Meeting People
Amul Pandya converses with independent, adventurous and sometimes courteous free spirits. Creativity is an act of rebellion. Whether they are entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, investors, chefs, or corporate antagonists, Amul's guests all share a common disposition of not just pushing boundaries but re-drawing landscapes.
Meeting People
Margaret Evison: Rising to challenges, coping with death, empowering adolescents
In 2009 Mark Evison was shot whilst leading a patrol in Helmand Province. Having been flown back to England, his mother Margaret was faced with no choice but to turn off his life support machine.
She now runs the Mark Evison Foundation which enables adolescents from state schools to undertake challenges. In one of my most difficult conversations yet, we talk about Mark’s life, coping with the grief of losing a child, and the example he continues to set. The Foundation, named in his honour empowers hundreds of children to take on the spirit of adventure.
A clinical psychologist by training, Margaret is an inspiring character who had lots to say on the war in Afghanistan, military support, parenting, and the journey she has been on to lead a life of fulfilment that would make her son proud.
Her book Death of a Soldier, a Mother’s Story can be bought here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Death-Soldier-Margaret-Evison/dp/1849544492
To learn more about the great work of the Mark Evison Foundation, please visit https://www.markevisonfoundation.org/
Hello and welcome to Meeting People with me, Amul Pandya. Meeting People is a podcast where I have long conversations with rebellious, adventurous and sometimes courteous free spirits. Margaret Evison, thank you for joining us, Thank you for sparing the time. You run something called the Mark Everson Foundation and obviously your name is Margaret Evison, so I thought an obvious place to start is who was Mark Evison and what was your relationship to him, and then we'll move on to what the foundation does. So let's take it from there.
Speaker 2:Mark Evison was my son. He was a soldier who a young soldier who died in Afghanistan in 2009. So he was 26 at the time. He was leading a platoon and his lieutenant and his lieutenant and he was shot in the shoulder under really very difficult circumstances. So his guys had to carry him back to the patrol base on two of their shoulders. He was conscious all the time, just slowly bleeding and finally lost consciousness in the patrol base and effectively died in their arms. So there were attempts over the next two days to get him going again. So his soldiers loved him. He was a very lovable person, so he was very caring, he was adventurous, he was charming, he was incredibly funny, so he could make you laugh and laugh and laugh so that you'd almost fall off your seat. Um, and it was a very sort of powerful combination of being caring, charming, funny, very capable and, um, lovable you talked about his.
Speaker 1:You mentioned his adventurousness. Can you give some examples of that from when he was 17? He did very interesting really.
Speaker 2:He was, uh, had always been interested. He was very physical, physical, all his life. So he loved sport at school and at one point I had to limit the, the amount, the numbers of different sorts of sports he was allowed to do every day. So he was, he was, he was a natural runner, he was a natural everything really. Um, and when he was about 14, for whatever reason, he was a musician as well, which probably came into this as a very good musician. He played the cello and the piano and um, very well and won a music scholarship at his A-level level.
Speaker 2:But he became very interested at about 14 in the idea of personal challenge. He used to read a lot of books as a teenager about some of the great adventurers and explorers of our time and he just became really interested in the idea. And so he decided when he was 15, I think it was, he was just about to do his A-levels that he was going to run the London Marathon and that was the first time that I'd been aware really of that. And he ran it very fast. He ran it in I think it was two or three hours and 15 minutes, but very fast. And then the next thing I heard was that he went with a friend. He went on a long hike with a friend along the Pilgrim's Way, but they did a lot of miles quite fast, walking over two or three weeks, and you know he pushed on hard with that.
Speaker 2:And then he decided when he was what age? Probably 17. He wanted to be the youngest person to cross Antarctica or to go to cross Antarctica. And he was just, he had the sled and the whole thing. He went on a two-week training course up in probably Greenland or somewhere like that, with an adventurer, wow, and living in igloos and training on the ice, and he was all set to go and he just needed funds. So I didn't want him to go and so I told my friends not to back him. Basically, oh, interesting, he never went but he, but the will was there and the interests and he um, he prepared for that. Actually he was a great skier and had a friend who had a ski chalet and he would sleep outside on the balcony to prepare himself for going to exactly.
Speaker 1:Yes, so he cold exposure in Exactly. It's kind of brilliant. Yes, it's Wim Hof.
Speaker 2:So he had a bit of a reputation for being like that. He was also a great yeah, so that was him.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I wanted to ask before we go further is obviously he was a very sporty, talented musician, as well as quite handsome by looking at the photos of him and all the rest and very adventurous and strong.
Speaker 1:How do you as a parent get that other side of him to flow as well? Because I also understand he was kind and caring and generous, which it would have been tempting as a teenager, teenage boy that had all those strong attributes, to kind of be a bit, you know, pleased with himself and a bit smug, and and not particularly- kind.
Speaker 2:No, he was humble for some reason. He was humble about himself. He'd been a very sick baby, so sick child, sickly child, up to the age of about six or seven, and he never really had, for whatever reason, a sense, a very big ego or sense of himself.
Speaker 1:My daughter actually doesn't either it must be your parenting in some ways I suppose so and what was he sickly with? Is it just just generally just kind of not coping with?
Speaker 2:no, no, no. He. Well, the detail is he was born weighing about eight pounds seven ounces and by the time he was one, he was failure to thrive, basically, and by the time he was one, he slipped down to the bottom half percentile of the baby population, from being up at about 50 percent to the bottom half, and and wouldn't? I was breastfeeding, breastfeeding him for his first 10 months, and he'd just turn his face away.
Speaker 1:It was very traumatic for a mother, our second child. Um, we got that failure to thrive yeah comment from a from a consultant yeah, I mean she's doing well now, but it was heartbreaking for a mother to hear that oh, it's very tough and it was tough for him as well.
Speaker 2:So he was under the hospital, hospital from about, I suppose, like seven or eight months and he had, as a in his first year, I think, he had two episodes of bad pneumonia and had to be hospitalized, and they were tragic as well, because the mother wants to cuddle her child and I was told I wasn't to physically go near him because his temperature was so high, it would make him hotter. So he was very sickly, but it was actually. He was missing an enzyme in his gut, okay, and he gradually grew out of it and he was milk intolerant as well. So he had to be fed soya milk, which he managed fine, and so slowly, slowly, he grew out of it. When he was about five or six he was sort of sorted, but it was quite difficult when he was young and because I suppose he was also, you know, very allergic and he had a lot of wax in his ears and he couldn't hear until he was three. Wow, so his speech only I could really properly understand his speech. And because of this business of catching bugs from other children, he was told not to mix with other or his sister, not to mix with other children until he was about three. So all in all, it was not an easy Tough start. It was a tough start, yeah, yeah, amazing, and maybe it affected him in some ways.
Speaker 2:But the person who came out of it, I mean he had a fairly irrepressible personality. I think it was always going to come out, yeah, and even as a little child he was sort of very naughty, first of all, extremely naughty, and also the doctors used to say that he always looked well, so they would. Even when he had pneumonia he'd smile, beam at them as a baby and then they'd put their stethoscope on his chest and it was a complete mess. So he had that sort of sense of, I suppose, in a way, charm, and right from the very beginning, whenever he was naughty in a group and he was often, always naughty in a group the other people in the group would push him forward to negotiate their sins with an adult, because he was so charming about it Mark, you're up. So he was always the one who had to sort out.
Speaker 1:Get people out of a pickle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned he went, he wants to go to the pole and you, you kind of south pole yeah, and you, um, for understandable reasons, um boycotted it. Um, how did you react when he said I'm joining the army? What was? How did I react?
Speaker 2:what did you feel?
Speaker 1:when he said right, it's sandhurst for me well.
Speaker 2:Well, it was partly my fault if you call it a fault. So I was a single mum from when he was about 11 onwards and there was just him, me and his elder sister. So he was living in a household with two women and his elder sister. So he was living in a household with two women. And he said, when he was he tried, he wanted to go to boarding school and I couldn't afford it. But he had a trial of two weeks of boarding school when he was about 12, because his school allowed you to pay £25 for him to go to boarding school for a week. So I thought that's a bit of a bargain. But he I thought he was a bit short on A. He was very naughty all through his teens and he didn't have a father and I was, you know. I decided he was short of a father figure so I sent him off to boarding school. He got a music scholarship to boarding school for his A-levels, but I still thought he was short of a father figure because he was still being very naughty.
Speaker 1:And by naughty you mean disruptive, not doing his homework, that kind of thing, or kind of more like breaking staff, kind of worse than that Intertention, quite a lot Intertention.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, cheeky at school, always with a big smile, very charming about it. People loved him.
Speaker 1:Kind of roguish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, roguish just naughty by nature, you know He'd get other kids to do other things with him. They'd think, oh, that's a good idea, you know.
Speaker 2:I know the sort yeah, and so I suggested to him because I had this thing in my head that he needed a father figure. I suggested to him that he try the gap year. I knew there was a thing called a gap year army sort of year and I suggested he try, and he did try it and he got through it. Actually, you had to go away for a week or two and be tested by the army, but he was too young, because he was very young for his A-levels as well, right, and because of his failure to thrive earlier, he was also small, longer than other kids would be small, so he didn't actually reach. He kept on growing until he was about 23. Because of his failure to thrive earlier, yeah, and so I thought it would be good for him to have a. You know he's quite cheeky. I thought it would be quite good for him to have to, you know a year around him who were a year in the army.
Speaker 2:So he didn't make it, but that sort of ignited his interest. Yeah, and then he and he was a sportsman, so he did. He went to university as officer brooks for three years, didn't know what he wanted when he came back, but he said to me one day what he wanted to do. But he said to me one day what he wanted to do. But he said to me one day Mum, I think I'll join the army because that'll allow me all the things I want to do, like skiing, exploring, playing rugby, playing football, playing sport.
Speaker 1:Music as well. Music yeah.
Speaker 2:It'll allow me all those things, so I think I'll join the army. Music, yeah, it'll allow me all those things, so I think I'll join the army. And at the time there wasn't any war on in particular, if you remember that.
Speaker 1:So this would have been 2007 or 2008?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically yeah, 2007. So the public was really fed up with the Iraq war and that sort of peaked around 2007, 2008. And there's no question that the British Army would be going back into Iraq and I thought, well, there's no war in sight, you probably have a nice easy ride and all that sort of stuff. So that's why.
Speaker 1:And then obviously that wasn't the case because he found himself in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2:Yes, fairly quickly.
Speaker 1:Yes, After he passed out of Sandhurst.
Speaker 2:Yes, so he passed out of Sandhurst and then he they go away for training for a year or two in Wales and Scotland and you know he got lots. The army loved him because he was the sort of guy he once got a special commendation. They went up for training up in Scotland in the wilds of Scotland and they had to. It was very cold, it was the winter, they had to get off boats and wade through the water to get to where they're going to camp and everything else. And he got a special commendation for helping the very last person on and off the boat and helping people to sort themselves out and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:And his nickname was 007. It was yes. Why is that? I mean obvious reason for that.
Speaker 2:The guys. So you've got to remember all the time. He remained a very humble person, but the guys were slightly in awe of him because they just because of who he was really.
Speaker 1:He was just a very talented, charming, humble guy, you know, and can we therefore wind forward. He's out in afghanistan. It wasn't long, was it?
Speaker 2:no, very quickly. He was um. He was put into an area that was just a few miles away from a Taliban training camp. It was probably the most dangerous patrol base he could have been in, and none of his platoon had ever been to war, so they were totally inexperienced. He was 26. He was the oldest and the youngest was 19. And most of them were 19, 20, 21. So it was a hard ask, and at the time this is 2009, the British Army was undersupplied with helicopters in particular, so there was a lot of public outrage about kit for the Army, and we'd also just come out of the Iraq War in 2008, and so the public were most unimpressed at the idea of going to war again, impressed at the idea of going to war again, but in fact, more soldiers lost their lives in 2009 than any other year.
Speaker 1:I believe so yeah, it was the bloodiest period from my understanding and and the welsh guards the regiment he was in.
Speaker 2:Yeah he was in the thick of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were yeah and he said he was out on patrol, as you mentioned, and he was. When he got shot in the shoulder, I understand he was still issuing orders to people trying to kind of conduct the show, as he was out on patrol, as you mentioned, and when he got shot in the shoulder, I understand he was still issuing orders to people trying to kind of conduct the show as he was bleeding out, and one of his soldiers told me he sort of went pale when he was shot.
Speaker 2:He went pale and you know, sort of half, sort of collapsed and then asked for a cigarette. So that was Mark for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so all the while you were back home. Can you describe how you found out what you were doing? How was the news brought to you?
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't find out for a long time. So I wrote a book about that whole process period, actually called death of a soldier, but a mother's story. But it took me a long time to find out what had actually happened. So there was a five-day the following year and that was very difficult the inquest, and then actually about two weeks later after the inquest I went to Afghanistan myself to have a look. So that was very interesting as well.
Speaker 1:What did you learn doing that? Well, that was an amazing experience really.
Speaker 2:Um, I was part of a small group that was being taken around by a very well-known journalist, sandy gore, who was in his 80s at the time. I think he's now in his 90s, still alive. But he there was just. I think there were six of us or seven of us, and including a journalist and an army man and a few, a couple of other people of interest. So Charles Moore was in the group and I had just been through the inquest and was feeling quite bitter about it and because in my view it was an MOD cover-up, they didn't want to embrace the idea that the guys might have been short of kit or the radios weren't good enough or all that sort of stuff, and I didn't particularly feel like talking to anyone. But I'm always interested in people and curious about situations. I'm always interested in people and curious about situations.
Speaker 2:So on the little buses you know, it's a sort of eight-person bus to get around I was sat next to an 18-year-old Afghan girl and the others also. Three of the others also were there with their partners. So that made a bit of sense as well and she would tell me all about the reality of Afghanistan. So at the time she was a covered Christian, but if anyone had known that she was a Christian, she would have been put in prison. So there was total religious intolerance, which was something I'd not come across before, and she told me all about what it was really like living as a teenager in Afghanistan, and I could see myself as well looking around me how it is unbelievably tribal. Yeah, so as soon as you get there, it doesn't make sense that the army comprise people from different tribes. All the national things that they're trying to set up, but the army in particular things that they're trying to set up, but the army in particular because the tribesmen are brought up to hate one another.
Speaker 2:Um so the nation building is not this is not not possible, and we've learned this in history like three.
Speaker 1:You know, the british tried this in the 19th century. The russians tried this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly you know during the cold war and you know 19th century the.
Speaker 1:Russians tried this, yeah, exactly, you know, during the Cold War. You know how many times do we need to learn this?
Speaker 2:And it will be still a problem because we went to three other parts of Afghanistan. So the Taliban is a southern tribe and the people up north, the tribes up north. I remember when we went up north one day the others went off to see this beautiful lake. I stayed home back at the hotel and went off to a local market with a teenager who happened to speak English and walked through the markets and sort of talk to people and they said to me if they saw a Taliban, a Talib or one of the Taliban, they would kill him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know so the hatred between tribes, and it goes back a long way to things that might have happened 100 years ago or 50 years ago or 10 years ago, so-and-so, murdered, so-and-so. So if you have a country where there is no real system of justice, then revenge is effectively all you can use, and it was probably used in the UK in medieval times as a system of controlling how your own tribe is looked after, given that there are no police around or courts to go to. So revenge is the name of the game, really, of the game really so winding forward.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing you weren't therefore surprised to see the images of Americans pulling out last year or two years ago when Joe Biden decided to evacuate and people were kind of cleaning off airplanes.
Speaker 2:How did?
Speaker 1:you feel when you saw those images Were you kind of, did you think, kind of point proven, this is what I thought all along, or were you kind of disappointed and sad.
Speaker 2:Well, my book written or published in 2012. I was very clear by then that this was as a war. It was never going to work. Yeah, because of the problem of how tribal the country is and and I'd as you can imagine, if you think, you know, I'd lost my son. I'm not going to be very keen on war as a solution to this problem, and Mark himself wasn't. He said this is not the answer. He wrote a diary, actually a very interesting diary, before he died and it was brought back to me in the UK and he said this is not the answer war. So I'd come to that conclusion myself and, in a way, there was a sense of inevitability about it. I still feel that war is a very blunt tool for dealing with a problem and if you think of how much the afghan war cost, which I think was 45 billion, and if that money yeah, a billion or million, I'd have to remind you- but billion, at least a billion, if.
Speaker 1:If not, you know the, the unintended costs that aren't accounted for yeah, exactly, will be much greater.
Speaker 2:And if that money had been used to give to the Afghans to sort themselves out so they didn't have to grow poppies anymore and had irrigation and this sort of that sort of thing, it would have been so much more powerful a tool than you know. Several years later, the Taliban taking over, yeah, because that tribal landscape.
Speaker 1:You put one person in charge. You're going to therefore bring out resentment from everyone else because this kind of Western-backed person's in charge, and they're all going to resent that person, and then you're always going to be the most vicious. You're always going to rise to the top. If you're saying there's a justice system based on revenge, the taliban are obviously going to always rise to the top because they're the most. Um, this doesn't do you.
Speaker 2:Doesn't do you any credit to be kind of kind and just yeah, northern tribes have benefited from a lot more money from the west than the southern tribes in Helmand, and so the Helmand tribes were always considered the more for want of a better word barbaric, really the least westernized as well. Um, and and the and that's where you know the taliban come from yeah, so so how long did it take you to?
Speaker 1:and I'm guessing you're still processing it now. So there's you never when you lose a child, I imagine um ever get over it no, not, not.
Speaker 2:You never get to grips with it and you're. You said you're a psychologist yes, um, and my world was cancer care actually, and so I had to deal with death and dying uh, all my working life. And actually, before Mark went to Afghanistan, I walked him down the garden and I talked to him about death and how it happens and what it means, so that he'd be prepared, yeah, Well, at what point did you therefore kind of feel ready to start?
Speaker 1:I mean, the foundation obviously is to do something like that, you have to be ready right to kind of get out.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a very good question. So we weren't ready. So the foundation. So Mark was brought back on life support, okay, and we had to turn off the machines two days later. So there was Mark lying in his bed, looking like Mark on life support, but asleep, and I suppose when he we weren't told for a while and we weren't told for a while.
Speaker 2:So we were there with his teenage friends from school who were then 26 as well, so three of his best friends who had grown up with him and loved him, and obviously the family and his sister and his father and a few other people who were close. But those guys in particular, you know, were all decimated. It's very hard for me. What my mind did around that time was clear itself out, just destroy all my memories. But in the process of writing the book, the first anniversary, I sat down a chair and all the first anniversary, all those memories of that time that week in the hospital, came back. So, and it is in the book in fact, the first chapter became I wrote. I wrote then to make myself feel better.
Speaker 2:So during the course yeah, I'd as a psychologist. I remember going to a lecture by another psychologist about how writing helps you deal with your emotional self and I remembered it. Actually that first anniversary when I felt I was going to first of all not survive the day because it all came back in, you know like graphically, came back and I thought I'm going to have to sit down and write because otherwise I won't cope. So I started, started writing. Then that first day and that first anniversary and it's very interesting, sort of in a way, how these things happen, because that first anniversary, when Mark died the weekend died, I'm a gardener and I spent the weekend gardening and it was a May garden and that first anniversary the same day in the garden, all those visuals came back, you know, when the garden hit the same place in the calendar year, and so that's why I started writing.
Speaker 2:So whenever I felt I was out of control or very out of control a lot of of the time, but it felt too much for me I would write. So I wrote every day in afghanistan, along with charles moore, who's writing as well, for the spectator at the time, I think it was. And, um, I wrote after and after the coroner's inquest and probably during the coroner's inquest. So I'd do coroner's inquest, so I'd do it as a matter of course, and in the end just happened to meet a person at a book launch and I had 30,000 words and told her about it from all my writing. So it was therapeutic writing and I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone who was really upset because I think it helped me hugely. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And did you have a decent support network around you of people to kind of carry you through, whether it was the army? Was the army good at kind of helping bereavement or do you think they could do things better on that front for parents?
Speaker 2:Well, that's such a good question. It's very complicated. Death is a son's death is very, it's very difficult and, to put it really graphically, to me as a mother, it felt as if half or a third of me had gone, which it had. So you have the internal feeling that you're no longer the person you were because a third of you is gone. Yeah, so I had a partner at the time and I said to him I'm sorry, I'll have to stop seeing you because I've got nothing to give. And that's how you feel. You just feel as if you've got nothing to give. It's almost like a third of you has been cut out and you want to.
Speaker 2:I suppose the psychological push is to go to where that person is, which, of course, is no longer here. But my relationship with I stopped, my relationship with my partner, my relationship with my daughter became more difficult and I just had this profound feeling that I no longer had anything to give. And so, in a way, the people who supported me at the time, I had a few friends who'd lost, someone who understood, and that was powerful. And then I was in touch with two other women from the army, one who'd also lost her son and one who had lost her husband, and it was a huge relief to find that the tricks that you use emotionally to deal with this issue they were using as well.
Speaker 2:So how the brain is is really interesting. So you go to the funeral and you know the person's died, but emotionally, your emotion, the emotional part of your brain, can never catch up with that. So it took me probably two years to accept, looking at a photo of mark one day, that possibly he wouldn't come back, because your emotional brain, what these three women, or these two women and myself, would do, is pretend to ourselves as he'd gone to America and would be back in a little bit of time. And in my dreams or nightmares, which were terrible, after he died, graphically violent, but for a long, long time he's never died. In my dreams he will come back, sodden, thin, distressed, in a state about something, all alone. And he's still there, you know, and he comes back.
Speaker 2:So, it's never happened in my dreams yet that he's died. So that's never happened in my dreams yet that he's died. So that's very hard, it's very hard. That's partly why I wrote this book, because I was so shocked, in a way as a psychologist, by the profound impact of the death of a child on one's psyche and I thought to myself it's happening to me, but it'll be happening to 20,000 women in Afghanistan who have lost their sons. And the British Army needs to think about that because obviously, if you've lost your son and you're one of the 20 or 30 or I can't remember how many people died in Afghanistan in the end and you've lost, you won't be keen on the British. You know those people have come in and taken away your son, and I never felt any anger or fury with the Taliban for taking mark, but I'm sure lots of people would channel their distress into either anger or shame did you feel anger at all, or is it more just?
Speaker 2:um, not really I. I dealt enough with death in my working life to know that anger or shame or guilt, if you like, are the bits that come out the most. And I suppose I felt more guilty if I allowed myself to feel anything. I was very tough on myself for not allowing myself to go down tracks about guilt and anger, because I and I also at the time, to be honest, because I was the mother of a child who died and I, for very various local reasons at the time, the BBC would turn to me to talk, to talk about it and I always wanted to be fair, you know, and I suppose I was angry with the army.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I was angry with the army and I felt slightly guilty about things I'd done, like encouraged him to have his gap year commission and all that sort of stuff. So, but it wasn't a profound feeling. I had a strong, much stronger need to be fair and to tell people how it was. So I wanted to tell the world, in a way, how what was happening in afghanistan, that they didn't have the kit they needed, that they, that the army could be doing better, and so I developed a public profile because of that okay, so that there was lower hanging fruit than looking after the mothers in some ways that had lost their children, because these kids were being sent out without the right equipment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, to places that were, you know, not they not, they were sent on a fool's errand in some ways, because, as you said, they were never going to be able to achieve what they were set up to achieve and they were under-equipped at the same time, and so I thought so, but that doesn't mean that the army didn't achieve a greater deal while it was there, and I'm sure it did.
Speaker 2:Army didn't achieve a greater deal while it was there, and I'm sure it did. So I I accept that I'm almost have to be biased about this, um, because of my own experience. So I'm sure the army did achieve a lot more than than I'm talking about. And you said you'd lost.
Speaker 1:You know I know you're speaking metaphorically but you felt said you'd lost. You know, I know you're speaking metaphorically, but you felt like you'd lost a third of yourself in some ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you I mean, there's the you know horrible saying what doesn't kill you makes you stronger kind of thing. Do you feel like that a new third has grown back, a different third in some ways? But are you kind of a different person now as a consequence of that trauma?
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting question and it's sort of multi-layered, like all these questions. So when you're grieving, you feel as if your life can never be the same again. Now. That's a very profound feeling that you can never, ever be happy again, yeah, so so because you can never be as happy as you were before. So you are sort of, in your head, committed to a life of distress really.
Speaker 1:Unhappiness.
Speaker 2:Unhappiness and I knew I used to say to myself to rationalize that that Mark would never want me to be unhappy for the rest of my life, and so I used to look forward to the day when my life could feel okay again as a way of dealing with the fact that he wouldn't want me to be like that. So I look at my life now and I say, yes, actually I'm back, I enjoy myself, I have a lovely life. I have become very interested in the foundation. The experiences after Mark's death were experiences I'd never had before, like meeting all the army people who I wouldn't have met without his death and becoming aware of the Afghanistan situation and the carrying with you this great dead weight of grief all the time sort of emotional scar tissue that, yeah, and maybe close, still in the process of closing up, but it's very scarred.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and it feels like it can come out at any time, like you can still feel distress and memories and one of the difficulties really is you have happy memories of the past, but when you're thinking about the time, you're thinking about the present memories they're so profoundly unhappy that you don't want to think about them, so you sort of block them out.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're kind of struggling to be present in some ways, which is what people advise you to be when you're trying to be content. So you mentioned the foundation. Let's learn a bit more about it, because obviously it's's named after mark and it I I've really enjoyed learning about it and carry in how it kind of carries on his example. What was the genesis of the idea?
Speaker 2:well, the genesis of the idea was that those guys in the in at mark's bedside, those, the three of them, and we said we'll start a foundation because there was no other way that they could deal with maybe me as well, but I was blind to myself at the time could deal with Mark's death. So we decided by the time of the funeral, one of them went and got a charity number through a lawyer and we knew it was going to be about the personal development of young people, because that was what mark was about really sorry, just before.
Speaker 1:When was this what this was?
Speaker 2:before this is 2009, okay, so very fresh two weeks before the funeral okay, I didn't realize it was that soon so we, by the time of the, we had a piece of paper on everyone's seat. A thousand people came to the funeral in the Guards Chapel and we had a piece of paper on everyone's seat saying this is what we're going to do. We're going to set up a charity. This is a charity number and it's going to be to deal with the personal development of young people. Well, you can imagine Mark was really loved of young people. Well, you can imagine mark was really loved and over the next two years we were given about 180 000 pounds, with no strings attached, because we had no plans at the time which was amazing.
Speaker 2:It was all a promise, yeah because they love mark, people love mark, so we got given large amounts of money. So so one guy there was a big army ball afterwards and I think the ball made a lot of money and he said, well, I'll give a third to the foundation. He gave us £30,000. He was a soldier who'd lost his leg in a different platoon, who was really fond of Mark, and various people gave us three people gave us £30,000. So there's a lot of money came our way and but it was very I knew almost.
Speaker 2:I had this vision, if you like, or idea. It was very clear. It came to me very quickly after Mark died that we were going to set up a charity to let kids do what they wanted to do, to plan it all themselves, to carry it out all themselves, adult-free, and it should be a challenge, a personal challenge, like as mark has always been interested in. So we, we started trying to, if you like, develop the prototype in the first couple of first year or two. We didn't employ staff or anything until 2016. We did it all ourselves developing the model, but the model has never really changed massively. So we work in state schools, we work with 17-year-olds who are at the best point, if you like, in their sort of psychological career to embrace challenge. So 17-year-olds are ready to find how they are relative to the world. And we? Well, this is how it's developed, because all these things happen incrementally, in tiny steps. But we wanted the students themselves to be able to choose what they wanted to do, but we also wanted it to be available to all students. And this is in a way, where, or those two things are how the foundation parts company with other similar charities, so we allow them to do what they want to do. But we also have built into it that any student can do it at their level, because so a student, who is A lot of our students, will, for instance, do things very difficult, things like climbing Ben Nevis or hiking, or cycling to Paris or cycling further than Paris or to Italy.
Speaker 2:We even had some boys who cycled to North Africa, which really meant cycling to the south of Spain and catching the ferry across, but nevertheless theycled to North Africa, which really meant cycling to the south of Spain and catching the ferry across, but nevertheless they got to North Africa. But we also have kids who are totally unfit and totally when I say totally inexperienced, I mean totally inexperienced, who have not even a mental map of how London is, far less a mental map of how the UK is, and they can apply as well and we take into account. So, at the beginning of every application, we ask them to write their experience and if they have no experience, like zilch experience, we they're. That's, that's fine. We let them do something that is going to be a challenge at their level, so anyone in a school, whatever level of expertise, can apply and and get an award.
Speaker 2:So we we talked to now, last year we talked to, we went to assembly to explain what we do to 10 000 kids, which is a lot of kids, and we explain what we do, which is basically to give any of them the opportunity to embrace, to plan, to choose, first of all, plan and carry out their own individual challenge, which they carry out adult-free, and we will give them the funding for up to £500. So if six boys, for instance, are cycling to Paris, we did have six boys cycle to Paris in about 2017, I think it cost about £800. And we them £500 and they had to find the rest themselves. So they're very carefully. I mean, their budgeting is kept to the absolute minimum, so they have to budget, budget, budget all the time.
Speaker 1:So we nip them in the bud about everything really it's also not just physical stuff you've done which is really interesting there's yeah one one kid.
Speaker 1:He organized a um a football training week exactly which I thought and you know, I remember him being asked what was the most challenging thing about it and he said getting up in the morning every day. Right, I've organized this thing. Now I've got to turn up, yeah, I've got to wake up, yeah, and just just really humbling just to hear, like you know, like you say budgeting, planning, doing things, that, um, um, you know that, using skills or developing skills they've never had before.
Speaker 2:So they have to budget, they have to research, they have to plan. You know, I'll give you an example really. So we had many. It was a few years ago, in about again 2016, we had two boys cycle to Paris who had never left Dagenham before and to my mind, at the time I thought to myself that's a bit like going to the moon. Yeah, if you live in Dagenham and you've never been out of Dagenham and you don't really know, you know first of all, how to go to the rest of the UK and then to have to cross the channel and get, get to Paris.
Speaker 2:It's a big thing and they were all big things mentally to these kids, however small, I sometimes thought they were like walking the Seven Sisters hike down in Sussex. You're only allowed to do that if you're totally inexperienced and have to sleep in your own bed at night, but for some kids that's a really big thing. And so, yes, we allow physical challenge, we allow creative challenge. We've had some wonderful fashion shows, books, written pantomimes put on, music created. We've got a lot of musicians who have used us to cut their first discs in recording studios. So we have a lot of creative challenges. So we have about 60% physical, 20% creative and the other 20% are technical.
Speaker 1:And the technical ones are obviously outside my comfort zone, but we use external experts, assessors for the, for the physical and the technical ones and again, those kids do amazing things so the kid make a turbo wind turbine in his backyard and he was measuring the um, uh, the voltage that he was getting out of it, the thing was spinning, it was, and then there was another one like uh, someone who wrote a poetry book, as two girls that did a book club, which I thought was brilliant yeah, yeah what was the one I like? I think the boy who made the um the an architect's model of this sort of luxury, la mansion, uh which is I want to do this, but you. But how do I afford to make more coffee?
Speaker 2:I mean, if you go to the, so we've now had over 2,000 awardees, I think nearly 3,000. And if you go to the front page of the website, you can see. You could just see hundreds, probably thousands of photos and ideas of things kids have wanted to do, and every single idea is different, so they all do it differently. Now, when the foundation began, I was told by an accountant friend of mine that it simply wouldn't work to let kids Never listen to accountants, accountants, lawyers. Never listen.
Speaker 2:She said it simply wouldn't work to let kids do what they want to do God. But of course it can work and it works perfectly with us. It's probably a little bit more effort, but it works perfectly because we get their experience. A little bit more effort, but it works perfectly because we get their experience. And then we ask them explain to us why this is a challenge to you, and so it has to be not just a challenge but what we call a substantial challenge. So it has to be a big challenge for them to get the funding.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the measurable thing, is so important.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about it. It really got me thinking what is a challenge? And I tried to sort of define it to myself and think it through to figure out why it's something that is worth doing If you take it from the top. Let's say I didn't. I tried not to look at the dictionary, but, like you know, challenges. Let's say I didn't, I tried not to look at the dictionary, but, like you know, a challenge is, let's say, an endeavour whose outcome is uncertain, and by uncertain I mean you could succeed or you could fail.
Speaker 1:You could succeed, it's not something that's you know, I'm going to run a marathon in 10 minutes. It's not. It's got to be attainable in some way. It's interesting. But you've got to fail, but in the kind of I was thinking more about it and then okay. So what does fail mean? So well, there's probably two types of failure. Let's say there's the failure that's in your control.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where you've got to turn up, you've got to plan, you've got to prepare, you've got to have the right equipment. You, you've got to turn up, you've got to plan, you've got to prepare, you've got to have the right equipment, you've got to be on time, yeah, uh, and if you don't do those things, you'll fail. But then there's also the things that are out of your control, which I think is kind of the most important thing.
Speaker 2:So like you could be cycling to to paris and you go over a nail and it's not your fault yeah, you could be um and then there's failure from bits of your personality that you're chronically late or you chronically put in stuff you know at the last minute.
Speaker 1:So you learn to fix the stuff in your control and come back if you fail that way. But I also think we need to learn that it is to learn that it is Well. I know a lot of people who don't take on challenges or they kind of look at people who've succeeded, successfully, taken on challenges to go well. They got lucky because that all went right for them. You know, most of the time these things fail for reasons outside of your control.
Speaker 2:But what we do? We ask kids to do what they want to do, so you're tapping into their interests. They're tapping into what they will, always what for them is a pleasure, you know. So I've always the idea of going climbing scotland. For some people would be dreadful, but for some kids it's just the golden grail yeah and then we, you know, and then kids themselves.
Speaker 2:I remember one girl, um, we went to this school and, um, she was a jewish. It was a jewish school actually, and not that that's particularly relevant. But um, um, she said, well, I wanted, I want to do something, but I don't know what to do. And I and I usually with that sort of question. I think it's interesting that they want to do it at all, because that's part of being 17, but it's wanting to step out and do something. But she wanted to do it and I said, well, tell me about your, what have you always enjoyed? Which is how I usually get to it.
Speaker 2:And she said, well, in my teens I've just had three operations for epilepsy and I've just been dealing with that all through my teens. And I said to her well, how about we write a book, or not? We you write a book about your experiences as an epileptic teenager. And she wrote the most fabulous book, little booklet if you like, about how it had been, about going to hospital, how friends had dealt with it, how it felt, all the ins and outs of being. The book was called what you Would Like to Know If You're a Teenager with Epilepsy. Yeah, if you're a teenager with epilepsy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we actually published, or we paid for the foundation paid for, which is what we do with books. We paid them to be printed and we paid for enough copies to be given to the Teenage Epilepsy Association. And it's a fabulous little thing, amazing.
Speaker 1:And for her that would have been attainable but challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, attainable. She learnt a lot of skills, but in the process as well, she's dealing with something. I mean, obviously it's pushing her out to be publishing a book and to be organising it all and thinking about it. But it was also deeply personal and important to her, and important in the same way as climbing a mountain can be to other kids.
Speaker 1:I think we need to take on challenges or be good at taking on challenges, because the human condition is one of, let's say, entropy, where, if we didn't take on challenges, the human condition is one of, let's say, entropy, where, if we didn't take on challenges the way we made up, we would just everything would fall apart, we'd end up in mad max exactly, and that's I've always.
Speaker 2:I've always been someone who's never been really keen or comfortable with health and health and safety, but I do understand it and the foundation is I used to handle psychological risk in the hospital in fact it was my job, so, um, patients who cancer, patients who were suicidal, was my bag really and, um, I understood risk and the foundation is pretty. We have a risk process which is pretty substantial, but nevertheless, I think it's really important for us humans not to let health and safety dominate how we are or what we do.
Speaker 1:Well, can I take it one further? Would you agree with me, or would you agree with the position that we almost have a duty?
Speaker 2:to take on challenges.
Speaker 1:So let's take Mark, for example. At a young age he's reading these books about these explorers and people taking on the world and that inspires him to do the marathon or try and go to the South Pole. And then he joins the army and let's say he took on a challenge there where something went wrong that was outside of his control, but that has in turn inspired other people to then take on challenges of their own to uplift everyone. So there was the boy who was one of the boys in the in um, in the foundation, who did a walk, and he was interviewed after and goes well, you know, I did 40 miles. Now I can tell people that, and maybe someone else is going to go right, I'm going to do 50 miles, or I'm going to make a better winter, or yeah that's a really nice way of doing it.
Speaker 1:Can I talk to him and think, think about?
Speaker 2:another way?
Speaker 1:I think that's right and so we all have. You know it's so easy to beat ourselves up, but I think we have this duty on ourselves to try and take on things so that we can contribute, but we also stop other people just going down the road of comfort.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2:I think we. I think it's very interesting actually that humans are sort of driven by hope rather than fear. So the thing that keeps us going, most humans, is hope of various sorts that it'll be better tomorrow, that this will sort out this or that, and if they see someone doing something that is inspiring to them in some way, it gives them more hope. You know, it gives them a goal, if you like. I remember reading an article a lot of my sort of the latter part of my life has been working towards an internal goal that I read.
Speaker 2:It was something I read about, just a simple little newspaper article about a woman who wrote her first book when she was in her 70s and went to actually, she went to Oxford in her 70s and when I was younger say 50 I thought what a fabulous thing to do, to think of one's life in in stages, if you like, and to do something out of the ordinary, like that when you're getting older.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I always had in my head that that's something I would like to do write a book and I didn't obviously go to oxford, but write a book and see the latter part of one's life, because as a woman you're, you know, you're tied up with, first of all, childhood it's all defined and then women bringing up children. Obviously, the place where they can explore the rest of their lives is when their children are grown up, which is when you hit sort of 50, maybe, and then you've got another quite a long time to do. Some do what you want to do, and the fact is that humans live a long time. So we have time to be a child and we have time to bring up our children and we have time after that to be what we truly want to be.
Speaker 1:Retaining that kind of beginner's mindset. One of my one story I love is this story of this lady who kind of kids, went to university and she was sort of sat in the house going well, what do I do now?
Speaker 1:And three hours later I kind of I quite like cheese. This was after you know, weeks of boredom, whatever it might be, and then she drove up motorway, bought a sheep, put it in the boot, started making cheese and then learnt about cheese making and now she runs a dairy which creates a really delicious English version of camembert called Tunworth. Sadly, it doesn't sponsor the podcast but they're doing free advertising now, but it's now a national cheese because and she was she was in her 40s, 50s, going.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to just sit around doing nothing and now you do have a lot of time and people, of course, when they're younger, never really appreciate that they're going to have a lot more time. Yeah, you know, you have another big slice. After your children have grown up, you've got a huge slice where you've got lots of energy, lots of time and often, well, you know enough experience to know how to use it.
Speaker 1:Basically, but going back to the 17-year-olds, I'm guessing a lot of the schools that you're going into these kids don't even know they can take on this stuff without you guys going in and telling them look, here's an opportunity now. They're like well, no, this isn't for me, this is for people with more privilege than me, and all of a sudden you empower them to kind of give something a go.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and a lot of them, you know, around London a lot of kids are children of immigrants and you know the take-up when we go to an assembly is huge. So we'll go to an assembly and there might be especially now as we're more established there might be 200. Well, the biggest I had, I remember it was an assembly of 250 kids and 170 wanted to come to the first session afterwards. So we have a structured four session sort of approach and then we do a lot of tailoring of applications by email. So the applications have to be very detailed and very risk free, as I said. But you know you have 170 kids wanting to come to our first session and it's going to be in a classroom and you know it's a lot of people in one classroom. So you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you're touching those, that layer of, let's say, the layer of kids who would love to take on a challenge, but they don't't know that they can. As I just said, I think there's also like, if you can rub off on them, then there's a layer below them who are the kind of more nihilistic, let's say, who are like, actually, you know, they're all a bit smart. I'm just going to sit in the basement and play computer games and play computer games the reaction for those people is that you know the world is comfortable for you because other people are taking on challenges.
Speaker 1:So you don't want to be piggybacking off other people's hard work and adventure, so you kind of get out there yourself as well.
Speaker 2:But when the foundation comes along, we offer them a sort of dream, the option of a dream, and then after that that what you're really tapping into and you never know whether kids like this or not is how determined kids are. So sometimes kids, at whatever level, whatever level of challenge, whatever, can be very determined. And often I'll say to say, a group of eight kids who've never done anything in terms of physical challenge say just, for example, tell me how determined you are. And you know they'll nearly all put up their hands and say I am determined. And it's once you decide to do something, whatever it is it's determination that pushes you through. You know that says to you well, I want to do this, you know, to the end. And there's that determination. You know, the determination of some of our great explorers is the big thing really.
Speaker 1:It's that famous Shackleton advert. Yes, Men wanted for hazardous journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, low pay, discomfort, Amazing.
Speaker 1:And yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it's completely amazing that they did those things in those days, but that human spirit is still there.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's still there? Do you think we've become a bit soft and a bit kind of? You know, soft times breed weak men and strong times, hard times breed strong men.
Speaker 2:Are we in that sort of part of the cycle where Well, there's still lots of people who do physical things, but you know the determination to do other sorts of things as well. The foundation is amazing, really, when you see what kids want to do.
Speaker 1:So what are the pinch points for the foundation? What would you? Is it funding? What would you like to be able to do more of? Is it more staff? Is it access to schools? If you had a magic wand, what are the things that you would like in the next, let's say, 12, 18 months for the foundation to really do what it can do and maximise its mission?
Speaker 2:Well, we are in 20% of London schools already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:At nearly 100 schools. So we're in 95 or so, nearly 100 schools. So we're in 1905 or so and we, half of those schools, will be struggling schools. All of them will be London State schools. Most of them not all of them, but a lot of them will be disadvantaged. 50% of them will be very disadvantaged. The other 50% are schools who use us a lot. So where and this has got more, how shall I say it, obvious in the last two or three years where we get particularly this year I suppose where we're getting? We go into any school and we get 20 applications of an average of three kids actually putting in a physical application. That's 60 kids putting in a physical application, so lots of kids apply. We're in a fifth of london schools. If you said to me what would I want or what do I want before you know from from mark, for me it's all over. I'd love, I'd love it to be available to all london schools so that's more staff to process it.
Speaker 1:It'd have to be more staff.
Speaker 2:it'd have to be more staff. It'd have to be more money. It'd have to probably be a, because we work from home at the moment, but it'd have to be a Get an office An office It'd have to be.
Speaker 2:we've got a lovely board of young trustees. On the whole, I'm obviously the oldest. We've got one experienced headmaster and a couple of senior teachers, but they are the two senior teachers are probably under 50. Most of the board is under 50. And we've got a great board and we'd need obviously you know there are lots of things I'd like. I'd like a little team of ambassadors, people with outstanding experience in different walks of life, such as sport and education and the city and artificial intelligence and et cetera, et cetera. I'd like those. I'd like to build up the. I mean, it's a huge process or it's a huge operation building up us from a little team of, say, six people who go into a fifth of London schools to build us up to being a team to go into five times this month. So we'd have to build five times what we are now and we'd also have to. You know the trustees aren't averse to the idea of going into other cities in London, in the UK.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll definitely do what we can here to amplify.
Speaker 2:It's very kind of you, I must say.
Speaker 1:Well, I've got a lot out of it, I think. As you know, I try to close these conversations with what I call the long bet, which is a kind of 10-year guess as to something in the world that you'd like to happen or you think will happen. It can be about you, the foundation, the world and, and don't worry, it's nothing that we're going to hold you to uh, so it's a bit of fun.
Speaker 1:Uh, what do you think over the next 10 years? Um, is something that you would love to happen or you think will happen?
Speaker 2:it's probably obvious in a way that in 10 years' time, if the foundation could be in every school, I think it makes such a difference to young people. So we have because I'm a psychologist, I've always researched as I go along, kept auditors as I go along, and we have done a little research study on the effects of what we do. But it increases confidence, it teaches new skills, but in the end it gets down to any of us who have an experience that's outside our comfort zone and totally different to what we've had before. We learn a lot of stuff. That's how humans are.
Speaker 2:You know, if you push anyone into a new situation, it's why kids love travel, it's why anyone likes anything that's demanding. Push yourself into a new situation. That's very stimulating and it's very good for kids to be pushed out of their comfort zone. So if you could push out, if you could give every student across London the chance of being pushed out of their comfort zone, I think that would be fantastic.
Speaker 2:I have to say as well that the Duke of Edinburgh scheme is not very available in state schools because it's generally too expensive. So the number of state schools that it's in is tiny and we are the only option for kids to do these sorts of things in the schools that we go to. So it would be great if all the young people across London and possibly across the UK in the future, but across London had the chance to do something that's going to teach them skills that they can use in their life afterwards like working in teams, researching, planning, all those things and also make them more internally confident and make them have a more not make them, but encourage them to be determined and have a can-do attitude. Imagine what a difference it would make to a whole population of kids.
Speaker 1:Huge and I think you do these things that are beyond yourself you, but you grow as a human and you exactly a better representation of yourself and that's better for the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, there's a. There's the smart acronym, which I don't know if you've come across it. It's in terms of goal setting or taking on challenges. So there's a challenge should be specific is the S, and then M is measurable, a is attainable, r is, I forget, and then T is reasonable and then T is time bound. So you know, that kind of 10 year challenge to get into every school in London. I think you've set yourself a, really, you know, it's one of my favorite answers. I've got so far to this closing question. I really think you, you are, you know this has been a really challenging conversation to listen to and you're, you're, you're a living, breathing example of Mark's example and you've carried through his, his example to the world. And you know, I really hope that we can, you know, keep building, that You're doing God's work with this foundation.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's very kind of you. We'll do what we can to kind of get out there.
Speaker 1:Where can people? There's a Mark Everson Foundation that has a website. You can donate there. What's the name of your book as well?
Speaker 2:It's called Death of a Soldier Mother's Story and it's still available secondhand on Amazon. It went through two editions but it's still there secondhand.
Speaker 1:Death of a Soldier Mother's Story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is recommended to all the new recruits for Sandhurst.
Speaker 1:actually, yeah, I bet, and I hope this conversation gives everyone whets their appetite to learn more about it and go to the foundation.
Speaker 2:We'd certainly love to hear from anyone who's interested in helping us, probably at whatever level. So any sort of help would be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if anything, in the memory of Mark, we can keep striving to take on all our challenges. I recommend everyone listening, watching, Think of a challenge you can do that follows that SMART acronym and go for it and get in touch. There's no doubt so, Margaret. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:It's been an absolute blast.
Speaker 1:And we'll speak again soon.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:This has been Meeting People. People, I've been your host. This is a podcast produced by mass cooper, with music composed by loverman.