Week 39.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Unhealthy Tendring – are we oldies to blame again?

Not so long ago it was we oldies who were ‘skewing’ the statistics of educational achievement in the Tendring District. We hadn’t the paper educational qualifications of the younger generation (not even a couple of GCSEs at ‘E’ level!) and we were making the rest of the population appear more ignorant than they were. Be that as it may, I’d back an average team of over sixties to beat any similar team of teenagers-to-thirties in any General Knowledge quiz that wasn’t concerned solely with sport, pop music or ‘celebrities’!

Now we’re affecting the district’s health statistics. You may think, as I do, that the Tendring District and, in particular the holiday coast, is an exceptionally healthy area in which to live. There is little industrial pollution, weather conditions are rarely if ever extreme. We have the lowest average rainfall in England, and fresh air blowing in continuously from the sea. Clacton’s holiday publicity used to claim ‘Champagne air, Rainfall rare’. For what more could one ask?

However, a report by the British Heart Foundation reveals that more people in the Tendring District die of heart attacks than in any other part of Essex. Every year an average of 320 people in the district die following a heart attack. Neighbouring Colchester does better than us with only 203 deaths from the same cause each year.

Dr Nick Robinson, consultant cardiologist for the Essex Cardiac and Stroke Network is reported as saying, ‘Compared to other areas of Essex, Tendring has a much older population and heart attacks are more common in older people. The other reason is, that Tendring is more deprived than other areas of Essex, in terms of income and education’. Education again!……..Dr Robinson seems convinced that it is we poverty-stricken, uneducated and ignorant old pensioners who are casting a shadow over the County’s health statistics. In that connection may an ignorant old octogenarian point out that ‘compared with’ rather than ‘compared to’ is correct English usage

I hope that Dr Robinson will give the matter a little further thought. Has he, for instance, ever wondered why the Tendring District has a much older population than other parts of Essex. Couldn’t it be because we are a lot healthier than other areas? We natives (as a resident for fifty-four years I surely count as one) live longer because of that, and people from elsewhere, shrewd enough to know a good thing when they see one, move here because they believe that living in the Tendring District will probably ensure them a longer and healthier retirement.

No-one, as Dr Robinson has surely noticed, lives for ever. Tendring folk tend to die of heart attacks in their old age because previously they have successfully avoided or resisted other, often much more unpleasant, causes of death. I can imagine many worse ways of departing this life than having one’s heart stop beating while dozing in a favourite armchair. Yes, I’m well aware that not all heart attacks are like that……but we can always hope!

Is Tendring, as Dr Robinson also suggests, ‘more deprived than other areas of Essex?’ Remarks like that make me wonder if he has ever actually been here. There certainly are areas of deprivation in our district, as in any area of comparable size. I don’t think though that a visitor, driving through our countryside and our town centres, feels that he is passing through scenes of poverty and deprivation.

Less than a fortnight ago my son and daughter-in-law from Enfield, visiting me here is Clacton, remarked how prosperous and ‘regenerated’ Clacton was beginning to look, compared with some other areas with which they were familiar.

Possibly, because of the high proportion of pensioners who live here, our average income is below the national, or even the county average. The incomes of most pensioners are quite low. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all living in desperate poverty. Some undoubtedly are, and I wouldn’t for one moment make light of their difficulties. They need every penny of help that they can get.

It should be remembered though, that living comfortably within one’s means depends upon outgoings as well as income. Many of us have long ago paid off our mortgages. We have no dependents and no debts. We don’t have to pay for NHS prescriptions, for bus journeys or for tv licences. Once we have made it to eighty we don’t even have to pay for our passports for travel abroad – a concession for which I have been very grateful. The fact that our actual income may be low doesn’t necessarily mean that we have a struggle for survival.

I suggest that the average age at death would be a much more reliable indicator of the general health of a district than which of a number of natural causes was most frequently responsible. None of us can hope to evade for ever the attentions of the grim reaper. I think though that in the Tendring District we manage to avoid him for rather longer than most.

I’d like Dr Robinson to come to the Tendring peninsula and have a look round. If he’s hoping for a happy and healthy professional life followed by a long and comfortable retirement, he could do a lot worse than settle here.

No more doctors’ catchment areas?

There are not all that many areas of policy in which all three main political parties find themselves in agreement. One, it appears, is that doctors’ catchment areas should be abolished, and that we should all have freedom to make our own choice of the medical practice with which we wish to be registered, no matter where it may be.

It sounds a splendid idea and there seems little doubt that it will become law in the near future. How will it work though? Do you remember when they abolished catchment areas for secondary schools and said that all parents would have the right to send their children to the school of their own choice? Those schools that were considered to be ‘good’ were quickly over-subscribed and others (like Bishop’s Park College in Clacton) that were seen as being less good, were left seriously short of pupils.

The final result was that parents lost the valuable right that they had once had, of automatic admission to their nearest comprehensive school. It was head teachers of good schools, rather than parents, who were able to do the picking and choosing. Freedom to choose whichever medical practice patients prefer could lead to a similar situation.

The idea seems to be that regular commuters might well prefer to have a doctor near their place of work rather than near their home. Nobody though, spends all their time at work, and very few people spend more time there than at home. Nor can we always choose the times that we need to see a doctor. A medical practice near the place of employment would be very handy for routine visits like blood pressure checks and ‘flu jabs, but how about more serious problems?

Supposing you work ‘in the city’ and commute there from Colchester, or Frinton or Clacton every day. You’re registered with a medical practice somewhere near Liverpool Street. I assume there is one in that area. One morning you wake up after a bad night’s sleep with stomach pains that could just be the temporary result of over-indulgence……but might not be? What would you do? Catch the 8.10 or whatever as usual, and hope that it will either get better or that you will be able to get to the surgery before it gets much worse? Or ring the surgery and ask for a home visit? It’s only seventy miles away after all!

I have an idea that giving patients ‘freedom of choice’ will turn out to be one of those well-intentioned ideas that ultimately have the opposite effect from that intended.

Successes in the Anglia in Bloom Competition

The annual Anglia in Bloom competition has surely been one of the most beneficial influences on the East Anglian countryside and townscape life in recent years. It ensures that our towns and villages get an annual floral facelift, and encourages both local co-operation and healthy competition. Chairman of the Judges, George Dawson, said, ‘The competition is not just about flowers. Many different categories are looked at including environmental quality, community involvement, biodiversity and the involvement of young people……….when everyone is involved the rewards are tremendous’.

I was glad to see that competitors in our Tendring District received their fair share of those rewards. Frinton once again set an example, gaining a gold award and top spot in the small town (2,500 to 6,000 residents) category. Brightlingsea achieved a gold award in their (6,000 to 12,000 residents) category but yielded the top place to Halstead. Clacton, a little disappointingly, missed the top award but did receive a silver in the coastal town category.

I was pleased that Kirby won a bronze award in the large village category, and more than pleased to learn that much-maligned Jaywick received a similar award in the small town group (Lord Hanningfield please note!)

Surely though, the children of Clacton’s Holland Park Primary School, and their parents, must have been the very proudest participants in our district. They were selected for having the best project in the Anglia region for children under twelve.

Congratulations to all those mentioned. I’m sure that we’ll do even better next year!

Songs of World War II

How refreshing that the wartime album of, now a nonagenarian, Vera Lynne, recently proved to be ‘top of the pops’! It is nice to know that there is still a demand for melodies that don’t assault the ear drums, and lyrics that can be heard, understood and don’t insult the intelligence.

No-one, whether in the forces or on the home front during World War II, will fail to remember having their hearts cheered during those dark days by her voice singing ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when’ or ‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover’. They brought a message of hope to folk who were desperately wondering whether, in this world, they would ever meet again someone they loved, and whether anything but warplanes would ever again be seen in the skies over the Kent coast.

She and her songs were loved by members of the forces. It must be said though that hers were not the songs that we sung as we marched or drove along Libyan or Egyptian desert tracks, or off duty in the canteen back in England.

I don’t, of course know what went on in the officers’ or even the sergeants’ mess, but we common squaddies favoured songs that were either quite unprintable – the unexpurgated version of ‘Bless ‘em all’, and ‘When this (censored) war is over’ sung to the tune of a popular hymn, or songs that were sickly sentimental, all about childhood sweethearts and silver-haired old mums waiting at home. ‘There’s an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean, Where we used to sit and dream, Nellie Dean’, was, I remember, particularly popular with those who had had a drink or three!

An exception was the one song that became equally popular with the rank and file of both opposing armies in North Africa and, I think, had the most memorable melody of any song that came out of World War II. I first heard ‘Lili Marlene’ sung by captured German troops after we had taken Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) and Bardia just after Christmas 1941…….six months before the debacle of Tobruk, when most of us became prisoners! It had been broadcast by the German Forces broadcasting network in occupied Belgrade and had been an instant success.

It had a melody that stuck in the mind (it’s going through mine as I type these words!). We tried to put some English words to it, and I think that the Italians tried the same. Eventually, of course, there was an English version ‘Vor der Kaserne, bei dem grossen Tor’ became, ‘Underneath the lamp-light, by the barrack gate’. Its title was, of course, as easily pronounced in English as in German. It was added to Vera Lynne’s repertoire and became, as far as I know, the only song of World War II that was popular with both those in khaki and those in field-grey.