I'll never know

KEEP NOT TAKING THE TABLETS

This post is, sort of, a follow up to the one about mental health on the 24th.  And I wonder if there's anyone else who'll read this and find it striking a chord of any sort?

For most of my adult life there's been a short film clip that crops up in my head from time to time.  Sometimes in a dream, sometimes in response to external triggers (but I'm not even sure which ones).

I'm a teenager, maybe about 14 or 15, living with my parents.  It's about 3 or 4 in the middle of the night, I'm wide awake, and decide to go into the bathroom.  In there I open the medicine cabinet, take out all the bottles of pills I can find and line them up in a row.  I look at them for a few minutes, then decide to put them where I found them and go back to bed.

That's it, that's all that happens.  My own thought processes during the incident aren't available to me, it's as if I'm an outside observer recording the moment.  I get the inference that I was contemplating taking an overdose, and chose not to.  It's not something I find disturbing, for there's now an easy familiarity about the scene, like watching a favourite film for the twentieth time.

What's still mildly frustrating is in resisting the temptation to try and figure out what this actually is, for I know now that the answer will never come.  Is it a genuine memory, or a dream, or simply a story I told to myself?  Did it happen in the real world or only in my head?  Is that weird?

McCartney's words look older than me now

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four"

WHAT'S MEANT TO HAPPEN PAUL?

I'm 64 today.  Happy lockdown birthday to me.  (Although I'm one of those weirdos who's quite enjoying the whole lockdown thing on a personal experience level.)  And when you hit that number there's only one song comes to mind.  But has it aged as well as... us?

Although the song first appeared on vinyl as a track on 1967's Sgt Pepper album, it seems McCartney first wrote the basis for it when he was a teenager in the fifties.  To a sixteen year old I guess anyone in their sixties looked very old.  Paul's father died at the age of sixty four.  People of that age looked older than we do now, looked more homogenous, colourless, in the background. In the nineteen fifties the average life expectancy in the UK was around seventy.  There were good reasons why sixty four seemed elderly, especially in working class communities.

Life expectancy is now over eighty and, if you've had a reasonable amount of luck with your health and employment and life in general, being in your mid sixties now is not the same as it was when the song was written.  We're the fittest old codgers in history.  Yes we're slowing up, creaking a bit, grunting from the odd ache here and there, the skin a lot loser and the wrinkles deeper, but still functioning, still going out and doing stuff (when we're allowed again...), still reasonably sure the incontinence hasn't kicked in.  More importantly, nowhere near as close to the end as we might have felt ourselves to be sixty years ago.  No sense of any milestone today - sorry Mr M.

The cute Beatle's 77 now, so maybe he'd agree those lyrics are overdue a change.  But "When I'm seventy four" doesn't scan too well.  And a decade of austerity politics has stalled, in some cases reversed, the progress made since the sixties.  

So there may be a very long wait before "When I'm eighty four" becomes appropriate...

Cummings' camel comeuppance?

A CAMEL WITH TWO HUMPS

He's no Hans Christian Andersen, but watching Dom's Jackanory session yesterday I found one old adage kept popping into my head (along with all the sweary stuff...) 

"a camel is a horse designed by a committee"

Dom's fairy tale looked, smelled and behaved like the most deformed camel of all time.  Within a couple of minutes of the start of the world's most boring fable there were lawyers on Twitter saying "this has been lawyered", something even a layman could spot pretty quickly.  So how did this sorry pastiche of a story come into being?

That's where the camel comes in.  Can anyone doubt this was the product of a hastily assembled group, including at least a couple of lawyers, told to find some kind of rebuttal to each of the points raised in the press over the previous days (mostly down to the excellent investigative journalism of Pippa Crerar).  And then the really fun bit, attempting to squeeze all those random excuses into something that vaguely resembled a coherent narrative, followed by coaching Dom in which version of the fantasy he now had to stick to.  I can't see any other explanation for something so transparently pathetic.

Two humps?  My knowledge of children is comfortably stamp sized, so I consulted everybody's favourite pish expert, Gusset Grippers, on the likelihood of a four year old going for five hours in a car.  

Her answer - "I’d suggest that if a 4 year old hadn’t peed in 5 hours it’s a bit of a worry.  The only way I can see it, logically, would be if he was dehydrated before the trip - in which case you have a kid whining for 5 hours.  Maybe they drugged him?"

Has Dom been taking parenting tips from Doris?

So now we know the answer to that age old question, "what do you get when you cross a hyena with a weasel?".  The Cummings kid must be a fekin dromedary.

PS  Gusset Grippers is as the wonderfully funny physio and comedian Elaine Miller.  Do give her a follow on Twitter by clicking here.  Who could resist a woman that talks pish for a living and promises to improve your orgasms?

Was that really me?

LIFE CHANGES

We change as people across the years, often without realising it. Once upon a time I would have struggled to imagine how I'd cope with a life without work. Now I wonder how I ever had enough time to go there. In a few days I'll be sixty four years old, and I'm pretty sure the last five years have been amongst the best, if not the best, of my life. So much for schooldays.

That realisation has been strengthened by my diary data capture project. I really wasn't very happy in 1982, the year I recently completed, and hoped '83 would prove a bit better for me (I write that as if I'm talking about a different person, and that's what it feels like, for while some character traits remain the same I see so much that's changed completely). The year got off to a good start, but it only took a few days before my initial promise towards positivity was knocked backwards, folded up into a ball and thrown out of the window. At the time I used the word 'depressed' without any real understanding of what it really means, at least in clinical terms, but rereading what I wrote about my life, and the feelings I was experiencing almost four decades ago, I can see that depression was what I had.  Later in life I would have further mental health issues at times, but by then I had the maturity and experience to recognise something of what was happening to me, and the subject was starting to open up more widely in society so there was more information to fall back on.

It comes as a bit of a shock to see my twenty six year old self in the state I was then, and the lack of recognition my condition received - most notably from myself.  But it's also fascinating, seeing a life I now view through very different eyes rolled out before me. That person seems just as much a stranger as he does an younger incarnation of who I am now.

That's a positive of course. Not simply because I'm now a much happier individual  than I was then, but also realising anyone who hasn't developed, metamorphosised, and changed their passions and views over such a long period would be incredibly boring. Consistency, at least in this context, is a very overrated 'virtue'. 

The one thing that hasn't altered is despising tories. I hope it never will.  Seems very unlikely after today's events...

Digital derision points to uncertain future

CALENDAR CONTEMPT

Anyone else feel their calendar is laughing at them?  Back in the olden, pre-lockdown, days I could look at the weeks ahead and see what promises they held.  Science Festival events.  TradFest gigs.  Plays at the Traverse.  Matches at Murrayfield.  Some appointments and meetings related to my volunteering role.  Train times showing when I'd be on my own for a few days.  And then our world changed.

On the plus side, I suppose, a load of money winging its way back to my account, refunds for tickets I'll never use.  The biggest downside is a bit more obvious.  No live entertainment for ... however long it's going to take.  Be patient.  And the unexpected sideswipe of a calendar that mocks me, telling me about all the things I should have been going to see.  I could have deleted them, but they seemed to offer a form of measurement, watching how many events would pass before we could start booking again.  But that's about to end.  The final notification for the A Play, a Pie and a Pint series flicked up yesterday.  On Saturday week the last league game of the season, the big derby match against Glasgow, was due to be played.  And that's it.  At least my calendar can stop taking the piss after that.

Hardly a big deal, I know, but a trivial illustration of what so many are going through.  Packed diaries, be they for work, domestic or leisure purposes, rendered meaningless.  Replaced with Zoom meetings, Whatsapp calls, reminders to clap and bang pots, and a sudden fascination with parcel tracking numbers.  We have had to alter the patterns of our lives, lower expectations, recalibrate the meaning of achievement.  

Change.  That's all it is, some of it temporary, some of it more long term - and the uncertainty of not knowing which is which.  But human beings are good at change.  We can rationalise, replan, manage our lives and adapt.  There will be good things as well as bad to come out of this pandemic.  We can only hope that our political leaders, and wider society, are able to recognise and embrace the good, and not simply try to return to past practices because "that's how things were done".  

That sounded like an upbeat note to end on.  Then I remembered we still have Doris over us....  Oh well.

Dealing with Lockdown Hair

DRASTIC MEASURES

Lockdown hair.  It's a thing.  A big thing for many people, as roots get ever deeper, showing their true colours.

Mine has been getting a bit wild, but I could live with that.  What was getting annoying was how hot it was making me feel when I was sat down of an evening.  The growth of my mane meant a  decision was growing imminent.  But how radical to go?

Did you watch Friday's The Last Leg?  Faced with a similar decision Adam Hills opted to grab the clippers and carve himself out a mohican.  The reaction of his wife was not available, but he did sport THAT beard for many months, so she's used to surprises.

I don't have such powerful clippers available, so scissors would be required.  Not having any ambition to be the next Van Gogh it seemed a better idea to get a responsible adult to wield them, rather than DIY.  And there's only one responsible adult in the flat, so that narrowed the choice down.  That and the fact that she was itching to have a go, as the pic above suggests.

So here's the Before photos.

And here's the After.

Not that drastic.  And definitely more comfortable.  No blood was spilled in the process, so that's another big positive.  If it goes a bit strange in the coming days more radical options are in reserve, but it'll do for now.

The only slight downside is a bit of a jaggy feel to the hair, but it's not like we happened to have a pair of pro-standard scissors lying around.

But it now means my first trip to the barber, whenever it may be, will result in me saying the same thing as millions of others around the planet.

"What can I do for you today sir?"

"Repairs..."

Imagine

LOUISA WHO?

"All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein

It's been more than five weeks now since the name was revealed, a name now well established in the media, widely recognised by the public.  And still there are unionists, invariably tories,  bleating on social media that the NHS Louisa Jordan, the temporary hospital set up in Glasgow in response to the Covid-19 crisis, should be referred to as the NHS Nightingale.  So it can then be confused with all the NHS Nightingales down south maybe?

They object to the Scottish Government not following the 'lead' set by the government in London to have all seven of their similar institutions called exactly the same thing, identified only by location.  In part that's because they're the sort of people who will blindly, knee jerkingly, criticise anything their own elected government does, right or wrong.  They can't help themselves.  And in doing so are they revealing one underlying trait that determines their unionism - a severe lack of imagination?

I had never heard of Louisa Jordan before the announcement.  Most people hadn't.  Which is, surely, a good thing - ?  Everybody has heard of Florence Nightingale.  But how many other historic names from nursing can you come up with immediately?  Edith Cavell?  Emmm...?  These temporary medical facilities are being opened in response to a situation that sees many, many people shut away in their homes for weeks on end, with no idea of how long it may continue for.  Anything, no matter how small, that makes us think, provides learning opportunities, creates a bit of interest, is to be welcomed, encouraged.

In the bigger picture it's not important what these hospitals are called.  But in a shrunken world where the micro is taking on greater significance, calling all these institutions by the same name is a missed opportunity, a failure of imagination, an apparent fear of difference.  Why aren't those in England having the sense to follow Scotland's lead and giving them names that reflect their local connections, and bring an obscure historical name to prominence?  Why isn't the Exeter hospital being named after Elsie Knocker?  (And no, I'm not making her up, check out the link!)  She'd bring a smile to a few faces, I'm sure.

Criticise the choice of Ms Jordan as a name and you criticise imagination and difference.  (As if right wingers ever showed any hostility to anybody they don't see as the same as themselves...)  And imagination is the key to change.

And it's change they fear most.  They are desperate to defend vested interests - big landowners, the media, the wealthy, the 'safe' middle classes - with no thought given to the possibility of making life better for those less fortunate. If the system changes they might be relative losers, and they can't stomach that. It's  selfishness - most don't want to change a set up from which they benefit.

Hence the attacks on anything the Scottish Government do, no matter how trivial the reasons to try and justify them.  Hence the constant attacks on the SNP, and Greens, and the wider Yes Movement, because Scottish Independence threatens the cosiness of their world.

But the Covid-19 crisis has further highlighted the iniquities and weaknesses of what is now the 'old normal'.  It's a normal we can't return to, and we have to make sure that the new one is better for more people, that the growing inequality gap is reversed and that empathy has greater prominence in our society.  Let Ms Jordan's name be a symbol for change, for difference, for better.

Queenie - Could do better

WHALE MEAT AGAIN

Anyone watch Queenie's "inspiring" broadcast last night?

Naw, me neither.

Anticipating the usual meaningless platitudes I found something more interesting to do (not a high bar to climb over) and waited to see if the morning's headlines suggested she'd said anything that in any way contributed to the current store of knowledge around the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Hard to be hopeful of that happening because, unless I've missed something, she doesn't have any recognised expertise in epidemiology, virology, and/or immunology, or maybe even a bit of experience working with health stats.  Come to think of it, she doesn't have any recognised expertise.

I understand there was a passing reference to the kind of 'blitz spirit' drivel ( a period which, for those who know their history, and don't wear blue, red and white tinted specs, included rampant profiteering, black marketeering and a huge surge in burglaries due to the blackout - so Jacob Piss-Dogg would have fitted in well) to appeal to the right wing knuckle draggers that would have formed a large proportion of her audience.

But she conspicuously failed to announce any of the things that she could have done to make a real contribution, to make it seem like we really might all be in this together. 

She didn't offer to donate a portion of her obscenely vast inherited wealth to help out the NHS or all those people who have lost their incomes.

She didn't offer up some accommodation, in all those palaces and castles and big hooses, to homeless people for whom the phrase 'self isolation' is a sick joke.

She didn't even point out that her oldest son is a selfish dick who should be sacked from his 'job' for going, complete with entourage, to another country and risking the lives of the local community.  If it's what Catherine Calderwood deserved....

So what's left?  Yup, those same old meaningless platitudes.  Vive la Republique!

I will not walk 500 miles

THE 11K CASUALTY

Before the lockdown, before the virus did or did not hit me, I was managing to record a minimum of 11k steps on the wee step counter thingummy on my right wrist. The app told me I'd been doing that for a streak of 267 days in a row. It doesn't really tell me how fast or slow I did it, whether I put any bloody effort in or not, but at least I did... something.

And then the bug came, complete with 14 days self isolation, and, at least to start with, a shortness of breath that sometimes had me pausing half way up the one flight of stairs in the flat. Suddenly it was a struggle to crack 2k and the only records I was setting were for hours of body in bed and arse on sofa. As I started to feeling a bit better I got into the habit of walking aimlessly up and down the hall, just to see if I could get my step count up. (You ask why? What else is there to do...) And I'd be smashing through the giddy 4k barrier. Once I even passed double that, but only because I was trying to do a clear out of my jeans and trousers (and no, I'm not going to explain how that could result in my walking so far inside a not exactly vast space).

Now I'm allowed out again. But under the strict guidelines of course. Shopping trips were needed on the first two days, simply to restock the depleted cupboards, fridge and freezer. Without even thinking about it I suddenly found I was back over 11k. But today was just a going out for a bit of exercise day, and to make the target number almost half of the steps had to be done indoors. I made it. Just. That's a triumphant 3 day streak. But how many more days can I do this? Tracks are appearing in the carpets. The scenery is unchanging. And the inevitable comparison to a caged animal only falls down because most animals in cages manage to move a lot more elegantly than my gawky frame is capable of.

The streak, methinks, will not last long. As for thinking about Kiltwalk later in the year... I may have to accept that the arse/sofa interface will become a dominant factor in my life. We all have to #StayAtHome.

It's a different world

FREEDOM!  (NOT FREEDOM...)

Fourteen long days have gone by and I released back into the wild.  In an earlier post I mentioned we were both self isolating and not venturing out until third of April.  Clearly whatever the bug was it affected my brain since I was unable to add up past a baker's dozen.  Today was the day, not tomorrow.

For me it couldn't come soon enough.  Never mind the actual illness, spending day after day in centrally heated rooms is enervating in itself.  My brief forays out on to the balcony were never enough.  So it was good to be back out, albeit alone.  I still have a bit of tightness in my chest, but am otherwise feeling fully recovered.  Not so Barbara who is not yet strong enough to hit the mean streets and still drifts off to sleep from time to time, still has headaches.  But she had it worse than me from the start.  A few more days yet.

Has it been THE virus?  We still don't know.  Maybe we never will.  Strange times.

The official lockdown hadn't started when we shut ourselves away so it's a different world to return to, a world of restrictions, but also a world that feels fresher and more peaceful.  And with better stocked shelves!  First time I've seen a tin of tomatoes in weeks.  How quickly we recalibrate our definitions of joyfulness.

Few people on the streets, few cars, everyone keeping their distance, buses almost empty.  We now have to live under more draconian legislation than most of us have ever experienced, but being out in such quiet (in an area that is supposedly the mostly densely populated in Scotland) brings an odd sense of freedom to being out.  Even though you know you can't be out for long it feels more like a holiday than the apocalypse.

Out of curiosity I went past three supermarkets to see what was happening.  They all looked quiet, but only one, the local Sainsbury, had a queueing system (strictly 2m+ apart of course) and a one-out, one-in policy.  The homeless guy outside one had a sign saying thanks to everyone who'd given him money, but he'd be having to find some other way to survive now.  Nobody is carrying change any more.  Will this be one of the long term outcomes from this crisis - the death of cash?  And a consequent knock on to those who relied on the kindness of strangers?

We don't know yet, will not know for months to come maybe.  But this different world is going to remain different, in ways we can't foresee.  Capitalism has failed to cope and may not recover, at least in the aggressive form we've seen develop over the past forty years.  UKGov daily briefings give us a conveyor belt of identikit lying twats who, defying credibility, are all apparently cabinet ministers.  The only thing that can make Doris look vaguely competent is comparison with the orange manbaby across the water, where a disaster beyond Italian proportions appears to be unravelling.  We urgently need that different world.  We need to be out of this broken UK.