This is the very lowest my mood has ever been. I feel like I'm in a coffin, buried and forgotten, in a lonely abandoned winter graveyard. This is the end.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
After the threat of social services intervention was lifted yesterday, I am only now succumbing to the after effects of my betrayal by the Stepping Hill Home Treatment Team.
I can't remember when my mood was as low as it is now, everything is a a colossal effort and it feels as though I'm embedded in an invisible viscous tarry substance that makes even getting out of bed for a pee feel like weight-lifting.
This entry is unlikely to be very long because of this.
My self harm has accelerated dramatically. I've inflicted seven deep wounds so far today. The compulsion is so strong I can't resist it, it's like watching a movie of someone else hurting themselves, except that I feel the pain. I'm so out of body today. I just wish I could sleep but I'm so tolerant to benzodiazepines now that 20 mg Valium doesn't even slow me down.
I'm supposed to be seeing my GP and discussing my progress with weaning myself of Valium tomorrow but the last few days have undone all the good work I'd done over the preceding 3 weeks.
Work is utter hell and I can't face it. Nothing works. I spend weeks and months trying to model stuff or analyse data only to be left with very little of substance. I can't concentrate.
I know I'm going to have to take some serious time off soon but I also know that it's the top of a very slippery downward slope.
I wish i had a real friend who could help me out but i seem to have lost all of mine.
I can't remember when my mood was as low as it is now, everything is a a colossal effort and it feels as though I'm embedded in an invisible viscous tarry substance that makes even getting out of bed for a pee feel like weight-lifting.
This entry is unlikely to be very long because of this.
My self harm has accelerated dramatically. I've inflicted seven deep wounds so far today. The compulsion is so strong I can't resist it, it's like watching a movie of someone else hurting themselves, except that I feel the pain. I'm so out of body today. I just wish I could sleep but I'm so tolerant to benzodiazepines now that 20 mg Valium doesn't even slow me down.
I'm supposed to be seeing my GP and discussing my progress with weaning myself of Valium tomorrow but the last few days have undone all the good work I'd done over the preceding 3 weeks.
Work is utter hell and I can't face it. Nothing works. I spend weeks and months trying to model stuff or analyse data only to be left with very little of substance. I can't concentrate.
I know I'm going to have to take some serious time off soon but I also know that it's the top of a very slippery downward slope.
I wish i had a real friend who could help me out but i seem to have lost all of mine.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
My secret life as a self-harmer and would-be suicide
Self harm is a common type of externalisation for a number of depressive or personality disorders. It is very common in young adults, less so at my age (47).
A few months ago I started self-harming.
I couldn't and still can't identify a causative event, and I've suffered from mental illness (borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety) since childhood, but in all that time I had never deliberately hurt myself.
The only thing I can It roughly coincided with when I started to abuse Valium in a serious way (I'm at 20 mg a day now , but tapering off with a doctor's help using smaller dose tablets). Unfortunately that's led to me using a lot of Kalms as well, which contain numerous herbal hypnotics and sedatives including Valerian extract, a well known addictive substance from the "Great Binge" era.
I started small, a few abrasions with a pumice stone, followed by dressing the wound and clearing up the mess, it felt like someone caring and apparently released endorphins, which is why, I suspect, it has now taken over my life. I usually did it if I had had an argument with or felt belittled by my wife, or if there was shouting of any description, which messes badly with my PTSD. Verbal and physical violence are the same thing to my fucked up brain. It was, I realise also a symbolic way of hurting those that hurt me. If asked why I injure myself, I would say "it's because no one else will let me". My suicide attempts are, in the same way, redirected homicidal urges. For example, if I kill myself, my kids still have one parent, but if I killed my spouse, they wouldn't have any, as I'd be imprisoned for 20 years or more and emerge an old man. The ineluctable logic of suicide. Protecting ones kids is a categorical imperative and BPD/PTSD amplifies this, in the form of heightened hyper-vigilance and the hiding or explaining away of symptoms or injuries.
At first it felt, as I said, like someone caring about my pain and inner turmoil when no-one external seemed to. It also had the added benefit of diffusing suicidal feelings and relieving anxiety, although I have made three serious suicide attempts in the past two months, that's another story, and an extension of another form of self-harm, deliberate SSRI overdosing to induce mild serotonin syndrome, which enabled me to be "ill" and stay in bed.
I think it was the addictive effect of he endorphins are what got me in the end though, and I'm finding now that I self harm several times a day, in more and more extreme ways. I'm addicted to hurting myself and growing increasingly tolerant.
I started deepening the abrasions and increasing the bleeding with my razor, then a hobby knife and now I routinely use the reciprocal saw tool on my trusty Gerber multi-tool to really get the claret flowing. I use Mepore dressings but if I've really hacked away at myself I have to add tape of waterproof dressings over the top to stop blood seeping through my clothes.
For those of you that don't know, a reciprocal saw is one with two rows of teeth running in opposite directions:
It's very effective.
On ironing days (most of Saturday and Sunday), I use the iron to make very painful, slow healing burns that evolve into seeping, bloody lesions after a day of two. I've even carved words and pictures into my skin with a large blunt paper clip which gives broader strokes than a sharp knife would. I do it at work, on the commute, at home, even in shop toilets.
And to cap all, if a wound starts to heal, I don't seem to be able to resist attacking it again, so most cuts take many weeks to fade to ugly scars.
My wife gets very distressed by all this and until recently I was hiding them from my young kids by only making wounds where a t-shirt and shorts would cover them, but having been caught at it buy both of them now, I have stopped bothering with that. I am using bio-oil on the scars to try and get them to fade but to be honest I'm just as likely to make a new hole over an old scar now and the oil makes the dressings fall off.
The psychiatric "profession" seem helpless to stem this new tide and I spend my life in constant physical pain as a result, every time I bump into something or hug my kids the odds are it presses on at least one deep wound and makes me shout out sometimes it hurts so much. Lying in bed is torture. To get any relief I have to take such a mammoth cocktail of painkillers that I get an actual hangover the next morning, plus the painkillers become slightly less effective. add to this the fact that since my last suicide bid NICE guidelines have me on fortnightly prescriptions, forcing me to eke out my meds.
It has left me isolated and in worse shape psychologically than ever. I am so lonely and desperately want to die at this point. I've looked on the Exit international website and the components of the suicide bag are so expensive they make your head spin. I could put one together after hours with equipment in the lab here for free but then some poor PhD student or cleaner would have to deal with finding my corpse the next morning. More than anything the two things that have inhibited many suicide bids have been fear of failure (and ending up crippled or worse) and sympathy for the poor sod who has to clear it up. I used to be the thought my kids, but somehow the thought of them living on without me doesn't fill me with such profound sadness any more. Maybe my increasing age and thus proximity to natural mortality lessens that feeling, or maybe the Valium numbs it.
Oddly, I keep thinking about my next holiday and how I won't get a tan because I'm essentially a grotesque mass of scar tissue and too ashamed to uncover. I might not even wear shorts next year as some of my wounds have been in the ankle area. Ah the random processes of the sick mind.
A few months ago I started self-harming.
I couldn't and still can't identify a causative event, and I've suffered from mental illness (borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD, Depression, Anxiety) since childhood, but in all that time I had never deliberately hurt myself.
The only thing I can It roughly coincided with when I started to abuse Valium in a serious way (I'm at 20 mg a day now , but tapering off with a doctor's help using smaller dose tablets). Unfortunately that's led to me using a lot of Kalms as well, which contain numerous herbal hypnotics and sedatives including Valerian extract, a well known addictive substance from the "Great Binge" era.
I started small, a few abrasions with a pumice stone, followed by dressing the wound and clearing up the mess, it felt like someone caring and apparently released endorphins, which is why, I suspect, it has now taken over my life. I usually did it if I had had an argument with or felt belittled by my wife, or if there was shouting of any description, which messes badly with my PTSD. Verbal and physical violence are the same thing to my fucked up brain. It was, I realise also a symbolic way of hurting those that hurt me. If asked why I injure myself, I would say "it's because no one else will let me". My suicide attempts are, in the same way, redirected homicidal urges. For example, if I kill myself, my kids still have one parent, but if I killed my spouse, they wouldn't have any, as I'd be imprisoned for 20 years or more and emerge an old man. The ineluctable logic of suicide. Protecting ones kids is a categorical imperative and BPD/PTSD amplifies this, in the form of heightened hyper-vigilance and the hiding or explaining away of symptoms or injuries.
At first it felt, as I said, like someone caring about my pain and inner turmoil when no-one external seemed to. It also had the added benefit of diffusing suicidal feelings and relieving anxiety, although I have made three serious suicide attempts in the past two months, that's another story, and an extension of another form of self-harm, deliberate SSRI overdosing to induce mild serotonin syndrome, which enabled me to be "ill" and stay in bed.
I think it was the addictive effect of he endorphins are what got me in the end though, and I'm finding now that I self harm several times a day, in more and more extreme ways. I'm addicted to hurting myself and growing increasingly tolerant.
I started deepening the abrasions and increasing the bleeding with my razor, then a hobby knife and now I routinely use the reciprocal saw tool on my trusty Gerber multi-tool to really get the claret flowing. I use Mepore dressings but if I've really hacked away at myself I have to add tape of waterproof dressings over the top to stop blood seeping through my clothes.
For those of you that don't know, a reciprocal saw is one with two rows of teeth running in opposite directions:
It's very effective.
On ironing days (most of Saturday and Sunday), I use the iron to make very painful, slow healing burns that evolve into seeping, bloody lesions after a day of two. I've even carved words and pictures into my skin with a large blunt paper clip which gives broader strokes than a sharp knife would. I do it at work, on the commute, at home, even in shop toilets.
And to cap all, if a wound starts to heal, I don't seem to be able to resist attacking it again, so most cuts take many weeks to fade to ugly scars.
My wife gets very distressed by all this and until recently I was hiding them from my young kids by only making wounds where a t-shirt and shorts would cover them, but having been caught at it buy both of them now, I have stopped bothering with that. I am using bio-oil on the scars to try and get them to fade but to be honest I'm just as likely to make a new hole over an old scar now and the oil makes the dressings fall off.
The psychiatric "profession" seem helpless to stem this new tide and I spend my life in constant physical pain as a result, every time I bump into something or hug my kids the odds are it presses on at least one deep wound and makes me shout out sometimes it hurts so much. Lying in bed is torture. To get any relief I have to take such a mammoth cocktail of painkillers that I get an actual hangover the next morning, plus the painkillers become slightly less effective. add to this the fact that since my last suicide bid NICE guidelines have me on fortnightly prescriptions, forcing me to eke out my meds.
It has left me isolated and in worse shape psychologically than ever. I am so lonely and desperately want to die at this point. I've looked on the Exit international website and the components of the suicide bag are so expensive they make your head spin. I could put one together after hours with equipment in the lab here for free but then some poor PhD student or cleaner would have to deal with finding my corpse the next morning. More than anything the two things that have inhibited many suicide bids have been fear of failure (and ending up crippled or worse) and sympathy for the poor sod who has to clear it up. I used to be the thought my kids, but somehow the thought of them living on without me doesn't fill me with such profound sadness any more. Maybe my increasing age and thus proximity to natural mortality lessens that feeling, or maybe the Valium numbs it.
Oddly, I keep thinking about my next holiday and how I won't get a tan because I'm essentially a grotesque mass of scar tissue and too ashamed to uncover. I might not even wear shorts next year as some of my wounds have been in the ankle area. Ah the random processes of the sick mind.
Thursday, 3 October 2013
BPD very bad
Borderline Personality Disorder is Hell. It really is.
Take today, I've been physically removed from the road in front of speeding traffic by a good Samaritan because I was in some kind of depersonalisation fugue, I've almost fallen down several escalators, I feel high but not in a good way and I've done so much self harm that my left arm looks like it's been in a garbage disposal unit.
Why is this happening now?
I could blame the Cambridge thing, or course, particularly the way Astra-Z continue to refuse to confirm or deny that we're a. going and b. when we're going IF we're going at all.
Uncertainty and instability are generally very bad things when you have BPD.
Nobody really understands BPD well enough to make that sort of causal link though.
It's actually much more distressing for my family than it is for me. If I nod off in front of a tram again like the other day, and nobody is around, I'll just get killed and my problems will be over.
Trouble is, the affordable and/or free provision for BPD families is shit, with a 16-week waiting list and the private stuff comes in at £50/hr, well out of our reach.
Yesterday I spent the day with my head under the covers or in the bath room cutting myself, I've gone through over a hundred wound dressings in two weeks and the ones I have on desperately need changing as I can smell the yuckiness all the time and they itch like crazy. I've graduated from simple pumice abrasions to knives, razors and hot irons too. A worrying development. :/
trouble is, I would cheerfully do that every day but I'm shit-scared of losing my job again. I don't feel like I can go to the disability support people here as that was the start of the downward spiral last time that saw me booted out, an unfair dismissal I didn't have the emotional or financial resources to challenge and still don't.
the crisis access team at my local hospital are all very well but BPD isn't really druggable like common-or-garden depression and there's little they can actually do when I'm in acute crisis like now.
Take today, I've been physically removed from the road in front of speeding traffic by a good Samaritan because I was in some kind of depersonalisation fugue, I've almost fallen down several escalators, I feel high but not in a good way and I've done so much self harm that my left arm looks like it's been in a garbage disposal unit.
Why is this happening now?
I could blame the Cambridge thing, or course, particularly the way Astra-Z continue to refuse to confirm or deny that we're a. going and b. when we're going IF we're going at all.
Uncertainty and instability are generally very bad things when you have BPD.
Nobody really understands BPD well enough to make that sort of causal link though.
It's actually much more distressing for my family than it is for me. If I nod off in front of a tram again like the other day, and nobody is around, I'll just get killed and my problems will be over.
Trouble is, the affordable and/or free provision for BPD families is shit, with a 16-week waiting list and the private stuff comes in at £50/hr, well out of our reach.
Yesterday I spent the day with my head under the covers or in the bath room cutting myself, I've gone through over a hundred wound dressings in two weeks and the ones I have on desperately need changing as I can smell the yuckiness all the time and they itch like crazy. I've graduated from simple pumice abrasions to knives, razors and hot irons too. A worrying development. :/
trouble is, I would cheerfully do that every day but I'm shit-scared of losing my job again. I don't feel like I can go to the disability support people here as that was the start of the downward spiral last time that saw me booted out, an unfair dismissal I didn't have the emotional or financial resources to challenge and still don't.
the crisis access team at my local hospital are all very well but BPD isn't really druggable like common-or-garden depression and there's little they can actually do when I'm in acute crisis like now.
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Moving to Cambridge - Part ... whatever I don't care it's finally broken me
I'm in data-analysis hell again today so I thought I'd give my carpal tunnel a rest and do some typing. Any potential reader of this post might as well be as miserable as me...
Well..
AstraZeneca sure know how to keep us dangling. STILL no confirmation either way about the move or any time-frame. It's like they think I can just throw together a new life down south in a couple of days or something...
Consequently my depression and delusional episodes are going off the charts. Hallucinations, suicidal ideation, self-harming, Valium abuse, all sorts of big fun stuff. I've made a large seeping wound on my chest with a pumice stone and it really hurts, stupid.
Meanwhile the work on the house has stalled due to a bad patch of multiple flash-flooding towards the end of the recent hot weather, due to blocked street drains emptying into my house and soaking everything.
Ergo everything is still like a bomb-site and it's really breaking me in the head. Plus I managed to rip my second good Fat-Face shirt in as many months thanks to having to struggle over the piles of crap and it's become completely obvious now that my marriage is a tissue-thin illusion.
I've got to go and see the Psych crisis team tonight after work to look at my meds and probably I'm going to have to endure yet more fruitless months of psychology referrals, because that's how modern Mental Health Services roll, it seems. Damn you George Osbourne, you posh twat.
I just have to focus on keeping the hissing lit match of madness away from the flammable Draylon that is my job, to coin a bloody awful metaphor. Watch this space.
In other news, just got back from a family "holiday" in Whitby. I did enjoy lazing on the beach and fossil hunting with Joshua as usual, he may drive me nuts but he's a really good kid. Previous to that we went to the cottage in Norfolk again (near Thorpe Abbots). Not so good as the "wife" had asked her parents along AGAIN so I couldn't relax at all. Plus I ended up going fishing, which I abhor, with Josh and my Father in Law. It only served to reinforce my conviction that fishing is a hideously cruel blood-sport, so I'm afraid someone else will have to take him next time. The WI-FI at the cottage was playing up so we all felt a bit amputated, especially since we really rely on BBC iPlayer these days to keep the kids from killing each other. One cool thing was going to an aviation museum and seeing a real Gloster Javelin, arguably the very worst jet fighter Britain has ever built, a genuine pilot killer which was obsolete before it even left the ground. A full list of it's many flaws is given by the late, great, much-maligned test pilot Squadron Leader Bill Waterton GM AFC* (1916 – 2006) is a major part of the excellent book "Empire of the Clouds" by James Hamilton-Patterson (ISBN: 0571247954), which I highly recommend to all those who wonder why we're having to buy in US F-35 fighters for our aircraft carriers and why the RAF flies planes which are 1/3 German.
We also saw a couple of Apache helicopters weaving through the trees one day which was a first for me. It made me think of how I used to see planes all the time in Northampton, Tornados, F-111's, A-10's, F-15's the works, flying training sorties up the Nene Valley. The agile grace of the A-10's particularly left an impression upon me, such a contrast with their plug-ugly looks and their mission profile as witnessed later .in Kuwait and Iraq.
This has been a post of two halves, for which I am sorry, but sometimes one just needs to vent.
Well..
AstraZeneca sure know how to keep us dangling. STILL no confirmation either way about the move or any time-frame. It's like they think I can just throw together a new life down south in a couple of days or something...
Consequently my depression and delusional episodes are going off the charts. Hallucinations, suicidal ideation, self-harming, Valium abuse, all sorts of big fun stuff. I've made a large seeping wound on my chest with a pumice stone and it really hurts, stupid.
Meanwhile the work on the house has stalled due to a bad patch of multiple flash-flooding towards the end of the recent hot weather, due to blocked street drains emptying into my house and soaking everything.
Ergo everything is still like a bomb-site and it's really breaking me in the head. Plus I managed to rip my second good Fat-Face shirt in as many months thanks to having to struggle over the piles of crap and it's become completely obvious now that my marriage is a tissue-thin illusion.
I've got to go and see the Psych crisis team tonight after work to look at my meds and probably I'm going to have to endure yet more fruitless months of psychology referrals, because that's how modern Mental Health Services roll, it seems. Damn you George Osbourne, you posh twat.
I just have to focus on keeping the hissing lit match of madness away from the flammable Draylon that is my job, to coin a bloody awful metaphor. Watch this space.
In other news, just got back from a family "holiday" in Whitby. I did enjoy lazing on the beach and fossil hunting with Joshua as usual, he may drive me nuts but he's a really good kid. Previous to that we went to the cottage in Norfolk again (near Thorpe Abbots). Not so good as the "wife" had asked her parents along AGAIN so I couldn't relax at all. Plus I ended up going fishing, which I abhor, with Josh and my Father in Law. It only served to reinforce my conviction that fishing is a hideously cruel blood-sport, so I'm afraid someone else will have to take him next time. The WI-FI at the cottage was playing up so we all felt a bit amputated, especially since we really rely on BBC iPlayer these days to keep the kids from killing each other. One cool thing was going to an aviation museum and seeing a real Gloster Javelin, arguably the very worst jet fighter Britain has ever built, a genuine pilot killer which was obsolete before it even left the ground. A full list of it's many flaws is given by the late, great, much-maligned test pilot Squadron Leader Bill Waterton GM AFC* (1916 – 2006) is a major part of the excellent book "Empire of the Clouds" by James Hamilton-Patterson (ISBN: 0571247954), which I highly recommend to all those who wonder why we're having to buy in US F-35 fighters for our aircraft carriers and why the RAF flies planes which are 1/3 German.
We also saw a couple of Apache helicopters weaving through the trees one day which was a first for me. It made me think of how I used to see planes all the time in Northampton, Tornados, F-111's, A-10's, F-15's the works, flying training sorties up the Nene Valley. The agile grace of the A-10's particularly left an impression upon me, such a contrast with their plug-ugly looks and their mission profile as witnessed later .in Kuwait and Iraq.
This has been a post of two halves, for which I am sorry, but sometimes one just needs to vent.
Monday, 10 June 2013
US Aircraft Carrier CVN-77 should have been another Lexington
As the long-awaited Queen Elizabeth Class of Royal Navy aircraft carriers slowly take shape, with their names steeped in tradition (both names were given to WWII battleships), I have found that the last of the Nimitz Class super-carriers of the US Navy, The USS George HW Bush (CVN-77) was originally touted to have been named USS Lexington, according to US Senate papers.
According to Senate concurrent resolution 84 (106th congress, 2nd session), submitted by Democratic Senators John Warner KBE (VA) and Daniel Inouye (HI), veterans of the Korean war and WWII,
respectively, on Feb 24th 2000, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN-77, then building, should be named "Lexington" since:
The senators continued:
"the aircraft carrier CVN-77 should be named the U.S.S. Lexington:
(1) in order to honor the men and women who served in the Armed Forces of the United States during World War II, and the incalculable number of United States citizens on the home front during that war, who mobilized in the name of freedom, and who are today respectfully referred to as the ``Greatest Generation' and
(2) as a special tribute to the 16,000,000 veterans of the Armed Forces who served on land, sea, and air during World War II, of whom less than 6,000,000 remain alive today, and serve as a lasting symbol of commitment to freedom as they pass on and proudly take their place in history."
In the event, the Navy saw fit to continue the modern trend for naming ships in honour of still-living individuals, in this case WWII carrier aviator and later President George H.W. Bush, rather than after famous and pivotal moments in their history.
This is a shame in my opinion, since it would seem to turn away from tradition, so long the proud backbone of navies world-wide. At least they're building another "Enterprise".
More on this discussion can be found here: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/march/whats-in-a-name/article_print
 |
| CVN-77 at Sea |
According to Senate concurrent resolution 84 (106th congress, 2nd session), submitted by Democratic Senators John Warner KBE (VA) and Daniel Inouye (HI), veterans of the Korean war and WWII,
respectively, on Feb 24th 2000, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN-77, then building, should be named "Lexington" since:
- "the name bestowed upon aircraft carrier CVN-77 should embody the American spirit and provide a lasting symbol of the American commitment to freedom"
- "for the citizens of the United States, the name``Lexington'' has been synonymous with defense of freedom from the very first battle of the War of the American Revolution and is taught to American schoolchildren as the place of the ``shot heard round the world'', at which our forebears mustered the courage to gain inde-pendence"
- "the name ``Lexington'' has been associated with naval aviation from its origins in the 1920s, when President Harding bestowed the name ``Lexington'' on the second aircraft carrier in United States history ... that vessel, the U.S.S. Lexington (CV-2), also known as the ``Fighting Lady'', saw active service from 1927 until lost in 1942 during the historic Battle of the Coral Sea"
- "immediately after that loss, President Franklin D.Roosevelt saw fit to bestow the name ``Lexington'' on a successor aircraft carrier in order to carry on the fighting spirit to preserve freedom"
- Whereas that successor aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Lexington (CV-16), joined the fleet in 1943 and earned 11 battle stars during the Pacific campaigns of World War II as she helped carry the fight to the enemy"
- "U.S.S. Lexington (CV-16) continued her service to the United States after World War II, conducting nu-merous deployments during the Cold War and completing her 48 years of service as a training aircraft carrier for student aviators"
- "upon the completion of her service and in keeping with the traditions of the Navy, the U.S.S. Lexington (CV-16) was stricken from the Navy Vessel Register on November 30, 1991"
The senators continued:
"the aircraft carrier CVN-77 should be named the U.S.S. Lexington:
(1) in order to honor the men and women who served in the Armed Forces of the United States during World War II, and the incalculable number of United States citizens on the home front during that war, who mobilized in the name of freedom, and who are today respectfully referred to as the ``Greatest Generation' and
(2) as a special tribute to the 16,000,000 veterans of the Armed Forces who served on land, sea, and air during World War II, of whom less than 6,000,000 remain alive today, and serve as a lasting symbol of commitment to freedom as they pass on and proudly take their place in history."
In the event, the Navy saw fit to continue the modern trend for naming ships in honour of still-living individuals, in this case WWII carrier aviator and later President George H.W. Bush, rather than after famous and pivotal moments in their history.
This is a shame in my opinion, since it would seem to turn away from tradition, so long the proud backbone of navies world-wide. At least they're building another "Enterprise".
More on this discussion can be found here: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/march/whats-in-a-name/article_print
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Relocation - Part 2
I'm feeling quite gloomy about the move to the Fens today.
As part of our impending relocation to Cambridge we are updating our 1929-built house to better reflect contemporary tastes, which means basically halving the number of internal walls and putting in a cool kitchen.
We had the designer guy from "Betta Living" around last night and he was here for FOUR hours, and it wasn't like we hadn't already decided what we wanted down to the last drawer. It was exhausting, and it made the move that much more real, which left me with a nasty sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
That's been happening a lot lately, being assailed by unwelcome thoughts about how finite our time here now is. I was especially struck by it when my son goes to cricket. He's become quite a regular pick for the Marple CC junior team and one of the coaches was talking about his "future at the club" the other week, which almost had me in tears. People keep telling me we'll find new Cricket clubs, dance schools etc. at the other end but that's missing the point. The hopes and dreams I had for my kids now lie in a future that will no longer take place, like another country that it's no longer possible to visit.
Maybe I should just man up and stop feeling sorry for myself but this move is going to be very tough for my kids.
As part of our impending relocation to Cambridge we are updating our 1929-built house to better reflect contemporary tastes, which means basically halving the number of internal walls and putting in a cool kitchen.
We had the designer guy from "Betta Living" around last night and he was here for FOUR hours, and it wasn't like we hadn't already decided what we wanted down to the last drawer. It was exhausting, and it made the move that much more real, which left me with a nasty sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
That's been happening a lot lately, being assailed by unwelcome thoughts about how finite our time here now is. I was especially struck by it when my son goes to cricket. He's become quite a regular pick for the Marple CC junior team and one of the coaches was talking about his "future at the club" the other week, which almost had me in tears. People keep telling me we'll find new Cricket clubs, dance schools etc. at the other end but that's missing the point. The hopes and dreams I had for my kids now lie in a future that will no longer take place, like another country that it's no longer possible to visit.
Maybe I should just man up and stop feeling sorry for myself but this move is going to be very tough for my kids.
Thursday, 23 May 2013
Modern Workplace - we are nothing but abstractions
Going to work is crap.
I hate it.
I have no idea how to do my job properly, it stresses me out and given the choice I'd stay in bed all day watching DVD's and eating biscuits.
And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Going to work has always been crap. It's like being forced to eat shit.
However, in the modern workplace, going to work is like being forced to eat shit but also being forced to call it chocolate, because in an effort to avoid the appearance that you're nothing but random meat to them, your employers now seek to restrict the very thoughts you have in your head.
Example? Two years ago I was unlawfully dismissed by my employer for being unable to do my job as it stood, due to a disability, in direct contravention of the Disability Discrimination Acts 1995 and 2005. But I was repeatedly bollocked by HR for saying I'd been fired or sacked. I wasn't being sacked,. I was being "re-deployed", to the DWP benefits office as it turned out. But it was considered supremely important that at no time did I think that the employer didn't have my best interests at heart.
Even when they're dumping on you from a great height, be it unlawful dismissal, unpaid "promotions", enforced relocation or "re-structuring" in such a way that ten people who have worked together for years as a team suddenly have to fight over nine jobs, you mustn't think you're being treated unfairly, let alone say it.
For a long time I thought it was just a litigation thing. But then I realised.
We are all just meat.
Underpaid, unvalued, anonymous, expendable meat.
And meat is always better if it goes to the abattoir willingly or unknowingly.
I hate it.
I have no idea how to do my job properly, it stresses me out and given the choice I'd stay in bed all day watching DVD's and eating biscuits.
And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Going to work has always been crap. It's like being forced to eat shit.
However, in the modern workplace, going to work is like being forced to eat shit but also being forced to call it chocolate, because in an effort to avoid the appearance that you're nothing but random meat to them, your employers now seek to restrict the very thoughts you have in your head.
Example? Two years ago I was unlawfully dismissed by my employer for being unable to do my job as it stood, due to a disability, in direct contravention of the Disability Discrimination Acts 1995 and 2005. But I was repeatedly bollocked by HR for saying I'd been fired or sacked. I wasn't being sacked,. I was being "re-deployed", to the DWP benefits office as it turned out. But it was considered supremely important that at no time did I think that the employer didn't have my best interests at heart.
Even when they're dumping on you from a great height, be it unlawful dismissal, unpaid "promotions", enforced relocation or "re-structuring" in such a way that ten people who have worked together for years as a team suddenly have to fight over nine jobs, you mustn't think you're being treated unfairly, let alone say it.
For a long time I thought it was just a litigation thing. But then I realised.
We are all just meat.
Underpaid, unvalued, anonymous, expendable meat.
And meat is always better if it goes to the abattoir willingly or unknowingly.
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Animal names for tanks
I was reading a book about German armoured vehicles of the WWII era and was struck by the rather whimsical use of animal names, especially cats and insects. Some, like the Panther and Tiger tanks are well known but some others are more obscure and I shall list them here. I have not bothered with umlauts, I hope you will forgive me.
For example, other tanks (experimental or unbuilt, by and large) included the Lowe (Lion) heavy tank, the Maus (mouse) super-heavy tank, the Leopard light tank (not to be confused with the contemporary German main battle tank of the same name) and the Wanze (bug) one-man tank. There were numerous self-propelled guns including the Wespe (wasp), Grille (cricket), Heuschrecke (grasshopper), Elefant, Hornisse/Nashorn (hornet/rhino), Hummel (bumble bee) and Brummbar (grizzly bear).
There was an experimental amphibious vehicle called the Ente (duck), miscellaneous recon/APC vehicles like the Luchs (lynx), Maultier (mule), Puma, Katzchen (kitten), Falke (falcon), Schildkrote (turtle), UHU (eagle owl) and anti-tank or anti-aircraft vehicles like Marder (marten), Gepard (cheetah, again, not to be confused with...) and Coelian (a legendary monster, referring to a converted Panther tank).
Anti-aircraft guns in particular were often given eccentric or dramatically lyrical names: converted tanks carrying AA guns were known as Mobelwagen (removal vans), while more adavanced AA vehicles became Wirbelwind (whirlwind), Ostwind (east wind) and Kugelblitz (ball lightning).
My absolute favourite name was for a prototype heavy tank destroyer called Sturer Emil, stubborn Emil.
By comparison, the allies in WWII often (but not always) used rather prosaic names if they went beyond simple model numbers at all. British tanks usually have "C" names like Covenanter, Crusader, Comet, Cromwell, Churchill, and the more modern Centurion, Conqueror, Chieftain and Challenger, although informality and eccentricity did creep in occasionally, tanks converted to APC's were called Kangaroos, Valentine tanks were so named because their design was initiated on 14th February, M7 Priest SP guns were so called because of their pulpit-like machine gun mount, an unofficial ecclesiastical naming system being established which led to later SP guns like Bishop, Sexton and Abbot. American vehicles were named, unofficially at first and often by export customers, after famous soldiers (mostly generals), Lee, Grant, Stuart, Chaffee, Sherman, Pershing, a tradition continued to this day (Walker, Ridgeway, Patton, Abrams, Bradley, Stryker) and taken up by other countries, e.g. the French LeClerc.
Tanks and armoured vehicles are bad things that are designed to kill people, plain and simple, but some that conceived them had poetry in their souls.
For example, other tanks (experimental or unbuilt, by and large) included the Lowe (Lion) heavy tank, the Maus (mouse) super-heavy tank, the Leopard light tank (not to be confused with the contemporary German main battle tank of the same name) and the Wanze (bug) one-man tank. There were numerous self-propelled guns including the Wespe (wasp), Grille (cricket), Heuschrecke (grasshopper), Elefant, Hornisse/Nashorn (hornet/rhino), Hummel (bumble bee) and Brummbar (grizzly bear).
There was an experimental amphibious vehicle called the Ente (duck), miscellaneous recon/APC vehicles like the Luchs (lynx), Maultier (mule), Puma, Katzchen (kitten), Falke (falcon), Schildkrote (turtle), UHU (eagle owl) and anti-tank or anti-aircraft vehicles like Marder (marten), Gepard (cheetah, again, not to be confused with...) and Coelian (a legendary monster, referring to a converted Panther tank).
Anti-aircraft guns in particular were often given eccentric or dramatically lyrical names: converted tanks carrying AA guns were known as Mobelwagen (removal vans), while more adavanced AA vehicles became Wirbelwind (whirlwind), Ostwind (east wind) and Kugelblitz (ball lightning).
My absolute favourite name was for a prototype heavy tank destroyer called Sturer Emil, stubborn Emil.
By comparison, the allies in WWII often (but not always) used rather prosaic names if they went beyond simple model numbers at all. British tanks usually have "C" names like Covenanter, Crusader, Comet, Cromwell, Churchill, and the more modern Centurion, Conqueror, Chieftain and Challenger, although informality and eccentricity did creep in occasionally, tanks converted to APC's were called Kangaroos, Valentine tanks were so named because their design was initiated on 14th February, M7 Priest SP guns were so called because of their pulpit-like machine gun mount, an unofficial ecclesiastical naming system being established which led to later SP guns like Bishop, Sexton and Abbot. American vehicles were named, unofficially at first and often by export customers, after famous soldiers (mostly generals), Lee, Grant, Stuart, Chaffee, Sherman, Pershing, a tradition continued to this day (Walker, Ridgeway, Patton, Abrams, Bradley, Stryker) and taken up by other countries, e.g. the French LeClerc.
Tanks and armoured vehicles are bad things that are designed to kill people, plain and simple, but some that conceived them had poetry in their souls.
Monday, 20 May 2013
Relocation...part 1
I started this blog out of curiosity but with no clear purpose in mind. I have hardly ever posted to it. But now it has a purpose, to document what might just be the darkest hours of my life.
AstraZeneca (those motherfuckers) announced that they're relocating their Alderley Edge R&D operation to Cambridgeshire in 2015, and the BEST CASE is that we'll have to uproot and trek down to East Anglia.
The enormity of this has finally hit me when I was forced to consider how many things, large and small, will have to be sorted out to allow this to happen. I finally sat down and thought about the minutiae that add up to a life and how every single tiny piece has to be uprooted and moved, I finally started to realise what will be lost in the process.
Top of the list, I have to find a job down there. I'm 47 years old and not exactly transferable. Sure I know a bit of Python and Java and I'm working on my Perl but I seriously doubt Sanger or EBI would be interested. I couldn't even get into Cambridge Uni as a student, when I would have been paying them to be there, so getting a job there is frankly unlikely. My wife has suggested commuting to Manchester and living here in the week, returning to Cambridge at weekends, but I honestly can't see that working, not least financially. Maybe if I could've stayed in London rather than moving to the North West and built my career there instead of in this provincial little hole I'd be in a better place about this. That milk's spilt though, no point crying over it.
We will also have to tear the kids away from the schools, friends, clubs etc. It's going to be heartbreaking.
We've become deeply embedded where we live, we have friends, hobbies, sports and other activities set up for the kids. We own a house, have favourite places, our kids took their first steps here and said their first words. I've never loved where we live but I guess I'd always assumed that we'd be here to see them take their first steps into the wider world, first loves, first triumphs, first failures. That future has now ceased to exist and I think I might be mourning it.
Now our home is just a house again and it's all down to some corporate bastard's bottom line. It's hard to get up in the morning because what's the point of going to work when I know I'll never finish what I've started in my job?
I feel robbed, sad, lost, scared. I feel like I'm suffocating.
I feel like checking out.
AstraZeneca (those motherfuckers) announced that they're relocating their Alderley Edge R&D operation to Cambridgeshire in 2015, and the BEST CASE is that we'll have to uproot and trek down to East Anglia.
The enormity of this has finally hit me when I was forced to consider how many things, large and small, will have to be sorted out to allow this to happen. I finally sat down and thought about the minutiae that add up to a life and how every single tiny piece has to be uprooted and moved, I finally started to realise what will be lost in the process.
Top of the list, I have to find a job down there. I'm 47 years old and not exactly transferable. Sure I know a bit of Python and Java and I'm working on my Perl but I seriously doubt Sanger or EBI would be interested. I couldn't even get into Cambridge Uni as a student, when I would have been paying them to be there, so getting a job there is frankly unlikely. My wife has suggested commuting to Manchester and living here in the week, returning to Cambridge at weekends, but I honestly can't see that working, not least financially. Maybe if I could've stayed in London rather than moving to the North West and built my career there instead of in this provincial little hole I'd be in a better place about this. That milk's spilt though, no point crying over it.
We will also have to tear the kids away from the schools, friends, clubs etc. It's going to be heartbreaking.
We've become deeply embedded where we live, we have friends, hobbies, sports and other activities set up for the kids. We own a house, have favourite places, our kids took their first steps here and said their first words. I've never loved where we live but I guess I'd always assumed that we'd be here to see them take their first steps into the wider world, first loves, first triumphs, first failures. That future has now ceased to exist and I think I might be mourning it.
Now our home is just a house again and it's all down to some corporate bastard's bottom line. It's hard to get up in the morning because what's the point of going to work when I know I'll never finish what I've started in my job?
I feel robbed, sad, lost, scared. I feel like I'm suffocating.
I feel like checking out.
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