Category Archives: Social comment

May 26, 2020 · 10:55 am

The social distanced funeral and the need for primeval hugs

My Dad’s funeral was last week. It consisted of me, my four siblings and a vicar, all stood 2 metres apart in Gloucester Crematorium. The vast majority of people watched on through a live stream as the hymns and the eulogy echoed around the near empty room. The rows of empty silent pews speaking volumes about all the people who knew and loved Dad over the years who couldn’t be there.

After the funeral I have spent some time trying to answer people’s unimaginative question, “how was the funeral”? And I think this is the nearest I have come to an answer so far.

Crucially, both for coronavirus, but also for understanding what happened, there was no physical contact at the funeral at all. The vicar welcomed us with a polite nod of the head and my siblings and I all gave half smiles and weak waves back.

At the end of the service there were no hugs, no shared tears, and no sharing of marginally inappropriate anecdotes at the boozy wake. There wasn’t even the usual socially awkward British handshake (or my personal favourite, when one persona goes in for a handshake and the other a hug) from friends from Dad’s distant past. Instead there were just awkward good-byes and splodges of hand sanitizer as the next cask was wheeled in for the next small group of mourners. As we all disappeared off to our own separate lives even the warmth of sun felt inappropriate. It was a beautiful warm day and I knew the next time I would speak to my siblings it would be through a Zoom call or a shared meme on WhatsApp.

To me it felt inadequate, a poor fraction of a funeral for a man that burst at the seams of life. I wanted a festival for him, I wanted to hear first-hand about how he used to rally cars, how he spent hours preserving ancient machinery, how at one point or another he would have poured everyone there a glass of desert wine and watched expectantly for their reaction as they took the first sip.

Instead, the inadequacy compounded a hurtful sense of the inadequacy in not being able to be there to support my Dad in his final weeks of life. Instead of holding his hand in those final weeks I counted down the hours and days left of his life just 20 miles from the hospital where he rested. I still feel disproportionately grateful to the palliative care doctor who told me she sat and held his hand while she spoke to him about steam trains.

Although I answer honestly when I tell everyone “I’m fine” it is, I think, important to acknowledge that with death comes a form of psychological pain. And ritual and contact normally plays an important role is helping us all deal with that pain.

While people deal with this pain in their own personal and socially specific ways, I read that everyone uses the same regions of the brain to process this pain. To one degree or another it’s a shared experience. When we come together to mourn a death remarkably similar thought processes are occurring in all of our brains.

Crucially though, these processes are the same parts of the brain that are used to process physical pain. To deal with this, most of the world has developed a form of ritual that helps release endorphins to dampen this pain – in our society this is around the social gathering and shared embraces at a funeral.

We know that endorphins dampen, incredibly effectively, our psychological pain. That is why at funerals hugs are shared so freely when in general in British society we normally avoid that close embrace of a hug. It’s thought that these endorphins produce an opiate-like analgesic effect but just much stronger (one study suggests 18-33 times the effectiveness). We have evolved this behaviour as social creatures over millions of years. As a behaviour pattern it really isn’t dissimilar to the grooming of primates. Cuddling, with its stroking, patting and even the occasional leafing through the hair (that’s a joke) is the human form of primate grooming, and is designed to create and maintain our relationships and to soften pain. Anyone parent will know the impulsive response to hug their child equally when they fall over as when they are upset about something.

In an increasingly isolated world that has become more and more physically distanced (I had a cousin watch dad’s funeral from New Zealand), these rituals of gatherings around births, deaths and weddings are more important than ever. Sometimes a decade could pass and these are the only occasions when my extended family will have got together. These are our backstop to maintaining the loving relationships that sit as the foundation blocks to personal, family and social well-being.

That’s why I feel a funeral could and should be a time to gather and share stories of love and shared history but perhaps more importantly to be there, physically, for each other. Instead it feels like the coronavirus not only stole the last part of my Dad’s life, and indeed also the small but important role that we his children could play – to be there physically for him, but it also stole so much of the ritual that we all rely on to help us through the mourning process. In these socially distancing times, it feels like we are being asked to go against the most primeval of instincts embedded within all of us. To gather, to give and receive a hug and to share our memories.

One of the most comforting thoughts now is the promise of a gathering when “all this is over”. I know that this is unlikely to happen any time soon but the prospect of it is something to hold onto. To really say good-bye to my Dad I want warm ales on a hot day and long anecdotes about narrow-gauge railways all shared by the unusually diverse group of friends that my Dad managed to hold onto. But most of all I want a moment when everyone is deep in conversation and the booze is flowing that I can turn to someone who knew him and loved him as much as I did and hug them, and to mutter softly how much he would have loved us all being there together.

Until then I am making do with photo-albums and the incredibly lucky sensation of constantly having two children climbing over me and to be sharing this all with the most loving wife.

I know in this sense I am lucky and my heart breaks for all those in comparable situations going back to empty houses. If you are still reading this I urge you to take the time to reach out to those people living alone – I’m really OK and they might well not be. This unprecedented time isn’t just changing the basics of the modern society that we have grown so use to, but also the slowly evolved rituals that we rely on more heavily than most of us realise. There is little that can replace the importance of a hug but just letting people know you’re there for them is also important.

5 Comments

Filed under Blogging, Health, Social comment

Tagged as coronavirus, covid, funeral

May 22, 2018 · 8:23 pm

A long journey…

My mum, Jackie, with her favourite cow, Emblem.

Yesterday was my mum’s funeral, the end of a long journey that started many years ago. Its initial stages were played out behind the scenes, out of sight, deep inside my mum’s mind. Unknown to any of us, friends or family, the 100 billion or so neurons in my mum’s brain started a countdown. These neurons in her brain threw out neurological branches that connected to more than 100 trillion points, allowing for thoughts and memories to be formed and recalled. Slowly, and completely silently, this number started to drop. With no fanfare, an incredibly awful and utterly incurable process began that would only begin to show itself years later.

When it did show itself, it did so relatively innocuously. It was the odd repeated question, the occasional double take, the subtlest of shifts away from engaging in conversation.

The science behind Alzheimer’s tells us that the areas of the brain most commonly affected early on are those that are used for learning and planning. I remember patiently sitting with my mum trying to explain to her how to use her new mobile phone. The simplest instructions seemingly lost in the seconds following the conversation. In retrospect I can see the folly of trying to explain, and reexplain, something new to my mum. That I failed to mitigate my own behaviour, let alone expectations, to allow for the early onset dementia is both something I regret, and something that makes me feel embarrassed.

How unequipped I was to support my mum in those initial stages leaves a deeper sadness in me now than the ending of her story. She was preparing for one of the hardest journeys of her life, and I turned up with no shoes to walk in, maps to direct me or rations to sustain us. I was woefully ill-equipped.

In retrospect, there was still so much left to celebrate at this stage and instead I was too focused on the immediate problems and challenges in front of me. The fixation on the next steps trying to ‘fix’ these problems blinkered me from spotting the wider landscape of where we were, how we got there and how much further we still had to go.

I remember asking questions about gardening and composting and getting encyclopaedic answers disguised under a subtle humble demeanour of a women with a life time of experiences not used to being asked to share them. The lack of notebook and pen in hand resonates strongly now to illustrate my own failings at the time to appreciate the delicacy of these thoughts that could dissipate at any moment.

By the time I spotted the severity of the journey ahead, my mum had been walking solo for years. Everyday a confusing challenge, walking a journey no one would chose to take. Each day trying to guide herself with sheer willpower through an ever-changing landscape.

To try to support her I took my first significant step in equipping myself for this journey. This was to read Oliver James’ book ‘Contended Dementia’. Although far from the miraculous saviour text some of its proponents make it out to be, it did set me off in the right direction. It was from this that I accepted that parts of my mum’s memory, and what makes her who she is was slipping away. I set about ‘relearning’ my relationship with my mum. This was beyond tiring and involved unlearning a lifetime of habits. My questions soon ceased to be part of our conversations. They were instead replaced with an ever-changing melody of chitter chatter which at times danced as freely as the topics that passed through her mind, while at others were strictly kept to subjects I knew to garner a positive reaction. I learnt the joy of hearing about parts of my mum’s life that were previously never mentioned and my curiosity about the patchwork of her earlier life grew. Even then though I struggled to prevent my focus returning to the ever-growing list of things we couldn’t do or talk about.

In retrospect, if I could change one thing from this whole journey, it would be to spend more time at each stage celebrating all that was left of my mum – the good, the bad and the utter complexity in between.

My mum had a fiercely proud personality, often contradictory in its nature, and a stubbornness that any mule would be proud of and in retrospect she plodded on this journey as any mule would – proudly, quietly and without complaint. She would never ask for help and would scorn the suggestion if anyone ever offered it.

And yet, in my mum’s mid-stage of dementia, I feel like I learnt new ways of interacting that allowed me to better help her. By just being with her and holding a conversation that was not threatening and didn’t highlight the missing memories I felt like, for a short period, I could carry some of the extra weight for her on this journey.

At this stage I began to spot the crucial role that emotions played. If I had a positive interaction with my mum, then I could tangibly see how these positive emotions lived on much longer than the memory of the actual interaction. Equally, if something distressed her it was clear that the anger, or hurt, or confusion would long outlast the initial problem. This moved me onto what I think of as the relentless optimism stage. Regardless of the reality I found a positive moment – the new flower that had just sprung in the garden, the fact that my wife was pregnant, that the sun was shining. The smallest of things resonated.

Again, I wish I had turned some of this optimism and positivity to all that she still had to offer at this stage instead of just distracting from all she couldn’t do. Whether or not this would have been possible I don’t know. I do know that I wish I had tried harder.

Later I would read that this importance of positivity wasn’t just my experience but one backed up by studies. One lead author of a study concluded by saying that “our findings should empower caregivers by showing them that their actions toward patients really do matter and can significantly influence a patient’s quality of life and subjective well-being”. It did for me. For some months, a year maybe, I could visit my parent’s house and let my reality melt away and interact with my mum wherever she was at that time. In her mind, if she was milking cows I would comment how good the fried breakfast was waiting for us. If she was worried about where her Dad was I quipped that I was sure he would have a good story to tell over dinner. If I didn’t know where she was in her mind I would look out of the window and say how special it was to be here at this time of year.

This is not to say it wasn’t incredibly hard work. Each visit I was constantly second guessing what was happening and trying to steer conversation away from any cracks in my mum’s memory road. I suspect though that this was just nothing compared to either her experience of living with the disease or that of my Dad’s experience living with her and for many years being her primary carer.

In the final year or so, it became harder and harder to muster these positive emotions. Verbal conversation became a less useful tool and suddenly I felt like I had slipped back to square one – back to being an unwitting bystander to my mum’s journey. At times I found ways around this. After the birth of my son, her grandson, we would sit together with her doting affection and my son performing back a series of giggles and smiles. It is hard, even after years of suffering from Alzheimer’s to not be cheered by the rapturous laugh of a baby. In the final months though we would more often than not sit in silence.

As these final months ticked by, I watched the seasons slip from one to another outside her care home window. This alone was enough to fill me with sadness to think how she once lived her whole life outdoors surrounded by animals. She was now sat in a thermostat-controlled room – I wasn’t sure of much at this stage, but I knew this was not right, and not what she would have wanted.

With the passing of the seasons so the number of neurons and connections continued to quietly drop. Basic functions disappeared but still, at times, there was the unmistakable facial expression or look that was uniquely my mum. In these last few months I spent more and more time feeling awkward and unable to help her. My weekly visits had slipped to every other week and sometimes longer and as a result the progression of her symptom became more pronounced between visits. By the end I would helplessly sit with her unsure if she knew if anyone was with her not.

Coming one time into the uncomfortably warm care home I found her slumped sideways on the chair. A member of care staff who was spoon feeding her explained to me that she had lost control of body positioning. Her eyes were glazed and focused on nothing in the distance. She weighed just over 40 kilograms. The length and severity of the journey she had been on had taken its toll.

Two days later she passed away.

When people now ask me how I am, I say I’m OK; that I feel both relieved and sad. A mix of emotions. But the more I think about it, the more I think this is the wrong question. There are much more pertinent questions to ask. How have I been for the last 8 years? How have I been throughout this long journey? At what point did I feel that the essence of my mum left leaving her body to keep on the journey? When did grief start? What have I learnt over the last 8 years? Do I feel guilty for not having done more? Do I feel proud for doing what I did? How did all those who loved mum struggle in their own ways to interact with this journey?

And then, and only then, a little for the here and now: how does it feel to be setting off on this next stage of life, on my own journey, without a mum that had, up until now, been a constant in my life?

At this stage, I’m not really sure.

11 Comments

Filed under Blogging, Health, Social comment

Tagged as Alzheimer's, Blog, Dementia, personal experience

January 8, 2017 · 5:42 pm

Reflections on my Mum’s advanced dementia

Sitting across from each other on slightly uncomfortable wooden chairs in the care home I watch my Mum interact with one of the staff. The young girl lays her hand on my mum’s shoulder, raises the volume of her voice slightly and asks if “everything was alright dear” and if my Mum would “like any help?”.

My mum looks up at her and smiles with wide unfocused eyes. The staff member smiles back, hovers awkwardly for a moment trying to decipherer what this blank stare means before finally she walks over to another resident. As she makes her way over to a lady sat hunched in the corner I look back at my Mum and catch just the faintest flicker of a death stare from behind her eyes. It was an unmistakable reflection of something deep within her that these days only occasionally surfaces. Today this was a split second of a “fuck off am I your dear”.

Of course, I could have imagined it, I could have simply wanted to see a bit of her old self and so read too much into a distant stare. But, in that moment I think I saw my Mum: proud, wanting to help others – not wanting to waste people’s time in being helped, and ultimately using anger as a shield to hide away from all the insecurities and uncertainties of her life.

She focuses her eyes back on me, a second of surprise or alarm gives way to a meandering anecdote about the walk she believes she had taken that morning over Dartmoor. I ask if she saw any deer and she responds that she had, but only in the distance. This follows a second of silence and a drop in her eyebrows before she asks if I was OK to count? I promise her that I was more than happy to count to which she scoffs and says she doubts it. I once again miss the nuance of her reality.

Asking questions of dementia patients often only increases distress and confusion and so I try to steer the conversation back onto safe territory and say it was a beautiful crisp winters day outside. Her eyes look at me. One, two, three. Seconds pass with no response. I try a new path. I tell her that I recently spoke with her nephew, my cousin, and that he is happy and doing well. One, two, three. Eyes wide. No response. I try three of four times more and get little in response.

I decide not to push conversation. I sit with her in the weak winter sun surrounded by the stuffy air of the car home. Silence.

In the silence my mind jumps to memories at random. I think back to my mum cutting all the fire wood for the house by hand insisting that she was perfectly happy with her bow saw and no, she didn’t want me to come around with a chainsaw. I think back to her carrying heavy trestle tables out of the local scout hut as all the other mums stood and watched. I think about her slapping down any idea or suggestion that she might in anyway need any help.

With these thoughts in mind I smile at her thinking that I might get going soon. She doesn’t smile back. The staff member approaches and puts her hand on Mum’s shoulder and, just before Mum smiles up at her, she gives her a split second of that recognisable death state. The staff member either doesn’t notice or chooses not to.

The thing I feel saddest about when I leave is that Mum has so little capacity, so little control. Despite both the care home and my family doing all they can, we are no longer able to play by her rules and there is nothing we, or she, can do about it. She is left to be looked after by others. She is clearly being looked after well but they also clearly miss the very essence of her. I don’t think I am sad that she will pass away in the coming, weeks, months, or possibly years. I am just sad that it must be like this, not on her terms.

2 Comments

Filed under Health, Social comment

Tagged as Advance dementia, Care home, death, Dementia, dying, Hendri Coetzee, Living the best day ever, Living with

November 29, 2016 · 5:11 pm

The simple satisfaction of cycling into work along the River Frome into Bristol

My daily commute follows the River Frome into the centre of Bristol. Or I should say, as close as the modern infrastructure built around the river allows. Every day I pass the same weir, the same log spanning from one bank to another, the same bridge where the river finally disappears below the concrete centre forever from sight.

There is a simple satisfaction in observing how the river responds to the weather and countryside that feeds it. After heavy rains the weir can almost disappear under surging dirty brown water washed from ploughed farmers’ fields. A few days of no rain later, and you will be left with a clear trickle struggling to make it down its shallow path.

On days like today, when the temperature drops below freezing, this slow flowing river begins to freeze over altogether leaving sheets of ice floating in the river’s eddies.

Wrapped in thick coats, scarves and hats, the red flushed faces look out as the dog walkers crunch over the frozen muddy puddles. On one section of path, just south of Broom Hill the puddles perpetually sit never normally fully draining. Today though, they are iced over leaving a crisp brown path slicing through the centre of a frost filled field. The small wooden picnic bench which normally sits opposite a small outcrop of limestone perfect for some climbing in warmer months is today frozen white.

About 2 kilometres north of the city centre the River Frome emerges from the steep valley in which it has been travelling and my commute cuts up through the open expanse of Eastville Park. In these winter months, the sun rises directly to my left, beaming gently through the historic horse chestnut trees that cast long shadows over the frozen ground.

As the river fights its way through the monstrosity of modern out of town shopping my route slips alongside the equally awful piece of urban engineering – the M32, the first real reminder that you’re heading into a major city centre. From here the river dips below concrete in places and the off-road cycle route weaves between skate parks, railway bridges and underpasses.

The embedded heat in the concrete on this stage of the commute means that despite the air temperature being close to minus 4, nothing is frozen. The concrete is grey, the grass green and the sky blue.

Nothing of the surroundings for the last bit of this commute gives any hint of the weather or countryside that surrounds the city. It is then that I feel a huge sense of privilege to have such a commute. Also though, I feel a sadness that for most people, even those whose daily commute is outside of their cars, most people in Bristol would not have seen the frozen field that I cycled through this morning.

As I arrive in the office buoyed by the beauty of the seasons, I can’t help but to wonder what impact it is having on us as a society for most of us to never fully experience or appreciate the changing of the weather, seasons and nature that will always sit beyond our control.

Leave a comment

Filed under Blogging, Bristol, Outdoors, Photography, Social comment

Tagged as Bristol, Broom Hill, Climbing, Commute, cycling, Eastville Park, Frome Valley, photography, River Frome, Snuff Mills

October 25, 2016 · 3:23 pm

How you can help the unaccompanied child refugees in Calais

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On our doorstep, just two dozen miles from the British coast, is a refugee camp that is being demolished leaving people in the most desperate conditions. There are hundreds of children in these camps, many of whom have a legal right to be in the UK. Due to feet dragging, legal technicalities and lack of political will, their temporary shelters are being demolished and they are being left exposed having to fight not just for their rights, but their very survival.

In the next week or two this camp will be fully demolished. Unless our government acts, unless we act, many of these accompanied children will more than likely just go missing and disappear. This happened before, it is likely to happen again. The thought of the exploitation they will likely face should this happen should be enough to inspire us all into action.

Last week I went with the MEP, Molly Scott Cato, who I work with and visited the camp and met with some of the refugees and volunteers. What I saw was the end result of an uncaring and uninterested government. It was simply awful. A policy to do nothing left vulnerable people with nothing. I saw no government representation, no officials offering support, only volunteers where government agencies should have been.

It is worth noting, that the refugee camp in Calais is not, and never was, actually a refugee camp but just a makeshift camp with refugees in. This distinction is important. The former implies order and support and the latter implies disorder and little sufficient support.

Our government’s limited response to this is in the last few days is shameful. At the last minute they generously offer to accept a fraction of the children they are obliged to support. Too little too late. For too long they have been focusing on building a hugely expensive “security wall”. Perhaps a wall fits better with this governments fortress Britain mentality, but does little to support the children living in the camp. This whole time, rather than resorting too counterproductive Trump-esque style tactics, the British Government could have been registering the children identified to them by NGOs in the camps, to stop them risking their lives trying to get to the UK illegally.

We now face a ticking clock while the camp is demolished. To stop children disappearing, the UK government must step up and process all children with a legal right to be here. This is either through the Dublin III Regulation which entitles them to be reunited with family members living in the UK or under the Alf Dubs amendment which is supposed to bring the most vulnerable unaccompanied children in Europe to safety in the UK.

There are of course children there who don’t have a legal right to be in the UK and for some it may not be in their best interests to come here anyway. For those the UK government needs to be pushing the French authorities to do more in providing reception facilities to these children so they can go through the appropriate asylum process in France.

Whilst in the camp I heard reports of children being turned away by French authorities when they tried to register to claim asylum. Worse still, I also heard numerous reports of excessive use of violence from the French police. Volunteers talked to me about rubber bullets and tear gas being fired directly into groups leaving some minors with serious injuries.

History will judge our own and the French government’s actions and inaction poorly.

This government behaviour has, to some extent, been mitigated against by an army of volunteers that should be highly commended. Until government steps up to its legal and moral reasonability the goodwill of you, I and volunteers is all some have at the moment. If you have not already I urge you to write to your local MP urging government to act urgently. This cannot wait. There is a sample letter here but more powerfully, you can explain why this is important to you in your own words. Secondly, if you can afford to, please send phone credit to the refugees in the camps. This is crucial all the time but even more so during the up-coming demolition. Lastly, if you have time, volunteer either in the UK or the camps yourself.

This is a moral crisis. Primarily a crisis of government but one that touches on each of us. As Dr Seuss said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.”

I doubt many in government have read Dr Seuss. But you have, so please act.

Leave a comment

Filed under Human rights, Hynd's Blog, Middle East, Photography, Politics, Social comment, War

Tagged as Calais, How can I help, Refugees, The Jungle, unaccompanied children

June 20, 2016 · 3:30 pm

I want my country’s confidence back

Picture by Jon Connell – Flickr

“I want my country back…”

This is the lazy rhetoric of the Leave campaign. I want my country back…from what, or to when, seem to be questions they are unable or unwilling to answer.

But I think I can though, so here goes.

More than anything I want my country back from the recent poisonous rhetoric of the Leave campaign. When did it become OK in this country to produce political videos depicting refugees as “vicious snakes”? At what point did it become OK to produce political videos that depict a women being raped by a political entity? At what point did it become OK to produce posters so dehumanising, degrading and despicable that they are compared to Nazi propaganda – by the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer?

I want this to stop. This isn’t the politics of a country that I am proud of. This is the politics of the gutter.

It hasn’t always been like this though. And that’s what I want my country to return to. Metaphorically speaking, I want my country back to that balmy summer of 2012 when the country came together around the Olympic Games to celebrate our role in the international community.

Do you remember it? Kids playing in the street, spontaneous acts of kindness, citizen ambassadors? I remember the image of Mo Farah flying the Union Jack and how it became a symbol of our nation: confident, energetic, multi-cultural, welcoming, high achieving.

After that incredible summer of the 2012 Olympic Games a study was done to explore what impact it had on our international standing. The results were clear, people from around the world saw us Brits as more “distinctive, daring, charming, energetic, trendy and authentic”.

The world came to us and we embraced them confident open arms.

Skip forward 4 years and we seem have retreated further into ourselves. Without the same confidence we have half-turned our back on our neighbours, arms crossed, protective.

So how do we get our country back to that outward looking, confident country we were all so proud to be part of?

I can tell you it is not going to come from either the mainstream Leave or Remain fear based campaigns. While the Leave camp are hell bent on dog whistling on immigration, the Remain record is stuck on the question of “what if” we leave.

I want to be asking a different question. I want to be asking what it is about the EU that has secured peace for decades, secured a higher quality of environment and worker protections. And, significantly, what was the role of the UK in that process?

When we start to dig deeper we can find a proud history. One that stretches from Churchill’s post-war vision to our leadership through the EU in tackling climate change, promoting human rights, and exporting democracy. A role in the UK plays in the EU that we can be really proud of.

This is what we must be focused on and, crucially, asking how can we look to build on these successes?

I will be voting Remain on Thursday not out of fear but because I want my country’s confidence back. I want us to reclaim that outward facing, confident and positive feeling that gripped us back in 2012. I want us to be leading not leaving the EU. I want us to remain a positive, confident, tolerant country.

1 Comment

Filed under EU politics, Politics, Social comment

Tagged as EUref, I want my country back, Leave, referendum, Remain

December 29, 2014 · 12:54 pm

Why I keep on blogging: Reflections on 2014

Walking with friends in mid-Wales

One of the many things that inspired me in 2014 was reading Henry Coetzee’s assertion that (and I paraphrase from memory) ‘there are few things cooler in life than getting an action photo of yourself doing something awesome but few things less cool than stopping the action to take a photo’.

I couldn’t agree more.

And so it is that I am writing my reflections of Hynd’s Blog for 2014 a few days before the end of the year because, in my mind at least, there are few things cooler than writing about life in all its wonderful contradictory complexity, but there are few things less cool than spending time online when there is life to be lived outside the window.

My next couple of days will take me into the internet nether zone of the mid-Wales valleys to spend New Years with old friends. My computer will be left where it belongs – on my desk at home and so these reflections will come a few days early.

This project, Hynd’s Blog, has always been, for me at least, about enhancing, understanding and/or challenging life – not replacing it.

I find it so interesting that this is a distinction that so many bloggers seems unable to spot.

Anyway, before I disappear into mid-Wales I wanted to reiterate my thanks to each and every one of you lovely people who take the time to read my ramblings. You’re ace and don’t let anyone ever tell you anything else!

Seriously, you are the only thing that distinguishes all this from a virtual equivalent of locking myself into a dark room and talking to myself. You are what makes Hynd’s Blog a conversation.

So…Thank you!

And what a rather large conversation it has grown into.

Hynd’s Blog continues to grow into something that I had no idea it had the potential to do. Tens of thousands of people come to read my ramblings every month and this, quite literally, never ceases to surprise and equally delight me.

From all over the world people are coming to read, to comment, and to interact with issues that mean the world to me. From local politics to the finer details of micro brewing; from human rights violations to the relative merits of lower league football people are coming here, to Hynd’s Blog, to engage with them.

As amazing and wonderful as I find this, it also adds a pressure, in my mind at least, to keep Hynd’s Blog being something worth reading. At times good articles seem to flow easily from my meandering mind to article form and at others it feels like drawing blood from a stone.

At these lowest times those, the times when I wonder why I bother writing, I have almost invariably been lifted by the sweetest of emails from both friends and strangers that makes it all somehow feel worthwhile.

Haters will always be haters (and believe me there are plenty of them) but it is each of you that have made the effort to leave an interesting or kind message or comment that makes me want to keep Hynd’s Blog going.

Hynd’s Blog remains a labour of love and you are part of it.

2015 will see me move back to Bristol after a few years of living in Uganda…Different people and issues will be on my doorstep but I am excited as ever to keep writing about them.

I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that you are as excited to keep reading and interacting with them.

If so, roll on 2015…

2 Comments

Filed under Social comment

Tagged as Blooging, Hynd' Blog

December 14, 2014 · 11:47 am

24 hours in the UK

Last year when my plane touched down at Heathrow coming back from Uganda I was met with a wonderful scene to welcome me back to old blighty. Queuing to enter the terminal building, what the British do best, an elegant determined woman pushed to the front of queue – sacrilege! One chap next to me notices that I have clocked this queue jumping outrage and chips in with the comment, “fucking French huh”.

What a welcome back to the UK – baseless xenophobic queue based hatred all performed to the backdrop tinny Christmas carols under a smattering of drizzle!

This year I was a smidgen disappointed to find no Christmas carols on repeat but delighted to make it out of the airport without witnessing any casual racism.

Once back in the hills and valleys of the ‘West Country’ though I took little time to head out for a walk. Thinking that this is what made the UK amazing I walked with uncharacteristic clear skies and meek winter sunshine hitting the frost covered ground. I was in a buoyed mood striding across farmer’s fields and down hidden valleys following bubbling brooks.

This mood was lifted further though with what truly makes the Great Britain great. With every dog walker passed a friendly ‘good morning’ was chirped followed by a compulsive observation of the uncharacteristically good weather: “wonderful day for it” or “you couldn’t ask for a better day” before then swiftly apologising for their dog who would be eagerly sniffing my trouser legs.

These small interactions last less than a few seconds but make up an integral part of the DNA of British culture.

Warmed by the simple pleasant jollity of rural British life I stopped in the open fire warmth of a local pub – the Woolpack in Slad – where I had arranged to meet family.

Sat sipping local real ales on slightly uncomfortable wooden furniture (why is that both pubs and churches consider it a virtue to have furniture that in other walks of life would be considered completely unfit for purpose?) I watched dogs curl up on the floor close to their owner muddy wellington boots. With a low warm afternoon winter sun breaking through the window I sat back with family around me and listened to the impromptu piano/saxophone performance that only added to the ambiance.

Outside, after a hearty pub lunch, we strode up Swift’s Hill which enjoys some of the finest views in the region down over the Slad Valley across the market town of Stroud and out to the Severn Valley and across to the Black Mountains in Wales. A few clouds clung to the horizon to exaggerate the sunset as wonderful pinks and oranges were thrown over the fields and footpaths.

It felt like the weather was welcoming me back to the UK, giving me 24 hours of pleasure before it inevitably resumed in the monotony of drizzle that everyone seems to perpetually believe might stop at any moment but so rarely does.

Walking back over the fields I make a decision to call into another pub on the way home. Instead of live piano/saxophone renditions, this pub instead has the unmistakable sound of football coming from the TV screens. Excited to be able to watch my national sport with my fellow countrymen I step in and order my pint of warm frothing ale.

Looking for a place to sit I approach a stranger with the prerequisite of “excuse me, I am terribly sorry, but would you mind if I possibly took a seat” motioning towards one of five empty seats surrounding him. Smiling warmly the man looks up from his Daily Telegraph with impeccable replicable manners and says, “Please, it would be an honour”.

How wonderful is that – being told it would be an honour for me to sit next to him.

Buoyed by these little interactions I sit happily watching Arsenal score four goals with the return of their star striker – Giroud. In an unspoken acknowledgment I suggest to the man next to me through nothing more than eye contact that I was happy, that I was delighted to be back in the UK and that in that moment I could think of nothing I would rather be doing.

Responding to this the man next to me commented in a perfect middle England accent, “Typical isn’t it”. “What’s that?” I responded. “The fucking French keeping such an English institution like Arsenal afloat” he sneered.

Sigh.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gloucestershire, Social comment, Travel

Tagged as 24 hours in the UK, life in the UK, UK

December 10, 2014 · 7:32 am

Living the best day ever

This is a cross-post of an article that I wrote for the Africa edition of ehospice news reflecting on the lessons learnt from Hendri Coetzee’s book ‘Living the best day ever’.

Palliative care, by definition, is both a science and an art form that involves accepting the reality of death. What you have left when you accept this is what the profession calls ‘preserving or improving the quality of life’.

Never before though, have I been challenged to re-examine the concept of ‘quality of life’ than when reading Hendri Coetzee’s book: ‘Living the best day ever’.

Hendri Coetzee was a South African living in Uganda perpetually searching for the best day ever. This search led him to become a legend throughout the extreme sports and exploration world.

In 2004 Hendri led the first ever complete descent of River Nile from source (Lake Victoria) to sea (the Mediterranean). The 4,160 mile trip took four and a half months and crossed two war zones.

Coetzee was also the first person to run the rapids above the Nile’s Murchison Falls, a section of river filled with some of the biggest white water in the world, and holding one of the highest concentrations of crocodiles and hippos.

He would go on to complete this section of river a further seven times and he remains the only person ever to run the section by himself. He also ran large sections of the upper and lower Congo River, walked 1000 miles along the Tanzanian coast and was the first person ever to snowboard the glaciers in the Ruwenzori Mountains.

In short, his résumé was one of the most impressive in the business.

It was not, however, his outlandish adventures that makes Coetzee’s book such a challenge for anyone to read, but his burning passion for life. Deep within all of his adventures was an intertwined journey to accept the fullness of life – to be able to appreciate it to its full. Only by understanding and ultimately accepting one’s death, Coetzee believed, can we truly experience a ‘quality of life’.

Speaking to some, and by no means all, palliative care patients I have come across a stillness – a deeper happiness – that I have rarely seen elsewhere. It is a happiness that comes fundamentally from within, a spiritual or psychological wellbeing.

Does this come from an acceptance of one’s own death?

Early on in the book, when undertaking the Murchison Falls section of white water, Coetzee writes: “In our society we avoid the thought of death as if recognition alone could trigger the event. Thinking about your own death is seen as a sign that mentally, all is not well. Some people live their entire lives with the sole purpose of minimising the chances of it occurring to them, instead of preparing for the inevitable. After avoiding the issue for so long, it is almost soothing to invite death on my terms.”

Reflecting on this, I wonder how many palliative care practitioners spend their professional hours encouraging patients to think about their deaths, to make preparations and to become comfortable with the idea whilst then perpetuating the myth in their own lives that life is infinite?

I only speak for myself when I write that I am too often guilty of this self-delusion.

To live a truly high ‘quality of life’ do we have to be comfortable with the idea of our death? I don’t know.

For Coetzee though, this acceptance was clearly linked to the life he chose to lead. Writing about his desire to keep going on clearly dangerous expeditions he wrote: “Psychoanalysts may diagnose a death wish, but missions like these enhance the appreciation of life. It is no coincidence that death and rebirth are related in all forms of religion and spirituality. When you accept that you are going to die, and it will be sooner than you think, it becomes impossible to merely go through the motions.”

Even the acceptance of my own inevitable death cannot push me to actions that so invite the prospect of death earlier than it otherwise would arrive. There is too much to live for to put my life on the line in search of living just that one day to the extreme – in the search for the best day ever.

That said, it is imperative for the palliative care community to understand the full spectrum of thought that exists out there. Just as there are people who are terrified of the concept of their own passing so there are people like Coetzee that can write the following words:

“Death is coming for us all…the day we will have to face the crossing will come sooner than we think. I hope my day is many many years away, but… I don’t want to make the greatest leap in life in a vague dream. I want to have the chance to look it in the eye, to say: ‘You have had me in your sights all your life, but it’s on my terms that I come.’ Tibetans believe that one can find enlightenment at the moment of your death, as long as you prepared yourself for it during life…I have had the best day ever more times than I remember. So yes, I believe I am ready to die if that is what is needed to live as I want to.”

Hendri Coetzee was pulled from his kayak by a crocodile deep inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo and his body was never recovered.

At the end of his last ever blog entry though, after completing a section of river that many assumed impossible to kayak, he wrote: “We stood precariously on a unknown slope deep in the heart of Africa, for once my mind and heart agreed, I would never live a better day.”

I have no idea if – when it came – Hendri Coetzee was prepared for his death. It is clear though, that he lived life to the full and died in way he had to have expected.

Not many of us can say that and for that alone ‘Living the best day ever’ is worth reading. I think we can all learn something from Hendri Coetzee approach to both life and death.

2 Comments

Filed under Health, Social comment, Travel, Uganda

Tagged as ehospice, Hendri Coetzee, Living the best day ever, review

November 28, 2014 · 8:07 am

A future full of potential regrets

These are some thoughts inspired by a conversation I had with my fiance about how, at just 28 years old, most of my regrets still sit in front of me. It explores how regrets are also rather complicatedly mixed up in taking the risks in life that ensure I live the sort of life I, and others, can be proud of. A life lived to the full.

Regret rests in the past. That is what we are told.

Regret resides in those residual reminders of actions, or inactions, of days, months, or years gone by. The mantra, so often used by oneself to torment oneself is that ‘if only I had another chance, I would have done it all so differently’.

This perspective is one that comes with age. Age forces regrets into memories of days, months, and years that now rest in our personal rear view mirrors, distorted by the lens of time that we all place over our memories.

And yet, even with the most painful of regrets, the ones that loom largest in our memories, the ones that haunt us without warning in the middle of the night, we know where they are. If we have the courage we can turn to face them, we can take action to rectify them, or at the very least, we can learn to live with them.

At the age of 28 though there is something far more terrifying, in my mind at least, than my existing regrets. This is the concept of all the potential future regrets that rest in front of me, in my future. Sitting on the side of the mantra of ‘I would have done it differently’ that still holds the agency to enact the change that could steer myself and others away from regret is ironically both terrifying and debilitating.

My main regrets sit in my unknown future not the past. This is a challenge unique to the privileged and the young – neither of whom normally realise their predicament.

Like a rabbit caught in headlights I can see paths roll out in front of me leading to actions and inactions that hold all the potential for regret. I can see them all too clearly but choose to keep going, to keep walking.

Why? Why not stop now? To explain, I must tell you a little of myself.

I write these words with thousands of miles resting between me and the friends and family that I grew up with. Each mile serves as a barrier for why I can’t, or worst choose not to, spend the time with the people that mean the most to me.

The future holds a deceptiveness that leads you to think that it is infinite. Just as you fail to appreciate the beauty of the rising of the sun because you think it will always happen, so you can also fail to take the time or appreciate the beauty in being able to pick up the phone and speak to your parents, friends or loved ones.

Despite the warnings, the heart attacks, the high blood pressure, the years passing of my parents, I convince myself that the future will hold the same potential to always be able to pick up the phone, jump on a plane or even send an email to them.

This is of course not true. Life is finite.

Simply, you never appreciate what you have until it is gone.

I am all too aware that it is this that holds the potential for so much regret.

With this foresight, there is a question of why not take action now – look for a job back home sooner, close to friends and family? Why not take action to limit that potential for regret?

To answer this question, an explanation of my parents is needed. From the earliest age they encouraged me grasp opportunities with both hands. To fight for them and to appreciate them to the fullest.

All too clearly I remember both my parents repeating the phrase ‘just give it a go’ throughout my childhood.

Every day I feel the importance of living life, of giving it a go. I push myself to do things, to be bothered, and most of all to appreciate every bit of it – even the supposed failures. I think for that alone my parents are proud.

Life has thrown me around geographically. It dropped me on this earth in the UK but has since taken me all over. I sit now in East Africa thousands of miles away from the parents that made me who I am. I live, I make mistakes, and I regret them. But even these regrets I try my hardest to cherish and to savour because I know that these regrets are signpost to risks taken, choices made and a life lived to the full.

The biggest potential regret of not spending enough time with my parents should they die before me rests in the future alongside other potential regrets. I have no idea how I will react if suddenly the ones I care about are taken from me, but for now at least, that is a question for tomorrow. Today I plan to live every second to it’s full.

My regrets reside in front of me, but so does the rest of my life. I know I can’t have one without the other.

As always, please do contribute comments and thoughts below.

2 Comments

Filed under Social comment

Tagged as death, dying, love, Regret

November 17, 2014 · 1:19 pm

Band Aid 30 lyrics as ‘patronising and fatalistic as they are bizarre and untrue’

Madagascar missing from Band Aid 30 logo

There is nothing, literally nothing, in the whole world, that I dislike more than sweeping generalisations and crass oversimplifications – nothing!

It is out of this bugbear that [at least part of] my dislike for Band Aid/Band Aid 30 comes from.

I plan to take off from where the ever-awesome Bim Adewunmi left off when she wrote in the Guardian about how the lyrics of the original Band Aid still haunt her. Under the headline ‘Band Aid 30: clumsy, patronising and wrong in so many ways’ Adewunmi writes:

“…there were a few parts of the song that always stuck in my craw. For example, the lyric that begins: “And there won’t be snow in Africa …” It does snow in Africa! I say under my breath every December when shopping malls roll the track out.”

Well indeed – just as I can assure you there is snow in Africa so I can also assure that the original Band Aid song is filled with idiotic sweeping generalisations and crass oversimplifications – you know….the sort that niggle at me until I am forced to write an irate blog post.

Adewunmi finishes her article by offering what I feel to be premature credit though saying:

“To his credit…[Geldof] has said some of the lyrics will be tweaked slightly for this new version. Gone are the references to Africa’s “burning sun” as well as the assertion that it is a place where “no rain nor rivers flow”.

Well yes, this may be true but believe me, it does not seem that he has learnt any lessons about crass generalizations. While reference to famine and starvation have been removed (acknowledging that those “inappropriate” lyrics did not reflect that swathes of Africa that are “booming”) he has instead replaced them with these pearls of linguistic idiocy:

“At Christmas time, it’s hard but while you’re having fun

There’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear

Where a kiss of love can kill you, and there’s death in every tear”

Firstly, let’s clarify something Bob – we (the generalised European/American masses) are not all having fun at Christmas. We are sleeping rough, dying of cancer, being beaten and raped by our partners, choking on pieces of lego and/or drinking ourselves into oblivion. I have no doubt that many people enjoy Christmas day greatly but this hits at the heart of the problem Bob, not everyone does.

Just as not all Europeans enjoy Christmas, so (it should be axiomatic but evidently it isn’t) not all ‘West Africans’ live in a ‘world of dread and fear’ because ‘there’s death in every tear’.

Ebola has killed around 5,000 people at the time of writing and has impacted on many more. It is a crisis that is as terrifying for those as involved as it is potentially life-threatening. According the MSF latest update:

Guinea has 1,760 confirmed cases and seen 1054 deaths,
Liberia (Cases 6,619. Deaths 2,766),
Nigeria (Cases 20. Deaths 8),
Sierra Leone (Cases 4,862. Deaths 1,130),
Senegal (Cases 1. Deaths 0)
and recently Mali (Cases 1. Deaths 1). (all WHO figures)

Now in West Africa alone this leaves (off the top of my head), The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea – Bissau, Mali, Niger, Togo, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso etc etc who have nothing more than a vague geographic connection to the Ebola crisis.

But hey – why let the reality of millions of people get in the way of a good song?

The lyrics of Band Aid 30 continues:

No peace and joy this Christmas in West Africa

The only hope they’ll have is being alive

Where to comfort is to fear

Where to touch is to be scared

How can they know it’s Christmas time at all”

These lyrics are as fatalistic as they are simply not true, as patronising as they are utterly bizarre.

Did no one think to point out to Geldof that when you get some very well paid Europeans to sing that there is “No peace and joy this Christmas in West Africa” that you are rather undermining the millions of West Africans who will be living in peace in West Africa this Christmas – including I might add the courageous, well organised, and utterly wonderful Nigerian health workers who contained and then removed Ebola from their country?

And then the back to that line again, “How can they know it’s Christmas time at all” – well here is a suggestion…. Either through the wide-spread access to the internet or perhaps because a few of the approximate 400 million Christians in Africa know when one of the own most important celebrations of the year takes place.

This song, in both its literal lyrics through to its conceptual approach is depressingly archaic. What is more depressing though is that so few of the mistakes from the cringe worthy original Band Aid seemed to have been rectified. As much as I have focused here on the simplistic idiocy of the lyrics there are also a plethora of other questions that need answering such as why Band Aid still has such little input – both musically and logistically – from people from the countries that the song aims to be helping?

Still, to every cloud there is a silver lining. At least they don’t still have have Bono singing that line which is maybe the most insidious in pop history:

“Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”
Donate to the MSF response to the Ebola crisis here.

2 Comments

Filed under Music, Social comment

Tagged as Band Aid 30 lyrics, Bob Geldof, Ebola, what is wrong with band Aid 30

October 20, 2014 · 1:41 pm

First ever self defense programme for people with Dwarfism launched

A good friend of mine and occasional contributor to Hynd’s Blog, Eugene Grant, has launched the first ever self-defence programme for people with dwarfism. This is a cross-post of his article that explains why he sees the need for such a self-defense course.

I don’t even remember where I was going. All I remember is looking to my left, distracted by a homeless man asking for change as I walked past. When I turned my head back to the front, a tall man – about 6’ 0” – was advancing aggressively in my direction, just a few feet away, his hands outstretched towards me.

I have Achondroplasia – one of the most common types of dwarfism. In 28 years, I’ve had stones thrown at my head; I’ve been chased by youths on mopeds; I’ve been grabbed and assaulted by strangers. I was frequently bullied at school. The list of instances in which I’ve been verbally abused or threatened is too long to include here.

Now, I make no assumption that my experiences are representative of other dwarfs. But I know I’m not alone.

Throughout my life, I’ve studied boxing, self-defense, and martial arts: Karate, Kick-boxing, Ninjitsu, and Tae-kwon-do, to name but a few. Growing up, these provided a valuable outlet for me as a frustrated and isolated young man, who struggled to deal positively with an environment that felt harsh and hostile towards me.

And yet, over time I realised that so many of these forms of self-defence were completely inapplicable for people with dwarfism. Even at 4’6” – hardly small for a dwarf – my hips are at the height of most people’s knees. I’m never going to get my leg up high enough to kick an attacker in the head – as you’re taught in Taekwondo. Nor, at 7 and a half stone, would I try to grab, trip, and throw him to the floor – as you might in Judo. Like most dwarfs, my arms are short – making boxing difficult (but not impossible…).

I realised that what people with dwarfism, people like me, really need is a self-defense system designed for our body types and the sorts of threats and assaults (being grabbed, picked up, bear hugged, and so on) which, sadly, some of face all too often in our daily lives.

And so SPD – Self-Protection for Dwarfs – was born.

Designed and developed by myself, under the expert guidance and instruction of Urban Warriors Krav maga Chief Instructor Kelina Cowell, SPD is a unique, practical, and applicable form of self-defense for people with dwarfism. For us, by us; tailored to the modern day environment (not the battlefields of feudal Japan!).

Of course there’s a desperate need for us as a society to re-evaluate how we treat those who are different; to think critically about how a dearth of real representations of people with dwarfism – and indeed other disabilities too – in the media perpetuate prejudices and spread stereotypes.

But as Kelina herself has said before, the world will never rid itself of violence, abuse, and discrimination. That we also need to address structural problems like poverty and inequality, social immobility and educational disadvantage, shouldn’t stop us from locking our doors at night to prevent burglars and home invaders.

Urban Warriors Self Protection for Dwarfs is a serious step forwards to helping people with dwarfism be better prepared to look after and defend themselves in times of crisis; to learn new skills and grow as individuals and as a community; and to build our self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-confidence.

To me, that’s truly empowering.

All we have to do now is to spread the word, teach and train others, and watch the movement grow.

Interested? Want to know more? For more information about Urban Warriors Self Protection for Dwarfs, Please like the Urban Warriors SPD Facebook page, follow us on the Urban Warriors SPD Twitter page, or contact us urbanwarriorsspd at gmail.com

Leave a comment

Filed under Social comment

Tagged as achondroplasia, attacks on dwarfs, Eugene Grant, London, self-defense for dwarfs

October 15, 2014 · 12:53 pm

Is there a case for making exceptions to the national minimum wage?

Conservative Lord Freud

In 1997 the Blair government, to their credit, reversed 5 years of Conservative feet dragging and introduced the minimum wage. This policy, at its now slightly inflated but still chronically too low rate, is a basic safety net for paid workers.

Hynd’s Blog has consistently called for the advancement of the minimum wage to match that calculated as the ‘living wage’ – the minimum amount it is deemed to be able to have a reasonable standard of living off.

Today though the paper’s are not filled with the argument for increasing the minimum wage to match a ‘living wage’ but instead, the idea of some people being able to earn less than the minimum wage – an idea which Hynd’s Blog is not immediately and unconditionally opposed to.

Lord Freud, the Conservative Welfare Minister, has been thrown into the heart of this debate when a recording of him saying, “There is a group, and I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage” was released.

In short, he suggests that certain disabled people are ‘not worth’ the meager £3.79 (for under 18s) that stands as the current minimum wage.

Moving this debate though beyond the despicable language that suggests you can assess the ‘worth’ of an individual there is a pertinent question to ask around whether or not exceptions should be made to minimum wage legislation – like for example the system they have in New Zealand.

I would personally advocate for a system where an individual employee could apply for an exception to the national minimum wage that is then assessed by a government agency so they can continue working in a job that they are perhaps good at but cannot perform at the speed or efficiency of other workers.

An example might be an adult with learning disabilities who works slowly and methodically at a certain task benefiting greatly from the social interaction, the responsibilities of work and the limited financial independence of a reduced salary but who works too slowly for a commercial employer to feel they can justify paying a minimum wage.

This opt out clause could easily be supported through an existing financial top up scheme comparable to that ‘disability premium’ income support to ensure the employee is protected whilst the employer does not lose out.

With this in mind, it is worth also examining the politics of the current uproar. Lord Freud’s comments were unacceptable and as such he needs to apologise. But, equally, the nature and severity of the attack from Labour on this issue only serves as party political point scoring and does little to add to the social policy question that the Conservative Cllr and Lord Freud were addressing – what is best form of legal protection disabled workers whose output is partially effected by their disability?

I don’t have the answer to this and certainly not the research to back up the above idea but it would be interested to get a discussion going – something unlikely to happen in the current media hyperbole.

UPDATE:

Full text of Lord Freud’s apology:

1 Comment

Filed under Economics, Politics, Social comment

Tagged as Disability, Lord Freud, minimum wage, worth

October 8, 2014 · 9:30 am

The completely false Daily Telegraph headline: “Cannabis as addictive as heroin, major new study finds”

The Daily Telegraph yesterday ran a story with the headline “Cannabis as addictive as heroin, major new study finds”.

The article opens reasserting the same headline phrase “Cannabis can be as addictive as heroin or alcohol”.

As I read through the article my ‘bullshit-o-meter’ that was already triggered by the headline started to go through the roof. I was fairly sure that quite a lot of what was written simply could not be true.

After I finished reading it I dismissed it as more sensationalist twisting of real research and thought nothing more of it until…I saw that a (slightly more than me) conservative friend had posted the story on his wall.

My perpetual obsession to share my crass inclinations with people led me to want to reply.

As such to provide a more factual response that just ‘well this doesn’t tally with my own worldly experience’ (which it doesn’t) and ‘this isn’t the impression I got from a limited amount of reading on the subject’ I decided to do a wee bit of internet research.

As with most ideas though, someone else’s ‘bullshit-o-meter’ had already led them to respond, quite comprehensively, to the article. This person is Edward Fox, the project coordinator for TalkingDrugs.org, a website ‘operated by Release, the UK-based centre of expertise on drugs and drugs law’ who then wrote a response for Huffington Post.

As it soon became clear, he is a much more qualified person than myself to write on this and so I leave you with his (edited down) words (read the full article here):

The UK tabloid hysteria has flared again over the dangers of cannabis, distorting recent research in an act that will prove detrimental to further educating people on the real harms associated with drug use….

On Addiction

The Telegraph’s claim that Professor Hall at any point stated that cannabis is on a par with heroin when it comes to addictiveness is a pernicious manipulation of his words. The exact phrasing he used to present his study was, in fact:

“If cannabis is not addictive then neither is heroin or alcohol”

This in no way equates to equal levels of harm, nor addictiveness, and at no point does the Telegraph cite a quote by Professor Hall that can back up their absurd headline.

On Cannabis’ Impact on Mental Health

Both newspapers claim that Professor Hall’s study found that cannabis causes mental health problems. This is conveyed by each as a statement of fact, when it is anything but.

Professor Hall’s findings were, rather, that the link between cannabis and mental health problems such as psychosis and depression has been found to be unclear. Research has determined that cannabis may be a contributing factor or heighten the risk of developing a disorder, but to frame it as a sole causation of a condition is misleading given the need to account for other confounding variables e.g. family history of mental illness and socio-economic standing.

On Cannabis as a Gateway Drug

The Daily Mail states that the study shows that “cannabis… opens the door to hard drugs.” This is, in a sense, true as Professor Hall did find from analysing different studies that cannabis users may be more likely to use cocaine and heroin.

However, the Mail fails to note that this finding is based on the exposure of cannabis users to the drug market and/or factors completely unrelated to cannabis, such as the “risk-taking or sensation-seeking,” of the user in question.

Thus, a pharmacological explanation of escalation in drug use is falsely left on the table by the Mail’s inability to go into further detail, suggesting that the effect of cannabis on the user in and of itself serves as a gateway to other substances.

Fox then concludes with this pertinent point:

Demonising drug users and manipulating research findings to sell papers serves only to avoid an open and honest debate on how to properly mitigate the harms of illicit drugs. If parts of the media continue down this sensationalist road, they will remain a malicious hindrance to real progress.

Leave a comment

Filed under Health, Social comment

Tagged as Cannabis as addictive as heroin, Drugs

August 28, 2014 · 9:47 am

Book review: ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ by Rachel Joyce

This is a copy of a book review I wrote for the UK edition of ehospice news.

If ever a fictional book has illustrated the importance of ‘spiritual care’ as an integral part of palliative care, it is Rachel Joyce’s debut novel, ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’.

Joyce’s heart-warming novel charts the unlikely story of Harold Fry. Harold is a retired Englishman who embarks on 600 mile walk from Devon to Berwick to visit an old friend who is dying of cancer. The walk, or pilgrimage, increasingly becomes interlinked with Harold’s own grief and spiritual pain as he becomes convinced that by undertaking such a walk he can not only keep his old friend alive, but also repent for the mistakes he has made in years gone by.

Although Harold’s friend Queenie is in a hospice with terminal cancer, the reader only gets brief glances at the physical, spiritual and social pain that she is experiencing. Joyce alludes to a lack of family or friends but this, it feels, is only mentioned to add impetus to the protagonist’s pilgrimage.

Indeed, it is Harold, and at times his wife Maureen, who the reader becomes best acquainted with. On a base level the reader begins to empathise with Harold’s tortured emotions towards Queenie and this only heightens throughout the walk.

From the beginning of the walk and the book the reader is aware of a pain lying just underneath the surface of Harold. Only as the walk, or as Joyce sometimes refers to it, ‘the journey’, develops do we begin to understand the nature and severity of Harold’s pain. Throughout the book one cannot help but draw parallels between Harold’s journey and other patient’s journey towards death.

What stands out in this novel though is the way Joyce cleverly explains to the reader how pain goes so much further than just the pain experienced by the patient. Friends, family and, of course, colleagues can be, and often are, effected by death and the process of dying.

Using this holistic understanding of pain, understanding it as more than just physical but also spiritual and social that can and does impact on friends and family as well the patient, Joyce takes the reader on a powerful emotional journey that is sadly too often out of reach in other novels that touch on issues related to death.

Using Harold’s well-being as an extended metaphor Joyce cleverly intertwines Harold’s hopes, emotions and fears with those of the readers and lets you experience the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Harold’s walk.

The context of which this journey is undertaken – the quintessential English landscape – is, I believe, mistaken by many as being the central theme to the book. Indeed in the reviews published on The Guardian or The New York Times, the life-affirming story and the societal implications of what it means to be ‘English’ or ‘Spiritual’ in the 21st century are drawn out as key themes.

For me, these were side-issues all playing in and relating to how we understand death and the role someone’s spiritual pain can play in that process. I took from the novel, and I believe this was intended as a key theme, the universality of spiritual concern and pain – something which palliative care practitioners have been advocating about for a number of years now.

This is illustrated in the fact that the issues around spiritual pain are shown from the perspective of an atheist (Harold). Regardless of religious beliefs we all have the potential to feel spiritual well-being and of course, pain.

Even when faced with the ultimate twist in the final chapters Joyce still refuses to deviate from what I felt to be the core theme of the book – Harold’s deeply personal anguish and how this not only impacts on those around him, but also on his own ability to be at one with himself.

‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ remains one of the few fictional books I have read that deals with spiritual pain around dying adequately. This is not to say it deals with these issue comprehensively, merely that it acknowledges it to be a central part of what it is that makes us human.

It is perhaps this unlikely source of shared humanity that makes this first novel such a triumph and pleasure to read despite the difficult subjects it addresses.

1 Comment

Filed under Health, Social comment

Tagged as ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’, book review, ehospice, Rachel Joyce

August 20, 2014 · 11:35 am

An averagely dressed male reflects on his [lack of] fashion sense

My socks… read into them what you will.

A friend of mine and an all-round nice guy, Mr Andrew Lansley, has just started a fashion blog called ‘Averagely Dressed Male’.

The blog is a simple idea:

Starting September 1st 2014 I will document what I wear every day for a year. The only problem is I have no concept of fashion and despise shopping for clothes.

It is, I thought, a nice concept and a counter balance to the media narrative that we must all worry and be judged by what we wear. Andrew will be showing us, day in day out, what he happens to be putting on that day whilst at the same time asking himself some pertinent questions around his clothing choices.

My initial reaction to the blog was one of immediate solidarity. I am someone with close to no fashion sense and who, quite frankly my dear, couldn’t give a damn what I look like. This feeling was confirmed when I saw him post a picture of a rather rancid pair of boxer shorts with rips in…. Boxer shorts with rips in that also just happened to look almost identical to a few pairs I own.

Andrew’s boxers (pants) – not mine!

That said, his post made me reflect on my fashion/clothing choices. Whether I like to admit it to myself or not, I guess I do have a style of sorts and this style is one of pretty boring conformity.

This realisation alarmed me slightly. Anyone who knows me can testify, conformity is not something that sits easily with my personality. As such I started thinking. How did I end up wearing such utterly boring clothes?

Well after mulling this question over my lunch-break (dressed in black chinos, a FCUK shirts and M&S boxers – only my socks offering a glimmer of interest), this is what I came up with…

My rule to fashion and clothing in general is a simple one: clothing (and/or fashion) should be there to enhance your chosen life-style not limit it.

For some (certainly not me) this might mean taking joy out of following the latest fashions from around the world and being the first to bring that style to the high street. For others (a bit more me) this might mean buying the latest outdoors clothing to be able to perform at a particular sport better.

For me though my day to day clothing choice is more often a negative choice. Essentially my day to day clothes are whatever I can get my hands on for free or very cheap that enable me to function as part of everyday society. I don’t really care what I look like, but I don’t want what I look like to limit my interactions with people.

When people are looking at your t-shirt rather than listening to what you’re saying, the chances are your fashion choice has fallen foul of my basic rule – it is limiting your life not enhancing it.

In this sense, I wear a shirt to work because people would frown upon me if I didn’t. Outside of work though I tend to wear shorts, t-shirts (often free) and flip flops because most people I hang around with are friends and don’t judge me (too harshly) on what I wear.

This approach is in many ways an anti-subculture attitude to fashion. What I wear and what I look like really doesn’t define me. While I take pride in my actions and words, my clothes are there as a slightly unavoidable extra in my life. Others that I politically or socially identify with in contrast will go to great lengths to ensure their image defines them.

While many people that I call friends use their image to fit with their perspectives on life, I tend to let my life mould my image.

At a job interview/wedding/funeral you will normally find me in a suit. Up a mountain you will normally find me in outdoors gear. At a house party you will normally find me in the before mentioned t-shirt, shorts and flips flops.

I want to be comfy, I don’t want to be judged, but I’m not too bothered if I am slightly uncomfy or if you judge me a little bit. As long as we can still be friends, I’m easy!

At an initial glance the flip side to this is that my fashion sense (or lack of) is driven by conformity. But, after thinking about it I also think something slightly more subtle is going on.

To start with most of my clothes come from charity shops in the UK.

My clothes are purchased whilst supporting good causes (even if I am not passionate about animal welfare you can’t really begrudge giving a dogs home one quid in exchange for a t-shirt). It turns a de facto necessity (being clothed) from something that perpetuates a global system of inequality and materialism into one that supports circular product-systems and a form of charitable giving.

This is a double win in my mind.

It is, in this sense that my fashion clothing decisions are a sub-conscious (I never actively decided to reject high street shops and do still sometimes venture into them out of necessity) rejection of the mainstream conceptions of fashion.

In one sense I often look like an image of conformity, in another sense I reject the whole notion of materialism, fashion and consumerism. This combined with a slightly ‘don’t actually care that much’ attitude sometimes peeks through in my not always on the mark fashion decisions.

Very rarely though will you find me making a statement through my clothing (how do you explain your socks then Steve I hear you ask…no idea!)

I fully support Andrew’s ‘Averagely Dressed Male’ blog idea. I think there are lots of issues to be discussed – even by those, including myself, who initially reject the idea of fashion. We are all in one way or another products of our surroundings and trying to understand how those who fit outside the media driven narrative of fashion fit into those surroundings is an admirable one.

Roll on September when his fashion blog starts for proper.

1 Comment

Filed under Social comment

Tagged as Andrew Lansley, anti-fashion, Averagely Dressed Male, male fashion

August 18, 2014 · 10:18 am

Video: Dwarf wears hidden camera for a day and reveals people’s insensitive reactions

“The next time you see someone who is different than you, think about what their day might be like, think about all the events of their life leading up to that point, and think about their day — and think about what part of their day you want to be?”

This pertinent question was posed at the end of a short documentary film by Jonathon Novick.

Novick is a dwarf with achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism. One of my absolute best mates also has achondroplasia and I have had the eye-opening, if deeply depressing, experience of seeing the intolerance and insensitivity with which the public respond to him.

In 2013 I did a short interview with my mate. In that interview he responded to a question asking if he had a message to the people in the street who take photos of him what it would be, with this answer:

“Just stop, for a moment, and think: What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why would you or your friends find that photo or film to be of any value or interest? What does that say about your character, as an adult, and how you think about and respond to people who are different? What if I was your brother, son or cousin? How would you see it then?”

This answer and the questions he poses chime closely with the one posed by Novick. Essentially it is asking for a degree of empathy, a smattering of consideration and just the smallest amount of basic manners. The fact that this is missing from most people’s interactions with dwarfs is deeply telling.

Please do watch this 6 min documentary and take it on board:

1 Comment

Filed under Social comment

Tagged as achondroplasia, Don't Look Down On Me, dwarfism, Jonathon Novick

Nice to Tweet you! Follow me on Twitter

Email Subscription

Blogs that people have enjoyed

Thanks for visiting

Category Archives: Social comment

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Be one of the cool kids and share this article

Like this:

Email Subscription

Blogs that people have enjoyed