Thanks James...

I'm putting this up here because I can't get it up in my sidebar by deep linking.

(I was one of several million guest posters whilst he took a short break).

Mr. Higham seems to be renaming his blog every time the whimsy takes him. He has also renamed himself Lord Straf Dresden as well, that threw me the first time I saw a comment of his- I thought who the f*** is that, he seems to know me?

Mental health

People who are not quite right are familiar to all of us, often related to travelling on public transport. Whether it is Jasper Carrott's nutter on the bus or Alexei Sayle's Do you like Sponge?, odd behaviour in social situations is awkward, particularly when children start asking straight questions (like why does that man keep shouting and sucking his thumb?).

Mental health is not an on/off thing- it is a continuum where the middle ground is not clearly defined. Some are born that way, some reach their development limits at a certain age and others drift into (and hopefully out of) it due to problems in life.

When I went on the Outward Bound City Challenge course, we had a stint in a mental hospital. Our first exposure was a big disco with all the City Challengers in the social hall when we met some of the more outgoing and entertaining residents. The sadder part was later that week when we found out how many were behind closed doors rocking their way through the day in anxiety, bewilderment or indifference. Of course, many of these were born that way (effectively brain or nervous system damage, although it is politely called special needs now).

Towards the end of our placement, one of the staff showed me the old patient records of some of the particular no-hopers who were never going to change. The medical terms were rather shocking, as they were common terms of abuse in the late 70s- This man is an imbecile, this woman is a cretin, this child is a retard. The staff member explained that they were all clearly defined, but such terms had now been retired from current use as they were regarded as offensive. However, she said that the newer system obfuscated the previous clarity in the name of PC (although that term wasn't quite in general use then).

At the hospital, apart from the disposessed who would never leave, we only really met long term mental health people who were being helped to cope if they were up to it in controlled circumstances (open wards, half way houses etc.) The others, we met in the hospice, the Geriatric Hospital, at home with carers, at the Sally Army shelter, at the Cyrenians (for the real bottom of the barrel vagrants who even Social Services gave up on).

We all aspire to the peak of Maslow's triangle but sometimes we slip down the slopes. How easy is it for regular people to develop mental health problems? All too easy. Stress, pressure, money problems, bereavement, rejection and being unable to cope can lead to being miserable and ultimately to depression. I have known people describe it to me as like a slow, relentless quicksand, pulling hope deeper and deeper down into the mire.

The first stage to recovery (as in many things) is in recognising the condition for what it is rather than denial or avoidance. One such blogger who has done exactly that is Tony from Cynical Chatter from the underworld. Tony has been blogging for about eighteen months and rose to the giddy heights of being an Iain Dale "A List" member with his insightful posts interspered with odd stuff about his whip obsession.
However, he came out about his struggle mid-February and despite lots of supportive posts, he has yet to post again.

I know how he feels, of course, and many of us will also. As soon as we go public with any big issue that rocks the boat, our few real friends are very supportive but the fair weather ones carefully edge away from us and go horribly quiet.

Keep your chin up Tony, we wish you well and look forward to you getting back online again.

Food glorious food

In our house, Karen mostly cooks, and I do everything else.*

Every now and then, SheWhoMustBeObeyed needs to be at an evening event or is on a brief stay away. On these occasions where I have had to reluctantly grant her a pass out, I need to be able to prepare my own food.

My Mum was a good cook. She used to make these lovely little pizzas with anchovies on the top and she could make a Vesta Chow Mein look like it had... er... come from admittedly well presented dehydrated ingredients.

My Gran was an excellent cook, or more accurately, she was an excellent boiler. She could sublime vegetables into slurry after 4-5 hours in the pressure cooker. The consequence of this was that everything had a similar constituency and we needed a lot of serving spoons.

Cabbage? Gloop. Carrots? Gloop. Potatoes? Gloop. Beef? Gloop.

I can cook when required, but don't particularly enjoy it. I'm actually quite squeamish about eating food that has obviously come from a carcass- i.e. with bones, fat, sinew and those horrible little tubes that stick out at silly angles implying that this protein used to be self-sustaining. My idea of a Sunday Joint is something that has been shredded into slurry and squashed together again into a nondescript shape at high pressure by Bernard Matthews.

There are, however, people who love to Cook, and Welshcakes Limoncello is one of them. She upped sticks and moved to Sicily in her mid-fifties and has been blogging about life there ever since last April. Her output is well written, informative and entertaining reflecting her strong teaching skills as a former (or is it?) linguist in education. She is an entertaining read has a strong following.

Welshcakes also enjoys sharing photos of her food. Whilst I would struggle to compete with her capabilities and flair, I do offer one of my culinary creations to savour.

I call it Piccate speziato saporito cane da caccia salsicca

*apart from washing, ironing, putting away, sewing, gardening, cleaning out the guinea pig, making the beds, hoovering, dusting, attending to the water rooms and paying attention when she is talking. As I am a man I am obviously useless at these things.

I do a bit of D.I.Y. but draw the line at fixing carrier bags as I'm not an Engineer.

Blogpower review number one- An insomniac

As part of that loose collective called Blogpower, we are encouraged to review other participant sites, so here goes.

In deciding which ones to choose, I had a dilemma. Blogpower is a broad church and there are some that leave me cold because they talk about stuff that goes over my head such as religion and Classics. If you click on the RSS feed button to the right, you will find An Insomniac all by itself under the left of centre subset.

Now many people assume I am a Tory Boy. I'm not, I believe in both personal and economic freedom. Torys generally are big on economic freedom but are all too keen to interfere in how we live our lives (although there are Libertarian Tories around, if they haven't defected to UKIP).

Traditional Labour, however, believe in freedom of the individual, but want to control the economy on the basis that business is evil.

NeuArbeit, as we know, is big on personal and economic lack of freedom with all of their authoritarian ways. They disguise it by appearing to be big on personal choice (drugs, sex lifestyle, civil partnerships etc.) but they give the game away with ID cards, surveillence, bans on smoking, foxhunting and punitive taxation.

An Insomniac is written by Matt Murell and we don't immediately know too much about him other than he may have a beard and spiky hair. Rooting through the blog archive, he reveals that he is an English Grad, a libertarian left and an atheist. I'm fine with that, I put up with practically everything apart from ignorance, malice and boredom.

His posts are well structured (you'd expect that from an English Graduate!), his topics are broad and he gets good comments, always the sign of a good blog. However, he had a bit of trouble with Blogspot, that classified his content last year as spam-can be recognised by their irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

I hope he has got over this unfounded automatic insult!