A while back I
wrote an Open Studio piece about illustrator, Linda Edwards, which I entitled
On the Sunny Side of the Street.
Now here I am on the sunny side again, interviewing the owner and
director of Jim Hawkins Ltd, otherwise known for his BBC Radio Shropshire 'Jim
Hawkins in the Morning' show. This
is a man who couldn’t be more sunny if he tried. Is it something in the water, I ask myself. Is it in the air? Why are so many Shrewsbury people so
upbeat?
Jim can’t
answers for the rest of Shrewsbury, but for himself, he says, he made a
decision years ago to stop being a ‘pint half empty’ type and become a pint
three-quarters-if-not-brimming-over type instead. ‘I can’t see the point in not being positive,’ he says. ‘Life was so boring the other way. And
negativity’s corrosive. On a
personal level it eats away at you.
And it’s not good for society either.’
Jim’s definitely
not the sort of person you’d find saying ‘there no such thing as society’. Life
for him is all about interacting. He hates it when people view each other with
suspicion, and he hates the way the media plays a role in this. We talk about what happened a month or
so ago to young Police Commissioner, Paris Brown. It infuriates Jim sometimes
the way that bad news is presumed to be the thing that people want to hear.
Jim has worked
in radio for over thirty years, starting with a university radio station, then
‘moving with a bunch of us to a commercial station opening up the road’. Over the
years, he’s witnessed radio being bland at one extreme, and playing devil’s
advocate at the other, with a tendency towards bullying. ‘How often is radio journalism sword of
truth stuff, and how often is it just a matter of wanting to start a fight?’ he
says. ‘People are encouraged to
judge each other. There’s a real lack of empathy sometimes.’
Jim gave up
newspapers over a year ago - and he hasn’t missed them. They’re bad for his
mental health he says, and he’s not joking here. Jim has a twenty year history
of mental health issues and now knows to remove all obstacles, be they news
stories, online articles or indeed negative and angry Facebook and Twitter
followers, that might be a bar to his continued good health.
‘Once I used to
be a three-newspapers-a-day man,’ Jim says. ‘I told myself I liked to be well informed, but reading the
news was upsetting me. So often
the world it described wasn’t the one in which I live, where people care about one another and take time to make a difference. Then one time somebody said to me look
for the good, and I started to see things in a more
balanced way. Seek out the celebratory, they
said. Look for the inclusive. And those words made sense. They shifted something inside my
head. Since then my tectonic
plates have fitted together in a new and better way. Initially living that way involved an act of decision, but
not for long. Quickly it became a
way of life.’
I’m enjoying
talking to Jim. We’re in Frank’s
Bar on Frankwell and the sun’s shining outside. It’s the end of the day - time for feet up, a drink and a
good yarn. We get onto the wealth
of community ventures around town.
Jim mentions the Street Pastors who go out at night to help people in
difficulty around the pubs and clubs. Then there are the Food Banks, of which
there are now two in Shrewsbury, as well as ones in Telford, Market Drayton and
Bridgnorth.
We talk about
the Severn Hospice, and the thousands of families whose lives it’s
touched. Jim tells me about the
Telford Hospice, for which an appeal was launched bringing in five million
pounds. Jim was at the sod cutting ceremony. He says it was very emotional. There’s a spirit of generosity about, he says. Again and
again he’s seeing people caring for each other. He’s definitely of the opinion
that people are mostly good, and that they definitely deserve to be regarded as
such, unless they prove themselves otherwise.
Jim was born in
Romford, and moved to Shrewsbury ten years ago for the job. I say something
about radio being his platform, and he corrects me. Radio’s a portal, he says. His shows aren’t about him as the presenter. They’re about
the people. To make his point, Jim quotes radio guru, Dan O’Day. Radio
actually doesn’t matter. You’ve
got to love your audience and the people you’re talking with. ‘It’s not a
matter of coming into people’s homes and saying here I am,’ Jim says. ‘It’s a
matter of saying there you are.’
So who stands
out in ten years of people featuring on the show? Jim mention the two Bens -
Ben Bebbington of Big Busk fame, and Ben Hughes, a man with a life-limiting
illness whose bucket list includes campaigning to get people on the organ donor
register. ‘Both these men have
stories that are engaging and make us all think,’ Jim says. ‘I’ve been accused of not caring for
Shropshire society, meaning Society with a capital S. But these two are true Shropshire society. If I’ve had anything to do with
persuading people to pay them attention, then that’s great.’
I like this man.
He’s full of stories about people - and we haven’t even started yet on the
bench. Do you know about Jim Hawkins and the bench? It’s over five years now since, equipped with a hand-held
recorder, Jim first headed off across the county to sit on a bench and see
who’d come and talk to him. He’s been doing this ever since, which means more
than two hundred and fifty benches, unless Jim returns to certain benches more
than once. All weathers he’s to be found out around the county, at all times of
year.
‘Why?’ I want to
know. ‘Because of the power of
story-telling,’ Jim replies. ‘I stroll down a street, I sit on a bench and I
see what happens. People come
along and we start to chat. So many people have stories to tell that may not be
regarded newsworthy, but they’re worth hearing all the same. And this is my way of getting to hear
some of them.’
All sorts of
people come along. The other week in Newport, Jim met Cintia from Brazil who
told him all about the long journey that brought her to the UK. Then another
time, elsewhere across the county - on a rainy day Jim will never forget - he
met an old man from Manchester who last saw his wife alive the day the doctor
came for a home visit. That doctor
was Harold Shipman. There’s a
story for you.
Plainly not
everyone’s as good as Jim would like to think. But that doesn’t dent his faith in human nature. I ask whom a one year blog on
Shrewsbury shouldn’t leave out, and the answer he gives me is as long as his
arm. One of the first things he noticed when he moved to Shropshire was how
generous local people were. ‘The county’s beautiful,’ he says. ‘But its people make it particularly
so.’
On the subject
of Shropshire people, have you seen Jim’s photographs? An increasing amount of
his work is as a photographer, and his work is every bit as positive as the man
himself. ‘It means a lot to me when reluctant subjects tell me they’ve enjoyed
the experience,’ Jim says. ‘For
some this may be happening for the first time, and that’s great.’
Plainly Jim enjoys making people
happy. Twice a week he’s to be
found in local venues playing music for people to chill or dance to. ‘Taking music for a walk’ he calls
it. His Sunday Socials are at
Eighty-Six’d, in Waterloo Street, Ironbridge, and his Saturday Socials are at
The Coffeehouse, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury. More can be found on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/SaturdayandSundaySocials
It’s time to go
our separate ways. Last calls here for anything Jim wants to say. ‘One in
four people will experience some level of mental health issue during their
lives,’ Jim says. ‘It’s great when people listen to something said on the
subject on the show, and get the point that’s being made. If there’s
anything I can do to remove the stigma surrounding mental health - on the show or
off it - then I will.’
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