From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

I’m not sure what this means yet… Perhaps someone could interpret it for me…?

The idea of BarCamp is crazy.  A self proclaimed un-conference.  A Cork gathering of people who’re really fed up with the conventional process that dominates conference practice.

This lot are going to have a day when anything goes.  Minimal structure.  Free flow of ideas and fun if you ask me.

It’s fitting it should be in the Cork International Airport Hotel (or is that the Cork Airport International Hotel?).  That’s a hotel with zappy design - the hotel that hosted Irish Blog Awards 2009 - the Damian Mulley inspired (and he also did heaps of the graft behind it).

I have to prepare for it.  I’m presenting a session.  Offering a session.  You might say selling a session.

I’ll be given a starting time.  A space.  It’ll be up to what happens next whether anyone will come or stay.  People might come, look in & move off to something that interests them more.  It may be a bit like Hyde Park Corner, soapbox stuff.

I blame @patphelan.  He’s the one who hooked me on this, get me to take a look at BarcampIII.  As soon as I looked at the website and some of the blog comments there, I got this mad idea to present something.

A more judicious person would have gone this year, sussed it out and maybe delivered a session in 2010.  Only there may never be a 2010.  For all we know no one may have a 2010.  I didn’t want to assume that I could do it next year.

Do it now.  It screamed at me.  Thought cried out from the depths of experience, and I remembered all those horrendous bouts of severe depression which stopped me in the past.

I got mad enough to put up a session called

"Mental Health : madness and the entrepreneurial spirit".

It may be the only topic on which I’m qualified to speak. 

My new business partnership with Gwenda Hughes of Dragon Marketing has started.

It’s absorbed loads of energy & time.  We [DragonMarketing&CopywritingServicesInternational] decided to go in for CorkMeet2009 - a business opportunity to meet new customers, partners and friends.

I never realised there was so much involved in setting up a new business properly - including dropping that mad name.

The implications for this omaniblog are clear: I must do all my work related writing on the blog of the new website.  It needs content.  And there’ll probably be a monthly business newsletter coming out of there too. (Got to earn more money… Minister Lenihan and sidekick Cowen are ready to make that even more necessary.)

So will "From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace" be for all my non-work stuff?

No. I don’t find the dichotomy between work and non-work helpful.  I work hard at having fun, being a dad, a husband, a good friend, a worthwhile companion,a coffee drinker & being angry about the state of the Irish body politic.

It’s all work to me.

So there’ll always be a fuzzy boundary with cross-over.  

I might as well accept that.  I spent long enough, years ago, organising my life into silos…  Trying to keep everything in separate compartments did me no good (but it has given me a fund of funny stories about how ridiculous the mind can be if you let it get the better of you.)

This blog will be mainly about mental health, being a father, the practice of focusing & continuing interest in food, writing poetry…

Of course, I’d love you to take a look at the new business website (MarketingWriteNow.com), but I won’t be using this place to flog it. 

All I’ll be hoping is that you leave a comment there on the blog and say what your first impression is. 

Harrods World

October winds unloose the trees
around the store we wheel bags
to the gentleman Jeeves who minds…

Escalate to the Fourth Floor,
settle in to croissants from Food Hall.
Tis Mohamad in Ramses court you know…

Flowing strands of auburn hair,
eyes agog at pussy cat’s dressing room
- how could she begrudge her pet? 

Chocolates here in silver coats,
diamonds cast to whet the purse,
fingers deep in pocket now…

Pagliacci  thrown into the aire,
a pizza here, mozzarella there
- I fancy the lady with the salt from Majorca.

That ice cream is much too heavy
for a man of my age
- let’s eat a photograph instead.

An elephant of glass,
a well-fired Ghandi
committed to memory.

We better leave, go get fresh air,
the smell of taste, the touch of waste.
The child in blue winked at you.

Friday 30 October 2009 
dedicated as gift to Tim Nelligan

It’s easy to write about London.  Tough to write about Harrods.

Conspicuous wealth is easy to condemn.  The craft, humour & manners I found in Harrods was remarkable - it’s worth it to have a go presenting it.

The first photograph I took in the pet accessories section

My first ever visit to any pet accessories department

I never imagined such a business

The book I got signed by the man who cooked the food

I don’t yet have a dog but, when I have one, I’ll remember this. 

This is the latest in ferret beds.  I know it’s advertised as a dog bed
but my friend the ferret lady & her friend the ferret man will see how useful it could be 

There is a new comment on the post "More on Shane Clancy and Dr Michael Corry". 
http://seroxatsecrets.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/more-on-shane-clancy-and-dr-michael-corry/

Author: anon
Comment:
http://wellbeingfoundation.com/news1.html

Psych boss gears up to persecute Michael Corry

A ’senior psychiatrist’, UCC Professor Timothy ‘Ted’ Dinan, has laid a complaint against Dr Michael Corry at the Medical Council. 

    In a letter to the Council’s Fitness to Practice Committee, Dinan said Dr Corry had made comments about a tragedy "without regard for the distress" caused to the families; had "made allegations regarding the competence" of a colleague [by suggesting a colleague treated a patient that rendered him homicidal and suicidal]; "made statements regarding a diagnosis without ever seeing the patient"; and made "statements regarding the pharmacology of antidepressants".
    The professor has made previous attempts to chill debate on the mental health services and on the dangers, efficacy or otherwise of the treatments his profession holds dear, in particular the use of SSRIs and SNRIs to treat depression and other complaints. 

    The professor has close relations with several of the makers of the drugs he espouses and defends, and whose critics he is trying to silence. A statement of disclosure related to a course he has taught says: "Dr Dinan has received honoraria [cash payments] from and is a member of the speakers board and advisory board for Lilly, Pfizer, Lundbeck, and Organon." (Reference here)

    The professor’s Cork Neuroscience Group is funded by, among others, the Wellcome Trust (which funds biomedical research) and GlaxoSmithKline, which itself resulted from two mergers. The first merger saw Burroughs Wellcome, founder of the Wellcome Trust, join with Glaxo plc, to form GlaxoWellcome. This later fused with SmithKline Beecham to create GSK, second largest drug company in the world and manufacturer of Seroxat/Paxil.
    He speaks at meetings which advocate the view that depression is underdiagnosed in Ireland by as much as 75% and that SSRIs are an essential treatment. For an example, see here
    Signing himself as Timothy Dinan, MD, PhD, FRCPsych, FRCPI, Professor of Psychiatry, University College Cork, the academic was one of six professors of psychiatry who penned a letter published in the Irish Times on 16 November 2006 demanding the resignation of the then Minister for Mental Health, Tim O’Malley, for two reasons. 
    One, O’Malley had dared to suggest that many everyday difficulties of life were being mis-labeled as ‘clinical depression’. Secondly, he had dared to suggest, with good reason, that the alleged benefits of medications used to treat mental illness cannot be proven scientifically in the way that other medications can. Both suggestions are cardinal sins for those who rule the world of psychiatry, and whose word is law among the students they teach. 
    Interestingly, the ’six professors letter’ drew a ferocious wave of disagreement, from former patients, from psychiatrists and GPs, from nurses, and from senior sociologists who have been studying the the use of psychiatric medications and such ‘therapies’ as electro-shock for many years. 
    Among the ’senior psychiatrists’ who disagreed with the six ruling professors was a former professor, perhaps the most distinguished professor of psychiatry this country has produced, Professor Emeritus Dr Ivor Browne.
    Clearly, the response to that intervention has not blunted the desire of at least one of their number to chill debate and silence critics of institutional psychiatry and bad medicine.
    In this latest attempt, the most chilling part of the complaint is that Corry made "statements regarding the pharmacology of antidepressants". If such a complaint was upheld as valid, neither Dr Corry nor any other doctor registered with the Irish Medical Council could ever again ‘make a statement’ on the action of a drug such as Seroxat or Lexapro — or, by extension, of any drug. 
    For the full report by the Sunday Tribune on the complaint against Michael Corry, see the right-hand column or go here
    For the debate stirred up by Minister O’Malley’s remarks in 2006, see here

http://wellbeingfoundation.com/debate.html

See all comments on this post here:
http://seroxatsecrets.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/more-on-shane-clancy-and-dr-michael-corry/#comments

After writing for other people’s websites, I finally get my own.

It’s a partnership.  "Dragon Marketing" & "omani & co" [lowercase does not mean junior partner) have clubbed together to save our clients money.

Why have two websites when one will do…

Next week all will be revealed.  All I can say is that we’re not selling dragons from Oman. 

There will be more about this on my business blog (writingforbusinessfromcork).