When my Aunt Ros was ill in hospital earlier this year, my cousin had real trouble feeling any sympathy for the people who were on the same ward as her Mum in Manchester.
My Aunt died in September from a rare disease called Wilson's disease. She produced too much copper in her body, and it killed her before treatment could be given. Most of the other poor souls on the ward were drug addicts and alcoholics, who usually tried to scrounge a cigarette from me if they saw me smoking in the smoking room. It was the only place in the hospital to have a smoking room. I think the powers that be thought it was the lesser of many other evils some of them were trying to kick. I once saw one desperate woman drinking the alcohol hand gel you were supposed to use on your hands when entering and leaving the ward.
George Best was more or less the same age as Aunt Ros when he died yesterday. He was an alcoholic. My Aunt wasn't, but they were probably ultimately killed by the same things. I have a real problem about how some people who get diseases are deemed innocent, and some aren't. We are all born innocent, and what is thrown at us as we travel along life's windy road we have to accept, and try to cope with the best we can.
I remember when my friends were dying in the 80's/90's from diseases brought on through having HIV, they were not thought of in the same way as other victims because they were mainly homosexual. In some of the press not only were they not given the same sympathy as haemophiliacs etc. they and there families had to live with headlines saying there deaths were God's wrath for being so wicked.
George Best certainly wasn't a Saint, he was a man with a great talent and a disease, who probably did things he regreted along the way like we all do, but got through until he couldn't fight his demons anymore.
Like us all, he was born innocent.
My Aunt died in September from a rare disease called Wilson's disease. She produced too much copper in her body, and it killed her before treatment could be given. Most of the other poor souls on the ward were drug addicts and alcoholics, who usually tried to scrounge a cigarette from me if they saw me smoking in the smoking room. It was the only place in the hospital to have a smoking room. I think the powers that be thought it was the lesser of many other evils some of them were trying to kick. I once saw one desperate woman drinking the alcohol hand gel you were supposed to use on your hands when entering and leaving the ward.
George Best was more or less the same age as Aunt Ros when he died yesterday. He was an alcoholic. My Aunt wasn't, but they were probably ultimately killed by the same things. I have a real problem about how some people who get diseases are deemed innocent, and some aren't. We are all born innocent, and what is thrown at us as we travel along life's windy road we have to accept, and try to cope with the best we can.
I remember when my friends were dying in the 80's/90's from diseases brought on through having HIV, they were not thought of in the same way as other victims because they were mainly homosexual. In some of the press not only were they not given the same sympathy as haemophiliacs etc. they and there families had to live with headlines saying there deaths were God's wrath for being so wicked.
George Best certainly wasn't a Saint, he was a man with a great talent and a disease, who probably did things he regreted along the way like we all do, but got through until he couldn't fight his demons anymore.
Like us all, he was born innocent.