The question I keep asking myself.

This one is a bit of a two parter as questions go… I think it’s best to start with the first part and I suspect you may know what the second part will be by then…

I have asked myself this question constantly since March 2003 but it’s only over the past 7 years that it has become much more personal and more nuanced.

“Do bad people know they are bad? Do evil people know they are evil?”

I gave up smoking on the 19th of March 2003, it was the only thing I could do to stop the Iraq war. Isn’t that pathetic? I figured that it was the least I could do to deny the government of that tax money in case some of it went towards killing some poor sod in George W Bush’s quest to finish what his daddy started. I often wonder if Tony Blair knowns what he is, does he roll out of bed in the morning and think, “f%%k me! Did I kill a lot of people?” Clearly not, as his actions since are those of someone who regards themselves as a great statesperson rather than the war criminal that everyone outside of his close circle thinks him to be. That is part of question too I guess… is good subjective? Depending on who you speak to. Or is it that people specifically choose who they speak to so as to elicit the desired response? If that is the case though, do people know they are doing that? Do they hang around with those that will reinforce their conformation bias as a means to safeguard their self image? We are definitely into ‘inception’ territory here aren’t we?

I have had a lot of bad and evil done to me over the years and it is still happening. I could never have imagined that sham medical assessor Atos and the Work Capability Assessment could be unleashed on the sick and disabled and I am still amazed now about how few care or even remember the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people under the first wave of Tory austerity. The man in charge throughout this, Iain Duncan Smith, clearly thinks that he is a thoroughly decent human being, so much so that not only did he insist that protesters calling him ‘Tory Scum’ were arrested, charged and brought to trial but that they be tried again when the first trial found them innocent. The amusing upshot is that after the second trial upheld the defendants’ description of Smith as ‘Tory Scum’ we can all call him the same. Thanks Iain!

I’ve had evil upon evil done to me and everyone else for as long as I can remember, from Thatcher onwards, the Conservative party have torn this country to shreds. Do they know they are evil? Again, they band together with likeminded folks to justify their appalling actions. To the Tories, evil is contextual, they ‘other’ the rest of the population and tell themselves that they deserve their success and it had nothing to do with family money, school connections or some other systemic unfairness.

When I was being thrown out of my home I couldn’t believe just how many people would happily sign up to work for letting agents and do the bidding of greedy, vile, people. I would be threatened by court orders just because I didn’t want to vacate my home during covid in the coldest months because some potential buyer wanted to poke around in my home of 13 years that they only saw as a money making opportunity.

Most evil or wrong doing seems to be diluted in some way or another, the estate agents, the surveyors, the builders and trades people that make a living working for these people all make up little excuses in their heads to tell themselves that they are ok people. They can point a finger at someone else up the food chain and tell themselves that they are the bad guy, not them.

I wonder how that applies to the property developer that gutted the entire building around me over 6 or more months (I’ve blotted a lot of this out). He knew my mother had just died and he threw me out of my home because he saw he could make a lot more money if he jammed in a second bedroom; sure, there would be partition walls halfway across windows and rooms in perma-darkness but… money. he really liked money. He exposed me to constant noise and torment for all that time, invaded my space and poisoned my lungs when I should have been grieving for my loss in peace. If done out of sheer spite, that’s a prison sentence, if done as he did it, he’s an entrepreneur. Evil is indeed a matter of context.

I have had awful things done to me by those that know me for even less and those events hurt even more. I have been cheated on, lied to, had people try and intimidate me on the internet (hence no comments) and in the real world. Partly through this annoyingly autistic habit of speaking the truth and partly through the blowback of someone trying to cover their tracks whilst two-timing me. Was evil intended? I don’t think so, but it happened regardless. The concept of good and evil gets very muddied when the notion of virtue signalling comes into play. I was attacked by people who live in the most ostentatious house in their street, Where everyone around them scrapes by as renters in one floor as a flat, they own an entire building and yet woe betide anyone that questions their socialist credibility. Hypocrisy comes into much of this; homeowners gentrifying the area, championing renters rights after they have indirectly caused their plight in the first place, anti capitalists with awfully nice homes and cars and the fanciest of houses in the fanciest of areas, environmental campaigners who jump on a short hall flight at the first opportunity. It’s amazing just how quickly these people will turn on a disabled person who has suffered at the hands of the Tories, the Department of Work and Pensions and bad landlords when their left wing values are put into question.

The reason I put myself through hell to write a book about my experience of the housing crisis was to put a human face on it. Most evil is carried out through ‘othering’ as mentioned above. It’s easy to take someone’s money away if you tell yourself that they are lazy, it’s easy to move into an already crowded area and force the prices up if you tell yourself that you are improving the area, it’s easier to put up rents or force people out on the streets if you can tell yourself that you worked harder or they are lesser people. I wanted to show that you can be a tea total, drug free, hardworking, ‘decent’ human being and have your life utterly destroyed by a combination of bad luck and greed, there is not much in the way of those but the most dedicated of fascists or the most rabid of capitalists who could claim that I in any way brought my situation upon myself. Not that, in a fair and just society, those things I described should mean anything but, sadly, they do, everyone deserves a safe and warm home, they are just the basic building blocks of a sane and healthy society. I wanted to create something real, shockingly real, and very human to possibly nudge a few consciouses into some human beings that are clearly lacking them. From everything that I have learned about people, though, it is a bit of a fool’s hope but then I am not denying that I am a fool.

Imagine how I felt, though, when the person who had already aimed human hand grenades in mine and other peoples’ (I later discovered) path had now declared themselves to be an expert in the area of rental housing, despite owning their own home for longer than many of their fellow renters rights campaigners have been alive and being involved in numerous enterprises that have indirectly whacked up the housing and rental prices… Can you imagine how that felt?… Hang on! Can you though?

Much of what I have described is about empathy, could Tony Blair put himself in the position of an Iraqi child as smart bombs rained down upon Baghdad? Could the ‘healthcare professional’ that described me as perfectly fit for work despite being a shut in for the decade prior imagine the toll of a year of appeals had on my mental and physical health? (I have had ptsd from that ever since). Does Iain Duncan Smith ever imagine how many deaths he directly caused and feel the fear and desperation of all those that died? Did Margaret Thatcher ever stop to consider her destruction of British industry, the deaths of soldiers for a rain sodden island in the middle of nowhere or just what would happen when the council housing disappeared? Do the people who nailed my photo to lampposts still believe that I am a ‘bad man’ because someone else told them so and I dared to question the sense of what they were doing and the damage it could cause, did they imagine how it must feel to have that much hate and those sort of threats directed at you from unnamed sources? Do the estate agents who threatened me with court action even remember my name? Would the guy who profited from my being slung out of my home of fourteen years so he could make an extra few thousand pounds even recognise me if he passed me in the street? It’s amazing the mental gymnastics that some people go through just to make what they do seem okay and the juggling that they go through to justify their continued wrong doing.

Which brings me to the situation right now. Does the person who knew me and now is blocking my path to promote my book on the housing crisis locally know that they are causing harm to me and to the whole cause of improving the housing crisis and, if so, do they care? The truth is, I haven’t a clue. To be honest, I honestly don’t know who that person truly is and I doubt that I ever did. Their actions seem entirely insane to me and completely unfathomable.

This brings me, finally, to the second part of the question… Am I a good person?

Surely this one fact must have a massive effect on who and what I see as wrong or indeed evil.

In a way, I am the last person to even judge that as I cannot separate myself fully from my actions to judge. The fact that I don’t think I am is actually a sign that I’m probably better than I think but we are getting into the realms of circular logic here. I can be ratty sometimes, I swear a lot and I am less forgiving than I’d like to be, I could be better at recycling, I didn’t go to my own mother’s funeral and I would never go on a protest march, however the last two are down to autism but I still didn’t do them and they haunt me. There are things I know upset other people that I don’t feel in the slightest bit sorry about, like not going to weddings or their social gatherings (autism again) but the ones that really upset people are the drawings… I have done some horrendous drawings of people over the years (I can’t judge as to their technical competence or ‘badness’) but, to be frank, I’ve just held up a mirror to them or the situation so those that are offended always deserve it (although , to be fair, I would say that, wouldn’t I?)… and that is about it, I think. There are a lot of people that hate me though… although I have a good idea who instigated most of that and why.

Autistic people can put people’s backs up, there is no secret to that. It’s sometimes because of the uncanny valley thing of trying to act more ‘normal’ (whatever that is) and allistic people sensing that somethings is ‘off’ or the complete honesty thing upsetting someone or the sensory processing disorder meaning that we have massively misunderstood something or have been misunderstood ourselves. We are disabled in some very unique ways that are hard to comprehend and these are some of them and it causes us to often be disliked ‘just because’.

I don’t even want to write this bit as I can’t bear vanity or virtue signalling and I make a point of keeping much of what I do very private…. Do you know what? I’ve written and deleted this paragraph of good things that I’ve done a number of times and it nauseates me. I don’t keep a score of this stuff and it would be indelicate to list who I’ve helped and why. You are going to have to trust me on this… But that is part of the point isn’t it? I have found that if you look in the papers and online sites, the shittier a human being is, the more mentions they seem to have. You will not have heard of the nicest people I know and never will as they hate publicity.

We have hit an impasse then in that how can we actually know who is good and who is bad? If the bad think they are good and the good won’t admit that they are, then how can anyone judge anyone’s actions? And my answer to that is….

Have you had a good look at the state of the world recently?

You can buy my book about the housing crisis here.

Who put you in charge?

Some people are utterly amazing, I spent six months or so liaising with a team of palliative carers a few years back. They’d come in twice a day to give personal care to a friend I was keeping an eye on. Their work was backbreaking at times but they did everything with such good humour; the humour was vital. I’d make them a drink if they had time to knock it back before the next client, they knew I made good coffee and deeply respected what they did. There is an invisible army in Britain of underpaid, mostly, women that live out of cars and go from person to person caring for the sick and vulnerable. I was offered a job with them, funnily enough, but my life took a massive downslide and the opportunity passed. I’ve always known that humanity is as much bodily fluids as poetry and it’s foolish to pretend otherwise (but many do).

There is a lot of skill that comes with caring for the sick and dying, they knew more than the doctors in most cases as they saw it every day, the lady in charge was an SRN (state registered nurse) but it was only because I am very observant that I spotted that she was the boss, they were a unit and functioned so. They were part cleaner, part medic, part counsellor and part comedian and all of this with utter grace.

And so undervalued.

I’ve met so many others who treat such people like dirt, they give themselves airs and graces and waft through life as if they own the world; that it and the people in it are their playthings, little person shaped pieces on a board that they can pick up and move around for their own ends and amusement.

Other people would like you to think they are amazing, they give themselves big titles or act like they speak for everybody. I was doing some maths in my head this morning I’d counted about 15 people that I know of that, for no good reason I can see, have appointed themselves as pillars of the community. They weren’t born with extra brains (far from it in mostly) they have no visible gifts but for some unfathomable reason they act like they are in charge and their opinions matter more than everybody else’s.

For the sake of argument (and easy maths), let’s say there are a hundred people like that in this town who are (as they would describe it) bringing the community together. so one hundred out of 92,000 is… Roughly 0. 1% have appointed themselves as leaders, champions, heads of the community. Questions spring to mind; Who by? Why? What qualifications? What are the other 99.9% of people doing?

I have regretfully had a window into this world and watched these characters scurrying from cafe to cafe, getting this person to do this while that person does that and not actually doing anything themselves in-between, there might be loads of people involved in whatever but as they are the spokesperson, it’s them in the press, it’s them in the media and years later when you put their name in google, they are often the only one linked to the project. It’s a clever trick to say ‘community’ when what is really meant is ‘me! me! me!”

I think of those beautiful people up top and it angers me that while they are wiping bums, changing incontinence pants, emptying catheter bags and applying cream to bed sores there is a ridiculously visible minority that lift nothing heavier than a full cup of coffee and deal with nothing messier that a rare leaking ball point pen that will get paid twice as much and rewarded with attention.

I was wise to their game from the get go. Often, those that set up a ‘community’ project become the most important thing about it. You will find their name attached to some focal point or a statement that could have come from a whole team. All those little minions that they shined their light upon so briefly are left behind in obscurity as they inevitability move on to the next thing when the funding money runs out. They are like animals moving through the savanna , going from water hole to water hole, draining it back to dry mud and heading on, leaving a barren wasteland behind them.

I hate the insincerity of such people, they are all smiles and eye contact and they overuse your name because they did a course once where they learned how to manipulate people into getting what they want. They are the equivalent of the sets in an old western, painted fronts and bare boards and props for the parts that you aren’t supposed to see. That charm is linked to a switch, not a dial, and it flicks on when needed and off as quickly.

I have tried to remain anonymous for most of my life and I’ve met these types when they haven’t been aware of my skill set and they have looked right through me and every kind word is met with stoney silence and a glare; and then I’ve been introduced to them later, maybe a week, maybe a months, maybe a year as Chris Hoggins, “whatever” and you see the light bulb moment of what use I could be to their goal for attention and suddenly they are all charm and loveliness… but I never forget a name… or when someone blanks me.

Whether it’s turning your birthday party into a charity fund-raising event, using your victimhood as a moneymaking exercise, humiliating the homeless for your childhood ambition that you should have grown out of when you learnt the difference between right and wrong, claiming to be something you are not so that you can become the focus of a cause or running groups for the vulnerable while you and your immediate family are making their lives worse, a few people in my town or in any other town will always have an obscene need to be loved, admired and / or worshiped.

One thing that particularly fascinates me is how willing they are to scupper anyone else’s good works, often much better than their’s, for no other reason than it wasn’t their idea. They do not stand for the public good, just their own.

It’s safe to say that such people have some serious psychological issues that need to be addressed but like most of a narcissistic bent, they can never see that the problem that needs fixing most of all is them.

I care because you don’t.

I remember getting my first pay slip in 1989, looking at it and feeling sick.

Not because it was so little, but because it was so much. I felt so guilty for having so much but in a world with so much awfulness in it. Okay, so I was 19, Thatcher was still PM and I had to walk past cardboard City most days. (And Rachel Reeves talked today about Thatcherism in glowing terms) and I couldn’t cope with having anything when so many had nothing.

Knowing that I have autism is such a relief. Knowing that the reason I get so hurt by greed, by mendaciousness and corruption is because it is literally hard wired into my brain to do so explains so much about my relationship with the world. It has also caused me so much trouble.

A lot of people pretend to care and the most cynical of all (the virtue signallers ) make sure that they are visibly seen to care but only within a given value of caring.

I used to know a wonderful man by the name of Kwame Ofori (what a beautiful sounding name, a bit like Graham Green’s “cellar door”) back in the early nineties Kwame was eating an apple and spotted a “produce of South Africa” sticker on it. He then stuck his fingers down his throat and proceeded to vomit it back up again into a waste paper bin. You have to admire that! He definitely cared.

I have upset so many people and got into so much trouble in my life for actually doing the right thing. I have, unfortunately, found that there are few better ways to guarantee poverty and people crossing the road to avoid you than doing the right thing and being honest.

We all like to tell ourselves that we are good people, that if we were challenged, we would stand up and do the right thing. But we probably wouldn’t. If my life were a report card, it would have “could do better” on it. But at least I have the guts to admit that and at least I am trying… Very trying by all accounts.

As I said, most people want to look like a good person; but there is a narcissistic and even calculating proportion that go the extra mile to look it even when they cause trouble by doing so. So many people get in a position to do good and then don’t; Keir Starmer anyone?

I know so many people that are too afraid to call out one particular person, around here, for the loathsome, greedy, conceited, arrogant and thoroughly deluded human being that they are because they have weaponised their particular protected characteristic and they beat any of the nice, virtue signalling, middle class, networkers over the head with it if they even think about questioning any of their many terrible actions. I’ve seen them all rally round this person and attack people on their behalf, they aren’t stupid (at least I think they aren’t) but they all want to remain on the ‘right on’ gravy train until they retire. I’m reminded of that episode of the Twilight Zone, hmm! What’s it called? Oh Yes! “It’s a good life!” Where everyone dances around a spoiled child because he has the power to destroy with a thought. Just how bad does someone have to be to take a wonderful quality like equality and subvert it for their own greed? I think I’ve come the nearest to standing up to them of anyone I know and I’m sure it’s cost me lost work, possibly a lost relationship; thinking about it now. I know they even tanked a business partnership to wreck someone else’s career when someone crossed them, so why wouldn’t they have?

That’s the problem with autism, we actually can’t stop telling the truth and that is one of the things that actually makes what we have a registered disability. We can’t function in this world as it is as we get into all sorts of bother and yet we are punished for it. I wonder if I could use the same logic other grifters use to get what I want and wrap all those nice do-gooders around my little finger with the threat of public shaming? Probably not; and because I, like so many autistic people, am hardwired to do the right thing, none of us would think to even try.

It’s okay in our society to consign the likes of me to paraih status because, in the hierarchy of victimhood, we don’t matter. Which, in a rather perverse way and one worth acknowledging in the week where we are supposed to be actually celebrating the neurodiverse, this failure for anyone to bat an eyelid about ostracising the autistic makes us more subject to prejudice than anyone.

I am past the point of caring if I look good, I know the difference between right and wrong and refuse to only do right when I will be applauded or rewarded for doing so. Truth be told I feel sorry for all those I see that only wave the right placard at the right time and champion the cause that gets them the most kudos because under that micron thick veneer of good I think that they are all rotten to the core.

Crawl under a cow.

A few years ago now, I did a project with some vulnerable people. This has happened quite a lot over the years and on this particular occasion, there was going to be quite a bit of publicity. I walked in while the charity workers were doing the set up and there was a big photo of me…

I instantly asked them to take in down and any mention of me with it.

It was nothing to do with me, I just helped the people do the best they could, It was their work, their show. I was irrelevant. They were a little surprised but they were aware that I thought differently to most of the visiting artists (even I wasn’t aware how differently though as it was pre autism diagnosis)

I picked the wrong career basically. Or should I say, the wrong career picked me? Whatever! I don’t like publicity, I don’t like praise, I don’t like attention. I just try and do the right thing and that is that.

I have a motto; it’s slightly vulgar, “If you want a pat on the back, crawl under a cow.”

I cannot abide people that put more effort into seeming to do good than actually doing so. Particularly when I know the harm that they have already done in the past and the horrendous lies they are telling now.

Imagine, that you have experienced the most horrendous few years of your life and rather than put it behind you and bury it somewhere in your mind, you instead spend a year and a half trying to turn that into something positive that will help other people in a similar situation to help raise awareness and make a difference. Imagine just how traumatic that must have been and how much that must have taken out of someone with autism to relive nightmares and some of the worst moments of their life to ultimately help other people. Now imagine how it must feel to know that someone that has already demeaned and patronised vulnerable people has turned what you have experienced first hand into their latest hobby and source of virtue signalling?

What kind of person would do that? Is it virtue signalling? Some desperate need for approval? Or is it some sort of cynical career move?

I am reminded of the fake poor girl in Pulp’s Common People, the anger in that song. The barefaced, diabolical liberty of someone wrapping themselves in the cloak of the poverty of others for their own selfish reasons.

Does someone like that have any shame? Or is there just something missing in their psyche that allows them to behave in such a manner?

You never get a straight answer from people like that, they squirm and lie and obfuscate and even turn on the tears and pretend to be hurt, but it’s all just defence mechanisms. I doubt that beneath all that deceit there is even a person there. People like that don’t exist unless they are being validated by others and it doesn’t matter how horrible those people are. You can hope after hope that they will develop a conscience but it’s a waste of time. They cannot afford to take a good hard look at themselves as they would be horrified by what they see.

All that I can take from this bitter experience is the knowledge that I’m glad that I’m not like them. I’ve done everything for the right reasons and if that helps others great, and it it’s overshadowed by someone else’s vanity project, Its still out there in the world. At least I and a few other good souls will know the truth and it’s there for anyone else that wishes to join that number.

I would ask everyone out there to think twice before trying to feel good at the expense of the dignity of others and if you truly want to get a pat on the back for your, all too visible, good deeds…

Go crawl under a cow!

The Sparrow Wars and other stupidity.

In China, in the 1950’s, someone had a ‘brilliant’ idea. They were trying to find ways to stop food wastage and someone looked at a sparrow pecking away at some grain and thought… “It’s their fault!”

An edict was put out and posters were made and China went to war with the sparrows. Day after day, the people of China made a terrible noise. They banged pots and pans and waved rattles while those with catapults took aim at the started birds and, eventually, the sparrows were so exhausted from flying for so long that they all came crashing to the ground, dead.

The victory over the sparrows didn’t last long, whilst the experts were angrily watching sparrows stealing a few grains of rice, they failed to spot all the insects they ate too. Crops all over China were eaten and spoiled by waves of unchecked insect life that were once gobbled up by the sparrows.

An estimated thirty six million people died; all because some clever clogs had a bright idea.

I get so tired with the world and the people in it. So many people seem so keen to inflict their grand plans on others without thinking of the consequences of their actions They are buoyed up with enthusiasm and belief and are so focused on how they think it will work that they never stop to look for all the unintended consequences. I am sick to death of the same people popping up on social media doing the same crap with a slightly different hat on as if that will mean that somehow, this time, it will actually work.

Someone wise once told me that it takes someone extremely positive to sound as negative as I can because it comes from a place of expecting and wanting better.

Part of that better is getting certain people in every situation to just go, leave, do a jigsaw puzzle, learn to play an instrument, anything but be involved because they clearly aren’t cut out for it.

Another part is understanding motivation. There is a LOT of money to be made in the right circles from being perceived as a good person; funny little jobs that you couldn’t imagine existed, funding streams with a hefty ‘admin’ component, ancillary work from all the bits and bobs and handy funds for training that turns into paid jollies. If someone wants to do something useful, this country is crying out for social care workers but heating up soup and washing old ladies bums doesn’t get your photo in the local papers. Wave words on a stick and you’re a class hero, change the catheter bag for a dying man and… nothing.

Some people just get it all wrong and they keep getting it all wrong and they’ll get it wrong some more until they eventually pop their clogs and then some daft bugger will declare them a legend.

I’m just so very tired of all this.

Never have I ever

It’s taken 18 month to begin to recover from moving here. From the move and the two years of pure hell before that. No one should ever be that vulnerable and no one should be made so because where they live has been gentrified out of all recognition, partly by people with the gall to take local council and charity funding to make where you live more appealing to monied people being drawn into the town, forcing up the property prices out of the reach of the everyday folk. Like many half baked, well meaning, notions of community projects, no one really stopped to think through the consequences, mostly because the sort of monied, bored, idiots, who do these sort or things will never suffer the consequences of the inevitable blowback they create.

The two years I spent fighting homelessness were the most terrifying of my life. A life that had already included, child poverty, squalor, bullying, psychological abuse, heart problems, assaults and bereavement. To have your home torn out from under you and to have that procedure commence during a global pandemic when all the advice and support services are barely functioning, and doing all this with your mother dying in the middle of it and being diagnosed with autism at 50 years of age… There wasn’t one part of this that wasn’t nightmarish. I doubt if a week went by without being on the phone to mental health support lines at least twice and the only thing that stopped me killing myself was the knowledge that it would ease the life of the greedy bastard throwing me out of my home; I would not give him the satisfaction.

All the while, through the pain, the terror and misery, there wasn’t one single moment where I thought… “Do you know what? I really fancy a sing song!”

Yeah… that is a bit of a random statement isn’t it? Believe it or not there was, possibly still is, a homeless choir near where I live, the idea was that having a good old sing song would make you feel better, lift your mood and make all your problems go away. Guess what? They didn’t! Singing did not convince my new landlord to not throw me out and gut my home for profit. Singing did not get me the money for a deposit on a new rental. Singing did not get me a band A or even a B on the social housing list. Singing did not get me through the prejudicial letting agent checks designed to make it impossible for people on benefits to rent a property. Singing did none of the things needed for me to find a new home. The only thing that helped me in the end was having a couple of really good friends. One to find me a flat and the other to lend me the money.

I think back on the concept of that solution to the housing crisis and the sheer arrogance and delusion of those that instigated it. I remember the look of horror and disbelief on the faces of anyone I tried to explain the notion to, the sheer incomprehension that a group of people could get something so very wrong. I would like to think that there was a point that common human decency caught up with them and that they crawled under a rock and disappeared out of a delayed sense of shame. But there is a subset of humanity that doesn’t ever realise that their actions are beyond the pale and their arrogance and conviction that they know best drives them on no matter what. As long as they can find someone vulnerable and worse off than themselves they can alway get that endorphin rush by believing that, in their own head at least, they did good.

Every day I contemplate how fragile my world is and every day I wonder what turn of events could lose me the roof over my head. Whatever could go wrong, I know one simple fact, singing wont make it any better.

The Toddler and the Worm

When my nephew, Christian, was three years old, he came in from the garden, very upset, asking for a plaster (a band aid to my American readers). I relaxed when I saw no visible signs of injury and followed him outside as he held aloft the little sticky bandage. He led me to an earthworm, on the ground aside a small hole and his toy trowel. The worm had been split in two and just lay there with both ends still wriggling a little. My young nephew crouched down and proceeded to try and rejoin the two ends together in the middle, at which point I suggested that we put the worm back in the hole Christian had dug and backfill the soil so that, now everything was fixed, Mr wormy could get on with his day. It was one of the cutest things that I’ve ever seen, but also one of the saddest, particularly for the worm.

I saw a similar situation a while back as I listened to someone get upset about a situation they had helped to cause. Every point that they mentioned, I thought, “yes, but you caused that.” over and over again. I thought what they were trying to do to fix the situation was as tragic as my nephew and the bifurcated worm, but with a grown adult to blame, not even slightly cute. What made it even worse was what they were suggesting as a means to help. It was just as ill thought through as all the daft actions that they’d done in the past to lead them standing there, complaining about the horrendous mess that was causing untold suffering (that they’d partly caused). They stood there, without a hint of irony or recognition, diverting people away from experts who could help them to a bunch of well meaning but untrained amateurs who could easily ruin lives. What would they do then? I wondered. Go off on a tangent and try and ham-fistedly fix that too? At what point does it all stop?

I am incredibly careful with everything I do as I am keenly aware of my own limitations. I seek advice and get second and third opinions from people in that field of expertise before I let anything out in the world. I can understand that need to actually do something and how horrible it feels to be helpless but sometimes you have to admit that the best thing you can do is get out of the way and leave it to a professional before you make matters worse.