BLOG ACTION DAY - CLIMATE CHANGE

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Today is Blog Action Day. Apparently this happens every year on October 15th, when bloggers are encouraged to blog in unison on some important issue which we feel is not getting the creative attention it needs. I have not done this before, but now that I know about it I think it is worth doing. This year it is about CLIMATE CHANGE.

I have no special angle on climate change. Like most people, I suppose, I believe in global warming, because the evidence seems undeniable. My own experience tells me that the weather is changing for the worse - but don't we always think that? I checked in on the Blog Action Day website and had a look at the Top 100 effects of global warming. Alright, most of them are quoted from newspapers and newscasts, and may not yet be fully attested scientifically - but can we afford to disbelieve them? Many of them are long-term effects which I am unlikely to see:



Ice melting, waters rising, sunamis and hurricanes, rivers drying up, more fires.

Loss of trees, plants, animals and fish. An increase in noxious plants and insects.

More diseases spreading, people getting sicker.

Increased threats to national security due to migrations, boundary tensions, and conflict over food and water. More wars, more refugees.



I think of my grandchildren. I think of those two girls and four boys, aged between 8 and 17, to whose flesh and blood I have contributed through my own sons; who bear my DNA, and will inherit, to greater or lesser degree, the physical and mental characteristics that I have passed on to them. They are my legacy to the world that I must leave, they are my immortality. But what sort of world will there be for them to inherit? Will it be a world that is still full of natural wonders, magnificent resources, beautiful habitats for man and beast a like. Will it still be possible to live full and satisfying lives, lives of invention, service, caring, and creativity? Or will the basic struggle for survival take all their energies. There are enough suffering peoples in the world already leading such lives. My family has been fortunate ...... will it continue to be through all the generations that will follow me?

I do my best with reducing, reusing and recycling, but we need strong and willing governments to lead us as well.
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Remembrance Sunday

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British people are familiar with sight of the London Cenotaph in Whitehall, the focus of the annual ceremony to remember those who were killed serving their country. For a brief moment yesterday I was watching the ceremony on TV, when suddenly the camera focussed in close on the words engraved on the side, below the stone wreath. If I had been asked, I don't believe I would have known what they were, but now I feel I shall not forget them.







THE GLORIOUS DEAD

What, I ask myself, is 'glorious' about dying on the battlefields, or on the home fronts, of wars which are not of your making or choosing. True, many will distinguish themselves with acts of great courage, but the context of their deaths remains the same.


I hear echoes of British jingoism in the words, chosen by Rudyard Kipling ,a year or two after the end of the 1914-1918 war. I feel that it is time to let go of the notion that such deaths are glorious. The words seem designed to conceal the horrendous and wasteful realities of war - indeed, perhaps they were.

I am not suggesting for a moment that we should not remember and honour those who died. And I suppose that at least as long as there are veterans still surviving of the two great world wars, remembrance ceremonies will continue.

But I can't help thinking to myself that a more appropriate inscription would be:

THE WASTED DEAD

Doom and disaster!

The end of the world is nigh!


I read in the paper the other day that it is being forecast that in two years' time we shall have run out of internet addresses. Just imagine, if nobody else could sign up for email!


I remember, not long after getting a computer, asking naively if cyberspace could ever become full up with the internet and the web; I was more or less laughed at. So if we are not going to run short of cyberspace, what is it that will be in short supply when we run out of internet addresses? Do I really want to know? Could I understand if I was told? Explanations in words of three syllables max please!

For those who do wish to understand, here are a couple of links to articles in the Times and the Guardian.

Behind the smile terror lurks

I usually write here about things which are life affirming, because that is what I think most people want to read, and that is what I need to write about if I am to enjoy blogging. So I write about what is funny, or interesting, or moving, or thought provoking. But this blog is also about being old, and today I need to write about what lies behind my enthusiasm for life, which my readers comment on from time to time.







We all know in our heads that we are going to die one day. For most of our lives we imagine that to be so far in the future that we really don’t need to be conscious of it at all. And if it was not so, life would be miserable, and we should probably make a pretty poor showing at it.







Later, as our bodies become noticeably less reliable, we may find that the end of our life has begun to come into focus, and we may start thinking about what it will be like. But if we are well most of the time, the force of life within us will still bear us along, and the chances are we will still be thinking: “It’s not my time just yet - I’ve still got a way to go”.





And then one day, if you are like me, in a moment of mind-blowing clarity, you may realise that your own imminent mortality has become a reality, and is part of your daily perception of who you are and what you are about. You may suddenly feel that the dark angel is sitting on your shoulder, rather than lurking on the horizon.




The loss of my husband left me acutely aware of being now the oldest in the family. Of course, I don’t have to be the next to go, but hey! just look at the odds. My heart attack four months ago revealed that two of the four grafts I had done 15 years ago have become blocked again, and I have to face the implications of that too. So now I know in my gut that my time is drawing to a close.





As a result a real sense of urgency has overtaken me: so much to finish, so many people to see, so much to put right if I can. And then there are the unanswered questions, the unspent passion, and the unfinished lives that I shall never see come to fruition. I don’t want to leave all this behind. I can’t bear the remorseless cycle of life and death, which demands that after so much effort, so much caring, so much creativity, it must all become the past, me included.

Will it be enough if among my descendants, someone decides to trace their forbears, and discovers my existence on a genealogy website? Will it be enough if my blog is still out there in cyberspace, available to be read by all? Will it be enough if my sons still think of me with sadness, but also with impatience at my remembered weaknesses and follies? My blog helps me to screen out the fear of being nothing any more, and to maintain an appetite for life, which I hope is one of the best ways to prolong it, because ....

I DON’T WANT TO GO!


The drawings I have used to illustrate this piece were done by Valerie Beeby, digital artist and web designer, as part of a feature on her own website about drawing the faces of fear. I am much indebted to her for permission to use them in this way, as they add a touch of humour to an otherwise rather bleak message. You can see more of her work here: http://www.purple-owl.com/art-faces-fear.html

Let the dying speak ...

How often do we we read or watch a deathbed scene where the dying person is struggling to articulate some confession or apology, and where the person who sits with them tries to brush their words aside, or tell them there is no need to unburden themselves, that all that is in the past, and that they must not distress themselves?

My feeling is that those who are dying should be allowed to say what is troubling their minds and lying heavy on their hearts; and however painful it may be for the listener to hear, those last words should be accepted and acknowledged. At no other time in our lives are we likely to be so clear about what we need to say, so that we may die peacefully and without regrets.

I wrote something here about how I wished my children to care for me in the last days of my life, and I am going to add to that some words about listening to what I have to say.

Nothing under the beds

As the day draws to an end, this seems like a good moment to take stock ~ not of all those years, but of where I am now.

The past 12 months have been difficult and disturbing, in unexpected ways. A year after my husband's death I continue to grieve for the failure of our life together. And although we had lived apart for 20 years, I have been feeling strangely without purpose, now that he is no longer around. I have been surprised at just how much a person becomes part of you when you have been married for 50 years, and have been in, and out, of each other’s lives for 60. But he was, after all, the one I chose, and the only one.

I find I am immersing myself in projects centred on Michael, such as the research I am doing into his family history. I guess this expresses a need in me to both mourn and celebrate him still. I am doing this by putting my research onto a family tree website, with photographs, so that our sons and grandchildren will be able to see who he was, and where he came from.

All of this seems fairly positive, even when it is uncomfortable for me, as it recognises Michael 's value, and the value of the 29 years that we had together with our family; I feel that in some sense it is restoring a balance.

But I am also feeling that I have moved up a place in the queue for “the pearly gates”, that my relatively good health is less reliable, and that I should be putting my affairs in better order, for the sake of my executors. This has prompted me to sort out my business papers into a tidy, up-to-date row of ringbinders, and also to undertake a major programme of house clearance and chucking out.

Possessions and clutter can feel like a heavy burden at times, and I am a lifelong hoarder and collector, not only of objects of interest and appeal, but also of “might-be-usefuls”. But now suddenly I have started to let go of stuff. I seem no longer to have the urge to keep things, just in case, in some unforseeable future, they might serve a new purpose. I can see clearly and cheerfully what I am not likely to need, especially when I have not needed it for the past 20 or 30 years anyway! This is remarkably freeing - I feel lighter every time I throw something away - or better still recycle it.

Hence the title of this blog: my aim is to end up with nothing stored under any of my beds any more. (And no unresolved relationship issues pushed there out of mind either!)

My brain has become frenetically active in the past year, which seems likely to be a counterbalance to this increased sense of my mortality. The genealogical research I am doing is fascinating and compulsive, and gives rise to many ideas for pieces to write. But my mind darts from one idea to the next, embracing the new while longing to pursue what is already under way, but remains unfinished.

So the past year has been sad and reflective, but busy and creative as well, and I think that on balance the positive is winning. And yet ..... I am worried by a growing inclination to stay at home and live life in my head and in my computer, rather than make the effort to go out and socialise. It feels kind of weird. It's almost as though I am not quite the same person that I was two years ago, or not quite in the same world.

Is this the effect of bereavement? Or of ageing? Or simply of being a disgraceful old woman?!!

[The snowdrops were painted by Julie Oakley. You can see more of her work on her website.]

Elder bloggers

Picking up on my post about Health Anxiety Disorder, my mind has been drawing together some threads from my recent blog wanderings and some stuff I have thought about before. I had a visit to my blog the other day from somebody who calls himself Klimt, and he uses as his avatar the detail below from the artist's welknown painting called The Kiss.

Another detail which is often reproduced is this one from Klimt's The Three Ages of Woman - so sweetly pretty and romantic.

It was some time before I came across a reproduction of the complete painting, and the effect was like a blow, as I am sure it was intended to be. [You can enlarge the small image at the top of the page to get the full impact.]

The depiction of the old woman is harsh and cruel, but also realistic ... or so I felt it to be at the time. For I was in the midst of the depression I have described which made an invalid of me, and I took the book containing the complete painting to show my therapist, so she could understand how I felt. But I came out of that, and whatever my mirror shows me today, ten years on, that is not how I feel now - so it is not how I am.

Then yesterday I wandered in to Ronni Bennett's blog Time Goes By, in which she describes her wish"to counter the complete absence, in popular writing about aging, of anything that is not focused on disease, decline and debility". In a piece in which she asks the question "When is someone old", she comments on how "the near-universal negative regard of old people goes back at least as far as Shakespeare who had a particularly harsh view of old age". Klimt has done nothing to alter that, but now some of us are trying - assisted, it's only fair to say, by advances in medicine and technological developments.

I started writing this blog 18 months ago under the banner of old age, because I too wanted to dispel the common perceptions of old people. But I have moved on since then, and I am beginning to wonder if I would do better to write as a woman of undeclared age, so that I should be seen purely for who I am, and not as a surprise or an exception to what people expect. Leo, one of my visitors, commented: "Congratulations for your blog and your age! you just seem a 30 old woman ;)" Doesn't that prove something?

Are we becoming more disorderly?

Most of us have probably heard of SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder - a sort of depressive condition which affects many of us in the winter, when there is not much sunlight, and which for some people can be bad enough to cripple their lives.

But have you heard of HAD? This is not a new affliction, but an old one with a new name which gives it credibility. In the past, the term Hypochondria has tended to be used, at least in common parlance, in a derogatory and dismissive sense, with implications of "Pull yourself together - it's all in the mind!" But according to a TV programme I watched last week, the condition is now officially described as Health Anxiety Disorder - something you need not be ashamed of suffering from, my friends!

The programme was about a group of people whose lives are being screwed up in varying degrees by their health anxieties. They spend a week in a remote country house with a handful of cognitive behavioural therapists*, in an attempt to help them start curing themselves. Well, some of them made some progress, and although my tone may be somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, I can bear witness to this method from my own experience.

I am a self-confessed hypochondriac, and there was a time in my life when it took such a hold of me that for a while I became an invalid and then bed-bound. I got myself out of it eventually, and came slowly back to life, but it wasn't until several years later, as the effects lingered on, that I finally recognised that my physical symptoms had had a psychological cause.

At that point I was lucky enough to find a good cognitive behavioural therapist who, with the help also of hypnosis, sorted me out and helped me to get my life back. I still get the occasional regressions, and have to call upon the skills the therapist taught me. But I am now able to recognise when my body is producing physical symptoms which have their origins in some sort of mental or emotional disturbance. Once the cause is identified, I can either do something about it, if it needs sorting; or I can say to myself. "Don't be silly - if that's all it is, it's nothing to get stressed about".

By the way, I just hate that expression "all in the mind": it usually seems to be applied in circumstances when the point is that the problem is not "all" one thing or another, but is in both the mind and the body, because the one works upon the other. We need to be healthy in both if we are to function properly.

So ... We've had SAD, and now we've got HAD. I wonder if the next medically recognised disorder will be BAD, or Blog Addiction Disorder?

[* "The treatment focuses on changing an individual's thoughts (cognitive patterns) in order to change his or her behavior and emotional state." Encyclopaedia of Medicine]

Thought for today

Thinking today about my friend Lee's blog entitled 'A Curate's Egg', I wondered if his title refers to his blog, or to something else. I came up with this in haiku form:

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Life's a curate's egg

You can eat or you can starve

Which do you prefer?

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I hope you'll forgive my working with your idea, Lee.

Do not resuscitate

I had the unhappy experience recently of having to stand by and watch the paramedics spend half an hour trying to revive a sick old man of 89, whose heart and breathing had stopped, but whose brain was still giving out an electrical signal. I knew that he had agreed with his GP that his hospital notes should carry the notation DNR, or “do not resuscitate”. It was his wish, in which his family supported him, knowing that resuscitation would be likely to leave him worse off than before.


But it seems that here in the UK, unless there is a letter from a doctor written within the previous two weeks, stating that the patient need not be resuscitated, the paramedics are legally obliged to continue trying, until not only the heartbeat and breathing have stopped, but the last electrical signal from the brain as well. If they have had no success after a certain time, they must take him to hospital where doctors can make the decision.

Is there no way to avoid this happening? I can understand the reason for such safeguards, but it seems unnecessarily distressing at an already painful time. If he had been in hospital they would have let him go, but it had been his wish to remain at home. Or if his GP had been sent for instead of the paramedics, he could have been left in peace and dignity. It is something to think about, if you are preparing for the death of someone you know. Here is a good framework to work with on this and related issues; I believe it originated in the British Medical Journal.

Principles of a good death

• To know when death is coming, and to understand what can be expected
• To be able to retain control of what happens
• To be afforded dignity and privacy
• To have control over pain relief and other symptom control
• To have choice and control over where death occurs (at home or elsewhere)
• To have access to information and expertise of whatever kind is necessary
• To have access to any spiritual or emotional support required
• To have access to hospice care in any location, not only in hospital
• To have control over who is present and who shares the end
• To be able to issue advance directives which ensure wishes are respected
• To have time to say goodbye, and control over other aspects of timing
• To be able to leave when it is time to go, and not to have life prolonged pointlessly
  
  

[Edited 06.01.08 - I wrote this piece to replace the two previous pieces, at a time when I had decided to delete them as too personal. I have now decided to restore them as the truer versions, but I am leaving this in place too. It has some interest as an exercise in writing about one event in two different ways.]

Principles of a good death

I started my blog to write about the realities of being old, and with the hope of breaking down some misconceptions and taboos. I know that I am writing rather a lot under this label at present, but but it's been a tough year for me in this respect. And there are certainly other people out there who are prepared to look at what lies ahead, and consider what arrangements, if any, they can make for the end of their life. I hope that the rest of you will forgive me, and move on to another post.

An earlier post reminded me of something I found on the web a while ago - ( I think it originated in the British Medical Journal) - which gives one a framework for thinking about this. And I believe that there is a move in the NHS for hospitals to develop their own protocols and care pathways for the terminally ill along the lines of these principles. I am trying to find out more on the web.

Principles of a good death

• To know when death is coming, and to understand what can be expected


• To be able to retain control of what happens


• To be afforded dignity and privacy


• To have control over pain relief and other symptom control


• To have choice and control over where death occurs (at home or elsewhere)


• To have access to information and expertise of whatever kind is necessary


• To have access to hospice care in any location, not only in hospital


• To have control over who is present and who shares the end


• To be able to issue advance directives which ensure wishes are respected


• To have time to say goodbye, and control over other aspects of timing


• To be able to leave when it is time to go, and not to have life prolonged pointlessly

Do not resuscitate

This is a distressing subject. I need to write about it because I am still distressed by what happened. And I think it may be helpful to others in a similar situation. But you don't need to read it, so give it a miss if you'd rather.

When my husband was in hospital for one of his fairly frequent recent visits, he agreed with his doctor that his notes should carry the letters ‘DNR’, for “do not resuscitate”. We were all relieved that he agreed to the notation, as we knew he was living on borrowed time, and that with his age and present state of health, resuscitation would be likely to leave him in a much worse state than before. Nobody talked to us, however, about what would happen in this connection if he died at home, as he hoped to.

When I got the call from his carer, to say that she thought he had gone, but had called the paramedics anyway, I was over at his house within 15 minutes. I made straight for the stairs so that I could be with him, but the paramedics turned me away, saying "We are doing all we can for him". The significance of those words did not register with me straightaway, and it was some time before I realised that they were trying to resuscitate him.

My pleas to them to stop were useless. The fact that nobody wished him to be resuscitated, including he himself, counted for nothing. Here in the UK, unless there is a letter from a doctor written within the previous two weeks, stating that the patient need not be resuscitated, the paramedics are legally obliged to continue trying, until not only the heartbeat and breathing have stopped, but the last electrical signal from the brain as well. If they have had no success after a certain time, they must take him to hospital where doctors can make the decision. Once I understood this I rang our GP at once; but thankfully, by the time he arrived, after half an hour's strenuous efforts to revive him, my husband had finally 'died' in their terms.

I can understand the reason for such safeguards, but I found it excessively painful at an already painful time. If he had been in hospital they would have let him go, and I could have sat beside him and held his hand. And perhaps while his brain was still bravely sending out its signal, although his heart had stopped, it might also have recognised in some little corner that I was with him. Instead I was barred from his presence, because in the bathroom where he lay there was not room for me as well as the paramedics.

And if it had been me who found him at home, and not his carer, perhaps, knowing his wishes, I could have sent for his GP instead of the paramedics, and we could have been peacefully together at the very last. It is something to think about.

[Edited 06.01.08 - I deleted this post for a while and wrote an alternative version, as I felt it was too personal. Now I have decided to restore it as the truer version. I have left the alternative version too (see 12th February), as the two together have some interest as an exercise in writing about one experience in different ways.]

One's real life...

"One's real life is often the life that one does not lead"
Oscar Wilde

I was sitting in the hairdresser's reading The Week - (the magazine that summarizes all the news in 35 pages, and, so they claim, can be read in an hour) - and I came across this quotation. I don't know the circumstances in which Wilde said originally this, but one can readily imagine that he was referring to the fact that, though by nature a homosexual, he had married and had children, so giving himself an acceptable public image and social status.

I began to think about what the words might mean for me, and the kind of circumstances in which it would be appropriate to use them. I came up with five possibilities:

• We might find ourselves being prevented from living our 'real life' by circumstances, or others' expectations of us, or our own weaknesses.
• We might choose deliberately to lead a different life from that which we believe to be the right one, though I have not been able to think of an example as yet.
• Or, to mitigate the dullness of an unsatisfactory lifestyle, we might create a fantasy or ideal life which we try to believe is real.
• It might be that the opportunity does not present itself for us to fulfil our true and proper role, or what one might call God's, or nature's purpose for us.
• And we might find ourselves contemplating our lives, from our approaching end, and regretting things we have never done, and that know we could, or more importantly, should have done.

I can associate myself with several of these. Most particularly, the second last. I am inclined to believe that whatever the Creative Principle of the Universe may be, it will often present us with opportunities to take up a role which is right for us, and also serves those around us; it may be a short-term or a long-term role, but it is one in which we will be at our best and most effective, and we shall learn and grow as a result of playing it. I consider that I have been lucky in having had three such opportunities in my life, all of them occurring after I had turned 60, and the role I played is one I would loosely describe as "troubleshooter". But more of that another time .....

What turns me on? - continued

Commenting on my post yesterday, Lillie said: "It seems we've found that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder". She is right, but I would add that it is also in the mind of the observer. After thinking about it some more, I have come up with some criteria for attractive partners.

As I said before, I am attracted by talent: in drama, writing, music, comedy, dance - if a man can not only dance well, but can take me round a dance floor and lead me so that I don't falter, he is a winner.

I am attracted to someone from whom I can learn, and who is prepared to teach me.

I am attracted to someone who expects a lot from me and challenges me to extend my own boundaries.

I am attracted to someone with a sense of the ridiculous, of fantasy and of romance.

And - borrowed from Lillie - I am attracted to someone who is verbal and articulate and expressive.

Any one of these would do.......

What turns me on?

This is a picture of singer-songwriter Jake Thackray. I don't even know if I'm supposed to have it, and I don't know who to acknowledge for it. If someone can tell me I will gladly give them credit. It's a scan of a blown up photo, so is not very sharp, but the charm is still there for me.


So what does turn me on? After reading Lee's blog on Boundaries, and Lillie’s response, I have been trying to work it out. I don’t think pictures, as pictures, do anything for me generally: not nudity, over-developed muscles, sexual organs, hair, tattoos, bum fissures, fancy pouches and unnatural poses. I think Lillie put her finger on it when she found a picture to post, only because she had seen the man move and knew his work as an actor.

The picture I have posted appeals to me because I have seen Jake on TV and film and I too know his work pretty well. His talent turns me on. Also his unaccustomed smile here, as most pictures show him to have been a man with a long lugubrious face with hooded eyes - a beau laid as the French say, or ugly in an attractive way. I also have a great weakness for men in white rollneck sweaters. I just ache to get my arms round them!

In the flesh, the ugly can have an irresistible charm, and I am also drawn to tall men, large noses, and long dancer’s legs. But for the quick clench of the stomach and the indrawn breath I think one needs the totally unexpected, as in this diary entry I made in July 2001, when my house was being rewired during a heatwave:

- The 30-year-old electrician stripped to his waist yesterday, it was so hot. His trousers, pockets loaded with tools, sat low on his hips, and his torso was bare to beneath the navel, taught and smooth, an even all-over brown from the sun. Ahh! so beautiful! Why are we able to give ourselves permission only when we are too old to act upon it? God! that stomach – I could have buried my face in it. I hope he couldn’t see the yearning in my eyes, fleeting as it was. It makes me weep as I write……

Belief

Picking up on part of yesterday’s post: As I draw nearer to the end of my time in this world, I am finding that my rather ill-informed agnosticism is not enough to take me there in comfort and acceptance. The total eclipse of Judith is something that seems wasteful, and leaves me feeling unsatisfied.


I know that I shall be passing on my genes down the generations, as mine have been passed to me; and I know that I shall leave behind the effect of my presence in this life on the people I have known, also possibly in a published book if I get on with it, and certainly in this blog in cyberspace, for as long as the host chooses to keep it there. The genes will go on forever of course, being modified and, hopefully, improved as they are passed down. But the rest is still pretty transitory.

I would like to think that there is some form of recycling or re-use, or something of durable value which would survive, though not necessarily of my individual self. Here’s a thought: perhaps I could offer my soul by email to my local Freecycle Group, where people can exchange unwanted items for nothing, rather than throw them away:

OFFERED: One soul, female Well used but good for a year or two yet. Collection Hertfordshire area.

Seriously though, reincarnation doesn’t seem logically sound, as the number of people on earth is not constant: where would the extra souls come from for the extra people? The best I have been able to think up is that there might be some sort of universal consciousness-at-large, with which the individual consciousness might merge when it no longer has a corporeal home, possibly even contributing something to the general expansion of that consciousness.


I do not ask for scientific proof in order to be able to believe, at least enough to have peace of mind, but perhaps for a good logical possibility of something as yet unconfirmed by science. I’d love to have your ideas, dear readers, if you are still with me after this long post.

[I found these gorgeous representations of consciousness via Google Images.]

Have I got it wrong?

The impact of my husband's funeral on my life has been unexpected in many ways. It was a sad but wonderful day, in which his own family and the family of his church came together, all contributing, all much moved by the occasion, and well pleased to be united at this time, though they were not, sadly, in his lifetime.



At the age of 16, I had found it impossible, logically, to believe any longer in the Christian god, and have since then called myself an agnostic, whilst leaning from time to time towards a number of other belief systems. This difference between us might have been an insuperable obstacle, but somehow we made it work, at least while we raised our children, though I believe it was always a great sadness for my husband that I could not share his faith.


Over the years, I have often been aware of how much was missing from my life by not being part of a church family. With the funeral, during the arrangements, on the day, and afterwards, this has been brought into really sharp focus, as I came to appreciate fully just how much his church meant to him, and how much he was valued by the church.



Can we not create such communities around other focal points? We can be good, caring, generous and honourable people without being Christians, and yet we do not seem to find the same all-embracing commitment, cohesiveness and purposefulness in, say, the Women’s Institute, or other social bodies of people. Or do I do them an injustice?


Some of our friends left the funeral saying that they wanted one just like it! What I do know is that there is no local community at present which will join with my family to celebrate my life, as this church community has done for my husband. Mind you, he was a very special man, in ways which I could not aspire to, but even so ………

Gina Ford vs Mumsnet

I don't usually pay attention when issues on baby care hit the news, as I am now two generations past having to bother about such things. But reading in the press about the current conflict, I was struck, as one so often is, by the aptness of the the old sayings, that nothing is new in this world and that what goes around comes around. You can read much of the detail of accusation and response if you go to Mumsnet.com; and if Gina Ford does decide to bring a court action against the website, and/or against its ISP, it is likely to be a test case, it seems, with implications relating to freedom of speech on the internet, and the vulnerability to prosecution of website owners and ISPs.

As the Times reporter rightly pointed out, this
is a battle between the 1930s and the 1960s, between an author who recommends a strict routine for babies, and parents who find her recommendations too rigid, and have not hesitated to say so in forceful terms on the website's message board, thereby causing great offense to Ms Ford. But the press report does not actually mention the name of the revered (or hated!) Dr Truby King, seen here in caricature and in a photograph.

I myself was a Truby King baby in 1927, which means that in theory I was fed only four hourly come what may and not at night, that I could cry my head off, but as long as I was fed, winded and clean I would not be picked up, that potty training would start at two months with the aim of being dry by day at a year, and that I would not be rocked to sleep or cuddled in my parents' bed.** Enemas to keep a baby's bowels moving was another of his less attractive ideas, but on the good side, he did advocate breast- feeding and plenty of fresh air.

By the time my young brother was born, my mother's natural instincts had taken over, which was lucky for him, and gives me a useful source of resentment if I should feel I need one. For many years I have regarded Dr Truby King as thoroughly misguided, and turned gratefully to the American Dr Spock and what I saw as his easy-going liberal commonsense when raising my own children in the 1960s. But a year or two ago I began to wonder if I really knew enough about Truby King to judge him so harshly, and so I began some research. I managed to get a number of his early works out of the library, books now crumbling into fragements, together with books about him by other writers, and I learned what he had really been about.

He was New Zealand born, but graduated in medicine at Edinburgh in 1886. He then went back to work in New Zealand and Australia where, apalled by infant mortality rates at the turn of the century, he set about developing and promoting a programme of baby care which would drastically reduce them, and thereby save the British nation from annihilation! He must in fact have done a great deal of good, but I don't think I can rid myself, at this late age, of the sneaking suspicion that his regime damaged my infant psyche!
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FOOTNOTE: ** When my father bought an antique Elizabethan cradle as a surprise for my mother, he had the dealer remove the rockers, thereby substantially reducing its value - a story which always turns my antique dealer friend green when I tell it!

How inappropriate can you get?

Normally I am only mildly irritated by being told to "Have a nice day" by people I neither know nor care about, apart from the role they have to play in meeting my daily needs for information, goods or services. But today I was roused to something approaching fury.

I was speaking to the Social Services Department at my local County Council. As always, it had taken telephone calls and delays over several days to reach the person I needed. I was looking for information which I consider we should have been given without having to ask. We were talking about someone who is very old and ill, and who has been referred for full-time nursing care, being no longer fit to live alone in his own home. We had perforce touched on such subjects as his deteriorating physical condition, his mental confusion, commodes, wheelchairs, and financial assessments. And I am not a social worker, I am his wife.

But at the end of our conversation this person says to me ... "Enjoy your day"! Does she think I am going through all this for FUN?

Counting my blessings

As I have been in rather a sombre mood lately, I have decided to do a quick check on the things I can be glad about today.


I have been able to keep my back door open the whole day for the first time this year.

Since the start of the year I have managed, slowly and sensibly, to lose half a stone in weight. Still another half to go though.

My front porch, which was painted with some dud paint in December, has finally been repainted and looks OK.

I have at last got around to updating my will, and setting up both an Enduring Power of Attorney and a Living Will (or Advance Directive) – all aimed at making things easier for my family and heirs.

I have a wonderful son – (I have four actually, but this is about one of them) – who visits from time to time and sorts out all my computer problems for me, and is now changing my broadband and telephone subscriptions for me, to save me some money.

I recently attended a craft class where I learned a simple form of Kumihimo or Japanese Braiding, which I can do with wools left over from my tapestry work. Both of these are soothing activities I can do while watching television.

I had a splendid Bank Holiday Weekend, going to see one of my on-line friends perform brilliantly in a brilliant play, and next day visiting the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in Shropshire, before meeting more on-line friends for a birthday lunch for one of them.

Here’s an idea to help with counting your blessings. Draw yourself a big flower on a large sheet of paper, and see how many petals you can fill up with moments of happiness or satisfaction. Then pin it on your wall. Or you could do a flower for someone special by writing in each petal a reason why you love them.