Month: January 2017

I opened an overhead cupboard in the kitchen at home the other day to take out something and I was showered with rubbish. All sorts of plastic crap fell out on top of me, including empty plastic containers, some with lids and some without, plastic bottles, plastic cups and plates.

This is becoming a regular feature in my place when I go looking for something and it’s driving me nuts.

It seems to me that every inch of space is taken up with clutter and when I go to move one thing, then five or six more bits and pieces fall out onto the floor. When I reach up to get a box of cereal, I must duck to avoid an avalanche of plastic junk and I end up on my hands and knees wasting more time picking it all back up.

It’s all stuff that I don’t want or don’t need yet, there it is, ready to assault me every time I open a door.

It always seems to be plastic and the lids always seem to outnumber the containers. When I ask why we are keeping the stuff, I’m told that it’s because you never know when they might be needed.

When I complain to my wife about it, she tells me that she needs more cupboard space. No she DOES’NT! If she gets twenty more cupboards she’ll manage to fill them to overflowing with more crap. There is something in her programming that tells her that space is bad.

Free space is dangerous so if there is an inch of space somewhere in the house she has to find it and fill it with something. If it’s big enough then she’ll put a lamp on it but a smaller spot might get a photograph or she’ll find a piece of glass to fit it or maybe another piece of plastic.

I have a shed that I can’t get into and an attic that will soon have to be reinforced to hold the weight of junk that is stored there. We have a walk in wardrobe or, I should say, my wife has one. My little section has been reduced over the years and I am now the proud owner of enough room to hang a shirt and a pants, the rest is hers. She added more shelving recently and somehow my little corner has managed to get even smaller.

I can say with absolute certainty that she has clothes in there that haven’t seen the light of day for over twenty years. They have served their purpose and they are doomed to spend the rest of their days gathering dust in the back of the wardrobe, squeezing me out. But they will never leave.

There is obviously some rule or superstition or something that I’m not aware of that prevents women from discarding old clothes. Maybe it’s a throwback to the Famine. It’s in their subconscious that they must always be prepared in case those dark days are ever revisited so they never throw anything away in case they need it someday.

Clothes and shoes, I can understand a little but the need to hoard plastic containers is beyond me. As soon as these containers empty their cargo in my house, they are washed and cleaned and then shoved into one of the already crowded cupboards to join their buddies.

There was a time when we weren’t very comfortable throwing plastic into the refuse because of the damage to the environment but now we are all familiar with recycling so it shouldn’t be such an issue to just get rid of these things like we did with bags.

Plastic bags have become a huge environmental nuisance but Ireland did its bit by introducing a tax on plastic bags in 2002. In some cases they’ve been discarded completely and England and some U.S. cities, are considering similar action.

Our tax on plastic bags has resulted in a 95 percent reduction in their use here. Many in Ireland now carry a reusable bag in the back of the car and the plastic bags that once blighted the Irish countryside are now merely an occasional eyesore.

So, it appears that a tax can have a positive impact on reducing plastic bag consumption and changing people’s behaviour and it gets people behaving more responsibly. Hopefully, people will begin to realise that plastic bags come at great cost to the environment and the ‘bag for life’ concept will become the norm.

Plastic is everywhere and we have become dependent on it. We take it for granted and it’s hard to believe that we were ever able to survive without it.  But it has only taken a single generation to develop our reliance on plastics which has created environmental problems such as crowded landfills, groundwater contamination, and ocean debris that future generations will be cleaning up for a long time to come.

Plastic bags are responsible for over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year and nearly 90% of the debris in our oceans is plastic.

Humans have made enough plastic since the Second World War to coat the Earth entirely in Clingfilm, an international study has revealed. Prince Charles is a long- time defender of the environment and he has stated that one of the most troubling environmental trends is the progressive build-up of plastic waste in the oceans. It’s being swallowed by sea birds, whales, dolphins, seals and other creatures.

He said: “I also find it sobering to think that almost all the plastic ever produced is still here somewhere, on the planet in one form or another, and will remain here for centuries to come – possibly thousands of years.”

You’re spot on Charles and you’ll find most of it in my cupboards.

 

Those of you who have read this column previously will know I have, occasionally, been known to have a whinge or a moan. I am prepared to admit that I sometimes have a bit of a rant when something gets up my nostrils and I have been accused of becoming a grumpy old man by some. Friends and family members have been among my fiercest critics. And that’s not a problem, I can take it and I don’t let it get to me.  Having said that, they are no longer my friends and I have cut myself off from my family and I intend to change my name by deed poll shortly.

Their attitude doesn’t surprise me though because it’s a well-known fact that the great are often mocked. Leonardo Da Vinci was laughed at when he showed people his early drawings of a submarine. Van Gogh was mocked when he cut off his ear because he wanted to give it to a prostitute as a token of his love for her. Although, in fairness, he probably asked for that.  I’ll have the last laugh though when I collect my Nobel Prize for my contribution to literature. Anyway, I intend to prove my detractors wrong and from now on I am going to be positive. You’ll hear no more complaining from me and that’s my New Year’s resolution.

Someone once said that New Year’s resolutions are a bit like babies: They’re fun to make but extremely difficult to maintain. Resolutions don’t have a high success rate and statistically, only a small percentage of people do keep them. It is thought that while 75% of people stick to their goals for at least a week, less than half are still on target after six months. We start off full of enthusiasm on the first of January but by the end of the month many of us have already decided to throw in the towel. So, if at this stage, you’re struggling, don’t worry about it. Statistically you’re bang on target to fail.

But there is one resolution that would be easy to keep and it would benefit everyone and that is a return to the good old tradition of using good manners.

When I was a youngster, manners were very important. One of the most common questions I heard as a child was “Where are your manners?” And it wasn’t only your nearest and dearest that would pull you up on it. It was quite acceptable for anyone to question you on the current whereabouts of your manners. There was an unwritten rule that allowed any adult to take a child to task for not saying please or thank you. As far as I’m concerned that was a good thing because it made it socially unacceptable to be unmannerly.

I was in the Fota Resort over the Christmas with my grandson for the annual visit to Santa. It was a great experience and after we had seen the man himself, I went to buy a cup of coffee. There were about four or five other people ahead of me and they were ordering chips and burgers. Their order kept changing as some had specific requirements. With cheese, without, with ketchup, with mayonnaise, plain etc. Then there was a variety of drinks as well, hot, cold, fizzy and diet versions if they were available. The poor guy behind the counter was struggling to keep up.

Throughout this ordering process I didn’t hear a single please or thank you. That shouldn’t have surprised me in this day and age but it did. There was a time when the lack of good manners would be unusual but now, unfortunately, the opposite seems to be the case. It’s rare to see someone holding a door open for somebody else but it’s also the case that if you do make the effort to assist someone, they won’t acknowledge your effort. Challenging anyone over their lack of consideration would probably result in a feed of abuse.

Years ago, if you reached over someone’s plate for something at the table you got a crack on the back of the hand and you were told to ask for the item to be passed to you.  It was a crime to put your elbows on the table. Slurping was completely out.  How often were you told to put your hand to your mouth when you were yawning or coughing? How many times were you told not to speak with your mouth full? If you were guilty of any of these transgressions, then that was a stain, not only on you, but your whole family because that proved you were ‘dragged up.’

On the other hand, the arrival of multiculturalism has introduced us to different ways of doing things and we need to be aware of new customs and traditions. We need to appreciate that what passes for good manners in one society may be considered rude in another.  For instance, the “okay” gesture we make by connecting the thumb and forefinger in a circle and holding the other fingers straight, is widely recognised as a sign that everything is alright. However, in parts of southern Europe and South America this is an offensive gesture.  I have been at dinner where it was acceptable for the person on your right to put their left hand in your plate and take some food. You may not want to sit at a table where belching is taken as a sign that a meal was appreciated and where flatulence is acceptable. But it happens so you better get used to it.

But feel free to behave how you like when you’re out with me because I won’t complain. That’s my New Year’s resolution, for as long as it lasts.

 

 

 

Happy anniversary to me! On this day last year I wrote my first column for the Evening Echo. If someone had told me back then that I would have written fifty two articles by now I probably would have advised them to ease off the funny mushrooms. After I first agreed to write the column I sat in front of the laptop and I may as well have been looking at the toaster. My mind went blank because, while all along I had just been scribbling for fun, now all of a sudden, there was a thing called a ‘Deadline’. That small word changed everything and initially it scared the pants off me but, thankfully, it didn’t last long.

This last year has been great fun. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and it’s great to think that so many people seem to get a kick out of my ramblings. People have approached me in all sorts of places to pass a comment on something they’ve read or to ask me where I get the ideas from.  A lot of what I write is pure nonsense but it’s all designed to be entertaining.

The good news for those of you who enjoy the column is that I have enough rubbish in my head to keep it going for another while. That’s probably bad news for those of you who would rather read the TV listings but as long as the Editor isn’t one of those then we should be ok for another bit. But I don’t imagine that I will last as long as a man by the name of Alistair Cooke.

I first came across Alistair Cooke and his ‘Letter from America’ in the eighties. He was an English journalist working in the States and he would read his letter once a week on BBC Radio 4. I used to listen to him in the car on the way to work and if you’ve never heard him speak then you are missing something. He wrote about his observations on life in America generally and his experiences there. He died on March 30^th 2004 but he will be remembered as one of the greatest radio presenters of all time. He wrote and presented ‘Letter from America’ for over fifty-eight years.

He was born in Manchester in 1908 and joined the BBC as a journalist in 1934. In 1937 he moved permanently to New York, continuing to report for the BBC on U.S. politics, and after 1939, he reported on the American perspective on World War II.

After the war, the BBC Director of the Spoken Word suggested that Cooke should begin a series where he could talk about everything that he had experienced in American life. So in March 1946, Alistair Cooke’s ‘Letter from America’ was born, but with the proviso that no matter how successful the Letter became, it would not be financed beyond two series or twenty-six weeks. It was, basically, a six-month assignment.

It did, however, run for a little longer than that and ‘Letter from America’ remains unbeaten as the longest running one-man series in broadcasting history. It has been heard in over 50 countries with an estimated audience of 34 million. It was first broadcast in 1946 and he broadcast his last letter in February 2004 just one month before he died at the age of ninety five. It was some achievement.

Alistair Cooke had a very distinctive, deep, soft voice which was not easily forgotten and he delivered his lines as if he had all the time in the world. He was completely unhurried. He wrote about ordinary life in America and he made it uncomplicated and easy listening. The Times described him as someone who read as well as he sounded and his voice reminds me a little of Peter Aliss, the great golf commentator.

He was hugely popular and many terms have been used over the last half-century to describe Alistair Cooke’s presentation in his Letter; Urbane, charming, informed, informal, shrewd, erudite, witty, perceptive, enlightening and elegant. Whatever the description, he certainly captivated his audience. The show was aired late in the evening on BBC Radio Four and lasted for about fifteen miniutes. It appealed to all ages and attracted a large and diverse audience. Many drivers, me included, often arrived at their destination and had to sit in the car until he finished his piece.

Harold Macmillan tuned in regularly and his chauffeur timed their trips to coincide with the repeat of the Letter. He wasn’t short of well-known admirers. Clementine Churchill once sent him a copy of her husband’s memoirs with the inscription, ‘to Alistair Cooke, whose broadcasts gave the author such pleasure.’ Ronald Reagan recorded a special 80th birthday tribute to Cooke, and ex-President FW de Klerk of South Africa often picked the broadcasts up on the World Service.

When Cooke was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1973, the Queen is supposed to have expressed admiration at his ability to sit down, week after week, and communicate so directly with his audience. What is also amazing is the fact that he never knew what he was going to talk about any week until he actually sat down to write and most of what he did write came from memory. He was simply a pure natural talent and a model for all would be presenters.

He signed off from his final broadcast and said farewell in typical fashion, “Throughout 58 years I have had much enjoyment in doing these talks and hope that some of it has passed over to the listeners, to all of whom I now say thank you for your loyalty and goodbye.”

Hopefully it will be some time before I sign off and bid farewell to my solitary follower, my mother.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s difficult to understand what is happening to our health care. Looking after the sick in our communities should be a top priority. You can survive anything when you are well but if your health is affected then everything else going on in your life also suffers. Minor issues can become magnified when you’re not feeling the best.

Many years ago I found myself in hospital after developing an infection and I had to have some minor surgery. The guy in the bed next to me had lots of hair and a beard and he thought that he was Jesus. He would shout at me and complain that I was the Devil and that I should be housed elsewhere.

One day, I awoke at some point to find him standing next to my bed in his pyjamas and he was tucking into my lunch. I got a bit of a fright and I threatened to box the head off him if he didn’t get lost. But then I realised that I couldn’t actually move so the threat was pretty redundant and I was at his mercy. This poor character obviously had difficulties other than whatever it was that caused him to be attending that particular hospital and after this incident the hospital ensured that there was an attendant sitting by his bedside for the remainder of his stay.

Looking back on it now, that experience was a thing of nothing but I was very vulnerable at the time so every little annoyance became a crisis in my mind. When you’re not well or in pain the last thing you need is another distraction to add to your existing discomfort.

So I have been thinking about all the unfortunate people who are in need of treatment now and who, after being admitted to hospital, spend so much of their time on trollies. This has been happening all over the country for years and there seems to be no end in sight. Despite the promises and best efforts of so many politicians and medical administrators, the number of patients having to wait for a bed seems to be growing constantly. Being in pain and discomfort is bad enough without having to suffer the indignity of waiting for treatment in a hospital corridor.

Everyone agrees that this is not acceptable so why does it remain an issue? I haven’t heard one medical person putting forward any kind of theory that would suggest that a prolonged wait on a trolley is good for the health. Neither have I heard any politician say that having your constituents waiting on trollies is good for getting votes. So, if it is in everybody’s interest to fix the problem, why isn’t it fixed?

According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO), there are between 500 and 600 patients on trolleys in hospitals across the country awaiting a bed at any given time.

I did think that our best chance of resolving the issue lay in the hands of two former Ministers for Health who were both doctors, James O’Reilly and Leo Varadkar. But disappointingly, they have both left the building and the problem remains. Both had previously suggested that it would be unwise for any politician to promise to eliminate this issue entirely because no health system had managed to completely deal with the problem so far. So is that it then?

Young doctors and nurses seem to be leaving for foreign shores in their droves. They say that they are looking for better conditions and more opportunities for advancement. Rather than stay here to work themselves into the ground, they are opting instead for a better quality of life in places like the UK and Australia where their skills are appreciated.

In a recent article in the Irish Examiner, it was reported that 371 people were transferred out of the Irish health service to be treated abroad under EU cross-border schemes. And although most of these cases relate to orthopaedics and orthodontics, an increasing number of transfers are also now focussed on general surgery at a rising cost to the State.

In response, a Department of Health spokesperson said Health Minister Simon Harris is fully committed to reducing waiting lists in 2017. Mr Harris has already instigated a five-point plan to tackle the problem of people waiting for care. One point in the plan seems to be to raise the health insurance levies by another 10% and the end result of that could well be that more consumers won’t be able to afford the cost of private health cover and will opt instead to cancel policies and take their chances with a public system that’s already up the walls.

The HSE says that 8,000 patients have come off the waiting list since August. While some of these have been treated, others have just been given an appointment for their procedure and in other cases names of people who died were removed. This was probably a good move because waiting for dead people to turn up for appointments could definitely cause delays. But despite this, substantial numbers of new patients are being added to outpatient lists every week.

It’s nice to hear that Simon Harris is committed to dealing with these issues. James and Leo were also committed but the problem got the better of both of them. It doesn’t fill me with confidence though to hear Simon saying that he was caught unawares by the outbreak of flu in the first few days of 2017. I would have thought that flu and winter went hand in hand.

Maybe the answer is to send everyone abroad for treatment. That would take the pressure off the system here and it would provide work for the Irish medical staff already working abroad. Win win.

Some time ago, maybe seven or eight weeks, I’m not sure exactly, I developed what I would call a ‘flu’. Doctors will tell you that we rarely get the ‘flu’ here but we do get heavy colds and the occasional virus but they consider the ‘flu’ to be a different animal altogether. But whatever it was that I had, it involved lots of shivering, sweating, coughing and a blocked nose. This stuffed nose business was a little different from what I was used to because I seemed to be blocked up at the back of my nose for a long time and it took a few weeks before I was able to breathe properly again.

Soon after that, it seemed to me that everything that I ate tasted bland and I couldn’t get a flavour from anything. When I was cooking I had to ask someone else to taste the food for me to see if it was ok and it slowly dawned on me that I had lost my sense of taste and my sense of smell. My sense of smell is gone completely and I suspect that about 95% of my ability to taste is gone. I think I can taste the odd thing but then I’m not sure if I’m actually tasting it or whether my brain is just telling me what it tastes like from memory. In any event, at the moment, they’re both pretty much redundant.

So I did what every self- respecting sick person does when they have an ailment, I contacted Doctor Google and typed in my symptoms. While doing this, I’m pretty sure that I have some rare form of cancer that only affects one in every forty million people but I just happen to be that person. Or else my brain has become loose and this is likely to result in my imminent departure to the afterlife. It’s bound to be serious.

One website advised me that I could be suffering from Anosmia which is a medical term for the loss of the sense of smell. And this could be caused by certain medication, recreational drug use such as cocaine or amphetamines, diabetes, long-term alcohol misuse, an underactive thyroid, a head injury, a brain tumour, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, liver or kidney disease or schizophrenia. That about covers everything but in around 20% of cases, the cause can’t be found. So I was no wiser after this.

Then I checked out another website and, to my surprise, I came across an explanation that turned out to be a little less dramatic and a bit more comforting than the previous one. One of the first things that jumped out at me was the fact that it is quite common for some people to lose their sense of smell and taste after a virus or a dose of the ‘flu’.

One woman gave an account of her experience and how it started with a bad head cold three years ago. Her sense of smell and taste deserted her. For the first few days she accepted it and put it down to the blocked nose. When it dragged on for a fortnight, long after her cold had disappeared, she sought help. When the nasal sprays and antibiotics didn’t work, her specialist confirmed what she already feared, that it was an upper respiratory infection that had attacked her olfactory nerves. Food tasted like cardboard and roses could have been artificial. She could still determine bitter, sweet, salt and sour, but they were empty without the accompanying flavours and scents. It became a near obsession and she used to cry when she could smell nothing.

Then, a few months ago, she went for a run and afterwards when she got in the car to go home she caught a smell of something instantly recognisable. It was dog poo. She checked her trainers and, sure enough, she had stepped in some. Instead of feeling disgusted like most people would, she had a rush of joy because she was able to smell it. She didn’t clean it off for days and would return to the trainer regularly to check that she could still smell it. Her sense of smell and taste is now 75% recovered and hopefully she can now smell things other than dog poo.

Now, I’m not sure if this is a permanent condition with me or not, I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see. If it is then I would like to thank those senses for the service that they have given me up to now. It is appreciated and I harbour no hard feelings and I only wish them all the best. If they do come back then I won’t have to step in dog poo to realise it because I have another detector that is every bit as effective.

My grandson, Cooper, has an ability to fill a nappy that, at times, could be used as a weapon of offence. There are occasions when these things could be classified as hazardous material. They can bring tears to your eyes faster than any onion. Cooper spends a lot of time sitting on my lap watching Fireman Sam and the only way I know that he has made a deposit in his nappy is when I see the family gathering around me with breathing apparatus and industrial gloves. I only hope and pray, at those times, that it’s Cooper that has the issue and not me and thankfully it would appear that I have not reached that stage yet.

Hopefully these senses will return at some point but if they don’t well then, we’ll just have to get on with it. It might suit me though if it doesn’t happen until Cooper is out of nappies.