Parental responsibility, self destruct buttons and Alzheimer's.

Do you ever think that life sometimes seems to be made up of little vignettes, like little windows into someone else's life, all endlessly different but somehow the same? It's another reason why I don't read the newspapers. All those sad or happy little stories about people you don't, can't ever know, seen through a kind of fuzzy haze. It's very different however when one of those very gently reaches out and gives you a little nudge. For a few moments, contact gets made and they are real. No longer just a story in a newspaper or a statistic in a Government chart.

Came across one of those yesterday. An oft repeated scenario. No money, no insurance, new born baby, single parent, father gone walkabout and not sending the cheques. It happens every day. Coming so soon after the responsibility rant the other day it got me thinking. I spend 3 months of the year stuck down here, arse glued to the ice, -60C, 250kph winds, snow, starving, just so I can raise my chick. Even when Fricka gets back, it's endless trips of 60km to the sea on legs not made for walking, 2 days in the water fishing and then another 60km to get back, just to give the chick a chance and please note, it's just a chance. No certainties down here! And what does he do.......walks out! I just don't understand it!

There's not much I can do from down here but I'm pushing a few buttons. It won't be much, bit like Havelock really I suppose. Still anything's better than nothing, don't you think?

What makes people seemingly hit the self destruct button? You know, they dig themselves into a hole so deep that there's no apparent way out. They know better but still they just keep on digging. Why?

They'll also make the hole wider just so they have more room to swing a pick and shovel, which of course just means more people fall in it. Seems strange to me. Not that I'm immune from my 'stupid moments' - witness the orca's tea party recently. I suppose I could have got myself killed and then where would little Fricka be? But that's more like an insane 'second', an impulse that you quickly draw back from, not some sustained programme to ruin everything.

It's just I've been racking what passes for my brain for a few days now trying to conjure up ways of pulling someone out of a very deep hole (not the first they've dug) and I just don't seem to be getting anywhere. My brain does back flips, corkscrews even the occasional triple axle but nothing is gelling at all. I just don't see any of it working. Oh well, I'm a little older (and wiser :) than Fricka so I'll not start despairing quite yet. After all, Sparky didn't, I got the flares, didn't I, little Fricka's doing fine and big Fricka came back almost intact. We need to keep hold of our tiny hopes! Come to think of it, maybe that's why people dig holes. Not enough tiny hopes to bar the door and keep the shovel in the shed where it belongs.

I found it quite strange today. Margaret Thatcher's daughter (MT - right wing British Prime Minister) admits her mother has Alzheimer's. Now we all knew that in the 80's when she declared war on Argentina over the Falklands but what I find odd is that the two leading politicans in the west during the eighties end up 'away with the fairies'. Might there be some connection between the 'barking' policies of the US and UK during the 80s and the long, slow, inexorable descent into Gagaland. Is this the first indication of 'early onset Alzheimer's' hitherto unrecorded?

And I am not insensible to the real pain caused to family, friends etc by the degeneration, merely a curious observer.

A very rambling blog today, must be the stress.