KICKING THE HABITUE

You may remember me writing that I once went into a pub (wait for the rest of the sentence!  It isn't such an unusual event so far) and, whilst waiting for my drink, the barman suddenly shouted out, 'Hello Bill!  Happy birthday.'  All the locals had gathered to greet him and a jolly nice party atmosphere developed.  Everyone greeted Bill and offered him a drink.  In fact I suspect he didn't buy a drink all day.  I was so taken with that. 

Not with the free drinks I don't mean, although there was I admit a certain attraction in that, but it was the fact that the local community knew Bill, knew it was his birthday and wanted to celebrate it with him, and that moreover the barman also knew him well enough to greet him, that appealed and made my heart jump slightly with envy.  When I retire and settle down, that's what I want, I commented at the time.  I dearly want to live in a community, to visit my local and have the barman (or preferably an attractive barmaid) greet me with, 'Hello Neil.  Pint of the usual?'  I will feel I have arrived.

Part of the reason for this is of course that I have spent my life wandering the world (which I shall continue to do in fact, mostly because it is what excites and motivates me) and clearly there is somewhere within me a gene which hankers after being settled, retiring, not just from work, but from travelling too, from being forever unknown in strange cities or empty countrysides.

But, hang on a moment, I can hear you cry, you are retired.  Yes, OK, I don't engage in any salaried occupation, but I do drive for my local charity, I am getting more involved in the administration of my local bridge club, and I do lead walking groups around the world.  One day maybe I'll stop doing those things and just sit at home.  I could do that.  I'd probably last about a week before I started walking off somewhere, or learning a new trade, or building an extension to the house, or joining the local movie-making club, but I could do it.

But that feeling of belonging, when you walk into your local and people in there greet you by name . . .  Wonderful!  I must say it has begun to happen a little here.  I do now often meet people in the street who say hello.  But, when I wander into Hemingways or the Crown and Cushion, nothing -  beyond normal politeness (except for that lad with the bleached hair who keeps saying, 'no probs'; he needs to improve his customer friendliness I always think).

We went into Petersfield today.  It was market day and The George was packed at 10.30.  I counted 60 people in the bar and the garden was full, as were the few table outside at the front, so I reckon 100 people having coffee, breakfast, brunch, etc.  Well, I don't expect anyone there to remember me by name, but actually the atmosphere was really comfortable.  I wondered then whether what I really want is comfort instead of that frisson of awkwardness that you feel in an unfamiliar establishment.

But, no, I think it's the human contact, that sense that, not only do you feel have you been accepted into a community, but also that you have welcomed by its other members, a private club maybe in which strangers aren't included, however nice they are and however friendly the welcome, and one in which you don't just wear a badge or a T-shirt, but where the individual participants have interaction and genuine personal contact with each other.

With these thoughts as ever in my mind, the other day I went into the chemist.  'Hello Mr Hook.  How are you today?' smiled the pharmacist.  Not what I dreamt of for my retirement, but maybe I have now arrived?

GOING VIRAL

I picked up some nasal coughy thing on the flight to Turkey 5 weeks ago and hadn't lost it by last week.  It wasn't a real problem.  I got a bit chesty in the morning, but I didn't seem to have a temperature or any other cold type symptoms.  But I was beginning to feel a bit low with the pressure round my eyes and when I coughed, I eventually gave myself a headache.  So I went to the doctor.

I get something like this every year.  I think my nostrils must be narrow or my sinuses slim.  Anyway last year my doctor wouldn't give me anything for it and told me to use a decongestant and take Paracetamol.  This year, the old one having retired, I have a new young doctor.

I told him about the decongestant and the Paracetamol.  'Oh, you've clearly been doing all the right things', he said.  'You shouldn't still have the infection.  I have no hesitation prescribing Amoxycillin.'  Great, I thought.  Treatment at last.

It is now 7 days later and the treatment has ended.  Do I feel better?  I'm not sure.  And then, yesterday, I read this.  Hmmm, back to the coffee and alcohol cure then.

MOVING

I started writing something last night about the Paralympics.  But I felt tired and went to bed before I'd finished.  The outcome is that today's newspapers have said most of what I wanted to say.  But of course I'll say it anyway; it deserves to be said.

I said earlier that I had changed my mind about the Paralympics and that, far from feeling uncomfortable watching blind football or the 200m for those with cerebral palsy or swimming for those with missing limbs, I am both stunned and captivated.

One often finds oneself listening to disabled persons speak animatedly of their pastimes or intellectual pursuits, or examining handicrafts displayed at a home for those with various disabilities, and one's enthusiasm is unavoidably tempered with a touch of pity or sorrow.  I think I had originally thought of the Paralympics in that way too.  Simon Barnes in The Times got it right when he said that many of us had felt previously that we should watch the Paralympics out of a sense of compassion or duty or support for some liberal social ideal.  But Lord Coe couldn't have been more right when he said at the Opening Ceremony that we should be prepared to be amazed.  And I am amazed that I, and everyone else for that matter, should be so happy.

So I watched Sarah Storey cycle home in the road race, after cycling 64km, a distance way beyond my fit capabilities, and she slowed down to pick up a Union Flag, flying it behind her as she crossed the finishing line and finishing over 7mins ahead of her nearest rival.  Sarah now has 5 golds for swimming and 6 for cycling, plus 7 silvers and three bronzes.  I have no hope of even qualifying for these events (not because I have all my limbs I don't mean, but because I could never equal, nor never have equalled, her achievement).  I watched Jonnie Peacock run the 100m in 10.9 secs with one leg and Richard Whitehead in the 200m with no legs . . . wow!  Just watch this.  You'll probably need to watch it twice.

Did you see that he was in last place at the 100m mark?  Watch it again.  Could I run as fast in my youth as either of these guys?  I doubt it.  Disabled?  Only superficially anyway.  And could I feel sorry for them?  Just look at how fired up and happy they were.  Of course I couldn't feel sorrow in the face of their achievements.  Envious a little maybe.  Who'd have thought that, that I might envy a man with one or both legs missing?

And there are so many other athletes I would wish to mention -  Hannah Cockcroft, who won the wheelchair 200m 2 secs ahead of anyone else; Jessica Long, the US swimmer, who won her first gold in 2004 and now has 12 golds, 3 silvers and a bronze; Ellie Simmonds, winning 2 gold medals at Beijing, aged just 13, and going for her 3rd gold today, after breaking 2 world records already; Danielle Brown and Sophie Christiansen, winning golds despite extraordinary handicaps, yet somehow transforming into totally different people when engaged in their sports; the Iranian men’s Sitting Volleyball team, odds-on favourite for the gold, doing so well because, poignantly, there are so many polio victims to choose from for the team; Esther Vergeer, the Dutch wheelchair tennis player, who hasn't lost a game I think for 7 years (at least she has only lost one in 11 years).  I think I'm in love with Esther BTW; who'd have thought that?  Certainly not Natasha Kaplinsky or Julia Bradbury (who don't know about each other incidentally, so don't say anything).

So, yes, suddenly disability is not a handicap.  But, more importantly, we don't now see it as a handicap.  I was struck by the wheelchair-bound lady interviewed on the radio the other day (I can't remember the context), who said that, when she visited the Olympic Park, no one ignored her, as they usually do, and many people came to talk to her because they thought she might be a Paralympian.  And, in today's Times, Melanie Reid, the famous paralyzed horserider, said that she hadn't wanted to go to the Paralympics because she was embarrassed at what the Paralympic equestrian team could achieve, but found herself surprised at how cool it now seemed to be to be disabled.  She also recounted amusingly the story of her in her wheelchair encountering a lady with a pushchair in a narrow space and finding she had to move out of the way.  No concessions then now to so-called disabled; they might be more able than we used to think.

And this is perhaps the legacy of these extraordinary Games - we now have a completely different view of disability.  I don't know whether it will remain cool to be disabled; I don't know that you will hear many people say (as we have heard many say at the Paralympics) that, if they could start again, they wouldn't want their legs back; nor do I know whether we will revert to ignoring or feeling sorry for those in wheelchairs, but I do know that there has been a step change.  And nowhere is it more apparent than in those countries which previously looked askance at those with disabilities.  It is notable for example how well the Chinese and Russian athletes have done this time (and note Jessica Long and Elisabeth Stone's stories).  I suspect that in Rio the Paralympics will be an even bigger event.

I am feeling particularly proud of myself today.  I have just been to the gym and had my performance measured.  Since I left hospital 6 months ago, I have put back a stone in weight, but, since starting the gym 6 weeks ago, I have remarkably lost an inch and a half round my waist at the same time.  So I won't now need to have a limb amputated to improve either my weight or my performance (or my street cred?).

NASTY LITTLE DISCHARGE

Well, I seem to be home.  One minute they were threatening me with further treatment, the next a lady arrived to take me to the Patients Lounge for discharge without letting me eat my sweet and sour pork.  I think they must have had a call for beds (a suspicion reinforced when 5 others from my ward turned up in the lounge).  I spent my first hours of freedom sitting in the garden or the garden window (depending on the sun) and drinking real tea.  To be honest, everything tastes of cardboard at the moment and I have no real interest in food at all, but that will change.

This (you’ll be pleased to hear) will be the only post about my hospitalisation.  And even this won’t be gruesome (unless you're Italian or French or maybe Algerian).

If you can imagine the UK as my head (where else?), Europe as my chest and Africa as my lower bod, the original intention was to remove Sardinia in a fairly non-intrusive procedure.   But they decided that it was Italy that was causing all the problems (as ever) and removed that too, as well as half of Sicily.  They then took off part of the Cote d’Azure, the coast of Tunisia and a chunk of the coast of Algeria and joined them all together.

The downside – I’m never quite sure now whether the uncomfortable twinges and stabs I can feel are from the surgery, whether they are protests from Algeria about being permanently joined to France (or vice versa), whether I’m hungry, full up or whether I need to dash off to the loo.  You know how it is when baby’s are born.  They cry when they’re hungry, they cry when they’re full, they cry when they soil their nappies, etc.  Well, it’s a bit like that (apart from the nappy thing).  I suppose I’ll get to know what’s what, as I get used to the new geography.

I’m now embarking on a programme of building up strength.  It may take some time.  After chatting for half an hour on my return home, I had to sleep for an hour.  But I guess that’ll improve too.  Not sure how many posts I’ll manage; more as time goes on I guess, but thinking is still quite tiring.  The really difficult part of all this is that doctors assure me that there is nothing I should have done or should not have done in my life to avoid the surgery.  Every time the nurses take my obs, they say ‘wow, great blood sugar levels’, or ‘what do you do to get great veins like this’, or ‘that’s a brilliant pulse rate’, etc.  So, what do you do?  All very depressing.  I know I said thanks before for all your support, but sincerely thanks again.  Your messages did help cheer me up.  

The upside now is I’m over a stone lighter.  The other is that whenever I feel those twinges and stabs, as I do at the moment, I don’t waste time wondering what it means, I just go and eat.  Talk to you later.

ANOTHER ADMISSION

Things haven’t gone quite as I expected.  I have been thinking of a ‘good news’ list to balance the equation.  There are many more entries on the credit side than on the debit.  In fact there’s only one entry in the bad news column, so I hope they now do in fact balance.

At my last hospital examination, they decided that the problem was not the gall bladder so much as the bile duct itself.  So, instead of a neat keyhole operation, they are going to have to open me up a bit more. The idea is to remove the duct, as well as the gall bladder, and bits of what the duct is joined onto.  It all looks straightforward enough on the map the surgeon has given me, except for all the blood.  Why does there have to be so much blood?

So here’s my good news list:

      My surgeon is one of the best.

      He has done hundreds of these operations.

      Most of his patients survived.

      The op takes place next Tuesday.

      I’ve passed the pre-op examination, although I need to be a bit taller to get the recommended BMI.

      The scans are not conclusive.  If everything looks OK, when I am opened up, he might only remove the gall bladder after all.

      I shall be anaesthetised and oblivious to all the poking about and blood.

      I shall stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks and not be expected to move.

      I’ll get to wear those navy blue stockings again.

      I shall see that Lithuanian nurse again.

      I shall have a very sexy scar.

      I will eat at least 10 days worth of those meals.

      I will read all the books currently queuing up on my bedside table.

      I will do a lot of thinking as well.

      I won’t have to put up any shelves for a while.

      Or change any plugs.

      I will have learnt to speak Spanish.

      I will no doubt also have a smattering of Lithuanian.

      You will have a break for a while from my blatherings.

      She Who Doesn’t Blog will be in touch with updates.

      When discharged, I shall sit in my armchair for a couple of months and be waited on hand and foot (instead of just hand).

      I will be up and about in the summer and probably manage to struggle to the patio sun-lounger.

      I will be out walking again in the autumn.

      I will be cured!

SPLENDID ISOLATION

I don’t suppose you want all the details, but I really was fit and well again.  I thought I had eaten something off on Saturday (Japanese meal with lots of raw fish the night before), but as we arrived home Saturday night I was in quite a lot of pain, worse than before in fact.  I took some pain killers and slept, but next day had to go back in (after the neighbours had cleared the snow!).  They removed a few more stones, treated a gall bladder infection and put in a new stent.  I felt better fairly soon and am now doing OK.  No explanation.

Thank you all once again for all your messages of encouragement.  I think it was the fact of the relapse, rather than the illness itself that was so depressing.  I was also helped on my way at a low point by one of the doctors who came to see me and apparently talked to me for a while.  I don’t remember anything she said, except ‘please close your mouth’, but it was a real fillip.  Don’t know her name either, but, for the sake of argument, let’s call her Dr Gorgeous.

We had a shock the night or so before I was discharged actually.  I was half-woken in the night by hundreds (it might have been 6) doctors and nurses and sisters and nursing assistants and other ranks running round, fussing with the man in the next bed.  When I woke up he had been moved out and the whole corner of the ward had been screened off.  

When I came back from hanging around the nurses canteen later that morning, there was only mine and one other bed left in the ward.  It was all a bit odd.  Shortly after that, the other man was wheeled out too, by workmen I think – they were wearing those white overalls and masks that the painters wear.

I sat there on my own for a while, wondering what it was I’d said, sniffing my armpits, etc, and then the workmen moved me too.

It was rather nice though – I was moved to a lovely private room with en suite, etc overlooking the barbed wire perimeter fence and open fields.  The only problem was that the builders had blocked off the corridor with a sheet of polythene to keep the dust out of the hospital, presumably where they were building the new wing, and the only approach to this room was through a sort of polytunnel with sprinklers in it.  The food trolley obviously couldn’t get to the room either, so the builders used to pass my food through to me on a long paddle-type thing.  

I didn’t have any visitors there either, which was a pity, apart from a builder who brought in my meds from time to time.  Still can’t complain; I could watch the sun on the hills, and pheasants and things in the fields, and the guards passing by occasionally, and I could make all the noise and mess I wanted without anyone making a fuss or saying, ‘better out than in’, etc.

It’s better at home though, on the whole (apart from having to keep getting out of bed).

Well, I've escaped and am now at home!  I'm wearing normal clothes too (by my standards anyway) and not pjs and ankle socks.  The socks are a curious addition to hospital wear, for anyone who doesn't know, aimed at preventing DVT in the immobile.  The nurse who first put them on me thought I looked rather fetching in them, but I wasn't so sure.  I took them off to shower, when I eventually became less immobile, but needed a crowbar to get them on again.  Those nurses are stronger than they look!  In passing, is there a grade of nurse with a requirement for members to be 5 foot high and wear a blonde pony tail?  Or has there been a mass recruitment campaign in Lithuania recently?  Or was I just delirious?

Very many thanks to all your get well wishes and a special thanks to Ian's uplifting Three of the Best.  I'm sorry I couldn't give you a daily account of my admission (it would have been 'got up, meds, croissant and OJ, doze, watch news, tests, lunch, meds, doze, tea, meds, dinner, TV, sleep' pretty well each day anyway, so I bet you're sorry you missed that).  I think social networking sites were supposed to be blocked on the hospital internet, but I found a way round that using Yahoo! mail alerts.  But, although I could read my own blogs and your comments, I couldn't write anything.  Curiously, they also had a keyboard missing some of the essential symbols needed for my e-mail password, so that wasn't available either.

Anyway, back to the beginning - I attended my friend's funeral, having postponed my admission to hospital, but then had to go straight to A&E.  Maybe it wasn't a good idea to stand through the service.  I'm glad now that I did, for all sorts of reasons, not least because they played Buddy Holly as the coffin was taken away (True Love Ways - not my favourite, but then I had never thought of using the song like this).  I actually smiled, which was probably what my friend intended.


By then, I could have been mistaken for Data and felt as cheerful as he looks.  The hospital wasted no time in taking me in and connecting me to wires and tubes.  Incidentally, at my weigh-in next morning, I had put on a kilo overnight.  Powerful stuff those drips! 

To cut a long and tedious story shorter, I had the usual bloods and other tests on admission and they had to repeat one of the tests the next morning because they thought it had been compromised.  Apparently my bilirubin levels didn't register.  Next time they discovered it was because they'd gone off the graph.  Bilirubin is not, as I first thought, the doctor who'd cocked up my tests, but the yellow stuff that's supposed to leave your body, but in my case wasn't going anywhere except round and round.  I don't know what my level was when I went in, but it's supposed to be 20 micro-somethings to a milli-something of blood; I was up for release home when they got mine down below 300.  I'm currently 250 and falling, so still not without a pleasant golden tinge, but I don't seem to scare young children anymore or encourage people to address me in Omicron Thetan.

Hospital treatments are nothing like I imagined.  They seem to be mostly geared to stabilising and patient self-help.  Nothing much happenened over the wekend, except a lot of sleeping and medication.  I was then told after my first proper medical examination that I could eat anything I fancied and that they would stabilise with anti-biotics as necessary.  Having not really eaten for so long, it took a while to fancy food at all, but I have to say that the menu (yes, menu!) was fabulous.  My first meal was sausage and peppers casserole.  I shall remember that meal for years (hopefully).  I shan't go through everything, but (Gael please note) no gruel and no restriction to mashed potato and jelly either.  One memorable meal was Moroccan cauliflower and broccoli soup, followed by Mediterranean fish ragout (four stars)  One disaster was fish in bechamel sauce with creamed cauliflower.  Who creams cauliflower for goodness sake?  And why?  It tasted like breakfast porridge with unpleasant surprise pieces of fish hidden in it and a slightly thicker bit in the corner that had gone off (nul points).  The steak and kidney pie was a masterpiece (five bulls).  The biggest surprise (given that we were all in the ward for gall bladder or pancreas related illnesses that I thought needed low-fat management) was battered cod and chips for lunch on Friday (three starfish).  The next biggest surprise was successfully persuading them to let me have a second portion of the chicken korma that evening (two chillies and four poppadoms).  That may have contributed to me being sent home on reflection.

My procedure was eventually carried out when I was up to it mid-week and they removed a stone that had blocked an exhaust pipe (that may not be the technical term) and cleared out a load of yukky gunk (that was apparently the technical term) and at the same time inserted a stent to stop the pipe closing again.  All this done endoscopically, which I found extraordinary.  Now, as I said at the start of this, on the mend (and with half the hospital's pharmacy in my cupboard), I will go back at some later stage for another CT scan to determine whether I need anything done about stones still in my gall bladder (apparently they may not be important and anyway they may remove the gall bladder itself which is apparently also not important.  One does wonder why we have all these things - appendix, tonsils, gall bladder, third nipple.  But still . . .) and to remove the stent.  But meanwhile, back to normal life, although I might wait to wean myself back onto alcohol, having drunk not a drop for a month (nor missed it, worryingly) or coffee for that matter (haven't fancied that either for weeks which shows I'm still really ill).

Talking of pharmacy and patient-led treatment, one of the interesting phenomena were the Dealers who came round twice a day, asking if we wanted anything 'to ease the pain'.  They then seemed to hand over anything we fancied, including morphine (excellent for sleeping, but bad for hangovers), through codeine, which I thought was unavailable generally (I seem to remember Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys getting high on it illegally anyway), down to various nausea and (hooray, hooray!) antihistamines.  The Pushers came round inbetween times ('I can offer you something to help you through the day') and we could buzz for the Traffickers any time we fancied trying something different.  One or two patients were permanently connected to PCAs (patient-controlled analgesia), but this was where the system broke down - they wouldn't let me have one of those.  They made great bleeping noises too.  I also used to have daily injections of vast quantities of antibiotics (tabs now at home), mouthfuls of skunk's piss (or vitamin K, as the pharmacist calls it), and blood thinner, but I seem to have weaned myself off most of that (especially the skunk piss - I'm now on Brussels sprouts, which are a great alternative!).

Anyway, the whole point of my ward was supposed to be to wean you off medication and back onto food and into the real world - a bit like The Priory without the celebs.  You can adjust your own bed, get up and walk about, ask to be disconnected from the drip for a longer walk, get your own bikkies and water, etc and we had daily physio and medical support visits.  Not everyone reacts well to this and several kept buzzing for footling things (one wanted a new table!) and one or two even refused to help themselves, which was sad.  In contrast, I was told they wanted to keep me in over the weekend, so I sent out positive vibes and they decided to let me go early.  Hope it's not a mistake - my moods are still up and down (so don't expect a lot from me after this marathon piece) and I lurch from eating two curries to only managing one biscuit, from trying to persuade the nurses to play sardines to falling asleep unexpectedly, from sneaking down to the staff TV room to buzzing for more morphine. 

Anyway, I'm back.  And I'm going to watch TV tonight (for a change . . . .) and am I going to enjoy Borgen.

WE ALL LIKE FIGGY PUDDING

I'm afraid I've been hors de combat for a few days.  I think I ate something that wasn't quite cooked or fresh or something.  You remember Kane on that spaceship, just before the alien burst out of his body?  I have been feeling a bit like that.
 
It hasn't been a good time to attend two formal dinners and two more Christmas parties.  But I struggled through.  What's the good of entering the Christmas season if you have to cut down on things like pork pies and wine!!!  And if I see another cup of camomile tea, I might throw it through the window.

Anyway, things are still not quite right, but I think I might give up everything planned for this weekend and take it easy for a couple of days.  When here, it's been a hot infusion of some sort and off to bed.  There's worse ways to spend Christmas I suppose.

The weekend before last I was over in Kent.  Wonderful Japanese dinner (that's the second this Christmas.  I think it's the recession - everyone economising with fish).  Then I think I played bridge for 3 days.  Bit of a blur that part.  But here's me receiving my second prize during the event.  Two prizes!  You should see my face!!  Then I had to make a presentation to the Board at my local charity.  They accepted everything I said.  Hooray!  So more celebrating necessary now . . .  Probably more work too.  What have I let myself in for?

Last weekend I was up in Croydon.  I then had to catch a bus from there at some unearthly hour of the morning to take me to a conference in Cambridge.  The conference was great - 200 walkers sharing stories and advice ('don't forget your boots', 'keep away from the cliff edge', 'that wine's better than that one'.  You can see I learned well).  Anyway, only time to take one pic.  This is from my room at sunset.  Lovely, isn't it.

People round today which was nice, if time consuming.  Then tomorrow and Friday a couple more parties.  It must be nearing Christmas by now.  I don't really understand what's happening this year.  We might go away for next Christmas to get away from all this; it's far too festive for me.

Anyway, that's me up to date.  I'll try to get back online in a day or two.  As Sally Phillips would say on Miranda, 'Bear with, bear with.'

MODEL PATIENTS

It’s time I posted something about women again.  In fact it's time I posted something again.  It's not that I've not been writing, but I've been posting somewhere else and forgetting to pop in here.

I am always amazed at the way women mess around with their looks.  I was looking at Jane Fonda on her new video (I just wanted to see whether I could loosen myself up a bit with a move or two) and thinking a) that she looks great at her age (129), but b) that she was a completely different woman from the one in Barbarella who helped me through puberty.

Granny Fonda                         Barbarella

In fact, although she has admitted to plastic surgery, I thought she was rather less changed than some.  Her eyes were slightly less ingénue and her cheekbones can now withstand a tailgate at 30mph and I don’t suppose she has frowned in a long while, but she looks better than some victims beneficiaries of surgery and a whole lot better than most women her age.  I expect you all remember Jocelyn Wildenstein, who eventually reversed her surgery after scaring people with her cat-like ex-boxer look.  But why did she do it in the first place?

As if to confirm this thought, I’ve just been watching Anna Friel in a new TV drama.  When she first appeared on TV she was a big hit because of her tiny elfin looks.  She had some minor film success and then went to Hollywood.

 

  

Judging by her looks now, she asked to be cut and pasted to look like a latter-day Kathleen Turner.  Is this what you have to do to succeed in Hollywood?  She isn’t quite as bad as Wildanimalstein, but there’s definitely something chimeric there, possibly a bit of trout and bit of panther.

I know many (maybe most) actresses have had a bit of work done here and there, but surely eventually they look far worse than they did when they thought they were beginning to lose their looks.  Click on the celeb plastic surgery sites and you’ll see what I mean.  Anyway, this post isn’t about plastic surgery exactly.  Jane Fonda, to her credit, has said she regrets what she had done and, as I say, doesn’t look that different now.  But I am puzzled by what women seem to think is beauty.  Is Jane what women aspire to?  Or is it Kathleen Turner?

 

So who does tells women what they should look like?  Why exactly did Anna Friel change her looks when she got to Hollywood?  Is it some sort of peer pressure?  I can’t believe it’s what men have told her they want.  I, at least, find that high cheek boned, slitty eyed, puffy lipped look rather unpleasant (except in Wladimir Klitschko obviously) and will tell her to change herself back the next time I sit next to her on the bus.

But the other news in my newspaper today (you can tell there’s a certain Euro and recession fatigue and a certain lack of news this side of Christmas) was about Cheryl Cole (she who has been meeting her estranged husband, Katie Price style, in secret)(oh, didn’t you know that?!)(what, you didn’t know about Katie Price either?!!!)(what newspapers do you read then?) who has put on weight.  Yes, hold the front page, I really mean it, never mind France going bankrupt and Afghanistan descending into civil war, a little known pixie who belonged to a less well known pop group once and whose speech is entirely indecipherable until you’ve drunk at least 3 pints of Newcastle Brown, and is still married (I think) to a moderately well-known footballer, has actually put on weight.  Well, 7lbs anyway.  She now strains the scales at 8 stone, that’s just over 50kgs, or about the same as a carrier bag of shopping from Tesco.  Here’s what she had to say about this phenomena, 'the curves are back, well and truly. I’ve got my boobs and bum back and, yeah, I like it. I think it’s sexy.’  Well, who’s going to argue that boobs and bums can be sexy, but I wonder where she put all that avoirdupois.  What do you reckon – it’s that hair, isn’t it?  But, more to the point, why does she have to have pounds on her boobs and bum?  There’s something here about self-esteem and being accepted by friends, isn’t there.  Cheryl clearly isn’t happy unless she weighs at least 8 stone (although I expect she would be miserable again if she ever weighed 8½ stone?)   Can it really just be advertising and the pressure of cover girl images that sets the standard? 

The next important earth-shattering story that caught my eye was about Abbey Crouch, the internationally-might be someone I’ve heard of and wife of a footballer quite a lot of people have heard of, a guest once on the Richard and Judy Show and, according to unconfirmed rumours, interested in appearing in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here model.  She has been outraged at suggestions that her duck-like mouth has been in anyway enhanced.  Should I accept her denials?  Should I remain sceptical?  Is this something I’m really going to nudge the sides of my friends about down the Crown and Cushion?  Why is she so upset about it though?  Has she always wanted to change the shape of her kisser and is she now annoyed people are commenting on it before she’s got round to having the work done?  Maybe she’s worried she might be thought of as trying too hard to be one of the girls?  Do her friends and model rivals keep on at her to have some work done?  Is she worried that she might soon have to?  Is she really under so much pressure from all the standard-setting model-seeking magazines?  Has she actually had the work done?  Why is she so uptight about it then?  Have you Googled her yet to see who she is?  Am I bov vered?  Why am I asking all these footling questions? 

But then I spotted this pic.  Notice anything about it?  I've been staring at it on my bedroom wall for ages and there is something about it.  Yes, the bodies don’t actually exist.  They’re all one CGI image with different heads grafted on.  Now, is this a humiliation to women or is it the answer to all their prayers?  Is this going to be another succession of questions?  Do they gnash their teeth (do models’ personal trainers allow them to do things like that?) that some programmer’s dream woman is somehow better looking than they are?  I think I would be totally offended if a magazine told me that they were going to use my face because I’m famous (this is a small specialised circle of cognoscenti I’m referring to, you understand), but were going to use a virtual body because it looks better than mine.  Apart from the impossibility of creating on a computer a better-looking body than mine, the whole editorial thought process would insult me.  Or should I think that I can now keep my career forever and still gorge myself on black forest gateaux lattes and lardy cake without worrying about the appearance of anything below my neck?

Anyway, it does make a mockery of the whole model thing and surely must cast doubts on the ideals models have to aspire to, if only their faces are going to be used in future.  And doesn’t it somehow make a mockery of modelling bikinis, if the only bit of you that’s shown is your face?  Maybe we should be less fussy now too about digitally altered images of models?  Actually, do we need models?  I guess all the interchangeable heads are on file somewhere.  Maybe now the models will all be less neurotic about their sticky out bits and we can get more stuff into our newspapers about disasters and things.

I might go back into swimwear modelling myself too actually.  All I have to do is send in my photograph, choose the body I want to attach it to, and have the photoshop boys change my hair colour, skin tone, skin quality, etc (and maybe correct the angle of my ears and the shape of my eyes a bit).  Meanwhile I can just sit here and get on with this new packet of Jammy Dodgers.  Great! 

BRAIN TEASERS

There was an interesting debate on the radio this morning about the discovery of a political gene.  At least, researchers have found, using MRI scans, that the more right wing you are the more likely you are to have a larger amygdala, and the more left wing, a larger anterior cingulate cortex.  I’ve no idea what these parts of the brain are, but in practice this means that we have no control over our political views.  Or, put another way, we are what we vote. 

Do you realise what this means?  We each fall into one part of a divided circle, rather like those wheels they produce in management training courses to show who was going to be a leader and who a follower.  So one semi-circle (presumably the right) is for those with Conservative cerebral construction; and the other is for Socialists. 

But there is more to it than that.  Since we know that gays for example exhibit genetic differences from straights, we can sub-divide the semi-circles into gay Conservatives, gay Labour, straight Conservative and straight Labour.  I’m not sure where the Lib Dems fit into this spectrum, but presumably we can add in all other views in the same way that the European Parliament is divided up – Lib-Dems in a slightly right of middle orange segment; Greens here; Independents in a pink bit up there; Nazis in one extreme segment of the right-hand semi-circle, Communists to the left; and so on.

There are probably further cerebral/genetic subdivisions - burglars, muggers, ladies who like red dresses, men who like football, curry and real ale, etc.  Clearly at some stage we can then stop ‘coming out’, since we will each have our genetic/cerebral make-up and can do nothing about the way we are.  Every time there is a revelation about a Minister of famous personality, they can just say, ‘yes, I know, been trying to avoid that for years, but it’s my genetic make-up you know.’  Maybe we can all simply carry a card saying ‘gay Labour footballer’ or ‘Christian wine-drinking non-voting straight lady supporting Gillingham Football Club and collecting china frogs’.

It’s not clear whether we are born with these traits or whether they are acquired features.  But, whether it be through indoctrination or not, the worrying thing is that governments will be able to manipulate the size of these divisions through policies designed to encourage those with certain favourable political traits to have children together.  You will remember there has already been a Tory debate about policies which seemed to encourage ‘the poor to breed’ (thus risking increases in future numbers of Labour supporters).  And of course we open the way to genetic modification or embryo selection or brain surgery to add or remove qualities in order to guarantee a surplus of political supporters for the next few years. 

However, the good thing is that there is no need now for me to come out about my thing with handbags in wardrobes; it’s all in my anterior cingulate cortex.  In fact, all my friends in the Wardrobe Handbag (Southern Counties) Society will be pleased too, since this can only prevent further discrimination and harassment when we meet down the Purse and Pocket every month.  Actually, I can see this heralding the end to all discrimination, perceived slights and inclusivity issues, since it is now clear that we are all different and society’s present labels are far too simplistic.  It will be impossible to insult someone by calling them a fat Tory bastard or a left-leaning shirt-lifter; the only insults now will be ‘you’ve got such a small amygdala’ or ‘hey, you fat anterior cingulate cortex with the green allele’.  I look forward to enjoying such exchanges without the spectre of litigation or compensation.