Ghosting

 I spent International Women’s Day 2023 on a beach in Turkey, reading a book about the gender data bias, feeling angry and empowered and wanting to change the world… while also agonising over a man.

Man in question had somehow coaxed me out of my single-hood, and garnered both my exclusive attention and my commitment, in a reasonably short period of time. I was somebody’s girlfriend again, and I was enjoying it and excited about what the future might bring for us.

Then he stopped… just stopped dead.  I worried at first that he was actually dead, and then when that was disproved, I realised that he had just simply chosen to cut me out, cut me off.  It took me a day or two to realise that’s what he had done, a day or two more of worrying about him before I realised I should have been worrying for myself and my mental state.  Because when someone chooses to make you disposable like that, its hard not to feel like you agree with them.

Instead of feeling safe and supported I suddenly felt vulnerable; I had allowed myself to share responsibility for my happiness with someone else and they hadn’t kept up their side of the bargain.  Over and over I wondered what had caused this monumental shift in things, and I blamed myself of course – something I had done, or not done; I had been too much of this, or too little of that; I hadn’t been enthusiastic, or had I been over keen?   I wondered if this was something we are all guilty of or is this a special treat reserved for certain people, the ability to absolutely destroy themselves with blame for other peoples’ actions. 

I didn’t deserve to be treated this way – whatever had caused his change of heart the very least I deserved was to be told, to be “dumped” in whatever way deemed appropriate.  But this was so cold… so thoughtless and hurtful, and seemed so incredibly out of character for this particular man, who had been nothing short of kind, attentive and affectionate from the beginning.  

And so, I wondered - maybe it isn’t me, maybe it is something that has happened to him, or he has done – has he cheated and can’t bring himself to tell me? Is he having a deep mental health crisis? Is one of his family fighting for life and he is tearfully holding a bedside vigil? I worried then that it had in fact been me that was thoughtless and hurtful, that I was being inconsiderate of his (imagined) need for solitude.  Somehow, whichever way I tried to reason with this situation I made myself feel worse and more at fault than before. 

And now that spiral of over-thinking, blame and self destruction has brought me about as low as its possible to get.  I’m looking everywhere for the remnants of my self-esteem, and I just can’t seem to find any… 

I need to press the reset, effectively remove the last few months and try to stop the walls going up (or the mental health going down…)  It wasn’t long enough to fall in love, but it was long enough to fall in like – to trust him and relax and look forward to some shared future.   It was long enough to deserve a more respectful end than this disappearing act, this ‘ghosting’, whatever the reasons for his change of heart.  

But  I remind myself - I am learning something new at every step of my life, so that my next choices are always better ones. I really hope they are 

Kx 

 

Not Worrying.. Just Wondering x

My sister would have been 30 this year – my little sister would be a grown up.  I sometimes wonder what she might have done – would she be married, would she have children of her own, what would her career be.  Mostly though I wonder what she would think of me.

Would she be proud of me, her big sister, proud of my choices and the things I have done in my life?  Would she have grown up wanting to be like me, wanting her friends to know I was her sister?  Would we be friends now as adults, would we go to bars together, or museums?

I like to imagine her all grown up, slim and beautiful with blonde hair for some reason; she’s elegant and enchanting and her blue eyes sparkle when she smiles. I don’t know what her face would be like, but it doesn’t matter because in my imagination she is happy, loved and loving.

I look at the photographs I have of her and I wonder what that little girl thinks of the grown up her big sister has become and I hope that she is proud of me.  I’m sure that I would have been so proud of her.

K x

Blaming & Shaming

For those of you who have been eagerly awaiting my next blog post, I apologise for the lengthy hiatus.  For those of you who have directly asked me to write again (yes, there genuinely are two people out there who want me to write more), I don't think you're going to like this one.  I'm wondering how I can cover this subject in my usual witty style, but I don't know that it would be appropriate, or funny.

Its not often that I find myself crying in bed on a Sunday morning, though those of you that have known me well  for a long time might find that hard to believe.  Rarer still, rare to the point that I cannot remember a single other occasion, for those tears to have been invoked by a carelessly written piece of Sunday paper journalism touching the deepest, darkest secrets of my soul and invoking not only rage but a bitter sadness.  This morning's reading has moved me to write about this for the first time ever, an experience from my youth that very few people know about but I think I need to share to explain the outrage I am feeling.

The Sunday paper piece in question discusses a recent case in which two young people, drunk and with the intention of not going home alone after a night out, did not go home alone together.  They fooled around, both were too drunk, she removed herself from the situation, told her flatmate things had got weird and the next day she reported being raped to the police.   The case went to court, she told the jury she had been OK with sex at first but then froze in bed; he was acquitted, and I make no comment on whether this is the right or wrong judgement, I certainly don't know enough about this particular case to pass comment.

Where the article kicked me in the gut was in the writer's response of "Bravo!" to a quote from Camille Paglia "...the majority of campus incidents being carelessly described are not felonious rape (involving force or drugs) but oafish hook-up melodramas, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides" - to paraphrase, rape is only felonious if it involves force or drugs.  This comment not only pushes blame for unwanted, non-consensual sex on to the non-consenting party (victim blaming of the worst kind) but frighteningly de-legitimises sexual assaults and rapes in which force or drugs were not used (hint... lots of them, including no doubt a vast majority of marital rape and assaults, and also mine).

In my early twenties I was living and working abroad, and went to a nightclub with a mixed group of friends probably no more than a mile from home.  We drank, we danced, we flirted no doubt outrageously with many people; I remember it was the first time I met the man who later became my first real love.  As the night went on people fell away and went home and by closing time I realised I was the last of my friends still there.  I could quite easily have walked home, the way was lit, I could probably have been home in less than 15 minutes.

Instead, someone in a position of authority from the place I worked offered me a lift - he hadn't been drinking so he, his friend and I went in his car.  He drove us to the beach, not home, and I didn't think anything of it, it was a warm night we were just going to hang out on the beach.  He kissed me, I kissed him back.  He put his hand into my underwear and I didn't stop him, it was harmless fun.  His friend was on my other side and he started to put his hands on me and up my skirt.  His touching me must have shaken me  - I remember trying to stand up and get both of their hands off me, but it continued and I was powerless to stop them, though at no point was any kind of force or violence used.  Eventually they must have stopped, I don't imagine the whole experience lasted more than ten minutes.  I asked him to take me home, so we all got back in the car.

When we arrived at the place I lived, he told me not to tell anyone what had happened - he reminded me of his position, that he had family in the company, that his girlfriend worked there, that no-one would believe me and that he'd make sure I lost my job if I said anything.  He told me his friend would stay the night with me, got in his car and left.  His friend followed me home, I had no idea what to do so I told him firmly he would not be sleeping in my bed but in the living room, but I woke up to find him on top of me, naked, starting to have sex with me.  I pushed him away, or rolled away and he didn't try again.

All of this happened without me being drugged, or either of them using any kind of excessive force.  The comments from this mornings paper made me feel like the journalist was telling me what happened to me really was my fault, not theirs.  That it was an "oafish hook-up melodrama, arising from mixed signals and imprudence on both sides".  It wasn't, and isn't for hundreds, thousands of people with experiences like mine.  No, not like mine - people with experiences of their own, for we cannot compare one person's experience of sexual assault or violation with another's, each is utterly personal and reprehensible in itself.

This all in light of recent comments from Judge Lindsey Kushner QC, that women who drink and behave in an uninhibited manner are putting themselves in danger of rape - basically that women should take responsibility for having left themselves in a vulnerable position, rather than that rapists should take responsibility for having raped.

I may have been stupid, drunk, uninhibited, but I was not to blame for being assaulted.  I was ashamed, fearful that I'd lose my job, I saw both of them on a nearly daily basis for the rest of the year.  I don't think I ever feared that they would do it again but I always felt dirty and embarrassed when I saw either of them and remembered what had happened. It wasn't until quite a few years later that I realised that it had been a sexual assault.  Even then I was so conditioned to think it was my own fault for being drunk, English in another country, perhaps promiscuous on occasion; that it would be me that would lose out if I told anyone about it as I'd lose my job and the home it provided.  I was more worried about being judged a slut, but I should have been making sure these men didn't get the opportunity to do this again to another unsuspecting young woman.  I didn't report it, and I should have; I have seen him in years since and we have mutual friends and I still feel sick when I see his face at the thought of what he and his friend did.  I have never once spoken to him about it.

Rape is not only rape if you are drugged or beaten, forced or tied down.  You don't need to be screaming and pushing them away to be non-consenting, nor do you need to feel ashamed or responsible for the attack, whether or not you were able to fight them off, or if you didn't or couldn't physically stop it.  The blame, the responsibility and most definitely the shame needs to lie with the perpetrators.

K x

Writing to Order

A few weeks ago I was tagged in a "blog-hop" which, for those of you not yet initiated in dark lexicon of blog-speak (as I can assure you I was not), is a kind of game of tag: I get a mention and some links in someone's blog, to which I then respond in my next blog and likewise tag some new people.  All a merry jape, you might think, but it has been playing on my mind for a few weeks and distracting me from actually joining in the game.

I was tagged by my lovely friend Mel Davies, over there on the other side of the world, basking in the Western Australian sunshine, rollerskating, reading loads, barbecuing prawns with her fiancé on a regular basis and writing her fab blog lipstickhoney.com - you can read her post here.  She asked me first if I would be happy to be tagged; 'Sure,' I said, 'always up for a new game', I said.  Well, I hadn't prepared myself for the pressure of writing a structured response to pre-set questions; this was like university essay writing all over again, but without the massive amount of caffeine, ability to quote copiously and a pressing 9am deadline.  What could I possibly write that would be interesting, witty, thought provoking or slightly contentious as per my usual fare?  How could I join in on a game of blog-tag with no-one to tag at the end and nothing to say in the middle?  The questions are about my writing process and its painfully clear that I don't have one! Of course, the pressure became too great and I just decided to ignore it until it went away, but then the guilt crept in and the thought of letting the side down and letting the Aussies win became overpowering - I WILL complete the task, I WILL retain the Ashes.  (note: Mel isn't actually Australian, but the metaphor was working for me, so I stuck with it).  So here we go...

Q1 - What am I working on?
Right now I am working on this blog post, and to be honest that's about as far as my writing-working ever goes.  I often think I might write a book, but after the opening chapter (paragraph) my mind goes blank or I get a bit bored, I just don't think that far ahead with writing. As such, as far as "working on" is concerned, its really a "written in one sitting" experience for me. My blog is an outlet for the mists of miscellany that swirl around in my brain day by day: once the words are out the job is done, I don't have ongoing writing projects. That said, I have written several guest blogs for fittamamma.com which have an underlying theme holding them together, but each was written independently of the others.

Q2 - How does my work differ from others of its genre?
Tricky thing, genre.  Such an easy word to bandy about, great if you're Stephen King and write thrillers or George R R Martin and write fantasy (or, more accurately, you're George R R Martin and you resolutely DON'T write fantasy, you fanny around taking YEARS to write nothing at all).  I write whatever I feel like, whenever I feel like writing it, whether that may be loosely political, or deeply personal or complete rubbish.  I suppose you might just about put me under the nice broad heading of "social commentary" but that is probably stretching a point.  I think I shall choose to consider my writing style as 'uncategorisable' and be done with it.

Q3 - Why do I write what I do?
There's a quote from a film which springs to mind in answer to this question, which may seem completely irrelevant but I'll get there eventually...

Hannibal Lecter: No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.

Clarice Starling: No. We just...

Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

In essence, I don't look for things to write, I don't seek out topics and work out what I want to say about them. The things that worry me, that niggle or bother or upset me, these are the things that I see every day, that I feel the need to write about and, in doing so, clear my brain and sort of internally work through the problem.  (Note: I don't have psychopathic tendencies, nor am I making a dress out of skin, just in case there was any need for clarification).

Q4 - What is my writing process?

As someone who is meticulously organised in my day job, as far as writing is concerned I consider it a leisure activity, a way to clear my mind of the worries that have built up and as such I don't plan, I don't prepare or research, I just write and when I've written enough I stop writing. I will always re-read several times to ensure I haven't made any ridiculous typing errors, but I'm not infallible and I do sometimes write things that I later wish I had worded differently, or not said at all, and sometimes I write so late at night that the next morning I realise it doesn't actually make all that much sense anyway.  I am very self-critical, but as this blog exists as an outlet for my worries and anxieties, its somewhat self-defeating to analyse it too much, because then I would have to write a blog entry about how anxious reading my blog has made me... and then reality might start to twist a little.  Ultimately, I write for pleasure, and I absolutely don't have the time to add anything in to the mix that makes it less pleasurable, like a carefully planned structure, or any kind of advance thought process; I like to live life right on the edge.
_________________________________________________________________________________

And the final part of the blog-hop is that I am supposed to tag someone new to answer these questions in their blog, in the merry tradition of the chain letter - well I'm rubbish and don't really know that many bloggers and I'm not allowed to tag Mel back again.  So instead I am going to make some recommendations of people whose work you should definitely read, without asking them first and without asking them to join in the game, because I can't pass the anxiety I've experienced on to someone else! (But of course, should any of you wish to respond, please do!)

- I've mentioned before my wonderful friend who writes a blog about living with diabetes, and I would strongly encourage you to read it at www.insulinindependent.com (@T1diabetesblog) - she is truly inspirational and her posts are warm, intelligent and funny; she is very well respected in the blogging community and her blog was voted one of the Top 10 UK diabetes blogs in 2011, which is pretty stupendous!

- My second mention goes to my darling little brother Alexander and his blog theworldandotheranimals.wordpress.com.  He is 21, a German and Politics student at Bristol University, currently in Berlin for a year doing something useful I'm sure.  His blog is mainly about politics'n'stuff, and he uses far too many long words for my taste (why be wordy when you can be verbose?), but he's very smart and up to date with current affairs and, biased though I may be, I think he's Great (geddit?).

- And finally, of course, you should read all the blogs at fittamamma.com, some of them written by yours truly (shamefully few in fact, yet another thing I have been burying my head in the sand about!).  Lots of people contribute different posts to the fittamamma blog: exercise experts, fitness bloggers, midwives, yoga teachers, pregnant women, recently pregnant women... the whole site is a really useful resource, so check it out.

So, I have completed my great challenge unscathed! Normal service can now resume :)

K x

Words

It is so easy to underestimate the power of the words we use.  Every day we talk to each other, we write emails, facebook statuses, tweets, texts, captions on photos, instant messages, maybe even an actual letter from time to time, and so much of what we have to share can be so easily shared again with other people these days that it is almost impossible to fully understand the reach of our most seemingly meaningless thoughts and comments.

Words can cause distress or hurt to someone, somewhere, without that ever having been the original intention; words can be misunderstood or misconstrued, thanks to the complexity of our beautiful language, and can be interpreted in a way entirely different from the one which was meant.  Words can give false hope or expectation to someone by their inferring meaning where meaning was not intended; words can lie and cheat and let you down.

Words are beautiful but treacherous, and should be treated with extreme caution and utmost respect.

K x

Politics

My worrying about politics has been brewing for quite some time.  I've not quite managed to put it all in to words, hence my lengthy radio silence, and actually for the last six months I have been the happiest I have been for the last few years.  But the time has come for me to stand up again on my internet soap box and worry publicly about something that is important to me, and this time it's important to all of us.

I called the doctor this week, suffering with what I assumed to be an ear infection.  The new process in my surgery is for all callers to be put on a list, prioritised by the GP in question and called back in order of life expectancy urgency.  My GP duly returned my call, listened to me explain my deafness and pain and wrote me a prescription for antibiotics.  It wasn't until I was reclining in my sick bed later that it struck me what had happened: I had self-diagnosed an infection and received prescription medication without ever being in the presence of a medical practitioner.  Now I can see two ways of looking at this: The Opportunist - "I could make this work in my favour, get some kind of racket going with black market medications" - and my natural fall back position: The Cynic.  The Cynic notices that her GP is paid a handsome sum by the NHS (read taxpayer) to be the primary care giver for non-emergency medical requirement.  I (one of the aforementioned taxpayers) just did his job for him, by telling him what was wrong with me.  He got paid for writing "amoxicillin" on a slip of paper and signing his name (actually they don't even write it anymore, they click a box on the computer and print it out). So, to whom shall I send my bill?  Why is the NHS under such strain that GPs can no longer do what they are employed to do viz. actually see patients and diagnose illness?

Bedroom Tax, which isn't a tax, is putting people into rent arrears and making people homeless when there is no other option for them.  I don't think that anyone should be entitled to council housing, or housing benefit, for more than the requisite number of bedrooms per head that the law permits.  But that doesn't make it reasonable to suddenly start charging people for the extra bedroom with no availability of smaller properties for them to move in to, or sensible period of time for them to make arrangements.  There must have been a better way to balance the system than the way the government decided to go. There is so much I want to say about this, it rattles around my head day after day, sometimes I get angry- for and on behalf of both sides of the Bedroom Tax debacle - but debacle it has been and continues to be, nonetheless. 

So the NHS is being torn apart, the lowest earners and poorest families are being squeezed the hardest, disability benefits are being cut, public sector pensions are being cut, more and more people are relying on food banks to survive, retirement age is continuing to rise, the country is only barely out of recession but MPs are being recommended an 11% pay rise to £74,000.  I know there are an awful lot of people earning an awful lot more than that, but the average UK salary is something in the region of 28k. Our MPs are earning more than double that already, and that is before their expenses claims and second home allowances come in. 

Russell Brand, in his usual showy and verbose manner, tried to incite revolution recently.  He said what so many of us feel: that we are disillusioned with politics; that we don't trust our politicians or our government to make the right decisions for the majority of the populace; that we don't think our politicians are in touch with the people of Great Britain.  But his answer to the problem was a silent, apathetic revolution, a revolution where  people show their disdain for the current way of things by removing themselves from it, by standing to one side and letting others make the decisions, in the hope that things will be forced into change by their refusal to be involved.

I'm not the first person to notice that this won't work.  I'm no great political strategist, I don't have the answer, but I know that even if 1,000,000 Britons decide not to vote in support of Brand's rhetoric, it won't make a blind bit of difference.  Of the 45,597,461 registered voters for the 2010 general election, only 29,991,471 actually voted.  We now have a coalition government that not even one of us voted for. No encouragement is needed from Russell Brand for people not to vote, what we need is encouragement for people to vote.  We need more people worth voting for, more politicians who we trust and believe in, who understand us and will represent us honestly in parliament.

I recently interviewed for a new job at the company where I currently work.  I really, really want this job. I worked hard in preparation for the interviews and I would be very disappointed not to get it. But if it doesn't go my way then maybe it won't all be bad.  I could become a politician, get paid more money than I would know what to do with (I'd learn), and lead the revolution.  Either that or cash in on my new found expertise as a GP.... K x

Me

Something strange has been happening over the past few weeks - I haven't been worrying about anything.  Or, at least, nothing important.  Work is toddling along, merrily wiping out my mental wellbeing on a daily basis.  The weather has been glorious, which suits me just perfectly as when I'm not tied to my desk drowning in misery I can bask in the hot sunshine and get a vitamin D hit.  My immune system hasn't thrown any nasty surprises my way, my spine is as painful and displaced as it has been for a while. 

I visited some friends who I haven't seen in far too long - they've recently got married and I was so chuffed to have been invited and so gutted to have not been able to make it.  But a month or so afterwards, with a big bowl of moules marinieres, a large G&T and a few hours of reminiscing, I was 21 again, back at university with them, young and carefree, laughing at our drunken antics, promising not to leave it so long until the next time.  Without my friends I'd be half a person, and I'm so lucky to be blessed with a great bunch of them spread out across the country, and dotted around the world. 

So the world has kept on turning; The Royal Progeny is yet to be birthed (and we are all waiting with baited breath...), England are winning at cricket, some nutters are cycling a lot in France, the government are a bunch of idiots, the NHS appears to be being sold off piece by piece, Post Office workers are striking and most people in Britain are being wholly inconsiderate and buying a lot of drinks from outlets supplied by my company.  But, for once, none of this is touching me - my worrying days are on hold.  So keep it up, sunshine, because you're obviously doing me good.

K x

And yes, of course I'll be worrying about something again soon.  But in the meantime, check out some of my exercise blogs on www.fittamamma.com as they're pretty good too ;) x

Religion

I can hear the groans already even though I haven't even got going yet.  Yes, I know that worrying about religion isn't particularly new or exciting; a good proportion of the world are worrying about their neighbours' religions - Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Muslims, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Jews, the Westboro Baptist Church and everyone else.  Everyone seems to be at odds religiously with someone else and that causes quite significant amounts of worry for huge proportions of the world.  But what I have been worrying about isn't what all the rest of you are up to religiously-speaking, and is more about my own beliefs, or lack of them.

I think... gulp... that I may be an atheist.  There, I've said it now, it's committed to paper (sort of) and therefore true.  I have been reading* up on Richard Dawkins (*watching YouTube clips) and have come to the realisation that he and his atheist pals' way of thinking makes a hell of a lot of sense.  I don't believe in gravity because someone told me to, I believe in gravity because it has been scientifically shown to exist, and work in certain ways. I don't believe in Darwin's Theory of Evolution because that's what my Mum believed and therefore I shall carry on with these beliefs, but because evidence has been discovered, the theory has been tested and the hypothesis proved, just as I was taught to do in science lessons back in school.  (a brilliant interview with him here in full http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AS6rQtiEh8 . It is unfortunate that the interview is with an incapable fuckwit, but silently berating her idiocy makes it even more enjoyable).

Now might be a good time to bring up one of my very favourite people in the whole world - Tim Minchin.  First and foremost, he is a tremendous musician, comedian and performer; I feel perfectly comfortable using the word 'genius' in describing him.  He has also spoken very openly about his thoughts on religion and spirituality, and in between clutching my sides with laughter and wiping away the tears, I realised that there was nothing he was saying that I didn't agree with.  I can't begin to put these things into words in the incredible way that he does, so here is an example of one of his superb songs which puts things so succinctly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1I3mBojc0 (he also has written a song about his love for cheese - a man truly after my own heart)

So millions of people worldwide choose to live their lives based on a book, which is entirely their right even if it is hundreds of pages of contradiction; a book about the horrifying cruelties committed for and on behalf of an allegedly benevolent God (who created everything), several thousand years ago in the Middle East.  Other millions of people worldwide choose to live their lives based on a different book, also their right, with slightly different rules and regulations, with a different God (who created everything).  Everywhere you look there is another God or Goddess or Gods (who created everything) and millions of people who choose to believe that their choice is the right one.  First of all, how could I possibly decide which one is the one to back?  And second of all, which of the religions can give me any kind of proof or evidence to suggest that their God is the right one, or that he or she or they even exist at all. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that none of them can.
Which reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite books on the "proof" of the non-existence of God:

"The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.

In my extensive research for this blog (ahem) I have been studying the writings (cartoons) of NonStampCollector - check out his YouTube page http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nonstampcollector&oq=NonStamp&gs_l=youtube.1.0.0l4j0i10l2j0l4.965.2194.0.3460.8.8.0.0.0.0.131.553.7j1.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.NoZEi-cBX5c .  I have come to the conclusion that a) he is right in pretty much everything that he says and b) being an atheist doesn't mean you are a 'hater' or an anti-religion protestor... just that you haven't seen the evidence to make you believe in any deity.  And as I haven't seen the evidence to make me believe in any deity, and am myself a generally rational, intelligent and sensible person, I must therefore reach the conclusion that I consider myself an atheist.

But coming to this conclusion hasn't changed me in any way - it's not like up until now I have been regularly attending the local Methodists and now suddenly I'm going to stop going and instead spend my Sunday mornings romping with heathens at al fresco sex orgies (although, now I've thought about it...).  It just wasn't until recently that I'd really put much thought to my beliefs, knowing that Christianity wasn't for me but not really thinking about it any further than that.  I'm comfortable with my atheism, I won't be shouting about it, or refusing to attend weddings, christenings or funerals.  I'll even sing along to the good hymns (but will draw the line at All Things Bright and Beautiful) for the simple joy of belting out a good tune.  I don't intend to start any hate campaigns, or anti-Religion crusades, your beliefs are your own and you are entitled to them, as am I.

But if anyone out there has that irrefutable proof, do let me know, just in case I'm wrong?

K x

P.S. I am aware that this entry relies heavily on external sources - this is largely due to the fact that I can't physically restrain myself from watching YouTube clips at the moment, and I thought perhaps that a glorious celebration of my favourites might be cathartic.  It is also true that I haven't the patience to do the research that NonStampCollector has done into the inconsistencies, idiocies and atrocities of the Bible, so I would be largely regurgitating his hard work if I were to start listing them here.  Also, Tim Minchin, that is all K x

Equal Marriage

Well, that was an angry rant wasn't it? Don't worry I don't intend to attack anyone I see carrying a bottle of said branded fizzy drink... but I may silently berate them.

A brief post today, as those fools we call our government are debating the ins and outs (so to speak) of gay marriage, I thought I would share my views.

1) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to me?  None whatsoever, I am not gay and therefore don't intend be indulging in any actual gay marriage myself.  I don't have a gay BFF or a large numbers of gay friends, but for those that I do have, I would be glad to see them happy and if getting hitched is what they want to do, then who am I to suggest that they shouldn't?

2) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to the rest of the straight population of the UK? None whatsoever.  It's not like legalising gay marriage is going to mean every home must have one...

3) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to the Church? None whatsoever.  If church leaders want to impose certain rules on who can or can't get married in their particular church then that's up to them, but they can't argue about who can or can't get married in someone else's church/synagogue/temple/prayer teepee.

4) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to currently married straight people? None whatsoever, it doesn't make their own bond any less important, or less recognised. 

5) What difference will legalising gay marriage make to gay people? Probably quite a bit, if you are gay and want to be formally attached to your partner in the same way straight couples are and at the moment you can't.  And if one is a real life gay person who doesn't want to get married, then that too is OK and affects no-one but oneself, but better for it to be a personal lifestyle choice, than an imposed regulation?

Basically, just legalise it already and shut up and go away. Ta.
K x

Prescription Charges

I wrote to my MP, Conservative Damian Green last week (I know! How grown up am I?!) about the spiralling cost of prescriptions on the NHS.  I didn't do this entirely off my own back, you understand, but on the suggestion of the Presciption Charges Coalition (http://www.prescriptionchargescoalition.org.uk/) for whom I had signed a petition several months ago on the subject.  I have a lot of prescriptions; I take five daily medicines, two weekly medicines and various painkillers as and when required.  My repeat prescription sheet has 11 items on it.  At the current rate of £7.85 per prescription, that would cost me £86.35 every time I need my prescriptions to be re-filled.  Now, anybody can agree that that is an unholy amount of money to spend on prescriptions on a regular basis; multiply that by the rest of my life and it becomes astronomical.   I have a prescription pre-payment certificate, which means I pay just over £10 a month for 10 months by direct debit and this covers any prescriptions that I need in a 12 month period. But that is still over £100 per year, which the rest of the tax-paying nation don't have to spend.  And that is my argument, because I will be taking these (or similar) medications for the rest of my life, unless they find a cure in the meantime.  £7.85 is not a large sum to cough up once in a while if you get an infection, which is the only time the average person needs a prescription.  If I were unemployed my prescriptions would be free, so why not when I am diagnosed with a chronic incurable disease? 

Here's my letter, minus my address (don't want the paps round ;)

Mr Damian Green MP

Ashford
House of Commons
London SW1A0AA

Dear Mr Green,

As your constituent, I am writing to ask if you will pledge your support to phase out prescription charges for people with long term conditions.

The Prescription Charges Coalition has just published a report called ‘Paying the Price’, which makes the case for reform to the current system. It uncovers the shocking decisions people with conditions like asthma, heart disease, arthritis, HIV, Crohn's Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Parkinson's, mental health conditions, cystic fibrosis, auto-immune disease and many others are being forced to make because of the added financial burdens associated with prescription charges. It is wrong that people are forced to choose between food, clothing, bills or their prescriptions. I myself have Rheumatoid Arthritis and Vasculitis, and at age 29 I have eleven prescriptions to buy each time, and I will be needing these prescriptions for the rest of my life.

The prescription charge has again been increased to £7.85 from this April. The current regime of charges seems to actively undermine good health and costs the NHS more. As people are rationing their prescriptions or foregoing them altogether, this is resulting in poorer health or, in extreme cases, hospitalisation. This is clearly unacceptable.

A high proportion of people are already exempt from prescription charges because of their financial circumstances, their age, or the fact that they have certain other medical conditions. It is inconsistent and unfair to deny people with long term conditions the same assistance. People develop a long term condition down to a complex combination of hereditary, environmental or other lifestyle factors. Once diagnosed, many will have their condition for the rest of their lives and if we want them to stay in work and continue to be productive members of society, then the Government needs to address this problem. The present approach to charging is little more than an additional health tax on the sick.

I would therefore be grateful if you would write to the Health Secretary and the Chancellor to call on the Government to reform this arbitrary, outdated and inequitable system, and make it fairer for people with long term conditions. I would appreciate you asking them to commit to phasing out prescription charges for people with long term conditions through staged reductions to the Prescription Prepayment Certificate.

Yours sincerely

Katherine Evans

I am lucky enough to have never had to ration my dosages, or make a decision not to take my medications based on the cost, but I can't deny that it has been a close call at times.  And what I cannot understand is why certain illnesses are exempt, and others aren't.  Now, I am absolutely not suggesting that diabetics should have their exemption revoked, but why is it that diabetes medicines are free, but my rheumatoid arthritis medicines are not?  If I were to not have my medicines I couldn't go to work, and would have to be entirely financially supported by the state through disability benefits.  Surely that would cost a lot more to the government than my prescriptions do?  And the ultimate paradox is that if the medicines I am currently on stop working for me, or my disease gets worse and my rheumatologist can show that I need them, I could have injections of new biologic therapies sent directly to my house by the healthcare companies at no cost to myself.  Now where is the logic there?  So, if the stuff that the NHS currently charges me for turns out not to help, then we'll give in and give you better stuff for free?

I was disappointed by the reply from Damian Green, in that it didnt seem to even acknowledge the request that I put forward, that being that I wanted him to support the phasing out of prescription charges for people with long term conditions via staged reduction of the cost of the Prepayment Certificate.  He wrote me a letter explaining that I could get a Prepayment Certificate if I wanted to (what a complete idiot...)

Rt Hon Damian Green MP
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A 0AA

25th March 2013
Dear Ms Evans,

Thank you for your e-mail of 15th March about the Prescription Charges Coalition reprt Paying the Price.
I realise that this issue raises some strong feelings, particularly for those with long-term conditions who are not exempt from charges. The Government has no plans for a further review of the list of medical conditions that confer exemption.

There is already an extensive system of prescription charge exemptions in England. This includes provision for people on low incomes who can apply for free prescriptions through the NHS Low Income Scheme, or who get free prescriptions due to the receipt of certain benefits. This system of exemptions means around 90 per cent of prescription items are dispensed without charge.

There is also provision for people who have to pay prescription charges and need them regularly, or need a lot of prescription items. A Prescription Prepayment Certificate (PPC) can be obtained and PPC holders pay no further charge at the point of dispensing, with no limit to the number of items the holder may obtain via the certificate.

As part of the most recent announcement on prescription charges, I am pleased that the Government has not changed the cost of a PPC. The cost of a three-month PPC will remain at £29.10. This will save people money if they need four or more items in three months. A 12-month certificate costs £104 and will save money if 14 or more items are needed in 12 months.

Yours sincerely,

Gee, thanks Damo, if you had actually read my email in the first place you would have known that I am aware of the PPC and what it is, but what I asked was for you to commit to something that I, one of your constituents, has asked for.  And yes, people on low incomes or who get certain benefits can claim free prescriptions, but what about us people on not quite low enough incomes?  The people who forever and always get stuck in the middle, not quite poor enough to be entitled to anything, but not quite earning enough not to need help.

Remind me, when I'm filthy rich and living in a golden house, eating caviar and foie gras for breakfast and having all my pain magically removed by some technological wonder, and the polling card lands on my doormat, just how much help he and his government have given to the chronically sick recently.

Oh, and keep your eyes open for that cure - there's still 11 months on my current PPC so you've got a bit of time

K x
  

Mental Health

And no, before you say it, I don't mean my own (although it is questionable at times).  I struggle with other people's mental health issues, because what I want to say is 'Come on, you know you're nuts, right? You don't really believe what you're saying, do you?'.  I know that this is not a healthy, compassionate, supportive response and so I don't say it.  What I say is 'everything will be OK I promise' and then cry about it.  Which rather elongates the chain of mental health misery by becoming borderline depressed myself.
But when someone very close to you suffers from a mental health issue - and someone very close to me currently is and has had episodes of deep anxiety induced depression for many years - it affects everything, and there's almost nothing you can do.  Of course, I can alleviate as much stress or strain or worrying for that person as I possibly can; but the problem is that the sufferer can very easily replace those anxieties with a whole new set of completely irrational ones.  And the more irrational the worries or fears, the more difficult it is for me to help alleviate them.  So, bit of a vicious circle really, but I can't justify 'completely ignoring the entire problem' as an effective aid to rehabilitation.
The stigma attached to mental health is astounding and I don't just mean the obvious disabilities - ones which make a visual difference to the sufferer and cause people to point in the street.  But the secret, private miseries which can cause people to lead seriously limited lives and experience such debilitating problems are compounded by a general lack of understanding or even mild disinterest on the part of the rest of us. 
We can all do more, learn more, understand and accept more about mental illness; and just watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" does not count.
K x

P.S. 23/03/13  The above post was shorter than my usual fare, partly because I found myself getting angry and upset about the situation as I wrote it and also partly because I was exhausted and was losing my train of thought.  It's frustrating dealing with someone who is going through mental health issues because their understanding of the situation is fundamentally flawed by their illness.  You can't tell someone they are being irrational because the irrationality is part of the problem.  It makes it very hard to talk about, and very hard to write about because I want to justify every sentence with an example and I don't think that's fair on the person in question. Off to search for my magic wand now...
K x

Writing about Exercise

Believe it or not (and I'm not entirely sure that I do myself), I am going to be blogging about fitness.  Me. Yes, honestly. I, and all my curves, are going to be test-wearing a specially designed supportive exercise clothing range and writing about it. 

In the past year I have changed my lifestyle beyond recognition: I do now exercise regularly and find a weekend of idleness makes me feel lethargic and unhappy; I would far rather go swimming for an hour than sit and do nothing, as not only will I sleep better but the swimming will totally counteract the cake intake, right?  But as a lady who has been a comfy, squishy size 18 for as long as I can remember, the thought of being taken even slightly seriously as a writer of a fitness blog seems hilariously unlikely.
But there is an explanation to all this which I shall now divulge, following this important note:  I am not pregnant and I do not intend to be any time soon.

www.fittamamma.com is a brilliant website, designed to be educational and informative for pregnant women who want to know how to stay fit and healthy through their pregnancy, as well as those who want to lose the baby weight afterwards.  I was glad to be involved when the site was being put together with researching recipes and nutritional information, due to the fact that the company's founder-owner is my buddy Alex McCabe. She, along with her business partner Deb Hazeldean, have designed and made a range of fitness clothing designed especially for pregnant women, with special stretchy fabrics and hidden supportive structures as well as, of course, super stretch bump bits that grow with your bump so you can wear them all through the 9 months of hell joy while you wait for your little darling to arrive.  They can tell it so much better than I can http://www.fittamamma.com/section.php/2/1/fittawear , and yes this is shameless plugging but its my blog and I'll do what I want. 

So, picture the scene:  a young lady erring on the wrong side of the 'healthy BMI' line, with an evil immune system that is destroying her joints and an as yet undiagnosed seriously painful back problem really wants to exercise and get fitter and try and limbo under the BMI boundary.  Her friend has designed a range of extra-supportive fitness clothing designed for women who are carrying a little extra weight (usually around 6 to 8 pounds of human child) and have certain restrictions on what exercise is possible.  It was inevitable really.

And today I have worn, for the first time, my High Support Top and Leggings while pottering around the house and doing useful things looking at twitter.  Sure, the stretchy maternity tummy part is a little redundant (and hopefully, if this exercising malarkey works, will become even more redundant as we go along!) but my back feels supported for the first time in months, and my lady lumps are firmly held in the right place, not likely to try and jump out if I tried a gentle jog.  Much as I love to swim, I really hope that this supportive gear will make it easier for me to get a proper workout at the gym, to give my weekly routine a bit of variety.  But I am also going to be wearing it to do normal things like, say, the hoovering, to see if a bit of extra support means that I can do it without wincing at every step. 

I will definitely post bits on here, but I will also write directly to FittaMamma's blog, so if you're interested please do find them on twitter @fittamamma or facebook, to see how I get on.

And yes, I have been shameless with my links and plugs, normal service will be resumed soon, but for now let me bask in the moment of being taken even slightly seriously as a writer with some semblance of talent that an actual real-life company want me to write stuff for them and feel free to have plenty of lolz at the idea of me writing intelligently about exercise.  It's cool, I am.

K x

Skyfall

I should preface this blog post by pointing out that I did really enjoy Skyfall - the new James Bond film.  Daniel Craig is hot, Javier Bardem was an awesomely camp bad guy and in general it was full of happy James Bond-y feel-good action excitement.
And I  can cope with the playful misogny that goes hand in hand with the James Bond ethos - shagging indiscrimanately, making sexist jokes, shrugging off the death of the Bond Girl - all these things are naturally occuring Bondisms which, although perhaps damagingly sexist, we have come to expect from the franchise.

What bothered me in an angry feminist kind of way was the total and complete degradation of any strong female role in the film.  Judi Dench's 'M' has been an awesome cinematic role to encourage young women that positions of power and responsibility (and ultimately the top job in the man-centric world of espionage) are not something that is beyond their means.  M is female, in control (mostly), authoritative, responsible and undoubtedly earning top civil service wages, all the things that young women should be able to aspire to.  In Skyfall, she is beginning to fail the service, and gets a grilling from a government committee.  Yes, the MP in charge of the enquiry is female, but when she starts to get a bit 'naggy' one of the 'boys' just tells her to shut up - good that she can be put in her place by the entirely male committee right?  Thankfully, poor old M has a strong male agent (Bond) to take her to safety and hide from the nasty bad guys.  OK, so she has incredible skill at making lightbulb nail bombs, but without the presence of some masculine types she would just be dribbling in the corner, unable to take care of herself, or dead already.  And, of course, as the head of MI6, with years and years of experience in counter-terrorism and espionage, she would be completely unprepared for actually defending herself, right?  She wouldn't be so stupid as to use a torch in the pitch dark when trying to escape from the baddies... oh no wait, that's exactly what she did, with all her years of training and experience.  Come on, Ms Broccoli, you can do better than that - killing off a strong female character via a series of her own ineptitudes, allowing a good old-fashioned man to take the helm, sort out all her silly mistakes (no doubt caused by those pesky hormones) and get the service back to its former strength (round about the Stone Age, it seems).

And what about Moneypenny?  A cool, exciting field agent zipping round the world taking on interesting missions and shooting people; "Cool" my 15-year old self yells "I want to be an MI6 agent and go around shagging catching bad guys!". She misses that vital shot and gets recalled to London where she spends the rest of the film (invisibly) at a desk job.  Sure, she doesn't succumb to Bond's wily charms and manages to remain chaste in such trying circumstances, but any semblance of equality is shattered.  By the end of the film 15-year old me is sighing and saying to myself "Oh, she gets to be a secretary after all... err... ace..?"

I was angry by the end: angry that the film-makers had two relatively good opportunities to promote a bit of sexual equality and general female awesomeness and both were dashed to bits on the chiselled torso of the patriarchy.  M ends up as a withering incompetent and Moneypenny is only fit to be a secretary in the gentlemens' club MI6 headquarters. 

Shame, 'cause otherwise it was a stonker. K x

Market Research Telephonists

To celebrate my unemployment, I decided to take a low-paid part time market research telephonist job to while away the empty hours.  In my naivety, I thought that doing some kind of paid work would make me feel more useful and fulfilled than spending the days in my dressing gown, eating left-over Christmas chocolate and watching Jeremy Kyle.  Oh, how I have regretted that decision.

For five hours at a stretch I have sat in a small three sided booth on an old, uncomfortable office chair (which has done WONDERS for my back) and made hundreds and hundreds of phone calls on behalf of various companies to unprepared and mostly unwilling recipients.  A stream of constant rejections, general disinterest and mild disdain has come my way, only to be broken by the few who were willing to take part in my survey.  A few brief moments of amusement were to be had, specifically during the Friday evening shift when one respondent decided to err from my carefully worded script and tell me just how "satisfied on a scale of 1 to 10" he was with me personally and bemoaned the fact that I had his phone number but that he didn't have mine.

Never again will I angrily hang up the phone on a market researcher - partly through a feeling of solidarity, though mainly because I now know that by not responding, my phone number will simply be thrust back into the swirling mist of numbers, waiting to be randomly plucked again by the computer and re-dialled.  The computer will continue to dial my number again and again until I politely explain to a caller that I would prefer not to be recontacted.  It is the only way.

A friend of mine who has worked for the same company described the work as being 'the closest thing to being lobotomised' and I have to say that I agree with her.  I would not have been surprised to find a trail of saliva hanging from my mouth by the end of a shift, or to be informed that I had been talking to the plant.  In all the years that I have been working I have never yet done any job so mind-numbingly dull and ultimately so completely unrewarding.

All the supervisory and management staff were lovely: kind; helpful; genuinely complimentary of  my telephone manner and capabilities.  I had to bite my tongue during quality control meetings (where a supervisor had listened in on one of my calls and made comments on how I was performing) to stop myself from pointing out that a basic level of literacy and a small amount of common sense was all the job required.  Instead I smiled sweetly at the comments I was given and went back to my box cubicle. 

Thankfully, I have found a full-time day job which will start in a week's time.  I have given myself the gift of sanity and decided not to return to the call centre this week, but to enjoy a week of real rest and relaxation before getting back into the 9-to-5 world.  I can understand now why some people would prefer to stay on benefits than to do a mindless job, however I still believe that were I to find myself unemployed again, I would rather be working doing anything, even market research, than languishing in self pity and benefit forms.

But in the meantime, spare a thought for the poor people at the end of the phone who want to ask for ten minutes of your time to complete a survey - they are doing a very boring, repetitive job for which they are not being paid much, and the only way to pass the time is to speak to you.  Decline if you wish, but please do so politely :)

K x

2012

I have been intending for several days to write a final post of 2012, summarising my year's major worries and advance-mentioning some upcoming concerns that I predict I shall be worrying about in the New Year.  However, it being the season of extreme gluttony, it has been difficult to tear myself away from the temptations of the kitchen to concentrate on the laptop for any real period of time.  So I have chosen today, 31st December 2012, to finally cast away the Jaffa Cakes and write some choice words to sum up the year that I have had.

In an uncharacteristic display of optimism I have decided not to focus on the negatives of the year gone by (and believe me they are many and varied) and try instead to remember the wonderful moments and the occasions by which I would prefer to remember 2012.

Firstly, the birth of several nephews and nieces (of the non-genetically linked variety): so many of my friends chose 2012 to be the year to produce offspring (or more offspring) and Christmas has really reminded me of the delight that is to be had from spending time with my friends and family and their progeny, safe in the knowledge that I can give them back afterwards.  Ten years ago I would have imagined that I would be sharing the early years of their childrens' lives with children of my own, but this has not been the way my life has panned out thus far.  I'm sure that I will not always be the barren Aunty who visits and dotes upon everyone elses' children for want of children of her own, but for the time being it is a joy to see others' little ones and know that I am glad to be a part of their lives.

Secondly, the awesomeness that was a summer of British sporting success with the Olympics and Paralympics.  I have written in earlier blogs of the life-changing experiences London 2012 brought to me, and I hope that for the rest of my life remembering the year 2012 will induce memories of the warmth, togetherness and healthy patriotism that the Olympics and Paralympics instilled. 

Thirdly, the rediscovery of my love of swimming and the personal challenge I undertook to raise money and awareness for Rheumatoid Arthritis.  I refuse to let RA become the bane of my life - it is something that I have and will have forever so why let it ruin things?  Sure, some things just aren't the same and never will be, but I am proud of the fears that I have overcome this year through swimming.  Our final total raised for NRAS is a few pennies short of £1,400 (+ Gift Aid) which is a truly staggering sum for a very normal 29 year old girl and her family to raise by swimming a mile each.  It shows the overwhelming generosity and love of our friends and families and, believe me, every minute that I was swimming I was thinking of all the donations we had received and how this was my chance to show that peoples' faith and support in me was well placed. (OK, every other minute I was thinking about this.  In the other minutes I was thinking about how stupid I was to have EVER suggested such an idiotic idea, and how was I ever going to get to the end?).

Fourthly, this blog.  It may not yet have reached the dizzy heights of other more well known, more highly favoured blogs, but it is my personal triumph.  I love to write it, even if the subject matter is at times a little sketchy, and I love to know that people are enjoying my writing.  If I could just find a way to generate enough income from sitting at home with a cuppa and my slippers on while tap-tap-tapping away at a keyboard I would be a truly happy person.  True, I may find myself a little starved of human contact if that situation were to arise, but I'm sure people would point it out to me if I started to take on too many cat-like characteristics, or lost the ability to string a sentence together in conversation (though some of you may argue that I struggle with this already at times...)

My Dad shared a letter with us over Christmas from his consultant - in two lines saying the best news I had heard in a long time - that he has beaten the myeloma cancer cells that had invaded him.  I managed not to cry in his face - after all it is a happy letter, and one that I feel could be framed, or brought out to cheer up a particularly depressing evening of rubbish TV.  But I think that might be the biggest success of 2012 and puts all and any minor moments of misery that I may have experienced into perspective.

So on that note, I wish you all a Happy New Year! May 2013 bring you all the joy and happiness that you deserve.  Please be assured that I shall resume my normal worrying and cynicism soon and put all this nostlagic cheerfulness behind me.

K x

Writer's Block

Believe me, I do not suffer from writer's block in the classic sense: I can write/talk at any time of day or night at length on almost any subject.  Neither have I been short of subjects worthy of my worry these past few weeks.  The reason for my relative inactivity for the past few weeks has been a combination of a) job hunting and interviewing (so far to no avail, but I have hope) and b) the inability to discuss the most pressing worries in public.  Not, you understand, because I don't know what to say, but because they are not my business to be sharing.

Over the past few weeks I have been deeply involved in some very fraught and upsetting troubles and on many occasions I have wished I could vent my worries and fears on here.  But the Jeremy Kyle-esque temptation to broadcast the woes of others is not my style and not, ultimately, the purpose of this blog.

I have read with interest and revulsion about a US judge who stated that the woman who was raped 'couldn't have protested hard enough' because the female body would stop sex from happening if it really didnt want it.  He admitted he was no gynaecologist but... NO.. no, you are not... clearly.  (idiot)

I have watched with horror the unfolding story of Newtown, Connecticut and the atrocities that happened there; I have read and agreed (or disagreed, depending) on different opinions about what could or would turn the tide of gun crime in the USA in the wake of this horrible tragedy.

I have silently congratulated Wills and Kate on their happy news, actively avoided any involvement in X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing or I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and indulged my obsession with Homeland.  I have cried as I left my job and colleagues for the final time, taking that inevitable step towards my possible future unemployment; I have worried myself to distraction about how I am going to find a new job in this unsettled economic climate, about how I am going to pay my rent and bills next year; I have been through another set of spinal injections and still feel no lasting difference to my daily pain and discomfort.

But for all the petty worries that I may have had, I have been completely unable to write about them as they have been shadowed by something so much more personally troubling. You know who you are, and you know what I am speaking about, and believe me I wish that my writing about it could solve any of the hardships that you are currently suffering.  In the past few weeks I have gone from joyful and positive through utterly speechless to appalled, disgusted and heartbroken for you.  Somehow today I have found myself able to write, albeit in a guarded way, about this pain and I applaud your strength and hope that a happy resolution will be made quickly for you all.

In the meantime, selfishly, I hope that this temporary 'writer's block' of mine may be eased by this blog and by the catharsis of accepting the reasons for my lack of productivity.  I also hope that a work-from-home job paying 40k lands in my inbox tomorrow, begging me to accept.

K x

Actually Finding a Job

I have been accused of being a little "ranty" in my last post.  Well, in fairness, I was very ranty and intentionally so as that was how I felt at the time.  Now I am more concentrated on worrying about getting a new job than the reasoning behind the loss of the original one.
Nigh on every single job I see online is advertised through an agency, and once you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all there isn't actually a real job at the end of it (or it has mysteriously already been filled, despite the advert only being posted that morning).  I have completed several applications directly for jobs that not only fill me with interest and enthusiasm, but seem to fit precisely to my skills and attributes, only to have no response at all, not even a rejection email.
Unless I feel so little self worth as to start applying for jobs which a monkey could do, or joining the ranks of Eurostar call centre staff, it seems like there is so little out there for someone like me who is, ultimately, completely unqualified.
In hindsight I really should have done a different degree, like teaching for example, or physiotherapy.  I would then be qualified to be an actual teacher, or an actual physiotherapist.  Rather than my very enjoyable Film & Television Studies degree which qualifies me to be absolutely nothing.  It doesn't even qualify me to be a film or television critic, because they want people with a journalism degree for those jobs.  I really wish I had paid more attention in the 'careers' lessons at school and college, but I doubt they told us anything useful like that; if my likes and dislikes at age 15 can tell anyone what career I should plan for, then I take my hat off to them.
So, with several years of customer service experience, management experience (albeit with small seasonal teams) and a fluent foreign language, I am struggling to find anything much out there that isn't either depressingly badly paid or requires an extra experience that I don't have - like online marketing, or web design.  I don't think yell.com's web-builder for small businesses counts as web design.
I have a job interview this week, for a job that seems to fit and they obviously like my CV enough to think that I am not completely unsuited for the job. But in a month of appliations this is the first interview, and as the days tick away leading up to my imminent unemployment, my inbox is not filling up with offers as I had hoped it would.
So I keep plugging away with the applications, in the hope that someone will see me for the wonderful person that I am and the amazing skills and benefits that I could bring to their company.  And still keeping my fingers crossed for that lottery win...
K x

My Imminent Unemployment

Hi there campers.  Sorry its been a while since I last updated you all on the delights of my neuroses, I am afraid I have been somewhat sidetracked.
First of all there was the charity swim - for some reason I said I would swim a mile for Rheumatoid Arthritis charity NRAS, then suddenly it was a few months later and I had to fundraise, not to mention practice swimming.  Both were done succesfully (raised £1,400 and managed to swim a mile without causing serious physical damage to myself or others) but the build-up to the event did rather monopolise my evenings for a while.
Then, of course, there was the self-imposed rest period following the great event: I shall just eat this takeaway because I did do something great for charity last week; I shall just leave the washing up today because I did raise loads of money last week and I am quite tired etc etc.
And now there is a whole other something which is taking over my mental capacities - job hunting.  My current employment was always billed as 'temporary': a 12 month maternity cover contract, then a 6-month extension to help on a project, then a 6 month extension to cover someone's secondment to a different department.... it goes on.  But, because every time the "end of contract" date loomed closer the company extended it by another stretch, I had never really truly prepared myself that one day I  really would run out of job.  But here I am, preparing to leave a job that, although of course I am biased, I do rather well.  Being a generally modest and unassuming type, I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but I am good at my job and I can think of several people in the same office who truly are not.  There is something terribly soul destroying about the unfairness of incompetent idiots being gainfully employed in a job I can do better than them, more efficiently than them and, importantly, more quietly than them, without the need to broadcast my every action to my colleagues (if you work in my office you know exactly who I mean). 
I don't mean this to become a childish tantrum, my cheeks reddening as I stomp my feet and declare angrily how unfair everything is, no doubt blaming my parents for ruining my life and then slamming a few doors for good measure (my bedroom door in my teens wouldn't slam... it was such an enormous disappointment).  But the economy and the job market at the moment are not in the best of health, and desperately seeking employment is not a happy place to be.  I am disappointed in an employer who recognises my worth and my abilities but resolutely manages NOT to "talent manage" in any kind of effective way.  I now dread every day: not because I dislike my job, but because every day I am reminded that however hard I work, however efficient, organised or exceptional I might be, in four weeks time I will not have that job anymore.
And so I trawl the job boards for possible alternatives, delaying the inevitable calls and emails to the agencies who will then bombard me daily with vacancies which almost completely do not meet my requirements.  All the while keeping my chin up, my upper lip resolutely stiff, telling myself its 'onward and upward'...

K x

Vulgarity

As an aside before I start this post I should mention that I did have the epidural anti-inflammatory injection, a 2 foot needle was inserted into my actual spine for approximately 17 hours.  OK, thats an exaggeration but it was one of the least pleasant medical procedures I have ever experienced, not helped by the fact that I had to listen to the elderly gentleman in the next bed have his before me. (It comes a close second to the electrical nerve testing, which basically amounts to being electrocuted over and over again.)  I heard his every groan, every yelp, every cry of discomfort.  All good solid preparation for my turn.  So far, after a week, I can report no discernible change to my own physical situation which does make me feel a little cheated after such a long wait and such an unpleasant experience.  I had acupuncture again, and again no change.  As far as I am concerned, medical professionals just feel the need to stick needles in me at the moment (speaking of which, flu jab this week, joy!) and no-one seems to be able to fix the problem.  Maybe one day one of the needles will actually make a difference...

So, vulgarity.  Not other people's vulgarity, my own.  There are certain people with whom I am able to speak frankly and use whatever language I feel is necessary, if not always wholly appropriate.  My problem is remembering which friends are which, which friends would not take kindly to me discussing certain topics or using certain words at the dinner table.

A few weeks ago myself, A & M went for dinner in a very exclusive "the place to be right now" type restaurant.  It was beautiful, it was tastefully decorated and subtly lit; the waiting staff were attentive yet conversational and the food was mmmmmm yummity yum yum.  We began with cocktails, then a nice cold bottle of dry white wine; we delved into the menu and chose several delightfully delicious sounding plates to share in a 'modern south-east Asian tapas style'.  I mentally prepared the perfectly worded opening sentence of my restaurant review and politely enjoyed the first few plates and the first few glasses of wine.  I do not know at which point it became appropriate for us to start discussing the relative hotness of our waitress, which foods were most arousing or for me to turn my laundered linen napkin into a crude interpretation of a penis.  I truly hope that the couple on the next table who ordered the tempura vegetable dish that we had originally scorned (vegetables on sticks? who wants those?) didnt hear us when we bemoaned how good they looked and said something along the lines of "why didn't we order that shiz? For fucks sake those veg look fucking amazing. Bastards".  Needless to say I didn't ever write the eloquent, descriptive restaurant review that I had planned; it was all over after the first bottle went upside down into the ice bucket.

Then, the evening descended into what can only be called a wine-fuelled furore.  We went to a wine tasting... except we weren't really tasting.  We were nodding and smiling as the wine purveyors earnestly described the grape variety and taste of the wine; and helping ourselves to as much as possible whilst literally tearing lumps of cheese from the cheese table.  We visited the Venerable Association of Bordeaux Wine Fanatics (not their real name) table, had a few tastes and then I asked the Lord High Venerable Wine Taster for his wine afficionado medal, wore it, posed for a photo in it, told him it was the shit and I wanted a medal.  I am so surprised they didn't ask us to leave.

I spoke French to the only Frenchman there, and told him I wanted to 'degouter' his wine.  Degouter = to disgust, Degustation = tasting.  I then had an argument with the cheese man about whether his cheese was ewes milk or cows milk; good god surely he would know?

All in all, it was one of the best nights out I have had in a really long time, with people who I can be as vulgar and debauched as I wish without feeling like they are judging me.  The trouble is toning it down when with other people, who may not appreciate my line of humour or constant swearing, like at work for example.  When something goes wrong it seems only natural to exclaim 'oh cock' or complain quietly about a rude colleague as being a bit of a 'cunty bastard'.  A friend of mine works in an office with her mother, which can only be a swearer's kind of torture: not only may the words be inappropriate but to say one of them accidentally infront of one's mother must be horrific.

So I apologise in advance if my language ever offends you, it is never meant to be intentionally offensive or hurtful (unless I am looking directly at you and trying to insult you, in which case I am probably drunk so just ignore me until I go away).  I just like to use our wonderful language in all its colourful beauty, and sometimes those words are a little bit more colourful than might be your preference.  But remember, if a word can be used by Chaucer, then it can be used by me (and I have one, which he didn't).

K x

HealthCare

I have more opportunity than most to worry about healthcare; not because I am particularly accident prone or sickly, but because I suffer from a chronic immune disease.  This is not a "wah wah, poor me" blog post, I have no room for sympathy in my relationship with my unruly immune system.  If I'm having a shitty day and all I want to do is curl up and feel sorry for myself, chances are that what I actually need is a large glass of wine and some cheerful company, or failing that an early night and a snuggle with the cat; what I really don't need is to sit down and think/discuss how shitty my day is.   I am not really one to revel in my misfortune and dwell on all the misery it may cause.  To borrow someone else's favourite turn of phrase: I prefer to "man up" and get on with it.

Anyway, what got me started worrying on the healthcare issue today, was a visit to a new physiotherapist.  The occupational health department at my work decided to trial a visiting physiotherapist over the next few weeks, and as I have some mobility issues I thought I'd sign myself up.  Several months ago (like, May) I started getting some really nasty back pain.  Floored me for a week or two, I could barely move.  My rheumatologist, and rheumatology physiotherapist agreed that it was down to inflammation in the small joints at the base of the spine, and irritation to the nerves caused by a disc prolapse (not the first time).  I saw a second rheumatology physiotherapist after several months of waiting, who agreed with the above and arranged to carry out a spinal epidural to ease the pain and swelling and get me back on my feet, so to speak.  I had waited 3 months to get to this stage and the epidural was booked for next week.
So I went to see this new physio through work and he announed (after 2 mins of looking at me and a quick prod) that its not the disc, its not the joints, its just muscular; he proceeded to acupuncture me in several places and declare that I "probably won't be needing that epidural after all".
WT actual F?  I will have waited the best part of four months for something I don't need, when your two little needle pricks could have fixed this months ago? Obviously I didn't say that, I politely agreed that I hoped the acupuncture would make a difference and would be pleased if the pain eased. 

Sadly, the pain hasn't eased much and I will still be having the epidural as planned.  But it worries me that healthcare professionals can come to such hugely varying diagnoses of the same set of symptoms.  Would it be cynical of me to suggest that the first person agreed with the second's diagnosis because it meant the problem would not be their's to solve?  Or that the third person based their's on the notes of the second, rather than on a thorough investigation of their own? And did the new physio, who clearly is a acupuncture enthusiast, tweak his diagnosis in favour of something that could be helped with acupuncture, as opposed to the disc prolapse, which couldn't.

I am often accused of being too cynical for my own good, but I can't help but wonder who is right and who is wrong in this story - because they can't all be right! And just imagine if this was the American insurance system, and my treatment was based on what my non-medically qualified insurance broker would agree to allow me to have?  Thank goodness that the grand old NHS is in safe hands, or who know's where I'd be going to next....

K x