Ostrobogulous, and shitnastic, to the nth degree. A week when everything I have touched, every device I rely on, seems to have either blown up, caught fire, or just slid gently off the table and laid down on the floor emitting a feeble, electronic, death-rattle.
And it rained. The gardens need the rain, apparently. They’re welcome to it. The trees are coming along nicely, more and more catkins, and now the Rowan has fresh green leaves, which is no surprise, considering they’re being constantly watered. The clematis is in bud, now, as well as the magnolia. Monday was the best morning, which is not something you can usually say of any week, and I woke up to the note of a wood-pigeon, coo-cooing just outside the window.
While the April showers hammered down in between the all-too-brief bursts of sunshine, and Kitty slumbered on beside the fire, inside the house, carnage raged. The phone handset cradle was the first to go. It has given up recharging the phone, and the reason for this is, as I discovered when I took it apart to look, a wire has come loose inside and unless I can find the solder and the soldering iron sometime soon, it is “Fouquet dans Le Touquet”. Now we are reduced to alternating the handsets and taking each one upstairs onto the one remaining cradle for a day or so, while we use the other one. Inevitably, given the stress she’s currently under, there are days when Debbie forgets and leave both handsets upstairs, so I am left with only my expensive, emergency-only mobile for a day.
Brenda and Freda continue their nocturnal visits, and it has now got to the stage where if one of them comes early, I put out a second sitting for the other one, before I go to bed.
In the midst of all this, a parcel of books went AWOL on its way back from a school in Ilford where one of our authors had been performing poetry. It did, eventually, turn up, but only after hours (which felt like days) spent tracking it. In case you want to know which courier to choose if you, too, wish to experience the effect of dropping a valuable package down a bottomless pit filled with piranha fish, never to see it again, the courier was Hermes, though, given their propensity for, and proximity to, cock-ups, perhaps they should consider re-branding as “Herpes”.
But by far the biggest mechanical disaster this week has been the total write-off of Debbie’s mother’s car, owing to some benighted pondlife having sprayed cavity foam insulation up the exhaust for a lark. Debbie's mother's car was parked on our "drive" while she was away, and when Debbie came to start it up on Monday night, to go and collect Granny from the Station, some "humorist" had squirted expanding cavity insulating foam up the exhaust, which had set rock-solid. Debbie collected her Mum in the camper,instead, and then we phoned the garage – who were still there, at 19:40hrs, but all they could do was tow it. The next morning they phoned her to say her car was completely knackiepooed, a total write-off, because a reconditioned engine and a whole new exhaust system would cost more than the car's worth (or rather, more than a comparable new car) so she's been completely in bits about this and is probably now going to spend the weekend filling in insurance claims forms.
The PCSO who eventually came round to talk to me about it (I reported it, because it happened on our property) was a nice enough young bloke, and I have been given a crime number and everything, but so far my efforts to get the police to fingerprint the car have been in vain, despite spending a long time trying.
Since this blog is at least supposed to be nominally religious or at least spiritual in its aim, I should perhaps at this point say how hard it is to forgive people like this. In fact, it’s completely impossible, which is why I am not a very good Christian – or, possibly not even a Christian at all, given what I would happily do to them. `Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay’. Well, all I can say is, Big G, if you’re listening, and the fiery pit really does exist and they really do end up there, get the biggest, butchest, demon in hell to give them an extra prod with the pitchfork, from me, just to make sure they are done to a turn, like.
The week ended with a similar malfunction to the phone handset, only this one came to my attention when Debbie stuck her head into my “bedroom” on Friday morning and barked, in full-on “Raus, Raus” mode, “Why isn’t the printer working?” interrupting rather a pleasant dream involving Fiona Bruce and Anita Rani arm-wrestling for the exclusive right to present antiques programmes on TV.
Several answers sprang to mind (the most obvious being “which printer?” as there are two). I did consider “I don’t know, why is the printer not working?” in a sort of “Mistah-Bones, whuffo did de chicken cross de road?” cod accent, but a sixth sense told me this would not be appreciated, so instead I struggled into my clothes and transferred to my wheelchair as fast as I could, and then came trundling through like the Seventh Cavalry, to the rescue. The printer thought it had a paper jam, even though it hadn’t, a “malady most incident” to HP Printers, I’m afraid. [Although in fairness, we did have one, once, which was displaying “paper jam” and which turned out, on inspection, to have one of Tiglet’s gravy bones - a small proprietary brand of dog biscuit - unaccountably wedged in its mechanism.]
I was quite pleased to note, while fixing the printer with one hand, that the chiming clock, which had unaccountably stopped ticking the day before, despite being fully wound, and which I had squirted with “Double T Penetrating Oil”, was still going, and had been overnight. I remarked on this to Debbie, cheerfully.
“Why are you talking to me about a CLOCK?” she snarled querulously over her shoulder, slamming the door on the way out. Thank you, AQA, thank you GCSE. I got a similar response when I asked if there was any chance we might go up to the Flouch to see if there were any new lambs and look out for Lapwings. She asked me why I wanted to go and look for Lapwings, and somehow the answer that “I like their grebey little heads” seemed strangely inadequate. Perhaps I should try getting them to enrol for a GCSE.
All of which has more or less led to me sitting amongst the wreckage, presiding over the chaos like a cross between Nero and Miss Havisham, without any of the redeeming features of either. Somewhere along the line there was a stand up row (except I was sitting down) over the phone with Barclays about whether I could deduct something for paying off the loan three months early (I want to, they disagree). I said that when the loan is discharged I want my personal guarantee back because I want to set fire to it in front of the bank manager, and maybe him as well. He said `we’re recording this call, you know,’ and I said `good.’ – that sort of thing. I am so tempted to deduct 10p off the final payment, and then watch them try and get it to close the loan.
Debbie’s battle with the AQA marking continues, and now, of course, she’s got something else to worry about, because the debate’s already started about what courses will/won’t be running from September 2012 onwards. It wouldn’t be so bad, if there was only one organisation was involved, but with Debbie currently working for three, with possibly a further one on the horizon, planning who’s going to be taught what, when and where, is like doing a three dimensional jigsaw wearing boxing gloves and a blindfold. Meanwhile, the grim grind of the existing marking goes on, and unless it’s something to do with AQA or GCSE, she isn’t interested right now. From what little I have managed to glean about the manoueverings over next term’s courses, it’s a case of “Mr Arse, may I introduce you to Mr Elbow?” It now turns out that the GCSE course may run next year after all, and my only comment on that was that no barge pole is long enough.
All these car shenanegans, of course, have meant that Freddie and Zak have been spending some unplanned quality time with us again, both during the week, and this weekend. The squirrels, knowing that Freddie is safely shut in behind half an inch of double glazed conservatory door, have been positively taunting him, with their improbable high-wire routines, skipping along from branch to branch of the high bendy saplings, while he howls his fury at them and paws at the door. God alone knows what he would do if I actually let him out to chase them, except disappear into the woods down the valley out the back for hours, and have to be retrieved by a search party of able-bodieds.
I’ve decided that’s what you lot are, by the way, all you bipeds, striding confidently around the place, you’re “able-bodieds”, and with adequate training, care and skill, you could be taught a wide variety of meaningful rudimentary tasks.
Sadly, that sort of language isn’t as preposterous as it should be, especially when you substitute the word “disabled”. As each day passes, I have become convinced that there is a deliberate government policy to attack specifically the disabled, and specifically those on benefits. It’s as if they have sat down after the election, and invented “Apocryphal Benefits Man”, someone who looks a lot like Ricky Tomlinson, sits on the sofa all day, sipping tramp-strength Kestrel, watching a widescreen plasma TV, pausing only to sire another unemployable hoodie now and then to drain further the coffers of the equally anecdotal “hard working family”. And then proceeded to spend considerable time, effort, and taxpayers’ money since the election in perpetrating the myth that all disabled people on benefits are like this.
Apparently, Chris Grayling and Iain Duncan Smith are “mystified” at the demonisation of the disabled under this government. As Sue Marsh has perceptively pointed out in her blog, they should maybe try reading their own Department’s press releases:
Have you ever wondered how it is that the Daily Mail & Express (other brands of toilet paper available) seem so intent on victimising sick and disabled people?
Ever wondered how it is, that monthly benefit fraud rates, released by the DWP are always written up in such an inflammatory way? Why national media only ever print the government lines. Chris Grayling, minister for employment, says he is “bemused” by it. Maybe Iain Duncan-Smith can clear up this mystery?
Meet his special advisers : Susie Squire former Taxpayers Alliance until May 2010. For those who don’t know already, The Taxpayers Allowance are huge Tory donors, regularly accused of simply being a Conservative front. They’re not exactly on the Liberal, one-nation side of the Tory fence either. More your rabid frothing side. A quick scroll through their website will tell you everything you need to know, but they regularly attack disability benefits and those who receive them.
And SpAd No.2 : Phillipa Stroud : Remember the name? Yep she was the politician who thought she could pray-away-the-gay! She sees homosexuality as a “demon” that needs to be driven out of a person. Accordingly, she set up her own “church” to carry out this important work. Do click on these links, they’re fascinating. As I read through, I wondered if she should be allowed anywhere near Westminster at all.
One can only begin to imagine what someone like Stroud might think of the disabled. No doubt we have demons of our own. It’s not so long ago since people thought disabilities were the outward sign of some inner corruption or evil. Now, surely the profiles of these two women might go some way to explaining just why, yet again today, we see misleading press releases leading to misleading stories?
At one end of the spectrum, the vile river of garbage spewing from the DWP leads to the grim, grotesque idiocy of people being declared fit for work by Atos and then dying of cancer three weeks later. At the other, darker end of the spectrum, it leads to people deciding they can no longer go on, and, sadly, deciding to do something about it. People such as Mark and Helen Mullins. People such as Darrowsgirl. I never knew Darrowsgirl, although we apparently posted on the same messageboard on the internet, but this week, in the course of an online conversation, I was shocked to discover that she had – apparently – taken her own life, almost six months ago.
Now, I’m aware that this next bit may sound creepy, but, once it had been brought to my attention, it niggled at me: it seemed almost as if in some way I had been “negligent” in not noticing at the time. [In my defence, I also felt the same way when another poster on that same messageboard died recently, albeit of natural causes, and in his case it was worse, because he had actually sent me a message when I was in hospital, offering to help out and bring me things, and somehow it got lost in the wash and never got replied to.] Anyway, I followed from thread to thread in the way that the internet allows you to do, these days, and found that she had been fond of greyhounds, and wanted to sell up and live on a canal boat. What a tragic waste of a life, of a dream.
I would like to take the politicians responsible for these policies, and sit them down in a room, and, if her death was in any way attributable to people with mental illness being demonised by this government, in any way at all, however small their contribution, I would like to say to them "I hope her spectre haunts you to the end of your days. I hope you never sleep again. I hope you are punished for all eternity for your part in her sad demise. You disgust me. You disgust me."
This, again, is the forgiveness trap, of course. How can you even begin to forgive a government that does this to people?
Mental health has, to a certain extent, always had something of a stigma attached. In my defence, when I use terms such as “loopy” and “gaga” in my own writing, I am usually decrying the bizarre actions of people who claim to be sane, or at least “sane” enough to stand for election and think they know what’s best for the rest of us. And I’d also like to say, here and now, that I am (probably) mentally ill. I’ve thought for a while now, that I am probably suffering from depression, and let’s face it, googling dead people isn’t exactly the balanced and considered action of someone who is what a “hard working family” would probably call “normal”. Nor is chronicling the minutiae of your life in a weekly blog, weird and funny as it often seems.
I’ve written before about “The Black Fog”. For Churchill, and Nick Drake, what I call The Black Fog [note the capitals] was the “black dog”, but I don’t buy that. “Black dog”, is friendly. I’d quite like a black dog, to be honest. The Black Fog [those capitals again] is the feeling that there’s nothing left, that you’ve been running on empty for so long, and nobody notices, nobody cares. That this is it, this is all there is, that things will never get better and you will just go on grinding away until the day when all your energy, all your reserves, all your hope are gone, and you reach that bleak and howling place where The Black Fog is so dense, it collapses in on itself like a Black Hole. The Black Fog is, of course, made blacker and more pea-soupier by a government that tells you (and everyone else who will listen) that it was your fault you got lost in The Black Fog in the first place.
There are, however, some things we can do. When I feel it starting to get on top of me, I compartmentalise. I concentrate on the task in hand. I get on with things. It doesn’t matter what, to be honest, God knows there is enough stuff lying around here needing fixing after a week like last week. Not giving The Black Fog more importance than it deserves, is a way of keeping it at bay.
The second thing is not to worry. These days I do what I can do, and I can what I can’t. 99% of the stuff we worry about never happens anyway. The example I always used to quote is that you can be worrying about whether your job is safe, or how you’ll pay the mortgage, and then a badger falls off the roof onto your head one morning as you go out of the door. This metaphor was intended to convey the unpredictable “left-field” nature of events, though, since the advent of Brenda, it has, in my case at any rate, become more statistically likely, so I may need to find something even more outrageous and unlikely to not worry about!
The third thing is, and this was a big step forward, this realisation, that we are not alone in the fog. If you shout out, then we’ll hear each other. There are lots of us in The Black Fog. Some of us are lucky, and only pass through it fleetingly, like when you’re driving along a country lane late at night and suddenly mist envelops your car like a wraith, causing you to slam on the brakes, and then it’s gone, as quickly as it came. Some of us spend days in it, like becalmed mariners. But everybody’s been in it, even if they won’t admit it. Shout, and I’ll be there, and I’ll shout, and you’ll be there. Like in that poem by A. E. Housman;
if you come to a road where danger
Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share,
Be good to the lad that loves you true
And the soul that was born to die for you,
And whistle and I'll be there.
Clearly, the government isn’t going to crumble under the single-handed assault of one wizened old Yorkshireman in a wheelchair, though they will get slaughtered at the upcoming local elections. The problem is the lack of a viable alternative. The Opposition, to get elected, has to pander to exactly the same mythical white van man Daily Mail tendency, and is unlikely to be any more compassionate towards disabled people than the present gang. So, fourthly, we may have to get through by using unconventional support networks, possibly for the foreseeable future, or maybe even bypass the system altogether, and go and live in the woods, and bake our own curtains and weave our own bread.
Whatever, the government will sneer, smear and deride, because that’s what governments do, especially this one. But we are able to resist. While I was writing this, I was listening to various random tracks on Spotify, and up popped L. J. Booth’s song `The Ox That Pulls The Cart’, which is about, amongst other things, how the USA, a superpower, was defeated in Vietnam by – basically – a society of peasant farmers.
Never underestimate
The ox that pulls the cart
The iron will
Of the humble heart
So, a week that began with me watching a fat wood-pigeon preening himself amongst the new boughs outside my window, looking for all the world like an 18th-century cleric, with his purple-grey front and his white collar, fluting his harmless “take-two, taffy, take-two” call on a calm Monday morning, ended, by Friday, with a Raven pacing about on the decking like a centurion in gaiters, tilting his head from side to side, his gimlet eye seeking out the broken shards of Ryvita I’d put out earlier. Even Freddie thought twice about barking at him.
Let’s see what next week brings. I’ve been too busy to read my Bible this week, as you may have gathered. I hope Big G has got my six. I hope someone has. When it comes to The Black Fog, we’re all just Chindits in the jungle. Close ranks, and carry on. Comms check. I’m still here. I got your six. If winter comes, can spring be far behind? The sun’s comin’ over the hill. I will not go down under the ground. Roger that.
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