the brilliantly leaping gazelle

December 22, 2014

My Christmas present to all (!) of you…Christmas Liffs…

As I in no way wish to dampen your festive mood, I present for your delectatation my own Christmas Liffs. Liffs are, as I’m sure you need no reminding words than describe a feeling for which no word yet exists, by using place names (These are all places in the United Kingdom I assure you!)

No doubt you’ll have heard of the phrase “As camp as Christmas and so for your added enjoyment, I suggest reading this while listening to the musical expression of that sentiment here.

A’Chill
What one gets from rashly agreeing to a Chila.

Acha
People on a Chlia clearly having a nauseatingly jolly time, which you think they’re purposely doing to wind people up

Acha Mor
People engaged in Chlia, obviously wearing presents.

Adlestrop
Realising that nobody has picked up hints dropped in the run up to Christmas about what you’d really, really want.

Alcol
When the life and soul of the party has had too much to drink and then becomes thoroughly obnoxious.

Azeley
The worried looks which express concern for the mental state of the teller of a Fanellan after a Fazerley.

Badcall
Leaving it so late that by the time you get to the buffet at a Christmas party, all that remains has been pawed, breathed and touched by everyone else, before they decided they didn’t want it.

Buck’s Green
A feeling of increasing jealousy that occurs when your partner is on the opposite side of a crowded room and watching them enjoying the company of an attractive stranger rather too much for your liking.

Bucks Cross
A Bucks Green that is magnified when, after being distracted by long Maunby, you cannot see either of them.

Chiia
The name given to the post Christmas dinner walk, which is claimed to “Be just the thing we all need!” but seldom is.

Chislet
Duration of the dilemma one feels about the probity of asking if the receipt has been kept for a present that is wholly not what you need, want or ever choose to own. Duration of which is proportionate to relationship with giver.

Chittlehampton
The feeling of nausea that is felt either watching someone sitting opposite you eating their Christmas dinner in messy and off putting way.

Dacre
When an someone experiencing a Alcol proceeds to boorishly holds forth on a subject on which they clearly knows nothing but which you have considered, reasoned and well thought out opinions and which you can defend articulately, so much so all you want to do is punch his lights out.

Edith Weston
The elderly friend of the family whom your never told exactly how and in what capacity they’re a friend of the family, as you only ever see them at Christmas.

Enochdhu
Stony and awkward silence that greets a joke that you found on sickipedia and that everyone else you’ve told it to found hilarious.

Fackenham
Exclamation frequently heard at supermarket checkouts when the grand total of the Christmas food shop is revealed.

Fanellan
An often repeated, interminably long anecdote concerning people whom you don’t know but whom nevertheless you are meant to find fascinating. Sometimes delivered by an aged relative, normally in a very tired and emotional state.

Fazerley
When the thread of the Fanellan has gradually drawn to end, although one isn’t quite certain, on account of increasingly lengthy pauses accompanied by wistful eyes and sudden bursts of laughter.

Feckenham
Frequently heard repeatedly and at full volume by householder one month after Christmas upon opening of a utility bill and realizing that your partner’s relatives had taken the invitation “to treat our house as your own” rather too literally

Foeck
Just before you enter a room, hearing a parent exasperatingly observe to your partner, “But darling, that’s what you say about all of them!” only for them both to become all smiles when you appear.

Freeby
Knowing that the relationship is only being kept alive just so you can get a free holiday, and you will end after Christmas. Until then, and for utterly mercenary reasons, you maintain the fiction of happiness to her them and their family.

Fulking
Moment when the pleasure one gets from an unexpected visit from relatives becomes irritation at them being in your house, and them showing no sign of leaving.

Funzie
A Fulking exacerbated by knowing you have somewhere much more enjoyable to go to and that the longer they stay, the less likely it is you’ll go.

Glamis
A female relative of advanced years that dresses in a manner more befitting someone at least twenty years younger and behaves accordingly.

Glenis
Male equivalent of a Glamis.

Gonalston
Playing Trivial Pursuit with members of your partners family who know rather too much about things you consider irrelevant.

Gospel End
The curious silence that descends on a gathering by osmosis when carol singers can be heard nearby.

Grimmet
Whereby food that really should’ve been thrown away by Boxing Day, mysteriously finds its way into sandwiches.

Gushmere
An awkwardly affectionate and long lasting welcome hug from which there is no extrication from, usually given by a Glamis or a Glenisa to an attractive partner of a much younger relation.

Hasings
Presents wrapped in a ham-fisted and slapdash manner, indicative of a being done in rush, suggestive of a recently being undertaken after Sheet

Herstonceux
A cook who believes that what Christmas dinner lacks is the wow factor. And therefore convinces themselves that condensed milk glaze for the turkey together with balls of stuffing with centers of sherbet is going to achieve this.

Hipswell
The embarrassing dance at Christmas party that a Glenisa does, after which he proclaims “Oh yes, I’ve still got it.” when he just proved the very opposite.

Hurtiso
Accident caused by rather enthusiastic pulling of a Christmas cracker.

Huish Episcopi
Being introduced to your partner’s distant Eastern European relative whose name sounds like a Latin name for an infectious disease.

Hynish
Suppressed rage when exhorted to open something you’d wanted to do either a Worthington or a Littleworth to.

Kippax
Assorted excuses to avoid partaking in a Chlia which conceal the fact that is one is perfectly content to slob out in front of the television in an agreeably comfy chair, where it’s warm, and where one possibly snatch a bit of shut eye.

Lagganlia
Regression common in adults when entering childhood homes

Littleworth
Effusive thanks that conceal the fact that an unwanted present of little financial worth will be re-wrapped and passed on next year

Mark’s Cross
Usually following a gonalston, saying to your partner later that you’d have a far better chance of winning if you’d been playing on your own, and when the conversation becomes an argument, rashly suggesting that they were “mental pygmies who’re as thick as a whale omlette”

Maunby
A pervading sense that you are stuck with the most boring person at a Christmas party.

Memus
The trepidation one feels throughout Christmas dinner when an aged relative repeatedly accepts brussell sprouts and cabbage.

Minnigaff
When the person who made the Terrible Down realises their mistake and brings the call to an end to preserve their own good humour

Morphie
Despite everyone sharing the same opinion of the Dacre, when you cannot take anymore and challenge him on every point, displaying a knowledge they lack, the Dacre inexplicably becomes the recipient of everyone in the rooms’ sympathy.

Nasty
The sudden and almost violent gag reflex one experiences upon entering a toilet which someone has recently done aTrumpington in.

Neaton.
Presents wrapped in an overly elaborate and neat way, suggestive of an O.C.D.

Netherhoy
The cheerily effusive Christmas greeting that one gives to neighbours that one quite happily ignores for the rest of the year.

Nevern
When you meet your partner’s parents for the first time at Christmas and immediately know from looking at them that marriage is so not going to happen.

Patching
The art of decorating a Christmas tree that is twice the size of the one you normally have, using the same decorations.

Patchway
Concealing a Patchway by only decorating the front of the tree.

Phantassie
The Christmas truce between a married couple that are on the brink of divorce agree to in order to maintain the fiction that all is well when out visiting.

Sexhow
Even though they know you live together, your partners’ parents have seen fit to put you in single bedrooms located at the opposite ends of a creaky wooden hallway, of which their bedroom is located in the middle.

Readymoney Cove
A person who notes the disparity between the value of gifts given and those received, causing them to think they’ve been the victim of a Littleworth

Runtaleave
The belief that one can plant this years Christmas tree in the garden when finished with and dig it up and use it again next year.

Raggra
The suppressed anger one feels when, having given individual presents to a married couple and their children, one gets one in return.

Shatterling
The interval between you unwrapping a Christmas present, wearing it, and then it being permanently and prominently stained.

Sheet
Person who leaves it until Christmas Eve to all their Christmas shopping.

Swaffham
Guests to a Christmas party who bring cheap alcohol and then drink much better quality alcohol throughout.

Terrible Down
A phone call made by a caller on Christmas Day, throughout which they have to repeatedly shout in order to be heard over the sound of boisterous party, to wish a Happy Christmas to someone who clearly isn’t having one.

Trashbush
The amount of alcohol required so that a Glamis will permit a Glenis who has earlier done a Hipswell to have sex with her.

Trumpington
The noxious, prolonged and inevitable percussive accompaniment that follows soon thereafter a Memus.

Worthington
Effusive thanks which conceal the fact that an unwanted present of financial worth will be going on eBay, as soon as one can get online.

….and whatever – and whoever – you do, enjoy it….

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December 11, 2014

Is Ebola doing to humans what humanity has done to the planet…?

Charity is a wonderful thing. Indeed so wonderful that one cannot say a word against it. Therefore I’m going to say quite a few words against it, specifically the Band Aid 30 single, ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ (DTKIC) Leaving aside the rather obvious fact that the people currently suffering from Ebola are not likely to celebrate Christmas, there’s also the equally obvious fact that of course there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas, mainly because there never is! (Although, actually, it er…does, as I discovered after writing that, only hardly ever and winter for us isn’t winter for them.)

And don’t for one second imagine I’m making light of the very serious humanitarian crisis that’s facing everyone confronting the horror of Ebola. However, what I am making light of is the somewhat patronizing attitude of some ‘pop stars’ – admit it, you have no idea who the vast majority of them are either – who under the guise of seeking to do the right thing, do the right thing by their careers. Oh what a happy coincidence! Only a cynic of the very highest order would suggest of course, that all of the artists taking part have a vested interest in being seen as concerned individuals who are doing their bit to help – hey, they’re just people too, they watch and read the same news we do – which is all very laudable as far as it goes.

However, let us examine the actions of Bono.

Whilst he exults everyone to try and make poverty history, certainly no one can accuse him of not practicing what he preaches, insofar as he’s made his own poverty history. This, after all, is a man whose estimated net worth is $600m. And has transferred for more advantageous tax purposes, any payments to him from Ireland to the Netherlands thus reducing the amount of tax he is liable to pay. I am not suggesting that he has done anything illegal in this, but one wouldn’t have to be cynic to point out that someone who channels their income through a more tax efficient country is hardly best placed to pontificate about the need to eradicate debt. They say ‘charity begins at home’, which for Bono must be something of a headache, because he’d got three of them (and they’re not too shabby either!) Mind you, fairs fair, it’s his hard earned money, it’s up to him what he does with it but…

Equally I cannot find any information about exactly how much from every sale of ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ actually goes to help combating Ebola. Given that even if it was the full £3.50 – or 99p if you download it – it would still have to be a massive seller to make any substantial difference to charity. But the biggest selling record of this century sold 1,790,000 copies and if DTKIC equaled that, then it’d raise just shy of £6 million. Perhaps the assorted ear botherers’ could instead have each donated 1% of their income. That would have made considerably more money – Chris Morris time, only two minutes long this one! – and another thing, shouldn’t a charity single by definition, be given away for free?)

With this in mind one has to hand it to Adele, who was condemned in the press by Sir Bob for not taking part in his single. However it emerged that Adele had made a private and anonymous donation to Oxfam and that this was made in lieu of her taking part. Similarly Mark Zuckerberg (you know the Facebook bloke!), Zuckerberg faced criticism for not doing anything to help the victims of Ebola. Only for him to respond to that by pointing out that he donated $25m to the Ebola fight.

Lest you’re thinking I’m quite happy to criticize others but what has he done in the last few months? Well I’ve donated funds to the White Helmets – volunteers who race into bomb hit buildings in Syria to rescue survivors – so that they can purchase essential life saving equipment and I’d urge you to do the same and to ‘Save the Children’. I mention this only because when one considers my charitable giving as a proportion of my income –which is only benefits – I would contend that it’s much higher than Bono’s.

(Maybe Bono is heavily into charitable giving? He might be! And anyway, can’t you write it off as tax deductible?)

In a similar vein, one feels some sympathy for Katie Hopkins – the former Apprentice ‘star’ who was hired by ITV to be a controversialist on the This Morning programme. When she tweeted something entirely rational regarding Ebola – basically Ebola might be seen as a preventative check on population, citing the work of Malthus, – she was widely condemned on Twitter. But just not to be controversial or anything, but from a purely objective standpoint, when one considers the global population’s rate of increase and the effect on the planet, is it too far fetched to see what the Ebola is doing in Africa is small payback for what humanity is doing to the planet?

Equally there is the irony that this Christmas is going to be a boom time for retailers, with an estimated consumer spend of £90.7billion. This makes me think of Karl Marx, Robert Cialdini and Black Tuesday. Bear with me here. In his book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” Professor of Psychology, Cialdini identified six universal themes common to retailers to persuade consumers to buy. Scarcity was one such technique, by which he suggests that the less there is of something, the more we want it. This want, he elaborated, can be enhanced by time limited offers and discounts. And then one thinks of the chaotic pandemonium of Black Friday, where shoppers acted like savages in their desire to get a bargain. Given that, seven people have died in the U.S. during Black Friday bargain hunts, it puts a somewhat macabre meaning of, “It’s simply to die for, darling!”

Karl Marx predicted that the working class would become ‘the grave diggers’ of capitalism. Witnessing the scenes of mayhem over heavily discounted merchandise, one thinks not only that this capitalism at in its basest and simplest form, one thinks of the grave diggers Marx wrote about. And we spend more on sales than we do on saving lives. Indeed, shoppers are the grave diggers of capitalism.

Except that if you die of Ebola, your body has to be burned.

My next post will be altogether a lot jollier, as it is not the time one wants to think about less than cheery things, so it’ll be nothing more than a collection of Christmas Liffs. And as everyone wants to open their presents early, here’s a few….

Barmouth
The exact moment when the life and soul of the party has had too much to drink and then becomes thoroughly obnoxious.

Dacre
When a someone experiencing a Barmouth proceeds to boorishly hold forth on a subject on which they clearly know nothing about, but on which you have considered, reasoned and well thought opinions which you can defend articulately, so much so all you want to do is punch his lights out.

Fackenham
Name given to an expletive laden outburst traditionally heard at supermarket checkouts when the grand total of the Christmas food shop is revealed.

Feckenham
Name given to an expletive laden outburst by householder one month after Christmas, upon opening of a utility bill and realizing that that partners relatives had taken the invitation “to treat this house as your own” rather too literally.

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December 7, 2014

The Bell’s Palsy diet. Extreme (but effective)…

Last Wednesday the NHS in Devon announced that they were restricting elective surgery for those who were morbidly obese. This was amongst a number of measures that they hoped would go some way towards having reduce their deficit of £14.5 million. Which kind of makes sense if you think about it. Someone needing elective surgery – that is a planned surgical procedure not an emergency – you would think would have a vested interest in maximizing their chances of a successful outcome. You might also think, that given that two-thirds of Britons are overweight and that the change needed to effect better surgical outcomes requires simple lifestyle choices, exactly how comfortable can comfort eating be when one is culinary challenged, the challenge being to say “No!” to food.

(At this point I must point out that I have very little sympathy for people who are no stranger to the light of the fridge at midnight and who consequently look like a bin bag full of yoghurt. If you find this and other comments about the abstemiously challenged distasteful – no, no, no, too obvious – I ask you this. Exactly which part of the first line I ever wrote on my first post did you not understand??)

Therefore in this spirit of wishing to do a public good I give reveal free to the world a revolutionary – some might say unorthodox – approach to dieting. It’s extreme but I say no to the wishy-washy and yes to the demonstrably effective. Because far too many fat people look as if there’s a thin person inside them waiting to get out, the problem being that they look like they’ve eaten the thin person. With this diet ones ability to consume what one used to is severely restricted. This state of affairs is however, not one you can opt out of and can last for some months. Ladles and jellypoons I give you the Bells Palsy diet.

Whilst I concede that temporary facial paralysis might be seen as a radical – some might say idiosyncratic – means to lose weight, as it can potentially be necessitated by having one of your eyes taped shut – seeing things properly isn’t really an argument against it. And not only does it reduce ones ability to eat, it also reduces ones desire to eat as well. It’s a win/win situation (or maybe that should be a thin/thin situation?) The N.H.S could deliberately infect people with it; namely the people you hope don’t sit in front of you on a long flight. With Bells Palsy, if you are lucky one side of your mouth is as much use as a eunuch at an orgy. By this I mean one side of the mouth is effectively on strike. The first intimation I had that anything was wrong with my face was a couple of Sundays ago, was when I was attempting to spit out some mouthwash. It felt like when one is at the dentists and the dentist has finished and invites you to gargle with some mouthwash and you spit it into a bowl provided. Even though you are consciously aware that your mouth has been numbed, you foolishly think it can’t be that bad. Until that is, you realize the mouthwash is dribbling down your chin.

Consequently, I eat only soft food and only then food that has been cut up into small chunks that I then carefully place in the right side of my mouth. If for some reason some the food makes a dash to the left side of my mouth then by a combination of either tilting my head to the right, or by a suction motion borne out of necessity, whereby I maneuver the errant food back on the right side of the mouth. However this suction motion proves that the law of unintentional consequences is undeniably true. Because when I engage in this suction, the noise that is produced invariably leads to what Avril calls ‘mouth farts.’ This occasions much hilarity on her part, but which for some reason I fail to see the funny side of. (Which is ironic, given that I frequently make much ruder and personal comments about her, yet expect her not to be in a grump about. Although to be fair, she hardly ever does.) And because I have no control of the left side of my mouth, food can get stuck there, without me always being aware. Therefore, I wash my teeth in the shower, for reasons of practicality when you consider the dentist comparison of my mouth action given previously.

One of the other less edifying aspects of temporary facial paralysis is that when you do manage to eat it can often feel as if I’m trying to paint using only my feet to hold the brushes; messy, humiliating and ultimately frustratingly annoying, with effort not matching reward. Having only one fully operational eye – because Bell’s Palsy also limits my spatial awareness – is much the same as having a blind spot, so as the eating utensil gets closer to your mouth, the less of the business end of it you can see. Thus it becomes a very messy affair and soon you grow bored of wearing and not eating your food. This again could be of some benefit to people who look like barrels with arms. Because, as we all know, a diet can be summed up in four words; eat less, do more. Everything else is just garnish, which of course you can eat on a diet because they’re low in calories. Another painful lesson concerns the exiting of what goes in. By necessity I can only eat soft foods, which by definition are not high in fibre with, wholly predictable results. (If any does know of a soft food that’s high in fibre, I implore you from the heart of my bottom to share your knowledge in the comment section) So Matthew has been making me high fibre smoothies which are not as worthily tasteless as they sound, containing as they do raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, various seeds, bananas, apples and orange juice. Right now I’ve urgently to take the kids to the pool because I can feel the smoothie working…..

I know I wrote a few posts back that the next series of posts would be about me coping with Bell’s Palsy, and I meant it then but I’m bored now, so next time…How the maxim ‘charity begins at home’ is true in the case of Bono, with his Dublin mansion, New York apartment (and not forgetting his beachfront villa on the French Riviera….)

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November 29, 2014

Misadventures with Bell’s Palsy…the ‘Pollyanna’ philosophy to life…

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. This has never been an idle speculation on my part. I’m quite serious. If one were stupid for example, one wouldn’t know they were stupid and they could just blunder through life without being troubled by any notion of consequence or foresight. They could exist quite happily, effectively unencumbered by any thoughts except those relating to their own immediate needs. Whereas an intelligent person possesses the mental acuity to discern what the likely consequence of an action might be and therefore decide if it’s in their best interests or not. A stupid person will just blunder on regardless whereas an intelligent person might weigh up the pros and cons.
Speaking of stupidity, this leads me nicely on to the fact that some of my relatives in Ireland – just to be clear, I’m saying that religious belief, not my relatives is stupid – have for some inexplicable reason taken it upon themselves to light candles and say prayers at churches for my speedy recovery. But given that I’m an atheist and make no secret of the fact – viewing religion as a fairy tale for grown ups – one questions who benefits from all of this? Perhaps they’re doing it to bask in the glow of a good deed, in this case the glow being the one candle gives off. Faith might be a great pop song, but otherwise it’s as much use as a cup of warm spit. One thing that I’ve always found deludingly contrary about some people is that whilst they condemn religion because of it’s lack of any evidence whatsoever, they somehow don’t subject homeopathy to the same evidential criteria. Have they heard about the placebo effect? Or regression to the mean, whereby almost 80% of all illnesses will get better without any intervention? But silly me, water has a memory, as proved by the glass in front of me which has a molecule that has a distant memory of once being turned into wine!
Anyway, you don’t want to read about all that!
No, I promised you unflinching details of my adventures with Bell’s Palsy and that’s what you’re about to get, although if you’re in a good mood, keep it that way by clicking here, here or here.
When I was in hospital, and the diagnosis of Bell’s Palsy was made, with it there came information, advice and a prescription. But if any mention was made of the crucial importance of keeping the eye lubricated by the constant application of creams and eye drops – because now I look like Patrick Moore with my left eye unable to close unassisted resulting in no blinking and thereby no natural lubrication of they eye – it didn’t register, and believe you me, I was paying attention!
It wasn’t a stroke, I thought! But close on its heels came the negative, ‘In what way is temporary facial paralysis good news? That it isn’t permanent facial paralysis? You’ve got a severe brain injury and now this. F*ck-a-doodle-do!’ That’s the great thing about hospitals, nowhere else is less bad than very bad news seen as good news. “Well, it’s not as bad as it could’ve been!” is a philosophy worthy of Pollyanna!
The application of cream and eye drops to keep they eyeball from drying out and risking long-term damage is in no way assisted by my lack of fine motor skills. With the cream, you apply a thin line to the lower rim of the eye socket. This requires precision and quick co-ordination, because the cream erupts as soon as the cap is removed and the cream has to be laid in a continuous movement along the rim without the nozzle actually touching the rim. As Bernard Manning once observed a different context, ”One young kiddy..cried all the water out of his body.” (If you’ve never seen the genius that is a Chris Morris wind up, please click, because the first time I saw this I laughed so much I nearly shat a cartwheel!) I would try and cry, if it wasn’t for the fact that my left eyes tear ducts seem to have joined most of the left side of my face, and gone on strike. Despite the heroic endeavors of Blue Eyes and Avril – who’s schlepped across London most nights to apply the cream – I nonetheless took myself up at Moorfields Eye Hospital on Wednesday.

I was in no small way getting increasingly concerned about the state of my eyeball and the way it felt, and I thought I needed a competent examination of my eye, so naturally I went to an eye hospital. During one eye examination I was asked to put one hand over my good eye and to read some letters off a wall with my left eye, only to discover that all I could see out of my left eye was a blurred image. The nurse bade me to take a seat and thoughts of permanent eye damage, which were coursing through my head with increasing dire outcomes, like a large gang of teenagers swarming through a bus, I realised with a sense of relief that Matthew – my support worker – had some minutes earlier put some cream into my eye and that this was a more likely explanation of my blurred vision. Although one good thing did come of it, inasmuch as it expedited my next examination. A young doctor who exuded calm authority examined my eyes and pronounced that there was no major eye damage. Naturally I thought ‘What about minor damage, what about that? Was there any? What is he not telling me?. With regard to me asking what was the best way to prevent the eye from drying out completely, he advised keeping it taped down as often as possible. Given that application of the cream is essential and also makes the skin below the eye greasy, this is not helped by the fact that none of the sticky tape isn’t that sticky. Taping the eye down sounds fine, until that is, one tries it! (Or given my lack of fine motor skills, someone else tries it.) I’d use gaffer tape, only I don’t want my eyelashes to come away each time the gaffer tape is removed. Or the top layer of skin – although that boat may have sailed by now.

On the subject of keeping my eyelid closed to prevent long term damage to the eyeball he suggested two options. The first one would involve stitching my eyelids together – sounds like an eminently logical solution to me, one to be considered. No, seriously! And as if to emphasise this point, Blue Eyes has just been engaged in the frustratingly exasperating activity of trying to tape my eyelid shut, using wholly ineffective tools! The biggest tool being me, of course! The second one would involve attaching a weight to my upper eyelid to drag it down somewhat. Naturally I thought of a Prince Albert, one could just swap the weight from one eye to the other.

Or as Blue Eye’s daughter – Little Miss Sunshine enquired when she looked at my face “Do the batteries in your eye not work?” As a way of explaining the effects of facial paralysis, batteries not working, is a delightfully simple way to explain something very complex.
Right now, it feels as if they’ll always be flat.

Next time…More misadventures with Bell’s Palsy, as a diet it’s extreme, but effective…

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November 22, 2014

Whereupon I’m taken by ambulance to hospital and proceed to impersonate a swan….

Undoubtedly, what will follow will contain many grammatical errors and mistakes, but once you are familiar with the cause of them, I’m hopeful of your tolerant indulgence.

For my last blog I had planned to highlight Ed Milliband’s absurd posturing with regard to the minimum wage, and also was also planning to use this snippet of Howard Beale to illustrate the dire economic times in which we live. Futhermore, I was also planning to rename Ed Milliband as Dead Wood, and thus compare him to Ed Wood, the film director, famous for making some of the worst films in Hollywood history. For this blog I was planning to elucidate upon the dichotomy of being offered rehabilitation when are you are least in the mood for it but then as John Lennon so famously observed, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”. Which seems a highly apt line, given what did happen.

On Sunday 16th November, I was taken by ambulance to my local hospital (some context might be needed here!) Earlier that morning when I’d been brushing my teeth I noticed that one side of my mouth wasn’t working properly. For some wholly inexplicable reason I didn’t think this needed mentioning. Later on in the day Avril came over, took one look at my face and pronounced that something was wrong with it. I immediately thought ’Look who’s talking!’ but I could see the look of well intentioned concern on her face and as both she and Blue Eyes – my housemate who seems to (misguidedly!) think I am somehow worthy of her energy – examined my facial features. I knew that something wasn’t quite right, a feeling only heightened by being offered an Asprin! Doing what anyone who’s feeling a bit poorly is wont do, I repaired immediately to bed.

Avril took the opportunity to phone my local out of hours G.P and having explained the situation – namely that the left side of my face had seemed to lose all muscle integrity, she was advised to phone up NHS direct. This she did, only to be faced with a dilemma when asked to state her relationship to me. Avril and myself don’t discuss such matters, as I believe that if you engage in interminable discussions about the exact nature of your relationship one ends up destroying the thing one wanted to discuss. This puts me in mind of a conversation I had with a support worker Julie some time ago. Julie had enquired as to what exactly the nature of my relationship with Avril was. “Were we a couple?” she asked. I phoned up Avril and repeated the question that Julie had asked me. I left a suitable pause and then said “I told her yes, that we’re a couple, a couple of c*nts!” Julie was understandably unsure whether to laugh at his or not, but the bellowing laugher that gushed from the phone reassured her. Avril has on many occasions said that the day she met me was the worst day of her life and that I am her nemesis. Equally, she has also said that I’m an emotional psychopath. Avril said nothing of this to NHS direct instead resorting to the simple and understandable moniker of partner. Describing my symptoms they in turn advised her to phone the London Ambulance Service. She phoned them and soon an ambulance was dispatched. I can’t fault the ambulance crew. Their calm, assured professionalism had an immediate restorative effect, which I immediately dispelled, when in the ambulance I remarked to Avril that the last time she’d been in an ambulance with me I’d flat lined and nearly died. Understandably she wasn’t keen to reminisce upon that experience.

After the short journey to my local A&E I bypassed the waiting room and was instead placed in the treatment area where upon the ambulance crew gave a handover report to the sister on duty. After a couple of minutes I was shown into a cubicle. Then the fun really started! First of all a nurse came and asked me to raise up my t-shirt to which she exclaimed “You’ve got chest hair, this will hurt!” As she applied sticky pads at various points on my chest and abdomen, she then got a tangle mess of cables and then deftly connected each cable to a sticker. There was a machine behind my head onto which the information from my body was being displayed. Thankfully I couldn’t see it.

A doctor came to see me sometime later and Avril explained more of what she had seen and that I had experienced a severe brain injury sometime before, in case the doctor thought that all of my current symptoms were a result of this present episode. A nurse then entered and took my blood pressure. It was higher than on the previous two other occasions and I thought, ‘What the f*ck is my body doing to me?” As good luck would have it, it was about this time that Blue Eyes appeared. A little later on the doctor arrived with a consultant and they were both peering into my face with a look of dispassionate professionalism combined with a learning opportunity. What I was suffering from was either neurological or viral, they concluded, and the only way to establish for certain either way was to order a CT scan. I was whisked out of A&E and into a clinical decision unit where I waited for my CT scan. Avril joined me up there amazed to find out that I’d already had my CT scan. Then Blue Eyes returned with the wholly welcome news that an inability to close one eye independent of the other was a sign of Bell’s palsy. Up until then I’d been fearful that it had to mean a stroke and was doing a good impersonation of a swan – above the water all calm serenity but below the water furious activity.

In my case, exuding stoicism, but feeling petrified (of which more in the posts to follow). News that there was a possibility that it might not be a stroke is hard to over emphasise exactly how much relief that gave. Then another consultant came back with the results of my CT scan and asked if it was alright for Avril and Blue Eyes to hear the results. And I thought, these two who have done so much for me so selflessly and tirelessly, of course they have every right. This thought was highlighted by the occupant of the bed a few away form me (but not, as it turned out, phew enough!), who was having the loudest and most pungent enema, one that should not be experienced in an confined space. The consultant explained that the CT scan had proved that it wasn’t a stroke and that it was Bell’s palsy– a condition that affects facial muscles, resulting in temporary paralysis on one side of the face. She asked me a load of questions but being able to see a way out by just answering “No.” to everything she asked – thereby minimizing the likelihood of prolonged interrogation and the possibility an overnight stay – this seemed the most prudent course of action.

Eventually I was discharged and sent home.

Now hopefully you’ll understand if there are any errors or mistakes in the above account. Whilst I wrote in my opening blog that I would alternate between topics of wider relevance and topics relating only to me, given that this has happened to me, I think this is more worthy of your time than reading about me pontificating about wider issues. So the next few blog entries will be taken up with this, my ‘fun’ with temporary facial paralysis.

And also, because the Bell’s palsy affects my eyesight quite grievously, rendering me temporarily unable to look at a computer screen for any significant amount of time, what you are reading, and until further notice, will have been dictated.

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November 7, 2014

Principles are like ethics. And morals. Fine words than rarely translate into deeds………

Principles are great. One can agree with a principle – and defend it staunchly – without having the frankly tiresome necessity of having to translate word into deed. In this respect agreeing with a principle is akin to promising something, whilst crossing your fingers behind your back. Same goes for ethics. And morals. You fully believe in it when you say it, but once the words have escaped your mouth, reality has a habit of proving itself very disagreeable. One can make all the right sounding noise such that you seem, at first impression a good egg.

But if one applies the words into deeds maxim however….

A fine example of this took place on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 29th of October. (forward it to 1:50:14, or you can trust me to give you the précis.) In the interview, both David Pearson, President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, and Colin Angel, Policy Director of the U.K. Home Care Association – essentially representing the employers and the employed – both agreed with the principle that workers should be paid the minimum wage, but given the nature care work regrettably, it wasn’t always possible to pay them for their entire shift, only for the hours actually worked. There was also some deft buck passing with Pearson explaining that care was bought and provided in allocated blocks of time and therefore it wasn’t possible to pay travelling expenses. They could only spend what the budget allowed and cuts to budgets have meant that provision of care had been prioritised. The interviewer pointed out the rather glaringly obvious fact that paying people only for the work they actually did, and not for the totality of their working day, meant a substantial reduction in pay.

This state of affairs has had a practical impact upon me; my previous care agency was the preferred provider of my local council. In order to save money they too didn’t pay for travelling between shifts, and as you know public transport is a highly reliable way of getting from A to B. When I complained to a carer that she was massively late for her evening shift with me one evening, she showed me her rota. The end time of the previous shift some distance away was also the start time of her shift with me. Was she expected to have mastered the art of time travel and get from one part of London to another instantaneously? I was put in mind of this when the manager of my present care agency came for a review of my needs the other day. He mentioned in passing that he was experiencing difficulties in getting suitably competent staff. Yes, he had a plethora of bright young things that had freshly graduated from university with qualifications and a belief that by being positive, they could change the world.

But such optimism cut no ice with their ‘clients’ who by dint of being ‘clients’ in the first place, had been hit repeatedly by the arrows of outrageous fortune. And their age and background was, I observed, hardly that of the people they were meant to support. (For instance ALL of my support workers have been much younger than me, some worryingly so. Meeting them for the first time, to see if you like them is like speed dating. Except without the potential for sex, of course. They make all the right noises (oh you smutty reader!), are unfailingly polite and are keen, to the point of sycophancy, to agree with pretty much everything I say. Oh the fun an outrageous comment delivered deadpan can have!)

As he was lamenting this state of affairs, in such a way that one might be forgiven for thinking that recruitment was wholly out of his control I suggested that a presentation where one graph showed the demographic of the clients over which was layered a graph showing the demographic of the employees might focus the minds of more senior staff. Perish the notion that not paying travelling time, coupled with a low hourly rate, might in some way have any bearing on the type of candidates they attract. As I was thinking this, I remembered a conversation I’d had a week earlier with Julie, my support worker, in which she said that she hadn’t had a pay rise in four years. And that her partner had been looking on Gumtree and had spotted an advertisement for the agency offering new starters a higher hourly rate. She was idly speculating that she might leave, wait a few months and then rejoin.

This got me thinking. Firstly, that if your staff never meet, then they can’t organise themselves to press for a pay rise. And second, I calculated that if you multiplied the minimum hourly shift they accept hours by a conservative number of clients, and then multiply that number by the weeks in the year and then multiply this by the management fee, the resulting number was staggering. Someone somewhere is making a lot of money; unfortunately it isn’t the support workers who actually do the work. I was forcibly reminded of this only today, when I was asking my other support worker Mathew, about any extra payments for Christmas working only to discover that permanent staff qualify for enhanced pay at Christmas or weekends. To no ones surprise permanent applies exclusively to office staff.

As my support workers don’t get paid if I give advanced notification of a holiday – they only get paid if I cancel a shift within twenty-four hours of the shift starting – naturally whenever I go away I let my support workers know in good time and I cancel each shift so they get paid. I was not surprised to learn that this isn’t a common practice, because to me, not to ask the question which in this case is ‘what happens to you when I cancel?’ is no excuse. You can’t claim ignorance, if you can’t be bothered to ascertain what the consequence of your action might be. This gave rise to a situation where a support worker that had benefited repeatedly from this largesse got promoted to the office and at the very next review meeting I was instructed that this practice must come to an end. Talk about pulling the ladder up!
The explanation given severely tested my ability not to burst out laughing, for it was claimed the support workers wanted to work their shifts and were disappointed if they couldn’t. Mmmm, it’s a tough one….either one gets paid and can do whatever they want with their day or one can go to work, which one would you choose?

Next time……..never mind the rise in the ‘living’ wage being harmful to business, what about being harmful to those in the business of living……?

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October 31, 2014

You call it baseball, I call it rounders. More treatise than trick, this one….

Here’s a simple question. Is rounders simply baseball for grownups?

Albeit with massive salaries, lucrative television and advertising revenues (estimated to be $1.5 billion in 2015!), a frankly obsessive love of statistics, (So nerdy, in fact, that Nate Silver, used his baseball statistic analysis algorithm as the basis for one that not correctly predicted the outcome in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, where he correctly identified the winners in 49 of the 50 states but also but also repeated this analytical prophesy in the 2012 election as well.) Nor do I have a problem with them calling a baseball competition where the only competitors are teams from the same nation ‘The World Series’. No, the problem I have with baseball is that is classified as a sport. It is sport only if we consider French cricket a sport.

I ask this not to be controversialist but out of a simple curiosity born out of the fact that despite of the many obvious – obvious to me at any rate –almost identical similarities between the two, no-one else has asked, much less answered the glaringly simple question. Perhaps the conspiracy theorists, who see conspiracies seemingly everywhere, could harness their keen, forensic minds to exposing the truth! As for many years rounders was a game played by primary school children. It was designed specifically so that anyone regardless of their sporting prowess – and those with none, the ones who looked like small barrels with arms and – could play it. The rules were very simple. If you imagine a clock face as the rounders pitch and the batsman stands at six o’clock and was thrown a ball to hit – usually a tennis ball – by someone standing in our imaginary clock face where the hands rotate from. The batters aim was to strike the ball such a distance that it would allow him to complete a full circuit of the pitch. However if she or he was unable to manage this, there were conveniently placed stops at what would be three, mid-day and nine o’clock. Thus one could complete a full circuit in one go or else one could do it in stages. If one did it in one go, one got a point. If one completed the circuit in stages one was free to bat again. You could be out if you hit a ball and if a fielder caught it or if as you were running towards – or returning, you could go either way -the next stop a fielder got the ball there first. That basically is the rules of rounders and if anyone reading this could enlighten me as to how baseball is different then this in any substantive way, I’d be glad to know.

Apart from an over arm throw of frankly vicious speed by the thrower – what is the difference between the two? Oh yes, there is one major difference between the two! One is a children’s game and one could have been created by advertisers. With so many naturally occurring breaks and it being watched by so many, it makes sense to advertise there. In fact, can anyone think of an American sport that couldn’t have been designed to meet the needs of advertisers?

Pondering this extraordinary similarity between rounders and baseball – of how something has been exported to America and then sold back to us, replete with commercial opportunities puts me in mind of Halloween, which has somehow overshadowed Guy Fawkes Night and in so doing, has become a lucrative retail opportunity, worth over £300million. It is now the U.K.’s third most lucrative retail celebration, behind Easter, and of course, the gift that keeps on giving, Christmas. One wonders why retailers haven’t as yet fabricated another way for consumers to saddle themselves with increasing debt – I mean join together to celebrate the rich diversity of a shared experience – by coming up with a celebration in June and another in September. Spread ‘em throughout the year, that’d give the economy, if no one else, a cause for celebration!

When I was younger than I am now, Halloween was a kind of third-rate affair, only half-heartedly entered into. Bonfire night was the reason one got genuinely excited. I can remember buying hand held rockets – sadly unthinkable now – and launching them via a metal tube with a hole dilled in it for the fuse to protrude. It is so quaint, and rather endearing, to celebrate a failed terrorist bomb attempt. It is a quintessentially English celebration, and other than fireworks and …er..a fire, what else is there to buy? With Bonfire Night, not so much! Public safety concerns have resulted in large displays organized by councils. I despise organized council run displays because anyone pretty much all of the exciting fun – for me at any rate – is safely extinguished by luminous jacket wearing killjoys aided by a frankly ridiculously remote cordon one had to stand behind.
I went to one once. Never again. The sound of the fireworks, which is what I wanted to hear, was competing with some awful ‘music’ blaring out of speakers. Which were attached to numerous temporary lampposts, each surrounded by a wooden fence and a luminous jacket wearing funster.

One of my best ever firework experience’s was in America of all places. People were drawn by some weird firework osmosis to a sports ground in the middle of nowhere. And then using flat bed trucks as launch pads, merrily set off fireworks, proving that if you let people get on with what they are going to do, by and large they behave themselves with a sensible regard for their own safety. Unlike the bonfire party I had the misfortune to only ever hear about, at which some friends put all of the fireworks into one large metal container. You can guess what happened next. One of the first fireworks landed in the box with predictably magnificent results. There are few things worse than frugal firework detonation, much better to let them all off as quickly as possible. If people are mean with the fireworks then you feel tricked, which brings me neatly to trick or treat.

Or as it should be properly known ‘mugging for beginners’ albeit in inasmuch as the victim knows what fate is about to befall them and rather than take evasive action they actively collude. Some years ago when my other housemates were out, one Halloween I could hear groups of excited children coming up the path and ringing my doorbell. “Trick or treat!” they said when I opened the door. “Trick’” I said, as I watched the smiles disappear from their faces. “You mean you don’t have any tricks to play on me?” They exchanged bewildered looks with each other and looked for some explanation from their parents who were acting as chaperones, as otherwise trick or treat becomes a home delivery services for paedophiles. I remember numerous groups of parents berating me for not entering into the spirit of things, to which I answered “It was them who came to my door and offered me a choice, I just happened to choose the choice that didn’t suit them”.
Tonight being Halloween we will of course be visited by sweet demanding botherers, but fortunately for them I won’t be anywhere near the door. Someone less misanthropic than me will have that treat!

On a related note, I must tell you about the best firework display in London, The Lord Mayor’s Show Firework Display which takes place this year on the Saturday 8th of November at 5:15pm, between Waterloo and Southwark bridges on the Thames. Whilst the crowds amass in great numbers on either bank of the Thames, the best vantage point is to be found in one of the terrace cafes over looking the Thames at the National Theatre. Until my accident, I never missed it, it was – and is – that good!

Next time…Agreeing to principles is a no cost platitude….

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October 26, 2014

I’m sick of being sick….

If you are reading this and are eating, I would advise you to stop now and return when you’ve finished eating.

When I awoke in hospital one of the many things that confronted me, in addition to my body not working as it used to, was that I had suddenly developed a rather nasty gag reflex. I would vomit with little or no warning, and this coupled with my lack of fine motor skills, made for a very messy state of affairs. Over time I got used to recognizing the early warning signal that was an odd taste in the mouth that gave me ten to twenty seconds of an impending Technicolor yawn. Quite why or how this gag reflex happened or what triggered it, and more importantly, what I could not do to prevent it avoid wasn’t clear. Over time I discovered that brushing my teeth acted in someway as a trigger for vomiting. (Not that vomiting happened every time I brushed my teeth. That would be too simple, so to make things interesting my body added an element of jeopardy to proceedings, so it was completely random as to whether I pebble-dashed the porcelain.) Things got progressively worse and it led to a state of affairs where I was understandably reluctant to brush my teeth.

My vomit could be either the rather watery like bile liquid which normally emanated forth from my stomach to herald a new day, or if I had just eaten there would be the sink-plug plugging sludge of undigested food that I would examine for signs of blood. I must point out that I have a small toilet in my room – perfunctory, not palatial – and I sit on the toilet whilst my head rests conveniently for my mouth to give generously to the sink. For despite the smell of vomit being rather unpleasant, this is of minor significance to my overweening fascination with any of my bodily secretions. (A tissue after I’ve blown my nose in can be a thing of curious wonderment.) Or sometimes for variety when there’s no food or drink in my stomach, it can to be a succession of dry retches that seem to be both never ending and not the sound you’d imagine no human could produce. The one saving grace out of all of this vomiting was that I’ll get the early warning, then be sick and then usually immediately feel much better. I know, weird, right? If you think I’m treating vomiting with a casual disdain, you’d be right.

In my late teens and until a kidney infection was identified, I was prone to bouts of vomiting, which also had an element of jeopardy. There would be some breaks between each outbreak of vomiting, some hours, days or weeks apart – although thankfully not as distant as the gaps between litter bins, drains, and other handy receptacles I’d make use of. I could drink a cup of tea at my house, set of for school feeling fine and then suddenly just know I was going to be sick and the need to find somewhere to evacuate safely was paramount importance. Of course one can be sick, one can’t control that but what you can control is where you are sick. I would argue that one of the signs of a blatant disregard for people and surroundings would just be to selfishly vomit wherever one happened to be. One evening a while ago I had been sick earlier in the evening. Now, fast-forward to later that evening where myself and a my girlfriend are in bed. I sit up suddenly and make frantic gestures. She rushes to get a bin and upon finding one, she places it under my mouth whereupon I deposit some vomit into it. “You held your vomit in your mouth?”, she exclaimed. To which I replied, “Of course.” because it would be bad form to do otherwise and besides which, it was a way of demonstrating my remarkable self-control.

“You’re not normal!”, was all the thanks I got, although she did try to mollify it somewhat by protesting that she wouldn’t have minded changing the sheets and the bedding, but I pointed out that emptying the contents of my stomach into the bin was a lot easier to do.

However this state of affairs was unsustainable. And so I put my name down on a waiting list to see a specialist dental unit at my local hospital, this is when I discovered that the wheels of bureaucracy had brakes on. It was one of my fillings falling out, coupled with the gag reflex which ruled out as wholly impractical anything other course of dental treatment. I mean, most dental surgeries are all about clinical efficiency and I whilst I might be clinical, efficient I’m not. Finally after nine months I got an appointment. The dentist was as competent as the secretarial team were not. He listened to my problem and conducted a precursory examination of my mouth before sending me down for an x-ray. I must tell you I’ve never seen an x-ray machine like it. It was something out of Star Trek. In essence it was a revolving scanner that went around my head and there was a grip to hold the head firmly in place. Upon returning upstairs, five minutes late, I was confronted by my x-ray, which because it was flat made my teeth resemble Wallace’s’ (out of Wallace and Gromit).

I was pleasantly surprised that despite me not having seen a dentist since my accident there was remarkably little work to be done because, as I’m fond of saying, there is a benefit from coming from peasant Irish stock. He outlined the various anaesthetic methods that were available for the treatment. In essence the gas and air mixture was a lot safer, being only a local anaesthetic, but would require a couple of treatments. Whereas general anesthetic carried with it a greater level of risk, but all the work needed could be done in one go. When I asked him about the risk he said that one in every hundred thousand people who had a general anesthetic died as a result. That would be just my luck I thought, to have a general anesthetic and wake up afterwards. Bingo! Fortunately sense prevailed and I opted for the gas and air, which means cleaner, healthier teeth but also means life.

Every silver lining has a cloud!

Next time…you say baseball, I say rounders…..

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October 19, 2014

Not so much so Nigel Farage but Nigels’ Farrago….

Before I start, here’s your starter for ten? How do you pronounce garage? Go on – try it out loud, I’m in no hurry. Done it? If you’re anything like me, then your pronunciation of garage will have sounded like how the word porridge sounds. But on the other hand, if you’re Nigel Farage then your surname sounds as if a pirate has hijacked it with the result that Farage becomes Faraaarhhge. Somehow he’s managed to convince every media outlet, every political commentator that his name is not pronounced the way it is spelt.

Jay Leno once said that politics is just show business for ugly people, and if it is, then Nigel has been taking lessons from Ralph Fiennes. Because whilst we all know how Ralph is pronounced, somehow we are duped into thinking that Ralph is pronounced something else. Must make for an interesting meeting when he meets up with Rafe Spall! That isn’t the only extent of Nigel’s attempt to play fast and loose with common perceptions. In a masterstroke of historical omission, he has managed to convince large swathes of the population that he isn’t like other career politicians, and that he alone can articulate the concerns of the ordinary voter.

His own personal website is helpfully vague on his early life, so to is the UKIP website. Fortunately there is Wikipedia, which informs us that Nigel’s father was a stockbroker and that he – not his dad but Nigel – went to Dulwich college (a public school) and upon leaving he embarked on a career as a trader in brokerage firms on the London Metal Exchange. This is the sole extent of his working history until he became an MEP (a Member of the European Parliament). So, not that different after all. A politician who went to public school and then worked in the city before becoming a politician. Sound familiar?

Only a cynic would point out that that is why his personal details are a suitably vague. Equally, if ones main hobby-horse is to bang on about a little Europe has done for this country, and how Britain would be better off divorcing ourselves from a political union with Europe, the last thing you want known is that not only do you command a large salary from being an MEP – over £78,000 per year. (That’s not including paying your wife up to – no-ones quite sure – £20,00 a year for being your secretary) Or that your voting record is only 45.57%

No, what you wouldn’t want known by a public outraged by M.P’s expenses, was that you’d claimed over £2million in expenses since riding the gravy train first class.

Nigel likes to prove his man of the people credentials as often as possible, either being interviewed or photographed in a pub and is often seen drinking a pint. Is it only me that remembers that photo’s of that well regarded humanitarian Tony Blair being photographed with a mug of tea, strumming a guitar, or famously, when walking with the peace loving George Bush, having both hands tucked rather too self consciously into his jeans. Only me, I suppose who thinks that any politician who wants to appear like a ‘pretty regular kind of guy’’ – as Blair claimed to be – is usually anything but. This puts me in mind of Rowley Birkin QC. (Not that I’m writing that Nigel Farage is, or might become, like Rowley Birkin mainly because I don’t find him as funny or without such a tragic past. )

First let us consider that European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which Nigel Farage seems to find so at odds with British values that he wants us to leave it. In most UKIP supporters eyes the ECHR is synonymous with the European Union but this however, is a fallacy because they are both totally separate entities and besides which the ECHR has conferred many benefits to the citizens of this country. We have an unwritten constitution, meaning we have no set of legally enshrined laws, only vague rights which are open to interpretation by the courts. Since Britain signed up to the ECHR in 1959, a grand total of 500 cases have been presented to Strasbourg, which averages out at just under 8 a year, of which the U.K. has lost 60% of cases.

(Which by the way is comparatively low amongst countries that have signed up to the ECHR, yet no other country has advocated withdrawal. And if we did opt out of the ECHR, we’d join the noted for human wrongs regimes of Belarus and Kazakhstan. Even Russia is signed up to the ECHR!) Another fallacy is that British judges are powerless in the face of the ECHR whereas in fact it is up to British judges to interpret the findings of the European court.

And then reflect on this, whereas Rowley Birkin Q.C. lost the love of his life in an air raid during World War Two, only a cynic of the very highest order would point out that the European Union was created to prevent, in part, by the forging closer a union between the states of Europe, both political and economic, to prevent such a horror ever happening again. And equally, it would be beneath contempt to point out that a politician from a minor party of no significance, by skillful oratory and a keen awareness of the power of the media, enflamed and manipulated public opinion to such a degree that mainstream parties were forced to react accordingly and move even further to the right. By demonizing immigrants’ tighter controls on immigration was espoused by the main parties to combat this growing threat to their electoral chances. But the electorate interpreted this as weakness and punished them at the ballot box. They wanted, and thought they got, clear, decisive and effective leadership, which would deliver them from the worst global financial crisis of the 20th century. Who cared about political freedoms, civil liberties and the gradual dismantling of civil society when there was only one party willing to take the necessary steps need safety? From whoever, or whatever, was the most politically expedient bogeyman of the moment. Equally in the midst of a global economic crisis, measures that were deemed superfluous to be in the immediate need of the nation could be sacrificed upon the altar of austerity with the dagger of necessity.

I am not for one second suggesting that Mr. Farage – or however one chooses’ to pronounce his surname – is any way comparable to the one testicled tyrant. What I am suggesting is that anyone voting for UKIP could easily be committing the electoral equivalent of going on a few dates and despite not knowing too much about them, getting married, and then realizing what a terrible mistake it was. UKIP is well named because anyone voting UKIP could be sleepwalking into a nightmare. At least, and for all their faults of which they’re many, one knows what one gets when one votes Conservative. The UKIP website is full of what they’ll scrap and what they’ll do but vague as to how exactly they’ll achieve them.

A vote for UKIP could well turn out to be Nigel’s Farrago because as saying goes, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

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October 10, 2014

I promised you something interesting for this blog. Sorry about that….!

When I was discharged from the hospital, my council had thoughtfully setup a care programme that would meet all my domestic needs. Domestic in this instance means cooking and very light cleaning. To begin with this was a blessing – as my lack of fine motor skills means that cooking puts me at a very real danger to myself – but all too quickly it became a curse. To give you but one example; as very soon it became apparent that my carers could not cook, I took matters into my own hands. Every night for what seemed like months on end, I had tortellini every night. Because I deemed them only capable of boiling a kettle of water, adding the water and the tortellini together in a saucepan. And another example of their culinary competence; once when a carer asked me what I wanted for lunch I replied I wanted an omelette, to which she rather seriously replied ‘Do you want egg in that omelette?’ They would do the bare minimum, as slowly as possible, and not to a standard anyone with an I.Q. greater than their age would deem acceptable.

So it was with some delight I eagerly agreed to give personalization a try. This is a process by which the money for your care is given for you to spend as you see fit and totally bypasses any local council input. It’s like having bespoke suits made for you, after years of off the peg rubbish. Since then I’ve changed care provider, one that fully embraces the potential of risk inherent in any rehabilitive brain injury work, engaged a speech therapist, benefited from a neurological physiotherapist, and a undertaken incomparable amount more activities since control of how I spend my care money was passed to me. The fact they’re my councils preferred bidder is in no way related to the fact they’re also the cheapest. In setting this up I was fortunate enough to have a trainee social worker, one whose lofty idealism had not been eroded into jaded cynicism. Personalization is a fine theory but like most theories it’s application in the real world fails to live up to the idea’s behind it’s inception. One of it’s main failings is that there are no guidelines as to what one is and is not permitted to spend the money on. Councils have discretionary power over what they deem a reasonable expense and this can vary greatly from council to council. One of course has to keep receipts of every single expenditure and in theory is meant to forward these on to the council every single month.

Since setting up personalization, I’ve only had two meetings from anyone from social services. The first was in 2012 when it was explained to me that they would now be operating hub system. What this means is that whoever happens to answer the phone when you call is responsible for your case that day. There’s no social worker assigned to your case. It’s rather like “Tag! You’re it! ” social work. With the result I’ve never called them, and only a cynic would dare opine that was precisely the result they were hoping for, in announcing the change, a reduction in non urgent calls. Following on from this meeting I sent in up-to-date expenses, but fortunately I took the precaution of photocopying them. A friend dropped them off by hand with a request that they phone her to collect them. To date I have not had them back.

So imagine my delight a couple of months ago when it was announced that my annual review was due. I must have missed the one in 2013, but be that as it may, this review begat the arrival of a flurry of activity on my part. By the time of the meeting there were supporting statements from my carers’ as to how the continued funding benefitted my rehabilitation, from my consultant stressing the importance of maintaining the funding, from a housemate who eloquently advocated both my physical and psychological improvement that the change in care providers facilitated and a revised personal statement from me – my preferred version, the very short and very to the point ‘Give me the f*cking money’ sadly wasn’t it – all of which were collated in a plastic folder. In the same way all of my expenses had been prepared month by month in an orderly fashion and were laid out in an easy to digest way. So imagine my horror when the person that came to do the review took notes on the back of a sheet of A4 balanced on her knee. She took notes as if she herself was being charged by the word and it was only because there was so much material for her to take away with her that she would have had anything to make her assessment upon. One can hardly imagine my unbridled joy when a call came through from the council to my support worker who has put my receipts in order.

The computer on which I’m typing this is an Apple. The council wanted to know was it really necessary to submit a claim for nearly £2000 for a computer when cheaper models were available? Fortunately my support worker is not as blunt as I would haven, and explained how my lack of fine motor skills – the ones that control and coordinate the muscles so that one could thread a needle – meant that a PC trackpad was no use. A Mac was by some margin the easiest for me to use on so many levels, not least the fact I made the switch from polyester to wool in 2000. (Anyone that’s done the PC to Mac switch will understand that simile!) The whole idea of personalization was to avoid any interference from local authority jobs’ worth inquiring as to whether a purchase was really necessary. But the absence, despite my unanswered requests for them to send me guidelines out to what is, or isn’t permissible expense renders her question “Did you check it first with a social worker?” worthless. What do they have to check it against?

Next time…Not so much Nigel Farage but Nigels’ Farrago….

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