Epiblog for St Afra's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. We’re still theoretically getting ready to go off on holiday, although it’s anybody’s guess, as I write this, when we will set off, indeed, whether we will actually go anywhere, or stay put. The problem is that it means so much extra hassle for Debbie now I am in a wheelchair, and she is still absolutely shot after her winter and spring of teaching, I don’t know, as it stands, if either of us can actually raise the energy. However, I hope we can; the sun is sparkling on Kilbrannan Sound, and I don’t know how many more summers I will have – none of us does, of course, but perhaps I have more of an inkling than some, of time slipping soundlessly through the neck of an hourglass – so I would like to see it again, if possible.

Meanwhile, the weather here has moved to cool days of sunshine and showers, which is good for the garden, but it doesn’t help when I see pictures that people have posted online, of sunlight on Goatfell or on the Cuillins and I suddenly yearn to be there, because “my heart’s in the Highlands”.

At the moment, I am still proceeding as if we are going, and trying to get as much stuff done as I can. This includes getting caught up on a number of tasks of stupefying boredom, such as the meaningless jumble of accounts. If there is ever a national shortage of horse-tranquilisers, we could just give each neddy a calculator and ask them to do a trial balance. The tasks I have to accomplish before I can go on holiday anywhere with a clear conscience are many and legion, and vary from making sure my standing hoist is charged up to loading products onto Sage, to potting-on my radishes.

I have also phoned the “cat hotel where special catties go on their holidays” and told them they might be getting a special guest in the form of Kitty at some point next week. She’s been quite active over the last few days, sitting out with Deb on the decking when the sun shines, and soaking up the warmth, then coming back in to sleep on Zak’s chair, which she seems to have adopted of late. Zak and Freddie haven’t been around much this week, so the squirrels have been making the most of their absence, getting rowdy and throwing the dishes on the bird-table around when they have emptied the contents into their furry little tumjacks.

Speaking of furry little tumjacks, Deb is, as I said, completely exhausted and she’s been sleeping a lot lately, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, but if she goes completely into hibernation and doesn’t make the effort and go on holiday somewhere, for her sake, more than mine, I just know she is going to regret the decision during the long dreary weeks of winter stretching ahead. I know I will, also, but that’s sort of not the point. If anyone’s earned a holiday over the last academic year, she has.

I’m also feeling constantly tired, so I’m no help, really, and I have been railing against my condition (yet again) this week. As I said above, it may be a cliché, but I can feel the sands of time running out, and I don’t want to vanish into oblivion having achieved absolutely nothing of any lasting value or worth by my standards. I can hear my ancestors banging on the sky, some days, telling me to get a move on.

So I am going to devote the remainder of this Epiblog to ottering on about my favourite causes and pet hobby-horses. Well, not so much pet hobby-horses as pet dogs. Once more, we’ve been looking at the web sites of various pet sanctuaries in the faint hope (in my case) that we might be able to find a dog in time to take it on holiday with us to Scotland. I also have two other ideas I’d like to run by you. That makes three ideas in all. I hope you like them. I got them from the “three ideas or less”* queue at the supermarket. [*Yes, I know it should be “fewer”]. As Groucho Marx once said, these are my principles, if you don’t like them, I have others.

Anyway, these dogs. In perusing one of the many web pages and Facebook pages of the various sanctuaries, I came across a shocking photograph. A shot of the interior of a kennels with a row of black plastic doggy body-bags (occupied) all lined up neatly in a corridor, awaiting disposal and incineration. Just some of the 7000 unwanted dogs which are put down in the UK every year. It shocked me, because it brought home to me the reality of the situation in a way in which my own imagination had hitherto failed to do, and all kudos to the animal centre concerned for having the guts to put it up there. It certainly galvanised me into action. What can we do to stop 7000 dogs a year being put down for no reason other than lack of space and resources to keep them?

There is currently a consultation going on with regard to The Blight’s idea of compulsory micro-chipping of dogs. This could entail compulsory microchipping for all dogs within a set time period of their birth or acquisition. So in other words, it would be for the person acquiring a dog from whatever source to ensure that it is microchipped, or if not, to have it chipped. If you make it so that dogs have to be microchipped from birth, and back that up with punishment, however, this may lead to greater quantities of dogs being abandoned or even killed rather than incurring the cost of chipping say a large and unexpected litter so care must be taken in ensuring that in solving one problem, you don't create another, different, problem.

Care needs also to be taken when framing any legislation also not to disadvantage the homeless, many of whom have companions in the form of dogs, the disabled, and people who are suffering from the Government's cack-handed economic policies by being made unemployed and forced onto benefits. There should be a recognition that chipping is a social good and a willingness by the Government to "chip in" and underwrite the cost of chipping in such cases…

Microchipping will not make dog owners more responsible in itself, or prevent people or animals from being attacked, but it does provide enforcement agencies with a tool to identify owners who may have been irresponsible or cruel to their pet. Unfortunately it will do nothing to deter the people who will dump their pets on the roadside, or worse, in order to escape having to have them chipped in the first place, which is why there needs to be a “social chipping” exemption, see above.

Compulsory microchipping alone will not hold owners to account and if this is to be effective then it must be part of a wider annual dog registration scheme where owners’ details be centrally held in an up to date database. However, the construction and upkeep of such a database should not simply be handed by The Blight to an "outsource" agency such as Atos or Capita, for several reasons, but chiefly if The Blight is going to give out large amounts of public monies for creating and maintaining this database it would be better being run by the three major animal welfare charities with an interest in dogs in the UK, the RSPCA, the Dogs' Trust, and Battersea Dogs' Home, with government financial support. Not only would this be a better use of any funding, but also it would ensure that the scheme is run by people with an interest in animal welfare rather than a multinational PLC who just treat it as a cash-cow.

This licensing scheme could then provide money so there are proper resources for local authorities and the police to support those owners trying to do the right thing and target those irresponsible ones who cause the majority of the problem. Although of course, it could be argued, that local authorities and the police should have the resources to do this in any case, and indeed would do so, but for The Blight's unequal apportioning of rate grant cuts to Local Authorities.

Any excess money made from microchipping should be ploughed back in to local communities to improve dog welfare through an annual dog registration scheme so that local authorities and the police have the resources to tackle irresponsible dog ownership. As well as funding the "social" microchipping of dogs for those who can't afford it, the money resulting from this scheme, assuming it is cash-positive, should be hypothecated towards dog welfare and not swallowed up in the general "tax take" and used to buy missiles to fire at Libya, Iran, Syria or whoever. We do not want to see the situation degenerate into that akin to the Road Fund Licence for cars, which was originally supposed to be for the upkeep of the UK's roads but which is now swallowed whole by the treasury.

Dogs who will never be returned to their owners, or are unsuitable for re-homing, for example those used in dog fighting, should be allowed to be put to sleep only as a very last resort and then only if it is in their own best interests to do so. It is well known that in some cases dogs can be kept in kennels for years. The impact on that animal’s welfare and the seizing authority’s budget can be enormous, but the focus should always be on the animal's quality of life, with a presumption against their being put to sleep unless there are very good reasons. I repeat, 7000 unwanted dogs a year die on "death row" in local authority sanctuaries, and this legislation - indeed all animal legislation - should aim to reduce this not increase it. At the end of the day The Blight could end this scandalous waste of animal life simply by acting as an "owner of last resort" allowing many animals that are currently put down for no other reason than lack of a suitable owner, to live out their lives in peace in an animal sanctuary. The Blight already acts as a "banker of last resort" and an "insurer of last resort" to the financial industry, and animals are a much more deserving case than bankers and hedge fund managers.

And of course it should always be remembered that this proposed approach is not a panacea, because there will still be a hard core of animal abusers who ignore it just as they ignore any other existing animal welfare legislation. The only answer to that is stricter sentencing including custodial sentencing and the use of lifelong bans on animal ownership for the worst offenders.

Gandhi said, somewhere along the line, that the barometer of the health or otherwise of a society is measured by how it treats its animals, and if that truly is the case, then society in the UK is currently in a very bad way indeed.

I wrote some time ago that since society seems to be breaking down under a relentless attack from various factors, many of them stemming from our economic woes or from the lack of respect and spiritual leadership in society, we need some sort of informal networks of support to replace what has been lost by the demise of (for instance) the extended family, local communities, and cutbacks affecting more formal sources of help. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. This is the second of the three ideas I want to witter on about today. I call it “I got your six”.

The idea is as follows:

The phrase “I got your six” comes from military radio communications jargon. What it actually means is “I’m watching your back for you” – six o’clock is right directly behind you, on the geographical “clock face” method of notating direction.

What I had in mind is a network of people who’ve all pledged themselves to keep open a channel of communication with six other people. It’s sort of based on the idea of “six degrees of separation” that each of us is only six steps away from someone famous.

In this case, we are only six steps away from help – or rather, six of us are only ONE step away.

So, basically, choose up to six friends to whom you would answer your mobile in ANY circumstances. This is very important – in ANY circumstances. So if they ring you at 4AM saying they are feeling like ending it all, you MUST answer your mobile. Then text, FB personal message, or Tweet these people, and say “I got your six” – They in turn must do the same to their friends – and so it spreads. Choose your six people carefully, and be scrupulous – think: if this person really DID wake me up at 4AM, would I answer the phone? It’s a serious commitment. If you had a baby, and it woke up in distress at 4AM, you wouldn’t turn over and go back to sleep, would you? You would sort it. If your sixee rings you in that desperate last chance saloon, remember, at that point they’re feeling as helpless as that baby, and you will need to take the call.

When you text/email/PM/inbox them for the first time with “I got your six” they must reply either “accept” or “decline”. Just those words. No explanation, and no argument. If they decline, fine. No saying “What do you MEAN, you don’t want my help?” and going off in a huff. Choose somebody else, don’t ask why, and don’t think badly of them for declining or arguing or anything

No payment, either in money or in kind, is expected or accepted for being somebody’s sixer or sixee. You offer this out of the goodness of your heart. This is NOT and never shall be in any way a scheme to make money. I don’t want to see any “IGYS Brokers” springing up!

The offer is not time-limited. It can only be ended if BOTH parties agree, so THINK before taking on this commitment.

The sixee should not abuse this offer. It’s intended to be your ace in the hole, not your joker in the pack. Having said that, if you need to use it several times in a row, the sixer must accept that and not gripe about it. Sixers, see above about commitment.

I’m assuming close family is already taken as read, so your six special friends, your sixees, would be on top of that existing commitment to any family ties – but there are no rules, and I am not precious about it, though I am assuming here that if your wife/partner/husband/spouse/brother/sister/mother or father called at 4AM you’d pick up anyway, otherwise what kind of person are you??? – at the end of the day, what matters is that everybody ends up with at least two or three phone numbers - preferably six - they can ring in the darkest deepest times.

Sixers – you don’t HAVE to stop at six people, but just think what the commitment entails before you offer it to 27 passing acquaintances.

Sixees: - you can also be someone else’s sixer, if you feel up to the commitment

It’s an idea. Like it or loathe it. If you like it, please pass it on/share. Even if it only ever “works” once, it will have been worth all the effort of telling people about it. Thanks.

Yes, I realise you can do the same thing by ringing the Samaritans, but they aren’t your friends, are they? Anyway, why does it have to be either/or? Also, I know about ICE (in case of emergency) but the idea is to sort it BEFORE it gets to the stage of doctors and nurses ringing up your contacts from your phone to say you are in ER.

Is there a web site you can log on to for more information? No. It’s a simple enough concept, either do it, or don’t do it. No blame.

Yes, there is a jar of pickled onions on my desk. And?

Then, for my closing idea this evening, ladies and gentlemen, there’s the issue of social housing, which has long been one of my bugbears.

Prefabricated modern timber-framed buildings, perhaps built on the Walter Segal principle, could indeed be a significant factor in transforming the social housing market in the UK, and transforming the supply vs demand issues around housing.

There are many “brownfield” sites which are in public ownership and could be utilised for the purpose. Some of these (derelict hospitals and old MOD sites) are already owned by us (ie the taxpayer) and are actually costing us money at the moment, in the form of security patrols and maintenance of the sites.

What is needed is a government with the guts to commandeer these sites, clear them, and/or incorporate any existing structures on the site into something that can be re-used as social housing, then rent them out to groups who would help to self-build their own dwellings. The result would be self-contained, self-sustaining communities with an interest in making the arrangement work for all of the tenants. Any spare land in each development could be put to communal allotments. The dwellings created would remain on the national asset-register.

This will a) reduce the problem of homelessness b) increase the stock of affhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifordable housing generally c) provide a much needed stimulus for the construction industry d) teach people valuable skills or crafts they can use in employment elsewhere and e) create self sustaining mini-communities on each site fostering the spirit of neighbourliness and community respect.

I even went so far as to create a petition to this effect on the government’s e-petitions web site a year ago – it expires on 9th August, so there is still (just) time to affix your name to this admirably sensible idea. If, however, you think it’s mawkish sentimental twaddle, don’t bother. It’s still a free county (just).

The reason why the animal shelters are full, with more and more animals being turned out of doors because of what the re-homers euphemistically refer to as “a change in home circumstances” is because of the dismal state of the economy, exacerbated by The Blight. The reason why the homeless are growing in number, and people are now shoplifting food on a regular basis in order to live, is the dismal state of the economy, exacerbated by The Blight. The reason why so many people are teetering on the edge of despair and worry, causing us to even consider having an unofficial network of mobile phone contact friends who we can call if we’re contemplating suicide, is the dismal state of the economy, exacerbated by The Blight. And if you doubt that, pause to consider the following letter from the correspondence pages of “The Independent”:

At a time when those on benefits are being pilloried for being lazy, feckless scroungers lacking the motivation to get employment, it's rather telling that recent statistics show that as a result of Government policies, the benefit bill has risen to £22m an hour.

Closing Remploy factories, cutting Connexions advisers, making tax inspectors redundant and slashing services which push people out of jobs is not the way to get Britain out of the economic crisis. It is rank hypocrisy that the Government then blames the very people it's forced on to the dole for the Coalition's failures to get a grip on economic policy. With 23 people going for every vacancy, surely it's time the Government invested in creating new jobs. Our MPs have voted these policies through; our MPs have voted to put people on the dole rather than create employment – our MPs should be called to account.

Jo Rust
King's Lynn, Norfolk

Well said, Jo Rust of King’s Lynn, whoever you are. Actually, we didn’t need Jo Rust to tell us how bad things are; one of my correspondents in Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire, an area which has never really recovered from the pit closures and is now in the process of being demolished and rebuilt from the ground up, writes to tell me of the “rag shops” which are now springing up. There are two in Goldthorpe, and one in Thurnscoe. These are shops where you can take your old rags and they pay you 50p a kilo for them – presumably they then bulk them up and sell them on for Mungo or Shoddy or something. As if that were not bad enough, there are some people there whose lives are so desperate that they’ve been going round stealing clothes off other people’s washing lines to sell them to these rag shops for the money. I don’t know which shocks and saddens me the most – the implied poverty, taking us back to the 1930s or the Victorian era, lacking only a contemporary Priestley or Orwell to chronicle it in detail, or the implied destruction of what had once been cosy, close, tight-knit mining communities where people were, historically, more likely to take in your washing for you if it rained, as an act of neighbourliness, than to steal it and sell it for rags.

Of course, it is impossible to have such a debate (or indeed any debate) about these issues against the background of the Olympics. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the games, it is difficult to get any sort of news about anything that actually matters, what with the BBC, and indeed all of the media, acting as cheerleader for compulsory patriotism to take our minds off the meandering blunders of The Blight: the flatulent flabby arse-end of a rancid and corrupt junta that constantly quacks out new and ever more inane, contradictory absurdities on a daily basis.

Today is St Afra’s day, apparently, an event which has hitherto passed me by, so I looked her up, and was surprised to find that she’s yet another reformed prostitute, something the Catholic Church seems to specialise in. See also under St Mary Magdalene.

Summarising her life and death (in 304AD) from various sources, it seems that she travelled to Augsburg, in what is now Germany, from Cyprus, some sources even connecting her to the Cypriot Royal Family of the time. She became caught up in the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian in Roman Augsburg.

Such sources as exist agree that Afra possibly operated a brothel in Augsburg or served as a prostitute in the temple of Venus, living with her mother, Hilaria, and serving women Eunomia, Eutropia, and Digna. When the persecutions started in Augsburg, Bishop Narcissus of Girona, Spain, arrived in the city and took lodging with Afra and Hilaria, not knowing their profession. (A likely story. See under Father Ted - “the money was just resting in my bank account”). His holiness attracted the women, whom he succeeded in converting. When officials came looking for the bishop, Afra hid him under a pile of flax. Afra and her household were baptized, and her uncle Dionysius was ordained as a bishop.

From then on, it was all downhill, however; having been arrested, Afra was burned to death, apparently while tied to a tree, on the small island of Lech. She was buried in Augsburg and her mother erected a chapel for her tomb. Soon after, Hilaria and her serving women were also burned alive, in their house. Afra's remains were buried in a church named after her.

All of which is very interesting, but doesn’t really tell me much other than that there were lots of dubious saints in the early years of Christianity, and that the Romans persecuted Christians, often quite brutally, as indeed they did with all supposed enemies and opponents of the Pax Romana. Another source for St Afra notes that:

They were arrested eventually, and brought to trial. Afra faced a judge who had once purchased her favours. She was ordered to sacrifice to the gods, but cleverly debated with the judge, somewhere along the line saying, "My body has sinned, let it suffer. But I will not corrupt my soul by idolatry." The judge, however, was not moved by her debating. He ordered her burned to death. Her mother and three servants carried away the body and gave it a proper burial, for which they were put to death.

Apparently this earned her a position (quiet at the back!) in the holy hierarchy of saints as the patron saint of fallen women, which I suppose was always a bit of a slam-dunk, from a study of her life to date, she was unlikely to have become the patron saint of crochet. I have to say though, without getting into a totally feminist schtick here, if she was morally fallen, what about the men who sat in judgement on her? If history was not largely written by dead white men, she might have stood a better chance of emerging with her reputation, if not her virginity, intact. As it is, it seems rather judgmental to say that you have to be either/or a fallen woman or a holy saint. I am sure some fallen women do good works (oh do stop it!) just as I am sure some saints have nights when they go out and really tie one on, waking up in a strange bed with a hangover and having to do the celestial equivalent of the walk of shame.

So far in the last three weeks we’ve had saints’ days for three saints who have been variously morally lax and/or corpulent to boot, so who knows, maybe even I might be in with a chance. It would probably all come down to good works done after my death, not to mention miracles. Actually, I already do miracles in some areas, as my accountant will undoubtedly eventually attest to the Inquisition, or Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, as we call them these days. I bet you didn’t expect that.

So, one day, eventually, if and when the news reaches you that the grim reaper has finally cut my useless legs from under me, and I shall trundle no more, remember me how you want to, or forget me if you will, after your own fashion and beliefs, but set down this, think on this. If anything is remembered of me, I’d like it to be that I was a man with three ideas - I tried to set up three things – a scheme for public housing, so that everybody who needed one could have a home to call their own, and nobody had to sleep out in the cold; an idea to make sure that if everybody took some responsibility for the emergency emotional welfare of, say, six of their friends, then they would at least know that, in theory, they would never lay their head down, without a hand to hold; and finally, a campaign to ensure that unwanted, stray and abandoned dogs (and cats, for that matter) were no longer killed just because no-one wanted them.

And if you’ve ever enjoyed any of my hard-won words, often quarried late at night when the rest of the house, or indeed the world, was sleeping, I hope you’ll remember them, if one day you see some poor, abandoned, frightened hurt animal needing help, or some poor, abandoned, frightened, homeless human being, for that matter, and that you’ll try and help them. Don’t do it for my sake; don’t do it for your sake; but do it, for God’s sake!