Small Beds and Large Bears

Anyone who has never had to have their ears syringed won’t know what a life-changing experience it is. I say this up front because otherwise such people won’t understand why I would write a blogpost about the experience, let alone such a laudatory one as this.

My ears had started to get blocked earlier this year, I think: living next door to Hugo, Chavette and their mewling infant meant I had difficulty sleeping at the start of the year, and used earplugs extensively. The nurse I saw yesterday said I had naturally small openings to my ear canals and I think once they started to block then that just made them worse.

I had to wait a while for an appointment because of holidays, and the receptionist did the usual thing of trying to direct me to the often-broken, advertisement-playing electronic booking system which I then had to go through the rigmarole of refusing; but once I reached the nurse’s room the treatment was remarkably good. She agreed my left ear in particular was a disaster area, and over the noise of the motorized pump for the syringe water jet I did at one point hear her swear rather quietly in astonishment as something definitely shifted inside my poor beleaguered ears.

Her astonishment was nothing compared to mine as I wobbled slightly dizzily home, regaining both my balance and my contact with the rest of the world. I didn’t really think about it before, but my gradual hearing loss (and the discomfort of a ringing, full-feeling, slightly confusing ear) had made me just as gradually more and more miserable and stressed.

Music wasn’t as much fun, and I had to have it on louder. I rarely sang or hummed to myself, which any anthropologist observing me for long would confirm is a sign that I’m at peace with the world. I also found really loud noises oddly more objectionable – police sirens, roadworks, even social occasions – as they only served to amplify my inability to pick out other sounds in the background.

Now I can hear the treble in my own voice again, which is an odd experience to have to rediscover. I’ve also started singing around the house again – K, you’re a lucky, lucky woman – and I generally feel more comfortable in my own skin. So, for anyone having outer-ear hearing problems: I strongly recommend you see your practice nurse. It will in all likelihood make you a slightly better person.

Only, I wouldn’t suggest you do it yourself (kits do exist for that purpose, I’m told) in order to save time waiting. A trained nurse is more likely to be able to diagnose what’s going on in there, if anything, and recommend any further consultation. Also, that water jet fires at a variable pressure, and if you’re not daft enough to stick a propelling pencil in your ear then you should look at what the sea is doing to the Seven Sisters at Birling Gap and think on.

We’re back from what could now start being described as our “yearly vacation in Brittany,” seeing as we’ve done it two years in a row now. K’s parents own a one-time nightmare property which, in its fifteenth or so year of decorating and wrangling-with, has gradually been turned into an idyllic little retreat in the deep, verdant forests inland from the Côte d’Armor. Four of us made the trek over there to enjoy the delights of the region, which mostly consisted of cheese and wine.

Guingamp is scarcely the Moulin Rouge (although the smart-alec in our party did indeed spot an entirely different moulin rouge on our peregrinations) but nightlife was not our reason for going over there. Rather it was quiet, restful, sunny, warm, and involved steam trains and swimming in the sea by the vast bulks of granite rocks: all of these experiences were ones we’d hoped for beforehand. There were also roaring open fires and a selection of DVDs augmented at least in part by glasses Armorik single malt whisky, which Jim Murray rates surprisingly highly, but was very jolly indeed.

French food, outside of the basics, continues to be execrable, as demonstrated this time round by Brittany Ferries (more on that later.) The cottage itself has no landline, no mobile signal, no broadband: most of which was actually a blessing in disguise if we’re honest. And it was the most driving I’ll probably do all year. But it provided us with warmth of all sorts: hot summer, spicy whisky, and good company. Though tomorrow I return to the old routine, I hope to keep some of that warmth deep in my bones for months.

We soon come to the end of our first year of owning a garden. I have learnt since starting to fumble around in the earth that you should take at least a year after acquiring a garden, to merely dutifully weed and water and nothing else. That way you can see what really grows in your patch, rather than—as we’ve occasionally done—make massive, silly mistakes that end up damaging and possibly killing things.

The garden is definitely in a better state now than a year ago, though. Two of our three fence panels are now re-preserved, and no longer look on the edge of collapse. The shed roof is fixed, if not perfectly—it wasn’t possible to remove the boards that might have made a good pinned-down edge to the felt—and could have another five years in it. The lawn has mostly recovered from being scorched by the by-product of the previous owner’s dog, despite me sowing almost every batch of grass seed immediately before a cold snap.

The clematis that Jeremy so wisely identified has indeed bounced back—riotously so, straining off its trellis like a thing possessed—although the bits that we pruned in spring have yet to flower, which apparently is normal for a clematis. The cherry tree I could have killed is looking less bouncy, but seems to have some sort of tiny black beetle on it that ants are busy harvesting, which might account for the black spots and holes in the leaves. It almost invariably benefits from copious amounts of water, or maybe it’s merely gradually coming into season. So we’ll give it another year at least.

We dug over about half a square metre of our clay-and-chalk border, adding sand and compost as we did: the effort nearly killed us. Four spits of sand the size of a shovel are about our daily limit, so heaven knows how real gardeners do any more than that. While doing so we rather happily disturbed and largely removed the network of roots which were supplying us with occasional grotty sprouts of some sort of ivy, each one smelling of rotting seaweed. In the newly conditioned soil we planted a small mahonia and a smaller pyracantha, and we’ve since been watering them like billy-o in this remarkable June heat.

Most importantly, now that we have a bench and a reasonably grassy lawn our tiny patch of seven by four metres has become a thing of joy. Sitting in it of a morning, moving the bench around to keep catching the shade, having my breakfast and reading a book to the sound of birdsong: how is that not idyllic? Improving a garden is a gradual and time-consuming thing; we’re in it for the long haul; we’ll make many mistakes along the way: but already we’ve got somewhere to hide if we need to, spiritually if not—clematis takeover aside—physically. What else do people have gardens for?

My country has no flag. Its has no national anthem, although some of its citizens are partial to folk music and Morris dancing. No seething, populous crowds cheer my country on, with loud or incoherent cries in the street. Its citizens do not rally round meaningless symbols and engineer fake outrage at nonexistent bans, nor does it pay much attention to third-century Palestinian saints (although my country does incidentally support freedom for Palestine.) My country’s citizens never paint red crosses on their faces, to reinforce their aggressive bellowing at others; nor do they dangle such crosses on plasticated handkerchiefs from their cars or vans.

My country does not wage war on other countries; nor does any other country ever need to act aggressively towards it. It welcomes with open arms those who flee their own countries, whether from political oppression, fear of violence, or because of economic conditions that impact severely on their quality of life. It gladly acknowledges the debt that its health service and other public services owe to immigrants. It embraces their cultures—different yet similar—and celebrates the richness they contribute to millennia of development of my country’s multiculture, my mongrel nation.

My country does not imprison children in Yarl’s Wood. It does not detain people without trial. It does not mistreat those in prison or on remand, and has respect for international human rights. It does not clamp down on free speech and the right of those like Brian Haw to free and fair protest. It is liberal, loving, compassionate, and socialist, and gives the world’s weak the benefit of the doubt.

My country does not submit teams to sporting events. It does not embarrass itself in international arenas. Its more physically fit citizens do not take over any television channels to broadcast their halfwitted observations. My country does not reward stupid people, who merely have the stamina to run around a lot after footballs, with sums of money which would prop up whole hospitals and provide untold benefit for the lives of the sick and disabled.

My country is in my heart; but in the worlds of politics, sport, finance, journalism, commerce and international affairs, it invariably finds itself represented by its weird, slobbering, deformed twin; this twin gladly affirms it will do all of the above on its brother’s behalf, and spuriously in its brother’s name; and this twin is called, ridiculously, mock-proudly, “Ingerland.”

My country is currently trying to obtain some sort of legal separation. All donations to its costs will be gratefully received.

My parents spent a great deal of time on my junior orthodontics. Not money, though, thankfully: NHS dentistry was much easier to access in my youth (although read on for more news about that.) Still, the months I spent all braced up would, you’d expect, encourage me to look after my teeth into adulthood. Especially because the size and shape of the molars means they’re more likely than most to get decay in their deep cavities.

And I do, generally. I brush twice a day, one of those last thing at night, and floss when the fancy takes me. But making it to a dentist has always been difficult. Despite my mother being a dental receptionist I have a loathing of going to the surgeries, possibly because my oversensitive teeth can’t stand anyone fiddling with them, certainly not the dreaded hygienist.

More of an impediment is the fact we’ve moved house so often in the past few years. If you’re on a twelve-month lease it’s difficult to get organized enough to have more than one twice-yearly checkup, if that. We’re hardly deprived, but you can extrapolate from our situation to that of the insecurely housed, and see how they can fall through so many social frameworks that the middle class can settle themselves into over time. Anyway, it had been over three years since my last confession, that is to say checkup, and a few of my more sensitive teeth were starting to cause concern.

Now we hoped to stay in one place for a little longer, I decided I’d try to find a dentist. Last time I looked for an NHS dentist it was like hunting the snark, “the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature.” However, things have changed, and while you can say what you like about the outgoing government, they did actually manage to quietly revolutionise NHS dental treatment. Now it seems that every dental surgery is incentivized to provide it, and if there’s really no vacancies the local PCTs seem to have NHS locum dentists who’ll at least bang your jaws together and pronounce you sound for the market or the knacker’s yard.

I’d like to say I lucked out finding Dr Sharon Lewis on Church Green, and in some ways I did: a friendly, efficient, sympathetic dentist who actually treats NHS patients. Today’s two injections hardly registered at all, and the whole thing was over in less than an hour from my arrival. But now, with the anaesthetic long gone and a day of work-weariness upon me, all I can think about is the whine of the drill and the rattle of that wicked, grinding device that then smooths down the surface ready for the filling. My teeth ache more than they ever did beforehand, as my flesh and nerves begin to revolt against the minor GBH that was inflicted on me for my own good, and all I want to do is sleep.

… Either that or eat a lot of conciliatory chocolate. Don’t tell Dr Lewis.

The dust has yet to settle; yet any election blogpost is already out of date. Other more savvy political commentators than me (and probably ones with more time on their hands) like Obsolete and Anton Vowl have already digested much of the results and have largely pre-empted much of the points I might make.

When I went to bed early on Friday morning; with media helicopters hovering ominously and blackly over Witney, in the hope of watching David Cameron’s coronation; and with the Lib Dems already down two seats: I slept fitfully and fearfully. The next morning’s result was more than I had hoped for only four hours earlier: while the Lib Dem seats were disappointing, the votes weren’t, and merely underlined the wrongness of the system; the wonderful, inspiring Caroline Lucas was now Caroline Lucas MP for Brighton; Nick Griffin and the Dagenham & Barking BNP louts had all had a mighty drubbing; and we were heading for a hung parliament. No coronation, just lots of constitutional and parliamentary wrangling ahead.

Several days on and there’s still everything to play for. Gordon Brown has tendered his resignation of the party—still necessarily prime minister, as he has an obligation to remain so until the next prime minister is decided, even if that happens to be David Cameron—and the Lib/Lab pact has new life. Electoral reform is in the air, which would have given the Lib Dems something like 150 seats this time round. Even the pompous never-was William Hague, prompted by Labour’s moves, made a speech offering watered-down electoral reform—not merely the opportunity of an electoral review that the Tories had limply suggested earlier—that sounded like he was trying to swallow an unexploded mine, spikes and all.

I sincerely hope he chokes on it; chokes on the very notion of a sort of change that (were they to have been consulted) millions of people have always wanted; a sort of change that he and the rest of his party would never have countenanced.

Interestingly, before the election a co-worker tried to change my Green vote to a Lib Dem vote, on the grounds that in Witney either was a “wasted vote” but that by voting Lib Dem I would be at least catching a wave. Without electoral reform, on one level he was right at the time (yet ultimately wrong about that wave.) But I hate, and have always hated, tactical voting. It’s a clever-clever idea based on the assumption that everyone else—except you and me, obviously, chum—are idiots, and the ballot box cannot be relied on to provide a mandate without help. Tactical voting is the symptom of deep-seated rot in our suffrage, not the palliative for its symptoms. As such it inherits that rot: the supposed pragmatic act of tactical voting injects the rot of the system right into the heart of the voter.

As Paddy Ashdown said—and I’m sure he’d say it about my Green vote too—if you don’t vote for the version of the country that you want, how do you ever hope to realize it? Non-tactical voting, voting out of hope, voting out of idealism: this is an affirmative act. It’s a creative process and a way of willing yourself towards changing reality with your own words and actions, a willing of a different politics into being. Electoral reform, a coalition government, Westminster upheaval… these all might finally permit humble voters the alchemy of turning their wishes into a better world.

No wonder Rupert Murdoch is spitting feathers.

Our garden share has fallen through, unfortunately. The circumstances are quite complicated to relate, but a précis would go something like this. Our sharer—the elderly woman with a garden—turned out to be simultaneously unwilling to keep in touch and also very demanding, a headily passive-aggressive mix. Last time we spoke a few weeks ago everyting was irie, and there was no rush; we should consider planting some seedlings ready for full-on spring—not her words—but nothing more than that.

Ringing her last weekend we were subjected to the sharp edge of her tongue, as she explained that in the past month everything had actually got very urgent indeed. She said we probably weren’t ready to help her out—that’s right, ready for the privilege of helping her out—and we should think about helping out at the local farm museum instead. That we clearly weren’t serious gardeners. That, although what she said contradicted what she had last told us, it wasn’t up to her to contact us, and we should have contacted her. Trying to explain that it’s hard to worry enough to ring her when her last edicts were not to worry: well, that fell on ironically stony ground.

I took it as politely as I could, and contacted the local organizer. She said the old bitch had been whining—not her words, either—at the previous meeting but nobody else could see why she overreacted so much. Anyway, the best I can salvage from all of this is that I think I’ve come across as the reasonable one. K. says she would’ve given the garden-sharer a piece of her mind and bawled her out, but I just didn’t have the heart.

She’s a user, and a whiner, and passive-aggressive; but she’s also probably long-term sick, has obviously bad arthritis or rheumatism, and is clearly emotionally damaged, which she wouldn’t appreciate me saying. She’s alone but doesn’t want to admit she’s lonely, and that eats at her a bit. She’d not want my pity in a million years, but she has it, and I’m happy to write off all the repairs, the trip to Carterton to get wood to fix up her raised beds, the running round, even—it boggles me to think about it—the offer to put her on the TPS online when she was getting nuisance phone calls—as a brief spurt of charity. That explains in my heart the lack of gratitude, and lets me draw a line under it.

Thanks to her advice, though, we’re now home to some two dozen broad-bean seedlings, and a dozen or so each of spinach and lettuce. They’re growing up fast and we’re not entirely sure what we’ll do with them. I’d like to give them a fair chance and hope to get some pots for them this weekend, but I don’t know how much root space they’ll need, and I doubt if we’ll get much yield from them. Still, we’ll have them under our noses—metaphorically, I hope, if there’s room in the garden—and nobody else can deny us access to them.

In our own garden, on our own property, is where we feel happiest putting them right now. Being let down like this has made us slightly—temporarily, I hope—Tory in our outlook on this particular issue: by Tory of course I mean insular, prejudiced, wary and scowling. But at least the wonderful, burgeoning, glowing, cheery growth we’re seeing from one day to the next means we’re still inclined to vote Green. With the Lib Dems second, of course: we’re not monsters.

I very gladly took part in Record Store Day this year. Witney might not have much, but it does have one of the very few independent record shops in Oxfordshire, and a real gem at that: Rapture Entertainment. The previous time we lived out here I popped in almost every Saturday: it was a fantastic place to learn about new music, and there was a loose social scene centred on it that seems to have only grown in strength since then.

Since two years ago, though, I’ve been abstaining from CD purchases, largely for environmental reasons but also because they’re just so much darn clutter. Since then I’ve only really succumbed once, buying direct from members of Misty’s Big Adventure, and Record Store Day seemed an equally worthy cause. I left the town centre with my wallet considerably lighter than when I arrived. I even bought a CD from one of the artists that Rapture had got to play for them. All profit to their wallet, I thought.

I’ve now got some lovely music that I’ve been intending to buy for ages—stuff I’d listened to several times on Spotify and BBC 6 Music—and I’m playing it whenever there’s nothing worth listening to on the radio itself, but I feel uncomfortable about its physical manifestation. I now have several chunks of plastic and awkwardly-cut cardboard that I’m shuffling around on top of the record player; most of these, I could have easily bought the music online without having to have the physical release. In retrospect, and in darker moments, it feels like all I’ve done is indulge in excess packaging.

Brilliant, indulgent, wise local independents sell you mp3s in this fiddly “disc” format that you have to convert later; awful, exploitative, anti-consumer, massive multinational websites sell you mp3s you can download in five minutes for an album and listen to on any computer in the house straight away. Local independents fulfil a tremendously important social function—it’s only when you visit stores like Rapture and start chatting to the staff that you realise that what you thought was affected, local-store hyperbole is nothing of the sort—yet the compact disc still feels like an environmental mess.

What do I do? A friend of mine, now in a successful, touring band himself, said he occasionally walked into high-street record shops, looked round in a daze and said to himself: “just… exactly why does this place still exist?” He was talking about HMV, of course, but in the long run will having a soul really help the independent shops, when ultimately what they need is a sustainable business model that minimizes the use of crude oil in the form of plastic? And this same friend recently played at a farewell gig for a local independent video store! Where did his otherwise hardheaded judgments go when he thought of YouTube, or whatever its ultimate video-killing successor will one day be called?

Am I merely a victim of that same romantic disconnect, that loves the idea of the stores but ultimately can’t quite conscience their reliance on unnecessary plastic and their ultimately inevitable decline, and in such internal contradictions do I sow the seeds of my own sociocultural disaster? Or am I overstating the environmental impact of the CD, and are online music services and the computing power required to play sound files just as bad?

Even better, is there a third way? Could the circle of the CD be squared as the open window of a zipfile; could local stores actually wean themselves off CDs, and instead start re-selling mp3s from a computer in the corner, thus neatly capturing me and my music-loving heart for ever more? For this heart of mine is torn. I want to support my local record store, but somewhere along the line I’ve become incapable of working out why.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love my yellow cycling jacket, but seasons change and eventually it becomes time to put away clothes better suited for the wet. The sun has started to show a more regular appearance, and I have a dowdier pacamac which I can stash in my panniers for the times when the rain catches me out. I still love my yellow jacket: don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I wear it and pretend I’m in the Tour de France. Sometimes I wear it in bed. I don’t really.

A friend who drove past me one morning advised me that I should consider putting my yellow jacket back on, more regularly than I’d imagined. After all, I was “quite difficult to see” in the clothes I was wearing that morning. I responded—rather quick off the mark, given I’d only just stopped cycling and was trembling faintly from low blood-sugar and adrenaline—that most cars I pass are no brighter-coloured than me, and that I had all the legally mandated reflectors on me and my bike—more than that, as I have a fluorescent right armband which also highlights my right-hand indicating—and it was up to car drivers to do the legally mandated looking. Still being polite, I specifically didn’t tell him not to drive so cocking close to me in future.

Bikes aren’t particularly difficult to see in broad daylight, if you’re looking for bikes, which is what you’re meant to do. Car drivers have a responsibility towards vulnerable road users: cyclists, horses, pedestrians. I don’t really care about this story of a bike who was doing this, or that story about a bike that was doing that. The responsibility is still there, and if I’m using the road in a safe, legal manner then you’d better be looking out for me and my bike. In a county full of horse-riders you’ve even less than no excuse to be going too fast to spot a cyclist.

Fluorescent jackets have a limited effect against a busy background, especially one with bright colours. There’s also evidence that, after the initial visual and cultural surprise, people have become inured to fluorescent jackets. They ignore people wearing them because they’re worn by (to them) inconsequential demographics: security guards, workmen, Witney traffic wardens. Also, a great deal of rapeseed is grown out here, and it’s a short step from saying “I didn’t see him because he was wearing a dark colour” to “I didn’t see him because although he was wearing a bright colour but there was a field of bright yellow flowers behind him.” No: you didn’t see him because you weren’t being observant enough; because you took that corner too fast and made it into a blind corner; because you were too close to one or other edge of the road; because you didn’t think bike.

To suggest that cyclists are somehow neglectful—if not legally negligent—when they wear certain clothes is a bit rich, given that the majority of drivers who pass me of a morning are legally negligent when they overtake, or rev, or threaten me with their horn, or fail to indicate. Cyclists don’t go out of their way to bounce their bodies off cars: they’re usually the victims in any given road accident, in both a medical and a legal sense. Is it really advisable to blame the victim of a violent crime; to decide that what they were wearing contributed to an incident that was entirely beyond their control, and resulted ultimately from a failure on the part of those with legal responsibilities?

What motivates such a decision? Is it merely that people want the return of sumptuary laws, where what you wear is required to reflect your social status? Or is it the same underlying principle that used to apportion blame to rape victims based on how short their skirts were: their clothes were unsuitable, so they must have been asking for it? This principle allows demographics in a position of physical power to deny the legal responsibilities they have, to turn them instead into privileges they occasionally deign to shower upon the deserving weak. It’s power consolidating power, through an undermining rhetoric that glosses over the fact and the law.

Until they start requiring cars to replace sections of the bodywork that car drivers are so precious about—almost they only reason they seem to ever avoid cyclists is the cost of panel-beating—with bright, clashing, wildly fluorescent panels, requiring car drivers to stop as and when certain atmospheric, climatic or seasonal conditions develop and put these measures in place, getting their spanners out and getting covered in oil by the roadside…. Until then, anyone who tries to guilt me into wearing more fluorescent stuff than I’m already doing, just because they’re not paying enough attention, who tries to turn a jacket that I quite like (in its place of course) into a uniform, to be worn even when I don’t want to…. Anyone who tries that will just get the full force of my stilted politeness and a stiff blogpost in retrospect.

Gosh. It’s like points on your licence, except this copy is occasionally so tedious that my punishment might actually have a preventative effect.

Teabags with tags are a pain in the arse. I mean, the idea seems sound—a heat-resistant paper handle to lift out a nearly boiling teabag—and probably did have a function before the invention of the spoon. These days, though, a tag is largely redundant unless you’re the sort of person who finds their experience of holidays in the Mediterranean enhanced by the whiff of colonialism that the ubiquitous Lipton brands provide, and want to bring a little bit of that tagged love home with you.

If you try to just ignore the tag and pour water in regardless, it invariably ends up flipping over the lip of the mug and landing in your tea. These tags are often full of brightly coloured, if FDA-approved, paper dyes, and I for one stopped chewing balls of paper in my teens. I no longer have the enzymes to deal with them, even in an infusion.

Worse, if you try and do something clever with the tag—like looping it round the mug handle—it only makes the whole apparatus harder to detach and put in the bin when your drink is fully brewed. In a horrific reversal of the previous process, when you start pulling on the string to disentangle the tag, the scalding-hot teabag is in danger of flipping over the lip and onto your waiting fingers, busy as they are with this pointless extension to the tea-making process.

It has to stop. Some committee of sadomasochists have already extended the concept of the tag to the ridiculous drawstring affair, a bag-squeezing innovation rendered doubly obsolete by, once again, the humble spoon. We need affirmative action on all fronts: charitable trusts providing spoons for all; public information films demystifying the use of the spoon in beverage preparation; the political will represented by a campaign of No Child Left Behind Without A Spoon.

And, in the mean time, armies of discreet, non-violent protestors will roam the land’s supermarkets; each of them an expert in the process of removing tags without disturbing the packaging of most popular brands of tea; armed only with scissors, dexterity, and their own unshakeable resolve.