Love on the NHS (16 page)

Should he use kisses? Or emoticons? Were they genuine? Or sarcastic? For women, fine. For men, effeminate? An "x" to a woman was a flirt. Or was it? Friendliness? "Give me strength," Luke would cry.

The stresses meant he veered towards his sisters' and mother's walls most. They at least replied. His family posted inspirational messages or shared pictures and Luke was moved sometimes. His days were so empty. These interactions served as ointment to his lonely scars.

Bridget would post a lot. She put many things - bits of wisdom, links to campaigns and about exercise routines and food. One day she wrote: "Better to have loved and lost, than never at all" she wrote. "It's fate," Luke thought. "Just as I fall in love, she posts that. I haven't even told her." And on the same day, a news article: "The Most Common Regrets of the Dying". All about regrets confessed to nurses on deathbeds. "The biggest regrets," says a nurse, "of people dying is they procrastinated too much. They didn't tell people how they felt - how they really felt."

Luke would mull over these coincidences.

He had ventured into online networking, like a pioneer to the west. It was a frontier too far for Luke, a land of smoke and mirrors, and he retreated to safety.

XXVI

Luke had finished his counselling course. The weather was turning cold and Christmas was weeks away. He liked reading but it was hard to be committed. He was so often glued to his music player. A bus journey was best with a book, not music. It took Luke a while to learn that. He needed instant gratification. All youngsters did these days. His attention span had been formed in childhood by quick-fire adverts between shows.

The worst situation occurred on buses when they broke down. It was rare but happened. Luke experienced it twice. He once got stuck at a bus stop near a large and rough estate in Hardock. He was marooned for an hour. The local youths had milled around ominously, taunting and showing off. They had nothing to do, as kids did now. Luke blamed health and safety laws. IF not for them, children could still be children. Too many rules stopped kids from climbing in a boat and sailing in the river; or playing some football together in case of an injury. People had used to accept risks. Not in today's claim culture. It was good that people could claim compensation. Things went wrong sometimes. Yet a line needed to be drawn somewhere. When people could not even have fun anymore, it was sad.

Vandalism ruined many community facilities. For too long there had been a breakdown in respect - partly due to economic inequality and partly due to schools. It was the elephant in the room. Education lasted too long. It had grown to be drawn out; to be largely irrelevant to real life. Youngsters would rather smash a bus stop than study Shakespeare. Give them jobs earlier, Luke thought. It would be possible to create a night school for unacademic sorts. Let them work and be content. Then they might care to learn. When people see the point of a theory, they care to learn it more.

A tradesman crisis had developed. Well trained plumbers, builders and electricians were gold dust. Thousands struggled with damp walls, falling roof tiles and inverted light switches. New homes were certified as the best ever. Standards were high, so they said. Homes with thin walls. So thin, you could hear footsteps and pans rattling.

Luke's father had trained to be an electrician. He worked as an apprentice after leaving school at the age of fourteen. He made a mint out of it, rising from living in a rented council house to owning a jaguar and a large detached home. He had always been very good at his work. On the other hand, younger electricians he knew botched jobs after studying theory for years longer than him. So it seemed from his experience, learning on the job was preferable to years of studying.

Young people today do not generally engage in criminal behaviour. Those who do may well have a lack of anything to do as justification. In an age of instant gratification and multimedia entertainment, the ability to think for oneself has dwindled. Impatience is the motive to many a youthful indiscretion. Luke was typical of his generation, he too having a short attention span.

Facebook summed up Luke's generation. Funny videos were passed around. Images were shared and gossip made about the day's minutiae. It was easy. When he had been on Facebook, Luke began to wonder. What had become of all the people he had ever known? Even the ones he hadn't liked from school, he was curious about. He tried to find people through friends of friends. It was reassuring to see they existed. Some people were not on there and Luke wondered why? How many were dead, in the army or prison? Statistically, it was inevitable some had met tragedy. Someone he knew might have committed murder. They could be serving a life sentence with little chance for parole - someone he had kicked a ball with or who had performed him a card trick.

He remembered how inadequate the education system had been: for him and so many others. Perhaps that was why there was so much bullying - it certainly can not have helped. If all the students had been taught conflict resolution and anger management, it would have helped. It was a pity the education system was so focused on facts. Their accumulation and memorisation. It was indifferent to most anything else. Facts could be learned by a parrot. There were skills more important than that.

Luke would read about people being sent to prison indefinitely or receiving a life sentence. Pity was what he felt for them. To his mind, life imprisonment was vengeance, not justice. If a person compared crime in Scandinavia or the rest of the world, it was much more prevalent in the rest of the world. In Scandinavia rehabilitation was the focus of prisons, not punishment. In the Scandinavian such as Norway and Sweden the widespread use of open prisons, community service and short sentence lengths (in Norway the maximum is apparently 25 years) has actually worked and produced low crimes; the public perception even suggests people feel safer on Scandinavian streets.

From any films about prison Luke had watched - or books about people's incarceration it was clear prison helped only evil flourish, nothing good. A person was incarcerated with criminals, even if they were innocent or guilty of a minor misdemeanour. The likelihood was by the time they were released their friends would be criminals. The difficulty of family and friends visiting prisons and the stigma attached to convicted felons means it is all too easy to find oneself in the criminal underworld. And so it would make most people worse and create a vicious cycle wherein few escaped a life of crime. Luke was also sceptical about the use of prison sentences due to the political nature of any of them. After reading 1984 and Animal Farm he realized prisons, as much as psychiatric hospitals, are used to marginalise and silence dissidents and political activists.

Everything in a prison was twisted. Medical care was denied to people who officers and the governor did not like, even when injuries had been sustained by brutal assault. If an inmate committed suicide or died otherwise, it was the governor who had the last word. They could invent a reason for the death and it was rarely questioned or investigated – and naturally they would appear duly sympathetic as though they had lost a dear friend.

Prisons never apologized or thought they did anything wrong - only accidents happened. Everything had to be under control. People inside could be issued gagging orders if they were political opponents of those in power; under a pretext of it being for the safety of the community, of course.  If people outside wanted surveillance camera records, they could be said to have been lost or cameras forgotten to put on. Riots could be created on purpose by creating the harshest conditions. Then the prison would have an excuse to give to the public to justify its getting more weaponry such as pepper spray to use on its incarcerated, even if they were young. Solitary confinement could be dished out, a favourite of the prison authorities since it more easily demoralised its prisoners; in time, making them easier to abuse. Idealistic and ordinary young people who joined the prison service soon left - a year or two would convince them that most the officers wanted to be lazy and mean rather than help rehabilitate and perform their job to the full legal standard.

The worst thing about prisons was that almost every politician in the United Kingdom was in favour of them. Luke did not care for what most politicians thought. Given the choice between listening to them or a sage mind like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama he knew who had his ear. To err is human, to forgive divine: this was a motto Luke tried to live by. That was why when boys who had knocked on his windows and shouted racial abuse were caught by the police, he had instructed the police to give them a warning. Prosecuting them was pointless. As far as he was concerned, they deserved a chance. A chance to change, and processing them through the criminal justice system would only mess them up.

It was ironic politicians were so firm about prisons. For they themselves were such criminal masterminds. Luke had seen a show on the television that investigated their use of unpaid interns to do much of their hard work. Young people, bright graduates from universities did all their dirty work. They researched policy, wrote speeches and did the backbreaking work needed for all the other necessities of being a member of parliament. All for no money! It could be the same in media and fashion - and doubtless other industries too. Young people were a source of cheap labour. Supermarkets would pay less than adults to youngsters It undermined young people and adults - for adults lost good paying jobs too.

XXVII

Christmas was the same every year. It followed a pattern. They could have changed! He could have gone away for the season! And stayed in a bed and breakfast near the coast: but he didn't. Every year he went to his mother and father's. Do did Grace, Bridget and Lily. Lily would only stay for a few nights. Grace and Bridget would be there for longer and Adriana might only come for one day.

Two uncles, Bernard and Roger, came too but only on boxing day. They were unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit. Years spent reading books left little to their imagination. Neither had ever had a girlfriend. Yet they were not homosexual, only reserved. When they would arrive for an hour or two, it would be exciting for a while. To have new company was always welcome. The feeling would not last long as quietude settled. Bernard and Roger were hermits. They had lived so long in a lonely house. they had nothing much to say.

It was not where they lived so much as
their living there
that produced the outcome. They were not people who had much initiative. Being of a political nature, due to their father's strong beliefs, they had never mingled well with others. Besides debating, they had no social skills. And so for most the time they stayed in the house they inherited, cooking and tending the garden. Roger had worked in offices for most his life too and been a very capable and steady worker. He had never stuck out but had never disappointed. Bernard studied foreign languages and lived for a year in Scandinavia; upon his return he read thousands of novels, non-fiction books and poetry collections.

Luke felt sad to see them. Although he accepted they might be happy with their lot, he could not have been. "They know so much. Yet they experience so little," he said to his dad. It was just after they left.

"Well, that's just the way they are," said Bruno. "They're very happy, you know. They've never had any problems. They don't have any friends but they've got each other, haven't they?"

Luke dreaded becoming like them. It was his greatest fear. They were nice and civilized but nobody cared. They were politically conservative - any radical passions in them having shrivelled up. They lacked warmth and compassion for mankind. If security and a steady home made you like that - bring on the risk! though Luke. I will live by chance. No! I could not bear such a life as theirs.

When he returned from his Christmas, Luke got a violent shock. Every year he felt vivid dismay and anger. Back in Woecaster all was grim. Nobody festive. People went about their business. Albeit in smaller numbers, just as usual. The misery hit home to him how he longed. For somewhere else. More human, more small? At least more open: to change, like the sea, and feel like the seasons.

After his complaint, Luke grew more disillusioned with life. The NHS were dragging their heels. They prolonged responding to him and treated him as though he were the problem. And despite repeated requests - polite too - his housing association still refused him permission for louver shutters. He even gathered a petition with a dozen signatures - but no, they wouldn't hear of it. Imagining receiving nearer the mark of a hundred signatures, Luke felt hopeless about that campaign; so he presently set his focus on the NHS.

They were playing dirty. They would not make it easy for Luke. Their main strategies of discrediting him was to blame his problems on alcohol. At times he would drink alcohol to cope. The health service and social services like nothing more than dehumanizing people. Stick a label. Put them in this box or that. As long as it gets them off the hook, they are happy. Calling someone an alcoholic is convenient: blame is shifted onto the person in need; even when a council, social services, the NHS or the police are in fact to blame.

In Rochdale young adults were raped; and this not long ago. They were raped many times, over a long period. Social workers did nothing. They were told and did nothing. "They drink alcohol," they said. "These girls are acting up." The salient fact professionals overlooked was: the rapists were providing the drinks. Will demonization of alcohol abate? Ever? If not... expect the same. All will happen again. If the NHS convinced the Ombudsman Luke was to blame; then not only he would suffer. So too would all the other people in the mental health team's care. Their negligence would continue.

Luke was outraged by the Rochdale case. But he thought the problem of children being abused was worsened by the media. The witch-hunt they created about paedophiles left scars. Sensationalist news coverage meant every adult was now suspect. All were treated with suspicion. Anyone around a child watched. It had become such a taboo for adults and children to interact that tragedies occurred. Even when adults saw what they believed to be abuse, they would not intervene. Many would dare not risk it. The risks were indeed great: accusations of paedophilia or abduction. They may want to stop children bullying one another or check the welfare of a child - but it was not normal. Not anymore. Indifference was normal now.