On February 2nd 2003 I received a telephone call to say that my aunt Harriet had died. I had stayed several hours with her the previous evening in the side room where she had been moved so the news was not unexpected and I was already up dressed, breakfasted and ready to recommence the vigil. She was the tenth of seven sisters and four brothers to die and the only one where the circumstances were such as to merit personal investigation and official enquiries that continue to this day. At the time the thought of such enquiries or that they would continue for so long were further from my mind. There were two considerations. The first was what to say to my mother who was at the stage in the illness of severe memory loss with psychosis that she could be upset by what was said to her, only to forget what was said the following instant. From that date until her death, Harriet was always with her friends in other parts of the same building in which my mother had become resident, and was then subsequently moved to, so that I could visit more regularly. She was never satisfied with this explanation and constantly asked staff the whereabouts of her sister, although during the last years or so, she mentioned her less and staff said that although her speech became more and more indistinct, it was sometimes evident to them that she was asking about me.
She may not have known who I was, sometimes I was her father, one her brothers, sometimes I was the child of one of her sisters, but as a consequence of the admission of my aunt to hospital and my mother to residential care on the previous January 9th, for the first time in over six decades my mother introduced to me as her son when she spoke to members of staff. It was part of her attempt to cling to memory and for days, weeks and months after admission she would recite the names of her brothers and sisters as a way of trying not to forget them.
The second cause for thought that morning as I sat with her was to make a mental list of the things which would need to be done, from advising her relatives in Gibraltar, the USA and various parts of England, to issues such as burial and cremation, services and locations. It was while I was sitting there thinking about her life and these things that what medical and nursing staff said to me filled me with unemotional anger, as what they said, was contradictory, and brought into sharp focus concerns which had mounted over the past three weeks about the circumstances which led to the hospital admission against her expressed wishes. Medical and nursing staff in hospital in the community at best were making things up, although it quickly became evident that some lied. Proving this was so would be difficult and one had to ask if doing so would be worth the price which would have to be paid. As time elapsed the question of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice became an additional concern and remains so to this day.
The rest of my Saturday, five years later, was a mixture of activity, some productive, but I went to bed dissatisfied because of other matters. The circumstances of the death of my aunt is always with me, as is everything else that has happened in my life, including my knowledge of family and general history and what has happened and is happening to others, who lives have been and are less fortunate and more fortunate, or similar I have stopped everything else and given what happened to my aunt undivided attention during February through to May 2003 when her ashes were taken to Gibraltar for a mass and burial services, when the casket was placed in the tomb where her parents were once buried, in a cemetery immediately under the great Rock, close to the sea, by the airport. Then again when I received the two reports from the second level complaints system later that year and then prepared, with help, to attend separate meetings with the Community and Hospital Health Trust and the Social Services Local Authority. Then again when I made submissions to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman and the Local Authority Ombudsman for advice, following which I appealed the findings of the second level complaints procedure and agreed to participate in a second level Local Authority complaint investigation. It was following the result of the second level local authority investigation, the moving of my mother to a residential home in this area, and the consequential need to close her home and sort out her possessions, that the decision was taken to abandon the formal complaint procedure because I believed the truth would not emerge, and tried to concentrate instead on getting the appropriate authorities to ensure that the matters where it had been agreed changes needed to me made were appropriate, were implemented and that their effectiveness was monitored. It was only at this point at the end of 2004 and the early part of 2005 that I was made aware that the Health service complaint system has been radically changed and that the new system would enable one enquiry to be made covering all health authorities and individuals involved, and that from the autumn of 2005 it would be possible for a joint investigation involving the new Social Services Inspection and complaints agency as well as the new Health Services Commission. The problem was that my complaints had commenced under the old system and included formal reference to the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman, who indicated that my referral had moved from the queue awaiting consideration to allocation to a preliminary investigation officer and I was unclear to me how the new system would in relation to the rest of the system, because in addition to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman and their system and the new Health Commission replacing the old complaints system, there were continuing separate inspection units and monitory bodies for the health service and the separate Local authority Ombudsman system. It was not until the summer of 2005 that the Health Ombudsman announced the appointment of an investigator and suggested how my overall complaint that the death of my aunt had been premature and preventable and that the response of Community and Hospital medical and nursing officers was contradictory, incompatible should be broken down into issues. It was unfortunate that the decision to proceed arrived at the point when I was moving from my ten roomed house on a quarter acre site when I had lived for close on thirty years to a similar sized house, but without the grounds, and doing so on my own, and that the move included the completed parts and outstanding materials for my contemporary art work installation, and involved over 400 boxes.
It was not until a year later that I received the draft reports for comment on matters of fact and devoted several weeks to going through the draft line by line to ensure that I could not subsequently be accused of not having raised issues, however trivial, as well as the substantial matters. It was just before Christmas 2006 that the reports to the Government Health Minister arrived and I was confronted with reports which failed to deal with the substantive issues, failed to include significant and available evidence, and had drawn conclusions which were questionable and where other findings could and should have been drawn. It took a couple of months to work out the best way forward and to submit an appeal against the methodology and the findings. It took time for the Ombudsman to agree that a valid case had been made and for the appeal to be allocated and investigated. For at time I received monthly notifications advising why the appeal was taking so long to consider and then as Winter approached was advised that the decision had been taken to move the appeal from the first level to the second and higher level, and I received the first of the apologies letters for continuing delay as further investigations continued. Another such letter is anticipated in the coming week. A four draw filing cabinet is now full with the papers. However it is only one of ten such cabinets to put into perspectives this matter among the many others where the details are confidential, and may well remain so.
In the morning I concentrated on some writing and some correspondence, enjoying two tolls with lettuce, a red salad pepper and salami filling and then enjoyed the last three episodes of series three Lost. In addition to the substantive questions such as are the castaways dead, because according to one newcomer who parachuted on the island when her helicopter crashed into the sea, their plane had been discovered with all the passengers dead, there is the question, has Charlie died to bring rescue to the others?
The parachuted lass comes from Manchester England, the same city as Charlie, the former band member and, heroin addict who learns to kick the habit on the Island despite finding a crashed plane filled with the stuff hidden in statues of the Madonna. Charlie has established a relationship with Clare and her child born on the island where the other inhabitant are childless because all pregnant women die before giving birth. Unlike the film Children of Men, where everyone woman becomes sterile, except, despite the best efforts of a fertility doctor, only those who reach the island already pregnant. Hence the success of Clare and the interest the older Islanders have taken in her. Charlie learns that there was a memorial service for him and a best selling record produced In Memoriam. However this does not mean that they are in fact dead and could mean a government/organisational cover story to hide the existence of the island from the general public.
As series three progressed the new development is the ability of some individuals to see the future as well as reliving their past. Three years ago about the same time as the fertility doctor is brought to the island by submarine, Desmond is shipwrecked on his Yacht race to impress the father of Penelope. He spends he greater part of that time as does Locke subsequently entering a code every 108 minutes which prevents polarity reversing and ending not just the island but the continuation of planet earth. However he recovers his yacht, joins the survivors, attempts to leave the island, fails rejoin the survivors, and begins to have flashes in which he sees the death of Charlie. At first he takes action to prevent the death, but then he leads Charlie into one situation only changing his mind at the last minute, because he believes the venture will lead him to have contact with Penelope who unbeknown to him has used her wealth to mount an ongoing search to find what had happened to him. Then he experiences another future in which the death of Charlie enables the other survivors to be rescued, including Clare and her baby. Desmond attempts to take the place of Charlie in a mission to enable contact to be made with a ship from which the parachuted lass from Manchester has originated and provide them with the information to penetrated the Island's visibility and communication shield, We have previously learnt in the series there is one route which enabled the submarine to leave and return to the Island and which is also the course which one survivor, Michael and his son are told to take as a reward for tricking four leading characters into the hands of those who appear to control the Island and live protected on the other side and with the ability to also move to an adjacent Island.
In addition to the ability of Desmond to experience future flashes, the series concludes with the leader of the survivors having flashes of a future in which we know that he and Kate escape, that they are given golden travel passes by the airline and that he has been spending his weekends taking flights over the area where the Island was located in the hope of another crash as he believes they should never have left.
This is what the leader of the Others, Ben has been tying to explain, that they should not make contact with the ship because far from coming to rescue the survivors they will come to kill everyone on the island. However because he has proven himself to be a liar and killer, Ben is not listened to and contact has been made. However we also know that although the impression is given that this is a rescue mission organised by Penelope in search of Desmond, it is not.
We have also learnt that Ben answers to someone else, a non human being representing the interests of the island and those living there. The series had developed into a power struggle between Locke who does not want to leave the Island one of two survivors who have come to this position, one has cured cancer, previously incurable, and Locke was in a wheel chair bring thrown out of window by his alleged conman father. Locke has a significance to the Island because he seems to have great power, and in the first series we know that he has director contact with a supernatural being on the island, and whereas he has been cured and the apart from the fertility issue the other islands appear to be free of major illnesses and recovery abilities, Ben does not recover quickly from the surgery to save his life. In the series we learn that Ben was also brought to Island as a child with his father by the organisation conducting research, after his mother dies in premature childbirth and where his father blames his son as part of his disappointment and frustration that the job on the Island is only a general factotum workman. Because of this Ben makes contacts with the other inhabitants of the island and plots with them to take over, which involves killing his father and the other through the use of gas. All the bodies are placed in a open grave, Locke realising that his condition could revert to be a mental and physical cripple, destroy the submarine and presses Ben to know more about the Island and the controlling force. Ben sensing his power over the Others is slipping away accepts the demand of Locke to take him to meet the force, only to find that that Locke is able to communicate directly an consequently leads Locke to show him the open burial grave and to shoot him. But is Locke dead, we learn in the last episode of the series that he is not, and he appears to kill the parachutist in an attempt to stop her making contact with her ship. However the leader of the survivors Jack does so, because Locke is unable to kill him, or anyone, and it is this aspect which is part of the way in which the third series has commenced to link the main survivors together, past as well as present. Sawyer who represents the baddies, a conman who has mistakenly killed another man believing him to be the conman who tricked his mother out of money, and caused his father to kill her and then himself believing she has been unfaithful. Sawyer represents the tendency for human beings to become the thing, the person we hate most, the attraction of opposites and the more extreme we are in out lives the most likely we are to become the opposite, extreme right extreme left and vice versa, atheist advocate for a deity, abused the abuser, military man pacifist, wealthy woman a pauper.
Ben introduces Locke to the man, he believes is his father who conned him out of a kidney and then through him out of the window, who is on the Island as a prisoner, knowing that Ben will not be able to kill him and therefore he will be discredited in the eyes of the Others. This proves to be so but Locke discovers from the detailed files kept on all survivors that this man is also the same conman responsible for the deaths of Sawyers mother and father. Sawyer has no problem in killing this man whose body Locke takes to Ben to demonstrate his power and influence which in turn forces Bed to take Locke t meet the force and the unsuccessful attempt to kill him. The conclusion of the series also sees Ben explaining to his alleged adopted daughter that the mysterious Frenchwoman who lives alone on the island but helps the survivors from time is her mother, Juliet was aware that her daughter was alive and being raised Ben but delayed introducing herself until this moment. Ben had been trying to prevent a relationship between the girl and boy fearing she would become pregnant and die, but the boy has survived attempts to imprison and to kill him and the girls persuades him to contact and warn the survivors that her father has sent early a group to capture the pregnant survivors, if necessary killing the men and also capturing the other women, Although the survivors had advance warning of the raid through the fertility doctor who has joined Jack and they had a scheme to trap and kill the raiding party, the bringing forwards creates problems and three survivors remain behind to trigger an amended version of the trap. This only partially works and they in turn are captured by the remaining raiders and Ben pretends to have them shot in a desperate attempt to persuades Jack not to use the communication device to the ship. Just when the remaining raiders decide to kill the survivors anyway, one of the other survivors intervenes and with the help other main characters the raiders are killed and he survivors saved for the rescue. Thus all the remaining main characters are involved and survive with the exception of the fate of Charlie.
Whereas as Locke appears indestructible as a man who cannot kill directly, there is one agent/disciple of Ben, who we first encounter living alone having direct contact with the outside world who also appears to be indestructible as first he survives the
device preventing entry to the established village where the Others and the former Research organisation personnel lived, then he survives not one but two other situation in which he appears to have been killed, as a consequence of which he is able to ruthlessly kill, including members of his own community.
It is this interlinking past and present which is the main clue to unravelling the mystery of Lost, and to remember my opening words to one work on my history and that of my mother, in the beginning there was Adam and there was Eve, and then there was you and me and we are all connected through the past the present and into eternity. To which I will add and nothing is unrelated or unknown, or random and those who argue or say so are wrong.
Before going to bed I watched an absurd film which nevertheless reinforced my point about casual linking, A wife hires a detective to discovered why her husband has disappeared and where the first indications are that he has run off with another women, However in part because the detective is attracted to the wife and in part because he too like the survivors in Lost has flashes of things past things future he pursues the matter, first discovering that the husband did not officially exist having adopted the identity of someone else who dies as a child, He is able to piece together that the husband had parents where it appeared the father had murdered the mother and committed suicide and their two children had been taken into care one of whom became the missing husband and the other the detective. The film is otherwise rubbish with stupid detectives believing that the first of two men fount battered to death is the missing husband and probably killed in a joint operation by the wife and the detective who has become her lover, and then is responsible for the death of the husband after attempts to kill the detective and possibly his wife and falls out of the window as seen in the flashes.
The day was also productive in completing 11 sets of work related to Mabel, her life, birthday and death, but where the photographing will be undertaken later today, as well as further work and to enjoying the BBC programme in which tribute acts compete to gain public support in order to perform in Las Vegas. The remaining acts are brilliant with one exception which made the public decision to eliminate two difficult. Kylie Minogue obtained the lowest votes leaving the six successful participants, Dusty Springfield, Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, Tom Jones, Lionel Ritchie and Robbie Williams to chose between Elton John and Cher. Elton gave the better performance but Cher was closer to the original and carried the vote 4 .2. Any of the seven will be worthy winners. I was also able to watch the second of Ross Kemp's active involvement reporting of the work of his father's former regiment in Afghanistan. This is a remarkable series in which Ross is moving to a higher level from all his previous wok on Eastenders, in the special ops drama and reporting on gangs and other documentary work. The programmes on Sky one repeated on Sky two which can be seen by those with digital free view. It merits showing on the BBC channels. one or two or one of the main commercial
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