My last scribble, PC 443, ‘ere in The ‘ope’, reached Ian, one of the school chums with whom I went to Greece in 1965. (See PC 346 Puds to Greece August 2023) Ian commented that his wife Julie suffers from BPPV but uses the Epley Manoeuvre to ‘pop the rocks back’; always good to know what works! Ian’s note reminded me of Ray, one of us six, who died in Toronto in March; otherwise we’re all still pumping blood!
Funny how often something you read or see brings back memories. The other weekend, in one of those colour magazines accompanying the newspaper – I buy a hard copy at the weekend but read the digital version during the week – there was a fascinating article about Caroline Scott who, with her husband James, had fostered many many children over ten years. Faced with some stark choices for the future of their last one, Scarlett, they decided to adopt her themselves.
Caroline’s own mother had spent a lot of her early life in a Liverpool orphanage, “enduring a regime so brutal that she couldn’t recall a moment of kindness.” It was the next memory that pulled me up short. “When she frequently wet her bed out of fear and misery, she was made to stand alone in the corner of an empty room with the soiled sheet over her head for hours until it dried.” Sadly ‘the casual violence of adults’ continues in the C21st, as does ‘the utter powerlessness of little children’. I read that a couple of times, the image forming in my mind of a poor little girl standing alone and unloved.
I don’t imagine Ian would have remembered, but as an early teenager I suffered the indignity of wetting my bed; if he does, it’s not the sort of thing to mention. In our boarding school, there was no privacy and those who ended up with wet sheets were the focus of ridicule and derision. It lasted for a few months, probably brought on by a sense of abandonment, left in a school over a hundred miles from my parents. (“Do you good Caruthers! Man up!” sort-of thinking).
This week The Times carried the obituary of Joy Schaverien, a Brighton resident, who coined the term Boarding School Syndrome and, in 2015, published Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the “Privileged” Child. She noted the ABCD of trauma: abandonment, bereavement, captivity and dissociation. Growing up in an institution without much love or appropriate touch, she explained, can lead to depression, broken relationships and problems with intimacy. “Children need to grow among people who love them,” she said in 2011. “Things have improved but children are still exposed to regimented lifestyles, loneliness and separation. They often turn into very successful adults — look at the cabinet — but they can suffer from a poverty of emotion.”
Losing bladder control when frightened is known as ‘stress incontinence’, because the ‘fight or flight’ response triggers involuntary muscle contractions and a temporary weakening of the pelvic floor muscles. These muscles are responsible for holding urine in and preventing leaks. When scared the body releases adrenaline, causing muscles throughout the body to tense. This tension can disrupt the normal control of the bladder and lead to involuntary leakage, even if the bladder isn’t full. Of course, delightfully, the same can happen when something is hysterically funny, a little loss of control!! (Note 1)
My postcard titled ‘The Man in The Window’ (PC 384 April 2024) was the result of thinking about the chap who worked at his desk, in the front window of the house across Albany Villas. Delightfully Simon has become a friend and happy to chew the fate about this and that. The postcard itself ventured into voyeurism, initiated by that James Stewart film Rear Window. Voyeurism could have been levelled at whoever took the photograph of me having my cold shower after a hot yoga session!
I knew nothing of it until it appeared on a social media platform. Would I have minded? Of course not? But it got me thinking whether the person who took the photograph should have asked my permission before posting it online. Unprompted, maybe after thinking about it themselves, they did take it down after a few hours!
Not taken by a drone!
In Castle Combe in Wiltshire, one of the ‘prettiest villages in England’, voyeurism is taken to another level. The village is a magnet for drone operators who want to capture its beauty. Unfortunately for its residents they have become a real issue; “Somebody was sitting in their bath, looked out the window and there’s a drone filming them.”!! Voyeurism again?
We live with plastic, although there is a great deal of effort to negate its lasting effect on the planet. I assume this is the reason that my morning ‘Orange Juice with bits’, which comes in a plastic bottle, now has its top connected to the main body by two little thin strips of more plastic; I guess it’s to stop them separating and polluting the earth.
The trouble is if the top isn’t completely clear of the bottle, it’s easy for some juice to drip into the cap. When you put the cap back on, it runs down the outside of the bottle. God! These First World C21st problems!
My landlord, Southern Housing, is trying to enter the century by updating its IT systems. I now have an on-line account through which I can notify them of repairs etc. I have owned our apartment since 2012 so you would think they had my personal details correct. I was asked to check. Apparently, my date of birth is 1st January 1900! Gulp! I knew I was getting on but over 125 years of age. Unlikely!
Richard 20th June 2025
Hove
Note 1 There was a joke about Eastbourne, a town popular with pensioners to the east of Brighton: “Near The Continent (ie north coast of France) and incontinent.” Of course, we start life wearing a nappy and some will end it doing the same!
postcards 