Health & Family

from Issue 7 - Volume 18 - Mendip Times

Gardening Mary Payne MBE

Over-thinking Plop the Raindrop

IT’Sgreat to earn a living out of thinking. You just have a good ferret around in your subconscious, add in a few nuggets you’ve picked up in the news or from your neighbours, and voila, you’ve got a column or a comedy routine. Now all you have to do is persuade someone to pay to read or hear it. Hit the jackpot and you’re Peter Kaye or Adam Kay.

But life is still pretty good amongst the also rans. I’ll never play Wembley but I can still halffill a chilly provincial theatre and I’ve written for Private Eye for over 30 years now and the Mendip Times for perhaps half of that.

The downside of thinking for a living is that it’s hard to stop. Even when you go on holiday, you take your brain with you. It takes me ages to wind down and I’m very bad at “doing nothing”.

I have friends who will happily spend a day in bed but I’d worry about getting a pressure sore and keep shifting from one buttock to the other. Whenever I slow down physically, I think more mentally.

I’ve even perfected the art of slow exercise – moving just fast enough to be slightly breathless but never so fast as to be thoughtless or speechless. I can never clear my head of thought even when I’m asleep.

“The slow movement” sounds lovely but try it and you think about it all the time. Life may not always have been sweet for a medieval peasant, but they had more public holidays and far fewer key performance indicators than us.

During the Industrial Revolution,

the work ethic was rammed home from the pulpit and you were made to feel guilty if you didn’t enslave yourself to the production-line machine. Time and energy are both limited, and if we burn too much By DrPHIL up chasing dull, repetitive, HAMMOND unrewarding targets, the only escape is to try to squeeze in some instant gratification after work. So a bottle of wine or a six-pack of Stella disappears in half an hour and you have to do tomorrow’s dull repetitive tasks with a jackhammer in your brain. Some people manage to get pleasure from work, but you have to enjoy what you do. As Tom Hodgkinson, founder and editor of the (twice-yearly) Idler magazine puts it: “A characteristic of the idler’s work is that it looks suspiciously like play. This makes the non-idler feel uncomfortable. Victims of the Protestant work ethic would like all work to be unpleasant. “They feel that work is a curse, that we must suffer on this earth to earn our place in the next. The idler, on the other hand, sees no reason not to use his brain to organise a life for himself where his play is his work, and so attempt to create his own little paradise in the here and now.” This got me thinking. I think for a living because I enjoy it. When I disappear inside my head, I discover a few things that aren’t printable in a family magazine, but nothing too unpleasant or unsettling. And there are some fabulous memories tucked away in there, some of which might even be true. Even better, your brain uses up more energy than any other organ, so it might even be possible to think yourself thinner. That’s my excuse anyway. IT’S been a funny old year. Let me rephrase that. It’s not been that funny, given the wild weather we’ve had. Raindrops like me have been frazzled by droughts or flung into raging floods with crazy changes all happening at the same time somewhere in the world.

Some of us have been freed from glaciers and ice fields after being trapped for thousands of years –I’ve met friends and relatives I haven’t seen since the last Ice Age.

It probably means buying more Christmas presents . . .

But I have seen worse. About 250 million years ago a series of huge volcanoes led to the extinction of most of the life on earth at that time.

I spent a fairly lonely and pretty boring five million years before bugs started appearing again. Those slimy bits eventually developed into more complicated life forms like insects, fish and animals – then human beans like you. I’ve seen so many changes, mostly in the years before you evolved. I still miss riding on dinosaurs’ noses and cuddling down in the soft fur of a mammoth’s neck.

It feels like they disappeared only yesterday. In terms of my great age, that’s true. I still miss Magnus the mammoth, who I’ve not seen since some of your lot went hunting one day. And Doris the dodo, who was doing just fine before you lot arrived. You do have a lot to answer for.

But there have been some benefits. I spent one year stuck in a bottle of whisky, which wasn’t too unpleasant. Then some fat, red-faced chap drank it at Christmas – so you can imagine where I ended up.

Actually, I’m quite fond of toilets, they’re like one of those gateways to another world that you hear about sometimes. One flush and you’re on a journey into the great unknown – usually in the sea or a river. That’s something else that’s down to humans.

At the moment I’m sitting in the middle of a big, juicy Christmas pudding, waiting for the day when I’ll see lots of happy, smiling faces beaming around the table. Then after a big lunch the grown-ups might have a snooze, leaving you to play with your new toys.

Spare a thought for me – I know where I will end up.

Merry Christmas!

Helping the elderly this winter

SOMERSET Community Foundation has launched its Surviving Winter appeal encouraging people to donate all or part of their Winter Fuel Payment if they don’t need it.

It says the cost-of-living crisis means that this winter will be one of the toughest we have faced for decades. Many older people are already extremely anxious about rising bills and around 11,000 Somerset pensioners will find themselves living in fuel poverty this year, double the number in the same situation last year.

The team says that with many years’ experience of running their appeal, many of the poorest pensioners may not turn their heating on at all, or will cut back on food to save money as they are forced to choose between heating and eating.

And with everyday costs like food and fuel rapidly increasing, this winter will see many of our most vulnerable older neighbours struggling to cope. Many will stay at home to save money and will find themselves cut off from family and friends.

Around 800 older people in Somerset are supported through the Surviving Winter appeal every year with a cash grant to support their energy bills. This year the grants are increasing from £300 to £500 and there will be even more help for people to buy essential items to stay warm and help make their homes more energy efficient.

The foundation says: “For many local people who don’t need their Winter Fuel Payment, it is an easy way to make a huge difference to the life of one of their neighbours. Help Somerset Community Foundation to help more isolated and vulnerable older people stay warm, safe and well this winter.”

Michael Eavis is a long time supporter of the campaign

Details: www.somersetcf.org.uk/winter 01749 344949

Until the boys come home

Members of the Garland family stand behind (l:r) David and Gill Lindsay and Jen Richards after the service

A SPECIAL church service has been held in Lamyatt, near Evercreech, to celebrate its official status as Somerset’s latest Thankful Village – awarded to communities where all the men who served during WWI returned home safely.

As reported in the November issue of Mendip Times, it took several years of research and detective work by Gill and David Lindsay, from Evercreech History Society, with the help of an archivist from the Somerset Heritage Centre in Taunton – and a piece of good fortune – to establish that all 14 men who went to fight from Lamyatt had survived. The missing name was Frederick Garland, who enlisted originally in the Somerset Light Infantry but had been transferred to the Northumberland Fusiliers where his safe return had been recorded.

Now the village has joined nine other Thankful Villages in Somerset out of 56 nationally – Somerset has more than any other county.

Members of the Garland family, from Hereford and Sherborne, attended the service, which also paid tribute to those who did not return. Simon Laing read out letters from the Front sent by his great-uncle 2nd Lieutenant Edward Huddart who was killed on the Somme in 1916, whilst Mark Schofield read one from Thomas Upshall, of Evercreech, who was killed in action in 1915, aged 29. His body was never recovered and his name is on the Menin Gate.

Lay reader Jen Richards, who led the service, said: “This morning was amazing. It was far more emotional than I thought it would be.”

Wrington remembers Clutton

Pictured (l to r) Cate Lacey with Archie, Linda Harris and Edwina Morris

POPPIESappeared throughout Clutton, including the gate and railings of St Augustine’s Church, thanks to a small group of willing helpers.

Former WI president, Edwina Morris, said: “We started knitting the poppies when we had a WI in the village and several people have continued to knit throughout the year even though our WI has closed.”

Mayoral tribute

Linda Robertson, the mayor of Midsomer Norton, lays a wreath on behalf of the town council during the Remembrance Day service

Palace poppies

HUNDREDS of passers-by have been admiring the 2,000 poppies planted by the Bishop’s Palace moat in Wells.

The metal-stemmed poppies were created in 2018 by Dan Vidler with the help of local schoolchildren. Originally 2,989 poppies were made –one to mark each life lost of Somerset servicemen during World War One – but some were sold to raise money for SSAFA and the Wells Branch of the Royal British Legion.