MON SAC MON AMOUR - a handbag tale.

MON SAC MON AMOUR – a handbag tale.

 

"Just A Minute, I Know They're In Here Somewhere."

(This post was first published in 2014 but had mysteriously disappeared from my blog.  Having just recovered it, (much like those things that inexplicably go missing in my handbag but eventually turn up again in it), I am re-posting it.)

In Egypt in the age of the pyramids the dead were buried with possessions that they were thought to need to pay their way in the afterlife.  These things included food, money and items with which to trade.  Also included were objects that indicated their status in the mortal world.

If women today were buried according to this logic the one essential item that should accompany them is their handbag.  This alone would give testament to those things she considered essential to her daily life.  She may spend the rest of eternity searching in the bowels of this bottomless sack, but she would still feel safe in the knowledge that every item she considered necessary was in it.

These would include the basics through to emergency supplies of medicines such as headache tablets, bowel regulators, antacids, and artificial sweeteners.  As well there might be dental floss, a nail file, sun screen, breath freshener and eye drops.  A sweet for low sugar episodes is also a standby.  Make up touch ups include lipstick, cover stick, eye makeup, a comb and a mirror.

Louis Vuitton’s most expensive handbag – the patchwork tribute bag of 2007, a mere $45,000

In fact, given the number of accoutrements a woman requires when she steps from her home into the outside world, it is a wonder humans ever became mobile instead of rooted to the spot drawing nourishment from the soil.  It seems that movement from the home requires a lot of baggage.

A man has pockets.  Into these he places his wallet and perhaps a handkerchief or tissue.  He puts his pen in his shirt pocket and his phone on his belt.  That's it, the whole shebang.  But just wait until you take this man shopping.  Whatever else he's carrying he will suddenly decide you have room for in your handbag.  This will include his tobacco pouch or some extraneous item he cannot slide comfortably into his pockets.   I believe that when a man takes space in your handbag, it is essentially a return to the womb.

He is also marking his territory.  Placing his things in your handbag is much akin to a dog, forgive me, weeing on something to mark it as his.  Just be thankful he doesn't actually do that to your handbag, but instead, places an item he treasures in there for your safekeeping.

I own one handbag at a time.  While I love shoes I only tolerate handbags.  When it disintegrates, I buy another one.  It must match everything I wear and also fit my absolute requirements.  These are a slot for a mobile phone and an extra pocket on the outside for keys, comb and makeup, things I need to reach in a hurry without having to search the interior.

Going into the interior is much like going on safari.  You simply don't know where you are heading or what to expect.  Anyone putting their hand uninvited into your handbag is asking for trouble.  They may run into a sharp object or some food that has escaped its packaging and floating freely amongst the other articles.  If the weather has been hot and the owner of the handbag is not aware of the food's escape, it may turn sticky or slimy and attach itself to other unsuspecting items on the inside.

Your mobile will never be compromised by this mess as it has its own little pocket, however your tissues, wallet, glasses and business cards will all bear testament to your appalling handbag housekeeping.

Apart from this scenario a woman knows exactly what she keeps in her handbag.  She knows in which section to find an item but it may still hide in the depths of the accommodating pouch.  It is therefore necessary to grope about to extricate the object she knows, without a doubt is there.  Things have been known to go missing for weeks in my bag only to turn up there when I'm not looking.

There is only one reason a woman will not eventually find something in her bag that she knows is there.  It has been taken and the culprit will be, ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of the time, the man of the house.  When you discover his deceit he will do one of two things.  He will swear he put the item back, although he forgets that he actually didn't.  I'm sorry but what man ever remembers to put something of yours back?

Secondly he will have put the item down and forgotten entirely where it was.  There is only one way around this and that is to hide your handbag from him.  There are two reasons not to do this.  One, he will feel insulted as you are implying he is not trustworthy.  Second, it is near impossible to hide a handbag and besides you always need something that's in it as it is so essential.

I have never found the perfect handbag closure.  By this I mean how it is sealed, such as a zipper, clasp or flap.  Some handbags have none for ease of access.  The trouble is that means anyone's ease of access.  Zips are difficult to open one handed when holding something in your other hand, clasps rarely meet the other clasp to snap shut and flaps are just a plain nuisance.  My present handbag is open but also has a large zipped section and this is a good compromise.

At night I leave my bag on the floor near my bed.  I don't know why I do this except that perhaps if a burglar goes for it I can grab it.  Naturally the notion of grabbing anything from a burglar is ludicrous.  I would simply play possum and pretend to be asleep and hope he or she goes away leaving me unharmed.

Once I left some chocolate in my handbag.  That night I heard a rustling sound coming from within.  I knew who the culprit was so just reached over and tipped the bag on its side.  The mouse ran off.  This happened for two more nights until it occurred to me that there must be food in my bag.  I had the sense to remove it.  Mice really love chocolate much better than they do cheese.

My idea of the perfect accessory – actor Daniel Craig

A handbag is ready at all times to be taken with you from your house.  As such it is nothing like a human being.  Like a good boy scout it is always prepared.  I feel that my handbag is my fifth limb.  It should function perfectly and not stand out and make me look foolish in any way but blend into the whole as if a part of me that no one notices.

While I'm not interested in a handbag as a fashion item it is still an essential.  A woman's handbag is her best friend, her companion on all her journeys and her safe place.  If necessary it is also her security as she can whack someone on the head with it.  I caution against carrying a brick in it, however, as these are heavy and likely to throw your back out.

END.

 

2020: THOUGHTS ON A MODERN PLAGUE.

 

20/20 to most of us brings to mind the description of perfect vision.  Well apparently here in Australia, now that we're metric, it's been replaced by 6/6.  I was quite disappointed by this news when I visited the optometrist recently when having my eyes checked but, as the mention of 2020 will, from now on, bring to mind a disaster of global proportions, I'll settle for 6/6.

This year will forever, if it were able, hang its head in ignominy.  Its predecessor, 2019, after which the virus was named because the first infection was recorded then, will not suffer that fate because it was only in 2020 when we all became aware we were in the grip of a pandemic.  2019 is like someone looking the other way as if they were an innocent bystander to a crime rather than the perpetrator and letting the one standing beside it take the blame.  We know you were the culprit 2019, we do, and don't think that just because 2020 has a nice ring to it, we will forget.

Looking back a century to 1919 there was also a global pandemic.  Strangely it was not forever tarred with the brush of ignominy but that's because the four years that preceded it had already dished up such a serve of hideousness and mortality, that it was just the last straw.

This latest pandemic has brought out different reactions in people, ones that I doubt would have occurred in the last one.  It has brought out conspiracy theorists as well as a sense of entitlement; those who feel their rights are being infringed by having to follow government issued edicts to protect everyone, such as the wearing of masks.  These people have been more concerned with their freedoms, their right to chose what to do, than their safety.  It doesn't seem to occur to them that they are destroying the rights of others by breathing their potentially infected vapour onto them.  Perhaps they are redirecting their fear onto something they feel they can handle, such as the government, rather than facing something they cannot, death.

People all have different ways of coping but in a pandemic some of the real danger comes from those who cannot face reality.  For many decades now mankind has eradicated most of the contagious diseases and at least two generations have grown up without Scarlet Fever, Polio, Smallpox and the like.  The idea that a disease will sneak up on them and kill the young and healthy seems to be something out of history.  The sense that there is really nothing out there to worry about has also given rise to the anti-vaxxers and because such people won't immunize their children there is a recurrence of childhood diseases such as Whooping Cough.

Earlier this year my son's Mother in Law asked me if I'd had a vaccine against Pneumonia after I mentioned that I'd had my flu shot and she wanted to know if I'd had the Pneumonia shot as well.  I didn't know one existed but she did and she'd had it.  It simply never occurred to me I would catch Pneumonia.  In fact I thought it was a secondary infection you caught after the flu.  Well I sure wish I had known because, while I was flitting around during the mid-year, shopping in a mask and staying home a lot (I'd lost my job due to lack of customers thanks to Covid anyway), I caught Pneumonia.

I went to my doctor for headache tablets and the receptionist checked my temperature but wouldn't let me inside as it was high.  I had to get a Covid test first and go home and wait for the results before I could go back.  A day later I received the good news that I didn't have Covid but by then I was bedridden.  I didn't worry, it would pass, whatever it was.  Two days later my son came around and called an ambulance.  The hospital X-rayed me and told me I had a nasty case of Pneumonia and there I stayed for one week being pumped full of antibiotics and even anti-virals.

Six weeks later I only just felt human again but there is still the ever present threat of Covid and now my immunity isn't great.  Thank heavens I live in Queensland and the government has protected us in spite of those who think they are immortal or that the economy comes first.  I know the economy is vital but that really won't matter if there are no people left.

Other things have been going on around the world this year but everything pales in the face of the pandemic.  It is almost like a sign directed at our progressed society that we can't fix everything and that we are still merely human.

As for those who think the disease is a conspiracy designed by governments worldwide to bring people under their control, I simply don't believe it.  How could governments worldwide agree on this matter when they can't on anything else?  People think the vaccine has something in it that will either track them or cause them to be a mindless followers or heaven knows what or that it will cause everything to be electronic, such as no more cash only cards, and that we will have no freedoms.  I don't trust governments any more than the next person but I think that this has arisen because people are in denial about not being able to control a disease.  We've come so far after all but what they forget is that we are mortal, biological beings.

I'm just happy to be alive now while once I used to feel confined by not having the money to travel, which now seems a questionable activity at best.  We are far safer in Australia, at least thus far, than overseas.  Europe went through the plague in the Middle Ages and life, well the life of those who didn't die, went on.  The plague re-occurred regularly for a couple of centuries but still mankind prevailed even when there was no relief for those who were dying from it and no understanding about how it was caught.

It is the stupidity and arrogance of those who won't follow common sense rules that will continue to allow this virus to spread as well as those less effective governments who won't take the measures necessary to keep it under control.  Perhaps nature is counting on this stupidity to alleviate the planet of our presence.  We forget that it can take its revenge and the more we foul the earth, the more we will allow bacteria and viruses to flourish in the waste.  I for one, however, would like to live to a ripe old age and see my grandchildren grow up in a sane world.  What a shame there aren't viruses to make people more intelligent and responsible.  We wouldn't need a vaccine for those.

END.

 

 

THE EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY ON HOW WE DRESS.

 

I will first state that this post flits about like a demented mosquito but it comes together in the end if you follow the threads and are patient.  Just enjoy the journey.

They say that clothes make the man.  I'm not sure where that leaves women but it seems that the more technologically advanced we become, the less well dressed we are.  I have often wondered upon this discrepancy and have decided to address it, forgive the pun.

Clothing throughout history has indicated the status of the person wearing it because of the fineness or richness of the fabric or even the rareness of the fur or skin of which it was made.  Dyes and decorations also indicated status and only some classes were allowed to wear certain dyes in certain cultures.  Metals and precious stones were also used as embellishments and the wealthier you were, the rarer of these you were able to obtain and wear while the poorer or lower classes often used cheaper metals and glass to emulate those worn by their wealthier counterparts.

It is interesting to note that mankind is the only creature to clothe itself.  Animals, however, have evolved to display colors used for camouflage or to catch the attention of mates.  My favorite animal to provide an example of this is, in fact, a bird; the extraordinary Peacock.  The female is a dull grey but the male's plumage is fabulous and what a performance he puts on to win a female.

How, I often wonder, does a creature evolve and adapt to its environment in order to ensure the success of future generations when the animal cannot see itself?  How does it compare its appearance to that of its environment?  One of life's mysteries is to understand how the brain stores the details of the animal's surroundings in its data bank and passes that information to its genes so its progeny can gradually adapt to fit the environment.

I don't for one moment believe it is accidental but that the mind is, even at the level of a non self aware animal, the most extraordinarily clever organ.  We have not yet begun to really comprehend its complexity although we have begun to understand what parts of the brain are responsible for managing particular parts of our body.

Another interesting thought is that, perhaps, because homo sapiens did become sapient, or was on his way to becoming sapient, that the brain worked towards this aspect of his evolution rather than camouflage as the brain would become the means by which he could protect himself.  The subconscious, or perhaps the Limbic system of the brain, allied with its more evolved lobes, is intelligent at a level we cannot understand, in that it has come up with a way to direct the body to protect itself by evolving to disguise its exterior and also making itself attractive to a potential mate.

Now some people and, no doubt, many scientists would argue that this is nonsense and it's all an accident of nature.  To them I say bah, humbug.  We don't even know why or how we came to be, self conscious or otherwise.  What our brains are capable of is, frankly, impressive, but at the same time, not much.  We cannot possibly think our brains have evolved to their full extent.  If we do we are being like the smart alec in the schoolyard or the teenager who is quite sure his parents are idiots.  He or she thinks they have discovered thought and their parents are imbeciles.  They are wrong.  We are all imbeciles.

But back to clothes.  Since the Middle Ages, men's and women's standards of dress have been rigid and dictated by the fashion of the times.  Women's curvaceous forms have been held in by corsets that defy the ability of their lungs to expand and, for men, it wasn't until Beau Brummel first wore long pants instead of knee breeches that were accompanied by stockings that the current fashion of trousers was born.  His influence on fashion has remained legend or, to this day, women might be fighting their male partners for their pantyhose.

The modern couturiers of today favour stick thin woman and this brings me back to why the saying is that clothes make the man.  Men carry their fat deposits on their stomachs and under their chins.  This provides a certain uniformity for designers to work with.  Men look great in uniform too thanks to their inverted triangular shapes while women rarely do.  It is the skeleton that gives fashion structure.  Women, however, put on fat in all manner of places.  How can a couturier possibly create fashion for female curves without knowing where those curves will appear?  Hence they choose tall, rectangular, fat free women to inspire their designs and on whom they look good because they do not possess a stray mound of fat to ruin the line of the garment.

Recently the curvaceous rear of Kim Kardashian has become vogue.  She has a tiny waist and no overhanging saddles protruding from her rear.  I still, however, don't regret the liposuction I had on my saddle thighs at forty.  They and my rear were the only part of me that weren't thin.  It made buying slacks hell but that was pre-elastane, which became my best friend.  I used to have to choose slacks and skirts a size too large to accommodate my hips but that swam around my waist.  Thanks to the liposuction I fit clothes better now.  Women have so many different types of attire to choose from because there are so many varied shapes of the female body and they have to find one that fits theirs.  This is why, I believe, clothes do not make the woman.  We are not the bespoke gender and just have to choose what works for us.   

This brings me to the question, why are our clothes less formal now, more deshabillé?

I have a number of theories.  One is that fabrics became more comfortable thanks to manufacturers creating stretch fabrics but that doesn't really explain it.  The other is that, over time, our technological achievements have become many.  In past times, pre technology, it was the ability to construct complex edifices, for example the pyramids, that showed how clever an animal man is.  Using natural fibres such as cotton and silk, spinning and then weaving them into fabrics also showed intelligence that set us apart from the animals.  Until the industrial revolution, apart from the discovery of dynamite, the refining of metals and creating tools with them, language and mathematics, only these accomplishments set us apart from the non self aware beasts.

These things, however, began to pale into insignificance when mankind hit the twentieth century.  Of course the next advances wouldn't have been possible without the former, but mankind was beginning to take the old ones for granted.  We harnessed electricity and what a rocket boost that gave to so many types of manufacture, not to mention opening up the opportunity for all kinds of new inventions that could be powered by it.  It was like a superhighway of potential and reached its zenith in the computer and, following that, the Internet.

It was only fifty years before I was born that man invented a machine that could fly.  Women wore long dresses and didn't have the vote.  There were no domestic refrigerators, televisions or cars.  The car had been invented but hardly a soul owned one, nor was the means of mass production yet invented.  By the time I was thirty all these inventions had been part of our lives for years.  Baby boomers were truly the first to live in the modern age and not much seemed to change in a big way, except culturally and in regard to women's rights, until the eighties.  All this time, however, computers had been evolving as well as shrinking and satellites were being launched into space and being used for communication.  That nifty gadget, long imagined by science fiction and secretly lusted for by all humans, the mobile phone came into being.  At first they were the size of large house bricks but no one cared.  The Jetsons had come to life.  Oddly this one invention made man and womankind feel they had truly arrived in the imagined future.  But we hadn't seen anything yet.  By the nineties the time was ripe and the Internet was born and this changed everything.

After this things may have looked the same but everything was different.  Mail became electronic, telephone conversations became text, mobile phones and the Internet mated and created a superbeing: the Smart phone.  We took photos and videos with it and instantly sent them to someone anywhere in the world.  Towers were built to ensure global coverage for all who wanted a phone, the Internet or both.  The world became truly global and people suddenly felt it was harder to become important in a world where everyone counted and could have their say about anything.

It became very hard for governments, institutions, criminals and just ordinary people to hide anything but they still tried.  The one detriment to this overwhelming connectedness is the inability to be covert, but naturally it has, like any cloud, a silver lining.  How you see this is a bit like how you see a half full/empty glass.  It depends on your point of view.  It is wonderful to talk to someone you are not with who is half way around the globe.  It is wonderful to bank instantly, pay instantly, shop online, stream movies and music.  You can even become an Instagram sensation if that's your thing and you've Botoxed yourself, plumped up your lips and are willing to display your assets to the entire planet.  You can write 140 character statements (now 280) on Twitter, if you can be profound enough in few enough words, to say something world shaking, but presidents have tried and ended up with their feet in their mouth.

Watching all this from my Baby Boomer point of view, I'm amused.  I personally feel that what we had by the eighties was enough.  I am accused now, when I don't upgrade my technology, of not keeping up, to which I say, "I've watched it from the beginning and, frankly, I'm tired of it.  Tired of seeing planned obsolescence so that I have to upgrade to the latest version of Word, or whatever, as it won't fit on my old computer.  I'm tired of greed and I was happy before all this."

I'm not against all this innovation of course, I just no longer care.  Yes I love my Smartphone but the other day one of my Apps disappeared because they had upgraded it for newer phones.  I'm not going to buy a newer phone until the present one dies of old age.

But what has this to do with clothes?  Well, obviously, everything.  We are way past trying to show how far we are above other animals and so what we wear is no longer a means of showing how far we have progressed from our cave dwellings.  We can now be as shabby as a caveman because our technology has kicked clothing way down the ranking scale.

Just remember, however, that disasters can occur and we still require all the knowledge we've picked up over the millennia and may one day need it again to survive.  That's why school children should learn handwriting, food growing, fire making and all the basic arts of survival.  We must not take technology for granted.  Only a few people have actually contributed to the inventions that have taken us this far and we just learn the skills to survive in our present world.  I think that's dangerous.  I think we all need survival courses and books.  Yes, we definitely need printed books because they endure and are not beamed to our computers by a satellite that may, one day, not be there.

And you thought this article was just about clothing.  I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

END. 

DISAPPEARING IN PLAIN SIGHT: PUTTING YOUR NOVEL ON THE INTERNET.

 

It's hard being a writer these days because anyone can self-publish on the Internet and so the chances of standing out has diminished monumentally.  On one hand the Internet is a good thing for those seeking an outlet to express themselves (isn't everyone?), but it makes it difficult for a serious writer to gain a following.

Okay, so what makes me think I'm a serious writer?  I am and I've trolled through Amazon's Kindle site (on which I am also published) and, while some books are good, many are not.  As an exercise, one day I scrolled through the section under which one of my novels should appear and, after 74 pages of not coming across it, was forced to do a search.  Those that appear first have a star rating of four.  That means they've had reviews and there are pages of novels with ratings.  To be able to leave a book review on Amazon, you need to have purchased at least $50.00 worth of books.  I'm not sure if that's US or AUD dollars but most people read novels on Kindle Select, where you pay a yearly subscription of about $14.00 and can download as many books as you want.  That means they can't leave a rating so how do these novels manage to get one?  I'll get to that later.

A good third of the novels in the Romance genre have men with ripped torsos on the cover, no heads mind you, just torsos with a woman embracing the lower body.  The titles, too, boggle the imagination, "My Alien Lover" being one example, and there are three books by different authors bearing that same title.  Give them their due, none of them have a ripped torso on the cover.  Now I haven't read any of them and can't comment on the standard of writing but this shows that not even the title you choose is likely to be unique.  It's not like a username where, when you join an internet site, there can be no duplicates.  No indeed, if your story is titled "The Greatest Story Ever Told", it may be one among many, thus nullifying the superlative.

So why have I published two novels on the Amazon site?  Well, long story made short, I wrote my first novel thirty years ago in three very large exercise books.  I then put it aside and undertook a degree.  After that, while seeking employment, I transcribed my almost illegible handwriting and saved the file on Word.  I then reread the manuscript numerous times and edited it.  I have to say that doing an Arts degree helped with that as I am very voluble.  My father, a former journalist, also read and edited it.  Finally I sent three chapters off to a literary agent in Sydney, Australia.

My parents were staying with me on a visit when I received a positive reply from the agency.  Dad was over the moon.  The agency asked for the rest of the manuscript.  Shortly after I flew to Sydney from Brisbane where I lived, and handed it to them.  Some weeks went by and they asked me to rewrite a short section in the middle of the manuscript. I agreed wholeheartedly as that section was too long.  A month or two later I returned to Sydney with the altered manuscript and presented it to the woman who had shown interest.  There was just something in her manner this time that worried me.  Later I received a letter saying they didn't have sufficient faith in the story and, also, that they had been taken over by another agency that wasn't accepting new authors.  So close and yet so far.  It had been a long established literary agency, Sydney's best known, and my book turns up and the agency is bought out.

I then sent the manuscript overseas, I sent it everywhere.  It traveled more than Gulliver.  One day I phoned the University of Queensland Press.  It had published Peter Carey's "Oscar and Lucinda", but they were no longer publishing new authors.  I then phoned a woman at the same University who taught Creative Writing.  She was most helpful but bemoaned the fact that she couldn't even get her own students published anymore.

I don't know when the Internet started to have an impact on publishing houses but things were getting harder.  The nineties were still happening as this was going on and I think, although it was early days for the Internet, its spectre was hanging over the publishing houses.  Eventually I became tired of chasing a runaway train and got on with living and making one any way I could.  I was then nearing fifty, no one had wanted to employ me as a fresh, mature age graduate when I was forty and eventually I took any administration jobs that were going and part-time work was the only kind I managed to get.

I began another novel and quite liked it but the impetus wasn't there knowing how hard it was to get published.  Meantime I leased a taxi for my partner of many years and one day, when all the other work dried up, I took the bit between my teeth and got in and drove it and what a wonderful source of stories I discovered.  People's lives unfurled before me, information from so many sources filled my head.  I didn't get a story line from them but I did learn interesting facts with which to fill out my characters lives, but not for the novel I'd started to write.  I'd had a brainstorm and found my new novel and, no, it wasn't based on any of my customers tales.  It came from my head.  I'd needed a story that was different and I had it.

Waiting in a taxi gives you a lot of time to write and, in two years, I had finished my book and, again, it was handwritten.  I transcribed it of course, edited it and then followed all the instructions that literary agents and publishers put on the Internet as guidelines for submitting your work.  I thank the Internet for one thing: no more hard copy mailing of manuscripts.  Now writers could submit by email but there seemed to be so many more literary agents and the readers in the agencies all had specialties and wouldn't take this but would take that or were not accepting more work at this stage.

Added to this they all have different guidelines for submission.  Writing a novel is easy compared to the rigamarole you have to go to following their rules.  They want different length synopses, different chapters and often you have to change the manuscript you wrote in MS Word to a PDF file.  Added to all this they want you to sell your idea to them in less than so many words.  I felt very confident about this one but selling something just isn't that easy.

Let's be honest about what writers are.  They are not salespeople or they would be in a shop selling something or in an advertising agency writing copy.  Writers are usually sensitive souls with artistic natures.  The advice you are given when trying to find a way to have your manuscript accepted is to join a writers group and network.  Let me be quite clear, if I liked groups or networking I wouldn't be a writer.  I much prefer talking to myself than other writers.  Also, writers are competitive.  Do you think you're going to get lashings of praise from people who want their novel published before yours is?  Not bloody likely unless you look like a film goddess and the other writers are bespectacled and pimpled nerds.

I resist all forms of interaction with people in order to publish my novel, except over the phone.  When I began to phone literary agents one was a very experienced, nay old, female agent who asked me how many words my manuscript was.  I told her and she fairly shrieked down the line, "Too long."  My instinct was to ask, "How long is a piece of string?" but I didn't.

Instead I asked her what is considered too long.  Her reply was that novels should only be 70,000 to 100,000 words.  Well I was gobsmacked.  In all my school years reading Austen, Hardy, Bronte, Hemingway et al, my English teachers not once said that a novel could be too long.  I mean, how did "Gone With the Wind" get published if this is the case?

I asked her why.  "Publishing costs," she said and you need to have an Internet presence, a blog, good marketing and awards help.  Well how in hell are you going to get awards if you can't get published?  She even told me that if a writer had all that and she took their work to a publisher, that wasn't necessarily enough.

After speaking to her I did shorten my manuscript by thirty thousand words and that took me three edits, but there I stopped.  To do more would not have been true to the story, however, it did improve the work but it was still above her allowed number of words.

What galls me most is when I go to a bookstore and see a well known writer's umpteenth novel or a sports star's autobiography in the newly released best sellers list.  Don't you see the irony in the latter?  A ghost written 'autobiography' no doubt.  Publishers want a sure thing and that's how they get it.  One of my taxi conversations was with a woman who had worked in public relations to whom I mentioned a certain very well known author who still managed to churn out one book per year in his twilight years, always on the bookshop shelves for Christmas.  This author had once worked in advertising and she knew of him.  She told me his novels are now mostly ghost written by other writers.  He writes a plot sketch and another writer will use his style, which they have studied, to fill it out.  I'm not sure if I became a well known author I would allow other people to 'write' my books for me, no matter for how much money.  It just seems like cheating.

Let me return to the star rating of novels on Amazon.  I looked further into this and discovered that there are people out there in Internet land who have the ability to rate books on that site and, for a fee, will read your manuscript and rate it on the site.  Obviously they have bought enough books on the site and are probably writers themselves.  My guess is that this is more lucrative than selling their own work on it.

I have also tried using advertising on Amazon to promote my novels.  One month I spent a mere AU$100.00 as an exercise and did get a surge of readers but they all used Kindle Select, the subscription site, and I only made royalties by pages read and, while most readers did read the novels in their entirety, the royalties didn't add up to much.  I made around $2.50 in total and I'd had about fifty readers as I recall.  I've made about $3.00 selling one hard copy book on the site but few people buy hard copies.  To get a star rating would no doubt help but I'm not paying someone because what I spend would no doubt cancel out what I earn.

A dear friend read my latest novel and genuinely said she'd give it four stars but she couldn't as she hadn't spent the prerequisite $50.00 on Amazon books.  I was still enormously grateful that she took the trouble to read it.  I don't know about the experience of other writers but my friends and family resist reading my novels as if they'd catch Covid from doing so.  At least my son read my first one when he was eighteen years old and really liked it.  I was delighted that he bothered to read it to the end.

I would love to get a rating from someone who is able to give one on the Amazon site, nevertheless, I am deeply suspicious of these ratings especially given some of the titles that receive four stars.  I will never find out how it works as the Internet is a large and mysterious entity and, while I do love it for some reasons, life was often simpler without it.

END.

THE MISSING LINK IN PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT.

I've had a fair deal of experience being the patient of psychiatrists in my lifetime and I have to say that I've only known a couple who, I feel, have fewer issues than I do.  Now I'm not about to use this post to denigrate a profession that provides real support to people with mental health issues but, rather, to address the lack of training Psychiatrists and General Practitioners have in regard to the anti-depressant drugs they prescribe to patients.

Firstly I'll mention why I have taken on this subject and there may be people out there who read this, who are going through the same problem.  I know there are others in my situation as there is an actual on-line support group for us.  They, like me, have been left between a rock and a hard place by a drug company who failed them.  Now it's hard to believe that government bodies throughout the world would allow a drug manufacturing company to let down consumers who rely on them, but it has happened.  All such governing bodies have been able do is issue statements to both the public and doctors to warn them of the unfolding situation that remains still unclear.  At first the manufacturer of this drug said there were manufacturing issues and there would be a break in production until January 2020.  That was in October 2019.  It is now October 2020 and still no drug.

Okay, no more beating about the bush; the anti-depressant in question is called Nardil (active ingredient Phenelzine Sulphate).  It is a Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibitor and was first manufactured by Pfizer who no longer make it after selling manufacturing rights to Kyowa Kirin.  However the latter company may not be the culprit as Peter Jeffers states in his blog, "A shortage of this antidepressant will kill people":

"Lupin, an Indian pharmaceutical giant that produces the active ingredient in Nardil, is under scrutiny by the Federal Drug Administration for quality control issues."

From October last year I could no longer obtain Nardil from local pharmacies and my doctor referred me to a pharmacy in a hospital that was still able to get it.  I was able to obtain my next supply from them for two months until, suddenly, I was informed that my doctor needed to fill in a Therapeutic Drug Administration form and have it cleared by the government so I could obtain more Nardil from the hospital pharmacy.  The reason for this was that the drug was running out and they weren't able to obtain much more of it.  The pharmacy was very helpful but one day I received a call from them: "We're advising people to see their doctor as we may no longer be able to obtain Nardil."

My response to this was: "Do you have any left?"

"No, but we can obtain some from the USA, but it may cost you up to AU$500."

I told them to order a bottle.  I only needed one more, I hoped, as I had already started to wean myself off them.  I ended up paying AU$458 for the bottle of 60 tablets for which, normally, as a pensioner I paid AU$7.00.  For people not on a pension or health care card it usually costs AU$70 plus.  Nonetheless I was incredibly relieved.  The thing about Nardil is that it is a highly effective drug, but it is also very hard to get off it, especially the longer you've been on it.  It has also only been used as a last resort drug for many years because of its interactions with certain foods.  For many people suffering panic attacks, it has been the only effective drug, but you just can't switch from Nardil to another drug.  To do so can cause consequences such as psychosis and you need to be free of it for at least two weeks to go on another anti-depressant.

I have been taking it for thirty years and, twenty years ago, I had almost weaned fully off it as I was down to one quarter of a 15mg tablet a day having been on three.  I can't remember that far back how long the weaning took but don't recall much difficulty.  However, I then had complications from an appendectomy and my health improved when I increased the dose again.  Anti-depressants don't just work on mental depression.  If the body is physically depressed by ill health, it seems the drug can work to help boost the system.  At least increasing Nardil must have done so in my case but I'm not stating this as a medical fact only how it worked for me.

Some years down the track when I was back on three 15mg tablets a day I decided to lower the dose.  Again, I don't recall what happened exactly, but I must have had trouble as it took me one year to lower the dose to two 15mg tablets a day.  After that I just decided to stay on that dose as my marriage had broken up, I was financially badly off and having trouble getting and keeping work.  I was in my late forties and didn't need to add withdrawal to my problems.

Having had problems with lowering the dose of Nardil on that occasion, when the shortage arrived last year, I knew I'd better start coming off them completely just in case they were discontinued.  I began weaning in March 2020 even before the Australian TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) stated: "Consumers and health professionals are advised that Phenelzine tablets are no longer being supplied in Australia.  Phenelzine, which is marketed in Australia under the brand name Nardil, is used to treat major depression."

There is, however, not just an Australian shortage but a global one and no one knows what's happening next.  The Nardil support group I use on the site, Drugs.com, in a section called 'the Recovery Village' has people from around the globe who have written of their experiences trying to obtain it.  The last time I tried to post a question I was unable to for some reason and so I hope the site is still operational.  What became clear from reading of other peoples' experiences was the distress they were going through.  Many had previously tried other antidepressants and found Nardil to be the only one that worked for them.

This brings me back to the reason for writing this post and that is the lack of knowledge of medical professionals in regard to antidepressants.  When people are put on them by a doctor it is truly a matter of trial and error which drug will work for them and, boy, do I know that for a fact.  I shall first state that antidepressants come in different types: MAOI's (Monoamine oxidase inhibitors), TCA's (Tricyclics), SSRI's (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), SNRI'S Serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors) and NNASSA's (Noradrenaline and specific serotonergic antidepressants.

As I have previously stated Nardil is an MAOI and, before I was put on it by a neuropsychiatrist, my General Practitioner (yes, really, I let a GP put me on an antidepressant) put me on a Tricyclic one.  This did not go well (Please note: TCA's may work for some people, just not for me).  I was already depressed from a rocky marriage and suffering the panic attacks I had so brilliantly overcome on my own over five years earlier.  I didn't need to be in a worse place but that's exactly where the TCA's sent me.  I felt as if I was going mad.  I don't know how to describe the feeling but it was like nothing I had ever experienced.  After three weeks on the drug I went to my GP and told him how I felt.  Now I knew him well and he was a good doctor but, and it's a big BUT, he didn't believe I'd given them a proper chance.  In fact he didn't believe I'd been taking the full dose but I had.  To prove to him that I was, I remained on them two more weeks before giving up.  It had been a truly frightening experience and, as an adult, not to have a doctor believe me was galling.

One sad and sorry truth about people with mental health problems is that they suffer from a lack of credibility, not only from doctors but people in general.  I know this well as I began suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at the age of seven.  I'm highly intelligent (as is common among OCD sufferers), logical and not deluded but even my parents doubted me in other respects from that time on.  Having a mental problem that is not organic or a psychosis does not make a person irrational in other areas.  It is something that, as a patient in particular, you have to watch out for when dealing with doctors, even ones you trust.

The neuropsychiatrist who put me on Nardil said one extraordinarily enlightening thing to me: "Doctors and most psychiatrists know nothing about antidepressants."  Having been through the hellish experience with TCA's under my GP his words hit their mark and this year, when the hospital pharmacy referred me back to my doctor, my warning antennae went into overdrive.  Who could I go to for help thirty years down the track?

I suspect no one as, recently, a friend told me the experience of his friend who was put on an antidepressant and had the same experience I had had on the TCA's.  I realised that thirty years after going on Nardil doctors still knew little about antidepressants and were still blundering about in the dark, albeit with good intentions, and their patients were their guinea pigs.  So what did I do?  I Googled psychiatrists in my city with a view to finding ones who had experience weaning patients off antidepressants.

I may as well have been looking for the Fountain of Youth.  I rang the RANZCP (Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists) - "No, sorry we can't give recommendations.  Have you tried Your Health in Mind run by the Australian Department of Health?"  I did, no luck.  I even rang Lifeline.  No luck there either but I really admired their spiel as I held on for an inordinately long time as they promised to answer the call asap and their recording remained attentive and reassuring; really.  Wonderful organization.

I am now seven months into weaning.  The first two weeks I lowered my Nardil dose one tablet in one week.  I was fine for ten days and then I wasn't.  It wasn't depression or anything mental at all.  It was physical.  I was lethargic, I itched, my eyes watered, I yawned and I had no energy.  I boosted my dose back up to one and a half.  Things improved after a week and from then I went down a quarter of a tablet every two weeks.  The lethargy, yawning and then headaches kicked in.  I'm now on half a tablet and at least the yawning has subsided, but the headaches have not.  Added to all this, while trying to avoid Covid-19, wearing a mask to the shops, losing my job as their were no customers and staying home, I caught pneumonia from a sick bird.  I, and my doctors (when I was in hospital) and a GP, figured the bird had Psittacosis, which is zoonotic and carries to humans as pneumonia.  Who knew?  I'll add a suggestion here: if rescuing sick birds, wear a mask and gloves.  It can carry not only by droppings and beak to beak but by feather dust.  Sadly, the bird died.  I am no longer feeding birds and, I suspect, weaning from Nardil over months also lowered my resistance.

After one week in hospital I was sent home where, for the next two weeks, I still felt awful.  The hard part of this was figuring if this feeling was from the pneumonia or the withdrawal from Nardil.  I was sent to have and MRI for the headaches.  Nothing showed thankfully.  It's six weeks now and I'm beginning to feel closer to normal but the headaches and some nausea and sometimes lethargy kick in at will.  Also, the psychological part kicked in post pneumonia with feelings of dread and despair.  This I figured was definitely Nardil withdrawal.  (I should add that it's not called withdrawal when coming off medications, it's called discontinuation syndrome.  I personally don't care.  Withdrawal is withdrawal.)

Such feelings made me actually contemplate finding a psychiatrist, a horrible thought.  My doctor referred me to one who turned out not to be taking new patients and then she printed a list of suitable ones but I think it is the entire directory, all thirty one pages of the psychiatrists in my city and suburbs, so I could phone and get the one able to see me earliest.  As my feelings of doom are subsiding I'm no longer sure I want to.  There is only one who deals with medication addiction withdrawal and, after tests, you are admitted to hospital and then, apart from whatever else he does, put in group therapy.  Some cures seem worse than the condition so I think I'll see how I go alone.

Last year a journalist, Chloe Booker, wrote an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (a respected Australian newspaper): "Nausea, panic, tears - why wasn't I warned", about withdrawing from an antidepressant.  She spoke to Professor Derelie Mangin from McMaster University in Canada who has carried out a long term trial of withdrawal.  I hope Chloe Booker doesn't mind me quoting Dr. Mangin from her article here:

“Drug companies really only have a mandate to their shareholders to do the trials that will bring the drugs onto the market,” she explained.

“The system is not structured for anyone to have responsibility. Given the lengths of time that these drugs have been on the market, it’s extraordinary that we still don’t have the kind of evidence that we need.”

In other words, the emphasis has been putting drugs into the marketplace, not also training medical professionals on how to get patients off the drugs.  Considering the vulnerability of people needing antidepressants, that is an extraordinary omission by the medical profession.  It really is the elephant in the room that, especially after the recent example of Nardil becoming suddenly unavailable, needs to be addressed.

I still have half a tablet to go to get off Nardil completely.  It is one of the two irreversible MAOI's, whatever that means.  One is supposed to be able to withdraw from it but it also permanently, thus irreversibly, alters enzymes in the brain.  I've copied the quote below from an article in the Psychiatric Times:

"When an MAOI covalently binds to the enzyme, it is irreversibly inhibited and the enzyme is permanently deactivated.³ Enzyme activity cannot be restored until the body replaces the enzyme through new enzyme synthesis. Restoration of full activity can take up to 2 weeks. Tranylcypromine and phenelzine, the most commonly prescribed MAOIs, are nonselective, irreversible inhibitors of isoforms MAO-A and MAO-B."

Now I have absolutely no idea what this actually means.  Will I need something to replace Nardil even though I don't want anything?  I'm even wondering if a psychiatrist would know.  It's hard enough coming off a drug without having to obtain a medical/pharmaceutical degree to understand what's happening.  If only someone was trained in withdrawal to tell me.

Good luck to you all in this time of Covid-19.  Please feel free to leave comments or related experiences in the comments section.

UPDATE ADDED 14th April, 2021.

Three weeks ago today I took my last dose of Nardil.  It has taken another six months since completing the post above to do so.  At the time I wrote the post I had reduced the dose down to a half of one 15mg tablet per day having been on two 15mg tablets at the start.  The day after finishing the post I lowered the dose to one quarter of a tablet and alternated between a half a tablet and a quarter for a week before settling on the quarter.

Eventually, a few months later, towards the end of withdrawing I was taking one sixteenth of a tablet and then not taking a dose for four days before taking the next dose.  There was still lethargy and headaches, which I thought would never end, and I became depressed and emotional to the point where I felt I really might need a psychiatrist.  The latter two symptoms came in waves so that sometimes I thought I was okay and then I thought I wasn't.

The final crunch came when my doctor convinced me to have a colonoscopy only two years after the last.  If there is one thing I hate it is the preparation for that procedure because it requires drinking 3 liters of preparation liquid in an awfully short time plus a glass of liquid prior to that with 3 tablets designed to empty the bowels.

This really set me into a fit of nerves.  I barely managed but did it.  The odd thing was that in three previous colonoscopy preparations I hadn't felt nauseous but I really did this time.  I think the reason for this was that one side effect of Nardil that I will miss hugely, is that I couldn't throw up and rarely felt nauseous for thirty years.

Now that I have finished taking Nardil I still wake up feeling as if I need to keep sleeping even after ten or eleven hours and I remain groggy for two hours.  There is sometimes lethargy and yawning still but I'm better if I go to bed earlier even though I don't fall asleep for an hour or two.  The feelings of doom and depression come and go but, apart from Covid 19 creating a pall over all of us, I feel more hopeful.

It is hard to believe that the tiny dose of Nardil I was taking towards the end was having any effect on me, but when I tried to do it faster, the lethargy was worse.  The feeling that I've been functioning at about seventy percent of capacity for a whole year has been emotionally draining and no wonder I have been depressed.  In fact it's hard to know if it's the absence of Nardil or the draining experience of discontinuing it that's caused my depression.

I'm fighting to regain energy to this day.  I'm finding that pushing myself a bit helps.  I have even managed to re-upholster six dining chairs and have become a whizz with a staple gun.  Removing the staples to take off the old upholstery first was also an exercise in muscle building and arm wrenching.

Absence of Nardil has made me feel more self-centered, not in the conceited kind of way but in the way that everything is internalized.  I remember feeling like this before taking Nardil thirty years ago.  Time also drags on.  It's a strange sensation but the days seem longer and I remember feeling like this prior to Nardil as well.  I get very bored.  It's one reason I needed a good physical project to take on.

I haven't made up my mind about taking another antidepressant yet.  I know Nardil has changed me and it's for the better.  I would only take another antidepressant if my energy didn't return and I felt it could boost it.  If my depression gets worse I may consider taking one but I feel I should wait and see.  I am a calmer person now and I hope that stays with me, however, being calm at this time with this awful pandemic is hard and I'm also using my will power to try and stay that way.  I don't anticipate my panic attacks returning.  They didn't when I was down to a very low dose years ago and I feel they won't come back.

I've written down my experience in the hope that people who have gone through a similar experience might benefit from hearing mine.  I've also done so in the hope that any medical professionals reading this might consider the real need for more studies to be undertaken into antidepressant discontinuation.  There are well known psychiatric bodies with great influence that don't consider that it's a problem but, on the other hand, there are groups, among whose number are psychiatrists and pharma psychologists who have gone through their own discontinuation syndrome (withdrawal) problems, and who are calling for pharmaceutical companies to undertake studies into antidepressant discontinuation and for psychiatric institutions to acknowledge that so many people having problems coming off antidepressants can't be wrong.  They are doing so because of the number of support groups that have sprung up online where people help each other to go through the process because there is nil or inadequate medical support.

UPDATE: 26th April, 2024.

It's three years since my last update.  I've been off Nardil for that length of time now.  My energy finally returned and the headaches left, as if they'd never been there.  A few months after the last update, I finally resorted to taking Zoloft (Setra) tablets.  I'm on 100mg once per day.  I couldn't shake the feelings of dread and the heightened sense of self and time passing slowly.  The dread went after a few months.  Whether the Zoloft helped or not, I don't know.  It may just have been time that healed.  The heightened self-awareness and time passing slowly is still there.  I think I was always like that until I went on Nardil, so I have to live with it.  I appreciate all those years that Nardil made it easier, but I cope with it.

I thought I might gain weight on Setra, but that didn't happen thankfully, and I've had no side effects from it.  I don't know if they're actually doing anything, but my ship is in calm seas and I don't plan to rock the boat.  I don't imagine that coming of Setra would be anything like coming off Nardil.  I'm on a low dose and, having gone through one withdrawal (discontinuation), I know I can manage it.  I don't, however, plan to try anytime soon.

Good luck to you all and never give up.

END