Care & Familial Responsibility

When I wrote Why does disability make people more vulnerable to domestic abuse?, I talked about how carers are often seen as universally saintly and this can mean that it becomes harder to question whether they're doing what they should be. There are other, related effects. We praise carers, but - as with the sanctity of motherhood - believing that people are endowed with magical powers of patience and wisdom, we tend to stop supporting them (what could a mere mortal do to help?) and certainly don't value what they do in any material way.

The week before last, Jeremy Hunt gave a speech vaguely advocating that families care more for their elderly - that we should aspire to be more like cultures in which care homes are "a last resort." This is so cynical, it makes my skin crawl. Then the lovely Glosswitch wrote about caring for her brother, and her fear that her caring role will increase as her parents age.

What are the rules for caring for a sibling, anyway? I'm not sure but I've always felt they must be different to those that apply to parents or offspring. Indeed, I've often hoped I'd find them written down somewhere: 

Rules for Caring: 

• children – definitely 

• partner – of course 

• parents – probably 

• grandparents – maybe 

• siblings – siblings? Who do you think you are, Mother Teresa? Surely everyone draws the line at siblings, not because we love them less but because it's just too hard.

So I really want to talk a bit about care and familial responsibility. This post is a little epic and Glosswitch's bullet points won't be the last.

Apart from any kids who you brought into existence, I don't believe you're responsible for any family member just because of blood. Yet we're all responsible for the people we love, for people who have loved and cared for us, and that's the same whether they are blood, related through marriage, or our close friends. If you love people, you need to look after them as best you can, whatever that entails.

But that doesn't mean that you should ever have to perform care. Two things worth mentioning before we go on:

1. Here, I'm talking about responsibility. Sometimes, people have no real choice about becoming a carer and that's a terrible thing. This post should demonstrate why this choice is essential.
2. Fortunately, most people never even face this prospect. We're sometimes presented with a picture of old age where everyone needs round-the-clock care. In reality, most people grow old and remain independent until death or shortly before death. Hooray! 

Right, back to what happens when folk do need care..

Granny Kelly told me a story about when her own grandmother, who lived next door, was sick. This was the 1930s and my great great grandmother had a morbid fear of the hospital - everyone she knew who had gone in alive had come out dead. So Granny's mother cared for her bedridden mother, whilst running her own home and bringing up her three children.

One day, Granny's aunt came to stay with the old lady and give Granny's mother a rest for a few days. The aunt didn't even last to midnight, before she came round to Granny's mother's house, knocked on the door and begged for her sister's help. She could not cope with her poorly mother. She could not perform care. She had to go home. So she did.

This is the first reality of care within families: Some people are extremely ill-suited to this. I could look around my family now and tell you who would do well caring for their parent, partner, sibling or child should they become disabled  (I could tell you some of these things from personal experience).

This is not about how nice people are or the quality of love in their hearts.

Although needs vary, I'd say a typical carer needs to be pretty good at

• Working to a strict routine; meals at these times, drugs at these times, the same every day.
• Being able to rest and sleep during breaks, as opposed to the one long break most people have from the end of work in the evening to the beginning of work next day.
• Flexibility. All plans may change.
• Not getting easily bored.
• Not panicking in a crisis. 
• A certain kind of detachment when it comes to bodily fluids, effluent, injury and nudity.
• Respecting the inherent dignity of a human being, even when they are helpless.
• Reassuring people.

For some people, in the right circumstance, this stuff comes quite naturally - I've written before about how tasks we could define as "care" can merge with the natural teamwork that takes places within a partnership or family. But people and family dynamics vary hugely.

Take reassurance as an example. This is an essential skill for many carers; people often need reassurance when they're distressed, confused or in pain - let alone when they're having symptoms that will one day kill them. And that isn't something that comes naturally to everyone. If you think about times you've been in a real panic, then think through your friends and family and consider how many you're bloody glad were nowhere in sight. Some very lovely people have a habit of pouring petrol onto flames.

This doesn't mean that people can't or don't learn new skills - people often do. But if they can't, you're looking at a very miserable carer and very poor quality of care.

And that's plain old innocent aptitude. There are loads of families - there are elements of this within my own - where there's a great deal of talk of love, charity beginning at home, doing anything at all for one's nearest and dearest, but a complete lack of action or support when help is really needed.  Some people find illness in others irritating and lose patience when their partner has a cold, let alone something more long-term. In fact - as anyone with chronic illness will have learned - many people just don't have the stamina for any kind of problem that goes on and on and doesn't have a simple solution and a happy ending.

It would be great if everyone acted in the best interests of the people they love.  However, when they won't, insisting that they should does no good to a disabled or elderly person (nor indeed, does reminding them that their family could function differently).

Then there's the fact that some disabled and elderly people are extremely difficult to deal with. Some people who require care aren't pleasant people.  Some parents have given their children a lifetime of ill treatment before needing help in their old age. Others are decent caring folk who nevertheless become ill-tempered and demanding when living with illness, pain and impairment. Just as some people don't cope at all well with care, many people cope very badly with needing help, and find it much easier to snap at family members than they would at a professional performing a paid service (a professional who could resign their position if they feel mistreated).

And that's before we talk about conditions. Caring for someone with severe autism is very very different from caring for, say, someone with muscular dystrophy. Meanwhile, most conditions effect different people very differently - coping with someone who has profound dementia but is cheerful and co-operative is a completely different kettle of fish to dealing with a loved-one who - through no fault of their own - is now aggressive, even violent towards you.

And all of this is before we talk about what is practically possible. My Gran has four children, ten adult grandchildren and a few adult great grandchlidren (she is a great great grandmother), most of whom live within the same town. But when her health deteriorated, there was nobody who could take on a full-time caring role. There was nobody who met the following essential criteria:

• In possession of a house with a spare room and bathroom that was physically accessible to Gran or
• Able to practically move into the small spare room of Gran's bungalow.
• Not working or studying full-time. 
• Not chronically ill.
• Not on the list of people Gran strongly disliked and mistrusted even before she got dementia. 
• Not on the list of people Gran had so deeply hurt or offended, they may not show at the funeral.

So my Gran went into a care home. It was the last resort, but really, it shouldn't have been: my Gran suffered a series of falls at home, including one where it seemed clear that she had left the gas on, had later smelled gas and had fallen in her hurry to leave the house. The general feeling was that Gran would suffer a great deal leaving her home and she would stubbornly resist. In fact, she adjusted to it in the blink of an eye and quickly became happier than we've ever known her. She's currently insisting that she is engaged to another resident of the care home, although she's forgotten who that is.

Of course, this isn't the way things are, but our experience. It would have still been the right thing to do even if she'd hated the care home - she was made safer, and none of us could keep her safe otherwise. No amount of love or concern keeps someone safe when they really can't be left on their own for any period of time.

---

So, what if you love someone who needs care but you're not in a position - whether through personal, practical or financial reasons - to perform that care? Well, the great thing about care work is that it can be performed, to a very high standard, by professional people. But (a) someone has to make sure that's happening and (b) good care only gets you half way to good quality of life. There are a thousand things we can do to support our disabled and elderly loved-ones and their carers (paid or otherwise) without ever having to see them naked.

People often fail at these things for a few different reasons:

• The sense that anything done to support disabled people is a tremendous chore/ act of charity. 
• Guilt. I feel guilty I can't do more, so I'll pretend there's nothing I can do.
• The thing mentioned above about problems that go on and on and can't be fixed.
• It really is easy to get on with my busy life and let time (and good intentions) fly by.  
• Generalised squeamishness about age, illness or disability.
• If I can't be the hero of the hour, I'm not playing the game.

Jeremy Hunt talked about loneliness, but as Aditya Chakrabortty pointed out, young people are more likely to be lonely than older people. Disabled people of all ages, especially those not in work, are much more vulnerable to loneliness than say, my Granny Kelly who at ninety, keeps a calendar jam-packed with family visits, trips out with friends, concerts and church events.

But receiving good quality care is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to a disabled person avoiding loneliness and having a good quality of life. We all need to look after one another, best we can. 

This Year's Toned-Down Dalek Cake

A round white-iced cake featuring twelve
small Daleks, some peachy flowers and
a 60 shaped sparkler on top.

Last Sunday, Mum turned sixty.  Naturally, there was a cake. Naturally, it involved Daleks. However, this time we wanted a really big cake and we wanted it to look neat, unlike previous chocolately Daleks which have variously resembled walruses and fire hydrants.

Thus we attempted a collaborative effort which... it still wasn't stunning. The cake itself was structurally unsound. There was a little miscommunication about scale and colour. But hey, this is a Dalek cake. If it didn't look like something produced by an alien life-form, there'd be an issue.

Stephen and I made the cake, iced the cake & made the Daleks (it was about time that Warhammer figure-painting experience came in handy). Granny made the flowers. My sister provided the sparkling 60. Next time, we will make another Dalek.

However, most importantly, Mum loved the cake, it tasted good (a sort of Black Forest Gateau re-interpretation) and a lovely time was had by all.

The Dalek Cake Ignited: A white woman, looking all of 59, is
surprised to see a small explosion taking place on the cake
in front of her.

Some Reading Matter

It's ages since I've made a post of links, but I seem to have seen several I really want to share.

Wheelchair Dancer has been writing about a revamp of Ironside, the (originally 70s, I guess) American TV series with a wheelchair-using detective. WD's posts on this have been phenomenal and she's promised a fourth. So far we have:

• Ironside I: The Non-disabled Role/ Roll again about the justifications used to cast a non-disabled actor as the leading disabled character, descriptions of the actor trying to master acting disabled etc..
• Ironside II: The Rough Rider Condom Chair about the intersection of straight masculinity and disability in the character of Ironside and his impractical wheelchair.
• Ironside III: Criminal Minds, Luther about the casting of a black man as Ironside and the intersection of race and disability.

Read them all.  Read the fourth one when its published. Okay? Good.

Also:

Biphobia is not (only) an LBGT issue, on how straight folk can't blame queer folk for biphobia.

Disability in Kidlit: A new blog providing "reviews, guest posts and discussions about the portrayal of disabilities in MG/ YA fiction".  I know YA is Young Adult. Apparently MG, in this context, is Middle-Grade.

This is really old, but I first saw it this summer: Why Film Schools Teach Screenwriters Not To Pass The Bechdel Test - infuriating and insightful.
.
I read this after I posted this blog, but it needs to be here: A geek against Gok
- Zoe Burgess on the manipulation and humiliation of a TV show and the triumph of a geek over adversity.

Some powerful personal posts:

One Classroom, Two Genders - The experiences of a trans woman when identified as a man, then as a woman, by her students.

Peeling Back The Layers of Shame: Talking About My Mother - Rachel describes the shame she has felt for not loving her mother, and how that continues to effect her years after her mother's death.

My Mother-in-law and Me - Lucy tells the story of a mother-in-law, who has always disapproved of Lucy because of her impairments.

This is What You're Missing: An American Love Story - A deeply moving story of sisterly love and grief.

On Being An Auntie (again). NTE watches her new nephew come into the world.


I'm sure there were other things, but usefully, my reader has just been closed for maintenance.

Since I'm here, I'm guest-blogging at the F-Word this month.  So far, I've written about women abusers and sex tips.

On Hamlet and Hip Hop

Oh dear! Tory Conference: Hip-hop Hamlet "racist and evil"

Curiously-bearded Lindsay Johnson has been speaking at the Conservative Party Conference about a strawman school production of Hamlet with a Hip Hop soundtrack.

"Hamlet doesn't need a hip-hop sound track for young people to enjoy it." 

Mr Johns added: "It's been doing just fine for the last 400 years." 

Same production, same costumes, same accents, same set.  All the women played by men in dresses. As Tara tweeted, "we know exactly how it was staged due to Shakespeare’s excellent notes." Johnson goes on:

"It's not only incredibly patronising, but also viciously racist to think that black and brown kids in the inner cities will only 'get Shakespeare' if it's set to a hip-hop beat and presented in three-minute, MTV-Base-style chunks." 

"It is positively evil to deny inner city kids access to the manifold joys of hearing their national poet's true voice, in essence their birthright, simply because of a culture of low expectations."

Presumably, our national poet's true voice had a Midlands accent. Lawrence Olivier could never pull it off.

Right. There are reasons for teaching Shakespeare in school other than it's always been that way. Shakespeare is a major part of our metatext. Shakespeare's plots are much older than Shakespeare, but they're still present in our books and movies. Shakespeare's language is not ours, but it is familiar. Learning Shakespeare teaches us a lot about the effective and expressive use of language.

If all of this is being taught, however it's being taught, then everything is fine.

Next. Johnson, who looks about my age, accuses teaches of "genuflecting at the alter of youth."

I'm thirty two - old enough to have a kid in high school, plenty old enough to be a high school teacher and yet younger than Hip Hop. As a white kid writing poems in primary school, I called them raps. Teachers liked poems, but raps had credibility. I wrote a rap about my class and it was, by popular demand, blue-tacked to the classroom door. Everyone was impressed. Oddly, the kids in the other classes said I couldn't have written it because I was girl and girls didn't rap.

Okay, so, I didn't - I had to ask a boy to perform it. I always had a slow calm voice, more suited to recite Tennyson than 2 Pak. But rap is no more removed from the modern grammatically-correct British English I express myself in than Shakespeare. In fact, rap is much closer to Shakespeare because of adhering to meter and the fact it often rhymes. For example:

I pour a sip on the concrete for the deceased
But no, don't weep. Wyclef's in a state of sleep
Thinking 'bout the robbery that I did last week.
Money in the bag; banker looked like a drag
I want to play with pellet guns from here to Baghdad.
Gun blast, think fast - I think I'm hit.
My girl pinched my hips to see if I still exist
I think not. I'll send a letter to my friends
A born again hooligan, only to be king again.

 Ready or Not - The Fugees. 

This is not Shakespeare, but it has much in common with Shakespeare. And like Hamlet, Wyclef Jean, who in this context speaks with the indifference and self-centredness of youth, considers the violence of his world, his desire to be in charge and the eternal sleep of death. Now, my heart has an indie beat, but if I can think of that off the top of my head, someone who actually knows this music could come up with much better evidence.

If you can't connect Shakespeare with Hip Hop, the poetry of all our pop music, movies plots, soap opera or something that exists in 2013, then what is the point?  Hamlet is not about a prince in medieval Denmark, it is a play about young angry masculinity. Some kind of pop music soundtrack is entirely apt, but perhaps especially Hip Hop; Hamlet's world is absorbed in a violent power struggle, he has a love/hate relationship with the women in his life, all the people he respects are in show-business and he believes that the arts - in this case, the dramatic arts - have the power to retrieve the truth and finally set him free.

I loved Hamlet as a young person because it seemed to be about teenage angst.  I felt as miserable and misunderstood as the next person, but noticed that this was an irritating quality, taken to extreme in some of the boys around me. I had a massive crush on an older boy who became suddenly ridiculous in my eyes when he stated he would kill himself before he turned twenty, because after that, what was the point of going on?  It seemed to me that Hamlet was the story of such young men, who didn't want to die at all, but indulged themselves in petty jealousies and rage towards their parents, and wore self-pity like a beat up leather trench coat. Hamlet moved me deeply, because it is a tragedy; Hamlet is a twit, and his failure to pull himself together (learn guitar, put it down in writing, join the Elsinore Amateur Dramatic Society) results in his destruction.

There's plenty else going on of course, but the point is I saw that it was relevant to my life. Of course, I wasn't typical. We never studied Hamlet - I read Shakespeare for fun. It was on at the local theatre with a bloke in from The Bill and I asked to my Mum to take me to see it. If other kids need a few extra pointers, then hand them over. We were studying Romeo and Juliet for GCSE and saw two theatrical productions; one in a converted warehouse in Norwich, one by the RSC at the Barbican, with lavish sets and Elizabethan Costume. We chatted, fidgeted and sniggered at the Barbican: Juliet was an eminent actor, but she was thirty-five and had the voice of a cut-glass chain-smoker. In Norwich, with younger actors, looser annunciation, plain costumes and minimal sets, we were transfixed. Had we seen Baz Lurman's Romeo + Juliet, which came out at the cinema around this time, "Do you bite your thumb at me?" would have replaced "What're you staring at?" in form-room fracas.

Shakespeare lies dead and decomposing in the adolescent memories of so many adults, because it didn't seem relevant and was never presented as relevant. If we truly believe in its relevance to the modern world, as opposed to a mere source for quotations and self-congratulations, we need to show the kids. A Hip Hop soundtrack doesn't sound like a gimmick, but the placing of a play in a living context.

Who does nuance belong to?

In Roman Polanski and the sin of simplification our beloved Victoria Coren Mitchell discusses a new book by Samantha Geimer (the woman that Polanski drugged and raped as a thirteen year old girl). Much as I adore VCM, she confuses a fact about child sex abuse, and abuse generally, and a despicable lie that regularly gets in the way of reporting and justice:

  Fact: Abusers are human beings and thus are very complex, possibly with talents, virtues, their own pain, strengths and weaknesses like the rest of us. Victims are often well aware of this.

  Lie: If someone has talents, or has suffered in some way, the wrongness of their crimes somehow becomes more complicated.

Child abusers are rarely terrible people in every aspect of their lives. Victims will be particularly aware of this because usually, a victim knows their abuser; these are their parents, their family friends, their priests, teachers and mentors. What's more, victims are heavily invested in the idea that their abusers were not monsters because, from their point of view;

• If he were a monster, I wouldn't have liked or trusted him. 
• If he were a monster, other people who cared for me would not have let him alone with me. 
• If he were a monster, what he did to me is without meaning or explanation.

None of this is irrational.  Abusers are human beings. Victims (and the people who care for them) are not stupid, careless creatures who wander naked into caves past signs reading, "Rapist Troll Lives Here". Unless you look at the fundamental humanity of abusers, then you can't understand why this happens or how this happens. The idea that rapists and sexual abusers are monsters is one of the chief reasons that victims are so often met with disbelief; this nice family man has no horns, this talented sportsmen has no forked tail.  

And VCM would have done very well to write an article about that - to say that Roman Polanski is a man who has suffered in his life and he is very talented (though honestly, he's no Kubrick) and yet he still committed this monstrous crime. We need to see that and take note; people who are virtuous in some respects are monstrous in others. But she loses her way. Any article which discusses a rape and has the line 

"A second complicating factor is that Polanski's work is filled with beauty and humanity."

is going to boil a lot of blood. Gandhi beat his wife at least once - we don't think that was okay, and he was Gandhi, for goodness' sake. Polanski is just a film director, whose reputation has been elevated beyond his talent by his history of personal suffering. I think story-telling is nearly the most important thing on Earth, but there's nothing he could ever do in the creation of a movie that would somehow mitigate the rape of a child. VCM talks about Geimer's book:

"She says that the police investigation, hospital exams and reporting of the case were more traumatic than the attack itself. She says: "I did something wrong, I was stupid… To pose topless, and to drink and to take the [sleeping] pill." 

"It is so easy and tempting to knock this into a pigeonhole: the misguided self-blame and denial of the victim."

Only, this is not self-blame or denial.  I was abused as a young adult, so I can tell you about all kinds of foolish things I did, positions I put myself in, misplaced trust and loyalty, and I don't get to wipe that all away with, but I was a child; children are daft and don't know any better. However, none of those things make me responsible for what was done to me. None of those things make what my abuser did less serious because I made a few bad choices.

Geimer was a thirteen year old girl, who chose to pose topless, drink and take a pill she was offered. Some might judge that as stupid (I have very little context). But to think that could be read as self-blame suggests that a thirteen year old girl can do stupid things that make her to blame for her rape. She can't. Rape just isn't that complicated.

"It is the complication that we need. People have become desperate to reduce everything, including each other, to mindless categories of good and bad, as if the world can be divided into Facebook likes and dislikes."

But deeds can and should be divided in this way. I like yarn-bombing. I dislike child-rape. For all I know some yarn-bombers are complete bastards and I'm sure that there are some lovely child-rapists. Except for, you know, the raping children thing, which I struggled to see past.

"So what is to be done with Samantha Geimer's story? She does not condemn Polanski nor exonerate him. She does not blame herself nor refuse to examine herself. Her voice is strong and complicated. You cannot simplify her, or him."

No we can't. But we can simplify the crime he committed towards her - which Geimer does herself. She describes it as "rape, in every sense of the word" because that's what it was. Roman Polanski is a rapist. However complicated he is as a human being, this crime was not and our response to that needs no nuance whatsoever.

Geimer's reaction is nuanced. Like all victims, Geimer is a human being who has reacted, coped with and confronted her experience in a unique and personal way. She's done it bravely, and has written a book that people say is well-written.

But the nuance of what happened to her belongs entirely to Geimer.  It doesn't belong to anyone else. 

10 Reasons A Marriage Tax Break is a Dreadful Idea

1. People have and always did marry for silly reasons. The proposed marriage tax break provides another very silly reason. People who marry for silly reasons don't tend to stay happy or married for long.

2. There's a mixed message about childcare here. Impoverished lone parents are under greater pressure than ever to find full-time work as soon as their children are on solid food. The principle beneficiaries for the planned tax break will be married couples where one partner stays at home or works part time. If you're into social engineering (and there is no other term), then you at least need to be consistent.

3. It's quite complicated. It's to do with transferring part of your unused tax allowance to your spouse. I'm not sure I even know what that means or how it will work, and I'm guessing there'll be eligible people who never see a penny.

4. As with all political moralising about the merits of marriage, rhetoric around the tax break fails to understand why people who aren't married aren't married. There are perhaps four categories of people who aren't married:

(a) Single people.  Single people may or may not like to be married, they may or may not have been married in the past, they may believe that marriage is the bedrock of civilisation, but marriage is not a reasonable lifestyle option open to a single person. Because there's only one of them.
(b) Committed couples who can't or don't want to get married just now or perhaps ever. Reasons may include a conscientious objection to marriage (see point 10 below), deeply personal reasons, legal or financial obstacles, an uncomplicated disinterest in the subject and, very often, plans to marry in the future. Unmarried couples are not necessarily unmarrying; most married couples were once cohabitees.
(c) Groups of more than two people who are in love and can't have a legal marriage that includes all parties.
(d) (Much more commonly) Couples who aren't entirely committed to each other. 

The elevation of coupledom as the place we all want to be, the first class arrival lounge of adulthood, means that a fair few people are in relationships which aren't really working too well. People in these relationships may be restless, discontented or they may be desperately unhappy but afraid to leave. Such couples should, under no circumstances, be encouraged to marry. The trouble is that some people do think fairy dust is sprinkled over couples at marriage - as with having a child (which is worse), some people believe that a wedding is just what a struggling couple needs to sort themselves out.

The rhetoric around this tax break encourages unhappy couples to marry. The message is that married relationships are better, which can easily sound like your relationships would be better if you were married. It won't be.  It will be roughly like it is now, only harder to get out of. 

5. £3.85 a week is not a great deal of money to most working people. The scheme is expected to cost the state £550 million and not make a great deal of different to the lives or incomes of anyone. 

6. In fact, the administrative cost of marriage is just over £100.  If you want to wear fancy clothes, invite your family and have a nice meal, it's going to cost a few hundred more.  At £200 a year (the maximum tax break), a marriage will take between six months and several years to pay for itself. 

7. Cameron says, "Love is love, commitment is commitment." but marriage is a not a necessary or sufficient condition for love or commitment. For example, former MSP Bill Walker, on his forth marriage having violently abused his first three wives, would still be theoretically eligible for this tax break (if he was working and not in prison). Meanwhile, the most conservative-friendly hard-working jam-making war widow one can imagine would not. 

8. It is very much cheaper to be part of a couple than it is to be single. This is especially the case for couples or single people with children. It is therefore ridiculous to give any kind of subsidy to a group of people who - presuming married people generally live, sleep, eat and socialise together - are already blessed with lower living expenses that many other people.  

9. This policy really feels like it is about making certain people, those lucky enough to have found someone they love, those privileged enough to have been able to afford marriage, those where one person earns enough for another not to have to work full time, to feel superior and smug about a lifestyle that landed in their lap.

10. One of the chief reasons people object to marriage is the idea that it is an institution that belongs to conservative moralisers and religious zealots. The sort of people who say that marriage makes for superior relationships. The sort of people who grit their teeth through decades of domestic conflict, sexual frustration and deception just so they can call their marriages successful.

It strikes me that policies like this are exactly what gives marriage an image problem.

People Are Strange #3897

A woodland path in late summer; leaves slightly yellowing,
sun low in the trees.

So Stephen and I were on honeymoon in West Wales, coming out from the woodland path, both of us on mobility scooters. A slim anoraked woman in her mid-forties was walking down the road and, although we were moving at casual walking pace, she startled and stepped back. Then she said, "I thought you were a rat!"

Most people in the world might respond to this with a mixture of bafflement and offense.  But we're English. We apologised.

"I just saw a rat up the road," she went on to explain. "I thought you were another one, about to jump out at me. It was dead and everything!"

Of course; two tall adults using mobility scooters could easily resemble a rat. Particularly a dead rat. Just like the dead rats that often jump out at people on country lanes in broad daylight.

I have no clue whether the scooters were a factor in our rat-like appearance - we may have been mistaken for a rat by this eccentric person whilst on foot. In fact, had we been standing up, the sight of all six foot of us on our hind legs may have caused the woman to scream and run back up the road.

We had a wonderful honeymoon; exciting, relaxing and productive in equal measures. I got a great deal of writing done, we watched in wonder as this little story took the East Anglian press by storm and Stephen went a little bit wild:

Video description: Stephen (a handsome young white man with dark hair, dark glasses and a funky hat) zooms down a steep slope on his mobility scooter, holding a bubble sword (a plastic loop) that creates a modest cloud of bubbles in his wake.