Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Roses
For the first time for a while, maybe for the first time ever, I get to visit Hampton Court when the rose gardens are in full swing. Very good they were too - although I think I actually prefer modern roses to the older roses they do there. The next door wilderness really was a wilderness, with the grass being allowed to grow while the bulbs die down. Some of the visitors, who presumably had not worked out that the wilderness was about bulbs and were expecting a garden rather than a wilderness, were confused. Then we were slightly surprised to find that the formal gardens on the east front were rather full of tents and privvies for some fest. or other but were still a (full price) chargeable item. Given the world heritage standing of the site, readers will be pleased to hear that the privvies - the same trailer mounted white cubicles you might have at some rustic country show - were surrounded by tasteful brown wattle hurdles so as not to offend the festgoers sensitive eyes.
Slightly more surprised and a little annoyed to find that while this world heritage site had plenty of time to put on some commercial fest., it did not appear to have time to manage its usually splendid herbaceous borders. That down the east front was mostly rather unkempt - to the point where if they do not get a move on they will lose it. Once the convolvulus gets a grip you have had it. Perhaps we ought to shop them to the heritage people. Have them stripped of at least one of their heritage stars.
Meanwhile, FIL is composing his memoirs against his upcoming 90th birthday, from which I offer one anecdote: "Once upon a time, when I was working at the Maudsley, I was asked by the 'Nursing Times' to review a book written by a well regarded member of the psychiatric staff. This I did, reporting that the book was excellent. However, at the end of the review, as is customary, I did a bit of nit-picking. This included picking up on a 1,000 fold error in a reported (therapeutic) dose of LSD. Shortly afterwards the aforementioned well regarded member of the psychiatric staff committed suicide. Naturally I felt a bit bad about it, but since then I have often had occasion to wonder whether it is the psychiatric staff in mental hospitals who are the ones who are really in need of care".
While we are in this vein, I take the occasion to remind readers that hysteria, that scourge of ladies of a certain age from around 1850 to 1950, has been abolished and the term is not to be used in any therapeutic context whatsoever. The word itself has been almost totally expunged from the current revision of the WHO classification of mental and behavioural disorders. It only appears as something which Eskimos get and which certain Kenyan tribesmen used to get. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Oddly, the relevant document is filed under substance abuse: http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/terminology/icd_10/en/index.html.
# posted by Jim @ 3:34 AM 
