A little education...

I’VE BEEN a bit under the weather lately, with some flu-like symptoms compounding a gippy tum.

I do manage to make – and enjoy – a shepherd’s pie yesterday, using some leftover salt marsh lamb, and today I give My Good Lady a hand in cooking up some sautéed new potatoes and some of my very own, and very delicious, tomatoes to accompany her floddies, her little Rösti bacon patties.

I even manage to get us to the farmers’ market where we stock up on locally sourced beef and pork for the month – including our favourite Cumberland and black pudding sausages.

And yes, I have to admit, despite reservations, I manage to drag myself to the last of my weekly carers’ meetings – this time learning to communicate.

I have to say I listen to the theories of how to use words effectively with some distraction, and not a little awe.

Clearly, this session isn’t intended for the likes of me.

I have, after all, been a sometime writer of both fiction and non-fiction, of plays and stories; I’m aware that whole branches of both philosophy and psychology are devoted to the use of words.

I can look up from this computer and see well-thumbed copies of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus – classics, both, in the field of language and logic.

At one point I’m distracted by being reminded of Gregory Bateson’s theories of the double-bind and its influence on the onset of mental illness, especially schizophrenia.

And I’m longing to point out that some of the illustrations they are making have been brilliantly demonstrated by R.D. Laing in his little book, Knots.

And I know I have to remain – painfully – silent.

This is not an academic seminar, it’s intended as a practical session, designed to give ordinary carers a chance to express themselves with precision and effect, and to understand how to use simple logical techniques to be assertive without falling prey to aggression.

There are times, though, when I feel that having had a little education is a seriously frustrating thing…