Keeping Safe in a Changing World

The world has changed, in some ways it has got bigger but yet it has got smaller.  Regardless of international time zones, communication from one country to another has never been easier yet, in contrast, these very technologies have also made our world bigger connecting us instantly to more people in more places and to an awful lot more information.  How do you see all this panoply of technology, as friend or foe?

It seems the biggest worry for most people is how to keep themselves and their families safe.  It’s no longer a question of not talking to strangers and locking the front door at night, the challenges have changed and as the first generation we don’t exactly know what the rules are.  When we were children, parents could confidently set ground rules regarding the use of the landline and when and at what age their children could go out alone.  The challenges were straightforward, understood and across entire communities parents were probably all making similar judgements, they could base it on what thousands if not millions of parents had done before, what their own parents had decided for them when they themselves had been young.   But today?  How can a parent decide solely through experience when to let their child have a mobile phone or their own email account?  Those things probably didn’t even exist until those parents were all adults!

It’s a little crazy and people seem to veer from one extreme to another, some view the Internet and associated technologies with distrust and suspicion and avoid it at all cost whilst others jump on any passing bandwagon with carefree abandon.  Personally I would advocate a more balanced approach, somewhere in the middle, my rule of thumb is if you don’t need to use it then don’t.  It may be all your friends (or your children’s) have signed up for some great new service but do you really need to use it?  Anyhow, if you give it a while, the creases will be ironed out if it’s still around and as popular which means you’ll have less headaches when you start using it yourself.

It seems that patience can indeed still be a virtue in this hectic-paced modern life of ours.  We just have to choose which bandwagons we’re prepared to ride and why.

My Two Proofs

‘Complimentary’ or ‘alternative’ (the term you choose to use probably reflects your views) healthcare seems to be a great divider of opinion in these modern ages.  The rigid disciples of Science believe only in its apparently concrete, modern and proven theories dismissing other views as quackery suitable only for misguided ignoramuses stuck in the Dark Ages of Folklore.  They forget that folklore is the very foundation of their own pride and joy, its original springboard into modern terminology and that in fact Science and Folklore are still tightly entwined bedfellows.  Aspirin anyone?

Personally I find modern Medicine, much like all branches of Science, a little rigid in its understanding and a little too keen on pigeonholing.  I’d rather treat something holistically than to focus on one symptom and dose it up on chemicals.  Medicine prides itself on the physical, only accepting the tangible proofs of illness.  It struggles to explain and cope with conditions like ME.  And what is pain?  Physical, psychological, psychosomatic?  All or none?  I sometimes find Medicine too black and white.

I’ve used various treatments and systems of medicine before for various ailments, I respond better to them with no side effects which to me is a clear advantage.  There’s less risk of overdosing too, comforting.  One of the things that I regularly return to is homoeopathy, a quackery that some bristle up with a vengeance at the idea of.  Each to their own, I’ll leave you to your opinion and decision so leave me to mine likewise.

They often claim that any positive effect homoeopathy may accidentally have on a patient is simply a placebo response.  If you give a human any pill-like object to take, he will magically believe himself better.  I don’t know what this says about human intelligence.

I have two proofs, conclusive to my way of thinking at least, that homoeopathy works for real and I offer them up to you now:

1. My husband.  He loathes all medicine with a passion whatever its origin, suffering is a noble art and the only way to deal with illness.  He won’t take painkillers for a headache because it’ll ‘go away eventually’.  In the meantime he can’t do anything and is a total pain to live with.  I dose him appropriately regardless, husbands don’t know best in this instance, including with homeoepathic remedies which just like ‘standard’ or ‘orthodox’ or ‘Western’ treatments will do nothing. and never have done  The thing I love most about homeopathy is the symptom pictures that each remedy indicates, more than just your fever but the time it gets worse and often small details about your personality.  My husband’s go-to remedy when he has a lurgi has the following description included: ‘a bear with a ‘sore head’ who is irritable and resentful of being questioned or fussed over’.  Hmm.  That’s him to a T.  And do you know what?  That remedy works every time.  Even though he still refuses to believe so.  Placebo effect?  Not if he could help it.
2. The family dog.  The dog has even less intelligence than the husband and is normally completely oblivious to having taken a pill (I drop them in his water bowl to dissolve).  So I don’t think placebo effect is therefore possible there either.  In the past, when I was a child, we had a rescue dog who we treated successfully for separation anxiety and the current incumbent was dosed for another psychological condition for which modern Medicine offers no treatment or cure for, especially not for four-legged patients, grieving.

And there are my proofs.  If it works on the stubborn and the ignorant, it has to have worked.  In any case, life was better for all concerned after dosing which is the essence of Medicine anyway.

The Day They Got it Right

I don’t much trust weather forecasts, maybe because I am something of a sceptic when it comes to Science, it seems that Science has pretty much become the religion of the day with us mere mortals putting blind faith into the whims and translations and perspectives of Scientists.  I do not naturally go along with the crowd; I challenge things and form my own conclusions and beliefs.  I find it hard to be infatuated, blind to faults and mistakes, and Science has known a fair few of these.  And rarely admits to them.  And there’s another reason for me to be uncomfortable, untrusting of Science and its god-like Scientists, it is their attitude.  I don’t like the smug, the self-righteous in any walk of life, I don’t like people who reject what has gone before as if it no longer has any value or interest, I don’t have a high opinion of people who claim that their own personal belief system is the only belief system possible and that all men should follow their creed.  I have my beliefs and I respect you to have yours, please respect mine.  Science and its Scientists have an increasing tendency to look down sneeringly at us mere mortals, especially those of us who stubbornly remain outside of their flock and question them.  We are weak, unintelligent and just plain ignorant and stupid.  I don’t do well with being told that I’m stupid.  I’m likely to play up.

There is one area of Science that I have virtually no credence in: weather forecasting.  They claim that they are much more accurate these days, using satellite pictures to trace cloud patterns before they even reach a particular area but they aren’t infallible.  I wait to see what cloud I have over my own head before analysing weather possibilities, clouds don’t always behave in the way Scientists would like them to.  Or when.  And despite all the technology and Scientific Jargon, nothing much has really changed.  It is still the ancient art of reading the sky, of casting one’s eyes heavenwards to pick out signs and stories that may tell the future.

I am sceptical because I know that clouds, and indeed any other parts of weather systems, are idiosyncratic, much like me.  They don’t tend to behave in socially acceptable predictable ways; they can build or diminish, burn out or gather energy.  It is still the clouds that are our fore bringers of the future, something that is deeply imbedded into our idiomatic language.  We talk of gathering storms and country folk still know the value of signs such as red sunsets or sunrises, St Swithin’s Day and mackerel sky.  We know our local winds and what they mean for us in each season.  What more does Science really offer?  A pretty picture, something to discuss and debate, something to guarantee viewing figures all the way through the news?

But admittedly the world is not as reliable as it used to be, our seasons fluctuate according to some unknown whim and the future a week ahead is less predictable even than that tricky predictive text, one letter out and the whole message can be read entirely wrong.

Weather forecasting is still a matter of decoding and waiting to see.

And when they predict weather events of abnormal intensity and scale then well, it’s wise to be a little sceptical.  Why panic buy when the shops will still be open come what may and when any wise household keeps a reserve of at least dry goods in the winter?  Why anticipate when each day is enough and has its own unique challenges?

But they got it right today.  The snow came in hard with a storm wind last night and it looks like it’s planning to stick around.

I sent my envoy out with a camera, having made a wise decision that the best place for me was safely indoors where the temperature at least promised to climb above ten degrees.

It’s funny how snow completely changes the world; it becomes an enticing, magical place once those flimsy flakes settle and cover and it definitely brings out the child in many.  (There is currently a group of twenty-year-old (at least) lads loitering outside their building who have nobly taken on the task of assaulting every vehicle and pedestrian that goes passed with snowballs).  But it is the stillness, the quiet that makes a snow day a very different day from the mundane.  It is as if the world has held its breath, wondering and waiting.

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I Made a Stamp

As you have likely heard, small things please small minds.  I love small things.  You may draw your own conclusions.

Tonight, I had to package up a parcel to send to a friend in Europe.  I was very chuffed when I managed to get all five foot of draught excluder into something about A4 size (albeit somewhat plumper).  And yes, it would be me who is sending a five foot draught excluder to Europe.  (I’ve never actually sent anything to the country in question but I have sent something from.  An A2 canvas painting of the Titanic sinking.  Cheerful stuff, not exactly my taste.  But my friend was ecstatic that I’d persuaded the post office to take it).  It seems that I have something of a track record when it comes to posting random things.  You’ve seen other evidence.

Postage is ridiculously expensive these days.  I remember the uproar when the European airmail stamp hit 36p.  These days I think first class is more expensive than that now!  (I possibly sound remarkably old when I make comments like that).  Anyway, I like to know what I’m getting myself in for before going down and doing battle in the post office.  I find that the post office is indeed somewhere where knowledge is power.

I grew up in a small town (England-style, not US).  The post office had long queues, especially on pension mornings, because that was back in the days when everything was done in cheque-style books that had to be religiously stamped to death by the post office clerk, but was always helpful.  Actually, the library was the same.  The librarians were friendly and helpful.  I never had a fine in all the twenty plus years that I was there.

Then I moved here.  We have a bigger library and a bigger post office.  The librarians resent any disruption to their frantically busy task of sitting behind desks and I also have had more library fines than fillings, which is saying quite a lot with my dental history.  The post office has cordoned queue control and the whole thing at rush hour rapidly turns into Ellis Island.  With the appropriate interrogation and suspicion of course.  You don’t really want to risk asking a question in either of those places.  Your mission is simply to get in and out as quickly as possible, preferably still alive and with most of your income intact.

I make it my job to know how much my postage will cost and how it’s going where it’s going.  I write down all and any information that they may require for any random forms that must be filled out as fast as possible.  This way I can minimise the stress and confusion that results in what basically amounts to buying a stamp.  (If I’m armed with knowledge, I don’t get stressed and confused at all.  The clerk only does a little bit).

I have to agree with Tilly Bud, the service industry just inspires terror, trepidation and guilt.

Anyway, back to the stamp.  I was inputting all my variables and trying to find the most cost-effective way of sending a five foot draught excluder to Europe with not too much delay when it came up with strange little option.  I’m not a fan of the post office’s website, it’s never been particularly efficient and I tend to rely on my stash of printed price guides rather than their high-tech solutions that get me nowhere.  (I’m particularly suspicious how every time I try to find surface mail rates, it directs me only to expensive parcel services.  And in recent months it has seemed that whatever I do, I end up in some other online shop being told to buy huge books of first class stamps.  Not impressed).

This time I found, with remarkably little hassle although I did keep ending in the first day covers (the post office is apparently more keen on Doctor Who than I am), something called a ‘price finder’.  That’s my kind of thing.  Input, quote, use information against post office staff.

So I inputted.

Was very surprised by the rate.  (My draught excluder might be huge but it’s comparatively light, I can send it as a packet rather than as a parcel.  (Please don’t even get me started on dissecting that logic that means a parcel to the same destination of the same weight and dimensions is four times as expensive as a packet)).

Then freaked.

(I do that).

Next to the delivery options (it’s a little like flight tickets, please don’t choose our cheapest option), there is now a small box that says ‘buy and print’.

I’m scared by new things.  Especially when they involve technology.

And the post office.

And parting with money.

I asked husband if he’d like to come and test this for me.

As he was already in bed, he answered in the negative.

I was left to face the decision alone.

Me and one small red button that isn’t even a real button but a picture on a screen.

I pressed it.

And had to input a billion more things.

And then part with some money.

And then it asked me to print my label.

I don’t trust printing things from the internet.  They’re usually never designed to actually fit any known paper formats or printers.  And why is it that every time you do print something from the internet, it has this obsession with printing just two lines on the next page and wasting an entire sheet of paper?

I printed.

Then realised that my ink cartridges are at the invisible stage.

So I held my breath.

Because you know that’s going to make a difference.

I printed a stamp!

Not just a stamp, it had insisted on printing the addresses too in its own queer format (I prefer a nice, funky coloured marker personally) and it said paid for and lots of other official things.  And it had one of those new fangled squiggly barcode box thingys!

I have a stamp.

‘Stamp’ prints on a quarter page of A4.  (Don’t get me started about waste).

I took ‘stamp’ to husband to cut down.  He insisted on doing it with a ruler and pencil as he’s something of a pedant when it comes to precision.  But that’s why I gave him the ‘stamp’ to cut anyway, he can actually cut straight lines.  I can’t draw them.  Even with a ruler.

‘Stamp’ is now affixed to very squishy parcel (it bounces).

But I am now faced with another dilemma.

Clearly, I can repeat this process in the future.  I will be able to buy exactly (well, maybe, that might be dependent on what mood the website is in) what postage I want when I want it.  (Although most of the time, it will require traipsing into town to the main post office to find a fat mouthed post box, most if not all of the branch post offices around here have closed now, a discussion for another day, I’m sure).

But …

… is this a good thing?

Much as I hate the hassle and stress of the post office, I don’t want to be responsible for anybody, however grumpy, losing their jobs.  If we all end up buying our postage online, what will happen to our post offices?

Where Will Our Words Be?

Writing is a pretty useful form of communication, we tend to write off (pardon the pun) entire civilisations as uncivilised or primitive simply because they didn’t develop a writing system and their oral histories have been lost or ignored.  Writing can speak to not just two parties, the writer and the recipient, but the written word stays etched to talk to future generations and societies in a way that oral communication just cannot.

When I reflect over the couple of decades that I have been alive, I am constantly amazed by the rapid changes in technology.  When I was little, LPs (or records) were still pretty normal things.  I can remember CDs being developed but most of us still played cassettes.  Using a similar ribbon technology, video cassettes were what we watched our films on and recorded interesting programs from the television on.  We didn’t worry about scratches but ‘chewed’ tapes.

Technology was breaking new ground but it still wasn’t portable.  The fax machine allowed instant communication from one place to another, even internationally but we still had personal cassette machines with bulky headphones (those seem to have returned for some reason) and carried ten pence pieces for emergency phone box calls.

I’m an unintelligent nerd or geek (I have no aptitude for the prerequisite sciences and maths or even computing) so I spent a lot of my later school years helping in the library.  I think that the changes I saw in my time at school say the most about these rapid shifts of technology.

In middle school, we each had a certain number of green card square pockets or envelopes with our details on.  When you wanted a book from the library you handed over one of these cards and the librarian (or monitor) would take the slip of pink or white card from the book and place it in your ‘library card’ before filing it in a special long wooden rack.  The books kept those tongues of cards for much longer than there was this primitive borrowing system.

My senior school was high-tech.  It had a computerised system.  Probably DOS based.  Green characters on a black screen and a multitude layer of menus to allow for navigation.  We didn’t have cards anymore; our records were all digital, a window of dates and titles with our personal details.  It wasn’t even a window like we’re used to on these modern computers, more like a frame.  You’d have to go back rather than close it.  And minimise certainly hadn’t been invented.  I think the county library system was similar too.

Every week the library issued reminders for overdue books.  It was laborious and accompanied by the unique screech of a dot matrix printer.  Would today’s children recognise that noise?  Or even the special paper that was required to fit within the teeth of its plastic cogs?  We helping students would spend a long time peeling the punched edges from the paper then guillotining them into slips.

An unwanted ream (about five reams of modern printer paper) was also sometimes gifted to families for their children to use it for drawing paper.  There were streamers to be made from the edgings and on the back was a magical system of green lines (on some but not all versions) that looked temptingly like musical scores.

The library system was backed up each night on a five-inch disk.  Even my husband doesn’t remember those.  His idea of a floppy disk is the three and a half-inch disks that were rigid plastic (sometimes, excitingly, in bright colours) that we used to back up our own work.  The five-inch disks were properly floppy.  A little like a bendy LP or record.

Before embarrassment finally won over, I saved countless stories to three and a half-inch disks.  How much did those store?  A mere megabyte of information?  My camera now produces files of ten megabytes so that kind of explains why we outgrew that technology.  But mind you, cameras didn’t make files back in those days.  They were still using negatives, another ribbon technology.

Words are supposed to be permanent, a lasting record or memoir of who we are or were.  But what happens when the technology changes this fast?  Or when the writing becomes digital, embedded within legacy recording systems?

We can look at cave paintings from thousands of years ago and touch another hand, another human, his tangible marks connect us.  Even vulnerable paper has left us an enduring legacy of countless billions of pages filed in libraries and archives.

Sometimes we struggle to decrypt ancient writing systems; we need discoveries like the Rosetta Stone that allow a translation between different forms, some now defunct.   But the words were still there.

What about our words?  Have we lost them forever?

PS.  If you find that stone, let us know.

Seeing is Not Always Believing

My husband (bless his cotton or otherwise socks) has precious little imagination.  Or so it seems.  I don’t get it.  How can you not have imagination?  It’s as strange to me as people who do know how to count.  Without calculators, without fingers.  Surely it’s something that every human being is just born with?  What is life without imagination?

Admittedly, mine is perhaps a little overenthusiastic, especially when it comes to disastrous consequences.  I am a champion worrier.

My husband looks at things the way most well-meaning adults squint at a three-year old’s masterpiece.  Oh so that’s a tree?  Oh no, of course, it’s a butterfly, silly me!  He can’t see things in clouds and looks at me crazy when I point out a passing dinosaur.  Especially when I add that it has now morphed into a shark.  Is it possible to pass your life without seeing pictures in the sky or words in number plates?  I find it hard to believe, it’s an alien world to me.

He didn’t know that there was a man in the moon.  And that everyone knows that.  It’s not just me being crazy.  Fortunately, he did know that it was made of cheese otherwise I would have really worried about his childhood education.  Probably because it was on the telly; they had to take a rocket up there when they ran out of Wensleydale.  Everyone knows that the moon is made of cheese.  Just don’t forget the crackers.

The lack of imagination means that make-believe, something that I passionately see as both essential and normal in child development, is somewhat challenging.  It’s hard to teach a twenty-something year old these life skills.  For him, it has to be exactly the same or it just isn’t anything like.

Maybe it is a ‘bloke’ thing, being very literal.  He follows instructions religiously.  I think out of the box and several solar systems away.  He has to have the right tool for the job otherwise it can’t be done.  I improvise.  He stirs the pan with dedication as directed on the packet.  I abandon it to its own devices except for a few intermittent pokes so that I can get on with other things.  To him, recipes are Law.  Well, you know what I’m like with them.

I nearly passed out the other day when he suggested substituting an ingredient in a recipe that he fancied for something that we did have.  I’m a convicted heretic on that score.  (Which rather does suggest that bad habits do rub off).

His make-believe tolerance is severely tested when it comes to yarn made toys especially the food that I knit up on a regular basis.

Knitted food does of course have certain limitations.  Chiefly, the colour variation or lack thereof.  There just isn’t the tonal range of nature in a ball of acrylic.  (And yes, I do knit with acrylic, so hang me).  Or any other fibre either.  Variegated and self-striping, although inherently varied, are a little too regular and uniform for a natural effect.  I know that some folk paint shading on afterwards but that’s not really something I want to get into.  For lots of reasons.

However, if you went out and bought a set of that much coveted (it was the object of my desires as a child, the closest we ever came was a pizza-shaped pencil sharpener which we adored) plastic fruit it would face the same issues: colour, tone, texture.  But then I guess that plastic is just always going to be an acceptable alternative to reality.  There’s a more collective understanding of what the shorthand of plastic toys is.  Handmade yarn creations, well that’s entirely dependent on your imaginative translation.

If you give a child a box, is it just a box or something else, something more?  Perhaps, sadly, to my husband, it is just a box.  I see potential.  I see beyond the one-time, one-use labels that modern society imposes on objects.  A box is always something more to me even now that I’m too big to climb inside aeroplanes or to build myself a house.  Or maybe I’m not.  It just depends on how big the box is.

What is a world without imagination?  I would be more scared if I could better comprehend it.  I guess it’s a world where children are tethered to electronic entertainment and ‘play’ with ready formed plastic toys that come with their role, their use clearly predefined.

Sometimes I come crashing up against that modern life, that modern generation in my husband.  It is, thankfully perhaps, alien to me.  So I will continue to knit strange shapes that claim some semblance to reality and muse at cloud forms.  In the meantime, my husband will read how we should properly do something and stop the dinner from sticking.  Maybe it’s the best of both worlds.

 

 

 

A Spoonful of Medicine

Well, it seems that a spoonful of medicine makes the world go down a whole lot better.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of pill popping.  I’m one of those proud, stubborn creatures who would rather endure something than surrender to a drug ((wo)man up as the Americans apparently say and take the pain is my view, especially if the alternative is needle-pointed).  Besides then what would I do if it got worse once I’ve given up and taken something?  Exactly.  And if it’s just about to get better than it really wasn’t worth being a sissy and taking something anyway.

I know.

I’m stubborn.  And the jury is still out as to whether that’s a good or bad thing.

I’ve had to rethink my attitude towards medicine lately.

Firstly, there’s the matter of ‘supplements’, which as far as I’m concerned is medicine with a small m, it’s fairly natural stuff after all.  A lot of the American ME patients take supplements and the Hummingbird Foundation presents quite a lot of evidence in favour of supplementing in chronic illness.  Like good teeth, taking vitamin pills is something that the Americans are much more au fait with.  The grin and bear your lot, stiff upper lip and all that school of thought isn’t so keen.  Besides, surely if you can eat a good enough diet then what’s the need?

I hate to break it to you all but there’s less and less good in even the healthiest aspects of our modern diet.  In 1940 McCane and Widdowson published their first study into the nutritional content of food.  In 1991 when the fifth study was published, a scientist chap compared the findings between that latest study and the original 1940 one.  It’s not good news.  Whilst we associate boring, unattractive vegetables with the 1940s, they seem to have been much healthier in terms of nutritional value than our modern superfoods (with a price tag to match).  For example, the humble spud had 30% more magnesium, 35% more calcium, 45% more iron and 47% more copper back then.  Scared?

(Actually, I’ve just checked for you.  Potato still outranks blueberry on minerals and vitamins, except Vitamin K.  I’d keep playing top trumps with the groceries but I’m a little tired).

There are also two other factors involved in this supplementing decision, both involving that simple aphorism to ‘just eat a good diet’.  (I’m getting a little suspicious of any phrase that’s preceded by ‘just’).  I can’t afford to.  It’s embarrassing to admit that.  Fruit and vegetables are luxuries on my budget, as are proteins.  They’re all essential but expensive.  I get what I can reduced.  Then there is my health.  It takes a great deal of ingenuity to make our very limited budget tasty (or just plain edible) and ingenuity requires energy.  I don’t have it.  Some days I don’t have the energy to even make plain, boring, simple pasta with commercial sauce.  I don’t have the energy to prepare fruits and vegetables.  Isn’t that shocking?  It drives me mad, I find it embarrassing and shameful.  But that’s the truth.  It isn’t easy to ‘just eat a good diet’.  Not for me.

But the problem with supplements is the cost.  To start a whole new regimen is a serious investment.  A relative kindly helped me out and I’m slowly starting to take some supplements as recommended on the Budget Plan, I’m introducing a new one every two weeks to minimise reactions (and to work out what I’m reacting to).  I can’t say for sure whether they’re helping me, my health is so variable that I’d have to live a day with and without in parallel to tell the difference and that isn’t apparently possible.  Fortunately, actually.  Because I’d just be seriously confused.  And having to live each day twice is got to be too much energy.  And stress.

The ladies in the vitamin shop (it’s one of those chain shops rather than a proper health food shop, I’m afraid) were astoundingly helpful.  I don’t make a lot of sense at the best of times and I kind of make for an awkward customer sometimes.  I found it very amusing that in the end, the closest multivitamin combo to the Plan was the Senior.  Yep, my body has OAP needs.  Great.  I’m also glad that one of them warned me about the um, consequences of taking B vitamins because otherwise I would have freaked.  (You can do your own research there).

So I’m a pill popper now.

My new doctor (I may tell you all about that another day) recommended that I take a Medicine (with a capital M) for the pain.  I was sceptical.  unsurprisingly.  But it seems that I’m secretly a sucker for magic bullets after all so I acquiesced.  They’re tiny tablets unlike most of the vitamin pills and taste of Refreshers.  I’m quite happy to take those.  I took it for a couple of days then realised that there was something odd happening.  It was really weird.  I didn’t know what it was.  I spent two days wondering what on earth was wrong with me.  Then I clicked.  I wasn’t hurting.

I’ve had serious chronic pain for months.  I can’t remember when I last didn’t.  Last year?  On a good day, I’m a 6 or a 7.  On the chronic scale, acute pain has a different scale.  8 is bad.  Very bad.  9 is screaming out loud and giving in to painkillers.  The painkillers don’t really touch it.  There is no 10.  10 is a nightmare not yet discovered.  It could always get worse after all.

My pain is 5 and below.  I’m going to have to rediscover all the different lower stages again.  I don’t remember them.  I still have some pain when I do more physically, the odd specific symptom with pain but I’m not hurting all over constantly.

It’s weird.  Seriously weird.

But I think I could get used to it.

So I’m a pill popper now.

As I was taking all these pills already, I decided that I really needed to get back to my happy pills.  You know what I mean.  Only mine is technically liquid not pills.  I am really struggling, there’s a lot of stress and stuff going on again in my life and well, my chemicals don’t usually work in my favour anyway.  I hadn’t been taking it again because the birds stole my syringe (well, maybe not technically) and then I was on antibiotics for my second tooth (or un-tooth seeing as it had been ripped out) that stated no alcohol.  (What is it about medicines that say ‘no alcohol’ that suddenly make you want to have a drink?!)  They were really nasty antibiotics anyway.  But the liquid has alcohol in (don’t get your hopes up, it’s not worth counting unless you’re already puking on another medicine and it tastes totally vile besides).  So I had to wait.

Once all these barriers had been sorted, there was still the psychological to cross.  One, I don’t like to take medicines.  (That was the original theme of this post, if you vaguely remember).  Two, it tastes so vile that I cannot actually bring myself to make myself take it.  It is the kind of thing that an evil doctor or parent would ram in your gob for you.  You don’t do it to yourself.  Yuck.  It makes my toes cringe.

So I did it.  I took another Medicine with a capital M.

Admittedly, it doesn’t taste quite so bad when served up in a dosing syringe because it kind of hits the back of throat immediately rather than sits in your mouth as you reluctantly suck it off the spoon.  (Toes cringing at memory).

I’ve been using an online mood testing thing which sounds a bit of a gimmick but I thought I’d give it a try.  It’s been interesting, I thought my mood was fairly constant (albeit low) but apparently not.  And when I thought I was having a bad day, I scored my highest score (22%).  Crazy.

So I took one dose of the happy pills (in liquid form) and by the following afternoon I was feeling really weird.  Properly weird.  I couldn’t place what the matter was with me.  I don’t normally feel like that at all.  By late bedtime (my circadian rhythm is up the creek again partying with the grasshoppers), I had this gut feeling that I should retest my mood.  I hit 47%.  (I’d been averaging 11% for most of the week before).  Woah.  No wonder I felt weird.

So I’m a pill popper now.

In liquid form.

It’s amazing what a spoonful of medicine can do.  It certainly makes the world go down a little better.

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What Happened to Old-Fashioned Appreciation?

It seems inconceivable that manners, good plain Ps and Qs, could ever pass out of fashion.  To me, the simple pleases and thank yous of daily life are an inherent part of humanity, a vital cog in the machinery of society.  You could probably throw in apologies for good measure too.  What would happen to society, to social interaction if we just throw these niceties out of the window?  And why would we?

My little booted footsteps around the Internet are much like my thought patterns, at best diagonal but usually just plain mysterious and inexplicable.  One of the American news sites has various Lifestyle sections on it and the other day I found myself deep in the Parenting section.

Now, admittedly I don’t have anyone to parent except myself, my husband and a blue tit called Manky but it was fascinating reading.  I started with an article about teaching children to apologise (and how I got to that, I really couldn’t explain and I’m not sure if this was the exact article, I’m sure it was longer).  Saying sorry is a tough one and I could see the need for the article.  It’s easy perhaps for parents (especially as childless people aren’t always quite so forgiving) to excuse their child’s misdeeds either by apologising for them or by embarrassedly muttering about their age or some problem or other.  I believe it’s essential to learn, preferably at an early age, how to own up to your mistakes, with no shame or guilt (unless appropriate) then apologise for the mess-up.  I’m sure you can all think of instances where you wished that an adult had acquired this skill.

I also appreciate that there’s a fine line, as with everything, for parents to tread.  A child can easily be made to feel guilty about a trivial issue or error.  I’m one of those adults who apologises for everything, something that my growing confidence is slowly losing the habit of.  Sometimes.  It can be frustrating to hear someone say sorry every five minutes just as it can be frustrating to feel guilty about everything, including the weather or any other random uncontrollable event.

I can understand that perhaps in this day where people feel that it’s dog-eat-dog and where a little humble pie long went past its sell by date parents maybe sometimes feel that they’re weakening their child but the article explained that it’s about empathy, appreciating someone else’s position, being in their shoes.  That can never hurt.  Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all tried to wear someone else’s shoes for a while?  If we could put ourselves in someone else’s position for a bit?  With all the challenges and issues that parents face, I can appreciate that it’s not always easy to actively and consciously develop, well I suppose, a policy but shouldn’t good manners be second nature?  Shouldn’t teaching our children good manners be second nature?

From there I stumbled on a similar article but this time about teaching gratitude.  (I think that this was actually the article that I read).  Gratitude is a theme that appears quite often blogs and it does seem to be something that we adults sometimes need to work on a little, to cultivate in our lives.  After all gratitude is a little more than a token thank you.  Modern life often promotes perpetual dissatisfaction in that constant pursuit of better, faster, newer, more.  Do we encourage children to be appreciative?  And do we only encourage children to be grateful for material rewards?

I found the articles thought-provoking but I didn’t mean to blog about them.  What brought them back to mind was a little episode in the supermarket today.  It made me sad because I suddenly realised why we have such a self-focussed and ungrateful generation growing up before our eyes.  It is our fault.  What are we teaching our children by our words and our example?

Join me in an aisle of my local supermarket.  There is a mother with probably three children, I was looking at cleaning bargains at the time and after hearing, I didn’t want to stare too hard.  The mother is fairly smart, has possibly been to work during the day and the children are in various school uniforms (which is normal in this country).  I would estimate them to be middle-class.

The daughter is saying something about buying something for someone.

The mother’s reply is loud and clear, almost angry, which is why their conversation caught my attention in the first place, and is delivered as she marches down the aisle with her back to the children.

She says, I cannot quote but only approximate an abbreviated version:  No, I’m not going to waste my money buying anything for your teacher.  They get paid quite enough already.

The tone is angry, the voice is loud.  I would even venture rude as a description.

I am surprised.

I know that in recent years there have been more end-of-year teacher-themed gifts and cards available, surprisingly because it seems that this simple tradition has become old-fashioned.   Maybe because of a lack of gratitude.  In this modern world anything is game to be marketed and merchandised to high heaven and I quite agree with the idea of not supporting such pointless commercial geegaws, especially when it involves tat and expensive in the same place.

But to discourage gratitude in a child?  To a teacher who has devoted countless hours not just in the classroom but in their evenings, weekends and holidays to your child’s development?  And sadly, it’s probably the case in too many instances that a child spends more time with their teacher than any one of its parents.  What example does this set?  What has that child learnt?

It seems perhaps that basic manners along with the appreciation and fellow-feeling that motivates them has gone out of fashion.

Is it a waste of time to show gratitude though?  However few pennies there may be in our lives right now, what stops us from getting pen and paper to say thank you?  Or to encourage a child to draw a picture or design their own card?

It made me sad, very sad.

What would life be like without please and thank you?  And however nice it would be to lead a life without the need to say sorry whilst we’re all imperfect I’d rather continue saying that too.  Otherwise, what will tomorrow be like?

(I would like to add that I am not judging this particular lady, her family or her circumstances all of which are completely unknown to me.  I merely took an observation at the time which caused me to reflect upon life and attitudes in general.  This article is the result of those thought processes).

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On Poetry

It perhaps says quite a lot about me that I only get around to talking about National Poetry Month on the last day of the month.  However, it does seem to have taken everyone else to the middle of the month to realise it too.  So maybe I’m only two weeks behind after all.

I don’t know about how it is for everyone else, I can only speak for myself, but poetry seems to have disappeared off the world radar these days.  Yeah, I know that there are national poets but it’s seems to be a title only, there’s few who can name the poet much less any of his works.  Gone are the days when farmsteaders were versed in the Bible, Shakespeare and Milton.

Poetry isn’t cool.  Is poetry not relevant anymore?  I don’t think we can argue that, modern poets seem to be tackling a diverse range of contemporary issues.  (I can only say that because I’ve bumped into a rainbow of words these last few weeks, mainly on blogs not through any erudite or cultural experience of my own).  Maybe it is because we now live in a modern world of soundbites, pithy at best but if not, then amusing on a basic level and preferably crude, garnered from films and celebrities.  Maybe we don’t have the same attention spans anymore.  A haiku might be more appropriate.  But too highbrow, too artful.

It comes down to attitude.  Poetry is for other people.  Who are those people?  Will we ever know?  Probably not, the mythical demographics of popular consciousness are vague, distant.  Poetry is not just seen as some elitist taste like opera and ballet.  (Apart from ballet classes for the female under eight, people from all classes and neighbourhoods with aspirations and a sense of de rigueur and duty send their precocious darlings off in worn shoes and badly stretched leotards.  Real ballet is as far apart from junior ballet classes as Pluto is from the Sun, still remaining an alien art form).  Poetry is fluffy and wet, poetry belongs to those of queer minds and dispositions, the uncool.

We did poetry at junior school before we learnt self-consciousness.  Acrostics mainly.  Hammered out sentences across the initials of a word, much like the début of a banana-fingered piano player.  I didn’t even realise until last week that you don’t have to keep the initials in order.  Maybe the Laws of Poetry can be broken.

In middle school, we progressed into laboured ABAB rhyming.  If you wanted to live dangerously you could always mix up the form but again poetry was all about Law.  It was ordered, twee and contrite.  We learnt poems.  The kind of poems that were guaranteed to put pre-adolescents off poetry for life.  For example, how can a cloud be lonely and how can it wander?  Do I really care about a field of daffodils?  I remember something about Adlestrop.  Which in my pun-creating mind sounds like a tantrum gone awry.  The only good thing that came from that experience and reading some book about a chalice being found was a lifelong passion for the rural abandoned that continues with me still and surfaces in my photography.  Early on in middle school we did our own versions of the Jolly Postman, much more my cup of tea.

And in senior school?  Poetry went the way of Creative Writing.  Nonexistent.  For GCSE, we did one creative piece.  I think it had to be a side of A4, a very short short story.  We did War Poetry, rushed through in perhaps less than half a term.  It wasn’t about the poetry either, it was all about themes and issues and culture and history.  But I met the famous War Poets of World War I, a love that I still carry with me.  I liked the work of Sassoon but preferred Owen.  The next closest we came to poetry was Shakespeare, enshrined as Law that all GCSE students must study at least one piece in their two years.  He wasn’t popular, he used weird words, a language more alien to teenagers than Arabic even thought it was purportedly their own.  I love Shakespeare but haven’t really returned to it since school apart from harvesting the occasional monologue or duologue for other studies.

That was my education in poetry.  Or at least my formal education.  There was poetry at home.  As a young child, I had volumes of nursery rhymes and spent hours poring over them before moving onto the Nonsense Rhymes and an Old Possum’s Book of Cats.  Oh and there was AA Milne.  My father loved Winnie the Pooh as much as Paddington.  In the old days before I was born and he was still commuting, he would read Winnie the Pooh on the London train between the bowler hats and the copies of the Times.

My mother on the other hand had once entertained dreams of a university scholarship and furnished me with a proper anthology, probably one of her own school prizes like my World Atlas and French dictionary too.  Her maiden name printed neatly on the inside.  This was poetry that meant that you were someone, this was poetry that was meant to be learnt.  I never got on with it.  The only poem that I truly loved was the Night Mail, it stays in my head still.  (Trying to find a link for the poem, I have discovered that it was originally written to accompany a film documentary and one commenter is right, it does sound a lot like modern rap in this version at least!)  It was the magical rhythm and the pictures it conjured.  That’s my kind of poetry.

Therefore I am not a cultured being.  I sometimes feel that I should make more of an effort, that for some reason I should be a cultured person.  The kind who remembers the big words and proper terms for everything, the kind who can string fancy words into any sentence, the kind who can quote poetry and literature more easily than I remember the day of the week.  But truthfully, I feel that it’s a little too much beyond me.  Maybe it’s an attitude thing.  To be all of those things would mean being posh, being highbrow, being a hundred and one things that I am most definitely not.  Besides which, my head would hurt.

I wrote poetry as a child but like my creative writing, I eventually realised that my talent did not amount to much, that I would go no further.  Maybe it was living with that aforementioned attitude.  Writing was always something I did in secret, some shameful weakness on my part.  Less socially acceptable then stuffing chocolate bars and biscuits behind closed doors.  And I had no framework and few points of comparison.  In the old-fashioned novels of my childhood, writers burnt with genius and dashed off great oeuvres in a few strokes of the pen.  However I have recently realised that apparently it’s not meant to be like that, writing is meant to be hard work, it is something that has to be crafted.  But I didn’t know at the time.  I got discouraged.  My pastimes not belonging in the modern world.

Modern poetry was, and in fact still is, something inaccessible, something entirely alien to the Laws of Poetry with which I grew up, I mean some of it doesn’t even rhyme!  My poems belonged to the sentimental tripe of antiquity, a genre which I didn’t even enjoy reading.  But there was nowhere else to go, nothing beyond.  I only know acrostics and ABAB.  I have a funny feeling that poetry is more than that but it would be like trying to force an introduction with some learnéd, highbrow culturalist at a gallery opening.  Little me doing that!  No chance.

So poetry remains for other people.

Life’s Little Luxuries

I know I’ve written recently about wants and needs and our perspectives on them but it’s a recurring theme.  Well, life doesn’t just stop and it never seems to go easy either, at least not my one.

Another aspect to this wants and needs thing is how people seem to be increasingly seeing things as their ‘right’ rather than a need.  Even worse, I’m sure that most of those ‘needs’ are just wants.  When push comes to shove, could you really do without?

There are all sorts of things that make our lives feel better, little luxuries that we feel that we can’t go without.  A favourite magazine, a morning coffee, some fancy lipstick, that posh chocolate.  And sometimes our mental health does have to come first.  But seriously, are they needs or just wants?  Realistically, wouldn’t life go on without them?

Our grandparents and even our parents had a very different experience, many of them had no heating, no indoor toilet, limited lighting and running water probably was a cold tap.  That’s not so very long ago, a life time ago, less than.  We’re now prissy wusses when it comes to such things, claiming that all of these things are the basic rights of civilisation.  Um, no.

Darkness is a normal, natural phenomenon.  I know too many adults who are scared of the dark, whose lives and homes are only safe when basking in a minimum 40 watt glow.   We are repeatedly told not to walk home (we don’t have transport anymore) in the dark.  It isn’t safe.  Bad things happen in the dark.  We look at these mature adults a little crazy.  It’s winter.  It’s dark until nearly 9h and after 16h, sometimes 15h.  When exactly do you propose we go out?  Yeah, exactly.

Bad things happen, sure, we know that.  But you can take precautions and use common sense.  And bad things don’t just happen because it’s dark.  The sad truth is that they can just happen.  No rhyme or reason.  You don’t have to be asking for it by walking down a lighted main road.  For most of the adults I know, there are more monsters lurking in the streets than there are under the bed or behind the wardrobe of any three-year-old.

We tend to leave a light on for youngsters, a comfort in the alien dark in case they wake up.  Sadly I don’t think we’re encouraging them to grow out of the habit anymore and even sadder, I think it’s more of a comfort for the parents.  Darkness is meant to happen, that’s so we and the world can get some rest.  It’s beautiful not scary.

I could tell you about heating attitudes too.  I know parents who won’t take their children out if it’s snowy and icy because it’s too cold out there, the reality is that they’re going to be bundled into a car, a modern car whose heater works perfectly, and travel somewhere about 10-15 minutes away where there’s central heating.  I kid you not.  Cold has ceased to be an enemy instead it’s now a monster, lurking at the boundaries of centrally heated homes where it’s 25° in the winter and occupants are resplendent in short sleeves.  It’s probably colder in the summer, ironically.

We can’t afford to run much heating, if any, so we don’t.  We’re looked at as if we’re out of our minds and told that we’ll die of hypothermia.  The idea of putting a jumper on is fast becoming an alien concept.  Dressing warmly because it’s cold rather than creating some false atmosphere is considered strange, I’m laughed at for wearing thermals.  The last couple of central heating free winters have actually been our healthiest with fewer coughs and colds.  We appreciate the seasons more and have learnt a thing or two about layers.

We’ve had no end of problems with our boiler so in the last year it’s only probably been working for three, four months.  It’s frustrating and doesn’t particularly make our lives very easy.  Yet I’m always surprised at the reaction I get from other people when I say we don’t have any hot water.  Yes, hot water has also made it to the list of human rights.  Basic human rights.  Is it really?  I think you’ll find it’s access to clean water still.  Nothing about running or heated.

It makes me reflect.  How grateful are we for these things that make our lives easier?  Are we looking at them as a ‘right’ or do we look at the rest of the world, and tragically it’s probably the majority of places, and realise that these things are luxuries?  Do we appreciate that hot running water, a full belly of our favourite meal, streets never mind homes where we’re minimally at risk and safe, modern transport at our convenience are things that not everyone in the world can even dream of?  There’s probably even places and families in our own countries for whom these things are not guaranteed.

Sorry, I think we need a reality check folks.