30 1 2010
Decanto magazine has accepted one of the poems I sent out to advertise A Town Unlike Alice and Lisa Stewart who edits Decanto will try to add a link from the magazine website to mine, and Jeremy Hilton editor of Fire magazine has promised to mention Town Unlike in his next editorial, that issue of Fire will be featuring mental health issues. It will appear later in the spring, with two of my poems in it and Jeremy says he'll publish a third poem as well to raise my profile, very sweet and generous of him writers would be nowhere without the dedication and investment of time and taste of so many editors like Jeremy and Lisa. Cannon's Mouth and Carillon have also promised links but should you think me getting swollen headed, Acumen rejected my work with a form letter which brought me back to earth with a jolt! You can only please some of the people some of the time, there are as many ideas about what makes poetry as there are editors.
So far Sam and I haven't had the chance of getting out to take photos for Town Unlike, either the weather is appalling or he's busy and I can't ask him to venture outside with his expensive camera when it's pouring with rain, nor dare I ask him to grovel in the mud when there's a sharp frost or snow is on the ground, a meat and potato pie will only buy some favours. I'll see what the weather's like as February proceeds, perhaps next Sunday, Saturday is out because of the Six Nations rugby match, Wales are playing England and my husband is Welsh, the Wales England matches bring out the worst of his racism and if Wales win he'd better not crow too loudly, Sam supports England and may not feel like doing the Rees family any favours if he's been as humiliated as his team. The Welsh feel as strongly as anyone of Pakistani origin when their team plays England, folk memories of conquest and oppression are vividly alive and translated into national rivalries in sport, rugby is a working class game in Wales whereas the England team are usually drawn from the better off classes, it makes for lots of partisan spirit.
My husband may not know much Welsh but he recalls every insult to the "Sais", the English, and they are many and vigorously expressed.
I'm tired and I'm not very happy, I've bust a gut revising poems and it's very concentrated hard work and takes it out of one. This morning the ground was covered in snow and the air was icy when I went out to the cashpoint, my sacks of manure are frozen so it'd be difficult spreading the contents on my raspberry beds, warmer weather would have made it easier and getting out into the garden would have been the sort of change that is as good as a rest. Still, if I've given those poems my best shot I might have some more acceptances, I'd rather do good work and knacker myself than fiddle about half heartedly then make excuses to myself, it's the work that counts. On that note I'll conclude, I don't intend to make a living out of self pity, as his teacher apocryphally said, you'll never get anywhere by whining Zimmerman! Am I in the wrong job?
Saturday 30 January 2010
Saturday 23 January 2010
Photos for A Town Unlike Alice
23 1 2010
I've secured my photographer by cooking him meat and potato pie - a northern speciality - and leaning on my daughter Kitty his girlfriend, Sam is buying a super new camera and we're going to prowl round the borough with me pointing out wildflowers, graffiti, traffic intersections, trees and wild birds, and he'll take professional quality photos, that's the theory. Wildflowers in late January early February? Red dead nettle, chickweed and speedwell come to mind, and alder trees with male and female flowers scattering auburn scales over the asphalt pavements, all there if you know what to look for and we have marshes close by with ducks, cormorants, geese, moorhens, coots and reed warblers and wagtails, sometimes I see a heron flapping great wings lazily above the rooftops. It's a country childhood thing, I grew up on farms in the Fens and north Nottinghamshire, my Dad was an agricultural scientist working for what was then the Ministry of Agriculture and both my parents taught me to identify different wild flowers, trees, birds and other wildlife, if you're observant and can put a name to what you see the habit of observation is rewarded andf intensified. Sam can take a superb shot of a wild flower but he has no idea how to identify it so he misses things I'd notice, he's going to find himself crouching in the mud when I find red dead nettle or others, they aren't spectacular they are modest, little and low. But to compensate, this borough is rich in trees both inherited from the original farmland like black poplars, planted by farmers to mark the boundaries of farm and marsh, planted by the council like whitebeam, cherries, alders and both birch and silver birch, and self seeding like scruffy clumps of sycamore and buddleia. Sam can stand tall and direct his camera heavenwards when he takes shots of the trees and winter is a good time, trees stand revealed with their scaffolding bare to the weather and the shapes are characteristic, beautiful cantilevered structures.
As the T-shirt Kitty bought me proudly proclaims, never underestimate the power of a sick mind! I wear it as a statement of fact, my mind may have had its ups and downs but that in no way affects its power to think and observe, nor does it diminish knowledge acquired in childhood and the delight that natural things bring. Even when I was in hospital trying to starve the evil out of myself I loved walking in the grounds and woods, charms of goldfinches used to feed and fly in the woodland borders, magpies used to fly in ones which I thought very mean of them, at times I was quite unhappy enough without having one for sorrow forced on my notice, there were yellowhammers, assorted tits, chaffinches and hawks overhead keeping their eyes peeled for the next meal. keeping one's eyes peeled always struck me as an extraordinarily violent way of putting it!
Sam will get credits all over the website for his photos, as he'd doubtless bitterly remark, there's no such thing as a free lunch but after he's grovelled in the mud for me I'll make sure there's a nice meal as a reward, and go round the shop for some real ales for him. Lots of his photography can be found on flickr, he calls himself Samwise, he regularly sells work to magazines and newspapers. Trading favours is part of the culture in this neck of the woods, as it is all over the world, not what you know but who you know if you want a job done or can offer to do a job. You can't put a price on goodwill backed by expertise or access to a man with whatever at wholesale costs, or something left over from a previous job, or the plumber you know from round the pub turning out on a Bank holiday and not charging Bank holiday rates to fix that spouting pipe. I've met some real gentlemen who regard me as one of us not one of them because we use the same pub, gentlemen careful not to use abuse about nutters and careful not to frighten me with the harsher sorts of pub banter when I'm not well, far kinder to me than some of my graduate acquaintances who use abuse constantly and will apply my diagnosis to insult people they don't like. Curious. They'd slit their wrists rather than use racist abuse and quite rightly so, they're blind when it comes to abusing the most vulnerable members of the community, and sneer at cockney culture and comparatively less well educated people, what they don't realise is that it makes wonderful copy! As I say, never underestimate the power of a sick mind ho ho.
Anne Rees
I've secured my photographer by cooking him meat and potato pie - a northern speciality - and leaning on my daughter Kitty his girlfriend, Sam is buying a super new camera and we're going to prowl round the borough with me pointing out wildflowers, graffiti, traffic intersections, trees and wild birds, and he'll take professional quality photos, that's the theory. Wildflowers in late January early February? Red dead nettle, chickweed and speedwell come to mind, and alder trees with male and female flowers scattering auburn scales over the asphalt pavements, all there if you know what to look for and we have marshes close by with ducks, cormorants, geese, moorhens, coots and reed warblers and wagtails, sometimes I see a heron flapping great wings lazily above the rooftops. It's a country childhood thing, I grew up on farms in the Fens and north Nottinghamshire, my Dad was an agricultural scientist working for what was then the Ministry of Agriculture and both my parents taught me to identify different wild flowers, trees, birds and other wildlife, if you're observant and can put a name to what you see the habit of observation is rewarded andf intensified. Sam can take a superb shot of a wild flower but he has no idea how to identify it so he misses things I'd notice, he's going to find himself crouching in the mud when I find red dead nettle or others, they aren't spectacular they are modest, little and low. But to compensate, this borough is rich in trees both inherited from the original farmland like black poplars, planted by farmers to mark the boundaries of farm and marsh, planted by the council like whitebeam, cherries, alders and both birch and silver birch, and self seeding like scruffy clumps of sycamore and buddleia. Sam can stand tall and direct his camera heavenwards when he takes shots of the trees and winter is a good time, trees stand revealed with their scaffolding bare to the weather and the shapes are characteristic, beautiful cantilevered structures.
As the T-shirt Kitty bought me proudly proclaims, never underestimate the power of a sick mind! I wear it as a statement of fact, my mind may have had its ups and downs but that in no way affects its power to think and observe, nor does it diminish knowledge acquired in childhood and the delight that natural things bring. Even when I was in hospital trying to starve the evil out of myself I loved walking in the grounds and woods, charms of goldfinches used to feed and fly in the woodland borders, magpies used to fly in ones which I thought very mean of them, at times I was quite unhappy enough without having one for sorrow forced on my notice, there were yellowhammers, assorted tits, chaffinches and hawks overhead keeping their eyes peeled for the next meal. keeping one's eyes peeled always struck me as an extraordinarily violent way of putting it!
Sam will get credits all over the website for his photos, as he'd doubtless bitterly remark, there's no such thing as a free lunch but after he's grovelled in the mud for me I'll make sure there's a nice meal as a reward, and go round the shop for some real ales for him. Lots of his photography can be found on flickr, he calls himself Samwise, he regularly sells work to magazines and newspapers. Trading favours is part of the culture in this neck of the woods, as it is all over the world, not what you know but who you know if you want a job done or can offer to do a job. You can't put a price on goodwill backed by expertise or access to a man with whatever at wholesale costs, or something left over from a previous job, or the plumber you know from round the pub turning out on a Bank holiday and not charging Bank holiday rates to fix that spouting pipe. I've met some real gentlemen who regard me as one of us not one of them because we use the same pub, gentlemen careful not to use abuse about nutters and careful not to frighten me with the harsher sorts of pub banter when I'm not well, far kinder to me than some of my graduate acquaintances who use abuse constantly and will apply my diagnosis to insult people they don't like. Curious. They'd slit their wrists rather than use racist abuse and quite rightly so, they're blind when it comes to abusing the most vulnerable members of the community, and sneer at cockney culture and comparatively less well educated people, what they don't realise is that it makes wonderful copy! As I say, never underestimate the power of a sick mind ho ho.
Anne Rees
Saturday 16 January 2010
Thinking of building an ark
16 1 2010
It's good to have firm footing after so much compacted ice on the pavements, I fairly burn them up because I like moving fast and freely, just as well I do have firm footing given the umbrellas wielded by people without regard for other pedestrians, my weaving and dodging would earn me a fortune in the premier league if I only took a football with me. Expeditions into the rain are light relief from composing approaches to friendly editors begging them to (a) look at my website and (b) if they like it, to mention it in editorials, sometimes I come over hot and cold at my cheek, more neck than a giraffe. My daughter Esther and adoptive daughter Angela her best mate tell me it's the same as blowing your own trumpet in job applications and interviews, you have to be confident and positive about what you could bring to a workplace, cringeworthy as the process is but if you don't ask you don't get. I am confident I've written Town Unlike to the best of my ability and it is a positive account of schizophrenia, sounding tentative and unsure would come across as coy and amateurish when I'm a professional about my work, but oh dear, it's good to get outside and get moving to shake off the feelings inspired by an own trumpet solo!
Egotists everywhere tend to be taken at their own estimation of themselves, it took me longer than it should have done to find that some authorities aren't real authorities at all they've just nominated themselves then daunted shyer souls with weighty sounding criticisms and pronouncements. I've had work rejected and trashed for the most specious of reasons and crawled away in abject humiliation, these days I can tell the difference between someone not finding my style congenial or pointing out shortcomings, and someone who will aggrandise themselves at my expense and appoint themselves as judge and jury and get a thrill out of fault finding, feeling that makes a genius and isn't it fun to rip into submitted work and make a joke of it? It would be nice to think one's work speaks for itself and with the majority of editors that's true, they don't want submissions accompanied by an essay on one's private opinion of what poetry is about and what makes a poem. I'm in the position of trying to attract readers so Town Unlike will speak for itself, but people need to be told it's there and given a taster to pique their interest, or it'll bomb into the abyss and no-one will be the wiser. Hence being positive and confident in approaches to editors to convince them the work is worth a look, and I'm making it sound reasonable to myself as I type this in to get over my nervousness.
www.aliceworeareddress.co.uk is the bunny to look for, as in let the dog see the rabbit, for an everyday story of what it's like to be schizophrenic, thrills and spills included and a challenge to the prejudiced and abusive, yes, this is what you sound like from my point of view! And an appeal to the tolerant and better informed, this is my take on schizophrenia and my mission of enlightenment, your tolerance isn't a lonely spark in universal darkness. On that confident positive note I'll sign off, best wishes, Anne Rees.
It's good to have firm footing after so much compacted ice on the pavements, I fairly burn them up because I like moving fast and freely, just as well I do have firm footing given the umbrellas wielded by people without regard for other pedestrians, my weaving and dodging would earn me a fortune in the premier league if I only took a football with me. Expeditions into the rain are light relief from composing approaches to friendly editors begging them to (a) look at my website and (b) if they like it, to mention it in editorials, sometimes I come over hot and cold at my cheek, more neck than a giraffe. My daughter Esther and adoptive daughter Angela her best mate tell me it's the same as blowing your own trumpet in job applications and interviews, you have to be confident and positive about what you could bring to a workplace, cringeworthy as the process is but if you don't ask you don't get. I am confident I've written Town Unlike to the best of my ability and it is a positive account of schizophrenia, sounding tentative and unsure would come across as coy and amateurish when I'm a professional about my work, but oh dear, it's good to get outside and get moving to shake off the feelings inspired by an own trumpet solo!
Egotists everywhere tend to be taken at their own estimation of themselves, it took me longer than it should have done to find that some authorities aren't real authorities at all they've just nominated themselves then daunted shyer souls with weighty sounding criticisms and pronouncements. I've had work rejected and trashed for the most specious of reasons and crawled away in abject humiliation, these days I can tell the difference between someone not finding my style congenial or pointing out shortcomings, and someone who will aggrandise themselves at my expense and appoint themselves as judge and jury and get a thrill out of fault finding, feeling that makes a genius and isn't it fun to rip into submitted work and make a joke of it? It would be nice to think one's work speaks for itself and with the majority of editors that's true, they don't want submissions accompanied by an essay on one's private opinion of what poetry is about and what makes a poem. I'm in the position of trying to attract readers so Town Unlike will speak for itself, but people need to be told it's there and given a taster to pique their interest, or it'll bomb into the abyss and no-one will be the wiser. Hence being positive and confident in approaches to editors to convince them the work is worth a look, and I'm making it sound reasonable to myself as I type this in to get over my nervousness.
www.aliceworeareddress.co.uk is the bunny to look for, as in let the dog see the rabbit, for an everyday story of what it's like to be schizophrenic, thrills and spills included and a challenge to the prejudiced and abusive, yes, this is what you sound like from my point of view! And an appeal to the tolerant and better informed, this is my take on schizophrenia and my mission of enlightenment, your tolerance isn't a lonely spark in universal darkness. On that confident positive note I'll sign off, best wishes, Anne Rees.
Saturday 9 January 2010
The more it snows tiddlely pom
9 1 2010
Pooh may have made up songs in the snow, I slip and slide and swear like a trooper, luckily I have a wide and colourful vocabulary with which to express myself and old ladies look at me with respect, the old ladies in this part of east London are tough and use swear words like punctuation when roused. A Town Unlike alice is up and running as an alternative to the content on my website, www.aliceworeareddress.co.uk, it looks a bit bare apart from the Alice Springs photo which my brother took as a laugh while he was travelling round Australia working illegally, he got his wife to stand behind the place name with the piece of cardboard, up a bit down a bit etc. I'm going to look for photos of blackberries, snowy woods and fireworks to liven the bareness up a bit, all that unrelieved text is a bit intimidating. I was annoyed by a couple of journalists on Breakfast TV talking about the latest attempt by members of the cabinet to unseat Gordon Brown, they're mad said one, no, I felt like shouting, don't blame the mad we don't do things like that, we're only too grateful to anyone who shows us kindness, they're sane it's the sane who can be so horrible to each other and everyone else. They kept repeating they're mad and I thought well I know you're on TV so constrained a little but surely you could come up with something original instead of stale old abuse.
It's not the vocabulary per se that annoys me so much it's the ill will with which it's used and the assumption that the mad are sub human and incomprehensible, reiterating that does nothing to increase understanding and common humanity it reinforces unreasoning fear and ignorance. Being mentally ill is like being Black back in the nineteen fifties, you hear abuse wherever you go and it's so common people don't hear what is coming out of their mouths nor how offensive they're being to people who are sensitive and vulnerable already. It's the ill will that causes the offence and it's frightening.
I have my 2010 Writer's Handbook and currently I've been revising poems ready to send them to editors of poetry magazines, the Writer's Handbook published addresses but I've had a look through the list of magazines and several are listed that have folded. It's very much trial and error when you confidently post work off, some magazines don't bother to reply and I always include an SSAE, others are quick, efficient and professional, all praise to their hard work because they're in it for the love of the thing. Seven months later I got a reply today to say the magazine had gone, courteous because they didn't have to bother, cross that one off the list and thank the Lord it wasn't a rejection! The Reater is one magazine that never responds, I looked up their website and Myspace adddresses, status: drunk, it said of one of the editors, oh so that's why you don't respond, then there was something about wanting to f@ck an old man in a supermarket, if I ever go to Hull I won't be using any supermarkets. Quantum Leap, Carrillon, Fire and many more are clean different things, intelligent, interested and interesting, Pulsar, Awen and Imagenation are also very good, any of you out there with work to send off try any of them they'll treat you with intelligent understanding and professionalism.
I've replaced the u in the above paragraph not because I'm mealy mouthed but because I'm unsure of the rules or firewall, the firewall at the Environment Agency where one of my daughters works is hyper sensitive, Nads short for Nadia had it screaming and blowing whistles and posting pornography warnings. As my brother in Australia says, computers are stupid and can't think or tell you what you need to do, he's just learning and has been heard to threaten his machine with being unplugged and then it won't look so clever, aha got you there! Firewalls display the same characteristics, it's like trying to hold a conversation with someone who takes everything literally so you can't communicate any abstract sense, it leaves you feeling that belting them over the head with a chair might get through. My husband encountered a Fundamental Christian with those characteristics on a bus, she was horribly rude to a little Asian lad and when my husband remonstrated with for God's Sake be reasonable she denounced him for taking the Lord's name in vain and carried on with the rudeness for the rest of the journey. He'd meant for the sake of God because the Asian kid was tearful, but what can you do?
Off the point as usual, but perhaps Dirk Gently was right and everything is connected and happens for a purpose, hats off to Douglas Adams I'll go with that,
Anne Rees
Pooh may have made up songs in the snow, I slip and slide and swear like a trooper, luckily I have a wide and colourful vocabulary with which to express myself and old ladies look at me with respect, the old ladies in this part of east London are tough and use swear words like punctuation when roused. A Town Unlike alice is up and running as an alternative to the content on my website, www.aliceworeareddress.co.uk, it looks a bit bare apart from the Alice Springs photo which my brother took as a laugh while he was travelling round Australia working illegally, he got his wife to stand behind the place name with the piece of cardboard, up a bit down a bit etc. I'm going to look for photos of blackberries, snowy woods and fireworks to liven the bareness up a bit, all that unrelieved text is a bit intimidating. I was annoyed by a couple of journalists on Breakfast TV talking about the latest attempt by members of the cabinet to unseat Gordon Brown, they're mad said one, no, I felt like shouting, don't blame the mad we don't do things like that, we're only too grateful to anyone who shows us kindness, they're sane it's the sane who can be so horrible to each other and everyone else. They kept repeating they're mad and I thought well I know you're on TV so constrained a little but surely you could come up with something original instead of stale old abuse.
It's not the vocabulary per se that annoys me so much it's the ill will with which it's used and the assumption that the mad are sub human and incomprehensible, reiterating that does nothing to increase understanding and common humanity it reinforces unreasoning fear and ignorance. Being mentally ill is like being Black back in the nineteen fifties, you hear abuse wherever you go and it's so common people don't hear what is coming out of their mouths nor how offensive they're being to people who are sensitive and vulnerable already. It's the ill will that causes the offence and it's frightening.
I have my 2010 Writer's Handbook and currently I've been revising poems ready to send them to editors of poetry magazines, the Writer's Handbook published addresses but I've had a look through the list of magazines and several are listed that have folded. It's very much trial and error when you confidently post work off, some magazines don't bother to reply and I always include an SSAE, others are quick, efficient and professional, all praise to their hard work because they're in it for the love of the thing. Seven months later I got a reply today to say the magazine had gone, courteous because they didn't have to bother, cross that one off the list and thank the Lord it wasn't a rejection! The Reater is one magazine that never responds, I looked up their website and Myspace adddresses, status: drunk, it said of one of the editors, oh so that's why you don't respond, then there was something about wanting to f@ck an old man in a supermarket, if I ever go to Hull I won't be using any supermarkets. Quantum Leap, Carrillon, Fire and many more are clean different things, intelligent, interested and interesting, Pulsar, Awen and Imagenation are also very good, any of you out there with work to send off try any of them they'll treat you with intelligent understanding and professionalism.
I've replaced the u in the above paragraph not because I'm mealy mouthed but because I'm unsure of the rules or firewall, the firewall at the Environment Agency where one of my daughters works is hyper sensitive, Nads short for Nadia had it screaming and blowing whistles and posting pornography warnings. As my brother in Australia says, computers are stupid and can't think or tell you what you need to do, he's just learning and has been heard to threaten his machine with being unplugged and then it won't look so clever, aha got you there! Firewalls display the same characteristics, it's like trying to hold a conversation with someone who takes everything literally so you can't communicate any abstract sense, it leaves you feeling that belting them over the head with a chair might get through. My husband encountered a Fundamental Christian with those characteristics on a bus, she was horribly rude to a little Asian lad and when my husband remonstrated with for God's Sake be reasonable she denounced him for taking the Lord's name in vain and carried on with the rudeness for the rest of the journey. He'd meant for the sake of God because the Asian kid was tearful, but what can you do?
Off the point as usual, but perhaps Dirk Gently was right and everything is connected and happens for a purpose, hats off to Douglas Adams I'll go with that,
Anne Rees
Sunday 3 January 2010
more about A Town Unlike Alice
3 1 2010
John my son reports the website as unfinished but assures me it'll be all singing all dancing once finished, no doubt if you're feeling a bit jaded it'll tell you to put your feet up and make you a nice cup of tea as well. I wanted to launch it tomorow because it'll be my ahem-th wedding anniversary, John says he can have it roughly displaying the work by then, I suppose it'll be a bit like the ferro concrete shell of a building you see when they're putting up another monolith in the City, you can see the sky defined in building shape, gaping windowless and roofless, but it takes an imaginative effort to people the shell with office workers, plastered walls and golden reflective windows, the portico proudly displaying the logo of some multi national firm. And, ha ha, sheltering half a dozen desperate smokers to give the proud logo that Third World association, as a smoker myself I like the anarchic homeless suggestion fellow smokers give to their places of employment!
Let's try another paragraph and see if I can keep to the subject, my website address is www.aliceworeareddress.co.uk, mind the concrete blocks, stacked pipes and don't touch the wiring, clap your hard hat on your head and have a look at A Town Unlike Alice. Because it's about schizophrenia I've made it dramatic and sexy, in the compell your attention sense, after all the media can't report anything about a sufferer without sensationalising so if one wants to redress the balance on the side of truth, one must make that equally compelling. All the characters are based on real people and their actions have really happened, the taping of Alice's mouth is a dramatisation of what it's like to be treated as a taboo weirdo, no-one talks to you, anything you say is treated with suspicious wariness and people nervously look round for your keeper if you express an opinion, I kid you not. It's like being the scapegoat, hung about with bells and bundles and driven out of the village to take away the bad luck or evil eye or whatever and it's a horrible way to feel. Like an extreme of finding yourself among peple who don't like you much and trying to make conversation to carry it off, aware it's not going down well and wishing the ground would open and cover you, anything to get out of the situation. Such reactions from people you've known for years add to the misery and isolate you further, and one thing any sufferer from schizophrenia is, is miserably, God forsakenly unhappy and isolated.
The point of the Gospel quotation about the Good Samaritan is self evident, who is my neighbour? Alice and anyone like her when people treat her like that and make her feel ten times worse. I wrote Town Unlike with gusto, turning tables on unthinking attitudes and paying off old scores, to paraphrase Burns there's a schizophrenic among you taking notes, I may have been made to feel bitterly unhappy, it didn't stop me thinking and paying attention to what went on. People like me have no white bandages to signal the need for considerate treatment and sympathetic interest, we look the same as everyone else, my blood still runs cold at some of the things people say right out loud like the road sweepers going through the hospital grounds when I wasa patient, hope we don't meet no nutters said one to the other as I walked past! I suppose they expected swivelling eyes and foaming mouths like the old cartoons of Tony Benn, they didn't give me a second glance and I was both hurt and amused, it was an unkind and stupid thing to say but their happy complacency and unawareness was funny when the worst sort of nutter, from their point of view, was two feet away on the same pavement.
It's an appropriate time of year to say fear not I bring you glad tidings, but if you look at Town Unlike you'll see you have nothing to fear despite popular prejudice; popular prejudice is what I fear most, it prevents people from thinking critically and from seeing what is under their noses. The mentally ill were slaughtered along with the Jews in Nazi Germany. All the best to everyone for the New Year, Anne Rees.
John my son reports the website as unfinished but assures me it'll be all singing all dancing once finished, no doubt if you're feeling a bit jaded it'll tell you to put your feet up and make you a nice cup of tea as well. I wanted to launch it tomorow because it'll be my ahem-th wedding anniversary, John says he can have it roughly displaying the work by then, I suppose it'll be a bit like the ferro concrete shell of a building you see when they're putting up another monolith in the City, you can see the sky defined in building shape, gaping windowless and roofless, but it takes an imaginative effort to people the shell with office workers, plastered walls and golden reflective windows, the portico proudly displaying the logo of some multi national firm. And, ha ha, sheltering half a dozen desperate smokers to give the proud logo that Third World association, as a smoker myself I like the anarchic homeless suggestion fellow smokers give to their places of employment!
Let's try another paragraph and see if I can keep to the subject, my website address is www.aliceworeareddress.co.uk, mind the concrete blocks, stacked pipes and don't touch the wiring, clap your hard hat on your head and have a look at A Town Unlike Alice. Because it's about schizophrenia I've made it dramatic and sexy, in the compell your attention sense, after all the media can't report anything about a sufferer without sensationalising so if one wants to redress the balance on the side of truth, one must make that equally compelling. All the characters are based on real people and their actions have really happened, the taping of Alice's mouth is a dramatisation of what it's like to be treated as a taboo weirdo, no-one talks to you, anything you say is treated with suspicious wariness and people nervously look round for your keeper if you express an opinion, I kid you not. It's like being the scapegoat, hung about with bells and bundles and driven out of the village to take away the bad luck or evil eye or whatever and it's a horrible way to feel. Like an extreme of finding yourself among peple who don't like you much and trying to make conversation to carry it off, aware it's not going down well and wishing the ground would open and cover you, anything to get out of the situation. Such reactions from people you've known for years add to the misery and isolate you further, and one thing any sufferer from schizophrenia is, is miserably, God forsakenly unhappy and isolated.
The point of the Gospel quotation about the Good Samaritan is self evident, who is my neighbour? Alice and anyone like her when people treat her like that and make her feel ten times worse. I wrote Town Unlike with gusto, turning tables on unthinking attitudes and paying off old scores, to paraphrase Burns there's a schizophrenic among you taking notes, I may have been made to feel bitterly unhappy, it didn't stop me thinking and paying attention to what went on. People like me have no white bandages to signal the need for considerate treatment and sympathetic interest, we look the same as everyone else, my blood still runs cold at some of the things people say right out loud like the road sweepers going through the hospital grounds when I wasa patient, hope we don't meet no nutters said one to the other as I walked past! I suppose they expected swivelling eyes and foaming mouths like the old cartoons of Tony Benn, they didn't give me a second glance and I was both hurt and amused, it was an unkind and stupid thing to say but their happy complacency and unawareness was funny when the worst sort of nutter, from their point of view, was two feet away on the same pavement.
It's an appropriate time of year to say fear not I bring you glad tidings, but if you look at Town Unlike you'll see you have nothing to fear despite popular prejudice; popular prejudice is what I fear most, it prevents people from thinking critically and from seeing what is under their noses. The mentally ill were slaughtered along with the Jews in Nazi Germany. All the best to everyone for the New Year, Anne Rees.
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