Thinking You Know Stuff That You Don't Actually Know and Presuming Stupidity In Others

I think most people probably suffer from this weird condition whereby our brains produce an explanation for why something is as it is and, regardless of plausibility, our brains then accept this explanation, even without any kind of supporting evidence, as true.

Take flat earthers as an example: 

• Child looks at the horizon, it looks flat; ergo the earth is flat.
• Child looks at the horizon, they can't see the city they visited last week with grandma; ergo the earth is at very least curved.
• Child overhears the expression "all corners of the world"; ergo the world is a CUBE.

Most of our more improbable assumptions are quickly corrected by schooling or other information we are exposed to. Which is why we point and laugh at adult flat earthers who've somehow managed to miss or ignore the memo. But there are many other things we believe we know, often without realising we have only assumed them.

The 'today years old' meme is an example of this: things that were out there being obvious but people never thought about because we tend to accept things as they are. https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/x-mind-blowing-facts-people-learned-when-they-were-today

Part of the point of these things is that they don't actually MATTER to most of us either way. I mean, what DIFFERENCE would it make to your personal life if the earth is flat, round or oblong (yes, I was watching the repeat of the Midsomer Murders episode 'The Oblong Murders' a few nights ago)? Unless you're an astrophysicist or something the truthful answer is probably 'none at all'. Similarly the bit in Sherlock where it doesn't matter to him if the earth goes round the sun or 'round and round the garden like a teddy bear'.

It is because of this that articles are written debunking urban myths and explaining commonly held but misinformed beliefs...and I don't have a problem with that, only the assumption that I the reader am as dumb as the writer thinks!

And the reason I'm thinking of this was stumbling across this 'Cats in Ancient Egypt didn't look the way you think' article from Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidanderson/2019/01/29/cats-in-ancient-egypt-didnt-look-the-way-you-think/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
From the title I thought it would be something about the evolution of domesticated cats - even in my lifetime Siamese cats, for example, have changed appearance quite dramatically due to the way they are bred. I assumed (there's that word again) that it would be about Ancient Egyptian cats more closely resembling their wild ancestors than modern moggies.
But no. 
I'm not sure who the writer was talking about but apparently there are people who assume Ancient Egyptian cats were exclusively BLACK. Why? Because most statuettes of cats are rendered in black stone or dark bronze. *FACEPALM* As the article sites paintings of cats in tabby colouring a similarly wrong hypothesis that all Ancient Egyptian cats were black or tabby could be proposed! 
This in turn reminded me of my Open University studies where the course books would prattle on for several pages about some wholly absurd hypothesis - which would invariably enrage me to all caps comments and angry face doodles in the margins about how bloody stupid and utterly wrong it all was - before belatedly debunking it. Those detours along assumptions I had never made drove me loopy.
It just seemed such an odd premise for an article to start with... By all means write an article explaining how it might be assumed...but honestly, it's not an assumption I would have imagined anyone could make! Maybe it's because I have an interest in Egyptology and learned at primary school how Egyptian art (excluding the Amarna period aka Akhenaton's reign) is stylised and unified by convention, not realistic. Or perhaps because this is something I had previously shared on Facebook:

There's another one I have come across in a similar vein. There are those who assume Ancient Egyptian people were red-skinned because of artistic conventions and those who assume Ancient Egyptians were black-skinned because Egypt is in Africa... *sigh* What's more, I've encountered people who accuse the discipline of Egyptology of 'whitewashing' and who do things like assert (on no evidence) that all pharaohs (including Cleopatra VII who as a Ptolemy might be reasonably supposed to be of largely Greek ancestry) were in fact black.
Where do I even begin with that?! First off there's basic geography. Yes, Egypt is on the African continent but depending on how old the Sahara Desert is there has long been a barrier separating north and sub-Saharan Africans; meanwhile, even in antiquity Egypt had thriving ports on the Mediterranean coast meaning contact with paler skinned Europeans would be common. 
The Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in art as paler skinned than their Nubian neighbours. Was this merely a convention to differentiate themselves? Was this an ancient form of colourism (where paler skin is perceived as more attractive)? Or was it FACT - just as modern Egyptians are lighter skinned north Africans, not all historic Africans were darker skinned sub-Saharans.
There have of course been DNA studies on mummies...and so far these have found that the Ancient Egyptians tested were less black African than the modern population. 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530115141.htm
So Ancient Egyptian art conventions can be taken to be both fact-based and differentiating themselves from other populations...and yet clearly not realistic because, regardless of familial resemblance, not all pharaohs could have looked so alike. That, and the fact female pharaoh Hatshepsut was represented with a symbolic beard! 

Obviously, for people not well versed in Egyptian art this might well be counter-intuitive but the phrasing of an explanatory article makes a world of difference. Put it in terms of "Did you know...?" rather than "You know how you always thought...?" Quit dumbing things down to the lowest possible level and assuming your readers are as daft as a box of frogs. In my humble opinion anyone who assumes a thing must actually look the way it is drawn / painted / sculpted is pretty damn daft. Just look at the trouble Henry VIII had over Anne of Cleves!
I'm not the brightest spark and I've assumed I've known all sorts of things I didn't but I'm not about to assume other people have made the exact same mistakes either. By all means admit your failings if you feel the need but please stop short of assuming others did the same.

Complaining about what you can (and probably should) change: a rant from someone who is up shit creek without a paddle

Disclaimer: If that title doesn't tell you that this may not be the most well-balanced of arguments you might try Reading Comprehension 101. This is me, letting off steam that one career path is given a curiously privileged status.

This video is one of a set on the BBC site: "I wanted to crash my car to avoid teaching" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-hampshire-46738445/a-teacher-s-story-eat-sleep-teach-repeat 04 Jan 2019

Other titles include: Why teaching is making me ill (18 Sept 2018), More teachers seek help for stress (03 Sept 2018) and PE teacher left 'sobbing like baby' (17 Sept 2015).

*seething intensifies*

Stress happens in EVERY walk of life. The stresses this teacher talks of are stresses faced 24/7 by many parents - especially lone parents, and even more so homeschooling parents who aren't even getting funding for the materials their kids need, let alone a pay-cheque for doing the job.

You can argue that homeschoolers brought it on themselves but often parents homeschool because traditional schools can't don't or won't meet their kid's needs. I homeschooled my eldest after she'd been effectively excluded from the main body of the school because that was the easier path for them to take than to address the severe bullying she faced daily. I homeschooled my youngest because she was held back a year for being "too smart" to need the stimulation of being in the correct class. I homeschooled because professional teachers failed my kids.

*and breathe*

The point I really want to make is that teachers are well paid, highly qualified individuals with transferable skills. If teaching is so damn stressful change careers! Try being exhausted and stressed in a minimum wage job (7.5 years as a part time cleaner, struggling to keep afloat - 6 months of that homeschooling, another 5.5 years of it putting myself through uni in the hopes of a better future...yeah, that didn't work). Better yet, try being exhausted and stressed in a NO INCOME role such as welfare-dependent single-parent or full-time carer for an elderly & disabled parent. 

This is how I have spent virtually my entire working life. I have virtually no experience, minimal skills, no savings, no pension fund...my degree is just a piece of paper. I don't have the freedom to pursue a better future. If I have a breakdown (as I have before) I don't get 6 months off; I've never even had anti-depressants. Why? The NHS has failed me for 28 years of mental health problems. One ex GP told me in no uncertain terms he didn't care about mental health, I asked for help so many times that the rejections mean I'll never ask again.

My kids already have these problems and my youngest is still at uni. My eldest just quit her retail job cos the stress is too much...fortunately she has qualifications and transferable skills. Curiously, she is thinking of taking up teaching. 

*breathe*

Some people are in especially stressful public service jobs which deserve a bit of extra TLC - emergency services, air traffic control, ER staff, the armed forces... - but teachers? Maybe you've been lucky and had amazing teachers who've nurtured you / your children and done amazing things. My experience, my children's experiences, somewhat different. Some, of course have been good. A few have been very good. Most however, poor. Several, bloody dreadful.

Examples of our own experience include but are not limited to:

• Calling a child a liar in front of the class...because the teacher doesn't believe the kid is going to a particular place on holiday. Or, memorably, because a teacher decided what my cousin's wife's name was!
• Humiliating a kid in front of class for being illegitimate.
• Calling a child a cheat for getting answers right.
• Calling a child stupid for getting answers wrong.
• Deciding a child is a troublemaker because of their height...and then thinking it was okay to tell the parent that!
• Setting a class insane amounts of homework to counter the fact that the teacher just didn't bother teaching the class - literally sitting at the front telling the class to read in silence for the entirety of the lesson.
• Teaching a GCSE class one part of the syllabus only so they all flunked the exams...
• Dropping a GCSE class mid year (and so 'entrusting' their chances to the whims of various supply teachers) because writing a novel is more important than their futures.
• Calling kids names and making up nicknames for one particular child.
• Punishing one kid for the wrongdoings of the entire class.
• Punishing a child for being bullied.

Yes, I am 40 and my kids are 20 (tomorrow) and 23 (next week) so obviously a few of those things happened a good while ago but believe it or not many of those teachers will still be teaching; teachers in their 20s or 30s when I was in my mid teens would now be in their 50s and 60s.

In my years of education I had THREE really good teachers. And I went to four schools. Three. That's not a good proportion at all. Our kids deserve better and we're well aware that our cookie-cutter results-only education system is failing a proportion of kids that is scandalous. This is why I refuse to put teachers, as a whole, on a pedestal. 

*tense pause for glaring*

Teachers do not save lives, they do not put their lives on the line. And the moment Ofsted 'threatens' to hold them accountable for teaching standards they strike! Yes, teaching is an important job but it's also, supposedly, a vocation. What it is not is a life sentence - you can just hand in your notice and go do something else if the mood so takes you.

With this in mind, why is the stress experienced by teachers somehow a special case? Teachers have it easier than ever before with classroom assistants (didn't have those in my younger days), high tech teaching aids, and (generally) far smaller class sizes - an average of 20.4: "...the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the UK had some of the smallest average class sizes in the developed world" (Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38506305) and the same BBC article - from nearly two years ago - cites a year 9 maths class of 46 students...but when my mum was in primary school in the late 40s, early 50s that could be the size of a single form, not just one lesson, yet somehow teachers complain more than ever about their inability to cope. WHY? In what way is the job really harder and / or more stressful than it was in the past?!

One of the biggest complaints of teachers seems to be that the poor lambs they're struggling with performance targets and reviews...like that's not a nasty feature of most 21st century jobs! For heaven's sake, I worked as a cleaner in a school and it was all regular reviews and performance appraisals! My last job came with a whole bunch of unrealistic sales targets - partly cos you can't make customers by crap they don't want and partly cos the town was being redeveloped and people were largely going elsewhere so as to have a less stressful shopping experience. Unrealistic pressures, unreachable targets are just a fact of life nowadays. Also gonna say that I was put in charge of a shop (against my will) with virtually no training and minimal experience. I still think it's a minor miracle no one died on my watch! Teachers are at least trained and prepped for the job they do...and they sought to do it and are (contrary to their own PR) actually pretty well remunerated for it. 

I have struggled with depression virtually all my life and it is damn hard to see people act all hard done by for the career choices they made and could potentially change without much likelihood of difficulty. This is not to negate the stress they're under but I feel giving teachers some kind of special status it diminishes the stress suffered by others; their stress is not more important than anyone else's. EVERYONE who suffers stress should be entitled to support and help. There needs to be a shift in how we treat all workers in this country.

Even the headline annoys me - oh, so you wanted to crash your car to get off work? What about the emergency services called out to your rescue and NHS staff who'd have to look after you? What about the tax payer who has to cover your sick days, especially if you faked your injuries? What about the sub who has to cover your classes? What about the scare that'd give your students and the disruption to their learning?

INSERT HERE: I was run over at age 7,

my kids were at a school where a teacher died in an RTA.

At risk of sounding like a snowflake this is a really triggering thing to even suggest doing

to a class full of kids who might easily have a past trauma of this nature.

And more to my personal viewpoint...what about those in jobs where you're not entitled to paid sick leave? People who've struggled through incredibly painful shifts cos they simply don't have the luxury to recuperate. What about those struggling through life unable to drive and / or unable to afford a car? The sheer PRIVILEGE involved in that statement makes me livid.

Okay, so it's a wild statement born of severe mental distress rather than an actual action but all the same...

It will never not bug me that people who have the education, pay grade and personal freedoms to change their circumstances don't, and those of us at the bottom of the heap with no way out just have to make do. No one wants to hear about the stress of being a single parent, a cleaner, a sales assistant. We don't have the same allure, obviously.

Fighting The Wrong Fight: Forgotten Before Famous

I've had a quick through my list of blogs and didn't see anything on this topic but I'll start with an apology if I've been here and done this topic before. I know I've written about it a number of times on Twitter and even one of my uni essays went this way so it has good reason to feel familiar territory for me.

I love museums. I worked in one, as a cleaner, and working through my degree modules it was the workplace I aspired to. The particular type of museum wasn't hugely important; art, archaeology, anthropology, natural history, social history...museums are just INTERESTING. From world renowned collections to even very small local ones with relatively little to offer - they provide an invaluable learning resource.

So yeah, I like museums and I've been to all sorts all over the place. Had an almost religious experience (actually, it probably was... #praisetheAten) in Luxor Museum.

When it comes to 'controversies' I mostly take the side of the museum. I say 'mostly' because when it comes to human remains there's a whole different set of ethical nightmares to consider but I'm keeping this blog off that one. Possession isn't really the point; so long as they're available to the public and preserved for future generations.

It is somewhat problematic that somewhere like London has such a high concentration of world artefacts - admittedly disasters like The Great Fire or The Blitz are unlikely to destroy this huge wealth of treasures - but even within a small nation like the UK there are many who will never see such things; even in the south it is considered too far for many schools to offer educational trips. There is an argument to be made for safety of these objects, though. If all the artefacts of a particular culture were returned to its home nation and that nation was to be ravaged by war or fall to religious zealotry (see Buddhas of Bamiyan, Timbuktu, Ninevah, Nimrud) ...isn't that a risk too high to take? There's a reason putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea.

However, I do see the wisdom in it too...London is a major world city, a busy hub for tourists and business-people. An awful lot of people will have a chance to visit at some point in their life - more, it could be argued, that would pass through an awful lot of other capitals. And that is the crux of my argument - that world treasures belong to the world, not just the nation from which they originate. Not least of all when the culture from which they originate - such as with Ancient Egyptian artefacts - is no longer extant. The modern people of Egypt have next to no cultural connection with the pharaonic era...especially if you consider the Ptolemaic dynasty was Greek. Then there are the Romans who got all over Europe. If you were going to do such a thing, who would artefacts be returned to - their country of manufacture or the country they were found in? Or would you argue that everything Roman belongs to Rome and no other Italian city, let alone the rest of the empire?! IF such a practice of 'returning' items was to be adopted it would be an absolute logistical nightmare for starters.

I also feel very strongly for people of non-caucasian origin living in the UK...what message does it send them if artefacts of African, Asian, Aborigine origins are sent away? Why should diaspora be denied access to their cultural heritage? Why should European museums be limited to European history? How do we educate the young of the importance of other world cultures if the evidence of them is no longer there???

I believe, very strongly as you may have noticed by now, that these things belong to the world as a whole more than they do to specific places or even peoples.

But the reason for this blog post is, as so often, an article I saw on BBC News about the efforts to create a digital museum of hidden palaeontological artefacts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46497406 It may take 50 years to complete the digital recording of the 40 million fossil specimens at The Smithsonian ALONE. FORTY MILLION FOSSILS that may have incredible scientific value but are never seen and inaccessible. 

"there are drawers here in the museum that haven't been opened for decades,"

said Kathy Hollis (Smithsonian)

THIS is what makes me angry about arguments over objects like the Benin Bronzes or Elgin Marbles. They get fought over cos they're famous and envied but they're constantly available to be enjoyed by the general public somewhere at least. No one seems to give a fuck about museums holding MILLIONS of items in storage.

No, I have not gone stark raving mad, OF COURSE I know there is a huge difference between fossilised animal bones and the artefacts of human cultures BUT just think on it for a moment: museums of all kinds have 'surplus stock' - possessions which for a variety of reasons (mostly logistical) are neither displayed nor studied. Worse even than them being in private collections if they're not even being enjoyed! Just think about it...paintings which are never looked at. Why is THAT not something to get mad about?

There's an argument that possession will be of negligible importance in the digital age - as treasures are digitised and made available on the internet will there be a demand for real-world museums with actual stuff in them? OF COURSE THERE WILL BE! There's a thrill to seeing something for real for the first time that is ENHANCED by having seen pictures of it beforehand. Ownership however might become obsolete - the accessibility of artefacts either publicly or privately owned displayed or in storage can only be for the good. I get that people like things to be THEIRS alone but there's something decidedly off about big museums hoarding stuff only to keep it away from people who might study or enjoy those items.

Possession and ownership are not the same thing of course, and part of what makes me mad about stored objects is that they're not on loan to other museums and galleries who could make good use of them. A museum could still own what was on loan and another museum, perhaps in another nation, could possess it - for a time at least.

Example: The Alfred Jewel was found in Somerset and when it was at The Museum Of Somerset in Taunton it garnered enormous attention - queues around the courtyard, people fainting in the heat...staff stressed and cleaners exhausted lol. It normally resides at The Ashmolean in Oxford. Not so very far away and yes, it is on display...I've seen it there too...utterly ignored; a small object unimportant in amongst more exciting displays. So just imagine what a non-displayed object might do to revive a small local museum, or else to found an entirely new one. These objects could and perhaps should be sent around the globe to share the wealth of knowledge and art and history with EVERYONE.

And if they won't share and display actual objects it is probably long past time for ALL museums to digitise their entire collections. To preserve for posterity as well as to enable access.

We need to stop squabbling over a (relatively) few items that are contentious and deal with the bigger scandal that big museums act like monopolies, acquiring and hoarding for no gain - huge hidden collections do not add to their appeal (and footfall) or to the accumulated knowledge of the communities they serve. Because knowledge is power, not what you have hidden away under lock and key.

A Hairy Problem

I woke up this morning to the following article on the BBC News website:

"Alopecia patients call for NHS to fund real hair wigs"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46194962

1) Why are people with alopecia being 'treated' on the NHS??? A condition of hair loss is not an illness and there is no treatment. 

2) Wigs are purely cosmetic and the NHS should not imho be funding things that do not improve a person's health. 

As synthetic wigs ARE provided on the NHS it's not like there's nothing available for those who can't afford such things. NHS glasses used to be ugly af - if you wanted something nicer you had to pay for it. If you couldn't afford it you were stuck with functional. The voucher system on prescription specs has helped with this and maybe could be applied to wigs...but there are opticians on every high street in a way that wig suppliers just aren't. Not to mention the shortfall would be drastic and still price a lot of people out of real-hair wigs...but that does not mean the NHS should foot the bill.

"For many people with alopecia, wearing a wig is an essential part

of managing the psychological impact of losing their hair;

those who wear wigs for medical necessity

don't see their wig as an optional luxury."

3) As the impact of alopecia is psychological the treatment should also be psychological. However, as much as I feel for the mum in the article whose teenage son hasn't received any counselling for his hair loss I would point out that even after a suicide attempt many kids have to wait ages to see a counsellor. IF there's even a referral, that is; my kid didn't get counselling for 6 years!!! OBVIOUSLY that's not saying one psychological issue is more important than another but the system is already unfit for purpose - spend NHS money on improving counselling services for ALL conditions and you save money on dozens of other things; such as A&E visits, addiction services, eating disorder clinics, and maybe even wigs. 

Usually I argue for treating the cause, not the symptom but there is no known cause for alopecia so there's no choice but to go after the symptom...the symptom is lack of hair so address that with a wig, but that doesn't address the real issue which is psychological impact. Wigs are a band-aid solution, fixing nothing.

"Your hair is the first thing people see...

I've always had long hair, it's part of my identity."

We are socially conditioned to think that people (particularly women and younger men) should have hair while older men get a pass, baldness even being seen as attractive in some instances. It is cultural too - shaved heads being normal in many cultures. Addressing the social norms of hair and the psychological impact of losing it would be far more helpful in the long run. Those with baldness shouldn't feel obliged to hide it.

Taking the idea of hair being 'essential' to the extreme, you could in theory argue that if hair loss is to be treated as a medical issue then hairdressing, grooming products, razors etc should logically be available on the NHS - for those with conditions such as male-pattern baldness or excessive body hair for example. Actually, that's a bad example as male-pattern baldness and excessive body hair usually are related to hormone levels which could actually be treated medically...

For myself I could wrangle an argument that being stuck with my natural hair colour is detrimental to my psychological well-being. True but ludicrous. But so is arguing for a wig because your hair is your identity. Just because you've always had something doesn't mean you will, or can or should, always have that thing. You can get false teeth on the NHS cos you need them to talk and eat properly. You can get functional prosthetic limbs on the NHS but cosmetic ones cost extra because they are not medically necessary. What function does hair even have?! Answer is: none at all. 

Next issue: women from poor countries being targeted for their hair.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ugly-truth-behind-multi-million-7513507

Yes, this particular article from 2016 cites the beauty industry's demand for hair but it would be naive to think there is a clear line separating cosmetic hair pieces from wigs for those with alopecia or cancer. Human hair has to come from somewhere and most of the time it's poor women being exploited. There have also been stories of women being attacked and their hair cut off - some baseless rumours, others may be for motives such as humiliation - but in a world where human hair has monetary worth such things are liable to happen.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be an industry based on human hair but I'm saying there is an ethical argument against the NHS buying into it.

In the western world we see altruistic kids having their hair cut off for people with cancer but that's just a strand in a big ol' hairball. I don't think many people really consider where their real hair wigs and extensions actually come from.

In Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1862) a desperate and destitute Fantine sells first her only possession of worth - a locket - then her hair and teeth, then finally falls into prostitution; scenes which are deeply distressing to a modern audience - be it the book, musical or the 2012 film (with Anne Hathaway winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Fantine). Set the best part of 200 years ago you'd hope that such events were firmly in the past but clearly they are not. No 21st century woman should have those life experiences.

Most of us accept the idea that the NHS is underfunded but with a limited set of resources should this even be open for discussion?! Essential services that save lives HAVE to come first. The NHS should be about what you NEED not what you WANT. Waiting lists can appalling - months waiting for cancer testing and ECGs. My mum waited 4.5 months after discharge from hospital for a physiotherapy referral - she now refuses to go because it has been 'too long'. That will inevitably impact her life expectancy as her mobility continues to deteriorate. These are things people NEED - not prettier wigs.

One more point before my rant comes to an end: IF the NHS were to supply real hair wigs who would be responsible for the products and care required to maintain them?! 

Bring My Bones Back Home, I Don't Need Them Any More

And bury me all alone, keep my memory.

The title, and that line, are from an Ashestoangels' song "Bones Part 1" from A Trauma Shared. This is a very important song to me as it is one of three tracks I tend to play on loop from that album. The others are 'One Last Glance' and 'Endlessly'. They've been on loop for me 7 months tomorrow...since my mum's stroke. And that is why those words seemed so apt for this blog post.

This link should take you to a BBC video 'Where's the right place to bury your parents? - Deciding where to bury your parents if they were not born in the UK'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-46212155/deciding-where-to-bury-your-parents-if-they-were-not-born-in-the-uk

Case studies: Tosin lost her parents in quick succession, both aged 52. Her Nigerian born dad was buried with his dad and brother in London - they did not know his wishes; her mother was cremated and scattered in 'her father's land' - also Nigeria - according to her wishes. Ndu had to call elders in Nigeria to approve burying his father in London.

"I just did the best that I thought I could" - Tosin

This is a hugely important point. If your loved one did not leave specific instructions for the disposal of their mortal remains it is okay to do what is right for YOU. Do not assume that their not giving those instructions was because they left it too late to have that conversation; if it was that important to them they would have said or left a document with their directions. Tosin's decision for her dad is also based on decisions within his family - if the UK was a good enough final resting place for his close kin there's no great reason to suspect it wasn't good enough for him. Additionally, despite her dad dying first Tosin's mum was clear she wanted her ashes to go home to Nigeria. Do not feel bad about splitting up a couple who have died. If they wanted to be buried together fair enough but if the last surviving wants to be elsewhere then that is right too...

...which is not to say there are right and wrong answers here. Honouring someone's express wishes are, I suppose paramount, but where those wishes are absent, unclear, or unable to be fulfilled an executive decision must be made. And while you can take your lead from family precedent you can also do what is right for you.

Tosin also speaks of the fact she has a place to visit for her dad and Ndu agrees that this was an aspect of his decision for his father. Some funerary rites are for the deceased - such as ancient Egyptian mummification or the Catholic last rites - but most are for the living, a chance to say goodbye, to mourn, to let go - these include most funeral and memorial services, wakes and tombs. This is why, in my humble opinion, it has to be about what the immediate family want: it's THEIR goodbye more than it is the deceased's last hurrah. 

I have never yet had to make these decisions, and my parents are UK born and bred, but here's my take:

My parents went on holidays for a while after I'd grown up and left home and I was given instructions on what to do if they died out there - I was to have them cremated. Repatriating remains was a ridiculous waste of money and I was absolutely NOT to do that. My parents' have a VERY practical take on this.
I can understand the need to repatriate remains when someone has died outside their native land whether on work, holiday or, historically, via the slave trade. However, if someone took the decision to live their life in another country...well, maybe it depends WHY you decided that. If it was for work or a partner maybe you always wanted to go home. Or maybe you migrated as a child and the choice to not return 'home' wasn't really viable.
My parents have lived most of their lives within a radius of just a few miles - is that because they are deeply connected to the place or is that just happenstance? Happenstance seems most likely.

My maternal grandparents died close together in 2000. My mum fell apart and I was told to stay away, which I respected. However, both my grandparents were cremated and scattered so there is no goodbye, no paying my respects.

My paternal grandparents are a different story. My grandfather died long before I was born and was buried. I only plucked up the courage to ask to visit his grave after my other grandparents died as it suddenly felt like a terrible omission. A few years after that my nan also died. Despite 38 years of widowhood she was buried with him. Again I wasn't welcome for the funeral but I have visited since and seen the new combined headstone.

Meanwhile I have been to two funerals ever. The first was my cousin Allister in 2016; his was a church service followed by cremation. His ashes were scattered at a favourite spot. I remember thinking, somewhat inappropriately, that my kids had better not try this kind of a send off for me as it would be pitiful in comparison. Allister's was standing room only - he had lots of family and friends, colleagues and running mates - my turnout would be about 5 people. Maybe. The second was my great aunt Ben (Rosalind Brenda by birth). Hers was a simple crematorium service with maybe a dozen or so attendees.

My parents have always talked about death but neither has made much in the way of specific plans. Not from an unwillingness to talk but from an "I don't care, I'll be dead" mindset; but both decidedly prefer cremation. My mum has a prepaid funeral plan and as she has more family she'll need some form of service. I'd prefer church although I know that's not her...so most likely it'll be a crematorium. My dad isn't close to his surviving family and he's a no frills kind of guy so direct cremation seems likely. If at all possible I'd like to keep a funeral home out of the proceedings - I'd like to shroud them and so forth myself.

But then there's what to do with their ashes...

Once upon a gazillion years ago, when my parents were still together, my dad expressed the desire that I should chuck a handful of my mum under a passing bus...I find myself wondering how many handfuls there'll be...*mutters darkly* I certainly wouldn't mind chucking some of him under a bus.

I'd like to bury at least part of their ashes somewhere - not because I want to keep them when they're gone cos that's kinda weird and it's not like we're a close family anyway - I just don't like the idea of being completely gone. I'd like there to be an inscribed stone where I can lay flowers and tell my grandkids what annoying gits they could be. That's the sort of thing I would want for myself...a stone that could be visited intermittently and ultimately forgotten and when the weather has removed the inscription it'll be done.

Although, for my dad, he's been talking a lot about a place where he spent summers as a kid. I kept trying to talk him into going back for a visit but I doubt he ever will. I offered to go with him / drag him kicking and screaming ...but now I'm caring for my mum I can't. I think I'd like to take his ashes there.

I know I'll have to make these decisions sooner rather than later. Along with stupid, unimportant decisions like readings and music. That said, I'm kind of glad those decisions will be mine. Having specific directions and disliking them or failing to adhere to them would be so unpleasant.

Second Sight Second Hand

Tonight I was watching an old episode of Hamish Macbeth with my mum.  The one where Alex dies (Season 2 Episode 4; Radio Lochdubh; orig. air date 14 April 1996).  Hamish's sidekick TV John , an experienced seer, encounters a woman who has been having premonitions - they connect and he sees Alex's death through her vision.

This second hand second sight made me wonder...such things exist in my family and we've compared notes of premonitions but nothing quite so useful as to see through each others' eyes.  It might be rather useful, if disturbing, if we could figure out a way to do such a thing.

According to Wikipedia "There is no scientific evidence that second sight exists. Reports of second sight are known only from anecdotal evidence given after the fact".

Hmmmm.

There are a couple of problems with that statement:

• Seeing the future is never 'scientific' - a chain of events can lead to a certain outcome but any number of interventions to alter the course of things could occur. Just because the prediction did not come to pass does not mean that was not the outcome that was right when it was foretold.
• Reports are NOT only anecdotal nor only 'after the fact; people do tell their predictions or write them down - however, given the nature of these things predictions can be unpleasant or little believed.

 Take this example:

Three weeks before my cousin Allister's death from cancer I was so certain of the specific date I tweeted it.  However, not wanting to alarm family members I was very vague about it.  Indeed there is only my word and that of my daughters (who I told in full) to say what this tweet meant.  But honestly, how likely are you to say publicly that X will die on date Y?  Not exactly polite, no mater how sure you are.  And if I had forseen his brother's fatal accident an intervention may have been possible - I would have tried to tell HIM, not the world.  Incidentally, I favourited my own tweet so as I could find it again (I tweet a LOT) if it proved correct.

Then there's the fact Allister had terminal cancer...his death was no surprise although, not being a close relation, I had no idea the end was particularly nigh.  The prediction could be put down to chance although I remain unconvinced that could be the case.  But it also fits with my ideas of futures being changeable - there was little to interfere with his death occurring at any given moment unlike an accident such as the fictional Alex.  

Despite having no news of a particularly ominous nature the weeks leading to Allister's death were especially tense.  My parents and I stopped phoning each other as we prepared for The Call.  For me that came when my mum rang a little after 7pm on the 21st.  I swore at the phone and started crying before I answered it.

A more recent example was Sunday 15th April this year.  As my mum left my house I turned to my elder daughter, tears in my eyes, and said something along the lines of "I feel like I won't have my mum much longer"...27 hours later my stepdad called to report a problem - my mum had FINALLY answered her phone but he couldn't understand her.  It turned out she'd had a severe stroke.

My mother's still alive but in some ways I lost her that night - she's living with me now, I am her carer.  I have already lost the sound of her voice in my memory...they say it's the first memory to go.  I still feel like I won't have her for much longer but I don't know how much of that might be 'wishful thinking' - her quality of life is not so good, and she is very unhappy.

Who is to believe I foresaw this catastrophe?  If I'd had the idea it would be a stroke I would have been over at her flat, that had actually been the plan until I asked her for Sunday lunch instead... If I had been there to see her collapse perhaps the sodding doctors would've believed that it was a stroke and treated her - instead they insisted it wasn't a stroke and she wasn't diagnosed until the damage was permanent.  As creeptastic as I find my meagre psychic 'gift' I wish it was stronger so as to be of more use.

Obviously as I believe I have seen things before they happen you'll never get me to entertain the idea of coincidence or a 'lucky' guess.  If my mum or my daughters were to give me a warning I would heed it, no questions asked. 

I don't expect any warnings I give to be heeded but I would give them anyway - I'd rather be wrong than right.

NOTE

Just thought of a second hand example. My mum was once told her fortune and that she would die in her mid 50s. As she'll be 74 soon that clearly did not come to pass. However, in her mid 50s she suffered a DVT with pulmonary emboli; a condition that would have been fatal when the prediction was made. I'm not convinced the broken ankle that triggered it all off was a fixed point in time but who knows?!

My mum used the example as one of inaccuracy whereas I see it as a possible future that was averted. The explanation of 'anecdote' only works if the person reporting it believes in the prediction, surely?

9 weeks plus three? four?! I lose count...

Monday 16th April to Thursday 21st June

It's just the early hours of the 21st BUT...my mum is coming home today!!! I am roughly equal parts excited, relieved and terrified.

It's a new chapter of all our lives. It's tremendous that we finally made it to this point. But I am totally aware of how difficult this is likely to be. I just got my life back after raising my kids, I was enjoying my new-found freedoms...and now it's gone. Not gonna lie, that makes me sad. I was going to Bristol to see Ashestoangels on Sunday night and now that's gone. This last year I went to TVAES lectures...now that's out too.

I know it's pretty selfish but I never had much of a life. I went from being a kid to a teen mum and then after a brief midlife crisis I'm gonna be a full-time carer. No career, no relationships. It's difficult.