How much does one-to-one cancer care cost? As much as ‘benefits’?

I always skip over the headlines when I go online before I check my emails or add a post. One came up in my Google News feed about Labour’s plans to pledge one-to-one cancer care. I read it because I am always interested in what is being done for cancer-patients after my mom was diagnosed and treated over five years ago. The article could not help but point out the flaws behind the pledge and it just highlights how empty such promises are.

This will be the first year that I am able to vote in a General Election so naturally their promises and ideals have become more interesting as of late. I am fed up of hearing about their ’scandal’ over the expenses and I, like many others, have lost faith in all of the major parties and so I am basing my decision purely on what they can offer.

But what they promise is not always what they deliver. Why isn’t there a bill to stop politicians being crafty with their pledges.

“Yes, I will offer you a free nurse to visit you as and when you please but you must relinquish some other NHS service not currently in a media spotlight. “

The other parties try to point out the flaws in their opponent’s pledges but they never turn that ever-critical eye towards their own work. Each politician is as cunning as the other and they all have their own interests at heart before the interests of the common voter. I’m not saying their heartless but politics is a career path not a lifestyle choice.

Therefore they will do whatever they can to get into the top position and once there they realise they cannot do what they intended because its all too expensive and someone already promised £3bn. or whatever to help the poor sods that can’t get jobs but can get pregnant. Here’s a house. Oo here’s a wage. No don’t save your money because it will all count against you and you will get less money next month!

England is in a mess and we have to trust the politicians to sort it all out for us. Unfortunately, its them that got us into this mess and voting in old ideas is just going to bring all the old problems back and discredit all the advances we made socially over the last ten years.

Why can’t someone like Richard Branson run for Prime Minister, I’d trust him with my money!

Writing, writing, writing …

Naturally, as a reader, my dream is to eventually write my own book. I have made various attempts over the years and even took a course in Creative Writing alongside my degree at Uni. The first year of the course, however, seemed just to reiterate what I already knew about structure and also forced me to partake in the writing of poems and study films from a more intellectual and complicated viewpoint that Communication Studies forced me to.

It was the ‘Film Studies’ module that put me off most continuing my course as a Joint Degree and perhaps this was a mistake. If I was more careful to gear my course towards writing fiction then I may have gained more from it.

Anyhow, I’ve decided to continue my efforts under my own steam. It is more difficult to write a good piece without the support and criticism from a writing group but it is not impossible. I am sure, or at least I hope, that there are many authors who have made it into print without the support of a writing group.

I’ve set myself a target of 2,000 words a day and I am not allowed to go back and edit what I have written. It is a difficult habit to get out of but once I go back and edit what I have written I add in too many layers, over complicate things and then lose hope and give up. Yet another unfinished manuscript. I have managed 18k words since the 14th of Jan which is a lot faster pace than my usual 20k over a couple of years.

In my determination to take this attempt seriously I bought myself a couple of books. One is The Creative Writing Coursebook edited by Julia Bell and Paul Magrs. It is a compilation of small exercises and essays from various successful authors designed to advise and inspire new/aspiring writers. I did not get very far in before I stumbled across what I consider a revelation on why I find my own writing so amateur.

The introduction to the second chapter ‘Training The Eye’ by Julia Bell asks you to consider the details of a ‘picture’. By looking at these she shows you that you can create an entire back-story just through observation using the imagination of the reader. It seems so obvious now when I think about it but until I read that chapter I had not considered that I over explained things when I was writing.

I will of course go back and edit out all the unnecessary explanations once I’ve reached my target of 90k words!

I would really recommend this book from Amazon if anyone is seriously considering writing their first book and have no access to writing groups or courses.

In The Dark

They are doing roadworks local to my road so naturally, last week, the power got knocked to half my road. This happened in the evening just as we were losing light. There was enough time to grab some candles and sort through the duff batteries and get at least one torch working so we didn’t have to pee in the dark.

But what can you do in total darkness with no electricity?

I managed to scramble around under my bed and find the torch that I used to read with when I was younger and took unkindly to being sent to bed at a reasonable hour. The torch lying on top of the book next to my bed was a dead giveaway to my late night reading but at the time it seems irrelevant.

So for the next two hours in on/off lighting I desperately strained my eyes trying to read Dracula by failing torch light. Without the distractions of televisions, computers and other things electrical I got quite a lot of reading done. Not quite the pace I managed at Uni but then I’m not reading to a deadline.

Still, eventually, my eyes started to wander and I was no longer reading but half-daydreaming, half-sleeping. It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying the book but there is a limit to how much a person can read in one sitting.

Chapter length is the key to keeping a reader’s interest. It needs to be long enough so that they get involved in the story and finish on a cliff-hanger just a few paragraphs short of their eyes starting to ‘wander’. The end of the chapter is like a break and turning over to a fresh page invigorates the reader so that they can carry on reading.

J. K. Rowling is a master of chapter lengths and detail to pace ratio. I can quite easily sit and finish one of her books in a week without feeling like I have strained myself too much. Stoker on the other hand takes my mind on such a journey of twists and exercises that I can barely read a chapter before I have to stop to absorb it all.

So what makes the better read? The one you can finish in a few days or the one that takes longer? Dracula clearly has ’stood the test of time’ but ultimately with The Harry Potter Series be more successful because it is more accessible to a wider audience? Taking longer to read and absorb a book because the content is more complicated may be enjoyable for some but it’s not for everybody.

In the end reading is subjective. No one can tell you what or what not to read, or which is the more ‘valuable’. It is what the reader enjoys that makes it valuable, not what the academics can tell you about it.

Memory Game

Today my Grandad’s house has been finally cleared. Nothing now remains except the four walls that hold up the roof. All the furniture and leftover possessions have either been scrapped or sold by the professional ‘house-clearers’ a pseudonym for ebay-sellers no doubt; all the keepsakes and memories removed by much more delicate hands. Ninety-years worth of life bundled up and packed away.

Yet my Grandad has not passed away. He is happily sipping tea and eating hot dinners in a nursing home a mile away, completely oblivious to the fact that strangers are in his home stripping it of everything he once had. When we visit him this afternoon he will not ask, “Is my house gone now?” he will ask “And where do you live?” as though he is compiling a database on the residencies of all his visitors.

He will know our faces but not why he knows us. At times this makes him feel awkward and he will be frustrated that he cannot remember. Usually, though, he will chuckle and ask us if we have partners and children of our own.

My mother struggles most with these visits as she has known him the longest. To me, Grandad has always been forgetful, he has only declined rapidly in the last few years. It would be nice if he remembered I had graduated Uni, he was so proud of me for going in the first place. I used to remind him about it to see the momentary pride across his face but now I can’t even get past telling him the exact location of my house which is the same as my Mother’s which he asked her about not two minutes before.

It is sad to see him without his memories. It is harrowing to think what he must feel when his visitors have gone away and there is no one to remind him what he once had. Does he feel alone? Or is he simply happier because there is no one to remind him that he had something he can’t remember? The nurses and carers report that he is generally happy, involving himself in the activities with the other ‘residents’ but do they just say that to keep us happy? It’s impossible to know what goes through his mind even when we are there, let alone when we are not. There’s a barrier now separating us from him, making him a stranger to his own family.

The strangest thing, or not so strange I don’t know, is that even though my Grandad doesn’t know me or anything about me, I still love him just as I did when I was younger. It feels as though he is on vacation somewhere and we are looking after his body until he gets back. Of course, he will never come back. There’s no cure for his illness, only tablets to slow it down.

For now, at least. More and more research is going into Alzheimer’s so one can only hope they will unlock the mysteries about how to treat it, or at least how to help the sufferers in the best way possible.

The nurses and carers who work in Alzheimer-specific nursing homes are fantastic and under-praised. They have helped my family to come to terms with my Grandad’s illness as much as they have helped my Grandad to relocate to a safer environment. Their patience is never-ending which is remarkable given the various difficulties they have to endure.

I hope that when the ‘budget cuts’ happen this election year, the new PM does not overlook the value and importance of these nursing homes and the staff who ensure it is a ‘home’ not a hospital.

Is Dracula the Angel of Death?

Who determines which book is a classic and which is ‘trash’? Where does the value of a book come from? I personally believe that the value and meaning of a book originates from what the reader gets from it, not what the author intended the reader to find.

Recent books are more easy to validate as one can simply ask the author what they meant if there is a particularly elusive character or phrase. One example that sticks out in my mind is when J.K Rowling revealed post-publication that Dumbledore was gay. I had never ascertained this from my own private reading of her books though others clearly had. As far as I am concerned, he is not gay until I find such evidence. Does that mean, then, that I am wrong?

With older books it is easier to hold onto your own meaning of the novel; there is no author to come down on one side or the other. As long as you can argue your point, and find enough evidence, you are free to think as you wish.

I have been re-reading Dracula over the winter which I studied at Uni in my second year. I have enjoyed it more this time around as I have had no predefined parameters of what sort of ‘reading’ I should gain. I was determined not to read it academically but to enjoy it for what it was: a novel. I am now only at half-way, slow progress I know, but I wanted to absorb everything rather than skimming the way I used to when I was expected to read 2-3 books a week.

Half-way through I met an astounding line which I never noticed before, nor one which came up in seminars as there is so much other imagery and Gothic terms to digest when studying this novel. The line read: “I would not care if I heard this moment the flapping of the wings of the angel of death,” (p. 175) which is a clear echo of the “scratching or flapping at the window” (p. 120) that Dracula makes when transformed into a bat outside of Lucy Westenra’s window. Lucy makes several references to the sound which indicates it is frequent and troubling.

The use of the word ‘flapping’ may arguably be coincidental but it invokes a clear allusion to the idea that Dracula is the angel of death who appears in religious lore. I tried, briefly, to research the angel of death’s function but there are so many varying forms across different religions that I would need a brain far larger than the one I have to pinpoint the exact comparison that is being drawn. Instead I took Dr Seward’s expression of the angel of death to be the more common supposition that when one’s time of death is upon them, an angel (or the “grim reaper”) comes to take them away.

For Dracula to be the ‘angel of death’ is ironic as angels have a reputation for being good and doing God’s bidding. Dracula however was written in or around the modern period (late nineteenth century, 1897) where notions of religion were being question in the dawning of the scientific era. Some people feared that by meddling in experiments they were going to incur the wrath of God for interfering in his work. People were straying from faith and devout religious practise into a new territory of logic with unknown consequences. Dracula, the hideous demon that he is, is a reflection of the grotesque evolution of religion. As the followers become corrupted, so too do the religious icons.

Lucy is portrayed as the pure, innocent woman that religious doctrine reiterated was the correct way to be. I could find evidence for this but it would take a few hundred words on its own and is an aside to my point! Her descent into something monstrous is then even more dramatic. Her ‘angel of death’ killed her purity which was the soul of her nature.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the novel, she is entertaining three different proposals. There is nothing to say that she did anything untoward, however the volume of male attention she received would lead some to question whether her nature is truly ‘innocent’. Was her angel then a messenger from hell rather than heaven coming to take her away to her punishment?

Religious imagery is overflowing throughout this novel but the idea that Dracula is a variation on the angel of death is new to me. I will no doubt later investigate if this is worthy of an extended essay, but for now I will try to concentrate on just reading the book again!

I just thought I would share my idea in case anyone else has noticed this or could tell me if I am chasing a wild tangent! As Bram Stoker is no longer alive, I cannot inquire of him if I am right. This makes it more interesting as I now have to investigate it myself and will probably gain something more from a book which I already believed I had squeezed dry of imagery and allusions!

—

REFERENCES:

Bram Stoker, Dracula. (Vintage: London, 2007)

Put Me In A Bubble

If I could create a bubble or a mesh that filtered out the bits of media that has been masterminded by a PR expert or other similar genius I feel like I would live a very quiet life. When it comes to entertainment gossip as opposed to straightforward news (which regularly creeps into GMTV) it seems like someone somewhere is always gaining from the exposure. Whether its a neurotic Big Brother contestant or a minor celebrity diva, there’s a contract or deal to be signed somewhere if you can just your face on television for three minutes. Any show will do.

If you have never been on television before, the best place to make a name for yourself is to get on Big Brother. Since the first series the ratings have dropped significantly over the space of ten years but there is still a regular spot in Heat Magazine where there is ample space to splash your face around. Also you need to be memorable so make sure there is something slightly weird or loud about you. The weirder and louder the better hence why the gradual evolution of Big Brother contestants from everyday people to … well … something else.

Originally the show masqueraded as a ’social experiment’ which was filmed and broadcast for public consumption. The show even went to lengths of bringing in expert psychologists to analyse the condition of the contestants. However one of my friends at Uni pointed out that most of the psychologists did not have proper qualifications, some of them can even be bought.

My point here, though, is not to question the validity of the experiment – there are many people more knowledgeable and articulate than myself that have already done so. I’m pointing out the blatant manipulation of people for financial gain that sprung from this show. I did not watch the first series, though I remember it caused a sensation with people clamouring to read the tabloids to catch up on what had happened next. As the show was the first of its kind, the reaction could not be expected, but the financial beneficiaries made certain it was not to be a one-off phenomenon.

Newspaper articles, magazine interviews, appearances on low budget talk shows / panel shows ensure that everybody gets a piece of the large cake that is public obsession with other people’s lives. I understand gossip is entertaining but I don’t understand why gossiping about people you’ve never actually met is entertaining as well. Big Brother gossip is ’safe’ because the people involved will never find out exactly what you said, and you can be as brutal as you like because of this. But to me, the fact that I don’t know them is exactly what makes the show bland.

Even if they are vaguely-known ‘celebrities’ I still don’t care what they did with the loud one in the pool when they got drunk, so stop telling me!

Since Big Brother there has been a ripple of reality TV shows taking various shapes and forms, all of which play up to the public’s interest in other people’s lives and the amounts they will pay to hear the extra non-show related gossip. Due to careful marketing and media exposure each show has the power to create a ‘celebrity’ for a short period of time and it is the money they make from doing this, not the final product itself, which frustrates me. Sell your single not your story!

And its all over!

Why is it Christmas seems to come and go so much quicker than any other part of the year? And yet still I have nothing to show for it!

I seem to have misplaced the last two weeks and all I have to prove it happened is a handful of receipts and a bin-full of festive wrapping paper.

Admittedly I do also have a shiny black box with futuristic writing on the top that will claim the next 5-8 days of my holiday. No more reading for me bar the subtitles on the bottom of the screen.

My game of choice is predictably Role-Playing-Games (RPGs). These have a more involved and prolonged storyline than most games. The story is experienced through a main group or character and the more you spend looking around and speaking to the Non-Playable-Characters (NPCs) the more you find out about the story.

The one I’m most looking forward to is ‘Dragon Age, Origins’, although when I actually manage to brave the shops is another thing.

I can’t understand why people are so eager to go shopping in the ’sales’ after they have spent the last month battling queues and crowds to buy presents for people they hardly know. Surely now is the time to appreciate what you already have and spend some time relaxing at home. Unless of course you work in retail for you have no Christmas Holiday time.

I feel really sorry for people who work in retail, I’ve been there. They work you right up until the last minute and then expect you to come in again the DAY AFTER it’s all over. Not very fair I must admit. Especially when you have to deal with the sale-crazed public fighting and squabbling over the last size 10 sparkly top thing on the sale rack.

At least have the decency to put it back on the hanger once you’ve established it’s not the right size!!

I think I will hide inside my house for the next few days reading Dracula, playing video-games and eating my weight in chocolate!

Enjoy the holidays if you can! xx

Impotence in the face of Nature

Last week I watched more television in the space of two days than I usually do in a week. It is only recently that I have acquired a tv aerial in my bedroom so I am no longer subjected to the TV regime dictated by the family collective which always outvotes my own interests.

One show that really caught my eye was the first of a new series ‘Man on Earth’ presented/narrated by Tony Robinson. It followed the emergence of our species termed as ‘Homo Sapiens’ and their near-extinction due to a significant shift in climate.

I would recommend watching this programme if you missed it, it is available to watch online from channel4.com.

Robinson occasionally referred back to our current paranoia about the start of something similar. He did not over exaggerate the comparison nor did he infer that we have doomed our own survival. There was one quiet, understated suggestion that perhaps we have accelerated the coming of the next climate shift.

The fact that we are up against the forces of nature, can we be so arrogant as to assume that there is something we can do to stop or delay it? No amount of ‘cutting carbon emissions’ can protect us against the waxing and waning of the sun’s rays.

Pollution never caused the ‘ice-age’ that the Homo Sapiens suffered but it does damage our own health. Does this then mean that the politicans are using the fear ignited by such films as ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ to stop us from further damaging our own health? Are we such a sensationalist nation that we need something big and dramatic to kick us into action like in the Hollywood films?

This is reality and we need to accept that we are not all-powerful or all-intelligent. Neither is a big strong male going to come rescue us at the end of the film. In a few decades no one will even know we existed …

“And so this is Christmas, I hope you have fun …” (John Lennon, ‘Happy Christmas (War Is Over)’)

Only a few more days now till Christmas and still I have only bought a few presents. I can’t understand why people get so hyped up about just one day.

The last few years have been a little disappointing and, frankly, empty of the Christmas cheer I used to feel when I was younger.

Perhaps it is because I am older and more cynical or perhaps it is because as families grow more distant there is little to enjoy except the presents you receive that day. Being over twenty there are few ‘toys’ to enjoy and presents consist largely of beauty gift sets and tops that I will never wear.

After striking a deal with a pound-stretched Santa I have managed to convince him to buy me a PS3 if I agree to put over £100 towards it. This went down fairly well and I now have something to look forward to Christmas morning. When did I ever get so materialistic?!

I foresee that such a shiny console with its never ending list of new games, I will find it difficult to squeeze in many chapters of Dracula over the winter. Either way I will enjoy the break after nearly three months at work without having a day off besides the statutory weekends.

Still, I can’t complain, at least I still have a job which in the current climate is something to be grateful for. Even if I don’t exactly enjoy what I do!

When Reading Aggravates The Hangover, Turn The Telly On!

I never get the same feeling from watching a long adaptation of a book than I do from reading the original. However with books like Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights I feel that this is the only way to get to know them.

They were written in an era where books were written to be as long and as ornamented as possible. There are large chunks of the book which are unnecessary to the story and there is little to be gleaned from analysing them. In a modernist, minimalist world there seems little point to pouring over the lengthy chapters and just skipping to the good parts. This is where abridged versions come in … semi-skimmed literature with all the boring ‘fatty’ parts taken out.

Unfortunately my sense of pride forbids me to read abridged versions. If I’m going to read a book then I want to read it in its entirety the way the author meant it. I will not be beaten by a book but I will put it on hold if I find it a struggle. For example I have been reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy for over eight years now. I am on the last book but I keep forgetting the names and the places. At some point I will start this book over but I am so close now it seems a shame to give up now!

I sat down, well lay down actually because I had a raging hangover, to watch what I thought was the recent dramatisation of Wuthering Heights that ITV put on a few months ago which I missed but it turned out to be a film starring Ralph Fiennes. I thought I knew the story vaguely but on watching the film I realised that actually I knew very little bar the name of the protagonist (Heathcliff) which I had gleaned from a very old episode of ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’.

The film was actually very good. It appeared low budget and the special effects were meek though I think it was a very old or low-budget production. The suspense was built up through the script rather than effects which is what I like about film adaptations of books in the first place. They seem to play more heavily on the talents of the actors than the producers.

I don’t think I will be rushing to get myself a copy of Wuthering Heights in the near future as most of the scandal is fairly low-key will manipulation than anything juicy! Although the faint-hearted, swooning women of the Nineteenth Century, this was probably as much as they could take!