queuing for beef at the local church and - the cous comes to town!

today was a mixed bag indeed.

an early start on the road to a shoe fitting appointment, to get there at nine to be told i had to wait til 2.30...but wait....there was a cancellation!
my new shoes fought so hard for via a senator John Whelan and Journal.ie are now found to be so disastrous that this second professional told me they are totally unsuitable for my types of disability.
but he said the hardest part was for me.....to fight to get a new pair.
remember i have deformed feet but now i could be waiting for a full year to be sanctioned a pair i can actually wear.
who is to blame over giving me a dreadful pair of brogues fgs?
can i make shoes?
no.
who makes shoes for disabled?
a person trained to make shoes for disabled?
should he/she be employed if two out of three professionals say, 'oopsie, nope, not right them there brogues not right for those there feet!'

if i could cost all this, and i think i will.
cost the hours spent fitting (at least five times).
cost of materials, salaries etc we will find that our request to save health service costs are not due to me, but those that give us this service.
this hasn't been a cost effective way of doing things, and yet i was told by two out of three that the shoes given are inferior and that's why i was made drive over 20miles five times and back to have them sorted, (in the first place).

On another cost saving venture i have to draw your attention to the fact that contrary to the Minister for Health, giving me an OT also over 20miles away is proving even less than beneficial.
she has made two journeys to me.
the first to get to know, ask what my needs are and to get back to me.
my needs were rather simple.
small items needed.
she came back.
small items not felt suitable and i was to sit in a chair rather than lie on the sofa.
but i want to lie on the sofa!
she drove 20miles to tell me that (phone call?)
also no bath seat, she forgot the measuring tape, last time - if she had asked i would have given her one of several.
and no mention of the cushion i lost when my wheelchair went into a wall.

oh, reciting the incident of the wheelchair today at the hospital i was met with an 'oh CHR...T'


I had also text my home help not to come as i would be at the foot clinic.
she came anyway and stuffed a note in the door.

yep.

anyway i wasn't best pleased and went weak at the knees.
why, cos i am sick of the stress of being sick.
the problems just seem to be LIVING.
trying to walk is LIVING.
trying to get things done is LIVING.
but all the time this can amount to phone calls after phone calls, stress of explaining explaining begging and more begging.
crying and more crying.
with no let up from the demands of trying to get the basics of needs met!

then i rang the disab advocate and told her i simply couldn't take anymore, bawling down the phone, sniffling and consumed with despair i whacked on crying'  suddenly i noticed that no one was answering back.
my phone had gone dead probably a long while back.
i kinda giggled then at the absurdity of that.
she was saved!
by the wire.

or lack of it.

then i straightened a chair here and a chair there for my cous was a comin'
and i rarely see my cous.
so delighted.
she is the same age as myself and looked so so glamorous, oh wow cous if you read this it was the first thing i noticed.

yep.
healthy as friggin hell.
she wondered after a monologue did i not get tired of all things to do with health.

and i have thought on this too, (see above).
i am tired of all things to do with health.

but intensity to have to deal with it 24/7 you find that the record is on permanent stuck line.
it wont move forward nor back.
its stuck, round and round.

how long since i spoke of art or 'rt or photos or stuff, other.
long.

and then we spoke of the old fashioned typewriters and learning to type before we took up  a more acceptable or illustrious occupation.
i roared at the memory of the training colleges.
she described it well on the old banger typewriters, with circular keys on a baby spring like mechanism.
we trained to change type writer ribbon, i bet the young 'uns are wondering what the hell i am talking about.
she then described photocopying in the men's toilet in a certain prestigious institution of ours.
because that where the light was, so one foot in the men's toilet to get the glimmer into where the photo copying machine was after - the lights went out, and they went out at the same hour everyday, so if you went over the time scale, darkness.
now what would you do today if everything went black - on the job?
it doesn't happen.
we can safely say the work conditions were not good but we saved the planet i guess, in our stringent use of electricity.
we were not exactly in the candle era, but close enough.
i remembered a certain firm in London where the metallurgist fell in love with an Irish temp typist.  he who would kneel on the floor cutting out interesting pieces from the London papers on exhibitions etc for this woman here fresh from the typing pool before she launched into her fame of working on 'watership down.' the film.
bunny making.
the first telex i sent to south Africa after i learnt how to turn the machine on.
she enjoyed the chaos of that famous still famous Irish institution which had her putting foot in toilets to bring on the lights.
i was actually in a local hospital for the mentally compromised individuals when i got a job at the same place (~Ireland is very small) and the spin of the department i was in caused me to last not longer than two weeks.
chaos is one thing in the head but when it transcends that into the very physicality of a work environment, i could have well gone under entirely.
We both survived.  Needless to say.

i recalled to her the day i nearly got run over by a  Volkswagen beetle, beige in colour as i ran across the road with my typed papers belonging to the solicitor i typed for from 8.45 until 6.45 every day with an hour for lunch and every second Saturday for the full sum of wait for it...£14 and that's another insanity producing environment, about six inches away from a brown papered wall, pealing at the ceiling and i know for i looked up there often.
that's the office i had to sign a legal document in, at 18 and witness to someone making a Will.
when i asked what i should put down for my job description i was told 'Spinster"
yep, that's a job description in the 70's.
eat your heart out.
it wasn't exactly the good old days.
you have it plush for sure so never complain.

no such things as walk outs if the air conditioning wasn't on.
no such things as walk outs if you are discriminated by gender
nothing.
you stuck it or got out.

i then got thinking of the beef i queued for long after this.
the time i came back from London and my short lived live in the film business.
i was too shy to go to art college to study film.
i was afraid i would break cameras.
i came home to Ireland on the boat, sank into depression and ended in the local asylum.
to this day no one forgets.
cos the word 'psychiatric' is written on every file on me, so you can be a raving lunatic from the age of 18 to death, even if you were never.
and i was never - proven, got an apology for this but we do not have the personnel in Ireland to erase all the files where the word 'psychiatric' is written.
you can KILL someone and be legally entitled to have this fact erased after your prison sentence.
you have to wait til you are 75yrs of age or til your dead to have the word 'psychiatric' erased from an Irish personal file or medical file.
even if you went into that system for loneliness, shyness and terror of your fellow human being because you were just a shy, too young lass who didn't cope well with others, cos you freaked at the little confidence you have.

show me a puppy who whimpers at the noise of a fire cracker.
that's me.
cracker ed.

i deviated here a few paragraphs back.
beef.
well....probably horse, most probably horse.
i queued.
yep.
that's when i lived in an establishment where i had no running hot water and boiled a kettle and filled a basin and washed by the fire for four years.
baths, that was for keeping coal in, if you had one.
i didn't.
i didn't have a bathroom either.
but i queued for the beef (horse) and because a discussion came up on face book as to whether you gave a beggar a copper, was he genuine or fake, i thought of the beef.
we may not need to beg for food in Ireland - yet, but there are reasons why people beg.
whether you give to the beggar.
i would actually do so.
who would make a living from begging.
are you preventing him/her from getting the next rolls Royce if you denied him the price of a coffee?
do you resent that rolls Royce entrepreneur?
well, forget it.
you don't hold out the plastic cup for the coppers to try make enough for a rolls Royce.
a drink of wine, a hostel bed, a blankie or socks yes.
but not to be a millionaire.
i wouldn't be having intellectual crosswords on this one or chess for that matter.
its the state of the nation, education when it comes down to this sort of debate.
Live and let live.
think of the horse meet, the photo copiers in the men's toilets.
lights out at 6pm like it or not.
men kneeling on floors cutting out newspaper clippings out of love.
the local lunatic asylum one side of the road, the glam the other and both did meet.
the car for the people nearly running me down and saving me a life less spent.
and the fruits in the pudding of the stories i begot when nothing else.
not even shoes or wheelchairs.
and we still have the conversation around health ad nauseum.
because we are in dire times.
all of us.
beggars and beggars and beggars all.