Freedom!!

So I’ve just come out of an almost six year relationship, and now find myself with a large amount of time on my hands. When I’m not working or my son isn’t over I can do whatever I want.

The possibilities only limited by how close to payday it is . So what do I do? I um and ah about going out, although it seems very few of the friends I had those six short years ago have either moved, lost contact or themselves settled down. I feel like a fish out of water when I walk into pubs that only a few years ago I was a regular in and could guarentee that there would always be somebody to sit and drink with, but now… the likelyhood of this happening is remote at best.

So with my new found freedom I spend my time watching movies, using facebook and twitter like they’re going out of style, alone in my room with a bottle of this or that.

I need a life again, but fear that I’m too stuck in this inability to make a decision about what to do with my spare time rut. In the words of the theme from Smallville “Somebody save me, don’t care how you do it”

Can you hire someone to make decisions for you? Perhaps I should.

Social Networking

I had an epiphany last night. I turned off my internet cynicism, a cynicism usually held for social networking, and thought about how amazing it actually is. From Facebook to Twitter to Myspace. Ok, Bebo still sucks, but that can’t be helped.

Ok, so the basis of my cynicism is that i considered social networking sites to remove the humanity from relationships, that without human contact a relationship is worthless. Then I started to think about what a true relationship is, it’s a meeting of minds and what social networking does is break down barriers to this “meeting of the minds.”

So how does it accomplish this? Well it brings people together that it would be impossible to meet in “real life” by removing the obsticle of distance, you can search for people with the same interests as you anywhere in the world without the embarressment of meeting a person only to discover you have nothing in common.

Another thing that social networking does is create a sense of community with message boards, online chat rooms and services such as Facebook groups. These communities allow people from all over the world to interact and share ideas and broaden their horizons which perhaps real world communities do not do so well. That is not to say that online groups do not create the same elietist attitudes that offline communities can also create, hirarchy and social dominance are just as prevelent on and off line.

I’ve reffered to the “real world” a few times above as if it is different to the “virtual world.” A part of my epiphany was that there is in fact no longer any real distiction, the online world is just as valid to social community as the offline world, the two are now so interchangable now that it should really just be called life. We have work friends, pub friends, club friends and online friends. In a lot of cases now the online and offline worlds mix and allow us to keep the offline friendships going online, allowing the formation of closer bonds.

So here’s to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Pubs, Clubs and the whole shebang!

Just Checking, she said….

Had an interesting run-in with a woman in the car park today. It went thusly:

I was out with my son in town, Henley On Thames to be precise and he didn’t want to return to the car when it was time to return home. As is the general nature of the average three year old he threw a massive screaming tantrum. So, after literally dragging said ball of screaming defiance, we arrived back at the car. As is usual in these circumstances we had a bit of a scuffle getting into the car, myself having to force him into his seat. At this point the previously mentioned concerned member of the public appeared the otherside of the car door and said “are you her dad?”

“No, I’m HIS dad,” i replied with a not inconsiderable amount of rage in my voice.

“Ok, just checking, you can never be too careful,” she said before returning to her Chelsea Tractor.

“Ok, just checking.” Let’s meditate on that for a minute or two. If I had indeed, as she suspected, liberated the child from his parents was she expecting me to admit it? “No, I am not his daddy, i watched him wander off from his parents and then took him.” Idiot. You can never be too careful, she was right there, but come on… you could be a little more careful than that. Kids go missing everyday and she just took me at my word… what if I hadn’t've been his daddy, or any relative, what if I had’ve been the bogeyman?

Natural Consequences And Learning Difficulties

Natural consequences, the law of the street, law of the playground, pub, eye for an eye, etc., etc. Natural consequences are what help to teach us how to act, or rather not act, in certain social situations. Without them there would be something close to anarchy, people wouldn’t know where they stand, right and wrong would be right out the window.

So how does this affect people with learning difficulties, I mean, they can’t help it, right? Wrong! They are never going to get it because the world seems to dodge the task of educating them.

I’m going to use a real life example here to back this up, the names have been changed to protect the parties involved. Jack loves going to the pub, however Jack displays some quite unsociable traits at times in this situation, these being stealing peoples drinks, grabbing women and trying to kiss them, stroking their hair and touching their bums. Now, you could just put this down to him having a learning difficulty and just not understanding that this is wrong. Ok, but surely the best thing you could do is teach him that it’s wrong instead of patting him on the head and laughing it off, I’m pretty sure if I did this I’d get a slap at the least!

It is not just the support workers job to educate, it is all of societies. So what can you do? Ok, I’m not advocating violence, but if someone like Jack steals your pint or touches your bum let him know it’s wrong! We have a duty to people with learning difficulties to help them to understand the unwritten social laws.

You Bleed As You Stutter – New Poem

smiling inconsiderate me
dashes your dreams
with the click of a finger
in the blink of a lie
kiss your good time good bye
sweet dear those words
still make you bleed
as you stutter them out
forced from your stomach to
apease my male ego.

i love you too.

Copyright Alan Goodenough 2009

For more on my writing please visit www.myspace.com/agbooks

BBC Expose Young Children To One Handed Presenter

The BBC have received complaints from parents about the presence of a one armed presenter on the CBeebies channel! And why? Because she is causing their children to ask them “awkward” questions about her arm.

So instead of explaining to their children about the presenter, Cerrie, they are trying to remove her from our screens! How stupid is that? It’s not a difficult conversation, in fact it is one I have had with my son.

Alas by maintaining their own prejudices the parents that have complained are imparting their prejudice onto their children, thus feeding another generation of young people a fear of anyone or anything “differnt.” Is it not time to break this circle? Have we not grown enough as a society that we can embrace people regardless of any perceived disabilty? It would seem that there are still a minority of people out there that are content to live in denile, and this makes me sad. Sad that their children are being taught that anything different should be shut away and not seen. Sad that the circle of intolerence and ignorance is being maintained by a small fearful, yet vocal, minority.

I applaud the BBC for putting this talented young lady onto our screens and hope that she continues to entertain our children.

Last nights dream

I pushed thw wheel chair up the ramp and into abingdon town centre, lit a cigrette and realised i wore no shoes. I left the chair and it’s passenger outside under the museum and went looking around the charity shop for shoes. I walked to the back of it and picked up some green suede shoes and read the label “for the wider lady” and put them down again. I left that shop, crossed the road and went into another charity shop, this time there were no shoes but a man in a wheel chair who appeard to have severe learning difficulties, i recognised him as someone i had supported and he said in a high pitched voice “see you later mate” which he continued to repeat over and over again. I told his support worker that he was talking but she couldn’t hear him. I left and a man came up to me asking if i had ten pence. I told him that i didn’t he asked if i’d like one. I told him no and carried on walking. I went down the steps under the museum to my boss and he told me that i should’ve taken the ten pence. I looked around the room, a lady sat typing on an old fasioned type writer whilst loud daqnce music played to the rhythm of her typing.

Personalisation For People With Learning Difficulties

In a few years, 2011, the Personalisation Budget will be the main funding of support for people with Learning Difficulties. What does this mean? It means that every person that requires support will be given total control, via Brokers, to pay for their own support. Brilliant! Or is it?

Currently, in the UK, most people receive their support via contracts held by support providers. The money goes to the lowest bidder in a tender war between competing providers and the person gets very little say in who supports them. This will change come 2011 when the person will do the hiring and firing. Sounds good. Total control. But how much is really going to change? It is unlikely that any person that requires 24 hour support will receive enough money to pay for it alone and will still be forced into group living. This is especially likely as there are plans for the amount of money being handed out to be cut by 10-20% from what people receive under the current contract system, essentially meaning no real change and less money. Pretty much this will not work for everyone. It will work best for people that only require a few hours a week.

As in everything, you get what you pay for and in some cases, where 24hr support is required, people are going to be short changed. It is not going to be the revolution that people are hoping for within the learning disabilty community.

By being able to choose their own support this brings up two scenarios. People will be able to choose between using an established provider, such has Mencap or Dimensions, or friends/family/advert in the post office window. The second option is actually quite frightening as the person hired will not be required to have a CRB check (Criminal Records Bureau). This could leave the person being supported at risk of abuse.

Hiring a family member could also be hazardous to the persons development as it is unlikely that a family member would be able to be objective and therefore risk averse. The problem here being that we all need to take risks in order to grow as people and experience/learn new things.

Don’t get me wrong I am all in favour of personalisation, providing it is done correctly and a lot of that depends on money. There should be no cut in budgets, all people that are being hired should be, as they are now, subject to CRB checks, family members should be discouraged from taking on the role of support worker and the budgets should be enough for the, currently laughable, REACH standards to be met. The REACH standards are a set of goals that basically say that a person should be able to live where they want, with who they want and be supported by who they want.

The big problem I can see now is that we risk a return to the big institutions and nobody wants that. Of course this will only happen if Personalisation comes crashing down and the biggest possible cause of this will be money.

Valuing People Now White Paper

MAKE IT LAW. Stop messing around with it as a white paper, basically a bunch of guidelines and put some damned money behind it! I’m looking at you, politicians, sort it out.

Creative Endevours…

When it comes to creativity, I have many irons in the fire. I currently am:
Working on a Novel:
Currently untitled, it follows Matt Monroe from loosing his long term girlfriend,Lizzy, at a
New Years eve party through various drink and drug fuelled nights of debauchery to meeting a hippy woman named Jasmine and falling in love with her. It’s written in the form of a diary, and details Matt’s day to day struggles through love, work and partying.

Finding ways to market my first collection of short stories:
A set of ten tales of varying degrees of madness, alcohol, drug and marzipan abuse. Currently I’m using Myspace and Facebook to market it. It is published via LuLu.com. For more information etc click here.

Music!
My first passion, but something that I sadly, at least to myself, neglect far too frequently.
My current project is The Exan Project an
electronic/rock fusion type “band” that at one point was a duo but now is me and me alone.

Poetry
This is a passion, but is also sadly over looked at the moment in favour of the short story and
the novel, I’ll post some on here at some point.

Short Films & Documentaries
I’ve made one so far, a short film, called “Unforgotten.” It’s an exploitation movie that got banned from deviant art. As for documentaries, I’m in the midst of one for the
band Pistol Kixx. All that can be found here

Photography
Lots of interesting times have been had running around feilds etc shooting beautiful women. It can be found here

And that’s that I suppose… is there a point to this blog? Other than self-promotion, not really, but then it’s handy to have links in the same place I suppose…