My siblings are all wrapped up. They saw frost this morning and some places with snow. I asked them why they didn’t just live here but the prospect of back to back winter was less appealing.
We talked about the earth quake and riots in Victoria. Apparently the riots came about after a vaccine and mask mandate with disenfranchised groups getting on board. Outbreaks of covid amongst construction works but in more constructive news we learn about how schools are addressing ventilation, how they wear masks in schools meanwhile in my child’s class there is active transmission and someone they sit with not considered to be a close contact, it makes no sense to me so I’ll be glad to learn a bit more this week.
Finally a date for the memorial, I asked if we’re invited, because to be fair these days you never know. We talk about how there isn’t time for birthdays and rather than a reminder of how time is running out, more a time to be in the precious present. I sit feeling smug as unusually for me I’m already on it, a card on it’s way. Birthdays for me were always filled with tears but strangely I don’t remember why. Perhaps an historic legacy that isn’t actually anything to do with me, now, these days. Anyway I bought myself a present with money I’d been given at Christmas from here, https://www.yalajewellery.com/ I love it.
It’s been a week of paperwork, dealing with stuff under the bed. My sibling talks of being overwhelmed. I can see it in the tears welling up. I ask how they’ve been but the conversation is swept away by a well meaning but space denier. The space denier of the usual gender, I wonder how that might be different.
Did you see the news of Sabina Nessa’s murder https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/sabina-nessa-murder-cops-arrest-25074417 another family devastated by male violence.
There are computer issues a family can’t get on, another declares how they are struggling, feeling on a different page, not knowing what’s wrong.
Just our history of tax return violence? Rearing it’s head?
We swiftly move on as is our way of not dealing with difficult things, I’m interrupted by a gender related question and honestly I have no idea. My reading has made me more confused, we go further in-depth, how not every woman has a cervix and I’m feeling like the conversation is moving into areas where I’m unsure, direct them to further learning. Perhaps picking up the book just as I go to bed isn’t the best way to learn after all. Too tired when my head hits that pillow.
We talk about a person in transitional care, known to services but sofa surfing, was a child in care. My siblings talk about how our uncle used to take people in who went a bit “lairy” and they discuss the benefits of hard work, how this person says when they are physically tired it keeps them out of trouble. A trouble they have been no stranger too. Fights and drugs. Perhaps they don’t no about the link between psychological trauma and drug use, the prison pipeline. How hard physical labour prevents attention to trauma, how people in this situation haven’t had proper access to psychological services and find themselves in a state of disconnected numbness. How there has been no role model for rest yet hobbies needed when no longer physically able to do that heavy lifting. Still with something to give.
They talk about how people are turned into social problems by virtue of birth and I wonder if it is in fact the other way round, the circumstances of birth leading to the social problems. (see link https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html)
We talk about this person how what they actually need is work with accommodation. I talk about mentorship and this is dismissed, They talk about the community expectation of physically hard work, this a kind of mentorship.
They go on to discuss the Liverpool reform school how it was also a Naval college, they talk about the kids who were sent to Australia. Grave yards like those in reform schools in Canada? It reminds me of the grave yard in Shotley, young lives lost. Suicide and how it hasn’t got rid of the problem and I wonder what exactly they mean.
They talk about the Magdalene laundries (more here http://jfmresearch.com/home/preserving-magdalene-history/about-the-magdalene-laundries/ )
We talk about the medicalisation of distress, how it was more than neglect, how it was active retribution, suffering for a supposed sin yet the baby has no choice of parents. There followed a hard silence. Perhaps unsurprising.
We talked about job losses caused by AI and we wondered how the Tories will deal with that if 20% of jobs are replaced by apps. Will the machines pay tax?
My siblings reflected on who the machines once were. They talk about how people who are Irish used to dig our roads. When the drains were put in in Coopers Lane people dug down in ditches higher than their heads. This week has been one of delayed fuel supply here, the drivers back to the EU, a mess of our own making what with Brexit and the lack of planning. We’ve been searching for an alternative to the car for our school run, what we’re doing doesn’t make sense. I need a rain protected covering that can transport us from A to B but isn’t polluting. We looked at this (see link), registered our interest but we need it ASAP we need a solution sooner rather than later https://www.citroen.co.uk/models/future-models/ami.html something better, what can our collective minds come up with?
I feel disconnected to their world as grandparents, me with children still at school. They talk about how the new baby is coming along. They remark how the baby is skinny, Grandad corrects me, yes he had a cuddle before he attended a function and everyone put him in quarantine. They discuss how the baby is stretching and feeding, how another is walking and “has the devil in him”, they correct themselves a phrase out of date and harmful. The child is adventurous and “sees the funny side of things”. One cross at the others humour. A false binary already setting the path?
They ask me if I’m wearing uniform which seems odd, expressing worries that something has gone wrong. No just in my nightie. A uniform for bed they laugh. Does this speak to the fear of uniforms that many people have? For some a place of safety, for some a reminder of trauma.
A ping on my phone just as I was winding up, it’s World Contraception Day. Just the usual reminder that condoms prevent unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and HIV. In view of their role in caring for their congregations is this something from the pulpit too? What’s your pulpit?
When I was volunteering I ordered a box of condoms from The Terrance Higgins Trust thinking with cuts to sexual health clinics this might be a good way to give free condoms. On the whole most women I spoke to didn’t even think they had a choice to insist on a condom to protect themselves.
People with a penis need to know that they aren’t the only ones to get a say (link https://www.tht.org.uk/
I meant to pass these on to the teens just off to college…