Early Retirement?

Earlier this week it was brought to my attention that someone who looms large in my past has just announced he is to retire after 36 years in his present job. I first met the organist and music director Stephen Cleobury in 1982 when he was the surprise choice to replace the incumbent Phillip Ledger as Director of Music at King's. I was an already troubled and angry 13 year old. But come to think of it what 13 year old isn't?

After the at times terrifying experience of Ledger's violent reign I felt quite optimistic. He actually had local connections to my area, his father had been a consultant psychiatrist at the asylum of St Augustine's in nearby Chartham. Could any of us have known that less than 10 years later I would become a patient there?

Although it did not become truly apparent until Christmas of 1982 for whatever reason Cleobury took an instant dislike to me. Years later he described me as "a little shit". Maybe I was but he brought it on himself by the way he treated me. My last two terms at King's were not happy and I took every opportunity to piss him in. Neither of us cried when I left in the summer of 1983.

Much as I detested him he had a delightful wife who was always kind to me and as the years went by she continued her kindness when we met. Then one year I was there she was nowhere to be seen. Unbeknown to me Cleobury had run off with the young female chaplain of Queen's College. She was my age. The scandal hit The News of the World and how his career survived is something of a mystery to me.

Nowadays he is always nice to me. Always gets me a good seat when I visit King's. Am I mourning this change? Not really. Good luck to him I suppose. He will never be my favourite person but we all make decisions that don't always have good outcomes for everyone.

Today as I while away the hours until my return to normality tomorrow those scars are faint but there. There were plenty of signs of mental illness in my life long before that scary incarceration in that asylum. I'm trying hard to fight back from the latest setback. There will be others but I will reach some sort of equilibrium and return once again to what is normal working life. It just feels very frightening on this day, in this little flat and in this little insignificant life.

I Heard a Voice.