Sorted Magazine

Category: Comment & Columnists

  • Opinion: Why I am not watching the World Cup this year …

    Opinion: Why I am not watching the World Cup this year …

    This is a very personal story but I feel it is important to highlight to everyone why I will not be watching the World Cup.

    A few years ago, while I was working out in the Middle East, I had the chance to do some charity work in a labour camp; yes that’s what they are called. We went in to provide phone cards so the ‘workers’ could phone home. As soon as I arrived in the building I had to run out as I was being physically sick from the awful stench of body odour, urine, faeces and stale food all mixed together.

    A few minutes later (with some menthol rub on my nose) I went back in to offer the phone cards. The sight that I saw in there was beyond my worst expectations. These men were sleeping in a room where three of the four walls were lined with triple bunk beds. The only free floor space was just big enough for them to have a single hot plate to cook on. All their clothes and possessions had to stay on their beds as the room with nine people didn’t have space for wardrobes.

    Their washing facilities were repulsive with rows of eight toilets (all open with no privacy) on one side, with rows of sinks for washing clothes, plates and hands, lined opposite the toilets.

    While all these abhorrent living conditions are going on, there are other factors that these poor souls have to go through. They do not get annual leave, in many cases they work for two years with one day of rest a week. They are not afforded suitable medical insurance (in these countries there is no National Health Service) which is why there are rumours of deaths of up to 6,000 people. And lastly, upon entering the country their passports are taken off them and held until they leave the country. The entire system is effectively built like modern day slavery.

    This is the reality of life for some of these people. And I believe it is people like this who have built the stadiums in Qatar. In my opinion if we treated our pets half as bad, the RSPCA would rightly, be on us. Yet we have allowed hundreds of men to live in terrible conditions so that we can take pleasure from watching football.

  • Comment: By any other name

    Comment: By any other name

    My name is not Sylvia. And yet a former superior insisted on calling me Sylvia, while knowing full well that my name was not, in actual fact, Sylvia. He appeared to be friendly enough but his smile was more of a smirk, like that of a little boy who was getting away with something naughty. I staged a mild protest. But he grinned all the more while delivering this inaccurate salutation, seeming pleased to have drawn a rise out of me. Soon others, those ranked beneath him, began addressing me as Sylvia too. They seemed confused. I protested further. But the mis-naming continued and, if I wanted to hang on to my bottom-of-the-pile job, there didn’t seem to be a right lot I could do about it.

    My name is not Maureen. In a different work place, a person I was answerable to insisted on calling me Maureen, while knowing full well that my name was not, in actual fact, Maureen. He was joking around and laughing at his own ‘brilliant’ sense of humour. At first I laughed too, but after a while I couldn’t keep up the pretence. It felt too much like an adult version of the bored school boy who pulled my pig tails and I started to wonder what the actual heck was wrong with these people.

    Names matter. Especially people’s names. There’s a kind of passive aggressive power play going on when we decide to use a name that someone doesn’t like or want. I’ve seen this sort of jokey, mild bullying tactic happen to others, and I’ve been on the receiving end of it too. It’s galling. But isn’t it lovely when someone, usually a professional, takes the trouble to ask what name you prefer to be addressed by? It’s a gesture of kindness, courtesy and respect. Claiming your preferred name is liberating. Re-naming yourself is an important autonomous act. Children sometimes do this when they reach their teenage years; we ignore their decision at our peril. For many, taking on the surname of another at the point of marriage also represents a major shift in identity.

    Positive name giving, and re-naming, are viewed by some (mostly me) as a divine act. By this I mean that it’s not something to be done lightly. Back in my Sunday school days I noticed that in stories about the Almighty He was big on giving names to people and places. Re-naming seemed high on His agenda too. It’s akin to the gift of a fresh start, a new identity, a new role, a promotion, new purpose or fresh function.

    It’s in this spirit of renewal that I’ve become a self-appointed nano name giver. I’m currently writing a book about some long forgotten places, parts of them have no formal name at all. I can see no reason why I can’t make up an appropriate new name for a tiny part of a place, especially when that part is nameless. Naming something gives it credence. A made up name can stick because just one person started using it, and if you really think about it every name for every place had to be made up by someone. So why not me? I’m hopeful it will catch on.

    As a journalist the names of people, and especially places, hold a fascination for me. At some point in time every person and every place was nameless. Somewhere along the way, by accident or design, a name was chosen by one person. Someone was the very first person to utter the words Borsdane Woods or Rivington Pike or Blackpool or Leeds or Fred’s Field. And it caught on, just like with the Sylvia thing.

  • Sleeping on the streets

    Sleeping on the streets

    London City Mission (LCM) is challenging Christians across the UK to spend a night on the streets in its Big Winter Sleepout on November 19th.

    Anni Uddin, Field Director for homeless and marginalised at London City Mission, said: “The reality of homelessness in this country is heartbreaking and it’s likely to be significantly worse this winter.”

    “The Big Winter Sleepout is a powerful way to step into the life of those on our streets, experience what they face, and hopefully stir our hearts to engage with them in our daily lives. This is beyond just donating money; it is giving time and effort to change your perceptions about homelessness as you help make a change in the lives of people who are homeless.”

    This winter, it’s estimated that 1.2 million households in the UK are at the risk of becoming homeless. After a decrease in homelessness from 2021 to the summer of 2022, this forecast would mean the undoing of the efforts of so many who have been supported out of homelessness.

    Funds raised from the Sleepout will go towards the charity’s Webber Street day centre in Waterloo. Webber Street is a place where those struggling with homelessness can go to during the day and receive hot breakfasts, clean clothes, help with finding accommodation, career advice and a chance to hear the good news of Jesus shared to them lovingly. Last year, Webber Street provided more than 10,000 breakfasts, 2,000 showers and hundreds of clothes and toiletries. The centre is also home to the Corner House, a short-term accommodation home, where mid-term housing is provided for four men at a time.

    Sign-up for the Sleepout here: lcm.org.uk/sleepout. Participants can complete the sleepout at the Webber Street day centre or it can done in a back garden, balcony or doorstep.

  • Comment: The guy on the train

    Comment: The guy on the train

    ‘You’re advised not to travel by train today.’ Notifications of rail strikes and ‘planned disruption’ were all over the media. I’m not a big risk taker so felt it wise to heed the warnings. I patiently worked my way through an ongoing exchange of emails to rearrange an important face-to-face meeting with a potential new client based in London. Undeterred I agreed to a new date for the meeting, while hoping and praying that the opportunity hadn’t been blown.

    ‘Your return train has been cancelled.’ The email pinged in at 5.00am, 45 minutes before my alarm was due to go off. My initial disappointment at losing precious moments of sleep was instantly over shadowed by a wave of mild panic, followed by a double shot of adrenaline, a coffee, a quick search for alternative trains and a few deep breaths. Undeterred I set off for the train station, while hoping and praying that I would somehow be able to find my way home.

    ‘Your outgoing train has been delayed by 40 minutes’ announced a very apologetic voice over the tannoy. I found a seat on the platform, watched the world go by for a while, and listened to the repeated apologies. Undeterred I got on the train, while hoping and praying that the delay wouldn’t make me late for said meeting.

    Long journeys hold a special sort of dread for me. All my life I’ve suffered from chronic motion sickness. And I don’t use the word suffer lightly. Travel pills render me almost unconscious so I’m left with no other options but to manage the process by practical means. I must travel on a completely empty stomach, keep my eyes firmly shut for the entire time and keep my head, neck and body as still as I possibly can. In addition to this I practise the deep breathing exercises which I’ve previously used during 19 hours of un-medicated labour. It may look weird but hey, lots of travellers nap, so I just kind of zoned out all the way from Manchester to London.

    Upon arrival at Euston there was a 20 minute queue for the toilets and a 20 minute queue for a taxi. This involved the mildly inconvenient but mostly pleasant and settling experience of standing on solid ground with both of my eyes open. Both of these tasks sit well within my skill set and I completed them with a great deal of satisfaction. The meeting involved chatting to lovely people about creative things. Also good. Another 20 minute queue for the taxi back to the station was followed by a 20 minute stop-start journey over every speed bump in London, but I just about managed to keep myself together.

    Another long queue for the toilet. Another long queue at the ticket office. A forward facing seat is vital for me, but my attempts to book one on a later train failed. I explained to the ticket attendant that standing up for the journey would likely cause me to puke and pass out, but he’d obviously heard that one before, and told me seats were pot luck. Then a helpful member of staff intervened and suggested I tried to board the next train north which was leaving any minute now. Running wasn’t allowed in the station, but I did my fastest walking dash and arrived at the platform just in time. The train was filling up with disgruntled travellers.

    There were no empty seats left but it was absolutely critical that I got my bum on a seat before the train started moving and my innards along with it. With just moments until departure I quickly squashed myself into a tiny space on the floor and managed to lean my back against a lumpy pile of luggage. Another weary traveller came to mind, a pregnant refugee longing for rest and safety. But there was no room at the inn for her, she had to make do with the only lowly place she could find. As fellow travellers scurried around or stepped over me I pondered the significance of this bottom-of-the-pile story anew.

    By now the repeated assaults upon my system were beginning to take their toll. My head ached from lack of food. My stomach felt like a washing machine. I really wanted to go home. I told myself that I had to stay on that train no matter what happened.

    A man was working on his laptop just a few feet away. He was chatty and friendly and asked me if I was ok. He was a kindly presence. His appearance, voice and manner were so much like one of my relatives that I had to do a double take. He was a comforting presence. A mobile fan was linked to his laptop and he asked me if I would like him to aim it at me so I said yes please. He was a generous presence. That cool breeze was precisely what I needed. When it was time for me to get up from the floor he stooped down and offered me his enormous hand. I took it. He lifted me up as if I was just a doll. He was a strong reassuring presence. He didn’t know about my difficulties that day, he was just a guy on the train, but he seemed like an angel to me.

    Main photo credit: Victor Rodriguez via Unsplash

  • Lest we forget…

    Five years after 23 people lost their lives, Sorted’s Val Fraser shares her personal memories about the Manchester Arena tragedy and reflects on an act of terrorism that shook the world.

     

    In 2017, I was assigned to a journalism gig in Manchester. A colleague and I were briefed to create multimedia coverage which would tell the stories around two Suffragan Bishops’ walkabouts. “My” Bishop was the Rt Rev Mark Ashcroft.

    Meetings were scheduled. Itineraries were mapped out. Tea and biscuits were stock-piled. It all promised to be very jolly. But then, just before the first stop on our 12-day tour, tragedy struck at the heart of Manchester, sending shock waves across the world.

    LENDING SUPPORT: Bishop Mark talks to police officers who are on the beat near Media City.

    On 22 May, at around 10.30 pm, as concert-goers were leaving the Manchester Arena following a concert by American singer, Ariana Grande, a suicide bomber detonated a homemade bomb. The act killed 23 people and injured more than a thousand others, many of whom were children.

    It was the deadliest terrorist attack and the first suicide bombing in the UK since the 2005 London bombings. Emergency services worked incredibly hard. The whole nation seemed to be on edge, prompting fraught discussions in high places.

    LENDING AN EAR: The Bishop talks to people shocked and alarmed by the bombing.

    The walkabout, or ‘pilgrimage’, had been prepared well in advance as part of a Church of England initiative called Thy Kingdom Come. In the aftermath of the bombing, it was deemed more important than ever that a comforting Christian presence should be visible, so the decision was made to go ahead as planned. Not really sure what to expect, I loaded up my gear and prepared to follow Bishop Mark around various Manchester locations.

    I zoomed, clicked, filmed and tweeted as he received warm, well-planned welcomes at schools, hospitals and churches. But in between these vicar-friendly venues, Bishop Mark took to the streets. He walked through shopping centres, busy markets, parks and towns. He rode trains and buses. And it was here, off-plan, with no script, in unchartered waters as it were, that he engaged with total strangers. It’s my observation that a man with clearly recognisable Christian markers such as a clergy collar, a large shepherd’s crook and a massive cross and chain, was able to elicit an interesting variety of reactions in public spaces.

    REMEMBERING THE FALLEN: A message speaks loudly for those who perished.

    Watching these encounters up close, it quickly became apparent to me the bombing had caused the public’s mood to shift quite significantly. Many people were reeling from the shock. There seemed to be a heightened awareness that humans are capable of unbelievably horrible acts. Andy Burnham, the city’s mayor, described the act as “evil”. I for one felt he’d summed it up accurately. 

    Knowing that it was possible for any one of us to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, was deeply disturbing. This disturbance seemed to generate some degree of openness towards God, towards goodness, towards hoping for things to be better than this.

    DEEPLY MOVED: Bishop Mark reads some of the tributes left for those who died.

    And it was in this atmosphere that Bishop Mark was able to pause and pray with, for, and over people. Some requested a blessing. There were lots of these essentially private moments, when I switched the camera off, retreated to a suitable distance and gave him the space to minister to some confused and fearful folks. I think he just wanted to meet with people and offer them some hope.

    As well as being kind, Bishop Mark is also very fast on his feet. On one leg of our journey, he somehow managed to give me the slip. I was hot on his heels, following the trail when he seemed to double back and disappear into a rabbit warren of hospital corridors. I started to panic, thinking I was going to miss the ‘Bishop visits hospital’ story. But when our paths crossed again I learned he’d been praying in the chapel. In that sanctuary, he met with hospital chaplains. They told him about the doctors and nurses who had cared for patients that were seriously injured in the bombing. And I was glad not to have been there.

    MAKING SENSE OF THINGS: The Bishop talks to school children about the tragedy.

    In truth, I was glad that those moments had been just between them and God. I was glad that I missed that particular story because I don’t think it was ever mine to tell.

    Val Fraser is a regular Sorted columnist and a Manchester-based freelance journalist

  • Arise, the king of sketch

     

    Ever wondered who’s behind the whacky doodles dotted throughout the printed version of Sorted? Val Fraser caught up with Andy Gray, a multi-talented illustrator with a quarter of a century of commercial experience of drawing pictures for storytellers and companies behind him. Her task was simple: to find out more about the man whose cartoons put a smile on the faces of our readers…

    Recently, Andy Gray was invited to put pencils to paper and create representations of the bible characters which feature in the children’s book Whistlestop Tales, a tome written by Krish and Miriam Kandiah (and published by Hodder & Stoughton). Andy’s creative input to the project also included the typesetting, or as he modestly puts it: “I did the scribbles and layouts!”

    Catching up with him when he wasn’t drawing or administering his faith duties (yes, Andy is also a practising vicar), I asked him how this particular collaboration came about?

    PICTURE OF CONCENTRATION: Andy Gray snapped while hard at work.

    “An awesome bloke called Joe Fisher wrote a book through lockdown and asked on social media for an illustrator. Another awesome bloke, Andy Taylor, who knows Joe from Greenbelt, tagged me in the post. I illustrated for Joe. The story is a kid-friendly, focussed reflection in rhyme on the pandemic called When the Bugs Came. We turned it around in record time from a Kickstarter, to sending out in under three months.”

    “Unknown to me, Joe was that pleased with it, he sent it to Hodder. And Hodder asked if I would do a sample piece for a couple of projects they needed illustrators for.”

    And that, as they say, was that! Now Andy is working on a follow-up book for his friend Joe (appropriately titled When the Hugs Came).

    “I don’t try hard to get work. I follow my nose, and my nose follows God,” he explains. “Well, I guess that means I follow God since I’m attached to my nose! I just trust him. He’s the friend who will never leave me or forget me. And he’s done that since I was eight years old. It’s awesome and quite the adventure. You just have to follow each day; do what He says to do each day, and stuff happens.”

    Whistlestop Tales is the first children’s book written by the Kandiah’s. They have brilliantly re-imagined 10 bible stories in an exciting global adventure, showing how a wonderful array of characters are swept up in God’s plan for the whole world.

    HAMMERED: this illustration graced the pages of the August-September 2021 edition of Sorted.

    During his creative career Andy has worked on several children’s books; each one embraces a unique style. Some of his drawings seem very controlled, delicate and magical, while others are cute and whimsical. His fluffy animals look soft enough to stroke.

    In contrast, the illustrations for Whistlestop Tales seem scribbly and a bit messy – more out of control and not unlike the ones readers of Sorted will be familiar with. It may appear they have simply exploded onto the page. It would be a mistake to think so, for each one has been forged in the painstaking process of immersive artistic expression. Each one is carefully crafted to tell a story in miniature, often laced with humour. The character’s facial expressions are priceless and Gray admits: “I can’t draw camels!” Often there are tiny details which reveal themselves only upon a second viewing.

    In addition to illustrating books, Andy leads activities and events in schools. He seems at home in this playful environment and has designed elaborate murals which cover an entire wall, eight metres long by two metres tall!

    The mural came about as a result of Andy’s work with the Diocese of Bath and Wells. He’d help them to create and develop ‘chat mat doodle sheets’.

    He explained “The diocese’s GoTeam came up with the idea of a printable placemat kind of thing; a verse, a bible reading and some questions. The idea is to help people just chat about the bible.

    “The chat mats have ended up around the world, from schools to churches to prisons. We have over 40 so far, and are about to do a load with a slightly different style for young people. One of our ministers realised that it would look great in their church school on a wall that needed updating from a mural done 20 years ago.”

    OUCH: Another of Andy Gray’s wonderful magazine illustrations.

    To create the fully customised mural (pictured, below) Andy tapped into the ‘school hive mind’.

    “I got the school to work with all the kids to identify the main things that had meaning for the school,” he says. “I trawled the school paperwork digging out the values. And designed the chat wall for them – the idea being that the kids could think about the wall together. And prospective parents could be shown the school values as much as read about them in a pack.

    “I did the design work and used augmented reality to transfer it to the wall. Emma King, the community worker employed by the church, and a regular face at the school, did the painting. Then I went back in and blacklined the whole thing. It took four days to design and colour. Two days to draw on the wall. Two weeks to paint (Emma was awesome). And another day to blackline.”

    You can see Andy’s latest ‘scribbles’ in the new edition of Sorted, which hits the newsstands this Friday (15 October). To connect directly with Andy, click here and to check out the Whistlestop Tales click here.