From
The Prairie Schooner. Lots of Greenall
Whitley tonight.
Tuesday, 14 July 2020
Monday, 13 July 2020
Goodbye, Nexus, NQ cafe
Manchester's
Nexus Art Cafe has become the latest
casualty in Manchester's fight against COVID-19. Meeting point for
many a writers' group, the cafe was a great, cosy, quiet spot serving
tasty toasties and rocky road. Most of the stories I got published
were workshopped behind their walls.
We’re very sad to announce that Nexus has
not been able to weather the Covid-19 storm. As a not-for-profit
organisation, our margins were always very small, and even with your
help we didn’t have the reserves to keep us going. pic.twitter.com/ZRA3dNhOQ3
—
Nexus Art Café (@NexusArtCafe) July
12, 2020
The staff were always friendly and considerate, frequently donating 'The Nook,' their private room, for our sessions. I
remember one time, after a 2-hour critiquing session pulling apart
some strong stories and poems, I absent-mindedly left my wallet on
one of their sofas- they hung on to it 'til I called in again later
that night.A
great cafe. It'll be missed.Wednesday, 8 July 2020
Tuesday, 7 July 2020
Why Buddha Never had Alzheimer's
 |
| Dr Shuvendu Sen, MD |
Alzheimer's
is devastating. Over 850,000 people in the UK and over 5.8 million
Americans live with this degenerative disease. As medical science
continues to develop, so does the average life expectancy along with
it, meaning more people living with brains that- sadly- are not meant
to last as long as the body hosting it.
With
his new book, Why Buddha Never Had Alzheimer's, Dr Shuvendu Sen, MD,
takes us on a fascinating tour of the mind in its twilight. He throws
us a curveball- what if, rather than administering drugs for this
psychological condition, we prescribed treatments from the world of
Holistics? Can meditation, yoga and the arts alleviate the symptoms
of Alzheimer's- or even cure it?
I'll
admit, starting the book, I was sceptical. A little background on
myself as a reviewer- I sustained a head injury due to a complication
at birth, and have had lifelong short-term memory difficulties,
anxiety and depression. I've dealt with numerous interventions,
psychologists, psychotherapists and MRI scanners, finally getting a
solid diagnosis aged 26. Since then, I've been fascinated by what the
brain does by itself, and what we can do with it using psychology.
I'm 37, and still learning. Always will be.
Dr.
Sen investigates these unconventional but traditional treatments with
effective conviction. Personally, when introduced to Mindfulness a
few years ago, I wasn't keen. Staring into nothingness felt like
dwelling on my issues to no avail, so I haven't been back to it, but
Dr. Sen's details of certain medical studies gave me pause for
thought. Tales of wiring up Buddhist monks' skulls to encephalographs
sit on the pages, zen-like, next to anecdotes of General
Practitioners administering music and meditation to Alzheimer's
patients (both of which reaped astoundingly positive results). Dr.
Sen's treatments traversed hospital treatment rooms, GP's surgeries,
and home visits to capture a range of medical challenges and other
professional perspectives (including, if I am reading this right, an
actual Dr Doolittle at Yale) and details of how the holistic
therapies helped the patient to either alleviate or overcome their
condition.
Most
jaw-droppingly, personally, are the details of PTSD. I have had many
disagreements- and in some cases full-blown arguments- with NHS staff
about my memory condition and my depression and anxiety, the latter
two of which stem from incidents in adolescence. I've strongly
believed the psychological condition, and the mental health
condition, were interconnected, although I couldn't always place why.
Dr. Sen clears up a long-suspected theory of mine.
'In
normal situations, the hippocampus (where the memory is stored)
allows an individual to discriminate between threat and safety.' Dr
Sen describes how the amygdala- our most primitive, flight-or-flight
section of the brain, detects the threat. The hippocampus then
down-regulates this to moderate the threat. There should be
'emotional equivalence' between the amygdala, the hippocampus, and
the prefrontal cortex (that which plans complex cognitive behaviour-
it does the working out). When this doesn't happen, due to, say, a
head injury and damage to the hippocampus, anxieties can run out of
control. Can this knowledge quell my own anxieties? What
possibilities lie ahead of me now I know this? Well, once the
lockdown has been lifted further, I guess I'll find out...
There's
more I'd love to tell you about this theory and my own experiences,
but it's best if you heard the professional perspectives from the
horse's mouth (the book).
After
lockdown, I'm looking forward to putting this theory into practice.
A
few suggestions- metric as well as imperial measurements would be
ideal for other countries, and a glossary of medical terms would be
handy at points. But regardless, the book is a thorough, reassuring
and insightful look at the juncture of the traditional and the
cutting edge.
Thanks
go to Ascot Media for providing
the book.
Saturday, 4 July 2020
This is not the end
#WelcomeBackPubs is trending in the UK and I’m just gonna say good luck to y’all. This is what’s happenening in the US after we started reopening. Neither the US or the UK gov’ts care about lives anymore, just the economy. Hope the pubs are worth it. #SuperSpreaderSaturday pic.twitter.com/K3qefRzK8Q— 𝚜 𝚑 𝚊 𝚗 𝚒 (@shanilevyr) July 4, 2020
Last
night, at around midnight, a handful of bars and pubs around the
country thrust open their doors. Tonight, a much bigger number of
licensed venues will be welcoming punters with new social distancing
measures enforced. But I won't be there.
You
know me. Party boy. Bar crawl organiser. Hounder of zed-list celebs
and celeb gossip. I would be the first to be prowling Spinningfields
for stories, necking obscure cocktails, smartphone in hand, right?
No
thanks. The UK has seen 44 thousand deaths to COVID-19, the highest
in Europe. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Portugal and Israel have all seen a
second, in some cases more deadly, surge after lockdown restrictions were lifted.
The
UK entered lockdown on 23rd March. The day before alone, in the UK,
1035 people died from COVID-19. The day we locked down, there were 669 deaths. More recently, on 2nd
July, there were 829 fatalities. So, there are still more deaths per
day than there were at the time that we went in to lockdown, which
many agree was too late- largely due to that bumbling prick in number
10, who told us to 'take it on the chin,' and then nearly died from
it himself.
What
a dickhead.
We
are on track for another, more deadly surge of the virus, and I want
nothing of it. Gyms, weirdly, are not yet open. Hence the home
workouts- I'm usually following other people's Instagram Lives- will
have to continue in place of the gym. And this reading project
I started in late March will be reviewed when the gyms open.
Whenever that will be.
Whenever that will be.
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