The Soft Southerner

It was in the moment between sleep and wakefulness, that little death of a breath when the mind and body take a leap of faith to reconcile after the separation of the night.   no longer insensate but not yet in control of thought processes there was an awareness of something.... different.   an automatic, questing tendril of consciousness reached out to taste my surroundings, slotting each constituent element into it's allotted space.... cat, clock, duvet, toes, pillow, breath, pain oh yes always pain, also something unfamiliar caressing the skin on my face, a warmth long absent, a distant memory almost within reach.... SUNSHINE !!!

With retirement comes a new way of perceiving time and tide.  winter is distinguished by the number of cold weather payments that magically appear in the bank.  every time the temperature drops below zero for seven consecutive days us oldies hit the jackpot and receive a little bonus.   this year?  none.  does that mean there was no winter?   could it be that winter is still to come or perhaps it's not yet over?   were all those icy white mornings a figment from the fairies?  a gentle winter it may have been in the North East but nonetheless the absence of heat doesn't do the old jeni bones any favours.

When we moved here over 35 years ago from the mellow climes of the Far South i was discombobulated the first winter by the sprouting of sledges in our local supermarket, hanging like low growing fruit from every wall.  nobody had enlightened me that Newcastle was further North than some parts of the Scottish border until we woke one winter morning to stalwart parents hauling child bedecked sledges through two feet of snow that didn't clear till Christmas.   it was a moment of epiphany, The Soft South was no longer a concept but an incarnation of which i was bereft.  my sons had only ever seen a feathering in their entire lives so, since we were sleigh-less, i gave them the day off school and we built an igloo in the garden.  

The Big Cold has been tamed over the years, whether by climate change, natural cycling, or a mix of both, but i still yearn for the softness of a Southern winter, still spurn the freezing winds that reach Northumberland straight from the Russian Steppe, still think humans were created for hibernation.   but for a moment this morning upon waking it was spring and this Soft Southerner was filled with hope.

D.W.P. D.L.A. 2 P.I.P. Acronym Hell

And so it begins..... the world of I Daniel Blake has landed on my doormat.  a long dreaded letter from the Seventh Circle Of Acronym Hell has been sitting on my desk for the past fortnight curdling the milk and causing an epidemic of two headed calf births at every farm for a twenty mile radius.   thirty six A4 pages of D.W.P.  D.L.A. to P.I.P forms to be precise, little five inch wide boxes in which to explain the effects of sixty four years of bodily devastation. dozens of tiny tick boxes to persuade a bureaucrat relying on an algorithm that i'm sufficiently broken to need support.

Perhaps it's pedantic but could there have been an underlying motive when Disability Living Allowance was re-named Personal Independence Payment.   does removing the D word make it easier to justify removing the support?   Does "independence" imply our dependencies are miraculously negated?

It's hard not to be panic stricken when even the responsible press regales us with tales of woe from severely disabled people who have lost their financial support or mobility cars.

http://www.disabledgo.com/blog/2016/07/pip-reassessments-mean-35000-will-lose-motability-vehicles-in-2016/  

Living with a lifelong disability or illness is a test of ingenuity, an unskeining of normal protocols in order to achieve the basics of existence, finding shortcuts and gizmos in order to retain self determination, hiding the burns and bruises of misjudged activities and exerting super human energy to appear equal to the rest of humanity.   those who refuse to melt into a puddle of miserableness live in a form of conscious denial of their limitations, always pushing just a little bit further to keep up with a world that wont slow down to accommodate the broken. 

It's a human trait to assume that everybody else lives according to our normality, so i spent a large part of my life assuming i was a wimp because i was always left behind.   at school in the 60's running a lap of a full size track was expected of all pupils.   legs a mess of scar tissue?   no matter.   broken bones set wrongly?   no matter.   paralysis?   no matter and no lunch until you've run that track.  a couple of years later a holiday job in a busy seaside coffee shop ended in a hail of grubby cups and saucers raining down on the customers, gateau festooned in my hair.   1970's mini skirts were a curse for displaying cut and scabbed knees, the result of falling off kerbs or walking into walls, so i embraced the hippy style of long patchwork and velvet.  the employment universe became a possibility by working voluntarily or being self employed so the normal rules of decorum could be circumvented and shoes discarded for safety's sake.  

We the disabled deserve commendation for decades of stoicism, for laughing instead of crying whilst sitting in the gutter with the fag ends and empty crisp packets, blood seeping from the latest wound.  for using every ounce of feeble energy to hold the head high and the shoulder's back whilst the world is watching.  for fooling you all into thinking we are fine when pain is a barbed wire onesie enmeshing every nerve ending in it's octopusal grip.   but no.... rather than citation we are accused of faking or exaggerating our difficulties, subjected to humiliating medical examinations despite reams of supportive hospital letters, penalised for not "looking sick enough" or, most shockingly, denied support if not sufficiently literate to competently complete their forms.

So yes.... i'm apprehensive as i prepare to post my application, aware that for me it's second nature to understate how hard life can be and knowing that when i sit across from their "medical professional", not a doctor you notice it could be a physiotherapist or a healthcare assistant ticking boxes on a computer, i will automatically smile and be engaging, dress well and brush my hair, shake hands and sit up straight, be my usual vivacious self..... AND LOSE VALUABLE POINTS  !!!

Synthetic Humanity

"It's a test proven to measure human emotion.   we are accustomed to seeing some kind of response."

"You want me to be more like a human.... casually cruel to those closest to you and then crying over pictures of people you've never met."

So spoke a "synth" in the Channel 4 series Humans in which synthetic humanoids have been created to serve us in a slightly futuristic UK, and are becoming self aware.   Niska decides she wants to be tried as a human for a murder she has committed but first she has to prove she is conscious.   various images of joy, sorrow, exhilaration are projected onto a giant screen to elicit emotional reaction.  the above exchange is prompted by the interrogator after pictures of great suffering are shown leaving her seemingly unmoved.   

It started me thinking about what strange, inconsistent creatures we would appear to an emerging sentience seeking a moral code when the same people who portrayed refugees as a "swarm" of locusts to be exterminated, covered their social media accounts with saccharin RIP messages for a little asylum seeker washed up on an Italian beach. there are still 544 unaccompanied children in the Calais camp, the youngest is 10, where is the Facebook outrage for them?  it seems a child needs a name and a harrowing photo in the media to be worth our attention.

Government cuts have forced Cumbria to close it's last women's refuge and 17% nationally have had to shut their doors.   it's estimated 67% will be lost unless changes to housing benefit are reversed.  recently, after the much publicised trial in The Archers where Helen stabs the abusive Rob, a JustGiving page supported by followers of the program raised £135,000.  how can an imaginary character prompt such an outpouring of generosity when women and children made of flesh and blood are continuing to experience beatings at the hands of their partners because of a lack of funding and donations.

11 million people signed a petition last year claiming to be appalled by the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China.   yet, in the UK alone over a billion animals a year are transported for hours without food and water in cramped, noisy lorries to die in terror after being herded en masse into our  slaughter houses. hundreds of thousands being exported will be left untended in transporters for days in sweltering heat or ice cold conditions,  often arriving dead or in too poor a condition to be fit for human consumption.   what makes a Chinese dog's life worth more than that of the lamb you ate for Sunday dinner?  

The total number of animals killed in British slaughterhouses in 2013 was over a billion.

This included 9.8 million pigs, nearly 15 million sheep, 18 million turkeys, 14 million ducks, over 945 million chickens and 2.6 million cattle. Add to that 4.5 billion fish and 2.6 billion shellfish you have a total of over 8 billion animals killed in the UK each year.

How very much easier it is to be compassionate and cry crocodile tears over a fictional character, or a maudlin photo seen on a screen, than it is to allow ourselves to be moved by the plight of real people and creatures inhabiting this revolving rock.   perhaps it's a protection of our sanity against a sense of impotence that in the face of a rising tide of suffering catharsis overrides commitment, emotional release supersedes responsibility, avoidance is preferable to action.   

Maybe our synth in her cold, calculated honesty voiced more humanity in that one sentence than we express in a lifetime of false emoting.  

Curiosity Killed The Cat

I am cat

      

   I am cunning

     I am fearless

       I am insufferably curious

BUT..... i'm not like you, i don't think like you.  i may be sentient and intelligent but i have no concept of the future or the possible ramifications of my actions so i behave impulsively in your eyes, perhaps stupidly, thoughtlessly but i can be no other because.... I AM CAT.

When the postman left his van door open, all i saw was a little room i had never explored before, so i jumped in.  when the door next opened i was somewhere totally different.  frightened and in panic i jumped out to a place that looked and smelled alien with an unrecognisable skyline. 

When that mouse scurried across my path i HAD to chase it.  mouse = lunch,  mouse = fun, mouse = run.  i didn't know it was  in the middle of a road until i was caught in the headlights of your car, then no mouse, no fun, no run.... just blackness.

I was quietly sitting by my gate in the sun waiting for my humans when your dog galloped towards me barking, barking, barking.  no time for paws, no time for claws so i ran and ran.... but i ran too far and now all the gates look the same and i can't find  mine.

It could have been so different.  you could have checked your vehicle was empty or closed its door.    you could have driven more slowly on that bend.   you could have put your dog on a lead if you can't control it. my homeless brethren who survive the cars, the cold, the cruelty only live for about three years, three miserable, hungry, lonely years filled with sickness and fear. 

That's why i'm lying under this hedge desolate, shivering, starving, dying.   it's going to snow tonight but that's ok, it will cover my little body and in the morning my final indignity will be hidden from the eyes of those who didn't care.

Did you know there are NINE MILLION homeless cats in the U.K. and a quarter of a million die in car accidents every year?   and we are called a nation of animal lovers? groups like Cat's Protection (click this link http://www.cats.org.uk/ ) have subsidised neutering schemes, support and neuter feral colonies, advertise and try to reunite lost pets with their owners and, if that proves impossible, re-homes them.   that's why i'm fostering The Indomitable Fred who came to me so malnourished he lost his teeth, fur and muscle.   it was 50/50 whether he would survive. he's now a sturdy, sleek, black panther.   can you help save a furry life this winter?  if you purchase online there are dozens of companies such as ebay, Amazon, Argos, Sainsbury's that will donate to a charity of your choice every time you shop.   it doesn't cost you a penny more.   have a look at the link below.   maybe you could help support Fred find his forever home.

https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/catsprotectiongn/

May The Universe Treat You Kindly

Once more The Two Faced God Janus is imposing his implacable will upon us, pointing his cosmic finger forward, propelling us through the doors of time whether we are ready or not.   there's no avoiding his imperative, his command is non elective, 2017 is upon us and he will prevail.   

After sixty five new year's eves the speed with which a year passes still leaves me breathless and unprepared, unsettled that another year of a finite life is slipping into history never to be retrieved.   what happened in 2016 stays in 2016, the salutory and the injurious.  not a single regretted instance or word can be revoked, it's all there preserved as if in amber, as are the more noble moments though if i were to be honest the former probably outweigh the latter.

2016 has been a year of losses and gains just like every year experienced by us mortals.   only the gods can declare a door opens onto joy without pain, only Janus controls beginnings without endings, and Janus is a concept not a representation of reality.   humanity has to accept that we have short lives into which sun will shine, rain must fall, and in between will be rainbows promising hope for a better tomorrow.

Would you indulge me as i wish all my family and  friends a Blessed New Year.   may those who believe feel God more closely through the next 365 days, during the good times and the bad.  for the secular i hope the universe treats you kindly and balances the fates.   for you all....   THANK YOU for your love and care, your support and kindness, above all for your friendship as these rare treasures are the only things we carry with us from one year to the next.

A thousand ages in thy sight 

are like an evening gone; 

short as the watch that ends the night 
before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream, 

bears all its sons away; 
they fly, forgotten, as a dream 
dies at the opening day.

Two Thousand Years Of Wrong

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From angels bending near the earth,

To touch their harps of gold;

“Peace on the earth, good will to men,

From Heav’n’s all-gracious King.”

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the angels sing.

1. Yet with the woes of sin and strife
   The world has suffered long;
   Beneath the angel strain have rolled
   Two thousand years of wrong;
   And man, at war with man, hears not
   The love-song which they bring;
   Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife
   And hear the angels sing.

Many misconceptions, endless assumptions, too many cultural misrepresentations, masses of historical ambiguities peppered with nebulous presumptions.... that's one definition of the origins of Christmas.   it's also a description of the reign of the dinosaurs.   when we are uncertain of the past we have a tendency to fill it with our own experiences and expectations (whoever knew dinosaurs had feathers not scales?  we were taught they were simply giant lizards.)  it's this tendency that makes us human not raptor..... and that we prefer our turkey cooked not raw.

Does it matter that this Christ-mas we celebrate is full of uncertainty and ambivalence?  that the few facts we do know have been as fancifully embellished as King Arthur and Camelot?   deconstruct a traditional Christmas card and you will find very little that doesn't owe it's genesis to a large dollop of imagination and early European art.

Does it matter that the rare historical certainties we do have are brushed aside because of their darkness?   a child born homeless in an enemy occupied territory, the mass killing of baby boys by a paranoid tyrant afraid of losing his power, a family fleeing for their lives to a strange country and culture doesn't make for a pretty scene on the mantelpiece does it?  a little too close to our world's current reality perhaps?   so yes.... it does matter because in prettifying the nativity we strip it of it's humanity and create a myth that challenges nothing and nobody.   but.... if in the boy Jesus we see the face of a displaced refugee, the desolate chill of a slum child, the stigma of illegitimacy, the precarity of homelessness then maybe we would be compelled to act and that's not comfortable when compared with a snowy scene of baby barnyard  animals and an infant who "no crying makes".

So no matter how, or if, you celebrate.  whether you are alone or surrounded by merriment, honour God Incarnate  or Santa, are blessed with plenty or struggling with deficit, perhaps it would be worthwhile taking time to remember that not much has changed in two thousand years and the only hope of transforming our world lies with each one of us embarking on revolution in our homes, work places, friendships, a revolution of forgiveness and love.   we can't undo two thousand years of wrong but we can commit to a year of doing better.   then perhaps we would find the true meaning of a Season Of Goodwill To All Men.

Lion or Lamb?

There she sat, a tiny lady snugged in a shawl with her silky, silver hair neatly permed, paper fine skin  creased at the corner of her eyes, a humbug sucking, Catherine Cookson reading, sweet as cherry pie great, great grandmother.   i had been visiting regularly for quite some time when i realised she never spoke of friends past or present.   assuming it was because  advanced age had stolen company away by attrition i was hesitant to say anything.... until Christmas came around. apart from immediate family there were no cards, no phone calls, no visits, no gifts, nothing from the families of old friends, her universe was empty.

Intrigued i began asking gentle questions about her life when younger and knowing she had lived in the same small village all her life dropped in the names of people i was meeting as a newcomer.   the mystery was solved in one enlightening conversation that went something like this;
"I met Wilhelmina for the first time today."

"Don't speak to me about that woman, don't ever mention her name in this house again.  she doesn't exist to me, if i pass her in the street i turn my face to the wall."

"I'm sorry i didn't know.  what happened ?".... looong pause

".......i don't remember."

"When did you fall out?"

"SIXTY YEARS AGO AND I HAVEN'T SPOKEN TO HER SINCE."

This conversation was repeated when i mentioned Gladys, Gertrude, George, Henrietta, Henry and on and on and on......

The irony was that Wilhelmina and Henrietta et al weren't concerned in the slightest as they were too busy enjoying life with friends, going for coffees, days out, chatting on street corners, being involved, being sociable, being happy.   that's the thing with grudge keeping, eventually it doesn't hurt the grudgee who moves on,  it hurts the grudger who can end up alone and embittered.   forgiveness benefits both as it bestows freedom to form new friendships and sometimes even reconciliation.

Of course, forgiveness has it's limits.   if a lion bites off your right hand the animal doesn't deserve to be euthanised as it's simply doing what lions do, but you aren't obliged to offer it your left hand for dessert, if you are sensible you will make sure your appendages are safely tucked out of sight until the lion is tamed.   as my mother, who was the epitome of grace, used to say  "i can overlook one much, i can forgive two much, but three much is too much."

I'm not saying all who decline company at this time of year are malcontents,  those of us who are gregarious of nature need to be accepting of our more introverted brethren and not exert pressure to conform to our idea of fun.  if  Christmas by the fire with a book or movie for company rocks your boat then that's a perfectly acceptable way to celebrate. solitude needn't equal isolation, aloneness isn't the same as loneliness, privacy isn't necessarily privation, some simply prefer a simpler, quieter existence. it's absolutely fine to to batten down the hatches and seek the safety of a celebration free season if that's what a soul needs and wants, but it's sad to be alone as a result of alienating the universe and it's inhabitants by our attitudes and intolerance.   

Sometimes all it takes to mend a rift, especially where both parties aren't even sure what sundered the relationship in the first place,  is a reason to make the initial approach and this supposed Season of Goodwill is the perfect excuse.   if there's somebody out there who you would like to try again with, send a card, make a "friend" request on Facebook, contrive to bump into each other near a coffee shop, take the risk.   BUT if that person is a lion and you are still missing your right arm think twice before extending the left in friendship.