Selected Writings of a Trauma Survivor

Just recently, I have had a couple of unpleasant experiences in the tourism industry, in Ireland as a tour manager and – to a much lesser degree - in Barcelona, as a tourist. While the two destinations are around 1500 km apart, the experiences have a strong commonality in that both indicate a less than welcoming attitude toward tourists. Here, I reflect on what happened.  The flow of energy around the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland is probably the most powerful I have ever experienced in the natural world. There is a drop of over 200 metres from the cliff tops into the ocean below. Gazing at it invites contemplation on the fragility of life and the inevitability of death before quickly stepping well back from the edge as the wind buffets, sunshine blinds, waves break while the cries of seabirds are sequestered and disappear out to sea. Even the ground collaborates in the overall experience by sucking each foot into the mud and resisting attempts to heave it free....

"In ancient times as peasants tell   A friar came with book and bell   To chaunt his Mass each Sabbath morn   Beneath Stranmillis trysting thorn"* Summer, at least here in the northern hemisphere, is already a memory. In Ireland the nights are growing longer and the fading sun yields earlier each afternoon to the reign of the October moon. Darkness is ushering in the autumnal equinox, a time revered by the Celts because it was then they believed that the veil between this world and the next mysteriously lifted, allowing the souls of all those who had died during the year to pass beyond it. They called the festival Samhain (pronounced Sah ween); today we celebrate it as Halloween. As the date approaches, I find myself casting more than a passing glance at the headstones in Belfast City Cemetery and wondering... Its ancient pathways beckon, and momentarily I consider doing my own private midnight tour in honour of the mystery. But I don’t have the courage. It’s a dark...

E ven through I don’t fully understand what happened to me and why, I am still going to write about the silent meltdown which has changed the course of my life… definitively. Maybe writing will offer me some clarity.  Three years ago, I walked into my classroom on the university campus for the last time. My job, a job I’d been doing for 13 years, was to prepare international students, mostly Chinese, to tackle the challenges of a postgraduate course in a UK university. The main focus was on establishing and developing academic writing skills. On that day, the day the meltdown began, there was no warning. The lesson I had prepared was in line with the syllabus and it aimed to introduce students to the various reasons why referencing is required. It is an important lesson to learn for success in academic life, particularly so if students want to avoid being charged with plagiarism and subsequently expelled from their course. It was to be the last lesson I taught. Every aspect of the ...