How to win friends and influence people....

We have had friends staying with us this week,  from that there London-village. They were intrigued. How come, they asked, after only a short six months of living out in the middle of nowheres-ville, the locals are treating us like one of their own? How come the farmers wave hello each morning, the chef comes out of the pub kitchen for a chat and we have already been approved as a foster-family for next season's orphaned lambs? (Oh yes, it's true! Not only can lesbian and gay couples foster actual children, we can also foster orphaned lambs! How cool is that?)

How come a lesbian couple plus Badger-ish friend are so warmly accepted?  Is it Stray's minor celebrity status (she used to be on the tele-box y'know) or the fact that they get free counselling over a pint from me? Neither of these, of course. Our secret weapon is Badger.

 

Badger, for those of you who don't keep up, has Tourette syndrome.  

TS is a neurological disorder which gives rise to motor and verbal tics which can feel impossible to control, as Badger described in her Post of the Week winning post here. Perhaps as a result of this - or possibly it is entirely unrelated - Badger has the remarkable knack of just being herself with whomever she comes into contact with. 

Most of us will invest a significant amount of energy in monitoring or controlling our impulses and behaviours in order to make ourselves as acceptable as possible to others. Inevitably we end up projecting out our internal critic and responding to others accordingly. It all gets terribly messy and before we know it we are engaging with an imagined process rather than a genuine relationship.  Badger's world doesn't permit for this.

 

Although the received wisdom is that people with TS swear uncontrollably, the vast majority have physical and/or verbal tics which aren't remotely offensive. Badger, for sure, doesn't have the get-down-and-dirty rap version.

Badger has the Jane Austen remix.

Life with Badger is punctuated mostly with  Goodness Gracious Me!!'s, Lordy Lordy!!'s and Sweet Baby Jesus!!'s, all delivered in the deepest Surrey accent.  She is the secret love-child of Anne of Green Gables and Mr Darcy.

Which is how come Badger is our secret weapon. She delights people. She utterly disarms them until it is impossible not to warm to her. Badger is always just Badger, and I suspect others find this strangely liberating. 

Every home should have one. 

 

 

Get Well Soon Badger!

Little Badger is all wheezy and has spent the night in hospital having oxygen and things to help her breathe.  She is all the way down in Surrey so Ms M and I can't visit, and Frank is most disappointed not to be able to go and see her.

I'm quite glad she was down in the town though in some ways - it's a good hour and a bit round trip to get to A&E in an ambulance out here.  There is a helicopter during the day but at night you're in the back of a 4x4, though I suspect Ms M and I would have whisked Badger to the hospital much sooner if she had been here.  I certainly wouldn't have waited til her peak flow was only 70!  (For those who don't have Asthma, it's advisable to phone an ambulance for anything less than 50% of your top flow - in my case that's anything under 250).

We shall have to be sure to take better care of her when she returns.  It's a tricky thing, knowing how best to care for a Badger.  Mostly they care quite well for themselves, but from time to time they need a bit of looking after.  I spoke to the head nurse on Badger's ward this morning and asked if Badger had mentioned that she has tourettes and is Aspie ... she thought she hadn't, but was very understanding about why Badger might not have and also glad that I had told her.  

Mostly Badger's little ways and misunderstandings simply make us laugh and smile - a recent classic being that Badger thought Ms M had said she would prefer her chicken inbred ... she was most relieved to find that she was talking about a sandwich - but sometimes I do worry about the potential less sitcom-like consequences of little confusions. 

Badger isn't unique in needing a bit of looking after - I think most of us are similarly able to manage 90 - 95% of our lives perfectly well and a bit flumoxed by the other bit. And I'm sure I'm not unique in wondering where the line is between helping and interfering!

The book I'm working on a the moment deals quite a lot with this - a very western problem around the illusion of individualism. We are encouraged to be 'independent' and to mind our own business, being needy is an insult and self-containment is a goal. And yet it's all bollocks. Anyone who uses a supermarket is dependent upon millions of people involved in the processes that put those products on the shelves. 

The subject-object-verb nature of our own language shapes our world into one in which the individual person is central and we do things to each other.  The anthropologist I'm working with on the book is married to a wonderful woman who's first language is Japanese.  She speaks in generalities, often skipping a subject altogether.  It can occasionally be confusing (my friend often finds himself having to directly ask for the name of the person being discussed!) but it does lead to an entirely different understanding of the meaning of being.  Apparently there are some cultures in which there is literally no way of saying "The doctor does xyz to the patient", and instead they would say that the doctor and the sick person were working together to increase wellness.

So, I hope when Badger reads this she is feeling better and on the mend, we are looking forward to having her home safe!