To blog or not to blog

What to do with a wet Wednesday that holds all the promise a bowl of soggy muesli? It’s there; you just have to wade your way through it, knowing that eventually it’ll be gone and maybe, just maybe, things will improve. It’s hard to be enthusiastic, effervescent and charming when you’re knackered. I didn’t sleep well, as is sometimes the case. I don’t know if this happens to you, but I can lie there for a while, life buzzing through my head, thinking about things I need to do the next day, crusades to be fought, cooking to be cooked, and I am fine, starting to drift, feeling a little dopey, nicely relaxing. And then I get an itch, or a cough, or go all sneezy and I’m wide awake again, not sleepy and that is the point of no return. Once I’ve had that thought then there is no going back. And when I’m not sleepy, by definition I tend to not be happy either and get quite grumpy, made no easier by my apparent dwarf fetish – I’d go see the Doc about it, but I’m too bashful!

Last night, while trying to sleep, I was waging a personal battle and trying to work out exactly where I stand on a particular topic. In the end I had to admit defeat and agree to disagree with myself.  It is a real dilemma when you can see both sides of an argument, made worse by the fact that supporting either side with any degree of conviction can result in social stigma, rejection, hatred and possibly the daubing of a red cross on our front door. But we’re friends here right? I can confide in you? You’ll stick by me through thick and thin? As Shakespeare once quoth:

“Love is not love that alters
when it alteration finds”

Will you still love me? Deep breath. Here goes: It is grammar and the use of the English language that is bothering me. There is a huge part of me that believes that the degradation in literary and spoken standards is a bad thing. I’m a pedant when it comes to English. I get annoyed when I see inappropriately used punctuation, badly composed sentences, rules broken and structure disassembled. I shudder if I pass a greengrocer’s shop with a notice saying “Potatoe’s on special offer” or “Kid’s shoes on sale”; are they really selling the shoes belonging to a single child?  I refuse to use a supermarket checkout marked, “10 items or less”, when they really mean fewer. “There were less people at the match today.” Really? In what way were they less, of a more lowly background perhaps or maybe they were all below average height?

I risk the danger of re-writing “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” here, and my inner-stickler is nowhere near as honed as that book requires, but really, sometimes I do get quite frustrated. So many people just seem to not care about grammar these days, and I find that to be a terrible shame. There is a photo I saw on the internet the other day of a sign displayed by Susan Boyle’s neighbours in anticipation of her return from “Britain’s Got Talent”, which read, “Susan your a super STAR in our EYE’S WELL DONE”. One has to commend the intention, but condemn the execution.  I think they meant to write, “Susan, you’re a superstar in our eyes. Well done.” Even allowing for an intentional reference to “Stars in their eyes” they could perhaps have managed, “Susan, you’re a super ‘Star In Our Eyes’. Well Done”.  Maybe I sound snobby, and I risk being branded for a high and mighty attitude, lording it over people who know no better, but our language is such a critical part of our lives, it is a tool that has such power and creativity, and misusing it is on a par with daubing the Mona Lisa with Emulsion or playing a Mozart concerto off key. I’m not angry with the people who misuse language, just with the system that has left them not knowing any better. Surely in this day and age there is no excuse for anyone leaving school without an understanding of the basic rules of punctuation? The state is letting people down, and it matters. It is not snobby to want to see the correct use of bus, bus’s, buses and buses’. (Singular bus, belonging to a bus, more than one bus and belonging to more than one bus.)

We have these rules for a reason. A punctuation mark tells us so much. It expresses ownership, where to stress a sentence where to take a pause, where to breathe. Consider: “Let’s eat, Harry” and “Let’s eat Harry”. The punctuation mark gives us a clear understanding of what is meant and avoids confusion. So why not use these dots and squiggles correctly?

I see red when people use ‘into’ incorrectly. “I am going into the bank”, or “I am going in to deposit some money”, but not “I am going into deposit some money”.  And when did ‘upto’ become a word? My pet hate at the moment is the use of ‘invite’ as a noun. Please feel free to send me an invitation, or to invite me to your party, but I suspect you may struggle if trying to post me an invite, as nouns are notoriously difficult to coax into envelopes!

In one of my earliest blogs I told of a letter I had written to Sainsbury’s (note their trade name does take the apostrophe, whereas no apostrophe is associated with Marks and Spencer, but they have cheated and started to call themselves M&S anyway). This letter complained about a television advertisement for new potatoes and an offer which would be available “for a few short weeks”. This was perfect bull vs. red rag territory for me and so I wrote asking what right Sainsbury’s had to truncate the length of our weeks, from exactly which part of the week they intended to subtract time (explaining that if they had to shorten the week I would prefer they did that between 0900 and 1700 on a Monday through to a Friday, leaving the weekends unadulterated), whether they would give us the stolen time back at a later stage or whether this was a cunning plan to fiddle with the laws of relativity. To their credit, I received a suitably tongue-in-cheek reply and I think they got my point. An advertisement on national televisions, seem by millions of people, from a company as influential as Sainsbury’s should at very least employ correct use of our language.

On the subject of TV ads, I do enjoy the ones which proclaim that “Nothing works faster than [product X]”. So use nothing; it is cheaper and it works faster! And, “Nothing makes the sun safer”; no shit! It is a boiling maelstrom of super-heated gasses; suntan cream won’t make the sun safer. The best you can hope for is that it may protect you from the sun’s harmful radiation.

Ill-considered language in commercial advertising is nothing new though; it has been a slippery slope from the days when Beanz Meanz Heinz. Is it any wonder that spelling standards are falling? Weetabix in not much better. And less said about Nutz magazine the best I think.

There is a café we passed the other day which proclaimed, “New opening hour’s” and also has a list of “Todays Special’s”. Never-the-less, it is gratifying to know that they are now “Open Sunday’s til 23:00pm”!  Does anybody ever proof-read this stuff? Does anybody care? Are children not taught the basic rules of grammar anymore? I am no linguistic expert, I don’t have qualifications in the subject beyond O’Level but I do know the difference between they’re and their, I understand the positioning of the possessive apostrophe (most of the time) and I like to think I have some ability to inject commas, colons and semi-colons in roughly the right places. I welcome any of you to inspect my colon use, and let me know if you see an inappropriately placed semi-! I mentioned the possessive apostrophe before and admit that it can be a bit confusing. If the car belongs to the Jones family is it the Jones’ car or the Jones’s car? Are they collectively the Joneses?

Mr and Mrs Jones = The Joneses

The house of Mr Jones = Mr Jones’(s) house

The house of Mr and Mrs Jones = The Joneses’ house

‘Keeping up’ with the practices or possessions of Mr and Mrs Jones = Keeping up with the Joneses

English throws us all sorts of challenges to keep us on our toes, especially since it borrows words from different languages and is a compound of many different roots. Technically it is a West Germanic language (Dutch, Afrikaans, Low German, High German), with a good smattering of Norse, Viking and Norman for colour and a fair peppering of Latin and Greek. No wonder even the English get it wrong! Consider words such as sense, age, clue, direction or hope; these can all be negated with the addition of the suffix ‘less’, so hopeless, ageless and so forth, but what about “ruthless”, meaning cruel, callous, without mercy? Who killed off Ruth? She sounded nice! Someone who is not inept isn’t said to be ept. What is the opposite of dishevelled, shevelled? Would one mantle something that has been dismantled? I used to be disgruntled, but now I’m perfectly gruntled. What do you have to be doing to be frivolous? I demand the introduction of the word ‘frivle’ with immediate effect! I want to be able to go into a room and start to frivle.  Exceed has no opposite, which seems a bit unfair in respect of traffic offences where you can be fined for exceeding a speed limit but those dithering Sunday drivers who always drive far slower than necessary don’t even have a word for what they are doing! And we have those blessed words that take opposite meanings depending on their context:

• to clip: to cause to be together; to cause to be apart
• to consult: to give advice; to receive advice
• fast: not moving; moving
• to lease: in exchange for money, for a time to give up possession of; to gain possession of
• a strike: a hit; a miss
• to wind up: to start; to finish

Another word to avoid, especially if you are advertising an event, is bimonthly; it means ‘twice a month’ or ‘every two months’; ditto biweekly and biyearly.

Sometimes the rules just get out of hand; ‘uni’ generally relates to a singular aspect of an item, unicycle, unicorn, but not in respect of unisex, where both genders are involved!

We use once, twice and thrice, but thereafter the pattern stops, but not so with primary, secondary, tertiary, where the sequence continues quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octonary, nonary, denary – I bet you didn’t know that!

We can’t even stick to basic rules about plurals; you can’t assume that ‘s’ on the end of an object will turn it into more than one:

cow becomes cows;
pig becomes pigs;
but what about the sheep in the field? How many, one or more?

Conversely, what about all the things that already carry an ‘s’ at the end? Bellows, binoculars, forceps, gallows, glasses, pliers, scissors, shears, tongs, braces, briefs, flannels, jeans, knickers, pants, pyjamas, shorts, tights, trousers. ‘Scissors’ is a word guaranteed to fry the brain of anyone who considers it for too long. If I have one of these items, should I say, “The scissors is in the drawer”, or “The scissors are in the drawer”? Maybe I try to circumvent the problem with. “I have a pair of scissors in the drawer”, but even that could mean that there are two of them.

I was once challenged (and failed) to come up with a sentence which contained the word ‘and’ five times in succession, with no intervening words. It had to obey the laws of grammar and make sense. The answer was as follows: The sign-writer had left no space between “Pig” and “And”, and ‘”And” and “Whistle”.

There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a bar in Kentucky or somewhere with a sign “Ladies Welcome. Liquor in the front, Poker in the Rear.” At least that brings a smile to the face.

I cringe when I see Americanised versions of our words, such as color and favorite. I can forgive them for creating their own words for things, with lorry becoming truck, a chemist becoming a drugstore, a dual carriageway becoming a freeway and a pavement turning into a sidewalk. Even lift to elevator is okay by me, since we used to call them rising rooms so have no cause to complain. But why do they butcher so many of our words for no reason?

colour > color
humour > humor
favourite > favorite
theatre >  theater
kilometre > kilometer
cosy > cozy
realise > realize
dialogue > dialog
traveller > traveler
cheque > check
jewellery > jewelry
tyre > tire

In England we go to hospital, we do NOT get hospitalized, although that is a term that seems to be creeping into general usage, along with many other ‘-ize’ bastardisations.

But herein is my dilemma: Language has to be allowed to evolve or else it dies. Words are constantly being re-worked to have different meanings. The obvious example is the word ‘gay’, which have moved from meaning ‘happy and jovial’ to ‘homosexual’ and even now seems to be mutating further to mean ‘bad’. When the yoof [sic] of today say, “That’s gay”, they just mean ‘bad’ and probably don’t even reference ‘homosexual’ in their thinking at the time. I can’t hear ‘gay’ without the ‘queer’ associations, but I genuinely believe the meaning is moving on from that. Language does that, it messes with meaning, sometimes to the point when the original sense is totally reversed. Something that is wicked these days is good. This is not a new phenomenon; try these words that have reversed their original meanings:

Artificial
This originally meant ‘full of artistic or technical skill’. Now its meaning has a very different slant.

Nice
This comes from the Latin ‘not to know’. Originally a ‘nice person’ was someone who was ignorant or unaware.

Awful
This meant ‘full of awe’ i.e. something wonderful, delightful, amazing. However, over time it has evolved to mean exactly the opposite.

Manufacture
From the Latin meaning ‘to make by hand’ this originally signified things that were created by craftsmen. Now the opposite, made by machines, is its meaning.

Prove
Originally this meant to test. The old meaning survives in the phrase ‘proving ground’.

Tell
Its original meaning was ‘to count’, which is how we came by the term ‘bank teller’.

God alone knows what qualities to expect from something that is claimed to be cool, hot, bad, or even radical!

So often I hear data used incorrectly – data is the plural of datum, so “the data is correct” should really be, “the data are correct” or, if a single piece of information then, “the datum is correct”.  We do the same mangling to media (plural) so we should talk about the newspaper medium as being one type of a larger group of media.  We play sports in one stadium or several stadia (not stadiums although again, this is now becoming a more widely accepted pluralisation).  In the same way I get stressed about the plural of cannon, for which the rules seem to be changing. A cannon is a piece of artillery, a big gun. The plural is also cannon, in the same way as aircraft drops the ‘s’ when found in multiples. These days you will hear reporters telling you they hear the sound of ‘cannons’ firing in the distance and I wonder if I have any right to demand the language should not adopt this form. Maybe with language there is no right or wrong, just current use, whether that deviates from accepted rules or not.

I hate txt spk to my core and thankfully it does seem to be dying a pretty rapid death, as mobile phones offer increasingly sophisticated predictive text and reduced prices for messages, so there is no longer the call for the same degree of brevity. I am delighted though that Twitter does not seem to fall foul of txt spk too much, despite the limitations of 140 characters per message. It is an interesting discipline to try to convey news, feelings, concepts in such a restrictive space and yet few seem to resort to abbreviation beyond the occasional ‘&’. These days there is just no excuse for poor spelling, with spell-checkers attached to every type of technology. MS Word will help you with grammar, correct mis-spelt words and even suggest alternatives via its synonym and thesaurus technology. So if you can’t spell, run it through a word processor first! That said, beware and remember to proof-read everything at least twice. In earlier versions of Word my surname was auto-corrected the Pervert and therein lies a tale or two.

We add new words all the time, mostly derived from technological advances, such as blog and blogosphere, but did you know that these have also now mutated into Vlog (a video-blog) plus Vlogosphere and you can watch a Webisode of a ‘programme’ made especially for web-release? You can take a staycation, which is a holiday taken at home, and you might do this with a frenemy – one who pretends to be a friend but is actually an enemy.  On your staycation you might become a locavore – one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible.  To google is now a recognised verb in the Collins English Dictionary, but has yet to make it to the OED. I suspect that Twitter will soon receive its own recognition soon, with new definitions for Tweet and possibly the inclusion of Twitterati!

There are a few words that I think should be added to the dictionary. In big department stores quite often the escalators going up are in a different location to the ones going down, so I think clarification should be provided by the introduction of upscalator and downscalator.

My niece once came up with a brilliant new word.  She was asked to make a round of teas and coffees, with people giving their ‘orders’ as she wrote them down on a pad, being a proper waitress. She put sugar in my tea, which I hate, and so I asked her if she knew she had done this. She checked her pad and looked up at me, and sad, rather guiltily, “I’m sorry Uncle Adrian, I must have misunderheard”.

I’ll not delve too deeply into the issues I have with the way we write numbers these days! 24/7 is 3.428 and please will someone tell me, how long is 3.5 minutes? Is that 210 seconds (3 1/2 minutes) or 230 seconds (3 minutes and 50 seconds)? I guess THAT is a debate for another day!

So you see I am torn between a desire to maintain the traditions and structure of English as I was taught it, full sympathy for anyone trying to make sense of it, and a recognization [sic] that we need  to embrace a language that needs to change, adapt and grow. What is wrong and what is right? Language is a tool of courtesy. It has been created to aid understanding. Punctuation is about clarification, making sure the meaning is unambiguous. To not bother with such things is discourteous and, in some cases, dangerous. Evolution with courtesy, and if error is inevitable, let it at least be through ignorance rather than laziness. Oh, and will someone give the National Curriculum a kick up the arse and bring back a few of the old values. As Winston Churchill once said, “That is the type of grammar up with which I will not put, innit”!

Yesterday saw me storming of the Bastille. OK, I admit it, TODAY is the anniversary of the exact date, but I re-enacted my own metaphorical version (or rather tried to). Those of you who tuned in to yesterday’s episode will know the plan. For those of you who (shame on you) missed the instalment, it is available on my newly-activated, high definition, ergonomic user interface tool, called the iScroll bar. Go to www.oberonuk.com on your interweb-enabled computer-me-bob. At this stage you might need to use your iEyes in conjunction with a contemporary iReader such as the much acclaimed iBrain. (That bloke iNewton has a lot to answer for – if it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have a world full of Apples, or this predisposition for inserting an ‘i’ into every available orifice. Have you ever tried to get peas out of an iPod? Bloody nightmare!)  So, access reading mode and if you are having trouble with resolution, you may need a special plug-in called iGlasses, which are available from a number of retailers and also double as a handy fashion accessory. If you have any problems, please contact our helpdesk at the address not given anywhere in this document, where your call would have been important to us if we gave a fuck.

So, we’ll start today’s chapter with a the briefest recap:

Issue: Idiot stand-in doctor, wrong pills; could kill me
Requirement: Alternative pills
Solution: Call hospital to resolve.
Problem: Hospital like Fort Knox
Assumptions: Kray twins still unavailable to access via spurious means.

Up to speed? Great. So, my mission was simply to speak to the correct consultant and either get a reassurance that the tablets prescribed are not the ones that he took me off before because they were turning my liver into paté or get some alternative ones prescribed. Now, hospitals don’t like you to have direct line phone numbers to anyone, and are very cleverly managed so that no department knows who works in any other department. Phoning the general reception line is fine, as long as you don’t mind the 20 minutes of library music (or in this case 3-minutes of Elvis singing ‘Love me tend – your call is in a queue – me do” repeatedly, ad nauseum and don’t actually want anything doing. As soon as you start to ask for a specific department or person it seems that the Babel fish the receptionist keeps in her ear somehow short circuits. You say, “I need to speak to speak to Doctor Smith in Outpatient’s B” and they hear, “I think I need an x-ray of my knee” and they put you through to Radiology. 20 more minutes of music and the nice lady in Radiology can’t understand why you have been put through to her, but there is a Dr Smith in Maternity, click, “Love me tender…”

So having confirmed that I am not in the midst of a miss-carriage and I need Outpatients B, we now have to establish if this is NEW Outpatients B or OLD Outpatients B because they have moved during the building work and some of the numbers have changed, but not it seems the internal online telephone directory. Click. “Are you lonesome tonight…” No, I don’t want to talk to George, the foreman of works for Balfour Beatty, who are currently erecting a new mental health clinic where Outpatients B used to stand. If this carries on much longer I’ll be their first patient! Perhaps it would be better if they transferred me to main Reception?

Maybe the Community Service girl on the switchboard will have got new batteries for the Babel fish by now and anyway, I’m game for a laugh. Elvis has moved on to “Blue Suede Shoes” and I’m still in a queue. But you know when you are waiting just a second before the call is actually answered you get a little click and your heart fills with joy? Except this time it is the click of the automatic system cutting you off and the husky tones of a BT automated announcement tells you “The other caller has cleared. The other caller has cleared.” Kick a man when he’s down, why don’t you!

Another call then to the main switchboard, this time Elvis seems to be giving advice about swine flu amid selected tracks from his back catalogue and I’m wondering whether “Catch it, bin it, kill it” with a suitable rock beat could become quite a catchy hit.

Well, its one if you catch it,
Two when your blow,
Three when you kill it,
Now go, flu, go.
But don’t you sneeze if you’ve got the flu.
You can do anything but sod off if you’ve got swine flu..

Now, I’m thinking that maybe the problem isn’t a faulty Babel fish – maybe somehow it is me not speaking clearly enough, so this time I make sure I enunciate with absolute care and deliberation – the effect of which is that I sound like a slowed-down record: “Pleeeeeaaassse Caaaan iiiiiii speeeeeeak tooooo…”  It isn’t quite the same as speaking to foreigners which calls for fast and loud with lots of enthusiastic hand gesturing, this is more the way speech would sound if heard through a vat of treacle. But hey, it works and “You want Outpatients B; I’ll put you through now…” Oh the delight, the sheer unadulterated joy. Thank God for Tenna Lady, or I’d have dribbled on the sofa! And I even get a confirmation at the other end of the line: “Hello, you’re through to Outpatients B…” Who needs Ecstasy when you can get a high like this just from a phone call? Bring on the endorphins! Bring on the endorphins! “…The department is currently closed for lunch, our opening hours are…” Oh the downer! Woe, woe and thrice woe! This is addiction and rehab in the space of five seconds! More highs and lows than Altern Towers, more ups and downs than Pamela Anderson’s boobs on the Baywatch titles. I now have rampant serotonin and a craving for chocolate! Book me in at the Priory now!

But I knew the fortress would take some punishment before I got so far as the portcullis, and those arrow slits above A&E are not entirely decorative. Hospital consultants, much like MPs, are blessed with impenetrable moats, and usually a gaggle of ducks in tow too!

So lunch is cooked, eaten (but not enjoyed) and I allow plenty of time for the return to duty before I redial Reception and settle down for some more Elvis – Swine Flu Rock this time:

The Doctor threw a panic, said I looked too pail.
The nursing staff was there and they began to wail.
I sneezed and coughed and turned my head away
Catch it, bin it, kill it, is what I heard them say
Its flu, everybody, its flu.
Everybody in the whole room knew
The early symptoms of the new swine flu

I love being on hold, it gives one quality time to do those jobs that might otherwise be neglected like grow a little more gray, watch some paint dry, waste away precious minutes of life that will never be replaced, contemplate one’s place in the universe and notice that bit of laminate flooring that seems to be lifting…but I also use the on-hold time to come up with a different plan. “Hello, I’m phoning from the General Medical Council and I need urgently to speak to Dr Wilberforce Smith who I believe is holding a surgery in Outpatients B”. Oh, THAT registered with the Bablel Fish and within seconds, “Hello, this is Dr Smith’s secretary. Can I help you?”

“Yes please, I need some advice. I’m one of Dr Smith’s patients.”

“I thought you were from the General Medical Council?”

“No, sorry, the receptionist must have mis-heard, I said I needed a general medical consult.”

“Oh, I see, how can I help…”

So contact at last was made, through fair means or foul. The Trojans had a wooden horse, I had the GMC – all is fair in love and war. Actually, Dr Smith’s secretary was very nice, took my details, understood what I was asking and lulled me into a totally false sense of security with promises that she would not only speak to Dr Smith, but also my proper doctor (who was ill last week thus the reason I was lumbered with the Smith in the first place,) and someone would phone me back.

And I bloody fell for it! I should have known better. I’m kicking myself. It’s the oldest trick in the book and I just jumped in with both feet, eyes open, actually believing her. Oh, she’s good. She’s VERY good. Strap her to the Enterprise and call her a deflector shield.

And now I’m impotent – literally (thanks to the chemo) and metaphorically. I can’t ring back today for fear of being too pushy. I have to wait, to give it time for the various conversations to take place, or more likely the post-it note to fall off her monitor and end up in the hospital incinerator along with a ton of bloody swabs and a couple of artificial arms! But how long to wait? A day? Two? I’m worse off than when I started. And now I have to walk around with my mobile phone super-glued to my thigh in a pointless attempt to thwart the part of Murphy’s Law that guarantees if I DO get a call it will be when I’m on the loo and the phone is downstairs.

So, unlike the French Revolutionaries over 200 years ago, my own particular Bastille remains resolutely un-stormed. And woe betide anyone who mentions anything about eating cake!

I’m having a Boomtown Rats type of Monday already. I don’t like it. Can I have a new one please? This one seems to be broken.

I wrote on Friday about my pointless trip to the Hospital the previous day and the fact that the medication prescribed by the ‘supply’ doctor was something I had been given previously and had been forced to stop taking. This was the tablet that caused mind-altering visual anomalies which, in a night club after several pints, may have been appropriate but for any other situation seem a little too psychedelic! “Hey, wanna score some uppers man? Serious trip guaranteed!” – Except, for me, the serious trip would be a fast track to A&E. It took several chemists, none of whom held stocks of these pills and eventually a next-day order from Boots before I actually got the drugs and further investigation reminded me of another reason why I had been taken off them: they can do nasty things to your liver and at the time of taking them my enzymes were sky high and my liver in an offal [sic] state.

So today I embark upon a quest to speak to someone at the hospital who can sort this out. My hopes are about as high as a daschund’s scrotum, but I shall soldier on. You see, speaking to a consultant without an appointment is on a par with Frodo’s quest over the Misty Mountains, through the Mines of Moria, across the Dead Marshes, over the Mountains of Mordor and to the summit of Mount Doom; nigh on impossible and usually needing three books/films to tell the tale. Oh, so I probably fit the Hobbit size requirements, but I’m NOT about to celebrate my eleven-first birthday and I have no intention of ever fingering Gandalf’s ring! But a quest is a quest is a quest I suppose and I spit in the face of adversity.

Consultants have an impenetrable barrier around them, arranged in rings of ever increasing strength, starting with the reception staff that fends the majority of invasions with a few well-placed “approach at your peril” signs, totems and shrunken heads on sticks to ward off casual enquiries. Next there are the senior receptionists, amour-clad, wielding bows and arrows in case you got through the first defense. Should you have the cunning, agility and stamina to beat your way through this phalanx, next comes the consultant’s secretary. She’s the one who holds the keys to the drawbridge and has soldiers staged all along the fortifications with catapults, Trebuchets and casks of molten tar. Now, if she is particularly good at her job, she will know that to have come this far you must be a pretty strong opponent and she will call upon her reserve team, the gaggle of inferior and expendable student doctors currently being trained up by the consultant. She’ll try to deflect your attack onto one or more of these individuals, knowing them to be cannon-fodder with but three purposes in life:

1. To follow consultant with notepad so he doesn’t have to take any notes.
2. To be there so that if ever consultant does not know the answer to a question he can throw it at one of his ‘team’, thus either making them look stupid instead of him, or finding the information he wanted in a way that makes it look like he hadn’t forgotten it himself.
3. To be there to deflect annoying patients who want contact without following the 6-week appointment cycle.

You know, instead of using the main deflector shields, Captain Kirk would have been far better advised to “deploy medical fortification measures”, and thus protect the Enterprise with an impenetrable barrier of red tape.

I’ll let you know how I get on. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a little ditty I wrote while shackled to a hospital bed with a choice between Loose Women and Cash In The Attic on the TV and the threat of more hospital food on the not too distant horizon. It’s just a bit of fun, but I needed to try to keep my mind off of being ill. The rhythm, I suspect, reflects the pattern of noises made by the controlled IV infusion machine which clicked away at a steady pace, 24/7!

Veronica Johnson kissed me (Part 1)

Veronica Johnson kissed me
I had no choice at all
It was over by the bike sheds
Where she pinned me to the wall

Veronica Johnson’s a big girl
Stocky and strong and mean
When Veronica Johnson kissed me
It was really quite a scene!

Veronica wasn’t so pretty
Her face all freckles and spots
On the end of her nose, a bogie
And her hair was all tangled with knots

Veronica Johnson wore braces
Which I’d not really noticed before
But when she leant even closer
I saw the horror of what was in store

She opened her mouth even wider
Not a smile, or a grin or a pout
My heart was beating double
As I tried to squirm my way out

Veronica’s lips were enormous
They had a life of their own
Saliva drooled from the corners
On her top lip some stubble had grown

Veronica Johnson Kissed me
Squarely on my face
But as I tried to pull away
My lip caught in her brace

Veronica didn’t much notice
And started in with her tongue
It prodded and probed for my tonsils
And filled up my mouth like a bung

To breathe it was getting much harder
But Veronica didn’t much care
Her concern was her ‘skill’ at French Kissing
And not that I might need some air!

My whole life flashed before me
Everything turned dark and cold
I didn’t want to die like that
I was only six years old!

My lip was getting quite swollen
Trapped between brace and tooth
So I tried with my tongue to free it
But I couldn’t get it to move

Veronica thought that my actions
Meant I was kissing her back
So she doubled her efforts at snogging
Then suddenly something went ‘crack’

The sprung-loaded brace became looser
As one of the hinges had popped
Veronica Johnson let out a scream
But at least the kissing had stopped

Veronica Johnson then hit me
“Bloody ‘ell, do you know what you’ve done?
Those things cost a small fortune
And you’ll pay if I need a new one!”

I very quickly retreated
To where the other boys play
‘Cos if that’s what kissing girls is like
I’d rather be a gay!

Veronica Johnson kissed me (Part 2)

Veronica Johnson kissed me
That was many years ago
But the memory still haunts me
I just cannot let it go

She left school before she was meant to
Something about having a kid
I never saw her with her baby
I guess her social worker did

She was given a flat near McDonalds
On a street that was really a slum
But nobody paid much attention
To the men who started to come

Veronica took any client
Regardless of age, looks or weight
But one day she landed a good one
The local magistrate

Veronica started the blackmail
She said she had plenty of proof
Some uncompromising photos
From a camera in the roof

She’d take them to the papers
Or show them to his wife
Unless he paid her money
For the rest of his natural life

Veronica used his money
To better herself by far
She moved to a nicer location
And bought herself a new car

Often I would see her
As she drove by our front door
Dressed in the latest fashion
In her brand new four-by-four

The next I heard she had married;
The man three times her age
A broker in the city
With a very large family estate

She wanted to be an ‘it girl’
To be known around the town
But her features, not pretty, more macho
Were what really let her down

The surgery took forever
But no expense was spared
And when the dressings came off her
Well, everybody stared

Veronica Johnson was gorgeous
A wonder to behold
The talk of the top social circles
Dull rock turned to pure gold

She was there at every big party
And every gala review
She brought out her own brand of makeup
And an exclusive perfume too

But still she wasn’t happy
And became a complete recluse
Searching for some answers
Looking for some truths

After many months of torment
The solution one day hit her
And with yet more operations
Veronica turned into Victor

I met him in a club in town
Where gay men go to meet
Eyes across the dance floor
He swept me off my feet

We’ve been together three years now
And the rest is history
I thank the stars and luck and love
That Veronica Johnson kissed me.

Life is a rollercoaster (either that or I just turned into Ronan Keating), as I pick my way through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune along the rocky, up-hill, road of life, trying to spot the potholes, but more often than not ending tit-deep in a bottomless puddle, Dawn French style.

Yesterday was just one of those days. Didn’t sleep well – I think I clocked up about 30 minutes (taken in 5-minute chunks), so the day started with major league grumpiness and a general hatred for anything that slept better than me. Not aided of course by two cats of differing temperaments – one lying fast asleep on the sofa, legs open and brandishing his pussy bits (now THAT is a contradiction in terms) and actually snoring. The sort of snoring that says to a knackered person, “ha, bloody ha! You didn’t sleep last night and now I’m going to make you suffer”. The second cat I think had been secretly snorting lines of Iams and was hyper, demanding attention in the way cats do best – giving you the saddest look possible then sticking their bum in your face!  He just wouldn’t leave me alone. We’re talking here about demented prancing on keyboard, sitting on hand that uses mouse, jostling arm whilst typing and head-banging the monitor. “Pick him up and put him on the floor” becomes a game – to see how many times he could make me do it. After about 20 repetitions and with no energy left to play Mr Nice Guy I resorted to the only guaranteed method of ensuring cats give me a good 10 yard exclusion zone – reach for the wormer SpotOn!  Usually a drop of that on their necks and I’m excommunicated for at least a few hours. I think this bought about 20 minutes respite. Oh well!  Some days exist only to take the piss out of you and you know you should have stayed in bed!  But Struggled on and at least the day started bright and Sunny  – good washing day.  Several loads in overflowing basket and a chance to bash on with them. Pegged out second lot of clothes. Forecast said hot; sky said “Ohhh fresh washing, let’s have some fun”. So, ups and downs of the day became ins and outs – same shit, different gearing!

On the plus side, there was a sparkle of good in the morning as David escaped unscathed from the Dentists following a checkup plus a clean and polish, so he came home with a Colgate ring of confidence glowing like a fallen halo.

The afternoon though heralded my second hospital excursion of the week and because David was already off work it was an ideal chance to turn it into a family outing, so that at least he could ask the doctor any questions he has from a carers point of view. I know that following the chemo and because of all the damage that has been done to my body, I still have a few things that need sorting.  Many of these things are on hold until my blood returns to normal. In simple terms, the lymphoma was also widely spread in my bone marrow. It is the marrow which produces blood cells. The chemo killed off not only the cancer but also a lot of the bone marrow’s ability to produce more blood. Of greatest importance are the white cells, which form part of the immune system. So with each chemo session my immune system was destroyed and then had to re-grow in a process similar to burning moorland – raze everything to the ground, and allow the healthy shoots to grow back. (Of course in the ‘dips’ of the treatment you go through periods where you are extremely susceptible to infection and feel very ill, but then things start to grow again and you get a bit of immunity back.) All this means that I am now being monitored to check the proportions of white cells in my blood as the system kicks back in and grows in strength. These are steadily rising, but it will be a while before I’m fit enough to tackle some of the residue problems.

As you’ll know, I’ve been having problems with nausea and the ultrasounds and gastroscopy a few weeks ago gave us some clues – no signs of any ulcers etc but evidence of slow digestion probably caused by some of the pills I’m taking. What is happening is that food is staying in my stomach longer than expected, so when I come to eat a meal I’m already partially full and reach a point where there is no room, so a vomit reaction is triggered.  Change the pills, speed the digestion, stop the nausea, save the cheerleader, save the world – or something like that.

So I was actually really excited yesterday about finally moving this forward and starting to be able to enjoy food again, instead of having to have a bucket or barf-bag close at hand all the time which isn’t a good look if you have guests round or want to eat out anywhere.  Maybe I should live on an aeroplane where barf bags are always provided anyway! Just to be able to eat a meal without fear of an encore would be such a huge thing for me. And simple to resolve if it just needs a tweak to my medication – and that’s better than anything that may need surgery, no nasty lumps or ulcers or tumours or even men called Jonah, stuck in my tummy, left over from the days when I wasn’t the streamlined person you see today. I like to say I’m feeling summary – not Summery, in the context of shorts, shades and sunscreen, but summary, meaning “a small, succinct version”.

We got parked, eventually, and made it to the ward in good time. They took my weight, as they do, which was slightly increased from last time and is a good sign. So things looking up, positive vibes. It’s going to be a good day! Let’s put the past behind us, sort these pills out and start feeling human again! These milestone days are few and far between!

People keep telling me to be optimistic, and that really infuriates me. For me you see, optimism is just a blind faith that everything will be alright. That sort of thinking does not prepare you for the fact that some things DON’T go according to plan. My way of dealing with things is to try to understand what is happening to me and what the various outcomes may be. If I know a treatment will make me feel nauseous then I can prepare myself for it. An example: When I was in hospital one night my vision went very weird. I started to get a point directly in front where I couldn’t focus, like someone had inserted a contact lens with a smudge in the middle. Then I started to not be able to pull the images from my two eyes together, so I saw double of everything. Now this happened on a night when the ward was under a lot of pressure with an emergency admission of someone who was very poorly and quite rightly the nurses needed to give that patient the lion’s share of their attention, and when I called a nurse I was told they would get to me as soon as possible – I was non-critical in terms of my care at the time, so clearly and rightly a lower priority. BUT I was lying in bed scared beyond belief that I was going blind. Bright lights were agony, everything started to spin (like I’d downed three bottles of Scotch and sat up too fast) and I was terrified. I remember it well enough – I’d been watching “Muriel’s Wedding” and deciding that adding a couple of ABBA songs is just simply not enough to turn a turd into a tiara! I’ll not rush to watch it again – that was in fact my second time because I convinced myself that I must have missed something on my first viewing! It was the best part of three hours before I got to speak to someone properly and I defy even the most balanced mind to not start working up worst-case scenarios when left with so much time in such a situation. When I WAS seen I was told in a very off-hand way that. “oh yes, that’s a side effect of the steroids. It is only temporary and you’ll be fine in the morning. Just sleep it off.” If I had know that I’d have been prepared and nowhere nearly as scared. When I asked the consultant the next day why I hadn’t been told about this he said that it was a side effect that not everyone experienced and they tend to not tell people because they don’t want to scare them!

So back to my point – being realistic. What is better: “You’ll be fine, everything will be ok”, or “It isn’t an easy ride and you’ll have some difficulties along the way, but if you know about them you can be prepared for them and face them head-on”? I know my body by now. I know when things are not right. I knew I was very ill a year before I was diagnosed with cancer but all my idiot GP managed to come up with was that I was suffering from stress and sitting badly at work!  Now I think that my approach IS optimistic. I acknowledge that there are still things not right, I tell the doctors about them, I go for tests to understand what is happening with the intention of resolving the cause of the problem. Is that not entirely optimistic? Is that not all about wanting to be better? Surely that is more positive than sticking my head in the sand and hoping things will just sort themselves out in time?

So I went to my appointment yesterday with this optimism, knowing that I’d had a plethora of tests and that the gastrologer had a clear understanding of what was causing my nausea. Except MY doctor, the nice one, the helpful one, the one who gets things done, wasn’t there. He’s off ill. So I was landed with a supply teacher – the medical equivalent of a Hobby Bobby. I knew more about my tests and their results than he did. I’m convinced that he was briefed to just keep things in a holding pattern, don’t make any radical changes, don’t do anything clever. You see, MY doctor would have said, “your tests came back clear, so here are the next things to try…” Whereas the stooge pretty much said, “your tests came back fine so I’m not going to do anything…”  Do you see the difference? So I asked if there was anything I could do in terms of diet to speed up digestion.  His answer was to increase my fibre intake, and at that point a shiver went down my spine because he clearly had not understood the problem at all! I need the food in my stomach to digest more quickly. Fibre is slow to digest, produces roughage, which helps the passage of waste out of the body when it has left the stomach. It is exactly OPPOSITE of what I need. He’s prescribed me some anti nausea pills though which I suppose is something, although I kinda feel this is paining over the crack and not fixing the problem.

Simple analogy: Think of my stomach as a swimming pool. Adults (or food) swim in the pool and it all functions perfectly. Introduce some children (pills) who have a tendency to wee in the water, and things become unbalanced.  So you have three options to restore the balance:

1. Remove the children (pills) entirely. We tried this for 5 days and at the end of that period I was feeling much less sick. The day I started the pills again I felt poorly! But this is not a long-term solution – I need the pills like the pool needs the revenue the kids generate.
2. Add chlorine to the water to mask the effects of the children’s pee. (Or in this case, give me anti-sickness pills)
3. Get some better children who have been taught to not piss in the pool.

I was hoping for option 3, but came away with option 2. Although, knowing the lack of understanding the guy had for my actual system and where the problem lies I suspect that rather than giving me chlorine he’s probably misdiagnosed completely and has given me a note to get the dressing rooms redecorated, thus attracting more pissing kids and turning me into a toxic cess pit! Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…!

Addendum to the above:

Forgot to say, Dr Quack wasn’t able to prescribe the new pills from the hospital pharmacy so we had to run a note from him down to my idiot GP’s practice yesterday so that Dr Diabolical could prescribe the pills. Dr Quack made big mutterings about these tablets and how they were expensive (have some guilt along with your pills), so I guess the truth is that he wanted the GP to foot the bill and not the hospital.

Turned up at the GPs today and was told they are only giving me 5 days of the pills in case I get side effects! Oh THIS bodes well! I ALWAYS get side effects! What they mean is they are expensive pills so they HOPE I get side effects and then they don’t have to foot the bill!  But my position between rock and hard place is firmly established and I poodled off the the attached pharmacy to pick up pills. “Sorry, we don’t have these in”! Joy! Drive to other pharmacy in reasonable distance: Closed for lunch.

When I checked the prescription though something clicked. Dr Quack had called the pills by a technical name, not the trade name, Ondaznetron. Had them before, during the Chemo. Little yellow tablets, taste of banana. Didn’t help my sickness. I have some upstairs still – let me check the patient information sheet… Oh yes, those are the ones that fucked up my vision that time in hospital. Well, I should have known!

I am the very model of a modern cancer sufferer
Of chemo drugs and pills I am a veritable connoisseur
I know the mood swings and the problems that so often can occur
And which brand of steroids all the doctors now seem to prefer
I’m very well acquainted too with matters biological
I understand mutations and their process chronological
The lymphatic system is no longer such the mystery
When you consider all my recent health-related history

I’m very good at taking pills and always use the right amount
The sickness that they cause is something that I will surmount
In short, in matters medical and treatments tried by my doctor
I am the very model of a modern cancer sufferer

I give my blood twice monthly, though often with a lot of pain
As the nurses stab me somehow sure that they have got a vein
But nothing from the needle spurts, and thus they have to try again
Would leeches used instead be really seen as any less humane?
I’ve has the tests, the x-rays and the ultrasound
MRI and CT scans, the acronyms they bandied round
Fibrascan, and ECG as the doctors had a look around
And wait to hear the news of exactly what they might have found

Then the nurse approaches with a shiny new thermometer
And sticks it somewhere only angels care to monitor
In short, in matters medical and treatments tried by my doctor
I am the very model of a modern cancer sufferer

I know the stresses placed on my compromised immunity
And on the matter I can speak with relative impunity
I do, in fact, discourse to wit at every opportunity
And bore the pants off even those in the medical community
I down the drugs, the Dapsone and Omeprazole,
Codeine,  Gabapentin  and Fluconazole
For pain they give a daily dose of Paracetamol
Or if its really bad I get a better one called Tramadol

I caught the bugs,  c-diff, e-coli and then many more
You couldn’t come to see me without a plastic pinafore
In short, in matters medical, you’d not believe what did occur
I am the very model of a modern cancer sufferer

Heart palpitations started and they called it Tachycardia
I’m only in my forties and I should have been much hardier
Such stomach cramps and bloating that I couldn’t get much windier
The side effects of all the pills and potions they pump in to ya’
They thought I had an ulcer and sent me for gastroscopy
A camera down my gullet so they could see what was inside of me
I may be old fashioned but there’s some things I don’t want to see
Digestive tract in detail shown on a really huge TV

But I’m still alive and this sentiment I must confess
It is something that I really want now to express
I’m getting well  at last, thank God,  and all of this success
Is entirely down to the people of the NHS
In short, in matters medical and treatments tried by my doctor
I am the very model of a modern cancer sufferer

I spend most of my time in the house or garden. I seldom venture out into the big scary world for fear of lions and tigers and bears, oh my! But occasionally I have no choice. A typical example would be on the occasion where you discover that the bread which was fine yesterday, and well within its sell-by date, has today grown legs, horns and a green fleece and started stampeding round the kitchen with a life of its own, necessitating a trip to th’Asda (other supermarkets are available, consult local press for details). Yesterday provided another example: I had to go see Dr Doolittle for my monthly de-louse, worming and thermometer up the bum. But in the greater scheme of things these absences from home are very rare occurrences. In fact, the trip yesterday accounts for just 1.7% of the week. So, how is it then, that in that relatively miniscule slice of time, InterLink decided to try to deliver a parcel?

And it happens every time. If I gird my loins and steel forth to the land beyond our drive I can pretty much guarantee that someone will try to deliver something! You must have had the same thing happen to you, where you wait for a parcel for weeks but then have to ‘pop out for five minutes’ and you get back to find a card through your door effectively saying:

We tried to deliver your package. How could you be out when we called? I mean, how dare you? How very dare you? What makes you think you have the right to a life? You are an evil person destined to the fiery pits of hell for all eternity. If you want this package you will now have to complete several Herculean tasks, and even then we expect you to grovel at our feet, you pathetic waste of space.

So, suitably chastised and vowing to never leave the house again, I arranged a redelivery for today. I don’t suppose I even need to tell you the rest of the tale. You already know what happened. It is what always happens in situations like this. InterLink, still demanding their pound of flesh, did deliver the package, as they are obliged to do, but they did it at the crack of dawn, when I was in the middle of a particularly enjoyable dream involving marshmallows (my dream, you can’t have it!) and when the insistent ringing of the doorbell was guaranteed to propel me from the deepest of slumbers to a state of abject panic in less time than it takes Gordon Brown to lose a fake smile! Bastards!

And then the game starts. You know, the one where they try to get back into the van and speeding off down the road in less time than it takes you to get out of bed, struggle with a dressing gown (which always has one arm inside out) and half-fall down the stairs to the front door. Oh how much fun! What jolly japes! What a joy it must be to the neighbourhood to see me standing there at the front door, semi-naked, with dressing gown somehow managing to simultaneously ensnare me and expose me (probably have ‘bits’ on display but can’t do anything about it as one arm is somehow wedged up my back and the other is caught up in the rope that SHOULD be holding it all together but undoubtedly isn’t.) Now add to this the fact that the frantic grab for my specs sent them skipping across the bedroom floor and under the bed, way out of reach, so I have about the same quality of vision as a mole with cataracts, and I’m still being sucked back into the marshmallow dream-state and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the vision of loveliness that greeted said delivery man.

Now, at this point I should note that on the very rare occasion that we are home for a delivery (like Tescos for example), we are usually sent something that resembles the love child of Ann Widdecombe and John Merrick. Today, when it is I who resembles the missing link, the person at the door is a complete Adonis, muscles, shaved head, rugged and manly (but clearly sensitive and just sufficiently in touch with his feminine side). And what does this gorgeous hunk of a man say to me, in a deep baritone that oozes sexual magnetism? “I’ve got a package for you”!  No SHIT! And what a package! That is NOT the thing to say to a gay man in the best of circumstances, let alone one in a semi-comatose state just snatched from a marshmallow fantasy!

Now if there were a God (or if this were a porn film), I’d have come up with a suitably evocative response. Something like, “Oh, what an intriguing packet. Well, you’d better come inside while I unwrap it”. But no, Murphy’s Law springs into action yet again and my somewhat less than eloquent response is to sneeze. Not a little sneeze. Projectile mucus everywhere, dripping off my nose, on my hand, probably off the door if I dare show my face in public for long enough to look. I think I missed the InterLink man. I hope I missed the InterLink man. Needless to say his departure was rapid and I suspect he’ll be putting in a request to change his round!

My existence does seem to be governed by Murphy’s law – “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” as I pick my somewhat haphazard way through life. It IS a real law, Murphy DID exist, he was a physician and noticed the tendency for things to fail. The law has many variations, such as Finagle’s addendum to Murphy’s Law which states that: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way.” There is also Murphy’s Extended Law: “If a series of events can go wrong, they will do so in the worst possible sequence.”  And the Law has a number of practical applications, or if you prefer, more detailed subdivisions which give us a context to apply the Law to everyday life. My own observations concur with the consideration that: “Packages are only delivered when you are out, or otherwise unavailable”.  This variant forms a part of a larger collection of sub-rules, know as “Murphy’s ‘B’s” – and these deal with the certainty that interruptions (such as phone calls, visitors, fire alarms etc) are predetermined to happen when you are in the Bath, Bed or Bog!

Other interesting nuances include:

Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics
Things get worse under pressure.

Quantization Revision of Murphy’s Laws
Everything goes wrong all at once.

Murphy’s Constant
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Murphy’s Law of Misestimation
Nothing is as easy as it looks or Everything takes longer than you think

Murphy’s Replacement Stratagem
After you bought a replacement for something you’ve lost and searched for everywhere, you’ll find the original.

Murphy’s Law of Diminishing Value
No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you’ve bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

Murphy’s Laws of Motion
First Law
The other line moves faster (this can be applied to any queue, be that at a checkout, in a traffic jam or any similar situation)

Second Law
Traffic speed is inversely proportional to how late you are

Murphy’s Law of Repair
When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.

Murphy’s law of Reciprocal Pairing
The washing machine will eat one of each pair of socks placed in it

Murphy’s Laws of Observation
First Law
The probability of being observed is in direct proportion to the stupidity of one’s actions

Second Law
Your best attempt at anything (such as a sporting shot, throwing a sweet in the air and catching it in your mouth, hitting the perfect note etc) will happen when nobody is about to witness it.

Third Law (the inversion of the Second Law of Observation)
Your performance is at its worst when someone is about to witness it, and the more people there, the worse your contribution will be.

Murphy’s Law of Humour
It sounded funnier when someone else told it or It was funny in my head

Weather Laws
There are too many to list in this blog, but all follow the essential premise that the weather will bollocks things up. Primary examples relate to the impact of washing a car, planning a barbecue or hanging out washing, with several grades of associated inconvenience based on pertaining factors, ie distance travelled from inception, number of guests invited or urgency of requirement to wear washed garment.  Interestingly, Murphy acknowledges that in almost all circumstances, ‘rain’ can be substituted with ‘bird poo’ and the truism of the Law is preserved.

Of course, Murphy has been plagiarised throughout history, with many of his observations being stolen, re-worked or falsely credited elsewhere. You may recognise the well-known “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” as having its roots in Murphian philosophy and Mark Twain, no less, once used a bastardised version “No good deed goes unpunished.” Those in the IT business will immediately be reminded of “To err is human, to really screw things up takes a computer” – again, a re-hash of Murphy’s key observations. And who hasn’t heard of the buttered toast principal? This was a concept proffered by Murphy and adopted by many subsequent philosophers not least of which was Thomas Moore in his verse:

I never had a slice of toast,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
Always on the buttered side

Perhaps the most succinct rendition comes in the popular form: “Shit happens” although this fails in many ways to illicit the subtlety of the diversity of situation in which shit can happen, the consequences of shit happening or indeed the full horrendous arc of distribution that occurs when said shit, upon happening, hits the fan.

Now the less cynical among you may be thinking that this is a very pessimistic view of the world, but I argue that accepting the inevitability of catastrophe is in and of itself a fundamentally optimistic attitude. After all, if you only ever expect things to go wrong either your fears will be realised (and you’ll be prepared) or you’ll just be pleasantly surprised! That said I must in all faith point out that Murphy also understood the dangers of over-optimism and developed what is widely believed to be his greatest contribution to human thinking of all time. Greater than any Newtonian theory, making Einstein appear a gibbering imbecile, questioning even the validity of the thoughts proffered by Stephen Hawkins. Murphy provided us with his greatest gift in his final observation, widely believed to have constituted his last words as he lay on his death bed (at the age of 23) crippled, broken and dismembered from years of testing and proving his theories. I share that thought with you today and it goes as follows: If Murphy’s Law fails to operate, it’s building up for something really big!

My favourite Murphyism though has to be that which is known as the “Stiff Upper Lip” Law, or to give it the correct title, “Murphy’s English Law of Consequential Behaviour” which draws upon both the technical genius of Murphy’s gamut of observations as well as his astute understanding of the human condition. The law in question is phrased in very complex scientific terms, drawing from physics, chemistry, biology as well as cognitive behavioural theories and indeed religious sub-texts but can be expressed in the following formula:

Or expressed in non-scientific terms: “Cheer up,” they said, “Things could get worse”. So I cheered up and, sure enough, things did get worse!

I leave you though with a final Law, and in fact one of which Murphy was very fond, yet did not develop himself.

Cole’s Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Time restraints dictate a short blog today. I’ve been to the hospital for the first of two check-ups this week. Today’s visit was to see my oncology consultant, the one I have somewhat unkindly re-named Dr Dolittle due to his apparent inability to arrange the tests he says I need to have. He came up with another one today – a 6-monthly CT scan. It remains to see whether this actually happens 6 months after the last one (ie due sometime in August) or if I’ll still be watching for the appointment letter amid my Christmas cards this year! I’m a bit down about it because for the last few weeks I’ve not been ‘pending’ any tests, but now there is another on the horizon. It is good that they keep such a close check on things, but will be even better when they don’t think they need to! Still, looking back, this time last year I was in the High Observation ward, with tubes and monitors and needles and oxygen masks  and a real chance I’d not make it to the end of the day!  What a difference a year makes.

Maybe it is a good thing that we experience time in such a linear way. I’m not sure how I would have coped with the last year had I been given the benefit of hindsight, or if I would have lived my life differently in the years leading up to my cancer diagnosis. I hope, not that differently.  I’ve always believed that we make the best choices available to us at the time. They may not seem to others to be the right decisions, and hindsight may prove them to be disastrous, but at the time they were what we honestly believed were the best for us. That is a basic tenant of NLP, NeuroLinguistic Programming, something I have studied in a little depth and which presents models for the way people represent the world. But our minds are wired up for linear time and we don’t get second chances to go back and change what we have done in the past. I guess to that end I would say I don’t have regrets. Regret is a compound emotion anyway and can always be broken down into more base elements, such as anger, shame, embarrassment and so on.  And why regret things that you can’t change? Learn and move forward. Try to not make the same mistakes again. We don’t have a time machine to go back and fix things!

Consequential, linear time is certainly less confusing than having to deal with temporal paradoxes that being able to jump back and forth through time may bring, likethe possibility of killing your own great grandfather, thus preventing your birth and the possibility of your travelling back in time to kill your great grandfather. We all sometimes want time to run faster when we’re bored and slower when we’re having fun, and perversely it feels like exactly the opposite happens in both situations. Still, Albert said that E=mc2 and so I guess we’re kinda stuck with things the way they are. The world’s greatest minds ponder such things, parallel universes, quantum mechanics, branching possibilities where every choice leads to BOTH eventualities being followed. Tis the stuff to make your head hurt and maybe something I’ll consider for a future blog!

So time and tide wait for no man; a truth that seems as relevant today as ever when I consider that it would have been the birthday of Jon Pertwee, the Third TV Doctor Who. (I emphasise ‘TV’ as there were actually three actors who had played the Doctor before Pertwee took on the role, William Hartnell was the first incarnation, followed by Patrick Troughton and then Jon Pertwee, but Peter Cushing also played the Time Lord in two 1960’s movie adaptations. Pertwee’s Doctor was the first one I really got to know, although Tom Baker remains ‘my’ Doctor. Ah well, we’ll see what the new guy is like soon enough, when David Tennant shuts the TARDIS door for the last time in the New Year (unless rumours that he’ll be back for a movie are true!). I could write plenty about the Whoniverse, but that will also save for another day when time permits. Sadly, Jon Pertwee, like many of the other doctors, is no longer with us, gone to the great blue police box in the sky.

I need to mark another passing though today, with mixed feelings. We were very close, David more so than I, but it doesn’t mean we can’t both feel a sense of bereavement. You see, yesterday, David lost his Mohawk. Shaved it right off. It is gone. It’s passed on! It is no more! It has ceased to be! Expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! It now lies dead and decaying in our bathroom bin. It is an ex-Mohawk. So, you can forget your Michael Jackson, your Mollie Sugden’s Pussy and Farrah Fawcett; I demand a tribute concert in the O2 arena, endless documentaries on the TV, outrageous signs of public mourning and at very least two minutes silence.  I’m thinking there may be a musical and film rights to consider…

David’s Mowhawk: 2005-2009 RIP

I hate my oven. Really I do. And it hates me. There is no question about it. We have officially and irrevocably fallen out. There was never much love there to start off with, but now, nada, zip, nothing but mutual loathing. What, I hear you ask, could have caused such a breakdown in that which should be a mutually supportive relationship? Well, symbiosis only works when both partners gain something from the experience, and this weekend saw the stew that broke the cooker’s back. Well, it wasn’t actually a stew, but that sounded better.  And it wasn’t the cooker that ended up a broken, shattered mess, it was me.

I should explain myself, before venting! When we moved in here the kitchen came equipped with a gas hob and separate electric fan-assisted oven. However, the oven is one of these blessed oven/grill combination things. One unit. I’m not even sure it is fair to use the word ‘combination’, which would at least imply that they had been designed to work together, which clearly is not the case. So, if you have the oven on, you can’t grill anything, and if you want to grill something, the oven is rendered useless. All I can assume is that the ‘genius’ who came up with the notion of these ‘combi-cookers’ has never tried to cook a meal that needs roasting AND grilling at the same time. A good example seems to be almost anything ‘n’ chips, where the chips need 25 minutes in an oven and the ‘n’ needs to be grilled. Can’t do it. The ‘n’ has to be oven-baked whether you like it or not! And let us be honest here, we’re a nation of ‘n’ chips lovers!

Now to add insult to injury, the oven comes with a single shelf and slide-in grill pan. On first inspection you may be forgiven, dear reader, for thinking that this would not present a problem. But how wrong you would be! If this were a game show you’d be hearing the ‘quack quack ooops’ claxon of failure right about now. Wrong answer! To understand the problem I should provide a little information about the design of said stove. The heating element, which has to perform the function of a grill OR to heat the oven, is located, as you would expect, at the top of the ‘box’. There is a fan at the rear to circulate the heat when the oven is in operation. Sensible. Until you consider that the grill pan is a solid block of metal that slides in a third of the way down the oven and acts as a perfect heat shield. Having only one shelf means that I have to use the grill pan as a second level – you just can’t DO roast chicken, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and stuffing balls on a single shelf about 18 inches square! So I’m forced to employ the layering option provided by the grill pan, which then effectively seals off the upper third of the oven, raising its temperature to a degree that even a pot of molten iron might begin to mutter, “It’s a bit on the warm side in here”, and preventing any heat from reaching the poor raw chicken sat in its tray on the lower shelf, failing to break into a sweat let alone turn out with the golden brown crispy skin seen only on roast poultry or TV antiques show presenters.

I mentioned the fan, and those among you equipped with advanced engineering degrees who understand the mechanics of such domestic annoyances will be hopping up and down on the spot, brandishing set squares, blue prints, calculators, smug expressions  and almost wetting yourselves in the need to remind me that the fan is there to circulate the heat. Does it bollocks circulate the heat! The grill pan creates such a superb barrier that all the fan does is shift cold air around at the bottom of the oven, chilling its contents more effectively than the blasted fridge, and intensify the scorching temperatures above the grill to a point where the laws of physics break down!

Now I’m a creative type, I rise to most challenges and I don’t like being beaten by inanimate objects, and even more so ones that clearly have it in for me. I’ve worked out strategies to out-smart the bloody thing. I start off by turning it up full for half an hour, to get it really primed, no grill pan in at this point, just an empty oven that, if Corus sent an engineer round they’d probably be able to certify it for alternative use as a blast furnace. Anything for the upper quadrant needs placing ‘naked’ on the grill pan in readiness for a rapid insertion. The joint, or any said slow-roast item then has to be wrapped in enough tin foil to protect it from temperatures akin to those experienced by the shuttle on re-entry. Whip open the oven door, standing well back and fully anticipating the loss of eyebrows/hair/clothing (NEVER wear synthetic clothes for this part – I’ve found a blacksmith’s apron to be the most suitable, since they banned asbestos). I used to tell people I lost my eyebrows because of the chemo, but the truth, just between you and me, relates far more to a particularly argumentative Shepherd’s pie which struggled a bit as I tried to put it in the oven, causing me to be caught in the flashback. So, slam in your meat (Matron!!!), and shut the door again like your life depends on it – which it probably does unless you prefer to be called Cinders for the rest of your life, but, unlike the eponymous heroine, sadly find yourself lacking in the ball department.

Next, turn down the oven to about 5 or 6 degrees C, but wait for at least another twenty minutes before, with lightening agility and the best oven gloves money can buy, shove in the grill pan, with its contents, and pray that a) you’ve managed to retain enough heat in the lower section to keep cooking the meat and b) ‘upstairs’ has cooled enough to cook (not char) the spuds/Yorkshires.

Delia Smith never has these problems. HER oven always cooks perfectly evenly, at the specified temperature and her, “one I prepared earlier” is always browned to perfection. Cow. I hate her. She lies about Yorkshire pudding recipes (her ‘guaranteed’ toad-in-the-hole came out like a sausage pancake! Bitch!) and her used pots and pans seem to just disappear, instead of ending up in a pile of twisted metal and burnt-on carbon residue that need steeping for several hours before you can even THINK about introducing them to the dishwasher!  I can see what has driven Gorden F’ing Ramsey to his current addiction to profanity though! No wonder Rosemary Shrager always looks like she’s swallowed a wasp – some pimple-faced producer who has never so much as boiled a kettle before has provided them a set with an all-in-one grill/oven nightmare! Don’t get me going on Nigella ‘slowly caress its length with a drizzle of delectable juice and nibble the nuts from your spotted dick’ Lawson! I don’t need to see you seduce a scone, wank a waffle, suck off a sausage or fuck a flan! I just want to be able to cook a decent meal!

I was brought up in the era when celebrity chefs were confined to the radio, occasional guest appearances on The Generation Game (Good Game! Good Game!) or the odd appearance in Black and White when the BBC had run out of anything better to show on a Saturday morning. Yes, I am old enough to remember Fanny Cradock and the (in)famous continuity cock-up which lead to the immortal phrase, “Mmmm delicious! And I hope all your doughnuts turn out like Fanny’s”. I will always remember though, in ‘Butterflies’ when Wendy Craig was trying to make a trifle following the instructions on a TV programme and it all went horribly wrong – the jelly didn’t set, the custard was liquid and she ended up throwing fruit on top of the whole disaster.

And I must admit, I felt waves of empathy for Ria and her trifle recently. We had some friends over for a meal the other night. Nothing too adventurous; I still have to pace myself in terms of what I can do and what I can eat, so the menu was simplistic but safe: French Onion Soup (Oh how we wept), Chicken breasts stuffed with cheese and wrapped in Parma ham (see my previous blog “Did I mention I was wet?” on 3^rd July for the full procurement rigmarole) with garlic bread and salad (out of the garden, no less – the salad, that is, my garlic bread tree failed to deliver this year, despite all attempts to get a baguette to germinate), all followed by fresh fruit salad and coffee. NOTHING hard. NOTHING that the average school-kid couldn’t cook for their Home Economics class (or whatever the current SAT attainment level curricular stipulation pre-defines as what used to be called Domestic Science). All I needed was for my oven to play nicely, just once, and cope with cooking the chicken fillets and garlic bread.

I know how it works, I know the game by now. And for weeks I have been nurturing, complementing and fawning over the oven. Telling it how slim it is looking, how its silhouette is that of an oven half its age, how its sleek lines and perfect curves are even more beautiful than when we first met. I’ve let it watch its favourite programmes on the telly, bought it flowers and chocolates and wine. I even told it that it could see other appliances behind my back (I think it has a thing for the microwave as I sometimes see them winking at each other). Hell, only the other day David pampered it with the oven equivalent of spa treatment: a soak in a bath of essential oils, with candles and the sounds of distant toasters lapping on a Mediterranean beach and a full body scrub.. (Well, a good douse down with Mr Muscle oven cleaner  but I assume that in cooker terms that’s the same thing). All I asked in return was one night of good behaviour.

Do you think ovens get jealous? Maybe it was the fact that we were cooking for someone else that upset it?  But we’re allowed to have friends! We’ve never cheated on it.  It’s not like we were seeing them behind its back or anything. Nothing HAPPENED. Honestly. I promise. We wouldn’t DO that. It was just a meal.

But Hell hath no fury like an oven scorned. And it is more fun to reduce garlic bread to a smouldering cinder in under three minutes, when there are ‘new people’ around to witness the desiccation.  Ah ha! But I had anticipated a degree of oven opposition and was ready with a backup plan. Some bread rolls which just needed 30 seconds of attention with some herbs, butter and a garlic press before hey presto, garlic slices!

A harsh lesson learned though: never underestimate the level of sheer evil that can be inflicted by an oven when it thinks someone is trying to get the better of it. I mean, evil that makes Beelzebub seem like Father Christmas, evil that makes Adolf Hitler seem like he was just a little mischievous.  Pol Pot was a puppy, Stalin a softy. You’ve heard of Ivan the Terrible? Meet Oven the Terrible, his much nastier big brother!

So Garlic bread Mark II is prepped and slipped unostentatiously into the sulphurous pit of Valhalla and I swear, the oven door had not been shut more than 10 seconds when smoke started billowing out from round the edges. The chicken, meanwhile, is shivering in its baking tray on the lower levels, muttering something about brass monkeys (which to the best of my knowledge were not on the original menu) and I think turning blue from cold.  So, keep guests in living room, open patio doors, make comments about ‘someone seems to be having a barbecue, I’m sure I can smell burning’ and turn up music to sufficient decibel level to cover sounds of frantic scraping. Be gone burnt bits, for there is NO plan C!

Luckily, removal of grill tray allowed the near solar temperature to be distributed more evenly around the chicken which did, after much anxiety, several prayers (just in case there IS a god) and a few choice Ramsey-isms, actually start to cook.

25 minutes at 200C my arse! Let’s just say that if I had to swap kitchens with Nigella, she’s have made love to several puddings, a large pot of coffee and half the camera crew before her main course was ready.  Even the more appropriately titled “Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook” would have found itself running way into the News and probably interfering with a weather girl. So part of the meal cooks in about 10 percent of its designated time and part of the meal takes a good extra 90% longer than it should. I suppose mathematically that adds up to 100% and when reduced to an equation everything was actually ready on time! Maths was never my strong point. And the kitchen timer is only any use when the oven agrees to work to the same temporal rules as the rest of reality. Which it doesn’t.

But in the true English traditions of stiff upper lip, carrying on regardless, staring adversity in the face and grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory I soldiered on and managed to drag the soup course out for long enough to cover required extra cooking time. (Here’s a tip you don’t find in Mrs Beeton or for that matter post-prison Martha Stewart : small spoons! If you need more time, ditch the soup spoons, which are tantamount to mini ladles anyway, in favour of tea-spoons, or if you have enough, the spoons one might use for draining veg – you know, perforated to let the liquid drip through. And if you really need more time, give your guests forks and turn it into a party game!)

I’m pleased to say that the chicken WAS cooked in the end, and fears of salmonella were averted, but the garlic bread lived down to all expectations. Still, you can’t go wrong with fresh fruit salad, can you?

Today, having refused to go within 20 yards of the oven for a full 24 hours (a point needed to be made, even if it meant the expense of a take-away) I reluctantly decided to at least wipe down the hob and try to chip some of the charred remains off the grill pan. And it was then that I noticed something for the first time: The manufacturer’s logo on the oven door. Never paid it much attention before. Quick look, register what I thought was the name, good brand etc. But you see, upon closer inspection, it doesn’t say Indesit like I thought. Oh no. Now it all makes sense. When they moved out the previous occupants left me In-de-shit!

Hi there, let me introduce myself. Some of you I’ve met before and some are new faces, but either way, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Adrian’s Blog. Now, usually, he writes this stuff himself but today, as a special treat, he said I could have a go at doing the writing.  Sort of homo-e-write-icism. He has done this to celebrate Independence day. For today I have been given my independence!  You may have noticed that I’ve moved home. I used to reside with lots of other blogs with my cousin, Google Blogger. That was great for a new blog, wet behind the ears, still finding his way in the world. But I always knew there was a bigger world out there, more opportunities, big skies, bright lights! Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot with Blogger and made some great friends there but I’m a big boy now and Adrian thinks it is time I tried to make it in the world on my own. You see, for a young blog like me it is all about making contacts, having people round for a coffee, partying late into the night, and to do that you need your own space, where you set the rules, where you can invite whoever you want. So Adrian and David have created a new home for me. Do you like it? I picked out the wallpaper myself! And the party doors are open!

So, onto the heavy responsibility of content. What would Adrian write about? Well, maybe a story or something topical based on the date? Perhaps revealing a bit of my own life. You see I’m not really very old, in comparative terms. I’m not like some of the more established communication tools like Uncle email, or even Great GrandPa Ceefax. I don’t have a long history, traditions that can be traced back through the generations to the forefathers, such godly entities as the Enigma Machine or Difference Engine No2. , or even further back to the magic lantern machine. I guess that not having such an ancestry impacts the way you view your position in the world.

In my younger days I was alone in the world, undisciplined, childish, until Adrian came along and found me. He adopted me. He taught me how to be a civilised blog, stopped us silly little blogs fighting amongst ourselves. And for a while it was good. But, as often happens, many of us became dissatisfied, we didn’t like being told what to do, we didn’t like it if our pocket money was stopped when we misbehaved. We resented the feeling of being controlled and we couldn’t see that whilst the lessons were harsh they were delivered with our best interests at heart. So we did what all teenagers do. We threw a huge sulk, slammed the doors, stormed about and rebelled at every chance.

We didn’t know any better. You see Adrian or at least his friends, have looked after many developing blogs from all around the world, from Africa, Canada and India, Australia and even China. Ok, so sometimes they may have been a bit heavy-handed, sometimes it may have seemed they wanted to impose their ways on us, but their intentions were good and it is easy to concentrate on the negatives of what history sometimes writes as invasion. After all, what did the Romans ever do for us? Well,  apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, core elements of language, grammar, politics, some for the finest art and music in creation, astronomy, the battery, the pizza, leaning buildings and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?  One man’s invasion is another man’s occupation and imagine what we’d have been like if someone hadn’t taken us all in hand – tribal, unfocused, roaming the wilderness throwing random punctuation marks at each other. But white man come and teach us his ways. Ok, so we have had to give up our homes, leave our families, work for the big boss, and today I’ve earned my freedom. I’ve set forth into the big wide world. What sort of blog will I be?

When I was just a little blog
I asked my server, what will I be
Will I be witty, will I be rich
Will I show .jpg?

Que Sera, Sera,
I wish I had FTP,
My very own HTTP
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

When I was young, my content was plain
Nothing exciting or clever was said
Would I still blossom, would I seek fame
Or would I just bore folks instead?

Que Sera, Sera,
I’ve got my own ISP
I’m better than IRC
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Now I’ve a website all of my own
With link stats, a dashboard and feeds
And content amusing to make you all groan
For any who stops and reads

Que Sera, Sera,
No more SMTP
I even have MP3
The future is here and it’s me
Que Sera, Sera
I love TCP/IP

Ohh, that’s better. Needed to get that out of my system files.  So today I celebrate my independence. I’ll be out later singing “The star-spangled banner-ad” – join me, why don’t you? After all, at some point later today I believe we’re all going to be invaded by aliens – thank fuck we have Will Smith to save us, eh!

I’m wet. Not moist, not even a bit soggy. Very very NOT dry. The sort of wet that would make Saint Swithin think, ‘Maybe they’ve had enough for now – perhaps, on hindsight, forty days and nights was a bit excessive!” (But he’s gonna have to wait until the 15th to condemn us to biblical amounts of persistent precipitation, and anyway, we’re doing quite well enough without his help, thank you!) Wetter than a wet week in Whitby. More moist than a bath full of nuns looking for the soap. Dank doesn’t come into the equation.

We’ve had a few days of blistering heat, high pressure, oppressive atmosphere and no air. I was starting to wonder whether we’d entered a phase of massive coronal discharge, with solar flares scorching our otherwise green and pleasant land. But following some astute scientific investigation, availing myself of one of the most tenacious and analytical minds of our time (well, Google) I can inform you that:

Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 01/2100Z to 02/2100Z : Solar activity was very low. No flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The solar disk was void of spots. The geomagnetic field is expected to remain quiet for the next three days (03 – 05 July).

In fact, the darn thing looks positively spotless, not a black-head in sight. We officially have a zit-free sun! Bloody hell and we only bought that Clearasil at the weekend!

Today, by way of contrast, the manna from heaven is presented in liquid form. Which is typical. Today I needed to venture out. We have invited some friends over for dinner tomorrow and I needed to shop. Well, it is my way of showing I care – somehow getting Tescos to deliver seems to be cheating when it is for a dinner party. Besides, I like to fully examine the plumpness and quality of any breasts before committing – don’t like my breasts too big, my loins too lardy or my plums too pert. Buns have to be beautiful and grapes nicely bunched. A good broddle around in fresh produce is medicine for the soul. But therein lies the challenge, when the shops are separated from me by an excessive over-order of weather. We’re talking serious down pouring here; rain that pelts down with enough ferocity to drill holes in your head. Now I’ve never much been one for trepanning, even when it is meant to release evil spirits from the head – I surely have a few of those – and certainly not in the course of buying a stick of garlic bread! Protective headgear is requited before venturing out. Where’s my pith helmet? Someone’s taken the pith!

So to the shops, cap on head shielding eyes and keeping specs clear, but in the process managing to channel all rain within vicinity into a single torrential stream running down back of neck. I feel assaulted. Nape Rape! Swiftly seek sanctuary in sweltering supermarket where suddenly steaming starts. It’s like walking through smog. You see, the supermarket hasn’t lost any of its heat accumulated over the last week and is now but a pine panel away from being a sauna. Mmmm, there’s a gap in the market: Sainsbury’s Sauna-and-Shop. Bring your own towel. Men and women only on alternative weekends and no canoodling in the bakery department – “Put those baps down Sir”, “No I don’t want to see your Italian sausage!”

I should have remembered that Friday in Salford is Rent-a-Muppet day, a fact that I was reminded about upon entering said purveyors of finest fruit, veg and groceries in the entire kingdom (and yes, I did actually check it out on MySupermarket.com!!! Have a look – I was quite surprised. You can do your online shop just the same as with Tescos or whoever; they compare the prices and let you send your order to whichever worked out to be the cheaper retailer! Well impressed. And Tescos WAS the best value for ‘my basket’ so ASDA can go stick that in their non-representative trolley!) So, back to Muppet-central anyway. Muppet is a particularly appropriate term for most of the people in there – they looked like they all had someone with an arm up their arses working them. Why do people decide that the middle of a narrow isle is the best place to park two trolleys, a pram and basket-on wheels, while they have a good natter about Betty and her recurring corns, or the questionable merits of Tenna Lady? Why do teenage mothers bring the pre-school brats along and then not keep them under control? We have leashes for that sort of thing! Muzzles. You’d not get away with letting a dog loose in there unrestrained, and dogs don’t sneeze all over the mushrooms or try to stick carrots up their noses. Geez, I know it’s hot but lock the buggers in the back of your daddy’s four-by-four; just remember to crack open the window a bit and teach them to not lick the cigarette lighter. It’s not like anyone is gonna kidnap THAT snotty-nosed cabbage-patch reject anyway. No, dear, it isn’t puppy fat when the droopy-nappy, germ-ridden, snot monster can’t survive more than thirty seconds without another, “me wanna sweety now!” Sweetheart, catch it, bin it, kill it. It’s what Darwin would have wanted.

Now I have limited stamina, not a lot of strength for hauling shopping baskets round (even if they ARE cheaper than ASDA’s) so the sight of a checkout with hardly any queue is something of a relief. Except its Mable and Eddie in the queue in front of me. You’ll have met them. They’re in their 90s, tartan shopping trolley, hearing aids, put the ‘less’ into gormless. Sweet, I’m sure, and we’ll all grow old one day, but how many coupons?! How can you have more money-off coupons than items in your basket? Here’s how: only every fourth one is still in date. So, Bekki on the checkout, has to scan every one, and you can tell she’s not happy about this, especially when one is devoid of bar code and she has to flash at the manager for assistance. “No love, that’s your ration book and you used up your allowance for powdered egg and spam in 1953”. Now Mable and Eddie only use cash. Mable’s purse has somehow made it to the bottom of her tartan ‘Speed Shop Deluxe’ basket-on-wheels, and into which have been stacked the several bags of shopping. So out it all has to come amid must frustration and the worry that she has either left the purse at home or had it pinched, probably by the snot-monster. But all is well and the purse turns up, a little battered from its adventure at the bottom of her ‘cart’o’convenience’ and happy to relieve itself of the bulging stash of coinage that Mable’s been secreting away since that nice Mr Churchill was Prime Minister – before he started selling car insurance, Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!

My friend Bekki (It feels we’ve known each other so long now that I’m sure we’ll feature on reciprocal Christmas card lists) has made the fatal mistake of asking if the wrinklies have a Tescos card. Frantic searching through purse, with vacant expression. “We don’t use cards, dear” explains Eddie, presumably thinking that somehow a credit card is required. “It’s for your points. Your clubcard points”. “Oh, no dear, we don’t do them. Just cash.”

Now I know I can be a little unforgiving, but if it is me being asked to pay £9.97, and I have a crisp new £10 note to hand (I suspect she irons them), then I would probably opt for handing that over and getting 3p change rather than counting out the full sum in bronze coins! I tell a lie – there were a couple of 50p pieces in there but you could tell she was parted with them only after much soul-searching and inner turmoil.

Behind me in the queue I now have two barely pubescent mothers who’s conversation seems to be largely about how fit someone called “Lozza” is and whether or not “Bethny’s a lucky cow to have been invited to his party”, which will be “well good, cos everyone’s gonna be there”. I’m not sure how valid, or indeed rare, Bethny’s invitation is if everyone is going to be there anyway, but I suppose it is nice to be asked. The snot monster, bored with queuing and already onto his second packet of ‘flumps’ is busy removing mars bars from the shelf and making a small construction out of them – maybe a fort, it is hard to tell. He’s avidly watched by second child, thankfully strapped into a push-chair (or buggy I think they are these days). Poor thing. Pig-tails pulled so tight it looks like she’s had plastic surgery and an expression of concentration reserved exclusively for the moments preceding the wafting forth of a green mist and the sure knowledge that Mummy will have more than just the shopping to unpack when she gets home. Remind me why I never had kids? Oh yeah, I’m gay. Thank fuck for that!

It might be pouring down outside, but it’s as hot as a blacksmith’s jock strap inside, and twice as humid. I can practically hear the pot of double cream curdling as I queue. Methinks strawberries and cream might end up as a cheesecake at this rate.

But at last my turn has come! Bekki looks at me with the glum disinterest of someone who has had the life sucked out of them and I notice Mable and Eddie now blocking the exit as they rearrange the contents of their ‘shop-o-matic turbo’. Thank heavens all my items scan without incident. I was worried that a missing bar-code might be enough to send Bekki over the edge. She already has the Samaritan’s number tattooed on her knuckles, but what is that I see, poking from her burgundy tabard pocket? Why, an invitation to Lozza’s party, no less! You see, there IS a god, innit!

Back at the car park, trying to straddle the veritable river that is now sluicing under my vehicle and with the distant honk from the horn of a barge that seems to have been misdirected from the Manchester Ship Canal and is heading this way, I load my bags of shopping into the boot. A few cars down I see Mable and Eddie talking to a large, skinny bloke in a black cowl, carrying a scythe. “No, we can’t possibly come now, you see, Friday she has her Bingo. You’ll have to come back another time…”

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