The fabric of the new society will be made of nothing more or less than the threads woven in today's interactions

I finished an interesting online course a few weeks ago called "Surviving the Future - Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy". I agree, the title is rather snappy!

Nah, it's drier than a camel's flannel, but the thoughts of the philosopher, David Fleming, whose work the course is derived from, are often elegantly simple ways to look at our world to get to its essence. The stuff it's all about!

One quote of Fleming's I copy and pasted goes, "The fabric of the new society will be made of nothing more or less than the threads woven in today's interactions."

I was in my house pottering about a couple of days ago and thought I could hear someone outside wailing in pain. I looked out the living room window across the street and could see Mary who lives directly opposite, stooping down in her hallway with her front door wide open. Mary is 88, lives alone, and like many older people has been self-isolating for past 4 months as she's considered by the Government to be extremely vulnerable. She was wailing in pain because she'd stumbled and fallen making her way back into her house after waving goodbye to her son and daughter-in-law as they drove home.

I rushed out the house and down the driveway in my socks and skimpy Captain America T-Shirt (which is very comfy to wear around the house, but it's not really for public consumption), and asked Mary if she was alright, while maintaining the correct social distance. She wasn't alright. She had grazed her left arm quite badly, and due to a medical condition she has which has caused her skin to become very thin, a large area of the skin on her arm had just rubbed off, which I assumed was from friction against a rough surface as she fell. The bricks surrounding her doorway perhaps. I was really taken aback by how much damage had been caused, and couldn't stop myself from imagining how such a wound would feel for me. An deep pang starting resonating my bones which felt like my entire nervous system had eaten a very sour jelly sweet which had rendered me temporarily immobilised.

Only seconds had passed before another person had arrived at the scene to help Mary. A woman from our street, who I didn't recognise but knew Mary more than I do. She walked straight into Mary's house and brought out a chair for Mary to rest herself on, as she was clearly upset with this unfortunate and very sudden turn of events, and was looking more pallid than usual. I seized the moment to make myself useful and gratefully tip-toed back across the road over in my socks and skimpy T-shirt to call an ambulance. As I was dialing, stood on my doorstep, I recognised the car of Mary's grandson turn the corner and into the street before parking up, which really was a welcome news.

We all then assumed our implicit roles, automatically working as a unit whose aim it was to resolve this medical emergency as soon as possible. Mary's grandson fetched a couple of clean towels from the kitchen to wrap around his gran's wound as blood had now started coming to the surface of the skin. 

"I've had a fall! I've had a fall", Mary kept repeating in distress to her grandson, as he did his best to calm her while I got through to emergency services. 

I wasn't having much luck because I'd tried to weigh up the severity of Mary's accident objectively - whether it was a medical emergency or not and so I would know which number would be the right one to call. I also factored in Mary's extreme reluctance to be in a hospital if it wasn't absolutely necessary - but the blood on her wound under the towel....her pre-existing conditions that make her particularly vulnerable...the importance that we each use our emergency services in the correct way in order to not divert critical resources from those who need them most....

I called 111 in the end. Got through quick too. The operator asked me questions to get a full picture of the incident and I obtained for her the answers I didn't know by shouting across the road to Mary and her grandson, who I could now see had arrived with his wife in the car.  

With time trundling along and gathering pace, and Mary, her grandson and granddaughter-in-law constantly directing their attentions at my face every 10 seconds to scan for evidence that help had been dispatched, and with an operator interrogating me still further to help her determine what course of action she should take, I became increasingly compelled to override the civility of our phone conversation with a simple request.

"Just send a fucking ambulance now please!"

The sudden rage was a reflection of my own feelings of incompetence. I'd totally ballsed up a critical moment for someone by choosing the wrong number to dial. It can be a bit cruel, the universe sometimes, when you have to make a choice and both choices are both right and wrong for a range of different reasons! Well, standing on my doorstep looking across the street at Mary's scared face and her grandson who was on bended knee clasping his homemade bandage around her wound, I became flushed with a deep regret that I didn't just dial 999 to begin with. It would have minimised the worry and provided some reassurance straight away instead of the unnecessary melancholy of not knowing what is happening next. 

Fortunately for us all, Mary's granddaughter-in-law, had had the foresight to call an ambulance herself at some point during my phone call, and it was now pulling up to the house. The medics attended to Mary for some time as she sat on the chair outside her house in the front garden. Maybe for 30 minutes or more. Too long for me to carry on standing there though. I get bored of most things if they don't change in some way after 5 minutes. 

Before I bogged off back inside, I went over to speak to the three of them to sign off officially and make sure everything was alright. They were all really grateful for what I'd done (which was literally nothing!), but I feel like a thread had been woven between me and Mary. A connection fashioned from a gesture that had some meaning in it. 

"If I happen to see that you are in trouble and no one is around, then I'll do what I can to help you".

It was a knowing, that Mary now has which I hope she always has a sense of when pottering around her house. I hope it makes her feel like she's not alone and is worth the time and effort to be there for. It's important that people have that sense, especially as they get older, as it becomes easier for them to convince themselves that they've become a burden on others and are not deserving of aid or attention anymore. 

The funny thing about me and Mary is that I never speak to the woman! I always see her through the living room window and have an in-depth knowledge of the home improvements she's made over the last 20 years, but I only found out what her surname was when the operator asked me and I couldn't tell her. The last time we interacted directly was 6 years ago, just after my dad had died. She knocked on our front door soon after the funeral director had left and gave me, my mum and sister a kiss and a hug each, expressing how sorry she was for our loss, looking so sad and forlorn. Then she walked back across the street and went inside her house.