Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

A few weeks ago I found myself lying on my back on a stretcher, being wheeled into an operating theatre for the first time in life. An annoying and rather clingy sty had fixed its abode on my lower eyelid in July last year and despite trying to massage it off by pressing a warm flannel against it, the abscess proved quite stubborn to get rid of. I know that the housing situation in the UK is not in the best of shape at the moment, but surely this was not the kind of tenant I needed even if there'd been space for building a house on my lower lid.

It was a rather grey day with the first heavy snowfall of the season forecast for later on. I arrived at the hospital by bus and planned to return home using the same method of transport. At no point did I fret over the operation. In fact, I still recalled my GP's words when she first saw me last summer and the phrase "laser the sty off" kept coming back. So, I carried on thinking that the procedure would be quick and painless. A radio with the station Magic FM was on with Queen's We are the champions playing to the whole ward. The signs couldn't have been more encouraging.

And yet, life always has a card up its sleeve.

If you're squeamish about operations, please, look away now and come back in the paragraph after next one.

First my lower eyelid was numbed with local anaesthesia. Either I failed to see the size of the needle or the doctor did his best to hide it because at no point was I afraid about an area so close to my eye being lightly perforated. By the time he'd said: "You're about to feel a little prick", he was done. Thus, a wave of optimism  caught hold of me. This was going to be just fine. I would be home in time for Gillette Soccer Saturday. How wrong I was. The surgeon set to work and all throughout the process he kept talking to me, giving me encouragement and maintaining my spirits high. My upper eyelid was raised and held all the way back with a small clamp to prevent me from blinking. When it was touched lightly by one of the nurses, my whole body went floppy. I couldn't raise my arms nor move my legs. I'd passed out partially. Drifting in and out of consciousness I kept hearing the doctor and nurses calling out my name. An oxygen mask was placed on my face and a cold flannel on my forehead. My neck was lowered whilst the rest of my body remained flat on the stretcher to get the blood circulating again. My jumper was rolled up, including its sleeves, to allow cool air ventilation. At some point I mustered enough strength to signal to the surgeon and nurses to raise my legs so that the blood could circulate more easily but they couldn't understand what I was trying to communicate. As it was explained to me afterwards, my blood pressure and heart rate had plummeted to dangerous levels.

I was kept in hospital for about three and a half hours after under observation. During this time I had enough time to think about what'd just happened. I'd never been so close to... death? No, that's overplaying it a bit and besides, that's a subject for another column. But, indeed, I'd never been so close to... this state of dependency, of almost total immobility. To be clear, when I was a child, I was in and out of hospitals in my native Havana, but since becoming an adult and especially since getting so legless once, many years ago, when I went out to celebrate my graduation from university with my friends, I'd never experienced an episode so dramatic as this one. And yet, I also found a humourous side to it. Whilst semiconscious, Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive blasted out on Magic FM. As soon as I came to, I asked the doctor if that was the track that was playing during my ordeal and he smiled at me and said: "Yup, you weren't totally out of it, were you?" I also reflected on my decision to watch a programme on Dali the Sunday before on Sky Arts whilst doing the ironing (it's a habit of mine, either arts or football, but nothing is better when you're pressing clothes than watching telly) and the first scene of Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalu, which as everyone knows opens up with someone slicing their eye. Yes, idiot, I'm an idiot. What next? Watch Airplane before flying to Cuba?

But of whom I thought the most that day as the afternoon put on its grey cape earlier than usual, was the personnel tasked with my well-being and us, the beneficiaries. From the - mainly - Filipino nurses who fussed over me as if I was a six year-old child to the doctor who talked me away from my trauma by discussing fishing in Cuba (including the ubiquitous legacy of Hemingway and his The Old Mand and the Sea) the staff were magnificent, caring in their approach and professional in their delivery. And we, the patients in that ward, reciprocated in equal measure. It made me think of the future of the NHS in this country and the current threat that the coalition government poses to it.

 As I write Prime Minister David Cameron and his gang are trying to push a bill through parliament which could alter irreversibly the way the National Health Service is run in the UK. Words and phrases such as competition, efficiency-saving (namely, cuts), choice, decentralisation of power and other jargon are being used as a carrot to entice practitioners to believe that they're being given more power.

In reality what's happening is that the government is bent on expanding private provision of our free health service, probably copying the US model. If the bill becomes law, the NHS will be torn open and left exposed for the vultures of the corporate sector to feast on its entrails. The juiciest contracts will go to the richest firms which will be in a better financial position to bid for them. Joe and Joanna Public will be left with a local hospital that will resemble the landscape in the novel The Road. We'll probably even get the cannibals as a side dish, too.

Cameron, Andrew Lansley (the health secretary) et al don't get it. When we, taxpayers and those who benefit the most from a free health system, hear ministers talking of value, trade-offs and deals, we fight back, sometimes even using methods that might be thought of unorthodox. A hospital differs from a hotel in that the former is driven by response to need and not by a desire for leisure as in the latter.

It's very likely that the NHS will cost the Tories the next election (although bearing in mind that the next time we'll go to the polls will be in 2015, that might be a little bit of wishful thinking on my part) and that Andrew Lansley won't be in charge of the health system by then. He has conducted himself in a most unsympathetic and callous manner. My biggest fear is that by then it will be too late to reverse some of the changes that Cameron wants to introduce now.

Last week I mentioned my apathy towards marches and demonstrations and how it came about. I should have added, if only to balance things off a little, that I do have joined online campaigns and petitions. One of the reasons I feel proud to carry a British passport and call myself a "naturalised British citizen" is because this country has an efficient and fair health system where everyone, regardless of colour, sex, gender, sexual orientation or age can be treated without paying one single penny. Perfect, it is not, and I'd be the first one to say that a lot needs to be done. But let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. Increasing competition and changing the ways services are commissioned is not the solution. The result will be more inequality.

Thinking back to my experience in hospital, I imagined Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive as a response from the NHS to the Cameron-led government with each line being sung by a different member of the public to the Conservative-LibDem cabal: Go on now go walk out the door/just turn around now/'cause you're not welcome anymore/weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye/you think I'd crumble/you think I'd lay down and die/Oh no, not I/I will survive//as long as I know how to love/I know I will stay alive/I've got all my life to live/I've got all my love to give/and I'll survive/I will survive. I invite you, dear reader, to join me in this chorus.

© 2012

Next Post: “Let’s Talk About…”, to be published on Wednesday 29th February at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Attempting to understand an act is not the same as condoning it. Whilst one can and does oppose the riots that swept through England in August, we ought to, at the same time, try to make sense of the causes behind them.

I happen to live in one of the areas affected by the lootings. I’m as dumbfounded as everyone else. Why were these vandals destroying our community?

The reasons, when you try to bring logic into the argument, are manifold and inconclusive: growing inequality, loss of parental control, a yawning gap in opportunities in the employment and education markets between the haves and have-nots and a collapse in trust in our politicians, police and media. I could include many more, but you get the gist of it. The younger generation is receiving a message which is the opposite of a L’Oreal advert: they’re not worth it. Their opinions count for nought and when projects and initiatives are kick-started on their behalf, sometimes they stop all of a sudden without a plausible explanation.

A case in point was a local scheme that used to take place near my house. During the half-term and school holidays a team of professional workers led various physical activities for children and adolescents. The sessions were well attended and welcomed by the local community. Both my kids used to go regularly. They made friends there and more importantly they, like the rest of the participants, felt respected and valued. Last autumn the project was scrapped as a result of the cuts introduced by the coalition government without as much as an explanation. This is the key to understanding why young people feel disenfranchised. It’s the lack of ownership and the dearth of opportunities in which they can voice their ideas, suggestions and solutions. When someone’s contribution to society is not being acknowledged, he or she becomes invisible. And in the current situation in the UK it would be a good idea to read the opening page of Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, “Invisible Man” where the protagonist explains what it feels like to “not be seen” and how he reacts to those who suffer from “poor vision”: “It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.”

It's worth noticing, too, how the political, economic and social landscape has been radically altered in Britain since Cameron became Ventriloquist In Chief with Nick Clegg as his wooden dummy in May 2010. We're in a situation where the public and voluntary sector has had to withstand a forced scaling down of its workforce, a pay freeze and an increase in the retirement age. Along with this, public services have been put out to tender to a pack of hyena-like private investors circling around our precious assets and waiting for the right moment to strike. Moreover, the state's role is dwindling. The gradual erosion of local government's decision-making, combined with David Cameron's "Big Society" experiment has resulted in the partial or total closure of local libraries, youth clubs, community centres and sports facilities.

It is against this background that the London riots ought to be analysed. And no, I don't believe for a second that the vandals who smashed shops and burned businesses had a political agenda in mind. But that their actions were the result of a volatile social, economic and political situation, there should be no doubt about that.

If a generation ago people were told that "there is no such thing as society", why are we surprised that their offspring is behaving so destructively? The moral values that make up our social scaffolding are no longer based on love towards one's own neighbourhood and neighbours but towards the glamour spilling out of programmes on MTV. And if the Prime Minister is allowed to hire a crook who got sacked from a top-selling newspaper, as his director of communications, then, why should it be any different for the opportunist who makes off with a pair of shoes that don't belong to him and which he picked up from a looted shop? These are some of the questions being asked right now here in Britain. But they fall on dear ears.

One of the salient elements of the riots is how many of those who carried out acts of violence did so without covering their faces. In my opinion, they were declaring their visibility, albeit in the wrong way. The problem is that unless we start seeing the young as active contributors to our society, they will continue to choose unorthodox methods to shake their invisibility off. And as Ralph Ellison wrote, that is seldom successful.

© 2011
Next Post: “Tiempo Libre (Review)”, to be posted on Wednesday 21st September at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Morning: Coffee, Reflections and Music

At the time of writing this post I’ve yet to cast my vote in the UK general election. By the time you read this column, though, we might have a new prime minister. Or maybe a hung parliament. And if it’s the latter, it’d better be well hung, what with the lack of female politicians on the campaign trail, if your poison of choice is testosterone, it’d better stick out from the beginning so that it can rise to the occasion. And yes, all puns are intended.

Or maybe the hung parliament will hang so low that its fate will go the same way as Ellis Drummond, the teenager from Rushden, whose asbo (Antisocial Behaviour Order) prevented him from ‘wearing trousers so low beneath the waistline that members of the public are able to see your underwear’. Taking into account that David Cameron’s Big Society idea was just pants, an asbo on an incoming parliament wouldn’t be out of place.

But before today's Sunday outing becomes an unabashed version of a ‘Carry On’ film, let me come clear. I have fond memories of the 1997 general election. Why? Because I had just visited Britain for the first time in April that year and my flight back to Havana took off a couple of days after Labour’s historical landslide in early May.

During that month I remember enthusiasm, effervescence and a sense of confidence in the future. The famous British upper lip was nowhere to be found, at least in London. When I rode the tube I overheard people talking about getting rid of the Tories and how Tony Blair was going to fix the country.

We all know what happened after, however. What started off as overenthusiastic praise for the White House and the 'special relationship' (why is there never a Relate counsellor available when you desperately need one?), ended up with a full-time membership of Vatican PLC.

And yet, this type of two-faced politics never put me off voting. I voted even when I wasn't supposed to (in 2001 I was sent a ballot paper by mistake). I've stated my political sentiments with an 'X' four times in the course of twelve and a half years (I include the London mayoral elections, too). What's moved me to vote? Here are a few reasons.

I vote because I owe it to my fellow Cuban compatriots who don't have the opportunity of changing the government themselves when and how they see fit.

I vote because it's part of the process of adapting to a country with the oldest parliamentary structure in the world. Perfect, it isn't and neither would I like it to be. But it works most of the time.

When I vote I am mindful of the three following elements: what is important to me socially, politically and economically - that is, my beliefs -, what's likely to happen (I call it reality check) and how I feel about the result. The latter is fundamental. It's what makes some people despondent about the whole electoral system and others optimistic. In my case and putting my pragmatic hat on, my vote has made a difference. It has ensured that the SureStart programme continues to support less well-off families, it got rid of the shameful Section 28 (enacted by the Thatcher government and aimed at eliminating the mention and teaching of homosexuality in schools), it brought the minimum wage, the Freedom of Information Act (which in a subtle touch of irony is being undermined by the same government that introduced it. Who said that slapstick comedy was dead?), regeneration programmes that tackled housing and unemployment. But my vote has done a lot of damage, too. It gave us the invasion of Iraq, political spin as a substitute for substance and the erosion of civil liberties. And let's not forget those MPs milking the system.

So, voting is not easy. It is an arduous task and one that I've never underestimated. Of course, you could say that there's another way. And indeed there is: abstention.

I look up to people who opt out. And my appreciation is once again rooted in my background. Abstaining from voting in Cuba is a no-no. I once met a man who spent a couple of years in jail for leaving his ballot paper blank. Don’t ask how the officials knew that he had not voted. It’s common knowledge that elections are rigged in Cuba. Over here, though, people who write ‘None of the above’ are making a statement against political sleaze. And sometimes we need strong assertions like that. My only concern comes with the degree of responsibility the abstainers assume. Or the lack of it thereof. Because let’s be clear about one thing, even when you don’t turn up to vote, you’re still voting. I know it’s a contradiction but the truth is that someone will be elected. And that someone (MP, councillor, Prime Minister) might be worse than the option against you were fighting. If it’s a member of the Monster Raving Loony Party we might be in for a good laugh. But what if it’s the BNP or Ukip, or any other racist political outlet? How do I explain to my children that the jackboot that left a mark on my face was the consequence not just of lack of faith in a flawed political system, but also apathy?

That’s why I vote. Because it’s difficult, messy, complex and sometimes unpredictable. At the time of writing, the Best Newcomer Act award in the UK general election goes to Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Whilst in pole position for the ‘Went Out to Get Some Bread and Bagged Me a Prime Minister Instead’ award goes to Gillian Duffy from Rochdale, otherwise known as ‘Bigoted Woman’.

But that’s enough thinking for today. After all, it’s Sunday, and right now the fire in my belly can only be put out by a good old bass hook. Over to you, Suzanne!

Copyright 2010




Next Post: 'Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts', to be published on Tuesday 11th May at 11:59pm (GMT)