Apologies. There are no prizes for identifying the source of the quote in the post title above. Any super-annuated school boy of a certain age knows that it is from the justly notorious French taunting scene in Monty Python & the Holy Grail, the 1975 film triumphantly transferred to the stage as Spamalot. If your mother was a hamster, click here to watch the full clip.
I feared the scene might have aged but it remains stubbornly hilarious. Yet as a rule, I abhor this kind of puerile name-calling. It tends to be the last desperate weapon at the bottom of a depleted arsenal and it carries more than a whiff of the playground. I don’t suppose I have been subjected to any sustained name-calling since I left school myself. But that was until I started to engage with Wakefield Family Services; last week I was shocked and saddened to find out quite how rampant their verbal abuse of me has been.
It is quite one thing to be labelled as “posh” or “Southern” – although I am not sure either adjective is especially accurate in my case. I took particular umbrage when I was branded a liar after one shocking episode with my father. I was also referred to as “that deranged woman” (I paraphrase, but you get the gist) in yet another inadvertently forwarded e-mail. The incompetence would have amused if the insult had not been so appalling.
Last week, via an official data protection request, I saw another e-mail exchange – coincidentally between the same matey pair of WFS colleagues – which implied that I was a violent individual, who habitually went round physically attacking the frail and elderly. This is not just name-calling. It is malicious defamation and, by any criteria, libel of the most serious nature.
Not long after Dad’s dementia symptoms first began to cause real problems and I had serious concerns about his welfare, I did manage to have a face-to-face meeting with a member of the relevant Social Work team and with the authority’s Adult Protection Officer himself. They openly acknowledged to me that I was seen as “posh” and “Southern”.
At the time, I was living near Oxford which is certainly south of Yorkshire; so I suppose that sort of made me “Southern” – it’s certainly not an epithet to which you can seriously object. However, the very idea that I was “posh” was hilarious. We concluded that my use of the Queen’s English/received pronunciation might not have done me any favours. Again, only an overly sensitive individual would construe “posh” as particularly defamatory.
I did, however, object vociferously, and in writing, to being labelled a liar. Lying is simply not in my nature. If anything, I have often sacrificed tact for the truth. WFS accused me of falsifying an account of finding Dad alone in his room in a respite home outside Doncaster on a steaming hot July afternoon the summer before he died.
I rushed up north after Dad called one night, in huge distress: he did not know where the hell he was, he was having embarrassing problems with his bowels. Could I come and get him? WFS would not tell me where he was; I was not considered next of kin. Nevertheless, I eventually managed to locate him – via a helpful uncle and Google Earth.
I smelled him before I saw him and the scent was not of elderberries. I found Dad sitting in an airless room, up to his waist in his own faeces. He had been suffering from the vivid hallucinations which came with his Lewy Body Dementia diagnosis and he didn’t feel he knew any of the care home staff well enough to ask for help getting to the loo in time.
The staff at the care home “disputed […my] version of events”. I didn’t press my case too hard. I knew myself full well how long it had taken me to clean Dad up and change his pyjama trousers and his incontinence pants. The sights and smells of that afternoon stayed with me for months. However, someone at the care home might well have lost their job over the incident and that is the last thing I would have wanted.
The latest developments are in another league however. As I write, I am awaiting a response from Wakefield to this latest piece of evidence that I was regularly and casually libelled in written communications between very senior Wakefield personnel. I have also submitted another Data Subject Access Request. Sincere thanks to all of you who have so warmly supported and encouraged me not to give up. You know who you are.
As I wrote to Wakefield’s Head of Legal and Democratic Services last week: “The saddest element of this entire saga is that, rather than use my father’s experiences as a real opportunity to examine its adult protection policies, Wakefield chose instead to “shoot the messenger”. Vulnerable adult abuse is rising as the population ages and dementia rates soar. What a pity Wakefield has no interest in improving the protection of the many frail and elderly council tax payers to whom it owes a duty of care”.
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