The Elephant in the Room and Trafalgar Square, South Bank etc.

There are a noticeable amount of elephants all round the capital just now in an attempt to publicise the dearth of this magnificent creature because man is encroaching on their space.  Man (and woman)kind have not got a lot to be proud of - we are wrecking the planet, polluting the seas, over-populating the land etc. etc.  I could go on, but it would be too depressing.

However, the presentation of colourful elephants all over London is a bright and interesting way to highlight the problem - there are 250 apparently and I am going to try to photograph them all before they are taken away some time in July.  There is even an elephant parade at the Royal Hospital Chelsea at the end of June and I spotted a jewelled one, situated appropriately in Coutts Bank.  However, I have put a taster with this blog.  Enjoy!

Then I started to think about the expression 'the elephant in the room' and couldn't help remembering the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin with him seeing a hippopotamus every time his wife mentioned her mother.  My, very rude partner, suggested someone big to dinner one night and remarked that then we really would have an elephant in the room.

The expression of course means the presence of something not talked about or ignored, usually causing an atmosphere.  When I have an argument with someone and they think I am in to the wrong they may sulk and not speak to me - a punishment I don't enjoy.  I suppose that is 'the elephant in the room', but it usually refers to something much more sinister such as abuse, violence and sadism.  Fortunately, these days those subjects are shown the light of day more and no longer cast as dark a shadow as they used too.  However, there are still children and adults subject to abuse and violence and it is time for more refuges for the battered and care for the abused.

I believe the 'elephant in the room' in another home I know of was addiction - parents never referred to it and never even visited when their son was in treatment, nor his brother who was in hospital for drug-related problems at one time.  When I first mentioned addiction in that home, saying that Hepatitis C was probably caused by 'recreational drug use' the mother said she didn't know what I was talking about!  Now that is an enormous 'elephant in the room'.


I am not sure there was an 'elephant in the room' in my family home because we were encouraged to be honest and open and our parents were open and caring.  I was probably the one of us four children who shared least, being a rather private and secretive child.  I suppose sex was a little glossed over - my father was a minister and sex was considered taboo outside of marriage.  They had to give way on that after I moved in with a boyfriend, but it was at least a steady relationship - we were together for over 20 years and married seven years into the relationship.  Over the years, of course, they changed with the times and became less rigid in their beliefs.  I was proud of their honesty and belief in all of us children and couldn't imagine them not visiting us if one of us had been in treatment for anything.

Dedicated Follower of Fashion!

I saw Ray Davies (formerly of the Kinks to those of you who were born after the 70s) at the Albert Hall recently.  The concert was excellent and he and the band played many new numbers as well as some of the old favourites.  One of the old ones was 'He's a dedicated follower of fashion' and  I got to thinking how much I was a slave to fashion in my youth (many years ago).  I cringe when I remember many of the appalling clothes I thought I looked good in (I think it was called  'groovy' then).  I wore mini-skirts at the end of the 60s/start of the 70s  that were so short I couldn't sit down on the tube or sit anywhere except behind a desk  in case I showed my knickers and tights.  Thank goodness for tights though - imagine miniskirts with stockings.  I also wore hot-pants on a few occasions - I shudder at the thought.

Then in the 70s it was flares which got very wet and dirty, as well as downright dangerous if they caught in anything.  And the platforms -  which being 'vertically challenged' I wore a lot and have lost count of the times I fell off them when sometimes the worse for wear, but more often just because. ...  Then there were those awful tank tops and 'big hair' - I had an Afro which I could never quite manage and must have looked like a lollipop with a small, skinny body and a big head.

The long flowing skirts were a much nicer fashion and it meant you could be as undignified as you liked sitting down.  However, I never got up the courage to wear a see-through blouse - not got the boobs for it.  The hairstyles then were long and straight and I probably looked like a Amish and I coloured my hair with henna so I was red at that time.  I remember my boyfriend of the time had long, curly hair and wore an Afghan coat - he was always being stopped by the police who thought he must be on drugs to look like that.  I used to wear Patchouli Oil myself until a kind policeman told me the smell was similar to pot and I stopped - I was very naive then.

In the punk era I never really had courage for the chains, slashes and dangerous haircuts, but then I lived in Devon at the time and fashion was slow to reach Tavistock to say nothing of frightening the horses.  But I do remember an extreme punk hairstyled young man being refused employment because of the chances of him piercing the tyres in the garage where he was going to work.  There was the hairstyle I call the 'toilet brush' because that is what it resembled - hair pulled straight up.  There was a memorable occasion in a hospital shop when one of the elderly volunteers said, 'oh my dear, I am so sorry' - I presume she thought something had happened to cause her hair to be so bizarre.  Anyway, the young woman concerned came to work the next morning with her hair in a conservative ponytail.

In the 80s I became a great deal more conservative, not being in the first flush of youth, but I remember wearing a pale orange cheesecloth skirt and top on my wedding day.  I think my hair was mid-length and straightish by then.  But the ra-ra skirt was a step too far and I was proud of myself for avoiding this particular fashion - made you look as if you were a toddler going into a party.

In the 90s I went blonde and short - had a haircut similar to Annie Lennox but without her style and poise.  My own (then) husband walked past me in the street when I first had it done so it was a radical change.  It grew very quickly though and I couldn't be bothered having to keep having the roots done so grew it out and went for a different ringletty sort of perm - this was a disaster.  It looked fine to begin with, but when I washed it I couldn't get even an Afro comb through it and on one occasion my mother cut out a tangle which happened after a swim in Brighton.

In 2000 I am much more content and confident in dress and don't subscribe to being fashionable any more.  I look with fascination at the low-down jeans with the thongs showing at the top of them - I am always afraid they will either fall down or someone will tug them down for a laugh and the thongs make a weird sort of builders bum. Then there is the strange fashion of a pretty dress with Doc Marten's, shorts worn with tights underneath and warm boots with a light dress or skirt.  But I have to remind myself not to be an 'old fart' and remember the fashions I dressed in when I was young were just as ridiculous.

Totally wired - just another Manic Monday

For the last few days I have been feeling great, in fact probably too wired.  This is the manic phase of my disease and I must try to monitor it because these are the times when I can be in danger and my relationships suffer.  The difficulty is (I am told) bipolars lack insight when manic - I don'the think I do, of course, but denial  is all part of it.  It is fortunate that I have a dosset box to remind me to take my medication.  I sometimes feel I don't need the drugs I am prescribed at such a time, but just have to accept that I do at present.  The trouble is that in the last 12 months I have had 3 to 4 bouts of depression, one of them very serious, and not one manic episode - it seems grossly unfair to have so many, at times spectacular, lows and no highs at all.  Looking back I have been depressed for about 4 months and cycling between depression and 'normal' for eight.  No wonder one of the buzzwords in an argument is: 'why can't you behave like a normal person'.  I know that is said in complete desperation and understand why it is said to me sometimes, but it is very hurtful given the stigma attached to mental illness.

In the last couple of days I have had a bout of almost uncontrollable rage with my partner - so bad that I had to escape from the flat for a couple hours or I might have tried to hit him.  Of course I felt my anger was justified - he can be very impatient when I don't grasp something immediately, but the towering inferno that then erupted was awesome for both of us but because anger has replaced depression I feel it is a better emotion, but I do understand that I need to express my anger 'appropriately'.  I doubt he feels the same way and considering our argument in retrospect I know that my behaviour was out of control.  I just hope he doesn't get me sectioned one day!  That has not happened so far and if he felt it was necessary I trust him enough to go voluntarily rather than be forced into psychiatric care.

Other bizarre patterns include my thought patterns jumping about, not sleeping properly, talking fast, walking fast, not looking where I am going, carelessness when showering (tripping), falling over or treading on the cat, dropping things and generally mismanaging things in the home.  It is a good thing I am not responsible for the cooking as I would probably burn things or leave the gas on.

I have read somewhere that Omega 3 is particularly good for mood swings so I will try taking that in addition to the other medication I take, as long as it doesn't work against them.  I would really like to manage with just diet and natural medicines, but I suppose that is in the future.

Funeral baked meats & etc.

Went to a funeral yesterday - she was an elderly lady I had known for a few years; sadly she had become demented in the last year or so.

It was a crematorium service - rather perfunctory because the family are not a churchgoing crowd.  The vicar did his best and he had found out a few things about her so that he was able to give a very small homily.  I loved the old lady concerned and the service seemed to bear no relation to her whatsoever so I did my best to just try to remember her and ignore the funereal paraphernalia.  She was a lovely person with humour and personality before dementia robbed her of her reason.  I think she would have liked the sunshine and pulled a rueful smile at the meaningless platitudes mouthed by well-meaning friends and/or family.

When she had been dispatched the small crowd of mourners stood forlornly around the flowers and I was reminded that I want no flowers at my funeral - I dislike this outward manifestation of public grief and find flowers made into names such as Mum or Nan particularly offensive.  They look so naff and sad - all the money spent on flowers could be put to much better use  - given to Amnesty International, Save the Children or Oxfam to name but a few charities. Worst of all is when somebody famous dies or someone murdered and people who don't even know that person appear on TV with suitably sad expressions clutching flowers or worse still push their children forward to strew flowers at the place where someone was killed.  Cynically, I feel that they are using someone's death to promote themselves and publicise a grief that is false - I would be very upset if I was a member of a family suffering such a loss.

I have tried (and failed) to understand why flowers at funerals are considered a gesture of 'respect' and wonder where that has come from.  Surely respect is shown by attendance at a funeral service?  I find it pretty difficult, too, when people speak well of the dead, even when someone was a complete horror; also the way people mouth platitudes like 'it was a lovely funeral', 'the vicar spoke well' etc. etc.  In many cases the service was not lovely, the vicar an idiot, the funeral over-priced and the flowers naff, the mourners don't behave especially well and the fighting over someone's treasures can begin almost before the funeral baked meats have been eaten.

Hope nobody takes offence at the above, and must just say that the opinions expressed are mine alone and I reserve the right to say what I want in my blog.

Government and all that

I have lived in London for many years and have never been quite so freaked out and surprised by the public's behaviour as now.  Over the last few days with the Clegg and Cameron coalition the press have been all over College Green - the patch of grass opposite the Houses of Parliament.  This has resulted in the world and his wife walking and talking there and generally trying to be seen on TV.  Do any of them realise how idiotic they  look - imagine being the children of a man who just wanted to be seen there - how embarrassing.  The British never used to be so keen to show themselves up; now we are some of the biggest show-offs in the world.

Drowning, not waving

I have been struggling for some time with a serious bout of depression - looked at bridges over the Thames thinking about how simple it might be to just jump off.  However, I know that drowning is not an easy option, that I have too many people who love me to put them the pain of loss; doesn't stop me feeling bad, but stops me doing something crazy.

My mood is starting to rise, to my relief, and I shall be waving in no time.  Glancing through a few blogs I have been amused by somebody obviously misinterpreting the title of one which incorporated 'wet' - this, rather sad, person thought the woman might be looking for some kind of sexual encounter.  Groan - what is it with some men -

Dodgy Invitations

It is a mystery to me how people/sites get my e-mail address, particularly as I have an excellent firewall.  However e-mails from unknown addresses do, at least, go into my junk e-mail which is something, I suppose.  The newest one was an invite to join 'Queerpeople' - and I thought the word queer was no longer acceptable in the gay or homosexual community - obviously nobody's told the site administrator.

I also get odd 'somebody fancies you' messages on my mobile phone which I ignore, of course.  I understand that this can be a ploy to get you to call a premium line number just as a call suggesting that I have had an accident and might need a lawyer is much the same thing.  I do wonder whether anybody is taken in by it - how could anybody know if you have had an accident.  There are things about over-communication that can be a bad thing.

Incidentally, most of my friends don't do it, but sometimes I get sent those rather silly chain-letters encouraging me to send the (often rather soppy - pass on a hug-type suggestion) on to 10 other people.  At work I have often wondered how people find the time, or the inclination to do so - in fact, on one occasion a number of members of staff were ticked off because it was thought a pornographic message had been forwarded.