Polar Air and Prancing Lambs.

I’m sure I’m right in saying that this is the coldest Beltane Eve since I moved here in 2006. We had plenty of late afternoon and evening sunshine as the sky cleared – and a modest sunset on which to feast the eye while searching fruitlessly for the still-absent bats – but the north easterly wind was frigid enough to warrant the donning of my old winter coat while I was feasting, searching, and filling the bird tables for the early risers in the morning.

But I did get a good look at the new lambs this afternoon. I went through the small copse at the top of the lane and there they were in the field beyond, jinking and frolicking in true new lamb fashion. And then I heard one of the ewes bleat (did you know that every ewe has a distinctive voice? Contrary to popular belief, all the baas are most certainly not the same.) I noted that she was number 27, and then followed her gaze which was directed intensely towards the edge of the big wood on the far side of the field.

Sure enough, two little white woolly bundles came galloping as fast as their deceptively sturdy legs would allow. They were number 27s too, and soon they joined the summoning ewe in dutiful obedience. Once in position the group moved off slowly, the ewe leading and the babies walking side by side behind her like an attentive rearguard ready to protect their dear mama from any creature of ill intent which might venture from the wildwood. Surely, I thought, these little lambs must be fierce enough and strong enough to be a force to be reckoned with. At least they probably think they are.

On Being Appreciative.

I’m in a better mood now than I was earlier because I just got rid of one of my more uncomfortable pains by playing hot water on it in the shower. I’m full of good ideas like that.

So now it occurs to me that the next time I go into hospital, or the doctor’s surgery, or have a visit from one of our district nurses, I must remember to say thank you to them for working in the NHS. They make life so much better for us poor folks, yet still we complain.

The Greatest Bully.

Something else which came to my notice today is the fact that next Wednesday will be the 12^th anniversary of my moving into this house. What a different person I was then – under the financial cosh, but so much fitter, stronger and more confident of an eventful future.

It has been said that there is no bully who cannot be beaten, and I’m sure that’s true with just one exception. Time is the ultimate bully, the one who cannot be beaten by man, beast or metaphysical agency, the tyrant who drives us on remorselessly to the end of our days and ultimately the end of everything. There is no facing up to time; no blow strikes anything but empty air; no grumble stands the slightest chance of melting a heart of black diamond. We can only take the whip, hold our fading bodies upright for as long as possible, walk on with resignation, and accept our inevitable fate with as much equanimity as our natures will allow.

Today has not been a good one in the injured body department.

On Things Missing.

It occurred to me today that tomorrow will be Beltane Eve. Those who know me are familiar with the fact that I have a fire on Beltane Eve to offer respect to the forces of nature and to welcome the now-burgeoning new growth that is swelling inexorably into summer. Well, there won’t be any Beltane Eve fire this year. My body is still a long way short of being able to cut the wood, set up the fire on the ground, light it and keep it tended. Maybe I’ll pay token homage by lighting a candle in the front living room window which faces the garden, the fields, the river valley and the high hills beyond. Maybe the forces of nature will excuse my timidity for one year.

Something else I noticed this evening was the fact that the flower buds on the apple tree are not breaking yet. It’s turned cold here again after that brief burst of high summer which so delighted us a week or so ago, and I suppose the forces of nature – at least those which apply to the apple tree – are sensible enough to put everything on hold until a more propitious time. Here’s hoping it won’t be long.

But then I was reminded of previous Beltane Eves when I had the fire at the bottom of the garden and marvelled at the sight of the apple blossom illuminated by the light of the flames. I remember writing about it on this blog, and I remember also writing about the magical lights which appeared on the lane, in the trees, and over the field opposite the house one year. That was a very special Beltane Eve, and maybe those days will come again when I’m fully recovered.

And then there’s the lone bat which I saw hunting over the garden recently. It’s made no further appearance since, so maybe Mother Nature is keeping the bats on hold, too, and maybe they’ll return as my physical faculties progress. As I said, here’s hoping it won’t be long.

Resisting the Urge.

I’m dancing in my computer chair again, to the sound of Deep Forest and their Forest Hymn this time. (I’m nothing if not adaptable, you know. It was Irish last time. This time it’s pygmies singing about the rain forest.)

But my extant kidney is complaining as usual:

If it isn’t bad enough losing the companionship of your twin brother, now you send me bobbing up and down like a cork in a washtub. Do stop it.

OK; forbearance is due in the circumstances. But it’s a nice tune nonetheless. You can listen to it here if you want to. You can even imagine me dancing in my computer chair, although I doubt it would be worth the effort.

(I seem to be in a better mood at the moment than has become usual of late. Better make the most of it. Tomorrow it might be back to the Sargasso Sea on a flat day.)

Respecting the Memory.

It’s an odd thing, but my three periods of incarceration in the Royal Derby Hospital have started to seem like a distant memory. And you know what we do with distant memories, don’t you? We view them through a soft filter of rose-coloured gauze and imagine that they were nothing like as bad as they seemed at the time. And that’s irrational because however they seemed at the time was how they were at the time. Perception is, after all, the whole of the life experience. But memory is composed of such shifting sand that I wonder why we ever bother to rely on it.

I’ve also wondered what became of my dear old kidney. I don’t like to think of it as having been disposed of indecorously in an incinerator, or some dirty old receptacle near the back entrance where the big yellow wheelie bins were always queuing to be relieved of their unwholesome burdens. If I thought it had been fed to a stray dog I would be quite content, but I don’t suppose it was.

Maybe I should write to the hospital and ask, and maybe they will apprise me of the details in a respectful and sympathetic manner so that I might visit the spot and pay a level of respect commensurate with the dear old organ’s long and dutiful service. I don’t suppose they would do that either. It’s more likely that they would send a man in a white coat and a green van to collect me and deposit what’s left of my body in a place not too far from the missing kidney.

On Ignoring the Risks.

There’s a tendency to assume that racing drivers must be a little crazy in order to do what they do, risking life and limb every time they go to work. Apparently it isn’t the case. I read once that several studies done on them indicate that racing drivers are actually unusually calm, well balanced people, at least when they’re out of the car. And yet I still wonder whether they must be lacking imagination and a certain type of awareness. In most us, those faculties naturally produce the projection of imagined possibilities which have us stepping back well out of the way of extreme risk.

But today I wondered whether the same might be true of surgeons. When they go to work – which is rather more frequently than racing drivers – it isn’t their own life and limb they’re putting at risk, but somebody else’s. Does that mean that they, too, are lacking imagination and a certain type of awareness, or might it be that they are low on compassion so they fret less about the consequences of their actions on somebody’s life? Or could it be that they learn to put up a barrier to such feelings so as to avoid unbearable stress every time they take up the scalpel?

None of these possibilities might be true, of course, but it’s an interesting thought.

Spotlighting the Good Bit.

I made my first trip to Ashbourne today after an absence of more than five weeks. (May the thrill of adventure never cease…)

I’ll leave out the negative bits such as the speed the vehicle was being driven at and the potholes in the road, both of which factors combined to cause my brow to furrow and my poor injured abdomen to complain in abject anxiety. And I won’t mention the chilly air and the rain which fell incessantly the whole time. And I’ll ignore the cobbled alleyways which shook my poor injured abdomen for a second time until it threatened dire consequences if I didn’t find somewhere to sit. They’re all the miserable bits, so let’s do the nice one.

I did find somewhere to sit actually, in my good old Costa coffee shop where a cup of Americano with cream and a muffin are two of the rare pleasures available to me at the moment. And do you know what? The young woman who served me remembered to give me a fork for my muffin rather than the regulation knife as dictated (rather ineptly in my opinion) by company policy.

Isn’t that something? They remembered me and my predilections. They even said that the manager had noted my absence.

So here we are with the God of Small Things again. It’s odd how I take the major things like the existence of the NHS for granted, and yet the fact that some person remembered that I like a fork with my muffin is a matter of great significance to me, and one for which I am truly grateful. I even told them so.

A Friend's Sole Failing.

Being stuck in hospital last night I had no alcohol to fortify me through the dark, empty hours. I missed it. I said to my temporary best friend, Sabs, before she went off duty:

‘Any chance of getting me a couple of double scotches?’

She laid her head on her arms and said: ‘I wouldn’t know how to do that.’

‘Sabs,’ I replied, ‘if you really want to get your angel badge grade one, you might try.’

‘Sorry.’

Tonight I have scotch but no exemplar of the nursing profession to afford me confidence in making it through the night. Oh well, life’s never perfect, is it?

And it occurs to me that I might make the effort to change the subject.

On Being Fastidious.

You know, I’ve never been the touchy-feely sort. I don’t do hugs and was never one for sitting on a sofa with my arm around somebody while watching a TV show. My view has always been that human bodies are private to their owners and not to be brought into mutual contact except in certain fairly specific circumstances. I realise that such a sensibility (for it’s hardly a rational point of view) tends to irritate women and is utterly weird, but there it is.

The problem with bodies, you see, is that they’re only nice and wholesome on the outside (and very often not even that.) They’re pretty disgusting on the inside, and I’m not at all comfortable with getting close to what is only the width of a few very thin layers of cutaneous tissue away.

And that’s why I never understood how some people can spend their lives physically handling other people. It’s why I could never have been a doctor, nurse or paramedic (maybe a physio, but I’m not sure.)

This was brought home to me most uncomfortably during my short stay in Ward 202 of the Royal Derby Hospital. On several occasions I saw a nurse walk across the ward carrying a bundle of something white – presumably dressings – which was heavily stained with blood and maybe hidden fragments of some other even more unsavoury matter. (No, it wasn’t actually dripping, just in case you’re wondering.) I watched with mounting incredulity as she deposited the said… stuff… in a receptacle, removed her one-use plastic apron and latex gloves, deposited them in the same receptacle, and then went calmly back to filling in some book or other. She had such an air of nonchalance that it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d started eating a bag of crisps to celebrate s job well done. Mostly she didn’t, but she might have…

And then I would start thinking about excretions and weeping excrescences, and was glad that food was either a failing memory or a distant prospect.

On the other hand…

I saw lots of Chinese lady doctors during the most recent incarceration, and was led to wonder whether I might make an exception in their case. It’s an intriguing thought given my fascination with Chinese ladies, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out.

On Sabs and the Florence Ideal.

After yesterday’s debacle at the hospital over what they were supposed to be doing with me, I was eventually taken to the Elective Procedures Unit, Ward 202, where a number of nurses were sitting at the nurses’ station near the door. The closest seat was occupied by a young woman of around twenty who was clearly a student as evidenced by her uniform of white tunic and black trousers. She was also wearing a black hijab.

As soon as I walked in she turned and greeted me with a smile as warm as the Pakistani sun from which she had derived her genesis either in this generation or an earlier one. Her eyes radiated that warmth as she came towards me with the air of an old and trusted friend.

'Have you had any lunch?' she asked, as earnestly concerned as a diligent mother hen.

'No,' I answered. It was around 4pm and I would have eaten an elephant's toenail in the absence of anything softer.

'There won't be any hot food around now, but I can make you some toast if you like.'

'Toast will do nicely. Thanks.'

'And a cup of hot chocolate?'

'Please.'

Fresh toast, butter, marmalade and hot chocolate duly appeared in a little over a flash, and a mellow breeze of near-contentment drifted into a day which had hitherto known only anxiety, discomfort and frustration.

First impressions are not only important to me, they’re also usually accurate; and so they proved to be in the case of the student nurse known as Sabs (which I learned upon enquiry to be a familiar contraction of a Pakistani name which I don’t recall.)

From that moment on, young Sabs was the very model of the highest order of nurse. She was extraordinarily attentive, precociously skilled for one so relatively inexperienced in the matter of treatments and procedures, given to that type of positive attitude which is infectious rather than patronising, possessed of eyes which glowed not only with warmth but also the thirst for learning, sumptuously laden with a caring and friendly disposition, and blessed with an endearing personality which could hardly fail to soften the hardest heart or dissipate the most entrenched anxiety. For the next eighteen hours dear Sabs became my temporary best friend, and I admit to giving thanks to whatever power placed her on the stony path which I was walking. And best of all, she treated all the other patients the same way.

When she was going off shift at 7.30, she turned to the assembled collection of motley and malfunctioning old and middle aged men and said ‘Night, boys.’

‘Boys.’ That was the word she used. These men – two, three and four times her age – were her ‘boys.’ Isn’t there something of the Florence Nightingale ethos in that perception? Isn’t it heartening to think that the traditional values of the nursing profession are far from dead? And doesn’t it suggest that Sabs will soon be a rare star of that profession? I would say that she already is.

So thank you, Sabs. You will always be remembered with rare fondness by at least one of your grateful charges.

Stop Press.

The hospital screwed up yesterday. I was always sure that the arrangement couldn’t work and queried the fact with one of the secretaries, but to no avail. Sure enough, it didn’t, which is why I was kept in again and spent another night grumpily closeted in the Royal Derby while they applied a slightly different approach to removing a catheter and assessing success or failure. (The level of success has to be measured, you see. It isn't simply a case of 'now you see it, now you don't.' It's all about frequency, flow rates, expelled volume and residual volume. You're only working if your arithmetic adds up. That's the modern way.)

But it worked. It turned out to be less of an ordeal than I expected and I even met somebody a little special. So far, so good. I'm now back at the ranch minus one inconvenient appendage and hoping for a month of peace before the debrief. (Fervently hoping.) More later.

A Random Thought.

I wonder whether the human race will ever get back to functioning as the minority forest peoples still do – living, and being comfortable with living, purely for the sake of living, instead of getting stressed near to perdition chasing trinkets, gadgets and an endless array of pointless diversions as dictated by a system run by clocks and corporations.

Resonances.

In referring to my health woes, the priestess said in her most recent email:

I wonder whether you feel quite astounded by the limitations of your body – that all this is not really your business, and why can’t you just be left alone to continue questioning life’s purpose in peace?

That’s it; got it in one. I suppose that’s what taking good health for granted means to me: I expect my body to be a faithful steed which performs unflinchingly and unfailingly, while I simply ride him along the road to pondering higher matters and trying to find the opening in the veil. It’s quite a shock when the old guy goes seriously lame and stumbles heavily.

(On which note, I have to go back to the Royal Derby Clinical Processing Centre tomorrow and climb onto another conveyor belt. You know what happened last time, don’t you? I’m nervous.)

But going back to matters corporeal and philosophical, I wonder what it means when you stop feeling sympathy with another person’s woes (not mine in this case) and instead find yourself becoming prey to full empathy – to feel their fears, their suffering, and their insecurity, and then to experience a deep level of sympathetic disturbance. Does it mean that there’s a bond in place, the like of which has always been a mystery to you?

And here’s something slightly odd: I watched the first of a series of historical documentaries last week and felt an increase in my symptoms the whole time it was on. I watched the second tonight and the same thing happened. So now it seems I’m suffering some sort of negative resonance with King Alfred and his daughter. Maybe it’s a past life thing.

Or maybe I need a Klingon cloaking device to shield me from influences. Maybe I should just give up altogether.

Another disturbing aspect of today was that my faithful old friend, the Feedjit stats tracker, appears to have disappeared for good. I loved my Feedjit; it used to help me identify certain known visitors to the blog and was a most welcome companion. And from what I’ve read on odd forums down the years, it appears there are very many bloggers across the world who also loved their Feedjit. This is clearly a bad day for humanity (or at least those who blog.) Maybe we should all just give up.

Something About Horses?

This is a song I was very fond of many years ago and discovered again recently on YouTube.

I find it most compelling with its vocal dissonances, haunting guitar riffs and general strangeness, but don’t ask me what the lyrics mean. They’re a bit of a mystery to me. I expect there’s an intelligent explanation for them which is just as compelling as everything else, but intelligent explanations were never my forte. I’m much more at home with atmospheres and strangenesses.

On Tolerating Imperfection.

I just read my last post again (When White is Winning.) Who wrote it, I wonder, because it’s terrible. I’m tempted to think that it wasn’t me because it’s not my style at all. It isn’t a writer’s writing, but the inept scribbling of a prep school essayist who’s taking his first teetering steps at beginning the process of becoming a writer.

But I suppose it must have been me, so where was my mind at the time? Am I entering the seventh age and becoming a child again? I don’t know, but I need to try harder to get back up to speed.

And the question arises: should I take it down? No, I don’t think so. If my ramblings are to serve as a portrait – and what else can they be? – then I must accede to Cromwell’s philosophy and insist that it should be painted warts and all. Anything other would be less than authentic. And when all you have to offer is your authenticity, you don’t have much choice.

When White is Winning.

Of all the colours that step forth to be admired at this time of year in the English countryside, white is the most prolific. Leading the procession at the moment is the ubiquitous blackthorn tree which proliferates in groups all over the Shire, and which flowers abundantly once the sun shows its face in April or early May. They grow in hedgerows and woodland margins and positively glow ice-white in friendly competition with the warming sun.

Down in The Hollow the wild garlic is spreading more than I’ve ever seen it before, even displacing the ivy in some parts – and ivy is a tough plant to be reckoned with. Some of the flower heads which I mentioned recently are now beginning to open, so it won’t be long before the white hanging drapery will clothe the steep embankments of our deepest sunken lane.

And then there is good reason to hope that the monarch of spring, the strong and spiny hawthorn, will burst forth in all his glory. Hedgerows and standard trees alike will be thickly iced with a shimmering mass of cream-white flowers, and there are few more compelling sights anywhere. It appears that a heavy fall of snow has descended in stark yet beautiful contrast to the high temperature and emerald fields, and Tennyson got it just about right when he famously wrote:

Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May.

On YouTube Clichés.

I’m quite sure that all those countless people who comment on YouTube to the effect that some merely pleasant piece of music is ‘music to heal my soul’ wouldn’t know a soul from a sweaty sock. Neither do I come to that, but at least on the very rare occasion when I might use the term, I do so either in jest or with qualification and a level of respect commensurate with the gravity of the concept.

And then there are the people who insist that ‘this woman sings like an angel.’ What’s interesting here is that, as far as I’m aware, all the angels in the Bible – which is the source from which the concept of an angel is indoctrinated into western peoples – are men. Now, if they were to say ‘this woman sings like a flying apsara’ I’d have nothing to complain about. Maybe I should try it some time and see what response I get.

I re-discovered my love of marmalade sandwiches tonight.

Today's Fear and Yesterday's Vision.

So, now that darkness has settled on the Shire and it isn’t bed time yet, what should I write about at the near-closing of another uneventful day?

My fear, I suppose. The fear of next week came dropping suddenly and powerfully into my mind today. Wednesday is the day for my cystogram examination. What will it show, I wonder. And then I’m scheduled for another trial without catheter procedure, the last of which being what sent me into a crisis of pain, fever, cold air blowers and oxygen masks if you remember. What will happen this time, I wonder. Will it all go swimmingly, or will it represent another of the false dawns which have characterised this whole sorry business going back to early January? Should I now lay on the storms-and-ships metaphors with a shovel? I don’t think so. I’ll do as I’m told and report the outcome here, assuming I’m able.

The only other notable thing about today was the fact that the flower heads are appearing on the wild garlic in The Hollow. In another week or two the steep, 15ft-high embankments will be draped in a carpet of nature’s white. It will look very beautiful.

But let’s go back a couple of days to what I saw when I took a walk up the lane. There was a young Chinese woman standing alone and apparently unoccupied in the car park of the village hall. She had the air of a vision about her because young Chinese women are not in the habit of frequenting the Shire. I’ve only ever seen one other in the twelve years I’ve lived here.

I thought of approaching her and asking who she was, but decided against it. It occurred to me that she might reply with an enigmatic message which I would assume was being channelled from some denizen of a dark place; for who better to convey such a missive than a young Chinese woman with long black hair? And then I considered that she might say nothing, but confine herself to an enigmatic stare, the power of which might set me trembling uncontrollably. Or maybe she would simply vanish and reduce my mind to a state resembling festering custard. (It has been known.) And then I wondered whether I might have died and nobody had told me yet, and that the young Chinese woman might be none other than the priestess come all the way from Sydney to attend my memorial service. Maybe she was just early and was waiting for the other three people to turn up.

I decided that the most judicious course of action was to walk on, and so I did. And the weather has been beautiful and summery again today.

On the Cusp.

I just took a walk to the creepy copse in Church Lane for the first time since before I went into hospital. My, how it’s changed in four short weeks. Gone is the brown, skeletal starkness of winter; newly arrived is a greening woodland carpet dappled by the shadows of early spring leaves in the early spring sunshine. It will grow darker, of course, as the season progresses and the canopy spreads and thickens, but for now it’s wearing the best of maidenly livery and looks really quite splendid.

I find it odd that I complain so much – and with some justification – about the tyranny of time, and yet so love the regular changes of the seasons.

A Matter of Terminology.

Being more than a little interested in words and terminology, it intrigues me to note that the discharge reports sent by the hospital to the GP and patient never refer to me as having been ‘admitted’ to hospital. They always use the word ‘presented.’ Neither do they ever refer to me as a man or a male, it’s always ‘gentleman.’

This gentleman was presented to the Royal Derby Hospital on…’

There’s something oddly archaic about it, something almost Victorian in its linguistic sensibility, something which evokes images of the early days of modern medical practice. It’s why I can’t decide whether it makes me sound like some sort of prize or some sort of specimen.

On Being Unremarkable.

Apart from the weather which would have done full justice to a fine day in early July, and apart from the bewildering array of crossed wires and competing circumstances which fractured and confused what should have been a placid evening, and apart from being convinced all day that it was Wednesday which caused me to miss making an appointment for tomorrow, and apart from my first sight of the evening Venus for many a long year, today was too unremarkable to write about.

And yet write something I must. I’m driven to write. I’m not driven to write copiously in order to create volumes of opuses by which I might be remembered and through recognition of which I might be lionised. I have no desire to be lionised because I don’t see the point. Dead people are just dead people, whatever their name was when they were living people. And besides, I have a short attention span which marks me out for a place among the detritus at the bottom of the measuring jug in which human beings are allocated their worth.

That’s OK. Seeing the glorious evening Venus descending imperceptibly from the darkening azure to the russet-fringed skyline reminded me of those times when I used to take winter walks after dark – when I used to wander deserted lanes through the snow and frost and mist, when I used to look heavenward through steaming breath to learn the names of the constellations, when I used to listen for strange nocturnal noises in the distance or just beyond a hedge and make unsuccessful guesses at their origin, when I used to stand and marvel at the Lady B’s pale-painted cottage made mystical by a full moon beaming weakly through the translucent air. Such insubstantial recollections mean more to me than merely being lionised.

And so I write meaningless fragments like this in the absence of something better. And eight or nine people might read them, or they might not. And they might judge me by them, or they might not bother. It really doesn’t matter because the source of the drive is a bedraggled mind which has to constantly observe and perceive and question and come up with theories which are unprovable because I don’t have the patience to be academically inclined. It’s all about releasing pressure.

But now I’m rambling beyond the point, so I can allow myself to shut up shop and drink more Jameson to match the music.

(I have my first insect bite of the year, by the way, which I do consider worthy of mention.)

Posting Pointlessly.

Summer made a premature visit to the Shire today. I doubt she will stay long, but at least she persuaded the bluebells in the wood at the top of the lane to burst forth and join their vernal companions, the white wood anemones, in heralding the blessed season of abundance.

I mentioned those two old friends in a story I wrote once called The Gypsy Rover. It’s over on the other blog somewhere. It tells the story of a dark gypsy character who can only be seen by the village bum, and who might or might not be responsible for the mysterious death of one Jamie Green. Jamie’s body is found entangled in the dead branches of a fallen tree, you see, and there’s no obvious way he could have got there. Neither is there any obvious cause of death, leading to the eponymous gypsy being cast as both the prime suspect and also the most unlikely. And then a dark figure is seen in the shadow of a wall one night by Jamie’s widow; and someone is whistling the tune to an old folk song called The Gypsy Rover; and it might be the gypsy, or it might be Jamie’s ghost, or it might be neither. You never get to find out. Ha.

I felt better tonight than I did last night. I didn’t fall asleep with my head on the desk and see flashing red lights which suddenly stop just as I’m puzzling over what they might be. And I’m only writing this post to keep myself amused while I wait to become tired enough to go to bed. There’s no other point to it at all.

The Baby B in Prospect.

A most unexpected vision came upon me suddenly while I was eating my lunch today. I was in the delivery room where the Lady B was negotiating the rigours of becoming a mother. I heard the occasional muffled squeal and felt the energy of natal effort, and then Baby B was held up in triumph. At that point my eyes blurred to slightly overflowing and I felt silly.

This is odd because I’ve never been into babies. My eyes did not blur to slightly overflowing even when my own daughter was born, however much I subsequently came to love her more than anything or anybody else in my life. Maybe I’m growing up, or growing old, or getting closer to whatever life is about. How can I know since there’s nobody to tell me?

And I do realise I had no right to such a vision since the Lady and the new life are none of my business. But life can be a mysterious affair at times, and that applies to affiliations as much as to anything else.

*  *  *

As for me, I’m growing impatient to be well again and disappointed that the process is far slower than I had anticipated. Last night I felt it was going in reverse; I felt more listless, more ill and more in pain than I have since the last time I came out of hospital. Today I’m better so far, but the walk uphill to the top of my lane about half a mile away still took effort and was depressingly slow. (And the lambs I went to see were far away on the other side of the field.)

The Man at the Hospital (one of many with the same title) told me that it’s usual to take 6-12 months to effect full recovery from a kidney removal. That seems like a frighteningly long time, but I suppose it isn’t. And hopefully in six months time I shall be in the right frame of mind to revel in the smile of a growing and special baby.

Un-Queenly Things.

For all the Great British public professes undying love for and devotion to our dear old Queen, nobody actually believes that she’s human. That’s because nobody has ever seen her hair wet, not even when it’s raining. And it’s clearly evident that she never goes to the lavatory, her children were all conceived by immaculate conception, and never in all her long life has an errant pea slid off her fork and rolled across the carpet. I wonder where she came from.

I felt tired and ill for much of this evening. I want to go to sleep now.

A Kind of Progress.

Up until now the residual symptoms of the operation and subsequent crisis have left me feeling quite happy to rest up and do very little. But now I’m beginning to feel the early stirrings of a slow return to normality and the days are growing tedious. I’m becoming bored with the inactivity. I suppose that represents progress, but there are many jobs which need doing in the house and garden and I can’t contemplate doing them yet because I'm still well below par and I’m told I must do nothing strenuous for three months. I mustn’t drive either, so there’s no tootling off for my usual diversions in the nearby market towns.

But I did at least manage the longest post-op walk today – about a mile and a quarter – but it wasn’t easy going. The weather has turned a little colder here and there’s a stiff breeze blowing, which is not conducive to either healing or comfort because the body tenses when it’s cold. This is going to be a gradual uphill slog and I suppose I'll just have to be patient for as long as it takes.

As for the subsequent crisis which sent me into a nasty place a couple of weeks ago, it’s still awaiting investigation. The cystogram procedure which was scheduled for tomorrow has been put back a week, and they’re planning to combine it with the next (and much dreaded) ‘trial without catheter’ exercise. Next Wednesday will be a nervous day, but it has to be faced if the end is ever to come into sight.

Sorry for the boring post, but I might as well keep the story going for as long as it lasts.

Just Perfect.

Right then, let’s have another post which has nothing to do with surgical procedures, pain, fever, nausea, false dawns, places of incarceration, or nocturnal visitors who say they’ve come to kill me (with all the soul searching thus engendered.)  Let’s have the first music/video recommendation I’ve posted in a long time.

I’m well aware that music is a matter of personal taste and I have no right to expect anybody else’s taste to accord with mine. But this piece – both musically and visually – is pure class in just the right kind of way. And how I do wish I were a tall, dark skinned man at just the right age who can play the clarinet brilliantly and has just the right hat to set it all off.

An Irritating Habit.

As has become usual of late, I was so tired tonight that I lay my head on the desk and fell asleep. And when I woke up I found myself filled with a sense of fascination at the miracle of procreation. An egg and a sperm come together and suddenly there is life. Where there were just chemicals, now there is consciousness. And that led me into a series of questions and speculations, chief among which were:

Where does consciousness come from?

Does it vindicate my suspicion that plants are sentient?

Does it mean that pain is actually only an expression of fear?

What is fear?

And that was getting a bit far out so I decided to stop thinking about it and have a chocolate caramel instead.

(Why do people enjoy chocolate caramels? What is pleasure? How do I stop myself asking pointless questions?)

Old Ghosts.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet…

~ On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh

OK, so let’s have a brief but welcome break from the seemingly never ending saga of my health woes. Let’s instead briefly reprise a theme which has been ever constant on this blog since its inception: I saw the Lady B today for the first time since the nice folks at the Royal Derby Hospital cast me into a nest of vipers.

She wasn’t walking down a quiet street, though. She was driving up my lane while I was trudging slowly down it on my latest foray to re-acquaint myself with the great outdoors (or at least a little bit of it.) She smiled and waved but declined to stop and say:

Oh my dear Jeff, how are you my poor old friend? I’ve been so worried about you, rarely going a night without disturbing dreams of you stretched prostrate before a hideous demon of terrible aspect, claws outstretched and searing flames coursing from its malevolent eyes. It must be terrible for you, and I should like to offer whatever I may be able to give to ease you of your burden. Just name it and I will be your servant.

No, just a smile and a wave. But of course, the Lady B knows nothing of my circumstances over the past three weeks. She is understandably ignorant of the post-operative rigours consequent upon six hours of surgery (and four more in the recovery room.)  She is entirely unfamiliar with the hellish complication which descended on me just when I thought I was about to start the slow climb to full recovery. How could she know? And besides, there’s no way that the dear Lady B would stoop to utter the kind of drivel which appears in italics above anyway. It’s not her style.

But the smile and wave were nice and I was duly delighted.

The Broken One Rambling a Bit.

I was thinking tonight that responses to adverts fall into four broad categories:

Unintelligent consumers watch or read them all.

Intelligent consumers are more selective.

Intelligent non-consumers close their eyes or click the close ad button. They’re also much given to muttering expletives every time one appears.

Unintelligent non-consumers are hard for me to judge because I can only think of one I ever knew (she was also one of the finest people I ever knew.) If she was typical, then the type carries on knitting, baking, or washing the dog’s ears, and watches the pictures by way of occasional variation.

You wouldn’t think I was a broken person, would you?

(And incidentally, taking a shower with a catheter fitted takes twice as long and is a right bloody pain. I also discovered this week that women don’t have a prostate gland. Now I’m trying to think of a reason to care.)

Mr Wimpy's Excuse.

I’m being a regular wimp over this health issue of mine, am I not? I know I am, but then only I can know how the symptoms feel and how I feel about the symptoms. And it hardly needs saying that I realise how much worse is the plight of many, many other unfortunate people around the world. And that brings up another topic of note.

I’ve mentioned here before that I have never fully engaged with anything in my life, and that’s because nothing was ever sufficient to warrant full engagement, not even during the best of times when life was dripping with milk and honey. So does that make me a greedy lout who just wanted more and more of the good things? No, it wasn’t like that.

What I always felt was that even the best of things had something thin and superficial about them, and what I wanted was not more of the good things, but that mysterious something-or-other which lay beyond them. I would stand on top of a mountain and regard the distant view of lakes and woods and further mountains, and feel that the whole thing was a two dimensional image hiding a deeper reality. I would listen to a piece of music by Vaughan Williams and fancy that I could almost taste that reality, even though I couldn’t see it. I felt that my life was a constant search for it, but I didn’t know where to look. And so I never fully engaged with the things I could have because they were blocking the true quest.

And that’s why I envy those people who can still engage with life for its own sake, and be content with it, in spite of being disabled, impoverished, or beset by an endless variety of other difficulties greater than mine. I suppose I should have concentrated on being grateful for my health, strength and capabilities instead of pining for something which is both too subtle and too substantial to exist in this mortal realm. But is that a reasonable proposal or just a lame and pointless apology for my separateness? I don’t know. All I know is that being brought low by the vicissitudes endemic to the material form is keeping me further from my quest. And that’s probably as good an excuse as any for being wimpy.

Downturn.

I had another one of those spasm attacks today, the ones which scare me so much because it was just such an assault which took me down into hell a couple of Thursdays ago. I don’t want to go down there again, and I had hoped that the bladder – or whatever the culprit is – might have settled down now that recovery from the operation is progressing.

But at least today’s was shorter and less severe, probably because I got to the spasm-inhibitor medication and pain killers quickly. Part of the problem is that nobody yet knows what’s causing them, and that’s a reason to be nervous because you never know if and when another one is going to strike or how bad it will be if it does. Somebody suggested that they sound not dissimilar to the severe pain some women get during periods. If that is the case, then such women have my greatest sympathy and I would baulk mightily at the prospect of having to come back as a woman next time around. And I suppose I should be glad to have had yet another lesson served up to me on the red hot plate of adversity.

Today’s walk was a mile without difficulty, so at least something seems to be progressing as ordered. The vernal glory of yesterday was short lived, however. Today saw a return to dull, chilly, damp conditions. I imagine summer will get here eventually, and I further imagine that I shall still be here to witness it. Being of a mind to enjoy it is the one prospect still in doubt.

A Secret Belief.

It’s often occurred to me during my recent troubles that maybe I’m paying off negative karma. I like the twin doctrines of karma and reincarnation. They make sense to me, even though I have no proof and never preach them.

But then I wondered how many other people secretly (hidden even from their own conscious minds) also attach credence to the possibility of karmic debt. How many times do you hear people in difficulty say: ‘What on earth have I done to deserve this?’  

Matters of Timing.

And on this dazzling day when vernal glory settled upon the Shire did the first bat appear. Just one, though. Oh dear. The first to wake, perhaps? Or the only one to survive the Beast from the East. May the weather remain generous for a while, and then the next few days should provide the answer.

*  *  *

It occurred to me today how lucky I was that I didn’t have this operation two months earlier, for then I would have been going through these rigours during the Siberian onslaught. It required the doing of things which I never could have contemplated in my current condition, and the house was dreadfully cold during that part of the winter. It would have been very miserable. And how ironic that the Royal Derby Hospital might have seemed like a blessed place to be in such circumstances.

Polluted Pleasure.

The spring is springing nicely in the Shire today. The temperature is up to the seasonal norm, there’s a light breeze drifting across the land to encourage the growing things to wave happily, and there’s even some hazy sunshine to set the spring flowers glowing with satisfaction. It was a good day to try my first walk down to the village post box, and so that’s what I did.

It was pleasant and uneventful with no notable signs of strain, but I was struck by a sudden fear. Suppose I were to encounter somebody I know who likes to stop and talk, and suppose they were to be accompanied by a big Labrador dog which likes to leap at people joyfully. There are several such people with such dogs in this area and in normal times I don’t mind being leapt at. But these are not normal times and the prospect was a little worrisome. The fear proved groundless. The only dog walker I encountered was a woman I hardly know who was out with her quiet little mongrel, so no harm done.

Ordinarily this would be a time of great optimism, but I still have the next two weeks and two more procedures looming in the mist ahead. And there’s also the fear that I might be subject to another Great Crisis like the one which laid me low nine days ago. It takes the edge off the joys of spring a bit, but what can I do but walk the path laid out ahead and see what happens?

Whatever it is, no doubt it will be reported here for anyone who is interested. And to those who are interested I offer my thanks.

Fading with the the Classics.

I walked a whole half mile today for the first time since the operation, and now I’m tireder than a little lamb who’s spent the daylight hours playing King of the Castle and chasing his mother around through want of nourishment. And now it’s sunset and the bleating of the ewes tolls the knell of parting day.

I think I might be fading fast. I just fell asleep for an hour with my head on the desk and woke up feeling aggrieved that a major part of my life was wiped off the map when I discovered that my old high school had been demolished to make way for a new one with a silly name.

Time, I think, for my appointment with John Barleycorn, a little night music, and a carefully managed descent into the arms of Morpheus. I read once that the phrase ‘into the arms of Morpheus’ is a ‘pretentiously classical allusion.’ Proof enough that I’m fading fast, so I hope the sun is shining and the spring flowers blooming on the scepter’d Isle of Avalon. If not, I might be back tomorrow.

On Being Cautious.

I’ve felt the first stirrings of a return to normality in my mind and body today. Only the first stirrings, you understand, but they were enough to detect the faint scent of optimism come drifting in on the cold spring breeze.

My mind, however, being the size of a planet and yet mysteriously near-invisible to even the strongest of telescopes, kept screaming caution at me. It would insist on reminding me that one of the most tediously repetitive aspects of the past three months has been the phenomenon of the false dawn.

‘How many times did the doctors and their test results give you the impression that you were as fit as a flea?’

Several.

‘And how many times did they go on to say “Ah, but…” to pull you back down into the mire again?’

Every time.

‘Quite. So expect nothing. Just do as you’re told, go with the flow, and see what happens.’

But doing as I’m told and going with the flow is little short of torture for somebody like me.

‘Nevertheless…’

OK.

I sometimes wish I had Emily Brontë’s certainty. When she was dying of TB she declined all palliative treatment for fear that it might delay her release from the tyranny of incarceration in a human body. She wanted total freedom, as do I, but I don’t have Emily Brontë’s certainty in spiritual independence. I just want my body to go with its own flow and do as it chooses.

A Small Matter of Demotion.

I had another visit from the District Nurse this morning. She was only an ‘Assistant Practitioner’ this time, not a full staff nurse as I’ve been used to seeing. She’d come to perform a little surgery on the piece of equipment I currently have strapped to my leg.

She was probably in her mid-thirties and had about her an air of homely mundanity, the kind which probably inspires confidence in the very young, the very old, and those whose mind errs on the side of incipient imbecility. She was also very jolly in that ultra-lightweight sort of way which can become a bit wearing after a time. And she had a habit of using the dreaded phrase: ‘…what we call…’

‘This is what we call a tube,’ she would say, and I would want to reply: ‘Actually, everybody calls it a tube. A tube is what it is and what everybody knows it to be. The word ‘tube’ does not reside smugly in that bag of arcane words and phrases known only to highly trained clinicians and used to keep riff-raff like me wallowing in ignorant bliss. I do happen to know what a tube is, and even what it's called’

I didn’t, of course. I played my part well, nodding dutifully and remaining quiet apart from offering the odd mildly intelligent question or statement to make my point without fear of conflict or insult. Nevertheless, she remained lightly patronising in a jolly, homely sort of way, appearing to be unconvinced that I was neither a child, an advanced geriatric, nor someone whose mind errs on the side of incipient imbecility.

Eventually she left and my gratitude to the dear old NHS remained unshaken: purpose served and equipment returned to proper function. And then I was struck by the fact that grumpy old curmudgeons like me might be allowable in British society, but people like her are far more useful.

Designing for People.

I’ve been ruminating a lot lately on the nature of modern hospitals. The Royal Derby is a big, modern monobloc building contained within a shallow depression in the landscape, and the view of it as you come down the hill has an air of some technological behemoth waiting to swallow you. And the view from the inside goes some way to vindicating the simile.

My recollection of older hospitals I visited as a child is quite different. Admittedly, the view from the outside was a little dour – as you would expect of the functional side of mostly Victorian architecture – and there was a clinical feel about the interior. And yet there was also a certain cosiness about them, something human, something not entirely un-homely.

There’s nothing human or remotely cosy about the Royal Derby, and I expect the same is true of all modern hospitals where the emphasis is almost exclusively on clinical exigency.

It goes without saying that I am grateful for such places. We’re very lucky in Britain to have them available free to everyone on the National Health Service. But I still have to wonder whether a slight change in the approach to their design might produce a place in which there is an atmosphere of care and healing, rather than the feeling that you’re trapped in a soulless processing centre. Maybe most people don’t care about such matters, but people like me do.

Making Sense of Sensitivity.

It occurs to me that those highly aware and sensitive people who feel every sting strongly and suffer frequently in consequence are usually judged to be weak. We want to ignore them, discard them, throw them off the train while the rest of us get on with being tough and driven to succeed.

But are we missing an essential point here? Life is a mysterious, seemingly unfathomable business, and how can we expect to get even close to understanding it unless we gravitate towards the centre and get burned by the heat at its core? Could it be that the sensitive souls out there are not weak at all, but merely closest to whatever life is about?

A Subtle Difference.

Something I saw on YouTube tonight led me to question whether lust and passion are essentially the same thing. Eventually I decided…

No. Passion is to lust what a fine sunset is to a dirty ping-pong ball. (As far as I recall, that is.)

On Time and Prospects.

Today has been quite a good day physically, and yet I’ve felt an increasing sense of depression as the day has worn on.

In a way that’s odd because I had a visit from and old and valued friend this afternoon. It was none other than the Ms Wong I used to mention occasionally on this blog, and not only was it lovely to see her but it was also nice to see how good she looks. She’s forty two now, but has the face of a thirty-year-old and a figure which hasn’t changed in the twenty three years I’ve known her. But maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe she reminded me of the good old days when I was fit, strong and healthy myself.

I also had a text message this morning telling me that my next scheduled appointment at the dreaded hospital for whatever test they’re planning is next Wednesday. It left me feeling that this whole business has changed my life to some extent or other, particularly with regard to my personal future. I fear I might be entering a phase of routine screenings with all the attendant anxieties which every visit will inevitably entail, and also the sense of being on an endless personal treadmill of imperfection. I wonder whether being human has much value if you’re not a fully functioning member of the species.

One’s view of one’s future can never be better than hazy, of course, because none of us knows what chance might throw in our path. But mine looks suddenly dark and foggy, and I see darker shapes moving in the gloom which might be mirages or might be real. Time will tell, no doubt, as time always does.

Today's Update.

No posts today because I’ve been too busy writing other things, making some arrangements, and sitting around being justifiably lazy.

Bit of a dip today in the how-are-you-feeling stakes, but nothing serious. And at least the appetite has made an almost full recovery after two weeks of being at worst comatose and at best a paler shade of white. Just thought somebody out there in the land of the living might care. 

Music and a couple of medicinal scotches now. Whisky is something else which should be available cheap on the NHS in my opinion, but it quite amazes me just how few of my opinions are ever taken seriously.

Another Ramble Through Ignorance.

I’m led to question how much value we should place on material life. Is it better to live with suffering or die and be released? Are we released when we die? Are we anything after we’re dead? If we are, do we feel a sense of homecoming or a sense of loss? How can we be expected to know the right way to conduct a life without the requisite information? Religions claim to offer it to us, but religions are largely human constructs however much their adherents claim otherwise. And they’re widely contradictory.

I suspect that the only feasible road is to do everything with an eye on always doing the good and right thing as an honest reading of our consciences dictates. And then we hope for the best. But I might be wrong. And it might not matter anyway. And where do I go from here? A little more Bach and then to bed.

A Matter of Priorities.

I have a great deal of respect for my daughter who combines much wisdom with a high level of natural intelligence. Together they make her formidable in the area of reason and debate, and I’ve often said that I learned more from her than she ever did from me. And yet as a child she had difficulty learning to tell the time. I used to think this was odd until I remembered what Arkwright said in an Episode of Open All Hours:

‘I’ve noticed that about people who've always got their head stuck in a book. They seldom know the price of baked beans.’

Reviewing Expectations.

I’m tempted to wonder just how much we have a right to expect finer human feelings to play a part in clinical practice. The human animal is, after all, basically a complex biological machine which needs mending sometimes, and we have people in advanced societies who are trained to do just that. We call them doctors and nurses.

It used to be – if my memory serves me right – that doctors were expected to be the technocrats who used their technical skill to do the diagnosing, the cutting, the stitching, the dispensing, and so on. The nurses were there to provide practical support and also add a good dose of sympathy and compassion to make the process easier on the mind of the patient.

I have the impression that this is now undergoing a slow and subtle change. My recent experiences in hospital led me to suspect that modern nurses, trained to a much higher level in order to keep pace with technological and other advances, are also beginning to see themselves as technocrats first and foremost. I think I detected a diminution in the old quality that used to be a primary expectation of nurses – the providing of emotional as well as practical support. So, the questions:

Am I right? Is it a problem? Should it be recognised and addressed? I don’t know; it’s just a thought off the top of my head.

A Small Residual Positive.

While I was undergoing my crisis of excruciating pain and high fever last Thursday, a nurse kept coming to me and asking ‘Are you all right?’ It irritated me a lot because it must have been as obvious as the fob watch on her dress that I was anything but all right. But then I concluded that it was probably standard procedure in order to establish that the patient is both conscious and compos mentis, and ‘are you all right’ is a simpler question to consider than ‘what is the square root of 121?’ All you have to do is say ‘no.’

And in retrospect I have to admit that there is something pleasing about maintaining my accustomed irascible response even while being keel hauled under the medical equivalent of hell and being semi-conscious into the bargain.

A Minor Disturbance.

It didn’t fail to escape my notice while I was in the urology ward at the hospital that nearly all the other patients were men older than me, in most cases substantially older. It struck me that urology is largely the preserve of elderly men, and that disturbed me because I don’t consider myself to be in that category yet.

So then I took to considering whether my presence there was an indication of premature ageing, or whether it was simply due to my being as precocious as I’ve always been. I concluded that it brought me back to my old favourite dictum: perception is the whole of the life experience and left it at that.

On Bills and Birds.

Having had two hospitalisations over the past two weeks, one scheduled and one unscheduled, I’ve realised that if you live alone in circumstances like mine you need both a nurse and a secretary. The role of the nurse is obvious enough, but you tend not to realise that there are financial matters to be dealt with as well because failure to address them can lead to aggravating problems further down the line. I wonder whether the NHS will ever get around to providing secretarial assistance.

*  *  *

On a lighter note, I’m getting unusual pleasure from watching the blue tits build their nest in the box behind my kitchen this year. I envy their energy.

The Wimp Imagination.

I’ve mentioned on this blog a few times recently that for the first time in my life I felt the need of a hand to hold. Three months of tests, procedures, false dawns, bad news, some not inconsiderable pain, and a serious operation have been a bit of a trial. There never was a hand to hold and so I just got on with it.

But on the first night following my operation I was being woken frequently by a nurse come to do the ‘obs’ (the taking of blood pressure, blood oxygen level, temperature, and a sample of blood for testing.) She was very big, very black, softly spoken and pleasant of demeanour. At one point she must have deduced that I was a little uncomfortable and she reached down and squeezed my hand. Imagine that. I was seriously tempted to wonder just who she was in that moment, and I think I might be allowed my suspicions however fanciful they might appear to the rationalist.

The Wimp Mentality.

You know, it’s occurred to me over the past week or so that nobody can fully appreciate another’s suffering unless they have direct experience of it themselves. However well you describe it, however extravagant the adjectives you use, and however much another person can understand that it must have been very unpleasant, they can never know how it actually feels. And that makes me suspect that to have true compassion and empathy with a sufferer, you really need to go through the same level of suffering yourself.

It further occurred to me that I have deplored the causing of suffering all my life. As a kid I would never join in with the nasty things other boys did to frogs and other small creatures. Where I was able, I always stopped it. I begged my stepfather not to hurt the little mouse that was running around my bedroom one night, and when he ignored my pleas I went into a bit of a desperate and feverish state. And for all that I have come to understand an awful lot about human nature, the wanton causing of pain remains a mystery to me. Some would say that I was, and remain, a wimp; I always thought I was in the right.

And having gone through the experiences of the past week – especially on Thursday – I feel surer than ever of my rightness. Never again will I condone war except as the very last, desperate option of defence or to stop the suffering of innocents at the hands of the guilty, for now my inherent objection to the hurting of people or any other sentient being has become more implacable than ever.

Update.

For those who might be interested:

The catheter removal was a disaster which rapidly turned into a nightmare. Long story, but suffice it to say that I spent four hours in agony (and I don’t exaggerate) having cold air blown onto me, an oxygen mask fitted, and a bevy of clinicians checking this, that, and the other every five minutes with an imposing array of instruments, needles and concerned frowns. When the pain subsided from severe to merely moderate they took me back into hospital where I remained for two days.

After that I was visited by doctor after doctor who each had his own ideas as to what was wrong and what needed to be done about it. It was irritatingly confusing. And then they sent me home with a load of medications and told me to wait for the letter calling me in for yet another procedure in about two weeks. (Will I last that long, I wonder.) If the next procedure establishes the cause of the problem there will be further treatment which might include another operation.

I’m not enjoying this. Will probably post again when and if I feel better.

Thanks for reading.

Today's Encounter.

I saw the District Nurse driving her car into my garden earlier, so I went to greet her.

‘Are you the woman who should be wearing a bonnet and riding a bike?’ I asked (for such is the classic stereotype of the British District Nurse.)

She stared at me for several awkward seconds before asking:

‘Are you Mr Beazley?’

‘sigh I’m afraid so.’

You win some, you lose some.

So then she came up to the house and began her ministrations, and what a brilliant ministrator she was in every sense. (Word says there’s no such thing as a ministrator, but I choose to differ.) And I discovered two interesting things in the process.

1. My wounds have healed brilliantly.

2. I’ve lost around 14-20 pounds in weight over recent weeks. I’m now the lightest I’ve been since the age of about 10. I wonder whether being grossly underweight endows you with brilliantly healing skin.

Tomorrow it’s back to the torture ministry to have my catheter removed. (Sorry to be a bit lavatorial again. One’s standards of decorum tend to plunge through a hole in the floor and flop into the basement as soon as medical procedures show their grubby faces.) And I’m going to need luck again, I’m afraid, because catheter removal doesn’t always succeed. They have to keep you incarcerated for hours until they’re sure the relevant parts are working normally. Sometimes they’re not, and then they have to fit another… (Oh, God! I mustn’t even begin to contemplate that eventuality.)

Two Fragments of Oddness.

All the other patients on my ward were of the older generation, most of them substantially older than me. As the week progressed I watched a succession of younger people, clearly family members, visiting to fuss around them or make forced conversation. It struck me that here in this little room of four beds was encapsulated the incessant flow of human life through the generations. I was the only one who never had a visit from a family member. Always the observer, you see? Never quite the belonger.

*  *  *

One day I kept snoozing throughout the day, and each time I did I went into a brief and oddly static dream. I would be standing there looking at some object – a vase of flowers on a table, or maybe a tree or a curtain. And each time I did I would reach out to touch it, at which point I would wake up with my hand outstretched and the view in front of me empty. I wonder whether much research has ever been done on the psychological effects of being in hospital. I doubt they would ever include me in such an exercise. Far too untypical.

On Progress and Restriction.

My last two days have been quite a lot better. Most of the symptoms are still there but they’re lighter, less frequent, and generally more tolerable. The main improvement has been in my state of mind. I feel brighter, more relaxed, more alert, more confident, more optimistic. And that’s given me a new problem…

The piece of music below is one of my favourites. It was originally written by an Englishman called Simon Jeffs and made popular by the Penguin Café Orchestra, but Patrick Street got hold of it and injected it with an oversize syringe-full of Irishness. The result is that it demands you dance. It’s quite irresistible – at least to me it is – and it never fails to have me jigging around even if I’m stuck to the computer with a headset and have to jig around on the chair.

I played it last night, and because I was feeling the improvements noted above the old instinct cut in immediately. So did the voice of the Big Boss:

‘Stop it, Jeffrey. You shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing, now should you? You’re in no fit condition. You don’t want to have another of those granddaddies-of-all-abdominal-pains, do you, not to mention putting back the healing process by heaven knows how much?’

No.

‘Right, then. So sit still.’

OK.

It wasn’t easy. (And incidentally, this is the piece I want playing at my funeral so everybody will wonder where the knocking noise is coming from.)

On Appearance and Progress.

In reference to my excessive weight loss recently I described myself on the blog as ‘a stick man with a belly.’ Well, I was just dropping a note to a splendid and much valued Irish colleen earlier when I remembered the guy from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and now I think ‘stick insect’ probably describes my appearance more completely (and more succinctly.)

But I’ve started eating more. Tonight I had two vegetarian sausages with a few potatoes, carrots and gravy; and you’ve no idea what progress that represents in the case of a person in my condition. That’s because you’ve probably never been here. It’s not very nice.

On the Matter of Chemicals.

On my last night in hospital – and a particularly difficult night it was – I looked up at the ceiling of the ward and it looked yellow instead of its customary white. I was being bothered by a persistent fugg which I had been smelling and feeling all week, and it suddenly occurred to me just how saturated hospitals must be with chemicals. Chemicals in the functional infrastructure, chemicals in the furniture, chemicals in the fabrics, chemicals in the multitudinous array of sanitizing fluids, chemicals in the medications…

Several times during the week I had asked people what ‘that smell’ was. Nobody else had noticed, presumably because people in developed economies have become habituated to the burgeoning number of chemicals being used in such places. I’m different. Over the past ten years or so of increasing isolation from mainstream culture I have become less exposed to chemicals, both in the atmosphere and the food I eat. In consequence my body has become more sensitised to them and I’ve found them increasingly troublesome. I’ve also come to the view that they are probably unhealthy in random combinations.

I remember going to a few hospitals to visit relatives and so on as a kid. In those days hospitals tended to smell of stale urine and simple disinfectant, and I’m now tempted to wonder whether such an environment was more wholesome than the present one, suffused as it is with an invisible but possibly toxic mist. I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but I do know that modern hospitals are very uncomfortable to a person like me. And I further wonder whether they have become hazardous in ways separate from the big bacterial issues we’re all aware of.

On the Matter of Bowels.

One positive aspect that has characterised the past eight days is that I’ve learned an awful lot about things medical and the body in general. For example…

Two days after my operation a nurse approached and asked:

‘Are you passing wind?’

‘What?’

‘Are you passing wind?’

‘You mean, like, the flatulent sort?’

‘Yes.’

It seemed a very odd enquiry to a person of my sensibilities and the reply required an indignant frown.

‘No.’

‘Oh,’ said the nurse, and then she walked away.

The question was repeated over the next two days until I just had to ask:

‘Look, what is this obsession you seem to have with farting?’

And then she explained. It appears that major abdominal surgery (in my case six hours under the knife followed by four in the recovery room) causes the bowel to go into shock and remain in stasis for several days. The release of gas is apparently the first sign that Mr B is waking up and beginning to function again, and that, I was informed, is most important if the patient is to be released back into the world of mortal man. So when a little of the unmentionable did arrive, I was actually quite pleased.

But, you know, the body beneath the skin is really quite a disgusting place and the bowel is the greatest exemplar of that. I don’t do bowels. I don’t talk about bowels. I like to pretend they don’t exist. I don’t really want to know anything at all about the creatures. But it appears that sometimes you just have to, so now I do.

On Times Unfamiliar.

Last night I had a full six hours unbroken sleep. I haven’t had more than two at most for the past eight days and I felt quite a lot better for it this morning. But those who know – or claim to know – about such things tell me that the road ahead will be full of steps up and steps down from day to day, and so the watchword must be patience. I wish I were a more patient person.

The odd thing about last night’s rest, however, was the persistent dream I kept having, seemingly all through the whole six hours. I was in a church in Derby, and in front of me stood a group of six people who I knew to be five brothers and a sister. I knew that they were destined ever to be reincarnated in the same relationship and that they were due to be executed at the same point in every life. I knew that their end was nigh, that it wouldn’t be pleasant, and that I was in some way connected with them or at least would be affected by their deaths. It made me fearful and I remained so throughout.

I woke this morning to evidence of a heavy snowfall overnight, but it had turned to rain and the lane beyond my garden was running like a river. I also saw a mini waterfall coming out of the stone wall embankment at the back of my house which retains the higher ground of the field beyond the boundary hedge. In the twelve years since I’ve lived here, all through the wettest winters and the record wet summer of 2012, I’ve never seen that phenomenon before. And then two doctors turned up to check on my progress since that awful bout of extreme pain and fever two nights ago. They went away satisfied, but I couldn’t help remarking that my life is replete with doctors these days. I’ve seen more of them in the past three months than I’d encountered in the whole of my life before that.

These are strange, disjointed and disturbing times full of pain, anxieties, uncertainties and the generally unfamiliar, and I am yet to acquire confidence in the fact that my present condition won’t find some way to kill me. There is no clinical evidence for it, but I did have that visitation, remember? It seems I might have repulsed him for now, but time will tell. No doubt my progress or otherwise will be reported on this increasingly heavy journal. I do hope I’m not being too maudlin, for that would never do.

Shrinking.

I feel too out of sorts to make a normal post tonight, just a note on a startling revelation I received when I took my first shower in my own bathroom after coming out of hospital. I saw myself in my accustomed mirror for the first time in a week and I was horrified to see things I’ve never seen in my life before.

I saw light folds of skin under my cheekbones where my cheeks have sunk and become gaunt. I saw flimsy, wrinkled little arms which used to wrestle bigger men than me to the ground on the rugby pitch, but which would now have trouble wrestling the average tomcat off my armchair. Worst of all, I saw my ribs showing through the skin at the top of my chest. And to make matters even more disturbing, my abdomen remains distended as a result of the operation. I have become a stick man with a belly.

This rapid weight loss has all happened over the past three months, no doubt brought on by that nasty little cancer in one of my kidneys. I gather cancers are greedy creatures and take more energy from the body than they should be entitled to take. Maybe that black dog which leaped out of my bedroom wall back in November is getting fat as a result. Sorry, little canine, but I want it back please. And soon.

This post needs a JJ joke, but I can’t think of one at present.

Interim Debrief.

I feel I should say something about my week’s incarceration in the Royal Derby Hospital. It’s difficult to know where to start because it was a big experience, and it seemed even bigger because it was a bad experience.

Stop, Jeffrey. That’s a gross understatement.

Is it? Oh, right. Substitute a string of pejorative adjectives like ‘horrendous’, ‘appalling’, ‘dreadful’, ‘ghastly’, ‘horrific’ and so on?

That’s better.

OK. The simple fact is that I dreaded going in, and contrary to my usual experience of things dreaded, the actual reality was much worse than the imagined. I wasn’t expecting the level of pain, the vomiting, the persistent heartburn for almost the whole week, the persistent nausea which hasn’t quite left me yet, the fact of having my body punctured by a selection of tubes taking things out and putting different things in, the weakness, the inability to think straight for several days, and the being kept awake for much of every night by activity and noise. (The first night set the trend when the man in the next bed broke wind so often and so loudly that it set the record with consummate ease for the most extraordinary expression of flatulence I’ve ever heard or ever want to hear. I wonder whether he might have worked for Cirque du Soleil at some point during their rowdier period. And there’s a story attached to that which I’ll probably include in another post some time.)

But now I’m making light of it, and maybe I shouldn’t. There was very little that was amusing about my week in the Royal Derby Hospital following an elective right sided uretoscopy and laparoscopic radical hepto-ureterectomy. The physical unpleasantness (I’ll stick with the understatement this time) was also only one member of the pantheon of horrors. There were more; there were; really there were. Like the relationship between staff and patients, like the quality of the food, like the chemicals issue, like the way time expanded so that one hour felt like at least five.

So maybe I should leave it there for now; do this in small doses rather like I’m supposed to be taking food. Or how about I mention one of the few things which I did find mildly amusing? OK.

One day I found my record book lying on my bed, so I sneaked a peek. One comment said:

Communicates his needs well to the nursing staff.

Naturally I understood the real statement behind the polite formality of systemic convention:

He whinges a lot and is very good at it.

Breaking.

I was woken up at around 3.30 with very bad pain down in the nether regions. It was accompanied by extreme nausea and a raging cold sweat. Moving took so much effort. I called the out-of-hours service and a district nurse is supposed to be coming out to me some time in the next four hours.

The pain has eased a little since I got out of bed, but what is this mini hell I’m going through? What does it all mean? Is it achieving anything? Will it ever end?

I’m writing this just to have something to do while I wait.