Jacqueline

In a week where events that have been dominated very much with a national tragedy, the full nature of we are still very much learning of as well as trying to come to terms with emotionally, I need go back in time to what helped and still helps the adult-child me.

 Jacqueline is a dolly I had now for over fifteen years, that I like to handle, feeling the fabrics and generally care for who has a soft dusty complexion and isn't so obviously pretty pretty with her blue eyes.
She has however seen me  through a number of less than pleasant experiences and situations, steady and reliably very much the girl in what was the equivalent in UK terms to Juniors who looked after me she was named after.
While not being particularly fussy her dress has a simple country print and just a hint of lace and a bow which is more where I'm at not being heavily into lace, frills and 'sugary stuff'.
I always found back then getting back to a bit that regular child structure when such awful things happened did help more than just going over and over the events and involved your dollies and teddies.

 

The M.I.A. Edition

Hello again! I've come from the darkest recesses of the littles blog to talk about something that seems to be endemic on online  communities and that is the curse of the disappeared ones.
They come in a number of forms such as the enthusiastic poster, who sends a good dozen a day from the moment the sign up, the one that encourage you join up but only posts a couple of times or the one that's been on the site for quite a while.
The thing they all have in common is they just leave, no Custer's last stand style rants or kiss-offs with no trace at all. Not even a last past or personal message so you are left wondering had you or anyone offended them or they're actually okay especially when they alter their username to Gone and that.
I think the most important thing for us to realize is as much we enjoy social media and websites, people or even the sites themselves are always in state of flux and the relationships that really  matter with them or those that went to personal ones through emailing or face to face encounters and that we can't restore things to how they were.
Sites do go over time - I can think of five of the top of head I belong to between 2005 and 2009 that are no longer with us - that we may miss but they are either replaced as a good few have for all intrusive social media or that we replace by with real life activities such as munches or play meets.
Sometimes the best response we can make to such situations is to simply move on.

Wave Me Goodbye

It was just about three months ago that I was given by a kind relation who enjoys reading, a gift voucher for a well known book and stationery store and in early June, a new book by a favourite author of mine came out so I called in and used it to buy this book.

Entitled Wave My Goodbye, it is about the world of one Shirley L. Smith who lives with her Mom who works in an office and Dad who has joined the Army in the centre of London in Nineteen Thirty-nine.
It has been decided all the children need to be evacuated as the threat of war with Nazi Germany for their own well-being from bombing and it is being done on a school by school basis.
The whole of Paradise Road Junior School is called up, so Shirley has to have a suitcase packed with a change of clothes including night wear plus her favourite dolls and  books before her mommy sees her off at London Victoria railway station which after some fuss she is allowed to sit with the girls of the St Agatha's Convent School of whom it transpires seem to get the best of everything, enroute to Meadow Ridge way out in the countryside.
Arrangements for billeting the children and staff seem very rushed as nothing had been prearranged between the W.V.S. and W.I.and the children are taken around the village until someone claims  them. Unfortunately Shirley plus two east end boys, Kevin and Archie appear to stuck with nowhere to go until with some reluctance Mrs Waverley and Chubby who is her assistant at the Red House, decides to take them in although it appears they hadn't enough food in for them straightaway nor beds .
The children are bought new clothes which for Shirley includes a School Tunic and tie as she only had a pleated skirt with attached bodice and a party frock to change into plus Mrs Waverley also loves reading so they have something in common.
The story sees them attending school in extra classes of the villages local school with lessons by  who is brisk, kind in some ways but not opposed to strapping misbehaving children.
They appear to get on although life has it's ups and downs not least with one of the boys having a problem with bed wetting that creates a lot of work but following an accident  when Kevin follows Shirley who can look at Mrs Waverley's dolls house from the end of the war and to which is a kind of model of the life who had hope to have until her husband was killed in the Great War (W.W.1) and in the course of playing with it breaks the arm of the dolly of him, she gets upset and Kevin and Shirley run off back to London where she is met by her dad for a few days.
He returns them and smooths over the misunderstandings with Chubby and Mrs Waverley so they feel at home and so stay there until the war is over.

The story is one that is undeniable moving, based on what happened across much of Great Britain during the build up and shortly after World War Two, when our major city areas were deemed to unsafe for children and they travelled often more in hope that everything would work out being without their parents.
It is also true that some didn't want 'city children'  and their ways around and others only wanted them for much more for what they could bring them on say farms for labour rather than providing a safe place to live and yet for others it did bring changes for the better in their lives having access to fresh air and countryside.
As a book I found it highly enjoyable although a bit sad in places, telling an important story about the social history of being a child caught up in the storms of war having to adjust to vastly different realities.

On restoring our faith in ourselves

As unfortunately events in London this Saturday showed only too well it isn't too difficult to disrupt, injury or even take lives in seconds even if thank heavens it only took 480 seconds which is near enough 8 minutes to draw the incident to a safe conclusion although its effects live on for longer not least in our hearts and minds and for a period when it comes to just getting about a major city such as our Capital.
The bigger part of this was touched on in my post of May 24th when I spoke about how such events affect us either as people who were present at such an outrage or as people, often from that area who feel other peoples loss and feel less than secure.
While I can't and maybe we all can't criticize the mass media for talking often at length about such incidents, all too often what we get is extended speculation and sheer impact rather than fact and this easily plays into our insecurities.
I think one of the things we need to bear in mind is what news is: it is the exception, that appeals to sensation and it can play very much on such understandable emotions as fear, anger, disgust and hatred when that is all we see and feel.
It can be a only too real form of mental contagion replacing what we know to be right by a sense of paranoia and in the light of such  recent events we need to arm our minds against ideas not least actually  that we are all interconnected.
One of the things people such as so-called Isis rather like others such as the I.R.A.  like to do is to play a game of dividing us us into groups by our nationality, ethnicity, religion or politics as if our belong any combination of such group somehow means we do not see the others as fellow human beings, not feeling  and caring for and about them.
We are all members of one human race who share the same values of love, compassion and respect for one another that are written in the overwhelming majority of world religions and if you subscribe to one you know that is something that is at the core of our lives.
It is what we owe each other.
We need to replace in our minds that fear which is too easily transmitted, that hate even by love affirming the universe truth which is love conquers hate but also will meet every human need coming from our common humanity and it starts sharing with the person next to us.
We need to arm ourselves too against the demonizing of entire communities, communities that would hold those actions by people claiming to act on them as shameful, devoid of any part of their beliefs and practises.
No one ever kills or injuries civilians especially children with the approval of God or Allah ever, for this is not endorsed in our great religions and anyone who suggests as much is lacking in the understanding of the faith they mistakenly link their wicked  acts to supporting or justified by.
A part of making it possible, however hard it is to come to terms with such awful inhuman acts, is that very support that comes from love when we act on it, and we need as much in love to act on it as it is to be prepared to allow others in to help us through showing us their love in practical ways.
We are not alone and we have a responsibility to help those who may feel alone and lost as best we can recover.

Dealing with situations

This week I've been dealing with a couple of things that are not easy for someone like me to do and can have a bad effect on me emotionally and behaviourally.
Like most people I have a checking account with a Bank which is typically used for things such as my disability income replacement and care needs payments (Dla) to be paid into since for the majority of people payment by Government cheques redeemable at Post Offices or transferable to bank accounts stopped a good number of years back and equally I use to pay for things such things I buy, my PayPal tm transactions and rail tickets and to draw out paper bank notes.
To cut a long story short, here in the UK, banks have been trying to get out of owning branches, encouraging people to move to mobile or online banking and paperless billing and I recently received a letter saying unless I told them otherwise, I would no longer be getting monthly paper statements from August and they would be done quarterly.
Now while you can telephone the bank where it can tell you your transaction details, I don't always understand what is said and between hearing it and say trying to write it down , I totally forget what was said and while I can see a monitor online, my dyslexia is such words and figure go all over the place while so I normally use colour transparencies and a rule to filter  on paper this doesn't work on a monitor and I'd end up having print everything off.
I get very anxious telephoning people, never feeling I've understood them  and what we agreed especially if needs me to read information cos I struggle with that so I wasn't looking forward to it which wasn't helped by a good seven minutes wait.
Anyway I get through to a customer advisor in Glasgow and having supplied my ID details, explain to him a bit about my disabilities around talking and using the bank before explaining my call is about monthly statements and I'd like to keep them. We do a quick ID to confirm the account and with his support, reassuring me throughout I managed to do this by myself.
The other thing was that 'Form' - the Employment and Support Allowance Work Capability Assessment from April and I had a brown envelope from the Government department  that makes decisions and sends the payments electronically  in yesterday's mail in a badly worded three sheet letter.
It tells me they have looked again (not using the word 'reviewed') at my claim due to a 'change' (not saying what 'change' it is) outlining what I should get , what to if wish to appeal the decision and that I'm judged to be in the group for people who are unlike to transition back into work anytime soon.
Without expressly saying it, given nothing else had changed I'm reasonably sure this is the decision looked at with medical information from my doctor by the assessment people and the department as it was dated last Tuesday and followed a statement by them of my total payments for the last tax year I had last week.
I'm cautiously optimistic this is the last say for a good while about that benefit which leaves me feeling a lot more relieved.

Little needs

The initiated know just how hard it has been for me this week emotionally and psychologically with Monday's tragic events in Manchester and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's struggled this week

This is for us and I hope it helps.

Incidents, anxiety and grief

Today I've been feeling like crying most of the time here in the Dorm after an evening that sadly will live in the history of Great Britain and more so live on in our lives, not least the lives of the young people of our country some of which were killed and severely injured  at a concert in Manchester by the popular American singer Ariana Grande in a solo suicide bombing minutes after she had stopped performing Monday evening.
Forget the adult talk about motives and justifications although from my dorm chair I cannot  begin to imagine how you can justify killing people one of whom was only eight years of age and of injuring others from 8 upwards.
I remember only too well how my world fell in during the period shops, clubs and places of entertainment were targeted grim picture after grim picture of bombed out buildings, injured people and seeing bodies carried out.
I was ten at the time, loving to play out, play with my toys and read comics but then the big newspapers kept coming through the door with the latest bombing across its front pages, the hourly headlines on the radio and shocking footage on tv.
Its relentlessness didn't just make me nervous, I started to worry all the time my folks or my dad alone cos he travelled a lot in his work when I stay with with my grandma and grandpa worried sick if they were coming back when you heard something happened. My world no longer appeared safe.
Tonight I feel very numb about this incident, very shaken and concerned for those who today who are of a similar age to how I was and just what impact this may have on them and let us not forget the artist herself who is devastated that something she did to bring people together has had such a tragic outcome.
Everyone responds differently but one lesson we have learned in years since is being prepared to share our feelings even if it is say say less and hug more, to comfort those hurting rather than focusing on rationalizations and to offer practical help is really what it is that people need right now.
Some of that is what the people of Manchester have been doing in the last twenty odd hours to help each other and for the rest of us impacted by events is really what we need from our friends.