Monday 4 July 2016

Boat Trip - another bloody analogy.

Imagine this.

There are 65 of us, going on a boat trip in choppy waters.  The waters are choppy, no matter what happens, or which boat we choose, because that's how the sea is, these days.

We are stood on the beach, and we have the choice of two boats.

One of them is a boat which we've been sailing about in for forty years.  We have to pay for tickets, though, and some of us don't like that.  Some of us are not keen on the places it stops or the canteen on board, or the fact that we can't get a job behind the bar because one of those jobs is being done by a Polish person, and that's obviously the particular job we want.  The Polish person needs somewhere to sleep and our Mandy's renting a cabin out to them which is paying her Todd's school fees but if we were doing their job as well it would be better.  It's also a big boat and it's got loads of other people on it - we don't all know each other, but there are different languages and cultures, and we can all share stuff.

On the whole, although there are things we don't like about the boat, we're pretty sure it's sea-worthy.  It's been looked over by the coastguard and some shipbuilders, and various other experts, and they say it's the sounder of the two available boats.

There is a second boat.  Nobody's put it to sea for forty years, but that could make it quite exciting - we are all agreed on that.  There are a few considerations, though.

The coastguard, some shipbuilders and various other experts have looked it over and warn that they're pretty sure it's really not safe, although if we all bail out furiously for the first ten years or so, it may well improve.  There are no guarantees about this, but we're all pretty strong, probably, maybe, and financially robust enough across the board, obviously, to be able to afford the ten years worth of buckets we're going to need to bail with.  Actually, I bet someone would just give us some buckets.  We've been given buckets before on the old boat, after all.  Anyway!  There are some pretty exciting things about the new boat.

What are they, we cry?!  The company who own the new boat tell us some stuff.

One is that we are going to spend all the money we save on tickets for the old boat doing up the new boat - hurrah!  That sounds great!  Although, actually, we're not sure that we are paying as much for the old boat as we are being told we are.  But they wouldn't lie about that, surely?!

Another is that the old boat was run by a faceless and unelected crew, and we weren't able to have anything to do with where it went, whereas the new boat will be steered and owned by us, so we will have more control over the new boat - hurrah!

Hey, we forgot to tell you - this boat is going to be all for us!  Don't worry!  We'll still be able to buy stuff in the on board tax free shops, and everything!  Everyone wants to sell us stuff because we're really important and we buy loads of stuff.

Oh, and we really love this one - it's going to have a big shiny Union Jack painted on the side, and we won't let other people on because even one or two might sink the ship - so no Poles working in the bar!

Of the 65 of us, only 44 have a vote, because the rest are kids.

For one reason or another, only 33 of us 44 actually vote.  Some of the others were away unexpectedly, some were away but didn't get to vote for technical reasons - like their bit of paper which they asked for didn't arrive, some were away but had been told we would be staying on the old boat anyway so didn't get 'round to arranging for the crew to send them a bit of paper to vote on, some didn't realise we were really being asked if we wanted to leave the ship and that we were going to do so and some genuinely didn't know which ship was better, but trusted other people to make the right decision.  Anyway - who cares why?  They didn't vote, so they don't count.

Whatever happens, the 21 children have to go on the ship we vote for, and so do the other 11 who didn't vote.  No, we can't go on the boat we vote for, we've all got to go on the same boat.  No, if we don't vote, we can't just stay on the boat we were already on - we have to vote to stay on it.  Were you not listening?  I know we didn't say it very loud, and it wasn't printed on anything or, well, talked about at all, really.  Anyway!  Never mind!  It's happened, now!  Let's count the votes.

Of the 33 people who vote, 17 vote for the new ship and 16 vote for the old ship.

At this point - seconds after the votes are counted - one of the guys who told us about the new ship admits that we're not going to spend any money doing it up, because there wasn't really any to spend, let alone the large figure he told us about.  Oh dear!  There are some rumblings from the shore.

What's this?  It's emerging that we had plenty of say in where the old boat went after all.  Oh dear.  Apparently, it was our crew sailing it all along!  But what about the faceless guys?  Well, yes, they're there - that's who we've been buying our tickets off, after all!  But all along, any one of us had the right to tell the faceless crew where we wanted to go.

Okay, so because there were a lot more people on the boat, a lot more people would have had to have agreed to have gone there, but if everyone wanted to, we could have.  Now only a handful of people have the right to tell the crew where to go and remember!  It's the SAME crew!  They were always in charge!

But these faceless guys - they ARE faceless, right?  Nope!  They're printed up in the ship's log book, which you had access to all along, and guess what!  You could have voted for them all along, too!  Maybe you did?  Some people did, but a lot of those sadly thought it was funny to vote the guys who were planning to jump ship in to help crew the old ship.  There's a pretty good chance that in the last 17 years, he might have been doing his best to undermine the old boat, but not to worry!

The people who own the new boat (including that guy ^) just told us that the crew had no control over the big boat, for a bit of a laugh.  They actually did, and it turns out we had our own speedboat on the time for daytrips and things we wanted to do which the other people didn't want to do - we had that all the time!  And our own money to spend, too.

Oh yes, the shops.  Well, we can still buy stuff in them - yay!  Lots of the stuff might have to be made on board for a bit, or bought in from the big ship and other ships at a bit of a higher cost, because we haven't got contracts with any of the people who sell the stuff, at the moment.  I'm sure the people who do will really want to sell to our little boat, though, so they'll get around to working out the highest price they can get away with charging us that we are prepared to pay as quickly as they can.  And they are really going to want to buy our stuff, too - after all, it's handmade by local craftsmen.  It's not cheap, but we think it's totally worth it!

Actually, we're not sure if we can stop people getting on, after all.  The owners didn't really think we could, and they didn't really mean it when they said it.  Oopsie.  Sorry!

BUT!  You'll like this!  It's STILL GOT A UNION JACK ON THE SIDE!  YAY!

The guys who own the new ship suddenly start resigning from the board, but it's okay, because they've got lifeboats, life rafts and private islands, so don't worry about them!  They will be just fine.

The 16 people who didn't want to go on the new ship in the first place are royally fucked off.  Hang on, they say.  We never believed the new ship was going to have any money spent on it and we didn't want other people kept off it, anyway.  We like being able to buy good wine cheap in the tax free shop and we think the ticket price is fair.  We wanted our kids to be able to grow up with all the other people on the big boat, learn languages and feel they were part of the big boat.  We're really committed to this and we're pissed off our passports aren't going to let us or our kids stay on shore where the boat docks.  Now they're just going to be able to pop in for a quick run home then back on the new boat, without really getting a proper taste of the places.

We're REALLY pissed off about this.  We REALLY want to stay on the old boat.  We REALLY want to check whether you guys are still sure about the new boat - can we just check?  Just see?

The 17 people - well, they're not all quiiiiite as sure as they were, what with the lying about the seaworthiness of the new boat and the resigning of everyone who has anything to do with it, but quite a few of them keep shouting at the other 16 that they need to get over it now - we had a vote, people!  That's what the captain told us we should do and now we need to stand by it, no matter what!  That's how our system works!

A couple of the 17 mutter, erm, but, we're not sure.

The 16 people are still ROYALLY FUCKED OFF.

"No", they plead.  "We have never had a vote like this before - it is actually not how our system works!  Our system works in such a way that we pick the crew and the crew pick a captain, and we trust them to sail our ship.  As it happens, we also picked a bigger crew who make sure our crew don't all empty the bilges into the sea and do let the scullery maids have half an hour off to visit their mums once in a while, but our crew is still our crew, and we wan't to know why they're not steering the ship like we pay them to."

Oh great, now the captain's jumped overboard and the purser is just standing around looking awkward.

"Tough tits!" cry the 17 people.  "17 of us voted for the new boat, and we're all going on it because 17 of us said so!"

"Yes, but 16 of us said not, so we're all going - all 65 of us - because of ONE person!  Even the kids are going, and enough of them wanted to stay on the old boat to have made the vote go the other way."

"Yes but the kids can't vote."

"Well, don't you think they should be able to?  They are going to have to live on the boat for a lot longer than the rest of us."

"No but 17 of us said we wanted the new boat!"

"Well, two have said that they don't, so that will make it 18/15 in favour of the old boat, and we think a fair few of the people who didn't vote last time will make fucking sure they get to the polling station this time, so we think that even more of us want the old boat."

"No but 17 of us said we wanted the new boat!"

"But some of you have changed your minds."

"No but that doesn't matter - 17 of us said we wanted the new boat!"

"But some of you made your decision based on some things which have now been absolutely shown to be lies."

"No but 17 of us said we wanted the new boat!"

"But some of you have said that you just did that as a protest, to make the crew listen to you - but now you've stuck yourself with just this crew and no recourse to a second crew."

"Tough TIIIIITS!  You've HAD your democratic vote - that's your lot!"

"Really?  But it really matters - it's forever."

"Just get on with it.  Don't you like village fetes and cream teas and pubs?  What's wrong with you?  Why are you so miserable - you're getting everyone down!"

"I love village fetes and cream teas and pubs, but I also love fiestas and bratwurst and drinking coffee on the pavement outside a cafĂ© in Paris!  Yes, I am fucking miserable, because I can't do all of that any more because you don't want to, and I don't think that's fair."

"Life isn't fair.  Cheer up.  We won.  You lost.  There was one more of us than there was of you, and even though that person at least has changed their mind, it's tough, because on that day two weeks ago, that was what they thought, and you, or rather we - all 65 of us - are just going to have to live with that forever."


Thursday 30 June 2016

Democracy! For one night only!

I enjoyed that democracy.  Can I have some more, please, because I’m not used to it and I’m not sure I used it to its, or indeed my, best advantage?

More?  MORE?  No, you bloody can’t.  That’s enough democracy for you.

Very Dickensian.  Which is jolly British and ever so nice if you ignore Mr Dickens’s brilliant social commentary and biting wit.

I get why the people who are happy with their vote to leave the EU don’t want a second referendum.

What I don’t get is that they shout “Democracy!  The People have spoken!” as a reason not to have a second referendum.

Look, lads – you can’t have it both ways.

If a referendum is democratic, how is two referenda undemocratic? 

Does there come a point where too much democracy sends the whole thing into a handbrake turn and it turns in on itself?  What nonsense.

Democracy is a good thing.  Let’s have all the democracy.  No?

People who are happy with their vote to leave are not going to change their vote.

People who are happy with their vote to remain are not going to change their vote.

People who are not happy with their decision (either way) on 23rd June, given the enormous amount of information which has since come to light surely have the right to be heard?

How is that not democratic?

I’m actually campaigning on behalf of Leave voters, here.

It transpires that the Leave campaign told some very large lies and based their campaign on policies which they had neither the power nor the ability to deliver.  They haven't got £350million to give to the NHS.  They have no money and if they did, they wouldn't give it to the NHS, as they have already stated that they want to privatise the NHS - yes, that means you pay for your healthcare.  They also are not going to stop or cap or limit immigration, because they can't - and they knew they couldn't but they still based their campaign heavily on this.  They had no plan in place for what to do next, because they didn't mean to win.

People now know this and they feel cheated.

It transpires that a lot of people voted to leave the EU just as a protest against the government, and actually wanted to stay.

People now wish they had used their right to protest in a different way and feel robbed.

We also hear that people weren’t sure whether the referendum was advisory or legally binding – it sure wasn’t stated on the tin. 

Well, it’s not legally binding but, hell’s bells, 1 million more people, on one day, with a flawed and false campaign pushing them, wanted it, so let’s all go to hell in a handcart, because sticking to your guns, in this country, even when you get new information that demonstrates that you were wrong, is seen as a virtue.  This lady’s not for turning, my arse.

The popular press are finally printing some truths about what leaving the EU will actually mean to the average man on the street, rather than printing a load of emotive rhetoric, over Union Jack backgrounds, about how leaving the EU will Make Britain Great Again.

The average man on the street, now understanding what it means to him, feels horrified and wants to be given a second chance.

28% of the population believed either that we were going to remain in the EU by an easy majority or that their vote wouldn’t count anyway.

They now realize that this didn’t happen and that every single vote counted.  Whether they would have voted to stay or go, they deserve to be heard.

Young people, aged 16-18, were not included in the vote.  They are demanding to be heard, and they are the ones whose world was just made a little smaller.  A little more insular.

I believe they should be heard.

How does allowing any of these people to speak again qualify as undemocratic? 

Democracy wasn’t just for the 15 hours that the polling booths were open.

Democracy is ongoing.

When we hear new facts, we CAN change our opinions.

What I’d really like to do is wind back the clock and let people remember everything they have learned this last week, and give them chance to vote again for the first time.  Sadly, even though I’ve concentrated so hard I strained myself and risked a recurrence of my umbilical hernia, I can’t manage that. 

But I’d really like everyone to get a second chance to speak and vote in the non-science-fiction world that we live in.  With no Leave Campaign and no Remain Campaign pushing everyone’s buttons and playing with peoples lives for their own entertainment and the furtherance of their own careers.  Just a Campaign of Information – calm, measured information that will help The People to make an informed decision.

The People Have Spoken.  So what?  Are The People never allowed to speak again?


The European Union, and why I’m unlikely to “Get Over It” any time soon

Written on Monday 27th June, four days after the results came in.

My Facebook feed is divided into two groups of friends.  Friends who are bewildered and horrified that we have just voted ourselves out of Europe, and are trying to make sense of it and dig heels in to stop it from coming to pass  -  and friends who are fed up with the people who are still talking about it and want everyone to accept it and move on to making Britain great again.

I am beyond happy that my friend list doesn’t include one single person who wants anyone sent home or who advocates racism in any way, no matter which way they voted – and more of that, later.

It’s important to me to explain why this is so important to me, because I really value my friends and I am aware that some of them must be sick to the bloody back teeth of me.  I also want to try to articulate what it is that makes some of us feel so strongly about this.

In the run up to this referendum, right up until the day, I felt thoroughly nauseous at the possible ramifications but I worked hard to comment on the debate as calmly, informatively and in as non-partisan a manner as I could. 

This is hard for someone in my position, who believes with every fibre of her being in a unified Europe, but I really believed that not ramming my views down people’s throats, while explaining where general reporting and understanding was either deliberately or accidentally erroneous was the way forward.  I just really wanted to help.  Still do.

I think one of my mistakes in the way I approached debating this before the referendum was in being wholly logical, tackling the facts and deliberately trying not to get heated about it.  I didn’t want to scare anyone away from voting to remain in the EU with my sheer all-encompassing passion and belief in it.  I tackled the Big Lies which the Leave campaign employed, and which they are now having to admit were indeed whoppers, but I never addressed the emotional side.

So here it is.

In January 1974, my family moved to Brussels, where my dad was one of the first wave of Brits working out there.  We weren’t rich or privileged, we were just an ordinary working class family from the UK.  My Dad’s dad was a Kent coal miner and my Mum’s dad stoked coal into furnaces in a hospital, in eight hour shifts, morning, noon and night.  My dad, and all the people out there, had simply seen an ad in their local paper and sat a series of exams, followed by a grueling interview process.  In other words, ordinary people had applied for a job in an ordinary manner.

We, however, had a deep belief in the ethos of the EU from the start.   The mood in Europe at that time was one of hope.   A wholly optimistic belief in a bright future with a fundamental emphasis on no further wars within and between the countries of Europe.  No more young men would be sent to fight and die on the battlefields of France, Belgium, Holland – you get the idea. 

I, and my school friends, were bought up as genuine children of Europe.  We believe in it wholeheartedly. 

The implementers of this ideal were mostly young families from all over Europe.  Their parents had lived through and fought in the Second World War, and they wanted a better future for their children - and believe you me, they worked their arses off to ensure that neither they nor their compatriots, nor their opposite numbers from other member states (aka EU countries) would ever have to send their children, the children they had travelled across the continent to bring to Brussels with them, off to fight the children that they were meeting and befriending, going to school with, playing with.

I spent my entire school life, bar my very first term, in Brussels.  My school was set up by the EU to cater for the kids coming from all over Europe to build this bright new world. 

I don’t have much recollection of life in England – I was four when we moved to Brussels.  I clearly remember my first day at school in Brussels, however.  The school was enormous.   All on one site, the age went from kindergarten right up through primary through to the European Baccalaureat – A-level age.  There were at that time six language sections – English, Franco-Belge, Nederlando-Belge, German, Danish and Italian.  So take infant school, add primary and secondary school, put it all in one place then multiply by six and you’ve an idea of the size of the place.  Thirty to a class and more than one class per year group per language section, in some cases.  There were some 3,500 students there by the time I left – at which point we also had a Spanish and a Greek section.

Because philosophy is a compulsory subject in Italian schools, it was a compulsory subject at the European school.  All the language sections had to study it.  The same with economics.  The UK’s contribution to this was compulsory RE.  (My mum’s contribution was to add an Ethics option to the Religion thing.)

From the age of four, my playmates were chiefly British, as in primary school most of our lessons were conducted in our mother tongue, so we sat alongside our own countrymen for most of the day.  Playtime, however, we were all mixed.  Hundreds of kids of different nationalities, playing together in an enormous playground.  We really didn’t much notice whether someone was English, Italian, French, German, Danish, Belgian – we didn’t CARE!  We either liked them or we didn’t, and their nationality never once had anything to do with that. 

As we grew up together, the national distinctions became even less marked, as we all learned each others languages.  By the time we left school at 18, there was a definite European School lingo.  Because everyone spoke at least four languages, you would find the mot or phrase juste in whichever language first sprung to mind. 

When I first moved back to the UK – to London, to study Law at King’s College – I realized that it was going to be an effort to speak just one language at a time.  There were a few of us Eurobrats at King’s, and there was some resentment to begin with, as we appeared a little elitist, with our European manner and our peppering of our conversation with whole sentences in any old language we chose.  It wasn’t deliberate – we didn’t think we were better than anyone else – it was just how we spoke.  In fact, it now occurs to me that the only time in my life when I have felt awkward, alien and out of place was that first six months back in “my own country”.  Until now, that is.  Anyway.  Moving along!  This misunderstanding soon settled down and we integrated well enough – we were, after all, used to adapting to people.

The language thing is a microcosm of the whole thing, of course.  As much as we pinched words and phrases from one another, we pinched bits of culture that we liked, and, without realizing it, all sorts of other bits and pieces.  We became intermingled, European, unified.  However, we all still spoke our first language primarily, and we all knew that we were British Europeans or Italian Europeans or Belgian Europeans, and there was plenty of partisan banter.  We identified with both our home nations and our EU status.

The idea of going to war against our schoolmates, in the past, present or future, was wholly – wholly – argh!  There isn’t a big enough word.  Anathema.  Not strong enough.  Alien.  Nope.  Unthinkable is what it was - but really think about what unthinkable means.  It means it is so apart from your understanding that you can’t even think it.  Does not compute.  “Going to war with those guys – is that even a thing?”

By the way, in case you think the school sounds like a hotbed of elitism, I think I should at this point explain how it worked.  Anyone who worked for the EU, EC, EEC, whatever it was called at the time, was entitled to send their kids to the school, for free.  An enormous organization such as the EU doesn’t just employ Director Generals and highly paid boffins.  The cleaners, security guards and canteen workers had the same right to send their kids to our school as the Director General. 

I have always been immensely proud of this.  Very democratic – part of the ideal they are striving for.

I grew up knowing that I could work in any country in the EU.  As an adult, I could just up sticks and go and live wherever I chose.  Once I had a family, I could take my children and my husband, all of whom had that right as much as I did.  My children could choose to study art in Italy or engineering in Germany – or the other way around.  Or just go and live in Paris for a couple of years, working their way.

This right, which my dad worked almost his entire working life to create and nurture and protect, has just been taken away from me and from my kids, and I feel bereaved and very angry about this.

The belief that we are one united Europe, which was so deeply held in my very soul, has been destroyed.  I feel like someone reached in, ripped it out, tore it to shreds in front of my eyes, hurled it to the floor, dashed it with petrol and burnt it in front of my eyes, and I am reeling to my core at this.

It may sound overly dramatic to you, but I am not exaggerating my feelings.

And while they’re doing it, they’re cheerily telling me to stop moping, it will be fine.

I have tried a thousand analogies in my head, and I can’t make them work, but imagine that the village or borough, where you live and which you love, decided to take a vote as to whether you stay part Britain.  There’s 100 people in your village.  28 of them don’t vote, for any number of reasons – maybe one of them didn’t get home from work in time due to trains being totally effed up and major commuter stations actually closing (can’t even remember the last time that happened).  35 vote to stay part of Britain.  37 vote to go it alone. 

Going it alone means that your kids HAVE to go to the village school, and if the next village has a better degree course in something than yours does, it’s tough.  If they just fancy going and living in the next village because the view is nice from there and there’s a company there specializing in an area which particularly interests them and at which they are particularly skilled, they can’t.  As the votes have finished being counted, it transpires that the people who presented the case for leaving Britain lied.  Quite a lot.  They’re actually not going to look after the little cottage hospital in the village, for a start, and they didn’t expect to win so they don’t have a plan as to what to do next.  Despite the fact that they said they know there’s not a lot of houses left in the village and they’ll make sure they stop people from outside the village buying the ones that are available, or working in the village shop, they now admit that actually they are not going to be able to do this, and they never were. A few of those who voted to leave come out and say that they did so because they don’t like the parish councilor, and they thought this was a good way of showing that.  Some more say that they voted that way because they wanted their taxes to go to the cottage hospital, and they feel that they were lied to, and want to change their vote.  More yet say that they hadn’t realized that they were actually voting to leave Britain, and that they never thought it would happen, and that they want to change their vote.

Basically, that very small margin of two people (as you’ll have worked out, this is based on the percentage of turnout, then votes for and against) has potentially been heavily eroded.

But don’t worry, those of you who didn’t want to leave in the first place, we’re pretty sure it will work out in the end.  Probably. 

As it stands, in the UK, 28% didn’t vote.  37% voted to leave.  35% voted to stay.

Is it democratic to blindly stick with it and push on, forcing the view of 37% of the eligible voters on the other 63%? 

Or is it more democratic, before making this irreversible change – because make no mistake, there is no going back – to jussssst check one more time? 

If the result comes back the same, so be it.  If the people who want to leave still believe that it is right to do so, in the same numbers, the vote will stay the same, so where’s the harm? 

If it turns out that it goes the other way because people now realize that is NOT what they want – how is that undemocratic?

But on that tiny margin, with a lot of people now changing their minds, with the Sun and the Mail and the Express finally printing what will happen next with an unprecedented degree of accuracy, and their readers going “What? What? Why didn’t you tell us before?  We didn’t know!”, with the Leave campaign admitting that two of their three major platforms – increased spending on the NHS and reduced immigration– were just bollocks (the others are largely bollocks, too, by the way – they just haven’t admitted it quite yet), with this increase in racism which has fundamentally shocked all right thinking people whether they voted to leave or remain, I think the democratic and sensible thing is to re-examine this.

Is it not sheer pig-headedness to ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who are no longer sure they want what they voted for?  I think so.

Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people.  That’s all the people.  Not 37% of the people.

We have a very adversarial culture in the UK.  We are very black and white.  The very layout of the House of Commons is adversarial – face to face, head to head, us and them, rather than circular. 

First Past The Post sets up a system where everyone in the country is ruled by a parliament almost always elected by less than half the country, rather than by a parliament who represent the proportion of each party that people actually voted for.  Everyone therefore has to toe the party line.  Tories have to back Tory policies most of the time whether they like it or not.  Labour the same.

The deep rifts opening up in our society at the moment are a result of our view that you are either with us or against us – what’s it going to be? 

And so now we have US and THEM, and I don’t wonder that so many people just want the fighting to stop, but I also don’t wonder that so many others are desperate to make sure – really sure – that everyone knows what we’re doing and is not prepared to lie down and say die until we all know this is what we REALLY want.  It’s not inevitable.  It’s still fluid.  There is still, potentially, a little wiggle room.  Let’s make sure we know what we’re doing before we slam any doors and turn the lock.

Back to our adversarial nature - as a result of the fact that we tend to back a side and fight our arses off for it, nobody really questioned that there was a campaign for Leave and a campaign for Remain.

Question that! 

There should have been nobody pushing an agenda!  There should not have been a campaign for OR a campaign against, there should simply have been a campaign of information. 

As it was, virtually all of the independent information pointed towards remaining a member of the EU being a damned good idea.  But because we are used to this adversarial system, everyone believed that that independent information and analysis was part of the Remain campaign, and as such dismissed it as electioneering.

Meanwhile, Leave clearly had no intention of winning, or having to fulfill their insane promises, but they put on a good show and Boris, whose plan was almost certainly simply to use the campaign as a platform to raise his political profile, was dismayed to have won and has spent the entire time since he won looking shell-shocked and back-pedalling like the committed cyclist he is.

It was all jolly exciting and jolly good fun sticking it to the man, but now the party’s over and we’re left cleaning up the mess, suddenly a significant portion of people are questioning what they were told, they are angry that they were lied to, they are shocked that their protest vote is actually going to change their (and my) world, and they deserve to be heard.

I am as angry on behalf of those people as I am for myself.

There are some things that I would like to state categorically, and stand by.

I do not believe that everyone who voted to Leave is ignorant.  I know and have debated with some very intelligent and eloquent Leavers, and I respect their right to their view and their vote.

I do not believe that all Leave voters want to change their vote, but I believe that a significant and growing portion, in the light of new information, do.

I do believe that all of my friends, both for and against, did their very best to inform themselves and make what they absolutely believed would be the best choice for them and their children.

I do also believe that many Leavers based their vote on a dishonest campaign and now know that they were lied to on a large scale, but I know that is not the case for everyone, and I know that it is patronizing to suggest otherwise.

I do not believe that everyone who voted to Leave is a racist.  I know this not to be true, and I will stand up for that.  However, I must temper this with the statement that the Leave campaign was incontrovertibly fought on both overtly and subliminally racist platforms.  The tit Farage standing in front of the Breaking Point poster is a case in point.  That should have been a breaking point, indeed.  I’m surprised that it wasn’t the moment at which people became sickened by the campaign and decided not to ally themselves with racism, precisely because they themselves are not racists.  I don’t understand how that didn’t happen, but I still don’t believe that all, or even most, Leavers are racists.

As to the assertions that it will all be okay, because Britain is Great, nobody knows what will happen next, a country that won two world wars and one world cup is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet and we should stop harping on about what happened last week and get on with this week etc etc – I do need to address my attitude to that.

First, I really, really, really hope that everyone who believes this scenario to be correct is right.  I have no desire to be proved right in this instance.  I want our economy to boom and our nation to thrive – of course I do!  I’m not an idiot.  I’m not optimistic at this stage that it will, but I will do everything in my power (which is very little – same for all of us average Joes) to ensure that it is.  It’s like your teenage daughter hitching a lift home from town despite the fact that you’ve told her there’s a chance that’s not going to pan out too well.  If she gets home in one piece, you’ll rejoice.  If she doesn’t, you’re not going to go “I told you so”.

I’m not being pessimistic – I just believe that when a bunch of people who study this stuff and who have no axe to grind tell you in overwhelming numbers that one course of events will almost certainly have a good outcome and one will almost certainly result in years of struggle, it’s sensible to pay attention to them, and to acknowledge that they know what they’re talking about.

If it’s a question of people saying “I realize that there’s a 99% chance that the economy is going to be in a dreadful state for the next 3-10 years (as virtually all sources predicted), and I’ve looked into the reasons for that and into what we will lose and gain, all of which I now broadly understand, but I think it’s a price worth paying” – fair enough.

 If it’s a blindly optimistic “ah, what do they know, anyway”, erm, well, sorry for not playing.  That is a huge gamble to impose on the 63% of eligible voters who did not vote for this

I agree, nobody knows what will happen next, and nobody has a crystal ball to tell us what would have happened if we hadn’t done whatever we choose to do next, so there will be no point in “I told you so”, either way.  It’s not something I intend to indulge in, should things go horribly wrong.

If I have accept being asked to stop harping on about how devastated I am about this, I really think we should also stop harping on about world wars and world cups, especially disallowed goals in world cups.  That was a bloody long time ago and people are still moaning.  All we lost then was a football match.  We have lost so much more, now – even if the economy does well. 

So, my loves, I will continue to harp on, I’m afraid.  I hope you will see that what I’m doing is not moaning, but posting relevant information. 

Where the Leave campaign is shown to have lied or been economic with the truth, I will be posting that.

Where there is hope for a way to address whether it is right, in a democratic society, for 37% of the population to be given a mandate to strip a whole shitload of actual rights from themselves and the other 63% (35% of whom actively voted to keep those rights, and 28% of whom didn’t vote at all but definitely didn’t vote their rights away), especially when an emergingly significant portion of that 37% has now come out and stated that now that it is in possession of the facts, it would like to change its vote, please, thank you very much, I am going to keep hoping that the dream of a unified Europe can continue, and because I am an open book, those hopes will continue to be expressed in social media.

Petitions will be shared and clear statements about the effect that this has had already on the food industry, banking, jobs and the £ - I’ll still be posting those as long as there is any hope that people will realize what is happening and demand not to be bound to this minority vote.

I believe in not blindly following the result of this referendum precisely because I do believe in democracy.  There is plenty of precedent for referenda on important matters, carrying slim slim margins, being set aside. 

I don’t think we can ignore the result of this referendum – that’s not what I’m suggesting.  I believe it would be downright dangerous to do so. 

The result has surprised a great many people (not least the Leave campaign) and it shows that people need a voice.  I don’t argue with that.  I fear that not triggering article 50 and taking us out of the EU will cause anger and unrest, but we appear to have those right now anyway. 


Addendum.
I forgot to address the “unelected, undemocratic” issue.  I will try to do it briefly.  Not my forte, clearly! :D

I also believe, for what it’s worth, that it is worth considering this. 

There is a very strong argument that fact that legislation can be proposed either by experts in a field, who work for the European Commission (like my Dad), or other EU bodies, or any citizen of the EU (like you or me) as is the case in the system we now have with the EU, is altogether a more democratic system than one in which legislation can only be proposed by a Member of Parliament who, while he WAS elected by the people, inevitably has his eye on being elected once again next time.  And is therefore not going to propose any legislation which may be unpopular in his constituency.

So you get that?  A massive point for Leave is that laws are proposed by the unelected European Commission.  They can also be proposed by YOU.  As you sit reading this – YOU.  Not a notional you, YOU!

Not some MP you almost certainly didn’t vote for (because you only voted for one out of the 651-odd of the buggers, after all) – YOU!


Sounds pretty fucking democratic to me, my loves.

£350,000,000 worth of Zumba Maths.

The £350m etc explained through the medium of Zumba, written during the week running up to the Referendum.

This is all an analogy – it’s not really my mum, the fee is not £35 etc etc.  It’s just a way of explaining something that seems to be confusing people.

I pay a monthly license fee to teach Zumba.  Let’s say, for the sake of clarity, that this is £35.

However, a few years back, my Mum went to see the Zumba head office and asked if I could just pay £25, instead.  They said yes, which was jolly nice of them, because there wasn't really a reason why I should, but I said I wouldn't play, otherwise.

I get a CD every month, with Zumba music on, for which the Zumba people have paid the Performing Rights – so I can use that music for free.  Every other month, I also get a DVD of choreography.  I don’t have to use these, but it probably works out at a value, for a CD and half a DVD every month, of – let’s call it £18. 

So I’m paying a £35 license fee (which is actually £25) but I’m getting an £18 value back.

There are other inherent outgoings, such as hall hire, insurance, footwear, exercise gear, physiotherapy etc etc.  When I add the costs up, they’re a lot.

However, I get the right to enter the Zumba market and teach my classes.  This earns me a considerable amount more than I pay in, even after the outgoings.  I know how much I earn from Zumba, and I reckon it’s a bloody good deal.  What I can’t put a figure on is all the other things I’ve gained.  Through meeting people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, my other businesses have also flourished, I have extremely good friends I’d never have met otherwise, I have learned styles of dance I didn’t know before and listen to music I would never have come across, and my life has been enriched beyond measure by all of these things.  But they are unquantifiable, and I don't want to muddy the water - I'm going to assume you understand that.

I could set up my own system of dance classes, where I don’t have to pay the license fee.  I would have to pay out for market research and marketing to make sure that I chose something that was going to work, and got it out there in front of people, making them want it more than something they already know about and know to be effective.  I would have to do a lot of research in terms of safety etc to ensure that I wasn’t teaching anything dangerous- BUT!  I would save myself that £35 (or rather £25) but I wouldn’t get that £18 CD and DVD.  I’d still be saving myself £7 a month, though.

I’m not sure I could do all that research and marketing for £7, but maybe I should give it a go.  And hope that people come along.

The daughters will squeal with delight and suggest we use the £35 (£25) to join a gym.  I will laugh and explain that it is not enough to join the gym, plus I haven’t earnt that £35 because I haven’t been teaching Zumba to earn it, and besides, I’d rather spend it on shoes.

Meanwhile, Zumba would still be going on, with other instructors, and people would be entitled to choose to go to them, of course.

As to that pesky old share of the Basingstoke Zumba market (AKA World Trade):

Five years ago, when I started teaching, 100 people a night attended a Zumba class in Basingstoke.  20 of them came to my class.  I had a 20% share of the market.

Now, 200 people a night come to Zumba.  30 of them come to my class.  
I only have a 15% share of the total market.

And yet I have grown my business by 50%.

Get it?  Got it?  Good.


Saturday 16 January 2016

Eye eye.

On Friday morning as I drove Olivia up to school, we looked up to see the most glorious sunrise.  It was stunning.  Awe-inspiring.  The kind of thing which stirs you to your very soul.  I nearly burst into tears.

I'm sometimes a bit emotional about beauty, but there is a good reason for this particular bout of emotion.

This week, I nearly lost my vision in one eye.

I need to remember how it unfolded, and I want people to know the symptoms because it might help someone else not lose their sight, so for that reason, I'm writing it all up here.

There'll be a bit of anecdotal rambling first, because I'm incapable of avoiding that no matter how I try, so if you get bored, scroll down to the big asterisk below.

Background information, first.

Back in October, I had a routine eye test.  Being pretty fiercely myopic (-6 in both eyes), I don't think twice about eye tests.  In fact, I have them so regularly that I question how valid they are because I can actually reel off the letters on the chart with my eyes closed.  I have begged for a new chart, but no dice.

Anyhoo.  This particular eye test was a little different.  As I was casually reeling off such literary delights as VOTH and LPED, I realised that, with my right eye, as I looked directly at the letters, they disappeared.  I could see them if I looked around them but if I looked directly at them, they simply were not there.  The optician could not see any problems with my eye, but suggested that it was probably worth looking into.

The following week was half term and we headed over to Belgium to visit my parents.  My mother has had serious problems with her eyes, and as such is on first name terms with Belgium's premier eye doctor.  It's a two month wait for appointments, but he agreed to squeeze me in two days later.  His examination showed something odd and he said that I needed to be seen urgently by his mate who had a machine specific to the problem which he thought I had - a super-powerful HD imaging thing which would scan a slice of my eye and show us exactly what was going on.  Unfortunately, that wasn't going to be possible before we returned home the next day.  Once we were back home and back into a week, I rang Moorfields and was admitted the next day as an emergency.

Various machines wot go ping (and some wot actually ping physically ON your eyeball - bloody unnatural) came into play, including a super-powerful HD imaging thing which scanned a slice of my eye and showed us exactly what was going on, which, it turns out, is a touch of the old vitreo-macular traction, resulting in a blind spot and surrounding distortion right in the centre of my vision.

It looks like this:


Yeah, that's the inside of my actual eyeball.  Nice.  It's hard to see, but above the thick undulating layer, very close to the top of the image, there's a thin white line which follows the curve.  This is the macula.  Where the little dimple is in the middle, the white line actually pitches down sharply and attaches back to the main bit.  This is the traction.

And this is what it looks like from my side:


Somewhere between picture one and picture two, but much smaller - it hasn't affected that proportion of my eyesight.
Not ideal, but apparently no major drama, and it was a question of having a check-up 6 weeks or so later, as it's the kind of thing which can conceivably just sort itself out.  A letter was typed off and dispatched to my GP, asking him to arrange a referral, and a copy was handed to me for my own reference.  Nice touch.  We don't get enough of that. 

6 weeks or so later was Christmas, and as a result, it ended up being nearer to 8 weeks by the time I remembered that this should have happened, and chased my GP, who denied all knowledge - for one reason or another, he had never received a letter from Moorfields instructing him to arrange a referral for a follow-up.  

I would have chased this up straight away, but I was a little preoccupied, as the reason I was at the GP's in order to check this was that Olivia had a hacking cough, for which she had already been seen once, with a horrendously high temperature.  She was given antibiotics and I thought I'd go home and chase up Moorfields over the next couple of days.  Olivia, however, got worse, and on Friday last week I took her back to the Doctor where he checked her SATS (oxygen saturation levels in the blood) and asked me whether I was okay to drive her to hospital or would I rather he got us an ambulance.  I elected to drive, and while he was doing the paperwork, I mentioned that Maddy had had a collision in netball at school on Tuesday and was still complaining of a sore shoulder in the collarbone area.  He stated categorically that I should haul her out of school and down to A&E for an X-ray.

Potential logistical nightmare, but as fluke would have it, Simon was off work, so while I rang school to have Maddy sent out and drove Olivia to the hospital, Simon collected Maddy and drove her along, too.  So there we were.  Me on the 6th floor with Olivia.  Simon in A&E with Maddy.  

This seemed bad enough, then Maddy was diagnosed with a broken collarbone, and Olivia was put on oxygen and admitted for an undetermined stay in the hospital.  I can't really express how frightening that was.  If your children have ever been in hospital, you know, so let's not labour the point.

Four days later, late on Monday, we were discharged and Olivia was allowed home.  

Tuesday was a relatively normal day, with Maddy at school and Olivia having a final day off to recuperate.

Wednesday seemed like it was finally going to be the proper, real start to the year, with everything under control, work being possible, children learning stuff and not being critically ill.  Aces.  

Thoughts turned to myself, and I rang Moorfields, who found my notes and faxed a copy of the referral letter to my GP, for adding to notes, but told me meanwhile to come in as an outpatient in the next week or so and they would give me a follow-up appointment without needing the involvement of any other parties.  Pretty cool.

I had noticed over Christmas that I was getting some flashing lights, when I blinked at night.  By Wednesday, I was able to see these during daylight and for most of that day that I had a small floater (snurk snurk - sorry - I know - pathetic) in the corner of my eye, meaning that I spent a high portion of the day whipping my head around to look over my shoulder.  I kept thinking that something was creeping up on me.  Most distracting.

In the evening, I went out to teach Zumba, feeling perfectly fine.  In the middle of one of the tracks, and noticed that the floater had become far bigger and was beginning to move across my eye.  It looked like ornate, black ink, scroll-work or calligraphy flourishes.  Very attractive but scary as fuck.  Over the course of the next few seconds, it continued to move across my vision and suddenly exploded in slow motion across my vision.  It looked like when you drop marbling ink on water:

First this:


Then this:



I stopped the music and turned to my class to say that I had to stop and go home.  As I very seldom so much as take a day off sick, it was clearly a bit of an event.

My participants were very understanding and I left quickly, driving home (hmm) to ring Moorfields.  I described the symptoms to the very nice man on the end of the phone, who told me to come in.

Me:  First thing in the morning okay?
Him:  No.  You need to get here now.

With the girls newly out of hospital and with a broken collarbone respectively, we didn't feel we could offload them on someone while we both charged up to London - too scary for them - so, pausing only to whip out my lenses and sling both a book and kindle in my handbag (chronic fear of being somewhere with nothing to read *shudder*) Simon drove me to the station (still in my Zumba gear, thankfully not sweaty as it happened early in the class) and put me on a train to London.  

Of course, while on the train, there's nothing to do but worry, is there?  So from being calm, together and getting on with it, I turned into a gibbering, sobbing, snivelling wreck and did what all self-respecting gibbering, sobbing, snivelling wrecks do.  I rang my mum.  As she'd only just gone home having raced over to help us out over the weekend with the whole "being in two places at once" scenario, I forbade her from coming over again, and rang my brother to see if he was in London.  After a bit of panicking re non-answering of phones (he was a the theatre), I got through and my lovely brother met me at Waterloo and accompanied me throughout the rest of the night, doing a bloody good job of taking my mind off it all.

We got to Moorfields around 10.30pm, where we were efficiently checked in, triaged (possibly not a verb) and seen by a second nurse who did various preliminary tests.  Around midnight, I saw a doctor who began the consultation with what came across as an everso very slightly smirky "so what has prompted you to run all the way up from Basingstoke at this time of night?".  I guess he sees a few hypochondriacs.  Either that or I totally projected my own fear that I was being a drama queen onto his entirely innocent question.  He smirked a little less when I told him it was not my first time at Moorfields, and still less when he'd had a look in my eye.

"Ah, you have a bad tear in your retina.  We will need to operate first thing in the morning."

What?  What?!  A torn retina?  Hm.  Okay.  Kind of what I was expecting, if I'm honest.  How serious is it, Doc - will I lose my sight?

"If fluid leaks through the tear and lifts your retina away, you will get a detached retina and lose the vision in your eye."

"Do you mean go blind in that eye?"

"Yes."

"Okay, and the likelihood of that is?"

"There's no way of telling, but we will operate first thing in the morning.  It's a nice fresh tear" (oh good!!!) "so the chances are good that there will be no complications."

"Is there anything I can do to minimise the likelihood of fluid leaking through?"

"Not really, no.  Don't jump off anything high.  Or operate any pneumatic drills."

Thinks:  "Great."

"Just show up tomorrow morning at 8.30 in the retinal emergency unit, with this letter."

We returned to my brother's via a comedy cab ride - "you two had a lovely evening, have you?  You lawyers, are you?" - er, no and no, but so it went on.  Jon distracted him beautifully, allowing me to wake Simon up and tell him what had happened.  The cabbie managed somehow to find all the cobbled streets and speed bumps between the City and Kennington, so I spent most of the cab ride hovering above the seat trying not to jolt my eyeball about.  Great for the thighs.

At 8am, after four hours of not very efficient sleep and some pretty funky dreams, I was back in the hospital, clutching my letter, and feeling sick as a bloody pig, my loves.  In all the excitement, I hadn't asked enough questions.  I like to know what is going to happen.  I didn't even know if I would be okay to leave the hospital unaccompanied.  As Jon had had to go to work and I was on my own, this was a pretty stupid question not to have asked.  It turns out, yes - not a problem.  Which was kind of reassuring about the whole thing.

I was the first person called, which was nice, and the lovely nurse assessed me and put dilating drops in my eyes, with many jokes about how she likes doing this to young men as it makes them cry, but doesn't like doing it to ladies.  I'm sure she has a different line for all the different patients she has - one which would put anyone at their ease.  She was an Asian lady of indeterminate age - tiny and birdlike (such a clichĂ©, but she was), beautiful and funny, efficient and charming.  

With pupils like a fully committed pill-popping maniac, I returned to the waiting room, assuming I'd be there for another hour or so, and was once again called almost immediately.

"Hi, I'm Miles, I'll be doing your retinoplexy today.  Let's have a bit of a look and see how it's presenting."

Miles, like everyone I have met at Moorfields, was an entirely charming person.  They are so quietly confident in their ability to save your sight, and so delightful in their self-deprecation, I felt that I was in the best of care throughout the whole horrible experience.  I cannot emphasise enough how frightened I was that my tear would prove inoperable and I would lose my sight.  I also cannot over-emphasise how little fear I had that the operation would go wrong.  Even as I signed the consent form confirming that I was aware that the operation could result in permanent loss of vision, not one iota of me brooked the possibility that Miles in particular, and Moorfields in general, would let this happen to me.  I hadn't really worked that out until I'm writing it now, and to be honest, it's made me totes emosh.  *dabs eyes, womans up, carries on*

Miles filled my eyes with numbing drops, which are absolutely amazing.  I don't have any squeamishness about things touching my eyes, as I've worn contact lenses since I was 12 years old (profoundly short-sighted and a fairly serious ballerina - couldn't wear glasses for dancing) but I can't say I relish it.  He had a good peer into my eyes and pronounced the tear thoroughly operable and fairly easy to reach apart from a couple of areas for which he would have to use a tool directly on my eyeball to depress it and deform it so that the edges of the tear were attainable.

Boak.

Yeah, I take it back.  I discovered a little squeamishness when he demonstrated the kind of thing and I worried that my eyeball would actually pop or pop OUT, but it was pretty much painless, just uncomfortable and icky.  Technical term.  Meanwhile my phone sprung to life and started pinging, ringing, vibrating, dan-dan-daaaaan-ing and general making its presence felt.  Miles patiently (and unnecessarily) suggested that I switched it off.  He explained that while he was firing the laser into my eyeball, it may be distracting.

At this point he told me that a not inconsiderable amount of fluid had begun to leak behind the retina.  If I hadn't rung straight away and come straight in, that leaking would have continued.  There is a very good chance that, as I'm sitting here two days after surgery, I would have been completely blind in my right eye.

The laser machine, it turned out, was in the other examination room, so we needed to wait for that to become free before he could perform the retinopexy, so it was back to the waiting room, this time with eyes which were not only junkified but numb, too.  Mental!  Again I expected a long wait, and again I was pleasantly surprised.  I was checking all the phone things which had happened, which included a call from School to ask if Olivia was allowed to stay for debating club, a message from Simon that Maddy had decided not to go to A&E after all (arm playing up following Olivia falling over and grabbing Maddy's arm for balance the night before) and FB messages from team members and customers - the life of a self-employed working mother.

I'd dealt with school and was ringing Simon to let him know that Olivia was staying late when I was called in - it couldn't have taken more than three minutes.

This was the big one.  It was finally happening.  I was a little nervous (ahahahahahahahaahah) about what was about to happen, so, as is my wont, I asked Miles to describe exactly what he was doing as he was doing it.  He was kind enough and patient enough to do so.

First thing was to lock the door.  Apparently you don't want people barging in while you're firing lasers into people's eyeballs, as it can cause complications.  If the door needs opening after the laser has been set, the whole process needs annulling and starting again from scratch.

So, we're locked in.  The chair made a dentist's chair look like a bit of an under-performer, and I was comfortably supine.  Meanwhile, Miles set a contraption on his head which looked like a combination of an optician's glasses:


And a miner's helmet:












The lamp bit being the laser.  Yoinks.

I'd read the Moorfields leaflet on the procedure (which a friend very kindly drew to my attention at 2am - thank heavens for friends who live on the other side of the world) and had half an idea what was going to happen.  One of the points in the leaflet about the actual treatment is that it can feel like electric shocks in the eyeball, sharp pain, burning etc.  So you'll forgive me for being a little trepidatious.

Miles asked me how the numbness was and if I wanted any more drops.  As I tend to morph into desperate comedy mode under stress, I responded that I've never knowingly turned down a drug in my life.  I know.  He's heard it all before, hasn't he?  But he laughed patiently, and further numbed my eyeballs.  I breathed deeply and tried to concentrate on keeping my heart rate nice and steady.

I should mention that there is no restraint whatsoever involved in this.  You hold yourself, your head and your gaze motionless.  The surgeon angles his head to point the laser where he is looking and activates it with a foot-switch.  Your eyeball is the size that your eyeball is and the laser enters it through your dilated pupil.  The margins for error here are tiny.  The chances of rupturing a blood vessel or slicing across the optic nerve are, presumably, considerable (I didn't ask, but unfortunately have always been quite interested in human anatomy etc and know just a little more about the inner workings of the eye than I wished, at that point, I knew).

This is what happens:



The dots on the wall of the eye are the small welds to reattach the retina where it belongs.

What amazed me is that there was very little sensation, let alone actual pain, involved in what ensued whatsoever.

I found it quite mentally disturbing, however, as it was almost exactly like a recurring dream which I have had for many years, and which has woken me into insomnia on many an occasion.

The laser, you see, completely dazzles you.  So your eye is open, you have to hold it as absolutely still as you can (or you'll end up with someone's tag graffitied on the inside of your eyeball), which in my case was looking up and left, but you can see nothing at all.  Your eye is numb, you're looking up, and you see nothing.  I don't know why this has been a recurring dream/nightmare for me, but it has.  If it were not for that, the experience would not have been in the least bit unpleasant.

 There were moments when I could feel the laser on the inside of my eye.  Not going to lie, that wasn't nice, caused me to go "argh" and Miles to say "Shall we stop for a minute?", which he did.  And then we'd proceed.

The bits when the depressor was on my eyeball weren't nice either - mostly when they were close to muscles which are not used to being prodded about.  But it was easily, easily bearable.

A couple of times, Miles called the head of department in to have a look at how it was going, and she suggested he could turn the laser up from 250somethings to 400somethings (at which I turned into tedious comedy patient again, and more or less told her to fuck off, because Miles was doing just fine - I need gagging, really, in these circumstances), which he did, and it was a little more obvious that something was going on in the eyeball, but still entirely bearable.

I ended up with two rings of welds around my tear, and three at a couple of points where it was tricky.  It was harder to get the retina to adhere where the fluid had crept through, so he had to pull back from the tear, leaving more of a space between tear and weld.

Every time we stopped, I was completely blind in my right eye - I checked that this was normal.  I like to know these things.  But my vision would slowly creep back.

Miles would tell me "we're about two-thirds of the way around, and you're doing very well", and generally keep me informed.  It felt very much like team-work, which clearly it wasn't.  He had years of experience and study and a huge amount of pressure on his shoulders, whereas I just had to keep my eye still.

I think the whole thing probably took about half an hour, but I'm not entirely sure.  What I do know is that 12 hours after I arrived at Moorfields with an undiagnosed eye problem, I walked out cured.

It didn't cost me a penny.

I am SO FUCKING LUCKY!!!

I came *this* close to losing my sight, and I know what to do if it happens again.

*
If you read all of that - well done.  If you've skipped down to avoid my rambling, that's fine, too.

What you need to know:

If you are very myopic (short-sighted), you are at an increased risk of having a torn retina.

It can happen at any time - it could happen while you are asleep so if you wake up with blurred or occluded vision, do not hesitate to have yourself checked out.

Indications that you are at risk of a torn retina are flashing lights and floaters across your vision.  These can be specs, lines, dots or larger areas.

If you see these, get checked out.

Find out where your nearest Opthalmic A&E department is.  It may be your local hospital or it may not, but if you're very short sighted, you ought to find out just in case.

If a large floater appears and does that marbling thing - sort it out!  Don't delay.  Don't feel like a twat for bothering t'doctor.  Just do it.

Delay marks the difference between saving and losing your sight.

Don't be afraid of the operation.  It's not bad at all.