Harry 12th January 1990 - 27th February 2017

Arrrghhhhh.   This is such a terrible story.   Harry was my brother Tom's son; his parents split when he was 7, my brother's input after that was minimal.  His mother Heather is a materialistic nitwit, obsessed with appearances, she always preferred his younger sister Suzy and as a result of this, and her very limited nuturing skills, Harry was a very neglected child.  He left home at 18 and never had any higher education.   He started taking drugs quite early and his mother's family blame all his problems on that.  They prefer not to ask why a child would want to seek comfort and relief in drugs.   He was not an addict, he took them when he needed comfort or when he wanted to, for fun.

For several years he tried to get going as a music producer/creator but it was hard work and he was often sofa-surfing and didn't really have a proper base.   He made a great friend called Leroy and together they went back to Leroy's native Bradford and Harry got into various bits of sales work, etc. up there.    In summer 2015 he and Leroy had an argument,  Leroy threw himself out of a second floor window and died immediately.    The police responded by tasering Harry and arresting him for his murder (although he wasn't actually there at the time).  For 6 months he was a suspect, and Leroy's family and friends blamed him and basically ran him out of Bradford.   He went home to his mother. This wasn't very convenient, as, having just divorced her second husband, she was starting a relationship with a wealthy medical consultant, approaching retirement age (she is 52) who was clearly shopping for a future nurse.  He has a house in Italy, took her to Barbados, bought her a fur coat etc etc.   While Heather is swanking around the place, Harry is doing another grim telelsales job and taking anti-depressants and not getting proper treatment for the trauma of losing his best friend, of seeing his mutilated body outside their flat, and of being under suspicion of murder.  Heather starts to demand more council tax money off him and Harry sees the fur coat, the Jag and the holidays and he flips.  One night, when he's working on his motorbike in the garage he takes his clawhammer to her car and then he goes in and burns one/all? of her fur coats.   (He swore to me that he had not been taking drugs prior to this, apart from the anti-depressants).   He goes upstairs with all the kitchen knives and nails his door shut, intending to kill himself.    

When his mother came home she called the police who went upstairs and tasered him and took him into custody.   His mother then did what all mothers would naturally do, she took out an injunction against him which prevented him contacting her except via solicitors, or coming within 50m of his home.  Harry went to prison on remand.

Harry whizzes past on the dodgems - right

Where we come into it, is that I wrote to Harry in prison, expressing sympathy, but he didn't get the letter.  I assumed wrongly, that some member of the family, Tom perhaps, would be in court to hear his case (I had no idea when it was and that weekend I discovered that Ned was having an anxiety crisis and we needed to go to Norwich in a hurry).  About a fortnight later I got an email from my youngest sister begging us (my siblings and I) to try and speak to Tom and to persuade him to take on his paternal role and give Harry a home as he was currently living rough and had been seen begging outside Tesco's in Southampton...He had been found guilty of criminal damage with an 18 month suspended sentence and set free, on probation, with nowhere to go except the streets. 

I didn't think Tom would provide a particularly loving or supportive home for Harry, so I called his other grandparents and found out where he was and went to get him.  That was in July and he's lived here ever since.   He was absolutely charming although with a tendency to tell fibs, a necessity from childhood I suspect, like his habit of hiding broken crockery.  He wanted to get himself sorted out, but was frequently depressed.  He got a job almost immediately and seemed all set, but it was a sales job and he didn't make his targets during his probationary period so he was sacked.   He then began to look for more manual work, and was hoping to go on a Railtrack training course.  In the meantime he was in his room, watching endless films and making more music, trying to perfect a particular piece that he'd been working on since he came here.  Finn spent a lot of time chatting with him, and we all had supper together in the evenings and had a chance to talk.  I realised quite early on that although we could provide a fixed address and stability for him there wasn't much we could do about his state of mind, but he told his other grandparents how he wished he'd been brought up in our family and how I was a much better mother than his ("Of course, he didn't mean that" she told me).  I did try to nudge him towards drug counselling and so on, but when he first came, I don't think he was doing drugs at that time and while he was working, only on "party" basis, rather than habitually.  I suspected his drug use had increased a bit in January, he began to keep strange hours and would have intensive bouts of hoovering in the middle of the night. He went to one session with a local drug counsellor (who is a friend of mine) but didn't continue.  He was doing bereavement counselling to cope with Leroy's death, but a couple of days before he died he was wondering whether it was worth continuing, he wasn't sure if he had anything more to say.  Actually, he probably needed about 10 years of therapy to say all he needed to say, and I was hoping to win the lottery so I could pay for it. 

On Sunday I was admitted to hospital with a rather awful infection in my abdomen, related to gall stones.   On Monday Mark rang me and said he was coming in to see me and I said "Just go and have a chat with Harry and see how it all went on Sunday" (he had met up with his sister, Tom, my father and my sister C - a very rare event which had been brokered by C as part of her campaign to get Tom to behave like a father).    Mark went up and found Harry lying naked on his bed with his laptop on his chest, he called Finn, Finn's friends rang 999, M and F tried to find a pulse, without success.   The paramedics arrived, but clearly Harry had been dead for about an hour before they arrived.  There's been a post-mortem, we don't have the results yet; my suspicion is that his early use of cocaine, crack and heroine when he was younger, coupled with a phase of anorexia where he took drugs instead of eating, may have weakened his heart.  

Last week felt like the longest week of my life, and his, presumably guilt-stricken, mother immediately took charge as next of kin and has arranged the funeral and so on and not told us anything (apart from giving Mark a self-justifying spiel about "if you had seen the damage he did to my house and car").  I am extremely angry with her,  Finn has been absolutely traumatised by it and is distraught and Mark is feeling very shaken.  I want to ring her up and scream at her "My husband and son tried to revive his lifeless corpse, and now you are pretending it's nothing to do with us."

There are so many other poignant details I could add, but this is quite enough really.  I should say, when we took him in, I hardly knew him, I used to see him at Christmas, and at the summer birthday do, so it really was great to have had the opportunity to get to know him better, even though it has greatly added to the sense of loss we all feel.

Harry, Ned and Finn at Dreamland summer 2016

Book of the Day: The Loney - Hurley

I had wanted to read this book a lot, because it deals with issues like belief and so on (a popular topic currently) and was given a copy for my birthday.   It is book of the day, because I am enjoying "bedrest " just now, so I am getting through a fair few contemporary books.  I expect my rate will be slowed when I get onto C. Bronte's Shirley - our current Book Group read.

I enjoyed The Loney enormously, I liked the description of the countryside, could see it etc, and really enjoyed the characters and the evocation of different styles of Catholicism in the 70s.  What I found a little odd was the way it was described as "horror".   It is a darkish novel, and it contains some unexplained, supernatural elements, but horror?  I didn't find it scary particularly, I was intrigued as to what would happen.  We know from the beginning that the main character, the presumably autistic, mute Hanny, is cured somehow, but it is never made clear how or why.  

The book employs two particular horror genre memes - firstly the unfriendly natives, and secondly, the ominous objects (two separate ones) and a tense scene in which the unfriendly natives enter the rented house.   So far so Wicker Man/Straw Dogs etc.  But then there are three inexplicable people who are also apparently strangers - who are intertwined into the story. The narrator has no religious faith and doesn't seem fazed by anything, because he's a boy and it's all an adventure, so he doesn't have any sense of horror. Any horror must be in the reader's own mind, expectations based on readings of previous horror stories.   As I don't read this genre (except in classic forms, such as Stoker and M R James) I probably don't get so readily triggered by these cues.

The characters are very good, but because they are all described from the boy's point of view we get their actions and conversations, and the only way we get any sense of their inner lives is when he eavesdrops.  As a result, this makes them feel as though they are operating the plot - and it occurs to me that this a problem for all genre writers (to some extent I have found this) because the plotting is very important it is essential to get it properly functioning. However, they are realistic characters, and perform well in an ensemble.

Whose story this is is another question.   The narrator does go through a great change, but that happens after the main events of the book have occurred, and it cannot be quite understood.  Indeed, what happens at the end is remarkably difficult to understand, and the joy of the paranormal is that is doesn't require a rational explanation, simply a suspension of disbelief.   However, the excellence of the book, in creating a credible ensemble of characters (despite certain clunkiness alluded to above) means that it is harder to suspend disbelief when the final events occur.  And they are not explained.   Well of course, only a very simplistic literal person like me would expect to understand the ending!  For heavens sake, this is where the reader has to do the work, provide the narrative, probe their worst fears etc.

If the story is not the narrator's then it is his brother's, but we do not see his mind, only his brother's view of him, indeed, this is why the characters are so "operational" because we are only see them from the narrator's 15 or 16 year old point of view, and he is only interested in certain things about them, we do not know the rest.  His mother is astonishingly 2D though, but then again, I doubt whether either of my sons at that age would have formed anything like a nuanced view of their mother.  She is transformed at the end, in his eyes, but oh, I don't know.  She is transformed from 2D priopriety and piety to 2D happiness, so it's not something heartfelt.

There is a sort of pathos in the description of the "shrine" and the damage to the church, which does add to a doomy sense.  On some level you may expect this anti-Christian (or simply anti-Catholic) activity to be diabolical, but it doesn't go that far.  It fails to be melodramatic, and that's a good controlled thing, but I still want to know: WTF happened?  How TF did he get cured?   In this unresolved mystery I am reminded of similar annoyance with Waters' The Little Stranger and Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist.   I love a supernatural element in a book - but it needs to be explained, rather than sketchily hinted at, or shown and withdrawn.   And I could start on the apples.... but that's another thing.

Sick Diaries 5 Alternative Remedies

My sister in law recommended an alternative remedy, which involves drinking a lot of apple juice "to soften" the gallstones.  Presumably this makes them less painful when they are bashing about, the "cure" continues with you taking a lot of epsom salts and so on and lying very still while you pass them, and eventually deposit them in the lavatory.   I query whether even these softened stones would pass painlessly.  Besides, after you have done this, they recommend you have a colonic irrigation, so I may have to give that one a miss.   Subsequently I have heard of one person who performed this operation successfully.     However, I began to drink apple juice and then I stopped.  By coincidence the period when I stopped drinking it was when I began to feel better, so I now wonder, having resumed the apple juice, whether it is actually churning them up somehow.     I don't even know how this would work.  Presumably it's malic acid that softens them, but how does the malic acid get into the gall bladder?  Is it filtered out through the liver.   Or what?   I may stop taking the apple juice and see if it feels any better.

My nephew Harry said "Milk Thistle" was the thing to help liver function, so we have bought a box at vast expense.  I don't even know how I'd notice a difference but perhaps if I have a less tender liver and fewer pains in the liver areas I might feel better about it.   The only negative side is that it promotes oestrogen production, so not very good for fibroids, and I've only just about got over the whole unexpected bleeding etc.

Another suggestion, fairly harmless I think, is that I could have Epsom Salts baths - and this apparently draws out impurities - which is one of those nicely imprecise alternative medical phrases that sounds reasonable and reassuring without being very specific.  Anyway, it can't do any harm I guess.

What else do they suggest?  I dunno, should do more research I suppose.  

Sick Diaries 4

I have to say that I felt much better on Tuesday night after the trip to the specialist, all my nagging fear that it could be something worse had gone.  We ate a fairly normal meal by most standards, although for us it was quite abnormal - a "luxury" ready meal combo for Valentines Day, and I had a glass of some decent white wine.   The next day things weren't too bad.  I taught and went out and about.   However, since Thursday I have felt pretty awful and have gone to bed in the afternoon - or slept for hours in the morning.  I've also been having lucid dreams and the co-codamol doesn't seem to be working much.  Additionally there seem to be increasing pains higher up - under my ribs and in my breasts, and lungs.  This is presumably my swollen liver having a grumble.

So, what to do?  Yesterday I saw my friend S and she suggested various things.  Mainly that I stop trying to DO things, and just take a month off, and try to get myself healthy enough to go on holiday.  It is appealing advice, and we talked about the psychosomatic elements in the disease, and the disappointment and rejection I'd been feeling.  Curiously, I dreamed about being a priest last night - can't remember the context though.  The feelings I have about the lack of interest in TMOF or The Road through the Woods as it's now officially known are similar to the feelings I had about being turned down when I thought I had a vocation, I feel a sense of having been betrayed by my intuition, by God, that my sense I was doing the right thing, trying to exercise my talents to a positive end, had been absolutely futile.

Whether I can get to the bottom of my feelings of rejection and misery is another matter, whether I should even think of carrying on with my efforts is similarly unimaginable.  There is clearly a lot of psychological stuff to deal with...

Sick Diaries 3 A visit to the gastroenterologist

Today I finally went to the specialist.  He had an excitingly vowel-free Polish name and I was expecting a 40-something energetic young man with a nice strong accent.   Instead I got an extremely steady and low key man of about my age with a home counties accent who is probably a product of one of our Catholic grammar schools, to which all bright Polish boys went without exception.  Or maybe he went to one of the private schools if his parents were more affluent.  I almost thought I knew him from somewhere.  He was steady and quiet which prevented me making jokes.

Before I went in I was weighed and had my blood pressure taken.  The nurse who did this was far from young, again, about my age.  I suppose it is a product of getting older, you really start to notice people like you, who would once have been retired, now still at the coal-face.   My blood pressure was good 122/72 - much better than last time.   I expect my weight loss has helped.   There was another, younger, blond nurse, everyone was very friendly, and it was terribly quiet.  This part of outpatients is called Area B which sounds nicely science fictional, you enter Area B and there is nothing but a sea of blue seats, with one person sitting at the far end.

The gastroenterologist asked me if I had had developed any new symptoms.  I told him about the chest pains, but forgot to tell him about the shakes and lightheadedness.  He ordered an MRI scan, and more blood tests.   He told me he thought a stone was stuck in the bile duct and that was why it was grumbling all the time, if so, while annoying, it is very reassuring.   If this is correct they will send down a camera and remove the stone, subsequently, if necessary, they will remove the gall bladder.  Joy.   There is some concern about my liver, which is fatty "because you are fat" but is behaving badly probably because it is being affected by the gallstone situation.

I took my blood test form down the passage.  My veins were playing up, and it was touch and go, even with the butterfly on the back of my hand.  Sometimes it has come out so slowly that it has coagulated before the sample pots are filled.  This time there was a new sample pot, with a brown lid, as well as the more familiar purple lid (the other familiar ones are yellow and green).  I vaguely associate brown with the liver - the meat, liver spots etc. liver-spotted dalmatians.  But perhaps it's nothing to do with that.

The sun went in and cloud came over.  We went home.  What next?

Sick Diaries 2 Painkillers

I have never been a great one for pills, but in the last year I have found myself taking four a day, regularly - and occasionally more.  Two of these I've been taking for years, for my high blood pressure - losing two stone hasn't made much difference to that yet.  The other 2 are the high dose of anti-uric acid I am taking for the gout.   Recently my GP tried ant-acids but they didn't make much difference.   I stopped taking them, as ranitidine has some nasty, albeit rare, side effects.   So the other pills I take, occasionally, are pain killers.

I am puritanical about them.  I take ibuprofen for any joint/muscle pain, but I know that taking them regularly is bad, and does increase your chance of having a stroke.  As my mother took them regularly from her 50s on wards and had a stroke aged 72 I tend to avoid them unless the pain is unbearable and prevents me doing things, or wakes me up at night.    

Recently my GP has suggested paracetemol for my pain, coincidentally I heard a medical programme on Radio 4 which said what I had always suspected, that paracetemol doesn't actually work (except for getting temperature down and delighting babies - I can clearly remember the Calpol magic, the first time I gave Ned a spoonful). I've very seldom used paracetemol, as a child we usually had aspirin, until we were told paracetemol was better.  Perhaps it was.   When I had period pain as a young woman there was a magnificent drug called Veganin - which I don't think exists any more, but it was an aspirin and codeine mix.  I realised then that codeine was probably the only really worthwhile easily available painkiller.  This view was confirmed when the Greek government banned its import into Greece: you couldn't take it in your luggage for personal use.

So now I am taking co-codamol, and it works for several hours and I am able to take it in the evening and it helps me sleep without waking in any possible pain.  I am also experiencing bouts of light-headedness and occasional shaking... possibly low blood sugar?  However, I find if the pain is bad in the morning, I take it then too and it helps me get through the day with an illusion of capacity.

Sick Diaries 1

One of the reasons I haven't been keeping up with the blog much is because I have been sick.    The gynaecological (fibroid) problem petered out with my oestrogen supplies, but I still found that my foot problem, which turned out to be gout, was getting me down.   However, by October, the gout medication was working, I was far less stiff and achey and I had the benefit of a lovely Neapolitan holiday, so I was feeling almost oojah-cum-spiff.   In November two things happened, firstly another attack of gout, and secondly the beginnings of the stomach pains.    These have ebbed and flowed for the last two months, and have been provisionally diagnosed as gallstones, but as a result I have been more or less in pain every day since.

The reason I think things are a bit odd is that the pain is not behaving like gallstones (yes, I do have pains across the back, but there are other symptoms too).  What I have learned is that I can only eat minuscule amounts of anything.  So I can have a perfectly satisfactory lunch of 4 chocolates - giving me all the fat and calories I need to keep going, or an apple, but an apple seems to inflame my stomach (as does apple juice - which I was told was a sovereign remedy for gallstones - it softens them apparently).    Things that seem to agree with my stomach are: cheese, chocolate, cake, biscuits coffee, bread, porridge, milk (this would point towards an ulcer), while fruit doesn't seem to work, apart from bananas.   I am also finding that the long food free afternoon is bad, I get ravenous and then eat too much (in quantity terms, not calories) before supper.  I then spend the evening in pain.   Last night I discovered fish and chips was not terribly good.  Probably ate too much.

Anyway, the crux of this is that I feel considerably lower in energy.  I went down stairs earlier, washed up, hung out the washing and then felt knackered.  In the middle of doing that, I felt great, I felt "better", but bending and stretching played havoc with my stomach and the pain came back.    So all my thoughts that I WOULD manage to do some submissions to agents this afternoon, have turned to mush, and I am not feeling up to it.  I don't know how long this period is going to last, but I am thoroughly fed up with it.

I have been promised a fast track appointment, to look at this, which ought to happen in the next week (as it did not happen this week).  Perhaps that will make some progress.   I imagine they they will whip out my gallbladder within about 6 months, after which, life may return to normal.   In the meantime, I just wish it was possible to live without eating.