Netflix’s Adolescence tells a tale of our time

Netflix film Adolescence is certainly the talk of the town and understandably.

The four-episode miniseries tells the story of 13-year-old Jamie who kills a schoolmate, stabbing her multiple times.

His parents had no idea what he was doing in his room on his computer into all hours of the night.

But there is much more to it than that. He’s scared he may be ugly, other boys maybe laughing at him and girls might not be interested in him.

What’s his relationship with his father?

There are aspects about the last episode that are difficult to understand. How could mother and father have been so happy early in the day on the father’s 50th birthday.

Jamie’s father is a working class man. What does that say to us about what happened? Would a more middle-class father have got into similar rages, at least in the public place?

Little Jamie is not interested in his Dad’s football, nor is he any good at playing the game. Most of all he likes sketching and drawing. And that too is interesting.

A film well worth a viewing.

A hospital should do the sick no harm

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper 

Michael Commane

Impressions come fast and furiously. The person who answers the door, who sits at the reception leaves their mark on us, for good or bad.

I spent many years working in a hospital and saw firsthand how important the job is. Invariably the receptionist is the first person with whom the patient speaks. We ignore the importance of the job at our peril.

It’s always those little, maybe even insignificant moments of help and kindness, that leave their mark on people. Visitors too get their first feel of a hospital at the reception.

 

I’ve been visiting a patient in north Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital over the last few weeks. I arrive on my fold-up bicycle. Instead of locking it outside I fold it up and ask the receptionist if it’s ok to leave it at the desk. Without hesitation I have always been told no problem and am allowed leave it in an anteroom. In case you ask why not leave it outside, it’s easy to steal parts of a fold-up bicycle. Last Saturday when thanking the receptionist we got into a conversation about the importance of her job. Top marks to those at the reception at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

And now to the downside. There’s no perfection on this earth of ours.While chatting to the patient I was visiting we decided we’d go for a snack. I wheeled them down to the cafe. This time first impressions were not great, nothing inviting or simply nice about the ambience, no special touch about the place. I imagine it would be easy to make the space attractive. 

We each had a cappuccino. I could not believe the price we were charged. Two cappuccinos in paper cups cost €8.50. Some days earlier I had a cappuccino in an upmarket café costing €3.95. The cup might have been smaller but at least it was a proper cup. 

Anyway, in Beaumont I simply asked for a cappuccino, maybe they did have a smaller size but I was not given the option. Oh, I can hear you say fighting over 30 cent, he has little to annoy him. I don’t think that’s the point. I associate a hospital as somewhere which cares for vulnerable and sick people. It’s a special place, where patients and visitors deserve to be treated with kid gloves. Patients are vulnerable, visitors are anxious and nervous, they too are under pressure. To charge such a price in a hospital simply sounds mean. Maybe the coffee shop is a franchise, if so management should have a word with them about their prices. For that matter is €2.75 a little on the high side for a cup of tea?

People regularly criticise hospital management for car parking fees and again it looks and sounds awful but at least that money is presumably a significant amount of cash that goes back into financing the hospital.

And before I forget: the poor quality of hospital signage right across the State would make a great topic for a doctoral thesis.

Florence Nightingale’s thoughts about a hospital make sense: ‘It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm’.