POWER TO THE PEOPLE

We have all been watching with sadness (if nothing else) as Egypt's military grapples with a near civil war.  But the big question has never been answered.  The military decided to oust the elected Government when it started to go against the wishes of the people.  Was this then democratic or was it a grave offence against what we call 'democracy'?

Basically, there are 2 positions:  If a Government acts the way a minority doesn't want them to, should they just accept that the Government is democratically elected and therefore fully justified in doing what is necessary?  Or, when it begins to act contrary to its election promises, may we get rid of them by any means and start again?  Of course there are also the secondary, more fraught, conundrums of whether it is justifiable to demonstrate violently, just because you disagree with the powers that be, and whether they are justified in return to use all necessary force to subdue you.

We don't have problems with Presidents for life in the West and are generally accustomed to removing governments by democratic means, so perhaps these questions aren't relevant to us.  Moreover, in Egypt, as so often happens where there is conflict, outside forces, with less concern about democracy than the rest of us, insinuate themselves into the action and muddy the waters.

But closer to home democracy seems to be under strain too.

First it was the anti-frackers. Drilling at a shale site in southern England has been suspended because of the size of the group of protesters.  There seem to be at least seven known organisations involved in preventing the drilling, some of them what I call professional protesters.  There have also been  

attempts to incite people to break into the works site and to court arrest.  Meanwhile, another group demonstrated outside the offices of the company involved and there were again attempts to break into the offices.

I have mixed feelings about fracking.  On the one hand, there are worrying scare stories about the effects of the drilling operations, on the other, I am not convinced that covering the hills with wind farms and the valleys with solar panels will actually solve our energy problems.  Protesters criticisms range from the usual Nimbyism to opposition to gas exploitation per se in favour of renewable sources of power.  Apart from the debatable comparison of the effects on the environment, the argument seems to be that renewable energy sources are cheaper.  Since a whole hill of windmills seems only to produce enough power to charge a couple of mobile phones, I'm not sure about that argument.  And I'm not aware that anyone in an area significantly using renewable energy sources has had their energy bills reduced.

But the point is that what the energy company is doing is perfectly legal.  They have rented the land from the land owner; they have obtained a drilling licence; and the elected Government has decided that its energy policy will include gas extracted by fracking.  What the protesters are doing, on the other hand, is illegal.  Preventing a company going about its business, trespassing on the site and into the company's offices, and erecting a massive camp site on the side of the road without permits, are all offences.  Yet the protesters are allowed to stay and the company has had to suspend its operations.  No matter how much they dress their actions up by calling them 'civil disobedience' or 'positive action', they are a minority acting illegally against the wishes of the Government elected by the majority of us.

I am also puzzled by the words of one of the protesters interviewed on television - it is important to oppose this action 'especially with the Government trying to offer financial sweeteners to the community . . .'  er . . .

Next we had a 'National Day of Protest', led by a couple of feminist groups, against 'lad mags', the magazines that have pictures of pin-ups in bikinis or less (with the naughty bits covered by text boxes or photoshopped blobs). Campaigners have successfully encouraged supermarkets to sell such magazines in sealed bags, on the top shelves of the publications section, and only to customers with a proven age of more than 18.  Now though the aim is to stop high street shops selling such magazines, threatening legal action under the Equality Act 2010. They say that scantily-clad women are not appropriate when you’re shopping - a statement I certainly can't comment on.  But, more importantly, they claim that displaying these publications in workplaces, and requiring staff to handle them in the course of their jobs, may amount to sex discrimination and sexual harassment.

This is an interesting twist in the law, commensurate with the removal of sexy calendars from office walls and one with which I can sympathise.  The only problem is that, again, the companies publishing the mags and the companies selling them are doing nothing illegal.  I guess that, if mags with pictures of girls are only sold via a tag, as with razors or cigarettes, and only handled by male check-out staff, then the Equality Act legislation is not offended.  But, subject to that test of the law, the only illegal action at the moment would be preventing the sale of these publications.

There is also the slight problem that not all women agree with this action.  At least, I assume that none of the ladies in the photographs wish to have their publicity material hidden or (worse) banned.  And I guess there aren't many lads who support the action either.  Personally, I find a photograph of a pretty girl brightens my visit to the supermarket.  But then I don't get very excited by baskets of broccoli and packets of corn flakes.  I find that the magazines purporting to be about health and sports are often just as titillating as the ones blatantly about sex.  I am also constantly surprised by the pictures, ads and articles in my wife's women's magazines.  So where to draw the line?

I think there is also a bit too much PC illiberal action being taken these days.  Even I have to accept that attitudes have changed considerably since my youth.  Pictures of naked ladies appear regularly in daily newspapers and prime time television frequently contains plot lines, if not suggestive action, that would have offended 20 years ago.  We also not have the problem (for the protesting feminists anyway) of magazines with pics of men, gay magazines, and of course photography and art magazines.  The lad mags are easily identified, but does their existence represent a greater inequality or a greater offence than the other mags?  It doesn't seem unnatural either to younger members of society to post risqué 'selfies' on websites.  And don't get me started on music videos or stage performances by female singers.  The point is that the protesters, whilst I often appreciate the feminist view, are in the minority here.  Forcing supermarkets to comply with their demands through aggressive demonstrations, whatever you might feel about the magazines concerned, is not the democratic way.

I suppose defenders of positive action might point to the Suffragette example, which would bear debate.  But, whilst I agree wholeheartedly that the attitude to women in these lad mags is often insulting and demeaning, discreditable even, I would hesitate to advocate censorship as the solution.  There is no suggestion that the existence or propagation of these magazines promotes crime or encourages violence against women, in the way that porn or the Internet has been said to, nor do they in fact actually impinge on other female customers, but I can imagine a dangerous environment in which perfectly legal magazines are removed from general circulation.


Finally, we now have animal rights protesters taking to the woods to try to stop the badger cull.  Campaigners urge their supporters to stand in the way of marksmen carrying out the shooting, in other words to risk death (and the trauma of the shooter) in pursuit of their views.
The cull of badgers in the test zones of Somerset and Gloucestershire has already begun.  It is a controversial policy.  People are much swayed by the sad death of the cuddly, frolicsome, iconic badger and are thus prepared not too be convinced that the cull is necessary.  Protesters justify their actions with the claim that it has not been proven that the badger is to blame for the spread of TB in cattle.  But again, the only illegal, and frankly dangerous, activity here is that by the protesters.  The Government has decided that a cull is necessary and a number of designated persons have been given licences to carry out the shooting.  The protesters may not like it, but the shooting is a legal, approved action.

I am less sure about the science for this cull.  TB is a problem with our cattle.   We have done much to eradicate the disease in cattle herds and to prevent the movement around the country of potentially infected animals.  But the disease is still a problem and thousands of cattle have had to slaughtered.  And badgers have the disease and carry it wherever they go and presumably infect those they come into contact with.  The cull is not a total eradication of the species, just an attempt to bring the disease under control.  However much you might question the science or the methods, that at least is an admirable aim.  I was finally persuaded by the farmers' argument that at the moment we are essentially culling and containing one group of animals whilst allowing the other to breed, remain infected and roam freely.  Put like that, our previous policy is clearly destined to failure.

But of course badgers are lovely.  I have never seen a live one, but I've seen plenty of delightful wildlife films.  However, on balance, I'd rather see lovely badgers slaughtered and my dinner kept disease free.  Protesters' actions have so far made the problem worse by letting cattle out of their field.  One even died, I think in a collision with a vehicle.  I don't see how that helps either the badger or the cattle or the eradication of bovine TB.  I hope the minority who disagree with me will keep to the democratic method of reversing this policy and will not put lives at greater risk than they already are for the sake of their views.

All those action groups against fracking, against pin-ups, and against badger culls can soon have the opportunity to vote for another government in an election.  There's no guarantee of course that a new government will bow to the wishes of the minority, but voting is a great way to express your views without offending someone else or putting others' livelihoods or health at risk.  Democracy, after all, in the original Greek, means 'people power'.

NEW YEAR RESOLVED

I was just thinking.  This time last year I wasn't very well.  I had already had one visit to hospital, but was still feeling not right.  My very good Chef friend made us some delightful New Year's food, all carefully designed to be easily eaten and digested.  And it was delicious, as well as being easily digested.  Not long after that however I was taken rather more ill and had to be admitted.  The rest you may know.

Just a year later, I am surprisingly fit and well.  Except for this bloody cold thing.  Yes, it's now 2 months and, not only can I not shake it off, but I seem to have had a relapse.

Anyway, I would like to be writing that the experiences of the last year have been life-changing.  How wonderful to say that I have peered over the edge or into the abyss, or been given the chance of a peek into the future or some such!  Or how about describing my new perception of the preciousness and vibrancy of life, of the greater vividness of the greens of the grass and the trees, or the new deeper meaning of the spectacular sunsets I now enjoy, or the added piquancy of my breakfast sausage?  I could write a book or a film script or . . . a blog.  It might have been a sort of road to Damascus moment, such that I will never stay in bed beyond 8 o'clock again and waste all those precious daylight hours, or that I will stop and close my eyes in luxurious appreciation as I drink my first cup of tea of the day, instead of drinking it as I have my morning scratch and read the paper, or that I will throw the windows open every morning and drink in the sights, sounds and smells of the world and smile at next door's cat crapping in my flowerbed before I start my day.  Or maybe I should be saying that I have at last been encouraged to join the local abseiling club, or in gratitude spend every morning volunteering at Haslemere Hospital, or in contrition give up my packet of shortbread biscuits a day? 

But the truth is that nothing very much seems to have changed.

Somehow, at the start of a new year, we are conditioned to compose resolutions, to promise to do something, or not do something, over the months ahead.  I can't even say in all honesty that I have done that.  This is perhaps the first New Year when I haven't approached the future with a sense of renewal or renewed sense of promise.  In short, life just goes on.

Initially, when I sat down to write this, I thought I'd be expanding on my vision of my life over the next year, that I'd think up some noble course of action, or some impressive project to complete, or a glorious act with which to dazzle you all.  But it turns out I have written a confession of ignoble sloth or insouciance.  I'm just getting up, eating, reading the paper, undertaking some chores, eating some more, watching some television and going back to bed.  And, yes, I confess I should be doing more.  Maybe it's the weather, or the season, or just me.  Maybe I've now done everything in my life?  Maybe that's why I can't think of anything to resolve to do.  Or perhaps it's because we didn't move to a new area last year, as we usually have done as soon as we've settled in, and I thus have nothing different to do here?

Still, at least I do look in my diary before I start my day to make sure there isn't something I should be doing.  OK, that's my New Year resolution - definitely look in my diary every day.  Even if I then don't do anything.

TYING UP LOOSE ENDS

I had my final visit to the hospital today.  All I could get out of the consultant was, 'wow, you look well'.  I thought he might actually examine me or ask highly personal questions, as he usually does.  But, no, that seems to be that.  So I must be expected to survive then.

I also went to see the dietitian.  She seemed happy with my diet and added 'wow, you look well'.  I guess I look well.  She also, rather surreally, gave me a B&Q paint chart and asked which colour most matched that of my stool.  As I have said, there is not much left of your personal life that hasn't been picked over and I gave up on dignity a long time ago, but I thought the colour chart unnecessarily coy, if rather amusing.  Splendid Sienna BTW.  Or was it Brilliant Barbaresco?

Anyway, enthused, and energised by NHS cappuccino, I came home and chiseled out some drainage holes in a retaining wall, cleared out the drain in the patio and brushed up all the moss from the pointing, cleared the leaves from the side entrance, trimmed a bit of hedge I'd missed last month, composted the flower bed, touched up some painting on the stairs, fitted doorstops to two new doors, repaired a wall where one of them had been knocking and repaired the front doorstep where someone had tripped and pulled off the moulding.

I think I'll go to bed now. 

Not sure why I'm doing all this, but I start Spanish lessons tomorrow.  Actually, I made it a New Year resolution to learn Spanish this year because I thought I was going walking in South America.  Clearly I had to cancel all that.  But, ever hopeful, I thought I might still continue with the lessons.  I have been reading the text book 'Spanish In 15 Minutes' for the last 6 months.  I think I can safely say it doesn't work.

One last thing (I really am going now) - surely today's Google doodle is the best they've done?

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).

I'M HAVING A P

I know - I’m supposed to be working.  Just going to start now.  Oh, it’s lunch time.  

 

I looked at myself in the mirror last night before going to bed and was shocked to see how much skin I had.  Reminded me of that baby pug that appears on cute birthday cards – all folds and no bulk.  Still, now the malarial hue has receded, I don’t look a survivor from Changi any more.  That's a lot of ribs though.

Thanks to my friend Gael, I’ve now overcome this lack of interest in food.  At least, I’ve found a solution.  It was enjoying those pies yesterday that pointed the way.  From now on, I shall only eat food beginning with ‘P’.  This means I only have to look in the refrigerator and think about how to spell the food and not whether I fancy it or not.  As I think I said, most things seem to taste OK, so eating is not a problem, if I remember to do it.  But now I have an incentive!  Of course, Pinot Grigio is still a bit of a problem – I have discovered I don’t like that any more, but I’ve found some Pinotage in the cellar, so that’s going to be my tipple tonight.  Fingers crossed.

I started my day with Puffs (Sugar) and then moved on to Pepper Houmous.  This is a delight of red peppers and chilli in a bed of humus.  I spread it thick on Poppyseed bread, which seemed to work.  I washed that down with Powdered coffee which I seem to like too.  So far, so good. 

I’ve just found some Port Salut and Plum and Port Jelly in the frig.  I think it must have been left over from Christmas.  Not sure about the jelly, but the cheese was fabulous.  Mmmm.  I had a Pear with another chunk of Port Salut to make sure I was getting my 5 a day.  That was rather nice too.

I'm now going to warm up a carton of Plum Tomato and Basil soup, because it’s got a little cold here.  Tonight we’re having another Pie (Cottage), so that’s appropriate.  I think we have some Peas (Sugar snap) in the cupboard too.  I shan’t bother to tell you about this any more; I expect you’re as bored with it as I am.  I'm eating now anyway, so that's all on that subject.  I’ll write about something else in future. 

I’ve seen many diets publicised in the papers from time to time.  They will all work, provided you get the exercise that goes with them.  Sitting in an armchair and stuffing yourself with fruit is no different, or better, than sitting there and stuffing yourself with carbs.  And Veggie diets are just twice as hard, since, as well as being hungry, you keep dreaming of sausages.  So, forget the Vegan diet, I think I can safely recommend the P-Gan diet. 

APPETITE FOR LIFE

Quite a lot has been written about acquired tastes.  I find it interesting that children don’t immediately like some foods, or love others, and then change.  Over Christmas, Isaac said quite clearly, ‘I love Cheddar cheese.  But I don’t like Caerphilly cheese.’  In fact he said it so often that we had to tell him to change the record.  Anyway, it turns out he’d never actually tried Caerphilly cheese and, when persuaded to try it, had to be stopped from eating the whole block.  Actually there is very little he doesn’t like eventually.  Meanwhile, Tom likes Philadelphia cheese sandwiches and Marmite rice cakes and pasta with pesto, but it’s the devil’s own job to get him to even try anything else.  And that’s usually accompanied by all sorts of ‘yuk!’ noises. 

 

And of course there’s the whole child/adult thing – kids tend not to like Cabernet Sauvignon or Brussels sprouts until patiently forced into them.  Later they come to love them both (or else).  Actually, now I’ve tried raw vitamin K as a sprout substitute, my mind is wavering a little and I keep thinking of that liquid stuff when I look at sprouts.  So ‘Yuk!’

In fact, I have to say, my taste has changed entirely.  It’s a very strange thing.  I still have no appetite at all.  At meal times, I try very hard to think of something I fancy, but the only thing I seem to come up with is sausage casserole, that dish that was the first I ate when I stopped being NBM.  Perhaps I have to re-eat everything I’ve ever eaten to get my taste buds and imagination working again?  There’s not too much wrong with my taste buds in fact; many things I’ve been given to eat have been quite tasty.  But some are still so-so.

I went into the café at the hospital the other day to wait for my old lady and ordered a flat white.  It wasn’t very nice.  This morning, as I usually do on a Saturday, I went to a café and tried a latte with a shot of vanilla.  That was OK.  But it didn’t make we want to go back anytime soon for another one.  What’s going on?  

Friday I had a glass of Pinot Grigio.  It didn’t really do much for me.  On our walk last week, I had a speculative half of HSB (the local brew), when I might perhaps have fancied a tomato juice (horror of horrors!), and it tasted so nice that I ordered the other half.  I also ordered the steak and ale pie and chips that the other two had ordered, because I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to eat.  And that was delicious too.  So some things are working.  But ask me now what I’d like to eat and drink and I suspect steak and ale pie and HSB won’t be very high up the list.  But then nothing will be HIGH on any list.  Doesn’t it make you feel sad?!  On the other hand, I don’t think I really care very much.  But last night I tried a drop of Rioja and that was lovely!  I’m going to try another tonight if I can be bothered.

So maybe I've reverted to childhood.  Perhaps I should try Philladelphia cheese sandwiches?

Tonight, to celebrate Chinese New Year, we’re having spring rolls, sweet and sour something and black bean sauce or some such stuff like that.  I don’t know. 

Tags: food, illness

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.

GALLIC WARS

Sorry I haven't been around your sites much.  Two days of doctor and hospital appointments (and nil by mouth for 6 hours) left me a bit, what shall we say, happier asleep on the sofa watching property programmes on television (yes, it's possible to do both) than trying to think and type at the same time (leave alone walk to the next room).

Anyway, here's the good news.  It's gall stones.  Well, semi-good news; they could still be the symptom of something else nasty, but we now know what's causing all the other symptoms. 

I suspect it'll mean surgery.  I've never had surgery, or even hospital treatment, before.  So that'll be interesting.  And I always fancied sitting up in one of those beds on wheels and having a nurse plump my pillows and feed me porridge.

Then there's the bad news.  Well, first there could be something else, but I'm ruling that out.  Second, I doubt I'll be in hospital long enough to have anything plumped.  Gall stone removal seems to be one of those in out keyhole procedures these days.  I might not even get any porridge!

Third, when on earth am I going to have time for this?  I've already cancelled 2 bridge matches and a birthday drinks a) because I can't see myself getting through a whole match and continuing to concentrate and b) because I'm not drinking at the moment.  Still, I suppose, if it is an in out procedure, I might be back on my feet quick enough to get on with life without missing too much.

But then there's the other question.  If they weren't caused by some other nasty, one assumes the stones were caused by diet.  OK, I eat butter and drink blue top milk every day, and I like sausages and big breakfasts and fish and chips.  But I don't eat any of those often.  And my diet is otherwise boringly exemplary and healthy.  So will I have to give up anything in my diet?  Will I have to live on boiled chicken and jello for the rest of my life?  I suppose the other good news is that, if it's taken all this time to form stones with my diet, there won't be time for them to form again once these are removed.  So perhaps I just keep on with this diet.

Isn't it wonderful, incidentally, how a vist to the doctors can make you feel better immediately!

THE BENEFITS OF YELLOW

My teeth look white

My underpants look white.

I look naturally suntanned in colour pics.

I have less awkward contrast in b/w pics.

I use less Permatan spray.

I can go to tonight’s fancy dress party in a lamp shade and dressing gown and keep saying convincingly, ‘conglaturations’.

I can celebrate New Year again on 23 January.

I can more easily get off with Mrs Chang at the chippy.

If you squint a bit, it looks gold.

I could save George Lucas a fortune in make-up if he gives me a job as a Givin.

I could start a new group to rival the Blue Men Group.

I can hide in a bowl of custard.

Er . . . . . that’s it.

SKIN AND BONES TURNED INTO SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

This is no good.  The whole point about blogging is to make a daily record of things wot you do and wot you think, etc.  I have failed.  Here follow the excuses.

A couple of weeks or so ago, I ate something that did some sort of damage to my insides.  I thought I had recovered from it a few days later, but an innocent mince pie shortly after set it all off again.  But it was worse.  The docs are onto it now though and even I now think I’ll probably live.

I’m not very often ill.  Well, I have very bad manflu most winters (despite my flu jab).  In fact I get it much worse than anyone else in the world.  But, apart from that, I am rudely healthy.  Maybe because of that, because I don’t know what it’s like to experience real pain, I suffer excruciating agonies from little things like the odd stubbed toe, or - you know how sometimes you are walking through a doorway, carefree, incautious, swinging your arms, and you catch your wrist on the doorhandle?  I’ve done that and practically died from the suffering.  So I thought, you’re always making a fuss, everybody has these little knocks and spills and just brushes them off, this is just tummy ache, no blood or bones sticking out, live with it.

But, actually, I think every internal organ in my body was inflamed and protesting.  I tried to eat something small and digestible, but the digestion process was worse than the hunger.  It was as if one of the cogs had slipped off its mountings and was causing all the moving parts to clunk and grind off-centre.  Since I didn’t want that to happen, I didn’t eat for a bit.  Even drinking seemed to cause the gears to mesh wrongly.  You could hear them from a mile away.

I couldn’t not eat Christmas lunch on Christmas Day though, so, although nothing had passed my lips for two days, I had a taster plate of turkey and sprouts and other yummy stuff and . . . seemed to get through it OK.  There was no real pain now, but the aching didn’t go away.  And lying down at night to sleep was as uncomfortable as lying on a concrete floor.  (Yes, but only once, when I was younger.  Murder on the knees!).  Then suddenly I went yellow.  It was a bit of a shock.  I’d been white and pink and red and brown and even green before, but never yellow.  She thought I looked awful.  But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and Mrs Chang down the chippy commented on how well I looked when I popped in for our Christmas supper treat.  So I went to the doctors.

I’ve now had lots of poking around the abdomen, a vast selection of blood tests, a urine test (if anyone’s interested, it was a most impressive teak colour), and am due in the hospital again for some other tests in a few days.  The doc has actually rung me up twice in the last week (which is supposed to make me feel better, I’m sure, but makes me a little uneasy).

So – good news.  I stopped taking handfuls of paracetamol every couple of hours some three days ago.  I can get off to sleep now in a certain position, if I hold my teddy slightly differently, and sleep though half the night comfortably.  I can eat normally now, provided it’s porridge or chicken broth.  I had a spot of venison stew tonight, rather than see all that lovely food thrown away; it was delicious and, as I write, no protest movements down there.  I have rediscovered Ribena.  Today, for the first time for a while, I went outside (it was raining, but it was so nice to get out and DO something that I didn’t care) and I pruned our cherry tree.  All being well tomorrow, I shall finish off the front garden maintenance before the winter comes.  That really is a major advance from sitting on the sofa, feeling sorry for myself, and watching b/w movies (= dozing) all day.

On the debit side – I haven’t had any alcohol for 2 weeks, not even a drop of all that fabulous stuff I got in for Christmas.  But actually I felt so happy to see everyone else enjoying it, (and I was part of it) that I haven’t really regretted the abstinence.  I haven’t had any coffee either.  That’s more of a lifestyle problem.  I really haven’t had any urge to drink anything but Ribena for the last fortnight, yet they don’t serve it, sadly, at Hemingways or Mirabelles, so I haven’t been there either.  I bet Norma has been serving someone else while I’m away (fickle hussy).  No fry-ups either, though I have to say, I could do justice to a full English, given the courage.  But my derring-do has evaporated and I’m stuck in the safety of the chicken broth trench for the moment.  Oh, I scrambled some eggs this morning and ate those avariciously without regression.  That’s another plus point, isn’t it.

Anyway, there we are, that’s what I’ve been doing.  Or not doing.  I became horribly and frighteningly weak too, which is my real excuse for not visiting here.  Just walking to the living room sofa was enough to send me into a sort or narcolepsy, never mind typing, or thinking even.  Anyway, as you can see, especially if you measure health by number of words, I’m improving.  I’d like to be less conscious of my internal organs.  I’d like to do something constructive without feeling depressed at the thought or exhausted after.  I’d like to eat some battered sausages and chips and drink with them a nice bottle of Rioja.  I'd like to be pink again.  But that’s enough of my New Year Resolutions.  What are yours?  

Right, now to get back into this blogging thing.

Please don’t send condolences or positive messages; I’m sure I’m OK.  I probably just need a holiday.

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.'

NEW DECADENCE

I have been a bit quiet this year.  Partly, as I reported, I seem to have lost my voice at the moment, but partly also I have been a little reflective.  No, I’m not referring to my Day-Glo HiVis yellow jacket.  It's just that I have been reminded again forcefully over the last few days of how lucky I am still to be able to climb mountains, run after fit young ladies, play squash (should I wish to), leap over tall buildings in a single bound, etc.

Actually, this realisation came to me rather sharply when I celebrated my second 60^th birthday (the official one) to mark reaching the halfway point in my life and I invited everyone I knew to a garden party.  In the days before the party, I received constant telephone calls – ‘can we park outside the door? I’ve just had my hips replaced’, ‘is there wheelchair access?’, ‘is it very far to walk? I’m not supposed to overload my pacemaker’, etc.  In fact, if I stop to think about it, I am reminded almost every day of how the world around me seems to be ageing.  As you may know, one of the things I do is to drive elderly people to hospital.  When I was younger, I always thought in terms of fit young persons helping doddery old persons.  The reality is somewhat different – it’s those that can still walk assisting those that can’t.

Anyway, over Christmas, all the hospital visits were cancelled, because of the snow.  I have no idea whether that has caused medical difficulties; that’s not my side of the work, but I always thought that what I did was a fairly necessary requirement.  It made me think how especially difficult it must be for those who can’t get out when they need to.  The thought was reinforced a couple of days before Christmas when I was asked to take someone to Tescos, rather than the Royal Surrey Hospital.  All the roads had been cleared of snow and ice by then, but, although the man I picked up lived only a couple of hundred yards from Tescos, there was no way he could walk on the uncleared pavements with his walker and get back with a bag of groceries.  I had of course been walking to the shops and back throughout the snow, thinking only what a trudge it was.

So I went to visit an old friend of mine, who is now in a home.  He came to that party too in fact and told me then, in his characteristic dry manner, ‘please forgive me if I forget who you are later, my short term memory is shot.’  In the relatively short time between then and now, his memory has gone completely, he has lost the use of his voice (or forgotten how to speak; I’m not sure how the dementia works) and is now bed-ridden and unable to move.  I feel very guilty that I haven’t been to see him before, but somehow it wasn’t possible.  He used to record obscure music for me in the days of cassette tapes and I took some along hopefully in case it stirred something in him.  It did seem to make him prick up his ears and stare at me, but who knows.  Very sad.

Then, at my New Year’s Eve party, I discovered that the younger brother of a very good friend of mine has had a stroke and a subsequent heart attack, leaving him semi-comatose.

I realise I’m at that age when these things will happen around me more and more often.  I have lost 2 of my regular bridge friends recently, not to mention the passing of ageless icons like Boney M or Leslie Nielson.  But nonetheless I am reminded to get on and do all those things on my bucket list - a bit like (but not the same as) Austin Powers.  So that's my New Year's resolution.  Does it still count if you tell people about it?  Or is that wishbones?