Fresh from the interwebs and the funniest thing I have read for weeks,  no idea who wrote it or from whence it originated, but I found it on google+. Apologies to the author for not knowing who you are:

HOW TO FEED A CAT A TABLET (and a DOG).

1) Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.

2) Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in

left arm and repeat process.

3) Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.

4) Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm, holding rear

paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.

5) Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.

6) Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.

7) Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap.

Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.

8) Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill inside end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.

9) Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink 1 beer to take taste away. Apply Band-Aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.

10) Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Open another beer. Place cat in cupboard, and close door onto neck, to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.

11) Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges. Drink beer. Fetch bottle of scotch. Pour shot, drink. apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Apply whiskey compress to cheek to disinfect. Toss back another shot. Throw Tee shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.

12) Call fire brigade to retrieve the f------ cat from tree across

the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil-wrap.

13) Tie the little b****d's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table, find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of steak filet. Be rough about it. Hold head vertically and pour 2 pints of water down throat to wash pill down.

14) Consume remainder of Scotch. Get spouse to drive you to the

emergency room, sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and remove pill remnants from right eye. Call furniture shop on way home to order new table.

15) Arrange for RSPCA to collect "mutant cat from hell" and call local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

HOW TO GIVE A DOG A PILL:

1) Wrap it in cheese.

The Bercow Review.

In the event of twitter not this time being the best medium to reply to a tweet, it seems a short blog in response to a tweet from @PubeckPashmina is in order, so here goes..

Regarding The Bercow Review:   (I lifted this straight out of Wikipedia, more or less.)

In 2008, John Bercow was asked by Labour Cabinet members Ed Balls and Alan Johnson to produce a substantial review of children and families affected by speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).
After the report, the government pledged £52 million to raise the profile of SLCN within the education field.
The review looks at the extreme consequences that communication problems can lead to – from initial frustration at not being able to express oneself, to bullying or being bullied at school, fewer job prospects and even the descent into criminality.
The interim report highlighted a number of core issues: that speech, language and communication are not only essential life skills but fundamental human rights; that early identification of problems and intervention is important to avoid social problems later on; and that the current system of treatment is patchy, i.e. there is a need for services to be continually provided for children and families from an early age.

Doesn't seem all that controversial to me,  in fact seems exactly what is needed, but suspect it has long since sunk without trace.

Regarding the breakfast telly interview yesterday:

I think the Bercows' did a stirling job in the face of a poor and ill-informed interviewer who was obviously dumbing down a potentially difficult interview about a very complex subject.  Mind you, it was a bit early in the morning for that sort of discussion.

email to elizabeth11@buckhouse.co.uk.....

Hi Queen,

Appalingly late getting this written I'm afraid, I've had a bit of a troublesome few weeks and I ought to say, anyone who knows me is aware of my opinions concerning the monarchy. So sorry Ma’am, it’s nothing personal and I’m sure you are a lovely and gracious lady. It’s just that whole Citizen or Subject thing that bothers me and I do realise that it is just terribly unfortunate that you remind me of my mother in law, in several ways.

The extra days holiday you granted us for the Jubilee was very much appreciated, unfortunately it resulted in a Sunday service on the buses. We don't have a car which means we weren’t able to get out and about for three days as a Sunday bus service where we live means one bus out at around lunch time and one bus back at tea time but hey, the weather was not up to much anyway.

The street party idea didn’t really take off here either. There was a brave effort just round the corner from us. Four houses festooned themselves with a couple of strings on bunting, a couple of Union flags, a couple of Welsh flags and then fenced themselves off from the rest of the street with orange plastic stuff. I’m sure they all had a wonderful time, there was certainly a lot of screaming and shouting coming from that direction and the local dogs had a fine old time ripping open the resulting black plastic sacks and spreading the contents all over the neighbourhood. Such fun!

Of course, we have followed all the events put on in London to celebrate your 60 years on the throne on our brand new second hand 42” plasma TV. The river pageant was spectacular, your Royal Barge was magnificent. With hindsight, the facilities might have been a little more convenient for some of the more elderly members of your family, but we live and learn. The concert in the road outside Buckingham Palace could not be faulted. From our Welsh perspective, Sir Tom Jones was by far the best turn, with Dame Shirley a close second. I suppose I should say that the Australians put in a good effort too. Spectacular fireworks for the finale, couldn’t have been better. I bet there were dogs cowering under stairs and behind settees all over London. I do hope you made sure the corgis were kept indoors.

Of course this isn’t the first jubilee I’ve experienced, I was even at your coronation, I experienced that as a toddler from the vantage point of my fathers shoulders. June 6th 1953, Hilary and Tensing made it to the top of Everest, I saw you riding in a golden carriage pulled buy six grey horses. One of my earliest memories. To be honest, it was the smell of a damp and excited crowd and my dad buying a Daily Telegraph that was printed in gold that are the strongest memories. I also had a cardboard cut out of the coach and horses which I would push around the kitchen table much to the annoyance of my grandfather who had little time for anybody, least of all a three year old granddaughter with a head full of Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses. Unfortunately he was unable to give me a convincing answer to my most burning question which was why wasn't there a Prince being crowned as King since you were married to a Prince? I worked it all out for myself in the end, but to a three year old who wouldn't stop asking difficult questions that was very perplexing. The cardboard cut-out is long gone, as is my grandfather. The gold edition of the Daily Telegraph still exists in a draw somewhere in our house. By the time I got to junior school Kings and Queens were pictures on playing cards and Princes and Princesses were characters in fairy tales and tiresome characters at that. No offence mean't ma'am, I am sure your own princes and princesses are all quite charming.

Twenty-five years later, June 7th 1977. Silver Jubilee. On the big day that year I was to be found upstairs from my shop, seated at my bureau in my living room making a stab at my VAT returns which were almost certainly late. My partners youngest brother was staying with us and was in what we liked to call the music room at the top of the house playing God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols very loudly on the Hi Fi. My partner was in the back yard in the pouring rain trying to explain to our neighbour that her many, many recordings of Richard Strauss’s Viennese Waltzes were seeping into our part of the building several decibels in advance of anything the Sex Pistols could manage. His efforts were being hampered by the cacophony emanating from inside the building and the rain battering down onto the tin roof of the lean-to. The fact that the neighbour was stone deaf and hanging out of a 2nd floor window did not help. The Street Party we were to attend was cancelled due to reasons you may have already gleaned. We went to the cinema. The film was Car Wash. If you need your spirits lifted Ma’am, I can recommend it.

Well, the twenty-five years between the Silver and the Golden jubilee were quite eventful for both of us on the family front weren’t they? Births, deaths, divorces and marriages, not necessarily in that order. On balance, you probably had it worst than me, if only because every family event you have seems to involve vast numbers of military types riding horses up and down and firing guns into the air. Got to hand it to you, I know I wouldn’t be able to cope with that amount of attention at times when all you really need is your family and if they are not up to scratch, a good friend. Sometime during that twenty-five years I got married in a registry office tucked between a gasworks and a mortuary in deepest Gloucestershire, there was no family and the two witnesses doubled as guests. The one thing about the day that is anywhere close to anything you would have experienced was the rain. Divorces are always hell, the law getting caught up with raw emotion, let’s not go there. Deaths are inevitable, let’s not go there either. Births, well, usually a cause for celebration. I guess it makes no difference if kids are born into privilege of poverty, you’re always going to worry about them and they are always going to do something you disapprove of and will doubtless cause embarrassment whether it’s at Asda or Ascot.

I have to admit that your Golden jubilee passed me by. June would have been the month I was busy dealing with the problems of transition from school to college for our eldest daughter. She’s autistic so leaving the school she had been attending since the age of seven was going to be tricky. It wasn’t going to happen for another year but we wanted to start early. Eighteen months of meetings with well intentioned people from social services and frankly naive people from education led to two years of hell for our eldest and meant, I’m ashamed to say, that our youngest was left to her own devises while we concentrated on that. I’m pleased to say no damage was done and youngest went on to be a brilliant student who moved on to do English Lit. at university and now lives and works in London, a totally independant young woman. As I write this letter she will be preparing for her annual trip to Dorset for the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival with fellow trade unionists. Sorry Ma'am, but she like me, could not exactly be called a royalist, in fact her views on ostentatious inherited wealth are quite radical. I put it down to her love of folk music and living south of the river, parts of SE8 have an interesting history. Eldest is still here with us, she won’t be moving on for a few years yet, especially now that your majesties government seems to be hell bent on making life a little more difficult for the sick and disabled and those who care for them. But I digress, the golden jubilee.. no, sorry but I can’t seem to bring a single event to mind. Excuse me a moment Ma'am, there is someone knocking at the door.

I do wish these door knocking people would find a better way of introducing themselves when the door is opened than by insisting that there is nothing to worry about! They must think I was born yesterday! Of course there is something to worry about, they are going to try and sell me something I've already got! I'm on the internet, I do regular price comparisons. I've got the best deal you could possibly have on phones, mobile and landline, broadband, gas and electricity! I might listen if someone came round with a cheaper water option but that's not likely! Sorry Ma'am, doubtless you have never encountered this sub-species which blights residential areas usually deemed to be low income, scaring people into signing contracts they don't want or need by telling them there is nothing to worry about!

As I was saying Ma'am, can't remember a damned thing about your Golden Jubilee but I'm guessing the nation had a day off, I'm also guessing that it rained that day too since that seems to be a feature of your Jubilees. That must really annoy you, one of the richest women in the world and you have to put up with the weather making a nuisance of itself on important royal occasions. On the up side, at least you don't have to stand about waiting for busses in the rain like a lot of your less affluent contemporaries.

So what's next, any forward planning for the Platinum jubilee? Suppose it is a given that we will all get a day off and it will pour with rain. Another ten years might push some of the current celebrities and entertainers we saw at this years Jubilee concert just a tad over the hill, but then celebrity or plebeian (if we can be such a thing under a monarchy) we're not nearly as well looked after as you are and I fully expect to see you at the next jubilee. This year's Jubilee left me with a strange taste in my mouth, not a bad taste, but a strange one nonetheless and I wonder if you have any idea how difficult it is for people at the bottom of the heap these days. The disadvantaged, the disillusioned and displaced, even the downright disinterested. More and more people, every day having to struggle to get by and I wonder if you Ma'am, have any idea how hard that can be. I don't think you do. I don't think there is any way you could possibly understand what it is like not to have the trappings of royalty on hand all the time. Do you do your own washing, make your own bed, cook all your own meals, make your own tea, do your own cleaning, dusting and hoovering? Is your annual holiday a fortnight in a caravan at Tenby? Do you try and feed yourself and your husband for less than £40.00 a week? Have you any idea how much a decent loaf of bread costs? Sorry Ma'am, got a bit carried away there, it's inclined to happen more and more these days I'm afraid. If it is any consolation, my husband was livid when he heard they were doing away with the Royal Yacht, I don't think he knows about the price hike for using the No32 (The Royal) Squadron yet. Let's hope nothing goes too amiss with the Royal Train!

Anyway, have to close now, dustmen are due in the morning and I've got to sort out the recycling, don't you just hate doing that, I still can't work our which bag to put the padded envelopes in, and what do you do with crisp packets, it's a complete mystery to me. All the best to your family, look after yourself now.

Kind Regards,

                            Citizen.

Carers Rights Day, Friday 2nd December 2011....

Somewhat ironically, the word Celebration appeared in all the publicity to attract the attention of carers living in Rhondda Cynon Taff to Carers Rights Day.

It read 'Carers Rights Day Celebration Friday 2nd December 2011'

The agenda for the day was what you would expect. Tea, coffee and biscuits, an update on the progress of the Carers Strategy which appears to be going well, then some consultation from the department that buys in services.. they got a rough ride.

A break for tea, coffee and more biscuits followed by the big issue.. the Welfare Right Presentation, well I don't have to go into detail here, we all know what is being planned by this current disgraceful government, well I thought we all knew, but surprisingly there were some who did not know how welfare reform Tory style is going to effect them. Wales is historically 'left-wing' (a term which I notice our 'leader' is trying to turn into an insult!) full of tight communities all looking out for one another, with very long memories. Margaret Thatcher and the Thames Valley police remain high on the unforgiven list. But even in the most left-wing of communities there are those who are not politicised and go along with whatever the gutter press wants to peddle as truth. Of the 70 or more people that were in the room today which included council and social services staff as well as carers, my guess would be that half of them would happily say they were left-wing, I noticed that the four sitting councillors, three retired councillors, one AM and one MP that that were among us were all Labour. There was also a small group who always have something to say about welfare and benefits and who gets them and who shouldn't get them and usually quote the Daily Mail as the source of their extensive knowledge.

I was a little surprised when part way through the presentation of the realities of what was about to happen to our Welfare State, I noticed a couple from that group, probably in their 50's looking at each other with undisguised shock on their faces. She told me later over lunch that she had not considered herself subject to any of the changes which are soon to happen and was finding the reality of their situation truly frightening. Suddenly this nice couple with nice middle class sensibilities, who have worked hard all their lives until a disability meant they had to rearrange their lives and make use of the welfare state they had been complaining about paying into for so long, are going to be subject to the same disregard as the 'ne'er do wells' they assumed the cuts were being aimed at. We didn't hear much from that group after the Welfare Rights presentation, several of them were visibly shocked by what they had heard which has left me wondering how many more people are there out there with no idea of what is going to happen come next April if we don't all jump up and down and make a stink about the nonsense which this arrogant and ignorant government is hell bent on perusing.

So, I hope that 'Celebrations' of Carers Rights Day were held everywhere today and were as well attended as the one I was at in the splendid Rhondda Heritage Park Hotel in Trehafod. It is all to easy to become complacent and think that swingeing cuts in benefits will somehow not affect you, but they will and lives will be lost. As we went through the changes and implications facing us a fellow carer I was sitting with was close to tears at the prospect of having to allow his wife to undergo reassessments and the possible loss of much needed benefits by failing to score enough points on a somewhat skewed points system aimed at proving eligibility for work. Yes, times are hard, but penalising the poorest and weakest is not a civilized way of dealing with financial problems created by the richest and strongest.  

Everything Was Going So Well......

If you have visited here before you might remember that our autistic daughter Sarah, is apt to be a little volatile when faced with routine changes. When those routine changes involve transport to and from the day centre that volatility is apt to become something a touch more volcanic.  As of a Tuesday last week the bus has been arriving an hour late by Sarah standards. A chance meeting with a member of staff from the day centre while we were in Asda the following evening shed some light on the bus problem, and please don't ask what we were doing in Asda on a Wednesday evening, it happens almost every week and deserves a post all to itself which may or may not materialise depending on the mood I'm in.

Apparently some pen pusher behind some desk somewhere has decided there cannot possibly be staff taking buses out from the day centre as early as 7:30am  and the new proclamation has been made saying 'Thou shalt not drive the minibus out of the gates of the day centre before 8:45am and if thou doest the wrath of god will fall upon thee followed by weeping, wailing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth'

A little background information is probably required.. the annually contracted transport supplied by Rhondda Cynon Taff to take service users to and from the day centres across the area started well last September, new contractors seen by most as pretty good compared to the previous bunch of cowboys, bearing in mind the council always chooses the cheapest contract. Sadly the good start quickly degenerated into the usual erratic timing, bizarre routes and untrained escorts with little or no idea of what was expected of them. Several of the service users found all this more than a little upsetting and the day centre decided that they may as well use their own mini buses for those clients most affected by the contractors inconsistencies.

Because of the sheer size of the catchment area for the day centre, never mind the terrain and the remoteness of some communities, this means an early start to get everyone in by 9:00am. Nobody had a problem with this, staff hours adjusted accordingly and from my point of view things could not have been better. Round about 8:00am the bus would arrive and Sarah would be ready and waiting because she was going with people who she likes and trusts and who understand her need for routine and no surprises.

Everything was going so well and then this twerp sitting behind his desk on the other side of the mountain who has probably never visited the upper reaches of the Cynon Valley pokes his nose in and now we are in turmoil again. With no warning or time for preparation things have got to change, so not surprisingly Sarah's volatile volcanicity has gone ballistic. We have had a week and a half of weeping and wailing, only one garment got 'rended' but gnashing of the teeth has been evident accompanied by ear splitting screams and flying fists.. so far only one fist has landed, my deflection skills are well honed.  Nothing has been broken yet, which is pretty good going but the poor old dog is keeping a very low profile and has taken to slinking around corners very gingerly and hurrying across open spaces with ears and tail very low. Husband behaving in a similar way to dog, although his verbal skills are a great help. He can make Sarah laugh which gives us a few minutes to regroup ready for the next onslaught when she forgets what she is laughing about and gets back to the business of making her discomfort over the transport known to anybody within hearing distance.

We all know times are hard and services are being cut back, but this particular proclamation is not going to make any difference to the social services finances, all it is doing is causing disruption to staff, service users and carers alike by messing up schedules and time tables and confusing the hell out of anyone on or near the autistic spectrum. As this change coincides with the schools breaking up for the summer holiday that is the excuse I am using as reason the for the disruption which gives us six weeks grace in which time she will hopefully be used to a new routine.

It does effect the finances of a carer that I am aware of though. She lives alone with her daughter who has CP, is wheelchair bound and without speech. This lady has a job which starts at 9:00am, when her daughter was picked up 8:15am this was fine, plenty of time to catch a bus to work . Now her daughter is being picked up at 9:15am which means she cannot get to work much before 10:00am. She loses an hour in the morning and it looks as if her chances of keeping the job are further threatened by the uncertainty of the return home times. Didn't mention the change in coming home times did I, well Sarah used to get home at about 4:00pm, now it can be as early as 2:00pm but averaging at about 3:00pm. The proclamation also stated that buses must be back inside the day centre gates by 4:45pm.  This irritating little pen pusher has just increased my caring hours by eight hours a week, and has made it extremely difficult for another carer to carry on working.

I wonder how he would feel if a bigger pen pusher told him he'd had eight hours cut from his working week starting now with no consultation, after all, that is a whole days wage. Financially it makes no difference to me, I get the £55.55 a week carers allowance for the approximately 144 hours of care I now deliver per week to my daughter, with our income support duly reduced by that amount per week to make sure we don't creep to far above the poverty line.. I know my place.

The most important point I am struggling to make here is that these changes were made with no warning, no consultation and apparently no good reason.  Things have calmed down in our house now, but we have had at least ten days of upset and upheaval which could have been avoided if we had been given a decent amount of time to prepare Sarah for the imminent change and I'm sure that goes for other carers too, we have to make alternative arrangement for care if we cannot be in the right place at the right time, we need to know in advance if times are changing. The same goes for the staff at the day centre who are having to deal with multiple service users all in a state over routine changes and the uncertainties that go with it.  Most importantly the service users themselves have enough challenges in a day without having to worry about who will be on the bus, what time the bus will leave or arrive and who will be there to meet them, sudden changes may not bother your average administrator. but they have a profound effect on your average service user and that just isn't fair.  Awareness of the consequences of changes when you are dealing with service users must be paramount in the minds of administrators within social services, surely?

Thats it, rant over until the next time, 2:00pm is fast approaching and you can bet your life if I'm not prepared Sarah'll be home expecting everything to be in order and I still haven't located the album artwork for Amy Winehouse's (RIP) album 'Back to Black' which seems to have gone missing while I was uploading it to Sarah's iTunes and shuffle over the weekend. Everything has to be in order for her in iTunes and every track must have it's artwork, and if it doesn't there will be weeping and wailing, a rending of garments and a gnashing of teeth and I don't feel like dealing with that today....

It's Carers Week. I'd Better Say Something About It....

Carers Week 13th – 19th June 2011

Carers week already, it crept up on me this year. I know I've been seeing references to it all over the place but after a year of being vilified in the press about being a 'benefit scrounger' it is easy to forget the positives. So today I finally got my head around it, made a few phone calls and got my week organised.

A sort of bonus for this week is that Sarah has a few days in respite so I don't need to be home to meet and greet in the afternoon or worry about the damage the husband and daughter 'home alone' combo might do to the house and any trauma inflicted on the dog in my absence.

So tomorrow sees the start of a week of "activities for carers living in  Rhondda Cynon Taff designed to give a mixture of opportunities for you to access information and advice, to learn from other carers experiences and to have a little fun!" And the first event is.....

'Trouble Shooting drop-in session. Access support, information and advice about wills, benefits, debt, and getting back to work with support.'

Very nice, much needed I'm sure, but I'm having a 'week off', better known as respite, and since all the above has a tendency to depress me I'm steering clear of that lot, and anyway, I got a better offer for lunch from the Older Carers Support Worker. I turned 60 this year, I'm officially older, I got a bus pass! No pension yet but they moved the goal posts on that one. Never been one to refuse a free lunch so that's Tuesday sorted out.

There's nothing doing on Wednesday, so I suspect that will be the day I have to go to Aberdare and Asda and pull some weeds out of the garden. Thursday could be interesting.....

'Carers Celebration and Information event in Hawthorn Leisure Centre - bring your gym kit! A chance to find out about support available for carers locally and your opportunity to join the Carers Strategy Implementation Group meeting, join in a taster adult education session or a relaxation class, have a manicure and join us for a buffet lunch.'

Bring your Gym kit!?!?!? I think not. Observing and commenting on the Carers Strategy Implementation group meeting seems much more appealing and most probably pain free. Apparently there will be floral arrangement and relaxation classes available too. I opted for floral arrangement a couple of years ago, the relaxation class followed by a session with a hypnotherapist after the floral disarray were a godsend. Hopefully the Strategy meeting will take us right up to lunch and I can avoid getting involved with the 'gym inductions' and the 'free taster Zumba Gold (designed for the over 50's)' and be home in time for tea. Friday is the most interesting day for me, I'm involved with this already so really I should be there.....

'Carers Sharing Session. Find out how you can be a part of recruiting and training the next generation of social workers, nurses and social care staff. Come and hear other carers stories and meet the staff you may be working with over lunch.'

These sessions are great. They are a mixture of carers, service users and staff who provide an overview of their experiences of involvement and the benefits they have gained or seen, followed by a chance for others to get involved. In my experience much is gained on both sides, service providers are often unaware of problems carers and service users may have beyond the direct professional involvement, carers and service users don't always understand the problems within social services, and of course carers and service users don't always agree! These get togethers are always eye openers on all sides and the knowledge gained is invaluable.  Which brings us to Saturday.....

'Carers Day Out! An action packed activity day for carers and cared for in Dare Valley Country Park. Try out Canoeing, have a guided walk or learn some circus skills - suitable for carers and cared for of all ages and abilities.'

Now I submitted myself to this torture last year, the 'gentle warm up' almost killed me, and if you think I'm going to break the habit of a life time, which is the avoidance of canoes under all circumstances, you've got another think coming! I already know how to juggle and how to spin plates, both activities quite pointless and a bit boring after a while. The only other circus skills I can think of are unicycling, stilt walking, tightrope walking and the flying trapeze so I think the wisest move would be total avoidance of the beautiful Dare Valley Country Park on Saturday.  A little bit of gardening if the weather allows seems quite appealing.

So that's my carers week sorted out, three lunches and plenty of opportunities to put the world to rights, see a few old faces, catch up with the gossip, share some moans about the ConDem government and their cuts, then share some more moans about all the stuff that's gone wrong with social services or day care or health or the council or best of all, the new neighbours weird behavior or that obnoxious child from up the road. You know the stuff I mean, the important stuff that is really none of your business but certain to take your mind off of caring and benefit cuts!

If you are a carer, have a good Carers Week, make the most of it and spread the word. If you're not a carer then think yourself lucky, spare us a thought and remember that becoming a carer can happen to anybody at any time and it is not something you choose to be it is something you have to be and believe me, you will get precious little thanks or recognition for it. Understanding and a little bit of give and take can go a long way towards making a carers life easier, we're just ordinary people who have to deal with and be responsible for someone else's life as well as our own for as long as it takes.

That's all, I could go on forever about the difficulties but that would be boring for me as well as you! I could also get all sentimental about the joy of giving and the sense of worth and achievement you get from caring, but to be honest, that goes against the grain and would be a load of sentimental twaddle anyway, so if you got this far, well done! Thanks for sticking with it to the end.........

It's All Over The News So I'd Better Talk About It....

That's right, Panorama on the BBC last night. I didn't watch it... I watched and read the comments and disbelief washing all over Twitter.  I suppose it's a reflection of the people I follow, but at one point 90% of the tweets I was seeing were something to do with care homes and care workers. Of course all were expressing shock and sorrow that such an appalling thing could be going on.

You won't be surprised to hear that I have a lot to say on the whole subject of care homes and care workers and in particular, how they care for people with autism and learning disabilities. Our daughter lives with us at home and we know how difficult she can be, but that goes without saying, when she is not staying at home she stays in a small respite house, one of half a dozen or so run and owned by the local authority which take a maximum of four clients at any one time for a few nights of respite care each month.

They are almost fully booked for the foreseeable future, and sometimes stays have to be cancelled because they have to use the respite beds for emergencies. Carers get sick too, particularly the elderly ones, and if they have to go into hospital or even worse, pass away, places have to be found quickly for the upset and confused sons or daughters in reasonably familiar and homely surroundings with people they know and trust. These are ordinary houses in ordinary streets and fortunately for us, our local authority uses this model when moving people who need constant care and attention out of the family home and into supported living. Ideally three compatible clients and of course care assistants or workers who are aware of the difficulties these people are facing and are trained and confident enough to deal with them. Now and again things go wrong, but on the whole it works and most people are happy with the way it works. The thought of any of the people I know living in these houses being placed in a hospital setting for care is absolutely awful.

Of course, I do not know all the details of the dreadful happenings in Bristol but the fact that it is being described as a 'private hospital' speaks volumes to me. I have no experience of private hospitals as such, but I do have a little experience of the privately run care homes for the elderly, my own mother was in one briefly here in Wales and my husbands grandmother was in one in London, and her daughter, my husbands aunt now in her late 90's is in one also in London. In all three cases, care was and is only just achieved and individual needs a nuisance to a mainly foreign staff with very little understanding of the English language, here I should say that some of them were and are angels in a very difficult place, albeit scrupulously clean and ordered and run with military precision! I won't bore you with the bedsores, broken leg, disappearing chocolates, disappearing shoes, disappearing teeth, dreadful food and so on and so on. It was and is the indifference that bothers me.

We all know that caring is an expensive business, £20,000 to £30,000 per annum for the elderly, give or take ten grand either way, finding a figure for the cost of care for a person with learning difficulties, a disability, autism or mental health problems is more difficult, but at the bare minimum it seems to be more than three times the cost for the elderly.

Pause for thought and a flight into fantasy... £100.000 per annum... I could pay off the mortgage, get the bathroom sorted out, do a few repairs around the place, even have a little holiday... all in one year!

Back to reality, you can see why the private care home for the elderly businesses expanded into the care for the disabled business! Sadly I don't think they realised that caring for the disabled is a completely different kettle of fish.  We have private care providers who are supposed to fill the gaps social services can't cater for.. they are a disaster, they send out domiciliary care workers to people who don't know them and are expecting to be taken out if only to walk around the shops and have a cup of tea. I won't bore you with the extended telephone debacle which took place between me and one such care provider over five days a couple of weeks ago which resulted in complaints being made and apologies being received and over a week of anxiety and upset for our daughter which spilled over as challenging behaviors at home and at the Day Centre. It was a very difficult couple of weeks which could have been avoided if the care provider had got its act together and delivered the correct training for their staff, and I mean all of their staff including managers and the poor girl in the office, who has yet to master the art of delivering bullshit down the telephone in a convincing manner!

When it comes to providing services of any sort to service users in their own home, in a shared supported living home, in a 'private hospital', in fact, wherever a person with learning difficulties, autism, CP, Downs, mental health problems or whatever spends most of their time, they and their families should be able to expect those services to be fit for purpose. Fully trained staff who treat their clients with the respect they deserve.

It is a sad reflection of our society that it takes a current affairs television programme to make the 'authorities' take notice,  I suppose we have to be thankful there wasn't something really interesting on another channel and enough people did watch and comment to make it front page news this morning. Eminent people, experts, professors, cabinet ministers and the like are being wheeled out to make comment and people have been arrested. For the first time in quite a long while now I'm able to say I do not sense the usual indifference.

Some of us have been aware of instances of bad practice taking place but have said or done nothing, not from indifference but from the knowledge that although a complaint will be listened to sympathetically and appear to have been addressed it will only have been brushed under the carpet, usually because dealing with the problem will cost money. Most annoyingly from the parent carer point of view, is the innate superiority that some (and thankfully fewer as time passes) care professionals display when you question aspects of what is happening with your son or daughter, they obviously haven't run across the excellent Expert Patient programme which is being made available to parent carers in many regions now!

At the very least, many more people will now be aware of instances of abuse and malpractice within social care, possibly even newly aware that there is such a thing as social care for the people some members of the press have been insulting with the label 'benefit scroungers' in recent months. Awareness is a good thing, we need more of it! So thank you to the brave whistle blower for persevering and thank you BBC for the broadcast. Now lets hope the government gives this more than just lip service and sees the danger of  privatisation and the lack of accountability inherent within it, especially when you are dealing with societies most vulnerable members, many of whom do not have a voice.

A Little Ramble Around An Abstract Concept...(or coming to terms with the inevitable)...

Last month, in March, I had a birthday. It was one of those 'significant' birthdays with a 0 at the end of it. Wow, the tyranny of numbers. An abstract concept used to measure the passing of time which is also, arguably, an abstract concept. We hang a lot of importance on the 0's and the 5's and of course to be contrary and human, we have disregarded 20 and made a mega fuss over 21, only now we've shifted that celebration 3 years earlier and 18 is the liberating number.

I recall in the dim distant past, my own 21st, well no, to be more accurate, I don't recall it at all, It kind of past me by. I had been traveling and had arrived back in London to find a small package from my mother which contained a 21st birthday card with profound apologies for forgetting such an important event but they (her and my dad) had been away for a 'spring break' and had forgotten all about it. Taped to the inside of the card was a little silver St. Christopher pendant on a silver chain and wrapped in tissue paper. The irony of receiving the St Christopher after what was to be the last bit of extensive travel I would be doing for a very long time was not lost on me, then or now!

That was in 1972, and what a grim year it was Edward Heath was Prime Minister, the miners were on strike and there was a State of Emergency  declared. We had Bloody Sunday in Derry. Watergate was getting underway in Washington and there was the massacre at the olympics in Munich. In fact, terrorism was taking hold all round, with hijacking and bomb scares, real and imagined, being reported everyday. It was a pretty bad year for earthquakes too... you can see where I'm going can't you? 

Yes, 39 years later we're having a pretty grim year again, but what goes around comes around, things will improve eventually, governments change... but that is not the subject in hand today, back to the numbers... Thus far I've been manageing to keep the exact total of my years to myself. Not an easy thing to do with a calendar obsessed autistic daughter, she has been reminding me and anyone else within earshot about it since Christmas.  My mother in law saw fit to send me a rather gaudy card with a large 60 emblazoned on it in red and gold, I've often questioned her taste over the years. The other daughter, bless her, chose to send me a bunch of sunflowers and an invite to go up to London and visit soon, just me, so we can hit the galleries and museums. Absolutely no mention of birthdays or numbers.

A couple of years ago I got a letter from the Department of Work and Pensions telling me I would not be able to claim my retirement pension until I am 62. I was expecting that, no big surprise, in fact, it is to be expected that the goal posts get moved just as I'm within shooting distance, it's been that way for the last 25 years! Anyway, I'm a carer, I'm not sure retirement is an option. So here I am trying desperately to ignore the number and what I perceive as the stigma which goes with now being an 'over 60' woman. There is an assumption that all I could possibly be interested in is Bingo and soap operas. Well let me tell you, I barely watch the TV at all and I've never played bingo in my life!  I admit to look at me now you wouldn't imagine that more than 40 years ago I had hit and survived the hippie trail to Katmandu, been chased by a police horse in Grosvenor Square and taken a lot more risks than I should have. I'm not sure I believed I would reach the age of 21. But I did, and I started my first business that year. Small but profitable. But I digress, I am really talking about admitting to being 60.

Oh, but that is not so easy, in my head I'm still at the Isle of Wight festival in 1969, that was the year Bob Dylan and the Band played there, the weather was beautiful and I fell in love, not with the right person of course, but that didn't really matter. A year later I was in love with someone else sitting in the pouring rain on a golf course watching Jimi Hendrix play his last gig at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. None of that is relevant, it's just a bunch of memories, but memories are all bound up with experience, and these are what our minds are made of. I suppose what I am trying to say is, just as physically you are what you eat, mentally you are what you remember, what you have experienced.

So how do I come to terms with this horrific number? Well I'm going back to where I started. An abstract concept for measuring time, they are just numbers and if I choose to I can ignore them. We all know you can't turn back time and we are all moving into the unknown, the future is a mystery, we can only guess but we can't really know what is going to happen next. To help us move forward into the unknown we rely on experience and memory, it's why we fall in love with the wrong people and do reckless and dangerous things when we are young, you live and learn.  Well that's the theory, and we all know that theory and practice don't always go hand in hand. For example,  by now I should be making less mistakes!

Acceptance looks like the only way forward, damn it! So look for the advantages.. need to find the spectacles first... right... still drawing a blank. Here's one, nobody is going to expect me to be keeping up with fashion, so I can wear what I like, within reason. Oh and here is the best one, the over 60s bus pass. Free rides to Asda, and if I feel like getting on the bus at the bottom of the hill just to get to the top of the hill, the driver can't complain that he doesn't have a fare for only going 2 stops! Priceless....

I'm Cold, So Here's a Little Story About a Summers Night in 1982

Let me take you back to the summer of 1982, an average sort of british summer, raging hot days mixed up with bouts of torrential rain.  Sarah was not born until December 1985, we had no children, we had no encumbrances, we were still young...ish,  and we were trying to make a living selling our wares at festivals and any other event we could hustle our way into.

Thats the background, now for the specifics...  the date was most likely 31st July, it may have been the day before, but that doesn't really matter. The place was Port Elliot, a stately home in St Germans in Cornwall.  The event was The Elephant Fayre, held in the grounds of said stately home. Headlining were Siouxie and the Banshees, John Cooper Clarke and the Albion Band  but that is irrelevant.  We were selling wooden badges and mobiles made by our own fair hands with designs relating to rainbows, clouds and raindrops and were trading under the name of Heavens Above.

Here, check out the prices!

Thats enough detail, I'm sure you've got the picture, just another early 80's music/arts festival attended by the usual suspects.  So we roll up there in our old Morris van, set out our stall and pitch our tent ready for a weekend of hopefully good trade. Port Elliot is a lovely spot on the River Tiddy...which is tidal, and we are set up on a slightly raised piece of ground on the edge of what was called the 'events area' along with quite a few other diverse traders. We were there for four days and we remember it as being busy because we were pretty much tied to the stall and didn't get about and see too much of the festival beyond our little space, not that you'd want to since when the tide came in the events area tended to get a bit damper than was comfortable and it was apt to get an ethereal sort of mist wafting over it from the river at dawn and dusk.

On the night that this story is about it was particularly damp probably because it had been raining most of the previous day. We had closed the stall down and gone to find food and drink and then settled down for the night in our tent which as I said was pitched on a bit of higher ground, next to a path which lead up to the main camping area but close to stall and van. Every good festival in those days was frequented by one chapter of another of Hells Angels, a few yards up the path from us were the Windsor Chapter with quite a nice bonfire lighting up the night. All in all, it was a quiet, uneventful night, until at about 3.00am when we heard a voice coming from the direction of the events area, at first a plaintive little cry of 'I'm cold' repeated a few times. Fair to say, 3.00am in the morning in a damp field in the mist at the end of July is probably going to feel a bit chilly. Well this twerp really wanted us to know about it, by 4.00am there were a few of us beginning to get the message loud and clear since he turned up the volume and the frequency of his mantra.  He was by now getting a few muted responses from various disgruntled campers. Then we heard the distinct sound of a tent being unzipped and the sounds of rummaging followed by heavy booted footsteps stomping past our tent accompanied by  grumbling along the lines of 'So you're cold are you.'

Spurred on by the prospect of an event in the 'events area' we ventured outside of our tent and into the mist. We couldn't see anything very clearly, it was still quite dark and the mist was pretty thick, but we could see a figure making it's way down toward the sound of the cold complainer and hear the heavy biker booted footsteps accompanied by the sloshing sound of fluid in a container. There is no denying it was cold, we got back into the tent. The cries of 'I'm cold' were still hanging in the air, accompanied by a lot of grumbly mutterings and the sound of fluid splashing on the ground. Shortly after that we became aware of a rather bright and flickery glow emanating from the events area, then more muttering and some more cries of 'I'm cold', then some slightly more irritated mutterings and a thump. After a short silence came the last utterance from the event area that night... 'I'm hurt'. Then we could hear the heavy biker booted footsteps and sloshing fluid in a container sound accompanied by chuckles returning to the campsite. A small ripple of applause could be heard from nearby tents and quiet laughter from the Angels camp fire.

Later on the sun rose, so did the mist, so did we come to that, and the Angels, and the few others that had been witness to the shenanigans in the night and there for all to see in the event area was a large circle of burned grass, at least 15 feet across. It attracted a surprising amount of attention through the course of the day. We denied all knowledge of its origins and listened to various theories of ancient pagan ritual around and within rings of fire which bought to mind events two years earlier which I will write about some other time, I only wrote this because whenever anyone says 'I'm cold' this is what I think of, you have no idea where a burning ring of fire will take me! Later that day we had a cup of campfire tea with the Angels who really were a nice bunch of chaps and as bad as it sounded, the hapless cold caller was never in any real danger, he just chose the wrong part of the event area if he was looking for sympathy, and was keeping the only Hells Angel that wanted to sleep awake! To my knowledge that was the only event to take place in the event area and quite a few people were a bit cheesed off that they must have missed something quite spectacular, as I said, we pleaded ignorance and all things considered we had a good weekends trading and some good free entertainment, albeit at 400am.

That's your lot, a little story with no politics, disability, carers, cuts, Xmas or autism. Normal service will be resumed soon, so make the most of it while I can only bring myself to write about my dodgy past...




 

I Know It's Pretty, But With Only One Boot......

All this snow is a damned nuisance as far as I am concerned.  I know it looks wonderful and kids love it but all it does for me is complicate matters no end.  Slipping and sliding on ice and maintaining ones equilibrium is a discipline I have never mastered.  The correct footwear is essential and sometime between the last snowfall and this one, my pair of snow friendly shoes have worn out and been disposed of.  So, time to seek out the old faithfuls, must have had them for nearly 20 years by now, Kangaroo boots with little pockets on the ankles which have been used to stash no end of diverse cargo over their 20 odd years.  The pockets are irrelevant, just a few happy memories, the important thing is that they are good for walking in snow and on the nightmare we have today which is black ice.

I went with confidence into the darker reaches at the back of the wardrobe, located the right Kangaroo boot fairly quickly, fired with success I probed further for the left one.  Who knew I had two pairs of purple Doc Martens? I vaguely remembered one pair, absolutely useless in snow and looking a bit tired and worn.  The other pair are brand new with chisel toes, I was a bit taken aback by these, can't think where they came from, or when come to that, and trying to wear a pair of brand new Docs in icy conditions didn't strike me as a sensible move so they were put to one side for further consideration while I delved deeper for the other Kangaroo. Two pairs of cowboy boots and some aubergine coloured leather knee highs with a 5 inch heel later I realised that the boot I required was not where it should be and short of someone breaking through from Narnia and pinching it, it must be elsewhere.

I won't go into detail about some of the other places I looked into for this lost boot, It should be sufficient for me to say that during my search I found items of clothing and accessories that have been in and out of fashion more times I care to remember, and am quietly pleased with myself about a few garments I ran across which I made back in the 70's which are still intact and looking pretty damn good, though I say so myself! But, the object of all this mayhem, one left Kangaroo boot, remained elusive and as I write, remains elusive. The upside of this loss is that I haven't been able to venture out too far into the world since it started snowing. For me this is good. I do not like snow and ice, sorry if I 'm repeating myself but that's all there is to it, I don't like it, and now I've turned large parts of the house upside down looking for a lost boot.. to no avail, so I can go out and do stuff I don't like doing anyway!  Madness!  I decided to make the most of home deliveries from Asda, a far more sensible option than slipping and sliding to the wretched store, which I have to admit is just visible through the bare winter trees at the bottom of the hill, covered in snow.

I did find some shoes which were just about serviceable in arctic conditions, problem with them is they are size 8 mens walking shoes.  They belong to my husband, he thinks they are only a size 7 therefore has been unable to wear them because they pinch his toes.  Personally, I'm a size 5 or 6 depending on style and manufacturer, so two pairs of very thick socks and I can just about get away with them, but they don't exactly make me feel very confident and although it shouldn't be an issue during extreme weather conditions, who wants to be seen out in a pair of their husbands discarded shoes?

Sarah is not to good with snow and ice either and this is a difficult time of year for her, She has her 25th birthday the 19th December and is anticipating gifts and a cake, Christmas a week later, she's just anticipating gifts for that, food is neither here nor there for her at Christmas. But the biggest seasonal problems for her have already started to appear, cancellations due to bad weather.  So far, a trip to Cardiff, a visit to the health spa Jacuzzi, a service users disco and a Gateway Christmas party have all been cancelled.  Personally, I was just pleased I didn't have to struggle out wearing a ridiculous pair of shoes!  Sarah had the screaming ab-dabs of course, to say she went into meltdown doesn't seem appropriate given the current temperatures.  But things have settled down a bit for her, she is in respite this weekend which she almost always enjoys and transport to and from the Day Centre has been amazing this week.  I don't like to think how they've made it around the side roads up on this hill to pick up the four service users that live around here every day this week, none of them in the least bit confident in the snow.  The transport guys have helped them from the front door to the bus and the from the bus to the front door, all smiles and jokes and reassurance, absolutely brilliant. They are of course all wearing appropriate footwear!

So, at some point soon when all the snow and ice have receded I will be found looking in the shops for something decent and reasonably priced to wear on my feet in bad weather, and you can bet your life when I find and part with cash for something appropriate I will also find the lost left Kangaroo boot....

One Year Later... Charity Stays At Home... Revisited...

I hate this particular Friday every year, and the few days preceding with all the wind ups and the posturing  that goes on in the name of charity, or perhaps that should be The Big Society given the current political climate.

I posted this last year, a week after Children In Need 2009.  Dealing With The Day: Charity Stays At Home.  If you've got a minute or two just skim through it.

A year on, could we have imagined then that we would be in an even worse situation today, especially for the poor and disabled, whom the children now considered to be in need will surely grow up to be, with a government whose intention appears to be to decimate the health and welfare services?

Again, apologies to anyone offended by my opinion, and if you are offended, come and walk in my shoes for a week or so and see if you still feel the same way.

Elephants, Not Surprisingly, Big Subjects...

Elephants have always been a big thing in our house.. pun intended.  An awareness of elephants has always been present of course, but they seemed to become a very important after the girls were born. The most favoured cuddly toy was an elephant for a while, the favourite books almost always involved an elephant, Babar was the cartoon of choice on TV. There was a short period of dragons being favourite, but that was soon after we moved to Wales where the images of dragons are commonplace and the most played video was Ivor the Engine, particularly the episode with the dragons in Ivor's fire box, but the elephants soon returned as champions. Elmer was a particular favourite.

Somewhere near the middle of my husbands midlife crisis, which has been ongoing for at least twentyfive years, he took a liking to dance music, not Come Dancing dance music but the standing in a field with your arms in the air and flashing lights Ibiza style dance music. One memorable Friday night in the Hippo Club in Cardiff some time in the '90s, he got incredibly excited by some sounds which bore a resemblance to elephants trumpeting, after that he was hearing elephants everywhere for a little while. Consequently whenever anyone he knew came across anything elephant related it seemed to end up in our house. It was also useful when family asked what Bill wanted for christmas of birthdays I just said 'elephants' and left them to it, it worked for a good few years. He didn't seem to mind. I denied all knowledge.

Speaking for myself, elephants are cool, I've got a lot of respect for them and they seem to turn up in the most surprising places. You'd expect to run across them in Asia, and you do. I imagine if you go on safari in Africa you'd be pretty sure of seeing a few, never done that so can't be sure. Seeing them in a field in the bottom of the valley just outside Aberdare was a bit of a surprise. I was alone when I first spotted them, it was not long after we moved to Cwmbach, just outside Aberdare. We'd moved from the Forest of Dean where they have sheep in abundance and the odd pig, there were lots of red deer there as well and I was always seeing them although a lot of the locals claimed never to have seen one and some even denied their existence. I was brought up close to Richmond Park, and not that far from Bushy Park and Home Park, I know a red deer when I see one. And I know an elephant when I see one, or two which is how many I saw this particular day. 

Having just moved, and not knowing anyone in Wales let alone Cwmbach, the only people I met were other mums at the school gates whom I had absolutely nothing in common with, or shopkeepers and checkout persons. Add to that my inability to understand a word anyone was saying, although they were speaking English, it was at an incredible speed with an impenetrable dialect. Anyway, all this was making me feel a tad isolated so I decided to enroll in a local drawing class and it was while I was waiting for the venue to open early one Autumn evening, leaning on a iron fence watching the sun go down over Aberdare that I noticed the elephants wandering across an area I later came to know as 'The Ynys'. It struck me at the time that perhaps I should keep this sighting to myself as a wall of Welsh denial was certain to go up if I said anything, red deer in the forest still fresh in my mind.

I was still struggling with the whole concept of elephants in the Cynon Valley when the chap that was running the class wandered over, leaned on the fence and concurred that elephants weren't something you see every day mooching about down there and he was pretty sure he'd not had all that much to drink, he also felt that perhaps we should keep this sighting to ourselves. We left the elephants to it and went to unlock the class room as more people were arriving for the drawing class, and not another word was said about elephants for almost an hour, when a bit of a rumpus could be heard from the corridor where a whole load of nine year old karate kids were getting over excited about a group trip to the circus on the Ynys at the weekend. Teacher and I exchanged a knowing nod and didn't mention what we had seen to the rest of the class. That weekend I took the girls down to the Ynys to see the animals which was a sad outing, seeing them shackled and static and we didn't go to see the circus as none of us was really very keen on the idea. I just wished more people had been lucky enough to have had  the pleasure of seeing them wandering about in the open as I had. Yes, they did let the elephants out wherever possible to stretch their legs, in fact at one time I understand they would parade through the streets. I remember when I was a kid in Kingston on Thames, being awestruck by the annual Chipperfields Circus parade through town with the horses, trapeze artists, elephants, clowns et al, to the playing fields where the big top was pitched around about this time every year. How innocent we were back then, happily there are no more circus elephants and here would be a good time to admit that I cried all the way through Dumbo and I've avoided it for the last umpteen years, and somewhere on this earth there is a photograph of me aged about six riding with several other children on the back of an elephant in London Zoo. Happily there are not a lot of elephants in zoos these days either.

So what bought all this to mind? I saw this link by chance on Twitter and clicked on it:

                         Thai Elephant-Assisted Therapy Project - autistic autism

Like all therapies, it will work for some and not for others, but that is neither here nor there, it was the sheer joy that the thought of an elephant assisted therapy bought to me, and which has stayed with me that interested me, suddenly I was six years old and on the back of a huge grey elephant in London Zoo, swaying precariously and looking down at my Mum and Dad waving up to me, I had no idea that anything could grow so big and be so gentle as I discovered when I gave the elephant the bun I had been given to say thank you for the ride, after all these years I remember the soft warmth of the huge trunk gently taking the bun from me. Elephants are big and strong gentle, and so was that particular memory, and it occurred to me that I have clear memories of all my encounters with elephants, be they real or in books or films, they are without doubt a memorable animal, and for me, just knowing that there are elephants in the world is a therapy in itself. 

   

Queen Street.. Revisited

Sarah and I went to Cardiff today, and this has been rattling around in my head from the moment we turned a corner into Queen Street, one of the main shopping streets in Cardiff now pedestrianised and always busy... that wretched Tory saying us benefit scroungers from the top end of the valleys could all get on buses and come and seek work in Cardiff. (See previous post for that particular rant.)

This particular benefit scrounger has a degree in Art and Aesthetics, and I have always had an interest in public art, particularly the sculpture that graces our streets in the form of statuary of the great and good. South Wales is a good place to be if you like that sort of thing, there are bronze castings of wiry boxers in Merthyr, the Nos Galon runner and his dog in Mountain ash, we've got Kier Hardy and Griff Rhys Jones in Aberdare. No, not that Griff Rhys Jones, this one was known as Caradog, and conducted a 400 strong choir that won prizes in the 19th century. All good stuff. Cardiff has got an awful lot of the great and the good as you would expect in a capitol city, but their are two in particular that stood out for me and did their statuary brethren proud today. For me, their positions, one each end of a bustling retail thoroughfare, both of them are either greeting you as you enter, or watching you leave, speaks volumes about the city, the history, the politics and the people who find themselves walking along Queen Street.

At one end we have Nye Bevan, he was a politician, so he's on a big plinth, unfortunately he is also under a tree, so he gets a lot of bird crap dropped on him. This is the man who started the National Health Service, the man we have to thank for the Welfare State. Beyond any shadow of doubt, one of the good guys, there's a lot of us wouldn't be here today but for him. But the birds don't know that, so they can be forgiven.

And at the other end of the street we have the Miner. The same sculptor produced both pieces. Robert Thomas, from Cwmparc in the Rhondda, '26 to '99.

You cant help but notice that the Miner is only slightly elevated, he's not standing on a plinth like Nye, he is standing on a slab that is barely a foot high, He's a little bit larger than life and you have to look up to see his face, but then, isn't that as it should be?  Here is the hero, the working man, the guy that lives next door and goes to the working mens club on a friday night, the salt of the earth. Today he would be labeled a benefit scrounger by certain section of society.

So back to the object of this post. We are presented with two very different people, the politician who worked with ideals and ideas, and the miner who worked with his strength and courage, both working for the greater good, both heroes in their own way. One of them at each end of the street.. What has been rattling around in my head all day today has been the nerve of the Tories who are reveling yet again in the suffering of sections of society that they have no concept of, and would any of them have the humility to feel ashamed of themselves, were they to walk the length of Queen Street with their eyes open wide enough to see the strength of character  expressed by these two emotive pieces of statuary... and I have to admit, I would really like to see them squirm.

Spending Review, Ian Duncan Smith, Cold Calling.. This Has Not Been A Good Week...

I'm not going to talk about the Spending Review, I don't need too. It is all to obvious to all of us that it is an ideological swipe at the poorest and most vulnerable people in society. The image of whooping and cheering Tories waving order papers in the House of Commons at the prospect of destroying the welfare state will stay with me for some time. As for the LibDems, well, what can you say, this coalition stinks and it's intentions are clear. Their definition of fair seems to be something along the lines of being fair to everybody, and if you've already got more than you need, it's only fair you get a bit more. With the Tories in charge you can guarantee that some of us will be more equal than others.

Now IDS has decided to turn up the volume a bit to remind us all of the appalling 'get on your bike' statement made by Tebbit last time the Tories screwed up the country. This time the unemployed in Merthyr Tydfil are supposed to have lost the ability to get on busses and go to Cardiff to seek gainful employment in a city that already has a bit of an unemployment problem. According to IDS it's only a 50 minute ride to Cardiff, not going to argue with him about 50 minutes, that's probably about right. Now if you glance back through some of my previous posts you will see that I am no stranger the bus journeys in the South Wales Valleys.

I live in Aberdare, one valley over from Merthyr (35 minute bus ride away, weather permitting in the winter). If you are not familiar with the area we're talking about, open up your Google Earth and have a look. If you are unemployed and living in Merthyr the chances are you are housed on one of the estates to the north of the town. These estates are not exactly walking distance from the bus station in town where the cardiff bus can be caught, you are looking at adding another 30 minutes at least to your journey. Of course, another problem is on the return journey in the evening the chances are you would be too late to catch the last local bus back to your estate. I live on the edge of an estate 3 miles south of Aberdare, the last bus from there to where I live is at 6.00pm, whenever I have left Cardiff after 5.00pm I have never managed to catch a connecting bus and end up paying more for a taxi to get me home. I know 3 miles isn't that far, but look at the terrain, the last mile is seriously uphill. They may be small but they are still mountains! So Ian Duncan Smith, commuting into Cardiff by bus from the Heads of the Valleys bears no resemblance to commuting into London from the suburbs, believe me, I know, I have experienced both. Come down here and give it a try before you start telling the people whose families your predecessors have already tried to destroy by taking away their livelihoods and dignity one way or another for generations, that they have forgotten how to use busses!

Which brings me to a personal gripe which has niggled me more than a little this week.. cold callers, particularly the ones who call in the early evening when you are trying to get the tea ready. I knew they were in the area, I saw them while I was waiting for a bus earlier in the day, (ironically, on my way to the jobcentreplus to get a bit of paper stamped).  These two were from Scottish Power, apparently not selling anything, just anxious to show me all the savings I could make, I told the talking one I wasn't interested, but he was jabbering so loudly he couldn't hear me. He had to take a breath so I took that opportunity to say again that I wasn't interested and quite frankly fed up with the likes of him standing on my doorstep trying to sell me stuff I didn't want and started to shut the door. To cut a long story short, he took exception to my refusal to listen to his sales spiel,  told me I was abusive and the last thing I heard as I shut the door was him telling me I was rude and ignorant.  I have been in touch with Scottish Power, waiting for an apology as I blog.

That was Wednesday, yesterday it was TalkTalk, earlier in the day but still inconvenient, This one came out with some crap about did I know about the free internet being rolled out over our area. I said 'no, but somehow I already have free internet, so cheerio.' He then told me his internet would be faster, I suggested it probably wouldn't be and tried to shut the door. He's now waving a leaflet in my face asking me if I had read the leaflet that I should have received last week. I had to tell him that unsolicited mail went straight into the bin and was never read. What followed was a silly statement from a man who is only carrying a clipboard, 'Only we're collecting them back for recycling because we are a green company' I told him we were green too and all his junk mail went out with all the other paper recycling shortly after a nice man from the council delivered a very cute little green wheely bin for food waste only the day before and shut the door quickly before he could think of anything else waste my time on.

Now to pull cold callers, IDS and the spending review together. Old council estates with their high percentage of the low paid or unemployed and of course, a lot of elderly people, usually women since most of the elderly men have long gone with silicosis, must seem like the happy hunting ground for these high pressure and deceitful sales types. Faced with the onslaught of 'facts and figures' these people regurgitate on every doorstep I'm pretty sure the unwary get sucked in by the false enthusiasm and just go along with it.  I don't imagine these people do a lot of trade in the areas which sport front drives, nice cars and neat front gardens, I would hazard a guess that the people who live in that sort of environment are not the ones IDS is having a pop at either. Well, we all know who is going to come off worse when the spending review cuts are implemented and lets face it, the nice cars and neat front gardens are going to get over it if they lose a bit of benefit, maybe take a cheaper holiday, maybe put off the new kitchen for a year. Heaven forfend, they could send their children to the local comprehensive and save on school fees, their kids will still be able to take their A levels and go to University!

But back to the cold callers for a moment, I suppose they are just as worried as the rest of us about how the cuts are going to effect them, so of course they are going for the easy targets, get your sales numbers up, less chance of losing your job. Which is what the government is also doing, ensuring their core vote is happy by targeting those that they perceive to be scroungers, which unfortunately includes the people who will be least able to cope with cuts in an already meagre income, not to mention the inevitable reduction in social services as councils pull in their belts. They know these people are the least likely to vote, let alone vote tory.  It is despicable behaviour by people who should know better and that is as far as I am going, the sun is most definitely over the yard arm, Sarah is away in respite this weekend, and the said weekend starts here........

A Bus Too Far.....

We've just had a four day weekend. Very nice you might think if you subscribe to the normal five day working week with Saturday and Sunday off. In our household it's not quite that simple. Sarah spends four days a week in the day centre, transport picks her up at 8.45am and delivers her home at about 4.00pm, Tuesday to Friday. Well that's what should happen but that damned butterfly keeps flapping it's wings somewhere in the Amazon resulting in all sorts of nonsense occurring here in the Cynon Valley.

As you would expect, I arrange all appointments, missions, meetings, whatever, for the days when Sarah should be in the Day Centre. The second Friday of every month is the day chosen for the little writers group I am part of to meet up for a couple of hours in the Muni Coffee Shop in Pontypridd...  as an aside, if you should happen to be a carer that lives in Rhondda Cynon Taf and you're at a loose end on the second Friday of the month, the Muni does a decent cup of coffee and you don't have to be able to write to join us, having an interest and being a carer is sufficient... So the butterfly flapped it's wing in celebration of chaos theory and sods law, and Sarah is home on the second Friday of the month because of staff training and we've got a four day weekend on the back of a three day week.

Now Sarah, being autistic, assumes that she and I will go out for the day, somewhere exotic like Swansea or Cardiff. I explained to her that we had already visited Cardiff on Monday and I've got to be in Ponty for 10.00am which means catching a bus at 8.30am, If she wanted to come with me she would have to get up as if she were going to the Day Centre and not having a day off, and anyway she would only get bored because I would be talking to other people, so perhaps she and her Dad wouldn't mind following me so that we could meet up in the Muni around midday when my meeting would be breaking up, have a cup of tea, maybe go and have some fish and chips (always a deal clincher with Sarah) then the three of us come home on the bus together. By some miracle this suggestion was accepted and put into action. I met up with fellow writers and we were just winding up when Bill and Sarah arrived.

After a round of hello, how are you, nice to meet you and so on which Sarah loves, (a whole bunch of new faces with names and birthdays to remember and recite when I least expect it!) we set off for the fish and chip restaurant at the other end of Pontypridd, feed our faces and then head back to the bus station. It's round about 2.00pm and a bus is due in. And here it is, and it has Aberdare written in flashing orange lights on the front. Not the usual bus, which should have alerted me to potential problems, but it did say Aberdare, and when I showed the driver my return ticket which had 'Aberdare to Pontypridd return' writ large upon it and said 'Aberdare?' in a questioning manner, he nodded!  Bill travelled as companion to Sarah on her disability bus pass so no words were exchanged there. So off we go, should be back in Aberdare well before 3.00pm.

Quite a crowd on the bus, all happily settling down for the ride to respective homes, bouncing along the A470 towards the exit before the dreaded Abercynon roundabout. Passengers accustomed to the journey are preparing for the long left turn we are about to go into only to be surprised by the shortness of our turn to the left as we find ourselves going to the right and along a road that is not going to take us to Aberdare. A few of us noticeably sat up and paid attention at that point, and probably all thought something along the lines of 'at least I'm not alone!' Being British, none of us said anything. Working on the basis that this isn't the sort of bus that goes a very long way, Bill and I decided to treat it as a game and played at guessing our destination from the road signs, landmarks and clues like railway bridges etc that we spotted along the way. We were a little disappointed when we saw the road to Merthyr and didn't go down it. We then spent a good half an hour touring housing estates we'd never heard of, a few people actually got off, I'm guessing they knew where they were. We went through more places we'd never heard of and finally landed up in what passes for a bus stand in Bargoed. By this time the only people left on the bus were the confused from Aberdare. The silence needed to be broken so I thought I'd go down and speak to the driver. He told me that I must have got on before he changed the display on the front of the bus, I asked him where he had come from before arriving at Pontypridd, he said Aberdare, I wondered why the display hadn't said Pontypridd and was answered with a shrug. So then I enquired as to where he was driving to next because myself and most likely the half dozen others who got on the bus before the display was changed were curious. Pontypridd. Good, and where to after that? Aberdare. Right, I left it at that with the driver, he didn't seem at all bothered and anyway his phone was ringing, so as I returned to my seat I suggested to our fellow travelers that we all just stayed put on the bus until it got us to where we were supposed to be, being British there was an assortment of responses along the lines of  'deww' 'typical' 'durrr' 'tsk' all accompanied by raised eyebrows and rolling eyes and shaking heads.

So we revisited our mystery tour route, but the other way round of course, arrived in Ponty, picked up more passengers and then on to Aberdare arriving nearly an hour and a half later than we should have. I couldn't help wondering how many people were standing in Aberdare bus station scratching their heads and wondering why they weren't in Bargoed! First lucky break of this convoluted return journey then happens, as we are making our way to the stand for the connecting bus to Cwmbach, home and a cup of tea, it obligingly pulled in and within a quarter of an hour the kettle is on and Bill is summoning up Google Earth to try and make some sense out of all the twists and turns we had just experienced.  So that was day one of our long weekend,  on day two we didn't go anywhere near a bus. Day three... buses are few and far between on a Sunday. Yesterday Sarah, who by the way, thoroughly enjoyed the extended jaunt on Friday, decided we needed to go to Merthyr for which I am eternally grateful, since up to Sunday night she had been talking about going to Swansea which involves a bus change in the middle of nowhere onto yet another dodgy service running buses that have definitely seen better days.

Our Merthyr trip was uneventful, there and back again with no problems, but I've got to admit I could have done without it, for me it had no real purpose, but Sarah loves it, sitting on a bus with her earphones on, calculator in hand and a bottle of water and I could always do the same, except read a book rather than grapple with a calculator! But that trip on Friday, well the word Bargoed has begun to take on a whole new meaning over the weekend. I have a feeling it is going to become a point of reference when planning trips and events. I can almost hear myself saying as I study timetables or stand in a queue,  'Under all circumstances, we've got to avoid a Bargoed.' Without doubt, it was a bus too far. Ropey old vehicle, badly maintained and extremely bendy roads and by bendy I mean be up and down as well as side to side. Bill and I were so knackered that by 9.00pm we were both spark out in front of the TV.

Well that lot is better out than in, but there is one thing I should add, Bargoed actually looks like a pretty good place by Valleys standards and one day when I've nothing better to do I will probably go there on purpose, although if possible, not via Pontypridd bus station and preferably by train...

Turning The Tables...

Nearly a month since I last blogged.. how remiss of me, but I have been basking in the glorious peace that has descended on our house since Sarah seems to have turned another corner and has changed her default  reaction to any given situation from..

'I want nothing whatsoever to do with what you are suggesting and until I get my own way I will shout, scream, stamp my feet and inflict as much damage as possible (physical and mental) on you, me, anyone and anything that is within reach.'

..to..

"Ok, I'll go along with that. We are going to have something to eat aren't we? Busses can be a nuisance sometimes, never mind, earphones on, iPod on, can I have a drink of water? What is 64x72?'

In the last month several things have happened that would have resulted in utter meltdown seven or eight weeks ago. We've had changes of staff at the Day Centre, changes of personnel on the transport, a full moon, a menstrual cycle, several technical hitches involving freeview box, DVD player and iPod and a nasty cold which has left us with a nasty cough which we cannot shift.

So what's going on? What's happened? As far as I can see it is just two small adjustments made by everyone who has dealings with Sarah. At the Day Centre and at home we have made a concerted effort to ensure Sarah knows where all the people who are important to her are and that she is told well in advance of any events coming up, or changes to events she is already aware of. A couple of simple things really, but we had all let them slide and had not noticed. It needed to be pointed out to us because we just couldn't see it. Something was obviously making her feel as mad as hell,  none of us could work out what it was and we all just reverted to damage limitation and putting up defences.

As I said in an earlier post, we had visits from a psychiatrist. He finally assured us that the problem was not a mental health issue that required medication. This was a relief, Sarah has never had any medication beyond the usual antibiotics for infections etc, and decongestants because she doesn't cope well with stuffy noses. He was of the opinion that psychology was the way forward but he would keep a watching brief on progress.

Psychologist turned out to be a marvelous woman who hit it of with Sarah as soon as they met. Of course I was the one who had to do most of the work, listing dates, events, good days, bad days, what the weather was like, who was around. endless little details going back six months or more. and also keeping a diary with detailed descriptions of any challenging behaviours Sarah displayed what may have prompted them, where she was etc. A similar thing was being done at the Day Centre. Every week for five weeks Amy the psychologist and I went through the events of the week with a fine tooth comb, she made a chart and with the aid of coloured markers we started to see patterns emerging.

I believed from the start that what was needed was a fresh eye looking at the problems we were having, I had a bit of fight to get anyone to take me seriously and it wasn't until the Day Centre had trouble keeping Sarah calm on some days and I expressed my concerns for my own health at our GP surgery that action was finally taken and we were referred to the psychiatric dept. I believe I was proved right.

Two weeks in, Amy noticed that the worst incidents were occurring when things change and Sarah was not informed. We have always known that Sarah doesn't like surprises, We also know that, being autistic, routine rules, and that changes have to be explained carefully. What the Day Centre and ourselves had lost sight of is how small these changes can be and if too many changes are occurring, as they had been for Sarah for almost a year it turns out, she is not surprisingly going to get a bit miffed!  So, rules laid down, strategies put in place, and the last month has been plain sailing. We just couldn't see the wood for the trees.

So we have had the pleasure of a cheerful and relaxed Sarah for a few weeks now, she is not worried about what horrendous changes might have taken place overnight, so has space left in her head to think about other things, like getting back into teaching herself to read, she still doesn't like people showing her what to do or how to go about things, she has to work it out for herself. Also multiplication tables.

Like most of the pre calculator generation, I learned my tables off by heart in junior school from 'Once one is one' all the way through to 'Twelve twelves are a hundred and forty-four'. Now here comes the rod for your own back confession...  when Sarah was about three years old she didn't do a lot of sleeping and the only way to get her to lay down and shut her eyes was to sit next to her bed and talk to her. This happened every night, sometimes all night, sometimes just for an hour. We tried the classic children's books but she wasn't too keen. I'm not too good at singing so I used to recite Bob Dylan songs to her, she was, and still is, very fond of Mr Tambourine Man. My version of Subterranean Homesick Blues used to go down quite well too. Then we would say the alphabet, forwards then backwards, at least twice, then we would count to a hundred forwards, then backwards, she was usually getting dozy at this point, and the only thing left in my head that I didn't have to think about were multiplication  tables. We did this for a solid two years, then spasmodically, mainly through school holidays, until we moved to this house and she had a room to herself. She was about eight years old by then and she knew her times tables, she didn't know how to use them, but she knew them, and being autistic, she still knows them but doesn't have much idea of what they are about. Now she has all this spare time to use up, time that she was spending getting wound up about which bus was coming for her in the morning.

On Saturday the penny dropped.  

We had bought two sponge rolls for £2.00 from Marks and Spencers. I won't go into why we were in Marks and Sparks food hall, thats another blog for another day, suffice to say that a Cappuccino Chocolate Sponge Roll and an Apricot Sponge Roll for £2.00 was an offer we couldn't refuse. That evening, we had to decide whether we should break out the Cappuccino Choc or the Apricot. My husband, Sarah's father, suggested that we could have a slice of each.. each. Sarah was a little confused by this radical suggestion, but conceded it was a good idea after a small demonstration of swiss roll slicing. It was demonstrated to her that each cake was sufficient for nine good slices which meant we had three days worth of cake if we had one slice of each cake each and there would be no argument over who had most of which one. An astounding piece of logic to emerge from our house really.

In Sarah's mind, all those abstract numbers she's been carrying around since my attempts to bore her to sleep twenty odd years ago suddenly turned into slices of cake and by the time she'd finished eating her slices of cake she was grappling with the calculation for how many sausages were needed if there were ten students, four staff and they wanted three sausages each. she got to the answer before I did. Mental arithmetic was never my strongest point. So now she is asking me to confirm the answers to mathematical questions she is setting for herself. I really am useless with numbers, I learned tables by rote, that is the only reason I know them. I'm sure there must be a name for it, something like number blindness, dyslexia only it's numbers not letters that I have difficulties with. With paper and pencil I can do the basics, with a calculator I can do VAT returns, double entry book keeping is not too much of a problem, I just can't hold the numbers in my head long enough to do simple mental arithmetic that other people seem to find easy. I had difficulty telling the time as a child, I just learned to recognise the angles of the hands, I had to look very long and hard to be sure. Digital clocks were a bit of a bother but I think I've cracked them now, although twentyfour hour clocks can still be a bit troublesome.

So this latest bit of progress for Sarah is proving to be a bit of a problem.  She has literally turned the tables on me! I've had a few weeks of breathing space I suppose, now I'm just going to have to get to grips with the calculator and do my damnedest to catch up on the maths. Never mind, no peace for the wicked, as they say...  Hmm...  sometimes I regret my ill spent youth....