It's that time of year again

Not May when I rant about communications, or November when I don't shut up, or even Christmas when I attempt to write individually to each of my friends and give up after the "Bs" in the address book and post a dreadful round robin on-line.

No, it's blasted Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which this year in the run up to, rather than actually in s*££ing Lent.

Of course both of these events are positive, inspiring, GOOD things. It's just that they are also hugely complex things.

There may not be such a thing as bad publicity, but there are plenty of examples of bad, and possibly even more difficult to deal with, mixed, awareness raising. At least I'm not alone in noticing this  in fact I can have fun grumbling and sniping and then doing something positive to get things to change with many friends

When it comes to Lent I am feeling more lonely. It's not as if I don't heartily agree with the bishops. It's not as if vile, unthinking critical crap on the subject like this or like this doesn't make me want to pull my hair out, it's just that I'm wary of that four letter "f" word FAST.

My friends in the eating disorders world have given me more examples than I can really cope with on the dangers of fasting and I have passed them on but I haven't yet found anyone, well, apart from one far too busy person, with whom to really discuss the matter. I CERTAINLY don't want to join the critics of the ideals behind End Hunger Fast or the Carbon Fast, or End Poverty Fast it's just that I think actually, my giving up meat for a month, or cheese for a week, or food for a day, is as likely to bring true awareness of, and help to, the genuinely poor in the world, as my pulling my hair out over those articles is likely to help those who self harm. While they would be a bad example to any vulnerable witnesses who decided to emulate me, neither of them are even going to give ME a clue about what it's really like to be poor, or mentally ill, day in day out for years.

So, I'm looking round for ideas on how to make the 40 days of Lent healthful, helpful and effective in the long term. So far, my only idea is to give out the Carbon Fast leaflets to the church's target audience, because they ARE a good idea, and it would be a terrible waste if they went into landfill on Easter Monday but to scrawl on every single one of them CARBON SLOW. Not very mature I know, but Lent hasn't even started yet so plenty of time to use it to grow up.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

For tomorrow is 1st December, Advent Sunday, bringing with it Christingle, Advent Carols, Advent Wreaths, Candles, Christmas Hope, Mince Pies, Mulled Wine, Parties, and above all the end of NaBloPoMo

A sense of self

I created "Marcella" as a semi-anonymous way of communicating. I still use her as such to comment on newspaper articles or NHS websites, although since her email was hacked she's less useful in those ways than she used to be.

I think I'm pretty good at separating her fiction from my reality, even if I did get an email addressed to her gently criticising me and asking her to get me to pull my finger out.

Whether I'll always be able to tell fact from fiction, keep my petty lies from spilling out, hold my head up high when walking through a little shower let alone a storm, who knows. If not, I hope my carers are as dedicated and knowledgeable as the staff shown in "Bedlam" and that at least someone on the ward likes the me I will have become.

A Clear Sense of Direction

On leaving the Maudsley Hospital on Friday I asked one of the staff for directions to Kent. "Kent as in the Bethlem?" she inquired. "And a bit further" was my vague reply.

It's a wonder that I got out of London, let alone into the Weald and my desired destination, but despite falling off the South Circular a couple of times, I did in the end.

It was hardly the fault of the member of staff. I should have given a clearer idea of where I was aiming for and asked someone who was prepared for the question.

When it comes to treatment and recovery in mental health issues that member of staff is one of the best people in the world to talk to, but still I wonder whether we're asking her the right questions and really have much of a clue where we are going.

Mealtime Conversation

At the conference on Friday one of the clips shown was of mealtime support - a how not to, and how to support someone with a meal. It was interesting, but I would have used more distraction. OK, I'd probably JUST have used distraction.

I reflected on this some time ago when we spent some time with my mother-in-law. She makes a lot of small talk, spends a lot of time discussing the food, judging it, even occasionally talking TO it. It took some getting used to after our "don't mention the war" meals at home. But, unlike my own dear mother whose mealtime conversations can veer towards diets and how much weight so and so has gained/lost, there wasn't anything wrong with any of her talk.

Maybe I'm too avoidant, but we've used quite a bit of distraction and I'm particularly grateful to Charles Collingwood whose portrayal of Brian in The Archers has provided distraction to our family in difficult times for decades (my paranoid elderly aunt Marcella was much easier to deal with when obsessed about his affair with Caroline than with the imaginary affairs of real people).

I'm resolved to broaden the mealtime conversation but will still avoid weight and shape comments, and anything to do with Helen Archer.

Slough

Klara the car does strange things that Fleur never thought of. One of these is to beep when she's running out of petrol. Fleur used just to stop. It's probably an advantage but it is rather worrying. What if that beep means she's about to run out NOW?

So when she beeped on the motorway I decided it wouldn't be safe to wait 23 miles until the next service station and came off at the next junction and ventured into Slough to find a garage. I did eventually find one and it may have taken less petrol to do so than continuing on the 23 miles, but John Betjeman had a point about Slough.

Writers I have known

I first met (to my knowledge anyway) a writer when I was nearly 4 and moved next door but one to "a friendly witch", a children's author some of whose books, I'm pleased to note, are still available  
maybe even from places where they pay their taxes. 

Not all of her books were published. She REALLY wanted to publish a book on evolution with a biblical slant. No one would publish it. The religious publishers didn't like the evolution bit. Scientific publishers didn't want God. No one wanted her lovely whimsical coloured drawings because they were too expensive to reproduce.

Nowadays friends who write books have better access to self-publishing, wizzy graphics, on line media. I think Fy the friendly witch, despite decorating her 1960s house with furnishing from the Victorian era would have embraced the new technologies. Whether she could have got AppleiBooks to work from a Windows machine is another matter.

Home

50 years ago my parents put a deposit down on this house and my future as a Maid of Kent was mapped out. It wasn't some romantic dream on their parts - they had a young family and a limited budget and this was the kind of house that thousands of young families in the 1960s moved into.

We moved out of the village a few years later into the countryside leaving me, a shy girl, even more isolated and unsure as to whether I was from the village or not. I was never local enough to drink in either the White or the Black Horse, or posh enough to drink at the Three Chimneys. I went to school in the nearby town and my friendship group was largely based there, but I retained a small but very close group of friends (some of whom travelled in to town with me for school) at the Church.

I moved away from the village over 30 years ago but despite an occasional spell of boredom or fury haven't moved away from the Church as a whole. 

I went to the village church with my parents today. Most of the congregation were new to me, some were the same people who had been there when I first went to Sunday School. I was made to feel welcome but as a guest rather than one of the regulars, which was fine. However when the stand-in-vicar asked me at the end "and where are you from?" there was only one answer. HERE

Family Based Recuperation

I am enjoying some Family Based Recuperation with my parents and their still rather leisurely internet connection after a fantastic but tiring conference at The Maudsley yesterday. I'm shattered, and unlike the marvellous Miranda I didn't have to give blood.

We're Off To See

not the Wizard of Oz but one of the wizards of the genome, in his fantastical Biomedical Research Centre - really looking forward to learning more about what is going to happen to the samples collected for Charlotte's Helix

Eating Disorders Advocates tell you to how to lose ten pounds before Christmas

you could lose more if you can afford it, and when you've done it they'll be after your blood....

one of the best written blogs out there

One More Mum

Art for Art's Sake?

There has been a lot of music in our household over the last couple of days, much of it coming from my husband's "office" and much of it being very moving but somewhat over my head.

We've also seen a lot of Shakespeare all in one go, and in a more light-hearted moment, enjoyed some folk-rock

The rockers are ageing now, but still doing new work along with the old favourites. Much of the new work is based around the fiction of another family favourite, and nothing wrong with that. Fan-tribute music can be as serious as John Tavener's last work, or a bit of fun, but art inspiring art is as old as art itself.

Here is one of my favourites. I understand it better than the Tavener and know the stories better than the Discworld ones, and I am somewhat biassed when it comes to the lead singer.

What, where, when?

Any Dream Will Do?

I had the enormous pleasure last week of attending Messy Church with my god-children (a cue for a forest of posts about family and attitudes of the Church and the World to the same, but Charlotte has done a much better one) last week.

The theme was Joseph, and the activities included making a bubble picture and sticking on a drawing of your dreams.

I didn't do one myself, partly because I was there to "supervise" 7 year old A and 9 year old E (A needs very little supervision and E could run the place, but that's the rules) and partly because I was ashamed of my dreams. Most of the children were a bit embarrassed about their dreams too. "It's too weird" said one, and "it's silly" another. But they were persuaded that their dreams were no weirder than Joseph's and his friends' so they drew giant apples or snails eating their feet and stuck them on to the pink and blue clouds that they had made by blowing into a mixture of paint and washing up liquid, and then left my eldest god-daughter to clear up when they went on to the next activity. I went on to the next activity too, but this did inspire me to think of my dreams.

Lately they have ALL been about NHS computer systems. I've dreamed of filing documents, and furniture, and god-children. I've dreamed of coding illnesses and meals and paintings and cats. I've woken up relieved that I didn't have to find the best way to connect a computer to a hairdryer, and disappointed that I hadn't found the solution to reporting on the flu campaign. None of this is surprising. We've had a new computer system installed at work and it has been a huge learning curve for us all. No need to call Sigmund Freud for an analysis. On the other hand I'm not the only person who's ever dreamed about NHS computer systems and despite what the natural critics of the project would have us believe, the dreams were dreamed for idealistic AND evidence based reasons and have brought good as well as frustration

An ABC of eating disorders

A is for

They're watching you....

According to the scary links on Facebook (hmmm, Facebook, is that a site dedicated to my security and privacy?) Google are reading every one of my emails in order to try to sell me things. If so I hope they do better than Amazon who suggested, AGAIN, that this is what I might like for Christmas, and that both companies pay their due taxes.

Thou shalt not covet

But some things are too irresistible.

There's one of these, in lilac, near work. I can't decide whether the lilac or the purple is best but I can find a picture of the purple so here it is. Isn't it lovely?

Local details

More details

Still Antarctic ones, so cold. I'll find the pictures of British wildlife next, a lot less likely to make you feel cold just looking at them.