Do you ever wonder if you have got some sort of Syndrome? I do. Wonder if I have I mean, in fact I am sure that I have let me try to explain. It all started with a chat among a few friends as to how we like to eat our raw Tomato and I said "with sugar" and they said "ugh", then I said I like hard boiled egg with salt and Tomato with sugar, and suddenly I was transported back (in my mind I hasten to add!) to a picnic with Grandma Ward many years ago when Tomato and sugar along with Philadelphia cheese sandwiches with Pineapple were introduced to my taste buds. So far so good but then later driving home I couldn't stop crying and Grandma Ward and Mum and Elsie and xyz were all mixed up in my head and the pain was physical and there was that ache I thought had gone yet by I got home I was fine again, bright & breezy-.mm must be some sort of syndrome. Perhaps not, perhaps grief.
  Kathleen probably triggered it, Grandma Wards daughter who died last month and hubby and I went to Gateshead to her cremation, we met family members not seen for many years, her niece Rosalind who is so tike Eilleen her late mum, Vi's son Peter, Bill now very elderly but could chat about the caravan they had in our village in "their young days" K and Dorothy were great fun, we had wonderful times, they brought some dressing-up-clothes and K dressed up as a "Golly" and met a local dog which ran away for days at the shock. Happy memories. For the Wedding we tried to plan for everything even providing a mirror, hand cream, sun lotion and wet-wipes, the latter two were the most popular, I can remember chatting to one couple who were struggling in the hot sun and suggesting the wet ones to which the chap replied" If you have any more you had better get them, we have gone through two packets already!" Inside the Marquee it looked beautiful, many hands made light work and all the table bits n bobs had to be the right red, the heart shaped name-cards on the bags of Favours, the tea lights, serviettes, and esp' the Red Roses. We bought them at Greenbanks in a range of colours and then painted them the right red, two friends came on the Thursday and painted some so that we had plenty. Elder daughter had various ideas as to what to put the roses into, I saw a rustic idea in a magazine, put them in a tall tin with Baler-twine around it, so we ate a lot of tinned Rice pudding of a certain brand 'cos it came in right sized tin..then she decided not quite "the look" and settled on small tall glass vases. I decorated the drive with white ribbons and balloons while the girls had their hair done at Grandmas and then got asked "Why is the toilet roll draped over the bushes!" Huh!!
  As you may realize I am not very good at buttoning-my-lip, seem to have lost the instruction book, at least folk know where they are with me, having said that sometimes I think afterwards it would have been better to say nothing. Just sometimes. Did you see that programme on ITV about that family where Dad has Cancer and everyone skirts around it with "all will be well syndrome" until the daughter shouts at him "Its not just your cancer, its mums and Eric's, and mine  and Grandpas" I leapt out of my chair shouting "YES, yes. yes!" She is right, and while I do not be-little anyones experience of cancer or the side-effects of drugs or any other aspect of it at all, I am convinced that it does become a family thing. It has here, my brothers cancer in a way I can't describe has become "ours" too, it's not just the actual illness but all the side-effects and adaptions, hopes and fears, there comes a point when the skirting around has to stop and the only way is straight down the middle.
  Cleo is showing a little more senility in her old age and our animals were joined recently by a tiny kitten abandoned at Grandmas which I attempted to hand rear, sadly it only lived a few days but oh the cuddles were wonderful, Mitts was not impressed but having seen it live in a box she now wants to do the same! What a life, what a tapestry, enjoy yours. Or do I mean "survive"?

  I'm led to believe that weather forecasters consider autumn to start at the beginning of September; if so we are now well into autumn.  The heady days of summer are over and Sedbergh is settling down into autumn mode after the excitement of the Books and Drama Festival and the influx of visitors.  Schoolchildren are back at school and indeed will have their half-term holiday later this month.  It was good to hear a visitor say that there is always something going on in Sedbergh and that there is no need to go to Windermere and shell out on outrageous car parking charges.
  I hope that the Book Festival was a success as I'm sure there was much hard work involved in putting it on.  I say that because I haven't heard much comment about it, so I wonder how much local support it received.  I have to confess that I supported only one event.  Obviously by its very nature such an event will only appeal to the few rather than the many.
  Three events which received much acclaim in my hearing (and so I think must have had more general support) were the visit of the Jamaican Steel Band; the Charter Fair and .Market, and the Art Society Exhibition.  So many people have enthused about the Jamaican band I really feel I missed out not seeing and hearing it.  The Charter Fair certainly attracted visitors.  Like me they were probably fascinated by the Town Crier.  I wonder where they imported him from.  I was unaware we had a Town Crier.  What a posh chap he is.  Just something odd though, - I thought I recognised the voice - but surely not.  I just think it would be good if he were to patrol our streets more often.  As for the Art Exhibition the view was expressed that its new location made it more accessible.
  Now to Joss Lane car park.  It is the place where many, if not all our visitors first set foot in Sedbergh.  It is adjacent to the Book Town Tourist Information Centre and there is probably a well trod path from the one to the other.  Unfortunately doing so they have to pass by all our recycling bins, which are hardly a visitor attraction.  There is a fine line between an amenity and an eyesore and now that there are about a dozen bins there now I'm thinking it has become an eyesore.  Often the bins are overflowing which doesn't help.  I think it is time that my friends at SLDC should expand their fortnightly green and blue bin collections to include cardboard and plastic bottles.  All our milk, lemonade and cola bottles are recyclable and we all have plenty of them to dispose of and you can't have any home deliveries nowadays without several layers of cardboard packaging.
  So far I've only seen one car sporting a Parish Council Car Park sticker so I wonder how sales are going.  I fear that during the summer months when there were no season tickets folk managed to find other spots for free parking and are sitting tight.
  Now, back to autumn.  I've noticed that rowan trees in particular have had a bumper crop of berries this year.  No doubt many bottles of rowanberry wine will have been brewed.  A cheery thought!  However, are not many berries meant to herald a hard winter; or has global warming ruled that out?  We shall see. Best wishes,

  N. Hastle.

  A placebo, according to Chamber's dictionary, is medicine given "to humour or gratify a patient rather than to exercise any physically curative effect." No mention is made in this definition, of the idea, that the act of giving an inert medicine may have a curative affect on the patient. An alternative definition of placebo, popular in the complementary medicine press, is "the innate ability of the body to heal itself."
  Subtle therapies, such as homeopathy and certain types of acupuncture treatment, can work in no other way than by stimulating the body to heal itself. Part of this may be that the therapist takes time to understand the details of a patient's problem and that the conversation takes place in comfortable surroundings. And part of it is due to the treatment itself.
  In clinical trials of a medical procedure, the word placebo is used to mean a treatment which is both inert (ideally incapable of exerting a therapeutic effect) and indistinguishable from the procedure to be tested. This may be straightforward when testing drugs, but it leads to difficulties in physical treatments.
  I read of one trial where surgery to relieve angina was compared to "sham" surgery, in which the patient is simply cut open and then sewn up again. In this trial, the sham surgery was reportedly as effective as the real operation.  The point of this particular research escapes me. Even  though  the sham surgery appears to be as effective as the real one, is undoubtedly cheaper and probably has fewer adverse effects, there is no way your doctor would feel comfortable about proposing you book in for a sham operation. Why not do research which has useful clinical applications?
  Placebo poses problems in acupuncture trials as well. There have been several types of "sham" needles developed, which do not pierce the skin. The trouble with this is, they are not inert, in that they do provide some stimulation at the points at which they are used. (Indeed tapping acupuncture points has been shown to be effective for preventing sleepiness after lunch.) Another possibility is to use "sham" points, that is, points which are not included in the 400 or so recognised acupuncture points. These points may or may not be inert and this probably varies a lot between individuals, as life events can render certain areas of the body more or less reactive.
  There are two problems with the interpretation of such trials. For example one trial showed no difference between true and sham acupuncture, when treating patients who had suffered a stroke. This tells us nothing about the effectiveness of acupuncture, merely that real and sham acupuncture were equally effective in the circumstances of that trial. The other problem is, as with the surgery, no acupuncturist going to feel comfortable giving a "sham" treatment.
  More clinically useful research, in my view, compares acupuncture with another widely used treatment. This gives patients real information on which to base their choices.
  The Journal of Chinese Medicine regularly reports on such trials. Recently there was a trial where acupuncture proved more effective than standard preventative medication for migraine. Another showed acupuncture together with headache medication to be effective, whereas the medication alone was not effective.
  In one experiment, acupuncture produced less response in the brain if the subject was under general anaesthesia. (Who on earth volunteers for these trials?) Perhaps the placebo effect works better if you are conscious.
  If you would like to discuss these matters further, please contact me. My number is (015396) 20972.
June Parker