A Day in the Life

As it is the Christmas hols, I thought, as I have time, that I would write down a few yuletide musings that I've been having. These are to do with the vexed question of political correctness and how far we should adhere to it. This is of particular interest to me, as, at The Media Action Group for Mental Health, we often debate what are and what are not appropriate terms to describe mental illness or those experiencing it. It would seem, from my point of view, as one who has experience of mental ill health and, furthermore, has been labelled with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, that, in comparison with their racial or sexual counterparts, the use of pejorative terms to describe those experiencing mental ill health are still bandied about with relative impunity. It appears to me that while one would never use the "n" word, for example, to describe someone of a particular race, words like "bonkers", "nutcase", "schizo" and "loony" seem...

At the risk of repeating myself ad infinitum and becoming a bore, I ask the same question I did last year and, come to think of it, the year before that. While my lack of originality may be beginning to grate, I am simply going to say, once again- so here it is, Merry Christmas, every body's havin ' fun, or are they? While we all know what Christmas is supposed to represent; a time of peace, love and mercy, of both giving and receiving, but mostly giving, one can't help but see what it has become- an exercise in mindless materialism, a symptom of commercialism gone crazy. But maybe I am too cynical. Perhaps, for many, the true message of Christmas remains, despite the fact that before it's had the chance to say "hello", it's already saying "buy buy". Anyway, it's still, whatever it is now, a far cry from when some of the older generation of my family were young, when, as children, all they received was an apple, an orange, and a sugar mouse...

So, this is just a quick posting to wish myself a happy birthday. After all, if no one else is going to, I might as well do it myself! OK, so I'm joking. I have received quite a few cards from family and friends and have got more or less everything that I asked for. In fact, I even went out for a meal last night with my parents as part of my celebrations. However, I am now officially "middle-aged" and indeed, physically, sometimes feel even older. So, reaching the grand old age of 38 has made me feel old. I believe I wrote last year, on passing 37, in a post called "Birthday Blues" that, because of being ill for so long, I have a strange relationship with my age. While I feel, for example, mentally about 18, I feel physically a lot older. And while my peers would almost uniformly seem to be married with kids and mortgages, I just plod along with my voluntary work, mental health groups and blogs. It is not surprising, then, that one begins to feel a touch of ...