Frozen Out..........

The news yesterday of the closure of the 'frozen goods' section of Gallagher's Bakery in Ardara in southwest Donegal was a huge blow to the area. It is thought that 124 jobs will go immediately as the company that now owns Gallaghers (originally a family business) has been subsumed into another yet bigger company and globalisation means amalgamating certain functions in certain areas and blah blah blah. Some actuary with a spreadsheet in a skyscraper within a Financial Centre in Hong Kong or New York or Berlin produces a flow chart and 'bam' a little town in a corner of a small island is crippled.

What this closure means, in terms of people's lives, is catastrophe. Ardara is a small vibrant little village, local people worked in the factory - whole families of them. In many houses three or more pay packets now cease to come home. The knock on effect for local shops, tradesmen and small businesses cannot yet be measured. The factory has been one of the main employers in the area for almost twenty years. For younger employees, not yet settled and rearing families the option of emigration is there. Again. Nothing personal, you were doing a good job, it's just business. Aging parents may be left isolated and lonely. Nothing personal,we don't dislike you but your job is no longer viable on our balance sheet.Again.

And so lumbering corporate giants roll on and on and on, crushing lives, extinguishing hope in individuals and families and killing off communities. Surely they (whoever 'they' are) must see that eventually they will kill off all the very consumers they need to fund their profit accounts.And the world will consist of one company, one big brother, one god - and his name is money. And he'll have no friends or family, no one to have a laugh with to lighten the gloom of a January afternoon. There will just be money, all on his lonesome.

All anyone wants is the chance to do a day's work for a reasonable wage. Somehow, somewhere, someone has to say 'halt' - people have to come before profit or at least have equal footing. I have no idea who this someone will be. But I think I'll recognise them when they start to speak. And I don't think I hear that voice in the clamour of idiocies I hear from Leinster House. I cringed when I saw Mr Bertie Aherne's latest sound byte. How on earth can that man say that the only thing he regrets as his political life ends is the fact that he didn't get a world class national stadium built in Ireland. Bertie is definitely a Martian, and he may go back to Mars and take the rest of the sons of destiny with him.

I think I think too much.

Fireflies........

Someone whom I love very deeply suffered a bit of a wobbly over the last week. This prompted me to contemplate yet again how powerful and delicate an organ the brain is, how easily the balance of it can be disturbed and how distressing such disturbances are for both the person who is suffering and that person’s friends and family.

I suppose I understand it a little myself because I have sunk into some terrifying pits over a twenty year period. I get the very odd high-very, very, odd and not enough to warrant either medication or psychotherapy. I quite like the highs, I always write my best work when I’m in that head, the big ideas come and I try to hold them, write them down, record them for use in some piece at a future date. The worst I do is stay awake too long and talk too much. After the last episode I mentioned these warning signs to the beloved other, he is in general able to spot the dark clouds glowering before I do, but he’s not so tuned to the slight highs and his reaction was

‘But you talk so much anyway, how am I to know you’re going high?’

It’s hard on him and on my family but they’re great. They never ever condemn me, tell me to pull up my socks or to get on with it and stop feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn’t blame them if they did, living with mental illness is haard on everyone in the family. Sometimes I feel self-indulgent, letting the high or low get the better of me – particularly a bad low day, a day I cannot, physically cannot get out of bed, a day I want to die, count the paracetamol or contemplate the branches of trees pondering would they take my weight in a noose. I hope I never get to that space again where I actually do something with the thoughts that lurk in the recesses of my mind. But sometimes these very thoughts are the only things that calm me. Planning my death, my funeral – incredibly morbid, dark dark thoughts.

But then the doorbell might go and a freckle-faced boy comes home, and how could I leave him yet? How could I abandon him when he still needs me. He and his brother, my step daughters, my husband, family and friends. They are my ‘will-to-meaning’ (Viktor Frankyl). I draw breath for them. I be. For them. And as long as they are I too will be.

Why am I blogging about it? Why pour my soul, the fireflies in my brain onto the page? Because I have to. We have to. As a society we have to drag mental health centre stage, it is an area of medicine where prevention pays off. With the slow decline of religion in the Western World something must replace that spirituality, the comfort the contemplation of the divine gave to generations. Whatever the Divine might be. For we all need a ‘will-to-meaning’, something to make sense of it all, make living worthwhile. For some it is Art – painting, music, reading, writing – all the disciplines. For others sport or yoga or something non-chemical for which one has a passion. That, and one good teacher, is all any human being needs after all basic physical needs are met to live a contented life. Live, love and be safe in the moment.

Amn’t I horrid deep?

Maximum One Bitch Per House.

I'm meat in this house. My kids are refusing to talk to me and Jemser won't look me in the eye. Why? I took the dog back to Dog's Trust.

I know, I know. I waxed lyrical. What can I say? I was a fool in the first place.

But the amount of doo-doos in a small suburban garden - the jarvey nappies started to look appealing! The amount of excavating she did to my small but previously pleasing garden. The chewed clothes,shoes, she chewed right through a garden hose!

Her irrepressible affection and good nature manifested itself by her hurling herself- with a leap straight to the chest - that flattened anyone under five feet in height or who weighed less than 6 stone. Then there was the hair and the barking and the neighbours looking at me the way Spencer Tracey looked at Sidney Poitier in 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.'

She refused to stop jumping so we gave her limited access to the house and kids and I think we might have overcome it eventually, but in the last forty-eight hours she developed a nasty little habit. She started trying to take one's wrist in her mouth when playing, and nip a little. Now I don't know about you but I happen to think that biting is a big 'no-no!' even in play. She was scolded and put in the other room or in her crate. Then this morning when I went to put her back in the crate before I went to work she did it again.

But this time she ripped the sleeve of my jacket by worrrying it with her teeth. I was not impressed. And the growl - even though it was interpreted by the males in the house as a 'friendly growl'. I grew up terrified of dogs byut in recent years have more or less overcome my phobia. I had noticed son#2 had a similar fear so was actually pleased when it was he who suggested we get a dog. He picked her, I approved, Jemser fell in love and even son#1 grunted 'She's awright' from beneath his asymmetrical fringe. That was a week ago, when I had a nice easy-going fear free life

So I made the decision, because otherwise the males would dither for a year, I'd have no clothes, shoes, garden left. The bond would be stronger and sh'd still be at it - none of them wanted to do obedience training 'She'll grow out of it'

It's a good job I didn't leave potty training my babies to Jemser. They'd both be in incontinence pants by now

I rang the Dogs Trust who agreed to take her back and informed family of my decision. Jemser was devestated. I could see the little boy disappointment in his eyes. I hated myself. Son#2 was upset, despite the fact that he wanted her out in the garden or in her crate all the time she was indoors and had a panic attack every time she came near him ' Mam ,I did love her. I just didn't like being near her when she was moving!'

But Son#1 defended me. 'Yeah Mam's mean. But she was the only one doing all the shit and shit."
I was amazed. He actually noticed that no-one in the house does anything about the house except me. I'm living with Jemser for twenty years and he doesn't seem to have noticed.

Actually if I had said 'the dog or me' I think they would have picked the dog.

Damn! Best running away excuse ever gotten rid of, fool, fool, fool.

Saturday

I loved McEwan's Saturday-with some reservations-as I always seem to have with his work. I think it's because I'm not English and I do think his work is quintessentially English. But mostly I just love his prose - the man knows how to use words and for that craftmanship I admire him.

But lads, the Saturday he wrote about was a normal middle-class day in comparison to mine. Things is weird boys, and gettin' weirder, but we'll keep on the road and see what happens. It's all good weird, karma weird, serendipity weird.

The normalest thing that happened me today was that I sat and watched tv with a Belfast man whose kids were gone to the O2 for some gig. Don't ask - it was truly normal.

The weirdest thing I can't post just yet, but I will. Oh yes I will.

Man's Search For Meaning

Read a great book last week. A powerful, life-changing book.

It's written by a man called Viktor Frankyl and titled ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ A slight little book, only about 160 pages. The first half is an account of the time the author spent in Auchwitz during the Second World War. A survivor’s story. I have read many such books, from the poignant, powerful non-surviving Anne Frank, to ‘Sophies Choice’ to Elie Weisel and Fania Fenelon.

But for some reason Viktor Frankyl’s book hit a deeper chord with me than any of these other terrible, wonderful books. I think it is because it is not so much an account of his time in the camps but an account of the philosophy that got him through such terribleness. He survived because he quite simply accepted everything that happened to him. Tried not to baulk and despair. A sort of ‘Que Sera’ attitude, although not quite as trite as that. It’s a wonderful story, a story of the resilience of both the human body and spirit. In it he talks about all the things people thought were not possible before the camps. Things like, under no circumstances could people sleep in the cramped conditions they were forced into, they did. People could not survive on the tiny amounts of food they were given, they did. People couldn’t survive in the bitter cold and under the excessive hard labour they were forced to perform. They did.

Viktor Frankyl is a psychiatrist and after the war he went to America where he practises and teaches. He used his experiences to develop a therapeutic system called logotherapy and the second half of his book is a brief description of this therapy. It is basically the same message all great men have given us since time began. Live in and for the moment. Do not look forward or back. Accept what Life throws at you and try to enjoy where you find yourself in each moment that you live. It is not unlike the ‘Mindfulness’ that Jon Kabaat-Zin advocates, trying to be aware of oneself in each moment that we breathe
.
Mr Frankyl is an interesting man and his therapy is an interesting premise. A highly recommended read.