Radio Hendaye

My tuner only picks up Spanish radio stations.  (Yes sometimes I like to turn on my radio rather than manage internet based radio). Imagine my surprise this evening when I turned on radio three and heard a Scouse accent coming out of the speakers.  'Have I been beamed up?' I thought.  Within a few seconds I recognized the voice. It was Ringo. You know the Beatles not-very-good drummer: promoting his new album with Paul, the only surviving other member of what was undoubtedly the world's most successful and influential pop group That made me profoundly aware of what I lose as an immigrant /ex-pat.  However long I live in France, however hard I try to assimilate its culture, I will never be able to turn on the radio and know by the sound of a voice - oh that's Ringo, that's Will Self, that's Jo Brand or whoever.

The Gruissan Dairies part 3: Cold Turkey / Carpe Diem

I need internet access for an hour or two a day and have to go bars to get it (and before you ask I mostly drink shandy – ‘panaché’ - or milky coffee). I could - when I first got here -have bought have bought a SIM card for my dondle (Dongle? Dingle? Dangle?), but decided to resist the temptation. I thought ‘what will it be like to have to go out of the house to get internet access? ‘Surely it will encourage me to interact more, get to meet more people’. It was and has been hell. Every day I needed to check my e-mails. ‘Are my clients happy with the work I’ve done?’ ‘Have they sent me more?’ ‘Have they paid me yet?’ ‘Are there bills from Brussels or the NL that need paying?’ And then there were travel arrangements and bookings to make and research for my upcoming Pyrenean trip. I realised how thoroughly and utterly I was (and am) an internet addict. More than that, I had to try to fit all these essential communications into a one/ one and half hour slot. That meant being really focused. I tried a once a day schedule. I tried a once every 36 or 48 hour schedule. Either way I became the ‘geek of the village’ : hunched over my laptop doing e mails while other ‘normal’ people were drinking pastis, making bets on the horses or shouting at the rugby players. The ‘rural med’ isn’t Brussels or London or Copenhagen. There’s no Starbucks’ connectivity culture here. Yes the cafés have wi-fi, but I don’t think I have seen anyone all the month I have been here go into a café and turn on their laptop. If they had I would have gravitated towards them like a moth to flame.

I’ve been frequenting a bar down the street for the past two or three weeks but it was closed yesterday afternoon. The bar maid around the corner was taller, prettier and flirted with me a bit: so my allegiances changed. My internet session that evening turned out to be particularly demanding. The gîte (part of an organic farm) that I had tried to book five days ago in the high Pyrenees still hadn’t (and hasn’t) replied. And, as I am supposed to be handing back the keys to my gîte in Gruissan in two days time (now tomorrow), I had to develop a new search strategy - quickly. I left the café feeling emotionally knackered - hoping I have an Air B’n’B bed booked (I do).

Leaving the café there was a gorgeous looking hippy girl hanging around by the ice cream parlour, maybe 30 years old – probably not more than 45 kilo,– clearly on her own and looking in need of company: just the kind of girl that gets my blood racing. I was tempted to ask her back to my place to listen to my Grateful Dead bootlegs - but frankly I was too tired after my internet session to try to instigate a conversation in French. So I hung around for a few minutes hoping we would make eye contact - we didn’t. One minute further down the road an attractive (but much more aged) French woman made eye contact with me – almost saying with her eyes ‘come sit down at my table’. I might well have done in other circumstances - but she was eating at a pizza joint (and I really question the values of people who choose to spend 15 Euro for a piece of half-leavened dough with a smear of tomato, basil and Italian cheese on top of it. That’s not a meal – it’s a quick snack to be eaten on the metro). Moreover, she had one of those horrible little Pekinese dogs between her ankles, so beloved (especially) by French women who ‘like to lunch’. I passed by the unspoken invitation. Guess I’m not going to ‘get lucky’ in Gruissan. I’m either too timid or too selective.

The Gruissan Dairies part 2 –‘They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot’

The Gruissan Dairies part 2 –‘They paved paradise and they put up a parking lot’ Oh I do like to beside the seaside, oh I do like beside the sea. I do like to walk along the prom, prom, prom’. But I hate what continental Europeans do to their sea-side resorts. In the last decade or more I‘ve been to resorts in Belgium, Holland, France, Spain and several other countries and never found a place that was ‘gezellig’ (cosy). Well maybe I’m exaggerating – Bornholm, a Danish Island that is closer to Poland than Copenhagen, Lesbos a Greek Island that is almost part of Turkey and La Gomera, which is part of Spain but closer to Cap Verde, are three places that I have visited that have not had their souls ripped out by tacky tourist infrastructure, but they are exceptions). By and large it seems to be very hard to find coastal villages or towns in mainland Europe that have not been deracinated by the exigencies of the tourist trade. And this is in stark contrast with the UK - where coastal villages and towns such as Polperro or Fowey (Cornwall), Aberystwyth or Tenby (Wales), Oban (Scotland) or Whitby (Yorkshire) seem to retain a timeless charm, or at least a charm that is redolent of a bygone steam-driven era, rather than modern day Mammon.

This I guess is the only ‘red thread’ that I can find from my month long stay in Gruissan. It is a beautiful medieval village with a spider’s web layout (even now after a month here I can get hopelessly lost if I turn right instead of left to find the local shop or trash collection points)). There is a lot of (justified) pride in the local gastronomic patrimony (the wines, the fruits, the fish and the patés) - but it’s also full of tack, too many new-build apartments, too many yacht berths, too many ateliers of artists with, shall we say, limited talents. It sounds like I am having a bit of a bitching session –but that’s far from my intent. Surrounded by four lagoons (étangs), Gruissan (where eels come spend their maturity before migrating back to the Saragossa Sea – if they don’t end up on the Gruissanese tables- to reproduce, and where salt is panned in the traditional manner) and limestone massifs to the north, south and west it is truly a stunning natural environment. On a clear day you can see the Pyrenées to the south and the Montagne Noir (Cevennes) to the north. But it seems to me to have lost (or sold) its soul.

Perhaps there is a paradox here- continental Europeans are able to spend much more time and money on their holidays than us Brits can (its not uncommon to see signs in the windows of bars, barbers or boulangeries in Brussels or Paris saying ‘closed for four – or six - weeks for the summer holidays’. These are not EU ‘fonctioniares’ – though their clients may be- just ordinary working class people, who value their summers). And that means that there’s lots more money available to spend in developing these places as ‘desirable resorts’. And in my eyes, at least, that makes them far less desirable places to visit. It’s a paradox. And I’m aware that it smacks of elitism and snobbery - but I would just rather go to places that have a lower tourist/local ratio. Next stop the Pyrenées. In the meantime a few photos of the local scenery.

Thanks to Jeroen who supplied a couple of the photos after I left my camera's memory card in my laptop one day!

Devolution Blues

So my UK passport is still 'fit for purpose'. It’s almost due for renewal. I was wondering whether it would come back with a new descriptor. The Fragmented Kingdom? The Fell-Apart Kingdom?

I could hardly bring myself to go on line on Friday morning. Would the Scots go with their hearts or would calculating logic prevail? I had mixed feelings – I did feel that the UK would be belittled and diminished by losing Scotland and there is the ongoing fear that if the Scots left the table it would be that much harder (nigh-on impossible?) to get the Tories out of power (though the only available option seems to be replacing them with another group of Tories with a different name).

But there were so many attractive aspects to a YES vote. England would really have a problem with where to store its floating tools of potential mass genocide and would face the embarrassment of having to maintain the only controlled border between Galway and the Bosporus, between the North Pole and Tangiers. I take an interest in this issue as my Russian, Slavic and African friends living in, or visiting, Europe have to go through a separate visa process in order to visit the UK. And - to add insult to injury - those who live in Brussels – the capital of Europe - have to go to Paris to get their visa. Welcome to ENGLAND- keep out Johnny Foreigner!

Best of all a YES vote would have been ‘sand in the eye’ for the Conservative and Unionist Party. To preside over the dissolution of the Union would be an embarrassment that David Cameron’s reputation would never recover from. It would have led to a year of in-fighting in the Tory party that would have substantially harmed their next election prospects and left a historical legacy that no-one would forget. Tant pis

Vilnius City Tour

In Vilnius -a short city tour as a prelude to our organic conference.

This is big trip for me- the first time I have flown for four years - the first new country for me to visit in six (same for being outside the Euro Zone - UK Excepted) and the first time I visiting a country that was previously part of the USSR. Stories to follow later (maybe).

Ex-pat files

There is a brilliant article on what it means to be an expat - and indeed whether one should use the term at all- plus some very pereceptive comments. Don't think I can add to that really.

The Italian Job(s)

Living on mainland Europe doesn't always make inter-cultural communication easier - as these three sketches show.

1. Umberto Eco, one of my favourite authors, came to do a talk in Amsterdam to promote his new book. I almost went - I am a bit of a literature junkie and a signed copy of the book would not have gone amiss. But I only heard about it the day before and rearranging my schedule to include a trip to A'dam was too bothersome. The next week I was in the public library and saw a copy of it - in Dutch. So I went to the help desk and asked (in my best Dutch) if I could order an English version. Umberto is pretty difficult to understand in one's native language and there was no way I was going to try to read a 'stun an ox' novel in Dutch. She (librarians are almost always ‘shes’) hunted through the system and tried hard to find a copy. A few days later I got an e- mail telling me that the book had not yet been translated into English. 1-0 to the Dutch for being more integrated with the culture of other European cultures than the Brits.

A few days later the Champions League knock-out stages came around. There were two matches that night - Man U ('my team') vs. Marseille (one of my favourite cities in Europe) and Bayern vs. Inter Milan. I skipped out of my Dutch class a bit early hoping to watch the Red Devils trounce the Marseillaise. ITV has the transmission rights to the Champions League so I am dependent on Dutch broadcasters to show the 'right' match. They choose the 'wrong' one. Actually the Bayern - Inter match turned out to be the better one - with Milan stealing a last minute goal on the Germans (déjà vu from 1998?) to become the only group runners-up to make it through to the last eight. I asked a few Dutch friends whether the choice of match reflected a critical choice about the likely quality of the match – or a nationalistic one reflecting the number of Dutch players involved. They were disarmingly honest and almost universally opted for the later choice. But it was the better match- so we’ll give them a draw on that one (though I will have to make a note to go to a pub with cable TV to watch the Chelsea v Man U match tomorrow).

Finally, one of the banes of ex-pat life in (rural) Netherlands is that foreign movies are largely inaccessible to non Dutch speakers – at least at the movies – because they are only subtitled into Dutch. Representations have been made to managers of movie houses – pointing out that they may be losing a considerable amount of custom in a town where at least 40% of the student population (or about 20% of the total population) is non-Dutch speaking: all to no avail. It seems the system is too inflexible - or the cost of getting movies with English sub titles (as well as / instead of) Dutch ones seems too high (unless one gets lucky at a film festival and gets one that has only been subtitled into English). So non-Dutch speaking world movie fans miss out. But there are occasional victories – I can manage French language movies – at a push- and last month we went see a beautiful Italian movie ‘Le Quattro Volte’ - although secure in the knowledge that there was no dialogue, and thus no sub titles, to struggle with. (Having said that I have been to see a Thai and Iraqi movie this year and got by – most of the time- with the Dutch subtitles, only occasionally asking my Dutch companions for translations of key words). It (my Dutch) must be getting better. And things could be worse – one could live in Germany and have to watch James Bond movies dubbed into German…..

Lets call it a score draw on this cultural front.

Did the earth move for you baby?

There's a hundred more pertinent blogs that I could already have written this year- but when I saw this I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Changing of the guard?

The Netherlands is universally famous for its tolerance and pragmatism. Recent months have seen a wave of laws and decrees that threaten to undermine at least the former. Large swathes of the windows in the main red light district in Amsterdam have recently been shut down. Numerous coffee shops close to the German and Belgian borders have also suffered the same fate. The authorities think that they are attracting the 'wrong kind' of tourists. Maybe they should take a reality check - as one blogger recently asked: 'do most tourists come to this country to check out its cuisine, its scenery or its climate?'

Two weeks ago the Dutch government outlawed squatting - turning it from a civil to a criminal offence (this despite objections from the councils and majors of the four largest cities in the country). Squatting is an emotional subject. People imagine going on holiday to France for two weeks and finding a bunch of dread-locked anarchists having taken over their front room. The reality is very different. Most squats are of large institutional premises - warehouses, factories, administrative centres, that have no viable economic function any more and which will (in time) be redeveloped.

Dutch society, with its inimitable ability to negotiate and find compromises, has evolved a system called anti-kraak (anti-squat) through which (mostly institutional) property owners arrange for (mostly) young people to live in or run businesses from these properties until a new use is found for them. Its a system that seems to work well. It avoids large properties being left empty,possibly for years at a time, and becoming derelict - especially in times of recession. It provides temporary housing and work space to those at the bottom of the ladder. Quite how the new law will affect the anti-kraak movement remains to be seen. It was reassuring to see a protest against the new law in Wageningen last weekend - on a prime location that was bulldozed five years ago and has been left as a vacant eyesore ever since.

My friend, who has been part of the alternative scene in Wageningen for almost twenty years bemoaned the fact that ten years ago there would been hundreds rather than dozens of revellers /protesters. But I saw signs of hope: the large majority of people there were in their teens or early twenties. Disaffected youth who are a real hope for the future- because the longer they stay outside/alienated from the system the more they will fight to change it during the rest of lives.

The poster reads "squatting will go away when housing is a right". Right on bro'!

Inburgering

Today I met a former Pakistani colleague from a basic (and man was it basic) Dutch language training course - from some 4-5 years ago. He was a PhD student then but was sufficiently gifted to get a 4 year post-grad appointment here. He was walking with his wife and kid along the street, and I made a conscious 'faux-pas' (in terms of Islamic etiquette). I shook his hand - and then hers. And I could see he was quite pissed off with me - especially as he knows that I have visited Pakistan and have some familiarity with Islamic etiquette. I figured - well hey you've been here for six years now - time to accept some western customs - women are people not chattels.

And within this brief encounter lies a dilemma for all ex-pats- to what extent should you maintain your own cultural identity and norms and to what extent should you adapt? I know that if I were to leave the NL (either to return to the UK or to move on) there would be many positive things about Dutch culture that I would miss (one example being the respect given to cyclists). Yet equally there are many things about this country that I still find annoying after six years or so - and in fact as time goes on they become more annoying- (like their small beer glasses and belief that half the glass should consist of foam).

As an ex-pat one has to strike a delicate balance between maintaining a sense of your own cultural identity (nobody loves a chameleon) and to blend into another culture. It's often not an easy balance to strike.

In absentia

No intention to not blog for a month- I just got very busy. My planned two week stay in England turned into three weeks, as I was making such progress it felt a waste to lose the momentum. In that time winter has turned to spring and I have completely emptied and cleaned my father's flat, got it redecorated and recarperted - the decorator said that the flat smelt better after I got rid of the last (and most detoriated) carpets. At the same time I have been trying to keep my business on a level kilter- keeping one major (and intellectually demanding) project on the go and picking up on four or five new clients' requests. Also "processing stuff" about where my life / career etc came from and where they are going - how 'love let me down' and how, in what feels like, an emotional wildernesss, I might find the time, energy and motivation to try again. That hasn't left me much time to blog about the relative merits of the UK / NL public transport systems etc. etc.

Some of these issues (especially the last) still need to be resolved. My stay in the NL is teaching me so much about efficiently managing the resources that are available to me, yet at the same time offers me so little inspiration about how to relax, enjoy my life and not let work and money dominate my life. That's a paradox - because one of the things that attracted me here was the laid back attitude of Dutch people to work, with most people in my circles not working Fridays. Seems like I have way longer to go get these things in balance. Listening to and supporting others going through similar growing pains helps this process.

Kids if you want some fun, mister la page is your man

Autumn is truly here. When I wake in the morning it's dark as often as it is light and - for the first time in, I can't remember when, - I go out to see a movie. Generally I don't do movies in summer. And, since I came to live in the NL I do movies much less than before. Most of those I want to see (foreign language ones) are not very accessible to me, since the Dutch- for all their proclaimed internationalsm - only sub title movies into Dutch. So I keep a keen eye open for the ones I can follow (I can do French movies about 75% by listening and 25% by reading the Dutch sub-titles - which can be a strangely disorienting process)and so last night went to see LA GRAINE ET LE MULET- a French movie about - you guessed - food. It had been recomended by someone who shares the same taste in movies as me. Only the French could make movies with half hour scenes set completelty around the dinner table (well Woody Allen too, but where did he get his inspiration from?) and only a French director could make a film with such a bitter sweet ending. One Europe - still many cultures.

Take me home country roads

This one is especially for Rudi. Bangor Pier and the Carneddau taken from the moorings at the Gazelle on the other side of the Menai Straits, late on a summer's evening. Its been my screen saver for two years and I haven't got bored with it yet.

Double Dutch

Pushing on with my Dutch lessons - sometimes having French as my second language is a hindrance (I tend to adopt the French pronounciation of words in preference to the Dutch). But, sometimes it is an advantage. So it is with the two verbs kennen and weten - both mean to know - but in different contexts, and this largely follows the same pattern as savoir and connaitre in French. And having understood that principle some time ago it is easy to transpose it. Its difficult to pick up why a different language uses two words when yours only uses one.

This week's Dutch lesson was an interactive one. I had a lot of meetings and obligations yesterday so suggested to my Dutch teacher that we locate this week's lesson at the tennis club where I was due to do my twice annual voluntary bar service at lunchtime. I assumed it would be quiet there, serving a few coffees and lemonades - but in fact there was a children's tournament and I had to learn how to operate the chip fryer, the tosti maker and master the fine art of preparing croquettes - all this under the unforgiving gaze of my Dutch teacher who was able to recognize all of my weakest spots in Dutch (like speaking, comprehension and writing - reading I can almost manage if I put my mind to it and keep a dictionary close to hand). It felt like my worst idea of an exam. Still by the end I knew most of the words for the essential items and activities round a bar and have my homework for the week- practising pronouncing words with combinations of g and k in them. Apparently I am verbally dyslexic when it comes to distinguishing between the two sounds. So if you come across someone sitting on park bench with a dictionary and sounding like he has an advanced throat disease come over and say hi to the textual healer.

Guilt complex

Two letters were waiting for me in the postbox today - both from the Ministry of Justice. I immediately noticed a dry sensation at the back of my throat, higher pulse rate and a sheen of sweat of my palms. Not that I have anything to feel guilty about. It's just a lifetime's habit. But who knows maybe there is a pile of unreceived and unpaid speeding tickets that didn't catch up with all my changes of address (though if you saw the car I drive you would realise how unlikely that was). Turns that they both concerned my application for a permanent resident's identity card. Both were positive too. And i am impresssed by their efficiency: I only posted the application on Monday.

In one sense I am pleased: it symbolically represents a putting down of roots. In another sense I am reminded of the Marx Brothers joke about not wanting to join any club that would have them as a member.

Free lunches

Last month I wrote about the prospect of a free lunch. Turned out I blew it horribly. The day I was supposed to go for my free lunch I got a call from R's social worker in London telling me he had been wandering late at night and a decision about his future care plan was needed. TODAY. So I walked Bella dog tried to clear my head and think what was best. By early afternoon I was at least cognisant enough of the choices to go through and discuss the implications of the different options. I then worked until about 7.
I looked at my diary the next day - shit - I missed something. I immediately phoned the organiser of said 4 course meal to test English hostessing skills to apologise and explain the circumstances. Not turning up for appointments is such a faux pas in the NL that I thought that I would be black listed all over town. Anyway she accepted my apology and seemed to undertsand the unusual circumstances.
Last week I did eventually get a free lunch. Courtesy of BMI. Having become a frequent flyer I decided to get a frequent flyer card and they were offering a free sandwich and drink to card holders. Don't hold your breathe. It wasn't lobster thermadore. But its been a long time since I remember getting a free meal on an airline.

Milk snatcher to be given state funeral

Am I alone in thinking that the decision to give the milk snatcher a state funeral is an affront to British democratic values? What positive contribution did she make to British society? Was it
a. destroying (sorry modernising) the UK's coal and steel industries?
b, selling off most of Britain's social housing at knock down prices so the new home owning 'elite' would feel like conservatives and vote for her party (sorry, creating a home owning democracy)?
c. selling off every UK publicly owned enterprise at prices where the stock values doubled overnight in order to finance "tax cuts" (sorry, creating a share owning and enterprise culture) ?
d. enhancing the UK's role on the European stage?, or
e. sinking a Argentinian battleship full of conscripts that was trying to surrender? (Rule Brittania)
Makes you proud to be British doesn't it?
And her legacy now runs on through her family with her son making a unique contribution to peace and democracy in Western Africa.
There's a line in a Lindisfarne song (remember them)- "We'll dance on your grave 'till the flowers return." I suspect that not the whole country will be in mourning on the passing of Lady Thatcher.

Emotional Gearing

My new bike has thirty two gears – a little excessive for riding around south London – although that range of emotional gearing is coming in useful in other aspects of my life. Some days I have to be hyper-efficient and deal with solicitors, care packages and financial arrangements; other times I have to slow down to old person speed, drop down through the emotional gearbox to the functioning speed of an 86 year old: slow of foot and with limited memory. It’s not always an easy transition to make.

Thursday night at about 4am I was woken by hearing a bottle being knocked over outside and realized the neighbourhood fox was probably doing his rounds. Sure enough this morning there was a visible and very pungent spraint about 3m from the front door of my father’s flat. It was bizarre to find a bit of suburbia smelling like a farmyard.

Yesterday I tidied up all the loose ends on the admin side and paid a final visit for this trip to the care home to check on, and if possible, cheer up, R. He was in good spirits. By lunchtime I realized it was a case of mission accomplished and went to check if there any available flights that evening / afternoon. But the schedule to get to the airport was too tight and the prices too high. So I have to live with the inconvenience of getting back after 2000 on Saturday – when all the shops outside the main cities will be closed for 36 hours. My trip back will also need to include a trip around the airport supermarket for a couple of ready meals, bottle of milk and wine and a loaf of bread. Good job that I otherwise travel light.
I now have a free half-day here after clearing out the perishables from the fridge, packing and checking the windows and doors. A bike trip around Richmond Park might just be in order if the rain holds off. Looking forward to being home again.

A danger to himself?

Saturday I got down to the local bikeshop to equip myself with some means of transport for getting around the suburbs of London over the coming months. I went a more bit upmarket than I planned. The bike I went for was only £50 more than the basic model, but with the mudguards and luggage rack the difference soon slid up to £100. With the padlock and lights it was even more. But she rides like a beauty. So off I pedal into the quiet suburban streets of SW London. On the right hand side of the road! Why are there cars coming towards me? Seems like I've been away too long. I just can't get used to cycling on the left hand side of the road again. A danger to himself? Look into the mirror? Perhaps someone should lock me up and throw away the key.

Well there are cycle paths here now (there weren't twenty years ago) - but they might as well not be as so many drivers continue to use them as parking lots. I counted twenty cars parked in the cycle lane in about a I Km section of the main road. In Holland they would be towed and the drivers' get five penalty points on their licence. At traffic lights here you still have jostle for space with a ton of steel. Think I will bring my cycle helmet back with me on my next trip.

My father's house

Back in the UK for four days now. Most of the demons and dragons that I had been anticipating have not emerged. Maybe my practice has driven them back into their liars. I have been to visit R in the Residential Home (RH) three times in 4 days. So far he has not once asked me to take him home, or back to the NL. It’s a sign that he feels settled there. Yesterday evening I went to have dinner with the residents at the home (R included). I had a gut feeling that it would give me some insight into how the place worked, the interactions between staff and residents and between the residents themselves, that it would show me if there were any vipers in the nest. Also it would allow me to spend some time with R without feeling the need to maintain a conversation and to see how he reacted with his new ‘housemates’. On all counts it turned out well. If anyone is thinking about whether or not to commit a close relative to care I would recommend this as a strategy. It gives you a feel about the day-to-day life of the place. (There’s another blog there, but it doesn’t fit with the direction of this one).

Things really have seem to have changed since my grandmother went into care twenty years or so ago – then they were two or three to a room and it really did feel like a dehumanizing experience (or maybe because I was twenty-five years younger then being old felt dehumanizing). She complained about being abused, which always affected R’s opinion of RHs – but that could also just have been a symptom of her dementia.

Right now my mind is at rest. I think a future in a RH is the best option for R Moreover I think he recognizes it too. I think he enjoys having more social contacts. When he had carers in his house he used to follow them around as if they were going to steal the sheets from off his bed. Now he can let go of that distrust that has plagued him all his life. That’s another benefit. A huge one.

I’m feeling protected at the moment, because:
· R accepts the changes in his life and has started treating me in a different way. Instead of treating me like his wastrel son, who he could never stop criticizing for losing or breaking things, he has come to realize that I am his best ally. Often with dementia that equation goes the other way. Gaining some respect from that quarter so late in life makes all this effort have some kind of emotional payoff
· The wonderful support and safety nets offered by Kingston’s social services (SS) team. They have been wonderful. All too often one hears horror stories about SS failing to provide adequate care. All I can say is that they have been wonderful and supportive in communicating, in offering choices and respecting my choices and advocacy for R’s welfare even when these might not have coincided with their own professional judgments. I went to see a counselor for those looking after people with mental health problems this week (anticipating that this week was going to be harder than it has turned out to be). He said I should be grateful that R lives in Kingston, which has good care policies towards care, and also grateful for having TG as a caseworker, because she is especially dedicated. Thank you TG.
· Finally I am grateful because I am self-employed and don’t have to ask anyone for time-off. The last three trips I have made here have been open – ended. I always bought one-way tickets, with an idea of when I want to get back home –recognizing that it might take a few days more or less. Not many employers would buy that three times in six weeks. Moreover I can at least do some (albeit limited) work whilst away. Also being self-employed has given me the organizational skills and attitude to deal with some aspects of these various crises. I am sure I would have keeled over and folded if faced with this situation five years ago.

Friday night - facing the world - I feel I have moved mountains. Tomorrow I will take some of Reg’s pictures, a radio and other home comforts to his new home. Also look for a bike to ease my travels around the area over the coming months and give me an exercise machine to relieve stress. With some luck I should be able to pursue my political interests over the weekend too. As Henry (and most Buddhists) say it’s not just down to luck – it’s about the fortune you create.