These little words, what power...

I have a friend who thinks poetry is a complete waste of time. He even listens to music without lyrics as far as possible, because if it doesn't have some kind of message or "point" then he's not going to bother with it. As a complete word-phile, I disagree. I don't think it needs to have an explicit point for it to be useful or comforting or thought-provoking or beautiful. In fact, I am probably one of the very few people who is glad that we studied poetry for our English GCSEs. Without that anthology I probably would never have found Simon Armitage and bought his Book of Matches, and then I would never have found this on page 21.

æŋkɪˈlɘʊzɪŋ spɒndɪˈlaɪtɪs:
ankylosing meaning bond or join
and spondylitis meaning of the bone or spine.
That half explains the cracks and clicks,
the clockwork of my joints and discs,
the ratchet of my hips. I'm fossilizing -
every time I rest
I let the gristle knit, weave, mesh.

My dear, my skeleton will set like biscuit overnight,
like glass, like ice, and you can choose
to snap me back to life before first light,
or let me laze until
the shape I take becomes the shape I keep.

Don't leave me be. Don't let me sleep.       

©Simon Armitage 1993

It's not a poem with an obvious point, I guess, and I can see that it might look a little like self-pitying wallowing. It doesn't talk about the futility of capitalism or gender roles or voter apathy. But it is special to me. It reflects real worries and emotions, it tells you you're not alone when your imagination goes to town with Google image search, it speaks of the frightening uncertainty of the future. For me, the best bit, besides imagining what kind of biscuit I'd like my skeleton to be (mmmm, gingerbread, please) is the last line.

Don't leave me be. Don't let me sleep.

A desperate plea to his partner, I think, but also a reminder that for some people AS never goes away, and wakes you up in the dead of the night to leave you without sleep and in agony. (Ha! I knew there was a reason they gave me an A* for talking cowpat English Lit). The bottom line? Poetry is cool, man.



Simon Armitage says his AS is now in remission. Our GCSE class went to a Poetry Live! roadshow before we took our exams, where he explained that the visible signs of bone fusion had halted and he was no longer in pain*.

*Incidentally, taking a bunch of 16 year-olds to a poetry reading and letting them ask questions afterwards is a recipe for disaster. An example of an actual question to Carol Ann Duffy, a professor of poetry, 2009 Poet Laureate, acclaimed playwright etc etc, asked by my classmate: "Why is your voice so boring?"

Sharp scratch coming up...

Snow is falling (at least in some parts of the UK, if not actually in this little bit of it), the air is cold and DFS have started showing some really creepy furniture adverts featuring elves (for want of a better word). It can mean only one thing: it's winter flu season!

Despite not receiving any reminders, I managed to slot an appointment with the nurse into my hectic social calendar (ha) to get my free flu jab. Leaving the surgery feeling virtuous, although a little peaky, imagine my surprise to find this article on the BBC, bemoaning falling take-up of vaccines amongst both the over-65s and the younger generation. It's not that surprising, given that I didn't know I was in one of the at-risk groups (immunosuppressed - thanks to the anti-TNF drugs I take) until a consultant mentioned it in passing. Nevertheless, it seems that some people were getting quite worked up over the existence of a vaccine at all:

Why the desperation to vaccinate everyone? What is government so keen to get shoved into our bloodstreams? In past decades, people caught flu and got over it, without all these vaccinations; they weren't available. We have become too reliant on vaccines for everything, filling our bodies with the stuff. Yes I've had flu, it aint fun but it soon goes. Remember the outcry about swine flu vacs?

Unable to reply in person, here is a short list in defence of beaten-up influenza injections.

1. Vaccines are developing all the time in response to viruses evolving. The latest advances in medical innovation and technology are astounding. Why shouldn't we be using them to the best possible purposes?
2. Which leads me on to: we might as well say that plenty of people survive measles/Bubonic Plague/Yellow Fever/Malaria etc, so why bother vaccinating everyone? If we let nature take its course when we have medication available to save people's lives, then why bother with other diseases? Why bother treating cancer for that matter? In the village where my Dad grew up, a man's broken leg received no medical attention and he survived (albeit with a wonky shin), so why should bother with X-rays and bone-setting? etc etc
3. Besides, flu can be deadly. Every year a small percentage of the population die from various strains of influenza, mostly people with underlying health conditions, just like those people who are entitled to the flu vaccine. Last year, the death toll was 112.
4. And, because many people who receive the vaccine have compromised immune systems, we can act as disease amplifiers - we are more likely to get ill, and manifest more serious symptoms. The viruses are more likely to use us as breeding grounds, so god help those people with whom we come into contact...
5. Er, swine flu vacs? Not actually relevant to this discussion as they don't actually protect against "normal" flu, but the policy of giving them to at-risk groups makes sense, see 3 and 4 above.
6. Finally, on a personal note, my immunosuppressed state would not have been possible in "past decades" because anti-TNF is a recent drug. In those past decades I would have caught flu and got over it, but now I'm not sure: I've had some pretty nasty gastrointestinal bugs since starting my medication and my friends certainly knew about it (especially as one of them had to take me on an emergency taxi ride to the hospital).

 So there you have it. Admittedly I'm biased, but I've tried to be as objective as possible (barring number 5). And I was glad to see that this morning's free paper had a 1/4 page spread reminder about the injections.