the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Buying presents for Christmas 2016, that is.

If you are looking for present ideas for Christmas 2015 I’d suggest that you are leaving it far too late and most importantly, you haven’t been paying attention to what people say.

My reasons are as follows and based on evidence based observations, painful yet instructive, of how not to do things and yet most of you are guilty of some of these. Thankfully I have my parents to thank for me being so good at buying presents. Not because they were so good at it – because they weren’t. As a child, the lowlight of one Christmas was getting a pair of socks, and in answer to my understandably crestfallen demeanour there then followed a long explanation of everything they did for me throughout the year. That was their present to me; the usual functions of a parent somehow transformed into a never-ending feat of selflessness on their part for which I was meant to be grateful.

My brother and I out of necessity developed a coping mechanism for this, as we both knew instinctively that our parents were worryingly unencumbered by parental responsibilities and to make matters worse, upon return to primary school, there’d be an outbreak of competitive bragging about who got what and what they got could do. So, what I’d do – and decades later discovered he did as well – was listen carefully when someone described in painstaking detail to a crowd of hungry ears what a particular toy did and when it was my turn, repeat some of the details. At a frighteningly young age I discovered that fiction could be woven into fact if I wanted it to be.

So chastened by my childhood experiences, I understandably prided myself on never making anyone I ever gave a present to feel as aggrieved as I had as a child. It’s quite easy, this giving thoughtfully appropriate presents thing, although some people – most – conspire by their inactions to make it is difficult as possible.

The most pitiful of all excuses for this  is the line “Christmas crept up on me this year”, (or variations of) as if Christmas can happen at any time of the year, with a weekly global lottery draw to decide if Christmas will take place that week. Then, if Christmas is indeed to be that week, it’s as if the global audience – well just the wealthy citizens of it – act as if a kind of air borne compulsion to spend without reason has been released. As opposed it to being on the same day, every year, since before they were born and after they will die. Or that advertisers blitz the media from mid-November with novel and emotive ways to separate consumers from their money. ‘Look, they’re buying this and they’re happy, you can be too.’ Or ‘Look at these people, hosting a party full of attractive people enjoying themselves because of the table laden with food. Are your friends that attractive?”

It is therefore no surprise to learn that it’s estimated that this year the total UK spend on Christmas presents will be £24.4 billion. Equally, it is no surprise that UK advertisers are spending £310 million on adverts to promote the idea that you can buy your way to happiness. This leads me onto my second point, that given a substantial part of the expenditure goes on presents it therefore makes sense to spread the cost of the presents throughout the year. This isn’t being mean, just practical.

If you listen carefully to what people say they often give you unconscious clues as to what they really would like as a present. It also has the happy benefit of allowing you to spread the cost throughout the year, and also to display a degree of thoughtful consideration which is sadly lacking if you leave it to the last minute.

A good example of this occurred earlier this year, when I said to my Trilby that I’d never watched the Eurovision Song Contest – not all the way through, only bits – and she made me watch the whole sorry spectacle. At one point, she mentioned that she liked Abba – let’s face it, who doesn’t? – and then some time later she mentioned she was partial to a bit of Richard Clayderman. I ignored this comment, but as soon as she was out of the room, I got out my computer and looked on Amazon to see if he had done an album of Abba covers. He had, and six moths later when I gave it to her as one of her birthday presents, she was amazed. My theory being that ultimately you don’t buy presents for the recipient, you buy them for you, as a way of reminding yourself of what sort of person you are. This allows you to avoid taking part in Christmas present bingo.

Christmas present bingo is whereby the recipient unwraps a present, stares at it blankly and then gives fulsome thanks but is careful not to tear the cellophane wrapping. Because they know that they are going to wrap it up themselves and give it to someone next year, most probably to an annoying friend of their partner, a relation that they especially loathe or a hated in-law. I suspect that countless presents suffer this fate.

So, my advice is buy throughout the year – the January sales gives you the chance to get things at a fraction of the price you’ll pay in December – and listen and more importantly act on what you hear. Online shopping means you have no excuse.

As if to prove my theory, the one that posits that you give presents ultimately for yourself, to remind you of who you are, here is my present to you – one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, courtesy of ‘the twisted brain-wrong of a one-off man-mental’ that is Chris Morris.

Last week saw my yearly visit from a social worker to assess my current level of funding. It was a non-start carnival of fun! Because if there is one thing guaranteed to highlight how dependent one is on other people, it is arguing for continued maintenance of the current level of funding. One emphasizes the physical limitations one has, what one cannot do for oneself and the risk of serious harm if one were to do so. It’s like the opposite of the song ‘You’ve got to eliminate the negative / and accentuate the positive.”

Initially the social worker had phoned me some weeks earlier requesting an interview the very next day. I managed to postpone him, managing in the meantime to gather supporting statements arguing for my continued level of funding from various professionals. Only a cynic of the very highest order would suggest that by requesting a short notice interview it would prevent the gathering of such information and strengthen the hand of social services to cut funding. However, I’m not a cynic. If I was I might also believe that his assertion that social services had no record of my timetable of hours was nothing more than a trap, given that the council had to sign off on the transfer of funding to me in the first place

The social worker that came to see me was, it must be said, charming and courteous, even if he did throw his coat on the floor and had a rather ill advised hairstyle for a man who’d reached his 40th birthday some years ago. He’d slicked it back into a ponytail that revealed a pronounced widows peak at the front with less of a ponytail than a rats tail at the back. If anything, he was the warm reassuring presence that is designed to lull one into a false sense of security, rather like the nice man whose dog has just had puppies and his flat is only a short walk away. Would the child like to see them?

He was all affable concern and keen to know exactly how me being able to direct the spending of my budget had benefited me. Free from council control I’ve been able to switch care provider, from a local council appointed one (and the fact that the agency my council had chosen charged the council the lowest rate per hour was just a happy accident.). I was also able to engage the services of a wide range of professionals whose efficacy – or not – has been due more to my lack of motivation than their sterling efforts. He was at great pains to identify exactly how many hours I needed and managed to suggest that this was all for my own good, in case of a catastrophic failure in care provision necessitated that the local council provide my domestic care. Dealing with domestic matters was not as difficult as dealing with rehabilitative matters, as a council has a legal duty of care to ensure provision of domestic care, but rehabilitative care…not so much. So it was in my interest to present them both as inextricably linked. So I most certainly did not when he asked about speech and language therapy articulate properly, which required him blankly to look at my friend and she translated it for him. I then explained that he’d provided a good example of why speech and language therapy was needed. If he, in a quiet room couldn’t understand me, then what chance would I have competing with a listener battling background noise?

Thankfully I’ve made no secret of my battle with depression from the outset. As I’ve noted here before, the depression is as a result of my injury or more likely a combination of my injury and my inability to accept what has happened to me. Be that as it may, my psychologist wrote the following in support of my continued funding. She wrote;

One of the key aims of our sessions has been to reverse the downward spiral in which low mood leads to loss of motivation and confidence which results in disengagement from social activities which leads to poorer quality of life and thus to deterioration in mood which feeds into hopelessness, self-neglect, poorer health generally and increased dependence on others.

We have now reached a stage of less frequent sessions in order to allow X time to start putting some of the identified changes into practice. These sessions will end soon and it is his support worker who will be crucial in enabling him to continue to make progress and thus improve his mental and physical wellbeing, and hopefully avoid the need for re-referral to mental health services. This is because the activities that provide social contact and intellectual stimulation and thus help maintain mood and motivation would be extremely difficult for X to access without support due to balance problems (and therefore risk of falling) and speech impairment (and therefore difficulty communicating his needs). Without a support worker there is the risk that X would be largely confined to the house, and the downward spiral described above would continue.

This was echoed by my consultant who first treated me at the rehabilitation unit and has now transferred to a hospital near me where I am under his care. He wrote;

I don’t anticipate that there will be any dramatic improvements in his level of independence, but I am convinced that his current level of therapy involvement is maintaining him safely in the community. If this were to be any way reduced, I fear that he would become much more dependant, and the long term consequences both for X and for his funding agencies would be very severe.

Together with their supporting statements there were also supporting statements from a plethora of professionals and care workers. These not only had the benefit of being something he could take away and read at his leisure, they also helped enforce the notion in his mind that I was a highly organised person. This is important when one considers the motivation of social services. Namely a) are they going to cut funding to someone who appears highly organised and they think might make life highly difficult for them or are they b) going to choose someone else to cut? In this effort I was aided to a great extent by my housemate Old Blue Eyes, who not only made it clear that she was aware of all aspects of my care but more importantly let slip that she was a freelance journalist – which if he Googled her would bring up links to all her articles and programmes (although as she will read this I must be fair and point out she didn’t actually say that), but if he’s got more brains than hair, that’s what he’d do – and that I’d previously written a blog for a national newspaper.

Of course I resisted the rather obvious temptation of asking him exactly how many funding reviews the council had carried out and how many of these had resulted in a recommendation that the funding be increased. Because a funding review suggests an increase is as likely as a decrease. If not it is a cost cutting exercise dressed up as a funding review. It takes the fun out of a funding review!

I hate feeling like this, but I can’t help it. It isn’t so much that I want more brain damage, but rather that if I was going to have any at all, that some of it could have affected my cognitive function. At least more than it has. Bear with me here.

In an earlier post I wrote that,

One of the many thorny issues I’ve wrestled with over the years has been the question of whether it is better to be stupid than clever.

In essence I suggested that intelligence was more of a curse than anything, precisely because it gives ones imagination a greater range of options. Rich in detail, bleak in outlook and worryingly addictive, they present one with a plausibly realistic set of scenarios, realistic precisely because one is intelligent and therefore see’s them as such. You may, of course, disagree, and that’s fine. But it’s the way I see it and therefore it’s true for me.

This thinking was at the forefront of my mind during my recent sojourn to Dorset. To call it a holiday would be a misnomer, because as Crowded House had it ‘everywhere you go / you always take the weather with you’, which both literally and figuratively wasn’t great. Whoever said that travel broadens the mind clearly never had depression. Because, if it is true that money does indeed buy you a better class of misery, then it is equally true that depression shrouds any beautiful vista with a gloomy outlook. For that reason, it wasn’t so much a holiday as a helliday, because there was no respite from my thoughts, and therefore it gave my mind ample and ingenious ways to torment me.

And knowing that is in itself another torment.

Being aware that there was a strong likelihood of me not be a happy choppy and not wishing to rely on my memory, I took the precaution of keeping a diary of sorts on my computer – some lowlights of which I’ll refer to – to act as an accurate guide to my mood as it was. (Oh and by the way, anything in italics was written by me today)

fri morn spent contemplating continued utility of being – doing a c b a
(Cost benefit analysis) on my existence –things are only going to get worse, socially, economically and practically – the way things are headed – (If one looks with a rational and dispassionate air at the ways in which society has changed and become even more harsh, especially now under the guise of austerity the weakest are paying the price of others folly, can one really think that future is going to get anything other than progressively worse?) – I ponder this looking out on an idyllic vista surrounded by bees doing their noisy alchemy on the lavender bush – (It’s true. As I was writing these words, right in front of me was the most breathtaking view, which if anything only highlighted the trivial nature of my concerns in the grand scheme of things, formed as it was over many hundreds of million years, a view that will remain as unchanged as it was before I was and as it will do after I am) – I reflect that that bee’s only have an instinct do whereas man is cursed with a knowledge of a past and an sense of what the future might bring – even if it almost always never ever turns out that way – as I dwell on this I hear carefree laughter, which only serves to highlight my foreboding – sense of rootlessness, of not having a purpose.

But in most extreme case of being careful what you wish for, it’s now 06.50am on Saturday 26th September and I’ve been awake since 04.45am, scared to go back to sleep. What occasioned this was me waking up and then feeling a cramp like sensation in my lower left leg, from the calf down. Waiting for it to abate almost immediately, it hasn’t. There is still some tingling, not pins and needles exactly but noticeably there. Pointing my toes up towards my body is something I can do but feel instinctively – why and how I know not – that I shouldn’t. Mindful of the fact that others are sleeping in the house, I’ve gingerly attempted to put some weight on it. It doesn’t feel as strong as the right one, but then I am in a state of heightened anxiety, a state, which has to be said, is in no way helped by occasional twinges in my upper left arm. At least I think they’re twinges.

As I say, I scared to go back to sleep and not just because my Mother had a stroke last year. Am I having a minor one or am I thinking too much? Is my left arm tired just because it is tired or is it something else entirely? Is the slackness on the lower left side of my mouth something real or imagined? And more importantly, why am I writing this, when my time might be put to better use?

My shirt shrunk.

Not in and of itself a big deal I grant you, but as metaphor that neatly contrasts how things were with how they are now, it works. I wish it didn’t, but wishing it weren’t so won’t change it any.

The shirt in question was a cotton seersucker shirt, and as such it didn’t doesn’t require
ironing.

Which is just as well.

When I was old enough to realise that no matter how clean your clothes were, if they were nothing more creases arranged into shapes that rembled clothes, then you looked like a tramp with low self-esteem issues, I’ve always ironed my own shirts. In this endeavor my Mum was a great help – I was child after all and knew nothing of gender stereotyping. Despite being clothes conscious herself, this fastidiousness didn’t apply to anyone else clothes. So, more out of necessity than choice I learnt to iron. Not that my Mum didn’t iron anything, but more that there was in her an inbuilt boredom with anything domestic. Which meant that the closer one’s clothes were to the top of the ironing pile, the more care she took. Which meant therefore that the lower down the pile they were, the less attention they got. Bizarrely, no-one else in my family seemed to think this was odd and, much more importantly , that something needed to be done to rectify the situation.

So I learnt to iron. Not jeans – that’s just wrong! One things jeans should never have is a crease – it screams out ‘Way too much time on my hands.’ And underpants – as if as you’re going to be undressing to do the dance with two backs and your partner suddenly runs out of the room shrieking ‘You depraved monster, you don’t iron your pants!’ Nor did I iron the lazy man way, whereby one only irons the parts of the shirt that are on view – so on a hot day, when you see a man still with his jacket on, odds are he’s done some lazy man ironing.

And I never saw ironing as a chore – it was a way, literally of ironing out the creases, of neatening things, of restoring some order in the world. So much so that some time ago, a housemate whom I didn’t much like was preparing for a job interview the next day. Seeing her door open, I asked how she was doing, more out of politeness than of any genuine interest. A conversation then ensued, during which I commented about the shirt she had hanging on a hanger. Was she about to iron it, I enquired? Sadly, and it must be said, not my surprise, she said no, that she’d already ironed it. My dislike of a badly ironed shirt was far greater than my dislike of her, so I insisted that I ironed the shirt, suggesting to her that one doesn’t get a second chance to make a first impression. I write this not as a boast, rather as a lament.

Because thanks to the nature of my brain injury – my lack of fine motor skills and balance problems – it means I can’t do my own ironing anymore. And because of my brain injury, I’ve lost all but two of my friends, which means I rarely have an occasion to go to where I need to look smart. “What’s that you say? Looking smart to maintain your own personal values? To retain your sense of self? Cop on to yourself and get some shape, even if your shirts don’t!
And you can forget any ideas you might’ve had about hand- washing shirts. You are aware that care workers are paid by the hour, aren’t you? A washing machine will do the job just fine. Yes it’s regrettable if shirts shrink because the care workers just bundled all the clothes in without first checking the washing instructions. Yes, you’ve told us that the clothes they shrunk predated the brain injury and therefore you attached an importance to them far beyond their material value, but they’ve said sorry and what else can they do?

The situation gets distinctly Quentin Crisp when it comes to domestic matters. Quentin Crisp said, just to remind you, as regards cleaning that after the first inch you don’t notice the dust. Again whilst my support workers were meant to help facilitate my day-to-day activities, the theory doesn’t translate into practical application. You might’ve been hitherto unaware that you were house-proud, even going so far as to use your food cupboard as a storage area for your shoes. So much so, that a plumber the instant he entered the bedroom in your old house was given to exclaim, “This room smells of trainers and laziness!” However it was only when you were rendered physically incapable of housework that you realized how house-proud you are. (When I write physically incapable, I mean of course doing it to a standard the me before the accident would have done it. Having written that I’m well aware that someone who used their food cupboard as a shoe rack is not best placed to pontificate about standards. Therefore, I’ll amend that doing it to a standard I’d like to imagine myself having done it, without the tiresome necessity of actually ever having done so.)

Perhaps it’s because I spend so much time in the house, and so consequently have more time to notice the dust and the cobwebs that it irks me so. I’m aware of the dichotomy inherent in the fact that precisely because I’ve so little going on in my existence, my brain compensates accordingly by dwelling on things that achieve an importance out of all relation to their actual importance.

But be that as it may, my shirt has shrunk.

I’m busy polishing a turd to a lustrous finish, so here are yet more of my musical favourites…

I know last time I promised you some show tunes and other musical treats, but then this morning I was beleaguered by the combined ineptitude by my bank and mobile phone provider.

I was going to post a long and rambling post all about it – which would’ve been a digital version of a whinge and no fun to write let alone read – but then I remembered my show tunes promise. And if anything is guaranteed to put one in a good mood it’s a musical!

I love musicals, always have done. I can’t see what people have against them. Musicals – in my opinion – represent the creative pinnacle of what cinema can achieve. In no other art form can two characters spend most of the time despising each other and then in the space of a song lasting four minutes discover that they are in fact madly in love with each other! Musicals are unabashedly cheerful aside of course from the ‘Fiddler On The Roof’, which is set against a backdrop of the Russian pogroms and virulent anti Semitism. But then ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ gets away with this precisely because musicals are not like that.

Musicals also contain some of the most lyrically inventive songs ever written. If you don’t believe me have a listen to some of my favourites.

(If you are receiving an email notification of a new blog post then you won’t get the songs mentioned if you visit this website containing my blog then you will)

First off we have perhaps a song from one of the greatest musicals ever written. I refer of course to West Side Story. It’s hard to overstate how great this musical is. ‘Gee Officer Krupke’ highlights the magnificent lyrical skills of Stephen Sondheim. (And if you don’t know who Stephen Sondheim and why he is a legend in musical theatre then I despair of you!). This is taken from the Original Broadway Cast recording and not the film. Trainspotter alert! Somdheim drastically rewrote the lyrics to ‘America’ and some other songs for the film adaptation. How do I know this? Because I’ve got two vinyl versions of the Original Broadway Cast recording and also a CD copy as well.

Next up we have one of the two greatest songs from the Sound of Music. I know what you are thinking ‘I’ve every song from ‘The Sound of Music’ ‘, whereas actually, you probably haven’t.

Two of the best songs were not included in the film. This is one of them. The Captain is advised by his friends to capitulate, like they have done, to the Nazi’s.

That sentiment expressed above is also expressed in this next offering. Buried deep within ‘South Pacific’ is this gem. If I was a cynic I might suggest that this neatly sums up everything ISIS is against and why the hate any form of recorded music. Listen to the lyrics and decide for yourselves.

Next up, we have the second song from ‘The Sound Of Music’ not to have been included in the film. Again this is from the Original Broadway Cast recording, of which I have three vinyl copies – all worn out – and a CD copy. This is in my opinion one of the wittiest songs ever put to music. Coming as it does from the standpoint of two very wealthy people bemoaning the fact that the majority of love songs never have as it’s love struck protagonists the wealthy.

And for a completely different change of tone we have this little gem from ‘Hello Dolly’. It positively flies in the face of feminism but it is still a very funny song. Even though you know you shouldn’t laugh, when you hear it for the first time I defy you not to guffaw.

Next up, we have the superlative Pet Shop Boys and ‘Shameless’, from their musical ‘Closer to Heaven’. When the idea of a musical with music written by the Pet Shop Boys was first mooted, I was understandable ecstatic. Partly because the Pet Shop Boys were one of my favourite bands but also because they’d expressed contempt for jukebox musicals such as ‘Mama Mia’ and ‘We Will Rock You’. (A jukebox musical is the lowest common denominator of musicals and just plays the bands greatest hits – or not, in the case of ‘Viva Forever’ the Spice Girls musical – all held together by a thin narrative.) But the Pet Shop Boys did something different. They wrote completely new songs that hadn’t been heard before that propelled to story forward.

This is one such. Remember this was written over twenty years ago and is even more pertinent now than it was then.

Next up, we have this classic from ‘Gigi’. In which an old man gives thanks that he’s no longer encumbered by the mental torment that goes with love. Again quite possibly one of my favourite musical numbers.

And finally, we have this treat from ‘My Fair Lady’. In which Rex Harrison bemoans the rather baleful influence that a woman has on a mans’ life., and foolishly asserts that he will always be a bachelor. This being a musical we know that it isn’t going to turn out that way! He’s merely setting himself up to gloriously fall in love.

See. I was in a thoroughly bad mood earlier and just thinking about these songs has lifted my spirits. I hope it does the same for yours.

Right now though, I have a pressing appointment with Captain Malbec.

…I’d embedded the video’s into the blog so all you had to do was click play. My blog has them, the email delivered to you, sadly does not. The link below will take you there.

And there was I thinking it was the easy way to do things.

I could re-do the whole thing, but frankly a) my blog looks much better as it is and b) much more importantly, I can’t be a*sed.

A deadline looms, so here for your aural delectation are some of my favourite cover versions….