Category: Health
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Back to work
The last time I worked full-time, in 2015, I got fired for taking too much time off sick.
The last time I worked full time before that, in 2011, I got fried for taking too much time off sick.
So I was quite happy to work part-time since 2016, fifteen hours a week to begin with, increasing to twenty two and a half hours in 2017. It felt like something I could cope with.
And it allowed me to spend a lot of time with big kid when he was little, and then little kid, too. Although that was often tiring ‘work’ I feel very fortunate to have had that much time with them when they were so young and fun.
Working two or three days a week and really being in charge of my own hours and schedule also allowed me lots of flexibility. I could almost work when I liked and didn’t worry about how many hours I’d done. If I needed to I could easily make up time or catch up on another day.
Going back full-time today, I was very conscious of how much time I spent working, and not working. I’ve got much less flexibility now to make up my hours.
Then again, I know that at work, it’s possible to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, and the office not actually doing much work. I won’t be too hard on myself for making a cup of tea, powdering my nose, connecting the wife to the internet or checking my online socials every now and then.
All in all it wasn’t a bad day. Nothing urgent to do and I ended up going down a fundraising rabbit-hole. Found a couple of new-to-me funders and shared them with the relevant people, one of whom has already said they will apply.
Job done.
New hat achievement unlocked.
Despite it being xmas holidays and eating to excess I lost a pound in weight.
If I can get to bed earlier tonight I’ll have cracked half of my aims for this year and we’re only four days in.
This year
This year I’m returning to full-time work for the first time in almost a decade. I’m looking forward to it, though, and my main focus is going to be on researching and writing grant funding applications for local community youth work.
Last term I joined my sons’ school’s parent teacher association specifically to help find grant funding they can apply for. I need to get on with that.
I also hope to be able to get more involved (again) in local democracy and activism in person. I’d like to see if we can get some kind of organised mutual aid and self-help community going.
I want to get fitter and lose some weight, so I’m intend to walk every morning (flat feet permitting) and I’m no longer taking sugar in tea and coffee.
I want to sleep better (which is partly dependent on little kid staying in his own bed all night), breathe better, and get my psoriasis under control.
And I want a new hat.
Last year I feel like I tried out some new ways of doing things that make my life better.
- journaling
- reading more
- listening to music more
- being more sociable online, less time on X
- writing (and publishing/sharing) more
- eating less red meat and more beans/pulses instead
- walking more regularly
Developers: if you really want to help the community
This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a billion pounds.
I’m concerned about noise from the site causing a nuisance and health problems in an area that is already susceptible to multiple environmental health stressors, and exacerbated by deep-rooted poverty, deprivation, low pay and systemic racism and power imbalances embedded in the local authority planning system.
I’m also concerned about the local power grid. Only a couple of years ago it was reported that Ealing doesn’t have enough capacity to power more new homes that are so badly needed, particularly in Southall which suffers from chronic overcrowding. A data centre requires a lot of power. How will this work?
If you really want to do something for the local community how about you plant thousands of trees to compensate for the fact that Southall has the lowest tree canopy cover in the whole of Ealing?
How about building homes for the street homeless and providing ongoing support they will need to live in them sustainably?
How about building a drug and alcohol rehab unit to treat the ever growing numbers of addicts roaming our streets and parks?
How about using all that information processing power to work out how to provide more frequent, more reliable, free public transport in Southall and to reduce the congestion caused by all the traffic?
How about building a secular community centre, a library, a youth club, a health centre, a school? Southall is so overdeveloped now, and Ealing Labour Council sold off all our community assets to developers.
Little kid sleeps in his own bed for about three or four hours before waking up crying and climbing into ours.
At least he now just goes straight back to sleep instead of wanting to be awake and playing for two hours.
The last three nights I’ve gone to bed very late and missed all the drama. I’ve slept so much better as a result.
Unfortunately, getting up at 8:30 in the morning isn’t sustainable when the kids go back to school.
Road Rage
My driving instructor told me that I would have to learn to drive twice. Once to pass my driving test (which I did first time, rather fortuitously), and once to learn to drive like everyone else does (i.e., with little regard to the laws of the land, the rules of the road, or the Highway Code).
He also gave me some more sound advice to be a good driver: in addition to getting from A to B, my aim should be to avoid causing other road users to brake, stop or get out of my way. I’m not perfect, so I don’t always get this right, but it’s something I always remember and try to do.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from a friend who was totally into cars and bikes, driving them, riding them, taking them apart and putting them back together again.
His advice was to always look ahead as far as possible. It sounds obvious, but most drivers used to look no further than the end of their bonnet (and nowadays, of course, most are looking down at their phones).
Looking head as far as possible means you can see what’s going on and get a literal heads-up on any possible hazards approaching - children, people approaching a crossing point, slow moving vehicles, vehicles approaching a turning, emergency vehicles, etc.
(If only I’d applied this advice to the rest of my life! So many wrong turns, dead ends, car crash moments, write-offs, months getting roadworthy again….)
I also like to give way to other road users (small acts of solidarity) so that they can turn or perform whatever manoeuvre they need to do, or walk and cross safely. Although this sometimes results in drivers behind me (who obviously have no idea what I’m playing at) honking their horns at me or even overtaking me (this actually happens surprisingly often at the zebra crossing next to my sons’ school).
As a bonus, this strategy means that every weekday on the school run I get my road rage going by holding every other driver to my own standards:
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The speeding cars as I turn out of our cul-de-sac on to the notionally 20 mph limit “main” road.
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At the junction by our local pub where cars crossing are supposed to give way. Every day I pass there I slow down in anticipation of someone speeding through regardless, and I often have to brake sharply or stop to allow someone to turn into my lane.
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Directly ahead, the pinch point that stops lorries from getting stuck further down gives priority to drivers going in my direction, and while it’s badly designed, I usually have to give way to oncoming drivers.
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The road it leads on to is effectively a one way street as the exit is marked with a no entry sign for vehicles who would otherwise turn into it. But it’s routinely ignored and drivers coming the other way always seem to be in a great hurry in between the cars parked on either side.
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Then there’s the turn into the big main road from another one way street. The number of times I’m stuck behind someone turning right, who could have moved over to the right to allow me to turn left, but no, they need to take up the middle of the road. It’s easier now the council repainted the “Keep Clear” road markings, and that also has encouraged more drivers on the main road to give way and allow us to turn left and right.
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Speaking of the middle of the road, that appears to be the preferred place for drivers of ever larger vehicles to drive. Maybe they’re frightened of hitting a parked car or they can’t envisage exactly how wide their vehicle is?
Of course, I have to get out of their way as they’re probably not even looking.
Southall Odours
I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have been living there in the new homes they built since 2021.
Still, it’s better than the smell of petrol, which is what we had to put up with day and night for months on end in 2018. Bad enough to wake us up in the night during the long hot summer.
And it’s better than the smell of tar, which we still get when the wind is blowing from the west. Before the asphalt plant was built, we didn’t get any odours even though there is also a Tarmac plant nearby. The Asphalt plant owners say that is because the Nestle coffee plant closed. The (burnt?) coffee smell masked the tar.
I get around the corner of my block, on my morning walk, and see the small industrial estate that was the bane of our life for months in 2022. The main culprits were the paper recylcling company, which had its own incinerator for burning (believe it or not) plastics and coated wooden pallets.
Their neighbour opposite was a custom kitchen furniture maker, which also had its own incinerator for burning laminated particle fibreboard. The garage at the front regularly burns stuff in an old oil barrel.
All of which contributed to some of the most disgusting odours imaginable blowing into our kitchen, bathroom and hallway whe the wind blew from the north-east.
I walked down the street to the corner where the local council installed a tiny corner “wildflower garden”, which my wife and kids loved because it smelled so good. Two years later, it’s reduced to a dumping ground (no one could have foreseen this).
Further on my walk, past the homes reeking of marijuana, and weaving in and out of the obstacle course of bed bases mattresses and pallets stren across the pavements, I reach the town and smell the food aromas.
I’m reminded of the old Honey Monster factory, which used to regale us with the smell of roasted (burnt?) onions (I know, right?).
And my first visit to Southall (in daylight hours), twenty odd years ago, turning left out of the old station and naively going into the underpass. The stench of piss that hit me! “Welcome to Southall!” indeed.
I finished my walk through the town and back up round and through the park. If I’d gone further up the canal by my sons’ school I would have got the smell of the narrowboats’ wood-burning stoves, which sometimes fills the school playground and causes kids to have to use their inhalers.
And if I’d walked along the main road home or by the junction with the big industrial estate I would have choked on the heavy air filled with the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
Southall stinks so bad that the council set up its own Southall Odours web page, email and hotline where you can report bad smells. Because if you don’t report it, the council can’t do anything.
If you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining, as long as you can withstand the constant gaslighting.
If you’re unlucky, and you’re not already dead or too ill to complain, you’ll be branded a troublemaker and excluded from local democracy.
Or you’ll be told to move by the council’s community safety director.
Like I was two years ago, when I last had a blood test, I’m “pre-diabetic”, so I’m going to see if I can cut out sugar from my diet and go for a half hour walk every day.
Had half as much sugar in my morning coffee and didn’t even notice the difference, and had a cup of tea just now with half as much and it somehow tasted too sweet?
Two walks in two days as well and I’m on a roll.