To blog or not to blog

It has been an challenging week or so since I last managed to blog, physically and emotionally, with some high points and a few severe dips too (literally as it happens). So sorry it has taken me a while to get over my bloggers constipation, but I think I have worked one out today though! It is fair to say that the last ten days I have been “up and down like Zebedee on E” and at times I’ve not known here from there, left from right or whether I was just looping back on myself. It all started with a trip to the hospital for my 6-monthly CT scan. The procedure is fine, but I detest the copious amounts of Satan Sick you have to drink for 24-hours beforehand. Waking up at 7 in the morning to face 1/3 liter of “Devil’s Discharge” is not the way to start the day and Beelzebub’s Bile in no shape suffices as an accompaniment to breakfast, dinner or tea! I hate these scans; not for the process which is painless except for the needle in your arm, and I’m not afraid of little pricks any more, but because they hold up a metaphoric mirror to the last year and the realist in me can’t help but consider how I would react if the cancer was shown to be returning.

Scan scanned, I scrammed, and that evening turned my attention to the skies, hoping to catch a glimpse of the promised meteor shower. I guess the middle of a major city, with cloud cover and light pollution aplenty makes for less than ideal conditions to see shooting stars and I was rewarded with a stiff neck and little else. And when I say cloud cover I mean thick cloud, none of your wispy stuff that might have broken to reveal a quick peek at the Pleiades. Let’s just say that pilots must have been having a bitch of a time navigating between all those silver linings!  But the next night was much clearer and I did catch one superb trail traversing Cassiopeia and confirmed by a few local people too. I wish I still had my telescope, which I foolishly give away, and through which I did manage to see the rings of Saturn in quite spectacular display. But I saw my shooting star and had a wish, which was all I really wanted to do.  I’ll come back to stars later… Oh, and the wish did come true!

My sister Jo, brother-in-law Gavin and two nieces, Sam and Shannon came to stay with us for a long weekend and I hope they had a good time although to be perfectly honest I was way out of my depth and for all I can tell they may have had a vile vacation. You see, if there is one subset of the population that gay men really never encounter, have no experience of dealing with and are scared to death of having to interact with, it is that of pubescent she-children. To us they are completely alien, and not even in a ‘Nannoo Nannoo Shazbat’ Mork and Mindy integrated-with-humankind sort of way. They speak a different language, they require different routines, and they behave in unpredictable ways. They are neither adults nor kids. Their emotions are about as stable as nitro-glycerine on a damp day in December, and just as explosive. They go from adorable to abhorrent and back again at warp factor eight and with far less provocation than Gizmo in Gremlins! They have to be entertained for 26 hours a day and a good book does not count, nor a DVD or any TV programme aimed at anyone aged over about 5 years old. There were more hormones flying around than in an over-staffed brothel which is a shock when you consider that our house is usually an oestrogen-free zone. Is it contagious? Can you catch female hormones? Are there detectors to tell you when you have had too much exposure (and I’m not used to exposing myself to women, honest!)  I’m scared. And as a gay man, am I more susceptible? Is there a vaccination? You know how they say that three women living together will eventually synchronise their periods, well, can over-exposure to oestrogen, make-up, hairbrushes, leggings and highlights start to rub off on you? Can one start to develop an unhealthy fascination for handbags? Because I saw this very nice Louis Vuitton clutch purse…

On the Sunday we all went to Alton Towers. Last year, when I had just come out of hospital, I promised the girls that we would take them to Alton Towers as soon as I was well enough to do so. It was their choice of destination and one I regarded as something of a challenge especially since six months ago I was still using a wheelchair but I have to say that we managed remarkably well. The park is very well organised for people with disabilities and we were allowed to queue-jump the rides which was fantastic and actually made the day a possibility. I don’t like being disabled. I don’t like the fact that I am in constant pain. I don’t like not being able to walk far but I do like joining the rides at the exit and not having to queue! There have been few advantages to what I have suffered this last year, but by jiminy that was one!  I would never have managed to stand in queues for an hour per ride and as I was allowed to take two ‘carers’ with me each time it meant we all pretty much got on the rides we wanted. (Or in my sister’s case, got on the ride she really didn’t want to go on – she ‘endured’ Air, suspended, shaking, and eyes firmly shut.) We even managed a couple of rides as a family, with Jo getting soaked on the river rapids and me managing to stay bone dry with barely a drip on me!

I’m still trying to understand why a Theme Park was the chosen destination since Gavin doesn’t like rollercoasters, Jo can only cope with the ones that have an excitement level akin to a cup of horlicks and a quick nap before bedtime, Sam and Shannon bottled it for any ride with a target audience above about 6 years old I am not going on Oblivion for all the tea in Tetleys! I’m fine with Nemesis, Air and the somewhat obliquely entitled “RITA, Queen of Speed”, which blasts you forward at speeds that would have cracked Scotty’s Dilithium crystals, then corkscrews you round with the ferocity of an epileptic washing machine stuck on the fast spin cycle and tumbling in free-fall about all three axis. Although you do feel the acceleration and the g-force gets you Right In The Abdomen! The last time we rode RITA, David and I had our photos taken, showing the rictus expression as your skin is pushed back on your face, your eyes sink back into their sockets and your mouth and nostrils gape wide, blown open by the force of the wind. Didn’t bother getting a photo this year; I look like that all the time now anyway!

We did all enjoy the new aquarium where you can have the dead skin plucked from your fingers by cleaner shrimps, something that David avoided as he has an extreme terror of shrimps, living or dead and has to leave restaurants if anyone in his field of vision is de-shelling prawns. It’s the eyes. He likes scampi; or rather he did until I told him they were prawns too – Dublin Bay Prawns to be exact.I can be a real bastard sometimes! But they are only tiny things, and no reason for abject terror. I guess that is what comes of being too young to have been raised on a ration of Finger Bobs. Speaking of children’s TV programmes, I don’t think enough is done to recognise Andy Pandy for being the quintessential gay icon that he was. Even in Black and White he made Quentin Crisp look butch! Hartley Hare in Pipkins was a screamer. Mr Benn’s shopkeeper was a peeping tom, only interested in watching his male cliental undress and Hamble from Play School was such a dyke she was known, when off-camera, to have a power-tool fetish and to try to do the dirty with Jemima behind the arched window. We’re talking a serious Seventies Scissor Sisters situation here! I shall say no more about Bungle, Zippy and George in Rainbow, or Tony Hart, bless him, with his pink cravat and obscure relationship with a lump of plasticine called morph (who grew up to be Wallis and Gromit).  Is it really any wonder I turned out to be gay?

Alton Towers was fun though, despite its ups and downs (see what I did there?) and we made it home safely in time for a night of in-house entertainment. Normally I am very careful with what I put in writing, but in this case I make an exception to the point that the next detail I shall reveal ONLY in writing, as saying it out loud could lead to persecution, prosecution and penalisation! That night I let my nieces have a good few hours playing with my Wii. Their parents had a go too, and so did David. I think that’s the most people I have had on my Wii in one evening for quite some time. I’m surprised I stayed up so long. My Wii isn’t used to such attention and to be honest it took quite a battering and nobody was being gentle, all competing against each other to see who could last longest, get their points up, come first, shoot the furthest, get it in the hoop or hit the centre of the ring.

David deserted for the next two days, making some feeble excuse about “having to go to work” so the male/female ratio in the house dropped further and I was in great trepidation that someone would suggest a make-over. When you have a shaved head, hair straighteners are a thing of mystery, as are brushes, bobbles, scrunchies and for that matter all the bathroom parafanalia associated with hair styling. My pubes don’t need conditioner, curlers or a towel wrapping round for an hour until they dry. You’ll notice it is Head and Shoulders, not Head and Crab Ladder – and I’ve never heard of a case of testicular dandruff in all of my 42 years! So I decided that public places would be safer than staying home, besides which, there is a limit to the entertainment value I can offer, even with my Wii fully exposed and available for gratuitous use. I try to be a cool Uncle. Maybe that’s the thing though. Maybe the really cool Uncles are the ones who don’t need to try.

We went to the Imperial War Museum which is only a few miles away and was appropriate in that Sam is studying the Holocaust next year at school although the gift shop seemed to hold attention far more than any of the exhibits. Did you know you can get a pencil eraser disguised as a miniature tank? If ever we are invaded by alien mini-rubber people, we’ll be one step ahead there! Or, if the Germans try to invade us againwe can hold the rubbers really close to their faces and tell them the tanks are actually far, far away and really very big. You can also get ‘authentic wartime seeds’ – again a disappointment as it transpires they are not there to allow you to grow your own Heavy Artillery or air raid shelters, but are just common or garden carrot seeds in a brown paper envelope and at three times the price I can get the same seeds at B&Q – war time must have been tough but peace time is expensive! Sadly no peas though which is a shame as, considering the context, it would have been good if they’d opted to give peas a chance!

On the final day of the familial visit we went to MOSI, the Museum of Science and Industry because they have an excellent hands-on section there where you get to play with experiments, solve puzzles and generally learn without knowing you are doing so. And for free too. Well, by ‘free’ I mean subsidised by the exorbitant prices charged in the canteen and the gift shop’ (which again provided a good few hours of purchasing potential amid a torrent of total tat). I never knew I needed a wooden snap-together ant, a glass made out of recycled glasses (presumably the same ones as on sale, but returned broken because they looked about as ergonomic to drink out of as a buffalo) or some ‘MOSI environmentally sustainable food crops’ – yes, more carrots but this time in a green paper envelope.

It WAS lovely having the family here, despite the bitter, paranoid and desperate ranting of a ‘well past his sell-by date’ somewhat uncool Uncle. The girls are really very good and I love them to bits; they are a credit to their parents and the world would be a better place with a few more kids like them, intead of some of the guttersnipes we seem to be producing as a nation. We did get to celebrate Jo’s birthday and also Shannon’s (she celebrated on Sunday at Alton Towers and on Monday – her actual birthday – with a cake and candles). There’s also a party to be had for her school friends. I’m somewhat niggled that anyone should get THREE birthday’s a year! I mean, birthday-polygamy is supposed to be reserved for the royals and David and I are the Queens in this house!!

Wednesday, whilst seeing a significantly quieter and emptier house was no less fraught as I had to go to the Hospital for the results of my CT scan, the headlines for which are that the lymphoma is officially in remission, thank goodness. But, and in this case the but is a big butt, the scan did show a ‘thickening of the bowel wall’ and as a result they want to stick a camera up. That’s what they say anyway. I secretly think that this has more to do with the gastroscopy a few months ago where they stuck a camera down. I’m thinking maybe they left something in there – lens cap probably (I know I’m always losing ours) – and it has now shown up on the recent CT scan. So, camera up to locate where it is wedged and then, as is customary in these situations, I assume a medical team will be miniaturised, loaded into a microscopic submarine and injected up my jacksie. No doubt there will be an evil scientist hell bent on destroying the mission and added tension shoe-horned into the plot by the needless introduction of a deadline (cue ticking countdown clock – no, not Countdown, with (or without) Carol Voldermort, just a timer counting down to 00:00.01) at which point the sub and mini-me-medical-men will all expand to full size unless they can make it to my tear duct in time.  Actually, I’m wondering if they have the technology to stream the live feed to Facebook or link it via Twitter? We’d need a title – I’m thinking “Harry Potter and the Deathly Bowels” or “Harry Potter and the Chamber Pot of Secrets”. Well, even a camera up my arse will show less shit than the current Harry Potter film. Seriously, don’t waste your money going to the cinema to see it, instead, wait until it comes out on DVD and then don’t buy it!

I said I would return to the subject of stars. Yesterday was David’s birthday but also way back in history in 2AD (according to the astrologers who can calculate such things), on 20^th September, the planets Venus and Jupiter were in conjunction and lined up to form an incredibly bright star which we know as the Star of Bethlehem and, albeit the calendar is a few years out, supposedly guided the three wise monkeys to Bridlington, or something like that. Anyway, and pertinent to my beloved, the astrological alignment created what was also known by an alternative name as The Star of David. How perverse that my David was born on the anniversary of something known throughout history for the size of its twinkle.

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