Month: June 2017

…Thence to the Mitre and there comes Dr. Burnett to us and Mr. Maes, but the meeting was chiefly to bring the Doctor and me together, and there I began to have his advice about my disease, and then invited him to my house: and I am resolved to put myself into his hands…

My thoughts to myself as well as to anyone else about hesitating to ask for advice……

First, let us start on the giving end.  Unsolicited advice can be inappropriate as the enclosed card indicates. Unless using the most bland and general terms, you may have got your timing terribly wrong when trying to help someone. Possibly a good start is to ask how they feel and actually LISTEN to them without interrupting. A pause of five seconds does not mean you have to fill it. It means the person is thinking of the next thing to say. They do not need interruptions or prompts. If they don’t trust you enough to talk to you about intimate things then your advice is a waste of time anyway. Tread carefully.

So, let’s get down  to the question of getting advice. First, you have to acknowledge that a) there is a problem and b) you actually need advice and this can take years. Pride, stubbornness and all that – you know the rest.

The obvious place which most people do not think of is the Internet itself. Whatever problems you have had of whatever sort, someone else will have written about them. “why does the crust of my bread break off from the rest when I bake it”.  “how to fell a tree” “why is my computer so slow”. My wife often asks me questions about her computer and I say to her, write the question as you have asked it to me and you will find that someone somewhere has had that experience and got the answer. She has yet to be disappointed. Google is very good at making sense of queries

However, on a face-to-face level, it can be more difficult or awkward. If we confide in a friend about something, you will be surprised how often they guessed that there was a problem and you were just confirming to them what they felt anyway. There is the saying, ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time’.

There is good old-fashioned pride but you may find that your friends may actually think more of you for your sharing because it shows you trust them which may lead to a deepening of the relationship.

I had to ask the question, are your friends trustworthy? They are probably not trustworthy if they gossip about other people in your hearing.

Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of, as is not knowing what to do next. Sometimes we only know what we believe in the act of telling someone else about our problem otherwise the situation can go round and round in our head and get nowhere.

Sometimes we are worried about something when we do not need to be worried. I have covered finance in an earlier diary but what if we were worrying about something based on a misunderstanding or false assumption?

Sometimes we worry about something when in fact time alone will heal for example I worry about someone turning up when they said they will, or “what do I do if…”  Probably the best thing to do is to think of something else and make sure your arrangements were clear in the first place.

If the subject is too sensitive or personal to raise directly, why not discuss the subject in general and then lead the conversation towards the desired question in general terms and not personal terms. You never know, the person who is listening to you may have had just the same problem.  You are never the first person in the world to have the problem whatever it is.

For example I was anxious about setting up a payment for a fairly substantial amount of money and worried that the money would somehow go astray in the banking system. I rang up and talked to the administrator and they suggested that I send a trial amount. They would then confirm by telephone that the amount had arrived and I would then be more confident in sending the balance. I did not need to explain why I was anxious. Apparently this is a very common source of anxiety and the lady who I spoke to had encountered this with clients many times. I was able to solve the problem by confronting it and telling someone about it.

Some people keep themselves in an anxiety state for years when they need not have done. This delay would seem an unnecessary waste of energy.

I realise I have not mentioned problems at work and in this case it’s probably a more difficult decision to decide whom to call. It properly makes sense to allocate someone of complete discretion who is somewhat removed from line management.

evening – a visit to a most unusual garden in Holcombe where I’m sure fairies, nymphs and elves would be very comfortable.

I wonder how many people you know who promise faithfully to do something and fail to do so. In India, it is impolite to say no to anybody and so even if you cannot do something that someone asks, you will try to find a friend to do so to honour the request.

Timekeeping varies wildly from country to country. Famously, trains are supposed to arrive within 15 seconds of their advertised arrival time. Germans are punctual, Finnish people are very punctual and events start exactly on time. Indians are less punctual, Mexicans less so, and in certain parts of Africa any time the same day will do.

Today’s thoughts are occasioned by Françoise who went along to give a French lesson to someone who was not there. When I heard about this I jumped to the conclusion that the person had simply forgotten but that since no notice had apparently been given, the person would have compensate her for her time especially as she had to visit the house of the person concerned.

In actual fact we found that the student had written earlier in the day saying he had to cancel the appointment due to the need to visit a doctor. An apologetic phone call followed and the matter was resolved.

This makes me reflect on why people offer to do something when they have no intention of doing so. Is it the thought that being a person who says no or changes their mind is a negative and unhelpful person? An insecure person will promise something out of fear of losing someone’s friendship. I believe that people really do want to help another person but have no way of saying that they are unable to do so.

1. Here are some suggestions for how to say no.
   I would love to do this but I don’t have the time to give it the attention it deserves.
   I would love to come out with you tomorrow but I have got such a lot on my mind that I would not be very good company.
   I am very flattered that you’ve asked me to do X Y or Z but I don’t feel I have enough experience to do a job of the standard that you require.
   I’m really sorry but I can’t come on this occasion. I will be freer next week. Can we phone or text and discuss it then?
   

Please note that you are not downplaying or devaluing the person but saying why you feel you would not be a suitable candidate at the moment. This means that no one’s feelings are hurt.

With professional appointments, you as the practitioner need to make it quite clear that 24 hours notice is required for cancellation. In practice this means by some time in the afternoon of the previous day. In other words give them time to fill the space. It is also an excellent idea to text somebody and remind them that their appointment is due in 24 hours or 48 hours. My own dentist reminds me three times. I find it irritating because once it’s in my diary there it is. However, it seems that the dentists have obviously found it necessary to remind the more forgetful or scatty person that they have reserved time and staff and equipment which is probably worth let us say £200 an hour if not more.

This is a matter for self-discipline in the case of clients. If you feel there may be a problem, let the other party know as far as you can in advance. In the case of a private practitioner, if you have genuinely forgotten then the fault is yours and you should ask them how much you owe them. They may well say that you don’t have anything to pay because they managed to fill the space but I wouldn’t bank on it.

It is unacceptable and unforgivable to fail to turn up and fail to give an apology or advance notice. You wouldn’t like it if someone did it to you so why do it to other people?

As all being fashionably late this may be okay if you are a pop star but I totally disagree that it applies to ordinary people. I like it very much when I’m told to be there 6.45 for 7 PM. Social parties are a little bit more flexible but normally the host will indicate by saying “from 8 PM” in which case I would think that any time up to 9:30 PM would be acceptable.  Lateness is not acceptable for dinner parties. It is not acceptable for events that start at a fixed time for example a film or a concert or theatre performance. To avoid anxiety on the part of the person who has invited you I would turn up between five and 10 min before time.

It is a mistake to make the gateway too broad for example at a house warming “come round any time” since people want some indication of when they will meet others and not come in dribs and drabs when there are a few others around. if you are showing someone round a garden I would simply say “we shall start showing people around at two o’clock” in other words come slightly beforehand.

Saying to friends ‘come round any time’ may confuse them unless they know you very well.

... After dinner to White Hall; and there met with Mr. Pierce, and he showed me the Queene’s bed-chamber, and her closett, where she had nothing but some pretty pious pictures, and books of devotion; and her holy water at her head as she sleeps, with her clock by her bed-side, wherein a lamp burns that tells her the time of the night at any time.

Easyhotel Croydon is not the place to seek refinements in the bedroom. there are no shelves, no hooks, no wardrobes, no shares just a double or twin bed. There is a light or two. There is a bathroom. When it opened about three years ago I remember paying about £20 for a room. if I wanted to book now for next Friday it would be £51 for a night. Hotel prices in London are very high or should I say steep.

I like hotels that have rooms with plenty of hangers. Not the miserable selection of wire hangers that look as if they are 10 years old and that make noise when you touch one of them. I enjoy silent air-conditioning, lights that enable one person to read while the other can sleep, and a television that does not have five channels each of which are as boring as the others. It does cost a fortune for the licence to have Sky TV in each room which means that only the more expensive hotels can budget for Sky.

The style of Japanese rooms and some Scandinavian rooms is the absence of any form of clutter which may well be conducive to sleeping.

So here we have the Queen of England in a sleeping environment that could be likened more to a puritan bedchamber. It is not clear from the text but I suppose the candle is a crude type of clock where you can see what time it is by how much it has burnt down and there are probably black rings at hourly intervals. The holy water is a reflection of her religious faith as are the books of devotion.

Our own bedroom by contrast is a muddle. Between us we have about a dozen books that are waiting to be read. In the cupboard next to the bed there are a variety of hairdryers. On the bed table there is a light and a radio which is left permanently tuned to Radio Five of the BBC. There is a small cube clock. At the end of the bedroom are three drawers full of clothes. It is a mess even when cleared up.Underneath the bed there is a blowup mattress for the benefit of guests.

If we had a bigger property we would probably move everything out of the bedroom and have a dressing room but I will keep store of books for dipping into. This is part of the end of day routine that I would be reluctant to give up. However, we do not have a bigger property and we just have to make the best use of the space we have.

The last gardening person we assisted was 90 years of age and he never threw anything away because they ‘might come in useful’ sometime.  For some people the thought of throwing things away is too much. We have TV programmes illustrating this where people have homes that are so cluttered they can scarcely move around their living room or any other room come to that. Françoise and I am not as extreme as that, but we do have a tendency to hold on to things which we have not used and probably will never use.

Don’t even talk to me about the contents of the attic wherein lie memories in material form.

I sometimes wonder if we possess things or whether they possess us.

This afternoon, a stroll / walk with our local Nature Reserve society. The entertain or even mildly amuse you, some photos.

Read Pepys Diary by clicking on the date above

A special day today, a meeting with the hospital people to discuss various matters of after-care of patients who have experienced trauma. It was interesting to compare my ‘tourist’ visit, with my previous unrequited and unexpected visit to Southmead hospital nine months ago, 9 October 2016 when only after a few days of considerable pain was I able to get out of bed and stare out of the window.

Photographing it from the outside today and looking at it as some dim and distant place compared with last time when this was my home, that environment which made my existence stable while I was drugged up to the eyeballs with a variety of medicines and pills. I don’t think people realise what a life changing event an accident can be.

So as I start to write this in the evening I know it’s going to be quite a long account. I have been delayed by doing a gardening  job, and then watching a replay of the Ascot Gold cup which for those of you unfamiliar with the UK is one of the leading horse race events of the year.

So you see when I have an important appointment as was the case today I don’t want to leave ridiculously early but on the other hand I don’t want to leave late, cutting it to fine.  One of the things that I cannot bear is being late for an appointment. I would rather be an hour early and pace around or have a coffee. It is the same with flights. I would rather arrive as soon as checking opens and sit on “the other side” or “no man’s land” where you can hopefully switch off your phone and forget about all the daily nonsense that goes on in country A, and look forward to an enjoyable time in country B. I have come to loathe this ridiculous searching of everyone including the taking off of shoes, belts, not being able to take liquids through. The liquid ban is the biggest farce of all. Was it about 12 years ago when a group of young Muslims were accused of trying, perhaps, to make a liquid substance that could just could explode. There wasn’t a scrap of evidence but the authorities in their wisdom decided to ban all liquids. This has resulted in millions of harmless bottles of water being thrown away.

Anyway, the appointment was at 11.30 this morning Thursday, 22 June. On the way I witnessed congregations of people at Bristol bus station waiting to be taken by shuttle bus to the great Glastonbury. You can tell a Glastonbury person because they have unusual Wellington boots, and a huge rucksack which probably contains a tent.

Passing through the northern suburbs of Bristol is very much like visiting 1960s London. There are lots of trendy and down-to-earth coffee bars, eating establishments, Turkish, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, restaurants. there are high-class preowned clothes stores, shops with vegetables temptingly displayed  in bowls for one pound, unusual vegetables that we don’t see in Midsomer Norton because people wouldn’t know what they are.

The meeting itself was in the company of three staff from the trauma team who were concerned about giving after care service to those who leave the hospital with varying degrees of support. As the famous American photo Journal Life Magazine said in years of yore, “All Human Life is There”.  My feeling is that the traumatised community members should support each other, and that a blog and website should be used for support. No one wants to admit  that they need a support group so I feel we have to sell the idea in such a way that will attract the right people without the client group feeling stigmatised. However the bigger problem is getting the hospital authorities to allow me to advertise a patient group at all.

This is where I  am going to have buckets of patience because changes take a long time to happen in the NHS due to the complexity of the structure, potential litigation problems, health and safety, you name it. That is the overarching problem. Hardly a month goes by without a new set of rules established from ‘on high’ which have to be implemented.

in addition,it is quite common to find someone who’s got not just one remit, not two remits but even five remits. The responsibility of each in terms of human care is like one full-time job in yet these saintly people are driven by their desire to help others and so putting hours and energy that must exact a price in terms of the amount of energy available for a social life.

…To supper and to bed, my wife finding fault with Besse for her calling upon Jane that lived with us, and there heard Mrs. Harper and her talk ill of us and not told us of it. With which I was also vexed, and told her soundly of it till she cried, poor wench, and I hope without dissimulation, and yet I cannot tell; however, I was glad to see in what manner she received it, and so to sleep.

Very few of us get it right. We go off the deep end without checking why the person did or said as reported. Hitting someone with a hammer does very little to resolve the situation. If they knew they were doing wrong, then why did they do it? Is it because they did not see another way out of the situation?   The problem is that if you shout at someone, the fight and flight chemicals are automatically produced by the body –  the various types of adrenaline no less – and an argument will not proceed constructively.

It’s almost like if you keep your feelings under the radar people hardly notice that you told them off. If you the complainer can be more objective and say why the action or words caused harm you are more likely to get the miscreant to think about what they did. This will work in the majority of cases but not as I have previously said with people who are out of control through drunkenness or rage or panic.

My own father when concerned about my behaviour always said that he would talk about it the next day which was quite clever because he gave me time to think about it and when confronted I was as meek as a lamb. The offence was not repeated. It is very difficult to be a calm observer when the chemicals are running round the system. This is a good reason to delay a knee-jerk reaction if you possibly can.  In the case of Pepys above, he considered it right to tell off the employee straightaway because she knew she had done wrong and he wanted to nip the problem in the bud due to their close working relationship.

As I’m fond of saying, “there is a time for everything, and for everything there is time”. Does the whole process of chastisement have to happen in the minutes after the event is discovered? The person has probably been committing this offence, or shall we call it a ‘call for attention’, for a long time so what’s the hurry. I reckon 90% of it is getting your mindset right which probably includes lessons that you yourself have to learn.

Notice in the above example, Pepys took time to observe how the person received the telling off and felt that the contrition was genuine. The parents or the employer or the friend is entitled to remark how he or she feels their admonition has been accepted  and maybe one or two more steps need to happen  for the matter to be closed as opposed to being simply deferred.