ADHD news
My week begins with the news that the referral my GP sent to the Adult ADHD NHS team has been accepted. A lifetime of not knowing whether there is a reason I struggle so much with simple daily tasks could be explained. Is there a simple explanation or am I just thick?
I concluded from the start of Senior School that that I wasn’t very bright at anything except covering up the fact I wasn’t very bright. Then, in the last decade, mental health practitioners suggested something else had been at work. Had I ever been referred for an autism test, or perhaps Adult ADHD? I hadn’t. These things didn’t, apparently, exist when I were a lad. But sod it, I concluded. I’d try to get get an assessment, so I self-diagnosed my symptoms and concluded I might have ADHD. Or autism. And that, my loyal reader, is how I have been referred, with no medical intervention to date.
So, it’s encouraging. I may find what the hell has been going on in my head sometime before I die or it could be that I’m told it might be something else, so get your GP to put yourself on the waiting list for that one.
At least I’ll have plenty of time to think about it: the letter from the NHS says merely that I’ve been accepted to the initial assessment waiting list but “unfortunately we do have long waiting lists for these services…(and)…we are unable to provide specific details on when the assessment appointment will be offered. It’s likely you will be dead by the time we see you.” Well, I made up the last bit but I wasn’t joking.
Brexit
We learn today that, thanks to the success of the vaccine roll out, 12% of EU remainers now support Brexit. That is to say 12% of remainers have bought the government lie that our vaccine success came about because of Brexit. I have one simple comment: so what?
There are now no remainers or leavers. We left the EU over a year ago and it’s a done deal. Granted, it’s a done terrible deal with no benefits, which will act like a slow puncture in our lives over the coming years, but there is no going back. If 100% of Brexiters now supported remain, it would make no difference.
These polls are such a waste of time. Let’s talk about something else. Please. But not COVID.
Back to some kind of normal
But I’ll talk about COVID anyway. Today is the day when I can finally get my hair cut. At my age, looking in the mirror is a bad enough experience in itself but for half an hour or so today, with the added bonus of wearing a mask to block out much of the reflection, I can put up with it.
I might even do some inessential shopping this week, although I have no intention of queuing, as the good folk of Bristol were doing in the cold light of dawn outside, er, Primark.
I have no problem with Primark, although I am more man at TX Maxx than Primark, but I am at a loss to understand the desperation of some people to be among the first people in the store today. I am guessing that many early morning shoppers are not familiar with the internet from which I can order pretty much what I like. If I was short of pants and socks during lockdown I’d have ordered some online. But if you enjoy queuing to get in crowded shops, I suppose Amazon just isn’t the right experience.
Son Heung-min
Absolutely disgusted to read that Spurs footballer Son Heung-min has been the victim of vile racism on social networks. It is one thing to call him a diving cheat for his cynicism in feigning injury during his team’s match against Manchester United, which caused the joke VAR system to disallow a perfectly good – brilliant, actually – goal, but it is quite another to indulge in racism.
As things stand, you can set up any number of accounts on, say, twitter and abuse anyone you like however you like. Surely, there is a case for anyone having an account being identifiable, certainly to the company that operates the site? I always use my own name on social network accounts. Why shouldn’t everyone else?
Big Phil
Because of the deluge of complaints about its excessive coverage of the death of Prince Philip, the BBC set up a page from which you could, should you so wish, complain about it. Along with many others, that’s what I did. But not everyone thought the BBC’s actions were correct. Witness the comments of Ben Harris-Quinney, chair of the Conservative fruitloop Bow Group ‘thinktank’. The BBC, he whined, was “prompting a response” by establishing the complaint form. “When the BBC put out things that are more in accordance with figures of the left, no such opportunity to complain is promoted. It is quite clear that there is an imbalance,” he said, apparently with a straight face. Well, I never.
For one thing, no one complained about the BBC’s OTT coverage because Big Phil was a “figure of the right”: we complained because there was too much of it. I’d have said the same whoever had died.
But if we all thought the Beeb’s coverage was insanely excessive, just wait until the Queen dies. Those of us who complain about the coverage then will probably be shot.
