Rage Against the Washing Machine

I have come to the conclusion that the more clothes one has the more one has to wash. Thinking back to my childhood and remembering my mum scrubbing my dad's detachable collars with Sunlight soap (he later detached himself from the family unit circa 1966 and for years I felt like detaching his head from his shoulders but that is another story for another time) and standing out in the back yard feeding stuff through the mangle the drips going into a bucket underneath. I also remember playing ships in the big Monarch Laundry box which sat at the top of the stairs along the landing the laundry box was for sheets and pillowcases the big stuff that went to the laundry once every 2 weeks but when empty it was my own little ship for sailing the seven seas of wry.

I remember the lid it had a big lion on it Monarch - king of the jungle. I also remember years later working with women who had worked in the laundries and their tales of the sights and smells of what they had to load out of those boxes into the huge boilers - not for the squeamish. Of course my memories are all about the ship and the wonderful starched, pressed and folded bedlinen that the box held on return and of course the little pressed on laundry tag in pink or blue with a number that made sure we didn't end up with anyone else's sheets on our beds.

Even though we had a wonderful garden full of fruit bushes and vegetables and a big long washing line, thinking back it would have been impossible for my mum to have washed sheets by hand and got them out on the line. We came up in the world when she got a Baby Burco Boiler - a galvanised contraption that did what it said on the tin and boiled up gallons of soapy water in which our clothes were put in and agitated by my agitated mother with a stick which became bleached white from years of being dipped into the bubbling cauldron. Whites first - no such thing in those days of having separate washes for whites and coloureds; the soapy water was used until it became a thick grey froth. This was the waste not want not generation that and the fact that my mum needed muscles like Charles Atlas to drag the water filled contraption to the back door to empty it - still it was a step up from boiling stuff on the gas cooker and washing in the now ever so trendy Belfast sink.

You know, I used to think we were poor until I realised that some folks didn't have indoor WC's or a bath in their houses. What suprised me more was when twenty years later I was visiting people in homes that still had no inside toilet, bath and in many cases no running hot water - just a gas geyser over an old brown sink - this started my long relationship with social housing when I began working in some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in Belfast where the awful conditions that people lived in were often compounded by being burnt out of their previous homes and handing over "key money" to unscrupulous private landlords for substandard housing. It was wonderful to see old women who had struggled to raise their families in cold and harsh conditions moving in to new warm and comfortable homes but it was also sad to see so many of them dying often within months of the move many from chest and heart conditions from a lifetime of making do.

Anyway, after my dad and his detatchable collars flew our coop (I was 10 and never knew until years later that this collar stud had taken off with a much younger woman and had swiftly moved to drip dry and trousers without turnips - she certainly suckered him dry as she was pregnant at the time with her other lover's child and had needed a quick getaway from her husband an army cook with a red hot temper) things got better before they got worse; this was 1966 in NI and to be left, abandoned was not the norm and there was no distinction between the sinned against and the sinners in fatherless houses.

Still my Aunt she of the white hair and white powdered face and blood red lipstick (like a Geisha without the side activities) took pity and bought my mum a Hoover single tub with a mangle on top - we had arrived and this little magic box served us very well until we branched out to a Servis twin tub - yes it was second hand and yes the drum shuddered and it danced across the floor but it could do the sheets and pillowcases and spin dry them at 600 rpm that little rubber disc being all important in ensuring that the sheets didn't jump out like a KKK convention all over the kitchen floor. Progress? I am not sure as it was extra washing and drying and ironing and of course the ship was returned to the laundry and I sailed no more on the landing. Anyway, I was comfort eating by that time and my stern end was getting to big for the boat and I was all washed up.

Now back to my own beautiful launderette. :o)p

50 Ways to Love your Liver Spots

I have been thinking about getting older, not that I have a choice in the matter. Well pondering about the advantages and downside of advancing in years. The big advantage of getting older is of course it means you are still alive.

Is there such a thing as getting older? Or can we reasonably choose between say 20 and 45 what we do. For example, many of my peers lauded the advantages of having one's offspring "early" that is you are still young enough to enjoy yourself when the kids have left the nest - I often wonder if in fact that is an advantage as in their eyes you are still then young enough to be unpaid nanny for their progeny, instead of finding yourself by embarking on a world trip. Having your kids later might mean that they can look after you while they are still young and fit enough and don't have the disposable income to do the world trip thing as they are still paying uni fees.

As for the sex thing, does the ability to dispatch the durex, put away the pill, trash the thermometer and go equipped with built in contraception, that age brings the female of the species, lead to more? Well maybe, providing the hot flushes, headaches, mood swings and other menopausal mayhem don't dull the desire. But then again men-o-pause can be exactly that as himself may need an interlude in between performances before he can take the show to the provinces.

At what point does experience no longer count in the workplace? Forget the fact that you are over the hill in the IT sector at 30, in most sectors (apart from the sports and sex industries) you are considered an asset if you bring your knowledge capital and know how....but there is a creeping parenthesis that puts you into the older but no longer wiser bracket - a time where they are no longer seeking your opinion but leaving Saga brochures on your desk which has also been moved closer to the door.

Looking on the bright side, (with the aid of varifocals) with the right combination of health, wealth and happiness getting older can be getting better and regardless of the trials and tribulations of life its definately not a rehearsal and so what if it takes longer to do stuff, we can still be a class act

Mobile Foaming at the mouth

I have come to the conclusion that mobile phones are no more than social props for those who have difficulty coping in the real world. They have moved from being a useful tool to get in touch in cases of emergency – for example, when that matching kidney is being swiftly transported to the regional renal hospital or come home quickly Great Uncle Eustace is breathing his last and has asked for you, to a fill all down time with the pitter-pat of text and chat. You see them in the streets with that walky runny "I am so important" sidewinder swagger with phone jammed to the lug 'ole and oh so desperate.
Have people lost the ability to sort out the urgent from the important? Or is it a case of if no one needs you right now, then your usefulness and therefore career trajectory is on the slide? Better to be chattering into the void whilst negotiating the fast lane of the M6 at rush hour in heavy rain than to be concentrating on getting to that meeting safely. How many of us have had to dodge the sneak-a-peep textual intercoursers in the course of driving through town – or worse still, the traffic light texters, those who just need to get in that final gr8tng word of banal8t before realising the lights have been at green for the last 20 seconds.
I suppose it is safer when driving or operating machinery, but the sight of those buck edjits prancing round B&Q and other similar torture centres with their silver clad shell likes shining in the sun like piercings gone wrong irrit8s me– why when they get out of the car do they have to assume the position of a Borg drone; ear piece and mobile clipped to the belt like one of those tan leather strap on tool belts? Of course the uniform of the damned is only complete when finished off with the multi-pocket cargo pants, slogan socks and deck shoes.
Why do we need such intensity of being contactable and being able to contact others? Does this create a quasi sense of importance or does in feed into our anxiety areas? Its the same with the "news" (what ever that is) it's now on tap pumped and streamed to our systems with every nuance, twist and turn, spin and opinion, readily available to be ingested and acted upon. But are we really any better off with this information overload? How much time to we get to take on board stuff before we are bombarded with more stuff? It's like a race to bring us a disaster faster with the movie moguls racing to get the rights to bring the bad news to the big screen complete with special effects. Apparently, Sylvester Stallone is already pumping himself up to play the wrestler who allegedly murdered his wife and son before ending his own life using a weights machine to strangle himself – obviously not having to wrestle much with his conscience about the impact on the family and loved ones.
So I am left wondering if all these wonderful advances in technology have in fact got in the way of living – the just in time generation becoming the blink and its gone generation – but don't worry we have a digital record of the moment you missed

Fangs for the memories

Today I want to talk about phobias, not generally but mine. I am conscious of the fact that bloggus interruptus may occur as my phobia, well one of them may prevent me from going on with this - as in I may have to distract myself by whatever means I can which may include leaving the house.

I will start with the minor irritations as opposed to the big kahuna - these I can deal with without coming out in a cold sweat or feeling that sensation of cotton wool in my chest.

Anyway, cigarette ends is one - I am not on any anti puffers podium nor do I mind people smoking its the end product I can't stand. I am unable to lift fag ends without wearing rubber gloves or wrapping news paper round my hands. Its the smell that gets me and makes me chunder. I think it may be something to do with my parental unit being from the war generation where non-filter fags were partially smoked extinguished and then re-lit later I never liked that smell.

Moving swiftly on, I am not struck on winged instruments, that is birds. I don't mind them wandering around as long as they don't flap and wander around me that is. Last time I went to the local park it was bucketing with rain and the swans and geese and ducks were hungry and I had brought a couple of loaves of bread and was standing chucking big bits into the water when they got me in a pincer movement, I was circled by a pulsating pavlova of white wings and shrill squawking as they competed with each other for my bags of bread. Well, I ran screaming back to the safety of my car with every man, woman, child and their dogs laughing at the sight of this crazed banshee creature sliding over the swan shit in the pouring rain.

Of course, I have been building up to the main event the jaws of my dilemma the molars of my mortification, and the root cause of my problem - FALSE TEETH there I said it. I am now focusing very intently on what I am typing as opposed to the mental images that are skipping across my conscious like little dental plates of tiller girls doing a steradent frothed can-can in my mind.

As a child I didn't like it when my elderly great aunt, she of the white hair, white powdery complexion topped off with blood red lips that made her look like a ghostly geisha, used to think it was funny to let her top set slip down and act out the giant from Jack and the beanstalk...fee..fi..fo..fum..

It got worse over the years and actually made me switch careers in my early days from nursing to social work nursing = potential to have to deal with false teeth, removing them, washing them and refitting them like a bloody bricklayer shuggling them to get them to fit in the gummy cavity wall lining.

I can't even watch The Simpsons when Granpa's falsers are on the move like into Santa's Little Helper's mouth I have to turn away. And if there is a You've Been Framed type programme on the giggle box I keep a cushion handy to cover my face.

I am not dental phobic and have no problem going to the dentist and injections, drills and pain don't bother me but they know to move all sightings of plates and bridges out of my line of sight.

Its not really even the teeth bit that gets me, its the pinky, shiny, plastic pretend gums, attached to them like a set of mouth based maracas with a smattering of chattering.

This is not meant to offend people who have dentures, despite me making light of it, its as real to me as say a fear of spiders is to another person.

Now off for some retail therapy..

Sometimes It's not good to be right

This is one of the times I would have preferred to have been wrong. In my blog of 10th April I noted my concerns that we were likely to experience increased racist attacks in Belfast.

Today, Northern Ireland and Belfast and South Belfast hangs it's head in shame at the persecution of Romanian families at the hands, feet, bricks, bottles and hatred of those who have no idea or care about these people who wanted a better standard of living than they had in Romania - many escaping poverty and deprivation beyond what we could ever imagine.

Of course, out of such hatred and heartlessness, we have been able to lift our heads a little and be heartened by the actions of those who worked to protect, support and shelter those poor frightened men, women and children and we are advised they have now temporary accommodation for reflection and safe space.

Of course the planners and perpetrators of these unconscionable crimes need to be brought to justice and dealt with by the courts - there should be no hiding place for racists in Northern Ireland.

However, we also need to look for those who are using "race war" and playing into fears about cultural identity and nationality/"Britishness" as a way of influencing vulnerable and impressionable young adult men to do their bidding. Is this simply an outlet for getting an adrenalin rush now it is no longer about interface violence and the "other side" is no longer the opponent? Is it gang culture? and more importantly how can it be stopped before racial violence and sectarian violence become synonymous?

It's not enough to deal with the behaviour that's the easy part; fixing hate filled hearts will take longer and won't come cheap.

Which Hazel

Shed no Tears for Hazel Blears
As she squirms and wriggles amid her fears
Her little mutiny brought no bounty
By picking her time for ministerial office rejection
To create maximum damage with no protection
She rocked the boat of Captain Brown
Now she proffers apologies to avoid deselection
While he remains at the helm until election

Ineligibly Emaciated

I believe that we have a humanitarian crisis looming in Belfast and across Northern Ireland.
We have some really sad stories here from some our fellow European citizens in Belfast who have found themselves unemployed and because their work has been short-term, temporary contracts or via recruitment agencies they don’t meet the benefit eligibility criteria not having been on the workers registration scheme for one year etc;

Of course the jobs situation is now dire and the temporary work has dried up and many we placed into employment have lost their jobs. Not all are in a position to go home and for some here is home now - this is particularly evident for some of our older single male Eastern European clients. One (and I acknowledge perhaps more extreme example) a man in his early fifties who had to flee Romania/Hungary in 1999 and at the time of EU (2004) enlargement was seeking asylum in the UK, has no job, no money at all and is very definitely falling into mental and physical ill health – he is emaciated and it heartbreaking to see him deteroriate physically and mentally; he is a Chemical Engineer and speaks 4 languages but only had temporary jobs and volunteering since bcoming to Belfast from London 2004.

Many economic migrants made their home here and also contributed as employees and volunteers.

We now have a new criteria the “ineligible destitute” and of course a political hot potato (which unfortunately is not part of a hot meal for them) which no government agency wants to deal with and no one voluntary agency is able to deal with and we need to be really sensitive about highlighting individual cases in the media as these folks are already vulnerable to racist attacks and increasing a profile could result in the wrong sort of attention.

We are signposting these vulnerable folk for help as we don’t have any funds in our small charity whatsoever to provide financial assistance (other than from our own pockets which is happening too).

How do you offer help to a fellow European citizen and fellow human being who is starving before you and becoming more and more emotionally unwell when this person despite working and volunteering because of "the rules" is not eligible for public assistance? How do you get someone somewhere to listen and make changes, who can see beyond numbers and boxes to the real human need? How do you continue to do your job when you can't offer any help to someone who is losing hope and may ultimately lose their life because they don't meet the eligibility criteria?

This is the reality of the recession for those at the bottom of the heap, no job, no home no money, no help and no hope. Perhaps if reality TV would like to film the real reality of those people who are forgotten and what it is like to try and exist on nothing and have your dignity and self worth eroded by having to steal serviettes in the food line to be able to blow your nose?


I am not scare-mongering I also know that on the ground there are with the unemployment situation and currently “contained” community tensions at interface areas, that there is an emerging concern that Black Asian and Eastern European people are (if not already) becoming the focus of anger from those who have lost their jobs as a result of the recession or who just need to blame someone “different” for their situation


I am so very sad, so very angry and I know others who do similar work share the same concerns - watch this space and Happy Easter