Well heeled

It's hard to believe that in the year 2016, when gender equality is meant to be progressing rapidly, a woman can be sent home without pay by her employer for refusing to wear high heels all day.

But that's what happened to Nicola Thorp when she turned up for work at Price Waterhouse Cooper in London. When she said she couldn't escort clients round the office all day if she was in high heels, she was ignored. Her petition to the British government for a change in the law has attracted huge support.

Surely by now it's well-established that regular wearing of high heels is physically harmful, acutely painful, impedes numerous activities, and hinders personal safety. Yet employers can still overlook all these dangers and insist on their being worn in the name of "looking professional" and "promoting the right image".

As far as I know there's no evidence whatever that high heels make a woman look more professional or inspire more confidence in her abilities, but they're still part of the obligatory dress code in many companies.

If high heels look "professional", then how come men can look professional without having to hobble round the office in such things, and can inspire confidence simply by wearing a tie and a crumpled suit? Why aren't men asked to do their job in agonising shoes with bleeding feet? Why aren't they asked to "promote the right image"?

The obvious answer is that men simply wouldn't put up with chronic pain day in and day out, and wouldn't entertain the idea for two seconds. That and their entrenched dread of doing anything "effeminate", of course.

I can think of a novel way of opposing the high heels dress code. If we have business with a company that applies it, just refuse to talk to a woman in high heels and ask for a woman in normal footwear. That would soon bring a few changes.

PS: Nicola Thorp's petition is here

Scars

I was asked if I had any scars.
No, no physical scars.
I've never had an operation.
I've never had a serious accident.
I've never been beaten up.
So the answer is no.
But I have plenty of emotional scars.
I've had a strange life.
Things haven't always gone according to plan.
I've had my share of pain and grief
along with fun and happiness.
I've had to confront some dark corners
of my own personality.
I've found things I'd rather not have found.
I've wrestled with demons.
But I've lived to tell the tale.

Ow, that hurts

I'm quite susceptible to little hurts. A dozen times a day I feel hurt that I've been rejected, or ignored, or slighted, or not appreciated, or not understood, or treated brusquely.

But they're only little hurts, a bit like nettle stings or pinpricks. They only last a minute or two and then they're forgotten. I'm too resilient to dwell on them for long. I don't magnify every little hurt into a tearful melodrama. I shrug them off as a trivial part of daily life, just a sign of the rough and tumble of a hectic world.

The big hurts are a different story. The sort of hurt when a long-time friend suddenly snubs me, or my professional competence is doubted, or someone questions my sincerity or integrity. That goes deeper, like a thorn in my flesh. It pierces through the usual resilience and lodges somewhere, constantly resurfacing in bursts of bewildered pain.

That's the sort of hurt that can't just be shrugged off, though I'm still able to see it philosophically as an unfortunate but inevitable part of being human. I'm not the type of person who deals with serious hurt by getting bitter and vengeful, trying to cause as much hurt as was done to me.

I know some people would say that's a cop-out, that I'm bottling up my feelings and it's far healthier to ease the hurt by flinging it back where it came from. But that's not the way I see it. I want to drain the hurt, not add to it. So I keep it to myself and let it run its natural course.

Then again there's the biggest hurt of all, which is grief. Luckily up till now I've never experienced major, all-consuming grief, and I hope I never have to. I can only imagine how I might cope with it. Very well? Very badly? Probably the latter. Such excruciating hurt would knock me for six.

Tucked away

By the time you're my age, you've been through a lot of pain and hurt of one kind or another. If I gave it all free rein, it would be overwhelming. I would be an emotional wreck.

Childhood bullying, a vile-tempered father, failed friendships, failed romances, tyrannical bosses, nasty betrayals and rejections. Painful at the time and still painful many years later.

Those glib phrases "Get over it", "Deal with it", "Put it all behind you" are easy enough to say, not so easy to practise. Hurt isn't something you can just put in a rubbish bag and throw in the trash. It lingers, it loiters, it refuses to die.

You can come to terms with it. You can suppress it. You can take it to a therapist. You can pretend it's nothing much. You can take it out on other people. But at the end of the day it's still there, it's something you actually felt in all its raw intensity, and that has to leave a scar of some kind, a psychic wound. It happened and it's not going to unhappen. Somehow it has to be dealt with.

I have a bad memory. I'll forget the vicious words that someone used, the brutal look on their face, the clinical phrases in a redundancy letter. But I don't forget the cold way I was treated, the unkindness, the harshness.

I'm a forgiving person. But even when I can put myself in the other person's shoes, even when I can half-understand why they did what they did, what their motives were, what the catalyst was, it doesn't take away the pain.

Pain can cut you to the quick. It can break your heart. It can tear you to pieces. If I let it all out in its sheer extremity, I would be a jibbering lunatic. Like everyone else, I find ways of subduing it, of damping it down, of keeping it safely tucked away somewhere deep in my being.

Pain is the hidden shadow in everyone's identity. They may smile and chirp for other people's benefit, but who knows what they're keeping under wraps?

Needlework

I obviously missed my vocation. Tattooing is suddenly all the rage. Getting them, getting more of them, removing them. If I was a tattooist, I'd be doing very nicely.

I suppose it was the celebs who started the fashion, as usual. People like Pink, with tattoos all over the place. Now every Tom, Dick and Harriet is popping into the tattoo parlour to endure the agony of plonking a swallow on their shoulder, a snake on their ankle or "I love Susy" on their arm.

And once they've started, they're always tempted to add a second and a third. If they're hopelessly addicted they end up with every square inch of their body lavishly illustrated.

But there's always the risk that a few years down the line they decide the tattoo of King Kong or Dr Spock or Lara Croft was a big mistake. Or Susy has walked out and been replaced by Julie, who objects to being constantly reminded of Susy.

So the tattooists are in demand again, inflicting more pain as they laboriously remove the offending item and try to restore the decorated skin to its original state.

I've never been tempted by tattoos myself. When I was young they were associated with manual workers, heavy drinkers and hairy lesbians, but that wasn't what put me off. I just didn't like the idea of mutilating my skin for artistic purposes. I felt art belonged on canvas or photographic paper and not on the human body. I guess that's still my attitude.

I did once know a woman with extremely erotic tattoos on her buttocks. At least they were meant to be erotic, but I found them strangely off-putting. I couldn't help thinking of all the other men who had touched them and puzzled over them.

No, I like my skin just as it is, thanks. I intend to keep it that way.

Heel appeal

Many women are expected to wear high heels at work, despite the damage they do to the wearers' feet, knees and backs. Shouldn't women have the choice to wear something healthier and more comfortable?

The British Trades Union Congress says yes, of course they should. They've just passed overwhelmingly a motion that employers should carry out risk assessments on women wearing high heels.

They say high heels result in two million working days being lost every year through permanent physical damage, and women should be free to wear more sensible shoes that don't cause injury.

Yet shop workers, office staff, airline crew, hotel employees and others are required to wear high heels as part of their dress code. Ubiquitous health and safety regulations apparently don't apply to harmful footwear.

Not surprisingly the TUC motion hasn't been universally welcomed. Those women who're addicted to high heels can't see what all the fuss is about. As far as they're concerned, heels are glamorous and intimidating and get them more respect in the workplace, particularly from male colleagues*.

Union delegate Loraine Monk said women shouldn't be lectured to about what to wear. "This well-meant motion will see the union movement portrayed in the media as the killjoy fashion police."

Come again? If you point out the damage high heels can do you're being a killjoy? So if you point out that long hair can get caught in machinery, or bare flesh may lead to skin cancer, does that make you a killjoy too? If there's anything that kills joy, it's a bad back and painful feet.

I frequently see women clumping across offices or shopfloors in obviously uncomfortable shoes they must be dying to remove, yet traditional workplace dress codes say a woman doesn't look professional or authoritative unless she's wearing them. So how come men are instantly endorsed without having to teeter three inches off the ground?

Stilts belong in the circus, not in the office.

*See for example the outraged protest against the "shoe police" by Flic Everett in the Daily Mail
.................................................................................

Johann Hari of the London Independent has a superb article today about the relentless cult of the stick-thin female body and its destructive effects on ordinary women.

A shocking truth

I expect most people have heard of the notorious experiment* in which volunteers were asked to give massive electric shocks to an innocent and protesting man. Two thirds of them did.

The experiment was repeated recently, but the volunteers weren't kinder, they were actually more ruthless. This time 75 per cent gave the maximum shock - three times.

What this extraordinary experiment shows is that when it comes to the crunch, people are more likely to be obedient and conformist than to challenge authority and help someone in distress.

However guilty and nasty they felt about being cruel, they were scared to simply refuse and walk out. They somehow justified the instructions, repressed their finer feelings and did what they were told.

Even knowing how mindlessly callous some people can be, I still find this level of submission incredible. Are so many people capable of ignoring heart-wrenching, insistent cries of pain and misery? It seems they are.

I'm totally sure I would be one of the refuseniks. Apart from my ingrained rebelliousness and suspicion of experts and authority figures, there's no way I could willingly inflict pain on an innocent person for no good reason. And a so-called scientific experiment with no clear purpose is not a good reason. I would be out of the door like a shot.

We like to pride ourselves on being questioning and independent, looking carefully at a situation and doing the right thing. But it seems that in practice this can prove to be a fragile self-delusion.

Our cherished principles can all too easily be undermined by our human weakness for less moral considerations - wanting to please, not wanting to be awkward, or just following procedures. We're not always as strong-minded as we like to think.

* the Milgram Experiment at Yale University in 1961

Down in the mouth

The tooth fairy who’s so shamefully neglected Heart has been neglecting me too. I have a raging tooth abscess that makes eating or drinking virtually anything extremely painful. It’s the first time I’ve had an abscess and I sincerely hope it’s the last.

Clearly that feckless tooth fairy has been down the Wand and Tutu with her hedonistic Fairyland mates, happily supping the fairy nectar and forgetting all those mere mortals relying on her diligent protection. I’ve already sent a furious email to the Fairyland Directorate.

I went to the dentist because of a persistent toothache. Liz couldn’t see anything wrong so she took an x-ray and then showed me the nasty little shadow creeping around the root of my molar. That’s an abscess, she explained in her most professional, seen-it-all-before, nothing-to-worry-about tones.

There are two options, she added. Either extract the tooth or suck out the toxins and do a root filling. I looked round for the tooth fairy to ask her advice but she still wasn’t there. There weren’t even any lingering traces of fairy dust on the windowsill. She had obviously gone on a week-long binge without a care in the world and I was on my own here.

Well, since as some of you know I’ve only got 26 teeth anyway, I decided to defend my poor little molar and prevent it being sacrificed to the forces of bacterial darkness. I shall endure the rigours of the dental chair to save my frail, embattled chopper.

I’m sure it won’t be that bad. It can’t be worse than waxing, surely? Or maybe it can. I hope Liz has the epidural organised. And maybe a few bottles of whisky, just to be on the safe side.

In the meantime, I’m taking a course of high-dose antibiotics to clear the infection and hopefully the pain. At the moment chewing my favourite foods is more like chewing a rose bush. Jenny’s culinary expertise is wasted on my failing machinery.

If I ever catch up with that wretched, indolent tooth fairy, she’ll get a piece of my mind. And I’ll confiscate her magic wand for a week. That’ll wipe the grin off her face.

PS: It’ll all cost me an arm and a leg because the whole surgery’s just gone private and I carelessly hadn’t got round to signing up with a new NHS dentist. Rats.
.................................................................................

Good grief! Jesus with an erection! Whatever next?

Operation blues

Countless cancelled operations in the UK's health service are prolonging misery and pain for thousands of people. The latest cause is cock-ups over surgical instruments.

Surgeons say they are more and more likely to be broken, missing or dirty. In which case an entire surgical team, ready to operate, has to down tools and tell the patient to go home again.

Yet again the government has handed over a job to private businesses which are failing to do the work properly. Ward cleaning was farmed out and still isn't up to standard. Many nursing posts were farmed out to agencies, again causing lots of complaints. Now it's providing and decontaminating surgical instruments that's being screwed up.

The politicians are still besotted with the idea that private firms can do the job better than their own NHS staff, even though they've been proved wrong repeatedly.

So people like Helen R. in Leeds, whose hip operation has been postponed twice because the surgeon didn't have the right instruments, is angry and upset at such elementary blunders.

"This is supposed to be the 21st century. We're supposed to have sorted these things out" she said.

There are already tens of thousands of cancelled operations because of sick staff, vacant posts, funding problems or emergencies taking priority. A lot of operating theatres aren't even used in the evenings or at weekends.

Now even more people are finding they have to put up with that excruciating pain or disabling condition for longer than they thought because of the results of political dogma.

Clearly the politicians could do with a bit of emergency brain surgery themselves.
.................................................................................

The BBC reports today (Sunday) that there are 10 times more deaths across the UK from the superbug clostridium difficile among over 65-year-olds than in any other country in the world. And one person dies every hour in our hospitals from this deadly infection.

Spine chiller

Can you believe it? A 12 year old girl has a rapidly worsening spine disease which requires an urgent operation. The Irish health service stalls and delays and refuses to do anything. Eventually a businessman has to offer 100,000 euro for the operation to be carried out in London.

How come one of the richest countries on earth can't arrange a vital operation for a child who is in so much pain that even the heavy doses of painkillers might cause her death?

Her mother is in constant agonies watching her daughter suffer, yet the health authorities give excuse after excuse as to why she may have to wait 12 months for the 'urgent' operation.

Bernadette Kelleher, who lives in Cork, is so furious with the way her daughter Ann-Marie's scoliosis has been dealt with, she has spent six months lobbying her TD (member of parliament), health officials, doctors, the media and a major charity to get things moving.

The list of reasons for not performing the operation has grown and grown: lack of beds, lack of specialist staff, long waiting lists, the complexity of her problems. What all this really amounts to is management incompetence and lack of political will. There's certainly no shortage of money, the country is awash with it.

Now it looks as if the health service will pay for the operation in London. But don't hold your breath - next week there might be yet another U-turn. Why is it so difficult to give sick people the treatment they need, as soon as they need it?

All I can say is, I hope I don't succumb to any major disease that needs extensive medical treatment. The UK health service is not much better than the Irish one when it comes to treating you efficiently and promptly. They're just as ready with excuses and cop-outs and foot-dragging.

That might not matter so much if it's an insurance claim that's at issue, but health is crucial to our quality of life.

Photo: Woman with back pain. I couldn't get photos of Bernadette or Ann-Marie.