Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Dad’s sister-in-law died at the end of last week after quite a stay in a nursing home. Her kids have placed the usual type of announcement that you get for such things in the paper, of course:

STEWART, JEAN – August 26, 2010, peacefully, at hospital, dearly-loved mother of Muriel and Jean. Service on Tuesday 31st August 2010 at 2.00 p.m. in Kirkwoods Funeral Home, 150A Kings Road, Knock, Belfast, BT5 7EJ and afterwards to Roselawn Cemetery. Family flowers only please. Donations in lieu may be sent, if desired, for N.I. Chest, Heart and Stroke, c/o Kirkwoods Funeral Directors (address as above). Will be sadly missed by her daughters, sons-in-law Gerald and Colin, grandchildren Simon, Sarah, Jenny and John, great-grandchildren and brother George. The Lord is my Shepherd.

As in all such announcements, a full life is condensed down to just a few words of farewell and, as usual, this means that a great deal about the person is omitted.

For instance, in Jean’s case she was buried with her husband John who she spent decades and Allan, the brother of Muriel and Jean, who died when he was only six months old. Jean’s brother George lives in New Zealand and couldn’t come over to the funeral as he’s getting on a bit himself. Sadly, Jean never made it over to visit him in Auckland as John had a heart attack before he retired so they were never able to manage the months long trip that would have been needed in those days. Still, at least George was able to spend time over here with them several times over the years although perhaps not so much as they both would have liked over their 50 year separation since he emigrated. Jean was the eldest of the two being born on April 14, 1923.

She met John through her employment in a drapers shop on the Crumlin Road and they married in 1951. Between Muriel and Jean she now has four great-grandchildren Josh, Emma, Ben and Sophie as well as the grandchildren mentioned above.

Missing also is mention of the trip taken to Portrush every Easter Monday for decades along with the family above, my Dad and us, Dad’s sister Ena’s family, and their parents (four car loads at the height of it all in the 60s). And, of course, lots of other things besides, many of which I’ve forgotten and some of which were reviewed during the funeral service.

The church itself was a major part of her life and although much of her involvement with the church wasn’t known to me at the time, that she was a person who cared about her religion came across always. She was in the choir and taught in the Sunday school and was one of those relatively rare people who you just know are Christians without being told because of the things that they do and they way that they behave generally.

I can’t say that I’ll miss Jean because with John’s passing 15 years ago we weren’t as involved with her as we had been previously which is sad really. As always, there were so many people at her funeral who I should be seeing now and again but who I rarely see outside of funerals these days which is something that I’m working on changing.

We set out for there this morning and even skipped out on the tailback into Ballycastle by going down a side road as soon as we reached the end of the traffic jam so were pretty much right in the thick of it at the off.

The problem was that “in the thick of it” meant that we could see just how packed the crowds were before we needed to decide on car parking. Way too packed to make it any kind of a pleasurable visit so instead we changed tack and had a nice BBQ along the coast road and had the BBQ area pretty much to ourselves the whole time. Much nicer than packed solid into a mass of people.

The problem with the Auld Lammas Fair is that it was pretty much at full capacity a few years ago yet there are lots more people in Northern Ireland these days and so it looks very much over capacity now. Time for a change to add a few days to it and spread the crowds over a longer period I think.

Anyway, tomorrow is back to school day for the little guys (though John is feeling poorly so perhaps not for him). That means hunting out the uniform (done), labelling it (not done yet), trying to remember where the school bags were dumped a couple of months ago and getting back into the buying something for their snack.

Unusually it was a privately owned surveillance system that caught Mary dumping a cat into a wheelie bin but now her moment of madness is visible throughout the internet and she’s under police protection.

Whilst her actions can’t be condoned, I’m not so sure that it’s quite right for the cat owner to effectively create an instant mob by way of Facebook either. As he says in the interview in the Mail, he feels that it should be handled by the proper authorities although given the reactions of some people to her actions I’d say that he wishes that he’d left it to them in the first place.

It’s right that appropriate action should be taken against her, of course, but is it right that an instant mob was created by publishing the video on the net?

With my Mum being over 83 now she’s acquired a social worker as I guess do a lot of older people these days.

In some ways that’s handy as it’s given us access to a day care centre which lets her get out to socialise with people around her own age. That’s a good thing as what happened over the previous decades was that with Dad going out the majority of the friends that “they” acquired over that time were actually his friends which accentuated the problem of the increasing age of the friends even more.

However, where it’s not so nice is the sheer level of what seems like interference in the life of the family that having a social worker entails. Hardly a week goes by when Elizabeth isn’t calling in for something or other or rather tries to call in as we’re out quite a lot. That being out doesn’t go down too well as there seems to be the assumption that you’ll be there when the social worker calls, regardless of when they call.

The level of interference seems sure to go up a notch thanks to them pushing for Mum to be declared mentally incompetent. Now, I’ll grant that Mum’s mind isn’t what it was ten years back and indeed she moves around a lot more slowly too but, frankly, I think that having her declared mentally incompetent by a court is totally over the top. What it actually means is that Social Services get to review all of her finances and spending which seems to me to be incredibly interfering. Moreover, I’m supposed to keep her in the house or go everywhere with her. Thus, her regular walks to the shops would have to stop “in case she gets lost”. OK, I imagine the day will come when she will get lost on her way to or from the shops but that day isn’t here yet and putting her under what’s effectively house arrest seems far from reasonable.

Overall, I’d say that they’re not such a good thing at all. So far the only point in their favour is that they’ve organised getting her into a day centre but we’d have managed that independently if need be and any plus points are far outweighed by the interference.

Way back in May we had the idea of giving the Kumon a bit of a boost over the summer months. After all, the kids wouldn’t be tired after a day at school and we’d have more time to fit in the work. So, we added the other subject for each of them. Thus, James started maths and John started English.

What we hadn’t allowed for was that although they’d not be at school all day, they’d be tired out from doing holiday things. So rather than plugging away with ten pages of each subject they’ve mostly been doing five of each with perhaps a few weeks at the full rate on one of the subjects.

Despite that slower pace, both of them have made quite a bit of progress over the summer months. John is still ploughing on with 100% marks on his maths and, after a slow start, has just about completed a level in the English. James has continued to pick up speed on the English and is getting into the swing of the maths too.

Now we have the problem as to what to do when they restart school. We could continue on with both subjects but somehow I don’t think that’ll work too well when they’ve school homeworks to contend with as well. What we’re going to do is to continue on into September and see how it goes before deciding what to do over the remainder of the school year.