Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Paint
Finishing off breakfast prior to starting painting the box room. Lovely sunny day; might drag Son off to the B'ham nature centre this afternoon to visit the ravens and the otters while the paint dries. I went to the Natural History Museum on Sunday but was rather too high (having not slept much the night before) and the surrounding noise of children and the fact I couldn't touch anything drove me rather batty, so I didn't stay long.
Always worth going though, if only to remind oneself of how utterly huge blue whales are and to nose around the interesting fossil and stuffed remains. Found a dire wolf, which was rather smaller than the grey variety but did have impressive jaws, and a rather nice stuffed wombat. And a giant lemur which was larger than I was, and an assortment of elephant relatives with different numbers and arrangements of tusks, none the size of Tolkien's versions though. And a ver impressively rolled up armadillo.
Dropped into the V&A as well, on the basis that I'd never been there, but concentration too crap to appreciate- main response restricted to ooo shiny.
Anyway better now after sleep, and happily redecorating.
I have a bit of a problem with infanticide as a verdict. I gather that it is an early version of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, which I also have a bit of a problem with. "you couldn't help it but we are going to convict you anyway." And it's all very well to announce that the poor woman walked free from court, but she spent 18 months on remand, which is rather scandalous. Even more so was the police spokesperson, whose response seemed to focus on the fact that this woman didn't seem sufficiently upset about the death of her baby and was therefore callous and cold, both good reasons for locking her up. As someone who has recently been informed by her (now ex) psychologist that she wasn't showing enough emotion and was therefore seriously disturbed I object rather strongly to this kind of classification by level of emotional outburst. I think it was Angela Canning who ended up with a prison sentence for murder informed by a similar judgement of her inappropriate lack of screaming and hair tearing grief. And in this case we already have a diagnosis of severe post natal depression- how exactly does the police officer expect a severely depressed person to behave?
And then, just to annoy me further, we had the council spokesperson pontificating about the sympathy extended to the baby's family (mother clearly excluded) and in particular the father. This will be the father whose disappearance two weeks after the birth precicipated the mother's illness. The one who wasn't prepared to look after a baby and now doesn't need to.
Fortunately for my "unnaturally calm" mental state infanticide cases don't come up very often.
I think I liked Torchwood. They've certainly done a reasonable job of mixing up the stereotypes. I rather hope that they don't feel that they have to justify their post-watershed position continually.
Cardiff looks nice. Maybe I shall visit it and spend lots of money there.
Time to investigate the paint situation. New paint only accessible with some trouble so box room is going to be painted in whatever colour tins we have left over; it's going to disappear under bookshelves anyway.
Always worth going though, if only to remind oneself of how utterly huge blue whales are and to nose around the interesting fossil and stuffed remains. Found a dire wolf, which was rather smaller than the grey variety but did have impressive jaws, and a rather nice stuffed wombat. And a giant lemur which was larger than I was, and an assortment of elephant relatives with different numbers and arrangements of tusks, none the size of Tolkien's versions though. And a ver impressively rolled up armadillo.
Dropped into the V&A as well, on the basis that I'd never been there, but concentration too crap to appreciate- main response restricted to ooo shiny.
Anyway better now after sleep, and happily redecorating.
I have a bit of a problem with infanticide as a verdict. I gather that it is an early version of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, which I also have a bit of a problem with. "you couldn't help it but we are going to convict you anyway." And it's all very well to announce that the poor woman walked free from court, but she spent 18 months on remand, which is rather scandalous. Even more so was the police spokesperson, whose response seemed to focus on the fact that this woman didn't seem sufficiently upset about the death of her baby and was therefore callous and cold, both good reasons for locking her up. As someone who has recently been informed by her (now ex) psychologist that she wasn't showing enough emotion and was therefore seriously disturbed I object rather strongly to this kind of classification by level of emotional outburst. I think it was Angela Canning who ended up with a prison sentence for murder informed by a similar judgement of her inappropriate lack of screaming and hair tearing grief. And in this case we already have a diagnosis of severe post natal depression- how exactly does the police officer expect a severely depressed person to behave?
And then, just to annoy me further, we had the council spokesperson pontificating about the sympathy extended to the baby's family (mother clearly excluded) and in particular the father. This will be the father whose disappearance two weeks after the birth precicipated the mother's illness. The one who wasn't prepared to look after a baby and now doesn't need to.
Fortunately for my "unnaturally calm" mental state infanticide cases don't come up very often.
I think I liked Torchwood. They've certainly done a reasonable job of mixing up the stereotypes. I rather hope that they don't feel that they have to justify their post-watershed position continually.
Cardiff looks nice. Maybe I shall visit it and spend lots of money there.
Time to investigate the paint situation. New paint only accessible with some trouble so box room is going to be painted in whatever colour tins we have left over; it's going to disappear under bookshelves anyway.
# posted by Louise H @ 8:56 am 
