Written by Kim
This is a story about a relationship between the Lady and the Gardener.
The Lady had been a clinician in the NHS managing twenty other health workers supporting children with special needs. She was as sharp as a razor blade and able to think of more than one thing at a time, or so it seemed. She had the ability to plan the future with a stunning amount of detail. This was a skill that perhaps she had learnt dealing with others while running her team. It followed that she was also a perfectionist setting high standards for herself and others.
Although now well beyond retirement age illness had stopped her career prematurely twenty years ago. That illness was managed with an eye for detail that included her proactive approach in dealing with a degenerative disease.
The Gardener had also retired early not enjoying the last decade of his ‘proper job’. The ‘Company’ was dictatorial, an ethos that had got steadily worse. From what he could see this autocratic bullying behaviour by big business was happening everywhere. But it had been ratcheting up for at least twenty years before he escaped the treadmill.
The Gardener chose his present occupation to finish his working career; to make ends meet while his body was still able to. He had a full round of jobs but had whittled them down to just two. It had been difficult giving up work, he had made friends with his customers, but his legs were aching so much and he was slowing down. The writing was on the wall. One of his two jobs remaining gardening jobs was gardening for the Lady.
Some decisions are forced upon us, others made to maintain sanity. Perhaps they are the simple choices.
The Lady and the Gardener worked well together. As he had been in the service industry he had learnt the importance of diplomacy and humility; just the skills needed to maintain a good relationship with the Lady. She on the other hand was fair and honest, just the qualities that suited the Gardener.
Surely truth cannot be about science but resides in the domain of principles? Freedom is a principle that transcends our perspectives of what is the social norm. As we embrace ‘science’ in a developing technocracy we move further from the higher levels of human understanding, spirituality and truth. Failing to appreciate the importance of this it will have its consequences. The concepts of tolerance, respect and love do not reside in the realms of technology but in our relationships with others. These are some of the choices we make.
The Lady being a clinician in an earlier life was ‘precise’ in her management of the garden. The Gardener said she was brutal with her plants. He jokingly told her the plants winced as she came out and tried extra hard to make a good showing. The smiling faces of the flowers were sent to cheer us up. But she could not have a plant hospital. He was often overruled.
We humanise things, it is our way. Animals are the usual victims of these games. The robin that wants to be friends or the hedgehog that doesn’t. Natural evolution made their choices for them.
At the end of each gardening session, The Lady would make the Gardener a cup of tea. They would have a conversation about what was new or interesting in the world.
Often the Gardener bit his tongue when he was told “leaving the EU is so bad” or “Trump is a terrible man”. He could stand up for his views but there was futility here, only risking argument about emotive subjects. Rather he ignored, diverted or sowed seeds into the conversation. This conversational judo allowed a certain freedom and continuity in the discussion without creating confrontation.
Other people’s choices may be different but must be respected.
Her health was deteriorating as expected, but there were also a number of bad ‘episodes’ with the NHS. As an ex-NHS worker she had extolled the virtues of the NHS as she did of the BBC. Now the inadequacies of these services were becoming more apparent.
The Gardener took no pleasure in seeing this steady disillusionment with her beloved NHS. The NHS had turned from a sacred cow into a cash cow, with collapsing quality and a callous disregard for elderly patients.
We make our choices in many ways, not just the products we may buy but also in our allegiances and behaviour.
On one occasion The Lady had complained about the failure of Doctors and Consultants to get back to her and report on different tests being carried out. Their neglect was a disgrace as calls were not returned and reports were typed but not signed off and sent out. Neglect was a mild description and she was not alone.
The Gardener asked her that, if she found out what was wrong, would there be a treatment. This brought on an upsetting response with a flood of tears and a truth became apparent.
She wanted to know, she wanted a response, some kind of closure; even an admission that they had tried and could not explain what was happening. She was a planner who could not finalise her plans.
Our choices require information. By denying information our freedom of choice is suffocated and suppressed. To deny information through neglect, silence or censorship is an abomination.
The Gardener walked down the long empty corridor. It was one of those endless corridors you get in large hospitals. The floor was a shiny vinyl and the wide plastic dado rails went on into the distance. Strange muffled music echoed from some unknown source.
At the same time it seemed inappropriate and just wrong to hear such music.
We all have our own choices. Often they are influenced by stubborn belief, prejudice, apathy, or simply ignorance. Regardless of that, we must defend everyone’s freedom to choose.
The Gardener would miss those conversations with the Lady.
Thank you Kim, a very thought provoking story with all the emotions it contains I found it very absorbing.
Kim, thank you for that beautiful story. I think it took a certain courage to write something so personal and different. It’s a story worth remembering and calling to mind often.
We have to live together Catherine and do that whilst maintaining our individualism. I think we are all going to have to be courageous.
Brilliant piece Kim! We have all come across dogmatic people that they unable to see the other point of view! Many of us are biting our tongues when dealing with friends and relatives who cannot or will not see that there is so much wrong with the system!
It used to work quite well. So in the minds of the many who work inside the public sector they will hear no wrong about the way things work! Only when they themselves become victims of the system will the denouement set in!
Conversely the private sector -big business – has seen that degeneration and laxity is bringing about an ‘employers’ market. Coercion and bullying is being visited upon the workforce. With mortgages to support, mouths to feed and alternative job scarcity, people have little choice other than to comply with increased workloads and stringent rules. Years ago they would have been challenged robustly because people would have able to take their labour elsewhere.
The current State (despite their protestations to the contrary) has no time for the ‘little people’. Those who aspire to be their own masters and run small businesses are to be discouraged in favour of the multi-national giants (who incidentally seem to pay little tax into the exchequer!). Neither does the State have any use for the older population! Those who have worked all their lives, paid their taxes; been consumers in the growing economy (you remember….the one we used to have!!!); and raised their children to be ‘chips off the old block’ are now deemed to be ‘useless eaters’! Will the politicians who are so callous, be happy to be cast on to the scrap heap in their turn? No? Thought not! But of course they will have lined their nests at public expense and set up their pension schemes in offshore accounts very carefully during their time in office!
The key to all this is, imho, information. Just as we see the importance of Informed Consent from a medical perspective all choices should be made with the information to guide us. I am glad you enjoyed the essay.
Many ‘experts’ believe we are on the cusp of a great advance in the use of AI in everyday life. We are also told that already AI can outperform humans in some specific areas of problem solving. Could it be that AI will become so developed that humans will no longer be burdended with ‘…….stubborn belief, prejudice, apathy, or simply ignorance’ and other such influences affecting the choices they make? In the dystopian future will we even have the choice to choose? Dystopia or utopia?
Dystopia certainly if Boris and his globalist chums get their way.
No doubt sold as utopia; “you will own nothing and be happy”.
A scary possibility. Some people do not want to choose. But then that in itself is a choice. If we do not even have that choice then I would say we are livestock. Checkmate.
Oh dear Kim. Somehow you always leave me puzzled. So many threads to this article. How should I react?
I disagree with the Lady’s attitude to her garden. I prefer mine to be more ‘natural’ but it’s up to her what she wants from her’s.
It sounds as though she ran her bit of the NHS efficiently, ‘as it should be done’. She expects the same level of proficiency from them towards herself – quite right too. If they cannot do anything more for her degenerative disease they should admit it. Though surely the Lady had no choice about having that disease.
She seems to have accepted the majority decision in the EU referendum. While free to hold her own opinion that it was wrong to leave, she is not actively working against it.
The trouble is, we now have a government that is intent on Totally Removing Our Freedom of Choice, in every decision.
Thank you Pauline. Yes can’t life be a pig. We do not always have choices with the hand that is dealt but how we play the hand that is another matter.
With regard to the threads, the subject of ‘choice’ is vast. From natural evolution, personal bias and our inability to make informed choices. All I could do was lever the lid. Among the messages from this was the importance of respecting the choice of others.