My Work...

First Aid

I was about sixteen when I learned how to resurrect people - or at least ensure a sufficient flow of oxygen to the brain to hope for some kind of survival, in a recognisable form, until the paramedics arrive.

I expect the Youth Club and the Community Centre where I was trained with a revolting dummy, are both long gone, as neither are fashionable in these days of rugged austerity. But THIS is not about THAT. One day, when I'm mad enough... .

Here's a bleak bleak scene. Manchester. The Peak Forest Canal - 1974: An empty lock alongside a smut-caked factory building - vast, as factories were serious affairs when Victorians built them. The lock is not completely drained. In a few feet of water a child is dying. Desperate men are trying to lift him out. It's fifteen feet of slimy wall to the canal side above. A nine-year old brother shouts, 'My mum'll kill me.' I walk slowly forward, I want to help. I always want to help.

I'm the only person with CPR training. But I am twenty-two, and it was so long ago.

I try. I take this lifeless boy in my arms, I lay him down, and I try. He gurgles, but he is limp, his eyes are dead. I keep trying, I turn him over, I try to empty him of water. He is dead. I walk away.

I grew older and I grew up and I became a head teacher. One day, I went to a head teacher's conference in Harrogate. I am forty-eight now, and the tiny body, in my arms, is a distant memory. A man is about to drown beside me. I am in the hotel swimming pool doing some lengths in my black bra and pants, hoping no-one notices.

'He's going down!' I heard a shout from the side of the pool, I turn, the man beside me cries out and disappears beneath the water. He's a big man, and I'm in my underwear. He's drowning.

'Not this time you don't.' The thought comes so quickly, though time seems to stand still. He's a big man. He'll pull me down too - and he does. I instinctively bend my knees, so that when my feet hit the pool floor, I can spring up. I bunny-hop both of us in this absurd fashion, to the side of the pool. People haul us out.

'Thank you! ' the rescued one splutters.

'That's all right.' I reply, turning crimson, because I'm dressed in my underwear.

I bolt for the dressing room. I never see the man, who's life I may have saved, again. It doesn't matter. I am jubilant. Somehow, I can forgive myself for the little boy who's life I couldn't save, so long ago.

Aunty Ethel wasn't even dead.

It was my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, so I am fifty-one, and I ruined it. My father never, so far as I can recall, was ever seriously angry with me until this day. I thought he had the right to be a bit upset, though I maintain it wasn't entirely my fault.

Aunty Ethel, in her eighties, collapsed in our dining room. I felt in vain for a pulse and couldn't find one. Dad was right behind me.

'I'm so sorry Dad, Aunty Ethel's collapsed - she's dead.'

Two things happened instantaneously. Dad groaned, and Aunty Ethel sat up. She was dead DRUNK and had toppled over in an alcohol-induced stupor.

'Mary Ellen!' My father roared, ' I wish you'd THINK sometimes!'

Everybody laughed about it afterwards. Except me. I am glad Ethel survived my diagnosis of death, of course I am, but imagine how I felt! My credibility as a first-aider was shot to pieces for ever.

Or was it?

The last time I renewed my First Aid Certificate the trainer, said, ' We don't look for a pulse in very elderly patients, because very often, one can't be found.. '

My colleagues were more than a little bemused when I punched the air and shouted,

YES!!!

Unsubstantial Walls

When a man (sic) has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely imprisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. You may change it to something more sinister and angry, to something more appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting.'

I have quoted this passage from HG Wells, 'The History of Mr Polly' before, because it raises a delightful prospect.

On the first Thursday of the month, I have a rendezvous with my soul. I have to drive to South Wales to make the date, and when it's wet and dark, it IS a bit of a trek, but It's worth the effort.

There are ten of us in our Contemplative Prayer group. We eat supper together, then we sit in silence for twenty minutes. We stop. Doing, thinking, striving, worrying, planning, hoping, praying, believing... Stopped.

It's not easy, not always possible, but something emerges - the simple knowledge that it IS possible to stop.

So what? For twenty, often very long minutes, I put myself on hold. Everything I think I am, I lay down to rest in liminal space - a particular place, on the edge of being, that is pure life without the wearisome effort of having to live it.

What Mr Polly, in his ponderous way, invites me to do, twenty-one minutes after the singing-bowl rings, is to consider very carefully what I take up again.

My life, like yours, is great, and terrible, is pleasure and pain, is truth and make-believe... . Would I like to change some things? I would, yes I would... Will I? Not necessarily. But when I emerge from the silence of my deepest self, I know I have taken up, even the hardest things, voluntarily.

Playtime!

Aowl came to play on Tuesday. Aowl is my one-year old granddaughter. She's two next month.

This one has named herself. This is very typical. Aowl has a highly developed sense of self - a self she expresses firmly and with great delight.

For the first time this year, it was warm enough to play in the garden.

Jean Piaget, the great 20th century psychologist, who was instrumental in my formation as a grandmother, famously said, 'Play is the work of children.' I feel like going off on one about the neglect of brain-growing, real, physical, and imaginative play, in the experience of the modern child, but I won't, because this is about me and Aowl.

'Water peese granma,' Is the first command, accompanied by the presentation of a large bucket.

We water the ground. Aowl hasn't taken to watering the flowers yet, besides, she has a definite aim in mind. She makes a large puddle, then we have to jump in it. We both squeal with delight, me rather guiltily, as we both get soaked, and I'm old enough to know better.

Fortunately, a one-year old has a fairly short attention span, so we soon move on to playing games that involve throwing ourselves down onto the ground. I taught her 'Ring A Ring A Roses' to bring some structure into this particular activity.

I get away with about a dozen landings, noting, ruefully, that Aowl is up and ready for another round about ten times quicker than I am!

Fortunately, the toy-box beckons. This large, serviceable plastic tub is full of stuff. Soft toys, balls, books, dolls's house, tea set, flashcards, comics, wooden blocks... Over-stuffed with stuff to be truthful.

So I am made tea, regaled with a tinny version of the alphabet song, encouraged to count to ten... ' One, two, five, seven, three TEN!' and presented with a felt-pen to remove the top so that scribbling can be done.

At least I'm sitting down for this session.

Next, a walk. Look, touch, smell ... The wild area has a tiny pond, surrounded by a low wall and a bed of nettles. Aowl avoids them. We check out the robin's nest, and name together all the flowers. We pick daisies.

A lovely afternoon soon passes. I don't know about Aowl, but I certainly slept well that night.