ALFIE EVANS

I’m sure we all must feel tremendous sympathy for Alfie Evans, the Liverpool child who has been the subject of court orders regarding his life support system. Physically he is a nice looking little boy and it must be heart rending to watch him grow as a child should (though perhaps he is smaller? I do not know) while his neurological and mental progress has been curtailed. Who amongst us does not look at the distraught parents with secret dread in our heart, and think, There but for the grace of God, go we; and how would we endure it? We know that like them there is nothing that we would not try in an effort to save our precious child.

We can have sympathy for the medical team too. In all my experience with the profession (and I am by no means an easy, docile or compliant patient) I have not met a single one whom one did not feel was doing his or her very best to improve matters for the patient. This team will have done their utmost to help the child and support the parents and in the end it has all come to nothing.

Clearly it would be wrong to expect the parents to be able to retain a detached judgement in such cases. That’s not what parents are for. The medical team has a difficult task in that it is expected to deal with the parents with kindness and compassion, but to retain a certain detachment.

I am not sure it has been entirely successful in this case.

It always seems to me to be extremely regrettable when such cases end up in court. At the point where the hospital begins to refuse parental requests to take the child home, or to try unorthodox treatment, then I start to lose sympathy with them. They should, I think, show more humility. They are not always right . Besides (and I don’t care what the law may declare) at the last resort (and we are surely there with poor Alfie) – it’s not the hospital who is responsible – it’s the parents.

Surely the consultant in charge should say to the parents (and God knows we do not envy him or her this task); we have done every thing we can, but we cannot effect any improvement. While we can prolong his life a little with life support, he will not get any better. It is our opinion that the quality of life he would have is too impoverished, especially when there will be no improvement in his condition. It is with great sorrow that we request your agreement to switching off the life support system. They should give the parents a few days to think about this, and then they should ask them how they wish to deal with the time from when the life support is switched off to the time of the death of the child, offering them every support.

No doubt in this case and in the vast majority of cases the hospital is entirely correct in its judgement but if the parents wish to take their child home, or to Italy for other treatment, then I think every effort should be made to help them. They are in extremis. Their child is going to die anyway. If anything can be done to ease their pain, then let it be done.   What difference does it make to the hospital?

If you were hard hearted enough you could argue that this case with its many legal battles has been a colossal waste of money, given the likely outcome that the child will die; but faced with such parental grief and anguish I certainly could not bring myself to support such an argument.

PS Alfie Evans died in the night; may his journey be easy.

SUMMER DRESSING

The changing of the wardrobes is underway!

When this takes place, one is heartily sick of the departing season’s garments. I do this swap over several days, examining each garment with a critical and ruthless eye. Anything which doesn’t fit / suit / appeal is either despatched to a charity shop or cut up into pieces and re-used.

Today I am wearing white cotton jeans, and a long linen dress, white, with drawn thread embroidery down the button edged front, which was Elisabeth’s and which I sewed altering its A line style to straight. It has no collar which doesn’t suit me and so I have a white chiffon scarf with silver decoration back to front round my neck with the ends hanging down my back. Beige sandals complete the ensemble.

Summer is a-coming in!

BUILDING IT YOURSELF

My brother and I sold our parents’ house recently.

This made me remember how my father, in his sixties, bought a plot of land in Huntly, Banffshire, and built a house on it. When I say ‘built a house’ I mean that exactly – he built it with his own hands, with a very little help from his son and his son-in-law. I believe he hired a plumber and an electrician. It was on this labour that the inheritance that we have received was based.

There was an old croft on the site – just a ‘bothy’ really – the kind of building that is made of stone and had originally held people on one side and cattle in another. It had a Victorian fire place but no roof, but my father repaired it and my parents lived in very basic accommodation there for several years. They acquired a caravan and slept in that. At first they had no electricity nor running water.

My father was a man who made life difficult for himself (and other people) but he had some fine qualities; one of which was that he was capable of tremendous endurance and another that he was extremely industrious. He was also surprisingly lucky, for it turned out that that not only did he have water on his land, he had the only water supply in the whole area which never failed, even in the driest summer. He could himself divine for water, though he hired a professional before he sunk the well; and he had a well dug nine rings deep which ‘temple of Neptune’ I used to visit ceremoniously every time I went there in a little procession through the long summer grasses; my father and me, the three children, and two cats.

My father would not have managed this gargantuan task without the support of my mother. She could make even the most unpromising space comfortable and she could cook and bake delicious food on the most primitive of cooking equipment. When her only cooking equipment was an open fire, my father used to drive to my house in the central belt, pick up equipment and supplies, and I would have baked fruit cakes and pies and things which my mother could not have managed and he would take these away with him.

Gradually they introduced services, so that eventually they had a very comfortable house with three bedrooms, bathroom, a farmhouse kitchen; the bothy became a barn and store, and they lived there for twenty ears. My children loved going there every summer; in my father’s fields they enjoyed a freedom and country life that they had little opportunity for else where.

The authorities were extremely helpful to my father. I think the magnitude of the task he was undertaking appealed to their sense of adventure. The buildings inspector called frequently and would advise how to go about things that would be required.

There were of course problems with neighbours. (My father invariably had problems with neighbours, who generally died or went bankrupt or at any event had to leave: I as a child used to feel a little sorry for the neighbours because they never realised until too late that what they were dealing was not what they had supposed.) When my parents applied for electricity, the obvious place was to put a telegraph pole on a corner of the neighbour’s land (well away from his house, where it did not spoil his view or cause any inconvenience.) The neighbour refused permission, and my parents were faced with an alternative which would have cost thousands more. An official came out from the Electricity Board; my father showed him the alternatives and explained how they needed the neighbour’s permission but this was refused. The official looked grim, and called upon the neighbour; my father telling him it was a waste of time. The official came back, and said that permission would be granted, and indeed the electricity was shortly afterwards installed. We later learned that he had threatened that the Board would take up the case; it would fight it right up to the Secretary of State for Scotland; that it would undoubtedly win, and it would pursue its costs vigorously and he could expect a bill of tens of thousands of pounds.

It was a lovely place, and my brother and I still benefit from my parents hard work and creative efforts.

FARO

 

We have recently returned from a short holiday with Elisabeth and Robert near Faro in S E Portugal.

The flights there (and back) were fine although my incipient claustrophobia, normally held in reasonable mode by the force of my intellect was galloping up and down the aisle making offensive gestures at passengers who were too near, talked too loud, drank too much or breathed too fast!

We were whisked by our escort through the crowds and arrived at the Baggage Carousel. John and our escort deposited me in my wheelchair in the Baggage Hall and went to claim the luggage. I then noticed a well dressed women in her 80s perhaps, who did everything with a dramatic flourish designed I felt to draw everyone’s attention. Then suddenly I recognised her as a former TV broadcaster on domestic and forces radio and tv (though initially I couldn’t remember her name.) She had a golf clubs carrier on her luggage cart which stuck out sideways and she banged this into my wheelchair. She then apologised to an embarrassingly excessive degree and wouldn’t stop. I felt like saying, You didn’t hurt me or cause any damage, you’ve apologised perfectly adequately, now for heaven’s sake, go away! I thought she was slightly drunk; but I realised afterwards that she had sensed that spark of recognition and was waiting for me to say, Weren’t you so and so? I have met quite a few famous people and have never acknowledged their celebrity in the smallest degree. If they want to tell you who they are that’s fine but it has to come from them. It must be awful to be so needful of recognition. (The lady was Judith Chalmers)

Robert was meeting us which was a great help and we made the 20 minute journey through the backhills behind Faro Airport which is so near to the sea that I was convinced we were going to land on the beach. At the last minute you scramble up onto the airport and then the pilot frantically brakes with all his strength and you just manage to slide to a screeching halt at your docking station!

The farmhouse was found at the end of a very steep and very narrow track which later caused John some grief with his hi re car which was brand new but in the end there was no problem.

It was beautifully situated. We could see no habitation from our various terraces; just trees and in the distance, the sea. The house was spacious enough though to be comfortable, though shall we say of very different ‘taste’ to ourselves. Our children had kindly given up their bedroom for us which was on the ground floor and easily accessible by wheelchair. The bathroom next door was a large room with corner bath which the boys would swim in when having their bath.

We had been to Portugal three times before, once with all our children plus Alexandra, once on our own and once with Anne and Barbara, but this was our first time in East Portugal. We preferred it. It was not so horribly over developed or infested with golf courses; the towns were attractive and shops were for local people. There is a sandbar across the coast at this point, so there are lagoons rich in bird-life behind it. We saw a large black diver of some description which covered huge distances in his dive. We saw a little group of flamingos fly overhead, an elegant pattern with their long legs and necks, about 20 of them, and Elisabeth the previous week had seen them descend like a pink cloud. We had screech owls round the house. We also saw our first swallows at the house, beautiful with pink throats and long forked tails. In March there were no insects bothering us (though they have hideous black flying creatures as large as egg-cups) but the presence of insect screens and mosquito nets everywhere would suggest that they are sometimes present.

Less appealing were the guard dogs at nearby properties, one of which gave Rob an opportunistic bite on his calf, still nasty and vicious looking when we were there a week later. Everyone local including the medics treated this injury with great disdain – it’s just a little nip – and they regard the Brits as being afraid of dogs and paranoid about La Rage, as the French call rabies. Rob seemed to be healthy enough however.

There were only a few trees that I recognised. There were hills covered in olives of course; and oranges with fruit and flowers; a few lemons; cork oaks; yucca and cacti; trees that were black and appeared to consist largely of thorns. The other flora I did not recognise.

We stayed mostly close to home. The children would rest in the afternoon which meant that everybody got a little relaxing time. (There was quite a large pool). There were nearby towns and villages where we would go for groceries or vegetables and have a coffee and a delicious cake. One day we had lunch in a busy establishment which appeared to be the village canteen, where you dine with others at a refectory type table and where you had the dish of the day and the food was very good rather like what you would get in the kitchen of a friend’s mother (who knew how to cook.) At the other end of the spectrum we had lunch at an elegant restaurant literally at the foot of our road, where everything was as it should be and lovely and the food was delicious. Elisabeth and Robert walked out one evening to have dinner there leaving us in charge, and came walking back beneath the stars (taking detours to avoid rabid dogs!) We went to a modern shopping centre in Faro which was what you would expect. We went to a fish market held in a beautiful market hall and with a biggish market around it; to one of the lagoon resorts where William tried out his new bike, and we went to the town of Loule, very pleasant and authentic the way inland towns in coastal places often are.

The Portuguese are easy to get along with and very kind to children. It amazes me that Portugal, a very small country backed on two sides by the muscular Spain, managed to survive as a nation at all. Although it is Roman Catholic, its churches do not occupy dominating positions in townships, and after the service on Palm Sunday when the congregation walked amongst us, I noticed there was no ostentatious display of clothes.

We thought we might, in future years, take our caravan to the South of Portugal in March, thereby extending the caravanning seasons.

We enjoyed the holiday, and the time spent with Elisabeth and Rob and their children. Not forgetting Milo of course.

(The photographs, courtesy of John M Armstrong, show William and Robert cutting William’s birthday cake (2) while Milo waits to ‘help’; one of the local small towns, and William trying out his new balance bike.)

BLUE EYED BOY

BLUE EYED BOY

I have just realised that in our family we have a pitiful shortage of blue eyes.

I read once that blue eyes were considered historically to be the most beautiful, desirable and therefore valuable. As a brown eyed woman, I didn’t care much for this opinion and thought, Snort, what do they know of it?

So, my father had a magnificent head of hair, golden blonde and naturally wavy, and it eventually faded into a silvery blonde which he retained into extreme old age. He was always tanned, and he had eyes of an unusual colour somewhere between grey, green and turquoise which varied according to what he wore. He was an extremely handsome man, but so far as I observed, he was not vain or particularly concerned about his appearance. My mother was brown haired (darker than mine) and brown eyed, as was my brother.

My husband John, the father of my children, said in Iceland when introducing himself to the group we travelled with that he had always regarded himself as a Viking, and the two Icelanders with the group looked at him and nodded their agreement. He is tall, with light brown hair now white, and with grey eyes.

Of my three children, none are brown eyed. Joanna has my father’s colouring and her eyes are an indeterminate colour between grey, green and turquoise. I used to say her eyes were the colour of Achnahard Bay and she told her husband of this family legend but when they visited the bay it was a deep sapphire colour, and she had to say to him, It’s never been that colour before!

Elisabeth’s eyes are grey with hints of green. And Rory’s are the Viking grey of his father.

At school they did an exercise in percentages where they divided the class into groups of eye colour and our children were always left until the end before it could be decided where they would be placed.

Now we can consider the grandchildren. Alexandra’s eyes are a grey-blue; Erin’s are brown, and Dana’s are a golden, greenish brown. Their father has brown eyes,

Rory’s children have grey-blue eyes like their father, Julia’s having more blue in them than Ewan’s. (Their mother has grey eyes.)

Elisabeth and Robert’s eldest son has an abundance of curly blonde hair, of a very pale colour and a pair of melting chocolate brown eyes which are very large. (His father is brown eyed.)

And now we can consider our latest arrival. He has pale skin after the Irish fashion. His hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are a pale gold colour. But it is such a surprise to us when James opens his eyes in his pale face with its golden halo, for they are a clear and definite brilliant blue. They seem to gather the light into them. They shine like beautiful stones in the bottom of a clear stream. And they are wonderfully expressive. He can beseech you so successfully with these blue eyes that one could almost believe he didn’t need to learn to talk. I think he has inherited these from his other grandmother, Robert’s mother, who herself has very beautiful blue eyes.

James will be a blue eyed boy.