the brilliantly leaping gazelle

April 13, 2015

How necessity is the mutha of re-invention…

A few blog posts ago, I rashly suggested that compared to other peoples depression, mine wasn’t that bad.
And then events of last week proved me wrong. Or rather, the non-events of last week
Firstly I wrote a blog, which although I thought one of my best, no-one else did. I know this because WordPress has a handy statistics page, where you can check exactly how few readers have read an individual blog. (Only the nation they logged on from by the way, not in an Edward Snowden type way.) That was the first thing that didn’t happen.

The second thing that didn’t happen was that Matthew – my support worker on a Tuesday – was needed elsewhere, to work another shift for a client with ‘higher tier’ needs than I. Receiving notification of this by text on Sunday from the agency Matthew works for, means they would’ve known that there was little I could do. Monday was a Bank Holiday, so it was a fait accompli. There was no discussion. Just ‘Here’s our problem and here’s our solution.’

Which as a way of highlighting my dependency on others was a stark reminder. One that got me thinking, and not in a good way either. I don’t like thinking like this, about my situation. It isn’t good for me to ruminate; rationally I know it’s a bad idea, but emotionally. Well….
Or more accurately, not well.

Here’s what I was thinking.
‘My whole pitiful existence – as it isn’t a life in any meaningful sense of the word – is just endless journey of frustration and despair. One that now consists of necessity, of accommodation and above all drudge. The sheer, mind-numbing, joyless drudge of knowing that each day will be repeat of the one before. Yes, granted, tiny details that are out of the ordinary may occur, but in essence, nothing changes. Nothing.’

‘I could do exercises to help with my walking and speech sure, but I’ve been typing away at a keyboard pretty much continually since after the coma and guess what? No substantive improvement. Yes, granted, some incremental improvement, but I won’t be getting a data entry job anytime soon. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever work again, I mean I know how good I am and I wouldn’t employ me.’

That’s hard to deal with. Not working. Not doing anything one considers worthwhile. Don’t get me wrong, blogging isn’t worthless, but neither is it that far removed from technological graffiti – that title belongs to Twittter. But I’ve always worked. Not because I didn’t get any pocket money, but more that I didn’t want to be beholden to the whims of others – what they could give, so could they take. So I worked, doing paper rounds, after school jobs, jobs to pay my way through college, jobs when I left college, evening jobs to supplement those jobs. So to go from that to….this, is not something that sits well with me – given that I spend enough time sitting down. Which is why I tend not to think about it.

In fact, I tend not to think about a lot of things. As I’ve said before, it’s better to be stupid than clever. Because a stupid person may not be able to fully grasp the possible consequences of a course of action. Or to realise that there exist many possible courses of action. But a clever person can and if they put their mind to it, envisage differing scenarios that might occur, as a consequence.

One consequence of this is the disparity between want I think and what I say. A good example of this occurred late last week at Moorfields eye hospital, for a fitting for eye weights. A doctor asked me about my medical history. Upon hearing of my brain injury, she asked, “How did you get it?” Tempted, but knowing that replying “In a raffle.” was the wrong answer, equally I toyed with asking her was it in any way relevant. But I said nothing of the sort, I just inwardly raged. Having been such a private person before the brain injury is deeply infuriating. And to paraphrase Winston Churchill, ‘Never, in the pursuit of legal entitlement, has so much information been asked of one person for by many people for so little.’ Even worse when a support worker has to share it on my behalf for, as my speech isn’t always understood call centre staff who are tasked with finding out this information. So even more people know things about me.

Whoopief*ckingdo.

Another consequence is that things that had never bothered me before, bother me to distraction now. Other people have always been a case of botheration to me – in much the same way as I no doubt have been to them. But me being in the house so much has exacerbated this to an alarming degree. This can partly be explained by me spending so much time in the house, and partly by the fact that there is comparatively little else to occupy my mind. But mainly, however, because things are not done properly. I used do things in the most efficient and quietest way possible. I hate waste in all things almost as I hate needlessly generated noise. But since the accident I’ve had to bite my tongue so much it must’ve scar tissue on scar tissue. I didn’t realise I was such a control freak until I didn’t have any. I mean I could point out the error of peoples ways, but again, one of the many unpleasant consequences of my accident is my mental cost benefit analysis. Namely, what is the likely outcome of any course of action? So more often than not, my reaction is inaction.

This cost benefit analysis is both instant and instinctive and I hate myself for needing to think this way. I’d never put myself in a situation where I needed to do that before, not since childhood anyway, and I hate myself for doing it now. I’ve had niceness foisted upon me, not through choice but by circumstance. Not that I was deliberately not nice on purpose, but neither would I allow circumstance to dictate my actions. Now however necessity deems otherwise.

And I woke up from a coma for this?

Whoopief*ckingdo!

Next time…Nigel Farrage isn’t ‘a pound shop Enoch Powell.’ He’s more Alf Garnett reborn as a snake oil salesman…

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April 3, 2015

According to the bible, God could go all Bruce Banner…!

In my last post, I deservedly ridiculed some of the frankly bizarre beliefs that hold sway in modern life. Such as UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster, acupuncture, and the moon landings being faked. I observed that despite there being no credible proof for any of these, they somehow remain lodged in people’s consciousness as truths.

Now for the biggest mass delusion of all. I’m referring, of course, to religion or as I call it, a fairy story for grown ups. Quite how, in the 21st century – over 150 years since Darwin conclusively proved evolution wasn’t just a theory, but verifiable fact – religion isn’t a fading superstition but a flourishing worldwide activity, is a cause of serious concern.

This post will therefore be a tad longer than usual, because I’ve included some background on me, and I’ve also quoted and referenced the bible (The Revised Standard Version). The lesser known sources anyway, as I figure you’re familiar with the Adam and Eve story?

Like pretty much every child with religious parents, mine indoctrinated me into theirs, which just happened to be Catholicism. I knew my mum viewed going to church as more of a social activity than anything else, and my father saw religion as something you paid lip service to, especially if there was communion wine on offer.

Up until my confirmation I was the model of probity. It was during my confirmation classes that things started to go right, I was told I could choose a confirmation name and I was given a book of saint’s names to look through. Told I was allowed to have two, I considered my options and then said I want my confirmation name to be James Bond.  Only to be told that yes, even though there was a St James and a St Bond and that yes, even though I could have any two I wanted, no, having James Bond as my confirmation name wasn’t acceptable. Later, when I was studying Nazi Germany as part of my A Level history, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the Nuremburg rallies and religion. Specifically, that fact that there was a kind of group think at work, whereby otherwise quite rational people would get swept along in the carefully orchestrated emotional fervour of the moment and would become part of the group. It was about this time that I read Darwin and all of the unformed thoughts in my head suddenly coalesced.

As Julie Andrews sang in ‘Do-Rei-Me’ in ‘The Sound Of Music’, “Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” So lets. In the beginning there was nothing, blah, blah, blah, until in the greatest magic trick in the history of ever, hey presto, God created the world. Never mind who created God! Fast forward a bit and he created man, Adam, in his own image. More blah. Adam was lonely, so God created Eve, using one of Adam’s ribs.

Two problems spring to mind here. One, if God created Man out of nothing but dust (Gen 2 v7), then why did he have to go all rib thievery on Adam? After making the entire universe we’re expected to seriously believe creating a similar but different breeding companion for Adam was beyond his creative imagination and competence? Really? I know women are complicated, but he’d just created the universe and everything in it.
Two. Why didn’t Adam haggle? As anyone who’s ever been to a market anywhere in the world knows, the first price opens negotiations only, one isn’t expected to actually pay it, as this scene from Monty Pythons ‘Life of Brian’ demonstrates. What if Adam had done the same thing? I mean, women are great and everything, don’t get me wrong, but for one rib we got woman? If we could lose one rib, why not two? Or three? We’ll never know what we could have got because Adam couldn’t haggle.

Moving on, the first humans were Adam and Eve. After eviction (And that’s problematic. As any parent knows, if you draw attention to a thing, and then tell a child not to do a certain thing with that thing, guess what?) Anyway. They have Cain and Abel, Cain murders Abel, “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (Gen 5 v 16) Did he have a kip in the land of Nod? No, he got busy. “Cain knew his wife and she conceived and she bore Enoch; and he built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.” (Gen, 5, v 17)

Now who exactly this wife was and where she sprang from is never explained, but it isn’t called the holy bible for nothing, it’s full of holes! No, the really troubling aspect for a book that later on gives us ten rules to live by, is that god is morally flexible when it suits him. Cain, his wife and their son Enoch, populating an entire city? You can see where I’m going with this can’t you? I don’t need to go there, although Cain and Enoch must’ve gone there. Repeatedly.

But that didn’t bother God, it was only when “The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth… the Lord said ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground.” (Gen 6 v 5 & 7) that he got all Bruce Banner – (The Incredible Hulk) – “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” that he flooded the entire world. Or as Eddie Izzard puts it, did an Etch A Sketch erase. Which meant breaking one of his own moral edicts for everyone else – thou shall not kill – thus proving that the first commandment was ‘Thou shall do as I sayeth, not as I doth’ But hey, he’s God, who’s going to tell him off? Mrs. Badcrumble? So, God kills everyone in the world, “He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground.” (Gen 7 v23), except for Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives.

That’s it.

“And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’ (Gen 9 v 1), “These were the three sons of Noah and from these the whole earth was peopled.” (Gen 9 v 19.) Again, I’m not going to go there. But can I just make the observation that six pages into a supposedly ‘good book’, we’ve had genocide and incest on a – dare I say it – biblical scale.

Sodom and Gomorrah? God gets all Bruce Banner again (Gen 19 v 23-26) It’s the same throughout the Old Testament. Jericho? It’s God doing his Bruce Banner shtick by proxy “Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep and asses, with the edge of the sword.” (Josh 6 v 21) Only a cynic would think that kind of violence is eerily prescient of the religious bloodlust of ISIS. “But all the silver and the gold, and all the vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the Lord; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord.” (Josh 6 v 19) Er, hang on; doesn’t ISIS fund their terror that way?

If anything, the God of the Old Testament is a testament to the transformation that God undergoes before the New Testament. Out goes the vengeful, violent and capricious version and is replaced by a more compassionate, peaceful and level-headed version. It’s as if Bruce Banner went into rehab and left The Hulk in there when he came out. The lord does work in mysterious ways, after all…

And to any Christians reading this who are offended, I say this; a) what part of the title of this blog post induced you to read it, b) my soul isn’t damned, the only soul I’ve got is my a@sehole and c) as Bill Hicks once said “You’re Christians…forgive me.”

Next time…Necessity is the mutha of re-invention…

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March 28, 2015

Some people should be disqualified from the human race….

Since my diagnosis of Bells Palsy, I’ve been visiting an acupuncturist in an area of south London that has according to estate agents been up and coming for the last 20 years. (If this area were a man then he’d need Viagra.) Not that I believe in acupuncture, anymore than I believe in UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster or god, but what I do believe in is the placebo effect. The power of the mind has on producing beneficial outcome on health. The placebo effect has been the subject of double blind randomized trials, evidence gained and made open to scrutiny with the results peer reviewed, which is more than can be said for alternative medicine.

I’m with Richard Dawkins on this one when he says, “If alternative medicines actually worked, they’d be called medicine.” Of course some people will get better of whatever ailment was troubling them, but then that proves not that alternative medicine works but a lack of understanding of regression to the mean. Basically most minor ailments would get better without any intervention whatsoever. (For a detailed explanation of it see here, but for a less detailed explanation of it see here. Or you can believe me without any evidence whatsoever. Rather like alternative medicine.)

Sorry about that, but it makes me weep for the continued existence of the human race, people who believe in all that claptrap. The moon landings were faked? If the KGB had found any proof of that whatsoever, you think we’d have heard about it at the time. Maybe? It’s not as if the Russians had a vested interest in sparing Americas’ blushes during the Cold War. And lets suspend rationality for a second and imagine that they were faked. The conspiracy would need to have been huge. Sure those involved at the upper echelons might have had an interest in keeping schtum. But think about the people who did the catering. Or prepared the fake moon surface. Don’t you think some credible expose of the fraud would’ve emerged by now? Homeopathy? Water has memory, you say? Of course it does! This glass of water in front of me has a faint memory of it being turned into wine once!

People who believe this trumpery moonshine deserve to be disqualified from the human race. I’m not advocating killing them. But rather, by them having demonstrated their abject failure to engage in any deductive reasoning, they should be barred from partaking in civil society. Ask yourself, if you were on trial accused of a serious crime, for which there was a lengthy custodial sentence and social isolation on release, who would you want on the jury? A jury whose job it was after a careful and sober examination of the evidence presented to them, to decide your fate? Equally at elections. Why should anyone manifestly devoid of the requisite skills needed to evaluate one party’s policies from anothers, why should they have the vote? I’m serious.

Participating in democracy isn’t a right, more of a responsibility.

Anyway.

The point I was going to make before I got side-tracked down Tangent Street is that an up and coming area necessarily provides many and varied opportunities for businesses to creatively relieve people of their money. This area of south London isn’t particularly well off, but a tiny pocket of it is reported to be, and businesses charge accordingly. No doubt you will have encountered Artisan bakeries, which gives rise (no pun intended) to the joke, ‘What is the difference between an artisan bakery and a normal bakery?’ ‘About three pounds a loaf!’ I was reflecting upon this in the café I normally go to after my acupuncture, this bizarre notion that expense somehow equates to honest and/or authentic as I was having some tea. Not a lot of tea. Some tea. Now a pot of tea conjures up images of a large pot that you could at least get two cups out of. Unfortunately this café has prices well above its portions, meaning that the pot of tea was only capable of filling just one and a quarter cups of tea. By cups I mean those little dainty things that force you to make that little dainty maneuver with your little finger. This wouldn’t be so bad if I wasn’t paying £1.95 for the privilege.

I’ve the menu in front of me, their brunch menu offers house baked beans topped with Gruyere cheese on sourdough toast for £5.95. To you and me that means beans on toast with a bit of cheese. They also do a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel for £5.95, but the item on the menu that really takes the (overpriced) biscuit is a croissant with butter and jam for £2.95! One feels like handing them an empty cup and when they ask what it’s for, you can tell them it’s for the p*ss they’re taking.

This is café Twatteratti – not its real name – but a café that is popular with men who have floppy hair, unique facial grooming and worrying amounts of free time. And mothers, forced into the pretence of being mothers while their nanny’s are on a lunch break, loudly praising their portable fecal factory, for doing what an adult would be chastised for. Looking around at all of them I am struck by numerous thoughts none, of them edifying. The first is that the café is a triumph of style over substance. Secondly, and more worryingly, is the fact that when I look around at the easy confidence displayed by the customers, their fastidious sense of appearance, their casual insouciance, it only serves to remind me how far removed from that world I am now. Not that I was ever in any danger of being subsumed into that world before, but now even if I wanted to I couldn’t afford the price of admittance.

Literally. Whilst I wasn’t encumbered by a massive amount of savings, over the years – and thanks to a very lucrative death – I was able to squirrel away a tidy sum. All of my savings have gone, evaporated like a puddle on a hot day. How is now a matter of history, the facts don’t change the end result. Not that I’m angry about this.

I’ve got too many other, more important things to be angry about.

Next time…According to the bible, God would go all Bruce Banner…

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March 23, 2015

How sports news is like Debbie McGee…

For those of you who don’t know who Debbie McGee is, she’s most famously known for being the assistant to the magician Paul Daniels whom he later married. (Or maybe she isn’t that famous if I have to tell you who she is!) And for those of you who do know who she is, you’re now thinking of the infamous clip on the Mrs. Merton show. Which you can find here.

My last blog – which was a few weeks ago – ended with the somewhat rash observation that in this one, I’d be concerning myself with the fact that whilst sports news might be an oxymoron, it least offered a simple and understandable alternative to actual news. I write rashly because in the strict dictionary definition of oxymoron sports news isn’t one. It might not be news as I see it, but if it is information concerning sports that wasn’t widely known to people who care about these things, is, then it qualifies as news. So I write instead that sports news is like Debbie McGee. Allow me to explain.

As every magician knows, if the audience is paying too close attention to them, then there is every chance that they will spot the sleight of hand or other chicanery they are is engaged in. (For the purposes of this argument all magicians are therefore less than handsome men, and it thereby follows that their assistants are attractive younger females wearing as little as the audience will permit). The purpose of the magician’s assistant is to distract the audiences’ gaze away from the magician and to focus instead on something more appealing. In essence the audience looks the other way, so that the trick can be successfully executed. In much the same way sports news acts as a distraction from actual news. Let me give you an example.

Consider the many problems that face the world today. There’s certainly enough to choose from. From arms control to world hunger and everything in between, the problems facing humanity are simple; the solutions to them are anything but. (Although changing its name is one way to make the threat seem less threatening. The most obvious example being when exactly did global warming become climate change? Several large hats off to whatever genius thought of that one!) And if you spent any amount of time dwelling on all these in a very short space of time you’d go mad. At any rate, you wouldn’t be a funster! Let us take what is on the face of it, an easy one.

ISIS as everyone – except for mental pigmies – would agree is a dangerous slide backwards into religious intolerance and barbarity. But how did ISIS come to be? It is an easy question but one that doesn’t lend itself to easy answers. It all depends on how far back you wish to go. One could argue with some justification that ISIS filled the power vacuum that was left after the American withdrawal from Iraq. Anyone with a knowledge of that whole sorry misadventure could counter that with the argument that the power vacuum only existed because the Americans had not only disbanded the Sunni dominated military but had also installed a weak and ineffective leader. Going further back one could also point to the American support of Saddam Hussein provided them with a regional strong man who was totally dependent on them for support. Mind you Iraqi oil revenues didn’t hurt him either and only a cynic would draw a correlation between Iraqi oil and American support. Nor would one think of the one known diplomatic realpolitik phrase “He might be a bastard but at least he’s our bastard!”

Going even further back, one could even point out that the map of the modern Middle East, which as we know it was drawn up after the First World War according the Sykes – Picot treaty. A treaty that, like so many peace treaties before and since, worked well for those not directly affected by its provisions. If anything was guaranteed to foster generational hatred and tribal rivalries for decades to come then this was it. ISIS is but one as an example of how complicated things can be when you start to look at them with any degree of critical analysis. No doubt my own somewhat sketchy overview of events that lead us to ISIS might well be criticized, but that is precisely my point. Complicated things ARE complicated and defy soundbite understanding.

So it is no wonder that sports news provides an easily understandable alternative to actual news. If you follow a football team you know the rules that both sides will play by. You also know that a football match normally lasts for ninety minutes and at the end of it your team has either won, drawn or lost. And you will also know that at the end of the season their place in the league is a certainty, and not open to interpretation.

News offers no such rules based easy to follow narratives. One is always in the middle of news. The beginning of any news event depends on your perspective and your own bias. There is no clearly defined black and white with news, although there are considerably more than fifty shades of grey. Sports therefore act as a magician’s assistant, it distracts one from more important concerns and in so doing it effectively inures people to the more deserving of their attention than sport. Don’t get me wrong. I loved sport, was in my schools football, rugby and cricket teams. But soon after leaving school, I found I’d no enthusiasm for being a spectator of sports. There were far more interesting things worthy of my attention. But not if there’s a scantily clad attractive woman instead!

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February 21, 2015

Never mind the glass being half empty or half full, at least I’ve got a glass!

Last week I posted a blog concerning how depressing it was to write a blog all about your depression only to have a handful of people read it. One of the people who ‘liked’ it, upon visiting their blog and reading some of their posts made me realise that whilst my depression might be all encompassing to me, viewed impartially, and most especially in comparison to their experience, I’m fortunate.

Judging by what they write, they have no family they feel they can speak to, and having no support network of friends only compounds the sense of isolation. They feel totally alone – aside from the thoughts in their head and that I suppose is part of the problem. If one is alone or feels there is no one to talk to about things,  then thoughts of suicide can necessarily grow and develop, eventually becoming quite rational if no one is there to challenge your assumptions.

No I’m not fortunate to have had a severe brain injury and neither was I fortunate to be in a medically induced coma for a month. Nor was I fortunate to wake up from the coma especially, as the me I woke up to was not the me I remembered myself to be. I don’t claim this to be anything unique, I suppose that this is a common feeling experienced by many who undergo a sudden reversal of fortune.

However the reason I say I’m fortunate – and I posted a comment to this effect on the bloggers website – is that I have two extraordinary loyal friends who are seemingly indefatigable in the energy they expend on my behalf. One of them, Old Blue Eyes, who lives in the same house as me, has gone not so much the extra mile for me but has run a marathon in record time. Mind you she does think that broccoli ice cream is an idea worth perusing, so her judgment is questionable. Likewise Avril. I’ve known her for longer than she’d care to remember, quite literally in fact, as she says the day she met me was the worst day of her life! It is she who has schlepped across London almost every night since my diagnosis with Bells Palsy – in November – to ensure that my eye is properly lubricated (why I can’t do this myself can be found here) thereby negating any serious damage. Mind you, she thinks that UB40 were a great band, so….

I was reminded yet again as to my incalculable good fortune when last week I had an assessment from someone from the local mental health hospital to gauge whether I was a suitable case for therapy. Because of my infirmity this was a home visit. Knowing that I had to present a case in a manner that would be both appealing and demonstrate some awareness of my behaviours and how they might effect any treatment they might offer, I decided to engage in strategic honesty. Understandably this might confuse you, this notion of ‘strategic honesty’ if, unlike me, you have a policy of telling the truth most, if not all, of the time. Some years ago when a friend asked me about my flexible attitude to truth. I suggested to her that she thought that truth was a valuable thing, and as I expected she agreed it was indeed valuable. So I continued. She’d readily agreed with the assertion that truth is a precious thing, naturally wanting to be well thought of. So therefore, I suggested, if indeed truth is so valuable and precious one should use it sparingly, if at all.

Strategic honesty is whereby you are truthful in pursuit of a goal, which in this instance was securing treatment and necessitated by the person carrying out the assessment stating that I would only have twelve one hour sessions to start with. This rather helped focus the mind on what was of real and immediate concern to me – and not one of the many demons in my past. I’ve had psychotherapy before and it was suggested that my depression was either a direct cause of the brain injury, me trying to come to terms with the effect of it, or possibly a combination of the two. Being strategically honest, I pointed out at this assessment that the failure for the previous therapy not having the desired effect fell squarely on my shoulders. This demonstrated that I was aware of the barriers I put up then, but was willing to properly engage with the process now. I was only telling her something she may already known, if she had read the previous psychotherapists notes (they work for the same NHS Trust). Because, as I pointed out, the attitudes and behaviors that had served me so well in the past were no longer suitable to my present circumstances.

For many years I was able to compartmentalize feelings, able to lock them away as they were not helpful at the time I was feeling them. This was born out of childhood necessity and became second nature for most of my adult life. But yet when I wrote I had functioning and not debilitating depression upon reading the bloggers posts I mentioned above, I realised that being able to differentiate between your depressions meant that I was in a markedly different place to them. I have two good friends to speak to. The fact that I sometimes choose not to burden them with my darker thoughts is neither here nor there; the fact is I could if I wanted to. But if that option wasn’t open to me I shudder to think what I’d be doing now. This isn’t meant to be a sombre post, rather it is me indicating that I’m aware just how lucky and how thankful I am that I have two such good friends in my life. And when I write ‘in my life’, that is exactly what I mean.

Because without them I doubt you’d be reading this.

On a wholly unrelated point, if anyone reading this could enlighten me as to whether there’s a search function on WordPress and more importantly, how to use it – or if there isn’t, how does one find posts? I ask, because for the last two of my posts, bloggers have ‘liked’ them, and I’ve no idea how they found them.

Next time..Sports ‘news’ may well be an oxymoron, but it does at least offer a simple to understand alternative to actual news…

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February 13, 2015

The Albert Einstein Guide to Blogging…

What is more depressing than writing about ones depression in a blog? Not having many people reading it that’s what!

When I first mentioned to someone I was toying with the idea of writing a blog they asked me what would happen if I didn’t get that many readers. Flushed with enthusiasm for this venture, I replied optimistically, that quality was more important than quantity when it come to readers.

How I laugh at those words now!

Because whilst I feel I have interesting things to say and interesting ways to say them it would seem that hardly anybody is interested in reading them. According to my subscriber lists most of my subscribers are based here in England but a glance at my stats for last week proved that hardly any English interweb users read my blog. This leaves me to the rather unpalatable conclusion that an email notification of my blog goes direct into their junk mail folder. And I’ve yet to get my head around harnessing the power of social media to publicise my blog, because whenever anyone tries, this happens

It put me in mind of Albert Einstein. When he was asked to describe his theory of relativity in language that could be easily understood his quote goes something like this. “When you are sitting on a bench next to a pretty girl an hour seems like a minute but when you are sitting on a hot oven a minute seems like an hour!” The amount of time it takes me to write a blog like the one I wrote about my depression is inversely proportionate to the amount of time people will spend reading it.

Another thing that works against me is that I don’t have a single, unifying theme or subject matter to my blog. It alternates – one week about me and coping (or not) with severe brain injury and the next about something altogether more interesting. Before my injury, lots of many things appalled, bewildered, fascinated or amused me about life, sometimes all at the same time. Quite how my change in circumstance has changed my outlook is beyond me. This blogger encapsulates the dichotomy rather well.

I know that such concerns only highlight the abject lack of any other meaningful activity in my life. As if to prove the point yesterday I had a trip to Moorefield’s Eye Hospital. I was fully expecting them to examine my eyes and to comment favourably on the relative health of the eye and that whatever ministrations I was receiving that they were working, namely keeping the eye well lubricated. (I could make a rather crude and obvious joke about eye’s elsewhere on the body being well lubricated, but I won’t!) I was not however expecting a consultant to suggest that I needed part of my left eyelid sown shut to prevent any damage to the eyeball caused by the eyelid not closing properly. And for good measure the consultant also added that after three months she would have expected to see more movement in the left side of my face. I was reminded not in a good way of my physiotherapist at the rehabilitation unit when he said to me that most gains are made within the first few months and after that it is a series of rapidly diminishing returns. I asked him if he was available as a motivational speaker! (No really, I did!)

Thus I went from being very low at the start of the week to be very, very low at the end of it. And given that tomorrow is Valentines Day (or V.D as I call it!)

Here are a couple of ideas for you.

Cajole a member of the opposite sex who is single and a good friend of yours to engage in an act of public theatre. Book a table in a restaurant on Valentines Day and proceed to have a nauseatingly good time, laughing loudly and with frequent displays of affection with big smiles to other diners. This of course, will have the effect of making everyone else feel thoroughly wretched. Or on the other hand if might unit them in a shared antipathy towards you, either way it’s a win win!

The other idea – which I’ve used many, many times – is a cheapskates guide to romance. If you are an urban dweller no doubt there are many fatal car crashes or fatalities involving cyclists or pedestrians near where you live, some of these see impromptu memorials springing up on the nearest lampposts. What I used to do was to find one of these near to my house with a fresh looking bunch of flowers and take the name tag out and present them to my significant other.
Although what it was signifying was another matter!

Next time I hope I’ll be in a less misanthropic mood.

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February 7, 2015

Depression and Bells Palsy? What could possibly go wrong?

I could start by offering a similar warning to the one I offered here namely that “This is about MY personal experience of depression, how it makes ME feel and should not be misconstrued as advocating any course of action by any other person. Sorry about that, but there are some vulnerable people surfing the interweb and one has no idea who might stumble across this when they’re at an especially depressed state,” but since the amount of people subscribing to this is (barely) into double figures – and less than half of them are real people _- by that I mean NOT bloggers selling lifestyle / recipe / self-help nonsense – I don’t think I’ll bother. Not when this blog doesn’t feature high on any Google searches which means the chances of someone stumbling on this by chance are as remote as the creationist myth being anything other than trumpery moonshine.

Of the many things I’ve recounted in my blogs about my Bell’s Palsy, perhaps the most obvious omission is the most relevant. My mental health. Or, to be more exact, the lack thereof. When the villain in the last Bond film ‘Skyfall’ is captured, he recounts how after months of being tortured by the Chinese – and realizing that M had abandoned him – he decided to break open the cyanide capsule hidden in a tooth. Which didn’t quite do the job leading him to angrily point out, “Life clung to me like a disease.”. I know how he feels, because they may well have saved my life after the accident in the strict technical sense, but insofar as the practical day-to-day mechanics of life, what I’m left with is a cruel imitation of one. All I amount to now is loose change.

The Bell’s Palsy only worsens this, because not only does it highlight my own lack of fine motor skills – the ones that help your fingers distinguish between shaving your face or conducting an orchestra with the requisite precision needed for both – also by doing so, for an added confidence eroder, amplified my dependence on other people. The fact they do so selflessly and with good humour only makes it worse. At the hospital they gave me a prescription for eye cream; the fact that due to my lack of fine motor skills I couldn’t apply it was neither here nor there. Their records would show I’d been given a prescription for cream, told how to apply it and so they were in the clear.

However, as I alluded to in a previous blog, a hospital is perhaps the only place where less than bad news is interpreted as good news. My symptoms could easily been indicative of a stroke, so further tests could until conclusive proof to rule out that possibility, and until the results of a CT scan were known, I was outwardly as calm as one could be, but inwardly thinking, ‘Fine. If it is a stroke, we know exactly what we’ll do. We’ll enact the plan whilst I have sufficient function to do so’. The plan, it need hardly be said, is not a plan one communicates. Suicide is, when you take away all the emotion and break it down to its constituent parts, an achievable goal that just requires some thought. Mine has been refined such because I know it’s both viable and foolproof, I don’t dwell on it.

Meanwhile, back in hospital I just waited as thoughts – none of them cheerful – multiplied in my head like an aggressive virus. Not that my head is a good place to be at the best of times – and that certainly wasn’t the best of times. Winston Churchill famously called his depression ’The Black Dog’ and mine is more like Battersea Dogs Home. It has been with me ever since I woke up from the coma. Darwin, how I wish I hadn’t. But wake I did, and even though my waking thought some mornings is ‘Why did I bother waking up’ nonetheless I have a ‘functioning’ depression – one that gets me out of bed, partaking in my rehab (not the Amy Winehouse kind) and subjecting this on you. – rather than a’ debilitating’ depression where you can’t see the point of anything resulting in you not doing anything. Nevertheless, it is always there; sometimes more pernicious than others, but a constant unwelcome companion. And the irony is that due to the nature of my brain injury, most anti-depressant drugs are contra-indicated. Which in itself is depressing!

I don’t often write about my dark thoughts not just because it does me no good to do so, but also more importantly there are far more interesting things to occupy my mind. And therein lies the problem. To look at, I seem relatively normal. It’s only when I try to speak, or stand or do anything that requires smooth controlled muscle co-ordination, that one realises that the relative in question is a distant cousin I’ve never met. Never has the phrase ‘The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak’, been more apposite. My mind is as sharp as it ever was, but now the means of transporting it from A to B have been blunted.

When I was young – and not so young – when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, or what my ambition was, my reply was always the same. “Happy”. And this so isn’t happy. When I get in these moods, I think I should really take a long walk off a short pier. It all depends on the length of the pier, as unaided my walking is haphazard. And that in itself alarms me, writing about it so calmly. Worryingly calmly in fact. I know I shouldn’t. If anything, that exemplifies just how fubar the situation has become.
I endured childhood for this?

My childhood was a fairy tale. A Grimm one.

As I wrote earlier, whilst the depression has been with me since I woke up from the coma – and I have only a memory, of being happy, I have nonetheless learned how to live with it.

Despite, that is, not enjoying living.

So, in order to lighten the mood, a little musical treat for you, there being no similarities whatsoever between The Cures ‘Close to Me’ and George Michaels ‘Faith’.

Go on, hear for yourself.

Next time..Sports ‘news’ might well be an oxymoron but one that provides an easy to understand alternative to proper news….

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January 30, 2015

Is ‘Peppa Pig’ mind control?

Bear with me! It’s an audacious claim to make, to be sure, but if you’re a parent who’s ever been subjected to Peppa Pig you might well agree. If however you are not a parent – and are not likely to become one in the near future – count your blessings for ye know not of what I speak. As far as ‘Peppa Pig’ is concerned, ignorance is bliss. I am neither, but share a house with a charmingly delightful child, Little Miss Sunshine. This is why I ask if indeed ‘Peppa Pig’ is mind control, having been made to endure it countless times, as there not being a television in our house (the sewage goes out and not in!) and whilst she can watch it on her parents phones, my laptop has a bigger screen, and is therefore her preferred option. Believe me when I write that I’ve commanded by the tyrannical overlord to watch it. Again. And again. There are sadists out there who put three hour (!) compilations of ‘Peppa Pig’ on youtube, misguided individuals afflicted by the delusional belief that what one needs is yet more from the frankly painful porcine.

The first assault on the senses is the annoying theme tune, written, so the credits have it, by the same bloke who wrote the music for ‘Wallace and Grommit’. Barely have you recovered from that blow then another, in the form of a visual affront to common decency, in the guise of it’s animation hoves into view. I say animation in the loosest possible sense. ‘Peppa Pig’ is to animation what Primark is to haute couture. Using a palette of only bright colours, it must be nightmare for an adult first thing in the morning. Thankfully I’m spared that. But there is much, much worse to come. Now I know ‘Peppa Pig’ is not aimed at my demographic, but notwithstanding that, makers of childrens entertainment are aware that it is not only the children they have to entertain. Adults have to like it too.

At the risk of coming across all Jerry Falwel (pardon!) – the former spokesmen for America’s Moral Majority, who denounced the ‘Teletubbies’, on the grounds that it didn’t provide a good role model for children because Tinky Winky was gay – ‘Peppa Pig‘ presents a one-dimensional view of the world, one that to an adult celebrates conformity and eschews anything outside of that. ‘Peppa Pig’ is to me, as entertaining as I imagine being buried alive is. Here’s why.
First off is the lazy way the character of ‘Daddy Pig’ is depicted. Always unshaven, frequently getting things wrong, as lazy as he is fat, if a woman was portrayed in this way, there’d be an outcry. But hey! We all know men are crap. ‘Mummy Pig’ is by contrast, an oracle of common sense and cool, calm, logic. It’s as though there’s a deliberate attempt to invert the sexist stereotype of the past by creating stereotypes of their own. And of course, ‘Peppa Pig’ herself. She is as annoying cheerful as she is permanently seeking to control both events and others. She is not, I need hardly add, lacking in self confidence, aided in this dubious emotional grounding by her indulgent parents, who are seemingly unaware that in later life she will turn on them with a vengeance, blaming them for them for the car crash that has been her life.

I’m aware that any children’s programme will, when scrutinized in detail by an adult will be found deficient in some ways. But ‘Peppa Pig’ abuses that level of scrutiny. Just because millions of under fives watch it, doesn’t therefore mean it’s any good! Viewing figures don’t equate with quality. Eastenders anyone? Exactamudo. It’s the parents who are woken at far too early o’clock to watch it I feel for. Their children see a warm and reassuring view of the world whereas their parents know a doctor won’t make an immediate home visit for a cough.

There is one episode in particular that annoys me though and Little Miss Sunshine never seems to tire of it. In the episode ‘Recycling’, ‘Peppa’ learns all about recycling. Fair enough, we don’t recycle enough. But it was when ‘Peppa’ first said, “Recycling is fun!” I knew something was wrong. For a start, I can’t imagine anyone of any age saying that, and second, it reminded me of those ‘Blue Peter’ fundraising campaigns, whereupon children were encouraged to send in milk bottle tops – remember them – and they’d be turned via charity alchemy into wells in drought ridden Africa. It is the same, rather paternalistic worldview that existed then which is prevalent now. That is the whole mind control thing, or to be less chilling but more cunning, behaviour channeling. The prevalent societal attitudes of now are introduced and then reinforced over time by the media we consume, which in turn influences the choices we make. Or are they our choices?

Did you know that the nephew of Sigmund Freud – the one with all the theories about the unconscious mind and how essentially everything could be reduced to suppressed sexual desires – applied the theories of his uncle to advertising with predictably successful results?

If ‘Peppa’ Pig’ proves one thing, then it is the truism of the Jesuit maxim “Give me the child by the age of seven and I will give you the man.’ because all of us remember television when we were children as being much better than it actually was. That is what adults do, remember a mythical childhood of majestic sun drenched summers that lasted forever, Christmas’s where it snowed, where really bad things seldom happened – and if they did, they happened to other people, people you only know briefly from newspapers – and that is what the children of now will think when they’re adults. I’m aware that to some extent, I’m highlighting the flaw in my own argument.

But as I’m fond of saying, “The only constant thing about me is my inconstancy”]

From an egregious use of the medium to an excellent use of it, in the shape of Adam Curtis and his new documentary, available on iPlayer, ‘Bitter Lake’. Curtis – who bought us ‘The power of Nightmares’ one of his award winning documentary’s’ – combines challenging yet interesting ideas with a visual flair that is breathtaking in its audacity. Watch a short film he made for Charlie Brookers Screenwipe here (only 5mins) or watch ‘Bitter Lake’ on iPlayer (until 2015).

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January 20, 2015

Trying to keep a put on a brave face with Bell’s Palsy is difficult when half your face is paralysed….

Trying to put on a brave face with Bells Palsy is rendered somewhat problematic when half of your face is paralysed. In an earlier blog I’ve outlined the benefits of the Bells Palsy diet, namely that having only the use of one side of your mouth and only then being able to eat soft food necessarily means a weight loss, in my case that amounts to 6 kg. all the more impressive when you consider that it was lost during Christmas, traditionally a time not renowned for abstention but I don’t want to tell you about that, I want to lead you by the hand into the murky world of conflicting health advice. Ladies and Gentlemen I give to you the interweb or as its otherwise known the Charlatan’s playground!

In the case of Bells Palsy the advice concerning facial exercises is worryingly contradictory. On the one hand one is advised that under no circumstances must one undertake any form of facial exercise, but on the other it is suggested that gentle facial manipulation started early, will encourage the activation of muscle tissue that would otherwise have lain dormant for a long period. On another blog I have written that a neurologist physiotherapist had suggested that exercises were a good idea as in her experience and her full time job is at the national neurological hospital so she’d know, was that gentle exercises could help. Quite what constitutes gentle exercise as opposed to vigorous exercise is another matter. She also suggested using different kinds of touch on the face, in order to stimulate the facial muscles. Rubbing ice cubes and make up brushes, as well as all manner of tapping. It was for this reason amongst others I fond myself on an acupuncturist’s table. Anyone who knows me will know how unlikely that seems because I’m with Richard Dawkins regarding alternative medicine. If alternative medicine worked it would be called medicine. Everyone who believes in alternative medicine really believes in is the placebo effect. But I was willing to try and trick my mind into alleviating some of my facial paralysis.

The acupuncturist listened most attentively – well he had to because thanks to the brain injury I have a speech defect which the Bells Palsy makes worse – and spoke in a soft reassuring tone his whole manner was quite unlike visiting a busy G.P. Once I was on the table and after explaining what he was going to do he gently inserted some needles around my cheekbone. My sense of relaxation was in no way helped by the fact that he looks like Malcolm McDowell! Alex, Clockwork Orange, aversion treatment eye, No? No sooner had I thought of that filmic reference then another one more chilling popped into my head. No doubt you are familiar with the first ‘Taken’ movie in which Liam Neeson takes violent revenge upon those who kidnapped his daughter. In one scene he has chained one of the baddies to a chair and proceeds to violently introduce two metal spikes into his thighs. He then attaches leads to the spikes that run to the electricity supply with wholly shocking results. I tell you this because not only did I have needles sticking out of my face, but also the acupuncturist attached little cables running to a small generator to stimulate the muscles. What was being stimulated was my sphincter muscle

Which is as nothing to the story my support worker told me when she enquired about my acupuncture. Some time ago she told me she was seeing an accupucnturist and that it’d neccessitated her removing her clothes. Not some. All. I know! Asking the questions that statement required, I asked exactly what kind of ailment required nudity to facilitate needle placement. Well, originally she’d gone for treatment to alleviate backache and insomnia but when told she couldn’t afford the fee asked, the accupuncturist asked if anything else was wrong. Yes, she replied, period pain, and he kindly offered to treat that as well for the same price.

He wanted to start all three treatments at the first session. Wisely she demurred but for the good of this blog, she agreed after a few sessions – knowing this man for less than five hours – to willingly remove her clothes and climb onto a table to allow him to try to alleviate her period pain by acupuncture. Now I’m presuming you all know what the perineum is – the gap between your genitals and your anus. I don’t have to tell you what’s coming, but I will. He placed (!) needles there and she paid him to do it. And if you think that’s shocking, it didn’t happen just the once. Oh no. She went back on numerous occasions to have this done. And if you think me divulging this is shocking, I asked if I could use this. No, what is shocking is that he tried to ‘friend’ her on Facebook! Her initial concern to me asking if I could use this tale of medical malpractice was not, as you might think, that I’d identify her, but that I’d reveal what part of London it was. Being polite, and not having replied to his request to be friends, she avoids walking past his shop, in case he see’s her. But he was Chinese, and she figured there were some cultural differences at work, rather than as I fulminated, deeply inappropriate behaviour.

It got me thinking; exactly how sadistic could an acupuncturist be without one realising? Not maybe as this one from Jam (Yet more Chris Morris. And yes, there will be more from him…)

Next time…Is Peppa Pig mind control for toddlers…?

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January 10, 2015

How Charlie Hebdo is distantly related to Nick Griffin…

I know that this is a rather ambitious claim to make in the light of recent events but bear with me and afford me the opportunity of making my case. After all, much has been written about the atrocity at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, not least that it was an assault upon free speech, so in the spirit of free speech I make the following observation.

It was widely suggested that the ability of cartoonists and anyone else that blows a satirical raspberry to lampoon the great and the not so good was itself under attack. It has also been argued that any attempt to curtail people’s freedom of expression is a fundamental affront to democratic norms which we in the west hold inalienable, a line in the sand which cannot be crossed.

Except of course when it can.

Free speech is easy to defend when you agree with what the person is saying or writing, but less so when you find what they’re expressing offensive. That is the dichotomy of free speech. If you believe in it you have to believe that it applies to everyone or else it applies to no one. As Voltaire said “I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”. This simple and rather obvious truism has been lost in the tsunami of words all championing free speech in the light of the murders at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

If anything this championing of free speech displays an almost enviable amount of breathtaking hypocrisy in some sections of the media and some politicians. Whilst they agree with free speech, it is only the free speech of people they agree with. They have seemingly forgotten or more likely never heard of Voltaire’s maxim.

Some speech, it seems, is freer than others.

And now, for the first and I hope only time in my writings, will I call forth Nick Griffin as an example of how the critics of the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo were conspicuous by their absence in launching a robust and forthright defense of Nick Griffin. Early in 2009, you will recall, Nick Griffin, who was at that time leader of the British National Party and an elected member of the European Parliament, was invited onto BBC One’s Question Time. Cue inevitable media outrage and handwringing at this. Basically, it was felt that by giving Nick Griffin an opportunity to espouse his views – which incidentally I find abhorrent – the BBC were in effect giving him a platform that they shouldn’t have.

In all of this there were a couple of things that were conveniently overlooked. The first is that he was a democratically elected member of the European Parliament and no matter if you disagree with his policies or the way he chooses to express them, nonetheless the fact is that he had garnered enough support to win an election. The second more worrying aspect to all of this is that in attempting to deny Nick Griffin a platform to speak they were in effect handing him a tailor made opportunity to make the claim that ‘THEY don’t want you to hear what I have to say because THEY deem it so prejudicial to the established order of things because if you heard what I’ve got to say, you’d question everything.’ In effect that is precisely what one achieves doing when you prevent anyone from speaking. You make their silence so much louder than their words. His appearance demonstrated he should’ve been wearing a mouth nappy. So when I write that the atrocity at Charlie Hebdo is distantly related to Nick Griffin I am not comparing the two. The atrocity at the former is in no way comparable to the latter, but it is distantly related. They are two extremes of the same principle; one can’t defend one without the other.

Which leads me nicely on to Section 57 of the Crime and Courts Bill 2013, which replaced Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. Under the 1986 Act ‘A person is guilty of an offence if –
a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

Under Section 57 the word ‘insulting’ was removed. Free speech campaigners saw this as something of a victory, whereas I would contend it was nothing of the sort because threatening or abusive behaviour is highly subjective and is not clearly defined What you might find as such I might not and vice versa. This led to the farcical situation where in 2005 a student protestor was arrested by the police for asking a mounted policeman “Excuse me, do you know your horse is gay?”

Or this, more recently, when someone accused Katie Hopkins of committing a hate crime by calling her fat. In doing so, she proved that the only thin thing about her was her skin. You might find that rude, but then, if you believe in free speech……

Next time…I’d try putting a brave face on my Bell’s Palsy, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve got temporary facial paralysis….

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