Merry Ouchmas: The festive special 2021

Christmas Episode

20th December 2021

bbc.co.uk/ouch/podcast

Presented by Emma Tracey

Emma -  

Hello and welcome to this festive special episode of the BBC Ouch podcast, It’s a Disability Thing and it’s [in chorus] Christmas!

I’m Emma Tracey, and as you can hear I’ve got Beth Rose and Keiligh Baker with me. Hello.

Beth -

Hello.

Keiligh -

Hi.

Emma -  

It’s been a strange old year, hasn’t it? So, we here at BBC Ouch thought we’d look back at some of our favourite podcast episodes from 2021. Some were sad, some were happy, but all were, we think, insightful. So, let’s start by talking about our year, our 2021. Beth, what was your year like?

Beth -

Well, it was a year of two halves really actually. Obviously the first part we were at home. I was in London doing all my Ouch recordings from my flat. And then latterly I got to go home and visit my family, so that was a big thing for me. Obviously the BBC Ouch team has been behind me and my park running career. You’ve enjoyed my weekly updates on how slowly I can manage that. But also big news: today me and Keiligh have met for the very first time in real life. We’re actually in a studio, sat next to each other, with 2m between us. But yeah, it’s the first time we’ve seen each other in the flesh and not on a Zoom call, so that is very exciting.

Emma -  

I’m pretty jealous, it has to be said.

Beth -

I know. You’re up in Scotland, aren’t you, and we are missing you.

Keiligh -

We are.

Emma -  

I miss you all a lot. Actually at this stage I’m really keen to get back and see you all and work collaboratively – that great word. But I am in Scotland making podcasts from my garage. I’ve managed to get home to Ireland a couple of times, which has been just a real winner for me. It’s fed my soul. I’ve got to see my family and it’s been absolutely lovely. We’ve had a lot of building work done on our house, which I talk about quite a lot in our daily meetings. And working from home with builders coming in and out all the time has been interesting I would say. So, yeah that’s my year in a nutshell. What about you, Keiligh?

Keiligh -

Yeah, it’s been a weird one. I’d kind of forgotten actually that I was still shielding at the beginning of the year. I only thought about it earlier when I looked over at Beth and I was like, this is the first time we’ve met, we’re in a studio, and from April I was recording everything from my bedroom at my parent’s house in Wales. So, this seems really strange because it doesn’t feel strange anymore, seeing people in real life.

Beth -

Well, the funny thing for me, so the last time I was in the office was I think March 19th 2020 and it was to record the very first cabin fever.

Keiligh -

Wow.

Beth -

Which I think it’s gone vintage now, right? I’ve not listened back. I bet it’s a bit of a terrifying listen because we had no idea what was coming around the corner.

Keiligh -

Well, actually when you were talking as well about getting home you didn’t have your Christmas until when?

Beth -

No.

Keiligh -

When did you have your Christmas?

Beth -

I think we had it in end of May this year. So, all the presents had been wrapped ready for Christmas under the tree, and then by the time we actually got round to having our Christmas day and opening them no one could remember what was in the wrapping paper. All the tags were really cryptic. And also it’s made this year’s Christmas shopping much harder because we only had six months to think of new ideas.

Emma -  

Some of the biggest news stories of the year: COVID, climate change, the space race, we’ve covered them all with our unique and disabled outlook on the world. Let’s start with one of our most recent episodes. Beth, what was your biggest highlight of this year, or one of them anyone?

Beth -

So, one of my favourite podcasts this year was meeting two of the ambassadors from Mission AstroAccess. And that’s a brand new space firm, a bit like SpaceX and all of those that we hear about. But it’s all about making the space industry and space travel both inclusive and accessible. So, at the moment we know about NASA astronauts and they’re kind of the cream of the crop. There’s the famous saying they’ve got the right stuff, which basically means they are brilliant at everything, they are impeccable when it comes to physicality and intellect and ideas. But actually do you know what, that doesn’t really help us going forward into space travel because the human race is entirely different, good at all sorts of different things and have different needs. So, Mission AstroAccess is making space travel inclusive. And just a few weeks ago in October they took their first crew of 12 ambassadors who are all disabled and all brilliant scientists, and they went on their first parabolic flight; which you might have heard be called the vomit comet. So, basically it’s an aeroplane, it’s a Boeing 727, it’s not kitted out like your regular aeroplane though. And they fly very high up into the sky and they do these arc shapes. And as they tip over the top of the arc so gravity disappears and they experience weightlessness like they’re in space. And so I spoke to Sina Bahram and Mary Cooper, both from America, who had just come off this flight.

[Interview extract] What was it like that very first moment when you experienced zero gravity?

SINA-

Magical. And I don’t really use that word to describe things, but magical, absolutely joyous.

Beth -

Is there any way to describe it? Is it like being in a swimming pool or is it just completely different?

SINA-

No. Mary, I'd like your thoughts on this, but it’s not. That's what everybody says, it's like swimming. No. It's not that you're floating up, it's that you're no longer getting pulled down.

MARY-

But a lot of people have that sensation because it is one of the closest things you can describe it as. I think someone on our team described it really well: as a child you used to pick dandelions and you would blow them and the white flakes would go off and you make you a wish. It felt like that, like being one of those flakes just in the wind, and you have really no sense of where you're actually going.

SINA-

Every assumption that you have. For example, being blind I'm very aware of my environment. I have to be, I can't just rely on looking over, 'Oh, the coffee table's over there', you're paying a lot of attention to your body, to am I brushing up against something? And for all of the things that have remained invariant in your life, which is to say gravity, down is down, up is up, for that to be released, for that constraint to be redefined, you know you could look at it as kind of scary. That's not the emotion though. It was just sheer joy. You're sitting on the ground; you push up so much as with on finger and you're floating. This is what you see in Mary Poppins, it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I think for all of us, at least for many of us, we've been dreaming about this our entire life. In some of the pictures I like 100% have my eyes closed, and it's not because they shouldn't be open because I can't see much from them or anything. It's because I just wanted to concentrate on that sensation of just bliss that came over during the experience.

Beth -

I just loved hearing the wonder in their voices. These are important scientists, so Mary is at Stanford University and Sina is a whizz at computer science. But taking that aeroplane I think has just changed everything for them. And they weren’t there just for fun; they did some experiments. So, Sina, as he mentioned is blind, and so his experiment was to use audio beacons to navigate, so sounds to be played and he would know where he was in the cabin. But they didn’t work. They did not hear a single audio beacon go off, because basically the environment is so loud that it didn’t cut through the noise. But, and this is amazing, when they yelled ‘feet down’ which is basically signalling it’s the end of weightlessness, come down and find your seat, the body and mind remembered where they had to go back to.

Emma -  

That’s so interesting.

Beth -

And it wasn’t just Sina that experienced this; it was all the blind crew and those with low vision. Their bodies somehow knew, which they weren’t expecting, which is amazing.

Emma -  

I reckon I’d be the one person that wouldn’t know. I reckon I’d be the one person still upside down when everyone else is…you know like musical chairs when you’re still dancing. Oh my gosh, so many questions. But they were just like kids; they were so excited and so happy and it was just a real joy to listen to their experience, and a real advert for more of this I think.

Keiligh -

My big question though is, when you were talking to them, did it make you want to do it?

Beth -

You know what afterwards I googled how much it would cost: $5,000.

Keiligh -

Oh, I thought it would be worse.

Beth -

Which I think is actually almost worthwhile saving that money and doing it, because how incredible would that be.

Keiligh -

I would do that if I had the money. I don’t. I work for the BBC! [Laughs]

Beth -

Well, it somehow seems like an almost seamless Segway into our next podcast, which is about climate change, because of course 2021 big year for climate change. And Keiligh was onto it.

Keiligh -

I was. Well, I mean obviously it’s just been one of the big topics of the year, hasn’t it? I think every other conversation begins with a C word: it’s either COVID or it’s climate change. But yeah, it’s been a really interesting year in terms of developments and stuff. But we wanted to focus on how climate change is impacting on disabled people. So, to mark COP26 taking place in our very own Glasgow, not far from you Emma, we decided to look into that. I knew nothing about how climate change was impacting on disabled people. And when I started looking into it, I don’t want to scare people, but I was horrified. Disabled people make up a really massive part of the population, there’s one billion of us on the planet, and a lot of the time we are poorer or perhaps we have less access to services and stuff. So, as part of this research I ended up speaking to some very interesting experts in their fields. So, I spoke to Dr Sébastien Jodoin, and he told us this really interesting story. It’s shocking but I think it really sums up the situation quite well.

Sebastien -

[Interview extract] July 2018 in my home town, I’m from Montreal, there was a heatwave that killed 61 people. And of these victims a quarter had schizophrenia, which is about 500 times their share of the population. And so the question is why would people who live with schizophrenia die at such high numbers in a heatwave. So, there is an element to the fact that they will often be using medication that makes you less tolerant to heat. Antipsychotic drugs make you less tolerant to heat basically, so they have this underlying effect. There are many other medications that have this type of effect as well. So, many people who are also on certain medications or many people who have chronic illnesses, such as mine, it's a very common symptom to be more sensitive to heat as well. But for the most part it’s really tied to their underlying levels of poverty that they experience disconnect from social networks and family. And obviously the city did not have a plan to think about, oh okay, this group might be more at risk; we’d better have something in place to we reach them and ensure that they’re safe. So, ultimately we see these kinds of stories all over the world, whether it’s when there are bushfires and there isn’t a plan to evacuate people who are wheelchair users or who may need to move in medical equipment; whether it’s the context of hurricanes where shelters don’t have ramps. So, we see this story time and time again.

Keiligh -

I just find it really sobering. I’d never thought about having schizophrenia and how mental health could actually lead to that kind of situation happening.

Emma -  

Yeah. And I think often we talk about disabled people and how disabled people can be more friendly to the environment and we can pull our weight and what we can do to live more sustainably. But actually the more important thing is that we’re remembered when a climate emergency, that we had no hand in, actually takes place. I remember reading a lot on social media when there were big power outages in California, and people with ventilators and other equipment really, really struggling. And a big social media surge within the disability community to help each other. That was a really interesting thing to follow on social media at the time. And I think we get forgotten sometimes, don’t we?

Keiligh -

A 100%. And also it’s something that keeps happening. The strangest thing is the authorities and the people that are in charge don’t seem to be learning from these massive incidents. Going back to Katrina, and that was a while ago now, there was a real issue then with evacuation buses coming along and they didn’t have wheelchair access. So, people that use wheelchairs were quite literally being left behind when they were evacuating. Another issue they had during Katrina was there weren’t any sign language interpreters on the news talking about the updates and everything, so again people were being left behind across the board. 

Emma -  

Yeah.

Beth -

I think the interesting thing, and also a bit of a scary thing, because these are really shocking facts and situations, especially the schizophrenia and ventilation ones. But I did a piece fairly recently about an artist called Carrie Schmitt who in her 30s discovered she’s allergic to heat and the sun. That’s not a result of climate change, that’s just her body reacting to it, but she moved from Ohio to Seattle because it’s much cooler. But now with climate change sometimes Seattle is too hot for her. And if she gets too hot she goes into anaphylactic shock. So, she now has to find hotel rooms with certain air conditioning, or actually relocate to islands which are much cooler. So, I just think we’re going to see this more and more as a natural occurrence with all the stories we cover.

Keiligh -

The things we’re talking about on this particular podcast and with Beth’s story as well they do sound really scary, and to be honest they are scary. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t know about them. If anything it means that we have to know about them in order to tackle them. Whilst it’s scary knowing these things we also have to know these things. It is a matter of survival.

Emma -  

[Music] Speaking of being part of the conversation, back in January I interviewed Katie Price and Harvey, her son who is disabled. I think it’s one of my favourites from this year A, because obviously they’re celebs, that’s fun; but also I’ve seen Harvey on lots and lots of interviews and lots of things, and it was my opportunity to speak to Harvey himself and to have a conversation with Harvey. So, we had a lovely chat about trains and frogs and all the things that he’s really, really interested in. And then we were then able to lead from there into speaking to him about his life and about his school and where he lives. And then I talked to Katie and Harvey about change and transition, because that’s a huge, huge thing for disabled people, the transition from school into adulthood and what services you go to and where you live. This clip that we’re about to hear is all about that and about how Harvey handles change.

[Interview extract] The filming, you did lots of visits, it was in a pandemic, what was that process like, you and Harvey getting to the college, getting round the college?

Katie-

It was difficult with Harvey, because when you say residential, he loves where he goes now so he’s got used to that, so when I say we’re looking at another one he’s quite confused. When I said, "You’re going to go there in a year," because he doesn’t understand why he has to leave the other one. So there were a few challenges, you’ll see it in the documentary, there were a few challenges. And then once we were there at one of them he didn’t want to get out of the car. So you’ll see him having a little meltdown, but then once he’s there and he’s happy then he’s fine. Because I said, "All right, we’re not staying here, we’re going home after. You’re just looking." So it’s how you communicate with him and how you talk to him. But he loved National Star. But he had them round his finger there as well, he has a tendency to do that.

Emma -  

Oh my goodness, he’s so charming?

Katie-

Yeah, he does. I don’t know how he does it but he does.

Emma -  

How have you found is the best way to prepare Harvey for change?

Katie-

Well, I’ve got him a little place now to help transition him. So he’s got a house, although it’s just opposite me, so we’re there all the time. We’ve got cameras in it, so… He’s got carers here, he’s got his own kitchen, bath. It’s three bedrooms basically, so it gets him used to his own environment and his own space. And he loves it, absolutely loves it. He Facetimes me. We speak to him through the cameras and he looks at the camera. And it’s safe because there’s nothing he likes…When he’s at home, like I say, in the night he’ll raid the cupboards, because he’s got his Prader Willi’s, and that’s not healthy for him either, whereas here there’s nothing he can get out of the cupboards, because I don’t leave anything in it that he can get and eat. Obviously he’s got tins of food and stuff like that, but he’s not interested in eating that. And he knows it’s his space, so he feels like a man. If I say, "You’re a boy," what do you say, Harve? Are you a boy, Harve?

Harvey-

No.

Katie-

What are you?

Harvey-

A man.

Katie-

Yes, you’re a man now. That’s why you’ve got your man house, haven’t you?

Harvey-

I know, mum.

Katie-

So, it’s getting him ready for residential. When you go to college, Harve, this is what it’s going to be like at college, isn’t it?

Harvey-

Oh yeah!

Katie-

Your kitchen, your bathroom.

Harvey-

Yes mum.

Katie-

You love it. And when he brushes his teeth and stuff he likes to video it and show me, because he likes the praise. So, I think it’s doing him really good coming here, helping him transition. Not everyone’s lucky enough to do that.

Emma -  

Yeah.

Katie-

But I just want it so right for him.

Beth -

I just love the fact that Harvey’s got his own three-bedroom house, at 18, isn’t that amazing? But on a more serious note the documentary, and Emma your interview, it was just so refreshing to hear Katie Price and Harvey’s story away from the noise of all the celebrity stuff and the background stories that are always going on around them, and actually see them as a mother and son and a mother trying her utmost to get the right care for her son. And the amount of things she had to go through, all the visits they had to do, it was during the pandemic. She herself was in a wheelchair as a result of an accident. And just making sure that Harvey was happy and understood what was going on.

Emma -  

I know. And even all the media attention that they’ve had later in the year and all that noise around them, I love having that memory of that great chat, and the love that comes across and how Katie wants the absolute best for him. And even the documentary in the pandemic it sounded like it was really hard. He couldn’t go to school, that was a big thing, he couldn’t go back to his residential school because of the first lockdown there was no school available. And that was really tough going for them as well. So, it really was a highlight. It just felt like a really good conversation and that I got to know Harvey a bit better than I’d managed to get to know him from YouTube or Instagram or any other chats that I’ve seen on TV.

Beth -

I do remember when we recorded the interview. So, Emma was obviously leading it and I was sitting in with her, and there was a press woman, as there always is in these kinds of high-profile interviews, and then there was Katie and Harvey was with Katie that day. And it was on Zoom, so really regular, so we all jumped onto Zoom. And the camera opened, as it were, we could see everyone, and Katie was an absolute glamour puss. The rest of us were just wearing no makeup, because lockdown happened, makeups gone, a top, whatever. I imagine Emma looks quite glamorous as well. But Katie Price was full on Katie Price.

Emma -  

Well, I love the way you say I’d imagine, I’d imagine Emma looked glamorous, because Emma didn’t have her camera on. I had no idea that everybody else had their cameras on. Katie never saw me and I was never in vision and we never got in picture because I couldn’t get my camera to work. So, it’s a massive missed opportunity and a pure blindy blunder there where I had no idea that everybody else was in one situation and I was in another.

[Music] We’ve done quite a lot of reality TV related stuff this year; more than we would usually do I think, haven’t we?

Keiligh -

Yeah, we also did a podcast about Love Island because this year was the first year ever they’ve had a physically disabled contestant on. But actually when we look back and we think about the history of Love Island perhaps not the first disabled contestant if we include mental health and things like that. But anyone the headline was First Ever Physically Disabled Contestant. It was Hugo Hammond. He was a 24-year-old PE teacher and he was born with a club foot. He said that you could only really tell when he was wearing no shoes because then he’d have a slight limp. Beth, do you watch Love Island?

Beth -

No. So, actually I watched it on your behalf, Keiligh, because I knew we wanted to do something about how do you make Love Island accessible, and I was shocked.

Keiligh -

Yeah.

Beth -

So, I’m in my 30s and I was like yeah, I’m cool, it’s fine, I know what goes on in these reality shows. Love Island is like a totally different brand. I just don’t understand how they get away with a lot of the stuff.

Keiligh -

Yeah, I’ve always been a Love Island fan. I’ve watched all the series, to my pride and shame simultaneously. But we got Kamran Mallick, the CEO of Disability Rights UK to come on and talk to us about what it would cost to adapt the villa.

[Interview extract] Very, very generously you watched an episode, [laughs] as research for this podcast. From what you could see of the villa what would need to be done to make it accessible?

Kamran-

Yes, so I thought before coming on here I should at least watch one episode, so I did. We mustn’t forget that impairment is not just about the physical mobility aspect, there are kind of cognitive impairments, visual impairments. But before you kind of get into all of that I think almost your starting point is to say you almost want to get an actual access type audit done, someone professional who would come in and say, “Yes, these are the physical environment changes we want to make. These are some of the softer things that you should be doing, like creating quiet spaces.”

Keiligh -

Can you put a price on that? Do you have a rough idea of how much it would cost to put those adaptations in place?

Kamran-

Huge variance. So, for example, allocating a space, that’s a quiet space, really there’s no cost to that, it’s just identifying a part of the villa where you accept that that’s going to be a quiet space for anybody, and so that there’s some no cost, very low and no cost options like that. To make contrast change on steps or if there’s glass, putting strips across to identify that there’s glass and a barrier there, again, these are very low cost. I think when you get into the higher end it’s always difficult to put prices on these because it depends on the physical building itself. But if you’re looking at lifts, you know, it could be between £10,000 to £30,000, but that’s a very rough ballpark kind of figure of what it might take. And that £10,000 to £30,000 is the cost that would be for a typical home in the UK. It’s always going to be more expensive if you’re retrofitting adaptations in, making adjustments.

Keiligh -

Yeah. I’ve heard that a lot, it does seem to be just so much easier and cheaper in the long run to just ensure buildings are made accessible from the start.

Kamran-

Yeah, absolutely. And if you just think about the advertising revenue they must be getting from it, its popularity, it’s in series seven so it’s clearly incredibly popular, and therefore the levels of income that are probably being generated through it must be, you know, more money than I can imagine.

Keiligh -

Also, quite famously in some of the earlier seasons people were really desperate to find places to have sex, so imagine how much fun they could have in a giant wet room? I think they went in an airing cupboard one year. Think how much more room there’d be in a wet room.

Kamran-

Absolutely. And you always hear don’t you, accessible toilets are much bigger.

Keiligh -

Yes. Yes, exactly. More manoeuvrability. [Laughs]

Kamran-

Absolutely. You’re looking at between £5,000 and £15,000, depending on the size and kind of facilities.

Keiligh -

I really appreciate that he gave us the price for the wet room for fun.

Beth -

Exactly, just that clarification, just to bring it back.

Emma -  

I also really love that you got the CEO of a fairly major disability organisation to watch Love Island and then speak at length about it. I think that was quite a coup.

Keiligh -

Kamran had done a lot of research and was an incredibly charming man, and I would love to talk to him about Love Island again in the future one day. I think maybe he’d watched more than one episode.

Beth -

I think so. I was quite surprised though at how reasonably priced it would be to make the villa accessible.

Keiligh -

Well, yeah because whether or not you’re a Love Island fan you can imagine a tropical villa on the Spanish coast. And obviously there are a lot of steps and a lot of patioed areas, there’s a pool and all that sort of stuff. And although Kamran a lot of the time was saying about how much those adaptions would cost in the UK, I think it is pretty comparable. Also we have aged out of it now, you realise that?

Beth -

Have we?

Keiligh -

We’ve aged out, yeah.

Beth -

What’s been the top age?

Keiligh -

I think the top age was 31.

Beth -

I have a contender.

Keiligh -

You do have a contender. Seamless.

Beth -

For Ouch listeners who have been with us for a while you will of course be familiar with the fabulous Simon Minty, who’s a very handsome man. He is now part of the Gogglebox team on Channel 4, so he is on primetime TV every Friday night talking about TV. I saw him last week and I put it to him, “Simon is the next step in reality TV Love Island?” He didn’t say no straightaway.

Keiligh -

Well, if he didn’t say no…

Beth -

I think he would be great on it. He would be brilliant, he’d be funny, he’d be witty, they’d all love him. Yeah, so watch this space.

Keiligh -

That would be a better TV show I think.

Beth -

[Music] So, my dad asked me last night what carols he wanted me to print off so as a family we could play over Christmas, so me on the violin, my dad on the guitar and my mum may or may not be on the harp, she took up as she retired.

Keiligh -

I love harps.

Beth -

And I was going for the classics, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Three Kings, Good King Wenceslas, the ones that don’t seem to get sung as much.

Keiligh -

Can I give you a really embarrassing Christmas confession?

Beth -

Please.

Keiligh -

As t’is the season. I only found out two years ago that it wasn’t Good King Wenslas. For 30 years I thought it was Good King Wenslas. And someone was like, no it’s Wenceslas. And I was like, what are you on about, Wenceslas.

Beth -

What did you think everyone was doing with the last bit?

Keiligh -

I thought it said…

Beth -

Good King Wenslas last looked out.

Keiligh -

Yes exactly!

Beth -

Ah.

Keiligh -

Thank you Emma that was not alone. I felt so stupid. Wenceslas last looked out, yeah.

Beth -

What were they thinking?

Emma -  

I just like taking the big deep breath and going, [sings] Glo-ria, Gloria, hosanna in excelsis. When I’m in choirs or if I’ve been in choirs it’s always been an achievement if I’ve done that without breathing.

Keiligh -

That is an achievement.

Beth -

I was playing some Christmas music the other day and I realised – do you know the song, Gaudete?

Emma -  

Yeah.

Beth -

Is it Latin, Emma?

Emma -  

Yeah.

Beth -

So, I can sing the full song in Latin.

Keiligh -

Go on then.

Beth -

I’m not going to do it. But I was like that’s a good handy thing to do.

Emma -  

Easy-peas dot com.

Keiligh -

Yeah, could you give us a bit.

Beth -

[Singing] Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus, ex Maria virgine, Gaudete.

Keiligh -

Maybe I do know that actually.

Emma -  

Did you say sex and virgin in that?

Beth -

Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus, ex Maria virgine, Gaudete.

Emma -  

Oh, right it was the…

[Music] So, we’ve talked about reality TV and we’ve talked about a lot of the fun stuff that’s happened this year, but it’s been a tough year for a lot of people. And back near the beginning of the year as well we recorded an episode of mentally interesting where one of our presenters, Mark Brown, spoke about the death of his sister Alison from COVID-19. It’s an incredibly powerful episode and difficult to listen to at the time and difficult to edit, but really relatable and we had a lot of feedback from it. I suppose the reason being that COVID has disproportionately affected disabled people and lots of us have lost people over the last year or two. And Mark has just put into words what some of that felt like, and that’s what we’re going to hear now.

Mark-

[Interview extract] One of the really weird things about losing someone and about grief is it’s really not like it is in the films. Like, you don’t put on your black dress and your black veil and walk around with a sour face all of the time, just kind of shaking your head and sighing. Although to be honest, I’ve been doing quite a lot of shaking.

Seaneen-

That’s the way you live normally anyway, so…

Mark-

I’m full of grief and sadness, sighing.

Seaneen-

Sad face.

Mark-

Just like slowly deflating one of those inflatable men that, you know, waves their arms around in front of car dealerships.

Seaneen-

But you did want to talk about it. So why? Why did you want to explore it on this episode?

Mark-

Well, I think one of the things that’s very difficult for us to talk about right now is how much this pandemic period, this cabin fever period, this lockdown period, about how much the last year has been haunted for a lot of us by the spectre of death, the fear of illness and the fear of loss. But we never really think that it’ll happen to us, like, you always think that things will turn out all right and, you know, in the final reel of the film you all get together for that big party that’s been put off for all that time and then everything will be all right and you’ll get to see all the people you wanted to see and you’ll get to pick up all the threads that you wanted to pick up. And unfortunately that’s not the case with me and my sister. So the last time I saw my sister was on her birthday in February, just before lockdown started. And being very good, very conscientious people we observed all the lockdown rules, you know, kept ourselves safe and stuff, so we didn’t see each other all year.

She fell ill just before Christmas and had to go into hospital for a medical procedure and she was really, really ill. I couldn’t go and see her. I was standing in the field outside of the hospital in the dark waving a torch up at the windows in the hope that she would see it, because that was as close as we could kind of get. Then she was moved to a care home for kind of rehabilitation and whilst she was there she contracted COVID and it wasn’t sounding very good but, you know, it’s all right, she’s young, she’s healthy so she’ll be fine. She was 39.

Then at kind of four o’clock in the morning I got a phone call from the nursing home saying unfortunately your sister’s died. I’m a month, a month and a bit, nearly two months into the kind of process of getting used to being a person that doesn’t have a sister anymore. Yeah, so I thought it was really important for me to talk about it because it’s something very real that’s happened. We can wang on about mental health stuff and talk about stuff in the abstract, but for me this was the kind of experience of all of the headlines coming home.

Seaneen-

Yeah.

Mark-

And almost, you know, like echoes from the future resounding back through the past, like all the things that I’d been worried about for other people happened to my sister, and kind of happened to me and her partner and my family and all of her friends.

Seaneen-

Because of the pandemic, I mean, you can’t grieve in the way that you probably would like to, or that, you know, people have done for years in order to say goodbye. I mean, what’s life been like since Alison died?

Mark-

Life since Alison died has been a kind of mixture of feeling the good stuff and also feeling the loss. It kind of takes a long time to even begin to, like, reset your internal settings. So I remember I went out for a walk and I was thinking about Alison’s partner who’s on their own now, and I was thinking, God, you know, they must be absolutely knackered. And I was thinking, you know, all this emotion and all this feeling and all these feelings of sadness, I’m really knackered. And then my mind just ran on and I just thought, God, and Alison must be absolutely done in from, like, all of these people saying that they miss her.

And it was like I hadn’t reset my thinking to stop worrying about how she was feeling, like, I was concerned about how her death was affecting her. And that’s that kind of, you know, that’s what you feel for your sibling, that you’re always thinking, you know, this is happening to me but how do they feel about it.

Beth -

That was such a powerful episode and clip. I think Mark just describes things so beautifully. Often you’re going through these experiences, we’ve all been in a similar position to Mark’s, but the way he can actually articulate it I think really hits home to a lot of people. And a lot of people have obviously been impacted by grief over the last nearly two years.

Keiligh -

And of course what we should say is, if it is a bit of a difficult time for you at the moment, and lots of people have been through lots of grief and challenges, you can always get in touch with BBC Action Line for any support and advice, or there are various organisations as well such as MIND or Rethink.

Beth -

[Music] It has been tough. There has been a lot of grief. But also there has been a lot of happiness, and some of that happiness has come to the extended Ouch team. If you’ve been with us right from the beginning of Cabin Fever then you’ll be very familiar with Kate and Holly who presented the Isolation Diaries. They are a couple. They are married. When they joined them they had a daughter called Scout, a toddler, and very recently, earlier this year they also adopted another little girl called Gracie. And we’re going to hear when that became official.

Kate-

[Extract] Okay, I just had a call. It was from the court and they said everything went through on Gracie’s adoption order and she is now a Monaghan!

Holly-

Yay!

Scout-

Gracie Monaghan.

Holly-

Gracie Monaghan, yay!

Scout-

Gracie Monaghan is a pomaban.

Holly-

Ow!

Kate-

Scout, too tight hugs.

Holly-

Too much cuddle, too much cuddle.

Kate-

Too much love. Yay, so we can take her out of the country. Oh wait, COVID. But that’s great news.

Holly-

You’re official, Grace.

Kate-

Official.

Holly-

You’re officially part of the family. Is that good news, Scout?

Scout-

Yes it is.

Kate-

Right, for anyone who couldn’t really hear us in the bath with screaming children, yeah we found out from the courts today that Gracie is now officially part of our family. So, when you adopt a child, for anyone who doesn’t know, when you bring them home that’s not the end of it. You share custody for at least ten weeks with the local authority, which is to make sure that everything is good on their side and it’s good on our side and the match is right and all of this stuff, and that the child is happy and safe and loved and all of this stuff. And then after ten weeks of the child being with you you’re allowed to apply for the adoption order through the courts, which is a paperwork kind of thing that she’s yours. And that’s what we did. And then there’s lots of kind of waiting around, even more than normal because the courts are backlogged in all their stuff. It feels like we’ve been waiting ages. You have an official hearing to make sure everybody’s happy with the match. And then you get another date, and then it’s at that second date that it all goes through.

Holly-

It's also to allow birth parents to contest as well. They can try and try and try again, just to try and prove that they are…

Kate-

Have changed.

Holly-

Yeah. So, sometimes it might work in their favour. Luckily for us… Can you go and wipe mama’s face?

Kate-

Oh, that’s got a load of snot on it. And Gracie is now officially ours, so that means no more social worker visits, no more looked after care review.

Holly-

It’s a funny feeling because it’s amazing, but also there’s obviously a hint of sadness that nobody did contest her. But I think luckily we know that her birth parents are happy where she is, don’t they?

Kate-

Yeah. They understand that she’s in a good place anyway.

Holly-

And that’s really important for when she’s older and we can explain to her that her birth parents did want her but they couldn’t care for her.

Kate-

Yeah. Good girl, you’re building a tower. And that even though they weren’t able to care for her we wanted her more than anything in the world, and we were lucky to have her.

Holly-

Yeah.

Beth -

Can you imagine how chaotic that household’s going to be this Christmas?

Keiligh -

Very chaotic and very cute.

Emma -  

Cuteness.

Keiligh -

Oh, the little snuffly noises Gracie makes, and when they were like “too much love, Scout, too much love” when she was celebrating.

Beth -

Just lovely.

Emma -  

It’s just beautiful. And the idea that we followed Kate and Holly through such a difficult time for them where they were shielding, because Holly’s immunocompromised, for that to be the outcome, the ending. And also a disabled female couple adopting is just all the feels.

Keiligh -

Just so lovely. And also just for a bit of a weird time context I produced our Christmas podcast last year, and while we were recording Kate suddenly started crying. And Simon Minty was like, “Kate, what’s wrong?” and she’d just got the text from Holly saying that Holly was finally getting her first jab. And that was a year ago.

Emma -  

Big moments. And Kate and Simon presented the Ouch podcast for many years, the Ouch talk show, and they’ve been in our lives for a long time and we’re very fond of them and we’re very keen to follow their journeys in life, as you can tell.

Keiligh -

Definitely. Oh, and also a nice thing that I couldn’t include in the clip was that then Kate and Holly were explaining they’ve got a booklet to give to Gracie when she’s older that marks her entire journey. So, there are pictures of her with her foster parents, stuff about her birth parents, about how Holly and Kate found her and all these lovely things. It’s really nice. And when she’s old enough they’re going to present her with it and then she’ll have a little life story, a bit of a – what was that programme back in the day?

Beth -

This is Your Life.

Keiligh -

This is Your Life little Gracie. I think that’s ending on a high note right there, isn’t it?

Beth -

It is. And it’s interesting hearing about the court process, the adoption process, because it’s always, not shrouded in mystery, but unless you’re going through it you’re not sure. So, they’re going to have a great end to the year. And actually there was loads of brilliant Ouch stuff that we didn’t include. Obviously the summer was the summer of the Tokyo Paralympics; didn’t go as…well it went smoothly, but not in the normal way we expect. And also what a year it’s been for loads of disabled celebrities. We’ve had Strictly with Rose Ayling-Ellis wowing everyone with her dancing. Rosie Jones is appearing on everything right now. Casualty, my personal favourite.

Emma -  

I saw here on The Wheel; that was quite good.

Beth -

Yeah.

Keiligh -

And obviously she also appeared on an Ouch podcast not that long ago as well. Another of our… can we claim Rosie Jones?

Beth -

Yeah, definitely.

Keiligh -

Fantastic. I’d love that.

Beth -

What about Tim Rencow? He had a new series of Jerk out, he’s been with Ouch many times.

Emma -  

Yeah, we’ve had him a few times on. Absolutely. Lots of highs, lots of lows, and lots of stuff in the middle as well. But I think the Kate, Holly, Scout, Gracie clip is the high to end all highs.

[Music] It’s been quite the BBC Ouch year, I think you’ll agree. And all the episodes we’ve taken the clips from for this one are available on the BBC Ouch podcast on BBC Sounds. And you can subscribe to us there too; please do that. And you can get in touch with us as well. We’d love to hear from you. We are @bbcouch on Twitter. And you can search for BBC Ouch on Facebook and Instagram as well. So, all that’s left for us to say on this episode is:

All-

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Keiligh -

Sing us home with a Latin song Beth.

Beth -

[Singing] Gaudete, gaudete! Christus est natus, ex Maria virgine, Gaudete.