et in arcadia ego

Madness and Death

I was called up last week by C's psychiatrist to say that, although his memory is not deteriorating, his mood is. She did not disagree with my suggestion that he is actively suicidal and we talked about the problem with C rejecting - angrily - offers of help. Since he has rejected the idea of drugs, the only help that is available is sectioning him in the case of a crisis. We agreed that a CPN should visit him in the hope that, if he gets offered care from a variety of people, eventually he may come round to the idea. We talked about how C's increasing mania with regard to his wind turbine (ignoring and often rejecting all other activities) has left him vulnerable to crushing and dangerous depression when he is forced to give it up (because he doesn't have the spare £30,000 per annum that it swallows up). I found myself getting angrier and angrier as I walked home at C's new friends who - with no idea of the context - have encouraged what they see as an endearing enthusiasm in wind energy. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing - in this case it's my father's sanity and life that's in danger.

This weekend was a quick dash down to Glasgow to say goodbye to the lovely Frankie (lodger from Bristol who is heading off to Paris for Erasmus) and hello to the (probably lovely but let's just wait) Radostina who is moving into my room. In the brief gap between them I got one, glorious night in my own bed. Otherwise I managed to ignore Glasgow's cultural life (I know it's stretching it to call my bed cultural, what with it having clean sheets and all) limiting myself to Byres Rd's poncey cafes. I took C and Marc out for dinner at Gandolfi Fish on the Friday night after a magical flight down (only marred by the cost-cutting removal of a free drink - would it look greedy if I started a campaign to get it reintroduced?). C started off very weepy and went downhill getting very drunk after about an hour (and 3 drinks - not sure how much he'd had before we arrived) and got gently poured into a taxi. I called him up the next day when I got back from coffee with Peter and Norma (excellent french cakes from Cranston's and gossip from the Citizens') and he was much more coherent but didn't want to see me again and still regards his visits to the psychiatrist as a challenge that has been imposed on him.

Another lovely flight back to Benbecula and I found myself almost crying as we descended on a curve across the water-speckled land. A mixture of relief and comfort at coming back to these broad lands.

and it was going so well

The new year really was going well.

I got the last ferry off the islands on Christmas Eve and drove through bits of such outstanding picturesqueness hat I quite forgot myself and started driving to Inverness instead of Fort William. The Christmas bit itself passed pleasantly enough given that there was no water (I'd brought 5 litres of drinking water with me and - together with a bathful of water for flushing the toilet - I just managed to eke it out 'til defrost on the 27th without having to do a run to the burn) dodgy electrics (the dipstick had been left out of the diesel genny, spraying oil everywhere and leaving it in danger of seizing which is a bit of a problem since the batteries are fucked so the genny's coming on every 5 minutes and we're running through fuel like it was going out of fashion - and it so isn't oh and the water turbine controls have failed as shown above) and a fridge and freezer that had both been switched off and left closed for a month (the freezer was truly disgusting and my car still smells of a mixture of offal and blackcurrants from transporting the rubbish over the track to Drimnin). I didn't get the second potato bed dug (frozen ground) or all the fruit trees pruned (too many trees) and I nearly missed the ferry on the way back (I think the ferryman recognises me from the last time: as I bombed down the hill into Uig in my exhausted wee panda I did consider crying to see if that would get me on but apparently folk try that all the time and the ferrymen are hardened, it's a funeral or nothing) ... but ... but I spent a lovely time breathing the air at Drumbuidhe and arrived on the islands smiling in the winter sunshine. A gentle start to work, a run along Culla Bay and a bracing walk in the south Uist and it's all looking good.

Alas the madness of Campbell is still there in the background and the kraken has started to stir. He's been in Glasgow since November (with Christmas in Devon) and his social life seems to be slipping into negative figures - he's rejecting everyone (friends, lovers...) and I think I'm the only person he sees in Glasgow (and since I'm based in Benbecula that's not good). He must be aware that he can't go up to Drumbuidhe by himself (I tried to be gentle about it but his memory is too bad to be in charge of the electrics we have up there - if the genny had seized it would have cost thousands to repair and we're losing probably £100 a month through excess diesel use with the crap batteries not to mention the cost of spoiled food from the freezer) so his cunning solution is to get a series of random families that we don't know to come and stay in Drumbuidhe for free and look after him for a week at a time. Oh and Emma Wright (who lives in Yorkshire) would organise the bookings for this.

Campbell is trying to recreate a period in the past that he sees now through very rose-tinted glasses since he finds the present so unbearable. I think that's also why he doesn't want to see people he knows - they would see him as he is and he would have to acknowledge that he is a confused old man. On the plus side he's getting closer to the power of attorney stage but it's not really much of a plus side.