A buzz of action, excitement and anticipation despite everything else going on. Would it go up North? Highlight of next year! My Life My Choice are bussing to Bath. Brilliant said Norman Lamb. Becca got her clipboard back out to organise the life raft trip to London. Booked. Booked. Booked.

Someone prosaically tweeted, ‘Lots of time to do something remarkable’.

It’s already remarkable. A beautiful boy dismissed in life matters. His quirkiness, love of life and buses, humour, irreverence and courage to stick two fingers up at adversity count.

I’m setting aside my stamp and ink pad. There will be tears. So many tears, alongside laughter, bafflement and kick ass brilliance.

Thank you Steve Unwin.

Tickets are available here with relaxed and captioned performances.

Sharks on the rooftops

Posted on August 4, 2018 by sarasiobhan

I went for a wander round Headington late afternoon earlier. In part to practice taking photos with my new camera and because I remain so blooming upset/agitated by the description of LB in the NMC hearing ‘determination of (un)facts’. How dare a fucking ‘panel’ of a nurse and two lay people who never met LB and have done nothing to try to understand anything about him be so callously disrespectful of who he was.

No doubt they will argue their determination is based on evidence but evidence is not statements like so and so ‘seems to suggest that…’

Distressing, unnecessary and cruel.

In the late afternoon sun I wandered past the Co-op where LB smashed doing the shopping back in the day. Still makes me chuckle. On to Posh Fish, a go-to chippy for 20 years though our visits have dropped to rarely as the kids have grown older. My mum and dad took Rosie, Tom and LB there for some nosh on the day of my viva at Warwick in 2006. Rich and I pitched up later to have a celebratory beer with them. Such a joyful day. Posh Fish rocked. Reach for the stars stuff it seemed at the time.

Sharks on the rooftops.

Then round to the other Headington shark. The one we used to go and look at when the kids were tots. Rosie was convinced for years it had been a fish and chip shop. I think maybe as a way of trying to make sense of an enormous shark apparently falling head first from the sky through the roof of a terraced house.

At the end of the shark road is the funeral home LB was in before his funeral. Well in and out of because of the balls up over his post mortem. Behind the side window is the ‘viewing room’ or chapel of rest. It’s just a room really but a room completely and devastatingly not like any other room.

[For geography nerds, the John Radcliffe Hospital is up the road there on the left.]

As I waited to cross the road directly opposite a coach went passed blocking my view. Oh my…

Angel Executive Travel. No.fucking.way.

This coach passed me on the day of LB’s funeral. Walking in distress and agitation in the park across the road (the same road). A different type/flavour/density? of distress and agitation.

I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or punch the air.

I’m taking air punching.

At the end of a week in which professional sharks (not our local fun and quirky ones) have once again been circling for blood and behaving like fucking spunktrumpetweeblewarblers we’re not going to let LB’s memory be sullied in a crass, ill-informed and deeply biased report.

On Friday we’re back to London to fight the fucking fight that never, ever seems to end; to try to establish the humanity of our fun, quirky and beautiful children.

Legacy, power and the in-between bits

Posted on May 27, 2018 by sarasiobhan

On Friday a Craft Activism day was held as part of the Oxford Brookes Think Human festival. The #JusticeforLB quilt was on display for the first time in 18 months and Janet Read, one of the quilting team of four, was a presenter. Other presenters included Karen Nickell talking about textile art during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Roxanne Ellis, who founded the Women’s Quilt celebrating the lives of 598 women killed by men between 2009-15.

The event was held at the Avado Gallery in Oxford.

It was blooming moving and powerful listening to Janet tell the story behind the making of the quilt.

Concerns about whether it may turn out to be a #JusticeforLB tea towel if not enough patches were sent. The bundle of patches from the Messy Church group arriving with still wet glue. Letters sent with stories and concerns around whether patches might not be ‘good enough’. The stretching of the patch size template… The small detail that Janet, Margaret Taylor and Janis Firminger had never made a quilt before.

Janet said when they first laid the patches out on the floor, they realised they had been given a gift. And cried.

Janet’s sister Jean Draper, a textile artist, was drafted in to help and the just under 300 patches from people aged 3-80 were transformed into a quilt of beauty, spontaneity and power.

During Janet’s talk I began to think about the in-between bits of the quilt. The individual patches have kind of eclipsed the quilting work. The joining together of different shaped patches into a spectacular whole and the artistic endeavour this involved.

Karen Nickell earlier talked about how invisible much textile art is, stored away in suitcases or attics. Undervalued within the art world (or dismissed as ‘soft furnishings’). The enormity of this quilt, like other objects of protest stitching, was breathtaking. Joanne Begiato rounded the event off reflecting on the ‘time traveller’ dimension of these objects which have a power beyond those who make them.

Bang on.

A Doughty Street gig

A couple of weeks ago I was involved in a Doughty Street evening event about strategic litigation. I didn’t know what this was but Kids for Law have helpfully produced three short films explaining it; using the law as a tool for social justice. I was asked to speak about the legacy of #JusticeforLB.

‘Ooh er’, I thought. ‘Legacy?’

The (attempted non) publication of the Leder review weeks earlier came to mind. How committed journalists worked to make a ‘buried’ report newsworthy. How editors were willing to take a punt on the unseen report. The passion and dedication demonstrated on that dark day.

This is an example of the legacy of the extraordinary efforts of families and allies to make the premature deaths of their daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, parents known and cared about. These issues have become more prominent, connections have been made, networks developed and countless people have stepped up to collaborate and be counted.

Another example is the truly wondrous pop up #CaminoLB walks that took place across the UK when we were walking the #JusticeforLB bus to Santiago. I can’t describe how moving it was to facetime brilliantly cheerful groups of people, many of whom had never met before, from the Camino. London, Cheshire, Kent, Devon, Birmingham…

Legacy is an important strand of social action I learned during the evening. Or steps made can wither away. I suppose, like the quilt, it’s now about looking beyond the headline patches. We can’t bottle the magic of #JusticeforLB but we can certainly start to think a bit more about the in-between bits. How it worked and why.