Don't Wait For Me

Russians, speedos and a bomb scare on Tel Aviv beach

2011-10-04T18:33:00.005+01:00

What is it with some Russian men and their speedo's? You can always tell them. They appear with pale, hairless bodies; some have tummies that protrude over their nether regions and they wear speedo's. There's absolutely nothing remotely sexy or enticing about a man in speedo's. Whatever his physique or youthfulness - or, rather, lack of it. Yesterday a man in a pair of pale blue speedo's was going through the transparent bin bags on the beach. He was looking for anything plastic - preferably bottles. I've no idea what he could be doing with them. There's cages on street corners specifically for plastic bottle recycling. I didn't think that there was a black market in plastic bottles. Who knows. Maybe he was a Russian involved in some kind of mafia type of bottle recyling that wasn't environmental. Nice oxymoron that. Russians and envionmentalism.

Lying as I was in my plastic chair, looking towards the sea and the lifeguard hut, I heard broadcast a warning. 'Would whoever has left a red and black bag unattended on the water's edge please come and reclaim it. Otherwise it will be dealt with.' A small crowd had gathered around the bag - not too closely. A couple, oblivious to events, were lying entwined in each others' arms but a few feet away. A young man in an orange t-shirt and carrying a walkie-talkie gave instructions to a faceless being in an office. No one came towards the bag who looked as though he was its owner. The young couple were asked to move on. The crowd were asked to move back. The swimmers in the sea were also oblivious, as were many others who a) did not speak Hebrew and b) were not paying attention. Again the warning was broadcast. This time with the addendum that it would be dealt with 'in no uncertain terms' should the owner not show/his her face.

I could see the bag about sixty feet in front of me. Poor thing, all alone as if it had the most awful BO or rampant halitosis. A red and black backpack standing upright, surrounded by beach-goers waiting to see if it was going to explode.The young man in the tee-shirt, speaking with his hands into the walkie-talkie turned around suddenly. Coming towards him was an older man in black speedo's. The man gesticulated. The crowd smiled. The young couple moved back towards their towel. Orange tee-shirt gesticulated back. He beckoned the older man towards him. No guessing what they were talking about. The older man nodded his head, opened his hands in submission. He was told off in no uncertain terms.

Who's to know what's in a seemingly abandoned back-pack on Tel Aviv beach? It could be anything. It could have been a bomb primed to go off when the bag was opened; it could have contained nails and bolts and poison, as so many of them have been. It was probably just a towel and some sun screen and probably a plastic bottle of water. At least Mr. Blue speedo may have been happy at that outcome!

No 'elf and safety hats here during demolishment

2011-09-15T18:47:00.004+01:00

Mahmud is next door. I know that he's called that because it's written in Hebrew above the window to his - I'm not sure what you can call it, 'digger,' caterpiller, large-yellow-machine-with- long-bit-that-has-huge-scoop-at-the-end so that it can scoop up a building and then place it on another pile of bricks in front of what used to be a block of flats. This thing pivots at 360 degrees and climbs junior mountains. It's a sight to behold. If it really does belong to Mahmud, then he's done really well because these things cost a shit-load of dosh. I remember a friend of mine here, back in the day when the Sinai and Sharm still belonged to Israel, he had an even bigger one of those things and it cost almost as much as a house. I can't see how this could have changed that much.

I'm happy that Mahmud has done so well and is working here in apartheid Tel Aviv. His friend across the road, waiting for Mahmud to finish scooping so that he could begin carting, almost threw a fit and ran behind another guy when he saw me walking the dog. The dog's not much bigger than a French Bulldog could be and, as I explained to him, while his other friend collapsed in mirth as he ran behind him, the dog doesn't bite! It's a cultural thing, you see. Even the Haredi girls do the same. If they see me walking the dog along the side of the religious beach, they scream and run for cover. It's hysterical.

So Mahmud and his pals were here because all of a sudden, without warning, they turned up two days ago and started to demolish the block of flats that is (or rather was) next door to us. I suppose that we should have guessed that something was about to happen because from one day to the next everyone had moved out and there were dead settees on the street, along with bed clothes, legless tables and garden chairs. Maybe they're going to renovate it, we thought. I saw a step-ladder in one of the bedrooms. Maybe simply painting it, although just a coat of paint would not have done it justice; it had generous holes in the walls and the trees were dying. Then, out of the blue, a noise of crashing bricks and cement and I looked out of the window and voila! our wall had been knocked into and debris lined the bushes and trees along the side of our building. So typical. No posters to say that this was going to happen, please close your windows. No Health and Safety notices on lamp posts along the street; no men wearing hard hats or the street being closed while various vans and lorries and general demolishing machines mend their way along to sit outside in a heap of dust.

Now we have what looks like the remnant of a small battle lying next to us and the dust drifts over in Arabian proportions, mixed with sand and dog hair. I had thought of getting the windows cleaned last week. Pleased that I didn't. I don't know whether I'll be able to until after the new building is up and who knows how long that will take. At least Mahmud and Co. will be off for the holidays. Here everything stops until 'after the Chagim.' There's some solace in that.

Tel Aviv Beach: No apartheid, no posturing pride

2011-09-08T15:57:00.009+01:00

I think that Wednesday more than any day of the week is really Gay Day on the beach. I could be wrong. Every day is Gay Day! Around the cornerfrom me, at the end of Independence Park, is the beach. Across a major road, along which reside the British Embassy (now being renovated,) the Swiss Embassy and the Turkish Embassy. Last year there was a noisy demonstration outside of the Turkish Embassy after the Mavi Marmara fiasco. This year, notwithstanding the grandstanding by the Turkish Prime Minister, 'who cares about $10 million or $150 million worth of bilateral trade so long as we have our pride' Erdogan, no one is loitering. They still have their walls around the rather dilapidated building but no one is paying them attention. I think that everyone is rather contemptious of the Turkish government at the moment. Had the Palmer Report (that they themselves had inititated) exonerated them, then they would be shouting from the rooftops. As it is, they're just throwing their toys out of the pram and making lots of noises about law suits and flotillas and attacking southern Cyprus and continuing their massacres of the Kurds in northern Turkey and Iraq but as no one in the world gives a fig, they can get away with it.

Anyway. So the walk across the park, past the picnic tables and the childrens' playground and the adult open gym and the Hilton halls, where they host weddings and the like, the view is of the most magnificant blue Mediterranean Sea and the pristine sand. To the left, looking past the sea with its myriad yachts and swimmers and lifeguard huts and breakwaters, is the marina and the Gordon outdoor pool, surrounded by towering palm trees and the new Gordon gym. To the right is the dog beach, the segregated religious beach and Mezzizzim beach, leading up to the Port and the new baby 'Borough' Market.

But the Gay Beach is most definitely fun. There's a mixture of gay and straight; families; singles and the occasional dog that strays along and whose owner is then shouted at by the lifeguards who make it plain that the dog has his/her beach and this one is not for him. Many of the beachgoers are regulars, the same as for the swimmers at the Gordon municipal pool. They've been coming here for years (even before the new pool was developed.) They've established enduring friendships and have watched their kids grow up and have kids and the grandkids are now in the pool alongside them. At the Gay Beach there are a number too who have obviously been worshipping the sun for many years. Among them is 'Mrs. Brown.' We call her that because she's there every single day. She's probably even there during the winter months (or maybe she goes down to Eilat for her daily fill.) She's unusual because she's topless. She also wears a teeny, tiny thong. She's all one colour. The colour of the husk of a coconut. She's about 60 odd and her breasts are small droopy additions to her rather lumpy body. She stands on the sand and speaks to her pals. She goes into the water and gets wet. She lays herself down on her chair (she brings her own) and she goes walkabout, up and down the beach, catching the rays. She's quite a sight.

Further down towards Jaffa, there's another stretch of beach that's recently been redeveloped. It's just after the Dolphinarium where, in June 2001, an Islamic Jihad terrorist suicide bomber blew himself up outside and murdered twenty-one Russian teenagers who were waiting to enter the nightclub. Another 120 kids were wounded. The building is still there but it's unused and there's a small monument erected in front on which is written in Russian and Hebrew the names of all the kids who perished. A very poignant sight. Just past here the beach is frequented by many Orthodox Jews and Muslim and Christian Arab Israelis. Their kids play together at the swings and roundabouts. There are many picnics and lots of cookouts and the smells are divine on a summer evening. Zatar and humus and techina and large, flat pitta bread; challas and hard boiled eggs and crackers and cheese. Everyone munches along and the runners and cyclists and bounding dogs pay them no attention. Nor do they pay attention to the gays on the Gay Beach or anyone else especially. Everyone does their own thing. Perhaps someone from the Turkish Embassy should pay a visit. Go across the road and check out the beach and the tayelet and just see how everyone gets along. No pride involved.

A flavour of Kikar Hamedina, Tel Aviv - a demo

2011-09-04T13:40:00.005+01:00

It was one of those evenings in Tel Aviv that only Londoners can dream of. Hot, sultry and sweaty but an aroma of lavender and wild thyme, aftershave and perfume hung on a gentle breeze. The moon, at one third, shone brightly, as the moon does, and the helicopters above circled the square, obliterating from time to time the stars and gleaming satellites.

They say that there were about 400,000 people there. I tried to establish some kind of arithmetical modus of counting - Pompey, the Emirates, Wembley. Initially it was maybe one or two Wemblies. I guess it was more. As I stood at the corner of the square and Jabotinsky Street, wave upon wave of demonstrators arrived en masse, singing, chanting, playing drums, shouting slogans, while others in the crowd surrounding me clapped and wooped and waved their arms at them. There was an amazing feeling of oneness when entire groups arrived with their banners and matching t-shirts. I suppose that it must have felt like this during the Russian Revolution, before the Cossaks arrived. Of course no Cossaks were expected last night, although I was somewhat concerned that some idiot could have planted a bomb or decided to camouflage himself as one of the people. But that didn't happen. Fortunately.

How do you compare a demonstration like this to anything in the UK or Greece or France, when the 'populace' as it were, are agitating? Not one window smashed. Not one mugging or knifing or any kind of looting. No arson. No 'kettling.' In fact very little police presence, apart from those who were checking for bombs hidden among the undergrowth or behind lamposts or bicycles that were chained up to the railings surrounding the flowers and bushes. There was the occasional police car and I looked up above the flats, to the roofs, searching for the odd police sniper but couldn't see anything that resembled this kind of activity. Some of the police carried green fluorescent flashlights - but then so did the kids and adults.

The meeting was being held in possibly the best part of Tel Aviv - a comparison would be Knightsbridge in London. All the shops were there; Gucci and YSL, Prada and Ralph Lauren, even Zadig and Voltaire. It had closed down in Hampstead but was obviously doing better here. None of the stores had been shuttered for the event. There were no cameras to catch any kind of miscreant because, generally, there are none. Such is liberty.

It was a meeting of babies and buggies and balloons and young couples on bikes and the middle-aged with tummies and men with grey pony tails and women, tanned and svelt, holding expensive leather handbags and I-phones and I-Pads. This is Israel, after all! Dogs of all shapes and sizes and picnic baskets and music in the square, a la Glastonbury or Woodstock. Israeli hip-hop competing with simply amazing drums and cymbals from the crowd who were jumping and jiving and simply enjoying the whole beat. A little boy in a Rooney t-shirt and an older man sporting 'Have Another Beer.' It was truly good natured and, notwithstanding that it was a demonstration against discrepancies in wages, entrepreneurs were there selling their bottled water and beigeleh and the ubiquitous ice cream seller, 'Hello, Artic, mishmish, chocolate!' Portaloos dotted the roads leading up the square where people waited in line and queues were forming at ATMs. I wondered why. What was there to spend at a demo?

So many banners, cardboard signs, slogans and so many agendas. Gilad Shalit featured prominently. TV journalists and young women with the latest digital cameras slung around their shoulders, hanging from branches in young trees, trying to get the best shot.

Will it make a difference? There are about 7 million Israelis. 400,000 crowded into a square in Tel Aviv last night. The government has established a committee to address their concerns. There's no more that can be done. This was the crux of their agenda. Let's hope that the tents and general debris that has been left behind over this hot summer can now be cleared up and life can continue.

Different tales of insanity and inhumanity

2011-08-26T13:59:00.005+01:00

Two really tragic stories in the press this week, among all the others. Notwithstanding earthquakes, Gadaffi's porn, Syrian murders and now a hurricane edging its way along the East Coast of America, I ask: is someone trying to tell you something? The stories that grabbed my attention were set far apart but so alike. In China an old woman is searching for a carer for her son. She's in her 70s and he in his 40s and he's been tethered to a wall, naked since he was 17. He suffers from a severe mental illness. In Austria, that country, the beacon of light where they elected Herr Hitler and celebrated the Anschluss, an octogenarian has been accused of imprisoning, raping and keeping as slaves his two 'mentally ill' daughters.

We here in the UK tend to believe that social services 'care' for our unfortunate. There are 'slips' but, still, there is usually something available, if you are able to take advantage of it. Consider China, where there is such a total contrast between those who have been able to take advantage of the huge new wealth and priviledge and those who remain on the outskirts in their almost feudal way of life. Austria, we are led to believe, should be among the most 'modern' of our democracies but how many times have we been privy to an insidiously depraved mixture of insanity and evil from that country?

I remember the heartbreaking photographs of children and teenagers also tethered to their cots and beds in mental asylums in Romania. Even though these children are desperate for homes, the Romanian authorites have forbidden their adoption outside of the country and there they remain in their most unwarrented and unwanted circumstances. Is there much difference between them and the young man in China or the women in Austria? When will the world spend less on conflict and more on humanity?

Good old Sky's Alex. A real journo for the 21st century

2011-08-22T20:54:00.003+01:00

When I was a kid and even later and we had wars and journalists went out to cover them, they looked the part. There they stood, usually at the side of a beaten-up old jeep, generally in the desert sand, microphone in hand, explaining to us mere mortals what had been happening in their parallel universe. We could almost smell the shrapnel and the cordite. We experienced the sand in our eyes; the glare from the sun glinting off the camera into the shiny sunglasses worn by our romantic reporter. Nowadays we viewers tend to see our TV journos in the front of SUVs or Range Rovers, together with the rebels of whatever confrontation they are covering. You see, there's no impartiality any more.

There's no greater demonstration of this than the BBC's man-in-Tripoli, our Rupert of the double-barrelled nomenclature. There he was last night and this morning and basically throughout the rest of the day, in the back of the jeep, with the 'rebels,' on his way into Tripoli along the seafront, exclaiming just 'how peaceful it was,' until the cars in the front of the convoy were 'attacked!.' Well, jolly dee. Isn't that what happens in a war. He was so upset, he was, in his flak jacket and helmet and various bits and pieces strewn across his brave chest. 'Run, run!' he screamed, or was it turn, turn!' Or even, sod-this-for-a-laugh, let's get out of here... In any event we viewers were privy to his fear. We almost saw his legs turn to jelly as the sound of gunfire came close and his jeep jumped around like a jelly bean on acid. Off they turned, either into or out of the sunshine. You couldn't tell. Pity, really, because I was just getting a good look at downtown Tripoli and, apart from the gaggle of 'rebels', it looked quite nice, all considering.

So that then brings us on to Sky's very brave and all-purpose Alex Crawford. She's been there forever. She must speak Arabic fluently by now. Off topic though is how well all those guys she's been interviewing speak English. Amazing how many we've educated here in the UK. Or could it be that the really, really nasty dictator that they're just about to heave-ho, managed to have a good English language school there? Anyway. Alex. Gosh. There she was this afternoon. She was interviewing a doctor in the 'only hospital left standing.' She'd taken off her helmet. Poor thing. Did you see her hair? I hope that Sky send in a hairdresser to her. Looks like she hadn't washed it in weeks. And her face! She had panda eyes! And her skin! All sunburnt she was. But that's the price of being in the front of the action. Not leading from behind like the BBC. I think she was jolly good. In spite of her flak jacket and her silly helmet and the bits and pieces strewn around her jacket and hanging out of her pockets. She looked like a real war journalist. Hemingway would be proud.

Intentional hubris - is it August 1914?

2011-08-20T11:20:00.004+01:00

Don't politicians have any morality any more? Or is that an oxymoron? Presumably one loses any pretence of morality once one has decided to be a politician. How can you explain that David Cameron is now going on his fifth holiday of the year? Everyone deserves a holiday, says he. Or that Obama and his wife take two private jets up to Martha's Vineyard. Let them eat cake, indeed. This is while in both countries the economy has tanked and the stock exchange is crashing. And Sally Bercow, wife of the Speaker to the House. She's now on Big Brother. I mean, what's this about? Has she no shame? Obviously not.

Then we can go further along the line of hubris and hypocrisy. The erstwhile Egyptian government has recalled its Ambassador to Israel because some Egyptian soldiers have been killed in the latest terrorist attacks along the borders of Egypt and Israel. That they were killed, inter alia, by the very terrorists that Israel is fighting against is irrelevant. It's the fact that Israel was involved. Oh, and by the way, Assad Bashar's government in Syria are routing out and killing Palestinians from the refugee camps that they have been deliberately kept in over the years. Fine to use these same 'Palestinians' as pawns against Israel but also fine to murder them when the Syrian government sees fit. Let's add to the pot the Turks who are now carrying out hundreds of sorties against Kurds. How many killed? Who knows. The BBC doesn't think it worthwhile mentioning.

Nice to know that while the world implodes around them that our 'leaders' are on their hols. Eating ice cream and bashing around in the surf. God forbid that they should actually work in order to deserve their salaries. We're informed that they don't really have holidays; they take their work with them. Oh, yeah. And now we see the 'end game' in Libya, except of course that no one actually knows what the end game is. Who knows who the 'rebels' are. Presumably that's why no one is going to say 'boo' to Bashar. Whoever comes next could, in fact, be even worse. And the Arab League, that bastion of humanity, human rights and transparency, is lambasting Israel because, having been attacked continually over the last four days and losing many innocents, has the temerity to protect her citizens. Who says the world hasn't gone mad.

Riots, Arson and Looting in the 'holy' month of Ramadan

2011-08-19T09:59:00.003+01:00

I heard say that August is the 'new' November. Something that I could quite happily (well, not so happily) have believed yesterday. The streets were awash with rain. Cars careering along at 60mph, totally drenching passers-by. What's happened to humanity? Doesn't anyone have respect or even empathy for anyone else? I guess that in the light of what happened to England last week, then the answer has to be a resounding 'No?' Five people were killed in rioting and where arson was seen to be a party to 'demonstrating.' I wonder whether the arsonists will be meted out sentences that merit. I remember that once arson was deemed even more heinous than murder. Just think who could have been in those buildings set alight, or the animals. There could have been a multitude of deaths.

People used to be locked away for life for arson. Will that happen here? Or will the limp-wristed liberal do-gooders who are now hysterical at the sentences that the looters and instigators are being dealt have their way and implore the judiciary that it's just not fair that these poor, misunderstood 'youth' are being locked away in some kind of 'knee jerk' reaction. Isn't it simply because of the effete judiciary handing out sentences that have not fitted the crimes over the last number of years that this has been allowed to happen?

How has it been that someone who commits murder only gets four years? Why can someone be jailed for not paying their tv license? What's the point of ASBO's? I read that one of the looters is a woman who has 67 previous convictions! Wow. She's a professional. She has a career. I suppose that Dickens would have made her into a Fagin. No doubt she has a really good heart and cares for her cats and dogs and wouldn't hurt a fly. I'm going off on a tangent here...

So it's rainy, autumnul August again and there are riots. It's Ramadan and there has been a complete upsurge in the most hideous attacks on innocents - from Israel to Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Somalia and Iraq. Eight Israelis killed yesterday and today a synagogue attacked in Ashdod. Yet another day for the Religion of Peace. Another 'holy' month. I guess it's just semantics, really. What's holy for some, certainly doesn't mean holy for others.

Sobriety ten months on?

2011-08-18T11:30:00.005+01:00

Ok. So much happens. You start. You stop. You wonder whether anyone is interested. You post on Twitter. What's that all about? Then someone says, 'why don't you continue? You had followers.' My answer is that who cared? Maybe people do. I'd like to hear about that. Maybe the numbers will increase again. God knows there's enough to write about. Where to start?

Well, I guess I'd better get up to date about 'Zach.' He was, after all, the purpose of this blog. To continue where I'd left off in the book. Keep those of you interested enough privy to those throes of madness or, even, sanity. So I will.

Last year we had a blip. This time of year. Maybe it was the subliminal fear of winter approaching. Those short bleak days and long black nights. The cold. The grey skies. The impoverished sun. A five day section in the local medical facility, then out again with little help, comme toujours. Back onto the smack and then the realisation at the end of November that he couldn't do it again. Couldn't live in London with proximity to the dreaded addictive curse. Made the decision that the only way to stop it was to put it as far away as possible and enter a kind of rehab facility. One where it's warm and sunny and there's no heroin on the street corner. Additionally, a place where he wasn't being mugged every day because that was what was happening here...

Ten months down the line. Health. Self respect and a belief that there are better things to look forward to. When I hear the phone, I still worry. When I speak to him, I'm still aware of the change of tone or a leaning towards pressurised speech. He looks so much better. Gone the skeletal frame. Gone the sweaty face, the deadened eyes. It's only ten months. Once an addict, always searching, thinking about the addictive choice. Strength of mind and character has to be so potent. Hard but so rewarding.

To be continued...

Itamar. The insanity clause won't work here

2011-03-14T11:54:00.007Z

Religion of Peace? Please. Don't.

We talk about madness. We talk about how psychosis does terrible things. What we don't talk about is the calculating madness that teaches children to hate and then that hatred festers and, having festered and circulated the organs like the tentacles of a malignant cancer, it has infected the working brain and the moral compass. This, then, is the consequence of these psychotic teachings.

Five members of a family in the Israeli town of Itamar in the district of Samaria were brutally murdered while they slept in their beds on Saturday night. Can there be another word for 'brutal'? Let's see. Violent. Cruel. Pitiless. Heinous. Vicious. More? Inhuman. Moral insensibility. A brute can be someone described as 'mindless.' Can the perpetrators of this most inhuman act be thus described? I doubt it. They say that there were two of these noxious monsters. They knew what they were doing. They knew where they were heading and the knew when they got there just what they were going to do. You see they had knives. They broke into the community and then they went to a house where seven people were asleep. Two adults and five young children. Yes, young. The youngest was a three month old baby. A little girl. Three months old.

I'm putting a link to the family here. You can see the before and after photos. The proud father. The mother at the sink while her son smiles shyly into the camera. Another of a beautiful blond cherub with ringlets and a kippa. How can you describe a photo of a baby knifed to death? How to describe the blood? The ripped body? The children spreadeagled on their beds, blood surrounding them?

http://www.myisrael.org.il/action/739

We talk about mental illness and insanity and give reasons for it being present in so many of us and we make excuses. There is no excuse for this.

October's sad reflection

2010-10-30T14:03:00.003+01:00

It's been a sad week. I wonder why this happens in October. It's a month of beauty. Of silent leaves breaking their fall onto damp pavements and stunning vistas in breathtaking splendour. It's probably the most elegant month of the year but, somehow, always the saddest. It was thirteen years ago, on another fabulous October day, that Zach had his first breakdown and we've probably had three other episodes during the same autumn season. So many times in October we've thought that we would not have Zach for long. That his tempting death was all-pervasive but, as he said to me yesterday, he fully intends to outlive us all.

Tragically, however, two weekends ago the seventeen year old daughter of friends of ours was killed in a truly terrible automobile accident along a stretch of desert road in Utah . Our friends were to have been visiting with her just two days later. Her body was flown back to the UK this week and yesterday was her funeral. You ask yourself why something this random, this so utterly unfair should happen but maybe in the greater scheme of things there are those souls who are not meant to for this earth. They reside temporarily with us and leave the most powerful memories. Full of energy, pushing the boundaries and blinding us with her personality, this child will not be forgotten.

Just what the mad need: Surfing lessons

2010-09-10T10:49:00.003+01:00

It's quite extraordinary. For thirteen years the diagnosis has been Bipolar Disorder. Two fifteen minute sessions with a 'psychiatrist' at the 'renowned' hospital and there's a new diagnosis: schizophrenia. Didn't read all thirteen years' notes. Didn't spend any time with him after the end of the episode. Didn't speak to the family but in all the arrogance of his 'position' decides on a new nomenclature. Didn't help him though. Sent him away after four days to the streets with no back-up and no way in which to enable him to seek the required help. What a laugh. You have to laugh, don't you? Otherwise, what? What can you do with these people? Surgeons are up in arms because the European directive on hours worked means that trainee doctors are no longer being trained. Well, what did they expect when accepting any directive that comes out of Europe?

If regular interns cannot be trained in brain surgery, what about psychiatry? How many hours are meant to be spent on wards with the depressed, the psychotic, the suicidal? How on earth will any of these trainees be able to recognise the difference between acute depression and psychosis or elation and drug affected disorders? My nice man at the Crisis Centre was right: the NHS is a whale that's floundering in the shallow waters of the Thames. Now the rumours persist once again of a 'supra-hospital' locally that's going to be an amalgamation of the two largest local hospitals but with only one A&E for the whole area. And, of course, who will be the scapegoat in all of this? Why, psychiatry of course!

Nice to see that in the south-west of the country mental health patients are being given surfing lessons. Really makes my heart happy to see how the much needed funds are being spent. Heaven forfend that beds might be made available or social workers or CPNs trained. I wonder who came up with that brainwave. Who makes these decisions and who passes them on?

Enough

2010-09-06T21:01:00.003+01:00

It's all too depressing. Too repetitive. Too enervating and just too... I don't know. I've run out of adjectives and expletives. Chucked out of hospital. No follow up care. Just lies. The unit says that they referred him. The unit they 'referred' him to say that they've no information about this. So he's back to the future. Tramping around the streets. Scared to go home. Phone 'stolen.' Beaten up by a 'gang.' Hungry. Tired. Strung out. Feet in a terrible painful and raw state because of an infection that he picked up he doesn't know where. Could be Thailand. Could be Egypt. Either way it could be Bilharzia or Leishmoniasis (however you spell it) but no one is doing anything for him and he isn't responsible or capable of looking after himself and he resents me for 'butting in' on his very 'busy and productive life.'

Where do we go from here? Sue the hospital? Maybe. Lack of care. Negligence. The Crisis Team could care less. The hospital additionally. Just joins the psychiatric army on the street. 2010 and I'm told by the very nice man at one of the numbers I called for help that it's 'only going to get worse.' That the consequences of the last hideous, vile, repugnant Labour government means that there's yet still more 'reorganisation' and less money will be spent on mental health.

I want to take the computer and slam it onto the floor. There's no one to speak with and they all pass the buck and no one will take any responsibility. What point my writing a book? What point this blog? Does anyone read it who cares? All this money they spent on a new cafe and they 'discharge' the most needy because there's no funds. They arrange parties for 'employee of the month', while withholding medication. 'The NHS is breaking up,' the nice man told me. What a surprise. It's now an enterprise that's only interested in breaking even and targets and fulfilling criteria and stats. The ill? Sod them.

A Mediterranean craziness

2010-08-16T10:28:00.004+01:00

They moved the crazy lady. At 7.00am a barrage of voices; the loudest being the local homeless woman who had colonised the empty house next door. And what a house. If I would win the lottery, what I could do with it. Sam's most adamant that it would make the most amazing abode. However, the crazy lady had spent I don't know how long in the path that led to the back garden. Bags full of bottles, cans, plastic, were piled head high. When they eventually cleared her out the detritus lay on the road opposite. Tarpaulins filled to the brim with mattresses, shelving, prams, umbrellas, flower pots, crockery, chairs, a step-ladder, stools, book shelves, rugs and hundreds of plastic bags stuffed with who-knows-what. The crazy lady fed the cats. She lived among the bags in a twelve-inch-square of habitation. She wore the same filthy grey (they could once have been white) jeans and once-white t-shirt the entire time that I saw her. She would coax the cats out from their lairs and feed them genteely, laying out rows of silver foil bowls of food and others with water, picking up each cat and kissing it and caressing it so that even though it lived in the wild (so the speak), it was loved.

The crazy lady is now gone, although where to, I've no idea. They told me that they had offered her a place in a homeless shelter many times. Each time she had refused. She would be given a bed, a shower, some food to eat and be allowed to spend the nights there, so long as she vacated the premises during the day. She didn't act too crazily. She didn't talk to herself; she didn't shout or scream or throw things at passers-by. I saw a man conversing with her, while trying to give her some money. She shook her head. So was she a 'crazy lady'? I guess that she had to be to live like that. Who would chose to live in squalor and dirt and disarray? Even in this most habitable temperature? What is craziness?

Meanwhile Zach is traversing London. The phone is gone. So, too, possibly is the computer. He's tying things. He told us that the hospital had discharged him. That, apparently, is a figment of his imagination, although he's still been discharged from the ward. His mood fluctuates. Maybe by the time September comes he'll begin the downward curve towards the winter's despair. He doesn't mention the dog.

[updated on the 19th August]

Nothing changes among the 'carers'

2010-08-14T05:13:00.002+01:00

I'm not there but I get the phone calls. Zach was discharged from hospital yesterday. Two weeks ago he was dodging the traffic. According to our wonderful health care workers he's compos mentis enough to be let out to do it all over again and no responsibility will be taken by them. It's the weekend, you see. Not enough staff nor resources to look after those who are ill. Who cares about them? No one. It's very sad. I'm sure that Zach is not unique here. Not enough psychiatrists, beds, support staff, continuity. Has he been given a Community Psychiatric Nurse this time? He never has had one. At least while he was going in to the unit he would, I believe, have discussed his medication. I doubt that they actually made him take it. Against his human rights, you see. Now he's free to stop again and on to the swings and roundabouts.

Zach was meant to be looking after the dog while I was away. He has yet to mention him. Sam managed to get him to the dog sitter while Zach was playing among the cars. How can I ever trust him again? Who knows what could have happened to the dog if we hadn't the presence of mind to organise the trusty D?

I wonder whether it's better in any other place. In New Dehli they looked after him until he was sufficiently compliant and had had to take the meds. Why have human rights superceded real care and support? Is it a sop to eradicate any kind of responsibility?

The phone calls are still bizarre. Zach's angry with Rickey for 'being anxious' about him. "Why can't he just leave me alone and get on with his life" was Zach's angry retort on the phone when I asked him whether he had seen any friends. Eventually none of his friends will bother. Only the other ex-hospital inmates and addicts will be drawn to him but none will be able to give him the right kind of support. How much does one do?

Usual negligent, irresponsible 'caring profession'

2010-08-09T04:59:00.003+01:00

When you lie in the main road at a major roundabout, or else dodge the traffic, you expect to get picked up by someone. This, it appears, is what happened to Zach ten days ago. No shoes. Maybe no sunglasses either, or the usual stuff tied to his belt. No keys, that's for certain. Rather scary for the drivers on this particular stretch of road. Luckily it was the middle of the night. Off to UCH and then the transfer the following morning to the local 'hospital.' It's in italics but there is really little of the hospitable about it - apart from the new ward and nice new beds and curtains. Really makes a difference to the mentally ill, doesn't it?

Zach was sectioned again. A 28-day section so that they could 'evaluate' him. He was out in less than a week. Six days. A bit of medication and some enforced sleep and there you go. Out to the streets of Camden. Calls us up in the middle of the night garbling rubbish. Usual questions: 'What are you doing?' elicits a stream of 'What's it to you?' type of response. Won't discuss medication. Shouts and manic laughter at the end of the phone. Admits to cannabis, yet again. 'Calms me. It's my life...' Yeah, and what about everyone else who suffers as a result.

Sam is fed up with it all. 'If he didn't learn after 2006 and especially what happened to him in the Himalayas last year, then he'll never learn...' I know that Zach will never be responsive to treatment or any kind of therapy. Maybe Sam's right. Maybe we should give up on him completely. The problem is that when he's 'fine', he can be delightful; charming, warm and witty but I wish that he would have more insight and just grow up.

And the local 'hospital'? We left it to them. 'If anything happens to Zach this time where he goes completely into orbit, let it be on your heads,' he told the 'nurse' on the ward. If anything happens to Zach this time where there's a dreadful outcome, I think that we should sue the bastards.

Reprise, reprise, reprise.

2010-07-31T09:44:00.003+01:00

I knew it wouldn't go away. It doesn't go away if you don't look after it and, as we all know now, Zach doesn't look after it or himself. He has the meds but he takes them in a desultory way. He knows best. Thinks he's 'happy' but doesn't realise that reality for him is that 'happiness' is elation, is pressurised talking, ideas coming at him from all sides; lack of sleep; exuberance; energy; grandiosity - psychosis.

I heard on the news the other day that the American diagnostic evaluation of mental illness is to be changed. It's going to incorporate more varied and less easily identifiable subsumes of 'mental illness.' One of those will be some kind of 'predisposition to psychosis.' As usual this is a red herring, a non-sequiteur. Of course among young men who indulge freely in drugs from a young age, there's going to be a 'predisposition to psychosis.' If you fuck around with the seratonin, then disrupt the neurotransmitters, screw the brain's chemistry, then, bingo! It doesn't take an Einstein to come to the conclusion that psychosis will follow that.

So what do you do? Shut these kids away during their formative years, impressing upon them that drugs and a 'predisposition to psychosis' don't go together? What parent would want to listen to that advice and act upon it? What percentage will create insanity? There's no real leadership from so-called 'role models' that has any force of will to instill a feeling of resistance to drugs in so many teens - boys especially. It's a part of the testesterone rush to prove that they can 'beat' drugs and that drugs won't 'beat' them.

This current government, of whom we had a glimmer of hope, has now gone the way of the last. They're going to cut the NHS budgets so that there will be even less money spent on mental health. Less beds, less infrastructure, less medication and the intervention that can provide succur for the mentally ill and their families.

This, therefore, brings me back to Zach. He's not in Greece, nor India nor Thailand. At 8.00am this morning he was in Camden, when usually he would have been out for the count, asleep in his bed until noon. His friends last night attempted to get him into hospital but, aware of their subterfuge, he did his usual and made a bolt for it. What happens now is part and parcel of his modus operandi. His behaviour will deteriorate. He'll try to do something so that the police are called. Hopefully someone will realise that he's ill and not a criminal and he'll be taken to hospital. Let's just hope.

July orbits. Here we go again...

2010-07-29T18:19:00.003+01:00

Just a note. I thought I'd let you know. July - you guessed it. Will keep you up to date. Once I get my internet connection thoroughly and convincingly together. There will be updates. I'm in the sun. Sam is getting his t-shirts together; those that want to come on holiday too. Tantalising. No?

Of Moat and moving

2010-07-15T10:50:00.007+01:00

It's been a strange time. We're trying to move. Stress, by any other name, would not smell so sweet. We've bought a flat near to 'Beth' and I want to spend more time with her. Spend the rest of the time in London. What's so terrible? It would be an interesting sociological experiment to write a book about it all, were it not so anxiety-producing. However, in that vein, haven't I already done that?

So much has happened. Life doesn't stop. Zach's pretty good. He's on his way to see a good friend tomorrow. Eastern Europe, or what used to be Eastern Europe, beckons. When I was there in the mid-'90s, vodka was our daily 'bread', the food being so dreadful. I learned to love all its flavours, even chilli. Hopefully Zach won't indulge himself too much with it. There's the need to counterract other agents. Mentally he's good. It's nice to spend time with him. His hair is becoming grey though. How frightening how time flies.

The fallout of the Raul Moat deaths still reverberates. The man was obviously psychotic. What I don't understand is why the police would not allow his brother or best friend to participate in the talks with Moat in order to convince him to give himself up. To taser him and then to watch while he turned the gun upon himself? He'd pleaded for psychiatric help before. He'd left a rambling four-hour message on the phone. Pretty indicative of his state of mind, I would say. The police had information before his release that he was non compos mentis and intent on pursuing his ex-girlfriend. Who had this information and why wasn't it passed on. When are they going to learn?

Mitch Winehouse, crooning and more summer madness

2010-06-04T11:15:00.005+01:00

So I was right. Mitch Winehouse now releases an album. On the back of his daughter's success. Am I being hypocritical here? I mean, I've written a book on the back of my mad son. Is it the same? He'll probably earn far more than me, though. However, money was never the issue. Or fame. Or vicarious 'life.' I wish him luck with the record but do we really need another crooner?

What I do get irritated about though is Mitch's denial of Amy's mental health problems. He invariably harks onto her 'drugs' issues, without ever consciously debating the reasons as to why she uses drugs in the way that she does. And booze. She's hasn't released an album for four years now. Isn't it about time, considering just how 'well' she is?

Zach spent a week with Beth. He had fun. He went to the beach. He spent time in a pub where he met up with a couple of Polish guys who spend their annual holidays in Tel Aviv; they love it there. Beth was working full time, as was the rest of the family. So, considering his money, Zach came home early. The weather's good. The days are long. The nights shorter. He just broke up with the girlfriend. So I'm only ever slightly concerned. You know, the summer haziness.

I wonder whether the summer haziness affected the Cumbrian who just murdered twelve on a spree in the Lake District. Reports said that, worried as he was about his fragile mental state, he went along to the local hospital looking for help but that he was rebuffed. Does this, if it is true, really surprise me? No, not really. What, after all, are hospitals for? It's not the first time, and won't be the last, that someone who really knows better than those in triage that there's something fundamentally and seriously wrong with his mental state and who begs for aid be turned away. How many times have I written about this already? How many more times will it occur?

So Mitch is plugging away and relishing more newsprint, now fixed on him, while Amy does - what Amy does. And we watch while the glittering sun sheds its dangerous light on the vulnerable bi-polarity of the mentally ill and only hope that it doesn't give way for despair.

Blue skies - but what do blue and yellow make?

2010-05-13T11:27:00.005+01:00

I loved the allusion to Morcambe and Wise but will these two truely 'bring us sunshine'? It's a faint hope. Maybe a feint hope. Politics brings strange bedfellows indeed. They're in bed with one another. Do you think that the sex will be satisfactory, in so far as leaving them begging and wanting more?

Sunshine. At last. But it's so cold. The dog's hair is growing, albeit slowly. He's beginning to look shaggy again. The proof being in one small child, on sight of waggy tail, calling out to his dad, 'Look at that fluffy dog!' We haven't heard that for a few weeks. More like strange stares and befuddled amusement. What kind of dog is this? I wonder whether he absorbed those curious glances. Do dogs really feel?

Yet another case of a mentally ill man whose poignant requests of psychiatric ward to keep him incarcerated fell on deaf and/or ignorant-to-the-extreme ears. So he was shoved out into the 'real' world where he murdered someone. Of course, as is usual here, no one takes the blame and a poor innocent loses her life and the seriously mentally ill man just gets shut away after the event. Will they ever learn?

I note that next week there's a new series on tv called 'Sectioned.' It's about three men on a secure ward. I shall watch it with interest. Ironically Zach won't be around to watch it with me. He's going to join Beth for a couple of weeks. I know. There will be those of you whose eyebrows will raise in astonishment at his travelling yet again. This time of year. But he's good at the moment. He's charming and good company and a natural conversationalist. He also needs sunshine and blue skies and also to see Beth and she's in no hurry to come back here. I have a good feeling about this. Plus there's so much family there that there's some kind of safety-net should anything happen to him.

I'm looking out and I can see the sunlight flooding the terrace and there's still the blue sky, although clouds threaten, but it makes me feel so much lighter. How much we have all suffered this winter from SAD. How much it affects us all here in the UK. Why do we put up with it? Will this 'new' government make us any better?

So if you win the majority of the votes, how come you don't win anything?

2010-05-08T11:46:00.004+01:00

What a kerfuffle. The election that wasn't. You hear about fraudulent electioneering in the third-world. You don't expect it here. Friends who were queuing around the block for an hour, only to find that when they wanted to vote, the doors were closed in their faces; others where there were not enough voting forms. 'We didn't expect such a high turn out,' is the phrase now being bandied around. As if it were an impossibility that enfranchisement meant that everyone who had a vote now wanted to use it! How could it have been so chaotic? Such an immense cock-up? And it is, considering that the UK sends invigilators all around the world to ensure that voting is not fraudulent. Even my postal vote was posted late. What has happened to this country in the last thirteen years that has left it supine like this? Bloody Gordon Brown, his rotten cronies and Labour. And the grinning gargoyle is clinging on, like the tenacious limpit that he is, enthusing about how it could only be Labour who can 'save the country.' He has no shame.

Back again in London and it's even colder and wetter and greyer than before I went away. This is May? How tedious. I went out with the dog (still short-haired; not quite so weird-looking) this morning, wearing my winter walking coat with scarf and inner lining. Jolly. I was in t-shirt, hiding away from the sun on Thursday.

Zach stayed here and looked after the dog while I was away. He saw me arrive late on Thursday night and rushed downstairs to help me up with my case and then squirreled it away in the bedroom before I could even ask him for aid. A drink and a chat and we enjoyed watching the counting until 3.00am and he wandered back home because his bed was 'his bed.' He looks well. His moods are pretty stable and he's thinking of going to visit Beth for a couple of weeks. Pretty safe. Famous last words? Don't think so. Although, of course, safety is always a moot point.

Of mobile phones and the extortion of the internet costs

2010-04-14T13:27:00.006+01:00

You probably think that I'm completely obsessed by the weather. You'd be right. Well, almost. Now, they say, we are expecting more snow and winds and freezing temperatures from the weekend. Great. Well, actually, not. The wind today keenly whipped around my face when dog and I were walking on the Heath. He likes it. Me not. At least we don't get the question mark faces when they see him. Or the amazed stares of 'What on earth has she done to that dog?' It's not MY fault I want to shout at them. I didn't do it! My Russian lady friend. She who has a dog that mine actually does an Obama bow to. An Obow wow wow, so to speak. She couldn't believe it when she saw him. In her rounded vowels she said that we must 'get compensation. It just doesn't look like him!' I know what she means. Not much hair has grown in ten days. It took three years to get that long.

New technology is great, isn't it? It is until you get the bill. I was upgraded to a BlackBerry. In my understanding, I believed the patter that internet and browsing were 'free.' Well, actually, they're! I can't believe that I was duped like this. I received the mother of a bill this week. Something that I had surely not anticipated. I recognise that we are still at the mercy of the phone companies when making international calls. I do tend to spend time abroad and I know from past experience just how much we are exploited for making calls there but this time I was charged for internet and browsing and I really, really (honestly) didn't realise that I would be charged. In fact, no one explained this to me. Only now, having checked my bill and contacted CarPhoneWarehouse and O2, has this been explained in terms of how much each megabyte costs! So beware! Don't be taken in by the beauty of the mobile phone upgrade. I think I'll go back to my old, trusty Nokia. I'm mightily peeved.

Sunshine, SAD, Avram Grant and Yom Ha'Shoa's Holocaust Survivors

2010-04-10T18:07:00.003+01:00

Amazing. A whole day of sunshine. People out and about. Summer dresses (even though it's still chilly) and sandals and legs. Walking dog this morning (ok, I've taken him out of hibernation, notwithstanding my pure embarrassment, no, not really) and the people I met en route to the Heath were full of the real joys of spring. "Sunshine!" we shouted at each. "Blue skies!" We have all suffered from SAD this winter and to see the sun above is liberating.

The above was written three days ago. Since then we've had grey skies and wind but today it's sunny but SO cold!

Pompey did well yesterday. Avram was the saviour and 20 people crowded into the flat to celebrate Pompey making it to the semis before they made their way to the match. The fact that they're on their way to Wembley yet again to a final, notwithstanding that they are broke, relegated, full of injured or out of contract players, is irrelevant. Avram wore his black armband and celebrated how strength of mind and the fact that football is not life or death encouraged his players to beat crabby 'Arry's lot. Go Avram!

To continue the Avram theme: Today was Yom Ha'Shoa, Holocaust Memorial Day. Avram left Wembley in order to fly to Krakow and thence to Auschwitz to go on the March of the Living. The fact that his father buried most of his family in the wastes of Russia, having 'escaped' the extermination camps, is a tribute to the way that Avram has led his life. He said that his father was born with a smile on his face and died that way.

A story on AP today showed that the Holocaust is not over for those who experienced it. Over 200 Jews remain in mental health facilities in Israel, never having been able to expunge their memories. Some are 'locked in', unable to speak; others chain smoke and stare bleak-eyed into the distance; some have grotesque nightmares and others, who had managed to make lives for themselves post-war and have families and grandchildren, have found themselves back on psychiatric wards because these horrific memories will not leave them and have placed themselves at the forefront of day-to-day lives.

Ruby Wax, who writes that she suffers from depression, is going around the country with some kind of comedy show for those who suffer in psychiatric institutions. Perhaps she should wonder how Holocaust survivors spend their days. There's no comedy in trauma.

Of dogs and groomers and electioneering

2010-04-04T16:12:00.003+01:00

Multi apologies. I've been away. It's been cold and wet and windy and I've suffered from SAD and now it's April and my birthday! Can't believe how quickly the time goes.

We're on our way to an election, although the party incumbant doesn't appear to have the balls to actually call it and yesterday the two weakest, most dorky, most irritating and infuriating - the boys Milliband - decided to launch a campaign wherein Dave the Cam is reflective of 'Life on Mars.' Doesn't everyone know that everybody loves the idea that political correctness is a burden and calling a spade a spade in the manner that Gene Hunt does is something to be admired, not vilified. And they want us to vote for five more years of the loathesome Mandelson and the man who sold off our gold reserves for the lowest price possible. Yes, that 'intellectual giant.' Geez...

Yesterday I took the dog into the groomers. He'd had a long winter. He was dirty and smelly and, quite truthfully, he was tangled. Guess what the groomer did? He shaved him. Can you believe it? A Rough Collie. A Lassie contender. A dog whose beauty is in his ruff had it shaved away! I'm in shock. I'm distraught and speechless that someone whose job it is to make dogs beautiful could actually do such a thing! He no longer looks like a Collie. He looks deranged. You can see the skin in some parts. The groomer showed me the bag of hair when I arrived to collect poor chien. 'He was matted,' he told me. He was never matted! All the groomer had to do was wash him, condition him and BRUSH him! Who's ever heard of SHAVING a Collie?! It will take years to grow!

So it's not all fun and games on my birthday. Zach came over with a card. He's taking me out for lunch later in the week. He's still good but still not doing anything actually to fill his days again. What a shame that the course didn't last for years...

Bleak winter cold and a tragedy in Scotland

2010-03-09T12:56:00.004Z

This winter just goes on and on. Walking on the Heath today, the icy north-eastern wind permeated my fleece-lined jacket and even though I was wearing hat, gloves, cashmere scarf and fur-lined boots, it was as if I had been dumped down on the Russian steppe. There were still rivers of ice along the paths. Yesterday it was such a gift to see the sun, even though it was bitterly cold for most of the day. Today it's grey again and the sparse spring flowering bulbs are attempting to show their faces above the tundra. There's a number of violet crocuses that can be seen, alternating with the green shoots of daffodils but the sky is leaden and it almost looks like snow again. Tomorrow we are off to sunny climes where it's predicted to be 36C on Thursday and 'Beth' is sweltering in shorts and t-shirt. Who's to complain about that!

A terrible story in the news today. An asylum seeker, obviously seriously mentally ill, imposed his will on his young wife and their 21 year-old stepson, and the three of them jumped from the top of a council block in Scotland. How awful. It was reported that this man was 'fine 90% of the time but off-the-wall the other 10'. I would have to think that it was the other way around. Or maybe not. Maybe you just have to be of unsound mind for that finite 10% in order to jump from a skyscraper. Or any building. But his family? Were they mad too? Could he have been so persuasive that the other two, in desperation for his sanity, decided to end their lives in this fashion?

While walking the dog yesterday (now that I can as my back is about 85% better), I bumped into one of my fellow volunteers from the local hospital. 'I read your book!' she told me. 'It was amazing...' (that's nice of her). She's going to recommend it to a friend whose daughter is also Bipolar, 'although not as bad as your son is...' My son is good at the moment. When he was around yesterday he told me that he now wants to return to university and take a degree that is challenging and worthwhile. 'I've done the teaching course and found that I could handle it and much more...' he told me. 'And I'm taking the meds properly.' Wow. Progress.

Back Pain - In the mind?

2010-03-04T13:01:00.003Z

Apologies. I've been injured. That is my back - or it could be my hip/leg - has an injury. Is it an age thingy? I stepped out of my car to put my foot on the pavement last Monday week and, weeeeze, ping, went my back! I managed to get a quick appointment with the physio who thought it was something to do with my 'hinges' and treated it as that. Over a week later and it was worse. Oh, well, thought the physio, it could be a prolapsed disc. Not sure really. See a sawbones. Get an injection. Think of surgery. Ah, well, no, I thought. I'll get a scan and that's it. So I saw Mr. Magic yesterday. The fabulous D. who's managed to put me back together before now. Why I didn't think of him last week is beyond my comprehension. Let's say it was the pain.

So deep tissue manipulation, as well as using his x-ray eyes to understand my skeletal frame and the way that I stood and how I was experiencing these vast amounts of pain, he told me he thought that I had dislodged my leg from my hip. After an hour of maneouvering me this way and that, I could stand up and the pain had, the on-going intense pain, gone! Oh, boy.

You see, my body had gone into protection overdrive and I had seized up with the fear of pain. So that's why those scientists had written that backpain is in the mind! Now I can, to some extent, understand where they are coming from. The more your muscles protect the injury and the more you fear the pain and the tensing and anxiety that stops you from breathing properly, the more it hurts.

Well, I'm going to go along to the surgeon this afternoon and I'll go through my real and regular back problems but I'll tell him that I'll opt for rehab chez Mr. D. and forgo any thought of intramuscular steroidal injections or back surgery - for the time being, that is. Who knows what the future brings?

And Zach is still good. He finished the course. Passed everything with flying colours. Is now a fully-fledged teacher of English as a foreign language. All he needs to do is to find a job. Yup, that's all.

Enough already!

2010-02-16T13:32:00.003Z

It's one of those days where I'm going to kvetch. It hasn't stopped raining all day. The rain is now falling in vertical lines and creating huge puddles on the patio. When I walked the dog this morning - yes, I know, but I had to - we both got soaked. My jeans, my anorak, my hat. Even my boots leaked water. My very expensive Ugg boots that I really would have believed would have been better made. Maybe it was the wrong kind of water! We had to avoid the baby-lakes that lay in wait for us when we walked uphill. The cars, seeing us huddled into the bushes by the verges, kindly slowed down and drove around the grey, cold stuff so that we didn't end up totally wet from top to toe. As it was, the poor dog kept on shaking his fur but it just got wetter and wetter. J. wrote me a text from home: "It's weird seeing people in their summer clothes! It's February! Is this global warning (sic)?"

Zach came around last night so that he could work. I still can't get over him being so responsible and so possessed of doing the right thing, on time and creating lesson plans and making sure that everything is correct! Another personality - although it is the one that resided there beforehand. It's just that we hadn't seen it for such a long, long time. He even makes sure that he gets enough sleep. I keep tapping myself on the head to make sure that I'm not dreaming. The nice thing is the knowledge that there's still sufficient grey matter there that hasn't been eradicated by the oh-so-copious use of narcotics.

I see that the cannabis diaries has been published. Splashed all over the Daily Mail last week. Lots of photos of son from childhood to present day. All real names. Felt sorry for the boy, really. Not much fun having your face spread all over the tabloids with the nomenclature 'addict'. Because I wouldn't compromise and divulge real names and faces, the tabloids weren't interested in me. Such is life. So long as it gets borrowed and people read it, that's fine.

They predict that this rain is going to turn to snow within twenty-four hours. Then I'll really have something to kvetch about. So long as I don't go head-first again. I have a course to go to in south London tomorrow. 'Listening and responding' to cancer patients. Hope that we don't have the wrong kind of snow.

Those kill-joy Saudi Arabians

2010-02-12T13:09:00.003Z

What kill-joys the Saudi Arabians are. Anything pink, from roses to chocolates, have been banned from being sold in shops in the peninsula. Why? Because it's against the religion to celebrate St. Valentine's Day and the pink stuff is just so anti-Islam. So between marrying eight-year-olds to 80 year olds and stoning adulterers and cutting off the hands of thieves, the religious authorities have the time to ensure that no one buys anything pink or sends a Valentines' card or buys their loved-one a pretty bunch of flowers because it insults their religion. Gosh! They must have so much time on their hands. Insanity.

Today there's two full pages of Gordon Brown; he of the bitten, dirty fingernails and greasy hair, whining about how he should have been the one to have been the PM instead of Tony Blair. He's now joined the celebrity brigade of the woe-is-me I too suffered, crying a little tear when speaking of the death of his baby daughter. I agree. That's sad. But to use her death as a part of his electioneering is depraved. He is so out of touch with the electorate that he may as well be on another planet. Hold on. There's an Endeavour Shuttle going soon...

Isn't everyone just sick of winter? It just seems to go on and on. I know and realise that it's still only February but the cold is getting to me. Maybe it's my age. I need to see and feel some sun. Yesterday it was bitter and the only thing going for it was that the dog didn't get mucky on the Heath but came back with icy paws. He refused to go out again later in the afternoon. You'd think that with his coat, he wouldn't feel the steely winds. Today we did a street walk because the mud had reappeared. The thought of hosing him down yet again deterred me.

Zach's still good and working twelve and fourteen hours a day, preparing his lessons and researching topics to teach. The reversal from total layabout to obsessive tutor is remarkable. One addiction replaced by another but at least this one leaves him no time nor desire for the former. The fact that he is really enjoying the strictures of the course and the people he's with and the positive future presented to him thrills me. Let's hope it continues along these lines. The shops filled with pink heart-shaped balloons and pink-ribboned boxes of chocolates and cards and flowers present no threat to people who have sanity in their lives. There's enough kill-joys even here but this is one instance where we are all free to express our freedom to worship at St. Valentine and maybe even Zach will have found someone to share in this.

Bipolar disorder and the most able students; Zach's progress

2010-02-03T13:41:00.004Z

A piece in the paper today stated that clever children have a much higher risk of developing Bipolar disorder than less able ones. I guess that's news. Research has shown that the more intelligent children are four times likelier to go on to suffer the condition. The people I know who have Bipolar disorder? Yes, they're all the brightest ones. Zach certainly is. He coasted through school, never really putting in any effort and pretty much under achieving because he didn't feel the need to.

Talking about Zach's education the other night, he pointed to the fact that he didn't read any of the texts for English Literature A-level. Just the crammers. Still managed to get a B. With a bit more reading, there's no doubt he would have managed A's all round and gone to Oxbridge but he just didn't want that. The irony is that he's now started a teaching course and is (so far) loving it! I always thought that he would make an excellent teacher. He's bright and funny and articulate and well spoken and manages to get his point across succinctly. I can see a class of students enjoying his input. Let's hope that he succeeds.

The interesting thing about the brightest kids being diagnosed with Bipolar disorder is that it is also these kids who are the most creative too. Kay Redfield Jamison, in 'Touched With Fire, Manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament,' explores the relationship between creativity and madness. As one of her critics wrote about her book, it is "an emphatic analysis of the creativity that emerges from a little madness and the horror from too much." Zach is studying hard. He's teaching class and he's researching and preparing his next lessons. He's still also writing music and wants that project to be successful too. 'I'm a little manic,' he said to me last night. 'It's a good manic,' he added. 'I'm watching it. Not letting it get the better of me.'

Star systems and the amazing Israeli response to the Haiti disaster

2010-01-24T10:49:00.004Z

It's kinda nice that little has been happening here. Well, that's a bit of a lie but I don't want to expand at the moment. Suffice to say that we have a good semblence of sanity and health. Let's not analyse it too much. Taking things on a daily basis then there's sufficient improvement to inaugerate a star system. I remember the gold and silver ones from primary school. I loved green. Red and yellow were good too. So here it is: all the colours, apart from black and brown, are good. The starry ones the best. I think that we are at a green. Should red be pointing in another direction? I'll have to consider that.

My mind has been on the terrible events in Haiti. What a poor downtrodden country. It's just amazing though that whenever the cameras are on the Haitians, even the ones without anywhere at all to live and no clothing that they can call their own, that they all look so sparkly clean and pressed. How do they do it? It's the same in India. Among the squalor and filth the women are beautiful. Their saris, folded and brightly coloured, do not appear to be hiding dirt or despair. Why is it that only in the west do the street people and the poverty stricken shout their condition?

I'm so delighted that the Israeli response to the Haiti disaster was so fantastic. Who else had the presence of mind to bring a fully operational field hospital that contained, among myriad other medical aid, imaging, x-ray and paediatric care? A functioning neo-natal unit and a telecommunications centre? Yet, by reading comments on various boards, you would be seething at the resentment by the Israel-bashers that Israelis could do such good deeds. Suffice to say that the positive comments outweighed the negative ones. The major aid organisations that search for survivors are leaving. The Israelis are staying there, so hopefully they will, against all odds, find others beneath the rubble and stench.

Library loans, cancer, mental illness and the long-awaited medication compliance

2010-01-15T11:11:00.003Z

It's raining. I never thought that I would be pleased to see rain. I'll hate it by this afternoon but at least it's melting the vestigages of the snow and ice. I don't have to take a stick to aid my progression along the filthy streets and I can wear boots that I can walk in. Finally. I hope it lasts. This morning we walked for an hour and I didn't slip once! We are supposed to hit the giddy heights of 9C on Sunday and sun. Ok. It's not the Dead Sea in January - all blazing heat and azure skies - but it's not the arctic.

I received a print out from the Public Lending Right this week. It tells me how many times my book has been borrowed from national libraries and how much I have made from this. I think it's done pretty well. From July 2008 to June 2009, its first year of publication, it was loaned a total of 2,212 times. That means that, added to the sales, it's been read over 7,000 times! Not too bad, considering. It hasn't overtaken James Frey but, then, he's been proven to be a liar. Fiction masquerading as fact in a 'memoir.'

Yesterday I was back in my role as volunteer in Oncology at the local hospital. Counselling patients with cancer makes me reconsider mental health problems. I still don't know what is 'better' or 'worse' and it was something that a colleague and I discussed during a quiet period. If you have a physical illness you will, at least, do everything possible in order to seek a cure or alleviate its symptoms. The very diagnosis of a mental health condition invariably means that you are not of sound mind sufficiently (in many instances) and you will deny yourself adequate intervention and help.

Zach opined that he never again wants to avoid taking medication. To repeat the hell that he went though in Ladakh and Delhi last year is the last thing on his mind. Previously, he told me, other 'episodes' at least had their memorable parts. There is nothing that he has positively from India's breakdown. He cringes when he thinks of it and finds it painful to the extreme. So something positive came out of it. It's only taken thirteen years. Let's hope it continues. I won't hold my breath.

HEALTH AND SAFETY IS AN OXYMORON (and so are the morons who came up with it)

2010-01-13T15:30:00.003Z

So, so fed up. Fed up with looking at the white stuff. It's nice if you can stay inside and don't have to live. To go anywhere. To have to walk, run, drive anywhere. Food we have but I've ordered dog food and the poor dog has about another day's worth but I can't go anywhere in the car today because it snowed again last night. And, as predictable as day following night, the roads around here are impassable.

Walking the dog (a much abridged version) this morning, I saw a Mini simply sliding its way down towards the main road, its wheels locked, it's driver staring straight ahead in terror. Why he had even wanted to take his box on wheels to these roads on a day like this was anyone's guess. He hadn't even cleared the snow from the roof or the bonnet. Other pedestrians were watching him too. Further up the road another boy-racer sped along, spraying snow and dead grit, until he, too, found himself at the brow of the hill, thumped on his brakes and carouselled into the side of a parked BMW. We looked at each other in disbelief, we of the two legged kind, and continued along our way. It was treacherous.

Zach calls me each day and we lament the weather. He's had some kind of gastric flu and has been throwing up copiously every night. He's worried that it's affected his meds. He's cold all the time and hungry too because he's now scared to eat in case it all ends up either on his floor or the loo. The Winter Vomiting Bug appears to be the one that's closing down wards. That and fractures. I'd hate to think what hospital A&E departments are like this week. Grit has been reduced by 50% and we are, according to news reports, running periously close on empty for that and salt. None of the pavements are safe. Either they've semi-melted and are mini ice rinks or slimy, slidely slush. Either way it's likely that I'll end belly up yet again.

The gardener in the house that backs onto our garden has, in his great intelligence, decided to light a huge fire with wet branches and leaves and the smoke has gathered in huge clouds that have descended into each and every window and crack in the brickwork here. My apartment smells like the aftermath of a damp conflagration. I went out to him and berated him for doing so. His answer: 'Sorry, can't hear you.' So much for neighbourly good feelings. I think that a phone call to the very nice Italians is in order.

And once more the waiting for EDF Energy, the 'Sustainability Partner', to turn up and relocate the effing meter. All morning Monday. I called today to complain yet again. 'Oh, Mrs. Morris. You were left a message in November. The appointment was cancelled. It's now for the 9th February.' Of course no message was left. Just another sodding runaround from them. They're all so nice on the phone. Health and effing Safety again. No other reason not to have the meter where it's been situated since the block was last renovated. Years ago. You see it's dangerous for someone to top up their meter in the dark. When I made the point that there's a light switch in the room where all the meters are situated and that most everyone knows how light switches work, the nice gentleman to whom I was speaking said, yes that's right but Health and Safety has tied their hands.

I AM SO SICK OF HEALTH AND SAFETY
HOW ABOUT HEALTH AND SAFETY GRITTING THE ROADS AND THE PAVEMENTS

Snow, fractures, the NHS and Bill Oddie

2010-01-08T22:00:00.002Z

Hairline fracture of a bone in my wrist. Therefore somewhat difficult to type! Sorry. Two falls in one day and the second one did it. We have so much snow and ice and nothing has been cleared. There's piles of snow and grit and sand but it's all lethal and we don't have the infrastructure here to deal with it.

I spent two hours at the local NHS hospital but was favourably impresssed. Pre-triage and then ten minutes to register and then straight to X-ray. Fifteen minutes and then they were done. Another hour to wait and an extremely nice registrar. What a difference...

But I have a caste on my wrist and it's so hard...

An interesting week with Zach. He's been staying here. Yet another chapter. To be discussed...

By the way: Bill Oddie. Now telling everyone how he's come through his depression. I'm delighted for him. Would have been nice if he had said thanks.

New Year: New changes. Will it be any better?

2010-01-03T14:21:00.007Z

Gosh it's cold here. In October we were informed by the Met Office that we were going to have a 'mild winter.' On a par with their 'barbeque' summer that didn't arrive, I don't think that they do their job very well, do they? And they're telling us that by 2050 we'll have 'scorching summers'. Blah blah blah...

So this morning we skated our way around the Heath and the dog avoided the really icy bits too but he has four legs and a lower centre of gravity and there's not too much to worry about him toppling over. I only saw three people almost come a cropper this week on one particular and famous piece of glass. You'd think that the powers-that-be who work for the Heath would've done something about this. But, of course not. I remember when I last asked these gentlemen about doing something to alleviate the possibility of broken bones. 'If we grit one path,' one of them said. 'Then we'd have to grit them all...' Makes one open-mouthed in awe, doesn't it!

Lots of articles about poor Mr. Shaikh. One thing in agreement: Why was it that the Chinese authorities wouldn't allow him to see a psychiatrist? Was it because the Chinese actually wanted to execute a Westerner simply to show that no one's gonna mess with them? Well, it seemed to have worked. Who's going to boycott China?

So tomorrow it's back to normal. We have a new year and a new decade. I wonder whether it will be any better than the last. Will there be new medications discovered that work better for people with mental illnesses? Will there be more money injected into the system here for better care in the NHS for those who are vulnerable? Will there be a different attitude shown towards drug addiction and mental illness? I think it's highly unlikely that anything will change. One can but hope.

Sick to my stomach: Poor Akmal Shaikh

2009-12-30T11:30:00.003Z

For the first time I agree with a foreign office minister of this government. Ivan Lewis described his feelings of revulsion with the Chinese authorities. He was, he said 'sick to my stomach.' How I know how he feels. When I heard that the Chinese had executed - or, rather, killed in cold blood - a man with severe mental health issues, my heart dipped downwards. I felt quite coldly sick. This is the twenty-first century. Haven't we learned anything? How can we tolerate a country that murders the vulnerable like this?

The worst, though, is reading the comments at the various media outlets. I would say that 99% of them utterly agree that the Chinese have done the right thing! Would these people concur that the Chinese would have had the moral authority to execute a 53 year old man who, although he had smuggled heroin, had cancer or MS or Parksinsons' Disease? Would there have been a huge outcry if he had been a white Englishman?

The sheer callousness and ignorance of the posters is astounding. I agree, no one should smuggle heroin. Heroin is simply disgusting. God knows what it's done to Zach. Or, rather, what Zach has allowed heroin to do to him. However, there but for the grace of God goes Zach. He says that even in his most psychotic moodswing he would never have involved himself with drug smuggling but having seen him at his worst, when he is unable to determine who he is, then is this likely?

Chinese human rights? An oxymoron if there ever was one. A thirty minute trial? A man, who for two years on death row, was refused psychiatric help for his Bipolar disorder? This is a country that the UK and everywhere else in the world wants to do business with? A juggernaut that rides roughshod over everything. China that sits on the UN Security Council while executing the sick and the vulnerable.

I'm sickened. It doesn't matter how often Bipolar disorder or other mental illnesses are discussed in the media, no one seems to want to understand it. I looked at the photo of Akmal Shaikh in the paper today and it's heartbreaking. Maybe being as ill as he was he was unaware of what was happening to him. Maybe his life was so awful that it's better that he's no longer alive and suffering in the way he was. It didn't sound as though there was a great deal of happiness there. His behaviour was just too manic and his decisions too extreme. Maybe if he'd received treatment here in the UK and was taking the right medication, then none of this would have happened. Who knows? Although from my experience here, it's more than likely that he fell under the radar of the NHS or slipped through whatever basic 'treatment' that is available to the mentally ill. Let's just spend the millions on more beaurocracy and backhanders.

RIP

The grounding of Britain and no to Chinese human rights

2009-12-22T11:34:00.003Z

Isn't this country quite insane? 2" of snow and the whole place has ground to a complete halt. Why is it that every time that we have 'extreme' weather here, nothing works? The trains stop. The buses collect together into little groups and refuse to budge. Cars are abandoned at the roadside (and are dealt the ignomy of parking tickets) and airports and ferries hunker down. It's bizarre. We must be the laughingstock of the world. In the 'States, where they have this weather every year, homeowners are bound by law to clear the paths in front of their homes and gritters work 24/7 in order that people can get to work and school, hospital appointments or to do their shopping. Here, shoppers had to spend last night in John Lewis in the bed department because they couldn't get home. Local authorities didn't have the presence of mind to grit the roads to major malls and hospitals.

It's a national disgrace. When I walked the dog on the Heath yesterday morning, slipping and sliding along the paths, I saw two men in green uniforms coming towards me. They were walking on the snowy, leafy bit (just as slippery though). Workers, with their Westminster badges highlighted on their anoraks. Ah ha, I thought. Just the men! 'Why don't you grit the paths?' I asked. 'They're lethal. I've almost fallen over three times!' The older one laughed. 'Yeah,' he answered, 'We've also been sliding all over the place.' 'Then why can't it be gritted?' I reiterated. 'Health and Safety,' was his response. Eh, what? 'We can't grit because of Health and Safety..'

I have now heard it all. I guess this just reflects the malaise at the heart of our society. The staff melted away on the Eurostar, afraid to take any decisions on their own so that off-duty police had to man the tannoys. No one was available the whole weekend to inform the public what was happening on the channel tunnel. No one took responsibility. And here the excuse, any excuse it would appear these days, is effing Health and Safety. It's an effing oxymoron (excuse the pun).

As an aside, it looks as if the English/Indian guy arrested in China for drugs smuggling will be executed, even though he has mental health problems. Human Rights in China, you see, don't exist. Where are the demonstrations? I hope and pray that Zach doesn't make it that far east. He's still insisting on travelling yet again. Yes, I know but what can I do? Unless we go to court, he's entitled to his passport and in his present state would convince a judge that he is compos mentis. Irrespective of his Health and Safety!

Global chill, Copenhagen hubris and sanity

2009-12-17T12:19:00.003Z

It's a quiet time of year. Thankfully. No histrionics. No tantrums or mood swings. It's like being with a human being. Let's hope it continues along this line. We take it on a day to day basis. 'Did you speak to Zach today?' 'Yes,' 'How was he?' 'He was fine. No different to yesterday...'

Christmas is upon us again. It actually feels slightly Christmassy too. It's bloody freezing! Yesterday it snowed. Great, big, fluffy, white globules that descended upon us from the skies above. It settled on the cars in the street and on the garden gnomes and the trees, making everything appear as if It's a Wonderful Life was about to reign supreme over our reality. I think, in some ways, that Copenhagen must be Pottersville. Full, it is of anarchy and hubris, hysteria and hypocrisy. All those do-gooders flying there in their Golfstreams; Chavez being applauded every time he opened his mouth and Mugabe denigrating the west. 'Cos of course these guys are just the epitome of goodness. Now we await the delights of Ahmadinejhad. Yummy. What can he possibly say that anyone can applaud?

It was -28C in Winnipeg the other night. The high in Moscow today is -24C. We are expecting winds from Siberia and snow of up to 8" overnight. I hope that I can get to my hairdresser in the morning. It's the firm's Christmas shindig and I can't possibly go with yucky hair! Will London be able to deal with the white stuff? What will the buses do? Will they make their ways out of the terminus (terminii?)? Will we have a repetition of last March when the whole of London ground to a standstill because, even though the meteorologists had (for once) rightly predicted snow, nothing was done about it?

I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile I'm going to put the heating on.

Climate change, courses and Zach

2009-12-09T11:20:00.003Z

It's extraordinary how time flies. I can't believe that it will be Christmas in two weeks. Where does it go? Of course, it doesn't feel too much like Christmas because it is so mild this week. We've had mild Decembers before, of course. I don't buy into 'Climate Change.' The climate changes. That's life. A bit less pollution. A few less forests in the Amazon chopped down. Less building along low slung beaches in the Far East could help but it's all such hypocrisy for these thousands of 'enviornmentalists' to fly over to Copenhagen, rent copious amounts of limosines, eat and drink and make merry and spend OUR money doing it, and then piously tell us mere mortals what to do and how to lead our lives. And as for recycling our slops - do me a favour! Rant over. Two minutes. Is this a record?

I see that the UK is still lagging behind in the heart and cancer leagues. Not surprising when so much of the NHS budget is wasted. The graft that goes on is in a league of its own. All very well being proactive in screening but what do we do when we have a patient with symptoms? I think that there are so many well meaning people in the NHS who would love to do a good job but their hands are tied by managerial tampering. It's jobs for the boys. Oh dear, another rant...

An update on Zach: He's still good. Says that he's still taking his meds. Looks fine. Has put on weight. He's applied for a course and hopes to hear back this week to see whether he's got on it. Hope so. Will open all sorts of doors for him and it will be good for him to have something to do on a daily basis that will involve his intellect.

I also participated in a course yesterday. Now I know more about cancers than I really wanted to know and their treatments. It's fascinating but frightening but the knowledge that there are cures is a bonus. Maybe I should pursue it more proactively. Could I manage yet another degree course? Medical ethics sounds interesting... We'll see.

Marriage guidance counselling on the NHS? Whatever next? Beds for the insane?

2009-11-23T12:26:00.004Z

I see that the NHS are proposing to offer marriage guidance counselling for free as one of its services. That's ripe. There's no money for drugs, beds, staff or research. A friend of mine is a scientist at the local hospital. She's working in oncology and attempting to find various cures for leukemias. It's a privately funded department because there are no government funds available for this kind of blood testing. Most of her colleagues have already been made redundant as a consequence of the recession. Private money is also wanting. She thinks that she will be next and doesn't know where her next job will be. But who will then be there to find the cures?

In addition to the above, the local hospital - in the midst of a huge refurbishment - and another hospital within the vicinity, are now the subject of a proposal to merge their two A&E departments. There's no money, you see, to keep the other, alternate, A&E open. This is also after a huge refurbishment of that particular hospital. The local hospital is already ill-equipped to deal with the huge catchment area for emergency medicine. How it could possibly cope with adding the fall-out from the other establishment is anyone's guess.

The psychiatric department where Zach has spent many moons was recently closed and a new one reopened. The problem is, though, that the local authority has to keep occupation at a minimum because there's no funding to offer the mentally ill the beds that they need. This is borne out by their 'criteria.' It used to be the case that if someone was considered a 'danger to him/herself or other people' then they would be sectioned. Well, this no longer seems to be the 'criteria' to which the NHS subscribe. God knows what it is. From experience, there's no 'criteria' at all.

NICE restrict medication that is proven to work for liver cancer sufferers; NICE operates a post-code for other medications and, this morning, I heard John Frieda on the radio proposing that hairdressers raise funds for a new operating theatre at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. An operating theatre? What is going on here? This is just after Children in Need, an annual private fund-raising event for the very same hospital raised hundreds of thousands of pounds. Great Ormond Street is an NHS hospital.

It's a scandal. Who is actually proposing that the NHS offer marriage guidance when there's not enough money for drugs, for childrens' operations, for mental health patients or even sufficient staff to provide urgent medical care for the elderly? Has anyone heard of the word priority?

SAD, Katie Price, celebrity and rattypoo

2009-11-20T20:49:00.004Z

Hi guys. I'm sorry. I just haven't had the energy or the inclination to write the blog for a bit. I think it has to do with the days - they're so short and so dark and so dingy. I get up in the morning and it's dark and then it's dark again at 4ish and I get fed up. I didn't think that I would suffer from SAD. I crave the bright blue skies and the sunshine and the beach and the smell of the pine along the boardwalk, running towards the port. There's not much of that here. Only the floods in Cockermouth.

Zach's good. I ought to bring you up to date with that. He has put on weight and looks 'normal', for once. Doesn't have the gaunt, haggard, withdrawn 'Twilight' pallor. He's not shaking or drooling or shuffling his feet. He's eating and has developed a tummy. Of course he's not too happy with the tummy effect and I catch him looking down at himself or glancing at himself in mirrors, side on. He's usually concave, not convex.

The meds are working. Zach sleeps and eats and we have conversations and he's got ambitions to do something that doesn't entail finding a dealer or 'smoking brown.' It's a new sensation. He's applied for something and wants to start something else in January. It's small steps but they're steps.

Just as an aside, I've been watching 'Celebrity'. I know. I'm sad. (Apart from X-Factor, of course!) I've been wondering why the 'public' have been voting for Katie Price on a daily basis. What is it about her that they want her to do all the tasks, however ghastly they are. And, golly, aren't they nauseating? What sadist comes up with 'tasks' such as these? Is there a groundswell of wanting to see Katie suffer? Or a groundswell of wanting her to do well? It's pretty odd, whatever it is. I think that she's one ballsy lady, whatever... Dunking your head into slime and being showered in cockroaches? Ugh. What does she have to prove? Is she the masochist, being manipulated by the public or is she manipulating the public?

The above is, of course, quite a red herring to Zach's machinations. I don't know whether he watches any of that. I think that he prefers real animals. He's got his own ratty in situ.

'Health and Safety' insanity

2009-11-01T13:06:00.002Z

Can someone please tell me what is the point of 'Health and Safety'? I ask simply because I'm just so bloody frustrated with the all-purpose answer from anyone who works for anything to do with utilities. It's the saga of Zach's electricity. I spent half a day in his flat a few weeks ago, waiting for the man to turn up and 'do' something with the electricity meter. It's in a room along with every other tenant's meter - gas and electricity. At waist high. All you have to do is to bend over to read it. Nothing dangerous there, I swear.

The meter was supposed to be moved inside of Zach's flat on Tuesday, for 'health and safety reasons.' He waited in all day but no one turned up (at least he didn't see anyone from the electricity company). The appointment had been made weeks ago. I rang them for him to find out what had happened. He didn't have enough juice left on his mobile. 'Someone was there,' I was informed. 'But they couldn't do anything for "health and safety reasons".' What were those, I enquired. 'I don't know,' came the response from the very nice man at the end of the phone. There's nothing unsafe about the meter, I told him. It's got good company with everyone else's. They're not having to be moved for 'health and safety reasons.'

Zach was down to his last £1 on the meter and called out for an emergency add-on. You have to do that, I was told. Not before the last £1. Nuts. The meter man turned up first thing this morning, Sunday. Of course Zach was asleep. The phone rang once to say that someone was there but when Zach got to the door, the add-on man had disappeared. Now he's out of both gas and electricity. Sitting in the chill and the dark and unable to boil a kettle. He's effectively cut off. What a botch of a system.

When I rang the electricity company once again on Zach's behalf and explained the situation, I was told that if Zach had paid his bills, then he wouldn't be in this situation. I agree entirely. But we're not dealing with someone who necessarily thinks like everyone else. He's got problems, I told her. He's not unique. I'll bet there are plenty just like him. She agreed. Then, I posited, this is not a very effective way of dealing with vulnerable people who should benefit by health and safety but who, evidently, are being let down by those very same laws.

Meanwhile we have an extension cable. There's a plug in the hallway of Zach's block and, because the landlords have still not mended the stove, the doorbell, the shower unit or replaced the rotting carpet in the bathroom - not to mention their recalcitrance with dealing with Ratty - he can use some of their electricity while he waits yet again for someone to turn up and add on the electricity because 'health and safety' meant that no one moved his meter without him being there because god knows what could possibly happen to the meter man confronted with a waist high electricity meter.

Back on earth

2009-10-29T10:56:00.002Z

I'm back. It's still autumn. It's still warm and the roads are carpeted with leaves. It's quite beautiful really. Stunning. I'm lucky because I can take the dog for a walk and see other people that I recognise as other dog walkers and the shop and stall owners who know us and we can meet and greet. It stops me from being invisible. Of course I'm still invisible when I'm dog-less. I think that Zach needs to be less invisible, although I suppose he'd rather be invisible if it means that no one knows him as the 'nutcase' of Ladakh.

We've reached terra firma again. It's reasonably firm. I'm not too sure what damage he's done to himself this time. It's taken a toll of him. He's quite exhausted and unfit. He still looks quite well though. He says that he's taken all the meds. He's not sweaty and he's eating. His conversation is constrained. I think that he's making an effort not to inject any 'Zachisms' into what he says to me. The stuff he knows that I dislike with a vengeance having to listen to. He says that he'll give the music one last try. So there's insight there. He still wants to do something abroad though. He says that London is bad for him. Absolutely. But to work in the mountains? In the altitude again?

Ideally, Zach says, he'd like to find something to do every day. Keep himself busy. See people. But what? Does anyone have any ideas? There's Oxfam in the High Street. They want volunteers for some hours a week. But is that any good for Zach? He would like to take some courses. He said that he'd go to the local library to see what was on offer. The inherent wishes are there but the motivation to get up and go is something else. I wish that I knew the answer. Again it's how much do I get involved? But if I don't, could he do it himself?

Greetings from 'the Land.'

2009-10-24T11:07:00.005+01:00

I must apologise. I'm away. In 'the land', among the sun and the palm trees and the absolutely azure Mediterranean and having a sublime time. It's nice because I can try and switch off. Sam is with me and we have seen Beth in situ and she's fine and having the best moments of her life. She asks about Zach in a tangential way, almost as if she doesn't really want to know. And I understand that. We're returning to what I understand is a cold and noisy London on Monday night and the blogs will recommence from then on.

We hear from Zach when Sam calls. He's been to see his GP but decided against the drugs counselling and has stopped the medication that's supposed to eradicate the need for opiates. He said that the pills were giving him terrible side effects. Don't opiates give you 'terrible side effects'? Quite frankly I would have thought that some side effects, thus negating the need for heroin. would have been worth while. But then I wouldn't have started along that route in the first place...

To some extent I'm quite despondent about Zach's future. He says that he's taking all the Bipolar medication. Maybe if he continues to do so, then the need for other forms of highs will be prohibited by the fact that he's 'balanced.' However, he's not of a mind to want to be 'balanced' at the best of times. We shall have to see.

In any event, I'm going off to enjoy the sun for the next couple of days because I know that next Saturday I won't be able to walk along the shore, watching the dogs and their owners having a whale of a time at the dog beach, or the gays on the gay beach or the orthodox on the orthodox beach. I won't be able to sit outside a beachside cafe and drink upsidedown coffee or ice cafe or eat humus and techina and tiny salad in freshly baked pita or pungent black bread. I won't be able to watch the cyclists and the skaters and the runners and the walkers. I watch the surfboarders and the windsurfers and wonder how they have the termerity and bravery to stay atop the waves. I'd drown. And noisily.

It's not a question of it being a dreamlike quality and reality hitting back when we get back 'home.' I'm saving it all up and will bring out a memory each time that I hit the blackspot when it all gets too much and imagine that I'm still here. And Zach will have to deal with that.

Doomed to repeat those errors again

2009-10-16T13:33:00.003+01:00

The sun is shining now. When we walked on the Heath this morning, I had to cover myself in my burka-like hood so that I wasn't a sodden human being. The dog dragged his bedraggled body along the paths. He doesn't like getting wet but unlike ex-dog he, at least, doesn't avoid puddles. I hate the wet. I live in the wrong country for walking dog. I went out at the wrong time. Now it looks like a summer's day again. When will I ever learn?

Indeed, do we ever learn? Why do we keep repeating patterns of behaviour, as if past experiences were part of an amnesiac's brain? This can be extrapolated globally, cif. the UN. But on a macro level we appear doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

We saw Zach on Wednesday night. A birthday dinner with Sam's mother. A nice evening. Zach was quiet. Controlled. An improvement over the weekend when he was, evidently, elated. He says he's taking all the meds but I'm not too sure about controlling his addictions. I hope that his mind will control his urges in that direction. But from past experience I can't say that I'm too hopeful. I know that he wants to but doesn't the desire far outweigh the hope? He needs to accept the right help. I can't see it happening though.

Are there times when we meet ourselves re-walking the same paths that we have walked before? Would that there be something new. Something positive. Only time will tell, they say. Will it?

And so we begin (Again)

2009-10-12T13:01:00.002+01:00

An endless line of cars stretched into the short term parking at Heathrow. Saturday night. Around 6.30pm. Probably, apart from the 'red eye', the busiest time of the day. All the flights arriving were from the Middle East, the Far East and Africa.

You would never have believed that you were in England. The terminal was heaving. Thousands of passengers. Most of them alighting from flights as diverse as Oman, Lagos, Jakarta, Delhi, Yemen. A crush besides the barriers. Families vying for positions close to the doors from whence their mothers, fathers, siblings and friends pushed their trollies and buggies. A couple in full African regalia were pushed along in wheelchairs. They looked like the king and queen of an ancient African state, glistening with gold, diamonds and bright red lipstick. Another young woman in a burka appeared alone with one child in a buggy, another toddling at the side and a baby grasped around its middle in a pink all-in-one. She looked exhausted and sad. There didn't appear to be anyone with her apart from the children. But then where was her baggage? Presumably her husband had gone along in front but I couldn't see him.

We both peered around looking for Zach. He'd texted us on someone else's phone to say that the plane had taxied to its spot and was about to stop. Then I saw a lone white face waving towards where I was standing. For a moment I didn't recognise it. Then I realised that it was Zach! How well he looked initially. He'd put on some weight and didn't look gaunt and haggard. His face had filled out and he'd had his hair cut well and was wearing a clean and elegant purple linen shirt and new jeans and shoes and bag. He hugged me and, I thought, gosh, he looks older. Like the 30 year old that he is...

A return car journey. A meal locally and an analysis of how Zach presented himself psychologically. There wasn't really too much that we could talk about because he was still somewhat delusional. A coup in Ladakh. A Chinese take-over. The entire area overrun with Chinese soldiers. A trek to a lake through 'enemy controlled countryside' where gurkha soldiers aided him and from where he was accompanied back to Leh on the back of a motorbike. Of course it had nothing to do with his state of mind that he took himself off without provisions or water. He met only the best people. How much of this is true? It's so difficult to determine. We took him home. Much appreciation for my cleaning and happiness to be back in London but after we had left he took himself off to Camden with a friend...

The problem is that Zach now wants to revert to how things were before but without the attendant heroin. He's happy to take the medication that obviates the need for opioids and the meds that should control the mood swings. He'll even take some of the anti-psychotic medication that will help him sleep but for how long is anyone's guess. He's been prescribed a cocktail that should really make a huge impact on his life but he's still resistant to lithium and, I do believe, has discarded it already.

Yesterday evening Zach came around for a quick visit full of plans. He's got some insight into when he's warbling on and when he's talking complete nonsense. He says how much he liked the psychologist and that he wants to continue their sessions online. He's still not well though. Maybe he has what is called a 'mixed state.' He's elated but, I believe, quite depressed. How the mood goes over the next few days is something that we shall have to watch. It could go either way. If he stops sleeping, stops taking the right amount of medication or starts smoking weed, then I'm not hopeful. Maybe he should have stayed in hospital longer. Maybe we were too impatient to bring him back here.

More interesting times.

Phew! Return returns and stressful situations

2009-10-09T21:20:00.004+01:00

Zach is coming back tomorrow night. I can't say that I'm excited about it. More like stressed, enervated, anxious. He's excited about it. So much so that Sam was worried that he was spiralling again. That's all we need. Another reprise of 2007. Weeks in hospital, then return to London and a squat among the market stalls in Camden. I can't see that we'll get any help from the NHS. Zach's been 'out of the loop' for the last two years. No CPN (community psychiatric nurse) has ever been doled out; the social worker disappeared off the scene. The hospital psychiatrist left his post and no one has bothered to contact Zach. Great.

The past few days have been spent waiting for the man from the electicity company to come back and switch on the lights. I got a parking ticket for that. Four hours backbreaking cleaning. The bathroom and kitchen look far less squalid now. I kept on looking for ratty but he didn't show his face. Maybe the smell of cleaning fluid and bleach frightened him. It was a new experience. I don't think that the kitchen floor had ever seen a mop before. I doubt that it will again but I left it behind. No doubt if I go back in six months it will still be in the same place.

Apart from dust and discarded cigarettes and ash, there wasn't too much to clean in the main room. The poor plants had mostly died. How can you kill a cactus? Poor sad things, all wilty brown leaves and crumbly earth. I tried to revive them but my Hippocratic skills, learned when I started my MSc at Imperial, were weak. Dosing them with water only created crators among the scorched soil. Maybe he can leave them outside in the rain. They need tender loving care.

The bits and pieces of groceries have been put away. The kitchen and bathroom almost shine but I wonder for how long. Other friends ask their cleaners to clean their respective kids' flats. I don't know if I could do that. It makes sense but then he'll never even lift a wet cloth to a tea stain in the knowledge that L. the clean will come along and make it pretty again.

The psychiatrist has sent him home with two weeks' meds. The psychologist has given him her advice and directions as to how best live his life. Ragesh is making his way back to Nepal, no doubt having made a friend for life. But at what cost? And the wonderfully kind men from the High Commission have extended their friendship. So rare among the various embassies and high commissions and consulates.

We'll be at the airport to see Zach among the crush of bodies on the New Delhi flight. Once again. How many times? He says that he's bought new clothes. That we should be 'proud' of the way he looks. That he wants to continue 'some' medication. I can't bare the thought of the extended conversation. The one that's been ensuing for twelve years. The thought of relapse makes me breathless. Then I think of the man with no arms and legs. It's not THAT bad!

Worry-men and inspirational talk

2009-10-05T14:27:00.006+01:00

There's an old parable about the 'worry-man.' From place to place, village to village, shtetl to shtetl, he goes around with his long wooden stick. In each village they come out to greet him and he shows them the stick and asks them to tie their worry to it. After half an hour it's emblazoned with worries. 'Take one!' he tells the people. 'Take any one. Any one that doesn't belong to you!' The villagers look at one another. Can this be true, they ask one another. Can we take someone else's problems, anxieties, worries?

One villager steps forward and pulls off a piece of paper and the string attached from the stick. Another one follows suit. Then another and another. Each person takes a new worry. Something that they hadn't had, something that they didn't want. They look at the writing. They look at each other then, after some seconds, stealthily they tread towards the worry-man, while he regards them with a short smile around his lips, his eyes beady with intelligence.

'I'm not sure that I want this one,' a tubby woman tells him. 'I've enough worries of my own...' She reaches up to where she had initially tied her problem. 'I think I'll keep it. If you don't mind.' On and on the villagers untie their problems. Half an hour later, they walk back to their houses, crushing the paper between their fingers, throwing it into the fires that burn in the blackened grates. The worry-man continues onwards, towards another village, another shtetl. Who needs someone else's tsuris, or worries, when you know your own?

I watched a short video yesterday about a man who was born with no arms and no legs, apart from a fin attached to what must have been a stump. A torso with a head. A young, handsome man who goes around to schools and colleges, talking about his particular tsuris, making the point - not necessarily elegantly - about things being far worse than you think they are. You wonder how on earth he manages to pee or scratch his nose, shave, eat, move from school to school. He's supposed to be inspirational. Your weight gain or your insecurities or your cancer or insanity are nothing compared to me! Yes, they are inconsequential if it means that the alternative is to have no arms or legs and to be reliant on a host of people to do the basic, basic things.

So I guess that I'll stick to the insanity on my doorstep that permeates my existence. I don't want someone else's problems. The worry-man can sleep peacefully knowing that I won't tie my problems to his wooden stick. Although sometimes I do dream differently.

Of utilities and a waiting game

2009-09-30T16:29:00.004+01:00

I've spent most of the day on the phone. In his infinite wisdom Zach doesn't pay bills. Therefore the red ones spirit their way to him predictibly. At the moment there's no electricity in his flat; his filthy flat with the dirty dishes still in the sink. Everything is sticky and I think that Ratty has made himself at home among the piles of pots and pans and garlic bulbs. There's no washing up liquid, of course and the bathroom - you don't want to know. Miraculously everyone I've spoken to, from EDF electricity to Thames Water and British Gas have been incredibly polite, helpful and humane. I've had none of the 'I can't speak with you under the Data Protection Act.'

Obviously call centre personnel are now trained to deal with problems regarding customers with problems. Severe problems. When I explained to the chap in the call centre for the gas supply that Zach was in hospital in the very same city that he was working in, he was just charming. He was probably happy to divert from his script and discuss something outside the usual parameters within which he has to work. He knew of the hospital and where it is situated and wished Zach better and only the best for him.

Now I have to go and spend the day at the flat and wait for a man to switch on the lights. I could well do without having to do that. I'll have to sit in the car, as there's nowhere to park legally and wait for someone to turn up. The things I do for Zach. Does he actually appreciate anything? Unlikely. Frustration turns to anger.

The latest is that Zach may be leaving for London in about ten days. He won't be entirely well but it comes to a point that it will be unproductive having him in hospital. Ideally he would be an outpatient for months to come but he can't live in Delhi. No doubt it will be fun and games when he comes back because, naturally, none of this episode will have been his fault. It never is. He put the phone down on me last time I spoke with him because I told him that I personally would have left him in Ladakh. This time I'm going to sit him down and tell him exactly what I think of him. How well will that go, I wonder.

Blogging blogs that are hopefully read

2009-09-22T09:19:00.004+01:00

The inherent problem about writing a blog is that you don't know who's reading it. You look at the number on the stat counter - when it works. Mine, for the second time, decided to give it up and now I've had to start again at the beginning. Frustrating but, ultimately, egotistical. No?

You sit down, you stare at the screen, you begin to write something and then, hopefully, you find a rythm, and something that makes sense invariably turns up. It's like the (famous) Henry Mancini concept: you sit at the piano, you know you have a piece of music to write, you know that you have x time to write it in, so you do and it gets done. Don't ask me how.

So I'm writing my blog and people are reading it and sometimes you get a comment (I wish that there were more!) that floors you. Who could it possibly be from? Who knows so much? Who is it that actually offers more information than you actually have yourself? Your imagination flows. So why be anonymous? And angry?

Little has happened this week. I think that the meds are kicking in. I believe that Zach is now taking a medication that counterracts the desire for heroin. I also believe that he's far less manic but, in a conversation with Sam, Zach still expresses his desire to use cannabis. So, then, what is the point of all this? Just a re-hash (sorry, my pun) of all the previous histories. Isn't it about time that he actually took stock of his life and there was some self-examination? How about going completely clean? You know, no drugs, apart from those medically prescribed? Wouldn't that make sense?

What makes sense is that Zach continues at the clinic in Delhi and enjoy the weather once it clears up and somehow make use of the facilities of detox and rehab and introspection and if and while that happens, I'll write my blog into the ether but hope that I do, indeed as a consequence, get more comments - whatever they are and whoever they are from.

And, by the way, Happy New Year!

Bipolar Days in sodden Delhi

2009-09-17T15:06:00.004+01:00

It's been a bipolar week, so to speak. At one end messages of stubborness and starvation, at the other, some better news. It's still raining. The consular official is still stuck on the road to Kashmir because of a landfall during the last days of his holiday. Ironic really, considering that only a few weeks ago Sam, Rickey and Zach were driving along the very same road. At that time only the bridge was out, delaying them for about five hours. This time the side of a mountain has landed on the only road west and so far it's taken five days while Her Majesty's representative has wasted his hours among the trucks and four-wheel drives and their angry and irate travellers, truckers and vacationers. No one knows when he'll get back. The thought of this having happened while Zach, Sam and Rickey were on their way is just too awful to consider.

So another member of HM's High Commission visited the hospital, umbrella at the ready, trousers lifted high above his shoes, his suit jacket splattered with the tumbling rain. He met up with Ragesh and Zach and noted Zach's 'jolly, jovial mood.' Yes, indeedy. Zach was 'jolly and jovial' while he was able to get what he wanted. When he didn't, said HM's rep. he retorted to 'violence.' The reason that poor Ragesh is needed so desperately is that Ragesh keeps Zach calm. I remember a large hole created in a wall in a well-known London hospital. The flat that we had bought so that Zach had somewhere to live other than the streets here was pretty well destroyed before we threw him out two years ago. I doubt that he's violent towards people. It's inanimate objects that he tends to lash out at. Doors, tv controls, walls, guitars.

Yet for the first time since Zach has been diagnosed Bipolar we received a written report from his consultant in Delhi. Isn't it disgraceful that even though he's been sectioned here what, nine times, that we've never had this before? Dr. J. in Delhi was thorough. He wrote about the medication prescribed and it's effects; he wrote about Zach's behaviour and also what they are doing about his drug problems and how they are tackling them. At the moment there's no time scale involved. Another local patient would 'recover' somewhat and then go home and go back to the hospital as an out-patient. Because Zach has no home or family there, he will have to stay in hospital until he, too, 'recovers', if at all he does. The irony is that he travelled to India in order to be cleaned up. Maybe, in this convoluted fashion, he may well end up being 'clean'. How bipolar is that?

It's a Hard Rain Gonna Fall

2009-09-13T15:52:00.003+01:00

New Dehli is awash with streams and puddles and it's steaming. The temperature outside is around 35 centigrade and it continues its monsoon. No one is left out of the downward cascade. Around the corner from the hospital is a slum. Sam described the moment they came upon it, trying to find their way back to their hotel. Dozens of women, bottoms up, using the lanes around and about for their personal toilets. He said that the smell was indescribable - as was the sight of such squalor juxtaposed with the skyscrapers of Delhi. I don't think that Zach will want to escape into this - without money or passport.

Things aren't too pretty in the hospital either. Ragesh is fed up with the situation that he's found himself in. The staff at the hospital don't treat him well. Class and caste distinction in India may have eradicated itself on paper but on the ground it exists well into the twenty-first century. Ragesh is a Tibetan Buddist. This is almost on a par, it would appear, with the dalits, or leatherworkers, of the lowest caste. He's called names and treated as Zach's skivvy and Zach, in his mania, isn't too nice to him either. What a gem he is. He's still there. I think that maybe he doesn't want to lose face and leave or that he's totally loyal to Zach or he's frightened to tell us that he wants to go. We ask him each time. 'Ragesh, do you want to go home? You can, you know. Don't feel that you have to stay with Zach...' But Ragesh demurs and he's still there. 'It's been the worst time of my life,' he told Rickey. What to do?

Then there's the other thing. The thing that Zach refuses to eat hospital food. Initially I felt that it was spoilt behaviour but remembering the swill that they served up in the clinic in Greece, I can guess that it's not Le Gavroche or even Wimpey. I've a bet that Wimpey would be gobbled down with alacrity. Indian hospital swill is probably not too inspiring. Being almost 6' and skinny as a broomstick, Zach could do with calories. He's not going to get them by going on hunger strike. I guess that other patients have their families bring in food from home. It's a bit far for us. Ragesh gets pizzas for him but one can't live on pizza alone.

So Zach's angry and he's kicking out and breaking stuff and I presume it's because he's hungry and the meds don't work properly without food and he's not well and it's all very frustrating being so far away and unable to do anything proactive. I thought, for about a minute or two, that I would go and then jumped back. What's the point? Apart from taking in food, within quarter of an hour Zach would be at my throat metaphorically and we would be shouting at one another.

So the rain continues to fall. Ragesh is bemoaning his fate and Zach is starving himself but not into submission. I've asked Chabad to visit him and take him something to eat. I've not heard back. It's a 'good deed' I said in my email. Hopefully someone will plop through the puddles and the downpours and deposit a pot of chicken soup on the hospital cot. Am I dreaming?

Safety in Delhi?

2009-09-10T12:03:00.004+01:00

I made a friend recently. Elsie, I'll call her, runs the antique stall in the village. A real eccentric, smells wonderfully of expensive perfume, hugely charismatic and jolly in the extreme, she asked after Zach. 'How's your boy?' she enquired while Monk, my waggy Max replacement, bounded up at her in joyful exhuberance. She knows Zach. When he's reasonably sane he takes Monk for walks on the Heath. He passes by Elsie's stalls and stops, no doubt to louchely light a cigarette and chat to Elsie or to talk with Ken her partner about the latest football stories.

I imagine Zach there on a cold winter's day, collar up, huddled over lighting the fag, while Elsie regales him with the latest local gossip. He's charmed her. When she saw me after Sam had returned from Delhi, she then too enquired about Zach. 'Where's your boy? I haven't seen him for weeks...' I told her what had happened to him. The journey to Leh. The meltdown. The drugs he had apparently been fed by the 'friends' he had made while they watched him as one does a clown or the funniest comedian. Her face fell and tears reached her eyes. 'I know just how you feel,' she said to me. She didn't have to say much. I could tell that she really could empathise. 'You know,' she continued, 'it's not his fault. When you start to lose it, the distance between the time that you can stop and do something is so small, so very tiny that it's almost an impossibility to do anything about it...' So she knows a lot about this, I thought.

Today, after being dragged around the corner by the ever-affectionate Monk, almost knocking over the bric-a-brac and pictures and into Elsie's arms, she asked again after Zach. I considered the question. How do you answer it? 'He's safe,' I said. She looked up at me and smiled. 'Well, that's something, isn't it? At least he's safe.'

I suppose he's safe. We're, what, five, six thousand miles away? We have to trust the hospital, the consultant, the attendants, nurses, Ragesh... We don't really know what's happening there but then we didn't know what was happening to Zach when he was in hospital in Greece or Ecuador or Thailand. Various people gave us feedback. The only feedback we get from Zach is that he 'shouldn't be there.' When asked by Sam why, his answer was that he should still be in Leh, 'fighting the fight in Iraq/Afghanistan...' Whatever that means. Still delusional, is the reply.

So safety is paying hospital bills and bills for Ragesh and extra bills for Ragesh to go and buy food for Zach because Zach refuses to eat the food at the hospital and then there's more clothes to buy for him and... Well, it's still safer him being there than here because at least we know that he's not knocking around the streets of Delhi, making his home in a market and scoring as much as he can from the local dealers. Well, at least I hope he's not...

Football's wonderous clarity

2009-09-06T19:25:00.003+01:00

I suppose that clarity returns when part of a 'conversation' turns onto football. That hadn't happened for something like two months. It's a semblance of sanity and something that we can grasp on to. The rest of the conversation didn't much resemble the sanity we want but there's time yet to go.

The call is now for money. The problem is that by sending money to Zach, we don't know in whose pocket it will end. Ok if it's for McDonalds or pizza but not such good sense if it's the local dealer and knowing Zach's propensity to smell out the ones who take the money and then deliver the goods, we don't want that. Another dilemma. According to Zach, Ragesh wants to go. Hardly surprising there but do we believe Zach? Maybe it's a ruse to do away with Ragesh so that Zach 'manages' himself...

So it's back to the consultant tomorrow. The last words that Sam had with him, the kind doctor told him that Zach's MRI was good; that he was 'progressing' and that they do rehab there. Zach feels that there's no need that he remain there in India. He can 'take a sedative and take the plane home.' Oh, yeah... 'And,' he added, 'continue detox in London.' Raised eyebrows and downturned mouth. The thought of that...

Why is it all so difficult? The continual juggling with thoughts and opinions and ideas and never any real advice from anyone. We have to make these decisions and hope that they are the right decisions. We want Zach to stay in hospital until he comes down enough to be able to steer himself through some kind of rehab. 'You didn't have to bring me to hospital.' Someone will speak with the consultant about money. 'I need money. I don't have any money. You can't survive in Delhi without money.' Send me, send me, send me... As if somehow that will be the answer to everything.

As usual there's no insight from Zach as to why Zach's in hospital in Delhi. Always someone else's fault. His arguments are currently falling on deaf ears but for how much longer? When the entire conversation focuses on football? And then...

The cords that bind and the chords that strike

2009-09-02T11:56:00.004+01:00

He shouts at Sam, 'What IS this place?' Then, realising that he knows all along, he simply raises his voice and belittles Sam about the first hospital. 'It was the worst! They tied me to a bed and wouldn't let me go..!' It's amazing how mania makes you forget everything. The fact that this latest hospital was a small, private facility in a large Indian city is irrelevant to the now.

The first time I came across Zach in this predicament was in Athens. This, too, was a private hospital. Here he had been shackled to a rusting metal bed by a leather strap and a lock with a key. Sounds medieval? It was. He was practically comotose, though. There was no need to disihibit his movements. One step and he would have folded, like a pair of trousers, onto the grubby floor. This was the reason, the consultant later told me, why they had shackled him to the bed. To stop him from falling out. But the amount of meds they had given him would have obviated that argument.

This time in Delhi, in the full glare of the hospital lights, surrounded by nurses and doctors and attendants, Zach had to be packed down onto the bed. He was out of control. Maybe a padded cell would have been the answer? He hasn't done padded cells yet. But the hospital, sweet as it was, didn't have that option. He had to be tied down before he did himself or anyone else real damage. He remembers the cords but not the reason for them.

There's no real news at the moment. Just the few words from the consultant to say that the real work will begin when the meds have made their way across the deluded mind. We can only wait until we hear that that has happened. Until then, our imagination will have to be utilised and the occasional phone call from Zach, angry and despondent and humiliated, will assault our senses.

I see that Julie Myerson has had her book published in the USA, not to great acclaim. But that won't stop it from being sold in the thousands. Any publicity, it would appear, is good publicity. She's been largely criticised for glibly 'outing' her son in this book. The general concensus is that he appears to have behaved like a teenager - and yet she threw him out. It's the connivance between the two of them that has struck that chord. All too convenient.

Autumn leaves again so soon

2009-08-30T16:37:00.004+01:00

We're now at the angry stage. We're also at the stage where realism begins to show its head among the delusions. Zach's aware that he's not in some crabby hotel room or a prison cell. He's in hospital and he's not happy. He wants out but he's not sure how to make that possible. The consultant emailed me. They're going to start psychotherapy when there's something to work with. Until then, it's taking the meds and sleeping and, hopefully, eating.

Three messages were left on my mobile yesterday by Ragesh. Zach wants to talk to his mother. Another voicemail from Zach on the house phone. Difficult to understand what he said. Sounds pretty doped up. And angry. How sad.

I spend time considering what can be done so that this doesn't happen again but that likelihood is remote. What I do think is that something should be done to divert Zach's attention; change his behaviour patterns. Coming back to London and facing the autumn and then winter and the dark days and the cold will not help his equilibrium. The boredom will return. The unaltering days. Re-visits to where he was before he left. I have an idea but more of that later.

I can't believe that summer is almost over again. It goes so fast - here, especially, where we have such a short period of heat and sunlight. Walking, I see that brown leaves are making carpets on the Heath and that autumn fashions are displayed in shop windows. When Zach left in June, summer was just on its way. We'd had a few good days. When and if he comes back here, it will be leading to short nights and Christmas decorations and adverts for the 'festive season.' Will he notice that? Notice that it all went away so quickly, while he was puffing and snorting and being fed all and every narcotic?

Oh, for the days of 'Soap'

2009-08-27T12:57:00.006+01:00

It's come back again. The delightful incubus of Zach's soul. The one that only wants, wants, wants and takes everything and does nothing to show its appreciation or happiness. Poor Ragesh. Stuck in a room with Zach and his demons. An email from Ragesh was only so enlightening.

"...he still asking me for drugs. He asking me so much thing I could not effort [sic] him. Whatever you pay me, most off money I envest [sic] for Zach. I could not seved [sic] any money."

So he's basically saying that Zach's manipulating him to buy him the usual: coke, cigarettes, pizzas and, if he could, drugs. I only hope that Ragesh has the good intelligence not to go down that path.

I wrote back to Ragesh, telling him not to give in to Zach. That this is typical behaviour and to tell Zach that he doesn't have any money on him. That he's put it all into his bank account and that there's no way on earth that he's going to bring in drugs. You have to be very strong, cold and stern while dealing with Zach when he's like this. If he doesn't get his way, he's likely to be aggressive and frightening. You have to leave him when he eyes the wall and lands a hefty thump through the plasterwork. Hopefully he's wearing sandals or, better still, nothing on his feet. The local hospital here in London still has the site of his last temper tantrum.

It's very early days then. This is the beginning of the downward slope but it's still likely that he could, if he managed to get hold of any skunk or ketamine, spiral yet again. You just have to hope that the hospital is aware of this. I wrote to the consultant, reiterating Zach's propensity for all manner of narcotics. I've not yet heard back from him. Still, Zach's not alone there. The guy in the next room is also in for a psychotic breakdown linked entirely, he shamefacefully told Sam, to his 'predisposition for cannabis.'

And today I read that Kerry Katona biffed her accountant. She's in meltdown too, yet again. Addicted to cocaine, the story goes. That will make her aggressive for sure. Now she's been arrested and what gives for her kids? Will they be given to her ex? Taken into care? What's happened to this generation? Is there really so much more mental disengagement? In decades past was there such an enormous amount of suffering? Is it simply due to the proliferation of drugs?

Will Ragesh last the distance? Who could? Will he take my advice and tell Zach that he's not going to bring in to the hospital anything other than bottled water? It's like Soap. Where's Jessica Tate when you need her?

Monsoons, slums and the waiting game

2009-08-24T10:10:00.003+01:00

The first thing on waking up. The last thing on going to sleep. When you wake up in the middle of the night, it's there, like a shadow, spreading itself over your supine body. It doesn't go away. There's always a tinge of it, whether you are watching a film: yes, I remember him like that too. Reading a book, concentration is lacking. How can you work, you ask yourself. You have to get on and try to push the thoughts to the back, so that they don't take precedence over everything. Then it's a Pyrrhic victory because then the overriding emotion is guilt. Guilt that it ever happened. Guilt that you were a party to it and guilt that it takes so much of you and that those who deserve equal sentiments are denied.

A young Australian intern at the neurological hospital in Delhi emailed us. 'The past few days,' she wrote, 'he's been very manic, aggressive and agitated, as you no doubt know and today he's quite a bit calmer. This is definitely due to his medications. Today was the first day that he's not been delusional.' This morning Ragesh called and Zach tried to speak with Sam. Pointless, as he was so full of these delightful meds that he was unable to articulate a word, save for asking for Sam and Rickey to 'take him out for a meal.' He doesn't, therefore, seem to be in a place yet where he knows what's happening. I doubt that it's the meds doing this, it's where his head is.

There's really nothing that we can do from this end. Phone calls to the hospital are difficult to arrange because the consultant has his own methods of doing things. He has his various hospital consultation hours and then the time that he spends at Zach's hospital is spread out between the number of patients there. We'd like to know what's happening, though. Be brought up to date. Find out whether there's some light at the end of the tunnel, although I know from past experience, that this is just the beginning and it's going to take weeks.

From mixed messages by way of Ragesh last week, Sam got the impression that maybe Ragesh wouldn't last the distance, notwithstanding his sudden increase in wealth; that the time spent with Zach was so fraught, that it wouldn't even be worth his new status. However Rickey spoke with Ragesh and somehow Ragesh's fears have been allayed - for now.

So the monsoon continues its downpours onto the sodden Delhi streets and the malodorous and monstrous slums that abut the hospital and we wait, all the while our waking moments are wondering and imagining how things are there and whether it was all worth it.

A different set of altitudes

2009-08-20T05:47:00.004+01:00

I look out and I can see blue skies, sunshine and the mediterranean glinting not so far away. I should really get a thrill from it and I do but everything is tinged with a melancholy. There's also the other emotions: anger, guilt, sadness. I've been away for three weeks and I knew that I shouldn't have looked forward to it. That whenever you look forward to something, then there's going to be something that spoils it. You can say this is it, this time. I sound spoiled and petulant. Maybe I am. I feel anger that Beth hasn't been able to see her father and that the week that she was going to spend with him now has been eradicated; you can't re-spend time. They'll have it again but it won't be the same.

And I think of Zach in the hospital room. The way that he will be spending his days there for the present. In a haze of intense medication. Probably not eating much. Drinking water. Pacing around the room. Bored. Listless. Angry. Conflicted. I wonder whether they will try additional and alternative medicine there. I know that they have yoga and ayurveda. This is India, after all. Whether he participates is something else.

So Sam is back in London. Emotionally and physically exhausted with Indian beaurocracy, intense travel, Zach's needs, traffic, fumes, heat and the having to contend with a zillion bits and pieces that continually stymied their movements. Back to London's shifting weather. But the football season calls and the further frustration that his team creates. Will they stay up this season, have an owner, win a game? All good stuff for a diversion. Eventually, it is hoped, Zach will once again join in with the trek south.

So I leave tomorrow for London once more. Leave these wonderfully sunny climes and then to be confronted with the full and unexpurgated version of what went on these last nine days among the mountains, the lakes and traffic fumes.

British Airways from Delhi to London and thoughts on the altititude of Leh

2009-08-18T05:11:00.006+01:00

Sam's taking a plane back to London today. I hope he leaves enough time to get to the airport. Rickey took a cab to meet Ragesh yesterday but the traffic drove him to distraction. I expect that Sam has taken that on board. Leave four hours early maybe!

Ragesh is now esconced in the hospital room with Zach. I think that he needs just to spend the nights there. Make sure that Zach doesn't do anything that will make his 'recovery' more fraught than it has been already. The meds should make him reasonably compliant, doing what they do to a person. It's a pity that the side-effects are always so profound. The shakes, the facial tics, the desperate desire to keep drinking water, coke - whatever is available. I can't see him but can imagine.

It's all quite depressing, really, leaving Zach in India like this. Even when his dybbuk is in place and he's immensely difficult to be around, you want to visit, to show that you care. It's too far to go. The hospital will keep Zach for as long as we pay and until we tell them to release him. How long is a piece of string? Who do we trust? I have to wait until I speak to Zach. Wind him up in the usual way and then see how he responds. Then I'll know how he is.

Oh, and my maths being so pathetic, I left off zeros. Sam reliably informs me that Leh in Ladakh is 12,500 feet high. Oops. Can't imagine being in altititude that thin and having to live a day to day existence. I know, it's the Himalayas and vast amounts of travellers go there in order to trek and climb and the sunrises are spectacular. Rather them than me. No wonder madness is an attendant theme. Far too little oxygen hits the brain.

Crop circles of cigarette burns adorning bodies and a hope for 'Ushpizin'

2009-08-17T05:32:00.004+01:00

What chemical imbalance would make you stub a cigarette out on your arm in anger? Someone said it was 'self hate.' It's not the first time. Look, if you decide in one corner of your brain that you want to take so many drugs that you become totally dependent on them, then surely there's something there. But I simply can't understand it. It's such a nightmare.

It's just an undate now. Sam's had enough of India. I think that the traffic is finally getting to him and Rickey. They want out. They had the most wonderful Indian meal of all time last night. A set meal. The equivalent in rupees of £4. That's something. Rickey's on his way to meet Ragesh at the airport but they didn't realise just how bad Delhi traffic could be. There's over a billion people in India. No doubt plenty of those are spending their time in cars, taxis, lorries, rickshaws and whatever form of transport carries people in India. I remember the cows dodging the traffic in the south. They've taken them off the streets of Bombay. Have they in Delhi?

So I sorted out the pyschiatrist for medication this morning. My phone was cut off over the weekend because I had gone so far over my limit. Yet another expense. Frustration for me. Nothing like the frustration that Sam and Rickey have been experiencing in the heat and clamminess of Delhi. Another meeting with Chabad who will visit and take in food and, maybe, hopefully, lead Zach onto a better path. Maybe he will become a 'return to the fold' and they'll find him a wife and a long black coat and a hat and he will grow side curls and he won't have to worry about anything else again. It's been done before. You only have to see that wonderful Israeli film, 'Ushpizin.' I can dream, can't I?

Sam's on his way to see the High Commissioner. Do we leave Zach's what-passes-for-a-passport with him? The psychiatrist sounded very on the ball, although he spoke so fast that it was difficult to catch everything he said. He sounded as though he knew what the medication was. Zach's receiving a very hefty dose of Olanzapine. He's obviously very disturbed. Ah, well.

How many more cigarettes will end up smoking skin on Zach's extremeties? Why does the brain make people do things like this to themselves? I know that the suicidal option is just below that skin, once the brain has been 'balanced' to realise the scope of the position it's owner has put it. Not a pretty sight. Got that t-shirt too.

Dehli's finest clothing stalls and swift negotiations

2009-08-15T07:57:00.003+01:00

So that's it again. They managed to get to hospital number one. However, hospital number one was unable to contain Zach. During the first night he became very violent. Didn't like being there. Dosed up on disgusting Haloperidol, the gum that makes you drool and shake. Doesn't agree with Zach. Makes him even worse. If that's possible. He decided to destroy the room, rip his clothes, shout and scream. So they restrained him and he spent the rest of the night tied to the bed. Not very creative but effective.

Yesterday Zach was moved to another hospital, near to where Sam and Rickey have set up base. It's monsoon season and it rained but was still 40 degrees. Zach's in a suitable place. In a secure room, on the right medication but he has to be watched 24x7. At night, stipulates the hospital, a family member has to stay in the room with him. We have, unfortunately, no family members in India. Ragesh from Leh has been asked whether he would like to earn some extra dosh and fill in as a family member. He's agreed and is flying down from Leh on Monday. Sam had hoped that it would be on Sunday but the flights are all full. More nights in Delhi.

500 rupees a day for a private nurse. Not too bad in the scheme of things. Hope that Ragesh won't be driven too mad by close proximity to Zach. He only needs to be there at night and, hopefully, Zach will be sedated so that he sleeps and doesn't impose his needs on Ragesh. You know those needs. Cigarettes, coke, pizza, cell phones. Ragesh will have to be strong. Then the money he earns will be for him and not for Zach. Zach will once again be penniless. Hopefully without money he won't be able to smuggle in drugs. Is the Pope a Catholic?

Sam and Rickey invested time in Dehli's finest market. There Rickey negotiated for tracksuit bottoms and t-shirts. Things that Zach can't destroy too easily. They may not be sartorially and aesthetically beautiful but, again, practical. How many times have we had to go out and buy shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes and underwear that Zach discards? Repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. We should have shares in Glaxo.

A round robin text from Sam made its way to friends and family. We've had some wonderful replies. Thanks to you all.

Sunshine, clouds, monsoonal rains and heat. The saga continues...

New Delhi's Finest and a Psychiatric Hospital among the high rises

2009-08-13T16:13:00.004+01:00

Phone calls, texts, hidden messages. It all costs one hell of a lot. Hate to think what my mobile bill is going to be like at the end of the month. Calls from London. Now calls from Delhi. Hot. 40 centigrade and counting and it's muggy and dirty and full of traffic and road works and building. Any they're fed up and tired and exhausted and on edge and Rickey almost biffed Zach yesterday. Don't know who stopped him. Quite understand him. Have been there. Have every item of clothing that matches.

The story so far: hour upon hour upon hour in a car with a driver from Leh to Srinagar. Zach completely deluded. They managed (more later) to get to the lake and from there to rent an absolutely splendid houseboat in a bucolic setting among other houseboats from a delightful man who told Sam he could use his cell phone at 'any time.' Zach drove them all crazy. He wanted to go and party in town. Rickey took time out to be on his own and Sam had duty. Worse than at any time, he told me. Worse than Greece (although he wasn't there - but, of course, Zach had already been in jail and hospital there by the time I had arrived); worse than Chaing Mai. There, too, he had been in hospital for a month, at least. And I remember the time that I met him at Heathrow with the scowling nurse the first time that he was repatriated from Thailand. Mad as a hatter then, too.

Srinagar, Sam tells me, is the most wonderful place. We have to go back. I'd love to. Sans Zach, bien sur. Zach shouted and screamed obscentities and broke china and glass and, somehow, managed to get more drugs. How, surrounded as he was by others and by Sam and Rickey, is beyond my imagination. But they get drugs in jail, on psychiatric wards... No doubt there was always someone ready to supply but he didn't have any money. How did he pay them?

Just two days and then another journey to Srinagar airport where, Sam told me quite astoundingly, the security made Israel appear totally lacking (although you never actually feel the security there...) As had been the case in Athens, Zach behaved like a totally revolting toddler. No concept of other people. No concept of his behaviour. No concept of the consequences of his behaviour. He lit a cigarette. They confiscated his boarding card. Sam flung the letter from the High Commissioner under their noses. Somehow they allowed him to board the plane.

On board the saga continued. Notwithstanding having fed Zach barbiturates to make him sleep, he drove them all mad. I'm surprised that they simply didn't open a hatch and push him out. God knows I've felt like it...

Sam made the decision that there was no way that they could get Zach to hospital in Delhi themselves. He called his guy there and an ambulance was waiting, practically on the tarmac. A doctor, two nurses and a strong guy who drove. This was plus Sam and Rickey. In his state, Zach thought it was the airport bus. Even though there was a huge red cross on the outside, he somehow couldn't put two and two together. His behaviour, however, within the confines of the ambulance (probably aided and abetted by two very pissed off compadres) was disgusting. There was no doubt that he was, to put it mildly, 'insane.'

So, at the time of writing, Sam and Rickey are sitting down to dinner (and strong drinks, too, I hope). Zach has been 'sedated.' A meeting is scheduled for tomorrow morning and a plan is being conceived of. Is there such a thing as a room where no drugs can be smuggled through? A doctor who can reach him? A light to shine into his befuddled brain? I mean, Ketamin two days into his holiday. I ask you...

Modern technology, heat, altitude and internet gremlins

2009-08-11T20:27:00.002+01:00

Internet pressure. From here, it seems that every time that I sign on, I get signed off or go offline or simply the connection doesn't like me, so there's been a bit of a delay in getting on to here and I've been caught short, so to speak. It's hot and sweaty though and I like that, although it means that ten minutes after I've taken a shower and head out into the sun and the blue skies and the lack of cloud or rainbursts or thunder, lightening and golf sized hailstones, that I should really return and re-run the shower and the talc and the deodorant and get dressed again. But it means that soon I'll have nothing left to wear and will have to go to the laundromat but I expect that that will be an experience.

So far as I know, both Sam and Rickey are in Leh. I received a short email from Sam yesterday, telling me that neither of his phones work there but that there was ample internet. They hadn't seen Zach but that from asking around, he was 'living' in a 'house' with 'foreign degenerates.' I'm not too sure how the 'foreign degenerates' came to be given that appendage. Who by? Probably the local police. One can imagine how these people view foreigners who go to these stunning locations in order to blow their minds on all kinds of mind-blowing material. They must despise them.

Two Australian girls knew of Zach. Maybe they pointed Sam and Rickey in the right direction. I don't know because I've heard nothing more. It's frustrating. You get used to instant information. But then years ago this was the norm. So normal, in fact, that no one would have gone off looking for Zach or anyone else like him. He would no doubt have been concerned about. Maybe even worried about. But who would have gone off to try to find him and bring him back?

I guess that I can reiterate how modern technology has actually been more of a hindrance than a help in some situations. Well, only time will tell. Meanwhile I check my emails more than I should, if only to gather an insight into what could possibly be happening to all three in Leh.

The mind boggles.

'Have Son, will Travel'

2009-08-08T12:32:00.003+01:00

Ok, so this is it. The wild goose chase begins again. All those miles under the belt. More jabs, pills and potions. More phone calls to high commissioners, attendance at an embassy. Airline tickets and doctors' prescriptions. Only this time I'm not going. Sam and Rickey are.

Good old Rickey. A friend in need is a friend indeed. Or so I tend to tell myself. 'Another road trip,' that will appeal to Zach. I couldn't do it. For the main because it's up there in the Himalayas and I get altitude sickness at eight hundred feet. Leh is, what? About twelve hundred feet? The thought of it makes me dizzy.

Sam's fears are that because of Zach's psychosis, someone will take him out. 'I couldn't live with that on my conscience,' he told me. 'Those shopkeepers are just waiting for him to do something more...' 90% of me still thinks that he should be left to endure his life the way that he's decided. I still wonder whether he shouldn't be left there to come down eventually but he's still my son. It's a dilemma. One which we shall never know the right answer to.

So Sam and Rickey are on their way to Heathrow this afternoon to take the night flight to New Delhi, an overnight there in a business hotel next to the airport (and no doubt some wonderful food) and then the 6.00am flight to Leh on Monday morning. What will they do when they get there? 'We'll be making a plan at the back of the plane,' Sam told me. A good cop/bad cop regime? Who knows. Will they find him? How will they find him? What will they do if and when they find him?

Chapter 24.

Losing oneself in Leh

2009-08-04T18:52:00.003+01:00

When do you know when to draw the line? Is there a line to draw? When do you make the decision to discard, to abandon? Do you have to continually tell yourself that you are responsible for your children, even when they are no longer children but of an age that they can have children of their own?

Sam got another call. Three weeks from the time we received the first, telling us that 'all was not well.' Ragesh had sent a text to James, a friend common to both Zach and Sam. A producer who had worked extensively with Zach; who had visited him on psychiatric wards and who had once taken him in a child's plastic ukele. 'Anything,' he said, 'that will give Zach some kind of focus...' It was a charming gesture. I wonder what happened to that ukele.

How on earth did James get this text? Obviously in some kind of 'sane' moment Zach imparted this bit of knowledge. 'Zach's literally living on the streets,' Ragesh told Sam in heavily accented English. 'I've been giving him food. He's got nothing. No belongings. No food. No water. No phone, nothing... He's very bad.'

Zach's been arrested three times and released. The police still have his passport but Zach's inaccessible, in a kingdom somewhere in the Himalayas. It takes five days by bus or jeep to get to Delhi. Sam arranged to send some money to Ragesh, to pay for the food that he's been supplying but the money hasn't been collected yet. Ragesh sent an email. No one is interested in allowing Zach comfort he said. They won't open their doors to him. He's far too grandiosely manic for them.

Now the Embassy are on to it. For a change. 'Your son has had an interesting life,' mentioned the High Commissioner in New Delhi. I told him in a further email that yes, that's quite true, but that I had already written the book. They're trying to work out how to get him to Dehli to a psychiatric hospital. Five days by road but an hour by plane. However, no plane will want to take him. Rickey has offered his services again.

Ragesh was pretty plain in what he feels should happen. ' You must come and take your son, otherwise you will 'lose' him...' So where do we go from here? Is he not lost already?

'The Times' Dear Tanya and monumental hubris

2009-07-28T20:28:00.003+01:00

'The Times' has a piece in today, 'Dear Tanya, My son is dealing drugs...' The usual stuff. Sixteen year old, started smoking skunk, personality changed, parents are divorced, don't know how to deal with him. You know, all the stuff you've heard of from me. Father tries to be tough. Mother unravels and enables the son because she's unable to be tough with him. It's nothing new. The kid's also started to deal at school. It's a pattern.

So I wrote a comment at the end of the piece, as others have done too. Only theirs have been published, mine hasn't. In mine I wrote that the kid resembles mine. He also started smoking but that his personality changed and then he developed Bipolar disorder. Because of that I wrote my book and, as a result, I've been going into schools and other venues and talking about it.

I wrote that most sixteen year olds don't have the insight into the consequences of their behaviour; that although they use, they couldn't possibly develop mental health problems as a result. I wrote that when I speak in schools and, especially, read out the chapters from the book about Glastonbury and bringing Zach back from filthy pscyhiatric wards half way around the globe that they do sit up and, to some extent, take it in. I wrote that shock value, talking about someone like them, does have an impact.

The Times, in its judgement decided not to publish my post. Why, I ask, is that, or am I simply being naive, that the piece was simply to fill in space because, as we know, drugs are the topic of conversation this week. That the 'comments' left at the space below the article aren't really 'comments' at all, but all part and parcel of the article, written by the same person in order to give the impression that there is some input from us poor morons because isn't it true that the media believe us all to be morons?

This is not the first time that this has happened. Countless 'articles' in countless columns have been written about drug abuse and mental health problems and I have contributed to many in the comments' sections and only once has one been published. I think that this is a serious question and has to be asked on many levels. This presumably happens on every subject. The perception that it's a free press. Oh, no it isn't!

Back to Leh: Zach's latest three lines of email tell us that he's 'been in the trenches... but that I'm fine and there's no money problems...' Right. Okay. Fine. How, exactly? As of today, he's making his way towards Israel. 'I'll surprise you, he writes. Um. Again, how exactly? From skunk to gear to mania and dirty, nasty wards and even worse medication but no one's allowed to read about that. Hubris.

Is Elvis the new flavour in Leh?

2009-07-25T15:45:00.002+01:00

Maybe the boats don't go often enough or maybe you actually need some kind of identification. The latest slurring message on voicemail gave the impression that Zach is still in Leh, not having moved too far towards the icy lake further north. Just another one of those unrealistic ideas he has of moving on to other things. I suppose that it's a case of not having a passport.

The garbled message included news that he was 'heading in the direction of Japan.' He has 'meetings with record producers and publishers...' You have to wonder how he's managing at all. That money is still sitting with Western Union. Pity, because it's not even making any interest while it's there. At least that could have been a good outcome. As it is, what's he doing for money?

What can Leh be like? It's a huge area of land, although the town itself is quite small, I've been told. My impression is that Zach is going from guest house to guest house. Is he paying? Does someone else? Is he playing in the town square like a country roustabout, guitar in hand, chippy scarf around his, probably now, scrawny neck. From the voice, it didn't sound as though he was in the right frame of mind to be giving concerts but what do they know in Leh? Maybe they think he's the best thing since Elvis?

So we're waiting again for another phone call to tell us something else that will, inevitably, have happened to him. As of lunchtime today he was still breathing. That's something...

German heiresses, Western Union and Indian authorities

2009-07-22T16:14:00.005+01:00

A story appeared on my Google alerts about a German woman who had recently inherited wealth. What was interesting was, that apart from her being Bipolar and an addict, she had been thrown out by her mother some years ago because her mother couldn't deal with all the problems associated with her daughter's illness. Now, because the girl has inherited some money, the mother is desperately searching for her. The last time that the girl was seen was on the streets, covered in newspapers and blankets, begging for food. Why do you think the mother is searching for her daughter now? To tell her that she's got money and will therefore live her future life in mad luxury, or could it be more sinister, that she wants to find the girl in order for her to sign over the money to her mother as she's obviously non compos mentis? We don't know. We only know that she's still looking.

I'm writing about this because, notwithstanding Zach asking us to wire him some money as he was 'stony broke', he hasn't collected it. It was £50.00 that can be deducted from the money he owes us when he comes back. I had a short call from him two days ago, when he told me that 'the banks were playing around with him' and that he couldn't collect the dosh. Seems that his passport was still with the authorities. They were 'looking after it for me' he explained. Without proof of identification he couldn't collect the money.

It's worrying that Zach hasn't collected the funds, for all sorts of reasons. He's usually adept, even in the height of insanity, to collect money from Western Union. He's even able to conrol himself to make reverse charge calls. He's not reading my emails and I don't know from where he made the call earlier this week. In any event, from my understanding and reading between all sorts of lines, he's broke. So where is he, without money and what is he doing to survive? Did he lose it with the Indian police and, if so, are there repercussions? I can't believe that he's on a slow boat to China without money, passport or mind.

I think that it would be rather nice if Zach were to inherit some wealth from somewhere but what would I do if he did while he is in the outposts of India or on a rowing boat along the Indus? Would I go out there and search for him and if I did, would I bring him back here and esconce him into rehab or would I leave him to it and see if he would surface and repeat all the patterns ad infinitum? It's a conundrum.

To be continued...

A Slow Boat to China

2009-07-19T20:29:00.003+01:00

Pangong Lake is 13,900 feet up in the Himalayas. It's 83 kilometers long and a raggedy five hour drive from Leh. They say that it's the place to 'see before you die.' You drive through spectacular valleys towards the disputed border between India and Tibet, now China. The Chinese, always in for a bit more territory, incorporated Tibet and now Tibet is China. Pangong Lake is patrolled by the Chinese navy and the Indian navy and you need a special permit to visit it. Not the sort of place to go to if you have any kind of health problem.

Of course, being Zach, is exactly the place that he has had to go to. 'I've organised a visa for a week for China,' he told us in a later email, when he wasn't sounding too bad. I mean, I guess that you have to have some kind of reasonable mental health to organise a visa to anywhere. But in these nether regions, maybe it's easy to deal with officials.

Pangong Lake and the whole of this area of northern Ladakh is remote. So remote that there's just the one road that curls around the mountains and sometimes into the mountains in order that another car can snake around. Apparently it's an area for those of us who are the real adventurers. Consider the thinness of the air and the sparkling quality of the sunlight and the lack of comfort. There's the hippy trail of travellers and the locals who visit the lake but not much else apart from soldiers.

Zach said that he had 'visited a psychiatrist' and 'has medication.' I doubt that there are too many English speaking psychiatrists in the locale, although I do know that he has some medication. The last email isn't much of a testament to that. He doesn't respond to questions. He jumbles off a stream of consciousness of what he says is happening but who knows?

Whatever... So now we have to extend our imagination to a slow boat trip to China and whether or not he makes it back and how and when or what they do with Englishmen who display erratic behaviours in Tibet.

Twenty Quid and a laptop to Ladakh

2009-07-17T10:18:00.003+01:00

So yesterday morning the phone went and it was Zach. That's after a manic message left on Sam's mobile. 'I'm great. Everything's great. Yesterday was great. I did a thirty fucking mile walk to China...' etc. You get my drift. When Sam spoke with Zach he could hear from his voice that although he didn't appear to be grandiosely manic, he was levelling up to a good seven or eight on the scale.

There were things he wanted, he said. Stuff to be sent out. His laptop for one and twenty quid too. 'Yeah, we're going to send you a laptop to Ladakh...' Sam, 'How are you doing for money?' Eyebrows raised, for a change. 'Don't worry about me,' Zach's retort. 'I know the meaning of finances. But twenty quid will be fine...' We know it's still cheaper in India than here but twenty pounds will not go very far.

Zach intends to stay there until the 'end of August and then go on travelling.' On twenty quid? Show's where his head is at. There was other nutty stuff too but it was typical. It still comes down to the fact that he was meant to come back home this Tuesday and he didn't. He made the choice to use all over again and lose his mind again. This is where we are at once more. I've really no ideas this time. I'm not going over to bring him back, nor do we intend getting involved with other options over there but I don't know how he's going to get back here or when and if. It's all rather peculiar.

'Mainly ok' means what in Ladakh?

2009-07-15T10:27:00.004+01:00

So what does 'mainly ok' mean when you don't really know the person you are talking about? This was Jonathan's answer when Sam asked him if he had seen Zach and, if so, how was he? It was a rough line. There were shouts and laughter and the sound of traffic in the distance and Jonathan sounded as though he was doing four things at once. Difficult for anyone. Especially difficult for a man (sorry, men...) We couldn't really hear him and, I think, he's probably already at patience's end for dealing with Zach. Just like we all are. Now more than ever. 'He's mainly ok...' he responded.

For someone who's 'mainly ok', he hasn't checked his email and he hasn't written any more asking for money and he hasn't made the usual reverse phone call requesting same. So for once the pattern has changed. At least he's still in Leh, wandering the streets, so far as we've been told.

He has no money. We don't know whether he still has his belongings or his passport. The passport was supposed to have been retained by the police until he left. It's unlikely that he will leave now. I can't see him getting on a bus and spending 17 hours travelling to Kashmir. Previous episodes have painted a picture of him becoming more and more disorganised and irritable and impossible to be around with for any period of time. I can't see the so-called 'friends', a bunch of low-lives from Sweden and Italy, continuing to pay for his food and accommodation and drugs - even though they've used him as entertainment to see just how much stuff they can enable him to smoke and choke.

He's probably skinny and dirty and wild-eyed and hungry and desperately tired and if anyone gets on the wrong side, quite likely to hit out and eventually be arrested. That would be the best outcome - yet again.

He was supposed to have flown back from New Dehli yesterday. The plane flew, one seat empty. How on earth does he intend to get back here? Is there the usual subconscious knowledge that whatever happens we will make sure that he does? The way it always happens?

Amy Winehouse: Eat your Heart Out. Ladakh, China, Pills and Smokes

2009-07-13T10:42:00.004+01:00

Well, it had to happen, didn't it? Firstly the SIM card. That's gone. The phone? Who knows. The phone call on Thursday night, 'call me back'. Then nothing. Friday no news at all. The phone appeared to be switched off. Then an email, 'the SIM card's disappeared. No worries...' Yup.

Just a manic spread of words. The air is thin, the altitude high, the weed strong. There's no insight and his judgment is severely impaired. His judgment of the humans he's involved himself with. Nothing for two days, then yesterday afternoon at a party the phone call came. We'd been laughing, 'How long do you give it?' I asked Sam. 'Shall we make a bet at a betting office?' Here the sun shone and white wine and salmon and good conversation. I saw Sam at the doorway, gesturing to me, his eyebrows raised. 'It's India,' he said, my heart leaped. Ohhh, not again!

Jonathan in Leh. The police have Zach's passport. Three days of ketamin and no sleep and no food and he's with a bunch of people who think it's fun being with a loony. They're feeding him drugs and watching what happens to him. No responsibility on their part. Zach had gotten into a fight in a restaurant and the police took him to hospital. Wise police. There's no psychiatric ward there, so they gave him some medication and Jonathan, who works for an Israeli outreach programme that repatriate young Israelis who get into trouble, gave him soup and a hammock and Zach slept in his garden overnight. They were going to somehow get him onto a flight back to Dehli and into a psychiatric hospital but, as usual where Zach's involved, it's not going to end like that.

Zach was supposed to be flying back to London tomorrow. How likely is that! He's completely manic. While Jonathan was asleep this morning, Zach's 'friends' came to the garden and gave him two joints that he smoked with abandon. He's still got some medication but, as of 8.00am our time, was intending to go with his pals onto Srinigar in Kashmir. A really poor choice of location, for all sorts of reasons, one of which is Zach's propensity to discuss the Israel/Palestine issue to all and sundry and get into fights about it. The fact that Kashmir is mostly Muslim doesn't bode well. Zach's out of control.

Sam received an email that shows just where Zach's head now is: "before the 7 helicopters that i saw on their runs, ladak was just like another indian town with indian police... now... all the top ranking ones have chinese stars... i would say that the chinese took ladak 2 or 3 days ago... there has been a lot of chaos... either way ... this is as far away from a manic episode as..." Yes, as? And this was after he'd said that he was going to be staying in asia for the next few months and then going to China and now learning Han from his 'friends' the Chinese. Who knows? Has there been a coup in Ladakh? Have the Chinese extended their control to India? What is he putting into his mouth? What is he smoking, popping, snorting...?

The tale continues.

In Residence. Diabolus. For how long?

2009-07-09T13:11:00.003+01:00

'I'm on the back of a motor bike. I can't talk now...' No stigmata as yet.

Nothing changes except the scenery. You could almost write the script. I'm waiting for the phone call at 2.00am detailing the injuries. Generally nothing more than bloodied skin. Sometimes a twisted limb. More often than not generalised bruising and deep gashes. Into ditches, on-coming traffic. He's on the side of a mountain. Maybe into a gorge? Over the edge? How deep are those valleys?

Still, he continues to maintain a vigil over his phone. That's a first abroad. But it's the response to intelligent questioning that demonstrates the mania. 'When will you make your way back to New Dehli?' from Sam. 'I think I'll stay here for some time....' As if India needs another passenger. 'What about money?' Again from Sam. 'Don't worry.' How can we not worry?

So he intends staying there or travelling on or making his way - to where...?

You can hear the mania in the voice, even in two or three sentences. The pressurised speech. The grandiose ideas. 'I'm organising the music festival here...' The instant vilification of me, as if it was my fault that he's now manic. But, then, it always is. Has to be someone's and I'm easy prey.

I don't care about the mouthfuls of invective. The blaming. The apportioning of responsibility to someone else so that he doesn't have to take any himself. It's boring. I know that the incubus - let's call him Diabolus - is now in residence. He'll stay there until he's burned out again. But how does that leave Zach? And, more pertinently, where?

Is No News Good News and Richard Bentall's Doctoring the Mind

2009-07-06T10:28:00.003+01:00

Monday morning, London. After the sickly heat of the last two weeks, it's now a breezy, showery city. There's no news though. The manic phone calls of Saturday have left a void of nothingness over the weekend. I sent a text. 'How are things today?' No response. I'm perturbed and anxious. Don't know whether to call for the fear that a)I'll just get a mouthful of invective; b)someone I don't know will answer the phone because it will have gone the way of all the others - lost, stolen, bartered; or c)someone from a jail or a hospital will answer...

Whatever I do will be wrong. If I try to ignore what's going on in the mountains of Tibet, because, after all, he is an adult and should be left to do what he wants - irrespective of his mental health issues - then is it irresponsible of me as a parent. Conversely, should I try and find out where he is and how he is AND if he really IS as bad as I think he is, should I contact some kind of authority that will apprehend him and help him? Is there such a body or person there in the foothills of the Himalayas, among the monks and the travellers and the mountain goats?

In the past Chabad have helped. In Ecuador and Thailand - twice. If I were to contact them in Manali, will they have an archive of those foolish tourists who come to these areas highlighted with the dangers that they present and then, through invariably their own fault, get into the most grotesque scrapes? If they did, then their dossiers on 'Zach' will be immense.

However, who's to know whether should Zach be assisted medically in Tibet or India that it wouldn't be better than here in the UK? In 'Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail'. Richard Bentall, a professor of clinical psychiatry, argues that one's chances of recovering from an episode of psychosis are worse in a western hospital than in the Third World. From my own experience, I can concur. I believe that in the UK we just don't have a handle on the mentally ill.

When we were so desperate to get Zach into hospital during his last acute episode two years ago now, the local mental health services were irresponsibly unhelpful. The consequence of this was that Zach was eventually arrested and taken to jail. The fact that the police were involved instead of mental health 'professionals' is testament to the unwillingness of these 'professionals' to carry out their remit and actually help.

Two years ago, Sam and I should have left Zach in Thailand in the hospital where he was being cared for on a 24/7 basis. There he was given no choice but to take the medication. He was safe and secure and he had no availability to drugs. He would have come out of the episode well and, no doubt, drug free. What happened was that we were leaned on and we had to bring him back to London where he almost died. So, yes, who says that there's decent medical provision in the west?

Meantime who knows what the sprite is up to in the valley of the white tipped peaks?

Five on the insanity scale - deliver me from heroin

2009-07-04T12:33:00.003+01:00

We had two years. Two years while things have been quiet. No madness. No sections. No irate phone calls. Just a semblance of calm. How deluded we become. We believe that the heroin keeps him sane. It does, in that the opiate effect is the same as a mood balancer. The problem is that it's addictive and the problem is that it is hugely expensive. It is because of this that he decided to take himself off to 'somewhere hot' and go 'cold turkey' and come off it because, frankly he said, 'it's just a waste of money. God knows how much I've spent on 'gear' over the last twelve years.' Well, actually, he told me but it's so astounding that I can't physically write it.

So off he went to 'hot India' while we've had the hottest weather here for decades. He could've done it here of course. For the first week it appeared as though he could manage it. The flight. The different time zone. The lack of sleep while travelling. And unravelling because he no longer took his 'meds' - the hyper-expensive, addict craving heroin.

The first emails were ok. Then they became more noticably strange. Sam picked up on it initially. I noticed but pretended they were alright. Beth did too. Then another one and it was the collective sigh. The deep groan of groundhog day. He kept it together for the first phone calls but we knew it was only time. On Thursday he was a five on the insanity scale. Friday was almost a six. Today, after the phone calls, we realise that he's closing in on an eight. Where do we go from here?

Dateline July 2009. He's catching a flight from India on the 14th. Will he? What will happen between today - after he's ridden his mountain bike in the hills above Ladakh and said a blessing for the Sabbath and eaten the chicken soup? 'I've met so many great people - we're organising festivals...' - and tomorrow. Interested? Then keep reading.

Poor Daniel Gonzalez, let down by our 'caring society'

2009-03-05T17:27:00.003Z

Another day, another tragedy. Another young man, seriously, terminally ill with schizophrenia is callously let down by our 'caring community.'

How many more times am I going to write these lines? How many more investigations will there be into our mental health services? How many more times will the various heads of various trusts piously write: "We offer our profound condolences to..."

I'm actually pretty sick of it. Daniel Gonzalez, whose mother wrote to the Surrey mental health trust 'responsible' for him over 100 times. Yes, ONE HUNDRED times. She knew he was ill. HE tried to get himself sectioned. His case worker described him as being "like a wild animal in a cage" and no one, NO ONE was willing to take responsibility for helping him.

So, of course, the corollory was that Daniel, in a fevered state of mind, murdered four people. Then, while he was at Broadmoor, he slashed his wrists with a CD and killed himself.

It made me want to cry. Cry with the most profound pity for this poor boy. For the frustration his mother must have felt and, of course, for the innocent victims caught up in the horror because of the sheer inadequacy of the NHS.

It's a disgrace and it's one that will be repeated ad infinitum until someone takes the initiative and decides that the money that is discarded by this government on so many irrelvant projects is spent on the most needy of society. They can't do it themselves.

How many more deaths? How many more investigations? How many more tears will be shed by parents, patients and victims until something is done here to rectify these preventable killings?

I only wish I knew.

Of Slumdogs, squalor and Julie Myerson's 'unoriginal' memoir

2009-03-04T13:25:00.004Z

Gosh, it's March already. Where does the time fly to? You'll look around and it will be summer (we hope) again and then the Christmas decorations will be in the shops.

Just a couple of things that took my attention recently.

The first thing was Slumdog Millionaire. When they were embarking on this film and seeking out the actors, did it never occur to the producers that life would be just a little easier if they acquired them from an acting school? How could they possibly have been so callous as to take children literally from the slums, use them in the film and then return them to the filth and squalor from whence they came?

I ask this because of the reports that have come to life after the two small stars, Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Ali, who were feted, flown, wined (well, maybe not) and dined (I'm sure that they were, quite lavishly) in Hollywood, and then returned to their families. Obviously, having seen that life outside of their slum bears no resemblence to their daily grind, they no longer wish to remain under a corrugated metal roofs among the rats and dog droppings. Who, in their right mind (and having been paid) would?

It's a simply appalling lack of judgement and one which will, I am sure, come back to haunt Danny Boyle and his band of blind idiots over the years to come. At least, I HOPE it will...

And another thing: Julie Myerson as just written a book about her son, Jake. It's called, not very originally, 'The Lost Son' and it's about his problems with drugs and behaviour, so she threw him out of the house. She describes her time with him as being 'absolutely awful'. She says that "I still suspect that a lot of parents who haven't had the experience of drugs will find it hard to read that part and sympathise with us. People need to know this happens to families like ours."

Hardly groundbreaking stuff, when you consider that I've already done that! Of course she'll get pages and pages of newspaper coverage and will sell thousands of copies. That's life...

However, what really startled me was the fact that Jake was not consulted. He's livid, apparently. He's labelled his mother 'insane for saying he's a drug addict.' Is it really possible that she could have written a book about him and that her publishers would not have asked for his permission? When you consider the hoops that I had to jump through when editing my book so that no one would have any capacity for suing me, especially 'Zach', then this is preposperous and I quite understand how livid he is. But his mother is famous, so presumably she feels that she can ride roughshod over everyone in order to bring her 'story' to the fore. More fool her.

Scandals, Sadness and Zach's Thirtieth

2009-02-26T15:21:00.003Z

Yesterday 'Zach' was 30. Unbelievable. I remember it all so well. Some things never leave you. You forget the pain but you don't forget the months while your body no longer belongs to you and a strange morphology takes over. Growing a child. How bizarre. Anyway, he's well and we all went out, with new girlfriend, and had a jolly evening. He didn't think that he would make it past 27, so this is all good.

Tomorrow I'm on BBC Radio Humberside. I was meant to be on it two weeks ago but for some reason - age, idiocy - I put the wrong date in the diary and completely missed it! What a chump... So I'm off to Western House tomorrow morning. I keep pinching myself. 'Don't forget to go to the BBC on...', just so's I don't forget.

Every day seems to bring another scandal and sadness. The sadness is David Cameron losing his poor boy. Parents aren't supposed to lose their children. Children are supposed to outlast us. I believe that the Camerons would have reconciled themselves to losing Ivan because he was so terribly ill but the time is never right.

The scandal is the president of Sudan. There he was in Egypt, seeking help so that he isn't issued with a warrant for his arrest in 'suppressing the Darfur rebellion,' ie actively participating in a real genocide. You know, one where over 300,000 people have lost their lives. Will he succeed? Most likely. The UN Court of Human Rights have issued 80% of their declarations against Israel. Not one over the Sudan. Now the new Pres. (POTUS as I see is the nomenclature) is giving almost $1 billion to Hamas, while the USA is on a downward spiral financially. Does this make any sense? What did they do with the other billions?

Scandals. All too heavy for some.

The Maudsley, schizophrenia and the £400,000 shortfall

2009-02-17T18:41:00.005Z

There's a new advert that highlights the dangers of cannabis and mental health problems. Over the last week there's been an absolute plethora of articles in the newspapers about families with children who have mental health problems; a boy on a secure ward at the age of 16 and a piece in The Guardian about families who live with their children and/or siblings who suffer a range of mental illnesses.

Today I read that The Maudsley, one of the most renowned psychiatric hospitals in the UK, is cutting beds in order to save £400,000 from their costs. They're going to send even more schizophrenics and Bipolar patients into 'care in the community', as if it had worked before.

£400,000 is a paltry amount when one considers the sums each individual health area commands. The boss of The Royal Free in Hampstead last week complained that their new computer system was costing them an extra £10 million! Maybe The Maudsley should ask for funding from The Big Lottery.

I see that Friends, Familes and Travellers, Brighton [gipsy and travellers' rights group] have been awarded £414,017; Race on the Agenda, London [think-tank focusing on issues that affect ethnic communities], £483,824. Indeed, if you add another two: Friends of Birzeit University, London [supports Palestinian students at the West Bank university] £241,621 and the Greenwich Action Committee against Racist Attacks £269,795, then you'd have enough to replenish the shortfall.

Isn't it absolutely absurd? Why is it that mental health funding is treated so absymally in this country? If the government is running a campaign to promote the link between the increase of mental health problems because of the exponential use of cannabis and the implication that these will lead to more hospital stays, then why isn't there more funding available?

If it is the case that there is not enough money in the government's coffers (it's all presumably going to shore up the banks), then maybe The National Lottery should get involved. It's prepared to waste enough resources on specious PC groups. Why should the Bosnia Hercogovina Community Advice Centre, Brent, North London be awarded £438,117?

I'm appalled to think that people will be excluded from a hospital bed because The Maudsley is either unable to balance the books or because there simply isn't sufficient cash to maintain care for the most vulnerable patients in the country. It's a disgrace and there should be questions in Parliament about it.

Florence Nightingale, Bipolar disorder and Ketamine

2009-02-12T11:18:00.003Z

Gosh, what a week - or two. I dunno. This country is in some kind of turmoil. Every day another scandal. Maybe it's all being done so that we don't actually consider what's happening to our economy. But then of course we now have some kind of 'hearings' where the recalcitrant bankers are hanging their heads 'in shame' and saying 'sorry.' As if they were. Seen any flying pigs recently? No? Neither have I. 'Yes, we earned far too much...' they now say. What a surprise. I could never understand how 28 year olds could be earning £150,000 bonuses. It didn't make sense to me. If it didn't make sense to ME who has the numerical understanding of a six year old, one would have thought that there would have been even more whistleblowers out there making the point that, hey, there's something wrong here...

Then we had silly Carole Thatcher and her 'gollywog' disgrace. I didn't have a gollywog when I was a kid. I was deprived. I had a bald teddy (handed down) and a panda with one eye. I loved them both. If I had been given a gollywog, I'm sure that I would have loved it too. Weren't there gollywogs in Enid Blyton? There were gollywog brooches that I collected from Robertson's (Robinson's?) jam. Very proud of those I was. It certainly didn't make me think anything sinister about black people. I don't think that I even made the connection between the two.

This week the ultra-silly Professor Nutt(?) posited the view in his review of whether to make Ecstasy a Class B drug that taking Es was no more dangerous than horse riding. Tell that to the millions of 20 year olds who now have long-term short term memory loss. And the others who suffer from mental illness because of their over use of same drug. I read a report yesterday that there's another view that LSD should be downclassed. What next?

This leads me on to a piece I saw yesterday. A teenager killed his friend in a row about the fare in the back of a taxi. Both high on Ketamine, Louis Chambers (18) killed Dylan Bates-Fox (21). As I have said on so many occasions - and especially so in the context of my book - Ketamine is toxic, lethal and far more dangerous than it is given credence for. Of all the drugs that Zach used, it was the one that posed the greatest danger to his mental health. Whenever we brought it up with 'Dr. Goode' the foolish doctor fobbed us off. How many more kids are going to be completely 'fried' as a consequence of sniffing Ketamine?

Oh, and before I forget, a new report suggests that Florence Nightingale was Bipolar. This I had never heard of before. I guess that she must have been on somewhat of a 'high' all the time that she was in the Crimea. How else could she have worked those hours in those conditions? The sad thing is that if she were around today and having to notify her employers that she suffered a severe mental health condition, would she have been allowed to set foot in Turkey with her blue lamp?

It's February. London snow and nasty conflict

2009-02-03T19:55:00.005Z

Wow, it's February and I have a new computer. Still can't work out how to use Word. Don't think it has it. Will have to try some new fandangled way of writing on it. Chris will have to show me...

A lot has happened and I've not really had much of a head for writing. My irritation and frustration has meant that I've been writing to comments pages and newspapers and being more irritated by other responses that I've found on them. Is this being opaque? Only to those who don't know...

Last week I travelled up to Grimsby. I've never been there before. Two lovely trains. One very cold. It wasn't heated and I wrapped my coat around me, trying to keep out the draughts. Still, by comparison to the snow we've just had, at least I had a train to keep me going.

Once outside of London, travelling along the countryside, watching the cows in the fields and the triffidous electricity pilons stacking the distance, it meant for a relaxation. I took books and newspapers but was happy to look out of the windows, into the distance.

The reason that I travelled to Grimsby was that I had been invited to give the 'key note' address to Workwise Women, an organisation started by the effervescent Lindsay and the more calming Sarah. It's a networking group of women in business, law, writing, the media and designers. I really enjoyed it. Don't think that my address was really the best but I read the first chapter of my book and sold a good many copies. Fifty ladies who sat silent and still while I read to them.

Otherwise all that's been newsworthy is the snow that has crippled London and the rest of the country. I'm baffled by our authorities here. They don't grit the pavements and the paths, so that we're all at liberty to break our necks but close the parks and playgrounds, on health and safety reasons, so that the kids can't throw snowballs at each other. The buses stopped - so that the drivers could also throw snowballs at one another - and the trains didn't budge out of their sidings, presumably because they might get wet! Was it the wrong snow, for a change? No, just too much of it! They only knew about if for a good week beforehand. This country is slowly, silently, going down the loo.

Zach took the dog for a walk this afternoon. They both came back with icy feet. Zach's still good. He has his first gig with his new band this week. I'll keep you posted.

UNWRA finally admitted today that Israel didn't attack the school in Gaza where they said that forty-three children died.

Hamas has executed over 150 Fatah members for 'collaboration.'

750 of the so-called 'civilians' were Hamas members. Children as young as twelve with missiles and RPGs strapped to their backs.

Women wearing 'suicide' belts who ran at soldiers.

Children armed with detonators.

Old people mined to bombs.

Just thought that I would keep you up to scratch.

The Spineless Spanish and The Holocaust

2009-01-23T10:52:00.005Z

Looks like there's a kitten among the pigeons. Glad to see that some people read this blog and that those who do have an opinion. It's a democracy. You're entitled to believe what you do but it would be nice if there was balance.

Balance. That's a good word. Don't see much of it in the media here, do we? Don't see much comprehension of facts and history and we certainly don't see an understanding of words. Semantics? Maybe not semantics, per se.

So many words have been thrown around recently. Like genocide and holocaust. It made me think. So far as I know, teaching The Holocaust is compulsory in this country. It has been for a number of years now. Children are taken on fact finding missions to Holocaust museums. They have Holocaust survivors come in and talk with them, explaining to them what it was like during The Holocaust. Movies have been made: 'Schindler's List', 'Life is Beautiful', 'Sophie's Choice', 'The Pianist.' Coincidentally, the BBC just ran a new dramatisation of 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' Indeed, that very same book is among the highest selling books in the world.

So if all the above is true and people are being educated, why is it that they don't really know what genocide means and, more specifically, what The Holocaust entailed? Can Gaza really be described as being analogous to the Warsaw Ghetto? Let me just give you an idea what Polish ghettos were really about:

"During Spring 1940, the Nazis plundered and isolated the 1.5 million Jews they ruled over, before herding them into 'ghettos'. The method was always the same. Jews were registered and their property was confiscated and the Jews were forced into Jewish designated areas. Crammed into these specially designated ghettos, the Jews were prey to disease and starvation. The old, sick and poor were hit first. From January 1941 to July 1942 about 500,000 Jews died of sickness or malnutrition in the Polish ghettos." [David Ceserani. 'The Holocaust']

Having been privy, therefore, to all this so-called education, many movies and copious television productions, why is it that no-one understands what a genocide really is? Or is it that they really do understand but that they have deluded themselves to these facts? Why is it that when the Sudanese blast the hell out of Darfur and kill hundreds and thousands of people, that everyone isn't out in the streets calling for the Sudanese government to do something? Or that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where men, women and children are being burned alive, that no one at the UN calls this a 'crime against humanity.'? Why these double-standards? It can only ever lead to one thing. And we all know what that is, don't we?

Yesterday, the Catalan government in Barcelona decided to cancel Holocaust Memorial Day. They felt, they said, that while a holocaust was taking place in Gaza, they could not commemorate the deaths of six million Jews. In Gaza there is now a dispute as to how many people - mostly gallant terrorists in their jeans and t-shirts, and the wretched women and children human shields - lost their lives in this latest conflict. The number has now been downsized to about five to six hundred. It's a bit different to six million. Isn't it?

ISRAEL'S INSANE VILIFICATION BY THE SO-CALLED 'PRO-ISRAEL ' MEDIA

2009-01-12T12:54:00.000Z

Isn't it weird? The Jews, according to so many enlightened souls, 'run' the media. Really? One wouldn't have thought so over the last three weeks. If anyone would have said that during these hysterical times, then you would have thought that they were deluded. But they still promote those views. You only have to read the comments on the BBC Have Your Say website. Still, if you read what's actually called 'comment' you can only be aghast at the sheer ignorance and bias of most of the posters. What's the BBC's machiavellian pursuit in this? And The Independent and The Guardian and, let's be honest here, most of the other 'free' press here in the West. To promote anti-Semitism?

The insanity of the commentary within media circles has now encompassed what I thought that I would never, in my lifetime, have to experience: Jews are the new Nazis. Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto. There is a 'genocide'; a 'holocaust'. (I won't even put that in capitals). Apart from being the gravest of insults to those Jews and non-Jews extant who experienced the Holocaust, it just demonstrates the on-going hatred towards Jews from the liberal Left as well as extremist (and not so extremist) Muslims.

I was going to write more of this and then I was sent the following essay. It's written by Professor Chaim Harari, former President of the Weizmann Instititue of Science. Maybe one day the Palestinians will consider the value of life, create something that is not a cult of death and as wonderous as the Weizmann Institute.

A View from the Target Zone

Haim Harari

January 2009

These words are written a short distance away from the most northern hit, so far, of the Hamas missiles, which are methodically aimed only at civilian population in Israel. You may refer to this message as "A View from the Target Zone".

For eight years, approximately 5000 rockets have been sent deliberately into Israeli population centers, by the Hamas terrorists. The rockets are extremely inaccurate. The good news is that they often hit an empty field. The bad news is that, when they do hit buildings and people, they kill, maim and destroy. It is a very ugly game of Iranian Roulette.

But the most significant fact is that the undisputed purpose of the rockets is to kill civilians in a random manner. Since they miss entire towns, they could not possibly be aimed at military or strategic targets. No claim is made by the Hamas of anything other than a deliberate attempt to kill civilians within Israel. The world knows about the rockets but rarely mentions that they are aimed only at the civilian population and at nothing else.

The Hamas consistently refers to Israel itself as "the occupied territory". It refers to any town in Israel as an "illegal settlement". Its declared aim is to destroy Israel. It has proudly endorsed, initiated and sent numerous suicide murderers into Israeli buses, supermarkets, shopping malls, weddings and other crowded places. It explicitly states that it will continue to do so. Since Israel succeeded in preventing the suicide murders by a combination of the protective wall, other defensive measures and good intelligence penetration, the missiles became the preferred way of killing Israeli civilians.

Hamas is declared to be a terrorist organization, not only by Israel, not only by the US, but also by the European Union, who is not suspected of being pro-Israeli. This is the same European Union that refuses to label the Hizbullah as a terror organization, but repeatedly and officially declares the Hamas as such. Hamas is fully funded and largely controlled by Iran, a country openly and totally committed to the destruction of Israel, while continuing to enjoy trade with much of the western world.

The Hamas media, and especially its independent TV station, carry daily children programs (including programs for kindergarten age) depicting the Jews (and not only the Israelis) as pigs, dogs, scum of the earth and creatures that must be killed. One of these program features a rabbit which eats Jews. There is plenty of documentation of these programs, including animations and programs with child presenters. Major western news media never report on this phenomenon, while some of them publish op-ed pieces by declared Hamas leaders.

The favorite hour of launching the daily Hamas rockets during the last eight years was 7:45 in the morning, but only on weekdays. Why? Because this is the time in which the streets are full of Israeli children, on their way to school. No one wants to waste rockets when no children are in the streets, during the weekend.

Eight year old children in the Israeli town of Sderot, a few miles from the Gaza border, live, since they were born, with these rockets. They know no other life. When the alarm sounds, they have exactly 15 seconds to reach an improvised cover. Eighth grade children, age 13, have never gone to school, since kindergarten, without the real threat of having a rocket hit them on the way. Their parents have never felt safe about sending their child to school. It is very difficult for anyone living in a normal safe place, to imagine what it means to send your child to school, every single day, for eight years, with the fear that he or she may never reach school because of a missile attack, aimed at killing the children. The world seems to accept this.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip in 2005. Not one Israeli soldier or civilian remained there. Everything was ready for the people of Gaza to start a new life and economic development. There was no blockade, border crossings were open. Instead came increased shooting of rockets into Israel, a Hamas coup, throwing Fatah Palestinians from roofs of buildings to their death and torturing their own people in their prisons. It is regrettable that Israel did not react with full force to the very first rockets after its withdrawal from Gaza, but there was always the naïve illusion that perhaps talks, discussions, verbal threats and temporary closings of the border crossings, might do the job. What Israel did not take into account was that Iran, directly or through Hizbullah, was paying the Hamas operatives, per rocket launch.

Through the elaborate system of tunnels dug by the Hamas under the Gaza-Egypt border, thousands of tons of explosives and larger and better Iranian missiles have been continuously smuggled into Gaza. The Israeli Government stupidly agreed in mid 2008, to a six-month cease fire. During the "mock cease fire", many rockets were launched into Israel by a variety of real and fictitious Palestinian organizations, with a clear Hamas sub-license, pretending that the Hamas itself is observing the cease fire.

In the meantime, the Hamas could successfully prepare for the next round. It acquired Iranian rockets that were equally inaccurate, but carried larger warheads, had a longer range and contained numerous tiny still balls, in order to increase the civilian casualties over a larger radius. Again, the inaccuracy of the rockets guaranteed that they could only be sent into random civilian targets. But now the rocket range covered a population of close to one million Israelis and the damage is much more significant.

Larger and better rockets were now stored in mosques, schools, hospitals and normal apartment buildings. Mortars were added to the menu of shooting at Israeli civilians. Schools financed by the UN were used in order to launch mortar shells and missiles. The greenhouses left intact by the withdrawing Israelis were destroyed, their metal parts were converted to primitive rockets and their locations became favorite launching areas. Launching rockets at the Israeli population brings a much better income than growing strawberries and flowers in greenhouses.

Whenever Israel opened the border crossings to supply Gaza with basic food and fuel, the Hamas was attempting to blow up the crossing points. Providing too much food and fuel would disturb the flourishing black market totally controlled by the Hamas chiefs and their allies. It would also spoil their propaganda machine. Most supplies were transported through the tunnels from Egypt, under Hamas auspices, creating a lucrative business for the Hamas "families".

The absurd notion that Israel must supply fuel, electricity, food and medication to an outlaw region controlled by a terror organization, became a permanent mantra in the western media. Israel was supposed to provide the Hamas with raw materials for the rockets launched at its citizens, with electricity for the machinery used to produce these rockets, with food for its designers and manufacturers, and with building materials in order to construct safe bunkers for the Hamas leadership under schools and hospitals. On one hand the Hamas was claimed to have been the legitimate democratically elected government of the majority of the population and on the other hand the population, that allegedly elected these thugs, was declared innocent and suffering. The inconsistency was never pointed out.

Once the border crossing was closed, as a result of the repeated Hamas attacks, the international game of a "humanitarian crisis" was successfully played, with full cooperation of the western media. Famous incidents included photographs of poor Gaza residents with candles and (allegedly) no electricity, staged behind black curtains in full outside daylight (visible through cracks between the curtains). Most western media happily used these fake pictures and, when the lie was exposed, never mentioned it. Hamas leaders were never lacking food, fuel, electricity, luxurious private vehicles and all amenities of well to do black market profiteers.

Very few western journalists remained in Gaza, after several were kidnapped by the Hamas. Almost all reports to western media come from Palestinians, who are either sympathetic to Hamas, or afraid of it, or openly active in its ranks, or all of the above. The reader of the New York Times, or the viewer of a European TV network, never notices who provides him or her with the news. All photographs, both stills and videos, are provided by Palestinian operatives, who would stop at nothing in order to support the propaganda machine. On western TV, Hamas rockets are launched only from empty fields, never from a school or a crowded neighborhood, as it is in real life.

United Nation sources in Gaza are often quoted, condemning Israel for the "Humanitarian Crisis". But these sources are normally employees of UNRWA, the UN agency that, since 1948, makes every effort to perpetuate the "refugee" status of the great-grandchildren of the 1948 refugees. The grandparents of these "refugees" were displaced 60 years ago by a distance of a 20 minute drive and were never resettled because they were receiving free food from the UN. The UN objected vehemently to any attempt at settling the refugees, their children and grandchildren. The few real refugees, who remain alive today, and are 80 year old, were 18 year old when they were displaced. All the terrorists are third or fourth generation "refugees" held as such, courtesy of UNRWA.

These UN organizations employ, by their own admission, numerous active Hamas members. When the latter make statements on behalf of "UN sources in Gaza", the Palestinian journalists never mention to us who these "UN sources" are. The public gets the impression that these are truthful objective sources, while being fed with standard Hamas lies. Western media never disclose to us that the jobs of these people depend on perpetuating the misery of the so-called "refugees".

A Headmaster and science teacher of one of the UNRWA schools in Gaza was a leader in the rocket industry of the Islamic Jihad, a satellite terror organization in Gaza, collaborating with Hamas. The UN strongly denied the Israeli accusations that they are employing such a person, until the man was killed by Israel and was eulogized by his friends as a leader of the Islamic Jihad and a designer of rockets.

When Israeli truck drivers were bringing the humanitarian supplies to Gaza, during the period of Hamas rocket fire, they were frequently attacked by Hamas. At least one Israeli truck driver, supplying the Palestinians, was deliberately murdered. No protest was launched by the UN. But, when during the current fighting, an Arab truck driver, employed by the UN, was accidentally killed, the UN became indignant and stopped all its "humanitarian" activity in protest, to the tune of loud denunciations from all "UN sources".

The Israeli defense forces monitor every detail of this fantasyland by using airborne drones and by a very successful intelligence penetration of the Hamas ranks. They know which apartment building serves as a missile storage place, the addresses and phone numbers of Hamas leaders, which school serves as an ammunition depot, etc.

When the six-month "ceasefire" ended, in mid December, Hamas refused to continue it, launching 90 rockets into Israeli towns and villages in one day. In retrospect, this has prevented a much more dangerous future situation. Had there been an additional "ceasefire", Hamas would have acquired rockets covering all of Israel and possibly much more accurate Iranian missiles. The Iranian supply line of explosives and weapons, together with the flourishing business of smuggled goods, went through the tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border with efficiency and regularity. Had such efficiency been attempted in improving the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza, the entire Middle East would have been an entirely different place. But, coupled with the weapon smuggling, it was essential to create the charade of the "Humanitarian Crisis".

During the current operation, when the Israeli Air Force wants to blow up a house which serves as a missile storage, Israel phones every family in the house and gives them 15 minutes to evacuate. The Hamas is then sending the women and children to the roof of the building in order to prevent the Israeli aircraft from making the kill. Israel has now developed a tiny arrow-like missile which can be sent to the corner of the roof, making a loud noise and harming no one, in order to scare away the women and children on the roof, before the real bomb destroys the missile collection or the explosive storage place. Often, the women and children used by the Hamas as a human shield, escape and the house is then blown up, with a spectacular secondary explosion of the stored missiles or other war materials. On other occasions, a Hamas person gets to the roof and prevents the women and children from leaving. In those cases, the operation is not completed by the Israeli Air Force, in order to spare civilian lives, at the risk of having the rockets launched into Israel on the following day.

Never in history, has any country made such an enormous effort to avoid civilian casualties, in fighting against murderers who target only civilians and never anything else. No one in Kosovo, Serbia, Georgia or Iraq, was offered such a courtesy by the bombing and attacking powers. This fact is never mentioned by the western media.

Many of the heroic commanders of the Hamas are hiding in the central hospital of Gaza, in an elaborate network of bunkers, trusting that Israel will not attack the hospital. Hamas spokesmen issue proclamations from the maternity ward of the same hospital, knowing that Israel will not hit them there. Ironically, of all non-Israelis, the Hamas leaders are the only ones who know for sure that Israel never deliberately hurts civilians. They exploit this fact. The rest of the world buys the Hamas lies and blames Israel for hurting civilians.

Repeated claims of "humanitarian crisis" are made from the same hospital. The doctors in charge never tell us that the hiding leaders of the Hamas are using them and the patients as human shields. Whether the doctors are only scared or are deliberate accomplices, we do not know. Probably some are active Hamas members and others are justifiably scared to speak up. We never hear a word from the International Red Cross regarding the use of the hospitals as the headquarters of terror leaders.

One of the most horrible "impartial" testimonies on the humanitarian situation, in the hospital, is delivered repeatedly to the western media by a "Norwegian Doctor" serving there. The man is well known from his 2001 interviews with Norwegian TV, in which he explicitly supported and justified the 9/11 attacks. Needless to say, none of the networks who bring us the righteous doctor, mention this. He is just "A Norwegian Doctor" attending to the wounded.

Palestinian ambulances are routinely used to move terrorists around. This has also been the Palestinian practice in the West Bank during the terror wave in 2001-2002. An ambulance is an ideal method of transporting a suicide murderer across check points. In the unlucky case that the criminal is caught, there is at least a good press photograph of the ugly Israelis attacking or stopping an ambulance. It is a win-win situation. If an ambulance full of healthy Hamas terrorists and explosives is hit from the air, the pictures are even better for the western media and for Al Jazeera.

Several Hamas leaders are moving around Gaza surrounded by children, and often holding a child on their arms. There are well documented cases in which Hamas terrorists were pulling reluctant children by their ears to accompany them when they move from one building to another. None of this is mentioned by the western media.

Several Mosques, which were used as ammunition dumps, were destroyed by Israel. In every one of these cases, the air photographs showed a primary explosion, from the air missile or bomb, and a much bigger secondary explosion, from the stored missiles or other explosives in the mosque. The secondary explosion is an absolute clear proof of what was hidden at the mosque. The normal beautiful carpets in a mosque would not create a secondary explosion. Western media have these videos, but rarely show them or mention their existence.

But the same western media repeatedly show the pictures of injured or dead children, some of whom were indeed accidentally injured or killed by the Israeli attacks on military and terror targets, and some are obviously fake pictures with red paint smeared on children faces. At least in one case, the same child, obviously painted and not injured, has been paraded in front of various TV cameras by several different men, each declared to be his father by a different network.

Children and innocent civilians are, indeed, killed and injured, in spite of all the enormous precautions and efforts of the Israeli forces. This is truly tragic. But the only alternative for Israel is to sit still, absorb the thousands of missiles on its civilian population and wait for bigger, deadlier and longer range missiles to start destroying everything in Israel. Israel is offered a choice between a complete national suicide, on one hand, and an attack on the terrorists, with extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties, but with the knowledge that such casualties must occur when the other side is using children as human shields, storing explosives in mosques, shooting mortars from schools and hiding the perpetrators in hospitals.

Most Hamas terrorists hide in safe bunkers, leaving their families in the war zone. They are happy to fight to the last Palestinian civilian, not to the last Hamas terrorist. Women and children are moving within the battlegrounds, with Hamas snipers shooting, using them as cover. The women and children are not allowed into the limited space of the Hamas bunkers. More than once, a woman is observed carrying a suicide belt. Israeli soldiers, who are trying to help these women to move safely away from the fighting area, are at a very serious risk of a suicide murder.

When the Hamas terrorists are killed, they are counted by the "UN Sources" as civilians. That is how the "UN sources" reach the huge numbers of dead civilians they are reporting. Interestingly, Al Jazeera almost never shows dead bodies of young males, and the western media, being fed by Palestinian stringers, follow suit.

The Hamas TV ("Al Aksa TV") and Al Jazeera show, 24 hours a day, repeated video clips with loud music, showing injured bloody children, including some body parts. Some injuries are real, some are not, but the videos are shown nonstop between every two news items. The news items themselves are often lies, but that really does not matter. What do matter are the video clips, edited like commercials, brainwashing a worldwide audience and a new generation of future terror sympathizers.

A video taken several years ago in Gaza, surfaced. The video documents an accidental explosion of a Hamas truck, carrying a large number of missiles, among celebrating Palestinians somewhere in Gaza. Many were killed and injured in this accident, and the pictures were devastating. There is no Israeli involvement whatsoever, and the event happened a few years ago. European networks, including France 2, are showing it now as evidence for the current "criminal" behavior of Israel. The French channel apologized later, but the number of people who heard the apology is significantly fewer than those who saw the horrible pictures and believed the lies. In this case, at least, the hoax was delivered by the Hamas and France 2 was apparently the victim, not the perpetrator, as it definitely was in well known previous cases.

Israel opens the border crossings daily, during the fighting, in order to provide basic food ingredients and medication to the civilian population. No one can remember such a gesture in any other war in history, certainly not toward the side that attacks only civilians and repeatedly announces that its only aim is to totally annihilate its opponent. Most of the supplies are captured by the Hamas terrorists and used for their own troops and their flourishing black market, never providing them in an organized way to the population. "UN sources" claim that not enough food is transmitted.

That the Hamas murderers use these tactics, lies and methods, is not at all surprising. That the international community, with all its investigative reporters, swallows these lies so eagerly, without exposing them, is something which demands an explanation.

THE MADNESS OF HAMAS: 'ALL HAMAS CREATED OF HUMAN SHIELD OF WOMEN, CHILDREN AND ELDERLY.' Fathi Hamad

2009-01-09T13:19:00.000Z

'WE DESIRE DEATH, YOU DESIRE LIFE' Hamas

Has the world gone mad? What hysteria has grasped nations over the last twelve days that such things should come to pass? Nothing like this has been seen since the Dreyfus trial. For the last eight years, and on a daily basis, southern Israel has been attacked by Hamas terrorists. Israel did nothing. Israel waited while Hamas armed themselves – not stealthily, because both Israel and Egypt knew about it. They knew that the tunnels built under the Rafah border reached into Egypt, so rockets and launchers and mortars and guns and ammunition have been smuggled throughout the entire tunnel system since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

Once the ‘ceasefire’ was pulled by Hamas in December, their militants then indiscriminately fired yet more and more missiles and Israel finally decided that enough was enough. Enough of Israelis living in bunkers. Enough of children traumatised. Enough of animals being slaughtered. Hamas and the rocket launches had to be stopped. Logical, one would think. For any other country, this patience would have been deemed to be commendable. The international community would have agreed. Yes, you have to act now!

But having gone into Gaza, where Hamas terrorists blatantly make it their policy to hide behind women and children, who then get caught – intentionally by Hamas – in the crossfire, the world weeps bitter tears at the ‘civilian casualties’ and the ‘disproportionate’ response of the Israelis. Why is it always Israel that the world claims uses ‘disproportionate’ response? What would another country have done?

Now the voices are clamouring. The websites are buzzing. The newspapers are braying. A ‘genocide’; a Palestinian ‘holocaust’; the Israelis are 'brutes'. Hitler should have finished them off say the placards. Jews are beaten up in the streets of London; Synagogues are set alight in Britain and France; pro-Israeli supporters are attacked in Belgium and Norway.

Who is doing the attacking? Why are they attacking? Why is the media so vitriolic towards Israel? Why are the UN, UNWRA, the ICRC and all and every NGO so passionately against Israel? Of course you’re not allowed to explain why. It’s all so un-PC. The liberals mouth it. The Guardianistas sneer it: ‘Don’t call it anti-Semitism. It’s just the Zionists we hate. Not Jews. Some of our best friends are Jews…’ ‘Pity the poor Palestinians…’

Israel is now going to be forced into a ceasefire with a terrorist organisation, not a member of any government and the UN is going to give Hamas credence as if it were. Why? Why are the UK and France and the EU so intent on Israel being subjugated by a murderous, nihilistic entity bent on the destruction of Israel? Because 700 people have died as a result of the very same murderous, nihilistic Hamas using its civilians as cannon fodder? Because Palestinian lives are worth more than Israeli ones?

The paradox is that having voted for this murderous creed, the world doesn’t believe that the Palestinians should be the ones to bear the blame for the war that they have brought upon themselves. For this, Jews are being attacked worldwide and Israel will stymied in its pursuit of the aggressors in these hostilities. It goes without saying, therefore, that the next time that rockets are fired from Gaza, they will hit Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Haifa and the anti-Semitic world will stand on their roofs, shouting in glee, and throw sweets at one another.

'Don't Wait for Me' and the Christmakah round-up

2008-12-23T19:01:00.001Z

It's been a long week and I've basically been without wifi for most of the time. It's almost like missing a limb. How we all get so used to it and when it's not around, it's sorely missed! Yes, the internet... Apparently there are now people who are as addicted to 'going online' as others are to messin' around with drugs. Well, there you go...

Another year almost over and it's been interesting from this end. A lot's happened and one thing that I didn't think that I would ever do is to write a blog. Hope that some of it has been interesting and thought provoking. I'll try to replicate it in 2009. Guess that there will be much to write about...

I'll find out at the end of the month as to how many copies of my book I have sold. It's difficult to know. Really hope that it's been semi-successful. Another thing that I also didn't think that I would ever do is to get up in front of people and talk to them about a book and about my experiences with mental illness and drugs. It's been an intense learning curve and I'm surprised just how much I have learned from this particular experience. It's on-going and I've a number of other dates coming up where I shall be talking again.

What is extraordinary if one compares the end of 2008 to 2007 is the tragic state of the economy now. We all knew that we were in some kind of bubble, where house prices were astronomical and bore no relevance to the bricks and mortar encapsulated and we knew that something was happening in the 'States vis a vis 'sub-prime', but what on earth did it mean? We certainly know now. What a shambles and it's one that our 'sub-prime-minister' appears unable to extricate himself - and the country - from. The fact that it was his government that lead us into this mess - during the very time that he was Chancellor of the Exchequeor, no less - does not cover him with glory. We can all but hope that he takes some good advice from someone - if someone does exist - to put us back on a road for recovery.

So - it's my last blog for the time being and I'll begin again in 2009. We've almost finished a decade of this century. Doesn't time just whizz by?

The good news is that 'Zach' is still well and looking good. His band is going to be recording their first demo in the New Year and they have a number of shows lined up. All good... Let's hope for the best for them.

To everyone who has bothered to read the blog so far: Have a happy and healthy Christmas/Channuka and a peaceful New Year.

'Little Dorrit', Mr. Madoff and other peoples' greed

2008-12-16T18:32:00.000Z

What extraordinary times we are living in! Every day something new appears to make our hair stand on end. Now it's the story of Mr. Madoff - Mr. Madeoff-with-lots-of money Madoff. I was talking to my sister in New York this afternoon. We were both astounded at the apparent lack of fiduciary 'nous' all these investors have had all these years. They've invested all their money with one man for seemingly unrealistic returns.

Unrealistic is the right word. It's all surreal. Extraordinary. What were they all thinking of? Where did they think that the money was coming from? I would have thought that Steven Spielberg and Elie Wiesel and HSBC and Santander could have employed independent FSA's in order to investigate that the fund that they were investing in was bona fide. Apparently they did not.

So my New York sister now relates how once were millionaires are now paupers. "There's going to be so many suicides..." she told me. "How can people sleep at night? We're now wealthier than them!" I suppose that there's some kind of irony in that. One of the most bizarre things is that Mr. Madoff belonged to so many golf clubs. Not so many years ago he wouldn't have been able to belong to one! Anyone ever seen 'Gentleman's Agreement'? Of course the nasty, vituperative, insidious comments are showing their faces on various websites. The Daily Mail especially. "Don't deal with the Chosen People" was how one correspondent sneeringly wrote. Charming.

And then there's Nicola Horlick spewing venom. She only invested 10% of her clients' money with Mr. Madoff-with-lots-of-other-peoples'-money. That's a lot of money. £21 million, at the last count. I thought that she was supposed to be clever too. At least that's what she tells everyone she is! So she was taken in?

It's interesting that when a little man makes a mistake with his taxes or there's perceived to be something fishy about the way that he conducts his business, that law and financial enforcers are on his doorstep at dawn but here, where there's $50 billion at stake, no questions were ever asked. The auditor was a seventy-eight year old retiree in Florida and the auditors' office was run by one man and a secretary. S e c r e t a r y... take that apart: doesn't 'secrecy' reside there somewhere?

Even more bizarre is the fact that I watched the last three episodes of the wonderful BBC production of Little Dorrit on the telly on Sunday afternoon. Cold, wet and positively frigid it was outside. I curled myself up in the corner of the settee, while it got darker and darker the closer we got to 3pm. What a surprise! Mr. Merdle was the Victorian embodyment of Mr. Madoff! Everyone was desperate to invest in his bank. Why? Because his interest rates were far higher than anyone else's. Of course the whole thing was a sham and when he knew he was going to be rumbled, he took himself off to the bath house, gobbled a good slug of Laudenam and slit his jugular with a pretty penknife. Maybe Mr. Madoff read only three-quarters of the book and got bored before the end.

Amy, Sharon, Woolies and the great technophobe

2008-12-11T10:58:00.001Z

Isn't technology grand when it works? When it doesn't, as it hasn't done here for the past week, then all you want to do is throw the greatest strop and chuck the bloody thing out of the window!

I've had trouble since last Saturday with Broadband, or whatever it is. So far as I'm concerned, I want to get online when I want to. My laptop has developed a mind of its own and decides when and if it wants to connect, therefore creating within me the maniacal monster who just wants to scream and hissy fit around when I can't do what I want. I therefore realise that I'm addicted. Like so many others. I've not been able to post my blog or read my mail or keep up to date with Amy (nothing happening there. She's been in hospital for the past almost two weeks. I wonder why. No one seems to know but Sharon's still been blaming Blake and pretending that it's all his fault that Amy's a junkie. Yeah...)

Surprisingly people are still checking here, notwithstanding that nothing new's been put up. Sorry about that folks. Not that there's nothing happening outside these walls. Continual war in the Sudan, cholera in Zimbabwe - what an unblessed country; Chinese dissidents incarcerated into mental asylums, reflecting those long lost days of the Stalin era; recession, depressions and freezing fog. And finally the lovely Sharon, the head of Haringey social services, given her marching orders. She'll have to wait until she's of retirement age to claim her £1.5 million pension. Shame, poor love...

And it's back to the Christmas adverts but Woolworths have gone under and 25,000 are about to be made redundant and this government is still intent on throwing more money at the banks for them to sit on it like penguins and the markets remain stagnant. It just doesn't make sense to this technophobe, who had to spend three hours on the phone to various bods at the BT call centre in Chennai, waiting to receive instructions on how to get the connections working again. Thank goodness to the last guy, whose name I wasn't presented with at the beginning of the conversation that lasted over an hour, while he oh so patiently led me through each and every prompt and installation technique available to the common man. How do they know all this stuff? It all baffles me although, to my great merriment, he did in fact tell me that I'll be able to teach this stuff now myself! That's a laugh.

The 'True Movies' of our times and Karen Matthews

2008-12-04T14:24:00.000Z

What bizarre times we are living in. Some statistics state that, in this country alone, one child a day is being murdered by its carers. I don't know if I can really believe that. It seems to be too awful to be true. It certainly makes a mockery of the word 'carer'. In any event, I feel that that word is over-used in every context used by any organisations that have anything to do with people. Somewhat of an oxymoron, I believe. However, it's the end of 2008 and there's an influx of these tragic cases involving children. Last week it was 'Baby P'. This week another child in the same borough of Haringay who has suffered equally as badly as Baby P and today it's the verdict in the Shannon Matthews trial.

You have to ask yourself what kind of woman would use her own daughter as bait for the reward of something in the region of £50,000. Was that all that her daughter was worth to her? Does she have some kind of personality disorder? Or is it too easy to paint everyone who has the taint of evil with a psychological rationale for their unspeakable behaviour?

What kind of thoughts go through the head of an obviously not very bright woman, whereby she thinks that by having her daughter 'kidnapped' by an equally intellectually diminished boyfriend, she feels that she will be able to 'pull it off' without anyone seeing through her act? You have to hand it to her though, she certainly managed to appear the poor victim in this caper. How many 'True Life' movies has she watched, one wonders. Did she feel that she was the poor-man's yummy-mummy of the Maddy crowd?

The judge made the point that her repellent behaviour merits a long custodial sentence. I hope so but what will happen in the case of the mother of Baby P? The mother whose name is not blazened over the headlines and who, we are led to believe, will be given complete anonymity. Will she be given a long custodial sentence? After all, she actively murdered her child, along with the complicity of her boyfriend and her lodger. We are led to believe that no, she's not going to have very long behind bars because there's no proof that she actually carried out the deed herself and all by herself! So she'll get let out sooner rather than later and be spirited away so that no one knows who she is and where she is and she'll no doubt meet up with another loser, have more unwanted kids and repeat the offences yet again, while we the tax payer supply her with food, booze, unwanted contraception and accommodation.

And Karen Matthews? What will become of her? Looking at her already, she looks like a long term lag, far older than her thirty odd years. What will her sentence be? Ten years maybe? No doubt she'll have good access to any number of True Movies while she's in clink and will be able to spend a good deal of her waking hours day-dreaming about the not so far off day, when she's released on good behaviour, and another little oscar-winning performance.

For Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and Rivka and Chabad in Mumbai.

2008-11-29T11:11:00.000Z

We've had recourse to Chabad. Twice, so far. The first time in Bangkok, Thailand. I contacted them when 'Zach' was holed up in hospital, after 'Rickey' had managed to find him on that manic journey from the borders of Laos through an opium filled haze to the room overlooking the tropical gardens and the motorways of Thailand's major city. The local Chabad representative came in to visit him, bringing a menorah because it was close to Hanukah, as well as food and drinks and general good humour. Rickey wasn't quite sure, fearful that they might be there to 'evangelisize' him. I told him that they weren't that interested in converting those who had not been of the faith beforehand. As it was, he had plenty of discourse with them, trying his best to dissuade them from religion to hedonism. They weren't convinced.

The second time was last year, when 'Sam' and I were compelled once again to go and bring Zach back to this country. Another horrendously expensive repatriation. Three days in Chaing Mai. Beforehand I'd made contact with Rabbi Nehemia in Bangkok who put me in touch with Moyshi in Chaing Mai. Even in these far-flung posts, the Lubavitch make sure that there's somewhere for weary travellers to find a Friday night dinner or a break from the intensity of their journeys.

Moyshi and his Israeli helper Yossi had been to visit Zach in the 'cage'. This was a separate area of the whitewashed, seemingly harmless looking psychiatric hospital wherein Zach was once more incarcerated. I had received an anxiety ridden phone call from Moyshi before we'd left. 'You have to get him out of there,' he told me, almost breathlessly. 'Otherwise, he'll die...' When you hear something like that, you're not quite sure where you go or what you do. Apparently Zach was in a large cage with the demented and the criminally insane. I told them to do whatever they could to help. And they did.

The two Chabadniks moved Zach into a private ward. They visited him daily. They contacted the British consular offices. They took him in food and drink and clothing and stayed with him, talking to him so that he should once again feel that he was a human being. This was nothing particularly new to them. They'd done it many times before and asked nothing from us for so doing.

What Moyshi and Yossi did was no different to what other Chabad outreach workers do worldwide. It's no different to what Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife Rivka did in Mumbai. Their view was to help others, while living a very simple life themselves. They would have provided succour for travellers, a meal or two and other help should someone have health issues or, as above, acute mental health problems. Why they particularly were singled out and murdered in the backstreets of an Indian city is a heinous crime and one that can never be forgiven. There's no excuse that anyone can make.

When I spoke to my sister about why Nariman house had been attacked, she thought it was because it was 'near the hotels'. That wasn't the case, I explained. The terrorists had chosen to go to Chabad house because there were Jews there. Once in there, they bound their hostages and murdered them because they could. I was touched by the young Mumbaiker correspondent on our satellite Indian station. She was in tears after Nariman house had finally been cleared of its terrorists. 'Did you know,' she said, 'the Rabbi's baby who was saved by their cook celebrates his birthday today. He's an orphan because his parents have been killed and will celebrate that for the rest of his life.'

The explosion in mental health disorder and Britney's search for love

2008-11-27T21:06:00.000Z

I gave another one of my talks this week to an extremely nice and genteel school in the west of London. I'm not sure that it was one of my better endeavours but I'm always critical of myself. After all, this is a completely new aspect of my day - giving talks to kids about the dangers of mental illness and drug abuse. It's something that I know something about - after all, there's the experience of living with someone who has both. However, I do sometimes wonder whether I'm talking into a void. It's still daunting standing up in front of twenty or thirty A-level students and expect to hold their attention, while at the same time trying not to bore or watch anyone roll their eyes or yawn behind his or her hands!

Towards the end of the question-and-answer session, I asked them a question. "How many of you know people who have mental health problems?" I was astonished to see that more than three-quarters of the class raised their hands. Including the teachers. That's considerably more than the statistics portray. Indeed far more than the one-in-four currently believed. Extraordinary.

What was even more extraordinary was that at the end of the session, when everyone was filing out of the classroom, a student came to me and enquired if he could ask me a question. "How do you cope?" he asked. I looked at him. "Why do you ask that? Is there a problem in your own family?" Yes, was the answer. He wanted to know what you do when someone you love has had numerous sections and when your family can't talk about it or share their fears and emotions with one another. I understood exactly what he was talking about and felt so sad for him. My answer was the 'detachment with love' aspect of coping. You put your loved-one into a metaphorical box and tuck it away and take it out and think about it when you are feeling strong. Sounds somewhat whimsical and patronising but it helps. It was difficult for me to think of things to advise, apart from suggesting that he get some help himself too. Someone to talk to who will be there for him and to give him coping mechanisms. I hope he does.

I then saw the latest in the Britney camp. Mum says that Britney was nuts because all she needed was love and affection. And now, having got all her love and affection, Britney is well and happy. Jolly good. Talk about denial...

John Kettley, arctic winds and the cold of my childhood

2008-11-22T17:47:00.000Z

When I was a child, Novembers all seemed to be freezing cold. I remember chapped legs that rubbed together and knee high socks and short skirts. We didn't wear tights then. I'm showing my age. I remember black nights and frosty mornings and wet, steamy kitchen windows where rivulets of moisture ran down the panes into puddles along the paintwork onto the skirting boards. I remember seeing my breath in the frigid air when I ran home from school and waiting at Mile End station for the next train to Upton Park, when all the passengers on the dim platform kept jiggling around and slapping their hands together because the gusts of arctic wind throughout the tunnels flew under their coats and scarves and hats and it was really cold!

This week the papers and the television channels were full of how cold it was going to be this weekend, as if we never have cold air in this country. We were going to have 'an arctic spell'; there would be frost and biting winds and snow! What? Isn't it winter? Don't we have cold weather in winter? Why do we have to be warned to 'stay indoors' and 'wrap up' and not to go anywhere in Norfolk because they might well have 'one inch' of snow! Golly! How exciting to have winter in winter!

Yesterday it started off pretty mild but, as the day progressed, it did indeed get colder, so that by evening people were in their winter coats and some even had gloves on and scarves around their necks. I took the dog for a brief walk into the village and on my way back home I spied a little boy walking along with his mother and sister. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. That's it. Mum carried his anorak. Gosh, he obviously didn't feel the cold! Maybe I should have tardissed him back to the 1960s of my childhood and he would know what cold weather is. As it is, he didn't have a clue about those 'arctic winds' and the 'unseasonable' weather fronts that John Kettley and all the 'experts' were raving about.

'Misery Memoirs' and Mrs. Briscoe's lament

2008-11-19T14:06:00.000Z

I suppose that I, too, could be sued. By 'Sam', "Where am I?" he could demand. "Am I an absent husband?" Or 'Beth' when she was younger. "You hated my piercings!" a scowl of contempt. "You made me take them out!" Or even 'Zach'. "What? The book's about me? But didn't you say that I was charming and good looking or clever?" You may have read in the papers that a London lawyer, Constance Briscoe, is being sued by her mother. Yes, her mother. For having written a memoir called "Ugly." The things that Connie wrote about mum and her step-dad are not true, claims Mrs. Briscoe senior. Well, well, well. Wot a surprise!

Now, of course, the papers are full of hugely smug articles by gloating journalists about how ghastly these misery memoirs are. How the public are now well and truly fed up with them and how it's so 'pornographic' to expose one's 'personal pain' on the written page. Pornographic? Hardly. I agree that many memoirs have to be fictionalised. It's illogical to consider that a child can remember in all graphic detail what happened to them at age four. James Frey even admitted that his story A Million Little Pieces was a work of fiction, thus setting in motion the considered opinion that all memoirs were lies.

The problem that we now have, however, is that everything published is genred (my word - I quite like it) meaning that it's no longer apposite to qualify a book as autobiography, biography, fiction, non-fiction - you get the picture. It has to be put into a new breed of genre, so that, unless it's written by a celebrity, a memoir is thus described as a 'tragic life story' or something akin to that. Can't people decide for themselves? And who's doing the qualifying?

Of course the publishers only have themselves to blame. Once they saw how successful readers' interest has been in life stories, they've insisted on churning out book after book after book, with little consideration as to how practically each and every publication resembles the last. How many more books can be published that purport to show the abuse that appears to be so prevalent in the western world? I suppose that I can be accused of hubris here. After all, isn't my book also included in Amazon's 'Tragic Life Stories'? Yuck.

Vanity projects and 'Of Time and the City'

2008-11-17T15:47:00.000Z

It was an interesting weekend for vanity projects. Two, fact. The first was yesterday afternoon. T and I decided to spend a lunchtime at the Renoir in Bloomsbury. Feels so decadent, driving to the cinema on a Sunday afternoon, among heavy traffic and drivers intent on stopping at every green light and rushing ahead on red. Almost like being in Rio! Without the weather and the favellas. We pitched up at the cinema with a few others (literally a few) and paid our rather exhorbitant £10 per ticket. Is it me, or have the prices of cinema tickets been hiked in the last year or so? Seems extraordinary to pay so much. I must be getting old...

I wanted to see 'Of Time and the City' because I believed it was going to be the renowned director Terence Davies' 'homage' to Liverpool. I thought that the archive footage would capture how Liverpool had transcended from poverty to 'The City of Culture.' Nope, that would have been too easy. What it was, was a hodge-podge. For instance, Davies hates the royal family. Fine, he's entitled to his opinion but what did that have to do with Liverpool? His narration, like his direction, was intrusive and irrelevant and tedious. His use of music to illustrate points was, on the whole, quite wrong. What did The Hollies' 1969 version of 'He's not heavy, he's my brother' have to do with the Korean War? And Davies' repeated use of quotes that he then quoted as if he was writing an appendix for publication, was, in fact, ridiculous. It was, indeed, a vanity project and one that should have stayed in Davies' front room for his accolytes and family to watch on a rainy, wet afternoon when there was nothing better on tv.

The second vanity project was a personal hymn to forty-five years of marriage. A couple of years ago a friend of ours decided to learn to play the piano. Having learned in doubble-quick time, she set out to compose and write a number of love songs. These she dedicated to her husband. Unbelievably brave, she then recorded an album and performed it live on stage last night with a band - sax, drums, double-bass and piano. It was, her husband declared, "The first and last time that she would do so". Ok, so she was not the greatest singer but it was an utterly memorable and unique occasion. It's quite something to invite a hundred people to hear you sing for the first and last time. Is that vanity?

'Baby P', 'Responsibility' and what it means in 21st century Britain

2008-11-15T13:33:00.000Z

Hasn't it been a depressing week? We know that we are in some kind of recession. Redundancies are happening all around us but the bankers who largely contributed to all this are still getting their bonuses. No sense of responsibility there.

Then we come to the appalling case of little Baby P. I wasn't going to write about this as I thought that there was enough in the newspapers and on the airwaves but you can't get away from it. There's something utterly Dickensian about it and how the virtuous and arrogant woman in charge of affairs can so blithely wash her hands of the whole event. The blame lies with the mother and the boyfriend and the lodger, all of whom were complicit. But the authorities knew, had evidence, that the child was the subject of the most awful abuse. He was visited sixty times. How many times does a child have to be visited before the file is flagged up with the obvious question: "When do we take him into care?"

'Care'. That's a great word in this country. Just like their mantra of 'care in the community.' It's basically a reason not to do anything at all so that someone take responsibility. It's a way in which the buck can be passed from one department to another; from one 'care worker' to another, so that no one actually is in possession of any kind of responsibility to another human being.

It has left me with this empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know that this is, or hope that this is, an unusual case but somehow I don't think so. Letters had already been written to what had been perceived the 'right channels.' No one bothered to follow them up and the woman who was so disgusted with the way that Haringay Council was carrying out its remit vis a vis children was herself made a victim. We are living in a surreal world where everything is turned on its head and the concept of ultimate responsibilty has evaporated.

Despondency and depression at the thought of the NHS

2008-11-13T10:48:00.000Z

I really have a fear of getting ill and growing old in this country. The thought of ending up in some 'care' home in a grey turning off a motorway, shoved into a wheelchair to stare through a dirty window at a dirty, sodden, gloomy rainswept car park, fills me with dread. However, what is more horrendous is the thought of getting ill and being at the mercy of the NHS and even the private sector.

I noted in the weekend paper how Richard Branson revealed that he wouldn't allow his father to be operated on in an NHS hospital as he couldn't find one that wasn't riddled with MRSA. I'm not surprised. Nine years ago my father-in-law went into his local hospital in the south of England for an excrutiating backache. Four weeks later he was dead. He'd caught the deadly bug. It was only because the medical staff were presented with four professionals - his children - three of whom were solicitors, that they tried everything, they said, to save him. I balked at the tracheotomy. What was the point, I pondered, when he was obviously going to die in any event?

Last year, when Zach was taken into the local hospital, in extremis, unable to walk because of some mysterious illness where he had developed a ghastly rash over his legs and they had swollen so badly that he was in excrutiating pain, he was left in A&E in a wheelchair for four hours. This was after I had rushed him to hospital. On arrival I looked for a porter. None was to be found. I dashed into the hospital, searching for a wheelchair. There were none. This was a hospital! Finally, someone saw me desperately seeking help. They managed to find a wheelchair that was being used to house magazines - and this while the traffic warden was harrassing me to move my car.

So we stayed in A&E those hours until he was seen and I was almost completely wrecked at this stage - mania, drugs and now a mysterious illness had rendered me to the brink of my own breakdown. Zach was taken to a single room on another floor. There was the possibility that it was something highly contageous that he may have caught while travelling. The nurses wore plastic aprons and covered their mouths. The young doctor who examined Zach wore no coat or gloves. He carried a chart that he continued to fill in while making his exam. When he came out of the room (I had been watching him from behind the glass), he came over to me to shake my hand. He hadn't even washed his hands. Is it surprising, then, that MRSA is so prevalent in our hospitals when even the doctors don't even wash their hands after examining patients? Was this a one-off? I wonder. Richard Branson is surely right in his assessment but I don't even think it's better in the private sector here.

For a comparison, consider this: Yesterday afternoon my daughter had to go into the A&E department of a large hospital in Tel Aviv where she now lives. She'd been suffering terrible stomach cramps and felt simply awful. On admission they examined her (the doctors wear scrubs and coats and gloves). They took bloodwork immediately and x-rays. They told her that they wouldn't let her go until they diagnosed what was wrong. Within fifteen minutes she had the blood test results; within the same time the x-rays. They diagnosed what was wrong and, after having put things right, she was able to leave. The hospital was new, clean, bright and airy. It was efficient and even though she had to wait for over an hour to see someone, she had faith that they would be able to help. I have no faith here. It makes me despondent and depressed.

The power of BBC Radio 4 and the Machiavellian machinations of the X Factor 'Judges'

2008-11-09T12:17:00.000Z

Gosh , the power of BBC Radio 4! Number one in 'Drug and Alcohol Abuse' on Amazon; Number one on Drug Addiction on Amazon and Number three in 'Tragic Life Stories' on Amazon. I only wish that somehow they would rename their categories. I sent an email and asked whether, as the book is actually about someone who suffers from Bipolar disorder, that maybe they would put it into their 'psychology/psychiatry' category. I received an email saying that it has been - but can't find it there! Anyway, the fact is people are finding the book and buying it in far greater numbers than hitherto. Let's see how long that lasts!

It was great, finally, to go into the studio. Chris Wilson, the producer of Excess Baggage, made the point that it was the first time that mental illness and travel had been used as a topic for discussion on Excess Baggage. I don't know whether it's a first for Radio 4 in any kind of formatted programme. If it is, then maybe here's the opportunity to explore it further. We could only cover a tiny amount of the travel aspect of the book in the small window that had been set aside for me. I'm absolutely certain though that a whole programme wouldn't go amiss! There's loads more to speak about. For example, what it's like to have one's passport confiscated at the border of an Asian country; what do you do if someone you're travelling with is jailed abroad because of a manic breakdown; how to approach your travel insurance people when your friend is incarcerated and what mental health coverage exists for those of us who have any kind of mental health problem? So much to think about. I believe that I shall have to put this to him...

I've no idea how many people heard me - but I've had loads of emails and text messages from people from whom I hadn't heard from in ages and who had heard the broadcast. So many people who recognised my voice but didn't know what had happened to 'Zach' over the last eleven years. "Buy the book," I told them, "there's so much more in there..." I hope that they took my advice and then told their friends. Who knows how much this resonates with their kids? Their kids who've been travelling across the world and who have had so many experiences like this? Then it was back to the weekend and The X Factor.

Isn't it funny, that when presented with talent, that the British public vote for mediocrity! I know that I shouldn't generalise here but I'm upset. My act got knocked off The X Factor! Laura White, a really talented singer, supplanted by the hideous Daniel whose hair takes on a colour of its own, week after week. Shall I join the conspiracy theorists here? Those who believe that someone Machiavellian, like a Louis Walsh or a Simon Cowell voted off the strongest singer in the bunch because she actually had real 'star' quality? It's all very shallow, I know. But I'm human too and I love talent contests! I love it when real people demonstrate that they have something that the rest of the population doesn't: the ability to sing someone else off the screen and shine.

Well, Saturday nights won't be the same. I'm not going to bother now. Mediocrity (apart from Alexandra, possibly) has won out. Rachel? Off-key, shouty and a tedious persona; JLS, with their terrorist scarves, very middle-of-the- road. The little boy should stick to singing in the local choir; Diana - spare me; Ruth? We all know what Simon sees there.... Who else? Who cares?

'Excess Baggage', Amazonian jungles and tasteless imagery in Selfridges, Oxford Street

2008-11-06T15:54:00.000Z

On my way to Broadcasting House this morning, sitting upstairs of the number 13 bus, I was driven past Selfridges. To my right, Marks & Spencer was done up in red and green chains and to my left, the windows of Selfridges were encased in what appeared to be green hedges and twinkling lights. The window displays were sparse. They consisted of one or two items of local designer-wear transported aloft in hermetically sealed bubbles. Nothing too over-the-top one can observe - apart from the price tags on the shoes, boots, bags and dresses. However, what caught my attention was what was written across each display: "The More the Merrier." Hmm... A bit tasteless in this age of credit crunch, job loss and banking monopoly. But don't those words symbolise why it is that we have reached this appalling stage in our evolution? 'Buy', 'buy', 'buy'... Put more and more on credit. "Because you're worth it!"

I eventually pitched up at the BBC where, sitting on their deep leather-bound armchairs and with Terry Wogan and Radio 2 coming out of ear-high pa systems, I then observed the man himself appearing from behind the security glass, a healthy glow to those well known cheeks. Odd that he could be in two places at once...!

So I've finally recorded my piece for 'Excess Baggage.' It goes out on Saturday morning at 10.00am. I've no idea how many people listen to the programme, deftly presented by John McCarthy, and whether or not, having listened to the broadcast, people will want to buy the book. One only hopes so. I only hope that I didn't go off on my usual tangent. Trying desperately to incorporate as much as I can into my interview, without either be boring, repetitive or too harrowing. It's a fine line. It was a rather surreal segue from 'Excess Baggage's' other guest, Dan, talking about being a missionary in the Amazon jungle for thirty years to bring Christianity to a tribe who don't count numbers, don't have words for colours and don't understand that Barak Obama is now the leader of the western world! (OK, that last bit is a slight exaggeration...), to discussing how not to travel the world while mad.

Western materialism certainly wasn't an intrinsic necessity while Dan and his family lived in the jungle and it hasn't been a party to Zach's travels - apart from the times that he called us in extremis because he was down to his last sou and asked if we could very kindly wire him a few pounds. It shouldn't be a party to anyone's life now and it's in pretty poor taste that such a blatent and immature take on what Christmas represents is splashed all over the windows in Selfridges, Oxford Street.

Katherine Jenkins, drugs, addiction and hubris

2008-11-02T17:00:00.000Z

Yet another article about drugs appeared in the glossy supplement this weekend. This time three women spoke about their addictions. One had been addicted to pain killers, another to coke and the third to cannabis and ecstacy. All were, to all intents and purposes, 'successful women.' The former two are now 'rehabilitated'; the other is still addicted, unable to pass one day without a spliff.

On the same day is the Katherine Jenkins story, a disingenuous piece about her having lied to a journalist some weeks before her having signed a multi-million dollar deal with Warners USA. Having been asked by the journalist whether she'd ever used drugs, she answered in the negative. "Now," she states, tremulously, "I want to come clean about this". Sorry about the pun. I think that they call this 'damage limitation.' She was never a heavy user, she states. Just a few lines of coke at home with friends, or in the loo at a club; or some of the old meta-amphetamines or a cake of hash. She never 'smoked' it, she says, as if that makes it better.

Tomorrow night on tv there's yet another documentary, 'Mum loves drugs, Not me.' This a week or so after Hannah's exploits with heroin were shown for all to see. And we see more of Amy, Kerry and Kate.

What does this say about our society? That it's awash with drugs? That no one has the moral fibre to say 'No' if others around are skinning up or drawing white lines on table tops or toilets or cooking with unusual ingredients? Katherine Jenkins hopes that having disclosed her drug abuse while she was a student, she can now present as a poor wayward child who was misled. How could she know, she asks, eyelids fluttering, that she would ever be this successful? How was she to know that the consequence of success means that there are only too many 'friends' who will be delighted to spill the beans about her forays into mind numbing and illegal happiness and ride on the coat-tails of her celebrity?

Oh, I know that I can't talk. I've lived with an addict and know full well what addiction is and I'm pretty sick of it all. I just wish that there were some cohesive messages in all this but there's not. Katherine Jenkins comes 'clean' about her drugs use because it suits her, not because there's any advice that maybe what she did was not advisable for anyone. She said that she didn't want to be like Amy. Well, who does? She says that the drugs made her depressed. I'm sure that they did but would any of this have come out were she not now the beneficiary of this huge recording contract?

Ross, Brand and the nation's reaction

2008-10-29T10:05:00.000Z

I drove by Jonathan Ross's place yesterday, via a throng of reporters and tv vans. I presume that he had gone to ground somewhere. Maybe a hole underneath one of the many trees in his garden would be suitable. I have to say that I don't understand him. I thought that he was overpaid (highly) and over-exposed (mainly) but he made me laugh sometimes because he is quick witted. Who I simply don't get at all is Russell Brand. I've not 'got' him.

Be good if someone over the age of thirteen could actually explain why the BBC had to feel that they should employ Brand. Ok, so he's an ex-heroin addict (as if one can be an 'ex' heroin addict. You're like an alcoholic. Once addicted, always addicted), and ex-con and ex-whatever. I think that he has an ex-brain. He certainly has had any common sense, loyalty and common decency excised.

Why would a man consider it amusing to boast on air that he had ****ed the granddaughter of a well respected and generally liked 80 year-old grandfather? Why was this remotely funny? What was it that these two highly remunerated 'celebrities' had been sniffing/snorting/drinking while this 'prank' was taking place? Do they really believe that they should be able to get away with everything that they do - whatever it is that their immature, irresponsible and puerile 'brains' tell them?

It is generally the case, I believe, that BBC radio programmes broadcasts are vetted apart from those aimed at the 'younger' market. Is everything now acceptable, whatever it is? Whether it's the foulest language, sexual innuendo or pornographic imagery?

What kind of moral vacuum do the 'stars' of the BBC now reside? I wonder whether Jonathan Ross's daughter will beg her father to prosecute someone were they to broadcast their having had sex with her in the same unspeakable manner. What does Mrs. Ross say about this? Is she proud of her husband? And Brand? Still giggling like the silly adolescent he is. What a shambles.