Capt SpaceBat

In July 1790, Baron von Grimm wrote, “We are obsessed by the idea of regulation, and our Masters of Requests refuse to understand that there is infinity of things in a great State with which a government should not concern itself.” [Inappropriate emphasis, mine.]

Today has been a prime example of this for me, as the deadline for submitting tax returns draws ever closer.  Without revealing too much detail, our attempts to interact with the Inland Revenue’s successor - HMRC - over the past few months has been quite Kafkaesque; especially with regard to registering for and accessing the online wealth-sharing system.  The process was further complicated by the fact that supposedly unique numbers were not, in fact, unique; rather unsettling for a person with a diffuse personality to find they are considered the same entity in both singular and multiple forms.

To top this off, I have spent some days tracking the progress of an item of jewellery that I had purchased about a fortnight ago from the United States.  According to the tracking data available, an attempt was made to deliver it at a quarter to five this morning: an unlikely circumstance.  It transpired that it has been delivered into the hands of the person responsible for collecting the excise duties due to - guess who?  - none other than HMRC.

What is the Borderline lesson in all this, I hear you ask.  Dealing with bureaucracy - and not being stressed out doing so - is the answer.  Trying to so unsupported is a minefield which many prefer not to attempt to cross, or even think about, which is why so many people with mental health problems have their affairs in a terribly confused state.  Getting diagnosed, accepted for treatment, registered with the necessary governmental and support services and one’s financial affairs in order is really hard work, even for those with perfect mental acuity; trying to do so whilst hanging on for dear life is a near impossibility.  One of many reasons I suppose why the care and treatment rates are so abysmally low and the attrition rates so high, as I highlighted in recent posts.  Support is vital, but so hard to find if it is not already there.

I have even more bureaucracy to deal with tomorrow; I am almost looking forward to it, which is some form of progress, I suppose.  Today’s machinations made me miss my Art class, so it had better have been worth it.  It will be, I know, but it’s one of those “Daddy or chips?” situations

---

Links etc.

Baron von Grimm:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Melchior,_baron_von_Grimm

Mental Health among Adults in England, 2007:
 http://captspacebat.today.com/2009/01/27/mental-health-among-adults-in-england-2007/

Self-help groups:
http://captspacebat.today.com/2009/01/23/self-help-groups/

Finally had my lumbar MRI scan this afternoon: the findings will - hopefully - help draw to a close three decades of spinal, lumbar and sciatic agonies.  Having been x-rayed on the Winter Solstice to check if my legs would prove hazardous to the “Sir Harry Secombe scanner” I went today to hospital to have my lower spine scanned, should the x-rays prove satisfactory.  Having ticked and circled all the necessary bits of information - and consented to any lumbar injections should they be required - I found that there was no check box along the lines of “do you have any fragments of metal in your body that are not surgical appliances, bomb or blast fragments or consensual body adornments?” 

Considering that this was the very worry that had delayed the scan by 4 weeks, I was a little concerndc. Alerting to assistant to this deplorable shortcoming, the information was addded to the form.  The x-rays in question - taken at another hospital - were tracked down and checked; only to show no fragments of metal left behind after the removal of an “external fixator” in 1984 …

… this in itself was puzzling, as I have been successfully setting off metal detectors since my mid-teenage years.  The new diagnosis of “non-metallic legs” took a few minutes to get used to; having had so many other diagnoses for my psyche’s variations from the norm, it only begs more questions than it answers.

I suppose that my therapist’s prior assertion that she did not know (or possibly care?) what my psycho-diagnosis was, but that she was there to help me deal with the effects of whatever was causing problems, was the right way to look at this new insight on my magnetic personality.  If I stop triggering metal detectors as a result of this new knowledge, then what does that say about the power of the mind to affect external objects?  What a can of worms …

No, this is not quite as strange, dangerous or frightening as it might seem at first glance.  Admittedly, it took me a bit of time to get to grips with the idea.  With any mental health diagnosis, one of the more common reactions is to lock one’s self away from the outside world, or only to engage with it on an ultra-safe level, such as hanging around “Pound-a-Pint” pubs all day or dozing through “support group” meetings . This is not necessarily the best and most progressive behaviour, surrounding oneself with very similar people and thus reaffirming one’s identity.  Cultural visits and days out - even window-shopping - can provide stimulation, enjoyment and entertainment; not necessarily at great cost to one’s pocket.

The two greatest financial hurdles to this great endeavour are Transport and Admission Fees. 

---

If one has a mental health diagnosis, it is possible to claim a mobility component to one’s benefit: for people who need help with getting around - further information available at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/DisabledPeople/index.htm.  Also the Freedom Pass (or similar scheme) may be available from your local authority, providing free travel - more at http://www.freedompass.org/ Transport for London also have a Bus & Tram discount scheme available - see http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/faresandtickets/5568.aspx - which gives half price fares on the bus and tram network.For readers in the United Kingdom, the above is an approximation of the situation; your own country may work in a similar fashion.

---

The costs of transportation now in part resolved, admission fees are the next hurdle to be overcome.  The good news is that many cultural intstitutions - museums and galleries especially - offer discounted admission to the unwaged, out-of-work and disabled.  Likewise there are many places to go to or to see that are absolutely free.  Local listings guides and newspapers are a great resource for events and attractions, libraries are free and have increasing number of activities on offer not traditionally associated with libraries: events, activities, Internet access, local history and information to name but a few.  Marvelling at Nature’s wonders - parks, gardens, landscapes - is almost always free.  Window-shopping is another past-time that can engross and inform: try to go the very best shopping areas: Bond Street, Hatton Garden, Chelsea and Knightsbridge are among my favourites.  Don’t waste time coveting and wishing you could afford the wonderful things on display; just marvel at them and their settings and surroundings.  Look at the buildings while you are at it.  The architectural heritage - usually above and around the shop window level - is often far more fascinating than the unaffordable offerings below.  Car boot sales offer even more chances to interact with people - both living and the long dead previous owners - see some beautiful things alongside an amount of lesser goods and even pick up a bargain.  It was in fact these local boot sales that first got me out of the house after my diagnosis.  The people tend to be accepting - and usually forgetting, if not forgiving - and one can exercise one’s particular collecting hobbies and find out vast amounts of historical and cultural information, all at little cost or danger to oneself.  Food and day-to-day supplies can also usually be obtained at cut-price, saving even more money.

---

That said, go out & have fun - you don’t have to interact too much with too many people if you don’t want to; but it might just develop at your own accepted pace, along with your improvement and progress.

---

What have I been up to?

• Get published:
  Contacting outside agencies to gather information

• Get exhibited:
  More thoughts on current works in progress; will have to miss tomorrow’s Art class, will make further sketches and notes

• Get rich(er) &/or better:
  Emailed creditors, went to boot sale, had a fab lunch, did more shopping, heard encouraging news about progress of external events which for now must remain unreported.

• Get out of the United Kingdom before the Olympics:
  Set about getting materials for refurbishment of toilet/bathroom, bought radiator “bleeder key”, coincidentally the boiler packed up - arranged for engineer to have a look at the antiquated system - hopefully might even get it replaced!  All making the flat more attractive for another later dweller.

Having written my resolutions for 2009 already, the sort of blog post that I had planned for today has had to change.  Which is good?  Change is good, as is planning; planned, managed change is best.  This is true of many things: blogs, daily activities, work, life, art, computer systems, and the day-to-day management of mental health issues, to name but a few.  It would be great to say that being an expert on all of the former parts of the list that I could put this experience into place better to manage my psyche, psychoses, neuroses, voices, and the like.  Alas, apart from my IT experience, managing change has never been a strong point of mine - an all or nothing; sh!t or bust, concrete or chaos approach, probably indicative of inner turmoil; change always seeming to be at the behest of others outside me: those “in charge.”  Well, part of my short list of resolutions for the year ahead is to take charge more of my situation: I suppose that it all is about “taking charge” - a mighty leap forward for SpaceBat-kind.  Having regular patterns, flexible enough to cope with the external pressures that might seek to alter them subtly and a proven coping strategy seems to be the way that works for most people.  Likewise, those without these in plan or in place seem to be least able to manage in the long run.  Bright shooting stars, burnt out and gone too soon.  Include me out this time around.  Good luck all in the year ahead.  Oh, and if you need an IT consultant, piece of abstract expressionism, magic spells, philtres or charms, antiques, jewellery, garden, house exchange or support group for BPD, discussions on boating, cooking, politics, the environment, magick, sex or death, you know where to come … and don’t forget to have a great 2009.  Or else.

Human Rights Day is celebrated across the world on 10 December.

The date was chosen to honour the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption and proclamation, on 10 December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first global enunciation of human rights. The commemoration was established in 1950, when the General Assembly invited all states and interested organizations to celebrate the day as they saw fit.

60 years on from UDHR and what has happened? Looking at my categories:

# Antiques - The work of more oppressed people has moved into the antiques category
# Boating - not much progress, barring emigration and piracy
# BPD - mental health: fewer burnings at the stake, although more use of emergency mental health powers to detain State opponents, my art exhibited online
# Death - much more of it in new and more immediate ways; decentralisation of the “State Murder Squad”
# Food - seems to be less of it to go around more people
# Gardening - “see Food”, likewise less of it to go around, also see “Housing”
# General - prognosis not good
# Jewellery - hoarding against harder times
# Legal - more freedoms granted, more restrictions in place
# Money - more of it in fewer hands
# Politics - bread and circuses
# Recycling - greater need whilst more want newer things, see “money” and “Politics”
# Sex - more diversity, less perversity - did anyone mention bondage?

Have to add a new category:
# Housing - more of it exchangeable - see http://blog.gardenlend.co.uk/2008/12/03/gardenlend-the-next-stage-house-and-garden-swap/

Here’s to the next 60 years - cripes, I shall be 100 and - no doubt - “wearing something tight”

Thanks Leonard Cohen!

Many thanks to Chato B. Stewart from Mental Health Humor for this fine caricature.  The additional cartoon elements inspired quite a number of thoughts; mostly postitive ones, which is both a good thing as well as being possibly a first.

Fortunately (for me, in mine humble estimation) the Mental Health profession has not seen fit to treat me with pharmaceuticals; the basis of my particular personality disorder and related traits being psychological rather than physiological, so I don’t really have too much first hand experience of going through the medication treadmill.  Here, in the United Kingdom, the first problem seems to be getting any treatment at all; many trained psychologists and therapists moving straight over to the private sector once qualified leads to a patchy paucity of service.  That said, the quality of care, once finally obtained, is outstanding.  At least that is mine experience of psychotherapy.

The psychiatric and medical end of mental health provision stills seem to be trapped in somewhere, if not “half Disney, half Kraft-Ebbing” at least, a strange amalgam of Franz Kafka’s and Charles Dickens’ discarded plot-lines.  But that again is only my partially-informed opinion.

During one particularly shaky episode a few years ago, I was taken to hospital one Saturday night and - since there was nobody suitable to see me - I was discharged until the following Monday with a supply of anti-psychotics to see me through until then.  On returning home, feeling for a moment that my troubles were actually being taken seriously, I peered into the box of tablets to find 2 (yes, that’s right, two: the number between one and three) little pills.  Outraged at this, I decided the only way out was to attempt an overdose by taking both of the tablets.  At the same time.  After washing them down with a bottle of cheap wine, I decided that the mental health profession had little to offer me and that I was better off fending for myself.

How wrong I was.

Over that year, I had several (countless) episodes, some of which required short visits to hospital to discuss matters with psychiatric and psychological staff, along with the occasional request to be detained under whichever section of the Mental Health Act that I thought either appropriate or had not tried before.  By dint of being in many professionals’ thoughts as they arose, as they lay down and as they awoke screaming in the night - much to my wife’s credit - I finally started a course of psychotherapy.  Some 31 years after it had been first suggested, when I was a young child being taken into care.

The therapy - a short course and a long course - did prove invaluable; more of which at a later date.  It was only through repeated and relentless persecution of the local health authority that this was achieved.  What someone either less determined or without other support would have done to get treated is beyond me; probably resulting in an emergency admission, armed police or suicide.

Even with all this therapy under my mental belt, as stated - I think - in the Qu’ran, knowledge without use is worse than sinful and so I had not only to apply the lessons learnt about myself but to put them to some practical use and learn to interact with other people, breaking the inability to fit within accepted societal norms.  “Websites” came the answer from on high.

Wait, isn’t that what I did before, locked away in my room in the dark avoiding all human contact? Yes, but this time would be different; I would interact. I joined a college evening class to brush up my web skills and slowly reintroduce myself to the world outside of pubs, mental gutters and the dark side of the duvet. 

For both of my two immediately previous courses (online via Vision2Learn) a key part of the course had been to produce a website as a project throughout the course.  Thus two of Sarah’s brainchildren www.SansSeraphim.co.uk and www.GardenLend.co.uk had been born in digital format. 

This course was different.  Each week we learn (or usually re-learnt) some aspect of Advanced Web Design, applying it each time to a new context: Arboriculture, Classic Cars, Bookshops and the like.  Throughout the course I developed - at Sarah’s behest - a site devoted to selling Modernist jewellery: www.Modern-ism.com and managed through highly targetted site optimisation and search engine submission to get it to the front page of the major search engines for most of the desired search terms.

Our range of objets de vertu expanded, covering ever wider periods: eventually over two centuries and more, hence the name of the new website: www.2CenturiesAntiques.co.uk - we are dedicated to bringing you an interesting range of objects, including gold, silver, fine and costume jewellery, pewter, silver plate and silver metalware, glass, pottery, porcelain, costume, textiles, furniture and collectables.

We have called the site “2 Centuries Antiques” because it can contain at, any one time, pieces from any two centuries, apart from the 21st. We stock Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modernist, African, Asian and Oriental jewelry, antiques and collectibles. We try to keep our prices as low as possible, and our shipping is free worldwide.

That’s the end of this blog posts’s commercial plug; on a more personal note, if anyone who has a ground floor council or Housing Association flat with a garden that they wish to exchange for a second floor flat with a balcony on the outskirts of Wimbledon, please take a look at http://blog.gardenlend.co.uk/2008/12/03/gardenlend-the-next-stage-house-and-garden-swap/