Category Archives: life

Revisiting tits and trolls

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A rare post about twitter. Sorry twitter haters. A while ago I wrote a pithy little number called ‘Of tits and trolls’.  Now, after getting the latest Moran storm tweeted into my timeline over the past 24 hours, I’m rethinking my support of the ‘block’ button. Basically Moran wrote a column about equality which started with a parody which was the only bit available to view online for non-subscribers of the Times. This caused offence. Moran has a bit of history of causing offence [sive].

Helen Lewis then wrote a laboriously detailed defence of Moran putting ‘everything’ in context. This has been retweeted off the planet. The trouble is, the context that Lewis draws on is sterile and stripped of the emotion, pain, devastation, weariness, tedium, injustice, discrimination, harm, exhaustion, etc, etc, etc, often experienced by the people who are so incensed by Moran’s careless journalism. For me, Lewis’s post reinforces some of the complacency and ignorance that tinges the writing of many journalists (not all of course) who have little or no understanding of what it is like to grow up outside of, or on the margins, of mainstream life.

Should Moran have some sort of insight or understanding of these experiences? I think she probably should given her position and reach. She’s in a position to make a difference. But there’s the block button. That protects Moran (and others) from having to engage with
difference. Well the block button and the concept of ‘troll’.  The trouble is, blocking ‘trolls’ (i.e., people who disagree with you) will lead to twitter becoming a tedious, turgid space where you’re surrounded by similar others, with your views and values protected as kind of cosily superior and untouchable. Instead of blocking, ignoring offensive posts is probably as effective. And allows space for discussion and change.

The British Gas Plumber

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“Must admit, I’m not a great dog lover, me. And you get them…they kind of come up to me and sniff me knees. You know what I mean? They sniff me knees, but once one dog’s sniffed me knees, other dogs can smell that dog on my overalls and they all want to sniff me knees. I got a cat at home. That probably doesn’t help either, as the dogs can probably smell the cat too.  So I tend to shoo em away, like. You know, shake me legs a bit. But one man got a bit uppity when I did that. He was like “My dog wouldn’t hurt anyone!”, but these days, you don’t really know that. A lot of dogs that shouldn’t hurt people do hurt them. So I try to keep away from them… Yeah.. Just the one sugar thank you.”

Baby Jesus in the walnut

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“Come on everyone! Time to decorate the tree…!!”
“SHUT UP!!”
“Eh? LB come and decorate the tree NOW.”
“Mum. Can I go back on Youtube after Mum?”
“Yep…”
“I don’t think it’s straight. Is it straight?”
“It’s straight…”
“I think it’s leaning to one side. Look…”
“It’s straight...”
“Rosie could always go upstairs and get her protractor…”
“Mum you don’t know what a protractor is, do you.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m going to look for the baby Jesus in the walnut. The one I made at nursery.”
“Watch that angel, the head fell off remember…”
“I’m going to put this one round here on this branch…”
“Grrrrr… I’d forgotten how much Tom talks…”
“And this one can go here…”
“Tom you don’t.need.to.narrate.your.life.”
“LB put the bubble wrap down and get some decs on the tree.”
“Yes Muvvar.”
“Hey! I found the walnut!!!…Oh wait. It’s awful.
“Hahaha!!!”
“I remember it being much better than that. I thought it had a proper face and everything. Look it’s just got two dots for eyes…Felt tip dots??”
“HAHAHAHA!!! It’s really rubbish!!!”
“DON’T PISS AROUND WITH THE TREE!!!”
“Hahahahahahahaha!!!”
“I’d forgotten how stressful decorating the tree is.”
“I still don’t think it’s straight.”

ryan5-2

Pick n’ mix on the 280

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Not a good day for LB related reasons. But caught the 280 home from work and had the following encounter with a geezer dude. Kind of cheering…

“I went to Smithers ya’know? Smithers?”
“Eh?”
“W.H.Smiths?”
“Ah, yeah.. W.H.Smiths…”
“Yeah. I picked up a newspaper, tucked it under my arm. £2.60 it was. £2.60. I thought I’m gonna walk out with this. Without paying like.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. But then I saw the man with sweets and I thought YES! I want some sweets! So I got some and thought well I’ll pay for the sweets but then walk out with the paper under my arm… You know, as if I’d already paid for it…? But then I thought Don’t.be.so.childish. Do you know what I mean??? So I paid for the paper too.”
“Cool.”
“Do you want a sweet? There’s jelly beans and all sorts…”
“Nah, I’m fine thanks…”
“Ahhhh. Fuck!! Dropped em! [….] I’m just gonna eat them anyway. Well these ones. Not that one. Look. It’s rolled in some squishy stuff. Yuk. Look at it..  I’ll eat these though. I love jelly beans.”
“Yeah, me too…”
“Funny. Jelly beans still taste good, but other sweets from when I was a kid. They just don’t taste so good now. They put other stuff in them I think. Not nice. When I was a kid, I’d eat some sweets then do twenty laps of the room. Like round and round and round! My mum used to say ‘You ain’t having any more sweets!’ Sent me hyper they did. But I like to get sweets now and again. And like scoff em all.”
“Ha! Me too…!”
“Yeah! Maybe I need that energy rush.. Every now and again. I dunno…”
“Maybe.. Nice to meet you, I’m getting off now…”
“Well a happy Christmas to you missus!! And don’t eat too much chocolate!”

ryan5-14

Half of Frank Ryan

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Had a browse through my old sketch pad that tipped up during the recent loft sort out and came across this gem.

Who is Frank Ryan? I can’t remember. It was drawn during my overland gig across Africa which makes it more mysterious. I google the name and find Frank Ryan, celebrity plastic surgeon who died in 2010 after driving his car off a cliff in Malibu, while tweeting about his dog Jill. (Jill survived with mild injury). Too young to be this Frank Ryan, but a salutary tale about tweeting about the dog while driving.

The only plausible Frank Ryan is the controversial Irish republican.  I deduce this through a vague likeness to the drawing in google images, and then remember a couple of deeply political Dublin boys we met along the way all those years ago.

Why only half? No idea.

Doc-advisor

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There was an article in yesterday’s Observer reporting on a survey showing that Brits are less likely to ‘rate their doctor’ online than restaurants or holidays. Parking any engagement with the quality of the study (because it’s late), the article underlined the importance of patient feedback in informing change in the NHS and suggested people were wary because they thought nothing would change, the NHS didn’t care, they would get staff into trouble or their care would be affected.

Today I dutifully logged on to NHS Choices to rate my GP. I completed the boxes and fed back. I then read the other five comments about my surgery. An anonymous poster recommended the surgery two years ago, but complained about the leaking roof. One person complained about the lack of continuity of care. Two other very recent posters raised the same issue I’d outlined in my previous post. The sixth person, anonymous in June, wrote an essay about the wondrous care they’d received over the last 15 years. Here is an extract;

I really can’t think of how they could improve it. I marvel at how well-run it is, and how intelligent and knowledgeable the doctors are, and how kind and responsive the other staff are. When I was very ill at home once, they sent round a community nurse every day, and doctors visited me at home and phoned me several times. On another occasion I failed to respond to a letter asking me to make an appointment because of some blood test results, and the doctor personally visited my home and left a handwritten note, they were so concerned. 

Whoa. We’ve been at the practice for 15 years too and haven’t had a sniff of this uber-service. I want to know more. How do you access this level of healthcare? Marvel at how well-run it is?? A handwritten, hand posted note after failing to respond to something?  Responsive staff? Home visits? Concern???? This patient’s 15 year period spans the entire roller coaster experience of LB’s diagnoses and everything that came with that (too laborious and lengthy to even start recounting).  Where was the GP in all of that?

*tumbleweed*

I can only hope this feedback is a plant… Ironically.

Patient choice? My arse

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Ding dong time this afternoon with the Practice Manager (PM) of our GP surgery. They’ve introduced a crackpot system where you can no longer book an appointment with a GP. You have to arrange for a GP to call you back that day to assess your need for an appointment. It’s all in the name of patient centred care and choice.

So I had a 30 minute call with PM  who’d swallowed the health policy rhetoric manual but could not explain why I couldn’t make an appointment without a screening call. The gig was that I could agree to a GP call-back and potentially get an appointment the same day, or I could be allocated a loser slot, out of hours on a Tuesday night or Saturday morning.

In response to the (numerous) concerns I raised, she tried to persuade me that GPs were so flexible in this new system that call-back could be arranged to coincide with tea-breaks for people at work who didn’t want to discuss symptoms in front of colleagues, and that an online option existed so patients could type their concerns quietly. No reflection on how unrealistic or burdensome this was.

Yes, in some contexts of course it’s fab to have the option of managing some health related issues by phone. I howled for that when a GP rigidly insisted on ‘seeing’ LB in the surgery before re-referring him to neurology after he’d spent a night in A&E recovering from a massive seizure. But not a blanket screening system. That’s just crap.

Eventually, she suggested making an out of hours appointment in 2034. I told her I’d just crawl off into a corner and quietly die. She didn’t budge. It was screening call or crappo appointment. That was the system. I said I should probably contact the local paper about it. She booked me an ‘in hours’ appointment in a few days with my GP.

So, this new system is also going to feed into and reinforce health inequalities highlighted by, and remaining/increasing, since the Black Report. Fucking great.

Of Gerards and Geralds

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I know I’m jumping around a bit with my trove of old diaries, but my 17 year old self having a holiday pash made me chuckle. Not least because I shift from ‘Got up.. dressed..went to bed‘ type accounts to an exercise book filled with ethnographic reflections that Margaret Mead would be proud of. Description, narrative, sketches, music, food and interpretation. Of a two week coach/camping trip to Biot.

It was a cheapy cheapy cheap cheap holiday with three school mates; Mandy, Louise and Tamsin. A two day drive from Gloucester Road bus station, central London, via a night in a campsite ‘near’ Paris, to a craphole campsite in the South of France.

We fell into a happy routine in our fully equipped tent [brown plates, cups, a gas stove which collapsed, a table, 4 plastic ribbed chairs, metal beds with blue plastic mattresses], daily walks to the beach [quite a long walk, over a bridge over the motorway then turning right down a fairly narrow winding road, passed the Camp de Pylon (the other Nat campsite). We then had to cross one main road, go past JR’s through a tunnel, then across another main road to the beach], nosh (tinned ravioli, yoghurt, cacolac) and the campsite bar/disco.

The range of characters included the punks; really nice. 2 couples. Alison and Roger (peroxide blonde) and Sharon/boyfriend. Alison was ill most of the time with diarrhoea and sunstroke. The two couples didn’t get on very well. They lost £200 in Antibes and got left behind at the end of the holiday.

But what about the pash??? Gerard. From Clitheroe. Touring Europe on a motorbike with Vernon [very kind, paranoid about his age, lived with his mum, fell for Mandy big time] and Paul [27, drunk all the time, looked like Starsky and disappeared on Saturday morning and didn’t come back]?

Well. Turns out he was Gerald and not Gerard. And piecing together the story, with the detail provided and hindsight, he played with my 17 year old feelings with cups of Oxo, the odd slow dance to ‘Still Crazy after all these Years’ and general shite treatment [Gerald walked passed me without speaking and spent the evening with the posh girls/Gerald asked me to stir his oxtail soup].

Sigh. Maybe, just maybe, this tale of sun, sea, Oxo, love and leg warmers suggests very early signs of a sociological imagination.

Thanks to Kate Bielby for pointing out that all Gerards turn out to be Geralds in the end.

My any year diary

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On a horrible, rainy, cold, early Autumn Sunday, I’ve had a right old cringe-chuckle diving into the box of diaries and old letters we found in the recent loft clear out. There is so much evidence of the laugh riot I was growing up, but in case you still had doubts, a couple of tasty morsels from my any year diary;

April 6th, 1978

Woke up. Sam had to do all the washing up. Started my school needlework (what a mess). Sarnies for lunch. Had my haircut. It’s really short. Ugh. Washed my hair, looks nicer. Read. Peeled spuds. Dad did some of our rockery. Mash, liver, bacon, peas, jelly. Watched TV. Patchwork. Read in bed. A lovely sunny day but rather windy.

The same day, a year later, I went to the Tennis Club Disco with the two Mandys and Claire. Sparing you the ‘woke up’ and what I ate routine, the disco took an exciting turn;

It was quite good. This boy danced with Mandy three times. His name is Peter. She gave us a lift home. Bed.

I (I think I) started to mix it up a bit, the third year. For example; a formal declaration of my diet intentions glued to the inside cover;

Hilarious. With a bucketful of cringe. And nosh of course.

Of tits and trolls

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Two hugely inflated ‘stories’. Pics of ‘royal tits’ for sale? I’m not condoning the practice at all, but really, if Will, that strange talking palace and the media had stopped banging on about em, would anyone have really cared? The photos can’t be untaken, and once in the public domain, will never disappear. Get over it*.

Then trolls. A ‘phenomenon’ that appeared with social media, particularly twitter. Interpreted by some as a form of cyber bullying which is serious, of course, but the label seems to be applied to any bit of tongue in cheek banter, or edgy comment, that before ‘trolls’ were constructed, would have been ignored. Twitter, handily, provides a tool for dealing with anyone who you might find offensive. The block button. Press it and move on.

*And maybe get on with something.