Milkman by Anna Burns

I read this a few months ago.

It's a fun book and it's about a serious subject. What is it like to grow up amid sectarian violence? What is it like when deathmongers are your normal old neighbours? This book goes a long way towards telling you what it's like, but it's fun and inventive too.  Middle sister, our protagonist, feels threatened by a sexual predator she calls Milkman, although he is not a milkman. That is his code name. Milkman wants Middle Sister to get into his car. He makes subtle threats. Middle Sister knows what could happen - she has lost family members in this pseudo-war. She could fall apart with the stress of the situation ...

Like the rest of the neighbourhood, Middle Sister is secretive. She is mainly secretive because she doesn't want her mother to know she has a boyfriend. So she doesn't tell you her name, or anyone's name (Maybe Boyfriend) who matters to her. She doesn't want anyone identified.

Middle sister's understanding of what went on is acute. She knows that there are 2 sides to a story.

"In our district the renouncers-of-the state were assumed the good guys, the heroes, the men of honour, the dauntless, legendary warriiors, outnumbered, risking their lives, standing up for our rights, guerrilla-fashions, against all the odds. They were viewed in this way by most if not all in the dstrict, at least initially, before the idealistic type ended up dead, with growing reservations setting in over the new type, those tending towards the gangster style of renouncer instead. Along with the sea change in personnel came the moral dilemma for the "our side of the road" non renouncer and not very politicised person. This dilemma consisted of, once again, those inner contraties, the moral ambiguities, the difficulty of entering fully into the truth. Here were the Johns and Marys of this world, trying to live civilian lives as ordinarly as the political problems here would allow them, but becoming uneasy, no longer certain of the moral correctness of the means by which our custodians of honour were fighting for the cause. This was not just becasue of the deaths and the mounting deaths, but also the injuries, the forgotten damage, all that personal and provate suffering stemming from successful renouncer operations. And as the renouncers' power and assumption of power increased, so too, did the uneasiness of the Johns and Marys increase, regardless too, that the other side - "over there" - across the road" - acress the water" - would be hard at it, doing their own versions of destruction as well. There was also that day-to-day business of dirty laundry in public, and of the distict renouncers laying down their law, their prescripts, their ordinances plus punishments for any prceived infringements of them. There were beatings, brandings, tar and featherings, diappearances, black-eyed, unlti-bruised people walkng about with missing digits who most certainly had those digits only the day before. There were too, the impromptu courts held in the district's hutments, also in other disused building and houses specially friendly to the renouncers. There were the myriad methods our renouncers had for levying funds for their cause. Above all, there was the orgnisation's paranoia, their examination, interrogation and almost always dispatch of informants and of suspected informants, but until this discomfort with the inner contraries took hold of the Johns and Marys, the renouncers had constituted iconic noble fighters in pretty much the whole of the community's eyes. To the groupies of the paramilitaries however, - and this could be certain girls and women unable to grasp with mind and emotion any concept of a moral conflict - men who were in the renouncers signalled not just wonderful specimens of unblemished toughness, sexiness and maleness, but through attaining to relationship with them, these females could push for their own social and careerist ends."

She goes about walking and reading at the same time and she didn't intend this to attract attention. I admire this and I admire the fresh approach to writing that keeps you engaged with this book.

Yay, Middle Sister!!

Return to the book group - This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

I stopped going to the book group because the other readers were so annoying, so unable to appreciate literature, but the person who runs it is not annoying, but the reverse, the sort of person who soothes one's nerves. I finally caught up with the book groups because they chose Adam's Kay's autobiographical book about working as an obstetrician in the NHS - This is Going to Hurt.

The book group was composed of the same elderly people that went to it before, so I knew all the faces except two - another elderly gent and a woman who has had a stroke and comes in a wheel chair. At the end her carer came to wrap her up and take her home.

First of all, the elderly people doubted that the book was true. They agreed that the NHS gets overwhelmed but this is surely because the population is ageing. Why then, does this affect obstetrics?

The men said the book was not for men. They do not like reading about the things that affect women's bodies. "Revolting." It's very interesting that the men in the book group radiate their feeling of pride in masculinity, as though being born male was such a huge achievement they hardly have to do anything else to prove themselves. (Why have the women in their lives not questioned this? I think it is maybe because men who served in WW11 deserved recognition for their efforts, and then this carried on when men did National Service. - call ups ended in December 1960. In 1963 the last of the National Servicemen left the army. Only after this did this "men are wonderful" mindset start to change.)

The group agreed that the NHS is badly run. For example, the NHS sends its patients for private operations, which it pays for. All agreed that this is a stupid waste of money. It's possible because they have private health insurance and think NHS patients should not get the same treatment as those who pay. They also tend to the belief that the people from other countries come here for medical treatments which they are not entitled to, having never paid their National Insurance, and they are never charged. I said that this is not possible any more, but they said they think it happens all the time.

The group believed that the government is making a false economy by stopping the bursary for training nurses, not providing nurses and hospital doctors with accommodation, and the nurses should also get free food in the staff canteen.

Examples of waste in the NHS includes their refusal to take back Zimmer frames and walking sticks which have been used (apparently they are too expensive to clean. Couldn't you make a large steriliser and do it easily?) There was a long digression into using Freecycle and how it works - also what the Red Cross can provide you with if you are in need.

Self-inflicted injuries - the group agreed that patients should pay to have objects removed from their rectums.

I suggested that there were three areas which in this account of a junior doctor's work are really shocking:

1. He was often far too tired to be responsible for a department full of patients. If another doctor was ill there was no cover available and he might have to work for 24 hours at a stretch.
2. The Consultants who were senior to him were no practical help at all, and this is WRONG.
3. The training method is "see one, do one, teach one" and this is NOT TRAINING or not enough training.

Everybody agreed that this was really wrong and shocking but they are secure in the knowledge that the Conservatives are in power and it will all be sorted out. "Boris is very clever" they say, misty-eyed.

Many of them said the book was not true, it was just for a laugh. The swearing was awful, really awful. The writer is gay. Hmmm.

Marks - all 7 and 8 out of 10.

I was trying to work out if they are all able to "go private" and I think about half of them are. They really don't care about what's going on outside their own lives. It is very depressing.

Jordan Peterson - what is it about him?

So many people I know - intelligent people - have become addicted to his podcasts, interviews, lectures on Youtube etc.

1. It may be because he has a high degree of seriousness, and he tell us certain stories matter, and certain qualities like courage, they have meaning. We watch maybe to see if anything makes him smile or laugh! He seems to find his life of shows and interviews difficult and stressful. He has such a wierd voice that seems to express a high degree of pain and stress, but keeps us listening.  It may be that he also has a sense of mission to save us all from going the wrong way, intellectually and socially, and we respond to that which of course, lies next to the seriousness. He never seems to be stumped by a question or a challenge and that is really important for his followers - he has followers.

3. It can't be denied that we need some new ideas because the old ones aren't working for us, and we need someone who explains things in a new way - not an economic way and not in an overtly political way though I believe his thoughts have some political implications - but drawing from his studies of our psychological human nature and explaining it to us as something which asks for more than simple gratification but for

"self-actualisation, which requires qualities ranging from a sense of humour to profound self-reliance. Beyond even this come needs such as discovery, transcendence and aesthetics, which can lead to peak experiences: moments of transcendence and harmony, also known as an oceanic feeling. "

This is from a paragraph about The Hierarchy of Needs, by Abraham Maslow, in a book called "Psychology in a Nutshell" by Joel Levy.

4. Nobody can prove that a psychologist is right, to some extent.  At present it seems to be a hotchpotch of borrowed ideas - you can borrow some from Jung, if you like, and a dollop of Nietzsche if you like and Maslow seems to be pretty safe. However, the ideas should be plausible and answer all the questions we need to answer about what we want and why we do the things we do.

5. In 12 Ways to change your life there are ideas you can put into action - to do with finding out what you want and putting it into words and specifying what you want or need in order not to feel resentment for an unspecified reason. The reason is simply that you haven't got what you want and you need a plan for getting it, and you might fail but you certainly ought to try. Courageously. It is a plan full of hope, if you have never tried before.

 I haven't finished writing this but I may never do so, I'll just explain that this is incomplete.

Coming Up Trumps by Baroness Jean Trumpington

This autobiography has been dictated to someone - it reads exactly like someone having a long, hard chat. So this book is very good company. In one part it gets rather boring as the author talks about old friends she knew in the old days with whom she played tennis, or went to Ascot, or had "such fun". But there are a few anecdotes that did make me smile.

Here is one from Jean's early days as a wife of a fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge:

"One small fly in the ointment was that my early attempts at cooking were a bit hit and miss, and sometimes dropped as well. My first tossed salad was tossed  straight in the dustbin because I made it with a cabbage and not a lettuce."

"My early attempts at entertaining were similarly disastrous. The first thing I did was to invite the porter to tea, confusing the college porter with the college master.... There were a lot of undergraduates around when I issued this invitation and they killed themselves laughing. I had no idea I was doing anything peculiar. To his great credit, the porter came to tea and a jolly nice time we had."

Jean's husband was frustrated at not being made a Professor of History, so he went back to teaching at Eton, and then to be headmaster of the Leys School, where Jean enjoyed being the headmaster's wife.

"Only once did my behaviour really infuriate Barker. It was three weeks before the end of our last term. For seventeen years we had been at The Leys, and for seventeen years, on every Speech Day, it had been by job - my only job - to walk around the edge of the indoor swimming pool, terrified I would fall in, holding the various cups to be presented to the winners of the swimming gala. In this seventeenth year, when I had paraded around the pool for the final time, with the final cup, I jumped in, at the deep end, fully clothed, in my best Speech Day dress. The masters were astonished, the boys beside themselves with delight.  Of course, almost the entire school followed me in, to 'save' me. Barker wouldn't speak to me for three weeks afterwards. I'm not surprised. It was so naughty, But so funny. I had suffered all those years and I just wanted a little bit of fun."

Later Jean is made Mayor of Cambridge and has yet more fun: she wears a large gold chain to every function and is followed everywhere by a mace-bearer, in his own ceremonial robes, with a huge gold mace, so she insists he follow her onto, for example, the dodgems at the fair, and on the fairground horses!


This shows the Mace-bearer wearing his robes and showing his mace to the Queen. He is supposed to use it to defend the Mayor.
 

Here you can see her have fun on HIGNFY