The Bees.

I don’t really remember when I first saw them. I think they had been lurking in the corner of my eye, retreating into the shadows as soon as I looked their way. The buzzing came first. It had been very faint in the beginning, barely audible, but this one day it became so noticeable that I had to stop my friend Susie in the middle of a conversation and ask her if she could hear it too. She couldn’t. It started to get worse. It seemed every time I talked or thought about it, the buzzing became louder and louder until I was certain that there must be something hanging right beside me – but every time I looked toward the direction of the sound, I couldn’t see anything there. I could sense something though, edging back into the darkness, watching me with malevolent eyes, delighting in my agitation and never showing enough of themselves to satisfy my eerie curiosity. I soon noticed the pattern; they always came at night, usually around 6pm as I left work, pursuing me as I walked home. If I stayed late, I could hear them tapping faintly against the office window, just letting me know they were there. They stayed with me through the night, torturing me as I lay in bed, restlessly trying to find a way to block out the noise and fall asleep. But even if sleep came, I had no respite. My dreams were plagued by the buzzing, my subconscious embodying the noise in these vast winged beasts; eyes glittering with malice and rough skin oozing with moisture. Their sickening forms lorded over my chained, naked body; utterly exposed to their stroking claws and wet, rank breath. And as I cowered from them in the gloomy light, curling my body into a protective cocoon, they slunk up behind me, the buzzing from the back of their dark, miserable throats, vibrating across the skin of my back and my neck to my ears. I often awoke in fear, drenched in sweat with my sheets twisted at my ankles, trapping me to my bed. This happened several times each night until I eventually drifted into a restless half-sleep, not quite prepared to slip fully back into the nightmare, but too exhausted to stay awake. And when I awoke the next morning they were gone.

Houses of my friends.

London, July 2010

Nepal

But it stuck with me, this wish to do something wild and spontaneous. And then, as if someone had been listening to my despairing thoughts and decided to give me a nudge in the right direction, my sister told me that Sara and Don, who had booked a month-long trip to Nepal in the summer, were no longer going on their trip as Don couldn’t take time away from his studies. Sara didn’t think she was going to go either, not wanting to go alone. I didn’t say anything to my sister, but it occurred to me that there was absolutely no reason that I couldn’t take Don’s place. She needed a companion, I needed an adventure. So a few weeks later, when Sara emailed to say she couldn’t come to a BBQ I was having, I floated the option of me going instead, and after she told me the details and asked me to consider it, it took all of five minutes for me to know that I was definitely going to go. I had to work out the practicalities – as spontaneous as I was feeling, I wouldn’t want to get into debt or throw myself completely in the deep end without having a way of getting out of the water afterwards. But I realised I had enough money to cover the trip and rent for the next two months, as well as spending money for Berlin when I returned in September, I had time to get my necessary vaccinations, the flights could be transferred in my name (which we later found couldn’t actually be done, though Don bought a new ticket and got a refund for the original one) and I’d be back with plenty of time to spare before my OU course started in October. I asked work whether they’d let me take a break, but even before this, I knew I was going whatever the outcome. They said no, and whilst the thought of coming back to unemployment was quite a shock and a rush of panic shot through me as I heard the words, a few seconds later, this incredible feeling of freedom ran over my body and I felt a thrill that this part of my life was over. It felt like a sign – all these different factors had come together to this moment where I had the opportunity to completely change my life.

And so here I am, two weeks later, vaccinated to the brim, preparing to officially give my 1 week’s notice, and looking out into a world of uncertainty.

I can’t wait for it all to start.

Meltdown

Returning to normal life was hard. Someone called it post-holiday blues, but it was so much more than that. Two days after my return, on a Sunday at about 10pm, I found myself on the Expedia checkout page, about to book flights the following morning to Germany for a week. I was on the edge of despair. I’d come back from a beautiful place and way of life - where they grew their own fruit and vegetables, where they took advantage of all nature had to offer, natural remedies, food and fuel, where there was no need for constant entertainment and where every bit of work you did was not for money, but to feed and support yourself – to a city, where the streets were dirty, the people unfriendly, where I worked for money in a job I hated that was going nowhere, to people who only thought of themselves, to a completely unrewarding way of life. Why couldn’t I just ship off to Germany at the drop of a hat? Why couldn’t I be spontaneous and reckless with the money I’d saved? Why was I restricting myself to this dull and insignificant way of life? We’re born, we grow up, we get jobs and a career, we retire, and then we die. Where’s the living? Where is the point to our urban existence?

My mind was running in overdrive at this point – I was verging on insanity; my eyes were wide with it and I could feel laughter rising in my throat. I thought ‘I’m going to do it. I’m literally going to go to Germany tomorrow, leave all these people and all these worries behind me, and just go. No need to tell people – I’d just do a Stephen Fry, emerge from wherever I ended up when my money runs out. Why the fuck not?’ I had no plans, absolutely no commitments until Berlin with my sister in September. I wanted to learn German – perhaps I could get work out there and learn German. ARCADE FIRE. Wait, I was seeing Arcade Fire with Harry on Tuesday. A gig I had been anticipating for three years. A one-off, special gig that Harry had booked for me whilst I was in France. Arcade Fire. I came crashing down. The delirious happiness gone. There was no way I was missing this gig, it wasn’t even an option. Spontaneity would have to wait, changing my life would have to wait. Freedom would have to wait.

I couldn’t go to work the next day. After having what I can only call a minor breakdown, I could not face the thing that had almost pushed me over the edge. I spent the day kicking myself into action – sorting out things, applying for new jobs and agencies. And the next day, almost as if nothing had happened, normal life had to resume.

Je m'appelle Nicole. Non? Moi Nicole. Nicole. Et toi?

Just under a month ago, I jetted off to Southern France for a week’s holiday with friends. We flew to Rodez (a small airport in the Pyrenees) from where we drove for an hour to a small commune called St. Cirgues. The drive from the airport took us deep into the countryside, with undulating, glorious green fields either side of the road, and picturesque farm houses dotted along the way. It was hot, and the van we were in was baking, though the heat reaffirmed the fact we were actually on holiday and so only made our smiles broader. We were staying with my friend Nic’s Grandparents – Australian Kevin who liked to tell a story, and fierce, French Marcele, who we were warned would shout at us all at some point in the week. On arrival, we were directed to our bedrooms; mine was on the ground floor, in what Nic called ‘the old pig sty’. If it was once a pig sty, it bore no resemblance, and now contained a sink, a table, a washing machine and a fridge. And my bed.



It was a mismatched room, and I could sense there were spiders lurking in every corner, but it felt 100 times more comfortable than my room in London, and the view from my window over the fields, the flowers and the trees was incredibly beautiful.



And so began what has to have been one of the most beautiful and calming experiences of my life. It wasn’t like a holiday in the usual sense – of course, we had a lot of down time to relax, play and explore, but we also spent some of our time helping out with chores around the farm. Several times, we went down into Marcele’s forest (which stretched out way across the valley) to pick wild mushrooms. Following a lesson on safe mushrooms from Nic, we cast our eyes into the shadowy regions of the forest, looking for Cep and Girol mushrooms. You can not imagine the childish thrill we beginners felt as we spotted a mushroom - like panning for gold - we wandered around with our woven baskets, screaming and stamping on any poisonous mushrooms we spotted, and smugly showing off our good finds. After we’d gathered what we felt was a fairly impressive haul, we went exploring through the forest, finding our own routes down steep, slippery verges (cue near-fatal knife incident), jumping across streams and taking numerous photos of our beautiful surroundings.



It was all too good to be true. That evening, the holiday took a turn for the worst. Marcele served up mushroom omelette. A cold wave of dread slid over me. Ciaran hated egg, I despised mushroom, yet somehow the dinner had been constructed in such a way that it was impossible to separate the two. I gulped some down, each bite followed by a glass of water. I have truly tried to like mushrooms, and I gave it my all that evening, to show I appreciated Marcele cooking for us all and because I felt it was only right that I tried to do justice to the mushrooms we’d picked earlier that day. But to no avail. It still tasted like I was eating some sort of slimy, earthy animal. That weird soft firmness playing havoc with my taste buds and my mind. And then as I screwed up my face and quickly swallowed the last mouthful, just when I thought the worst was over, Marcele left the room calling back to us ominously, ‘we’ll have the Ceps tomorrow’.

Aside from the mushroom incident, the rest of the holiday was a dream. We picked cherries from her trees, which Marcele made into a jam.



We took a 9km walk to the nearest town to buy some supplies (booze) – a hot day, but an enjoyable walk through the countryside, at the end of which we slumped into the nearest café we could find for a refreshing lemonade and some pizzas. Another day, Marcele arranged for a local lady to drive us to the lake one afternoon – this hippyish woman with a huge love for Bob Marley – where we ate, drank beers, swam and read our books in the sun. We went out onto a football pitch one night to tell ghost stories. We played cards and danced to George Michael. The boys played football. I taught Alex how to do killer sudoku.

Having being warned of Marcele’s sharp tongue – we were told on our drive to the farm that she had called a 6 year old child an ‘imbecile’ a few weeks earlier – I found that she was an incredibly lovely lady, who just liked polite and helpful people. I think she liked me too, and it culminated in her asking me to dye her hair for her. I was petrified – sure, I’d done my own before, but to dye a notoriously fierce lady’s hair, a lady I’d just met four days previously was absolutely terrifying. But I stepped up. And aside from a tiny bit of hair which I accidentally didn’t dye, it looked lovely.

And so the holiday ended. We spent our last evening playing charades in the kitchen, trying to drink the last of out 5l box of red wine and this horrendous rum we’d bought. And the next day, we were driven back to the airport, and in a flash we were back in London, getting a train back into a grimy city which felt like a world away from beautiful St Cirgues.

Abuse the Aged!

A friend is currently on a placement in a care home as part of her nursing training. A few weeks ago, she described the things she’d seen on her few weeks there and why she couldn’t wait to move on to the next placement. She nursed 14 patients, on a floor which held 21. She began looking in on the other 7. These patients generally could not do anything for themselves, most not able to talk and many not able to move. This being said, they had a selection of care assistants assigned to them to take care of their needs.

Toilets: Patients each had a bed pan and toilet, which the care assistants should help them to and from. However, the bed pan washer had broken, and rather than get it fixed and help the patients use the toilets in the meantime, the care assistants had taken to putting all patients in incontinence pants (nappies) and letting the patients go whilst lying in their beds. This was because they were ‘too busy’ to lift the patients out of bed when they needed to go. As a sidenote, patients are only changed at three scheduled times a day, meaning these often incontinent patients are regularly left sitting in their sh*t for many hours each day. Throughout my friend’s time there, she regularly observes the care assistants spending several hours each day chatting and watching tv in the communal area, as well as ‘nipping out’ to do some shopping or errands, as well a taking full lunch breaks. Clearly not busy enough.

Social interaction: Interestingly, the communal area where the assistants tend to spend their time is never used by the patients, as whilst care home guidance says they should spend a few hours with other patients in this area each day, it’s ‘too much effort’ to take the patients out of their beds, and so they NEVER do it. So basically, aside from when they are washed, these patients spend 24hours a day, alone in their rooms and unmoving in their beds. Neglected.

Hygiene: Aside from patients sitting in their excrement most of the day, there is also an issue with washing. To preserve a patient’s dignity, when washing they should be unclothed section by section so they are never completely naked. However, this is also apparently too time consuming, and so patients are stripped naked, showered/hosed down, then returned to their beds. My friend observes that some animals are treated with more respect than these people.

Feeding: My friend walked in on a care assistant forcefully pushing porridge down the throat of an old man, who had not been propped up in his bed and was lying almost flat on his back (a position which makes it extremely difficult to digest food). Due to his inability to eat the food at the speed with which the care assistant was ‘feeding’ it, it was dripping all over his chin, neck and even down his top. The assistant made no effort to clean this up or move the patient into a more comfortable position. In response to my friend’s ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the assistant replied ‘Don’t tell me what to do, I’ve been doing this for ten years’.

And finally – pain management. The key responsibility of the care assistant is to manage the pain of the patients in their last stages of life. My friend says this is not a priority in the care home she works at all. Patients are never reviewed and infrequently checked on.

If this was how a child was treated, social services would step in and call it child abuse. Yet because these people are elderly and are perhaps thought no longer able contribute to society, they’re neglected and treated with greater disrespect than any other area of society. Because most cannot talk, they cannot tell their family (if they have any) about their poor treatment and if an official does come round to check on the home, it is so easy for the assistants to suddenly abide by the book and make it seem like it is common practice for them. Imagine if it was your own grandparents or parents. It’d sicken you.