OH MY GOD!!!!
Did you see on CH4 last night???

If you didnt watch- its about the village of Botton, and its a community for people with special needs and their co-workers.

Discuss

yeah i did! , i dunno if im gonna go to hell 4 this, i kinda laughed (lots at times), but it was a strange old programme

Well I'll be joining you because it certainly raised a smile at my house.

I liked Pamela, I thought she was hillarious and also the lass who didnt like the ice on the roads and pathways.

In fact, hell, they all were brilliant.

Bless em!

and that pure classic moment when that old man started a fight wi pamela, i wanna be on the waiting list

"Your not going to push me out Anthony"
"GET OUT!"

Fantastic.. Even I was shocked when he shouted that at her.

i thought it was brilliant, however insensitively named it was. the guy who went to live in whitby had alota guts

I thought the kid they gave the camera to was an interesting chap...wandering around filming so many people and asking them random questions from "Have you ever been on a jumbo jet?" to "What colour is today?"...Some of them looked so nervous, like they wanted to run but found their feet stuck to the ground.

A very interesting place.

Wasn't there a guy called by a womans name as well.. Agatha was it or summat like that???

I liked it when John asked that 'slippy ice AAAGH' woman to be his wife as well --- a bit of romance there methinks.

and at the start of the show, when that old man sed ... 'Will you become my wife?'

There were some right characters.... but TBH I felt a little uncomfortable being invited by the programme makers to laugh at them. Thought it raised some very interesting questions about an institutional vs care in the community approach to disability / learning difficulty.
I'm not sure isolating a community like that is a good thing.

crazyness, me n thee thought the same thing at same time,

Originally posted by Voise
There were some right characters.... but TBH I felt a little uncomfortable being invited by the programme makers to laugh at them. Thought it raised some very interesting questions about an institutional vs care in the community approach to disability / learning difficulty.
I'm not sure isolating a community like that is a good thing.

I agree with that, I dont think they should isolate them in the middle of nowhere.

.. And the guy flipping out about the coat on that womans chair!

I thought it was the most wonderful programme I've seen in a long time. I'd never heard of the place, but my wife told me she went there when she was a kid (they went to the village café, everyone thought her dad was one of the "residents" :)), and she almost wrote her degree dissertation on it.

I don't think there's anything shameful about laughing at it, there were some wonderfully human very funny characters. Barry (the guy who moved to Whitby) was just lovely, I wanted to adopt him. Also, I would love to find out more about his mysterious past, and how he got to be in the strange state he's in today. Gill said that from the photo of his family at the ambassador's residence it looked like he had a twin brother.

Also the "slipping" woman... do you think she had some really bad experience with ice when she was very young? Obviously she had other mental problems, but I was left wondering why they seemed so strongly focussed on this fear of slipping. And when John asked her to marry him... ahhhh!

But my favourite bit has to be the two guys who were putting books together - a real shame we didn't get to see more of them. They were a classic comic double act, absolutely hilarious, they reminded me very much of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.

Pamela and Anthony just wound me up though.

Were the makers really inviting the audience to laugh at the subjects of the documantary?

I didn't find any of what I saw funny in the sense of making a joke out of the people involved, I just thought it was a unique insight into the lives of a group of individuals who didn't fit into conventional society.

The reality of the guy who moved to Whitby finding his way home "by the colour of the light" was odd, quirky and made me smile, but it didn't make me want to laugh at him in a malicious way.

Yeah! The double act guys.... they were a bit like Vic and Bob with the timing.. brilliant stuff.

I liked Barry who moved away.. he's got to have some guts for doing that.. and when he lost his house as well.. bless!

Pamela was like a dinner lady from my old junior school.. I thought she was brilliant .

Originally posted by DanSumption
Pamela and Anthony just wound me up though.
It was a strange situation, wasn't it.

I was quite moved by the emotion that the residents attached to their responsibilities in the workshop, it seemed that each little job (no matter how small) gave them a sense of pride.

To see that young lass in tears because she'd been pushed out of doing the washing-up was awful.

Was that the lass called Nan?
Yeah.. I did feel sorry for her.

They really do have a sense in pride in doing even the smallest things in life- which I respect a lot.

Originally posted by ANGELUS
They really do have a sense in pride in doing even the smallest things in life- which I respect a lot.
When I was watching the carer talking the matter through with Pamela afterwards I was so aware of the fact that I couldn't do his job in a month of Sundays...I just don't have the patience!

Originally posted by Carmine
It was a strange situation, wasn't it.

I was quite moved by the emotion that the residents attached to their responsibilities in the workshop, it seemed that each little job (no matter how small) gave them a sense of pride.
Yes, and I didn't mean to imply any disrespect to Pamela and Anthony. I once lived in a house where 5 people with learning difficulties lived with 5 students, and I recognise that sense of pride and how people can latch onto it and become compulsive about it, and resent any real or perceived challenge to their own sense of importance. It just really gets my back up though, especially seeing how hurtful people can be to one another when they get in a situation like that. And, yes, horrible seeing Nan cry.

Originally posted by DanSumption
Yes, and I didn't mean to imply any disrespect to Pamela and Anthony. I once lived in a house where 5 people with learning difficulties lived with 5 students, and I recognise that sense of pride and how people can latch onto it and become compulsive about it, and resent any real or perceived challenge to their own sense of importance. It just really gets my back up though, especially seeing how hurtful people can be to one another when they get in a situation like that. And, yes, horrible seeing Nan cry.
I didn't read any disrespect from your post, Dan!

I had an extremely mixed response to the entire scene of the conflict. From my own perspective the dispute seemed like a strom in a teacup, but for the people in the workshop it was evidently a real battle of wills.

I felt immediate sympathy for Nan and Andrew as they were being steamrollered by Pamela, their reactions were so child-like and not at all aggerssive in an adult sense.

But of course it seemed that Pamela herself was trying to assert her authority to gain some kind of control over her life and deal with her own frustrations.

All in all a very complicated and emotional scene.

Originally posted by Carmine
I didn't read any disrespect from your post, Dan!
I didn't mean to imply that you did, but reading it back myself I realised I hadn't explained myself very well, and it could be open to misinterpretation.

I agree with what you said Carmine: very complicated and emotional, and very hard to deal with without ending up hurting somebody's feelings.

I thought it was a fantastic programme.

Made me laugh and cry at the same time. I loved the 2 men with the paper - they were so in tune with each other it was amazing. Barry's story about his gooseberry bush at Paddington made me laugh and cry at the same time. I really hope he's still doing well at Whitby.

The routines and fallings out with each other seemed to show how much they need some control and how frail things are if anything out of routine occurs.

Are these type of communities bad? I think they aren't suitable for all but they should be there as they can do lots to help people live in safe and secure surroundings with the assistance they require. There was one near where I grew up. The residents appeared to like living in their 'village' They were part of the wider community in that we used to go and do plays etc.. when we were school kids and go for gardening afternoons as help in the community projects. They had lots of trips out and some had jobs at the local supermarket etc... It's now a housing estate but for years after it closed some of the old residents used to be found at the housing estate because they didn't like their new lifestyle and wanted to go back to their 'home'.

Hi, thought you might be interested in this link
http://www.camphill.org.uk/botton.htm
i hope ive done that right, not done a link before.
Thought the programme was great.

I give a little each month to the Camphill trust which funds this sort of community.

In a perfect world it would be nice to think that such people could live in supported housing within our 'normal' communities, but I'm not sure it is possible today.

First of all you'd get the 'Not in my back yard, they're weird, they're probably perverts' crowd who'd object to the building of the houses, even in ones and twos.

Then if the people did come in to the community, I'm sure that the local ne'er do wells would make them feel very safe and at home by some bullying and vandalism.

Better they live safe, protected from us, with interaction with teh world on their terms than live in communities that will possibly scare them and make them miserable.

What happens in these communities is, of course, similar to what we do everyday but with some of the social constraints and niceness removed. :)

Joe

Originally posted by tpiddo
Hi, thought you might be interested in this link
http://www.camphill.org.uk/botton.htm
i hope ive done that right, not done a link before.
Thought the programme was great.

Cheers for the link.. its a very good site.

Kasper Hauser??? I remember that name from somewhere.
Possibly a story told by my teachers or parents ages ago.

AND.... Barry- the legend.. working in the food centre!

The double act guys were amazing! It was almost like telepathy.

Train doors opening and shutting. Give them their own TV show.

And the woman who dreaded slipping down. She was helped all the way to the workplace by a guy who promised to turn up at 5pm to escort her home and he never showed up.

The next scene showed her back home. How did she get there on her own?

I must admit, though, I found the programme a bit distrubing.

Originally posted by dishwasher
And the woman who dreaded slipping down. She was helped all the way to the workplace by a guy who promised to turn up at 5pm to escort her home and he never showed up.

The next scene showed her back home. How did she get there on her own?


I think she asked one of the producers behind the camera to help her home.. bless her.

Take a look at the pics on the website link in one of posts above this one.. it makes you wonder if she ever goes out the house with all the snow about like that :D

Bless!