Category Archives: Rants&Rambles

Average

Dear God (dess) send me the grace of a perfectly average man,

overweight, rather short, fond of cereal and sliced ham.

Send me the confidence of the inadequate and over-valued,

Paid for all of his thirty-nine hours,

Praised for the sixteen hours scraped away at home,

and assumed the next sixteen spent watching the woman work,

On and on, while he watches telly

And she raises the kids.

Send me the honest bewilderment of a man recently divorced,

By the woman, on average, twelve years in, fifty years old and kids still to raise

Can you really be that bad, that useless,

For her to make a rational decision to lose your wage and raise the kids

Alone and poor,

rather than spend the time and emotion on you as well.

Lady, send me the gob-smacking arrogance of the middle aged man,

who sits down at the table and says to the woman on his right,

“Let’s talk about me!”

Becoming Angry

How much longer must I spend my time

Pretending the man sat next to me is interesting.

How much longer must I spend my time

Looking after someone else, anyone else

children, parents, him.

As the body sags and settles into itself

and the fire inside burns hotter

day by day, year by year, decades pass.

Begrudging every minute,

As I see the same path mapped out for my daughters.

Sing out my soul, let the humble rise up

Now,

Not later, not constantly waiting for changes that never come,

How much longer must we wait for nothing more than our due

Growing old, waiting

For the never-ever promises

Give me my time, my space to be me

not someone’s mother or lover,

Now.

Do not make me wait for something you know will never come

Old women are too often angry women,

fuelled by broken promises and dreams

And the not-apologies of men.

Add Food

Item satsuma:

50 1 satsuma,Satsuma, or

28, 1 fruit, Asda, or

53, 100g Sainsbury, or

Bigger, fatter, juicier?

It’s only a fucking orange, easily peeled.

10 minutes, thinking, considering, counting

Working through the trade-offs.

Item: potato:

265, 1 medium, jacket

92 100g jacket

278, 1 medium, homemade

Oh for fucks sake. Is that with or without butter?

Another five minutes thinking about what it means to be a large potato in a preferably small world

Lose weight they say.

Calories in, calories out.

It’s just will-power, they say.

Looking at you and finding a lack.

As if a worldwide epidemic could be fought patient by patient,

could be reduced to nothing more than positive thinking

and paying attention.

Each pound of fat worth 3500 calories,

almost two days worth of eating, restricted.

Assuming we’re average, which clearly we’re not.

And fat cells never die, did you know?

We add them as we put on weight,

but when we lose they just shrink

like a sponge squeezed free of water.

And they keep sending out these messages to the brain,

Screaming feed me!

Feed me! FEED ME!

What does it mean when it is the fat that is hungry not the person carrying it?

Will power.

An entire industry set up to make us eat,

and once we’re fat our own bodies do their work for them.

Cos the only way to be slim, is to stay slim.

But the bastards tell us all we need is willpower,

The power of an individual person’s mind to defeat an international superpower,

The power of an individual’s will to defeat their own body’s screams,

not once but always.

Each day. Every day.

Will power.

Incel Boy

Learn to ask better questions,

And listen to the answers,

So many answers.

Listen to the stories women tell,

To their needs

Be sufficient.

Move yourself off centre stage,

And let someone else be lead

For once.

Take up a hobby, an interest,

No dragons or dungeons,

Or porn.

Volunteer and be useful,

Old people, sick people,

Find value.

Maybe travel far away

And enjoy an adventure

Solo is okay.

There are worse things

Than to be happily single

So be happy, single.

And maybe move out of your mother’s house,

Shower more often,

Stop killing

Nice chat.

The Shape of Old Age

In lockdown, my partner was diagnosed with Pakinson’s Disease (PD) and that would be properly gutting, if another friend hadn’t been diagnosed with motor neurone disease at around the same time.

The peculiar thing about ageing is that there’s always someone else in a worse situation, and whilst that doesn’t make our own individual situation better, it does make it more difficult to complain, at least out loud. Motor neurone is seriously unpleasant with a short prognosis, limited life expectancy and a rapid physical decline. The woman we know has gone from full out athleticism to unable to eat or drink, slurring words in speech and now struggling to walk, all within six months. She will die soon.

Common Dolphin

Finding out that your husband has PD is bad, but not that bad. It won’t kill him (probably). It will be the shape of his old age.

What does that mean?

The PD journey is very individual, dependent in part on how deep you have dug the well of health to start with and how well you have nurtured good habits and health.

Almost everyone diagnosed has had the disease for a good ten to fifteen years before they’re diagnosed, with the weirdest possible symptom, a lack of sense of smell, arriving early in our experience. I’d been pushing for a doctor’s visit and diagnosis for a couple of years, spurred on by a seemingly gradual increase in frailty and a decline in small motor skills (crabby handwriting) but it wasn’t until lockdown that he decided to follow through on it. He’d also managed to push through the pension administration hoops and retired. Having pushed for a diagnosis, I was still gutted when it arrived.

He’s very early on in terms of symptoms and medication. He has occasional light tremors in his hands (not all do) which makes fine work with his hands more difficult. He plays tennis twice a week, has a session once a week of Pilates and another of tai-chi. The tennis is good for his cardio-vascular system and gives him lots of balance practice (lots of chop and change of direction and balance). There is strong evidence that people who work out two to three times a week have a more gentle progression of the disease. The Pilates should be good for his core strength. The tai-chi should be good for his balance and if the worst comes to the worst, should help him fall well. There is some soft evidence that people with PD who practice tai chi fall less or at least feel less at risk.

Having been put on an initial medicine, his tennis coach noticed a large difference in his physical rigidity, but the rest of us really didn’t see much everyday change.

Humpback Breach

Parkinson’s Disease cannot be cured.

When someone tells you that they have an incurable disease, do not immediately google the disease and come up with helpful new treatments. Just don’t. You will never have the expertise of people living with the problem so it just isn’t helpful. Treatments for the disease are largely centred on managing the symptoms for as long as possible whilst mitigating the side-effects of those drugs taken over the long term.

PD is a gradually progressive neurodegenerative condition. The etiology and pathogenesis remain incompletely understood. The movement disorder of PD occurs largely due to the selective loss of neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, with consequent depletion of dopamine in the striatum. The drugs work using a number of different methods, by being metabolized to create dopamine, or by activating the dopamine receptor in the brain, or by preventing the breakdown of endogenous dopamine. Currently my partner is being dosed with selegiline, a drug that helps prevent the breakdown of his own dopamine.

Dopamine is the happy drug in the body. It’s part of the fight or flight response as well. As a result, when the process to create and use dopamine is interrupted as with PD, the physical results can (and in our case do) include anxiety and/or depression.

My partner is routinely anxious. All day, everyday. Nothing is too trivial to worry about.

And anxiety is tiring. He’s lost weight.

My partner is also routinely glum. All day, everyday.

It’s wearing.

I have spent most of my adult life caring for my children. I had expected to have maybe a decade or so of freedom before finding myself caring for my older husband.

It’s difficult to express how very angry the diagnosis has left me feeling and almost impossible to share the frustration living with this disease second hand. My life feels wrecked, though it’s not my illness. It feels as though I’m left carrying the burden of it because he cannot, physically or mentally.

This will be the shape of our old age.

Breaking up

Why do houses keep breaking? You spend a sizeable amount of time in your twenties desperate to be able to afford your own home, only to find out when you eventually own the deeds that they come with a never ending litany of disasters.

So getting the house painted on the inside, top to toe, had been put off for a decade or more. It seemed sensible to schedule the work for when I was away on a trip to Baja, but then who would have though it would over-run by two weeks? I arrived home after more than twenty four hours of travelling to find the house in chaos, dust everywhere bar a one metre square on the sofa in front of the television where he obviously sat down each day. All else had been left to gather dust and debris.

Two weeks with workmen in the house is difficult, even if they’re nice enough people who work quite hard to not get in the way, to be pleasant company. And since I was glad they’d been there to keep him company (and were on a fixed charge) I couldn’t get too cross. Painting was followed by a leaky radiator that required the heating to be turned off for a fix, which in turn was followed by repairs to two toilets. The final fix was supposed to be yesterday, but flushing the toilet led to a flood in the bathroom – at one o’clock in the morning obviously – so clearly we’re not done yet. And that’s not counting the repair to the roof, the trim underneath a dormer window is letting water through and damaging the newly painted ceiling underneath. Joy.

Maybe a better question would be: why do I have to be the one to fix stuff, or to stress and organise the stuff being fixed? Because every family seems to have one person who for want of a better reason gets stuck with this stuff. And in our house that person is clearly me. When the toilet flushed and the floor flooded, it was the second time in the evening. Why didn’t my daughter or partner recognise that there was a problem? At least it would have been earlier in the evening, and someone else would have been around.

It’s got to a stage now where my partner literally thinks of something that ‘might’ break, and feels a need to let me know. What if? And because I’m a manic sorting kind of person who needs to solve problems, once he’s pointed out a possible problem, it’s very difficult to ignore it.

Maybe I just need practice.

For the birds!

Apparently the annual RSPB UK bird count survey is over and whilst I recognise the birds, it seems a bit different to my own garden feeder.

RSPB birdwatch – the top 10 birds

1. House sparrow – almost never see these in the London garden
2. Blue tit – probably the most common visitor
3. Starling – an occasional visitor
4. Wood pigeon – not so much of the ‘wood’ but we see the city sort daily
5. Blackbird – at least weekly visitors
6. Robin – each and everyday second only to the tits
7. Goldfinch – never spotted on my feeder though a friend four streets down is regularly mobbed by these
8. Great tit – probably the second most common visitor
9. Magpie – each and every day
10. Chaffinch – cannot remember the last time I spotted on here

My birdwatch – the top 10 birds

1. Blue tit
2. Great tit
3. Robin
4. Pigeon
5. Magpie
6. Long tailed tit
7. Rook
8. Jay
9.Blackbird
10. Nuthatch

At The End of the Day

There is an excellent article in the New Statesman by David Gauke, an ex-Tory politician writing about the current state of his old political party and what comes next.

With the drip, drip, drip of constant scandals from No10 where our leaders seem to be shameless in their partying whilst the rest of us were left isolated and alone, it feels somewhat like the final series in a tv soap opera. We all expect the PM to go. The only question is when and who puts in the knife.

It is tempting to believe that the new leader will remake the party, which is in power in the UK two thirds of the time, into it’s old rather staid and, well, conservative, image.

The politics of 2019 were certainly extraordinary and, it is certainly tempting to view Johnson as an aberration, someone that only came to power in those very extraordinary circumstances. Now that those circumstances have passed, the argument goes, we can return to normality. The Conservative Party can elect a more conventional leader and pursue a more conventional Tory agenda. Post-Johnson politics can look like pre-Johnson politics (only with the UK outside the EU because, after all, he got Brexit done). Let us never speak of him again.

But this ignores the causes of the Brexit impasse, it ignores the political risks that faced the Conservative Party in 2019 and it ignores the political opportunity which Johnson seized at the last general election and which the Conservatives are likely to want to replicate.

Johnson skilfully exploited the nation’s weariness with a problem he had helped to create – the apparently endless drama that was leaving the European Union. Reassured by Leave politicians that this would be a simple and straightforward matter in which the UK held all the cards, it came as a shock to the electorate that negotiations proved to be complicated and that the EU was not prepared to give the UK everything it demanded.

Matters were not helped by the most intractable issue being one of little direct relevance to the population of Great Britain – the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This received little attention at the time of the 2016 referendum (despite the best efforts of Tony Blair and John Major) but the logic of the issue meant that there was no way of delivering a ­satisfactory Brexit.

The UK’s regulatory and customs divergence from the EU meant that a UK-EU border was necessary. We could, of course, have decided not to diverge on regulatory and customs matters, but this would have brought into question the whole point of Brexit.

It was this trilemma that sunk May’s withdrawal agreement. As a sincere unionist and someone acutely conscious of the risks of creating a border on the island of Ireland, she obtained an agreement that effectively kept the UK in the single market for goods until the border issue could be resolved. This was a practical solution to the trilemma, but it failed the Brexiteers’ purity test.

Brexit had become redefined so as to mean that any compromise with the EU (or, indeed, any compromise with logic) was unacceptable. As one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, Johnson might have engaged with and understood the issue and tried to explain to his followers that it was necessary to address a real practical problem. Where he led, Brexit supporters might have followed.

Instead, Johnson dismissed the Northern Ireland border as nit-picking by Remainers (once likening it to moving between the two London boroughs of Islington and Camden) and sided with the sovereignty purists of the European Research Group. His answer to the Northern Ireland border question was to hang tough, shout louder and threaten the EU with a no-deal Brexit.

On the substance, Johnson turned out to be wrong. He thought he could avoid a border but agreed in October 2019 to putting one in the Irish Sea. He tried to reverse this while negotiating a new EU trade deal in the autumn of 2020 but again backed down and is still trying to renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol without much success. His position, however, did bring political rewards – the support of the European Research Group in the Conservative leadership election and a comfortable victory among the staunchly Eurosceptic party membership.

Johnson’s triumph among Conservative MPs was not, of course, limited to the diehard Brexiteers. It helped enormously that he was the favourite among the members and was always likely to win. That can focus the minds of those wanting a frontbench career. He was also the candidate who could most plausibly see off Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, the winner of the 2019 European Parliament elections.

The risk for the Conservatives in 2019 was that they faced being squeezed on the Brexit-supporting right by Farage while being squeezed on the Remain supporting centre by the Liberal Democrats. This had happened in the European elections and Conservative MPs were terrified that it would happen again in a general election.

Johnson’s strategy was to unite the Brexit side of the debate. Brexit had created a risk but also created an opportunity. By seeing off Farage, it meant that the Conservatives could appeal to a new part of the electorate – cultural conservatives who had voted Labour and Ukip in the past and who wanted to see Brexit done. They liked Johnson – a charismatic, anti-establishment, politically incorrect, optimistic, patriotic, affable character who did not take himself too seriously. He promised them change, more nurses and police officers and a bit of a laugh. He was also up against Jeremy Corbyn, an historically unpopular figure. In December 2019, Johnson’s ambition was fulfilled and he won an 80-seat majority.

It is worth dwelling on this moment. It tells us three things about modern politics that are relevant to the post-Johnson world as well as his emergence as Prime Minister – the nature of the parliamentary party; the determination to close down space to the Conservatives’ right; and the changing alignment of British politics.

Johnson’s three predecessors as Conservative prime minister – John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May – were all brought down (or, at least, deeply damaged) by their inability to control the Eurosceptic right. Johnson, in contrast, exploited the right.

For a sizeable element of the Tory party, sovereignty has assumed an almost theological quality. They no longer exist in a world of trade-offs and compromises, of pros and cons, but a world of absolutes. In the context of Northern Ireland, this requires a continued refusal to accept the choices available and an insistence that we can avoid a border in the Irish Sea and diverge from the EU. Future leadership candidates will be acutely aware of this.

Incidentally, for most of these MPs, they also have a vision as to what Brexit means. Divergence is for a purpose and that purpose is to make the UK more competitive, to deliver the next stage of the Thatcherite revolution. The reality is that Brexit means reversing much of Thatcherism – putting up taxes because the economy is smaller than it otherwise would have been, erecting trade barriers and imposing new regulatory burdens on business – but the increasing tendency is to blame Johnson’s Big State instincts for this predictable turn of events.

The events of 2018-19 also revealed a wider change of temperament within the parliamentary party. Conservative politics became about campaigning not governing, with well-organised factions talking to the like-minded, and using every method possible to exert pressure on the government. The Tories became more a party of protest than of government, with a research group for every cause.

In recent weeks, the most prominent of these groups has organised opposition to Covid restrictions. The country is fortunate that Omicron has turned out to be as mild as it has – something that was not certain when a hundred Conservative MPs rebelled over the Plan B restrictions. Had these MPs got their way, with Plan B not implemented, (and had Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, not warned the public to ration their socialising), the NHS may well have been overwhelmed this January.

Again, as with Brexit, Covid-19 has ­exposed a tendency among Conservative MPs to view the world as they would like it to be, not as it actually is. Their risk appetite is insatiable. Johnson’s removal would not change this – he was relatively cautious on Omicron.

The threat of an alternative party to the right of the Conservatives has diminished since 2019. This is partly due to Johnson’s positioning and partly due to coronavirus. Farage and other Brexit veterans have ­associated themselves with the anti- lockdown cause, which has had little cut-through with their traditional older, Covid-vulnerable supporters. The Reform Party has consistently performed poorly in by-elections and opinion polls. 

Post-Covid, however, the opportunity to change the subject and prompt public ­animosity towards immigration will increase. A significant breakthrough for the Reform Party remains unlikely but Farage’s influence comes not from his own success but his influence over those Conservatives easily spooked by the prospect of losing votes to him. If anything, Johnson’s removal would increase these Tory concerns because his successor will not have Johnson’s track record of diminishing Farage’s appeal.

The final lesson is that there is a long-term realignment of politics in the UK and throughout the developed world. Whereas once the economically secure voted centre right and the economically insecure voted centre-left, voting behaviour has become increasingly influenced by cultural matters. The way in which a particular constituency votes increasingly depends not on income levels but upon population density, ethnic diversity and education levels.

This has created an opportunity for the centre right and helped deliver the Red Wall to the Tories. Johnson, with his performative patriotism, ideological flexibility and apparently disarming personality, was able to woo this part of the electorate in a way that few Conservatives can. Reconciling the small-state instincts of many Tories with this electoral opportunity is a challenge that any leader of the Conservative Party will have to address but, with our current political geography, it is hard to see how the views of the median voter in a Red Wall swing seat (economically to the left, culturally to the right) can be ignored. This does not suggest a return to Cameroon-style liberal conservativism any time soon.

Johnson’s period in office may be coming to an end. What replaces him will not be Johnsonian as such. He never offered a coherent philosophy and, ethically, any change will be a step in the right direction. Rule-breaking parties won’t be an issue. But the forces apparent in 2019 – an unruly, even delusional, parliamentary party, the fear of a threat from the right, and a realigned ­electorate that rewards cultural conservatism – will continue to drive the politics of the Conservative Party for years to come. 

How to Enjoy…

About to go on a holiday with my eldest and somehow it’s started to feel a bit less like a treat and more of a risk. Why is it so hard to actually enjoy going on holiday?

Apparently anticipation is something that makes people happy. very happy. And honestly, I’ve spent months looking forward to this trip, making my sudden last minute nerves, well, unnerving! Part of me is still very excited at the idea of the trip, of the experiences it will bring and the delight of some time spent in the sunshine, on the water. But the other part has also moved onto the reality of around 24 hours spent travelling there, and another 24 hours travelling back. I’m old enough to remember being able to arrive at an airport just 30 minutes before a flight and still manage to make the holiday work.

Maybe I need to learn to love airports more. the queues are never as bad as expected until the one time that they are and the hours ahead of the departure just drag by. Usually there is at least an hour sat in the airport on pretty uncomfortable seats, followed by twelve hours on a very uncomfortable airplane seat. Time drags when travelling by plane. Is there anything fun to do whilst sat in an airport or on a plane?

Maybe I just need to make sure that I’ve downloaded enough music or maybe some podcasts.

It doesn’t help that the airlines at the moment keep messing about with the flight schedule. I can understand why – they need to try to keep things profitable and people are cancelling all the time because of covid. When they moved my connecting flight in Dallas to 16:55 ie 10 minutes before my flight actually arrived at the airport, it did seem a bit daunting. The agent has now re-routed me through Los Angeles but it made for an uncomfortable couple of days . Memo to self: always check your flights in the rundown to a trip.

The holiday involves a small boat, so my partner has no interest whatsoever but it also involves whales so my eldest just jumped straight into it when offered a chance to come along but now I’m left planning how best to make sure her father isn’t left all on his lonesome for two weeks. Again, my initial excitement at getting away from the everyday (don’t we all want a break some time?) has morphed more into worry about looking after him. I’m booking on-line grocery deliveries, organising activities for him whilst I’m away, trying to keep him busy.

Perhaps to get the most out of holidays it’s best to organise lots of smaller trips to maximise the anticipation and to minimise the schlep of travelling by plane. Even short haul flights seem to drag out for a full day but at least they don’t come with jet lag; something I’m enjoying less as I age. Peak enjoyment of a holiday is supposed to arrive somewhere around day eight. Isn’t this just sometime around the middle when, if you’re having a good time you suddenly realise it’s half-way over.

It does help to keep moving and having something else to look forward towards. Trips which have plenty of arrivals in new places after small enjoyable journeys can feel like great fun.

Experiential holidays are a new and rising part of the holiday market, but not something that our family has really bought into. I like to visit and photograph new places, primarily historical or sites or natural wonders which seems enough of an experience for me – not really into the idea of learning to dive, or cook.

Filling days with pleasurable things seems an obvious holiday plan but too often when the kids were young, a holiday could end up just moving all of the mundane jobs and responsibilities from home (convenient, everything you need in its place) to the seaside (less convenient, rarely everything required, never to hand). We were never interested in kids clubs or all-inclusive resorts but I can certainly see the benefit if you’re a stay at home mum and desperately need some rest and relaxation.

It used to be easier to leave work at home but nowadays technology makes that harder. Leaving the husband at home feels a bit like a return to those days where being on holiday meant leaving the everyday behind.

Part of it is to do with leaving my caring responsibilities behind – he is a grown man and able to look after himself but still there is a surprising amount of emotional labour required to be married to the man. Part of it is the basic facts that the boat does not have wi-fi so we will be literally out of communication with the rest of the world. And now after all of these years becoming accustomed to the internet on tap, that feels less reassuring than daunting.

Finally and most definitely something that I need to remember: the best parts of any trip have always been the planning and being home afterwards to put together the photographs. It is incredibly difficult to really enjoy being in the moment on holiday because everything is new and challenging. The memories of a trip are inevitable shaped by the photographs because they bring very specific memories to the front of our mind.

I love going on holiday. I love coming home.

Grim

It’s all looking a bit grim in the UK at the moment. The PM has been lying again. Caught again. No shame. No resignations. And almost worse are the people who trot out to justify his behaviour. Perhaps the most egregious damage Johnson has caused is the hollowing out of his own political party, all to avoid someone holding up a mirror to his own shortcomings. Whether you support their polices or not (I generally don’t) the Conservative party is in power in the UK most of the time and anything that undermines it is just bad for the country.

The elderly couple we visit to play bridge with once a week are active Tory party members who struggle to justify his behaviour but also to identify any competent MP to take over from him. Maybe that’s why he’s still there – they just can’t find anyone else willing or able to do the job that the members can stomach. And yet he’s still there. Still funnelling money to friends and family. Billions of taxpayer’s money.

Today the courts found that the government’s decision to award PPE contracts worth over £500bn via the “VIP lane” ie gravy train was unlawful. Billions of our money staffed away to Tory friends and family whilst apparently we’re unable to find the money to make classrooms safre for covid or feed kids through school holidays. It’s all about choices, isn’t it? Apparently “them” feeding at the trough, is a better Tory choice than educating everyone else.

And I’m trying really hard not to revisit the Brexit debate, but the last pieces of the puzzle with regard to import/export requirements are about to hit home, inflation is the highest its been for an awfully long time and the cost of utility bills is predicted to double.

Where is all the good news?