Reach for the tap

So, today someone I have known for YEARS invited me to join "We Want Tap" on Facebook (which, by the way, is the most fantastic thing ever invented. I actually have a date on Saturday with someone I used to work with who I haven't seen for about 5 years). At first I thought it was going to be some sort of Downing Street petition to put Fred Astaire and Jimmy Slyde back on the map, but then I realised it is an ACTUAL MOVEMENT to get people to drink tap water over bottled water. Seeing as the UK has some of the world's most clean/pure drinking water in the world, this makes total sense. I'm just kicking myself that I didn't market this - I always drink tap water!

Anyhow, "We Want Tap" is a great way to get the British (and, hopefully, worldwide) public to realise that our water is plenty good enough to drink and that it'll probably mean that a few less birds get caught up in all the plastic bottles we have floating around. And it's got to be better on the wallet, seeing as a litre of bottled mineral water costs more than a litre of gasoline. Try it!

A day with the one little monster who makes me think that maybe kids aren't such a bad idea...

Ho-hum...

Do you think Capitalists would be allowed to do this in other countries? (Photos taken on the street right outside my office).


At least there was someone trying to make the best of an otherwise disturbing situation:

Brussels - Part II

On the second day I did more walking around the center and less hiking to see buildings miles away.


I took this picture, because he looks strangely like Schnarf:


See?


This guy owned a fantastic Belgian chocolate shop. He made all his own truffles and stuff...


And this shop sold cookies. The mannequin in the window was great!



I did do some trekking out of the city to see the Basilique, (after having a Belgian waffle with melted dark chocolate). It was really grey, so the photos aren't too good, but this building was absolutely magnificent. I had to make do with taking photos from the outside only - there was a da Vinci exhibition inside so cameras were verboten, and in the church part there was a funeral. I don't think they would have appreciated me barging in to snap the architecture.



This, I found hilarious! A picture of the Mannekin Pis - do not pee in the garden...


By this time, my Eurostar train was about 2 hours from leaving and I still had to collect my bags from the hotel and make my way to the Midi, so I had to leave.

Brussels is a beautiful city, and I'd recommend it to everyone who travels to Europe.

Brussels - Part I

So, I decided to go to Brussels at the last minute. I was in Amsterdam and then Paris for work, and then got on a train on Friday for some chocolate, waffles and mussels. No, I didn't go entirely for good food, but I did partake in the eating of bad things and drinking of Belgian beer while I cleared my head for an entire 27 hours.

I spent most of Friday morning wandering around the Grand Place, people-watching and taking pictures.


I wandered up side alleys and different streets, and took a couple of photos on my way to the Manneken Pis.



Then I came across a busker who looked like Santa - he had a beautiful electro-acoustic and was singing John Denver, Johnny Cash, Creedence Clearwater Revival and others. He was fantastic and drew the biggest crowd than any other street entertainer I saw the whole time I was there.



I took a walk out to the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudule. It was quite a trek, but it was the most beautiful cathedral I've seen in a long time. I went down to the crypt to see what the original church was like, before looking around the rest of the building.





Then I headed through the Parc du Bruxelle over to the Palace de la Nation - it must be pretty important, because you're not allowed inside - there's a lot of guarded space between the road where tourists can view the building, and the entrance.


By this time I'd been walking for about 4 hours and had covered about 16 miles. I headed back in to the center where I found the St. Hubert shopping gallery and had a beer, before heading back to the hotel for a shower before finding somewhere for dinner.

Open Letter to Spring

Yo, dude, 'sup?

Where you at? It's coming toward the end of the financial year and there is no sign of you at all. Yeah, you sprouted a few daffodils and even a crocus here and there, but that's all I've seen of you since last year. Winter has been here long enough and he's outstayed his welcome BIG TIME. Wet-footprints-trailed-through-the-house-muddy-shoes-on-the-coffee-table-stinking-smell-of-damp kind of overstay. It's about time you moved back in and kicked this snotty, spiky little troll out. Like yesterday.

Thank you muchly,

Little Sausage

Shopping

Shopping is great. Not only do you get to buy things (!) but it's a great excuse to people-watch. I usually stop and take stock in a coffee shop whose windows face on to the street. Last Saturday I went shopping and all I wanted was a belt. I wandered in and out of many shops looking for just the right belt and as I was one shop away from giving up, I was stopped by a (really cute) guy who waved a leaflet at me, and asked me to attend some rap/hip-hop/RnB evening at the local pentecostal church. I said no, it's not really my thing, thank you very much, and explained how, even though I had been brought up as a Catholic, in a Catholic family, in a Catholic country, the faith I had as a child was lost when my father died. We chatted, outside on the high street, for what seemed like ages - it was about -2^oC with intermittent snow showers, my fingers felt as if they were about to drop off and he looked absolutely frozen and so I asked him if he would like a coffee at Starbucks to warm up a little. The smile he gave me then lit up his entire face and we sat, having coffee, for about 2 hours.

I don't really remember what we talked about, but I know that I was able to open up to this complete stranger more than I have ever opened up to anyone before, and when I left I felt as if a great weight had been lifted. Strange. As much as it pained me, I had to go before all the shops closed. We exchanged cards and he called me on Easter Sunday, inviting me out the following weekend. That's this weekend, as in, 3 days from now. And I'm stressing about what to wear. Lame.

The Bard of Downing Street

It seems there is a poet amongst them...

There is a hunt on for an elusive, Blairite poet who wrote this fabulous little ditty:

At Downing Street upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't Blair.
He wasn't Blair again today,
Oh how I wish he'd go away.

John Hutton was accused of writing the piece by his Shadow, Alan Duncan who said it could only have been one person". John Hutton rebuked the claim, saying that he would "write better poetry than that." I think John Hutton was right to deny that he had anything to do with the poem. If he had been feeling creative, the outcome would probably have been more like:


Oh, Mr Brown, no-one likes you!
(Unless you're Muslim, Chinese or Hindu).
Please disappear, without a trace
Before this country you utterly disgrace.

Why I hate the NHS

I know that there are people throughout the world are green with envy that the British Public has a National Health Service that is "free". "You mean you don't have to pay when you have to go to hospital?" No. "You don't need medical insurance? And how about co-payments?" No, theoretically we don't need medical insurance and no, no co-payments.

So, here's a bit of history: The NHS, unveiled by Aneurin Bevan in the summer of 1948 was, pretty much, what Labour had promised the Brits in their bid to oust Churchill's Conservative government. And it worked. Everything was absolutely free, until the NHS ran out of money three years later and people had to pay for prescriptions, and half the cost of any dental work and optical aids. As of April 1. this year, the prescription charge is £7.10 in England, compared to Scotland where it is £5 and Wales where it is free... this is the start of the disparity.

My neighbour is a lovely lady. About three years ago she started suffering from terrible, excruciating abdominal pains. Her GP sent her away with the advice that she should take paracetamol, and a week later the pain was so intense that she had to go to hospital. In the Emergency Department they did an x-ray and a colonoscopy which showed nothing. It was not until over a year later that she was finally diagnosed with a rare for of bowel cancer that grows on the outer wall of the bowel. Operating was not possible because the tumour was attached to major blood vessels, and after many months of chemo- and radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden in Fulham, (a specialist cancer hospital) it had gone. Tri-monthly checks for the last year or so have all been clear. Until last week. In the three months since her last appointment, the cancer is back, more aggressive than ever and is approximately three inches in diameter. And the first thing the hospital said to her? "Now we need to send off the paper work to see if your NHS Trust will fund your treatment." That's right... if our local NHS Trust decides that she is too old, (she's nearly 60, I think) or that it is not cost effective (because this is the second time she has had this cancer) or even because that particular trust has spent all of the money it had allocated to the treatment of cancer (because they obviously do not know how to spend money effectively) then she will probably die. This is after she has been paying in to the NHS for the last 43 years. It is emphatically NOT free. In fact, it is compulsory to pay for it, with no guarantee that you will be given medical help when you need it most. Had she paid that money in to a private medical insurance policy instead, there would be no question over her treatment.

My local NHS Trust has been terrible for as long as I can remember. In 1997 my father was admitted after being told he was riddled with incurable cancer. It had started in his kidneys and by the time he was diagnosed it was in his bowel, his lungs and had eaten through some of his ribs. He spent some time at home because he hated the hospital, and yet was refused an oxygen canister to take with him. I was sent away to boarding school so that I didn't have to see him so sick. My brothers, fortunately, were too young to remember. I was not allowed home on the exeats, and instead went to stay with my grandmother. My father just didn't want me to see him looking so sick. I remember how this big, strong man withered away to almost nothing, his arms and legs so thin and frail that he was unable to stand or hold himself up. In hospital he started to develop terrible bedsores which got infected. My mother spent every moment at the hospital, bathing him, turning him over, making sure his bed clothes were clean, ensuring that he took his medication and ate when he was able. All things that the hospital staff should have been doing, but weren't.

In September 1997, when my brother was old enough, he was sent to school with me. My father had developed a huge abscess, the size of about four golf balls, on his back. Whatever it was, meant that his left lung could not inflate, he was unable to lie on his back and he was in terrible pain. Tests were done, and it was discovered that he had contracted MRSA. This surprised no-one - the hospital was filthy, God only knows when the last time was that the floors had been mopped; my mother had to clean dried blood from the bed, left by a previous patient. She's sure she never once saw the medical staff washing their hands. On October 28, 2007, my father died in my mother's arms. It was the MRSA in the end, although had it been up to the cancer he may have only had another month.

My point is this: the NHS may look, to an outsider, a service that is so fantastic and should not be knocked. But I have experienced just how fatally flawed it is, and the damage that a badly run health service can do. Now, people are so desperate that they are paying for medical insurance on top of paying for the NHS - although it provides sub-standard health care, no tax payer can opt out of funding it, yet the Trusts are allowed to pick and choose who they treat.

It makes you proud to be British.

Hmmm...

How very interesting...

Darling, or Badger Face, as he is so lovingly called, has not only used his first ever budget to tell us that we can't drink, smoke or drive, but he is also screwing over the whiskey industry with no extra pennies going in to the Treasury purse. In fact, the tax is thought to to bring in £2.3bn over the next 2 years, the same as it did in the period 2006-7 (Official Budget Report, (which, just out of interest, is called "Stability and Opportunity". Ha! Ha!) page 187). I don't know about you, but this makes no sense to me. It obviously made no sense to the spokesman for the Treasury, either:

"We are dealing in billions here," he said. "Figures are being lost in the roundings. But we don't have anything more specific right now – these are all estimates."

(I would have liveblogged the Budget, but I knew it would be much better portrayed here and here.)

Alistair, dear, you fucked up the DWP, and then the DfT. What the heck do you know about anything monetary?

But, you know what pissed me off even more than the Budget itself? During Cameron's comeback when he stated that Labour have given Britain the legacy of having the highest tax burden in history, that dingleberry, Ed Balls, had the gaul to say "so what?" So what? I suppose, when you claim over £300,000 in allowances each year, it doesn't really matter.

The one where I seem to have clawed my way out...

Forgive me Internets, for I have sinned. It has been approximately 3 months since my last confession.

The thing about a journal, is that it should be your one outlet. Your vent. I seem to have been unable to do any venting at all recently. Things happen, and then more and more things happen, piling upon each other, until you end up unable to move, due to the enormity of all these 'things' resting precariously on your shoulders. Something has got to give. And it did. I'm just not sure what it was.

Anyhow, it seems as if I'm back.

Last weekend I took the dogs out and took some photos. The creatures are rather photogenic. I recently bought and installed a child stair gate for the living room doorway. The gate closes when the dogs are in there, (yes, they have access to the garden and yes they always have plenty of water) and voila! My mail isn't chewed to pieces! People don't run away from the house because HRH isn't sitting by the front door barking when the doorbell is rung! I can come in to the house and not get covered in dog hair!





I have started tutoring two kids on a Saturday. They are the children of two of my mother's old work colleagues, and both need help with their reading/writing and preparation for English GCSE. The youngest lad, Jon, I see for an hour at 9am. He is an absolute joy - so desperate to learn. He is two years away from his big public exams, and it seems we have plenty of time to bring him up to scratch, and then some. Philip is only 2 months away from the start of his exams. He is lazy. He's very bright, but this laxity that has been cultured by the education system. It is so disappointing. Both of these boys have been let down so fundamentally by their schools and, at times, it is excruciating to watch. Philip's English teacher at school sounds absolutely horrendous. The class is given past papers, to help them prepare for the exams, as homework. Sounds good, no? But what is the point of setting that work if, when only four of the class have taken the time to do it so, you just say, "ok, here is the model answer, now do it for homework again and I'll collect it when everyone has completed it"? I was absolutely horrified. We are working so hard, going through past papers and the poetry he needs to know for the exams, and it just seems to be completely undermined. Is it any wonder kids get so disillusioned with school and education that they are, quite literally, counting down the days until they can leave?

A very old family friend from Argentina (who currently lives in Atlanta) is coming to stay for a couple of days next week, so I have a lot of cleaning to do. A lot. The dogs are moulting something chronic, so I think it's time to fork out for a Dyson.

Once upon a time...

...there was a big, dark cloud. It was good at hiding, and so would only come out when the mood was particularly blue. It followed the blueness around for a while before it rained a little, and then disappeared. But one day, not long ago, the cloud got bigger and bigger and the mood bluer and bluer. It caused a thunderstorm every now and again, and each time the grey cloud got bigger and bigger and blacker and blacker until it completely blocked out all the sunshine for the little person just underneath it. And the rain came and there was no sun to dry it out and cast light; the life underneath the cloud is waterlogged and dark and wishing the cloud would move along on its way sometime soon.

So, I blew NaBloPoMo.

Really, really blew it. Thursday was my downfall. Work was pretty quiet in the morning/early afternoon and then just before I was going to leave, shit hit the fan and my 7.30am-6pm day was extended by an extra 4 and a half hours. I make that a 15 hour day and, trust me, it really felt like a 15 hour day. Friday was spent clearing up leftover crap (although not literally crap, that's how it felt) and I raced out of the door at 5.30pm with a splitting headache, amidst cries of "aren't you coming for a beer?" I forewent the beer and was home before 7 when I took the dogs out and then curled up in a very dark room and went to sleep.

On Saturday, I drove to Walthamstow. For those who don't know London, it has a post(zip) code of E17. That means, that it is east London, and pretty far out east London. I live in The South West, so getting to Walthamstow meant taking the M25 (nightmare) to junction 29 and then all these stupid little A roads that take you through roundabout city. I don't know what it is about roundabouts that the Brits love so much. You have huge ones connecting motorways with something like"Welcome to Essex!" written in pansies; you have the medium sized ones connecting A or large B roads which are covered in sign posts telling you just how very, very sharp this turn is, and you have mini ones, which look like someone has spilled a blob of white paint in the middle of a crossing. As if people are going to drive AROUND this blob of white paint. Ay, Dios mio. Anyhow, I drove to Walthamstow to pick up the latest member of the family:


His name is Sunny (no, I did not name him). He is an 8 month old Labrador Retriever with the most incredible green eyes. This picture is rather deceptive. Sunny has been spoiled rotten, and is ROTUND. His name should be Dyson, because he doesn't just eat, he inhales food. On Saturday night I put all 3 dogs' food down at the same time and Sunny, sneaky monster, decided he was going to try and eat both HRH's and Sam's food, before his own. HRH growled at him and he backed away, but Sam is such a pussy that when the baby pushed him out of the way, (which is not difficult - we're talking at least 30 kilos of puppy here) Sam just let him do it. Sunny needs to be physically restrained from eating Sam's food, and on Saturday I think that Sunny must have left some slobber in the bowl, because Sam just was not interested after that. Instead, I wound up feeding him raw chicken wings. On Sunday morning, Sunny was following me around, wagging his tail. I didn't have a clue what he was after - he'd already been out for a walk that morning, where he strained so much doing a poop that I thought he was going to give himself a hernia. When I went over to pick the poop up, I found the reason for such straining - at some stage in the last 3 days, he had managed to eat part of a leash. In the crap was a leather strap about 2cm wide and almost 15cm long. This dog will snarf down anything. ANYTHING. Look, you left your book on the floor for a second while you picked up your cup of coffee - let me eat it for you. And that sweater on the sofa with the arm dangling down? Let me eat that for you too. But he is a lovely dog and with some (a lot) of training, he will be even more so.

To top it all off, my brother made dinner on Sunday evening. That is twice in one week. I think there's something very, very wrong with him. But I'm not complaining.

So he did manage to get his *insert Borat voice here* SEXY TIME, after all

So, HRH is doing great. I will definitely post some photos and videos in the next few days. But we have had an issue, what with her being ON HEAT AND ALL. Very inconvenient (especially when you have a male dog you can't get done because his previous owners failed to tell you he has a heart murmur which means the vet doesn't want to knock him out which means that his testicles are staying firmly where they are) and a bitch whose tubes remain unblocked because the thought of putting her through another invasive surgery is inhumane.

We've been so careful with them. She's been on heat for about 10 days so far (I follow her around with a mop) but hadn't shown any signs of reception. Great! He would get too close and she would park her behind on the floor and growl at him. Good girl. He would then run away and whimper, turning back after about 3 feet with this lusty look in his glazed-over eyes, tongue hanging out and dripping drool on the carpet. This would happen again and again and again... until you shout at him to lie down and be quiet and he cries and cries and then literally drops to the floor. This cycle lasts for about 15 minutes and then starts again. It's like being in a muy loco time warp where you're on a loop.

So, it's ok when we're home - Sam tries to hump the Queen and the Queen retorts with "I'll bite your bloody balls off if you come near me again" using, what I'm sure is, canine mind powers - we can make sure that the humpage occurs not. After having part of her spine surgically removed, we were worried that it might not take the strain of having it doggie style (ooh, forgive me, I am SO crass). To keep her safe while we're at work, we shut him in the living room, where he has access to the garden via the dog flap, and her in the kitchen (where she can make a mess if she has to and it is easy to clean up). This may sound foul - in fact, it is rather disgusting - but needs must, and I do not have the time or the inclination watch her go through, and pay for, another £7k surgery. (And, FYI, she manages to hold in both the poops and the pees until someone gets home at 5pm).

Late yesterday afternoon, before I had left work, I got this email:

disaster!!‏
From:	Your mother (xxxxxxxxx@blueyonder.co.uk)
Sent:	13 November 2007 17:05:23
To:	Little Sausage (xxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com)

Just got back to find kitchen door open, dogs together,
HRH looking subdued and Sam very pleased with himself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11


Yep. Sam had opened the door to the living room and then scaled the half-door to the kitchen, done his business and was lying next to her. Fortunately there seemed to be no immediate damage - she was also fine this morning. We won't know for a while if he managed to cover her, or if he missed his target. From what the vet said, if she did conceive, she may be ok to carry the puppies. If she shows difficulties, there are get out clauses.

In the mean time, I pray that she is going to be able to carry the puppies to full term without any issues. Who needs a man when you can have a puppy?!

Today I am going to write a little about autism

It's a subject that really is quite an important subject to me - not because I am directly affected by it but, because I know people who are, I know how they struggle and I feel that there is too much ignorance, even now when the wealth of information is there for all to see. I am writing this post to hail those I know (and those I don't) who have to live with autism in one of its many forms, and who do not give up. I know four different families who all have an autistic child, and I thank heaven all the time that there are people like them on this earth.

The autistic spectrum is immense. A child may show 'autistic traits' such as communication and relationship issues, (often developing in to ADHD) through language impairments all the way to something like severe Asperger Syndrome. Living with a child with the mildest of these syndromes is difficult enough. Firstly, diagnoses are often made very late in a child's development. There is no cure (even with a disorder like ADHD where Ritalin is handed out like candy). It's not like you can give a child with autism a pill which will suddenly make them "normal". Children at the milder end of the spectrum, like those with ADHD are prescribed drugs which are known to de-humanize them, often causing terrible tics, psychosis, paranoia and in some cases, suicidal thoughts. Although the drug does quiesce the symptom (your 'unruly' child is put on a downer) for some children with ADHD, there are no such 'medical' treatments for children with more severe forms of Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Treatments are of the educational variety. It is very slow progress and, often enough, there is no visible progress at all. It is heartbreaking to watch the strain that some of my friends and their families are under. Relationships are pushed to critical capacities. There are never enough hours in the day to look after your autistic child. Everything takes longer than it would otherwise when you are trying to communicate with someone who does not know how to communicate with you. It's like me, in London, trying t communicate with someone who has been plucked out from their village made from mud huts in the Congo. The barriers to hurdle are numerous and, even with these, you are likely to be able to communicate better with this person from Africa than you are with a child with autism.

Don't get me wrong. There are some fantastic therapies out there. Things we take for granted, like simple thought processes, are often nigh on impossible, (yet are often achieved with a lot of therapy and even more hard work) and really should be given miracle status. But what I find most incredible, in all of the cases I have come across - whether personal or during my studies - is the strength of the parents. As far as I can tell, being a regular parent is stressful enough. But to have the extra difficulties of non-communication, severe violence, (because even kids - maybe that should read especially - kids can be violent) financial troubles, difficulties in social situations plus other worries about the future, must make life feel like wading through molasses; to be able to continue to exhibit such patience, the desire to keep going and this all-enveloping and totally unconditional love - in my book, that makes these people saints.

London did not burn down today

Just thought y'all would like to know.

Will DEFINITELY write a proper post tomorrow.

Well, well, well...

It seems that the weekend has already come to an abrupt end. I have lots to write about, but find myself with only 42 minutes until the end of today and way too much to do before tomorrow. I will definitely write a proper post then.

I have, however, managed to wear my new shoes all day - and they were just as comfortable when I took them off as they were when I tried them on in the shop.

This is LAME.

Tomorrow I will definitely post something worthwhile.

New shoes?

Yes! I got me some new shoes today. To celebrate what is (I hope) the end of terrible back pain and sciatica. I've been walking around in flats for too long now. The tendons in my legs have slackened. It all just feels so wrong! So, to train them back, (really just an excuse for some shoes) I have bought some not-so-highs. Purely for training purposes, you'll understand.

Humph

It seems everybody in the entire world (no, this is not an exaggeration) is either engaged or married. This is so depressing (although I am really happy for everyone who's hooking up. Really, I am).

New button

I have recently been thinking about just how strongly against the EU Constitution I really am. Why the bloody hell should some nitwit in Brussels dictate how our healthcare system works? Or how our justice system works? They shouldn't, that's the simple answer to the question. I have signed every possible petition I can find, calling for a referendum, and have now written to my MP. I may post the letter here at some stage, should he reply. In the mean time, any British readers who are AGAINST THE EU TREATY/CONSTITUTION, please see my new button below for loads of information. Then you'll know just how royally we are going to be screwed by Gordy and his minions.