Right To Read

This cold isn't a bad one as it goes and it seems to be moving quickly through the various stages. The worst thing is that I haven't been sleeping well and this worries me because usually it matters. But then I lost almost an entire night's sleep at the weekend with apparently no ill effect, so perhaps something is changing. Or perhaps not as I certainly feel like I could use some sleep just now.

Yesterday I was reading about the Books Before We Die campaign and the RNIB's Right To Read Charter. Apparently 96% of all books published don't make it into large-print, audio or braille formats. I didn't realise things were so bad. I have very good sight, apparently, but I have had problems reading because of various cognitive symptoms, which result in a kind of temporary dyslexia. The letters of the worlds slide together and muddle, the words within sentences do the same and so on. This doesn't happen as much as it used to, but for example I always read sheet music through coloured celophane and my computer is set up so I'm writing in black on an off-white colour - for some reason pale pink works best.

Some years ago (I was about to say a few but in fact it's six or seven) I was trying to do A-Level English Literature. I didn't finish it because my health relapsed. Anyway, I had to read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as a set text. Jane Austen rocks, but it is not the easiest thing in the world to read*. I tried to get it as an audiobook and it being a study piece, I tried to get it unabridged. To my horror I discovered that this, a classic by perhaps one of the greatest authors that ever lived, was going to cost over fifty pounds to get as an unabridged audiobook. Eek!

So not only are the vast majority of books unavailable, but those that are cost an absolute fortune. However much Jane Austen rocks, it can't be worth fifty quid just to read one of her books. And yet, a lot of abridged talking books, of which I have experience for the reasons described above, are pretty naff.

These days, because the talking software packages are so advanced, a great deal could be achieved simply by putting books into electronic format. There is a big issue with pirating, but the fact is most sighted people want to read books on paper – it’s not like music where a CD produces the same sensory experience as music on a computer or iPod. The majority of people would still buy books in paper even if they could download the book onto their computer screens for free.

I think it’s a scandal there is so little provision. Most of us are going to experience a deterioration in our sight at some point if we live long enough and the idea that the only version of Captain Correlli’s Mandolin I got to know was the saccharine excuse for a film fills me with horror.

You can volunteer to go read to visually impaired people or record readings for the RNIB. Having become so incensed, I am planning to volunteer for the latter once my cold has cleared up and I can actually talk.


* The first sentence of Mansfield Park is as follows:
About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income.

Five good things about having a rhinovirus.

I now have a cold. It's not too bad just yet, just a killer sore throat. This coincides with the day upon which all my general disorganisation catches up with me; I now have three piles of paperwork - mostly junkmail but there's an IB50 (benefit form) and a credit card statment in there somewhere - and I've run out of socks.

So to cheer myself up I have been pondering the five good things about having a rhinovirus:

1. You get sick, you feel crap, but then within a matter of days you feel a lot lot better. This is not the usual pattern with my health, which gets worse and remains so for months and months if not permanently. I may sound sarcastic but this is a real bonus; if I am better within ten days it will restore my faith in my immune system and my body in geneal.
2. Colds don't spoil everything. Not like flu and it could be flu or some other nasty bug which turns your brain to mud and leaves you in bed staring at the insides of your eyelids. With a cold you can watch movies, listen to music and maybe even do something useful and productive if you pace yourself.
3. You don't have to wash your hair. You're not going to go out and anyway, having wet hair and not being able to dry it properly by yourself, which is the case with me, is going to make things worse. My hair is long out of laziness rather than vanity and a cold frees me from the chore of its maintenance.
   
4. It doesn't feel so indulgent to fall asleep during the day. I don't know why it usually feels indulgent even though I do it most days and usually when I can't actually keep myself awake any more. Something to do with the "Sick Role" I think.
   
5. You get to consume sweet and syruppy things; lemon and honey, rum and blackcurrant and stuff like this. Yummy!

So there you are; I bet you wish that you too had my cold! It's not something to sneeze at - I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up with such an offer at issue. Unfortunately, when you do have a cold, you don't feel like any hanky-panky. Get it? Oh dear, I need some Lemsip.

Doubts

Today I have been writing very slowly, but when it goes slowly it usually means it’s good and won’t need too much editing. My doubts about the entire project are back though, as they seem to be whenever I reach any sort of landmark, like the 60,000 word wordcount on my final draft.

It could be a load of rubbish. I think it’s fairly incredible that I carry on despite this fact, really. I mean, it could be an almighty waste of time and energy. I could have been busy playing Solitaire or watching daytime TV for the last two years. I’m not afraid that it won’t get published. If it is any good then I believe it will get published eventually even if it takes ages and ages to sell it. However, it’s the fear that the first person to read it over will get to the end, look rather embarrassed and say they liked the bit with the chickens.

At the moment I am especially worried about one of my main characters, who I can’t really work out. The others I know as well as close family members, but this one I have doubts about. I’m not confident about whether she is convincing and consistent in her behaviour.

One thing that sometimes helps with the characters is to find on-line freebee personality tests or psychometric tests and to answer the questions as the character would answer them. Most of the results you get on-line are pretty rubbish, but the exercise is useful. And naturally when you put the bad guys through these tests you don’t get results saying;

“You’re an Evil Genius. You are highly creative, frequently coming up with ideas which your friends and colleagues may be disturbed by. You have a good sense of humour and take pleasure in the pain and suffering of others. You like to be in control and are happy to use the threat of violence in order to achieve this. Although family is important to you, you accept the fact your mother never loved you.”

Instead you get a description which is perhaps much closer to how your Evil Genius might actually see and understand themselves – which is more important than the truth when you’re considering their motivation and behaviour. At least it is unless you’re prepared to accept that Evil Geniuses do outrageous and often illogical things because they’re mad and bad and that’s all there is to it.

You may be either relieved or disappointed to learn that there are no evil geniuses in my novel.

Yesterday was the first drug-free day in about six months. Well, not totally, but nothing with codeine it in. Today I'm back on them as the battery of the TENS machine appears to be on its last legs. But certainly progress has been made.

Happy Easter!

This evening (Saturday) we watched Something's gotta give with Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves. It is about a middle-aged script-writer who winds up caring for her daughter's sugar-daddy after he has a heart attack at their home. Despite being a romantic comedy complete with cringe-worthy moments, it was a tight script and everyone acted beautifully - even Keanu. Rubbish ending though. Really rubbish. It was so close to being a good ending, but it was rubbish.

To make up for this we then watched Point Break (Keanu and Patrick Swazee (sp?) ) which is an excellent film. I always forget how good it is, but it's really very good indeed. Keanu is totally at home here, he just runs around a lot, surfs and jumps out of planes looking intense and beautiful. Although I must say the older Keanu in Something's gotta give has a little more meat to him (physically and otherwise) and did do some excellent expressions of a jealous lover. Bodacious.

Anyway, during this time we drank a bottle of white wine my folks brought back from Cephalonia, the Greek island upon which Louis de Berneres masterpiece Captain Correlli's Mandolin was based (my Granny always calls it Kleptomania - there ought to be an island called this - if you discover one, you now know what to call it). Captain Correlli is a brilliant book with a rubbish ending. The behaviour of certain characters made no sense. And then, given that the lovers were pointlessly, stupidly parted for fourty odd years, it would have been okay if Pelagia had shot Correlli for being such a owner-operator, but instead she hits him over the head with a frying pan. Which is comic. And I was crying at that point; I wanted the guy dead.

It occurs to me that my folks went to Cephalonia in 2001. So that wine has been hanging about some time. It was okay. I know nothing about wine. Hal once shared a bottle of wine with me that tasted like honey-suckle, really gorgeous, but apart from that it all tastes a bit... well... uriney. Goodness I am a little tipsy.

This together with the remarkable effects of the TENS machine have made me wide awake approaching one in the morning - worse, since the clocks are going forward, we will skip straight to two o'clock in the morning. Considering that I have a minimum of ten hours sleep every night, tomorrow may be a little disrupted.

As today I have been researching chickens and the keeping of chickens for my book, I shall now write great drunken lyrical prose about chickens. Did you know that if your chickens have large crowns, you need to rub them with vaseline in the winter to prevent frostbite?

Anyway, Happy Easter everyone! Now I appear to be comfortable without the use of codeine I hope to spend what part of the day I see painting my little wargaming figures, which I have previously been unable to paint for (a) pain and (b) drug-induced clumsiness.

TENS update

He he! It works! It took ages to be really effective and I think the battery is struggling so I'm giving it a rest in case it runs out over the bank holiday weekend. However, eight hours has passed since my last dose of painkiller and I do not feel the need to have any more just now - a real breakthrough. Naturally no miracles, but still. I feel happier than I have felt in a good while. Probably only a few days but it feels like months. Hooray!

Clocks are about to go forward so we lose an hour in bed... groan.

Feeling TENS

Well yesterday there was a big thick fog in my brain. Could I be less articulate or more ranting? I have been suffering lately. Nothing terrible, it's just the constant juggling of activity, rest, nutrients, alcohol, pain-killers, laxatives, herbal remedies etc. I made another doctor's appointment midweek as the new meds are worse than the old but I couldn't get an appointment before next Friday (and since it'll be April 1st he'll probably tell me I'm pregnant).

Today I received a TENS machine on loan from my sister and am wired up to it. Not sure how much or indeed whether it is working, but it feels funny, thus it makes me giggle and cheers me up a bit. I think it is helping actually. My legs were ready to fall off earlier (or at least, I was ready to saw them off without anasthetic) but now they just ache a lot.

My sister also sent me chocolate and I wasn't expecting to have any in the house this Easter so that's good. Also my nearly-but-not-quite-yet brother-in-law sent me a print of one of his photos. You can admire it yourself here.

I actually went into town this morning, which was a mistake. It was very busy and wet. Tourists out in town today have no patience and few manners. I have two rules when it comes to navigating the crowds in my electric wheelchair;

• Always treat others with the utmost courteosy.
• Ignore the needs of those who do not do the same.
  

Thus I create pedestrian traffic queues by waiting at one end of the bridge while an slow moving elderly lady - who could not have easily moved out of anyone's way - crosses safely. Since most people in town in Whitby on Easter Saturday are tourists, on holiday or out for a day trip, I'm not sure what they're in such a hurry for.

It was a fairly pointless trip into town but I managed to bump into someone who has never seem me in a wheelchair and probably doesn't know about me being ill or anything. So that would have been a surprise for him.

Sex selection

There is an article on the BBC news website about synaesthesia, which I previously misspelt. I've gone back and corrected my spelling now. Anyway, you can read about some research into the subject here.

Also in the news this week is a report by The Commons Science and Technology Committee which suggested there was no good reason to spot parents having IVF from choosing the sex of their babies. You can read about this here. I think the Committee lacks imagination.

The issue isn’t to do with creating an unbalanced society; in parts of the world where elective abortion of female babies or female infanticide has become prolific, things are bound to balance themselves up within a generation or two. Females of marriageable age will become rare and sought after. Throughout history there have been periods where the dowry was given to the bride’s parents from the groom’s parents and this may even return. In the UK this probably isn't an issue at all.

The issue is to do with people’s unreasonable expectations of parenthood and how this effects relationships after a child is born and existing in the world.

Folks get confused about the difference between sex and gender. Sex is your biological leaning; your femaleness or maleness – however, a good number of babies are born ambiguous, then there are folks who differ from the standard XY and XX chromosomes, so it’s not always straight forward. Gender is what you are socially; your femininity or masculinity and being a social construct, this varies according to cultural ideas of feminine and masculine. There are some typical traits associated with femininity and masculinity; for example, your average male and your average female, should two such creatures exist, could be expected to perform differently on a number of practical tasks and psychological exercises.
It is however almost impossible to work out what is biological and what is conditioned when it comes to psychology. A person’s attitude towards issues such as relationships and their ability to perform at a task is effected by all number of influences, natural aptitude, instinct and also experience of this sort of problem, motivation, identity and so on. There are lots of fun and more thought out tests on-line to test the sex or gender of your brain. The most comprehensive one is at the BBC here but it takes a while to do. Whenever I do these things I come out male/masculine although remarkably on the BBC I was slap bang in the middle. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I outperformed both the average male and female score on all the aptitude tests, but still…

Anyway, back to my point about babies. A close family member and a close friend were the only female children among several brothers. Both their mothers despaired of them because these girls were not girlie enough. They didn’t enjoy shopping with their mothers. They weren’t motivated by pretty clothes, make-up and so on. These women are not and were not especially unfeminine or tomboyish, but they were both a disappointment and a concern and it's affected their self-esteem ever since.

When [...] was working in a model shop, he had a woman come in looking for something for her son. She described how she wanted to get him a model of a tank or a plane because they were worried about the way he was developing. He didn’t seem interested in tanks and guns, instead he was into dressing up… as a wizard. A wizard, for goodness sake. I wonder why that was.

This is why parents should not be allowed to chose the sex of their offspring, apart from perhaps in very special circumstances for medical reasons. Anything you are selective about before the birth of a child raises certain expectations about the sort of child you would like to have and that is simply not something we have a right, let alone an opportunity to decide. Despite the phrase “designer babies”, the fact is that you can do very little to determine the experience and traits of your child before birth and only so much you can do after the event.

Similarly, you can’t prevent your child being born with an impairment, you can only prevent your child being born with certain sorts of impairment with screening. But that’s another issue I may rant about at another time.

And frankly, people who think their boy has something wrong with him because he wants to dress up as a wizard as opposed to playing with guns and tanks shouldn't be allowed to have children at all. But I'm not sure how you would legislate for that one...