2015, love...

Damon Albarn and Imelda Staunton may be among the big names on the New Year's honours list, but they'll be doubtless feel even more delighted to feature in this personal rundown of five favourite LPs on 2015 - right...? Oh. Ah, anyway, some lukewarm takes here for scant reason whatsoever...
(Why, see what a similar judgment 12 months ago did for Music Go Music's career: https://twitter.com/aidanrad/status/550081811251208194 Hm.)

5) Wilco, Star Wars. What, there was another big release this year called Star Wars? Ah, Jeff Tweedy's same-named, under-rated LP puts in a deft stormtrooper stomp...
eg. http://youtu.be/VjMRl6XPBeg

4) London's Savoy Theatre cast, Gypsy. Imelda Staunton a tour de force monster but rosy laurels too to Lara Pulver and, almost as impressive, an unannoying kid chorus...
eg. http://youtu.be/DsnctgVoc5o
(This song was also performed, rather more forlornly, by a Labour leader just after losing a general election he expected to win. That is, on Spitting Image in 1992.)

3) Little Mix, Get Weird. Toppermost of the poppermost, eg. their Ronettes rip-off second single plus a, er, skittish take on a stubbornly long-standing Fifa sponsor - oh... 
eg. http://youtu.be/4tA4sCUExS4

2) Blur, The Magic Whip. Party like it's 99 - or, er, "Cry my eyes out, hold close to me". Fun enough upbeat stuff - but far finer sad, woozy, unsettling and/or unsettled ballads...
eg. http://youtu.be/xdq0EPkzVnI
Hyde Park-life also reviewed here:

1) Father John Misty, I Love You Honeybear. "Oh, and no one ever really knows you and life is brief - so I've heard, but what's that got to do with this black hole in me?" An ex-Fleet Fox, from ethereal whimsy to unholy wit...
eg. http://youtu.be/a9BAlBFv9fE

"Please save little Malak" - mother's plea as four-year-old Syrian refugee faces dying from blood disorder

(Also earlier wrote about her here: http://aidanrad.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/you-had-me-at.html)

A Syrian refugee girl faces dying of a rare blood disorder in a Lebanese shack after being denied European medical aid - just one among thousands feared at severe risk this winter.
Four-year-old Malak, left desperately weakened by her condition, is just about surviving in a makeshift tent after crossing the border from civil war-torn Homs.
The medication she needs - exjade deferasirox - would cost the NHS upwards of £69 per week but her mother Yasmine has been ordered to hand over $1,200 (£800) by her only local suppliers.
Malak’s cause has now been backed by Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron, who is also pressurising the government to improve their direct help for Syrian refugees in dire need.

Welcome is turning cold: Syrian refugees faces a new crackdown from military ... as temperatures plunge

If life in Lebanon were not tough enough for the 1million-plus Syrian refugees escaping carnage back home, beleaguered officials and suspicious military are now threatening a sterner crackdown.
The influx of refugees into 4million-population Lebanon would be the equivalent of Britain taking in at least 25million newcomers.
Yet while aid workers have sympathy for the burden imposed on Syria’s neighbours, they are also increasingly concerned lives are being put in extra danger by new moves to deter any more arrivals.

The children of war need more help

Some still somehow dream of returning home to Syria, others are resigned to staying as safe as possible for good across the border, while a few do eye making it to Europe - for much-needed medical help at least.
But Syrian refugees continuing to flood into neighbouring Lebanon appear united on one thing: a desperation for the world not to look away, and instead continue putting pressure on both Bashar al-Assad and Daesh - and also keep providing aid.
Britain may have been convulsed lately in disputes over whether to extend military air-strikes against Daesh from Iraq into Syria as well.
But the UK is also among the most generous donors to the international aid effort, both in funding from the government and donations to charities such as Save The Children.
International development secretary Justine Greening told Metro that much more needs to be done better by others - with the plight of people in Syria and surrounding nations showing both the value and necessity of foreign aid.

I found out husband was dead from TV

Mother-of-three Nermine learnt from a TV bulletin her husband had been executed after being caught trying to escape Syria. 
She spent three months being tortured in prison on trumped-up charges. 
And she trekked 30km across mountain ranges, along with her three young daughters, to finally escape into Lebanon.
But she says her more sorrowful suffering came when she emerged from the main prison in Syrian capital Damascus for an emotional reunion with her children - only to find they did not recognise her, before scrutinising how she could have 'abandoned' them.

I still bear scars of shell ... I can never go back home

The dramatic dent sheared into ex-soldier Khaled’s forehead will likely be a permanent reminder of the rocket attack on his Homs home that left him in a coma for a month.
So are the three shards of shrapnel left lodged in his body, as well as the screaming fits that still afflict him even as he has taken refuge in neighbouring Lebanon.
The 24-year-old made it across the border being carried over their heads by friends wading through the chest-height waters of the connecting Nahr al-Kebir river.
He has since been joined, crammed into a basic shack, by his sister Amneh, 22, and her five children - Mohomad, eight, seven-year-old Ahmad, Yamama, four, two-year-old Soud and Abdelhodi, three months.
Khaled’s injuries came when his Homs home was shelled by the Syrian regime, leaving him unconscious and then in a coma for the following month.

You had me at مع السلامة

Malak is aged four. She and her younger brother Rakan and their mother Yasmine live in a tent in Akkar, just across the Lebanese-Syrian border, having escaped after being bombed out of their home in the Homs district of Baba Amar.

Malak has been diagnosed with thalassemia, a rare blood disorder somehow like a super-anaemia. Bloody hell, eh. Frequent blood transplants needed. Any blood transplants, unavailable. Regular treatment, now running into thousands of unavailable dollars. UNHCR guidance? Others need help better.



Every tale's a tragedy, of course. Every journalist ought to remain impassive, bigger picture and everything. This was the second time back in very similar circumstances, back in Lebanon towards Syria, albeit with Assad now exacerbated. And yet, and yet... Everything's dispiriting. Individual things even somehow even more so.

"Gonna lay down my sword and shield..."

British air strikes on Syria could leave innocent civilians’ lives endangered.

A lack of British air strikes on Syria could leave innocent civilians’ lives endangered.

Either way, whatever our MPs vote on Wednesday evening - and it now looks even more of a foregone conclusion, hence the fact the debate is even happening - there is no idealistic, winner-takes-all option.

As was put, not simply by the headline on this visit to Syrian refugee camps two long years ago, but people much more engaged there at the time and right now even more emphatically: there seem no answers, simply questions.

And more and more questions, all the time, as it has since turned out - with the bombardment of his own people by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad not replaced but critically complemented by the terror-fying rise of Islamic State.

‘Allez les bleus, allez les bleus - allez, allez, allez les bleus...’

‘Allez les bleus, allez les bleus - allez, allez, allez les bleus...’

The dusty streets of Saint-Denis, let alone the cram-packed market square town centre, were a swirling mass of chaos - football fans in their multitudes taken aback by what they had just witnessed.
Though this at least was not the horrified, terrified shock of last Friday, but the frenetic, ecstatic surprise of a Sunday way back when in July 1998.
On both occasions France’s footballers had just beaten the reigning World Cup holders to nil - last week, Germany; last century, Brazil.
But the experience and aftermath could hardly be more divergent - to put it mildly, of course.
Fond memories still linger of not only being among the throng, close to the Stade de France but missing tickets, making gladly do with watching that first French World Cup triumph on an outdoors big screen instead.
The preceding six weeks had tempted many English fans - always among the biggest contingents at a foreign tournament anyway - that short distance across the Channel.
As will next summer’s European Championship in France, with the Welsh and Northern Irish among those guaranteed to come along as well.
That then-newly-built Stade de France had not only stolen the thunder of Paris’s existing Parc des Princes but also attracted the world’s attention to a previously-neglected district to the north of the capital.
And yet Saint-Denis proved not only impressive as a synonym for that gleaming new edifice, but also welcoming in its slightly-down-at-heel enthusiasm - imagine, say, an England-hosted World Cup staging its final in Tottenham. 
Or, well, indeed Wembley...
The following day’s open-top bus parade along the crowd-crammed Champs d’Elysees bristled with not only triumph but wonder, the previous evening’s surprise trouncing of Brazil only adding to the sheer success of hosting for a second time, winning for a first.
Even more admirable, it seemed, was the mixed ethnic identity of a side earlier denounced by far-right mixer Jean-Claude Le Pen - part-Algerian Zinedine Zidane with his two goals in the final, Guadeloupe-born Lilian Thuram with his brace in the semi-final, among many attesting to a happy diversity.
Of course, such golden moments seldom - no, never - last nor remain untainted.
Within three years a fractious France-Algeria ‘friendly’ had to be abandoned following a pitch invasion by ‘away’ fans who had already booed La Marseillaise.
Le Pen defeated Socialist challenger Lionel Jospin to force his way into a too-tight presidential election run-off against Jacques Chirac in 2002.
And his daughter Marine has not only been surging in recent opinion polls compared to the already-beleaguered Hollande, but may well depressingly reap further benefits from an anti-immigrant backlash now.
Oh, and the reigning European and world champions France crashed out in the first round of the 2002 World Cup, failing even to score a goal while star striker Thierry Henry departed in further disgrace, red-carded.
More momentously, riots broke out in northern Parisian districts in November 2005 following the electrocution of two youths pursued by police - while Thuram has been among those condemning his nation’s residual racism.
This year - first the Charlie Hebdo tragedy in January, now the even more gruesome, unbearable atrocities across the same city. 
No wonder the Western world has responded in stricken sympathy. That Tuesday night’s England-France friendly has not only been made to go ahead, albeit with extra armed police patrols aimed at easing - while perhaps also adding to - existing tensions.
All together now: #rechercheParis, #JeSuisParis. All can and will and should mourn and support ... albeit, perhaps, up to a point, and with a feeling of reserve that the non-bereaved might best avoid narcissistic bewailing?
Hollande, captured on camera looking predictably stricken on Friday night, appears to have responded stolidly since - despite subsequent revelations about his security services’ hapless failings.
And the decision to wallop IS capabilities in Syria on Sunday evening - 20 rockets pounding down on Sunday night, albeit meagre against the 100 each day during Iraq’s ‘shock and awe’ - only puts paid even further to all those old ‘cheese-eating surrender monkey’ taunts.
What happens next - or ought to happen next - is, for all the frothing punditry, pretty much anyone’s guess. 
The one and only easy answer may well be that there is no one and only easy answer. If any answers at all.
French insistence their latest raids are precision-targeting only IS stockpiles, arms routes and HQs are to be welcomed - with instinctive misgivings, mind, about civilians being killed as well, even if IS capital Raqqa has been well and truly ransacked already.
The attacks do, however, pose questions of why - if such capabilities were known - they have stayed unhit during previous months, even if the recaptures of key areas such as Sinjar this weekend suggest IS is actually on the defensive as well as sporadic attack.
What little the rest of us without key codes or influence can do is only too limited, whatever our many opinion-forming. 
So: emotions, instead.
Symbolism, solace and whatever might be the French for solidarity can be emotionally important and useful.
Sport, after all, can fire the emotions, soothe the spirits - proving its importance precisely in its relative lack of importance.
And yet, for all the well-wishing of Tuesday’s night’s minute’s silence and unison rendition of La Marseillaise, such fair-enough stuff can only go so far, do so much - despite some papers’ claims that shading your Facebook picture with the tricolore colours would ‘help’.
Ah, if only it were as easy as to intone pretty sentiments, words, tunes - as some Place De La Republique songstrels chorused, ‘Take a sad song and make it better’, or 'Imagine', or else another Beatley track and one not only 'One World' but with a French connection: ‘All you need is love...’
Bleak as it may be, the lyrics that come to mind here are more Nick Lowe’s: ‘As I walk this wicked world, searching for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself: is all hope lost, is there only pain and hatred and misery...?’
From a song, that is, plaintively titled ‘What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love And Understanding?’
If only, as a terror-laden 2015 approaches its end, with the promise/threat ahead of another bleak midwinter and beyond.

All together now: 'Never felt more like singing the blues...'

Scrapping the Human Rights Act low priority for Brits, poll shows - while Peep Show's Alan Johnson agrees

Brits have little appetite to scrap the Human Rights Act, new figures suggest - as celebrity campaigners rallied to save the legislation.
Eight out of ten people approve of equality for all, according to a new poll, when asked about government plans to repeal the law.
David Cameron’s desire to abandon the act enshrined in British law since 2000 is only a top priority for three per cent of the public, a new ComRes poll found.
A government consultation on replacing the act is about to begin.
But now TV stars including Game Of Thrones’ Oona Chaplin, Doctor Who and Broadchurch’s Arthur Darvill and Peep Show’s Paterson Joseph are backing an Amnesty International campaign to keep it.

Refugees face freezing to death or losing skin and limbs this looming bleak winter

Thousands of desperate refugees fleeing Syria and surroundings are at risk of freezing to death in the coming weeks as a bleak winter takes hold, aid workers have warned.
Families forced to sleep outdoors in increasingly-chilly and rain-sodden misery are already suffering spreading disease and in some cases frostbitten feet.
Babies are being treated for hypothermia, while some migrants have become so cold they have inadvertently pulled off layers of skin when adjusting their clothing.

Two weeks in September...

An emotive photo showing a child victim of Syria’s civil war was accompanied by the plangent appeal: ‘Why has the West abandoned our little children?’
This could be a front-page this September, as the world reels in horror at the death of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi - his lifeless body shown washed ashore at a Turkish tourist resort.

And yet this was Metro’s front-page two years ago this Wednesday, as refugee families fleeing terror attacks begged for British - and Western - help.

Back then, families forced from their homes and in their millions into neighbouring nations such as Lebanon and Jordan were in mortal fear of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Five-year-old Nour stared out, while father-of-six Adhma Al-Hamwi told Metro: ‘What have these children done to desrve to be abandoned like this?’
Two years on, not only does his brutal government pose an ongoing threat, but the militant forces of so-called Islamic State have emerged as even more bloodthirsty tormentors.

Baby, you've got what it takes...?

Jerry Lee Lewis made sure to make a joke about it but his first visit to Britain was the beginning of the end for his first rock’n’roll reign.

"That was the 'good old days'," he sardonically drawled - before adding: "... that we had to modulate and bring up to better days..."
Thankfully, what he claims – to Metro, no less – will be his last tour to these shores will doubtless turn out only the latest triumph of a relentless career.
As his 2006 LP's title put it: Last Man Standing.
("Can I play the piano standing up? Man, I can play it lying down...")
Okay, maybe Chuck Berry and Little Richard may disagree. Although for all their rumoured feuds, Chuck turned up in a five-minute video tribute before Jerry Lee eventually took the stage, this Sunday night at the London Palladium…
Others shown giving him his dues included long late past compadres such as Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Sun Records supremo Sam Phillips.
As Perkins put it: "It was all over, playing piano for everyone else, because that was Jerry Lee Lewis..."

'No one was talking about the benefits system in the UK' - Brits help out amid the chaos and squalor of Calais

British mercy-mission volunteers battling to help out in squalor-ridden refugee camps have condemned the Calais ‘chaos’ left too untended by European leaders.
Refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Iran were helped by a makeshift group of helpers prompted to cross the Channel after being moved by the migrants’ plight.
But the trip organiser told Metro he was shocked not only by the abject conditions faced by the 5,000 stranded in Calais but also the lack of organisation among those trying to assist.

Victoria Pendleton on jump-racing: "It feels like you're flying"

Double Olympic champion Victoria Pendleton has condemned the sexism of cycling - insisting she would rather continue horse-racing and even take up dressage than take her bike off the track and on to the road.
The Beijing 2008 and London 2012 gold medallist told Metro she has spurned her father’s calls to take up road cycling due to the lack of Tour de France-style opportunities for women racers.
Instead she has taken up horse-racing instead, with her sights set on competing at next year’s Cheltenham Festival.
She also joked about taking up dressage, combining her new-found devotion to horse-riding with her valiant efforts as a former Strictly Come Dancing contestant.
Pendleton, 34, was speaking as she also prepares to become the first Olympian to host the annual Team GB Ball, at London’s Royal Opera House on September 9 - hoping to help boost fund-raising in the countdown to next summer’s Rio Olympics.

Labour? Intensive...

Apologies about this but here comes a confession, to being one of those infamous Labour leadership election "entryists".
Cynically ponying up the price of a cup of coffee, as a "registered supporter", solely to vote for that radical outsider ... Liz Kendall.
So-called "Corbynmania" may well be sweeping the nation (/north London/south-eastern England), and his coronation somehow appears now in the air, so apparent.
And yet, for all the supposed fervor he's (almost inadvertently, even embarrassedly) attracting, is this *really* a good thing?

"Who could ask for more...?"

For someone who dim and distantly mused chirpily about “doing the garden, digging the weeds” when turning 64, Paul McCartney still packs a pretty fab punch just weeks away from entering his 74th year.
For almost three hours solid on Saturday night he rocked the O2, not even pausing for a single sip of water - although at least a few stints in the piano gifted him the occasional useful sit-down.
And for all those still haunted/mocking his false start at the London Olympics’ ceremony, his voice remains surprisingly strong - any occasional hoarseness only adding gravitas and resonance if anything.
Why, one of the encores - just after allowing eagerly-bopping guest guitarist Dave Grohl to join him for “I Saw Her Standing There” and harmonising on a single-mike like early Beatle George if looking like late Beatle George - Macca then larynx-shreddingly hollered out “Helter Skelter”.
“When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide...”
Why, and some folk will insist a strict vegetarian diet must leave you feeling flakey, eh...

With apologies to "What A Friend We Have In Jesus" / "When This Lousy War Is Over", an ode to Spurs' final 2014-2015 home game this Saturday and the season ticket renewal deadline this Monday...

When this lousy season's over
No more Tottenham-ing for me,
When we get this summer started
Oh, how happy I shall be... 

No more playing every Sunday,
No more dull Europa League - 
I shall tell that Daniel Levy: 
... Ah, who'm I kidding? "Ticket, please."

"The evidence is clear, on every side, piled high and wide, about how..."

"... lately I've let things slide."

Mental Health Awareness Week, May 11-17 2015

No one, alas, was home when the police scoured then smashed their way through the front-door – perhaps both luckily and unluckily.

Only neighbours returning that moment to their next-door apartment, within a lobby of four facing flats, looked on bemused - doubtless embarrassed as well as alarmed for the surrounding plastering.

A stroke of luck, however, came when those poor PCs working a Sunday lunchtime shift shredded apart walls and floors to find, not a body, but instead a stack of business cards perched on a tumble dryer.

Oh, and a message scrawled on a stray A4 page which had been glimpsed from outside by well-meaning health visitors and presumed to be a suicide note – hence the call to Colindale cops to take over.

Bathetically, the sheet was merely a mundane set of requests to a cleaner due to turn up as scheduled two days later, rather than the final dying thoughts of the homeowner.

Who was, incidentally, at that very moment diligently if occasionally a little distractedly scrutinising newswires in an office across town – unhappy, sure, yet ignorant of the panic and police raid inadvertently initiated.

It was only when abruptly, confusedly taking a tentative phone call from those business card-reading cops, offering an explanation just short of an apology, that he learnt what had happened.

But it was on later arriving home, confronted by a chaotic mess both inside and outside, that the extent became clear of what had been brought about by ... merely seeking help.

And - having attempted to remain pragmatic enough during previous weeks of mounting despair, sudden sobs and suicidally grisly visions - that he now just hit the ripped-up floor and dissolved.

A career-long preference has been to avoid using, let alone over-using, the personal pronoun in articles – even if that might then necessitate awkward syntactic contortions.

And yet in this case perhaps that personal rule should come to an end, albeit briefly.

Apologies for the duration of this, honest. Because, dear reader, I was that (not-so-brave) soldier.

It was my private counsellor who instructed my GP, who referred me to Barnet NHS’s ‘Crisis’ service, who in turn called the police, who had the admittedly-unenviable role of turning up to discover a suspected suicide.

Apologies have followed, not just for the failure of health workers to call my mobile or any of the other friends’ and family numbers they were given before blundering in.

The ensuing days also brought more worry, with promised calls and visits delayed for hours, apparently cancelled without warning and once called off because the scheduled health worker ‘got lost’.

In retrospect, much of this seems understandable and fair enough, knowing just how pressurised such staff must be - how many other similar cases, and worse, must be met elsewhere.

But at a time of near-suicidal anxiety and disorientation, the extra stress hardly helped - and hardly provided much confidence in the very structuring and resources of those in such responsible roles.

Budgets for mental health services in England have been cut by eight per cent in real terms in the past five years, with the equivalent of 200 full-time staff lost since 2012 - despite demand rising by 20 per cent.

GPs will typically not only prescribe anti-depressants but refer patients to the NHS-run IAPT scheme - standing for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies.

Up to 16 sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy are recommended - and yet the burden of referrals is such that one in ten patients wait a year simply for assessment and one in six attempt suicide while on the list.

As many as one in five suffer depression at some point, one in 20 A&E cases are said to be due to mental health problems and failings in the system are estimated to cost the NHS £3billion per year.

And a stigma remains, preventing sufferers from seeking help and leading to misdiagnoses or misdirected assistance even when professionals are alerted.

Meanwhile, figures show 62 per cent of Disability Living Allowance and Employment Support Allowance claimants facing sanctions for not working are mental health patients, despite these making up just half of all applicants.

The newly-trounced Lib Dems may be little-mourned by many but their pledge to increase spending by £3.5bn on mental healthcare may be missed far more.

Nick Clegg and new leadership contender Norman Lamb also pushed mightily, while in government, for mental health treatment to be subject to the same focus and targets as physical healthcare.

Of course NHS services of all kinds are overwhelmed. Yet mental health bears an even heavier, if less visible, burden.

This was not (honestly) meant to be the over-written, over-wrought whine of a privileged person shocked by a rare confrontation with such services needed by so many thousands, millions, far less fortunate.

Although ‘over-written’ and ‘over-wrought’, guilty as ever as charged...

Depression had long been a humdrum background, well, hum in my life, from first seeking help as a self-harming student struggling with low self-esteem, anxious ambitions and stifling shyness.

Later came years of alternating between different antidepressant treatments with sporadically more damaging slumps and, in recent years, promises of GP contact towards NHS talking-therapies.

These failed to come, but as a functioning and accepting individual, that seemed fair and fine enough – anti-depressants, for all that some see their use or (over?)-prescription as harmful, felt harmlessly stabilising here.

Better just keep on keeping on, with their help, while waiting for anything further.

Crisis point - and Crisis referral - came after weeks, maybe months, of deterioration in mood, spasms of sobbing, increasing listlessness at home and at work, plus growing preoccupation with past and present failures and how to avoid the future.

On friends' advice, and having been kept waiting for a year for referral to talking therapies, I began seeing a private counsellor based locally - in sessions that swiftly become less about tackling long-term self-esteem issues than coping with current collapsing.

Friends and family and colleagues had expressed worries already about moods seeming bleaker than those usual long-held depressive tendencies.

And, in fact, although wary of admitting this to anyone, even loved ones, I was beginning to admit alarm to myself at how often and easily I would break down in tears not only alone at night, or alone at my desk, but in company.

Not only suicidal ideas but plans occupied my mind, prompting searches for diagrams as to the best and most effective knots for a noose – several of which I tried at home with dressing-gown cords which, once finally satisfied, got kept to hand at all times.

Not just knots – the research took in scrutiny of angles, weights, timings.

Displacement activity, I would tell myself when mildly blither moods settled – better to focus on a goal while knowing it will remain unfulfilled, than simply drift into oblivion in which anything could happen.

And yet, and yet ... The knowledge I would be better off dead, and wish to make it so, would usually clash against the awareness of how others might react – that is, close comrades, especially those who, alive to potential dangers, made emotively clear their potential horror.

And thus, I not only felt hatred of myself and a desire for death, but also immediate guilt at the thought of what that might involve – not for me, but for others. And guilt that they should feel so concerned about and prospectively affected by someone so unworthy.

In dreary sleepless nights, whether struggling to doze off due to swirling emotions or else the body refusing to do anything but cliché-like twist and turn, at times an instinct to recklessly swish across myself with a blade felt tempting.

Several times I did succumb to what felt most like curiosity, searing a razor across arms that for many years had settled into mere griddles of white lines but now became newly-scarred with fat and angry red welts.

Just as much to explore whether, well, doing so did anything. Could this provide some relief – some self-expression – some punishment?

For all that family and friends have offered well-meaning rejoinders, one response that sticks in the mind from someone once close is that I indulged too readily in self-pity.

And yet that too, equally - albeit differently - to compliments, felt jarring and unwanted.

Rather, not self-pity, inviting sympathy, but instead self-fury, expressing scorn.

And yet the self-harm, even if it still occasionally feels appealing, nevertheless came across as unsatisfying.

Not that it actually really hurts when swiping – the main pain follows in the days ahead, each scar however well-tended tending to sting to every touch.

But the familiar old necessary rigmarole, of cleansing, dressing and clearing up, barely felt a fulfilling use of an evening.

Then there came the same old sense of abashment the next day, with potentially ahead the awkwardness whenever exposing arms, say, in changing-rooms or to a new partner's curious scrutiny.

Once finally put in touch with the right people, at the right time, and with no sledgehammers in hand, some tentative progress began to be made last autumn.

A month of very useful sessions with a Crisis team psychotherapist provided clear goals, techniques, patterns of thinking and behaviour - supported by extremely sympathetic and supportive employers and colleagues.

A recent survey by AXA PPP suggested seven out of ten bosses do not believe mental illness merits time off work.

Yet everyone at Metro and its parent company have gone beyond the call, setting up medical help, allowing time off and offering plenty of sympathy and understanding throughout.

Deaths in the family and other difficulties have led to lapses over the months in between initial alarm and the current tentative efforts at recovery and returning to something like normality.

But since that confused initial response from the authorities, individuals have gradually been better co-ordinated - and there was even a recent end to a dragging wait for the next, post-Crisis stage of IAPT assistance.

Having often been struck confronted by the barely-believable stoicism of those forced into refugee camps, Aids clinics and famine-stricken subsistence in other parts of the world, I know all too well how blessed I have been.

Lucky in the love of family and friends, the sympathy and support beyond all measure of bosses and colleagues at work, in a way other employers may have not been so accepting nor encouraging.

And lucky in, for all the glitches glimpsed in these over-crammed and under-resourced National Health Service systems, the eventual assistance and sensitivity of friendly folk doing their bit, doing their best.

And yet, and yet...

Looking at the numbers involved, whether for funding or patient demand, cannot help but fuel fears for so many more who neither get the proper timely help in the first place, nor the right sort of fought-for follow-ups.

And so either stay silent or silenced.

I feel fortunate to be here, grateful for all support.

Guilt at being here, burdensome to be accessing such support.

And fearful for all those missing out much more – and for whom that over-emphatic police knock on the door might follow an alarm not false but too true, and tragically too late.

One Show's Alex Jones helps seal Comic Relief salvation for 'Africa's worst clinic'

A rat-infested, under-staffed and over-crowded clinic struggling to serve a village in the middle of nowhere might seem an unlikely preoccupation for a newly-engaged celebrity who dould otherwise be imagining honeymoon destinations.
And yet The One Show presenter Alex Jones is keen to get back to the eastern Ugandan village of Iyolwa after a quick-fit Comic Relief-aided overhaul of a life-saving local asset.