I take this opportunity to thank all those who have contributed their writings, photos and other creative inclusions.

I will continue with my other website: www.think-differently-about-sheep.com with no alterations and anyone who enjoyed John's photographs will find more included on this website and our flickr account:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/37177488@N06/

The sheep website site has given me sense of purpose away from my OCD. I think a sense of purpose is something all of us who suffer in this way need as so often we can feel our lives are without purpose swallowed by the misery of our respective disorders. We need something outside of our conditions upon which to focus. In recent times the plight of animals has caused me great sadness and I feel I need to do something even if it is only to create attention to that plight through my website and other on-line activities. As a sufferer of OCD and other debilitating conditions on-line activism is the only avenue open to me where by I can make a difference albeit small.

I will endeavour to keep OCD plus on-line but my priority will be the sheep website. I will try and add more entries to this blog and invite I everyone to send in examples of their creativity similar to those already included here and to write articles or comments for publication on this website. Don't lets leave it to the so called professionals to write about our conditions and how they effect our lives, with the best of intentions they can never know what it is like to suffer as we do no matter how many books they have read or degrees they have. There is little understanding of mental health conditions amongst the general populous. Particularly here in he UK when mentally ill people are being denied benefits and forced into trying to find jobs which are not available and which in many cases they are not well enough to cope with anyway. Yes indeed here in the UK it is a very trying time for people who suffer with mental health conditions. A greater understanding needs to take place in order to banish the continued prejudice and misunderstanding concerning mental health.

I sincerely hope you can tame the monster of OCD or other anxiety disorder or mental health condition and carve for yourself the best life you can possibly have. It is an ongoing struggle day in and day out, with little or no support, with few who really understand sympathise or even care. The sad thing is that often fellow sufferers fail to understand the problems of another if their manifestation of the condition is different and consequently we can feel so very alone. At least in modern times thanks to the internet we know that others are out there who suffer similarly. Both my memoir and this website was created to help people to understand the great mental agony of a life lived under the shadow of OCD and my wish is that this website and my writings, albeit inadequate as one can never really express the misery of suffering that is mental illness, have helped to increase understanding of this condition and helped sufferers to feel they are not alone.

If anyone notices any links that are missing or links that lead to other websites which are using the old name  please  do let me know. Only last  week whilst reducing and reformatting the website I noticed that some of the links link to the old domain name, which has since been taken over by a private commercial medical concern which I do not endorse and which has no connection to myself or this site. I am endeavouring to locate and correct these links. This is unfortunately a reflection of our sad world where every possible avenue of exploitation is taken in order for someone to make some money. While it might be quite legal to take over an old domain name and fill it full of advertising, in this case medical services, it is in my opinion quite unethical. But sadly as always there is very little I can do about it.
 

September 3rd

Luis has begun a new statue, a female nude. You can see some photographs of the work he has done so far. Luis, as those who regularly visit this website know, sufferers from OCD, AS and depression and eye floaters. Luis is accomplishing  so much with his sculpture and has a talent for this type of art.

Unless we try new things we never know if we are capable of doing them. Creativity can give our lives some meaning , but can at times be difficult.

Best of luck Luis with your sculpture

Check out Luis's sculpture Luis: Sculpture Female Nude

September 7th

I continue to find it difficult to include entries here on my blog, I have a number of ideas and so very much to say but right now I feel as though I do not have the ability to write it all down. Maybe it is because I am simply exhausted afterwards. So many headaches make matters worse and I feel anxious to begin writing as often if I  get too het up or excitable or angry I get a headache. Life seems extremely difficult right now, not only because of my OCD and other conditions, including those dammed headaches which halt any attempts at ever trying to at least find some normality in my life, but lately there are so many practical problems. Such problems are the type which most of us face right now, such as escalating prices particularly food and most particularly utilities , except of course the twenty percent of the population who own eighty percent of the world's resources, for these people such problems are largely irrelevant.  That's right twenty percent of the worlds population own eighty percent of global resources, mostly obtained from those of us who have so little, shocking isn't it, yet does anyone complain or care about such a terrible social injustice. The government doesn't that for sure preferring to demonise those who are unable to work or cannot find job, tarring all with the same brush as benefit frauds, preferring a life style on benefits. The fact that there are not enough jobs here in the UK is because many jobs have been taken abroad so corporations can make huge profits from cheap labour. Also government cut backs have and continue to cause job losses: the government's own polices are creating unemployment! These factors seem to be ignored. Yet they think people can get jobs out of thin air, jobs that do not exist. When I  was young there was virtually no unemployment. I had forty jobs before I was twenty! Not ideal I know but than I do have problems of course. But the point  I am making is there were plenty of jobs. You could walk into one job in the morning, without filling in forms and competing with dozens of other applicants, and  not get on very well and get a new job in the afternoon. Most clothing and shoe manufacturing took place in the north and the midlands, now these commodities and just about everything else are produced by people in other countries, mostly China, who are paid a pittance and work long hours, even child labour in some parts of the world.

People who are unemployed do not choose to be so, why would they on £67 per week? People do not choose to be disabled either mentally of physically. I hate it the way the government expect people with mental health problems to go out to work when they can barely cope with even simple day to day things like getting up or shopping or coping with anything. Particularly as the government know full well there are few jobs even for those who are able and are fit and well, let alone for anyone who is not. Few employers will give a person with a mental health condition a job. Its an excuse to put disabled people on lower benefits.

The government and some of the tabloids have done their upmost to demonise people on benefits, yet say nothing about the grave social injustice of so few people who control so much of the worlds resources often exploiting others and destroying the environment to do so. Last night on TV there was a program - l am not sure what it was and I am not going to waste my precious time trying to find out as we came upon it while we waiting for another programme to start - about a new type of Ferrari costing a huge three hundred thousand pounds. And there is a three year waiting list !!!!!
Three years!!!. Oh boy some people still have a fortune to spend on a car don't they, despite the so called recession which has really only seriously effected those who are already poor and who are as a consequence getting poorer. Makes me sick, the government trying to recoup the money it lost shoring up the banks by cutting public spending and reducing benefits. Taking from the poor to pay for the greed of the rich.

I dread the coming winter with the return of the damp, our cold house difficult to heat made worse by the astronomical heating bills that have taken a huge chunk of our income and which continue to rise. When are the government going to do something to stop the  greedy profiteering corporations. Anyone remember the good old days when gas, electricity, telephones, transport, water and sewage were state owned. Oh how easy it was!  You did not have to waste your precious life looking around for a good deal when in reality there are none. Yes you might get a minuscule reduction for a time by switching to another provider, than they will rise the prices and the whole process starts again. Besides people like myself and my family simply can't cope with it, we do not have the mathematical knowhow to work it all out, if indeed it is possible to do so, and we simply, due to our conditions,  just can't cope with it in a variety of ways not easily explained and consequently we are ripped off and exploited. Many people are trapped with one supplier unable to switch because they cannot pay their huge tariffs which have accrued large debts that remain unpaid, particularly during the severe winter last year. Or Simply they do not know quite what to do, its so vastly complicated, and what may appear to be a better deal may not necessarily be so, also those without internet access have a more difficult time switching suppliers. People like us with social interaction problems may find it difficult to telephone and get advice. I tried twice and got vague general advice and because I cannot process verbal information fast enough to respond I ended up just as confused as ever with details of an on-line deal that I really do not want, because we cannot cope with doing so. So we made a choice concerning a deal with a limited acceptance time, which by the time we applied was over,  and we got talked into a similar deal with the new supplier to the one we have already, and which means for a time  we will worse off as we will have to pay cancellation fees to our present supplier. There are a lot of people like us who are simply not able to cope and who will remain with a supplier with an unsatisfactory charge, usually a more expensive deal simply because the person is not able to cope with changing to someone else. Because of the mental health problems of our family we have not been able to make a rational and informed decision and there is no one to help us to do so, the fears and anxieties involved often keep us trapped in unwise often more expensive choices.  I know of someone who doesn't even know what tariff she is on and can't cope with the analysis involved looking at all the details to find a better option even if there was one. She sufferers with a mental health disorder and can barely cope with the day to day demands of life such as getting up in the morning.

When utilities were nationalised you did not have to pay soaring prices, I cannot recall the fear and anxiety at the approach of winter, when pensioners use their bus passes to go on buses going anywhere just to get out of the house but stay warm and save on their heating bills or keep surplus water boiled in a kettle in a flask so that it takes less electricity to boil the next time. A dangerous  health risk I would imagine. This is true as I know this person personally.

Don't you think that it is unethical to make a profit from food, water, gas and electric, all essential to life? In a climate as cold as ours heating is essential and many people put their lives at risk in unheated homes, fearing the huge bills which even with the governments cold weather payment scheme are difficult to pay. Furthermore the cold weather payment is only for people over sixty and now the government are thinking of restricting even this to only those who are on pension credit. What about younger people on low wages or unemployed, those on a basic state pension and those who are not able to work, someone on benefits will have a hard time paying their energy bills. And we call ourselves civilised! Doesn't anyone think our whole system is unfair? Yes of course they do, but few speak out. Yet people continue to support the capitalist economy, an economy of selfish greed, even though for most they are getting poorer and poorer while working longer and longer. I think this is because people are deluded into thinking that one day they too will be rich. Well that is about as delusional as thinking that  someday you will eventually win the lottery or that you will get a good deal for your gas and electricity.

Anyway I will leave it there as I have a headache today. The sun is still shinning and it is warm so somehow I have to suspend my anxieties about the approach of winter with all its miseries. But hey it was good to get all that off my chest even though I will check and obsess over it for days before publishing.

September 9th

Today in the Yorkshire Dales we met a very pleasant person. Yes it was socially awkward for my son and I and when we saw my husband chatting to this person we were not happy. When I am out and about in the countryside I really like to avoid the strain of conversation whenever possible other than the necessary courtesies, if of course there are any. Have you noticed in recent years that few people have any manners any more and I have to say that in recent years people seem socially inept. At least I try and learn some social skills and as a child of course we were taught to at least thank people who had performed some kind of service however trivial, anyway another rant for another time perhaps

Apparently while my husband was taking photographs of sheep this lady engaged him in conversation concerning these sheep and my son and I joined in as best we could. The conversation turned out to be most interesting despite my struggling to express myself even though she and I had a lot in common, namely veganism and animals rights. 

This person told us what she did to rescue sheep and other farm animals. She has intervened in the practice of cruel treatments in a local livestock market. Her activities have also included buying sheep from farmers and finding them new homes where they will be cared for and allowed to live the full duration of their lives.

She told us of the dreadful conditions in the local livestock market where tiny lambs are packed into pens eight at a time for pens meant to hold only four, of how thin and tiny lambs were wedged in tight, like commodities packed in a  warehouse. She told us of lame sheep which according to regulations should not be sent to market and how pigs were so crammed into a pen that the poor creatures could only stand on their hind legs which consequently suffered damage. Blood could be seen on the pigs.

She told us about the lambs we were photographing, two of whom you see here in the photograph below. These lambs she said prefer to sit by this fence whenever they need to rest.

This came about when they were taken from their mothers, who were than moved into the next field separated by a foot path. To be as close as possible to their mothers these lambs sit here, and for a long time after the separation from their mothers their insistent pitiful bleating, along with that of their mothers, could be heard for hours on end for several days eventually rendering them hoarse. The mothers have since been moved to yet another field ready to be “serviced” by rams in order to produce more lambs next year, which continues the painful cycle for the distressed mothers who again will suffer the grief of having their lambs taken from them. Still the lambs sit by the fence, the nearest spot that they last saw their mothers.

Many people assume that sheep do not show emotion, and if we compared it too human emotion we are mislead into thinking this.   Maybe a sheep is anatomically incapable of crying or other facial expression we associate with traumatic emotion, although of course the bleats of distress and anguish due to separation cannot be mistaken for anything other than emotion resulting from the brutal separation from their mothers, but sheep show emotion nonetheless, but in their own way. Besides the anguished bleating according to this lady ewes show solidarity for the shared plight of losing their off-spring by walking in single file. A sight I have often witnessed but until now had no idea why they behaved in this way. In deciding if animals have emotion it is a great mistake to compare their behaviour with our own, animals show emotion in a different way, and indeed if we think about it not all humans display emotion in the same way.

These little lambs who kept close company with their twin sibling, she told us, would soon be sent to slaughter. I could not help feeling overwhelming sad for the plight of these helpless creatures and at such times one can feel that there is little you can do.

Another interesting comment this person made was during an unsuccessful attempt to buy one tiny lamb from a farmer, the lamb in question approached her as she left as though she, the lamb, knew that that this visitor had tried to rescue her.

I strongly believe that there is more to sheep and indeed other farm animals than meets the eye. We should look underneath common excepted cultural beliefs and world views often so deeply ingrained that we never question what we have been led to believe concerning animal sentience. It is convenient for all those who profit from the rearing and slaughter of farm animals to have you think they are non feeling creatures unaware of what happens to them, when quite the contrary is clearly true. Look deeper into the lives of these animals and you will find a thinking feeling being, who given the opportunity are as likely to interact with you as your cat or dog. Rather like the pair of sheep in our locality who without fear or the usual timidity allow us to  approach and stroke them.

On our return home we saw dozens of lambs and a Texel ram in an enclosure, most likely put there to be sent to slaughter the following day. My husband said that rams are too important to slaughter. But this may not necessity be true. He looked like a young ram, he may have been infertile and from the stand point of farming of no use. He and several little lambs looked at us as if asking for help. I felt so sad and thought about the ram and the lambs all night long. I cannot understand the mentality of people who will come along the next day, herd these defenceless creatures into a truck and, with little or no compassion, without thought or consideration send them to a premature and terrifying death simply to sate the appetites of people who are equally thoughtless. I think this is the problem is it not, at least concerning consumers: they simply do not think about it.

Yes most of that sounds like an article from my sheep website and yes indeed it is although it is not as yet on line and when it is I will simply provide a link to it.

Maybe on the surface it appears to have little to do with OCD or AS or depression, but nothing in the life of a sufferer of any of these conditions is irrelevant. I felt depressed and sad that I could not take more practical action against such atrocities perpetrated to all living creatures and the evils of farming, particularly factory farming - sending sentient beings to markets, tearing tiny lambs from their loving mothers, new born calves from cows, piglets from sows and so on ...well read about factory farming on my website Factory Farming - is something that I have strong feelings about. I could not sleep that night thinking of those tiny lambs and that beautiful ram, a lovely creature who looked longing at us, no I did not imagine this at all. I told the lady we chatted to how the suffering of animals makes me so depressed. I don't think she saw it quite the same way; even though she had great compassion and love for animals she did not let it make her depressed.

If you cannot take more direct action there are other things you can do such as writing letters and signing petitions. Of course for me the problems with headaches, IBS and other issues in addition to OCD would make it very difficult for me to enter a live stock market and make direct protest or take some action. Although if I had the financial resources I would like to run a farm animal sanctuary and would have dearly liked to have taken home all those tiny lambs and the ram and I felt guilty that I could do nothing.

But there is always something we can do and we should despite our circumstances  try to do the best we can and not allow our respective conditions to rule our entire life leaving us feeling as though it has been wasted.

September 14th

"Pacemaker implanted in brain at Delhi hospital

Doctors in a Delhi hospital implanted a pacemaker in the brain of a woman suffering from a psychiatric disorder - probably performing the unusual surgery for the first time in Asia."