when you join your very own - what do you get?

its a frightening thing indeed to move back into your own social strata after decades in the one below!

this is because society has 'classed' people and each class reacts or acts in a certain fashion.

I was placed in the sub-class decades ago but now i wonder was it in fact ever that, and who decides anyway?

when i was quite young really and struggling i was more or less booted out by my own er, class.
Yes, pretty much so.
penniless and jobless in the 70's i applied for social housing.
I was to be the first on this side of the pond to ever do this.
so this in itself was something to be rejected for and shamed for.
I lived amongst murderers, indeed my very first next door neighbour was a murderer, done his sentence and then lived peaceably beside me and i sat on the road with him many a sunny day.
Literally on the road, the leafy valleys and gardens of Killiney now all gone but the concrete of the tenement path now mine, with the druggies and the alkies and the murderers, wife beaters and chancers.

For the first time in my life i was happy.
I guess when booted out and left you do begin to take charge.  i took charge.
from not even one wooden chair i had to take charge.
not even a bathroom or a kitchen and wallpaper never holding on the walls i had to take charge.
add then to the butter mountains and beef mountains of europe i queued with my plastic bag.
A far cry from the Holy Child Jesus Killiney School for young ladies.
it was battlegrounds.

but these people became my own.
they actually had a moral code of conduct.
they stuck by you and supported you and watched out and over you.
they also saw sometimes your naievity and warned you of the people needed warning against, even the murderer warned me about people to watch for and make sure i didnt let them inside.

but doors could remain unlocked and open.
there was one across the road and there i went every day to sit with my dumpy adopted mom.
yes she was i adored her.
we sat and chatted and had a cup of tea and gorgeous bikkies always ready in that tin there.

we talked about the black and tans and how she had a boiled egg on easter sunday and the leg of mutton hanging over an open fire with a skewer for christmas dinner if they were so lucky.

I was very happy, i flourished and settled down.
i concentrated on improving my home and working to improve my art.
writing and illustrating books and designing greeting cards.
all added up to a bit in the bank or post office and nice furniture.
no, the middle class never clapped eyes on me again, hardly ever visited and least cared about me.

time moved on.  Decades.
everytime i was in mental pain and trouble and that was often i was considered just that, trouble, again by the middle class.
i was a bloody nuisance with my troubles, to them that is.
i was troubled to myself and that was that, troubled.
i had a shocking start and i had brain damage.
but no middle class person ever gave any of that an inch of thought.
i was 'ah Ann, she is 'trouble.'

but when i got into serious trouble with social housing it was decades fast forward.
the shift in times had come but not so badly as i had envisaged.
i dont blame the enclave the social housing authorities had placed me, it was far from where i had come both in one working class group and from my middle class background.
all men they were and very rough, unemployed used to drugging up and hanging themselves, leaving the mother with the babies.
but they also had troubled lives so they are not at fault, life is as it is.  the people to take responsibility are the people who are entrusted with this role when many couldnt take it.
they abused their power and treated people badly.
all people badly.
people in social housing in Ireland were the rejected and still are.
they are worth nothing in anyone's eyes, ever.

so when i was placed with a crowd of men who couldnt or wouldnt, or who didnt have a culture of working they knew they had placed a middle class woman with disabilities in a very vulnerable place and also a volitile place.
it did come to pass that my middle class status got to the drinking men.
my door was rapped at night in drunken stupers, i was accused of things i couldnt possibly have done, one being someones plant in the middle of his back garden!
children too were off the rails and hanging from them.  wild and brazen i got it there too.
i went into a mini madness of utter terror.
until the day i was shot at and so fleeing county was the stratedgy.
the ones that placed me where they did admitted it was a dreadful place for me, as too had the HSE but then no one takes responsibility for these sorts of things in Ireland.
what happens here if mistakes are made the phrase is 'you must move on' meaning forget it mate.
i had to literally move on and away from all i adored.
this time i was plumbing for middle class country.
i felt it best i got back to my roots in another county.
but what a failure as i fully now in the realm of all i had hated.
the brutality which is middle class utter snobbery and blame another and then tell the other to 'move on'
but middle class people do things a very different way and now i realise i am not altogether pleased with it.
they seem to feel they have a god given right to trod all over people's emotions and personalities and characters.
this is even without even getting to know a person or inviting them into their homes.
they make their assumptions from afar or on one meeting certainly not on a few.
you can be tarred and feathered within a day in this place.
you can be called anything here and have no comeback.
so far in my lovely middle class neighbourhood i have been called 'dangerous' and 'a tramp'
yep, thats what i have been called.
nice isnt it for a holy child jesus child to be called this.
and also for a very sick person with a disability but who is vulnerable now.
anything goes here.
but then i think i knew that coming from a family of 'lord of the flies ilke.'
the most unforgiving of all classes in society are the middle classes.
because they have grandiose ideas without the backup.
they think they have this right.
to slash and burn and then tell you 'to forget it and move on!'
well in my book you dont do that.
you treat people with respect.
I did, and i was taught to and i certainly learnt to, both from school, from doing charity work every living decade of my life and of course from the sub class of society.
we did respect and we tried to help without lumbering in there and demolishing.
but here they dont help, but certainly lumber in and demolish and seem to think it ok to call you a tramp on your own property, for asking a relatively simple question as 'when do you think you will be finishing up here?' as in 'this is taking a very long time, when can i have my home back?
and i am called 'you tramp you!'
he got stroppy and i told him to leave, and on leaving i am labelled a tramp.
i am not liking the style of the middle classes at all right now.
will it improve.
i dont know.
if the middle classes want it to improve maybe it will.
but i am not happy about it.
i want to return to the decent people.
when you have nothing absolutely nothing, you are all on level ground.
not here, there are the ones who trash and the ones who get trashed, and very viciously too.
it isnt nice, i hate it.

Blogging allows for reasonable justice to be done

it has been over a year and a month that i crash landed in my new county....literally.
I was so so tired that my adapted van went out of control and i hit a neighbours tree, taking out the tree and the van.
I was unharmed....by the crash, the tree or the van.
I wasnt so lucky with the area HSE which is our Health Service Executive and the local area care teams.
You come to a new area an unknown, but does that also say that the new area makes up their mind on you within a month and thereafter you are literally 'outted' by the people who are about the most powerful in your life.
if you have a disability and need these powerful people the HSE then you have fouled up your chance of best care.
I didnt foul anything.
i fell foul of the HSE and the care provider.

blogging gives way a sense that someone hears you, unlike the hse who do it 'their way'
and whilst they do it 'their way' the most cruel, insensitive, undemocratic and unjust way i say what i can here.
because so far justice has not prevailed.

what can you do against a powerful body who brandishes you 'a danger to staff.'
yes, syou would be mortified to write such a statement in a blog.
but i am NOT because it isnt true.
i wouldnt hurt a fly.
but a year and one month later i am still named as such and services in my new county are a scandal.
This, too I have to say because most disabled people in Ireland have gone underground for the fear that is within them.
and i say it because to receive a label such as 'dangerous to staff' is an outrage in itself.
to receive little care is just as outrageous and if we do not speak of it, then the country, its health service and its government is no better than producing a weakened population driven by hitlerism ideals and a 'pathwaying' which we know is happening even in the UK right now.
i am 60yrs of age and refuse to be silenced, refused to take a label such as this lying down and refuse to be pathwayed out of life after a life pathwayed by the HSE and its consultants which was torrid in extreme.
when you find a voice, become a person who wishes to both engage in society, be responsible for ones life and not do silly things anymore i do have a right to be considered equal and this i am not.
once you feel equal, act as if equal and take measures to be the best person you can be and contribute to society as i have done then no one, certainly not health care professionals will spread rumours and inuendos and condemn me without recourse to 'right of reply' you put your response in the blog.
Justice for me must come for now i find that i took measure to improve my life after the hse left me sitting duck to children with guns and boozing men who attacked me with verbal abuse and end in more abuse dished out by the hse.
it has to end for me and my twin.
we deserve...i say....we deserve better than this, far better.
both have been passionate to bring best practise to those vulnerable, both qualified to bring best practise and ease the burden of lives for people and train up others to do the same, as my twin did, and i trained to encourage elders to feel better about themselves through Arts & Empowerment and they did, i showed them some ways to do this, and i also brought them relief from the monotony of once again our critically ill nursing home care homes.
so at 60yrs of age i am now on the receiving end of such injustice i found in the nursing homes, and my twin found in the places and circumstances she found through her social work career.
I will not allow the HSE to bring my twin and i down so far we reel in the gutter of despair.
the way forward is to speak out and speak out using every vehicle available.
this is one such way.
please speak both for us and for all suffering in Ireland today. there are many

communication mixture

yes, i guess that is what i have to say right now.
the communication seems to have gone a bit pear shaped and we feel it.

Along with the communication or lack of it comes the contrast of those who have and those who do not.
this my friends is evident in extreme.

communicating care and consideration isn't so much an art i would have thought.
Most humans have this facility, or so i believed.
But when it comes to our nearest and dearest even if you hoped this came naturally by virtue of being part of family you do get the shock when it doesn't.
it isn't even there.
no where in sight.
and it is so so obvious.

that fleeting visit to 'see what is up' in the land of the relative.
the yearly snoop in and the swoop out.
for that is what it feels like and that is what i call a communication mixture, or should that be 'mix up?'
You are left with the tear in the side of the eye.
The effort of brushing up the floors, wiping down counters and buying in the biscuits.
In hopeful anticipation and excitement of communication - with the family.
but you get the mixed messages.
the watching the clock by glance, the taking of a mobile call.
the statements of 'i cannot stay long' and you knew they wouldn't anyway.

You hurt inside that you are not worth it at all.
to hear the lack of. in the tone, the gesture and the hasty good byes and the 'blast it, why did they bother.'
you walk away or back through the hall door and close it behind the retreating army.
 The tears well up in the eyes.
You take out a painting to try and fix the warped frame.
you slam the nail in, miss and hit the bloody thumb knuckle.
you are angry at the rejection.
you get so angry you talk about Wills and the past and 'why do i expect any different.'

on the other occasion there was effort made, the taste of the starter was sweet and glorious.
effort shown in the presentation and perfection.
the spode on the table and the waterford crystal and silver.
the neat little table with wall adornments catching the eye in awe.
none of my paintings are there, not even a tiny one in the corner, or under the level of the chair.
no image of mine does my closest kin own or put on wall.
but we are now older, and peace must come.
and spode and good food is better than the plastic tubberware and the spoon scooping food as you watch the telly.
we are used to eating the stews and mess that never changes from week to week, so this real food is a delight and pleasure, twinged with the feelings and hurt of decades but what can we say when the decades leave us as the elders in the state.
the problematic families are i guess part of being a dysfunctional island.
where the protestant and catholic mix and the bringing up as both royalists and republicans of the last fifty years.
this being in my family tradition.
the feeling of displacement and upset and loss.
the loss of servants and family emigrating.
the feeling of being left behind in less affluent times, the struggle with six kiddies knowing full well in wimbledon there in lies the wealth of the kin.
not so much bitterness within the family but the feeling of estrangement.
the loss of togetherness then left the next generation as more or less the same.
the competition within the siblings echoed the family 'Lord of the flies'
and i am doing the same.
the hurt of it all.
no kinship and contempt there seemed to be reeking from the pores of the well off.
the lack of consideration, communication of kindness but the message is fully clear and understood.
those on the fringe of this family was the single twins.
the least able and the most intelligent.
we were fodder for decades of built up resentment, bitterness and disenchantment.
the bitterness born of the competitive, angry growling members of a middle class mix of once wealthy and now not so, yet some gained back wealth and suddenly we had the selfishness that goes with 'attitude of grandour'
we cannot regain a past time ever.
but some did try and brought with it such spoilt brats its unbelievable.
the lack of christianity is full seen with all this screaming.
the fleeting visit,
the holes in the roof, the spode on the table and eating then from tubberwares.
we are a family divided and with that brings such pain it beggars belief.
the need for togetherness and kinship i yearn for, but with the closing of the hall door, the whack on the knuckle on the now bruised knuckle and the pain of feeling no love from them and toward them, cuts deep to the broken soul of a sick individual who is waiting to die.
and shall do so alone, very.
The Will.
finally i shall end with the Will.
nothing is Willed on to anyone, nothing at all.
it goes to one which is united in the same grief.
not one single member gets anything.
not that i had much to give in the first place.
but the Will is made.
if you do not care in Living then you do not reap in dying.
amen to that.  what a sad life its been.  it doesnt look as if its going to end with a swan song either.