the brilliantly leaping gazelle

For most of this year I’ve been consciously avoiding news, for the simple reason that the more news I’m exposed to, the more I tend to worry. Worry about things that are out of my control and whose outcome I can’t influence. Worry for the sake of worry. Unnecessary worry. From one standpoint, this has been the best of all years to do this. From another, the worst.

Because not in my lifetime has one issue dominated the news agenda, had so much of an effect on our lives, and, for good measure, costed the taxpayer hundreds of billions of pounds to help mitigate these effects, as coronavirus.  (Well, aside that is, from the increasingly likely ‘No-Deal Brexit’.) Sometimes modern life feels as if it has gone all full ‘Six Degree’s Of Separation’ on us; the way in which every conversation seemingly finds it’s way back, ultimately, not to Kevin Bacon, but coronavirus.

 Perhaps I should’ve devised a coronavirus game for Christmas. Less ‘Snakes and Ladders’ more just ‘Ladders’. Then Rita Ora could’ve played it at the party she had, the one she regrets now having, not just enough not to have had it in the first place.

I saw this story on the BBC News website, which is still bizarrely my homepage a couple of days ago, and because she’s a ‘celebrity’ and has been on the telly, what does is considered newsworthy, especially if she’s forced to issue a statement apologizing for it.

Pop star Rita Ora has apologised for a second breach of the UK’s Covid-19 restrictions, after failing to self-isolate following a trip to Egypt.

The same day, the BBC website carried a far more alarming story, which was given the prominence it deserved. Given as how it didn’t involve a young and photogenic celebrity, her apologizing for something from which the rest of us could criticize from the high moral ground.

Snowy winters could become a thing of the past as climate change affects the UK, Met Office analysis suggests.

Both highlighted one of the many paradoxes that make up modern life. Well, they did to me, anyway. That whilst we know what we should be doing, but we’ll only do it when it’s convenient for us and only when.

So Rita knows what the restrictions on gatherings are, but thinks ‘I fancy a birthday party and if I have to issue an apology after, so much the better. Keeps me in the news.’  Is what she did really that different to what many thousands did last summer when they flocked to the beaches? In a word, no

Same with climate change. We’ve known for decades what to do. Not you and me, but people who could’ve ensured tangible and meaningful change happened. Politicians, business leaders and corporations. But they didn’t then and now we’re fucked.

Because we are.

To anyone who read yesterdays post and thought to themselves ‘He’s crediting his bladder with a consciousness now, how arrogant is he, imagining that his organs are capable of thought and can act independently,’ here’s the proof.

Proof that my bladder is up to all sorts behind my back. Literally. It has persuaded the pores of my skin to join forces with it in what can only be described as corporeal crappery.. The spot had lain dormant, rather like a volcano, biding its time waiting. It knew it was situated on a part of the body I couldn’t access so it was in no rush. It was just there, doing nothing until eventually, out of sight became out of mind.

(There should be a large ‘photo Julie took of it, nestled right in the middle of my back. But seeing as how it’sbig and yellow. with a hint of green, probably best that I haven’t got to grips yet with wordpress’s editor thing. Oh yes, this blog was written yesterday evening, in case your wondering)

Then it got a message from my bladder. And it erupted with painful fury, all the more painful because I can’t squeeze it. I can’t even tell if it can be squeezed and even if it could, that’d be no fun. No drawing a target on the bathroom mirror with my Mums lipstick to aim for get a pusy bullseye for me. In fact, it was only after I persuaded Julie to take a ‘photo of it with her iPhone, that I was able to look at it. I toyed with the idea of asking her to squeeze it, properly squeeze it, where you carefully manipulate the pus in the surrounding area into a head and then go all John Belushi on it.

But alas, it’s only when this bounder is playing cricket does he respect boundaries. Even if shortly after that ‘photo was taken we had a chat about having a threesome. Not that kind of threesome. I have to choose my next few words carefully as I know she’ll be reading this. Can one be offended, insulted and yet feel good about themselves all at the same time? Possibly yes, possibly no, and I’ve no wish to find out which one it is.

We were talking about possible new support workers I might employ when I move back to North London. Julie had the idea of sounding out a few of the volunteers at a drop in/advice/therapy centre place another of her clients goes to. She used the word ‘happening’ to describe them. Bet they’d be chuffed with that. Possibly not as chuffed as if had she called them ‘groovy’. And nowhere near as made up as if she thought they were ‘with it’.

Anyway she said I might like to see other people, you know, see how it felt and all that, and if it felt right, then she wouldn’t feel hurt….at which point I had to interject that this was the sort of conversation that takes place within the confines of an altogether different type of relationship.

As in an altogether in the altogether type relationship!

Despite yesterday getting off to a bad start, somehow I managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I write that I managed because I did. I overlooked the fact that I’d been rudely woken up from a sleep that wasn’t. I was the bigger person and so by the power of Castle Greyskull, roused myself into a creditable impersonation of someone eager to go for a ride.

Not that kind of ride!

Get your minds out of the gutter and stop being so juvenile! A bike ride. Now stop it! Not a bike ride that’s a rather ostentatiously bizarre sexual act, the kind of thing that that might simultaneously appear in an episode of ‘Black Mirror” and get one sectioned at Broadmoor. But one that involved the rather less questionable practice of cycling up to St.James’s Park via the very easy cycle route over Vauxhall Bridge.

On the one hand, it was wonderful. We – Marge and I – managed to get out whilst the sun was still shining and we both curbed any impulses to throttle each other. And on the other hand, it was proof that Sods Law exists. I have a side-by-side adult tricycle, so finding an easy way to navigate through London, was extremely galling. Because whilst I’m going to North London, the tricycle is going to Swanage. Typical that just at the last second, you discover what you’ve missed out on. For a variety of good reasons, we – me and Marge – didn’t go out on the bike during lockdown, which is an abiding regret, as the streets were deserted!

Heigh-ho!

On the way back we stopped off for some tea and cake and I was enjoying myself so much that I overlooked the fact that I was bursting. I hate using public toilets. Always have. Only if it’s absolutely necessary will I use one – and the last time I used one, I got locked in it. So no, I didn’t mention it, and no, even though Marge used one in the café went to relieve herself, I styled it out.

Not enough though, to fool my bladder. It bided its time. It knew when I’d arrived back. And waited. Waited till the tricycle was locked up in the garage. Waited until I was back in the house and then it was almost as if my bladder was possessed by a demonic version of “it’s a Knockout’ and the more urgent my haste to the toilet was, the more I could feel my bladder itching to ruin my jeans.  Punishing me for calling its bluff, showing me who was boss and in so doing, reminding me of my own frailties.

But when I got to the toilet, it went up to 11! The frantic urgency, the fumbling fingers versus of unhelpful zips and fabric didn’t exactly help matters. Then I hurriedly sat down – it’s just more efficient – and suddenly I was pissing like a king and making sounds more suited to when one riding.

Yes, that kind of riding!

This morning I had a rude awakening. No, not the one at 2.47 this, from which I only managed to snatch odd bits of sleep, but the one an hour ago. The one where my skylight blind was opened, with such speed that the blinding light hit me like I was a were a fucking vampire

As you can tell, I’m really in raring to go and embrace the endless opportunities the day has to offer. If it offers the chance to go right back to bed, right now.

As is clear from my blog, I’m in the process of packing things up and preparing to move house. And as also clear from this blog, I am finding this process incredibly difficulties. One of the main difficulties occurred yesterday afternoon when I was packing my Christmas holiday box. Moving, it seems, is moving.

But the real kicker came when I was putting the drugs and the one’s I want are not the one’s I will need into the box.. It was a bit like ‘Se7en’, but without the head. Obviously. What you want in it isn’t, and what I don’t want in there is. The one’s I need are prescription drugs for my depression and to combat high blood pressure. The argument that the best way to combat my high blood pressure would be for people not to annoy me and thus negate the need for blood pressure medication is not a universally welcome idea. The one’s I want are wanted now more than ever, but one of the problems with getting older is that you no longer know someone who knows someone who can sell you some drugs.

I remember Christmas Day in 1993 – or was it 1994?, It’s all a bit hazy, anyway, they point is I was living in Brixton close to Coldharbour Lane and I had popped out to the shops to get something. Milk probably. In the course of a five minute walk to the shops I was offered hash by three different drug dealers and I thought ‘What a testament to entrepreneurialism.’  Here were hard working drug dealers plying their trade on Christmas Day, sure in the knowledge that people will have grossly underestimated their holiday stash and will need extra supplies. They had identified a need and were there to meet it. Fortunately, my own stash was nowhere near running out.

But those days are long gone. Gone are the days when getting the drugs in for Christmas would involve a copious amount of skunk, possibly some ecstasy, and if I was very lucky some magic mushrooms.

I remember those days.

Well actually I don’t, that’s how good they were.

Not really been feeling it today.

Well, I am feeling it, but it isn’t a good feeling.

As I write this, I sit on a sofa in a sitting room surrounded by rolls of bubble wrap, gaffer tape, and boxes that have been assembled and filled with things. Mainly my things, it has to be written, as every other potential storage area is, or is about to be used. Earlier on we finished packing away the last of my records. The writing it is less of wrench than it actually was. When we had finished, Paul, who was helping me, asked ‘What next?

That’s a good question.

Because what I wanted to do was to be transported back to the warm and cosy moments of bliss my body found just before I got out of bed this morning. And stay like that, for as long as I could. But I couldn’t. Paul is on the clock. So we had to continue packing. It’s a complete and utter head-fuck this packing malarkey. Aside from the physical practicalities –my brain damage means I can’t do the packing myself – there is also the emotional fallout. Which is a new thing.

Before my brain injury, I was pretty much always able to keep my emotions in check. But now? This move feels like I’m caught up in a tsunami of grief, never quite knowing when the next wave will engulf me, but knowing there will be a next one. I described packing up the records to Paul as like running up the steps to the guillotine.

Now rationally, I know it’s the very opposite of that. Moving in to share with Nosferatu will be an unquestionably good thing for me. Not sure about for her though. It’s just that I want to be at the point where the move has been done and is a memory, where everything is not like this. This I can do without. I hate these feelings and yet seem incapable of stopping them. When was last time I thought, ‘And I woke up from a coma for this? When I finished packing up my records. That’s when.

Before then, not for a good while.

So what next? Well that’s up to me, isn’t it?

(Or not, as according to my iTunes playlist it’s ‘Molly’ by Michael Nyman)

I went to the dentist yesterday to have a tooth out. Not, as no-one in the history has ever done, and popped in for some rollicking good fun. No, a trip to the dentist at my age can only involve a number of things, none of them good; bad news or very bad news, painful work or very painful work.

Long gone are the days of my childhood when a visit to the dentist would end with him giving me a lolly.

I went to see the dentist initially because of a slight discomfort in my teeth and gums, a slight discomfort that was only going to get worse if unchecked. And also because it had been a while since I’d last seen one; not for want of trying I hasten to add. My local hospital has a specialist dental unit which caters for people with disabilities. Like most things in the NHS, once you’re getting the treatment, it’s excellent. Getting to that point, however, and dealing with shocking inept bureaucracy, is another matter.

As I was lying there during the examination, I was aware that he was calling out words and numbers, that by comparison made ‘The Shipping Forecast’ comprehensible. Worse was to come when he’d finished. He declared that apart from some minor work – two fillings replaced and a tooth out is not minor – everything was fine. ‘Then what was it with all stuff you were saying to the nurse. Or are you playing Battleships to relive the tedium’, I thought. But instead just smiled and asked when he could fit me in

Wonderfully, I’d gone private, not because I think private healthcare is anything other than an abomination – which it is – but because I wanted the work over and done with by Christmas, and I knew they weren’t seeing NHS patients because of Covid. Their secretary could get a job at my local NHS dental hospital; they didn’t me see for years…

It’s always a bit disconcerting when a dentist wants to engage you in small talk before he gets down to business, the first time I saw him, he was curious as to how I’d acquired my brain injury. Really curious. My stock response of ‘Just bad luck’ seemed not to work. So he asked a couple more times and got the same answer.  He gave up, thankfully.

So this yesterday I had a tooth out. It wasn’t as bizarre as hearing the sound of a drill going at it in your mouth and not feeling any pain. Or the dentist wearing a head-torch that made me think of Orbital.  But still. I can’t remember having one out before, but I didn’t realise they pull actually it out. Yes, granted, they twat about with wiggling it a bit, but is essence is the same you did as a child, when a tooth was loose you loosened it until it fell out. At least he didn’t offer me some mouthwash, so that with my numb mouth I could dribble it out along with my dignity down my chin.

Mind you, the day got off to a good start, even though the rest of hasn’t lived up to it. I awoke early to find LMS in the kitchen, told her was going to the dentist later and had got up to have breakfast. ‘If your making porridge can I have some?’ In the pantheon of silly questions that’s right up there, but told her to check with her mum first.

We have a mutually beneficial arrangement, she makes me tea and I make her porridge. As I was drinking the tea, I asked her to have a check on the porridge and to tell me how it was looking.

“It’s looking cooking”, she said.

Yesterday’s news of a vaccine for the coronavirus was good news. And just in time for Christmas too!

How fortunate is that?

That’ll make enforcement of newly announced restrictions so much easier as well. If people hear ‘vaccine’ are they going to be overly concerned about when they’ll get it or will they just hear ‘there’s no need to worry’? And party on?  Be that as it may, I’m busy packing – well my trusted helpers are, I’m just directing operations and gritting my teeth when they’re not.

So I’ve got a lot to do and being lazy, I’m to copy and paste an excerpt part of a blog I wrote in April that seems highly apposite now:

Another (fantasy) concerns anti-vaccers, people who are so set against vaccination for their child, who believe that somehow there’s a conspiracy afoot involving the government, the pharmaceutical industry, Bigfoot and the entire medical establishment. That they have pulled back the curtain to reveal the truth, which they share with equally delusional fuckwits on social media.

My fantasy is this

That at some point a vaccine for CO-VID 19 is developed and a nationwide programme of vaccinations is announced and people arrive at testing centres to get it. A somebody armed only with a white coat, ridiculous hair and a clipboard checks people’s names in the queue to get in and every so often, asks a family to step out of the queue. “Yes, there’s a bit of a problem,” they say. The children can be vaccinated, so to can any adults in the family who didn’t post on social media about how vaccinations were part of some conspiracy orchestrated by people who orchestrate conspiracies. They’d have detailed social media evidence –twitter comments and reposts – blog articles, their entire internet browsing history, transcripts of every ‘phone call they’d ever made…the whole Snowden/Cambridge Analytica nightmare. If they didn’t believe in vaccinations then, what had changed, apart from their desire not to die?

It’s just a practical application of Darwinian principles isn’t it? If people are foolish enough too believe this nonsense, what other rubbish are they going to testiculate about? And do we want them to breed, to pass on their genes?  I mean humanity is fucked; we’re heading toward extinction, anyone with an I.Q larger than the radius of their kneecap can see that, but even so, do we want more mental pygmies?

No, in a word.

Actually thinking about it, if one were to tell conspiracy theorists that conspiracy theories did exist and that they were right all along and that the moon landings were faked, that the mafia killed JFK, that Elvis is still alive, that the Loch Ness monster is real.  Would they believe you or would they think it was yet another conspiracy theory?

But since we’re all living in ‘The Matrix’ anyway, none of this really matters… 

“A Brief History of Time’ is one of the greatest coffee table books ever written. In it, Steven Hawking discussed what exactly time was and what we thought we knew about time being one of them. Turned out that time was in fact many things, and most of us were wrong. I’m guessing that’s what the book said. I didn’t actually buy it. And the vast majority who did buy didn’t read it either, and those who did gave up after a few chapters because it was all too complicated. But that didn’t stop them leaving it displayed in a prominent position on the coffee table to impress their friends, because they were sort of people who read those kind of books –  the kind everyone is talking about

The reason I know time isn’t what we imagine it to be is not because Joe has been listening to podcasts where physicists discuss these things. He does though and has tried to explain things to me. However, like most people time for me is a constant, inasmuch my understanding of is that it consists of specific and never changing distances between measurements. So there are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in a hour and so on. You know this. I thought I knew this.

 Then I discovered that there exists ‘Parental Time’

“Parental Time’ only applies to the child of an exasperated parent. I’ve seen this phenomena first hand. The parent is trying to chivvy the child to do something. ‘I’ll count to five’, they’ll say. ‘1…2…3…3 and a half…4…I’m warning you no pudding for you if you don’t…4 and a half…5’. I sometimes have been given to wonder if indeed this house inhabits a part of the universe where my understanding of time is positively unhelpful.

It’s a bit like the ‘X Factor’, this Parental time. On the ‘X Factor’ they have this weird way of announcing that someone has won something. ‘And going through to the next round is…(a very long pause) Gary’. Maybe this phenomena only exists in the world of T.V. Could you order a meal like that? “And as a starter I’ll have the…’ No. You’d end up wearing, not eating, the starter.

And it’s contagious. Passed on from mother to daughter. I first became aware of this on Sunday morning when LMS knocked on my bedroom door so I could get up and make her porridge. To coax me out from under my duvet, she told me that she was making tea and that I could remain where I was for 10 minutes. “A fast 10 minutes’ she said, just in case I had any delusions that 10 minutes actually meant 10 minutes in the commonly accepted sense of people’s understanding.