Lazy Weekend

Saturday 30/8/2014

I decided to take this weekend off, but not in the usual sense one would suppose. There have been very few days since February 8^th, two days after Caroline’s cremation, when I haven’t gone on very long walks. Then, into the spring and summer, swum or kayaked long distances, or some combination of these three. Now I’m starting to feel a little weary. I also had a quandary to ponder, a need to take stock, a need to distance myself from that jaded feeling I’ve started to get down at the beach, and I also needed get some things done. One of these was finishing my edit of Factory Station Room 101. The other was to sort some paperwork for my tax return, because the Inland Revenue is not noted for its patience whether dealing with the bereaved or otherwise.

So, this morning I was up at 6.30 and at 7.30 headed out on a 6.5 mile walk through the mountains. Obviously, something about the idea of taking a rest from exercise had escaped me. Next, I went shopping in Sitia because when I found myself having boiled sweet corn for breakfast the day before I thought maybe it was time to restock the fridge. After packing this lot away, I ate a meal of salad and frankfurter wraps, then I fell asleep on the sofa for two hours.

*sigh*

It took me a further two hours to get motivated and finish those final bits of the second Transformation book. As you read this is should be sitting in Bella Pagan’s inbox. I then sorted through a drawer full of receipts to find the relevant ones for the tax man, and hopefully I’ll get all that stuff completed ready to file my tax return online, which is of course going to be a joy.

I am determined to take it easy tomorrow and not going schlepping up to those wind turbines again, or do any other form of heavy exercise. If anything, I’ll do a bit of light gardening. Let’s see how long this resolution lasts if it’s hot and still and I start comparing my need to sort out my taxes to kayaking along the Cretan coast or swimming in the Libyan Sea.

Sunday 31/8/2014

Minutes of the Committee for Autonomic Function

Hey look, we really like what you’ve been doing with the old organism. It’s looking the best it has in fifteen to twenty years and it’s doing stuff we never thought would be possible. I mean, constant exercise as a response to trauma ... well, we didn’t see that coming. The expectation here amongst us was that you’d just load the organism with cigarettes, alcohol and bacon sandwiches. Well, you quit feeding it alcohol, at least for a while, and those ecigs were a great move. As for the food intake ... well the cut in input of carbohydrates came as a shock to us but, as the fat dwindled, we saw that you’d made the right decision again. However, I’m sorry, enough is enough. Yes, you’re keeping up the exercise but there have been injuries. You yourself have admitted that the organism requires periods of rest so committee members can get on with some repairs. And, let’s be frank here, you’ve strayed back into trying to use alcohol as a mental analgesic and method of end-of-the-day shutdown, and it’s been a failure. Alcohol-induced insomnia is hindering the repair teams. And when we check for the required materials for repairs all we seem to be finding is empty alcohol calories. You, of course, know all this and this weekend promised to keep the organism at home so we could service it. Yet, what was the first thing you did on Saturday morning? You took it for a 6.5-mile walk. I’m sorry but this was plainly just aberrant and destructive behaviour. Therefore, we of the committee are enforcing inactivity and sleep interspersed with periods of high stomach and colon activity. And you, Brain, you we are shutting down.
...

It’s been an interesting day and another one of those ‘the body demands’ times. I was up at 6.00 whereupon I ate a breakfast of three boiled eggs and six slices of toast. After that I fell asleep for two or more hours, couldn’t get myself moving properly until 10.00 whereupon I ate a load of salad and frankfurter wraps. I then fell asleep for another hour or so, was sluggish for another hour after that, then ate some more wraps and fell asleep again. Next, I finally got myself motivated to do some cooking and put together a Swedish meatball stew and ate two bowls full of that. Thus far, at 6.30, there’s been no sign of Dr Narcolepsy creeping up behind me.

I only have myself to blame. I’ve been exercising excessively, not eating properly and drinking too much. Mr Insomnia has been with me most nights and, let’s be frank here, Messrs Beer, Wine and Raki opened the door for him. All this needs to change ... apart from the exercising excessively bit.

However, on the good news front: I sorted out all my receipts and then, upon checking my tax form discovered that now I file my return online I don’t have to do so until January. It was quite pleasing to chuck the whole lot back in a drawer. Fuck that shit.

Beans

Okay, I nearly wet myself laughing at this.

It Killed the Dinosaurs! Claimed ASH

And I saw another interesting thing while walking to the hospital....

This brought me to a halt the moment I saw it and I was glad I had my camera in my bag. Somebody had obviously taken exception to a No-Smoking sign on a path leading into the grounds of Ipswich hospital and peeled off some of the paint. Not that these signs have any effect. I saw a guy in a wheelchair and another with his drip still attached outside one wing of the hospital chuffing away on cigarettes. Both didn't look in great condition and I had to wonder if the phrase, 'That will kill you,' would have received a hollow laugh in reply.

So what sort of funny line can go with this?  It wasn't Sir Walter Rayleigh who introduced tobacco to the world! So who's going to tell him to stub it out? Of course we could get into denormalization territory with something about how only dinosaurs smoke. Or maybe into one of today's manufactured panics: Now we know it wasn't an asteroid!

I mean seriously, no smoking for any stegosaurus beyond this point?  

Sniper in Brighton

Just before Christmas we went down to Brighton to visit my erstwhile boss (and editor still) Peter Lavery. We did a lot of walking there – so much in fact that my legs were stiff for a couple of days afterwards – and saw some sights.

Digression: I reckon people who live in towns and cities get more in the way of healthy exercise than those who live in the country, and by that I mean walking. You would think that in the country you’d have more opportunity to go for long rambles, but that’s not generally the case. In my village we walk for five minutes before the paths run out. If we want to walk further we have to risk white van driver on the roads or clump through wet clay and waist-high weeds. If we want a longer and in any way pleasant walk it’s necessary to drive somewhere that’s possible. If we go to London, Brighton or Chester we can enjoy walking for miles.

Now, where was I, oh yeah, here’s one of those sights:

It seems Sniper’s old body shell has turned up with a dodgy paint job on Brighton beach. 

Sob!

Well, I can tease my readers with hints about what I'm writing but some readers can strike back:

'To donate to charity or not donate to charity, in this post-Kindle world... That is the question...' says Paul Clarke on Twitter. He obviously wants to see a grown man cry.

Lavender Nightmares

We’re now coming to the end of our temperance month which, according to ‘health professionals’ is not such a good thing because it might encourage people to think that once the month is over they can pour down the booze willy-nilly. I stopped listening to health professionals long ago when I realised that in their efforts at self-promotion they were contradicting each other every week. All I do know is that a month off the booze gives my liver a rest, proves to me I’m not an alcoholic, and is just one sign of my increasing disinclination to drink alcohol. In fact, as this month draws to a close I’m not at all anxious to go find a corkscrew. But anyway, that’s beside the point I’m aiming at.

One of the effects of foregoing the booze is better sleep. I’m finding myself sleeping for 7 to 8 hours a night and the only time I get up is to stumble to the toilet, usually because of the excessive amounts of tea and cordial I’ve drunk. This good sleep I’m finding increasingly important, as it is for many as they get older. In the past I’ve had trouble and one solution I tried was dripping lavender oil on my pillow beforehand. Last week, while in a chemist, I spotted a bottle of the stuff and on impulse bought it and tried it out again. The result was heavier sleep – I’m now mostly sleeping right the way through to the morning – and some lurid dreams and nightmares.

...

I have, this week, burned the living head of Hitler, along with his chopped up body; been swimming with both my parents, though slightly puzzled about the presence of my father since he was dead; been involved in a car crash; and at one point had artichokes growing out of my bottom until I delved inside to remove the large chunk of root from which they were sprouting. Weird shit, so to speak, and the first time I’ve remembered dreams for many months. Time to put a notebook by my bed I reckon, since story ideas might be available. Though I’ll probably give the story about anal artichokes a miss.       

The Aliens Are Here.

Y’know, there are lots of conspiracy theories running around the world – the moon landings were falsified, alien spacecraft in AREA 51 – but I’m here to tell you now that one of them is true: there are aliens amongst us. If you were to split open a particular shiny forehead that’s been prominent on your TVs and in your newspapers you would reveal the green lizard skin of glombulfrog from the planet Zaarg. Cameron is not alone, of course, glombulfrogs have taken control of all the parliaments and senates across the world, because nothing else could possibly explain their deep disconnect from real human beings.

It is a conspiracy to give us the worst possible rulers, to fuck up our financial systems, blow our money on complete rubbish, involve us in pointless wars, control and dictate, nanny and generally leave us so totally and utterly pissed off with them. The purpose of this is quite simple. When, in about ten years, the invasion arrives and the particle beams lash down, turning the House of Commons to rubble, the White House to a smoking ruin, the European Parliament to a bomb site snowed with the pages from burning accounts books, we’ll all cheer. When the glombulfrogs stride out of their massive space ships and tell us that they are now in charge, there will be a collective worldwide sigh of relief and cries of, ‘Thank fuck for that.’

...

The latest Cameroonism is a perfect example of how they work:

‘Hey, the country is in huge debt, people are worried about their finances, worried about the massive amounts of money we’re blowing, so how can we hack them off further?’ he asked at a recent glombulfrog focus group.

‘I know,’ a climber in the frog hierarchy answered, ‘let’s spend some money on something completely needless and pointless just like our agents in the previous government did. That always seemed to work.’

‘Ahah,’ said the Camerofrog, ‘let’s do a happiness consultation and spend, I dunno, a couple of million.’

‘Only a couple of million?’

‘Well, we can’t get too drastic – the main invasion fleet won’t arrive for another ten years.’

‘Very true – we do actually need something left to rule.’

The Empathy Effect -- Bob Lock

First let me get a disclaimer out of the way. I’ve chatted to Bob Lock over the Internet for years, so you could take this as ‘what his mates say’. However, I didn’t much like his previous book so said nothing about that one at all.

I just have to wonder if Bob first rejected agoraphobic steeplejack and claustrophobic miner to then settle on the most unlikely of heroes: an empathic traffic warden. He stuck this character in the somewhat precarious position of being cling-filmed to one of the supports of Mumbles Pier, then took it from there. This is a short chaotic romp swiftly including a couple of psychopaths, a superdog, kidnapping, murder, paedophiles and dog fighting. My one complaint would be too much dwelling on what I will call ‘the carrot effect’, which is a tad hackneyed (you know what I mean Bob).

I’ll say no more about it other than that I read through it quite rapidly and simply enjoyed it. Maybe some would consider £6.99 for a 135 page book a bit steep, especially when we’re getting 3 for the price of 2 at Waterstones right now. But this is small press, so to be expected. Writing humour is a difficult thing, one of the most difficult, and I'll venture that no one below the age of forty is capable of it. Bob Lock can make us laugh, and that’s a rare and precious thing.

Wednesday 6th

To pass your Greek driving test there are certain driving techniques you must learn. Here I’ll just give you a handy guide. If there is a car in front of you it must be overtaken. It doesn’t matter if it happens to be going round a corner when you do this, nor does it matter if afterwards you slow down, thus irritating the driver of the car you have overtaken. If a car ahead is being overtaken by another car, you must attempt to overtake them both. Extra points are given if you can also do this on a corner.

When approaching a right-hand bend, you must swing out to the left to give you a better view around the corner so you can go round it faster, just like a racing driver does. This is compulsory, even if you are driving a pick-up truck in which you have yet to discover the other three gears and are travelling at 20 kilometres an hour. Also, in an attempt not to wear out your tires too quickly, you must be tardy about swinging back to your side of the road. Extra points are given here if you can drive any approaching vehicle off a cliff and into the top of an olive tree.

Let me make a quick note here about pick-up trucks. There are only two acceptable kinds of pick-up truck. The first should be worked over from nose to tail with a hammer, all the lights smashed and it loaded with crates of grapes until it is sitting down on its axel. It shouldn’t have working brakes, road tax and if at all possible should burn a pint of oil per gallon of petrol or diesel. The second is a brand new, polished to a gleam, 40,000 Euro vehicle with all the trimmings. It has the capability of climbing mountains, being loaded with tonnes of materials, the power to tow a lorry, and is used for none of these. It must then be driven at high speed everywhere, except when there are puddles in the road, which must be circumvented at two miles an hour to avoid getting spots of mud on the paintwork.

Indicators, in the Greek driving world, must never be used to apprise the driver behind of where you are going. If you must use them at all, turn them all on as hazard lights to baffle everyone, slam to a halt in the middle of the road then abandon you vehicle whilst you go and have a chat with Kostas about the price of tomatoes.

Wherever you find functioning traffic lights you must have your hand poised over the horn in readiness for when they change. Beeping your horn when way back in the queue is essential. It won’t get the guy ahead off his mobile phone any quicker, or get you through any quicker, but you can be smugly assured that you have at least irritated someone.

Double parking is a must, and extra points are given if you can gridlock a town or do so on a roundabout. Also, giving way to approaching vehicles where access is narrow, probably because of the double parking, is for wussies. Better to stop where you are and shout very loudly at the other driver.

Bonus points are given if you can achieve all the above whilst speaking into a mobile phone in your right hand, your left arm hanging out the window as you flick ash from your cigarette, and whilst you steer with your knees. It is a given for all Greek drivers that a necklace of beads and a crucifix hanging from the rear-view mirror is more effective than an airbag.

Chair Addiction.

The image here is courtesy of Sue Carpenter, an SFX reader on Crete (who also got a letter in the previous issue). Thanks for this, Sue.

It is nice to see Tor doing a bit of advertising – something I never saw for my first six or so books. I also noted, when in Britain, how small Tor sections were appearing in book shops across the country.

Still not writing much yet. I’ve no real excuse: visitors never put me off on previous occasions, nor did building work or some of the traumas that accompany living here. I guess, because I’m so far ahead, I’m just being lazy, taking a holiday, but be assured that you’ll still be getting your fix every year. Next Monday I knuckle down again to my 2,000 words a day.

So, after rescuing that first chair I seem to have acquired a bit of a chair habit. Caroline told me that she would quite like a few of the traditional kafenion chairs for up around the ruin and, being the skip diver that I am, I saw a couple in a local tip and immediately grabbed them. I completely disassembled them and out of them am making one complete one. Just a little bit more work to do...

Here also are some further random pictures of the garden, Jim of the excellent breakfast at the Lithos on Makrigialos harbour and my father-in-law revealing his inner alien.

Laptop Steering Wheel Desk

My thanks to Dick Puddlecote for this one - it made my morning:

I loved my Laptop Steering Wheel Desk so much I got one for my 90yr old mother. She is an avid crossword puzzle fan and now she can work on them while she is driving back and forth from bingo at the senior center. One cautionary note be careful of those jerks that stop at yellow lights, my poor mother rear ended one and the airbag drove the desk back into her stomach which ruptured her spleen, well after a short down time I'm glad to say she is back on the road and cranking out those NY Times crosswords once again. Thanks Laptop Steering Wheel Desk you have made my mothers life more complete.

Wow is this thing great! I use it as a "mini-bar" when the friends and I go out to the bars. I can quickly fix multiple shots of tequila for myself and the friends as we drive from one bar to the next. We also discovered that if you place a pillow on top of it and turn on the cruise control you can catch quick naps on the interstate. If you swerve to the left or right the rumble strips on the road wake you up in plenty of time before you get into trouble. I can now take longer trips without being tired!

Also, i am now dating a midget and she fits nicely on the steering wheel desk which allows us to experiment sexually while driving. This thing is like WD-40 or duct tape, it is a million and one uses!

There's 270 reviews like this. Gives me hope for the human race.

Update: 187 reviews here of a Bic pen.

Alcohol Units

You know, I'd really like to cut down on my drinking, but I've been having a few problems lately. I blame television. Every evening I keep seeing this government sponsored advert for booze. It displays nice frothy pints of beer all ready to guzzle, it shows a lovely glass of chilled white wine, the glass all dewy and its contents utterly tempting. I'm not entirely sure what the numbers written into the dew on the glasses is all about, but never mind. There is a health warning near the end of this wonderfully alluring display of alcohol, but by then it's too late because I've already cracked open a bottle.

Frequent Visitor.

He was waiting outside the back door after we'd been away for months and soon fell back in to his usual routine of attacking towels and coming in and sleeping on our bed. Caroline had wondered if he's not sure who he belongs to, but I've pointed out that he thinks that we and his owner, our neighbour Heidi, all belong to him. His name's Basil.

Terry Pratchett Living With Alzheimer's.

I once stood in a queue outside Ottakar’s in Chelmsford (now a Waterstone’s) for about half an hour, maybe an hour, to get a book signed by Terry Pratchett, all of whose books I’ve really enjoyed, even the ones you don’t hear so much about – science fiction and not set in the Discworld universe – like The Dark Side of The Sun and Strata. At the time I hadn’t been taken on by Macmillan, but I did have The Engineer and The Parasite published by Tanjen, so I took along a copy of The Engineer to give to him. What he thought of that I don’t know. Now I’m really in the writing world I reckon he probably though me some sort of freeloader trying to get a leg up on his fame, or maybe get a quote out of him. The reality was utter fanboyism, a bit of, “Look Master, see what I’ve done”.

Every year when one of his books comes out (in paperback) I buy it, or more usually Caroline buys it for me, and I read with enjoyment, normally polishing it off in a day. And if he ever appears on television I’m always there watching, since my inner fanboy has never died. I particularly liked the program he did with the orang-utans, which was fascinating and laced all the way through with his humour. In one scene a massive male orang-utan came walking through the jungle, and when it crossed a wooden bridge the heavy sound of its massive weight coming down with every footstep would have been enough to get any sphincter quivering. He noted how those about him were breaking the speed record for the nonchalant walk as they departed the scene.

Last night I watched the first of two episodes of his program Living with Alzheimer’s, which was funny, sad, offered hope and took it away again. Mr Pratchett was very angry upon discovering he had this malady, and you can see his anger and frustration as he fails to knot his tie, or types slowly and makes constant mistakes. And the killer was watching him doing a reading and starting to lose it at the end, audience dead silent and some teary eyed. What a bummer. However, the humour was there right from the start with, “Hello, I’m Terry Pratchett … at least I think I am,” and there later when he wore something on his head that looked like a Dr Who prop. In the end that guy who always speaks in capital letters in hiss books (the Grim Reaper) can be less frightening than those who usher him through the door.

When I first heard the news that Terry Pratchett has got Alzheimer’s, I felt a little sick. It’s the kind of thing that rips up someone’s heart when it’s a family member and, because he is so well known and loved, there are millions who see him as part of their lives, he’s the humorous entertainer with the beard and wide-brimmed black hat, he’s the guy who regularly produces a book they want to read at once and which never disappoints. If you ever do an English course of any substance you learn the true definition of word tragedy – not how it is thoroughly misused by the media. To me the idea that a man who has entertained millions with wit, humour and an incisive intellect, with wisdom even, being gradually destroyed from inside his skull, that’s tragedy.

Bus Slogan Generator

I do like this slogan generator which I picked up on over at Devil's Kitchen. Just insert your own words and check out the results.

A Rural Story.

Thanks to Shaun for this one:

A Lancashire Farmer is overseeing his animals in a remote part of the County when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a designer suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the farmer, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'

The Farmer looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Reet, why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the farmer and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'Wow That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says the Farmer. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car. Then the farmer says to the young man, 'Ey Up!, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You work for the British Government', says the farmer.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required,' answers the farmer. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used all kinds of expensive equipment that clearly somebody else paid for, you tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows ....... this is a flock of sheep. Now give me back my dog.'

Playmobil Security Checkpoint

My thanks to Phil Edwards at Live For Films for pointing this out to me. It's the Playmobil Security Checkpoint sold on Amazon. Read the comments below - they're hilarious. Here's a sample:

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).

Lettuce Kills your Sense of Humour

Here's an amusing column from Jeremy Clarkson, but what's even more amusing is reading the humourless, righteous, blinkered and nutty replies. As one of the saner people there commented:

I must admit that I am truly, truly saddened by the nearly complete lack of anything approaching a sense of humor in so many of the posters. Apparently, vegan diets are disabling that part of people's brains. Seriously, people, lighten up a bit.

Back in Good Old Blighty.

Ah, back in the land of politically-correct wank and bureaucracy for less than 24 hours and already I want to turn round and climb on the next plane out of here. My hackles started to rise in Stanstead Airport where apparently some new legislation applies which dictates that ‘No Smoking’ signs must be placed no more than twenty feet apart, though some variation of their contect is allowed: Smoking is illegal, Smoke here and we’ll take you to a political correction cell and beat the soles of your feet with a rubber hose. However, my hackles really stood up upon sight of the big blue ‘UK Border’ sign with its pale zit-encrusted officials gathered underneath. Beyond the sheer fucking arrogance of that I just knew that beyond it everything was going to go further down hill. I wasn’t wrong.

After going into shock for a while with the cold, the endless roundabouts and traffic, we finally got home to immediately put on the central heating, which took about five hours and probably a new mortgage to take the temperature up to somewhere bearable. For the night, hot water bottles were dusted of cobwebs and filled.

Today, since the car was in cobwebs for a while too, it was necessary to get an MOT. As we discovered on our last return trip here everything costs no less than £50, and this was no exception. Whilst the MOT was being conducted we headed off down the pub … another mistake I won’t make again. No smoking of course, so the four customers and one of the two bar staff were outside smoking whilst a pub capable of holding hundreds had one person inside. Outside we put our cigarettes out in ashtrays filled with water which was not there to stop the ash being blown about by the hot meltemi wind. The glasses weren’t out of a freezer, since that was hardly necessary. On our way away we noted that the pub seemed as ragged, run-down and as fucked-over as the country it occupies. No money to repair the damaged toilets or paintwork; that was all spend on the unused wheelchair lift to convey chairs over the three steps into the restaurant area.

My First Admittance to Hospital.

Subtitle: Brought Down to Earth with a Thump.

In my youth visits to the hospital were either grudging attendances on sick kin or occasional visits to A&E. One time I enthusiastically picked up and eraser thrown at me by a work-mate then as I stood found myself lifting a cast-iron engine block mounting cube (a lump of metal you bolt an engine block to on a surface table for marking out or measurement – it takes two people to lift it) with my head underneath one of the mounting studs, which subsequently slid down. I noted the lump of scalp on the end of the stud, slapped a hand over my forehead and fled to the toilets where, in the mirror, I was greeted by the sight of a flap of my scalp lifting on each pulse of blood.

In recent years my visits to hospital have become more frequent and come to involve death; you get older and more people you know get seriously ill and sometimes die. Like Alan Wood in the dedication in Cowl, and like my father last year. However, I’ve never needed to go beyond A&E for a problem of my own.

Last Friday I thought to myself damn, my bottom is sore, and wondered if I was paying the penalty of my drink-sodden lifestyle with piles. Over the weekend the pain in my arse grew, unrelieved by haemorrhoid cream, but I managed, much to my surprise, to get an appointment with the doctor’s on Monday. To be fair the doctor was probably misled by my mention of piles and probably, having to deal with dim patients was why he asked me three times if I’d had them before (I hadn’t) and if there was any blood (there wasn’t). He also didn’t get to inspect matters too closely since, after his first attempt, he had to peel me off the ceiling. He prescribed a cream, but it didn’t do any good.

Now here’s where the bottom humour starts to wane as soreness turns to pain and then PAIN. After a day in bed I got to see another doctor on an emergency basis. He tried the anal-inspection routine then after digging my fingernails out of the wall came to a conclusion: pain like that was probably due to an infection, probably an abscess. He prescribed strong painkillers and antibiotics and, if things weren’t getting any better within 48 hours I would have to go to hospital where, under general anaesthetic, they would probably have to open drain and pack the abscess.

The pain killers kicked in for a while, at least enabling me to get out of the car, but thereafter it seemed I might just as well have been eating Smarties. You know the expression ‘writhing in pain’? … well I certainly do now, only I was writhing the top half of my body and my feet because any movement of my middle section resulted in an invisible demon shoving a soldering iron up my arse. I was making noises too – little grunts and groans were escaping no matter how much I clenched my teeth. Coughing was to be avoided at all costs, because the demon swapped his soldering iron for a red-hot poker at that point. I spent a night like this, seeing every hour on the clock.

In the morning Caroline called up the second doctor who immediately referred me to hospital. Just a case of getting there. I could no longer sit in the passenger seat so lay down in the back then upon arrival walked from the car park with the alacrity of a 100-year-old. After signing in at A&E where I was referred a long wait ensued, during which I was unable to sit down. Next an assessment nurse saw me and was sensible enough to forego bottom inspections and admitted me. I have to wonder if her job is to increase efficiency or slow down the admission procedures, just to keep things within those government targets.

After a further long wait during which I stood supporting myself on the arms of two chairs I was taken into a cubical to be checked over by a junior surgical doctor. This involved her asking me numerous questions, delivering homilies about my smoking straight out of the New Labour Book of Truth, then she proceeded to part my buttocks and subsequently remove my hands from her throat. I jest, of course, but right then I wanted a pump-action shotgun beside me: “You touch this without giving me drugs and I spray your head over that wall!”

Some of the next bit comes second hand, because I can’t really remember much of it. I ended up on my side on a bed, behind A&E, Caroline departed and I was wheeled down to a ward. Despite my pleas to allow myself to sort myself out a nurse had to be helpful, then backed off when her tugging on the under sheet pulled on one buttock and I shrieked. Another nurse, aware that I wasn’t having a little joke about how much this was hurting, helped me change into a gown, confining that help to pulling off my socks and shifting my pants and joggers out of the way. Now came the wait for surgery, obviously nil-by mouth. I lay there listening to the moaning and whining all around me. The guys either side were in to have various limbs lopped off whilst those in the beds opposite had recently lost large portions of their insides. I felt a bit of a fraud, but the demon was still there with his soldering iron and I was venturing into delirium territory with the electric bed nearby sounding like rain on the roof and everything seeming a bit weird, a bit out-of-kilter.

Pain is no fun at all, but neither is the discomfort of lying in one position for hours on end so, despite this stirring the wannabe electrician demon into action, I had to move to relieve aching back, neck, buttocks and dead arms. At about 9.30 in the evening I did this again and noted that the demon must have been taking a tea break. Then I realised something was cold and wet and reached down to find a couple of slimy buttocks. Managing to shift myself I saw brown and pink plasma soaking the under sheet. I called over the nurse who changed things for me and I was actually able to stand beside the bed while this was being done. He then put down some nappies on the bed for me to lie on, and I was able to lie on my back for the first time in three days.

No surgery that evening – too busy – so I was able to eat a sandwich and have a cup of tea. I was told I would be able to have breakfast and something to drink, but nothing more afterwards because I would probably go under the knife that afternoon. Sometime after midnight I fell asleep until about six in the morning whereupon I found that someone had dumped a cupful of strawberry sauce and custard underneath me. I got rid of the soaked nappy in a surgical waste bin and grabbed another gown. When it came to being washed I used the ward shower. I ate breakfast, felt a lot better, and began to question whether surgery under general anaesthetic was a good idea now, but it was difficult to find anyone who had a clue about what was going on.

Finally one I assumed to be the consultant, with his train of juniors in tow, turned up. One of the juniors (the politically-correct anti-smoker) checked me over. She used rather more caution with my buttocks this time, which was a bit stable door. The diagnosis was that nature was taking its course and I was done there. No surgery. All I needed was a dressing on my bum and the needle taken out of my arm, which took six hours to get accomplished…

My impression: a lot of competent dedicated people running around working their butts off, along with the usual slackers you’ll find anywhere. But mainly it was an impression of disorganization, people doing the jobs they knew but phased by anything that fell outside of that, buck passing and ‘not my responsibility’. All the signs of crap management, which is odd, since under Labour the NHS is now oversupplied with managers.

I wonder what they do?