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Carrie Fisher

Filed under: Mental Health, personal — Leave a comment
December 2, 2024

There are always anchor points to our lives. Places we come back to, sounds and smells that take us to somewhere we know perhaps with someone of that time. There are memories we have of people that have mattered, whether close or just there somehow woven into the fabric of what makes us who we are and who we have become. 

I am a man of a certain age, wait, before you read from the title to that statement and start inferring anything, I am a man who came to Star Wars as a boy and a very young boy at that. My father took me to see it at the Dominion Leicester Square in Central London in 1977 when it first came out, I was 5. It was only the second film I had seen after Bugsy Malone, which was a film by adults but involving children not so much older than me and in a pleasant little movie theatre in Wimbledon. Bugsy was like the playground life I wanted to have. Star Wars was different, it was a fantasy film the like of which I had never seen before, in fact I don’t think anyone had seen before.  The screen was vast, the noise deafening, the action beguiling and encompassing, the ships, the explosions, the characters, it was already iconic for me before I even left my seat. 

After the film it pretty much populated my Christmas lists for years to come, the figures, the accessories, any memorabilia. My father even made me a model Death Star in a way Blue Peter could have taken blueprints from, indeed it was better than the one that cost parents a small fortune to satisfy their children’s demands. In fact I still have things that refer back to it. A t-shirt that says ‘Rebel Scum since 1977’ and picture books of the ships and bases that are written by people of my age for people of my age under the guise of being for people our children’s age!

The actors in the film were comparatively unknown, for me they were completely unknown of course. Thus they were cemented in my head all in that moment, in that role.

There is much said about Carrie in her role as Princess Leia, I’m sure many fathers and teenagers seeing the film in those days, and for many more since, have had rather more lascivious thoughts than I wish to speak of here because in case you’ve forgotten I was 5. She was simply an angel. I never felt any urge that was of the more base nature but the lure of her was always there. I presumed just bought into the story so much.

I’ve watched films from the franchise since, including the original ones some time ago now, I think when my own children were young, but I haven’t watched any of the first 3 since 2016 until they were on the television back to back over a weekend in the run up to Christmas this year. I was pleased to get the chance to see them as it had been long enough to make it all interesting again and to walk down memory lane somewhere in that galaxy far away.

I had reckoned without my reaction seeing Leia though. In the first film she reminded me of a good friend of mine whom I texted facetiously as a result and I thought little more of it. In the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi though I began to feel deeply melancholy about her, it was a sense of loss, a sense that this was Carrie’s trail left behind long after she’s gone. I saw her in a way that re-evoked that sense of the angelic presence of her and the character yet in a more adult way than that of a 5 year old. I was aware of her beauty, the deep brown eyes, the soft skin but there was a fragility to the image as I knew Carrie was no longer here. It remained a sense that was a level of emotion rather than anything that touched any coarseness.

In a way what happened would likely be the case with any photos or videos of lost loved ones that come to light after they have gone and you sit wistfully remembering them and all the images that flood your mind as a consequence. But this is surely not normal in the case of someone you had never met? Or is it, given the very significance? I go back to that assessment of people and assorted things in your past that have that shade of colour that forms part of the overall picture of you. 

I don’t know Carrie from other films really, I know of her in the odd comedy such as Catastrophe where I think she probably pretty much played herself and seemed to derive quite a lot of pleasure from doing so. I know her from the odd program about mental health too. I know stories of her life, which she certainly lived, but really I know her from Star Wars and principally the big 3 films. I wasn’t a child any more when the latter one’s in which she featured came out and neither were my children young anymore in a way that enabled me to take them to the cinema. Perhaps they would have come if I’d asked, it didn’t occur to me at the time. I wish I had done now.  I did see her though in the later film. It was still her, older as we all were but still that presence. I didn’t know that her last performance had been in effect posthumous and recycled clips that had been unused from other parts. I did know when she died, I do remember feeling some loss then, a screen icon of my generation, the equivalent of an Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Moore  to my parent’s generation in terms of impact. 

To me it isn’t just Carrie it’s also Leia and it isn’t just Leia it’s also Carrie. There is an inexorability between the two that perhaps actors must hate, when they become too synonymous with one character. Is it the same when that character is so big, so utterly epic that the mark they leave in that role will be felt across generations that are yet to have even been born?

I’ll grant you I will probably be extremely sad when Mark Hamill dies, he was in effect my first hero, but one that has a sense that isn’t all comic book like and has some depth. He has not been especially active on screen such as not to also be fundamentally still linked to the character of Luke. Likewise I’m sure when Harrison Ford dies I will feel immensely sad too, an actor I have watched in many films that I have enjoyed and who seems always to have been a good man, with a a wife I have always held fondness for too. But Carrie died 8 years ago and she was only 60, she was younger than my parents and I seem now to be lamenting for that fact.

Even writing this elicits a sense of hurt, of longing and of loss. Akin I think to what the Brazilians call Saudades. I have saudades for Carrie Fisher! Which is quite quite insane! Carrie herself might have enjoyed that, the strangeness of a feeling that comes from no position of sense. She was very open about her mental health and bipolarity, something she and I share interestingly, so there is a connection there, albeit the loosest thread imaginable but it does exist. It’s more tangible at least than saying something like I once shopped at the same supermarket as she did. Which is just as well because I think that’s highly unlikely. 

What I don’t understand is why to the degree it comes now and the very depth of it. It feels genuinely discomforting and has made a mark that will scar. It may seem an odd little interlude to write this, in a way that might be to some very banal but it doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like having some repressed loss has just surfaced and has done so in a way that will need to be grieved and how do you grieve for Carrie Fisher? I’m sorry Carrie, I should perhaps have marked your passing at the time a little more but perhaps I wasn’t able to process it or more likely just didn’t realise the impact you had on me at such significant ages. I’m sorry about that so if it helps balance the dispersed matter that’s out there I will shed the tear now if that’s ok with you.

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I haven’t forgotten

Filed under: personal — Leave a comment
October 21, 2024

I have however rather forgotten how to make an entry specific and to the point without it turning into some long-winded attempt to cram however many years of stuff that I have been sat on for so long.

It seems strange that it should matter at all, there has never been a time when I felt more like this was casting words into a void but conversely felt not able to express anything of any great personal sense save for political ramblings. Perhaps this may change one day if I continue to write, in truth though it’s been 10 years since I was really attempting to again and more years before that since I had done so with any regular success. It’s the lack of routine, the lack of linear train of thought, where once when blogging on the basis of an online diary when for much of the time I had bugger all else going on then it was straightforward. Now I have to write at times large volumes of stuff for work and so it feels here like a busman’s holiday. That said I can be fairly cross at work, but reigned within parameters perhaps somewhat more.

Once I’ve managed to split the long entry into sections I would hope to publish it. This may yet take some time as it is not easy doing it on a hand held device which feels more the sort of thing to be tapping out brief messages rather than essays but works better with the app than more traditional methods.

There is still much in my mind. A great deal of personal stuff that needs reconciling that perhaps the exorcising of in written form may help with. I think this was the beauty of this medium before, the ability to vent political anger, angsty love-life tribulations and the odd bit of general pap like this. 20 years ago that took up a lot of time, and rightly so, now older, stabilised a little more on meds and with a more comfortable domestic environment it is rather different. I just can’t seem to entirely let go of the idea altogether and there remains one to whom I would prefer to send words here in case they might still be listening. I doubt it but it seems important just as they are.

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The Prism Of Subjectivity & Echo Chambers

Filed under: Why Aren't You Angry? — Leave a comment
August 12, 2024

One might be forgiven for thinking that I had either given uo being angry or perhaps just shuffled off this mortal coil altogether. Neither is the case. It has however been a long long time since I felt the ability to write properly and give adequate voice to the thoughts that are still going round just as they did over 20 years ago when I started this process.

Nothing specifically has changed over the last three or four years since I had tried to re-ignite the spark and the combustion engine of vocabulary into life, nothing has changed that make me think the world is any more fair or stable than it was 20 years ago. If anything things have become more parlous. The COVID-19 pandemic has rendered the world before it almost unrecognisable in so many facets, we have had to live through the sort of life changing events that might previously have only been known by the generation in the 1930s and 40s, at least in terms of the effect on those in the western world. I use that caveat because it would be arrogant and ignorant to assume that in other countries there has been the sort of stable productivity that we have enjoyed within Fortress Europe. Even within that stability has been an ever widening golf between those who have and those who have not.


The world in which I used to write came from a situation where blogs had been a method of expression predated the wider sense of social media these days. Realistically it was foreseeable the distillation of conversation was on the cards long time ago as soundbites and snippets became more vogue than pros and musings or poetry or self reflection. To try to draw a clear distinction between the self-absorption feeling one had something valid to say if it was several paragraphs as opposed to finite number of characters would be to rather miss the point.

however, in times of such turmoil, injustice, insecurity and outright world War soundbites simply do not cut it, rendering a subject either banal or simply one worthy of glib reflection without substance or fact check. There is ever too much to say and sense of importance rendered by where to start. However, to deny oneself voice as a result of that is simply to descend into the sort of inertia that can only lead to accusations of acquiescence.

The problem with social media now is that it does not invite meaningful debate indeed in my view it never did, but a medium such as blogging realistically cannot really do so either unless one has a sufficiently broad-based audience that are willing to express differing opinions and make arguments and counter arguments accordingly. When I look back on the many post I wrote over the years seldom was there realistically an amphitheatre by which people would discuss topics with any great thought and significance. In fact the entry that had received the most interaction was a review of an event to which I had taken my children and my subsequent eye, at corporatised something that should have been fun had become.

that I cannot claim to feel that my writing is now Wood in gender any great importance or Harold change and therefore this can only serve to become something of a speaking platform for me to exercise my own anger, frustration and reflection. One might ask therefore to what end I would continue, but my own so would be that this is where I started all those years ago and it proved for me cathartic, thought provoking and perhaps inspired me to be a little more active outside of the written word. I have for some considerable time felt that my lack of any interaction has indeed led me to feel that others may feel I have gone soft, uncaring, old, or just ambivalent towards the plight of my fellow humans. If it must be that this medium is the one that is to be the beginnings of a reawakening of social conscience and activity then so be it.

I will be judged as to the nature of how I perform in this latest endeavour and whether or not these are idle words or ones of substance.

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Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

Filed under: General Life, Mental Health, personal — Leave a comment
July 27, 2021

Blogging may well be seen as hopelessly outdated in this more modern of worlds. Facebook is increasingly on the way out and the distilled banality of Twitter holds sway along with Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok and the like.  I am not one for little snippets of information though perhaps there is something about the constancy of provision that would have been a help, I confess though the platforms always seemed rather more self-indulgent than anything else.  Blogging is a self-indulgent form to a degree I will admit but it is not the primary function, nor would I contend one that cannot be counteracted.

I have found a way to post again, still using the classic method which affords me a sense of not having to learn more to do comparatively little.  I remain committed to writing and have a head full of content though my ability to express it continues to be distinctly sketchy and haphazard.  The lack of consistency almost certainly renders this a lone voice in a wider wilderness but I hope to continue it just in case a lonely traveller might hear it now and again.

It would be easy to have a sense that I lost my way at a particular time but in reality I don’t think I’ve known the direction for a long period of time and coping with survival sometimes makes doing anything more than keeping going just seem too much work.  I know begin once again to see the need to try to regulate things in order to try to help myself because survival, whilst I have negotiated it to still be here has not been especially kind to the body or the mind and recent scares in health have required me to take some stock.  I would like to say there has been an epiphany and that it has precipitated a new verve and impetus but that is yet to happen, it is more about knowing that where I am now is neither healthy nor sustainable.

Where this leaves things is unclear, whether this becomes something that can be viewed in this format we will have to see but I know that without writing regularly I am unhappy and therefore this needs addressing with urgency.  With so many people falling casualty to global circumstances these days it would be the worst form of waste to fall casualty to things that should be within my control.  This sort of self-reflection is very easy, at least in comes so to me, it is the enacting it to create tangible difference that remains less simple as can be reasonably viewed through any trawl in the archives here.

It remains easy though to rattle through 500 words in a way that at school used to take days of thinking about and always seemed a lengthy task, of course there I was never given the option of just writing a record but instead needing to document matters of fact in areas in which I seldom had any interest. It is possible my writings now are no less turgid than they were then but at least I don’t have to take the parlous markings back to my parents in shame!

Stay safe out there.

Song Of The Day ~ The War On Drugs – Red Eyes

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Oh Peachy

Filed under: Political — Leave a comment
April 29, 2021

So, WordPress have decided to cut off the last remaining method I had found to be able to add posts using the classic editor, cumbersome for some perhaps but in a format in which I was familiar and could structure things how I wanted to. I have tried posting a blog on another site which in draft format looked how I wanted but when published completely different and I have no idea why. It is ironic having paid the years subscription that I should then be hamstrung by technical difficulties.

The hiatus up to this point was one of motivational uncertainty, any silence now however is far more to do with the blocks system just not being as intuitive as the classic system and being difficult to navigate at a time when content is difficult enough makes for a process that is far more frustrating than cathartic. The ‘Classic Block’ is not even a poor man’s solution I can’t see it being of any use to anyone. I may in time try to solve matters and perhaps even be able to figure it out but I can’t promise anything.

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Future Shocks – Not Thriving At Work

Filed under: Future Shocks, Mental Health — Leave a comment
April 9, 2021

I am deeply concerned about the working world. Already the statistics of people with long term and serious mental health conditions obtaining and/or maintaining long-term work are very poor and speaking as someone in work with such conditions it is very easy to see why.  I will concede that the discussion around Mental Health has improved to an extent over the last 20 years from what I have witnessed.  What was once very specifically taboo can now be discussed more openly, people are able to declare and people are coming forward to seek professional help.  But in my experience and that of many I see that structure to cope with people needing help just isn’t there, it isn’t there at a clinical level and then you leave someone in a heightened state of vulnerability more alone to face the world, at which point they may be more aware of the help they need at a time no one is willing to provide it.  It goes the same way at work.  I have long since declared my Mental Health conditions in the workplace formally, I have my reservations about doing so and I understand those that do not but the nature of the job I know means I do not feel I could counsel others to do it in their workplace if I had not done so in mine. I am aware though that when speaking to others about it I am cautious to try to assess into what environment they would be placing themselves if they do.

We are still in a world where if you are in many jobs and off work for a reason that is a disability your absence remains recorded just as if you had a cold. Whilst this is direct discrimination if you were to suffer any detriment such as hitting trigger points for review meetings etc. the law has no real recourse unless you were to lose your job and most people are aware enough of the difficulty of getting a job that to risk it on the basis of the law helping out seems foolish and indeed most certainly would be.  The law is not there for the little person, its protections are scant and difficult to enact, there are many loopholes for employers to avoid falling foul of it that only really the most naive or the most dogmatically nasty should do so.

Of course employers know how to play the game and will talk about the importance of mental health and wellbeing as if it is at the forefront of their agenda, they may even cite the very sort of research that suggests it indeed should be.  ‘Thriving At Work’ [2017] a study commissioned by the last government some years ago showed as a result of extensive Deloitte research that money proactively invested in promoting and maintaining good Mental Health in the workplace had a return on investment in £ pounds of up to 9:1 and very often at least 5:1+ whilst reactively trying to clean up the problems of poor Mental Health and wellbeing could show only 2:1 at very best. You might reasonably therefore think that if even the bean counters should be impressed that the agenda must move along.  I have heard anecdotally about companies looking to utilise this information and take a proactive approach and have Mental Health First Aiders in the workplace and the promotion of positive mental health and in the examples I have heard it has proven hugely beneficial.  But these have been anecdotal and from small enlightened environments and very very much in the minority.

The problem I would assert is a sense of risk aversion coupled with a lack of humanity.  We have moved in the workplace often to a position of default mistrust, more people have to spend vast swathes of their time justifying what they have been doing rather than actually doing it. The people they are justifying it to often have little or no idea about the actual job and therefore it is more about justifying the latter’s existence than anyone actually doing any work.  In this culture you must therefore be able to show what you have been doing all the time and that just isn’t how people tend to work.  Everyone has time when they are productive and time when they are not, days when we are more ‘on it’ than others are not restricted to those with Mental Health conditions this is just the nature of Mental Health in general. The great problem for Mental Health is you can’t easily verify it and in the position of mistrust there is an assumption that perhaps someone is putting it on if they should refer to having issues in a way that would be unthinkable for a physical disability.  The damage that sort of rhetoric is allowed to do is seismic and should be stamped out but it isn’t because to do so would require admitting the scale of many problems, not least what the hell the tranche of middle managers are doing and whether or not the best way to get service running wouldn’t be to have more people trained and happy working at the coal face.

I have worked in many environments in the Public-, Private- and Third Sectors and none had their act together on Mental Health apart from a Disabled People’s User-Led Organisation which took a sufficiently enlightened view towards Mental Health and sought to support as much as possible that I felt empowered enough during my 6 months there that I never needed to call upon them to support me because I felt it was there and my productivity remained pleasingly constant for all parties.  Most organisations however enlightened they may like to portray themselves, whether or not they believe their own rhetoric, when it comes to issues of disability are only interested in covering their own backsides, the risk aversion runs to simply ensuring they cannot be sued.

What worries me most is that although I know my rights and am not afraid to exercise them I also know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em, I know certain battles that aren’t worth fighting and other times when a point of principle has to be held firm and that the former usually vastly outnumber the latter.  Yet I have found the working world to be intransigent to the point of belligerence, the ignorance and lack of compassion is astounding even when it becomes clear (and not by ramming it down someone’s throat).  I have tried to work to help better things but invariably been seen as someone being difficult to the point where it has made my position untenable on more than one occasion.  By and large I have managed to just about stay in work but it has not been at all easy.  I worry for the others who are not so bolshy, who for reasons of childcare or accommodation simply cannot afford to fold and have to trudge through the anguish and take it again and again. The long term implications of this are huge and I believe ultimately will lead to the premature death of a great many people who did nothing more than try to keep going in the face of it all.

Song Of the Day ~ Sinkane – Everybody

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The Treacle Of Attrition

Filed under: Mental Health, personal — Leave a comment
March 24, 2021

At times things can feel as if survival is hard enough and progression is really too much to ask for.  One has to make a distinction between the times here when you are having a little wallow in self-pity and need hauling out of it or between those times when a darkened room and foetal position is the best method of survival.  It isn’t always easy to know which is which and if we don’t know how can we expect others to know how they might be able to react?  There are times however when progress feels possible and others where it clearly isn’t, again it isn’t always clear, nor is it always within your control to determine the results or variables that come into play. How many times might you hear 2 steps forward 3 steps back, everyone has these moments, maybe stretching into longer periods of time where progress appeared hampered such that they feel despite working towards something the goal appears to be further away than if they had done nothing. Sometimes it’s to do with specific tasks we undertake to complete, projects, DIY, even interpersonal relationships, indeed the concept that things must get worse before they can get better is not entirely alien to us. Provided we remain of the opinion that the ultimate goal is on track, that progress of a fashion is being made we may reasonably encounter adversity and carry on, besides which by and large ‘initial setbacks’ are considered par for the course so we accept this tenet. The key is that sense of forward motion however gradual it may be for 2 steps forward 3 steps back over a period of time represents a cumulative negative, if not offset at some stage by more even than 3 steps forwards and only 2 steps back we may never realistically pass the part at which we started.  That’s a long-winded and roundabout way of saying that sometimes it feels like you’re walking through treacle and you might be better off stopping for at least a time.

A continual press against a seemingly immovable object where progression is not made might be better expressed as a war of attrition, that any ground won would probably just as easily be offset by ground lost elsewhere and a sense of enduring and debilitating stalemate. I think with mental health this can often feel very much the case and especially in darker times because each moment of work is all the more difficult not just to achieve but even to attempt in the first place and thus any sense that it has not been ultimately successful becomes a bitter pill to swallow as it hints at further work to come and sometimes even the very thought of that can be more debilitating than the job at hand itself. I know of a method of representing privilege which is to do with determining someone’s starting point and it is a useful model that can be adapted for other things I believe.

The premise is this, everyone stands in a line whilst societal influences act as filters to determine where someone ultimately begins – those of an ethnic minority background take one step back from the line, those who are women take a step back, those who have a disability take a step back and so on until a certain number of filters have been applied to reveal your starting position. These steps back can of course be cumulative, if you fit the criteria of several factors such that you may be many steps behind others at the outset given certain factors that are beyond your control.  If you therefore take certain life progressions as a step forward it is easy to see that even were everyone to have the same amount of progress they would not be in the same position and that for someone who started behind someone else they would have to have more steps forward to mitigate the filters that set them back.  This model works well for applying a sense of context to what would be the nature of any progress, it counteracts the argument of the classic white middle class educated male claiming that they got where they are today on the basis of hard work and not because the system has afforded them anything for free.  With this model one can see that they may well have worked hard to progress several steps but those who may not be at the same forward line as them may indeed have worked just as hard getting themselves to the starting point of those born with privilege.

The way this can be applied to mental health is not dissimilar. For most people getting out of bed in the morning is a factor of life we go through day after day, it does not have to mean we feel rested or enjoy the time we have to do it but we have the capability to accomplish it and move on to the next task and by and large this is what we do. When we are physically unwell it is clear that there are times when this is more difficult or may be impossible but it is less obvious when we are mentally unwell.  I was once told the difference between having a cold and flu is the £50 note test, someone tells you there is a £50 on the doorstep outside and that if you hurry you will catch it before it blows away.  If you are able to get yourself out of bed no matter how much of a struggle then you don’t have flu.  Having had flu 3 times in my life I can verify that it would not matter if you raised the payout on the doorstep then result would be the same because the capability to function is just not there.  That type of flu is apparent to people looking at you as it exudes from the crumpled nature of your being.  Mentally there are times too when the result would be the same but these are difficult for anyone outside to be able to see and not always easy for me to define.  We not only have a mask we don ourselves but I think those who know us have a mask of presumption too, one that means they think they see us as ok if generally speaking that is what they see, or want to see.  

I have found it frustrating that in spite of one of the most isolationist periods in our times, not exclusively but hugely exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, precious few people have reached out to me amidst the silence despite many knowing specifically that I am at my worst when left alone in darkness.  Whether they have had their own demons, issues, crises, whether they have felt that to remove the veneer of their assumption about me might reveal more than they are realistically willing or able to attend to I cannot say.  I can only say it has been a period of some of the most intense, sustained darkness and solitude I have experienced, to breaking point. If you know people out there from whom you’ve not heard, try to say something to them, try to tell them you care.  You may never know whether it has an impact on them, however their continuing existence may be enhanced by it, or in some cases perhaps even depend on it.

Song Of The Day ~ Mazhar Ve Fuat – Adimiz Miskindir Bizim

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49

Filed under: Mental Health, personal — 1 Comment
February 20, 2021

— Trigger warning —*

A couple of years ago when given a new diagnosis of my mental health condition I did what I suspect a number of people have done in those situations and googled about the condition.  I do not take Dr. Google in any way as gospel, fear not, but it is often a useful staring point for where I might be able to find out more or things I may need to go back and refer to my actual Dr. Like using Wikipedia to determine whether something you didn’t know is really obvious and you ought to have known or a bit more obscure and an interesting little interlude.

What was most stark was a study I found that suggested the average life expectancy for someone with my condition was 49.  I am now 49.

I nearly finished this entry right there with the last sentence, such is its power for me but it does require some further extrapolation and of course an average age is just a figure, the sum of all part as it were, but to say it shocked me genuinely would be an understatement because whether just to do with me or not this data was taken on the basis of other people’s lives.  Medical information that I find now a few years later suggests that actually life expectancy for those diagnosed with Bipolar is shortened by between 11 and 20 years, more factual specific data, not quite as punchy but certainly no less shocking.  To put this into perspective Obesity is thought to shorten life in men by up to 20 years and in women up to 5 years and there are national campaigns everywhere seeking to address the problem. The difficulty is that mental health doesn’t do things the way physical health does and therefore is far less easy to see, to diagnose or to treat but it is no less dangerous a phenomenon of our times and the impact no less debilitating as a disability to those suffering from it.

There are deaths that are directly attributable to a specific mental health condition, suicide being the most common and most tragic but what are less easy to factor in is all the co-morbidities that impact on the life of someone with a mental health condition, the greater likelihood of substance abuse or the damage caused by stress which are directly relevant but are practically impossible to quantify. I know my own capacity to deal with certain types of stress is drastically reduced, in particular at certain times, and that my own crutches include matters that tend towards greater likelihood of obesity and the like, which then bring the statistics associated with those conditions into play as well.

There is much talk of the beneficial effects of good diet and exercise and the effect this has on mental health, things which in lucid logical moments are of clear defined benefit but the watchword is in lucidity, much of the time when not in a good place one is not thinking about good diet, some people fail to eat, others eat too much and seldom is a good healthy balance the most obvious thing.  Likewise exercise is something that can not only bring health but joy to people, they enjoy going out for a walk, run, cycle etc. but when joy is the furthest thing from your mind what occurs with exercise can often be the same type of chore as cooking a healthy meal. You want to live by numbers, the lowest common denominator until things feel better, whenever that may be.  You make deals with yourself about how you will tackle things when you feel well again but very often that time never comes and this leads back into shame just as the financial crises we can end up in do the same.

We find crutches that make us feel a little better whatever that may be and like crutches there may be certain times when for short-term recovery these may not be a bad thing. But, like crutches there comes a point in time where you have to put weight on the leg and walk properly again or your ability to do so in the future will become compromised eventually perhaps irrevocably so and what was once a help becomes the very thing causing the maximum amount of damage.

Vicious circles abound in mental health, from the smaller consequences to much larger ones, for example lack of healthy diet means you may develop conditions which manifest physically on your skin or affect your build.  External appearance may not bother you in the good times but under the microscope of the bad times you see the flaws and you understand why they are there, the narrative becomes so easily self-critical – they are there because you are bad, broken, derelict, a failure.  You know the risks, you know the dangers and yet still you repeat the same patterns, what is wrong with you? You cannot even sort your own self out so what chance is there of sorting out anything else…? Where’s my crutch…?

Lack of healthy diet may lead to being overweight and the scrutiny is the same.  Yes it is my choice what I do and don’t eat by and large because I am an adult with an income and I can buy healthy or non-healthy foods.  I try to ensure I shop when I feel ok because the contents of that shop are geared around me looking after myself.  But then there are the downturns and the non-essential trips to buy the non-essential things because I might be feeling low and hungry for some comfort food.  Or maybe it’s the takeaways or the extra beers… etc.  Then I have spent money I didn’t need to spend, I have perfectly adequate food in the house, why have I gone and bought something I didn’t need and shouldn’t have again, why am I adding to my debts, why am I allowing food to go off because I’m eating crap?  I am bad, broken, derelict, a failure. I know the risks, I know the dangers and yet still I repeat the same patterns, what is wrong with me?  Where’s my crutch…?

I know these circles so well, often before during and after I am able to see the cycle for what it is, before I may try to put into place what I can to stop it and after the recriminations of the shame may make me also do similar and yet time and again the pattern goes on.

I am not seen as a risk to others nor to myself, what that means in medical terms is that I show no signs of physical violence nor activity that suggests I would commit suicide and those factors are correct.  But to assert from that that I am not causing myself harm completely misses the point.  I know the harm I cause both emotionally and physically, I imprison myself, frustrate myself, am ashamed of myself constantly. I know that I am rendered a less able, less successful, less happy person for those around me and therefore am I not causing them harm too?  The damage I have caused to others is unquantifiable and that ambiguity feeds so easily into a critical narrative.  Should it matter? Well perhaps, perhaps not but because I am who I am it does matter, how I have treated people matters to me in a sort of final reckoning way. I am not at all religious, any judgement comes from myself but I am aware of the tallies and I have a memory that retains the worst things all too easily whilst often forgetting the good ones which seems grossly unfair.

The fact that I am still here at 49 is not a testament to fortitude, it is not some form of success story, it is a set of circumstances by which one of my main vices, a sort of frustrated indolence, has led to there being no other option.  In actual fact I might muse that for me to be here at all represents in some way a tragedy like a strangled cry echoing or the light from a star existing in our sky long after its source has ceased to exist. Something that is noise after the usefulness has gone.  I don’t always feel like that but it is a train of thought I am familiar with.  To look at that which I might have done and the differences I could have made is the road to madness and one I have walked for many a year. The path is never easier nor the way back any clearer, the journey itself is so often tainted with fear, regret and shame that it is almost an emotional Sisyphusian struggle.  I wonder then how many others are in a situation where the reasons they expire might just be fatigue, the lacking of the ability to push the weight any more.  I hope they found rest.

*I put the trigger warning at the top not for effect and not because I feel it would specifically trigger anything but because I now know that if you’re just not in the mood sometimes it is helpful to know when to just walk away and come back to it later when you feel more ‘on it’. Prior to this year I knew of people talking about potential triggers but had no direct experience of it to draw on and I am very much an empirical beast.  Now I understand, in a relatively small confined way but no less significant for the window it affords me I had an incident that rendered me specifically in crisis at the time, disproportionately so, and mentions of it or reading through matters regarding it retained the power for some time to put me back in that place and experiencing the same level of distress.  I experienced a physical manifestation of what was going on in my head such that made me physically shake incapable of stopping.  This is not usual for me at all.  So now I understand the need sometimes for a trigger warning.

Song Of The Day ~ Honeyblood – Walking At Midnight

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The Great Counter-Revolution Scandal – Part 1 – Slogans & Substance

Filed under: General Life, Mediawatch, Political, Politics Blogs, The Great Counter Revolution Scandal — Leave a comment
February 19, 2021

My hiatus meant that significant and generation changing matters such as Brexit in the UK and the election and defeat of Donald Trump in the US and it might reasonably be assumed I have an opinion on these matters!  I conflate the two things for good reason because I see them as coming from much the same area of ourselves and our societies.

The idea of debunking certain long-held tenets is not in itself a bad thing, in fact often quite the contrary, from such little acorns so the oak trees that can topple repressive regimes might grow.  The difficulty here is that for me to point out where the problem comes is in itself marking out a perhaps slightly patrician way of looking at the world and people in it.  The reason being that I see the movements that have led to both Trump and Brexit as being manipulation of the disenfranchised for the good of an already elite few rather than for the amelioration of the people actually being mobilised on the streets around these ideals.  I’m not saying that Brexit and Trump did not garner huge swathes of popular support, they undoubtedly have done, in a way almost unprecedented in modern times because in both case they have almost split the population of a significant Western country in binary opposition to one another. I would also not want to make out that I do not think the people in their anger and frustration do not have many reasons for feeling so, had they not they would have been impossible to galvanise into such a force.  The working classes of both Britain and the US have been left behind for so long that the gap widening between richer and poorer is entrenched in the system from top to bottom.  What worries me is that they should listen to people who have so obviously benefitted from the system as it stands as being the ones who will lead them from its darkness.

Whilst I am not one for national politics and consider myself both Irish and European I was not intrinsically against Britain leaving the European Union as part of a move to decentralise power and move it to a more local basis, that as a principle is something I can see might have merit, I would have been very interested to discuss certain aspects of how it would mechanically work but I would not be opposed to exploring the principle.  The Left in fact have long since had a fairly antagonistic relationship with the EU as an organ.  I was however considerably more opposed to the Brexit voted for in 2016 because this was so clearly not about a localisation of power but a recentralisation in a different centre that was itself less accountable, namely the British Establishment.  The protagonists claiming to want sovereignty back soon revealed their true colours when the national legal sovereignty flexed its muscles as the Supreme Court ruled certain actions, such as the prorogation of Parliament to have been unlawful, at this point the vitriol was so severe that the judges were in fact branded traitors by the Murdoch media.  These commentators and politicians clearly did not want the British people to have greater power they wanted themselves and their cronies to have greater power over the British people and the ability to make unfettered profits at their expense.  Murdoch himself coined it when he said that ‘When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.’ (He has since denied it and claimed he has never asked a Prime Minister to do anything but his denial came later and at a specific time he was looking for approval from politicians on a Sky News takeover so one could be forgiven for cynicism here).  To me Murdoch’s opposition to the EU was one of the great feathers in its cap but his papers and that of the Daily Mail’s campaigning over 40 years to influence the British public is one of the most disgraceful pieces of sustained misinformation of the modern era such was its breath, lack of substance and its mendaciousness. 

I understand to a degree why Americans en masse voted for Trump, there was precedent here long before Brexit, Boris Johnson indeed garnered many non-traditional supporters when he stood for mayor of London, people buying into the bumbling buffoon act he so often puts on much in the same way people have bought into Trump’s facade of successful businessman.  Both are fallacious, Johnson uses this persona in order to not seem like just another conniving privileged Tory bastard whilst Trump who inherited more money than most of us could hope to earn in several lifetimes has lost more than he has made and therefore is a net failure which is certainly not the success story he would have you believe.  This might have certain people casting their minds back over history for other such ‘failed’ figures that have held sway, the failed Austrian painter etc. etc. there will be parallels with many a dictator leader of course but I think the similarities between Trump and Johnson stretch to a great deal more than just curious conglomerations of blonde mop because they are very much 21st Century demagogues.

When you have an ill-educated and ill-informed electorate single-issue politics is very persuasive and this is not a 21st century phenomenon.  Give people binary instruction and tagline that are easy to understand without suggesting anything as to the mechanics of the process.  ‘Get Brexit Done‘ and ‘Make America Great Again‘ are prime examples of this just as the ‘stab in the back‘ theory (Dolchstoßlegende) was used in Weimar Germany to galvanise the German people into suspicion of the Establishment and the belief that politicians had betrayed the German army in WWI.  There is no actual substance to any of these proposals and that is crucial, it makes it consequently difficult to know by what indicator you would be measuring the success (or failure) of the endeavours. Whilst the Brexit slogan may seem to have a defined end point it is not clear what form of Brexit is to be ‘done’ by it and whether it would be the ‘no deal’ Brexit favoured only by the most cavalier, not to mention explicitly voted against by Parliament – the very body sovereignty is supposed to be coming back to following withdrawal from the EU.  Make America Great Again is yet more wooly, it doesn’t even have the idea of what greatness would or did look like nor whether anyone would have an idea when it had been achieved.  It is in fact rather like a ‘War on Terror‘ where no one truly knows when that noun can be seen to have been defeated!

There is a reason I have lumped the Brexit slogan in with Trump’s and that is because despite Brexit having in some way the framework for conclusion in terms of the conditions of Article 50 of the Treaty of Rome it is not that which was the reason for using it. Rather it was the vacuousness of the slogan itself and this I feel is best evidenced by the fact that Johnson attempted to use the phrase again when it came to the pandemic, though he quickly dropped it when it became clear that to link himself to something this nebulous which was potentially never going to go away was folly. Indeed his strategy was so much of a one-trick pony that it was soon followed to the waste bin of history by the very Chief Strategist Dominic Cummins – ‘Getting COVID Done’ requires a very different approach because you’ve not got the ire of the masses and the invective of the Daily Mail to fail back on. The people are looking for leadership, protection of their loved ones, reassurances for health and economic reasons, the enemy is unseen and cannot be vilified in a way that guarantees blind obedience.  The UK government has been typified throughout by it’s failure to decisively act and rather reaction to circumstances and this I would assert explains why the proportionate death rate due to Covid-19 in the UK is one of the highest in the world.

Trump’s reaction to Covid has been even worse than Johnson’s, he looked utterly out of his depth and that’s because he was.  Boris Johnson had several other cronies around him all flustering and floundering whilst Trump had the now infamous arse-clenching, legs-closing incident of one of his chief medical advisors in response to one of his more outlandish claims.  I don’t wish to make out that I presume politicians should have an immediate handle on a global pandemic, there is no shame in being all at sea, especially in the early days, we are all stumbling rather in the dark throughout our daily lives but the difference is in such circumstances you are best coming clean and leaving it to the clinical experts.  Trump instead employed a strategy of inventing or parroting spurious and at times dangerous claims about light and disinfectant amongst others in an attempt to somehow get himself back into the news agenda as the big shot again.  The principle difference between Trump and Johnson on this is that Johnson is the secondary school prefect caught with his trousers down in the boy’s dorm and whilst he won’t admit it has a degree of guilt written across his face and a knowledge that he hasn’t done very well whilst Trump hasn’t yet made it past primary level and looks as if he has been told that he can’t play in the sandpit today, what’s written on his face suggests utter ambivalence at the fact that he was the one responsible for the deposited faeces that rendered the sandpit off limits!

The analysis and studying matters because to quote a wise man ‘those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it‘ and in both Trump and Johnson what is clear is that our capacity to learn doesn’t seem to last very long before the very same things that worked to hoodwink people before are used successfully again – ‘fool me once, shame on… shame on you, fool me…….., can’t get fooled again‘ as a far less wise man once said in Tennessee! 

Song Of The Day ~ Biig Piig – Sunny

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The Power Of One

Filed under: personal, Political, Review — Leave a comment
February 12, 2021

For all my writings to be distilled to one entry I think would be a shame, but perhaps that’s sheer self-indulgence, to be remembered for or characterised by anything you have done (if benign) is a blessing.  I would like to hope that I have said something of value to more than one person across the years and well over 500 posts that I have published in the years I have been writing. Granted 500 now doesn’t seem that much these days given the 6 year hiatus recently and there were times in the old days when I could rattle off 50 posts in a couple of months but nevertheless, we are where we are.  In the early days I think there were more people using this form of expression but as the medium evolved so some have gone to Instagram I imagine, others wrapped up in Facebook and many have probably gone altogether.  Of all of the entries I have made there is one that has certainly received the widest attention which is the very angry review I wrote of the Snowden Mountain Railway in North Wales some 11 years ago following a visit with my children.  The experience had not been a good one and that sort of thing might have made me inclined to write something but what tipped the balance had been the friendly and genuine experience literally just across the road which juxtaposed itself so well.  

My first port of call had been sending something to the railway companies, a complaint to the SNR and a thank you to the Padarn Lake Railway, I received responses from both that were so in keeping with the initial treatment that they fed easily into the subsequent narrative given the contrast between the blasé indifference of the SNR and the genuine heartfelt response of the lake railway.

For quite some time on the first page of any google search for the SNR my post would appear resplendent and I found that pleasing, not only because it was mine but that people could easily get an alternative and independent view to the bog standard tourism side of things, partisan I’ll admit but independent nevertheless.  I was also pleased to be able to do a little in publicising the other little railway on which myself and my children had been treated with such warmth and kindness.

Those heady headline days are sadly gone, it is 10 years old after all and my review languishes now on page 5 with most of the preceding pages taken up by mostly standard corporate crap, my review is still more popular than this 2018 one written by someone who was given free tickets on the railway for the purpose of reviewing it which gives me a wry smile.  I should say that I make no judgement here as to the nature of the reviews, the person got a nice day and good views, who wouldn’t enjoy it when they’ve not even paid for the tickets, the price of which was one of my major contentions.

Much of the information in my post is now out of date and because it is a review of our trip at the time I do not see the need to update it, some of the commentators have done so in the information they have given and that is useful to determine how things might have changed over the years, which it appears they have and perhaps for the better.  The labelling and pricing of things does seem a little more transparent than it did when we travelled and that is certainly a good thing and was very much lacking on our trip.  I did write a follow up post in order to update things in 2015 but I think more in the hope to garner enough interest and interaction to get me back to writing than anything else.

[I discovered a mildly interesting thing though whilst browsing around in the preparation for this one.  If you type in Snowden Mountain Railway or even just Snowden in the search field for my blog the follow up post appears in the search results despite the title of the railway not being in the title of the entry whilst the original post, which does feature the railway title, does not appear in search results.  Strange or just me?  It’s not the tagging because if you click the Snowden Mountain Railway tag both entries come up right away.  I’d love to think that I bothered the railway enough for them to take proactive steps to have my post stopped but in reality I am long in the tooth enough to know that my importance is less likely to be the case than that of a simple coding issue! Hey ho!]

What the whole SNR review affair shows me is that what may seem the least significant may get the most coverage and that is often beyond my control. The review was written as a method of me having a rant, I did not go to any lengths to proliferate its coverage, at least not that I recall.  More simply but gratifyingly it demonstrates the power of someone writing a review in their own words for other people to read as they wish.  It was not my sole intention to cause the railway embarrassment, it was part of it because I felt that the enterprise was cashing in on parents wanting to do something nice for their children just as I did and the prospect of other children also being disappointed made me feel I needed to do something, I felt a counter narrative would allow people a better method of making up their own mind before such a hefty outlay and that if they did not have deep pockets they had an option across the road where they would be welcome.

I have always tried to write reviews and to do so fairly, if something is especially good I am just as likely to leave a review as if something is bad.  I like good service, I like quality and value for money and I like those little touches that make you feel that someone appreciates you being part of their customer base and that you are a person of value in your own right, one of the main reasons for that is that I think it is possible for anyone to do.  Civility, being personable and caring about others does not need to cost anything it just needs to be something that matters to you.  Those touches deserve to be acknowledged and rewarded and I try to do my bit to publicise them and I hope that allows those who have made the effort for me to feel that they have been appreciated.

Covid-19 Lockdown has shown me the power of supporting local businesses, from still getting meat from the butchers to ordering the occasional takeaway pizza from my former local pub.  I know these people, I know how their livelihood hangs in the balance and I want them to do well so that when all of this madness is over they will be able to continue to support the communities in which they are embedded and about which they have every reason to care.  We will have lost so many facilities over this period, much of the high streets and communities will have lost shops and services from large and small providers.  All come at a human cost make no mistake, I may shed more of a tear over an independent cafe going under than I do a branch of a chain closing its doors but I appreciate that for those working inside it is of little significance if they have lost their job from a big company or a small one when they cannot subsequently pay their own rent or put food on the table.

I feel at a time like this it is increasingly important for people to share their experiences, we are doing more online shopping for goods and services and have perhaps a little more time and capacity to review, in the case of local producers and traders it can go a long way to help them against the shortfall in advertising capacity that they may have.  Many businesses have thankfully still got the internet and will trade this way but if lockdown has taught us anything it is that whilst it can be useful to order something online when there are no other options a world where it is the only option is surely not one we would choose.  I cannot tell Amazon or a large supermarket what type of sausages or cut of meat I would like them to stock for me in a weeks time as I can with a butcher, I do not get little handwritten notes and extra sauce from dominos if I order pizza because the person has recognised my name like I have from my favourite publican. I’m not saying there aren’t chain shops where you can chat to those working there and build rapport because of course you can and much of that may depend on the staff and whether they themselves are local however their ability to influence wider policy decisions is diminished and their buy-in consequently might reasonably be expected to be less.

I have learnt far more about the companies from whom I order over the last year and been more specific then in tailoring those orders to the ones that I feel pass muster. I get handwritten notes from craft beer producers thanking me for ordering from them and this establishes a relationship with these people that is beyond the corporate and mundane and strikes to the personal.  Likewise I have ordered from them because being on their mailing list I have heard what they have been doing to safeguard their staff etc. and I feel businesses with the view that staff are their most precious resource and deserve to be protected should be supported over the ones who are profligate in their provision.  A brewery that made political points about the Black Lives Matter campaign and received much criticism about it got at least an order from me on the back of my appreciation that they were prepared to speak out against injustice and were looking to support local causes in the enfranchisement of BME members of the community. I told them exactly why I was placing the order and I was glad they told me they were heartened by the support shown by me and others like me.

The localisation of services has so much of a wider beneficial effect, it forms and maintains direct communities it also goes some way to preventing bigotry if you know real people, it is far easier to be radicalised around concepts than it is to hate an actual human being that you have come to know.  Additionally in your locality you matter so much more, your interaction, the pound in your pocket, your voice, your smile, your frown is of far greater significance.  Look at the moves of Craftivism for example and how they have by little pieces of craft sought to bring messages to people, if you did this on a national scale you would lose the feeling and passion behind each example.  Perhaps right now we all need to feel a little more than usual that we matter and our local community is probably crying out for the opportunity to show us that we do.

Song Of The Day ~ Mark Lanegan Band – Ode To Sad Disco

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