So where have I been...

I had a busy vegan MoFo that involved badly spraining my ankle, then I got so sick I couldn't stand, travelled to see my Dad and Gran, got sick again, travelled down to London, lost my train tickets home* and came back to Torquay.

Luck wise and health wise I haven't had the best year really. But one more month - in which will probably loose my debit card and my house keys - and we can start again.

However it hasn't all been bad. I'm now a trained In4mer and I'm hoping to be able to start running sessions in the area some time after Christmas. I'm on the list to do PR for a district event which sets to be all sort of fun. I got to see some of my Family (last minute trip so I didn't make it around even half of the people I wanted to see!)

Oh yeah, and I got to go to Edinburgh! This is me (shock!) on top of the Camera Obscura with the 11th Torquay Brownie Mascots. It was a great weekend and big thanks go to my Guiding community, family and friends who made it possible.

To quickly recap the weekend we had a Castle visit where I got to look at the crown jewels, an open top bus ride which was freezing but very entertaining, a ball with less than brilliant food but an excellent band and a great deal of dancing and I got to verify that one man wore his kilt in the traditional manor. As you can probably tell by the picture it was cold and overcast but the city was brilliant and the company even better.

*The current leading theory is that they were taken out of my coat pocket so if you are the person who got a free trip to Torquay two weekends ago then I apologise. If you had just asked me I could have told you that it isn't worth it.

Sitting Comfortably

Okay, so I haven't yet finished the cushion covers for the living room. Or arranged a new (matching!) set of bed linen. I haven't made a toilet paper cosy, a pot holder or sewn up the hole in my pocket.

But I did make the most darling cushion cover... for the balcony... in October. No, I can't remember the last time I was accused of being practical either.

The fabrics are a mix of my leftovers, off cuts priced for pennies at the local fabric shop and, for the middle right, a vintage floral.

World Issues 1/4

EDIT: Health issues and other things stopped me from writing the follow up posts. I'm afraid their is no resolution for this one. We had fun though.

For the next three weeks I’m helping with Brownies. Brown Owl (the woman in charge) is also an assistant at guides with me and she needed a bit of help.

I said I’d come in to do a badge. Being a visitor like this helped me decide on what to do. I like talking about world issues with our girls but the added respect and detachment I get from being just a visitor was a big help in bringing up more difficult problems.

So I have the chance to do the World Issues badge. And – as it’s the centenary year – I’m going to be asking the girls to identify an issue they feel strongly about and have them work to make thing better.

This week we took on children’s rights. Not the easiest of issues to explain. Teaching about hurt and pain and the horrible things people do to each other is difficult for them and me. Add to that children who are being treated like crap by the people who are supposed to protect them the most – parents, teachers, governments – and yeah. Hard.

But we got there. To explain the concept of children’s rights with them we started with a game. They chose the game and started playing. It was All Brownies for those who know it (I didn’t!) and I walked over and announced that the winner would get a prize. They played the game and the winner stepped forwards.

I told her I didn’t much like the idea of giving my prize away, that I was going to keep it and she had no say.

After the complaining settled down I asked them if they thought it was fair? No. I asked them if they thought it was right? No. Then I asked them how it felt to be ignored and treated unfairly.

Then we used an Oxfam produced activity to introduce the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We discussed what we thought was important and why.

I pulled my map out and attacked it with sticky notes. ‘Does anyone know where Sierra Leone is?’ We talked about war, drought, and access to medicine. All with real life examples.

Then we went back to playing games. Right before we finished for the night we held the big vote. What issue do the girls want to work on in the next three weeks? What do they want to change?

All hands went up for stopping Animal Cruelty. Check back next week when we’ll have more of that plus talking about the work of international charities.

You can see the World Issues badge here, sign your daughter up for Brownies here, or become a leader yourself here.

Home grown

I'm busy getting ready to fund raise for Edinburgh tonight and I'm planning four weeks of discussing important world issues with girls age 7-9.

More on those when they have happened. All I have for you now is some hand stitched flowers out of leftover materials that I'm hoping to get a few pennies for later.

Things I wish I was doing

I feel like I've been punched in the head. Not that I can remember what that feels like. I'm just assuming that it feels something like the brain aching, blocked up feeling I'm having right now.

I have another bloody cold and have spent all week either tearfully exhausted or surviving on a bizarre blend of Hall's Soothers, spicy crisps, chocolate and pouting at boyfriend.

What I'm trying to say is that this isn't the most interesting blog post in the world, ever. In fact, it's about things that I'm not doing. So take that as some sort of sign.

Oxfam are up to something. Well, I mean, they are always up to something, they are a busy organisation. Anyway. They are asking for people to fund raise. In the office, school, wherever you happen to be. It's to help fund climate change projects.

They offer such ideas as denim day, collecting 1p and 2p coins and, awesomely, baking. Unfortunately I'm already spending my October fund raising for something else and I don't have an office to force to participate. But if you would and could like to give it a bash you can find the info here.

Also in October is World Food Day and people are needed to Stand Against Poverty. So if you are into raising awareness and know a few like minded people why not hold an event. We'll be participating with Guides but it will have to be the Monday after for us.

And I'm still washing the sand out

Did you notice? Officially Britishly at least we just had the last weekend of summer. We spent Sunday at the beach, arriving when the tide was going out. We had a dip, Stephen dammed a river, I read a bit, we ate lunch, we ate doughnuts. We explored the low tide. There was more swimming, ice cream and slushes.

And that was the end of another summer. Also I got decent shots of the dress I wore to the wedding.Shots that don't involve me stood in a badly lit pub. Hope this gives a better idea. If not, at least I've got my hair down.

Rules are Rules

I just got my Ultimate Edinburgh confirmation which is making me very happy right now.

So I thought I would use the opportunity to share with you our new unit guidelines. The girls thought up the rules, we vetted them and then held a vote.

1. Respect each other
2. Have fun but be sensible
3. Listen to others when they are talking
4. Tell a leader when you can't attend

All of them, especially number three, will be forgotten about before the next meeting but it did manage to buy us a bit of peace. I'm working on activities centred around Children's Rights, Independent Living and World Food Day at the moment. Any ideas?

A question of style, a question of rights

I've never took a peek at The Telegraph's style guide. I owned a copy of the Times version and wrote to the Guardian one at university but I haven't seen The Telegraph's.

I wonder though. Does it say, like the others I've seen, that when referring to people that you should always use their preferred gender? Is that rule and it's been broken here or haven't they got a shred of humanity at all?

The headline is 'Boy, 12, is having sex change, school announces' the actual story is that the School called an Assembly to tell the students this girl must be treated like a girl.

Or, as the Telegraph would spin it, that this school is forcing kids to be accepting and understanding without first informing the parents. In their own words now:

'the boy...was immediately taunted by classmates who recognised him from primary school.

'As a result, the 1,000-pupil school in south east England decided to call an emergency assembly ordering children to treat him as a girl and use his new name' [emphasis mine]

Way to go Telegraph. You can't even show the same understanding that we're expecting of twelve year olds.

And let's face it we should be expecting this of them. The question isn't whether these kids are old enough to understand gender identity in the most basic of terms (or, rather, if their parents are) but whether they are old enough to show someone basic common decency.

Whether they are old enough to know that we shouldn't persecute people for not being 100%, certified normal.

To suggest that this girl should put up with - as The Telegraph lightly puts it- taunting because parents think their children might find the concept of her existence a bit difficult is more than a little bigoted. Not to mention completely crap.

So well done to this school and to this girl and her parents and to the kids who, and I'm sure they existed, were more accepting. Screw you Telegraph.

And no, I couldn't bring myself to search for the original Sun coverage. I'm just going to assume that it would anger me.

Seahorses Are Real

'"But that's not you. It's not really you when you are ill"

"Yes it is, it's a part of me."'

I'm exhausted. I've just finished reading Seahorses Are Real as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme. Whether it was the writing, the unrelenting misery, or my own problems getting in the way it took me all bloody week. For perspective I could usually finish something of that length in two days so yeah, I'm exhausted. As you can imagine I had a bit of a mixed reaction.

Seahorses are Real details the abusive relationship between Marley, who suffers from depression, and David. David plunged himself into the relationship with hopes of saving her and, as the novel opens, he realises he can’t. How surprising. And the misery they bring each other is the subject.

The idea that depression makes you miserable isn't new nor is the idea that it can make the lives of people around you miserable. You, in a sense, loose all perspective. Things get blown out of proportion, you become irrational. You can say, and do, shitty things as a result of that. I have. And I have the ends of relationships and bruises from punching walls to prove it.

But I think David gets off lightly here. He too has a skewed view of things. He is the stereotypical nice guy (with as many TM's as you would like) who wants to save Marley. In his dreams he is rescuing her. He thinks he can protect her and rescue her. Fix her. The fact that he can't, that he has failed adds bitterness to an already sour situation. I really don't think that is explored enough.

The story is told in through cycle of fighting and making up. Abuse and making nice. And the unrelenting cycle that is Marley’s life: Jobcenter, ineffectual councillor (who makes remarks and hand her pills in sealed envelopes, this book could be read as an advocacy for proper treatment if nothing else!), home. The cycle that she longs to ditch as much as the depressive thoughts.

Like that, as a study, the novel doesn’t do too badly. It shows the horrible reality of a couple who only show affection with a side of sarcasm and who are overly dependant on each other for their happiness quite well, even if Marley is up – I think unfairly – for more criticism.

However the writing falls short. And I hesitate to say thing because I can see what’s trying to be achieved but it does just tend to fall back. The overload of adjectives, clichéd similes, repetitive sentences are a tool to let us see through Marley’s mentally ill gaze. However with the third person it just makes the novel seem clumsy and unpolished.

When the viewpoint characters switch and we see things from David’s eyes it does so clumsily. Several places I was dragged out of the story wondering where I was and who I was with now.

I will treasure the description of the calm after the storm, the hopefulness following a breakdown but ultimately the writing keeps me from giving the thumbs up, excited grin recommendation.

One a Day...

I've got to say that I'm rather sick of people freaking out when they here I'm on anti-depressants. And for the most part they aren't freaking out because I'm depressed (which is definitely freak-out-able. It sucks.) but because I'm on the pills for it.

I mean don't they ruin your life? They can't really make you happy? Don't they have horrible side effects? And if you do get happy on them how do you know if you are really happy or if it's just the drug?

Where to start? No, they don't ruin my life. Being depressed ruined my life. I let people down, treated them like crap, I didn't get my degree. Also, I felt like complete and utter shit. I was still functioning, yes, but getting up and feeding myself was exhausting. I wanted to die. Anti-depressants didn't do any of those things to me. They gave me my life back.

Second, I studied English literature so I really can't tell you, in anything but the floweriest terms, how 'happiness' works. All I know about brain chemistry is a doodle by the wonderful GP who diagnosed me. But my little pills got me to a state where I could function. Where things that used to make me happy could make me happy once again. That was good.

And yes, horrible side effects. Every little pill you take has that potential and many people have to try out almost every pill in existence before finding the right one. Which is why - ideally - you need a bloody good Doctor to help you deal. And yes, I do have a relativity minor side effect but the benefits I get from my anti-depressant outweighs it. For some people it doesn't and they decide against making anti-depressants part of their treatment. Cool. You have to do what's best for you. That is what treating depression is all about.

Lastly, I don't give a damn. Many people have asked me in their deep philosophical voice 'well how do you know if you are really happy'. Hell, as a kiddo, I asked that question myself. As a grown up I can say, without a doubt, that I just don't care.

Am I really happy? There is probably no way to tell. I feel happy and after feeling miserable for so long that is all that matters to me.

All those questions, those fearful questions, have been asked by people. Ordinary people. And you don't wonder why any more when half-baked advice columnists freak out over the same thing.

Malnutrition, outdated medical care, babies, lack of sanitation: a diet that finally works.

When comparing the 1940's to today:

• ' So why are we getting taller? It's partly down to nutrition - a better and more plentiful diet'
• 'Now, with warmer homes, better medicine and improved sanitation, our energy - significantly in childhood - can be devoted to growth.'
• 'women in 1949 were slimmer because their diet centred on vegetables and complex carbohydrates' and of course rationing that 'allowed about 3,000 calories a day' if you could get that much.
• 'post-war women also expended many more calories through housework and having to walk or cycle everywhere.' Drudgery! It was good for you!
• 'There is a tendency for the Pill to stimulate breast growth,' whore.
• Hips aren't wide enough because 'if a woman's hormone levels are unbalanced she ends up storing more fat around the waist and less around the hips where we should' ie it's the pill's fault you whore.
• 'Women's feet can change a whole size in their lifetime with weight gain.'

Yes, it's a badly researched comparison that quote experts in seemingly unrelated fields but the conclusion is clear. Life was better when we had nowt to eat and fewer choices. Now who wants to give up the last 60 years of progress - in the UK at least - in modern medicine, access to food, and human rights? Anyone?

You may get thinner!

And at the end of the day longevity isn't a good thing because an ageing female population is prone to Osteoporosis which costs the NHS money.

Also, and I hated to break it to you, 'Bigger breasts alone don't necessarily mean an increased risk of breast cancer' actually translates to 'I know you weren't worrying about it and you have no reason to but perhaps you should'. So fellow Bravissimo shopper... we're doomed.

Quotes taken out of the appalling context given to it by the Daily Mail.

Decorating Union Street

series of photos that stretch both the definition of public art and the definition of Union Street. To be honest, more the latter than the former. My map skills are much more profound than my social commentary. A

Hiding Inside on A Sunny Day

And my face is starting to burn so allow me, if you will, to rave about a book.

I read Halting State by Charles Stross as it was a new addition to Torquay Library. It still had that sexy new book smell which is a luxury for me right now. But the smell isn't the point, neither is the cute pixel art on the cover.

Halting State is about very bad things going down in an online game. It's tales of futuristic technology are delicious. Nothing that hasn't been predicted in a feature on Click but made much more human by the everyday lives surrounding it.

The novel follows three characters Sue, of the Edinburgh constabulary, Jack, who knits and programmes and, Elaine, forensic accountant and - in her spare time - a medieval swords person. The viewpoint is switched to tell the story from the three perspectives. I tried to race through Sue's because her story was much less interwoven with the other two.

What was really clever though is that it is written in third person. It gives a great effect of throwing you in the story and getting you emotionally involved without giving the game away. After all you assume you knows all about it while I may want to give subtle hints or tell you outright. This way the surprises stay surprises.

The plot moves on from robbery in an online game through industrial sabotage and international espionage the plot becomes a little hard to follow in the last twenty pages or so. The race for 'The End' is fast paced and in that it looses something.

Halting State is, however, a fantastic, realistic near future bit of SF. It gets extra bonus points for having characters instead of caricatures and someone who knits.

A little round up

Because things don't happen to you unless you blog about them I'm going to do a quick round up of the things in my life that don't let me waffle for long enough to get a full blog post out of them but are nevertheless really exciting.

1. I've been selected to be on staff for Fusion! It's the Fourth of next August and is set to be spectacular. From the website 'Fusion will feature over a thousand of the best outdoor performers from across Europe, with everything from music and dance to circus acts, buskers and theatre performers'. If you are a little girly Guide (girly Guide!) you can start booking places on the 4th January.
2. If you used to be a little girly Guide (girly Guide!) you can chat with former and current members on Guides Reconnected. I'm on there.
3. I've got a reviewers copy of Seahorses are Real on it's way. It's 'a haunting tale of love and tragedy'.
4. I own three copies of The Picture of Dorian Gray already. But I want this one.
5. One of our Bookcrossing books made it all the way to Italy!

We got no troubles

So we moved into our flat in October. To go with it we bought a shiny new telly. It had a built in DVD player and freeveiw.

Now let me just say that I'm a big fan of the telly. I love sitting down to watch something. Accompanied by snacks, my duvet, and/or a craft project and it's even better. And at the end of the day (oh dear? Did I just make a bad pun?) my DVD collection is the only thing that makes my infrequent bouts of insomnia bearable.

So the shiny new telly which would be my first telly in four years was a very welcome addition. Only it's broken down bit by bit since we first bought it. First the sound, then the DVD player, now it's refusing to pick up all but the strongest signal.

Sad! But yesterday our shiny new DVD player came so now we can at least watch DVDs and when Stephen gets paid for a project he's working on we'll be able to put the old broken thing out to pasture once and for all. (Side note: how crap does it feel to be unemployed right now?)

So we treated ourselves to a night of chips and DVD's during which I managed to finish embroidering one of our cushion covers. I've been meaning to decorate them to fit in better with our colour scheme since we moved in. I feel guilty about that because they where hand made by Stephen's Mum and, honestly, you can't improve on her sewing. Especially not with my half baked stitches.

I did want to go for an alien theme but Stephen and I could actually agree on an under the sea theme so we went for that. He even obligingly drew the fish. Eventually I'll work on the second cushion.

I guess I'm not

So I was going to use the last few hours of daylight to blog about cupcakes.

Then I got angry. Really, incredibly angry. Again at We Are The Real Deal. This time I get the message loud and clear. They are the real deal. I'm not. So I'm not going back.

So what is so anger inducing this time? MizFit posting about 'What IS average?' or, indeed, how to tell if you are better than everyone.

It's getting late and the wind is blowing and the rain is falling. I'm short of breath. So I'm just going to do a baby deconstruction here.

"In today’s world (where 75% of U.S. adults are projected to be overweight & 41% obese by 2015) what is average anymore anyway?"

Scary projections aside (mainly because it isn't 2015 and even if it was obesity isn't bad in and of itself...) it seems to me that the question is not how to tell that I'm average it's how to tell if I'm not one of those big, bad, fat chicks.

Let's go a bit further into this. Why, why oh why, do you need to know if you are average? Why do you need to know how you measure on a curve?

The basics of body acceptance tell us that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you are average, above average or bellow average in anything. You are a person. Your measurements don't define you, you shouldn't be defined by your measurements.

Knowing where you are on the curve is putting people above you and bellow you. It's setting yourself in a rank. And it this case it's wanting to see how you are better than 'American average' which means sadly in MizFit's opinion 'just a little overweight'.

That type of thinking? It's the very antithesis of acceptance.

Even worse that MizFit's standard for being awesomely average is ridiculously ableist. See, this is what you should do:

"an easy way to determine whether you are in ‘fine’ or average shape is to run up two flights of stairs or walk six blocks"

Can you manage that? If not, then you aren't fine.

Now keep in mind that I have no physical disability. I'm average remember. But I have days when I can't get out of bed, my right ankle is playing up, my childhood asthma has left me with a low lung capacity, period pain, hay fever and like everyone else I'm at the mercy of bacteria, viruses and anything that wants to call my body it's home. These are only the problems a healthy person (who can walk 13 miles without flinching if the conditions are right) has with this test of averageosity.

That's the problems with this entire 'be healthy' rhetoric. It's crap. Healthy is a state. A state that can not be achieved by hard work and dedication if all the cards are stacked against you. To judge people by this standard - that many of us only hold onto by the skin of our teeth - is the very antithesis of acceptance.

It also has nice connotations about class. Now I can't speak for the States but I am told that it's sometimes a problem there to walk for six blocks. It certainly can be here in some areas and we have plenty of footpaths and pavements.

Class connotations are also rife in exercises+ awesome diet= infallible health rhetoric. If only you work at it by going to the gym and eating 'healthful' foods you deserve health. Anyone who doesn't have the same resources, funds, time and priorities (Any or all in combination) is just lazy and isn't working hard enough.

So let's answer MizFit's questions:

"Non-Americans: do you see us as the Great Surrendering to SuperSizing nation?

Have we gone so far into the notion of perfect not being important & it’s ok to be less than our best & we need to love ourselves regardless that we’ve swung too far into deconditioned is the new black! territory?"

Yes, body acceptance has gone too far. Truly if we allow people to be okay with themselves even if they aren't healthy, even if they aren't average then...

Wait no, that isn't what happens at all.

People are still discriminated against for having different bodies. Fat people are dismissed by doctors, women have sexual abuse shouted at them on the street, disabled people, people of colour, non-heterosexuals, transgendered people... Treated like crap for looking different everyday.

Acceptance hasn't gone too far. On a large societal scale it hasn't even happened. A world which MizFit describes in fearful tones sounds perfect to me.

'we need to love ourselves regardless' and to suggest anything but We Are The Real Deal has become the antithesis of acceptance.

No Claws!

Memories, eh? Do you remember the days when I could spend six quid on a repair job (or six quid at all!), the days when I had hair that bright, the days when Stephen took pictures of me that weren't blurry?

What ever happened to those days? Well I can't tell you that but I can tell you what happened to the skirt. It got a hole in it. I got rather over adventurous with some scissors and cut not only the fabric on my lap but the skirt as well.

This repair job came out of the stash. Stephen copied a cat print down for me as I was watching Gardener's World. I whipped out my chalk and drew it around the hole. Some satin stitch and a gold outline later and I look like I've been attacked by a kitten with muddy paws.

I think it's rather cute myself.

(Incidentally I'm more than a little ashamed of my use for the words 'sane' and 'insane' in the post linked to. I apologise.)

How realising thin privilege meant realising thin...

For some reason that will go unmentioned, but from recent posts you can probably guess, I’ve been thinking of my own thin privilege lately.

When I found fat acceptance I was coming at it from the perspective of someone who thought them self fat. I’m not. I’m thin. But I’ve only come to realise I was thin recently.

Why? Well yes, I lost inches around the waist as a result of pasty deprivation but - I admit now – I was thin before that.

Probably my mental issues come into play here, making me cringe with disgust as my big flabby stomach brushed against the sheets in bed. Or how I screamed thinking of my fat cheeks turning inward to suffocate me.

Reading that back it scares me. How the hell did my body image get so far off of what I am: an average sized, average height woman who always manages to find something off the rack even if my boobs make me an inbetweenie.

And yes, some off that is anxiety and depression. I imagine I have some undiagnosed body issues thrown in. Some of it is, of course, growing up with a family that commented on my chicken legs. And I think that is why thin privilege can be so hard to grasp. Because it’s easy enough to think thin people have it easy but not so easy to say ‘like me’

I have had it easier being thin. To choose just one example when I joined the University Health Centre in my first year I had to have a physical. The guy doing it did my BMI and found me solidly (as usual) in the middle.

He asked me if I did any exercise. “No, not really. But I do walk everywhere.” He told me that it wasn’t a problem but I may want to think about joining the gym if I put on weight like a lot of people do in first year.

Yeah, spot the logic there.

So from realising I was thin I could realise my thin privilege, but how did I come to realise I was thin? It ties in with something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. How my barely updated craft blog got political.

You see it’s hard for me to separate one from the other. Just like how we occasionally bring up the politics of food on Always Autumn politics is entwined with the way I craft.

If I where to post about how I wasn’t doing any projects or – more accurately – how I didn’t feel I had done anything good enough to post I couldn’t do that without talking about depression.

Cutting the cloth for a dress makes me think about my body. I measure it constantly, evaluating a clothing project means talking about my boobs or my hip size. And so often when I post ‘my big boobs’ so on or ‘I’ve lost weight so I’ve taken this in’ I feel like apologising for having at least some ideal (so called, although not in the sense that it causes me problems with altering in the first place!) parts of my body.

Crafting lends itself to discussion of body image, to my mental state. It makes me think about feminism and the treatment of the mentally ill. When I want to write about crafting with Guides it’s often linked up with thoughts about how young people don’t have a realistic voice.

Quite frankly if I tried to separate the political from the personal I’d never bloody post. And -of course - I didn't.

Dots and spots

"Boyfriend, will you take a picture of me in my new top?"

"Sure just sit next to the new backup server."

So this is me in my new top, sat next to the new backup server.

The pattern is Simplicity 3750, which is rather cool. I used view E. The other variations give cute puff sleeves, big bell sleeves, breezy cap sleeves and a tunic length. It's a wonderful pattern, with it's elastic and gathering on the bust, that can go from casual to decadent depending on the fabric.

I went for Minnie Mouse personally. I took out the sash, lengthening the bottom front. Next time remind me to drop the top front down two inches, cut the length of the elastic shorter by another one and clip the armholes shorter by a half.

I'm hard to please

There is so much I want to rant about today that I'm just going to list them. Three things that I'm not impressed by:

1. This picture in Glamour (US)

It doesn't impress me, it doesn't placate me. One 'normal' woman in one issue of one magazine.

Not even getting into the idea of what is normal I think the ideal we are striving for here is a diverse representation of body shapes, sizes and colours. I want to see people on all parts of the spectrum not just one slightly chubby, naked, white, blond woman as a political statement.

A lot of people are saying she looks happy and healthy but come on! You can not tell how healthy someone is by a picture. You can't see inside some one's body, you can't even see the other side of her body. And happy? Chances are she was told to smile at the camera. She is a model, posing for a photograph.

2. This arsewipe Doctor who thinks loosing weight can cure depression.

I mean come on! I've heard every magic cure for depression there is. What I haven't heard is that you can cure depression by shaming your patients and treating what you perceive are their problems rather than what they are asking for.

And yet I know that there is a problem with people accessing medicine because their doctors are turning them away, or accepting them if only they did the impossible ie. maintain a low weight. And I know people don't take depression seriously even when you fit into that right weight. And I know that people have no idea how people eat but assume they do based on appearances.

Yet I'm shocked and bloody angry when one arse in a white coat can use all these things - all of their unfounded prejudices - to ruin some one's life.

3. It's the time of year again to tear young people apart.

A-level results are in and turns out people did well. This -as it turns out- is not to do with better teaching methods that engage a variety of learning styles, better understanding of learning difficulties or anything else that gives all people a chance at a decent education.

No, it is a result of the exams getting easier. And so the hand wringing starts from people who haven't looked at these exams in years know - like every older generation since time immemorial, or at least the Romans - that kids today are thickos.

And they say this with no regard to the young people. Who, lets face it, only ever get in the news over this and ASBOs. They don't care about someone who is pleased to bits about achieving their A or someone who already thinks they are crap for getting a D.

I'm angry, I'm full of hay fever and god knows the world isn't putting me in a happy place today.