I come from a farming family, my grandparents had a farm in Devon, so although I have never had to earn a living off the land I know how to do jobs like planting, harvesting and dealing with livestock including sheep. I say this so that anyone reading this can't say "well, this could only happen to a stupid townie who wouldn't know a ewe from a slap round the head with a jelly fish".
This true story starts when I went to visit friends who own a small holding with a couple of horses and four sheep. My friends are elderly and the husband had been quite ill so it was left to his wife to deal with all the animals. One of the sheep had a mild case of foot rot and one grey, muddy afternoon she and I tramped out to the field where the sheep were peacefully munching their day away, me wearing a pair of her old wellie boots, to fix the poor old animals foot which was not healing as well as it should.
The field was boggy, which is not good for foot rot, pools of water stood in little dips in the ground and after some chivvying and tempting with treats we got the sheep cornered and my friend got herself organised to tend the hoof. What was I doing? I was holding the sheep, I knew what I was doing, I had held sheep before and the ewe was docile until she realised that we wanted to fix her sore foot. She turned from being a friendly fat old woolly into a very large, old, soggy (because she had been standing in a field while it rained), extremely heavy grumpy sheep and suddenly I was clinging onto her for grim death. Slowly all her weight was beginning to press into my knees and chest which were bracing her while she stood on three legs and very slowly we began to sink into the mud. It was gradual at first but then seemed to gather pace and became like something out of a "Laurel and Hardy" film as my wellie boots went deeper and deeper into the mud and I struggled to stay upright, the thought of falling over on my back in a sodden field with a gigantic sheep on top of me was becoming a terrible possibility. Somehow I managed to stay on my feet, the treatment was finished and the ewe trotted back to her herd. Mud was over the tops of my wellies and I stank of "eau de sheep" and if you have never smelt that all I can say is you are lucky. I squelched my way back to the farmhouse aching all over.
This happened years ago and I had not thought about it until this weekend when I have been watching the war against IS develop and already you can see the tragedy unfolding, slowly at first with an accidental bombing by the American Air Force of a unit of Iraqi soldiers they mistook for IS fighters while the UK planes fly around in circles trying to find something to kill. Mission creep, such a wonderful term, will happen but then who will our ground forces be fighting for, who will they be allied to and who will be the enemy. Already, like me in that field, everything is getting bogged down but what do we do?
For years whenever I would oppose whichever war was being fought people would say "well, if we don't fight what do we do?" and that used to give me brain freeze.
When I was young I knew the answer, withdraw from Vietnam, stop the killing - it all seemed so clear cut but as the years went by the wars got more confused and the reasons for going to war murkier; wars that should have been fought weren't, wars like Afghanistan and Iraq were and always whether a war was fought or not by America and allies still the suffering of the ordinary people around the world is extreme.
Each of us has to make our own minds up about what I call "the new Iraq war" and whether it is right or wrong but there are simple things that can be done to help the civilians - donate to the various appeals for hospital supplies and support the refugee centres, sponsor an orphan and have an opinion, what is happening is happening in "our" name and we are all being dragged into the mud.
Why are Vikings stealing my organs?
Two years ago I was rushed to hospital in great pain and spent ten days in my local hospital. I was supposed to have an operation the next day and was put on Nil By Mouth which was fine with me as I never wanted to eat again but due to various problems - a broken air conditioning system in the operating theatre and no surgeons available I spent seven days NBM on a drip before I could have the operation. This piece is not about my time in hospital it is about my reaction to drugs and how debilitating the whole experience was. I do not use drugs; no pain killers or any medications because I have always been extremely healthy until Spondilitis reared its ugly head but even then I refused pain killers preferring meditation, breathing and visualisation techniques. Once in hospital I tried to explain I did not need any pain killers, sleeping pills etc but I had no control over what was administered through the drip so I was given pain killers although I wasn't in pain and pills to stop vomiting although I wasn't vomiting and I noticed that the control I usually have over my thoughts and speech was getting loosened, I was saying and thinking all sorts of odd things and holding conversations on topics I usually mulled over privately in my head - the role of the Lakeland Poets in modern society, Florence Nightingale and pie charts, concentric castles - I began to think I was the "nutter on the bus" as nurses started to look at me askance. Thankfully I wasn't rude or aggressive I just chatted away merrily in a manic fashion. Finally, my operation went ahead and I was wheeled down to the operating theatre, all the theatre staff were blonde which I found quite interesting in my new weird freewheeling state of mind (did they all go to same hairdresser or did they dye their hair at home?). The operation went well and I was determined to come round from the anaesthetic quickly, repeating to myself over and over "no more drugs" and I groggily asked in the middle of my mantra why were Vikings cutting me up and stealing my organs? Nothing made sense but then I was back on the ward with a little pump attached to me to self administer morphine when the pain got "bad". My system was awash with drugs, the effects scared me - I lost a day and became convinced Sunday was Monday, I had mild hallucinations involving a dragon and documentary footage of lilac bushes (don't ask, I will never look at dragons the same way again!)...it was here that I couldn't write about my experiences anymore and I saved the draft. The thing I treasure most, a rational mind and being able to use it unhampered had left me. I earn my living from writing, I value my clear headedness and even more than that my privacy and suddenly I was talking rubbish and thinking mush. So that is where I left my blog with the Vikings wanting bits of my body and that body 2 stone lighter than when I had gone into hospital 10 days before. Now I have picked it up again all this time later with a new perspective about everything because I have had time to heal and time to think. What happened to my mind isn't unusual, I watched other people on my ward have the same kinds of reactions but the drugs are useful they keep the patient quiet, they make it easier for the nurses to get through their tasks even if the patient is screaming abuse at an imaginary friend or in my case having dragons help Vikings to gather lilac in concentric castles where they met the Lakeland poets, oh lawks, do I spy James Thurber frolicking among the cocktail glasses - yes definitely "nutter on the bus" time but it kept me quiet and hopefully I wouldn't argue with the doctor when he decided I should go to rehab (what for my mind shrieked I don't smoke, drink or use recreational drugs) or a residential old people's home (again I was speechless, I had a perfectly good home to go to when I was released and I know my hair is white but it has been like that since I was 25 and it turned white after I crossed the Sahara Desert but I am not an ancient relic yet) but when your mind can't think quickly or clearly you can't express yourself or protect yourself and it was only that there were no places at either of these institutions that I was released to go home. The whole experience really shook me, it showed me how easy it was to have control over one's life taken away from you by people who know nothing about you but are determined to act for your own good. It is overwhelming.
I came home and had home help provided by the local council for 6 weeks, these ladies were very kind and helpful but judgemental and I am sure they thought I was weird; I have a robot vacuum cleaner to clean the floors, I use a gizmo which has brushes that spin at high speed to clean the cooker and kitchen work surfaces, I do as little housework as I can a la Quentin Crisp I don't really bother with dusting and I do all my shopping on line. None of them had ever seen a robot vacuum cleaner before or my kitchen gizmo and the idea that I never as one of them said "popped out to the shops" was really strange to them as was my using my pc to write everyday (normal women, especially women as one of them implied who are getting older don't do these things, or live by themselves and never see any family). I was a puzzle they decided to humour but I would love to see the notes they wrote up on each morning visit! Anyway I survived the hospital, the Vikings and the home visitors and the only thing that niggled at me was the fact I had never finished this blog and faced my fear of opening up my mind and how it worked (or didn't) to scrutiny but now the piece is written and if it is woolly and wobbly just blame the dragons gathering lilac in the spring.
I came home and had home help provided by the local council for 6 weeks, these ladies were very kind and helpful but judgemental and I am sure they thought I was weird; I have a robot vacuum cleaner to clean the floors, I use a gizmo which has brushes that spin at high speed to clean the cooker and kitchen work surfaces, I do as little housework as I can a la Quentin Crisp I don't really bother with dusting and I do all my shopping on line. None of them had ever seen a robot vacuum cleaner before or my kitchen gizmo and the idea that I never as one of them said "popped out to the shops" was really strange to them as was my using my pc to write everyday (normal women, especially women as one of them implied who are getting older don't do these things, or live by themselves and never see any family). I was a puzzle they decided to humour but I would love to see the notes they wrote up on each morning visit! Anyway I survived the hospital, the Vikings and the home visitors and the only thing that niggled at me was the fact I had never finished this blog and faced my fear of opening up my mind and how it worked (or didn't) to scrutiny but now the piece is written and if it is woolly and wobbly just blame the dragons gathering lilac in the spring.
