Saturday 24/10/09

Got through my first week of unemployment suprisingly well. There is never an excuse to be bored, and I must discipline myself to do all the things I wanted to do for a long time, like writing, now that I have tonnes of time on my hands. On my agenda today was a trip to Dublin Castle. I have long wanted to go in, but the weather was the main reason why this trip was aborted. Instead we just went to Newbridge and Athy. The clock goes back tonight, and we will soon all be plunged into winter meloncholy, but at least I have the van now so I can still get out and about. You can just imagine what it was like to be stuck in the countryside, at this often bleak time of year with no possibility of getting out.

Met a very interesting woman in Athy today, who I had originally met in Newbridge a few months ago . She told me she has had "Do Not Resussitate, tatooed on her chest, and was telling me about her living will. We are very much kindred spirits, but unfortunately I told her, her living will is going to be completely disregarded here, as it has no legal validity. She was telling me about another friend of her's with FA, who has had no choice but to move into a nursing home, as living on his own was no longer possible. So he has no choice but to sell his house and spend all his life savings on existing for a while longer. I don't want to go into the horribly embarassing,soul destroying minutiae of living in a home, but suffice it to say it is not pretty, and his future is not to be envied. These people, like so many countless others, are true heroes in my estimation. I hope that there will be continued support for a change in the la,w to allow people to have some choice over their own destinys. Not everyone would be content to live like a dog, but the fact remains that the law as it stands compels a lot of people to do so by taking away their choice.

I was watching the Late Late Show last night, well in all truth I only watched the first segment with the interview with the gay hurler Donal O'Cusack. I love the way he spoke up for himself, and was unapologetic about being gay in a very masculine world. Very often in these interviews the gay person, whether by his own freewill, or in answering pointed leading questions, is almost on the verge of tears or quite ashamed about his own orientation. I loved it when Donal said he was doing the exact same, (if not much less than) that other guys his age were doing, but only in his case it was with a man. There are very few asexual people in the world , so it seems to me that there is still a lot of fear driven guilt and nonsense associated with sexuality. As he said himself, there are so many bigger things to worry about than how you get off and who its with. Sexuality is obviously genetically determined, and nothing to do with choice, or being a learned behaviour.