people watching

I don't know if it's because I am getting older, ( I almost typed "odder" which could equally fit) but I do find myself becoming more reactionary - not, I hasten to add, in discriminatory terms, i.e.gender, race, sexual orientation etc. ( However, any opinion expressed is in essence discriminatory)

No, I mean in terms of speaking my mind with more acuteness than I have in the past.
I thought about all this while standing on one leg, then swapping to the other, waiting for a taxi in the middle of town. People watching is a favourite pastime of mine in any geographical situation but today it seemed that my senses were heightened. Perhaps it was the excruciating knee pain I was trying to relieve?
There was the woman in green, swathed in waterproofs and scarves - I wondered if she was a "green" candidate living up to the image - and obviously from her high colour sweating profusely. Then the bald headed man with a naked upper lip, a rim beard of pale ginger, combed out like a sun ray on his chin, in a long black leather coat and Doc Martin high laced boots. Obviously a grass roots philosopher.
A trio of women all wearing exceedingly tight trousers with expanses of flesh seeping over the waist bands waddled passed followed by the older woman in clinging jeans that emphasised the shelf-like nature of her buttocks.
They seemed to be impervious to the picture they presented while I keep try to hide away and be inconspicuous. It struck me that I too could be myself without souring the cream or making people scream and run for cover - couldn't I?
People drifted out into the road, munching endlessly on subs and wraps, heedless of traffic danger, then ebbed back to the pavement.
I craned my neck to see round the vehicles that shouldn't have been parked in the bay, but were, to try and not miss my cab and cursed the idiots that kept blocking my view. A car containing a man and child continued to sit in the bay, talking on his mobile until his partner appeared, (see I can be politically correct) and they mused over the bank receipt, disputing each item until with vehemence he revved the engine and they sped off.

But back to my exercise in growing intransigence:
While in the chemists scanning shelves of hair products some- woman imperiously tried to excuse herself to get passed me and it took all my self control to stop myself asking her what she'd done. Earlier, some- man had continued to walk into me despite surely realising we would collide. He had worked on the premise that I would get out of his way but I set my shoulders and carried on relentlessly meaning he had to swerve and was stopped in his tracks - and I didn't care if he had tripped! Some-people need to realise that Yourstruly can be just as obstructive and will be practising more of the same.

I am more than a little fed up with being the one who apologises, gets out of the way, takes the evasive action. Not doing it anymore and if that makes me a bit of a dragon, a cumudgeon, or whatever, then so be it. There has to be a time when the perks start and surely one of them is that one can speak one's mind with impunity and tell it as it is.
My list of those who need to be told what they really are in a clear and concise manner rather than having it dressed up in psycho babble is growing so beware, dear Blog, because there will be more of the same!

delayed

Here is another quick fix of a blog because I shall feel so guilty if I let another 24 hours go past without making an entry. This has been a hell of a shift for a variety of reasons. Very few people know, or care, about the effect of continuous repetition on the target. And before anyone says "You shouldn't do the job if you can't hack it" let me say we are looking after someone who should be more appropriately placed but that would involve health care professionals getting their fingers out and doing something about it. We were supposed to be a temporary holding operation which it has been very convenient to extend and extend. Trouble is the poor sufferer isn't improving and we seem to be crying the wind. She is too young to be in this placement but it has salved everyones' conscience and because she can't make up her mind, due to her condition, then no one else is prepared to. Result is nothing moves forward and she is back to square one, has come full circle, and we are tearing her hair out trying to deal with the situation appropriately. Pigs in the middle as usual.
Well, it's another early start again so if I am going to succeed in getting any sleep tonight I had better make a move. I shall be back to vent more steam tomorrow, all being well, so beware!

still getting a grip

I think that I shall have to make a point of researching more thoroughly the whys and wherefores of this blogging business.
I tend to go straight to new post and type away instead of looking at what others are doing - arrogance I suppose.
What I do know is that I am not making the most of this opportunity and it's basically due to lack of thought and planning as well as lack of self-discipline.
On another tack, my daughter goes back to work tomorrow after maternity leave and it's going to be hard for her.
Part of her is going to miss being there when her girls are rampaging around learning at a rate of knots, and yet she has a good brain and is extremely capable and needs to be out there doing. I would hate her to let all that talent atrophy, especially the writing ability, in a welter of domesticity, so I hope and am encouraging her to be as objective as possible and see that she is providing for her own and their future. They are also being left with a super dad who loves them to bits so will not lose out in terms of care and attention. She has nothing to worry about, in that respect, and the world needs strong women like her - with brain and skill tempered by care and compassion.

tiding over

This is purely an exercise to fulfill my desire to make regular entries.
Today has been a day for visual art and learning about my lap top's limitations in the art department.
I have had two extra days off work after pulling a ligament at the back of my knee and having to hobble into work on Wednesday afternoon because there was no one to cover my shift. Fortunately, an extra member of staff came in so I concentrated on medication and administration, although I must admit not responding to the buzzer was very difficult.
There are times, and this has been one of them, when I am tempted to go into the office with "Mug" written across my forehead with marker pen, because I am sure no one else would be so crazy or so easily persuaded!
By Thursday morning the knee was so swollen and stiff I could only move with great pain and a walking stick. I had to admit defeat and ask to be covered for that day's shift. I am not the sort of person who can just sit and watch television so I have filled my time building up my stock of cards and experimenting with new designs when not feeling guilty about not fulfilling my duties.
My imagination outstrips both my ability and resources, damn it, and every imperfection is magnified in my eyes, contributing to my frustration. I never really believe in my ability and so give up before I've started.

Stephen Fry and Guttenberg's press

This was a magical programme.
From wine press to printing press,
Obvious when the suggestion was made.
The pouring of the font.
Lead, tin and antimony, immediate solidity,
Chemical alchemy.

Artisan plus intellect,
Shirt sleeves, dogged patience,
Muscle, brain power,
Inventive alchemy.

Effort producing such treasure,
Glowing asymmetric jewels
Juxtaposed with geometric compacted type,
The wonderful crackle of a page turned.

The secrecy of dangerous invention, ideas,
Accusations of subversion, or fear of same.
Medieval industrial espionage.
Guttenberg "brown tongued" to protect his invention
Printing papal indulgences to buy,
Buying papal indulgence to print.
Temporality and spirituality combined.
Stabbed in the back with foreclosure,
But new ideas were unstoppable.
Poor Guttenberg,
Face saved with a Palatine knighthood
And pension.
Aborted dreams salved by minor status.

Where would we be without the metal inverted "e"?
The clunk of type rippling in the form,
Caress of ink paddle stippling, glistening across letters,
The anxious creak of press,
Replication.

To watch craftsmen decoding the mystery of
Press construction, and in the process,
Invent problem solving devices.
Engineering alchemy.

It's having the knack, Stephen.
You have a special combination,
Erudition, intellect, humour.
Media alchemy.

Independence - what's that about?

I attended a review today where the word "independence" must have been uttered at least a dozen times and it made me think about what the word and reality actually is.
My thesaurus says : liberty, scope, range, latitude, elbow room. So, in the light of that definition just how independent are any of us?
Let me say, straight away, that I believe that the whole concept of independence is a misnomer, a mirage, so the ultimate irony is that it is the focus of whole sections of industry and philosophy - and is in reality completely unattainable.
Real independence would only be within the reach of a superhuman, robotic entity ( for even God needed company) who could supply all its own needs and had infinite elbow room.
How many of us actually do meet ALL our own needs? Do we grow and process all our own food, produce the materials to clothe and shelter ourselves, supply all our own utilities? I am talking about real independence, life without reference to others.
Of course we don't. However self-reliant we might think we are the truth is that we need others to fill the gaps in our own knowledge and abilities.
When I talk to clients about maintaining independence and how we can support them in that, I am beginning to feel I maybe selling them a lie.
I think I should be talking in terms of interdependence - the need we have for the skills and input of other people and their need for ours.
The frail elderly are particularly vulnerable in this area. Because we live in a society which covertly believes that you are only valuable when you are producing, whatever that society might say overtly, then when people reach the time of life when their obvious productivity seems to have ended, the sense of guilt and dependence is overwhelming. To ease that sense of guilt we promote the idea of independence as the holy grail of social care - we are so focused on it that we lose connection with reality, we are expending valuable energy striving for the unattainable.
Now, if we talked in terms of interdependence then not only would it be a realistic goal but we would actually value not only the client but all those making up the network that allows us and our society to function.
The frail elderly are often perceived as takers, a drain on increasingly scarce resources and as unproductive, with a parallel rise in the often unsubtle questions regarding their continued right to life.
Of course, the reality is that without these people I, and thousands of others, would be unemployed and even larger swathes of British industry would be defunct. Which begs another question as to whether there is a correlation between the low status of both the social care force and their clients and the fact that the makeup of both sections is still largely female, and aren't we cheaper by the dozen?
The truth is that we all need each other, in every situation. If no man is an island then no woman, or man, is independent, and we would need to be the one in order to really be the other. We could all start to function more realistically and attain more successfully. More importantly, we would recognise the value of those who really count in society - I am not talking about class or professional status - but anyone who enables any of us to function and meets our needs, however eclectic.

naughty girl

I have been a naughty girl and ignored you, dear Blog, but I feel so awful that the most I have been able to manage, especially after baby sitting Pixie 1, is to try to eat something and then go to bed.
I shall be glad when this week is over for all sorts of reasons and hope to goodness I feel better.
Am in to work this afternoon at the start of a run of three late finishes then in very early on Monday morning - hope I can manage it!
My colleague has been bereaved so I am holding the fort but I can't shield her from everything, much as I would like to.
More immediately, I must psych myself up to tackle the mundane domestic chores of hoovering and dusting - Boring! - the last things I want to do but I can only ignore it for so long.
My mind is firing on about a quarter of a cylinder so bye for now - maybe I should plug myself into the laptop to give myself a frisson of motivation.

writing exercise

I had tried all I could to kick start the writing drive, including buying an extortionately expensive little pad and pen at the railway station book stall. I worked on the principal that surely a train journey ought to stimulate the brain cells. Where did the genie go and what did I have to rub to make it re-appear?

For a start, this lousy rail service needs a kick in the pants. National Rail Enquiries give out the information, it's even printed in their guide but come day and time? No train and no one knows anything about it except National Rail Enquiries and us!

I check my mobile phone and wonder who Nicola is and which of my particular financial vultures she represents? I deleted her message without really listening to prevent the bolt of lead re-entering my stomach and dragging me back down.
At least, from the carriage window, there's a different view, looking over and down. The landscape has a different shape and interpretation from the perspective of other peoples' backyards.

I have upset the refreshment attendant by bringing my own food and drink. I'll put him out of a job - but prices shouldn't be so inflated I tell him. He's in a sulk.
The ticket inspector looked at my ticket three times. Do I look suspicious or does he not believe his own punch?

I make a crackly call to my destination and at least my grandsons seem glad to hear my voice and anticipate all the opportunities for inveigling sweets, magazines, junk that my visit offers.

The refreshment guy has a rhythm all his own. He drags the trolley so far down the aisle and, as the rattles of bottles deafens, he says "Any drinks?" with so much sibilance it becomes a hiss, a release of gas. His hips swivel in step with the wobbly wheels.

This time of year the sun is low, the shadows deep and in the fields the past peeps, teasing us with hints and possibilities.
The sun flickers through hazels and hedges. Will it trigger fits in those susceptible to strobeing?
It is a gloria in a mackerel sky.

hospital visit

Just back from a visit to the hospital and so many memories have been triggered.
It's forty years since I left the place but each time I call in the clinic at the main entrance I am reminded of the love affair that started in the building next door, the old casualty. He was a porter and I a student nurse. He had had an adventurous life and I was as green as grass. We embraced in the old porters' lodge across the road just before I went on night duty, he was my first port of call as I went to the wards, in the morning, and he was ready to leave after a night shift.
Further up the drive was the red brick, barrack-like, structure of the Nurses' Home -where we started off under the eaves as cadets, and moved from floor to floor depending on where we were in our training. I always said it was a cross between a convent, girls school, and military establishment - the only thing we didn't have was a service number.
Today, I decided to take the courtesy bus from one end of the hospital to the other. There is much re-building going on, as everywhere else, and the corridors I trod have been shorn of their outbuildings. Up the hill, the Lecture rooms, where the Principal Sister Tutor held austere sway are dilapidated and blanketed in new brick. Round passed the Clock Tower, anno domini 1878, glass and chrome cover the ghosts of Burns, Tennyson, Longfellow, Keats, a literary cloak to hide long rows of geriatric, psychiatric beds, and the locked units where the immoral girls were kept - the irony being they had been locked up to try and curb their pubescent sex drive and I had to leave because my sex drive made me an unmarried mother at 20. 30 years, or so, earlier and I could have been one of them!
Now into the relatively shiny new orthopaedic clinic where, what ever the surroundings, the waiting is just as interminable. And people don't change.
My ability to wait and watch started very early when you saw the doctor at 9am and were still waiting in the stuffy, cramped ambulance room, to go home at 3pm. My mother, bless her, had walked the wards before me and, despite herself, built up great reserves of stoicism and self control - she expected no less from me and the training started from the word go. So, no fidgeting, no whinging, no unkind comments about others - we waited our turn, being sensible and patient, after all we could be in a much worse situation and it would end, it really would. I just wanted to get home, get through breaking the news to dad, then onto the sofa,before a roaring fire and get my nose in a book knowing that this was how it would be for the next few weeks - safe, secure and endless opportunity to escape into my imagination.

Today, I seemed to be the only singleton amongst a crowd of orthopaedic couples. The clinic staff seem to plod about looking hangdog and casual - the system must be known to them, one hopes, because it certainly isn't obvious to the patients. Opposite, sits a small, blonde haired, middle aged woman, huddled into an Astrakhan coat. Eventually, a large, louche, man joins her, loud and tapping her thigh with a "Now then my girl..." She brushes away his hand, embarrassed at his hearty familiarity. To begin with I think he's taking advantage, that she doesn't really know him, that she wishes she was somewhere else and I expect her to get up and move away but she doesn't and it becomes obvious that they are together.
He has the face of a frog, he's bigger, coarser featured, with the flushed, almost cyanosed, complexion of a hard drinker. The clothes are good, he has a patterned scarf tucked into his collar, and I notice they they are both wearing similar shades of brown, but it can't hide the roughness that sits uneasily with late affluence. He subsides into the same reverie as the rest of us.
The saw whines in the plaster room. It has been many years since I had a cast removed but I can still feel the tickling sensation of the blade slicing through the gypsum and the sense of anxiety as it closed on the skin. Only the experience teaches you to actually believe the plaster technician when he says the saw vibrates rather than cuts - that it won't slice through the cast into the skin. After the first time you believe because you see with your own eyes but the mind takes more convincing and there is always the tinge of anxiety.
Ancillary staff slob to and fro. Piles of files and x- rays are ferried around in square, metal, four wheeled trolleys not the two wheeled wicker baskets with walking stick handles we used as cadets. And today there weren't enough wheelchairs to move patients who had been decanted from ambulances, into the waiting area but couldn't walk into the consulting rooms and so appointments were held up while staff scoured adjoining corridors for spare chairs. Various names are called and we strain to hear our own, afraid if we miss it then the wait will be even longer. I always remember the Senior Geriatrician giving me a lesson in voice projection the first time I did his clinic. He had been in the Brigade of Guards, an Old Contemptible, and always walked with great long strides carrying a furled black umbrella. It was my first out patients clinic and he sent me out with a set of notes to call "Mrs Smith" - no response so I tried another patient, still no response. He came out with me the third time and directed my attention to the fact that not only was it busy and noisy in the waiting area but Mrs Smith could have been to the toilet, be entering via the ambulance area or just plain deaf. "Lift your chin, Nurse, turn to your left, raise the pitch of your voice and call the name. Now, try it to your right, then finally, if there's still no answer, to the body of the clinic."
Of course Mrs Smith was there all the time, chatting to her neighbour and deaf, and the pimply nurse, feeling and looking unsure of herself had directed her voice into the buff manila folder of her notes.
I have often wondered whether something similar ought not to be mandatory training for clinic staff, especially as now I am the deaf one struggling to hear my name when a bored, staff member mumbles my name from the other end of the corridor, into my buff manila folder of notes.

Then, I am in to see a doctor and he's actually courteous enough to stand as I enter and shake my hand. He examines my fat, unattractive knees, reads my notes, checks my slightly less unattractive orthotic shoes and tells me we will leave well alone for another six months.

Here goes

Sitting here, shivering slightly with the change in the weather, I have several issues exercising my mind and emotions so this entry may take sometime to compose and complete. It may also seem very random in content.

A few days ago I received a circular from the Royal British Legion highlighting the problems of, and help given to, various categories of casualties of service personnel and their dependents. It both angered and moved me considerably. Angered me that people are being jettisoned back into civilian life, after suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and being discharged as unfit for duty, with very little after care or support, and they and their families are having to turn to a charity for basic welfare provision. It moved me as I have a family member suffering from the same condition who is venturing back to work on Monday in order to save his job, home, and his children's education. If he doesn't make a successful return then he will be in the same boat and, quite frankly, I don't know how we will all cope. My capacity to withstand one crisis after another is waning and while the spirit is still willing the flesh and bank balance are spent!
I can see a period of intense and prolonged prayer coming on. On more than one occasion I have set myself the task of intensive prayer which meant actually getting on my knees for long periods and concentrating deeply to exert as much spiritual force as possible - e.g. at the births of my grandchildren in difficult circumstances. Prayer comes every day, in every way, but there are times when extra effort is necessary and I can feel this will be one of them.

Second installment coming up. The other thing to exercise me this week is my growing not-so-little list of those who won't be missed(to paraphrase the song from The Mikado) and I want to add Naomi Campbell to the list, and those like her.
They are all spoilt brats who take up valuable space, do nothing meaningful or useful, need their bottoms smacking, should be sent to bed without any tea and minus their dummies and not allowed out until they have matured sufficiently. Paris Hilton was let out of prison far, far too early for my liking.
Why we throw our hard earned cash at these rich,useless entities, who then grow richer while we grow poorer defies any sort of logic. The same argument was presented to me as a reason to stop smoking and it worked better than any health advice.
Add to the list, also, those incompetents who foul up and are not held accountable (they need a list to themselves!). If I have to carry the can for my actions then I am damned sure everyone else should as well. Yes, I know it's an unfair world but that doesn't mean we have to let injustice go by default just because the worst aspects of human nature seem to predominate.
And if another person bleats to me about not being able to come to work because of a pain in their backs, heads, stomachs or egos, I shall scream, quietly as usual, because it is a daily fact of life for me. I want to say "welcome to my world" where the expectation is that one will just carry on regardless, cope with whatever is thrown at one and just get on. If this seems like a self-regarding rant you are absolutely right - where else can I let off steam?

bursting forth

Get ready, Blog, because the pressure is building and come Saturday I intend to let you have it full force.
I have been ferreting around and there are a lot of drafts that I need to transpose and get into some sort of formal order or it will never happen.

My mind is once again starting to buzz with fantasy and characters acting out their lives on the screen of my frontal lobe. If I don't give them a voice and record their activities then they will plague me to death and I shall know no peace. Whether what I write has any quality or credibility is another matter - the important thing is that they are demanding I release them and I can't ignore it anymore.
This is the one area of my life where I can have free rein, although it does feel as if the characters control me, and I decide their fates. I can be at the centre of this particular universe and manipulate to my heart's content,pathetic as it may seem.

I will try hard to maintain the boundary between the realities and not lose sight of what is real and what I have created. We could get very philosophical here as what constitutes reality and varieties thereof but I really am too shattered to think that deeply.