"I'm frightened of people"

my elderly friend told me.
It was an admission that did not surprise me but it did sadden me.
I had, despite the rain, gone to see an elderly friend in a nursing home yesterday. It was not what I wanted to spend a wet Saturday afternoon doing. I would have preferred to be sitting at the computer doing the rewrite of the book - something I have not had a chance to touch in the past eleven days.
I did not want to spend another afternoon visiting anyone in a close to hospital type environment. There has been too much going to and from a hospital recently - and I have to go again today.
But, I had promised something. I promised I would go to see her. It was not because she expected to see met that I went. I had made that promise to the young man who is living in her house and getting it ready for sale. I try not to break promises and I did not know if he had told her when he went to see her earlier in the week. As it was I was feeling guilty. My friend and her husband had been moved very suddenly. The move had not surprised me. He has Alzheimer's and she had a stroke at the beginning of the year. She has made a remarkable recovery from the stroke but looking after him was too much. They struggled on for a few months until places became available.
My friend has always seemed to lack confidence. I met her about twenty years ago - when she and her husband moved in to a house not far from here. She asked me where the closest pillar box was and I showed her. After that we talked when I saw her. I taught her how to use their computer because her husband was writing a book and she was doing the work of typing it up. Back then he was still teaching a course at the university.
I sensed then that he was a bully. She never seemed quite relaxed, even when he was out of the house. "R....won't like it," was something she told me often.
She is however the generation which has remained with their husbands because divorce was not to be considered, especially if you did not go back to work after the birth of the children. Even if it had been my place to say something it would have done no good.
But now they have been separated. He is in one nursing home and she is in another.
Despite the admission that she is frightened of people I sensed relief. She looked much more relaxed after just three weeks. While she had not wanted to go to the "rock-n-roll" concert that afternoon ("not my sort of music as you know") and she is not interested in football ("never have been") she spoke about going on an outing.
What did she do all day? She reads. She does crosswords and she is thinking about joining one of the groups in the wider complex.
"And I am going to watch some television in the evenings. R...would never let me watch television. He said it was all rubbish  but there are some good documentaries. I always wanted to watch some of those."
And, suddenly, more came tumbling out. The man had clearly tried to control every aspect of her life. What I had always suspected was correct. He was never physically abusive but he was an emotional bully. It is scarcely surprising that it left her frightened of people.
My friend is in her late eighties now. I don't know how much longer she has to live but I hope that the time she does have will be very different. I hope she sees all those nature and travel documentaries, that she sees all the places she never had a chance to see, that she can read all the non-fiction she wants without being told "you won't understand that" and that she finds some companionship in her new home.
I won't bother to go and see her husband. He would not remember I had been and - I really don't want to visit a bully. Is that wrong of me?

My anti-bucket list?

Someone on another blog (Girls Heart Books) wrote about having an anti-bucket list. I read her post yesterday and I have been thinking about it since then.
I rather like the idea of a "bucket list". Although I have never actually written one I do have things I still want to achieve. I may not achieve them but I can at least work towards them - or grab the opportunity to try them if that opportunity comes up.
But an anti-bucket list? Things I do not want to do?
The author of the other article mentioned bungee jumping as being at the top of her list. Hmm...yes, I would agree. I have no desire to brain damage myself still further by indulging in that idiocy.
Then someone else mentioned "potholing". Hmm...yes, I would agree. The idea of crawling into dark, damp, small spaces for the fun of it is something I completely fail to understand. I am anxious in the basement car park in the local shopping centre. (Yes, I am wimp but even being called that is not going to make me like it.)
I don't like heights either so I do not want to go to the top of any the world's skyscrapers with their "observation towers" or their "viewing platforms". Oh, and I don't want to climb Mt Everest either  - even if I could.
I don't want to visit the South Pole - or the North Pole. I don't want to row across an ocean - or be rowed across one.
Even if space travel becomes normal in my lifetime I do not want to leave Earth. (I get travel sick and apparently even people who do not normally get travel sick are prone to do so on space missions.)
I do not want to go to another Wagner opera, read War and Peace or own so much as a print of a David Hockney painting.
I do not want to eat snake or snails or scorpions.
Well, that's the start of a very long list. Would I be missing out on much?
What's on your anti-bucket list? Do tell me!

It is a "locked" ward

and that means I need to be "buzzed" in and out when I go to visit my friend in the psychiatric ward at the hospital. The staff have seen me so often that they recognise me and, if they see me coming, they will buzz me through before I can ring the bell. They don't ask who I have come to visit either, just tell me if they think I need to know something or they want me to do anything. One of them even jokingly suggested that they should provide me with my own swipe card.
Most people in the ward do not get regular visitors, indeed some don't get any. Other patients will get visitors at weekends and some must get visitors in the evenings. Visiting hours are generous - from 8am to 8pm. I have also been told that, if necessary, visits can be made outside those hours. I doubt it would make much difference. People still would not willingly come. Many people dislike visiting hospital anyway. 
I have watched the other visitors. They go nervously in and out. They look, at best, anxious. They are uncomfortable about being there. It is clear that mental illness frightens many of them even though the patients in this area are considered to be no danger to anyone - except perhaps themselves.
As part of my teacher training I had a placement in another psychiatric ward. It was another locked ward. There were two doors to the ward and both of them were kept locked. There were armed guards present. The patients were considered a danger to themselves and to other people.
My role, along with one of my fellow students, was to provide "art therapy". Neither of us knew much about what was expected of us and there were serious limitations on the materials and equipment provided - no knives, no scissors, no string or anything else that might be turned into a weapon. So, we took along some clay - and at the end of the term we had a small exhibition of things the patients had made. I don't know if we really did anything to help but the patients seemed to enjoy the experience. Most of them talked to us. Sometimes it did not make sense but often it did - although sometimes not in ways that other people would necessarily recognise.
Did it bother me being there? If I am honest I suppose I was not completely comfortable. I was only nineteen at the time. I did not have much experience of the world, rather less than many other nineteen year old students. I would not have chosen to go but I was not given a choice. It was where I was assigned.
I would not feel completely comfortable there now but the ward I am currently visiting does not bother me. The door is not locked because the patients are violent. It is locked to ensure that the staff know where the patients are, so that they don't - as some of them would - wander off or deliberately injure themselves. Most of the patients would not do either. They are simply incapable of it. Some of them cannot make decisions - even offering them a choice of tea or coffee can agitate them.
It makes no difference.They are ordinary people. It's why I will go on visiting my friend and chatting to the other patients who are wandering the corridor and the garden or the television lounge. It could be any of us.  

I have a little more to say

on the issue of defection today.
I wrote a polite but firm letter to the man who has been my MP. I advised him, politely, that he no longer had my respect or my support.
I pedalled off to deliver it - because, unlike him, I believe such things should be done in person - not by text message or an announcement in the media. If you wish to make such a statement then you should be willing to put your name to it - and you should continue to be polite.
Nevertheless it did not surprise me to discover that the window of the electorate office had been sprayed with angry graffiti. There was a large media contingent outside the office. There were police. I had the letter in my hand. One of the police coming out of the office took it from me and took it inside. I thanked him politely and pedalled off rapidly - before the media could nab me for an on air opinion. I am all too well aware of how they can edit and twist things so that your words come out with an entirely different meaning.
There were angry mutterings in the post office, the chemist and the bank I visited. Most people, even those who voted for other people, are disgusted. They also feel powerless.
We shouldn't be powerless but we probably are. So much for democracy.
Yesterday afternoon I went to visit my friend in hospital. I had promised her I would come - but I came away feeling I might just as well not have gone. She was fractious and irritable and showed no interest in me being there. Her lunch was still there. As hospital food goes it is not too bad - at least edible. She had eaten half a small bowl of soup and a tiny container of ice cream - about a third of a cup size. That was all. There was an IV line in.
Today she is having an endoscopy because she is still complaining of pain when she eats - but an ultrasound and a CT scan have found nothing.
One of the senior staff believes they will not find anything. I suspect he is right. I suspect my friend wants to defect from life. I left feeling I wanted to defect from her as well. It makes me angry that she is not making an effort but defection would be wrong. I am not going to do it.
Defection does not take courage. It is cowardly.

It seems our votes ARE worthless

and that is not something I say lightly.
We had a state election in March. Our local electorate voted the incumbent MP back in. He had about 55% of the primary vote and even more after preferences. He also had almost twice the number of votes of the party which managed to form minority government. He was popular and he was considered to be an able and loyal member of his party. He had been leader of the party until he made a foolish blunder and was forced to step down.
Before going into politics this man was an officer in the army. His entire career has been built on the concept of loyalty and leadership.
Yesterday he abandoned all that. He betrayed his party. He betrayed the people who voted for that party through him. He betrayed those who voted for him. He betrayed the principles of democracy and political representation.
Without consulting his electorate or his party he announced that he was becoming an "independent" - and taking up a ministerial position in the minority government which has, until now, known it would have to rely on the vote of another "independent" with a ministerial post. Both "independents" are ignoring the wishes of their electorates.
Politicians are our servants. They are not are masters. Although they behave as if they are our masters they must at some point face the electorate. The system is not perfect. Our state saw a minority government retain power when it should, on the numbers, have been sent to oblivion. That makes the actions of this man even more reprehensible. He is not merely going against the wishes of his electorate but against the wishes of a majority of people in the state.
There can be very few reasons for an elected member of parliament to leave the party he was elected to represent. One possible scenario would be if the party was in power and abusing that power in a way that was harming the electorate. That is not the case here.
The decision this man made was made not, as he claims, in the best interests of the people of this state. It was made simply in his own personal interest. He will - if he lasts - leave politics at the end of this term with a pension relating to that of a Minister rather than a member of the Opposition.
Thirty pieces of silver does not even begin to describe his actions.

So the bar on the graph of voting patterns

in the EU elections in the UK indicated that more than a third of the population didn't vote?
It does not surprise me. I often wonder how many people would vote in Australia if we did not have compulsory attendance at the ballot box. It is usually referred to as "compulsory" voting. This is of course incorrect.
Nobody can be forced to vote here. You have to attend a polling station, line up, give your name, get it marked off on the roll, accept the papers and put them in the right boxes. Although you are supposed to mark them nobody can actually force you to do that. Indeed, for the most part, nobody needs to know if you don't actually choose to vote.
I did once see a man of "alternative" appearance take his papers and go straight to the boxes. One of the staff questioned him but he told her, very politely, that he did not want to vote for any of the candidates. He then put the papers in the relevant boxes and walked out. I suspect most people who do not wish to vote go into a carrel and fold the papers in private or perhaps draw something on the papers?
I actually believe compulsion to attend the ballot box is wrong - just as I believe that failing to vote is wrong. No, the two things are not incompatible. Democracy should allow the choice but it also requires the individual to actively make that choice. Not voting simply because you cannot be bothered or think it won't make a difference is not democratic. It actually undermines democracy.
Our system of compulsory attendance at the ballot box is, in my view, just as undemocratic. It makes for lazy politics. It makes for complacency.
There are still parts of the world where not everyone has a vote or where just one candidate is put up for "election". There are places where the "elections" are carefully controlled by those in power. The results will be a foregone conclusion in such places. There are places where people are prevented from voting in large numbers through the threat of violence and intimidation - and where their votes can be bought for a bag of rice or maize.
We need to be aware of those things. Just as the bar at the beginning of the graph should be almost non-existent because almost everyone has exercised their right to vote the vote here needs to change. It needs to change from those who unthinkingly vote the way they have voted all their lives, the way their parents and grandparents voted to those who think about what they are doing.
It is asking a lot, probably too much for immediate change. I just hope it will happen before it is too late.

Apparently Minister Gove

in the UK has demanded that only literature written there should be studied in schools. That would of course cut out things like "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Crucible" and other things which have appeared on the examination lists since time immemorial.
Naturally all this is also causing outrage among those responsible for educating the young, among writers and among others involved in the world of books. It is entirely understandable.
There was a similar suggestion made here some time back. It did not get very far and it did not get a lot of publicity but there it was, the suggestion that Australian children should study only Australian literature.
What happened was that more Australian writing was put on the lists of what needed to be taught. Note now that I said "literature" first and "writing" second. Not all writing is literature worthy of study.
If we had gone down the road of Australian literature and/or writing only there would have been plenty of material. Australia has produced some outstanding writers and they are worthy of study. It has also produced some mediocre and downright poor writers.
Choosing only Australian authors would of course deny students the opportunity to study other great literature. It would be unacceptably narrow. Despite all the diversity of, and access to, modern media there is already a narrowing of cultural literacy. There is so much information available that some of the literature, music, art and so on that society has absorbed into everyday life is no longer studied. Even some of the most culturally literate people can be entirely unaware of where things come from.
Does it matter? Yes - and no. There has been a revival of all things Jane Austen in the past few years. Joan Aiken wrote some more "Austen" novels before she died. Jane Austen has appeared as a character in other novels. There are people who will read these things without ever reading Jane Austen but they may absorb some Austen along the way.
Nobody has, to the best of my knowledge, tried to write another Shakespeare play or a Charles Dickens novel. (Alexander McCall-Smith writes chapter by chapter novels for the Scotsman but his characters are uniquely his own.)
I did not study "To Kill a Mockingbird" at school. I read it because my English teacher in my Leaving ("O" level)  year gave it to me.
I read a good many other books she suggested as well. Many of them appear on lists of books to be studied for English literature.
In the year previous to the Leaving we were supposed to read just the first 18 chapters of "David Copperfield". I was told to read the entire book "How can you hope to understand it unless you read all of it?"
I suspect "studying" a novel can kill it for many students - especially if it is not well taught and the exam at the end is emphasised. I suspect that there are novels and writers who have been over-exposed. If the study guides, the teaching materials, the films and the plays based on the words are there then it is perhaps easier to teach the same things over and over again, after all you are teaching new students each year and that makes a difference.
I am not worried if students never read "To Kill a Mockingbird" (although they will have missed out on a valuable experience) but I am worried if they never read anything like that. I am worried that they no longer seem to read as widely or often as I did. I am worried that they are not getting that diverse experience of cultural literacy that I did and continue to get.
I am worried that Shakespeare is rapidly disappearing from the texts to be studied here and that his work is being replaced by things like "film posters in context" (whatever that may mean).
Shakespeare is still worthy of study. His works just need to be put into a 21st Century context. 
And I want students to read literature from anywhere, literature in English and literature in translation.  Only then will they be able to consider the great ideas that will shape their future just as they have made their past.
Is that wrong?