Thursday 21 January 2010

Mothers & Sons, the tyranny of the nipple



Funny business, mothers and sons. Barely knew mine and remain astounded that people of my age have had mothers all their lives and still have them. They're in the news a lot, now, mums, what with Iraq and Afghanistan and of course with young Tommy often having had a series of uncles or you're-not-my-real-dads. The both-ways intensity of some of these relationships appears, to my curious eye, a bit too close to Iris Robinsonism for comfort, not incestuous as such but out on the unnatural end of parenting.

There's that geezer, wotsisname, the hacker, forty years old and cute enough to sneak into the cyber Pentagon and piss in the drawers but there, too, is his Mum, Mother McKinnon, all glammed-up, bleating about her Gary, like they were lovers. He has one of these syndromes but maybe it wouldn't be quite so disabling if he wasn't so mother dominated, I dunno, I do get impatient with syndromees.

Wearisome, how often we hear some poor, haggard, but optimistic biddy opining, with no ear for its incongruity, that Wayne is more than a son, 'e's me best friend, deaf to the Ruinous implications of such a statement, another sheet ripped from crass sentimentality's bogroll.

They are everywhere, syndromees, victims, separatees, divorcees, mothers in love with their sons, ready to die for them, or kill them. Like Frances Inglis, below, God bless her poor, mad mind. This is her mugshot. I've known a lot of murderers and they don't look like anything special but Frances really doesn't look like a murderer/ess, even so, at fifty-seven she's been given nine years, minimum nine years, for killing her comatised 22 year old son, Tom, with a heroin injection, succeeding on her second attempt, while on bail, charged with attempted murder, after her first crack at it failed. Fuck me, you couldn't make it up.

It seems such a vague stretch, nine years, not enough to indicate real wickedness or sadism or gain in the offence, yet way too long for a woman obviously, given the facts, living outside Reason's shelter, made loony by grief and guilt and imaginings, clinging to a distorted sense of ultimate responsibility for the fruit of her womb. We can argue that she knew what she was doing and she knew the likely penalty so let her enjoy her porridge and her roll-ups but we should be bigger and wiser and kinder than those who, deranged by cruel circumstance, offend us, shouldn't we?

We are awash with mistreated, mateless mothers, exploited, prey to passing strangers, bullying children, unstable, rudderless, making ends meet, firefighting; harangued, hectored and bullied by the likes of wee, salivating Michael Gove or Harriet Soursister; their relationships askew, often bizarre and it seems to me that in this case, as in so many, what's needed is that strong but gentle father's hand, keep Gary McKinnon on the cyber straight and narrow, tell him not that he's wonderful and talented and a very special person but not to fuck with Uncle Sam; to mediate between Frances Inglis and her isolation to regulate whatever chaos it was which saw Tom Inglis jump from a moving ambulance, his mother and her neighbours, au fait with the acquisition and administration of fatal doses of narcotics, adept at penetrating secure facilities, and at teaching her other children the jargon of grievance, this, friends, this is the apparatus of Ruin.

The boy, Tom, is dead, now; he might've died anyway, doctors may have eased his passing, he may have suffered, a bit, a lot, who knows; maybe Frances's remedy was a grim kindness but it wasn't her decision to make and she has transferred the boy's suffering, if such it was, to herself and to we, who must exercise our own freedoms, conscious that she for nine years, barring a successful appeal against sentence, may not. Lost her son, lost her freedom in her old age and distressed all who know her. And many who don't. Time to ring some changes.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obviously, you have some issues with not having known your own mother very well.

call me ishmael said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
call me ishmael said...

Some issues with. How very daytime TV.

Dick the Prick said...

Ay, twas a kindness she did, did she? Who's to say - she? We? Dead kid - Tom? Veggie you say? Blithering idiot sat in his own shite, squelching, moulding into the nappy, wanking furiously like deranged emasculated gibbon, fist covered in shite and piss blowing man fat over carers?

Oh, i'm sorry. Complex i'm sure but ended, free the gal, fucked up enough frankly.

lilith said...

End his life the state sponsored way by starving him to death or her way with a syringe of heroin? I know which I would prefer for my child. It's fucked up. She has nine years inside to ponder her choice.

Mothers though, indeed a vexed "issue". I decided to get along with mine a few years ago when I realised

a) she can't help it
b) she's not a bad old stick, really
c) I look just like her
d) being that angry just wasn't compatible with a healthy liver or peace of mind.

Anonymous said...

You think thats bad? You want to see the looks I get when my dog jumps up and I say "down syndrome"

Agatha said...

Dear Mr. Ishmael,
Such beautiful prose and so perfectly chosen music to describe this facet of Ruin. Set aside the dilemma that Frances Inglis dealt with by committing murder as defined in our judicial system. Set aside the feelings of your readership for their own mothers, or mothers for their sons, and focus instead on the manifestation of ruin described by Mr. Ishmael - the ever-narrowing definition of family in our country: no extended family,no intervening grandparents, seldom even mum, dad and 2 kids - just mum and child or children - no wonder everyone's mad - the intensity of the relationship excludes all others and preserves the offspring in a dreadfully extended adolescence. Thirty and forty year olds behaving like 18 year olds did a half century ago. Shirking responsibility, not paying their debts because mum will sort it out. I suspect I was as bad in my own parenting. I think something deeply wrong happened in the postwar generation and now we are living with the consequences of that social revolution. In my optimistic moments, I hope that we are in a period of transition to something better, that the cult of the individual will be reconciled with a new caring society. In my more realistic times, I fear that Britain is very different from our European partners - that we lock up more of our population than Western and Northern European countries because we need to.
Thankyou for your insights, Mr. Ishmael, and for playing "Mother" for us,
Best Regards,

lilith said...

Well said Agatha.

Dick the Prick said...

Defo well said Agatha.

Agatha said...

Thank you, Lilith and Dick.
The revelations today about all four of the little boys in Doncaster - victims and perpetrators- is another dreadful aspect of the destruction of the social, familial, housing, legal and religious ties that used to hold our compatriots together in some sort of workable compromise, and of the unstoppable rise of the Daemon Capitalism, which sexualises infants and children,normalises and then glorifies extreme violence in order to make a bob or two. The Daemon Capitalism's minions, Television, DVDs, Games,reach into every home, and influence the conscious and subconscious minds of all our children, from babyhood. And it can't be conducive to peaceful coexistence to witness a man beating the shit out of your mother, hospitalising her, not once, but many times; not one man, but many men. Politicians describe this as "unfortunate occurrences in every generation." Destroying traditional communities to replace them with cities in the skies can't have helped, either. Respectable reporters have no qualms about scapegoating little children, describing the small perpetrators as feral. What nonsense. The feral cats in my barn don't behave like that. No, these little boys, and all the other damaged children are not feral - they are the unhappy product of civilisation and the postwar Social Experiment. Ruin, to quote Mr. Ishmael. Expecting social workers (too few, underpaid, overworked, over bureaucratised, and, quite often, frightened) to reverse the structural tide and save all the children (perpetrators and victims) is ridiculous, as Canute memorably demonstrated. It is complex, it is structural, it is the consequence of untrammelled capitalism and the deification of sex and violence, not to mention alcohol (often inextricably linked.) I don't think that this particular clock can be turned back, though. Maybe we have to accept that the four Doncaster boys - and all the others- are bloody sacrifices on the altar of our new god, Ruin.
Best Regards,
Agatha

mongoose said...

Compare and contrast to the result today. The jury decided to let Mother Gilderdale. Perhaps they thought she had had enough suffering for one lifetime. Excellent result and just what juries are for.

call me ishmael said...

Exactly why they should be restricted and eventually abolished, mr mongoose.

mongoose said...

A jury protects us from the stupidity and tyranny of the State, Mr Ishmael. And they have been abolished - well, the absolute requirement for them - as we now have Diplock Courts if the Prosecution can make a case for a juryless trial. A complete nonsense.

call me ishmael said...

The other thing, of course, mr mongoose, is that they eschew the necessity of a formal qualification, or puppilage, as the reptiles call it and permit the application of lay but not necessarily inferior minds, of necessity being drawn from outside the minority media-political ruling nexus. Can't fucking have that, now, ordinary people deciding important matters, against my members interests.

call me ishmael said...

pupilage?