You can read "Barclays Bank are bastards" here.

This is what happened next…

At 3.33pm, I got this email from my customer relationship manager.

Mr Omahaony, (that’s not how my name is spelled, so I guess her email was written in a hurry)

I have received a call today from the Local Business Customer Service team informing me of your query regarding the closure of your business account O’Mani & Co.

On initial investigation it is not obvious to me as to why the account has been closed.

Please be assured I am investigating this for you as a matter of urgency and I will get in contact as soon as I have more information.

Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Please be aware I am out of the office tomorrow on leave so you will not get another response from me until Monday 3rd November.

Many thanks

Paula Moore
Local Business Manager
Bath & Swindon South Team

At 4.06pm, I got this email

I’m waiting to see what will happen on Monday.   I suppose she tried to recall the first email and couldn’t.  I wonder why Barclays wanted to recall that email?

I still can’t believe Barclays closed the business account which I’ve had with them since setting up my business in 1998, without even telling me.

What a way to reject a customer.

Thanks to David Gurteen, I can pass this on….

 Gurteen Knowledge Quote of the Day - Friday October 31, 2008

When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it
advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however,
such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from
the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important
decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep
inner needs of our nature.
Sigmund Freud (1865 - 1939) Austrian Psychologist

You  may find this hard to believe.

Barclays UK closed my business bank account without telling me, warning me or consulting me.  My ‘personal relationship manager’ Paula Moore, according to Robert Bell in the Sunderland call centre, took the decision. 

This morning I rang up to see what had happened to the BACS transfer that was made to my account yesterday.  I wanted to deal with that hard-earned money quickly.  I was shocked, flabbergasted, agog when Robert told me the account no longer existed.

"What will happen to the BACS transfer?"

"Oh, it’ll either be sent back or go into a dormant account at Barclays."

"Sorry I need to be sure exactly what will happen.  I can wait for an explanation of why you closed my account without telling me, but I can’t wait uncertain about what’ll happen to the money. "

"I’ll go ask my manager….   He says we don’t know for sure."

"Right.  Please escalate this.  Move this to a level that knows the answer, please."

"Oh we can’t do that."

"I know you and your manager don’t know the answer, but don’t tell me you can’t escalate this to someone who knows how Barclays’ systems  work.  Don’t make me escalate it."

"I’ll go talk to my manager….. (four minutes, 45 seconds later)  He says the person who made the BACS transfer can trace the money, can put a trace on it."

"And it won’t be put in a holding account?"

(Pause) "I’m afraid I can’t say that."

"OK, can you give me the email address of my personal relationship manager, please. I’d like to copy her on an email I’ve written about this while we’ve been on the phone."

"Sorry, that’s not on the system.  I can’t give you that."

"OK, please ask her to email me (giving my address), and failing that, if it’s against bank policy or her policy, please ask her to phone my office and leave an explanation on my voicemail.  Failing that please ask her to ring me on my mobile."

"No problem."

"I’m disgusted at what’s happened."

"I know.  I don’t understand it myself.  I’m sorry for this trouble."

"I’ll probably tell 1000 people about this in the next month.  That’s my business, improving customer service.  Sorry you  bore the brunt of my anger.  I hope I wasn’t rude to you.  All the best.  By the way can I have your name and the name of your manager?"

"My manager is Arshad, but I don’t know his surname."

"That’s good enough.  Thanks very much."

I’ll keep you all posted on what happens next.

PS: I’m not turning into another Damian Mulley, who lost his bag off an airline.  I think there’s a Damian inside me already.

Every day I miss her:  BlankPaige.

Nothing would cheer me like hearing from her again.

Every week I miss her: Sinead Gleeson.

I still haven’t replaced her and my education is suffering.

Know anyone who’d like this one?  It’s 8 foot long, comfortable, very good condition…  What will you bid?

No, I’m not setting up the Cork branch of Ebay, unless …

ps:  we’re not going back to live in the UK.  We’ve made our bed and we’re going to lie in it.

Before setting off for my counselling session in Cobh yesterday, I drafted this to discuss with Lisa:

To keep well I will…

Keep on writing in my daily notebook, writing for at least 20 minutes per day

Keep up the gardening - do at least a little each week

Keep on going to the gym - at least 2 times per week

Start keeping on top of the ironing - at least iron all my own shirts, at least once a week

Cook at least one proper meal every week

Get ahead and stay ahead of my paid writing work

Think every day about how to maintain balance in my life

Reply to texts, emails, and letters without delay

Keep on listening to Lyric FM

Keep on improving my office layout

Do at least one planned nice thing for the Wiffe each week.

There may be other worthwhile actions, but I need to keep the number down to an amount I can remember, without having to look at the list on paper to recall my preferences. 

I would love to know what you do to keep yourself well .  Or do you take wellness for granted, like I used to do once upon a time?

I was greatly taken aback when Stephen Bean the lecturer, said this blog was the first time a student had blogged about their university course in UCC. 

I’d assumed it had been done many times.

You can find earlier pieces about the evening class here  and here too…

Also, it was odd to be outed as a blogger in front of the class, none of whom I’d yet spoken to. I wondered what the others were thinking?  How many had heard of blogs before? Whether any of them might be bloggers about other topics?  I wondered if any of the UCC lecturers were bloggers?  Pretty quickly I realised that Stephen was doing me a favour by bringing the existence of the blog out into  the open.  If people discovered I was doing it on the quiet, they might feel in  some way offended.  There’s naught so strange as folks…

It looks as if I’m going to be the slowest learner of PhotoShop, just as I was the slowest learner of touch typing the ‘Sight & Sound’ typing class I did in the 1970s.  I emerged with a typing speed of 7 words a minute.  Our second hour in the lab is hard for me because I don’t pay full attention to what’s being said.  I allow my mind to wander over the implications, the possible, half-understood, barely intuited implications.  So I’m always catching up with the pace of the software induction.  The  machines crashed a few times and I found the drawings on the whiteboard (of the screen) to be confusing.  Why wasn’t the computer screen being projected and sections brought to our attention with one of those lazar-type pointers, I wondered…

I have PhotoShop on my laptop at home and I could be learning it at home.  Garry lent me ‘PhotoShop in easy steps’ - one of those ‘Dummy’ books - but I am too interested in taking photographs to attend to working on them.  I think I better challenge that habit. (But, I’m the same with my poetry: I love writing too much, when I might be better off doing the hard work of editing.)

Looks like habits fly in clusters, in formation…

The second lecture was revolutionary.

It took me completely by surprise because it was nearly all about the eye: rods and cones, blindspots too.. We did the Ishihara (?) colourblindness test.  The theme of the session was that the eye is not a very effective instrument:

(1) only a small area of what we see is in full colour and focus.

(2) lots of our rods are switched off in day light (If all were active, things would be 3,000 times brighter - so it’s good they’re off)

(3) we are colourblind at night, the rods come into their own and are great at detecting motion. (Lots of stuff about how all this has evolved to help the species survive.)

(4) the cones look after the colour, and 80% of them detect red (10% green & 10% blue): and all that wonderful colour that we see is composed of three basic colours - red, blue & green.  I couldn’t understand what magenta was, nor cyan nor yellow (I’ve never learned my colours properly and wish I’d gone to more than one watercolour painting class.)

The real revolution was the difference between the  camera and the eye.  If you take photos using the auto setting on my camera, everything is in focus.  The eye doesn’t see all that in focus.  So the photograph will be very different from the memory - unless you do something to  make the camera work like the eye.

I think this is all about depth of field, focus, blur, contrast…

Stephen Bean said that good photographers take photographs that measure up to what they see.  They get photographs of what they have seen.  So, by implication, I need to learn how to manipulate the camera better.

While he was saying that I was saying to myself: ah, I need to learn what the camera sees, so as to let the camera do its work better.  I felt my emphasis was different from Stephen’s.  I has so loved taking photos from my hip: I had so loved the unexpected angles and rhythm of the camera dealing with motion - motion in my shaking & motion in the subject…

Like this…

Am I really looking for a more pleasing image? I am, provided that ‘pleasing’ includes the experience of being challenged by results. For me the process is much more important than the end result, and I expect to stay in that mindset for a long time yet.  I may be years before I’m pleased with the result; meanwhile, I intend to be very pleased with the process of learning by mistaking.

Like this…

I almost forgot to record the gem that good photographers never trust their eyes: they take a Polaroid first to see what the camera can see. But it’ll be a while before I get one of those into play.

Next week:

we’ll cover how blur has been treated by painters and photographers.  I’ve got lots of blurry shot recently, and I’m getting to like blurry images.

Also we’re going to cover how you can look at a scene and tell whether it’ll make a good black & white image.  I’m really looking forward to that because I have a project starting which will require me to decide which of my photos would work best in black and white. 

This one of my favourites from this week.  It’s a shop display poster, taken on Canon PowerShot A510, 3.2 mega pixels, and I can’t remember which camera settings I used , but it was taken from the hip.

I’m sorry I’ve never done darkroom work, never been in there with the chemicals, never been there for the miracle of the appearing image as it emerges on to the paper.  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I did pick up a little from Jan’s photographic course in London in the 1980s.  She learned and I piggybacked on her learning.  I suppose that’s my main learning style: get in touch with someone who is a good learner and suck up their growth, so that I somehow make it mine.  An indirect learner.  Anyway learning from direct experience takes too long: there is too much to learn.

Publications to buy: 

(1)  Royal Photographic Society Magazine - see "www.rps.org" 

(2) Practical Photography.

The most important thing to think about when buying a camera is the lens.

I haven’t plumbed half the depth of the camera I have: it’s premature to buy anything new.  Resist the temptation.  Resist resist…

I did go in search of a monopod but they didn’t have one in stock, so I get to take blurry images in low light.

Looks like I’ll miss the next class, unless Mary Ann comes back from sick to mind Grace.  Stephen said he’d email me the assignment…

A gem of a book:

Finally, my good friend Garry, who forgotten more than I’ve yet learned about photography, has loaned me a gem: ‘Shots from the hip’ by Alias Johnny Stiletto (1992):

"Shooting from the hip you’ll get a far better perspective and there’s far less chance of being seen taking the shot.  Action carries on normally. Nothing produces a greater change in behaviour than the sight of a camera or the thought that you’re about to be photographed by a total stranger…

"Break the contact between camera and eye and you’ll take more interesting shots.  Let the world happen in front of you.  Watch. Look. Point the camera and press the button…"

ps:  A link to one of my favourite Irish photographers, Claire Wilson.  You can find her advice under ‘Tutorials and reviews’ - if you scroll down the right hand side.

Michael Reeves, my good friend whom I was with on Saturday, gave me a gift:

a little book of sayings by Thomas Hardy.

I found this one….

"There is a size at which dignity begins; further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins.  That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe."

(from Two on a Tower)

I was attracted to the quote because it made me think that Hardy understood how enormous the experience of depression is.

Recently I celebrated the local hurling team’s victory in the Cork County hurling competition.  First time since 1957 that they won the trophy.

Here are more photographs I took while imagining myself a documentary photographer.

There was great local community support…

More photos of the winning team on stage in the local GAA grounds…

and great fun celebrating with red eyes …

Learning to use the Canon PowerShot A510…

and another…

Today there was a man fishing off the slip ….

who got lucky…

and proud…

 Shows how little I know about fishing: thought he had no chance.

I’ve  booked to see 

next week… at the Cork Arts Theatre

at the hour of four oclock…

The city is in the middle of the Jazz Festival Week. 

Preparing for you know what.

Anyone care to guess who this is?

A man in need of a nose job…

Gurteen Knowledge Quote of the Day - Friday October 24, 2008

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do
it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

*** Howard Thurman (1900-1981) minister, educator, civil rights leader ***

Thank you David.  You provide a good service

I can’t generalise about psychiatrists. 

I’ve met four in my lifetime: one in UK, three in Cork during my recent bout of depression That lasted over a year. (Regular readers will know I’ve made a good recovery recently.)

But why did my psychiatrist have a poker up his arse when I told him I’d got better?  I went in to see him full of celebration.  Yes, there was a bit of nervousness.  I put that down to the fact that the waiting room of the hospital, the out-patient prefab, was a place I’d always experienced dreadful feelings.  The space had  the patina of trauma. I could feel that friesance coexisting with my upbeat mood.  I was expecting the psychiatrist to be really pleased.  I thought he’d say his confidence that I’d recover had been vindicated.  I expected he’d relax in my company.

What a bloody surprise I got.

While waiting to be called I wrote in my notebook.  I’d never done that before in that waiting room; I’d usually sat stiff with pain and tight with anxiety.

"With a cup of water on one side, and my bag on the other, I feel a little tense: I’m back where I sat so many times, going like a lamb to the slaughter. I used to feel pathetic, so pathetic, so incapable of speaking out how I was: it was too dreadful for my mouth to get round the words, too terrible for me to entertain the thoughts that could carry the feelings I was immersed in.  This is the place I have never felt well. Always miserable, always feeble, always alone.  Going through the motions of ’seeing my psychiatrist’. I’ve never treated the psychiatrist as someone who could help me get better, recover.

I suppose the first time I saw Dr D. was a bit different: I wanted him to take  me on, wanted a good listening to… And that I got - must have been nearly an hour with him. And there was the first time of all: with Dr M. he listened to me. He assured me they were going to pull out all the stops for me.  They would hit this depression hard, full-on treatment. ‘Don’t worry, we’re on your case.’ It was music to me.  I was getting attention.  I wanted to believe him. So I had two positive experiences to kick off my psychiatric treatment in Cork  ‘You are in good hands now.’

Oh how disappointing it was to start coming back, reporting on progress: I came to feel they were simply checking I was still alive, still taking the medicine, and even though the psychiatrist did change, and increase, my medication throughout the time here, I always felt I was going through the motions. I was a lost cause, and they had over-promised.  I reduced the treatment to one common denominator: checking you aren’t suicidal or still suicidal, ensuring you aren’t planning to kill yourself.  The medicine never felt it was working.  Never once - except for one day when I felt dopey and maybe a bit sedated.

The medicine worked: it had some influence on me. It helped me sleep, get off to sleep …"

That’s as far as I got when I was called in to see Dr. M.

 My psychiatrist was polite and welcoming…

not effusively welcoming but warm enough to come across as a man who could jump any way.  There was no sign that word had reached him that I was recovering or recovered. He began looking down at the notes in the medical record.  No eye contact, while he studied and began saying ‘I see I saw you in September and we kept your medication the same.  I think we can keep that going and see how you get on…’  I can’t remember the exact words but I remember the perception I had: he’s going on as if nothing’s happened.  He doesn’t know, and he’s not going to find out unless I interrupt him and tell him.  He’s not gathering any info from me.  He’s doing his own thing.  What has he got written down in front of him?

"Actually doctor there’s something I have to tell you, something important.  Can you  tell me first what did you write down last time I saw you?"

He looked down as if he was going to read from the medical notes. ‘We increased your dose of Z. and how’s that been going?’

Why wasn’t he reading back to me his observations (or summary) of how I was feeling when I last saw him?  I so wanted to hear him read that I was still in the grip of a terrible depression.  I wanted to hear that so I could report on how I was feeling now.  I wanted us to share the huge difference - and celebrate.

I gave up on the past, and went straight into my news.  I told him I’ve begun recovering from depression seven weeks and three days ago (and 2.5 hours).  Adding the info about how the recovery had gathered strength, how I was now back to being as well as I’d ever been.  And all the while he kept quiet, dead-pan, broken and spasmodic eye-contact.  He heard  me out.  Then he said something like ‘Well I think we should keep an eye on how things go.’

I told him I’d already cut down my night medication in half, because I wanted to be more alert in the morning and more able to go to Grace when she woke in the night.  His response was ‘needs must.‘ He agreed it was OK for me to break a tablet in half. He’d write to my GP to that effect. He suggested we meet again in ten weeks, and I should keep on taking what’s working.  I thanked him and left.

I’d imagined us shaking hands warmly. 

I’d imagined us agreeing to meet again, but talking about that as if the worst was over, and agreeing that the number one priority now was to prepare a clear plan for what I’d do to prevent the return of depression.  And what I’d do if I felt a bit wobbly and at risk of going down again. (That’s what I’m discussing with my counsellor whom I see every two weeks.)

Why the yawning chasm between me and ‘my’ psychiatrist?

The most positive spin I can put on it is that he was deliberately being different for me: he was giving me the experience of dealing with someone who wasn’t swept away in a tide of positive emotion, someone dispassionate, someone who knew (and acted out) the difference between the initial euphoria of recovery and the long haul. This knowledge contains the knowledge that my chance of escaping another bout of depression are a lot lower than the average person who has never had a bout. He was confronting me with reality, cold and all as it is.

He was doing me a favour by acting dumb, by providing me with a sounding board, against which I could measure my difference: neutrality meets enthusiasm.  It wasn’t that he was tired, half-awake, thick, stuck in his pre-selected process, unresponsive to the patient.

He’s a kind man, more precisely a man who intends to be kind - of that I feel sure.  It’ll be good for me to think of how subtle and insightful his approach was.  How good it was to feel myself challenged by his behaviour, what a useful bit of coaching I’d been offered.

But I think it’s easy to get the wrong end of the stick, isn’t it…

The best bedtime read I’ve ever started…

I’ve transported this book with me from house to house without ever reading it - as if its presence could do me good.  Until a few weeks ago.

It has five dimensions:

It’s about motorcycle maintenance

It’s about  journeying across North America

It’s about the difference between two thinking cultures - the rational, logistical, scientific and the emotional, artistic, intuitive…

It’s about living in the hear and now.

It’s persuaded me that reading slowly is the new black. I have a long way to go… hopefully

What’s you favourite bedtime read?

I hope the subject will forgive me…

I’ve had a dream,

an idea for a book

bringing together a team

working as one, taking a look

at how each can contribute

to the wellbeing of the other.

I’ve had a dream.

We might write resolute

prose you can enjoy and learn

prose you can employ and earn

respect and reward

reward and respect

for the skill and the will

of the whole team.

I mean to provide 

a guide for us all

a heart-felt book

to hold the hand

of all who live

in the cause of health

and the wealth of living

within the skin

that’s been dealt to our hand

that’s been given us

to have and to hold

the untold blessings

with which we strive

to be the best we may be

for self and others

especially

our nearest and dearest

self,

our nearest and dearest other.

I’ve had this dream

that the cream will rise

and we will see together

and weather all storms

coming through, seeing beyond

the present to the blessed land

where all will flourish

a little more,

a store…

ps: I took my medication today.

I couldn’t resist taking and showing this…

I wish my knee hadn’t got in…

0717

I’m with a very tearful Grace who’s eating a banana.

"Daddy, feed me… I’m just eating the nana…

"The wolf ate all my dream

"So we don’t like monsters

"I like nuts."

Me: "And what else happened?  What else?"

"There’s nothing else. Nothing else happened.

"And then the animals ran out of my dream.

"And I run away faster."

Me: "You ran away faster … and then?"

Kiss, kiss from me to her.

"Dad will you feed me"

I give her a bit.

"Actualy I can feed  myself.

"Dad I want to sit on your lap."

She rocks her head from side to side. Spoons muesli into her mouth.  She slips out of position, wriggling her bottom.  Laughs, smiles… She spoons more in.

Mother/Wiffe comes down to breakfast.

Chapter 1 is here.

The Applied Digital Photography short course kicked off on Thursday evening. Stephen Bean has a awesome pedigree: seven of his family are film makers; he’s been a battlefield photographer and I forget the rest…  He reminded me of Don McCullin….. whose work I admire.

A one hour lecture, with questions allowed.  A one hour session in the lab. Three assignments during the ten weeks.  We can use the lab anytime, and it’s open up to about 11pm.  Three quarters of the participants are women.

Stephen spoke of what it’s like to take photos without looking through the lens and with the display panel turned off.  He said we would learn how liberating this can be.  He also said we’d become worse photographers before we got better. When he said this, I remembered the model the learning runs from "unconscious incompetence" through "conscious incompetence", into "conscious competence" on to "unconscious competence"…   I felt I was in the company of someone who understands learning: he’s not simply a lecturer.

So I couldn’t wait to start taking photographs without seeing what the camera could see.  I was itching to go.  "Just do it" omani began and this is what happened….

 and

even worse…

and …

This is the best one I got …

But, I’ve had so much fun.

What have I learned so far?

I’ve learnt that my first instinct is to tilt the camera at too sharp an angle.  I’m growing in confidence that I’ll soon be able to shoot what I want to aim at.  I remember when the light meter packed up in my OM1, I learned to change aperture and speed without a light meter.  I learned a lot about what light looked like, even though I have a long way to go yet…

I’ve also learned about a method which will surely help me take edgy photographs.

PS:  Photoshop - that’s what we’ll learn in the lab and I’ll have more to say about that after next week’s lesson.  Meanwhile, if you have any advice for me, I’m sucking it all up these days.