I heard the button being pushed. Jimmy’s mum was calling from a public phone box.

“Jimmy is screaming. Can you come please?”.  She didn’t need to give me her name. She was a regular. 

I put my dinner in the oven and took off to see Jimmy. As I drove to his house, I remembered the number of times I’d been to this home, to see kids with middle ear infections, diarrhoea, running noses, sores, abrasion and so on. 

It was a beautiful summer evening. The sun was setting and the reflections on the wet mud flats were stunning. I stopped for a few minutes. There were a couple of herons and some pied stilts nosing about. Kids were playing in tide pools. It was a peaceful scene. I knew it would be a contrast to where I was going. 

As I walked up the path I heard a man’s voice screaming. I stopped by the back door and listened.

“F… you, you stupid bitch. What did you call the doctor for? We can’t afford him”. He raved at her, giving her no chance to respond. I could feel the blows. 

‘Oh boy!’ I thought to myself. ‘Take a deep breath and let it go Andrew’. I told myself. I knocked on the door, walked in and took in the scene. 

A mixture of smells, burnt toast, the pong of stale nappies and as I walked past dad, a cloud of stale booze, hit my nose. A scowling dad sat down ignoring me.  Grandad was snoring in a chair with his teeth in his hands. He was stone deaf and oblivious to the chaos surrounding him. There were seven kids in this household from a new arrival up to mid teens. 

The noise was strident. A toddler stood at mothers feet, pulling at her skirt, demanding attention. She had the recently born cradled in one arm hunting a nipple. She was stirring something on the stove with her spare hand. 

One kid sat reading a comic. The rest of them were running playfully around making lots of noise. The sink was full of dirty dishes and the kitchen floor felt sticky. 

“Shut up you brats”. Father had had enough. He stood up and managed to swipe a couple of them who were within easy reach. The resulting silence lasted a couple of minutes and then it was all on again. The kid with the resulting nose bleed was no more deterred than the rest of them. Kids sure have guts. 

No words were spoken by mum. She pointed to the bedroom with a dripping wooden spoon. I tried to catch her eye. She looked away, head down. 

Besides the kitchen-dining-sitting room area this was the only other room in the cottage. They all slept in here except grandad who slept in the garden shed. There were no beds. Just mattresses on the floor from wall to wall. Sheets and blankets scattered everywhere. Jimmy was in the corner with a pillow over his head. 

He was asleep. I looked in his ear. His ear drum looked like a juicy strawberry. I checked him over to exclude other more serious problems, no obviously broken bones. 

Mum was still at the stove. I gave her a bottle of antibiotics and paracetamol. She took them and nodded. She knew what to do. This was a familiar routine for her. 

It was a warm evening. I drove home passing the mud flats with the rising moon reflecting in them. I stopped and through my binoculars gazed at the moon’s reflection, thousands of glittering and sparkling diamonds.

I removed my dried up meal from the oven. Slung some tomato sauce on it and watched Miami Vice. My wife, Tish, came home a bit later, grinning from ear to ear. She’d been to a share club meeting and the value of their portfolio was up. They had been celebrating with a few gin and tonics. 

Her breath nauseated me. I pulled away from her hello kiss. 

“What the hell is the matter with you?” She asked with a slight slur and tipsy smile. She walked into the kitchen. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Before her arrival I had been mulling over my role as a medic and I was not in a happy space or place. 

“Yes please.”  I could feel her kindness.

“I am so sorry Tish. I’ve just been to Jimmy Sprogget’s. It was so f..ing depressing and you smell a bit like his dad. The smell of your breath brought the whole hopeless scene vividly to mind. I was responding to all of that shit, not you. Jesus some people live miserable lives”. 

She smiled. She took my hand and pulled me to her. She led me to the bedroom. Our coffees were untouched. I fell asleep snuggled up to her warm and reassuring body. I felt secure and safe. I was drifting off and as I did Jimmy’s mum came to mind. I felt admiration for her. 

Comments.

Jimmy’s mum was not a complainer. She was a struggling survivor, a person near to drowning every moment of everyday, with no relief in sight; refusing to sink.  She  deserved a better life, like many at the bottom end of the consumer ladder, not more hurdles

I challenge anyone to live in a similar environment and not lose it one way or another. How she hadn’t maimed or killed, I do not know. You’d have to be enlightened to survive in that environment and if you were, you wouldn’t be there.  What good are antibiotics to children who are deprived of a simple good life? I was a very temporary, momentary and ineffective band aid.

Austerity – great idea chaps.

A few years later, on night shift for two years in a drop in clinic, in a less than salubrious part of town, I got a deeper and awful feel for the effects of poverty; not the poverty of a third world country but of our first world one, a poverty of deprived experience and learning. 

I walked into this clinic at 9pm, thru the waiting room. It was packed. The last waiting person I walked by, on my way for a coffee before starting my shift, was a woman with a bundle on her lap, a baby all wrapped up and hardly visible. 

I have no idea what pulled me back from marching on down the corridor for my cup of coffee. Something spoke to me. Take a look.  I turned and walked back to her.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your baby?” 

OMG! The world stopped. My breathing stopped. I could not believe my eyes. Jesus f..ing christ.

The baby was blue, limp and hardly breathing. S/he felt cold, was dying in her mother’s arms and mother was not screaming for help. She was sitting, waiting apathetically to be called, next, while her baby was dying. 

“This is an emergency Jean. Phone 991. We have a dying baby, about six months old.” 

I picked up the babe, asked mum to come with me, shouted for help from nurses and colleagues. We did our best. The baby died from a surgically treatable condition in the ambulance on way to the hospital. 

If mum had come earlier. If she had screamed at the top of her lungs. Where was her fight?  I could feel her apathy. It was like a dense cold fog. How does a human reach this level of motionless with a child dying in her arms?

Mum and dad both go out to work for minimal wages and together just make enough, enough for essentials like a TV. After all, they need a baby sitter and they cannot afford a nanny. Their shifts don’t work neatly together. She’s on nights. He is on days. There are no savings for a rainy day. They can lose their jobs at a moments notice with no redundancy payments. The house is rented and eviction hangs in the air. Seeing a doctor means losing money for time away. Policing in this end of town is different to the expensive end. Their teenage kids more likely to end up on the wrong end of the law and in court rather than taken home. 

Yes, there is usually enough money for food; nothing flash of course, cheap pale sausages, chemically coloured cheap flavoured sodas, cheap white bread, instant noodles etc. But if there is illnesses, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, redundancy etc probably not enough. There is no room for luxuries, no future, no way out, no promotion to look forward to, just working in a mindless job for sweet bugger all forever, no sense of security or safety, always on the edge of things going sour. 

Austerity – great idea chaps.

Some of us have IQs of less than 85. According to the US army, folk with a level below this are unemployable as cleaners or at any level. Google the percentage of the population with IQs of less than 85. This is a lot of people who simply lack the ability, and will never have the ability, to fully take care of themselves.

There is more. Some of us were born into a life deprived of good nutrition, of beneficial experiences, of productive learning, of security, of safety, of hope, of goodness, of adults able to enable us, of peer groups looking for a good future, of any glimpse of the power of responsibilty.    

The fact is many of us, with hidden and unrealised potential, become adults lacking the skills to take care of ourselves, let alone be thinking of others. To tell them they are responsible for the mess they are in, may be a philosophical truth, but it is in actuality a cruel, callous, and damaging claim. It’s not true for them.  

Jimmy’s mum had some wonderful qualities. I could sense her intelligence, her potential. She lacked experience, knowledge and personal skills. She was trapped. She was in a deep hole. 

Those who think making her life more difficult, by forcing their views of responsibility on her, ‘a bit more austerity will do the trick’,  will make her take charge, be responsible, need their f…ing heads read. 

We can be a callous lot. Yes, there are bludgers amongst us but most of these folk aren’t. They are lost in a hole, in need of some compassion, understanding and real help. They need a decent environment to live in, food and shelter, a sense of community and belonging. They need to know things can get better. 

Maybe when all their basic needs are met, the threat of punishment is removed, they have a sense of safety and security, they will be ready to learn, develop the desire to take on new skills. And there will be those who will never rise up. We can either discard them as useless dregs of humanity and let them rot or give them a simple decent life.

We need to get clearer on the concepts of accountability and responsibility.  You cannot be held accountable prior to an event but you can be held responsible. 

Your boss is promoting you because your abilities are apparent. She/he knows you have the ability to perform. She/he is holding you responsible for future outcomes. You know you are going to be responsible for x, y, z.

Accountability comes after the fact. It’s an assessment of what happened. It’s an unravelling of events and people’s actions. How did this success or disaster arise. Is Jimmy’s mother responsible for the mess her life has become?

You and I could take a look at her life. We could point to the many poor decisions she has made over many years which have led to her present circumstances. We could hold her accountable. Lay out a chain of causes and effects.  But can we say she is responsible? 

I think to do so is nuts! She lacks the skills and knowledge which would give her the ability to act differently. She is in a hole that requires even more skills and knowledge than running a ‘normal’ life. She is a lost soul, as is her husband. We cannot and should not hold people responsible when they lack the ability to respond. 

When holding yourself accountable and responsible for some past regret, ask yourself did you have the skills and knowledge to act differently, probably not. If you didn’t, do you now, if a similar situations arises? Of course you do. You’ve learnt. You weren’t responsible back then but you are now. You can let it go. Yes, you did it. But freeing that past you from being responsible, when she/he was ignorant, means you can be responsible now, make amends if needs be.

Any comments appreciated.