New Years Revolution

Looking back, as we tend to do at this time of year, I realise that I have always been a rebel or reformer, (put kindly) or a bit B..... minded, (possibly more accurate). But, and its a big but, I have also always wanted to please & put others first. I was " seen and not heard" as a child. I suspect the conflict between the two has lurked throughout my life, but it is the way girls of my generation were brought up. I was once analysed on a senior management course & the dichotomy was pointed out.

Anyway I'm going to rebel - (I think) - If I can do it without hurting people's feelings. Tact was never a strong point, so this might prove difficult. I think when you know the oblivion taxi is waiting you are entitled to be a little selfish. I'm going to try to do what I want for a change.

It's not that I want to do anything drastic - I've already crammed a lot of experiences into my life. It's more about not doing things I don't really enjoy. We all compromise to some extent - with our parents, our partners, our children, our friends & relatives, our neighbours. It's how a civilised society works. But I think I have always put my own needs & desires at the bottom of the list. It's time to learn how to say "no" without harm.

I don't like:-

• Doing nothing. I've always been very active & task oriented.
• Sitting or standing for a long time.
• Big "Do's". I enjoy talking to people and being able to hear what they say. Otherwise what's the point? Now I'm partly deaf it's even worse.
• Superficial or one sided conversations. I've never been any good at "working the room".
• A lot of noise. Ditto No 3 bullet point. Music in shops drives me potty - I can't think.
• Christmas 2015 style - Rampant consumerism. 
• "Stuff" - I don't really need anything. I'm trying to simplify my life.

I like:-

• Interesting people & places.
• Children - (reasonably well behaved & in moderation).
• Learning new things.
• New experiences. 
• Old friends.
• Good food - but not too much of it.
• A good white wine.
• Reading a good book / Watching a good TV programme, film or play / Listening to music, (of my choice).

I have come to the conclusion that I have to accept that I don't have the energy I once had. I get tired. Even doing nothing is tiring. My memory has gone to pot. I'm not as tolerant as I was. (Previously I could always see everyone's point of view. Not good for decision making!) In other words, dear reader, I'm well on the way to being a boring old woman.

It has struck me that I should enjoy my remaining years & not waste a moment on doing something I don't want to. Life should be a balance between fun & necessity. Up till now I think I've had too much of the latter. Must aim for more FUN.

Accident Prone - a visit to A & E -

I went through the whole of my life never breaking a bone despite playing hockey, netball & tennis at school. Now I do seem a bit accident prone & have just spent another mindless afternoon in A&E. I think I will have to give up family parties for my new year resolution.

This time I jarred my foot against the bed & had a suspected broken toe. Earlier in the year I fell over & broke a finger at a friends birthday. Both resulted in black, swollen digits & quite a lot of pain. The worst outcome was the inability to use the hand & now walk with anything but slippers on.

Unsurprisingly A&E was very busy. It was the day after Boxing Day & I imagine that a lot of people, like me, had waited until the festivities were over. A&E is a microcosm of human life. All ages, ethnicities etc etc. Even 2 lots of police with handcuffed prisoners. You know you are in for a long wait whatever the injury or pain level & people cope in different ways.

I took a book by Caroline Lucas about politics - very good, but I couldn't concentrate. So I watched instead - for hours. Over an hour to be triaged. Then an Xray, then a Nurse Practitioner.

The thing that struck me, having been on holiday with an American who didn't "do" queuing, is how compliant we Brits are. The waiting room was almost full. None of us knew how long we would be there. There is no clue. I have been to A&E's where they have an electronic display giving an estimated waiting time - but not at the JR. Giving information to patients isn't high on the list of priorities.

You don't know who is at the front of the queue or where in the process everyone is. The workings of the system are a mystery. You don't know if the relevant practitioner knows you are there. But it does all work - very, very slowly. You just have to have faith & be a patient patient.

People were quiet. They didn't pester staff, who were obviously working efficiently to protocols. We were all resigned. I think I went off into a zombie like state & had to fight not to go to sleep.

The question is should A&E work any more efficiently? Should there be more staff? Should more money be put into this very front line service? I imagine you could throw lots more money at it, but would that be the right solution?

Personally I would just like to see patients being consulted & informed more. I can see it from the point of view of the staff. They do their best & their best is excellent. But doing this day after day can result in staff distancing themselves from the patient as an individual. People can become numbers to be processed through.

You are trapped in a waiting room. If, like me, you are on your own, you can't pop off for a drink, or go to the loo, or a walk, (not that I could), without worrying that you will miss your name being called.

It's probably never going to be a good experience, but I do think there is room for improvement.

Ghost of Christmas Past

We moved house just before I went to Grammar school at 11 & oddly I don't seem to be able to remember anything about Christmas in our first house at all. I do remember it being very cold in winter with no heating other than a coal fire in the living room & ice & snow inside the windows in my bedroom. My blankets were heavy, ex services I think, but not warm. Having a wash in the bathroom was a challenge to be overcome as quickly as possible. Fortunately I was only allowed one bath a week.

The new house did have radiators at some point, but I can't remember whether it was initially or later on. It was still cold though.

I had a stocking - one of my Dad's long socks. It wasn't filled with presents. There were tangerines, nuts & sweets. I regularly got books for presents. Always hardbacks. Always Classics. Mostly illustrated. I loved them & could read for ages. My daughter has still got some of them. I remember a compendium of games & a Bagatelle. I also remember a beautiful home made dolls house too. When I got older there were clothes. There simply wasn't the money when I was a child & there certainly wasn't the choice. I was born in 1945 so post war austerity lasted for a long time.

Children played simple games & mostly amused themselves. Working class parents were too busy earning a living & making ends meet to play with children. They were worn out & seemed old to me. Life then was frugal looking back through the prism of today.

We always had a real tree with real candles which were lit on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. Yes, the curtains did catch light one year! My mother was German, so Christmas was traditional & we didn't deviate. Christmas Eve was more important than Christmas Day. I always had iced Lebkuchen and can't eat it to this day. The smell and taste immediately transport me back. Nowadays cooked red cabbage is quite common, but when I was a child no one else ate it as a hot vegetable.

My mother always worked very hard but particularly so at Christmas. She was a good basic cook - meat & 2 veg. She did quite a few German dishes - potato pancakes which I liked with jam. It seems an odd combination but I loved it. She also did normal pancakes with various fruits - again delicious. Her gravy was wonderful & she abhorred Bisto with good reason. Her German cakes, Gugelhupf for example, were really good.

Now I am older I appreciate just how hard she worked to put good food on the table. My father & I took it all for granted. We offered to help, but it was difficult to match her exacting standards.

Both my parents must have sacrificed a lot to "do" Christmas. In fact it's only now I realise how hard things must have been for them all through my childhood & adolescence. We all take our parents for granted. We see them as a constant in our lives & not as individuals. We don't really ask them about their lives & what they want. Once we do begin to empathise it is often too late. So I think about Christmas past at this time of year. For me it isn't a particularly happy memory, but at least I understand more from my parents point of view.

Such a shame I can't tell them that. Family Christmases aren't necessarily jolly occasions for everyone. There are often tensions under the surface which come to the fore. Too much eating, drinking & sitting about can be claustrophobic & lead to arguments. It is an opportunity though, once a year, to try to get into the real spirit of kindness, tolerance & thanksgiving.

 

Pantomime

I am a volunteer usher in a theatre. This is the Panto season. By the time the season ends I will know the production extremely well. In fact there is a song that seems to be embedded in my brain already. (Rather perverse considering that I can't remember what I did yesterday!)

Normally I would only see a production once, so it's a completely different experience. I am simply amazed at the cast. How do they go out on stage day after day & do a couple of performances for weeks on end? How do they bring the same energy & joy to the performance over and over again? They must surely get physically tired - it's an all singing all dancing production. The sheer professionalism & talent is impressive. So far it has never become mechanical. It seems fresh and new every time.

A panto audience is very different to any other. There are obvious differences because it is mainly children & there are Panto traditions of audience participation. The audience involvement in the characters is central to the whole thing. Achieveing that involvement is a real skill. Bringing that much joy to a theatre full of people must be really rewarding.

Audience behaviour did come as a bit of a shock as this is my first Christmas season. A lot of people seem to arrive late, often even after the performance has started. They are allowed in. Given I am routinely on time for anything I personally find it hard to understand. Quite a lot of people go in & out during the performance - Understandable if children need the loo or are frightened of the "baddie". Surprising to me if it's adults. Especially if they are seated in the middle of a row & have to disrupt everyone else. If I were an actor giving my all I would be put off by people walking out. If I were in the audience around the people going in & out I would be irritated. It just seems rude and unnecessary to me. Surely adults can wait for the interval?

There are far more consumables eaten & drunk in a Panto. That's fine by me, but the ushers have to pick up all the litter after the performance. I have always been truly surprised that adults just leave their litter on the floor, but it's a whole new "ball game" after a Panto. We need quite a few plastic sacks for everything. It would be so nice if people took their litter out with them & deposited it in the bins. Why is it acceptable to drop your litter on the floor in a theatre when it's illegal in the street?

Any performance is such a team effort. There are huge numbers of people involved in every theatre production. Ushers are probably the lowliest in the hierarchy, the actors are the stars. In between there are a myriad of people doing very diverse tasks, but everyone is necessary to put a show on in front of an audience.

I'm just surprised when some members of the audience don't seem to appreciate that. The worst crime to my mind is those who dash for the exits at the end whilst the audience are clapping. Are they really in so much of a rush that they can't show appreciation for all the effort to entertain them?

Bombing Syria

I'm a fairly ordinary person. I try to be well informed, but I'm not "Brain of Britain". Generally speaking I question things & try to find answers.

I don't understand 2 fairly basic things about the government's decision to bomb Syria.

Firstly, given that we have had 7 years of cutbacks & recession due to the mess the banks landed the world in, how can we suddenly find the £millions it will cost to be an active part of the bombing campaign? Where has the money come from? If it was lying in some deep pocket somewhere how come we have just had a financial statement which continues the drastic cuts & the hardship well into future years when the deficit is not getting any smaller?

Secondly, given that oil is a precious & finite resource which the world depends on, how come it's OK for that same oil to be the target of the bombing.What possible sense is there in blowing millions of barrels of oil up? I know it generates income for ISIS, I'm not daft. But surely it's criminal to destroy a non renewable, major, fossil fuel resource now we have passed "Peak Oil"? Aren't there other, better, ways to defeat ISIS & cut off their money supply?

Is it just that dropping bombs is the easy answer to look as if we are doing something useful?

Tolerance & Anger

"I don't need anger management. I need people to stop pissing me off. My people skills are just fine - It's my tolerance of idiots that needs work". From a Facebook post which made me laugh because I could easily apply it to myself.

The Physiology of Anger.

1. Fight or flight - Muscles become very tight, causing an “uptight” feeling.
2. Chemicals, (catecholamines). are released causing us a burst of energy, which causes a sugar deficiency, so an angry person may “shake from anger”.
3. Heart rate accelerates: The average of 80 climbs to 180 beats per minute.
4. Blood pressure rises: The average of 120 over 80 suddenly soars to 220 over 130.
5. The body prepares for survival. It safeguards itself against injury and bleeding, releasing chemicals to clot the blood, (potentially dangerous - the clot can travel through the blood vessels to the brain or heart).
6. Rate of breathing increases to get more oxygen into the body.
7. Increased blood flow enters our limbs and extremities.
8. Attention narrows.
9. Hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) are released.

All of this happens automatically with no effort on our part. Therefore we are not in control of our body, or, it could be argued, our mind. We beome a dangerous mutant of ourselves, capable of things we could never have dreamed of.

Is this a description of what is happening, daily, all around the world? Does this explain the fundamentalist beliefs, which I do not dignify with the word religious, & which drive people to think that atrocities are justifiable in any way?

Anger is a useful tool in some circumstances. Tolerance is vital to the continuance of human life in societies with different cultures. We all need both.

What we don't need is emotional thinking driving important decisions and out of control behaviour.

Children - Let them be.

"Children are born geniuses. The world just sucks it out of them" - Marin Alsopp - conductor. I heard this on R4s "Midweek" this morning. It crystallised my own opinion & it made me think.

I remember my own childhood distinctly. It was all about conformity to other peoples rules. My parents. My teachers. Other children's parents. Other children. The one overriding urge was to be like everyone else. To fit in. If Mr Clewer told me in primary school that good pictures came from outlining everything in black, everything was outlined in black. If he stood at the back of the class & crept up on us in maths lessons to rap us over the knuckles with a ruler for some misdemeanor, that was how life was. You did what you were told & didn't deviate. At all.

My mother insisted I learned to play the piano. I did become quite good over the years, but had to stop when grammar school work became overwhelming & I didn't have time to practice. I escaped through playing the piano, although I hated being stuck in the cold, unused, front room to practice every day. I knew that everyone who passed could hear me & they didn't have to do it, so I was different.

Grammar school was just an extension of Primary except that you were banded. Sorted into groups according to academic ability. Your uniform defined you and made you uniform. It was all about learning by rote. Not just subjects, but how to behave. I really don't think I learned how to think until I had finished with education.

In the 60's I did a 3 year degree equivalent course at my Art, Music & Drama college. I certainly didn't learn to be creative until after I had finished that. We weren't taught to paint or draw or do anything creative. We were supposed to pick it up by osmosis. There was the stimulation of other students & of London galleries & museums. I don't think I had set foot in either before that. But it was too late for me. Any "genius" had been sucked out.

Now we test to extremis. We tick boxes. We don't allow children to fail or to take risks or change their minds. We don't allow them to find their own path. We don't value difference. Their lives are orchestrated by parents & teachers. They aren't allowed to just "be".

Most are squeezed tubes of toothpaste. All originality & real creativity has gone.

How sad. They are the future.

A Cold is a Cold is a ....B..... Nuisance

I can't remember the last time I had a streaming cold. I don't think I have ever had Flu'. So I had forgotten the misery that a simple virus can inflict. To my mind Bronchitis, Sinusitis & Laryngitis, which I have had many times, are all much worse. The ultimate is Pneumonia & Pleurisy, which I have also had & hope never to repeat the experience. (Thank goodness for the wonders of modern vaccination).

It started gently with a sore throat last Wednesday evening. Eventually I couldn't talk, not a problem really, I don't talk to myself a lot now. (Only in extremis). It was interesting to discover what my voice sounded like when people phoned though. Swallowing was uncomfortable.

Then I started streaming & explosively sneezing at the weekend. My ribs are actually sore from sneezing. I dread having something in my mouth or hands when I sneeze because whatever it is would end up scattered everywhere. (Then I would have to clean it up!) There have been near misses. Breathing through my nose is either exquisitely uncomfortable or completely impossible.

My eyes are sore, red rimmed & prickly. My "normal" slight deafness is much worse. I do hope my TV doesn't disturb the new neighbours. Not a good start to a friendly relationship.

My head & face ache. My teeth feel very peculiar - I think that's incipient Sinusitis.

My "normal" hot sweats are immeasurably worse. My cleaner actually complained how cold my house was. To me it's unbearably hot with the heating on & I'm continually stripping off during the day or throwing the duvet off at night.

I have watched daytime TV for the first time in living memory - apart from Wimbledon & that doesn't count. I have also officially become an old lady & have started a jigsaw. It was a big charity shop mistake - a Renoir, Les Parapluis - very impressionist, therefore difficult. I have done the border, but may give up on the middle.

It is so frustrating to want to be horizontal & asleep & know that the minute you are all the symptoms get worse.

Ah well - the end must be in sight & at least I'll have some anti bodies.