Homespun philosophy

Synchronicity at work…

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Wikipedia’s definition of synchronicity:

“Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events as meaningfully related, where they are unlikely to be causally related. The subject sees it as a meaningful coincidence, although the events need not be exactly simultaneous in time.”

Well…

I often get asked, “Wherever do you get all these treasures? You must spend all your weekends at car boots & jumble sales!” Which I would love to be able to do, but alas, life doesn’t always work out like that; I have lots of other calls on my time, though I do have two jumbles on my “hit list” this weekend. So in order to maintain some kind of flow, some continuity on the stall, from time to time I resort to buying stuff in from the wholesalers. It doesn’t necessarily work out cheaper, and I’m always aware that they will have cherry-picked the really good stuff for their own “headline” stores, so although they are reliably good value, I’m not getting the very best bargains, and am thus not able to pass them on. However sometimes I strike lucky… this little lot arrived today, from the wholesale arm of a well-known charity:

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50 magnificent vintage hats, which should keep my stall buzzing all summer long! Provided, that is, that not too many of them end up on my daughters or my trainee-daughter-in-law… This elegant confection has already made its debut on Facebook:

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and they are clearly going to provide us with days of entertainment!

I’d already decided to make some major alterations to the layout of the stall at Molly’s Den; books are selling steadily down there, but aren’t very visible from the aisles. And the kitchenalia on the shelves at the back might as well be in Outer Mongolia; despite being clearly visible, things just stay put there, but usually sell within days when I move them forwards towards the aisle. So I thought I’d find some bookshelves, put them along the back with some interesting vintage titles & reasonable prices clearly visible, and possibly some of the more dramatic hats too, and see if that tempts people further in. But no inexpensive bookcases turned up, for weeks on end, on Ebay, Gumtree or Freegle/Freecycle. Reluctantly, I decided to invest a whole £30 in a pair of cheap & cheerful bookcases from that well-known Scandinavian emporium, which I happened to be virtually driving past yesterday. They had 16 in stock when I checked online a couple of days beforehand, but by the time I got there, they were all gone, and they’re not going to have any more in for weeks! So, back to the drawing board… 

Luckily, last night, there was a small pine bookcase, just the right height, for £10 on Gumtree, which I was able to pick up this morning. It was close to Molly’s Den so has gone straight onto the stall, although it’s not yet in its final position and won’t be filled up until after the weekend. And an hour or so later, you could have knocked me down with a feather when I found the following Scandinavian item, marginally damaged but perfectly safe & sturdy, in the wood skip at the Recycling Centre – and look what else was there, too!

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Cat not included!

More hats! And all for less than I’d have paid for one new bookcase. If that’s not synchronicity at work, I don’t know what is.

A new paradigm…

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I have  a big task before me. I have to learn a whole new way of living. From now on, I do not need to buy enough food to provision a small army on a weekly basis. I won’t need to chase around the house trying to locate enough plates to feed said army at every mealtime. We won’t be tripping over piles of muddy boots in every doorway, or surveying the massive washing mountain with dismay. Yes, DS2 and his long-term girlfriend have moved out. It’s just us and the two girls under this roof full-time now, and DS3 back for the holidays. It’s going to seem very quiet…

They’ve moved into a bright, warm house shared with another young couple, for whom he was Best Man back last summer. They all seem to rub along very well together and three out of the four are offspring of big families, which means they know the ropes when it comes to the inevitable times when tempers flash, and how to let things simmer down again. And whilst he may have pushed the boundaries & got away with blue murder on the tidiness front here at home, I don’t doubt that he, like his two brothers before him, will somehow manage to be reasonably civilised when the chips are down. He may not always have obeyed them, but he knows perfectly well what the rules of civilised living are. And I expect Madam will keep him in order anyway; I have every respect for her managerial capabilities! It’s a shame they can’t yet afford a decent roof over each couple’s heads, but they are getting far more for their money by sharing; instead of a cramped little studio flat over a shop with no garden, no parking and a kitchen that would be better described as a cupboard (which they would be stretching themselves to the very limit to afford, round here)  they are in a very pleasant 4-bedroom house with a lovely, big, well-designed kitchen, a pretty & practical garden, parking and a garage. So they can have friends over to stay, space for their musical instruments, and room for money-saving devices like a chest freezer. It’s an ideal compromise, if such a thing exists. It may not last very long, as the house is on the market to be sold, but fingers crossed they will have long enough to find somewhere similar, if the arrangement suits all concerned.

I suspect that energy, resource and financial constraints may mean that the days of the nuclear family in their little suburban home are limited, anyway, and we need to look for and accept a range of different solutions if we’re not to develop tent cities or shanty towns; people need homes but simply can’t afford them on average wages round here, where the jet set meet in summer to play polo on the beach. Multi-generation living is one of those solutions, as is house-sharing, taking in (or being) lodgers, or even communal living. All of these, to some extent, have always gone on quietly in the background; several members of my family back in the 1800s were named after a lodger, who one daughter/sister had married, and one of my own brothers still carries that name. When we moved here, there were two dear old ladies, ex-missionaries, house-sharing around the corner, which was quite a common set-up for those who had never married, and often worked very well, with none of the smutty innuendo that people attach to such an idea now. And I can see that the idea of a “companion” was a very good solution for older people who didn’t want to leave their homes & gardens to go into residential care or tiny “sheltered” flatlets, and a younger person who didn’t earn enough to afford a roof over their own head, or might not have wanted to live alone. In medieval times, very few people lived in nuclear families; you were part of your master’s household, if an apprentice or a servant, or a monastery/convent (not all inhabitants were religious; less than half might have taken vows, in most cases) once past childhood. And in your turn, you would shelter an assortment of other people’s teens or other waifs & strays, as you achieved masterly status yourself. And harems are an example of communal living, though not one that most of us would find acceptable, but life in one might have been better than for a young Victorian servant girl the master took a fancy to.

What seems normal to us would seem extraordinary to people elsewhere in the world or living at another time; and one day our current living arrangements might well cause incredulity & laughter to our descendants. And different solutions will suit different people. But it’s not just people; as DS2 leaves us, we have gained a new four-legged family member. The feral cat we’ve been feeding for the last year has finally decided to come indoors. And very polite & unassuming he/she is being about it, too; the resident moggies haven’t objected at all so far, not even when it turned up for breakfast with them this morning. It’s played a very long game, and clearly isn’t taking anything for granted; we still don’t even know whether it’s a him or a her! But it has evidently decided that this is home, and we are its people, and it will tolerate our eccentricities like wishing to brush it, as long as there’s food in the bowl & a blanket in a box to sleep on. It remains to be seen whether it’ll be any cheaper to run than an energetic & lively 24 year-old and his young lady!

Tino1

“Shopping” in your own home…

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I’ve been puzzling over where to put my bread maker. Although my kitchen’s quite big, at 12′ x 15′, I don’t have a lot of worktop. One reason for this is that it’s always covered with clutter, but another reason is that there really isn’t very much, just a 4′ stretch between the cooker & the sink. For many years my trusty breadmaker has shared this with the enormous fruit bowl & the spill-over from my woefully inadequate spice rack; am I the only cook who could do with a full cupboard-sized spice rack? I really do use them all regularly! The breadmaker is in regular, if not constant, use, but I’d become increasingly aware of how much its great white plastic dome intruded on the rustic look of the place, such as it is. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I moved it onto a small table on the other side of the room, where it looked much more at home. The problem was, the rackety little plywood table, with a crumpled, water-damaged top, was a “sacrifice” picked up specifically & needed for its parts; the legs are now installed on a workbox/footstool and the leg connectors have rescued my lovely pink Lloyd Loom chair. But I couldn’t think what else would be the right size; the space isn’t in use for anything else, but it’s pretty small.

Until I noticed my Swedish-made step-stool in the utility room, that is. The top is just the right size & the footprint’s not too big for the space. A good height for a breadmaker, too. But – it’s in constant use, as a step-stool! So I’d made up my mind to pop into my favourite Viking emporium when I go to pick up son no. 3 for a dental appointment next week, and invest a whole £11 in another one.

One of the very minor precautions I took before last week’s storm, which luckily passed us by with very little damage, was to fill both our big camping water containers with tap water in case of any interruption or contamination to the supply; it’s not unknown for our local river to burst its banks. I emptied these early this week, let them dry out & went to replace them in the shed. On – surely, that’s an Ikea step-stool…? I did a proper double-take; I hadn’t a clue I owned two of them! A vague memory surfaced of having picked one up for someone who’d mentioned that they wanted one, but had got one literally the day before I found this one; I must have stuffed it out there soon after & was just using it to keep some camping stuff off the damp concrete floor.

This wasn’t the first instance of finding I’d already got something I thought I needed to go out & buy. It’s always happening with fabric and kitchen utensils – I’ve lost track of the times I’ve spent good money on a modern minor electrical appliance, only to discover that the old hand-operated one was better, quicker & easier both to use and to wash up afterwards – but has also happened this week with lamps and suitcases, oddly enough. I’ve been really busy moving my stall at Molly’s Den into the main warehouse as well as preparing for Boscombe Vintage Market, and didn’t have time to go shopping for things I thought I needed. Which was lucky really, as it turned out I didn’t actually need them, so would have wasted both my time & money. And I do now “shop” my existing wardrobe before even thinking of buying anything new, and look at how I could team things up differently or tweak details to make a “new” outfit. Not just for financial or indeed ethical reasons: I’m an odd shape & when I find something that both fits & suits me, I need to treasure it & hang onto it as long as possible!

I expect most people are much better organised than me, and don’t lose track of their possessions & clothing, but to anyone else whose home resembles the storage area of a secondhand emporium (which in our case it actually is) – don’t wear yourself out running up to town to buy a whatever-you-think-you-need – you’ve almost certainly already got one somewhere!

Interesting!

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Earlier this week, I did a Ebay listing for a spinning wheel that was being sold for charity. Which sold, within two hours, for a price the previous owners didn’t dare dream of, to a lady who has got a great bargain. And as you do (well, I do) I thought I’d have a little peek at what else was around locally; something I don’t normally do any more, in order to avoid temptation. I was amazed to find the next closest listing was for a wheel that I myself had had for sale down in Molly’s Den, which had still been there that very afternoon. Normally I’d have been delighted to think I’d sold it on, but it had been listed at a very high price with what I felt was a very misleading description; it was described “very old” and made of “oak or walnut” when in fact it’s from the 1980s and whilst bits of it may be oak and/or walnut, the base is MDF. The problem with that was that it was pictured on my stall… I really didn’t want any of my regular, knowledgeable customers associating such a misleading description with me! So I messaged the seller to point this out & asked them to change the picture. Nothing doing; no reply…

Next morning I trotted down to Molly’s with some new stock, and was amazed & appalled to find the wheel still there, unsold. The blighter had listed MY wheel for sale, without my knowledge or consent.  I have no problem with a) people selling things on behalf of other people, I do it myself sometimes, or b) people buying items from me, then selling them on at a profit; that’s what we’re all doing and it’s fair enough. If they can get a higher price than I can, no problem. But I do have a problem with someone selling on something of mine that doesn’t yet belong to them, at a huge profit & with a misleading description; apart from the element of fraud, to me it’s completely unethical for a number of reasons. Eventually I did get a fairly incoherent response from them, telling me to “get a grip(!), you get your money & I get mine, where’s the problem?” The problem is, mate, you are selling something that’s not yours to sell, with a misleading description & without the owner’s knowledge or consent, and if you can’t see what’s wrong with that, the problem is with you. Anyway, I’ve physically removed the wheel and he has “removed” the listing (eventually, under pressure, and by dropping the price drastically & presumably getting a friend to “buy” it) but the story’s not over yet as far as I’m concerned.

But I’ve found it rather interesting to see & hear other people’s reaction to this. Half of them have understood instantly why I’m outraged, but the other half have been unsurprised & basically said, “Erm, what’s wrong with that? It’s what our bankers do all the time! And if he can get more for it than you can, well…” And it’s not the split I would have expected, with other traders being unsurprised and everyone else being appalled; most of the traders have been horrified (and rushed off to see whether he’s listed anything of theirs) but some of my perfectly-nice friends have failed to see why I’d have a problem with this. I’m still trying to get my head around this; not sure whether they just haven’t taken on board the implications, or whether my entire worldview is hopelessly old-fashioned & innocent. But at the very least, it has huge implications for anyone who regularly buys from Ebay; no wonder some sellers are so vague & unhelpful! And – why is it so hard to report a genuine problem to Ebay?

Would be interested to hear what my regular readers (OK, any readers, really) think of this conundrum: is it morally OK to offer for sale goods that aren’t yet yours, without the owner’s knowledge or consent?

Working from home:

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Not so very long ago, the idea of “going out to work” would have astonished most of our ancestors. Most people lived & worked in what I’ve heard described as the “Domestic Economy” i.e. they farmed, they spun or wove, made buttons, kept a few sheep or hens, grew stuff & sold the excess. In town, they might have taken in laundry, or done a bit of dressmaking or knitting for cash. Shopkeepers, innkeepers, bakers & postmasters lived above or behind their premises, domestic staff lived in the nooks & crannies of the great (or middle-class) houses that they worked in. Only the middle “professional” class would have travelled to work, and for most of them it would have been a short walk. But now we’ve created a monstrous rod for our own backs of “commuting” to work; you are very lucky indeed of you can find well-enough-paid work within walking distance of anywhere you’d want to live.

 

So if you don’t want to lose weeks of your precious life sitting fuming in traffic jams, or standing jammed into wildly-swaying tube trains, or paying vast sums of money to be packed into trains that get you there late as often as not, and may not even run at all, you have to think outside the box & come up with something profitable that you can do from home. Or several tangentially-related somethings, as I have, though I’m the first to admit I’m lucky enough not to have to earn a “realistic” wage in order to keep the roof actually over our heads.

 

BUT, it seems we are so stuck in the “going out to work” groove now that it can be rather difficult for others, even your nearest & dearest, to get their heads around the idea that yes, you’re there at home, but YOU ARE STILL WORKING! People who wouldn’t dream of disturbing someone head-down at their desk at the office will happily ask you what’s for tea just when you’re trying to refine a particularly difficult sentence. Or yell from the rubble that used to be the ironing pile that they need a certain t-shirt RIGHT NOW, or ask for a lift to somewhere the bus could have got them to, if they’d thought of it in time. And it’s always delightful to see friends, but some warning of an impending visit would be a gracious idea, so that urgent tasks can be completed or rescheduled, and dangerous substances or valuable & fragile items aren’t lying around where your puppy or toddler can eat them. Although of course that does risk the possibility that I may say, “Terribly sorry, but could we do it another time?”

 

Rant over…

Wayyyyy cool!

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You may have guessed that I’ve been a bit busy lately, firstly preparing for, then at the Larmer Tree Festival as part of Boscombe Vintage Market. It was the first time we’ve done anything like this & I don’t think any of us knew what to expect, and by all reports most of us were pretty anxious as well as busy leading up towards it. But it was great, really good fun and well worthwhile. There were some magical moments which I can’t resist sharing with you all, and the whole thing sparked some interesting trains of thought & ideas for next year.

We were in a marquee opposite one of the big “venues” and got to hear some great music. I joined in with a couple of workshops over there, which were huge fun, but spent most of my time on my stall. And so I was there when a couple of early-teenage boys ran into the marquee, probably by accident. They skidded to a halt and looked round in utter amazement, and I mentally braced for trouble. But one gasped, “This place is waayyyyy coooool! Look! Harry Potter Luggage!” at the cabin trunk beside my stall. And off they trotted, admiring our ramshackle treasures quite happily. Then there were the group of bronzed late teenage boys who wandered past, looking somewhat supercilious & uninterested. Until they spotted the bookcase… “Ooooh, books!” And the next ten minutes resembled nothing quite so much as a meeting of the Literary Society as they leafed through the various vintage volumes, made their choices and queued up patiently with their pound coins. The bored husbands-being-towed-behind who suddenly spotted the vinyl records, the young lady who needed a slip to wear beneath her diaphanous Indian draperies, the people doing up vintage caravans who found just the right fabric or trim for their curtains or cushions – I do love making people happy!

Needless to say, there were people – a small minority, luckily – who just came in to sneer. But they weren’t just sneering at us & our vintage bargains, but also at the acts, the beautiful gardens, the peacocks and the other festivalgoers, especially those who were joining in with things. But to my mind, joining in is what it’s all about; festivals are as old as mankind, and aren’t something that can just be consumed, like a film or TV programme, they’re something you have to participate in to get the most out of. There’s always something new to see, a new skill to try, something different to taste, and if you’re too busy looking superior to join in, you’re missing out. It’s not all about buying stuff, although it’s nice when when people do; it’s about celebrating life in all its infinite & glorious variety, and adhering strictly to a narrow view of how people should look & behave doesn’t half get in the way of that!

I loved seeing people express their individuality, both in their clothes (I may have to become a steampunk, if I’m not too old & round) and by spontaneously breaking into dance with total strangers. There’s somehow both something very real & fundamental about festivals, and also something deeply unreal; those of us who went home every night (we didn’t, we camped) spoke of it as going back into the “real” world and there’s undeniably something fantastical, in the truest sense, about the whole festival thing. Life isn’t &  never can be all bubbles & flags, lace, glitter, music & dance, but are shopping malls, traffic jams, utility bills and the 9-5 any more “real” actually? The paradox is that I suspect people can somehow be more their real selves when they are dressing up, and that our brick & mortar habitats, our mobile metal shells & our serious workaday personas are no more real than our festive selves. And I know which I prefer…

One customer told me about her daughter, who was awarded a first-class degree in psychology several years ago. But after two years in a well-paid recruitment job, she retrained as a henna tattooist & nail artist and “works” the summer at festivals, living in a well-insulated van, and picks up whatever work she can in winter; far from worrying about her, her mother was proud of her independence and free spirit & I can understand that.

Anyway, now I have a much better idea of what kind of stock to take along next year, and how much; approximately half of what I took this year! But none of us were to know what would work, and it’s probably different for each one of us, and each year will be different too; the weather was glorious this year, but might not be so good another time. And more ideas on how to lay it out, and how to create & maintain an attractive display. All I need now is a sensible way of keeping track of all these ideas – I may have to sit down & make a book or folder of some kind, after I’ve updated my paperwork… now, that’s a good idea!

larmertreestall

A point of view…

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Went carboot-cruising with DD1 this morning, and came home with a very respectable haul from the bootsale area of our local market, I’m delighted to say, despite the fact that probably more than half of the sellers there are actually regular traders rather than people emptying their attics. But then I went on to another sale elsewhere; I knew it was likely to be more upmarket than the other one because of the “posh” venue, but some of the prices were eyewatering! I’d halfway expected to find people packing up as I was so late, but most of the stalls were still laden. Which isn’t surprising, when one of the vendors was charging £16 for a small rectangle of fabric, just big enough to scrape a cushion out of. Yes, it was nice Sanderson fabric, and probably half of what she’d paid for it new, but that is NOT a boot-sale price. If I want to pay half the new price for posh fabric, I’ll wait for a sale in at our very-good local interior designers & have a choice of fabrics.

And as for the gentleman who happily sold me a lovely ebony glove-stretcher for 50p, a matching ebony & ivory clothes brush also for 50p, and then spoilt it all by asking £5 for a white enamel milk jug with cracks, that someone at some point had filled with orange paint, which was thickly plastered inside & splashed all over the outside, oh dear…

I’m not daft, I know enamel is hot just now. But that poor jug was past it before the paint incident; you might have got some daft banker-on-secondment to pay £5 for it with cracked enamel. But liberally plastered with well-dried-on orange paint, too? I think not… but I’m very happy with the glove-stretcher & the clothes brush anyway. They’re beautiful, if not currently fashionable, and have true & lasting value.

I go out to boot & jumble sales with a change-purse filled with £20 of small change. I may or may not have more money with me, and if I saw something that I knew to be a real bargain – a Timbertops spinning wheel, say – I might dig into other resources. But mostly I manage to keep well within what’s in my purse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not intending to be mean, and I don’t begrudge a decent price for a decent article, and yes, I do know what it’s like to crawl out of bed on a freezing morning to try to earn a few extra pennies to keep the wolf from the door because I cut my teeth on car boot sales, but if you want to do well at car-booting, don’t charge too much!

I found one of my friends there, and she’d done well & enjoyed herself, by charging between 50p – £2 for good quality, serviceable clothes. The guy selling healthy, well-grown, unusual perennial plants like Saponaria for £1 each had clearly done well too, and deservedly so, and I was happy to add to his profits. And the lady selling delicious home-made fudge deserved every penny of her earnings. But charging nearly as much for everyday things as they cost new, or as much for stuff that really is past its best as you’d pay for top-quality items in an antique shop, is a sure-fire recipe for going home with a car full of unwanted items you brought with you. If you have something of real value to sell, chances are that a car boot sale isn’t the best place to sell it.

Yes, I mostly buy with a view to selling on. But I will have put work into the items that go onto my stall; every handcranked or treadled sewing machine & spinning wheel will have been serviced & supplied with instructions, feet, needles, & bobbins. Fabric, clothing & table linen has usually been washed, mended & starched if appropriate, pressed, trimmed & measured for pricing. Patterns have been checked; some of the older ones have up to 20 fragile pieces to identify & smooth out. Books are checked for defaced & missing pages, and so on & so forth. So if you want the same price as I’m likely to get for it, I’m not going to buy it from you! (Although, of course, someone else may.) And if you want more than I’d get for it, you’re probably not being realistic.

It’ll be a while before I have a chance to do a car-boot sale or something similar myself. But I have a garage full of assorted non-vintage clutter that I need to dispose of; let’s see if I can take my own advice when the time comes & let it go at a price that people are happy to pay!

 

I’m sitting here, toasty warm…

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…snow on the ground, sky thick with nasty needly little flakes that are more like hail. The heating’s on in the background but not blasting away; the conservatory’s wrapped in bubblewrap and the curtains & quilted blinds have stayed shut in the rooms that aren’t in use today. And I’ve been out and about with my camera, in my wonderful secondhand felted-wool coat (best bargain ever! If not exactly cheap…) my long-deceased great-aunt’s sheepskin gloves, my sturdy secondhand North Face boots, my 20p-at-a-jumble-sale handknitted wool jumper in shades of red & pink, and an assortment of other unlikely garments. I probably look like a small round ball of random vintage textiles but I’m warm, dry & happy!

Our local market was open for business this morning; many of the traders had travelled for miles to get here but sadly most of their customers hadn’t bothered, so I scooped up some excellent bargains. Stallholders pay for their stalls in advance, and run the risk of losing advantageous pitches if they don’t turn up; customers don’t run such immediate risks but may find their favourite stallholders have gone away or even gone under if they don’t support their efforts whenever possible. However, it really isn’t a day for driving if you don’t have to; luckily it’s an easy walk for me and my (reclaimed) shopping trolley, given sturdy weatherproof boots. And I do have the space to preserve & store my bargains.

We have enough supplies stashed away to coast through several weeks if necessary, but many people aren’t able to store much food, or even proper clothing for bad weather. A few years back, when I was working in sheltered housing, I was blowing my top about elderly tenants trotting off to the shops in the snow & ice in woefully inadequate clothing – high-heeled boots, thin tights, plastic raincoats, no hats or gloves – when one of them stopped me in my tracks by enquiring, “Where would we keep clothing for weather we hardly ever get? And where could we store extra food so we didn’t have to go out?” It was all too true; their “flats” were glorified bedsits with an alcove for a bedroom, a tiny living room and a kitchenette so small you had to choose between a proper cooker (as opposed to a microwave) or a storage cupboard. Adequate, perhaps, if you  lived a very active & social lifestyle so you didn’t need any room for, say, a sewing machine, or books, or could afford to spend all your winters on the Spanish Costas, as indeed many had envisaged when they moved into them 20 years before, as soon as their kids had flown the nest. Home was just somewhere to sleep, TV would take care of all your entertainment needs if you couldn’t get out, and there was always Meals on Wheels…

I do love the Tiny Houses that you see online, and many of them have roots that go back a long way, to a far more self-reliant & mobile lifestyle; the gypsy caravans, shepherd’s huts & narrowboats, the converted buses & railway carriages. You can make a home and a life almost anywhere, and a good one, without a lot of space, if you’re happy not to put down roots. And it’s very easy to accumulate far too much stuff; stuff that acts as an anchor, so that you can never spread your sails to the winds of Fate without being swamped. But equally, it’s possible to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not have enough space to store the things you really do need, even if you don’t need them all the time. I know I err on the side of having too much (which I’m constantly battling against) and that occasionally, in extreme cases of hoarding, this can prove fatal. But that’s not as likely as crashing your car  as you rush to the supermarket in the snow because you have nothing in to feed the kids, or slipping & breaking a hip on the ice because Meals on Wheels couldn’t get through, and you have no sensible footwear because you have nowhere to keep it…

snowday1h

Can we call ourselves civilised any more?

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Is the Social Contract breaking down?

I’m watching with sadness as my 86 year old mother, an exemplary member of society all her life, suddenly discovers that, although she worked right up until two years ago, always paid her taxes & National Insurance, battled to teach her children right from wrong, has never knowingly broken any law and generally been a shining beacon to all those who have been lucky enough to know her, the NHS doesn’t actually give a damn about her. Now she’s old, she’s disposable. Taking up resources that more economically-active citizens might need…

The story so far, as told elsewhere:

“She fell some time ago, for no known reason, & felt ghastly afterwards, but her GP refused to give her a face-to-face appointment, basically saying that that’s to be expected when you’re 86, just take some paracetamol & you’ll be fine in a week or two. A few days later she tried again to get an appointment, as she was still suffering from considerable discomfort under the ribs, and didn’t feel right at all. But again, all she could get was a “telephone consultation” & the doc said that she should just take more paracetamol; even if she’d broken a couple of ribs, the hospital wouldn’t be able to do anything for her & it could take 6 weeks or so before she felt better.

Eventually, on the insistence of my younger brother, who works for Social Services, they grudgingly gave her an appointment with a trainee GP, who luckily turned out to be very good, keen & painstaking. Turns out she’d had a heart attack, probably when she fell. Any fool could SEE that she really wasn’t at all well, that whatever ailed her was far more than a little bit of bruising, but evidently her GP doesn’t do actually SEEING people any more.

Yesterday she collapsed at the surgery after being given some kind of spray treatment to lower her blood pressure. The trainee GP called an ambulance & she was carted off to hospital; he’d written a note asking for her to seen by the cardiac department & various tests to be done. She & my step-father spent 7 hours in a cubicle in A&E, with nothing to do & not even a cup of water, where they eventually repeated the ECG the surgery did last week, then sent her home saying they couldn’t find anything wrong with her. Now the trainee GP can’t request further investigations until he gets the results of the ECG they did yesterday, because he doesn’t know why they ignored his requests & just repeated the ECG. In the meantime, Mum’s condition is dangerously volatile, because they don’t know what they should be treating her for.

Since when have doctors been too busy to see an 86 y.o. who may have broken some ribs? Since when is paracetamol the best the NHS can offer? I can understand that the A&E department may just have been run off their feet & too busy to read the notes that came in with a patient that was at least still breathing, but why do we have to wait for the results to come back – in the post, in December – before anything further can be done?

When I was working in sheltered housing, from time to time I encountered the attitude that anyone over 60 should just shuffle off quietly & not make any fuss on the way out. One minute it’s “the ambulance is on its way” but as soon as you give the date of birth it becomes, “Oh. District Nurse will come & see them in a week or so…” Seems to me that this is becoming more prevalent. But I can’t understand why anyone thinks it’s OK to leave an otherwise-fit & very capable old lady, who has hardly ever bothered them, in pain & distress, with just an impatient phone call & orders to take more paracetamol…”

There are plenty more instances I can add. Here’s a comment from a disabled member of a forum I belong to, referring to an incident this week:

“Having spent 8hrs on a trolley in a corridor I conclude it is the way the disabled are treated too!” And another friend has multiple serious health challenges, including psoriasis, a badly-damaged liver and legs that are constantly swollen, painful & actually bleeding half the time; getting dressed is acutely painful, never mind walking, but apparently she is perfectly capable of holding down a full time job, so no longer qualifies for most of the paltry benefits she used to scrape by on. And we’ve all read of the soldiers who have sacrificed limbs and/or their mental health, for Queen & Country, being denied housing & benefits. Dulce et decorum est…

Not to mention the time my boys came across an elderly gentleman lying in our road one icy night. One of them is a trained first-aider; it took him seconds to realise that the old boy was seriously hurt (broken arm, smashed fingers, broken nose, collar- & cheek-bones) after slipping on thick ice and that his bare skin was stuck to a pile of his own frozen blood. They called for an emergency ambulance, explained the situation clearly, and one ran to the house for blankets to try to warm him up. We are about 200 yards from the ambulance station. It took 50 minutes to arrive. And no, it eventually transpired there wasn’t anything more urgent going on; the dispatcher had just concluded, old person fallen over, no rush. He didn’t linger long afterwards.

Or the person in our road who has an autistic son, who has just found out that there’s no “funding” at all for respite this winter, not even a couple of hours so she can go Christmas shopping for the rest of her kids, as she works full-time in term time to keep the roof over their heads & food in their mouths. I could go on and on… sometimes I can help fill some of the gaps that were once filled by the agencies paid for by our contributions, which is only fair as I don’t currently earn enough to pay tax, though I do voluntarily (and happily) pay NI. But the holes in the safety-net are getting bigger & wider all the time and I, and people like me, can’t keep filling them all. Can’t even begin to see them all, in fact.

So, where are all our taxes & contributions going? They are draining upwards, keeping that interest flowing; after all, if the rich don’t continue to get richer, whatever would there be for the rest of us to aspire to? Seems to most of us down here that the “trickle-down” effect is more of a flood upwards; that our hard-earned cash is being grasped & flung into a black hole of invisible debt that is none of our making, and that our friends, neighbours & loved ones are now slowly, but surely, being sacrificed to keep the juggernauts of industry rolling over our once green & pleasant land. And we are probably next in line.

I’ve always believed, as my mother told me, that the mark of a civilised society is how it cares for its weaker members, those who for whatever reason are unable to care for themselves, temporarily or permanently. I am rapidly concluding that we can no longer call ourselves civilised.

Plant trees…

thriftwizard1 Comment

Last week, at our Quaker meeting, out of the gathered silence, a short phrase kept popping into my head. It didn’t insist on being said, as these things sometimes do; it wanted to be written down, and put into action. So here it is: PLANT TREES. Now to work out how; there are already as many trees here as one small urban garden can support. But somehow it seems really, really important, and urgent. So here it is; I’m writing it down for all to see, or at least the few of you who read this!

Pondering it whilst hanging out the washing, other words started to wrap themselves around it, and it’s ended up as a poem. With apologies for inflicting it on you all, here goes:

PLANT TREES…

See the bright flags of our defiance stream against the winter sky,

watch weeds nose through tarmac and reach for the sun.

Taste the food of freedom, nourished by compost and wrapt in eggshells.

Hear blackbirds shatter the dawn and snowflakes hiss through skybound twigs.

Feel the wind lift your hair, the sun on your back, cold sea foam kiss your toes,

Smell the roses, home-baked bread, slow-brewed coffee,

Pick berries, brew beer, plant trees and remember…

Life doesn’t only flourish in the nine-to-five. Money isn’t all.

Dump the daily crush, forget blurry morning rituals,

Leave the dull grey air, the plastic tumbleweed, behind

with the overflowing in-tray and the mumble-jumble talking heads.

Walk away from glittering windows and eye-watering prices.

Leave your cards behind, walk away from this empty game,

and hear the roar of people whispering – enough.

If we won’t play – game over.

Fingers burned by the pie in the sky,

half-baked from illusions and slathered in greed, we turn away,

or fall with it, crushed by the debts of millions, stacked & sliced.

Walk away, turn your back before it pulls you in and sucks you dry; it can’t be saved.

Gather round campfires, sing songs, tell dawntime stories,

plant trees, remember, grow and flourish!

 

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