Do I self-classify, or do others, sometimes more importantly, label me ?

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24 November

@theagentapsley I struggle with the idea of man-flu. There are the genuinely ill, the walking wounded (as I currently am) and drama queens.
— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) November 23, 2012

@sarahparkin1 That may be true, but who can rightly allocate anyone else to any such category ? And is that the root of -isms... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 23, 2012

@theagentapsley surely more true of some -isms than others? I trust people to self-classify as a rule- though maybe not the drama queens.
— Sarah Parkin (@SarahParkin1) November 24, 2012

So, taking up that idea of self-classification, what about where someone else doesn't let me be what I choose or am ? :

1. I am descended from a couple who immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago at a time when the UK encouraged them to come here (albeit to drive buses or collect fares on them), but they were my grandparents, my parents were born here, and so was I. Yet those who stir up hatred and talk about 'repatriation' try to deny me two things: being - whatever that is - as British as they are, and relatedly the fact that this is my home country and culture, too.

2. I have a mental-health condition. Let's say that it's unipolar depression, and so I am prone to my mood going low, or that I have other conditions that fluctuate and which, when they are at their worst, mean that, if I can function at all, I can barely do so. If I have, before I learnt by experience, shared that I have such a condition, people may not actually say 'But there's nothing wrong with you', but you can see it in their face, in their eyes, because they see you when you are functioning. Worse, they are people with power to see you when you cannot function, and who think that you aren't trying, are pretending. And the same can be the experience of those with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), who can be taken for being drunk (so hurtfully) when there is lack of balance or control.

3. I identify as being female, and dress accordingly, but do not want to change my physical gender. Often enough, without reference to me, I'd be called a man in a dress, and people would make all sorts of assumptions.

4. In my local supermarket, in the throng around the reduced items, a female member of staff is talking loudly to her colleagues, saying 'All men always...'. By being a man, I am included in her extreme generalization, because:

All men always do X
I am a man

Therefore I always do X


And that is the pattern for much of this - lumping people into together because of one characteristic that they may (or are assumed) to share, and ascribing to them all (or most of them) some behaviour or other characteristic, ignoring who they are, or what they have to say about it: all benefit claimants are scroungers, for example...


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Thumbnails and icons - the language of crap ?

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23 November

If you know anyone in the Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox traditions, and see their saints around the home in places that mean something to them, you might find it hard to relate those portable gilt pictures to the images on your desktop (so called, although it will often enough be the screen of a laptop, and, unlike any but the most exceptionally busy tops of desks, rarely seen), which link to My documents, Internet Explorer, or the Recycle bin (where there is little evidence of recycling - you can't even open the items in it without 'restoring' them, and who ever did more than take something out of a bin, not restore it?).

Now, I'll grant you that that rather uneasy word 'iconoclastic' has been with us in this world a very long time, but we never use it in its original sense, which is more akin to Cromwell's forces and the literal acts of de-facing, but more as a semi-Byronesque description of rocking the boat in a big way. Still, little explanation why these desktop images should be icons, any more than Madonna or Cher being 'a gay icon', or James Dean or Marilyn Monroe screen ones. (As I revise this, I find that my mind has done work for me, by bringing in what many an icon embraces - the Madonna and Child - by implication.)

Little explanation, unless you believe that, when terms were conceived for these purposes, the originators were laughing up their sleeves at the idea of everyone in the future talking about which version they were running. Just as if someone, in an alternative world, would be being urged not to click on an icon (or thumbnail), but, say, to touch a pussy, with different cats denoting what the swirly 'e' of Explorer or that stylized folder for documents (for some reason lying on its back) represent.

Maybe that fantasy's not true to whatever happened with these names, and I do quite like the word 'browser' (which people, though, little use), but what about these Chinese take-aways called things like Jade Gate, which I am led to believe directly translate to depicting the vagina ? Is that a big joke at everyone's expense ? And so, finally, to that Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch, with made up names for Thai food that sound like 'cock' and 'dick', and also the scene in Alas Smith and Jones where an approximation of the Javanese Gamelan is being played by our two: in one of the common bars' rests that are a feature of such music, Mel turns to Griff and simply says 'Is it me, or is this just crap ?', and then they carry on playing.


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Not mastering The Master

This is a 'leave early' response (itself a response) to The Master (2012)

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21 November

* Contains spoilers *

This is a 'leave early' response (itself a response) to The Master (2012)

Other than Melancholia (2011), I can only think of anything at the film festival in September that impressed me so negatively that it was 'a walker'.

To-day, to my unexpected surprise, it was The Master (2012), because I had no notion that I would not be there for the full trip. But I can concur with the person (whom I would credit, if I could recall who it was) who recently (courageously?) said that Brando in the trio of films about The Godfather (1972) gave a terrible performance, because who wants to hear someone mumbling.

Much in the same way, I was, by fifteen minutes in, totally antipathetic to hearing Joaquin Phoenix (Freddie Quell) talking out of the corner of his mouth*, and so rendering parts of the script unintelligible, not least with an already difficult accent. Not, in itself, maybe quite enough to ditch a film, but :

The depiction of servicemen with 'shattered nerves' was so one dimensional that this film, unaided, could put back the average audience's appreciation of the issues of mental ill-health by decades: the painful scene with the Rohrschach test, the travesty of the scene in the photography concession of a store, even the very early sexual exploits with the sand-woman on the beach as merry South Pacific (1958) / On the Town (1949) naval ratings career and cavort on the beach in their white caps

For me, far rather watch, again, Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), or even, flawed though it is for its concept of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), As Good as it Gets (1997). No, The Master may not have the job of convincingly depicting, as such, the reality of mental-health conditions, but it does not even come close to a plausible backdrop to its main action with this !

But I do wonder this: what could David Byrne have done with this, not just with Phoenix's role, but with directing the whole thing...


End-notes

* For the record, the left-hand corner.


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The what station ?!

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21 November

How I loathe, detest, and don't even like this relatively recent import from US English : 'an old warehouse opposite the train station'.

Listen carefully to Woody Allen films from the 1970s, and characters talk about 'the train station'. However, then it was not British English (and I'll fight for it never to be), but the station was just 'the station' :

Any other station, such as the bus station, police station, or fire station, needed qualifying, but we had (anyway) the word 'railway', if there were any doubt...

Or does anyone think that we should go further, and start using 'railroad', and other such terms from the States ?


As gratuitously added to www.takeonecff.com (TAKE ONE's web-site) - more of the same at What do we need 'for free' for?


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Assisted suicide : Writer's Rest meets Unofficial Cambridge Film Festival

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21 November

Brain-controlled robot interface. Look at something, robot knows what you want. tinyurl.com/clznfxk
— Lindsay Edmunds (@EdmundsLE) November 20, 2012

@edmundsle I'll take a peek later - but I'm guessing : is it like speech recognition, in that the robot only gets any good through training?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

@theagentapsley IT is an EEG controlled interface, which is brain waves. HOW it happens I do not know.
— Lindsay Edmunds (@EdmundsLE) November 20, 2012

@edmundsle Suicide by proxy: I associate a thought with a knife lunged at me. If I later cannot do this myself... © Belston Night Works 2012
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

@theagentapsley Now that is a wild idea. Thoughts have always been powerful, advances in AI are on way to making them concretely powerful.
— Lindsay Edmunds (@EdmundsLE) November 20, 2012

@edmundsle Yes, wild (and kind of repellent, unsure why), but I hope that you liked it: to me obviouswhich is why X's mind doesn't map Y's
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

Short story now Work in Progress (no Exagmination or Incamination involved)...


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WIN SIGNED COPIES OF TULISA'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY (thanks to the generosity of Huffington Post)

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20 November

Huffington Post is good to us:

It knows that people run raffles (e.g. proceeds to pay for services at their local hospital) at Christmas Bazaars, and raffles need top prizes to catch the eye and ease the pocket open (e.g. £100 John Lewis advert, I mean voucher).

But they also need little stocking-filler-like items - and this is where the Post's priceless geneorosity (?) comes in, providing the opportunity to secure a celebrity book to be 23rd prize...


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Video: Courteney Cox is bikini fabulous at 48 (according to AOL®)

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20 November

Do we, at last, see some variation in this twaddle about '[insert woman's name]'s bikini body' ?

Not what (semi-mockingly, as I recall) Fowler - in Modern English Usage (or was it The King's English?) - called elegant variation (because we might have our own go at something that actually works now...), but variation nonetheless :

* Fabulous in bikini - Courteney Cox at 48

* 48 years of Courteney Cox, and still fabulous in a bikini

* That bikini looks fabulous worn by 48-year-old Courteney Cox


etc., etc.


PS Other than Kinnock stumbling at the seaside, or Daniel Craig on the beach when he first became Bond, what other men at the seashore have been given any significant report and images circulated and perpetuated...?


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Barbara - in two Tweets, and a bit of bloggin'

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20 November

* Contains spoilers *

@picturehouses Dunno about Barbara - it's recommended if you liked The Lives of Others, but it - Barbara herself apart - doesn't go beyond.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

Barbara - does the film portray the same ruthless, but largely inept, Stasi that The Lives of Others did, basically benign because bungling?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

To my mind, if you've seen Others (2006)*, viewing Barbara is inextricably linked with that experience, although I would, in no way, want to underplay the fact that Nina Hoss plays the title role brilliantly, and that this fact alone serves to distinguish Barbara from the earlier film** (together with the skill and genuineness that Ronald Zehrfeld brings to playing the co-starring part of André).


To keep, for a moment, on this bungling Stasi idea, a few observations (in no particular order) :

* Barbara disappears off on the train and thence to a lakeside restaurant to get cash left for her by her lover in West Germany*** (somehow she knows that it is there, which is never - fair enough - explained)

* She does all this (and stashes the money where, I think, he has suggested) without any more than her hours-long absence being detected

* However, the Stasi seem powerless / unwilling to punish her for her more or less obvious disobedience / suspicious behaviour (even at this stage : Barbara never presents, from the first shot, as someone who will tow the line), except by the humiliation of trashing her flat when looking it over

* Despite these disruptive looks-around her accommodation, they later fail to find the cash at the time when it is hanging from a thread down the flue of her stove

* They humiliate her, at the same time, by intimate strip-searches, but to no avail, as - whatever they think that they are looking for (i.e. they do not question her in any meaningful way, let alone interrogate her) - they never find anything (if I kept looking, and not discovering, when Barbara behaves as she does, I cannot imagine saying Ho hum!)

* She sneaks away and, seemingly undetected, spends (part of) the night with her lover - I recall no visit, no sanctions


Do I need to go on, to suggest that these Stasi agents are not the brightest matches in the box? Fine for a talented and compassionate, as well as highly intelligent, doctor to outwit them, but I got the impression that Minnie Mouse could have, too...

Barbara is no Minnie at all - she is hard to get to know, easier to like, and that is the joy of the film, and of seeing André interested in (and trying to soften) her supiciousness (which is her protective cloak) and her.

That part of the film is perfectly fine, but it is the business with the rude mechanicals that doesn't convince me, and makes the film overall the weaker.


Apologies for a bit of a rushed account of this, which (unless it is something that merits no polishing) may get it later...

Actually, what it's going to get is this Twitter exchange :

'Barbara' a muted mystery timepiece swept international film festival circuit, praised for its take on East German life dw.de/p/179bm
— German Culture (@GermanKultur) December 27, 2012

@germankultur Fine, but a documentary, with re-enactments, could do that, and that isn't what makes a feature film, I believe.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2012

@theagentapsley Have seen it and must admit, having experience of the country at the time, thought it summed up the emotional conflict.
— German Culture (@GermanKultur) December 27, 2012

@germankultur It's not an inherent criticism that a film depends on one character, but I felt that this one did too much (and inept Stasi).
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2012

End-notes

* IMDb suggests that there is a The Lives of Others (2013).

** Which is not to criticize Ulrich Mühe, but rather the limitations of his part, or Martina Gedeck, for whom, from Atomized (2000) I have a soft spot / a lot of time for her acting.

*** BRD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which we called FRG = Federal Republic of Germany.


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Faulks, Fort Knox and fingers

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19 November

When the cover, for some reason, says Writing as Ian Fleming, does that say anything at all?

Is Sebastian thereby licensed* to write, or is it mediumship - transcribing the beyond-the-grave Bond of this so-called franchise**'s originator ?

And what, then, does the infamous 'statement' say, under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, on the imprint-page ?

The rights of Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming, to be identified as the author of this work have been / are hereby asserted under the [... CDA 1988 ...] ?


Aldous Huxley would never have allowed being dead to prevent continued authorship, as is attested by the account of A message from Aldous Huxley, deceased, and we can expect little else from the man behind Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (Fleming, that is, not Faulks)...

And this would have gone on to talk a bit about Auric Goldfinger, but, just now, it doesn't !



End-notes

* Or, as modern illiteracy has it, 'licenced'.

** In what sense of the term are films to do with Bond, Bourne or - for all that I know - Bono (Sonny or U2's own Paul Hewson) linked to someone granting a franchise in the way that Spar (or sometimes Costa) licenses the franchise-holder (or franchisee) to trade under that name and sell branded goods, or Rolls Royce authorizes a dealership to sell (and service) its vehicles ?


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Couches aren't just for potatoes...

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19 November

I'm sure that I heard the first reference to a couch potato on British t.v. thanks to Clive James, and I'm also sure that the word 'potato' is utterly gratuitous in that phrase - it might as well have been couch wiener, couch tomato or couch ocelot for all the seeming relevance that potato has...

Really glad we bought the cat that scratching post. It's something nice for him to look at while he digs his claws into my fucking sofa.
— Chris (@ChribHibble) November 18, 2012

@chribhibble D'you still like fucking on the sofa, then (given the choice not to)? Probably what the cat's trying to say offends him !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 18, 2012

@theagentapsley Ha! You might be right.
— Chris (@ChribHibble) November 18, 2012

@chribhibble Gotcha is the word, I think !:)
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 18, 2012

Which proves that Donald Sutherland (and Fellini) knew more about Casanova than we suspected...

(Incidentally, how did we end up with Casanova (2005) twice - was it 190 years since his last conquest or summat ?)


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Svetlana steals the show

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18 November

Lovely and legendary artist Svetlana Baibekova from St Petersburg will have a solo show this December at The Tavern Gallery, Meldreth


Living in Cambridge and a member of Cambridge Drawing Society, Svetlana has the distinction of having one of her fish paintings (shown here) being admired so much that a young man stole it from one of the society's exhibitions in The Guildhall in 2009 to give to his girlfriend (as reported by Raymond Brown of Cambridge News, and on Anglia News)

After a very successful joint show held at Michaelhouse in Cambridge this autumn, and Burnished Burgundy, a recent solo display in Ely, as well as exhibiting previously in several venues in Cambridge, Edinburgh, London and her native Russia, Svetlana offers this change to become familiar with and immerse onself in the captivating universes that are her painted work

The exhibition will be open between 12.00 and 5.00 every day from Friday 7 December until Sunday 16 December, with a private viewing on the evening of Thursday 6 December from 7.00 till 9.30

The Tavern Gallery, so called because it occupies the premises of the former Railway Tavern in Meldreth, is easily accessible by transport from Cambridge or from Royston (and beyond), because its station is on the King's Cross to Cambridge line, and the gallery is a few hundred yards away from where one alights


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This is Leicestershire - where comments cannot easily be added...

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18 November

Article from Nicky Morgan MP @nickymorgan01 about the need to improve mental health services ow.ly/fnxC5
— YoungMinds (@YoungMindsUK) November 18, 2012

Comment on : The report provides food for thought for all of us who want to see the best possible treatment, with in-patient units offering the most therapeutic environments


Because I can, I am adding my comment here :


I can say, from experience, that psychiatric units have provided a poor therapeutic setting for at least 15 years, during which nothing much has changed, despite :


1. Initiatives such as Mind's Star Wards

2. The merger of the Mental Health Act Commission with the Healthcare Commission (and a third commission, whose name escapes me) to create CQC, or the Care Quality Commission

3. Much public and parliamentary rhetoric

4. The (patchy and very late) introduction of services for crisis resolution and home treatment, as well as some services for early intervention

5. Any money added to - rather than cut from - spending on mental-health services


What we need is services, i.e. for someone to do something that helps those who are experiencing mental distress. That is therapeutic, whereas these (all too common) experiences are not :


a. Being told that the doctor wants to see you this morning, and waiting in for something that never happens ('Oh, Doctor Jones had people to see at the out-patients' clinic and couldn't get away after all'), rather than being able to go to the cafe or for a walk

b. Coupled with that, misinformation, doublespeak, denial about what someone else definitely said ('Oh, Richard wouldn't have said that', when Richard did), confusion ('Who told you that?', when it was someone who had never been on duty before and who didn't give his or her name)

c. Having no one listen when you report unpleasant side-effects such as constipation, being unable to sleep at night, awkward limb movements, or painful uncontrollable muscle spasms ('Welcome to the world of anti-psychotics such as haloperidol, designed to make you acceptable to the family, friends, neighbours and the requirements of "society in general" who may have had you sectioned or otherwise persuaded into being admitted to become transformed into whatthey approve of !')

d. Likewise with any existing physical-health condition, or a physical complaint that you may develop - these experiences get written off ('The side-effects are worth the therapeutic benefit') or dismissed ('The medication won't do that', even if you later get hold of a patient information leaflet and find it listed') by the doctor, and who are the multi-disciplinary team to challenge him or her (as with any doctor)... ?


Therapeutic environments ? Well, no !



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Before the Fall

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17 November

Myth, legend, symbol or allegory, we will generally be familiar with The Garden of Eden and what happens there.

Interesting enough, and, for some, the origins of a theology of original sin, but that begs a bigger question:


What was the nature of Adam and Eve before any of it happened?


My starting-point for asking (although there is almost certainly, as part of the theology of sin, a whole doctrine of our unfallen state) is that few, Pallas Athene and maybe Benjamin Button apart, come into existence as fully formed adults - their nakedness adverts to a state before clothes or fig-leaves, but also to the fact that (whether or not they have had sex) they did not come into being as a result of sex.

There are those who like to ask how incest was unavoidable, if their offspring were to procreate, but a better question is who they were, what they knew, and how they viewed their world. Was who they were - as well as what they knew - changed in the instant of eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Snow White (the pole to The Wicked Queen) only needs one bite of the Queen's poisoned apple; Neo just takes the red pill to see the mirror ripple and his arm silver; Alice follows the instructions (in the same Wonderland that Neo's pill keeps him in) and grows and shrinks. But a few examples of how a moment's ingestion makes a world of difference...

What would it be like not to know good and evil? We think of children (some of us think of the overturned legal principle of Doli incapax), we think of angels, and, though we were once children (and some feel closer to that than others do), and cannot imagine much more than the appearance of angels (except when Frank Capra and Luc Besson do it for us), none of this seems like the possibly timeless state that our pair was in.

Maybe Milton helps us 'flesh out' that notion of a state of being before culpability, or maybe our guiltiness, our sense of responsibility, failure and despair shuts out that possibility of actively identifying or imagining anything other than this - at best, maybe, the anthropologists of old, talking about tribes in a state of nature, wanted to read into them some sort of innocence or unknowingness that was never there...


I do not know, but I think, reminded as I am of Paradise Lost yet again, I shall go back to John Milton, and try to read a book on each day of Christmas.



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Scorsese directed, not dissected

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17 November

on his bday, a thought onScorsese: he's unique yet NYNY is like Cukor,TaxiD is like Wenders,RagingB is like Welles,Mean Sts is like Pasolini
— mark cousins (@markcousinsfilm) November 17, 2012

@markcousinsfilm And After Hours is like Kafka meets Woody Allen...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 17, 2012

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Bony and Rusty

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16 November

* Contains spoilers *

I cannot, try to think of it kindly as I may (now that I have seen the film), believe that the title of Rust and Bone (2012) was the best that anyone had the wits to come up with from the original French title, De rouille et d'os, itself a shortening of Un goût de rouille et d'os, which is what the film credits as the title of the book.

That said, although Craig Davidson may have written originally in French (since he is Canadian), perhaps the title is from the English after all... At any rate, it is that of a collection of short stories, seemingly brought out to tie in with the film, although information seems a little hard to come by. (In French editions, there appears to be one in May with the full title, which names Anne Wicke alongside Davidson, and then one with the abbreviated title in July and no mention of her.)

The title isn't a massive - or any? - reason to be put off the film, but it is - as Ali is - a bit brusque (and does, say, as with The Woman in the Fifth, set up certain expectations): what about, rather than suggesting Monte Carlo or Bust! or Steptoe and Son, Of bone and of rust?

There are those who would criticize Untouchable (2012) (Intouchable) for being 'a buddy movie' between unlikely bedfellows, and find cliché in it - for all that Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) accepts Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) for who she is, he still tells her, on first meeting, that she is dressed like a whore, unthinkingly says to her (as he says to everyone) 'Ça va?' (although he knows that she has lost her legs, because he saw it on the news), and treats her - although she is, as the phrase has it, all thumbs - as though being an amputee makes her incapable of making him a coffee. All this is the territory of Driss with Philippe, who, though having arms and legs, cannot use them. End of polemic (sort of)...


With this film (perhaps because I learnt that the origins are in stories, but I thought this at the time), I find myself thinking that there is bittiness about it: there could be one story about a boy and playing with the dogs kept for breeders; there could be another about a woman who enters 'the man's world' of hustling bids for illegal fights (used, in the film, to give a moment of hutzpah and light relief), partly because she gets a thrill from seeing the man with whom she sleeps risk getting beaten up; a third about the antics of a man paid by managers of stores to instal cameras to catch out their staff.

Now, I'm not saying that it was put together that way, but where does this film really cohere in any better way than Driss becoming the best chum to Philippe that he has ever had and vice versa? It is, apart from the gender meaning that Ali and Stéphanie can have sex, not really much of a love story - Ali's dissatisfaction about how his son has been treated has taken him to be with his sister, whom he has not seen for five years, and away from his son's mother, and the business with the cameras gets her fired and him off the scene. (Off the scene, but not - one notcies - around to Stéphanie's flat.)

Both films sort of come together at the end, though with less extensive need for trickery to give Cotillard stumps, when one admits to valuing the other (which Ali had not done, when he went off to Strasbourg - or wherever it is), but plenty of things rang false in the meantime :

* A patient who had had her legs amputated being left to wake up alone and find out what had happened to her;

* She would once, and only on impulse, try to grab a scalpel in despair;

* When, with her sister, she thins out clothes that she thinks that she no longer needs, she would not have been told already what prosthetics could do for her (which information, at the point of her despair, would have lessened it, if not the understandable tendency to depression); and

* Cotillard is not so much left unmade-up, as made down, so that, later, with make-up and her killer smile she can shine the triumph of her process.


And now to a Tweet, relating to Schoenaerts :

For those who saw Bullhead (2011), I think that there will be inevitable comparisons - beyond the male lead - between Rust and Bone and it.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 15, 2012

Nothing wrong with that, except - they used to call it typecasting - that he seems drawn to the same type of character, only doing a lot more here, because the script permitted it. (Here is my review of Bullhead, for those interested.)


In that connection of boxing, body-building and fighting, this is an interesting insight into Davidson from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Davidson :

Davidson also released a novel in 2007 named The Fighter. During the course of his research of the novel, Davidson went on a 16 week steroid cycle. To promote the release of the novel, Davidson participated in a fully sanctioned boxing match against Toronto poet Michael Knox at Florida Jack's Boxing Gym. Davidson was subsequently defeated in the match.


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Mental ill-health is exactly like a broken leg !

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2 November

If you've had chicken-pox, can you remember what it is like ? Or something else that you can compare with, say, having a bad dose of the flu ?

Does it make sense to compare one illness with another, so why is it a truism that depression isn't like a broken leg, because people can't see it ?

If you had appendicitis and had to have your redundant works removed, it's true that people wouldn't claim that you were shamming and just had to buck your ideas up, since you'd been admitted to hospital and they can credit that you have had surgery. Or wouldn't they ? Maybe they had ideas about how quickly you should be recovered, and didn't value how you or your medical advisers said that you should be acting and what you could or could not do and when?

So is a broken leg just a different case altogether from clinical depression, just because whatever the modern equivalent of a plaster-cast is on your leg and can be seen ? That as against feeling no value or warmth in the world, that you are worthless, and that there is nothing to live for.

Yes, we can see that your leg isn't (fully) functional, that you are using a crutch, but some officious, judgement-making person will - sooner or later - enquire how you came to break it : woe betide you, in the sympathy stakes, if it was on a skiing-trip, because you've clearly - the judgement goes - got too much money, and got what you deserved by doing something dangerous. (Forget the circularity that thinks what happened is proof that skiing is inherently dangerous, rather than any statistics as to how many broken legs per 1,000 novices.)

Because, with health, we all Get what we deserved - not quite, any longer (more often than not), in the This is God's punishment sort of way, but because (call it karma or come-uppance) we superstitiously and almost subconsciously believe that Things happen for a reason : whole films have been based on the premise, let alone novels or plays, or bigoted newspaper-columns.


Taking this back to the question broken leg versus clinical depression:


1. Assertion : people can see a broken leg

Well, when you've first fallen, or whatever happened, you might suspect a broken leg when there isn't one, or be surprised to be told that it is broken - it's a medic telling you whether it's broken or not that clinches it.

Same with depression. Someone who is depressed can quite typically, if it's never happened before (they've had glum days, as we all have, but nothing like this, this absence of feeling), not know that it is depression either. Maybe just been dragging oneself into work, but feeling really cold and isolated inside, and starting to drink to cope with it.

2. Assertion : because people can see a broken leg...

I have no idea what it is like to have a broken leg - the pain, the immobility, the disablement, etc. Sure, I know what a shooting pain in my back feels like, if I've put it out, but does anyone else who isn't a back-sufferer (albeit a part-time one) have any notion?

I have dropped descriptions above of what clinical depression is like : the sense of feeling an outsider to one's own life, of looking on one's family, responsibilities and hobbies and not caring about them or being able to derive any pleasure from thinking about them, of - depending on how it catches one - sleeping for England, or being so anxious and screwed up that sleep will not easily come.

These feeling, sensations, hurts, as with the other person who once broke a leg or once had or does have a bad back, will only mean much to anyone who has experienced them.


3. Assertion : because they can see a broken leg, they know what it's like

Really? If you've never had to use a crutch or a pair of them, you have a perfect conception of what becomes difficult, painful or impossible? I don't think so, and no more do I think so with depression.

Maybe not the person on crutches, or the person going through the hell of nothing mattering and everything viscerally feeling like rubbish, but someone who's been through that can tell you, the observer, what it's really like. If, as the observer, you love that person, maybe, with imagination, compassion and a lot of thinking yourself into someone else's shoes, you can understand what it's like:

Not ask the person with a broken leg to do something that is going to hurt a lot, or expect the person who is depressed to be as chatty as you are and be pleased to be alive, but be with that person where he or she is, not where we think that he or she ought to be.

That is caring in its full sense, not the cheapened one that wants to feel better about someone else (whatever he cost to him or her), and that is what it really means, using that other much misused word, to be concerned about him or her : to put those persons' feelings, needs and interests first, whether they cannot bend to reach something, or cannot get out of bed to-day to save their life.


Broken leg = visible suffering? No, I don't think so.


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Negativizing the non-existent

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1 November

Am I the only one who cannot entertain the redundancy, circularity or tautology of such notices ? : Only approved credit cards accepted.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 1, 2012

In the same way, at Luton Airport they say Smoking is strictly prohibited anywhere within the airport premises, except in designated smoking areas - so, smoking is not allowed, but, where it is allowed, it is allowed


Fathom my mind, if you like, as to why this irritates me, but it's just that they like using a lot of words to complicate a simple message :

You may only smoke in the smoking areas. You are not allowed to smoke anywhere else.

or

Smoking areas are provided in the airport. You may not smoke outside them.


I have since seen : Authorized parking only

For some reason, those who commission and erect these signs do not dare say No parking. Is that because cars parked in the grounds would appear to belie the assertion, or this mysterious search for the accuracy of assertions.

But, if they wanted that accuracy, why not favour? :

You may only park here with authorization


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A nupe ohm

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31 October - All Hallows' Eve

Call it a poem, rhythmic prose, prose-poem, it saw the light of day - kicking and mewling - on Sunday afternoon, at an event whose report is to follow...




Stopped watch


I am a stop-watch
But I have stopped,
Stopped at a quarter to twelve –
As we used,
When I was made,
To say –
But which is always
Now (when is now?)
Eleven forty-five


In my day,
No one thought
That forty
Contained a double vowel,
And knew where the place
Newgate, boldly declared
Above the pivot (‘London’ below),
Was, and what it meant


I’m old, but not that old,
Though big and what they call chunky,
As my numbered dial proclaims –
Whoever says ‘dial’, in
An age of ‘displays’? –
With its florid seven,
Even eight,
Nine with the grace
Of the six’s curl


As I’m stopped,
I don’t work,
And I have a loose hand,
The brass one that gave me life,
Now – whenever that is –
Forever upside down,
Severed from the shiny
Enamelledness of hour-
And minute-hands
(And even a small, red
Strip, more a marker
Than a hand,
Whose purpose I forget)
And was it just before mid-day,
Nearly to noon,
As they insist on wondering –
Or approaching the witching hour?


As if I care,
As if I remember :
I just hear
The faint click
In my ratchet-domed
Top-piece,
And doze back
To slumber



© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012



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Miliband on mental ill-health - 29 October 2012

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30 September


A series of what I see as key messages in Tweets

So far, this from Ed Miliband's speech : For people to talk about it and get help, there needs to be a common language and understanding.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

This, too, is an important point made : And people can lose years off their lives as mental illnesses undermine their physical health too.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Also this : But far too often there is scepticism and abuse. Abuse that reinforces the taboo [of not talking about mental ill-health].
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Regarding government total spending on mental health: A reduction of £150million, including cuts in crisis services and out-reach programmes.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

+ The 21st century challenge of mental health is as profound.Like sanitation, it is a massive public health challenge, affecting millions.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

And we need [...] an end to the artificial divide between physical and mental health services and ensure that they are properly integrated.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Recognition of difficulty : Silences in our culture are hard to break.Taboos are resistant to being overcome.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

The next Labour government will work with [GB] business to improve our workplaces, helping people stay in work and make their contribution
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Concluding points : But most of all the Labour Party I lead will speak out against prejudice.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 30, 2012

Then, in a comment on @MarkOneinFour's (Mark Brown's) piece in The Guardian, I said :


I think that the issues raised in this article need to be related to others that were mentioned in the speech:

What Miliband called 'the artificial divide' between physical health and mental health (as if, to one with experiences of stronger cases of either, it were not obvious that poor physical health can affect mood and morale, and how poor mental health impacts on immunity), because if people (GPs included, whose apparent desire for better training was highlighted) appreciated that they are not separate, more might give in the bullishly unforgiving attitudes of those such as Clarkson (much as he wanted to portray Brunel as a great man and for us to vote for him, when it suited).

Miliband rightly drew attention to the fact that the physical health and the mortality of those with long-standing mental-health conditions are far worse, and, although doctors may ask for better training, there has to be a massive shift in attitude, if the chest-pains of someone with a mental-health diagnosis are not, until it proves to be a heart condition, to be ascribed to panic-attacks or anxiety, whereas any other patient is looked at with open eyes.

It is a complete disgrace how, on mental-health units, even patients with diagnosed, pre-existing physical conditions receive - or do not receive - care, and the opposite case, of such a person being in a physical-health ward and needing their mental-health needs understood and not patronized, can be just as bad.

But, whatever the poor starting-point, Miliband is right to identify these issues, and I have tried to draw the half-dozen or so key messages out of his speech in my blog at [URL for this page censored by The Guardian]:


Next, I shall make another version of this posting, and interpolate comments between the Tweets of Miliband's speech...


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Comparing Bonds

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29 October

In case you missed it earlier, I have ranked all of the Bond movies from worst to best. (No Skyfall spoilers.) wp.me/pU0l8-Xr
— Mark Liversidge (@MovieEvangelist) October 29, 2012

Going to http://movieevangelist.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/the-23-best-james-bond-films-of-all-time/#comment-1479, I have added :

From memory, I know that I have seen Goldfinger / Dr No / Thunderball / Diamonds are Forever / The Man with the Golden Gun / Goldeneye / Die another Day / You only live Twice / Live and let Die / Quantum of Solace / Casino Royale, and one other, and I shall seek, before bedtime, to put them in order...



On reflection, can't place Thunderball / The Man with the Golden Gun as I recall them too poorly


Here, in order of my ranking, My ranking / The Evangelist's ranking out of 23 / That ranking translated to these 9

1 / 11 / 5 Live and let Die

2 / 19 / 8 Diamonds are Forever

3 / 8 / 4 You only live Twice

4 / 2 / 1 Casino Royale

5 / 7 / 3 Goldeneye

6 / 14 / 7 Quantum of Solace

7 / 22 / 9 Die another Day

8 / 4 / 2 Goldfinger

9 / 12 / 6 Dr No


On a first glance, biggest disparities (top of one ranking, bottom of another) are Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever, and closest congruence with Quantum of Solace, You only live Twice, Die another Day, and Goldeneye. So we agree more than we disagree...?






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Definately indefinite

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29 October

I cannot claim to have read every word written by William Shakespeare, or even every play acknowledged to be his (or to have his hand in it), but I do not recollect the word definitely.

Easily enough remedied, as I have two nineteenth-century concordances upstairs, but my suspicion is that, although the word definite might just about have been Jacobean, the longer word came later...

But, with editions of Shakespeare that very often harmonize and modernize his spellings, since it is notorious that there is scarcely a pair of his signatures that are the same or where he even spells his name consistently, it is hard to know what - if he ever wrote the word - he would have written.

Would it stand as definate and definately? At the moment, I can definitively say that Shakespeare did / did not use the words...


Bartlett's The Shakespeare Phrase-Book does not list either word, but it - and the other one - is of a non-exhaustive kind, unlike more modern ones.



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Blair and Barnhill

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28 October

Many will know that George Orwell = Eric Blair. Perhaps fewer know that, partly out of fear of personal retribution from Stalin following publishing Animal Farm, Orwell went to live for several long stretches at Barnhill (the estate shown), in the white property in the photograph.

Barnhill is located close to the more northerly tip of the wild and remote Isle of Jura, one of The Western Isles.

In the end, probably because he had tuberculosis before he went back there for the last time, he had to be taken off the island, and he died in London, but he had been working on the novel that, by the expedient of reversing the final digits, became Nineteen Eighty-Four.

This is not the first time that I have taken shots of Barnhill from as close as, unless one is renting the property, one can get from the private road, but I will have to look out those earlier images...



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