Ups and downs 2

In his two part series on bipolar disorder, Stephen Fry described taking a mania test and scoring 70, making him rather madder than he had imagined. By public demand the Cardiff research group have put a basic version online so we can all see how mad we are compared to Stephen, at www.cardiff.ac.uk/medicine/bipolar. It doesn't appear to have much other function at present, but maybe being able to establish one's comparative level of sanity with Mr Fry as a baseline is enough.

I scored 82. But then I've always been good at tests.

(Spoilers for yesterdays Doctor Who- "The Sound of Drums")

My favourite moment from the Ninth Doctor's short run is in "Dalek". That first reaction of fear and horror was a perfect start to the Doctor/Dalek relationship which ends up in "The Parting of the Ways" with the wonderfully atmospheric standoff between Doctor and Daleks.

The danger with the Daleks, for the Doctor and him alone, is not one of death- it is one of defeat by an old enemy totally focussed on his destruction. Similarly the Daleks fear him on fiercely personal grounds. That's what having a proper Enemy is like. If one could imagine Doctor/Dalek slash, which I'm sad to say I can't, that would be the perfect start.

I was deeply disappointed by "Daleks in Manhatten" because the whole intensity of the feud thing was lost. The Daleks were just another dangerous alien species threatening Earth. To the Daleks the Doctor was an old. vaguely adversarial acquaintance. I tended to blame David Tennant but it would probably be fairer to blame the scriptwriter.

DT has shown in this series that he can do a bit more with the Doctor than his face would initially suggest. I liked "Human Nature" a lot, I thought "Blink" was superb (although I'm a bit concerned about Doctor-line continuity.....) But it was with some relief as well as pleasure that I watched "The Sound of Drums" yesterday and found that he was capable of something else.

From the moment when the Doctor murmured into the mobile phone, to the scene where the Master ignores the entire world waiting below because he finally has the Doctor in his power, it is clear that both are totally focussed on the other to the exclusion of everyone else, and what's more, each of them knows it. That's the sort of nemesis we want- a bit of emotional connection. Make it personal. Make a gloat really mean something. (And can we hear the Doctor saying "Master" again soon please?)

ps I though John Simm was wonderful. All this and John Barrowman too :-)

I can see everyone shaking their heads at this point. Sorry. Little bit high.

for that feeling you get when you realise that you have posted something intemperate or opinionated and you now don't want to look at the responses in case anyone's been rude to you.

Even if I'm the only one who uses it, there still ought to be a word, because it's a very distinct feeling. Along with the two related feelings of relief- the one where you discover that you've left it so long to look that the thread has been deleted, and the other one where you finally go back to the thread and found that everyone else was in fact more intemperate than you and no-one reacted badly to your bit at all.

Flagrabellicophobia, maybe.

I'm not aware that Jean-Paul ever went camping, but it seems likely.

I like camping. On my own, failing that, in the sort of campsite where people regard the setting of the sun as an indication that sleep is called for. Unfortunately last weekend we were in the other sort, the ones where people have beer and no regard for their neighbours. Where they are, in short, a bunch of frisbee players of the non-aging variety. And when they did finally crawl into their tents at 1am, having slammed their car doors a few last times, I was so on edge that I ended up prowling the darkened campsite for half an hour, listening to sploshing fish in the lake.

Fortunately I found the earplugs on the second night, so that was rather better. There was a bit of a racket when people got back and found that the prankish young ladies in the team had swapped around everything in their tents, but fortunately Beloved had warned said young ladies off our tent by indicating just how unreasonable I could be. One of the delights of being old (or 40, at least) is that one feels no requirement to play along with the amusements of the young.

Apart from that, it was a good weekend- just the right temperature for the beach. Sandbanks beach was crammed full of seething humanity, real old fashioned beach stuff where you get a patch of sand and defend it against all comers. There must be a game to be designed around the strategic positioning of windrests to dominate the largest patch of sand.

Son and I went to see Pirates 3 (not as easy as it sounds- we made Bournemouth from Sandbanks in about 60 minutes, which is a fast walk) , which was an intrinsically bad film with lots of good bits and therefore quite entertaining- far better than the other way round. And we took his boat and my rented sit-upon kayak onto the waves- there were a lot of these because the jetskis charged up and down just outside the unpowered craft section, generating lots of up and down bits, so that was fun. Jetskis are lethal- apparently you need a licence but the beach were hiring them out to people who didn't look like they had a clue what they were doing. Son has a plan to buy a jetski engine for the back of his kayak but there are some practical problems!

My mood has improved, although work today has felt about twice as long as it usually does and the new drugs are making me dizzy. Provided nothing stressful happens I ought to get through the week. Beloved has gone off to North Wales for a few days, kayak on top of the car, as a rest cure. It will no doubt be good for him although I'm not good at being home alone. Poor Son will be dragged away from WoW to be company for me. He won't mind catching up with Dr Who with me tonight for a start.

All is not well in our household.

Holiday was good, despite nearly missing the boat (roadworks in Bodmin), Force 8 gale (we got our tent down before everyone else's broke, so that was a sort of result), discovering that we'd used the wrong carpark and having to pay twice (for a week's parking- ouch) and reaching our hotel in Exeter at 1am only to find that I'd booked the room for the week before (we carried on driving rather than pay yet another duplicate charge). Highlights were sea kayaking and lots of warm sunshine (after the storm, obviously) plus a teashop with the most wonderful meringue pavlova. And two families of birds that lived outside our tent- Mrs Thrush and three overgrown and lazy offspring, and Mrs Blackbird (with very occasional appearances from Mr Blackbird) and her two overgrown and even lazier children. I spent a lot of time relationship counselling Mrs Thrush and Mrs Blackbird, but it didn't seem to help. Feeding them cheese seemed to make them happier.

Unfortunately the theraputic effects of the holiday lasted until we were nearly home. Then the previous months of stress finally caught up with us. I'm hoping to get back to work on Monday, having had this week off sick, but am not yet sure whether I'll make it. Beloved has his first ever sick note and will be off for a couple of weeks at least, before he starts looking for a less toxic job. Both on new and exciting medication (mine is diamond-shaped, which is novel).

We are managing to be in general quite cheerful about it (mainly because we don't have to actually do anything at the moment). Son is somewhat unimpressed, primarily because his bid for a couple of weeks off as well has been firmly rebuffed.

I had a very disturbing experience yesterday. We were walking through a bit of residential area that we hadn't been in before (looking for a park), when we walked past a large building that could have been a nursing home or sheltered housing. In one downstairs room there was an elderly lady hammering on the window frantically and apparently shouting in a uncontrolled way. I looked round but no-one else was paying any attention. I walked on for a few yards, out of sight of the window, feeling very uncomfortable. Then I suddenly realised that I was about to completely ignore this person yelling for help, just in case she turned out to be crazy, on the grounds that she was old and in some sort of institution. I still didn't go back to look but we rang the doorbell of the main entrance and hammered on the door until we finally attracted the attention of a nurse-type, who went off to go and check.

I felt really ashamed of myself- I wasn't even willing to make eye-contact with a stranger in distress and I'm not sure why. Partly a fear of being pulled into a situation that might not be what it seemed, partly just a fear of the potentially crazy, although this poor woman might just as well have managed to lock herself in as be mad. Even if she had been crazy, she was obviously in distress and needed some sort of help.

Beloved tried to reassure me that at least I had stopped and done something practical; the road was fairly busy with pedestrians- some wouldn't have noticed her but many must have seen and ignored her. But I'm not sure that the issue is what I did, but how I did it. A humane response would have been to acknowledge her shouts, reassure her that I was going to get help and then go to the door. My response was the equivalent of seeing someone injured in the street, walking round the corner and calling the police- practical, possibly, but not brave or kind.

I'm sure there are conclusions to be drawn about the state of society, the fact that we live in communities too big to be sustainable, the treatment of the elderly and attitudes to the mentally ill. But I just feel I've failed. Maybe if I wasn't so depressed and anxious I'd have reacted differently, but I can't be sure.

Not a very cheerful note to end on. We are off to Bournemouth tonight to spend the weekend on the beach at Sandbanks- Beloved is throwing discs around, Son and I are playing in the sea (we will take Son's kayak, which turned out to be excellent as a surfing device), and we are camping with Little Brother, (my youngest brother-in-law who naturally towers above me) and having a barbeque of all sorts of goodness. And taking some kites and a couple of games.