You are old, Father William by Neville Teller

You are old, Father William

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “And your hair has become very white, And yet you incessantly stand on your head –Do you think, at your age it is right?”

These days I am increasingly inclined to take the Reverend Dodgson’ s admonition seriously. That I am old, a glance at the archive note appended to each forum contributor will reveal. My time at Teddy Hall was spent in the dim distant past of the early 1950s. Most of my contributions to the forum - I began contributing in May 2013 - are in the Journalism section. That, in itself, is enough to tell you that I have incessantly stood on my head. Venturing even the most innocuous of opinions on political events is a chancy business. Ten to one you will be proved wrong within a few weeks.

I suppose opinions should be distinguished from beliefs, though they do influence each other. There ought to be no shame in adapting an opinion in the light of changing circumstances; perhaps beliefs should be more firmly held. Even so, the older I get, the less flexible I become, and I am finding it increasingly difficult to change my opinions, and almost impossible to change my beliefs. In short, do I think at my age it is right to stand on my head? Answer - no.

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You adapt as you age, but it’s surprising how little you change fundamentally. Here’s an admission: back in my Teddy Hall days I was a little right of centre politically; I’m still a little right of centre. I was accused then of “sitting on the fence” - it’s an accusation that has pursued me down the years. I was radio-mad then; I have remained radio-mad to this very day. Drama and the stage fascinated me then; they have continued to fascinate me ever since.

So that 24-year-old, sitting on the Teddy Hall well in 1955, raising a glass to celebrate the end of Finals, was to go on to pursue his radio dream as a freelance alongside a more remunerative, as well as more conventional, career. Incidentally, he was 24 because, before coming up, he’d had to undertake two years army service. Back then conscription was compulsory. Yes, the past is a foreign country.

Talking of foreign countries, my family background, ancestry and religion inevitably directed my attention to the Holy Land. Ours, I may say, is an Aularian family. Two of my three sons followed me to Teddy Hall. When one of them began an academic career at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and years later the other took himself, his wife (also an Aularian, by the way) and family off to Israel, my wife and I eventually followed them.

But not before a full - some might consider over-full - career. A first period in the 1950s and ‘60s was spent in the exciting world of advertising, marketing, and general management. In 1970 I gained direct entry into the Civil Service, where I passed the next twenty years in the Department of Health and Social Security. Compulsory retirement at age 65 was followed by a 10-year stint in what is now Macmillan Cancer Support. Finally, a second retirement at age 75 allowed me to devote myself full time to the literary and dramatic work for radio and audio that I had been pursuing for the previous 45 years alongside my other career. After five years of this, my wife and I decided to join that part of our family that had set up home in Israel.

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“My old man,” my wife might have said (but didn’t), “said Follow the van, And don’t dilly-dally on the way. Off went the van with me ’ome packed in it…”

Except in our case, the home was packed into vast containers that were shipped down the Channel, round Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, out into the Mediterranean, and across to Ashkelon, perhaps, or Haifa. The operation took in all some eight weeks. Far from following the van, the van very much followed us.

Once there, and settled, I resumed my radio and audio work, but it wasn ’t enough. What else could I do? The political situation in the Middle East could never be described as without incident. So I began writing the occasional letter to Israel’s leading English-language newspaper, The Jerusalem Post. Encouraged by publication, I tried my hand at an article. In July 2012, exactly twelve months after arriving in Israel, my first op-ed, as these pieces are dubbed, was accepted. A regular weekly article on matters political followed.

It is amazing what follows regular application to any endeavour. In my case the articles quickly accumulated, and I could see how a book could be fashioned from them. Another volume followed, and then another. I ran a blog, opened a Facebook account, began to tweet. I had turned myself, willy-nilly and almost by chance, into a fullyfledged political journalist. Once a month or so I would select the best of my recent articles and post them into the Journalism section of the Forum.

No topic arouses greater emotion than the Middle East in general, or the Israel-Palestine situation in particular. I have no extreme views on these matters, or so I firmly believe - but some found what I wrote objectionable, and I generated some strong reactions. They remain on view in the Forum, which is fulfilling its purpose of generating discussion and the interchange of opinion.

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I have contributed also to the Drama section, where I make freely available a radio dramatisation for any aspiring radio producer who needs a radio script. And I am also represented in the Translation section, where I write about translating poetry with particular reference to a poem in Hebrew which I translated, working closely with the poet for whom English was not his mother tongue. It was subsequently published several times, and was used by Ralph McTell as the lyric to one of his songs. It appears as track 11 in his CD album “Sand in Your Shoes”.

Neville Teller

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