shake it off....

I injected myself for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon in front of an MS nurse in the Queens Medical Centre at the very end of May 2009, shortly after my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.  It was a Tuesday because that happened to be the day of my appointment with the nurse.  Pretty much every Tuesday night since then, starting on Tuesday 2nd June 2009, I've injected myself into the thigh muscle with Avonex beta-interferon 1a.  Occasionally I'll shift the day around by 24 hours or so, depending on what's happening and if I need to catch a flight or something and it saves me carrying needles onto a plane.  Mostly though, I inject on a Tuesday night.  I've never forgotten and never missed a week.

330 times.

Sometimes it hurts.  Sometimes it bleeds.  Occasionally it spurts and very occasionally it gushes.  The needle is a couple of inches long and you have to give it a bit of a run-up to get it into your thigh.  It's certainly no good trying to ease it in.  If you're unlucky, you hit a nerve and jerk the needle straight out of your leg as the muscle twitches, forcing you to start all over again.

Mostly, I inject at home in the kitchen, but I have injected in all sorts of places around the world, including in a campervan parked under the stars on the Great Ocean Road in Australia and outside a tent in Etosha National Park in Namibia.  I often take syringes and needles through security in airports because you can't leave them to travel in the hold in case they freeze, but the only place that I've ever been stopped was by Chinese customs in Hong Kong.  Even then, one look at a doctor's letter and they waved me through.

The routine is mostly the same: I prefer to inject in the evening so as to sleep through the worst of any side-effects.  I take 1000mg of paracetamol and 400mg of ibuprofen and just get on with it.  Some people are so badly affected by side-effects that they stop taking the drug entirely, preferring to take their chances without it.  The worst I get is a headache and a lingering feeling of weakness for the next 24 hours or so.  I often wake up on a Wednesday morning feeling as though I am being gently, but definitely pushed back into the mattress.  It can be a bit of a struggle to get going, but I've never been totally unable to get started in the end.  It might take a minute or so longer, but I seem to shake it off soon enough.

I have blood tests every six months to make sure that the drug isn't having any lingering impact on my liver function.  So far, so good.  I tolerate it well enough, so although there are other therapies available on the market, including some oral treatments, my neurologist has never considered moving me onto something else.

No one has any idea if injecting myself with this drug has made any difference to the progression of my MS.  It's not a cure, and all it claims to do is to maybe increase the gap between relapses, slowing the progression of the disease and therefore slowing the advance of any disability.  I'm doing pretty well, but is this down to the drug or is this the way it was always going to be?  No one knows and there's no way of saying either way.  My view is that I would always rather do something that might be helping than to do nothing, which definitely isn't.

It is what it is.  It's what I do on a Tuesday night and to some extent my life revolves around my weekly injection.

It's not so bad.

Today I gushed.  It's no drama, but it does make a bit of a mess.

coming back for more....

The Robin Hood marathon and half marathon took place yesterday. It’s my local race, with the start within easy walking distance of my house, but I wasn’t there. I was actually entered into the half marathon, but I had other business at Twickenham on Saturday evening (don’t ask), and a lunch in Oxford with a friend making a return visit from Montreal, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to run.

Well, I say unfortunately, but actually I was pretty pleased not to be running. Although I’m clearly not doing the mileage that I was doing when training for the marathon in April, I’m still running four or five times a week and getting through seventy or so miles a month. Over the last few weeks it’s been a bit of a struggle: I’m still doing the miles, but I’m finding them much harder to do and I’m running about a minute a mile slower than I want to be. I thought initially this was down to a week off running when we were on holiday in August, and then I thought it might be down to a lingering cold that left me with a nagging cough. Maybe it’s a combination of both. What I do know is that I’m left feeling as though I have no power when I run; I have a tightness across my shoulders and arms, numbness in my feet and a feeling of weakness and sluggishness in my legs.

Perhaps in the broader scheme of things, I shouldn’t be worrying about running nine minute miles rather than eight minute miles…. But I do worry. Who knows what it might be or if my form will return?

As you might expect, I knew loads of people running yesterday. There were a bunch of colleagues from the office running to raise money for a local cancer respite home we’re supporting this year (I would have been proudly wearing this vest) and, of course, there were loads of people from my running club taking part. The marathon is a landmark distance for most runners, and I’ve found over the last few months since I ran my first at London in April that other runners tend to view you as a “serious” runner if you’ve completed the 26.2 miles of a full marathon. It’s not that you’re not treated with respect if you haven’t done one, it’s just that most runners understand what an undertaking the marathon is and how much time and energy the training takes up. Whatever your finishing time, it’s an achievement that definitely isn’t to be sniffed at. A bunch of guys in the club were running their first full marathon yesterday, and as I run with them a fair bit, they’ve been picking my brains over the last few months. It’s been fun listening to their worries and their ambitions, and yesterday I had a very keen eye out on Facebook to see how they did and to vicariously enjoy their success.  It's also been quite funny to see those, adamant that they would only be running one marathon ever, change their minds almost as soon as they crossed the line.  Well, we've all been there.....

I am glad that I didn’t run yesterday (and had a lovely Sunday lunch in the pub with friends instead), but I won’t lie to you: seeing the camaraderie amongst the runners and seeing how justifiably proud they are of what they’ve achieved, it’s renewed my hunger to get back into form and to push on with training for the London Marathon next year.

There’s miles to go yet before I sleep. Miles to go before I sleep.

just trying to stay positive....

I'm very conscious that, when I write about my multiple sclerosis, I probably come across as excessively stoical.  I think it's true that I do downplay my own symptoms a bit, but I only do so because I am aware of how lucky I really am.  Perhaps that sounds odd, but I like to think about the things that I can do rather than the things that I cannot.  The Guardian posted an article about MS a little while ago, and I commented underneath saying something about how a diagnosis with MS wasn't the end and that you really do still have your whole life in front of you.  I was speaking from personal experience, and I'd just completed a marathon.  This defied my own expectations of what I thought might be possible, never mind anybody else's.  Of course, that comment quickly had a reply from someone:

"I appreciate what you are trying to say but after 5 months at home unable to walk more than 400 metres at a time on the flat in front of our home she has been able to go to the market . There are the highs and the lows . Sometimes the " Hey You could be running a marathon just like me. I have the same illness" has a very negative impact on the perceptions of those with and without the illness."

I understand where this person is coming from, but it just seems like such a negative view of the world that focuses on the things you can't do.  Alright, so maybe a marathon is out of reach for lots of people - goodness knows that it's out of the reach of lots of people who don't have MS - but what about focusing on something that you might be able to achieve instead?  Why wallow in those negative feelings?

Of course, the obvious reply is that it's easy for me to be positive when I'm well enough and fit enough to be able to run a marathon....

I mention this because my diary is currently filling up with various medical appointments with an assortment of specialists, mostly -- but not all -- related to my MS.  I'm trying to keep a positive attitude, but sometimes it can be difficult when it feels as if everything is beginning to malfunction, one piece at a time.

The latest is an issue I've been having with my eyes.  For lots of people, it's problems with their eyesight that first lead to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.   Again, I've been fairly lucky with this so far, but I have had a problem for a number of years where, under some circumstances, the pupil in my right eye doesn't respond properly to changing light conditions.  Usually, it gets stuck shut up tightly, as though I was in bright sunlight, and this means I have blurry vision for a bit until it finally starts to work again a few minutes later.  Just recently, I've been waking up every day with both pupils like that, and it takes a little while for them to adjust and for me to be able to see normally in the morning.

I'm hoping this is just a passing thing, but it's really hard not to think about how massively this could affect my life if it stays like this or gets any worse.  Can you imagine your eyes having a fluctuating ability to focus properly?  I try not to dwell on it, but it is a worry.

In addition, I've been finding running a lot harder.  I can still run at a reasonable lick, but I'm lacking strength and I'm running a lot slower than I would normally expect to and I'm finding myself feeling much more fatigued afterwards.  Maybe it's not that big a deal to be running 9 minute miles instead of 8 minute miles, but it matters to me and I've noticed the difference.  It's true that I've had a cold that's hung around for weeks that could be affecting my energy levels, but I also seem to be losing weight still, and I wouldn't be human if my mind didn't occasionally wonder "what if...."?  

It's the Robin Hood marathon and half marathon this Sunday. I was entered into the half, but as I'm at Twickenham for the England v Wales game in the World Cup, I'm not going to be able to run.... and I'm actually really glad about that.  Some of my friends will be running their first marathons on Sunday, and as I face into the prospect of running another marathon at London next year, the idea of all that training is suddenly both daunting and a little bit frightening.  I've done it all before, of course... but what if it's different this time?

Ah, but it's pointless to worry about these things, right?  There's nothing I can do to change anything that might (or might not) be coming my way so what else can you do but sit back and try and enjoy the ride?

Yes, but that's an easy thing to say and a much harder thing to believe 100% of the time.  Even if you believe it 99% of the time, then there are going to be moments when it all feels a little overwhelming.

freedom of speech won't feed my children....

"1984" by George Orwell @ Nottingham Playhouse, 19th September 2015

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve never read “1984”. I haven’t even seen the film adaptation – made in 1984, naturally – starring John Hurt. Because the book has been so influential and because references to it litter our every day lives, I had a bluffer’s knowledge of the plot and themes, but I was quite excited to really see first-hand an adaptation of such a famous piece of literature. The book was written in 1948, but many of the themes seem to be more relevant than ever before, but by the end of the play, I wasn’t sure whether that was because Orwell was particularly prescient or because so many of the themes of the book have simply been absorbed into our language and into our cultural reference points. I’m not sure that a cheap reality TV show starring a parade of vacuous show-offs was quite what Orwell had in mind, but Big Brother has been on our screens now since 2000, and the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” was well understood long before that. Most people will be familiar too with the concept of “Room 101”, albeit perhaps thinking it’s somewhere that minor celebrities send things that mildly irritate them for our entertainment, rather than somewhere a cage of ravenous rats might be strapped onto your face. We live in a CCTV culture and we read stories of how our emails and mobile conversations are eavesdropped; spin doctors have been selling us “newspeak” for years; hell, even the Architect in the Matrix films seems to be echoing concepts from the book. It works the other way around too: when Orwell writes in 1948,
“Sanity is not statistical – being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad” is he, consciously or unconsciously, echoing Gandhi’s (d. 1948) famous “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth”.

Much of the play just seems so familiar.

So did I enjoy this production, one that’s been very well reviewed and is about to go on a world tour after a successful run in the West End? Hmm. Sort of. At the beginning, there was an awful lot of repetition. You know that thing that Stewart Lee does where he repeats the same joke over and over again, to the point where it stops being funny and beyond… hopefully to the point where it starts being funny again? I hate it when he does that. To me, it’s just repetition and it doesn’t make the joke any funnier as he repeats it and deconstructs it and reassembles it. It is possible to be too clever for your own good. This play reminded me of that, and it took me a good half hour before I started to settle into the plot and to actually begin to find it interesting rather than just annoying (at one point I thought I couldn't be bothered and contemplated walking out). The acting is mostly good; not very subtle perhaps, but decent (and is the stage, darling). The staging was fairly simple, but they made some nice use of off-stage locations and handheld cameras to show us what was going on, albeit it in a slightly over-stylised way, perhaps.  Oh look!  Winston and Julia think they are safe from being observed, but we're observing them on the screen, so that kind of makes us Big Brother, yeah?  Some of it was also visceral and shocking, which I imagine it is entirely meant to be - and hats off to Matthew Spencer as Winston and Tim Dutton as O'Brien in those scenes, as well as to Janine Harouni as Julia.

I’m pleased that I went, but I wouldn’t say that I especially enjoyed my time. Watching the play did, however, make me more determined to actually read the book for myself (and, to be fair, some of my criticisms of the play might derive from the original)…. So I suppose from that point of view, it’s been a success.  A partial one, at least.

1984 does sound like something that was directed by John Hughes and starring Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald though. It really does. I imagine that would be a different kind of beast entirely.
Probably with a much better soundtrack.

got nothing in my brain....

Earworms of the Week

I won’t lie to you, this week’s selection has largely come from my attempts to create a playlist for a seven year old. I’d done a first draft, but listening to it through as I worked my way through a 10 mile run last Sunday revealed to me that the second half was in dire need of something more up-tempo…. So I put my thinking cap on, and my internal jukebox went haywire.

“The Macarena” – Los Del Rio

OK, so this one isn’t going anywhere near the playlist (in case you were wondering)…. But that idiot piece of attention seeking by Matt Dawson around the “Hakarena” has managed to plant the original firmly in my head. New Zealand take the haka far, far too seriously and seem to get offended when anyone “disrespects” it. Apparently, opposing sides should just stand there and let them get a psychological advantage. That said, what the hell was Dawson thinking? If the English should do anything in response to the haka, it should be morris dancing. Now that would be freaky.

“Kiss From A Rose” – Seal

Also not on the playlist, but my colleague Jack was serenading us with this at our desks the other day… and it sure is catchy.

“The World in Union” – Kiri Te Kanawa

Rugby World cup starts tonight, innit. And this was in our choir repertoire for last season, and will be available on our forthcoming CD….

“Everywhere” - Fleetwood Mac

Ah, so now we’re into possibly playlist options. The idea is to find something upbeat, but credible. I’m supposed to be providing some kind of musical guidance, but sometimes it’s a difficult balancing act. I’ve put stuff like Belle & Sebastian, Fleet Foxes & Flaming Lips on the back half of the shortlist, but it’s just too much. I need to be more upbeat without dropping quality. I reckon Fleetwood Mac might fit the bill, but my feeling is it’s probably still a little bit too dreamy for what I’m looking for.

“Johnny B Goode” - Chuck Berry

Mmm. A great song, without doubt and has the massive advantages of being both catchy and up-beat, but I have a feeling that I need to go a little bit heavier on the production values.

“Baby One More Time” – Britney Spears

Oh, now we’re talking. Is this too much for a seven year old? Should I go with “Ooops I did it again” instead? I’ve already ruled out Gaga, after careful consideration of “Bad Romance”

“Waterloo” - Abba

Of course, I could just go back to source and put on what might just well be the perfect pop song. I have taken a long time to come to terms with Abba, and in fact, I used to loathe them… but now I’m older and wiser, I can see the craft in the songs and the image of drunken morons at university bellowing along to “Dancing Queen” has faded somewhat.

“Cannonball” – The Breeders

Or if I wanted something that’s catchy but a lot edgier? Something like this or “Here Comes my Man” by the Pixies? I put “Golden Brown” onto the playlist for her fifth birthday, and that’s about heroin, right?

“Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” - Spiller

SEB at her finest. Catchy, sophisticated…. Or maybe I’ll just go for “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer? Dammit, this is hard.

“Shake it Off” – Taylor Swift

Speaking of the perfect pop song (although I’m not 100% sure about the talky bit, to be honest). Haters gonna hate, potatoes gonna potate.

Have a good weekend and enjoy the rugby, y’all.

bad to the bone...

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to boxsets, I have the best of intentions. The last few years have seen loads of quality tv shows, but if you’re anything like me, you miss the start and, by the time you’ve heard they are worth watching, you don’t want to jump on part of the way through and decide that you’ll just watch the boxset whenever that comes out. And then never quite get around to it. I’ve been fully intending to watch the Sopranos from start to finish for probably more than a decade now. I haven’t watched a single episode yet. I’ve done a bit better with things like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The West Wing, in that I’ve watched bits a pieces of them here and there… but I keep meaning to watch them properly, but still haven’t got around to it. I did watch Band of Brothers from start to finish when it was first on tv, but I still have the box set of the follow-up, Pacific, in shrink wrap next to my DVD player.

The arrival of streaming video services seems to have helped. Amazon Prime offers a number of shows that I want to watch, and I actually sat down and worked my way steadily through all three seasons of Vikings over the last couple of months, and it was great. Ridiculously, it felt a bit of a wrench going back to a physical DVD after streaming, even though it’s barely any additional effort at all to put a disc into the machine to watch three episodes. Luckily, I was able to overcome that absurd inertia to start watching Breaking Bad last week, a box set that I have had for a couple of years now.

Surprise, surprise…. This critically acclaimed TV show turns out to be really, really good. Who knew? I’m now working my way through at a rate of a couple of episodes a day.

I was a little taken aback at how dark it is, which is daft because I knew what the basic premise was before I started watching. But somehow it still took me aback, with a real turning point being the scene with the bathtub in the second episode. It’s gripping. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?

One thing though: If this was set in the UK, it wouldn’t have lasted for five seasons.

I’m not sure what’s next….. Sons of Anarchy, maybe (which I think is on Prime), I probably ought to bite the bullet and buy the West Wing too. Parks & Rec, maybe.

How on earth did we watch TV before? Adverts.... WTF?

confound their politics....

Here’s a question for you: how well do you know the British National anthem?

My reason for asking, of course, is because the new leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has been the centre of a storm over the fact that he chose not to sing the words of the National Anthem at a memorial service to honour those who fought and died in the Battle of Britain. He didn’t “refuse” to sing, he just elected not to.

He’s long on record as an atheist and a republican; if he had decided to sing the song, then he would have been betraying some of his principles and would have been guilty of being exactly the same as every other politician we have who don’t say or do what they actually believe, but instead say what they think we want to hear and will get them elected. Maybe he should pick his battles more carefully and could afford to have avoided giving his enemies a stick to beat him with by mouthing along… but actually I think more highly of him for not doing so. This is what makes him different. Apart from anything else, his presence at the memorial service was paying respect to people who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our freedoms, including our freedom not to sing the National Anthem. In fact, he paid a warm tribute to those servicemen:

“My mum served as an air raid warden and my dad in the Home Guard. Like that whole generation, they showed tremendous courage and determination to defeat fascism. The heroism of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain is something to which we all owe a enormous debt of gratitude. The loss of life – both civilian and military – should be commemorated so that we both honour their lives and do all that we can to ensure future generations are spared the horrors of war.”

Do you see anything offensive or controversial in that? No. Me neither.

Let’s not forget too what our Prime Minister thinks is appropriate at a memorial service.

Apparently, there’s a school of thought that Corbyn should show some respect to our head of state now that he’s leader of the Opposition. Really? Exactly what kind of a hold does the Queen have over our elected Parliament? She’s the only person in the world who isn’t allowed to set foot in the chamber of the House of Commons. She has no power here: never forget that in 1649, Charles I was executed on the orders of Parliament. We did it once, we could technically do it again. In fact, maybe it would be a mercy….she’s had a good innings and doesn’t look happy.

Why should any MP be expected to slavishly bend the knee and sing this servile nonsense if they don’t want to? It’s a dirge. Compare this to something as brilliantly vibrant and defiant as La Marseillaise. My wife’s father was born in England but has lived in France for many years; he refuses to sing God Save the Queen, but used to make the family stand up for the French anthem. Better, he says, to be a citizen of a Republic, even a rubbish one, than to be a subject of her Gracious Majesty.

This brings me back to the lyrics. How well do you know it? It has six verses, for starters:

1. God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen

2. O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

3. Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour
Long may she reign
May she defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen

4. Not in this land alone
But be God's mercies known
From shore to shore
Lord make the nations see
That men should brothers be
And form one family
The wide world over

5. From every latent foe,
From the assassins blow,
God save the Queen!
O'er her thine arm extend,
For Britain's sake defend,
Our mother, prince, and friend,
God save the Queen!

6. Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the Queen!

What utter nonsense. I’m English, and I think it’s rubbish enough…. imagine being Scottish. “Rebellious Scots to crush”? Is it any wonder they want shot of us? “Thy choicest gifts in store, on her be pleased to pour”? Even if you can get past the hideously contrived meter, what the hell is that supposed to mean? You could refuse to sing this rubbish on aesthetic grounds alone, never mind anything else. If you’re a republican or an atheist, it’s a nightmare. I don’t sing it, and I certainly won’t criticise Jeremy Corbyn for not singing it either.  Haven't we got more important things to be talking about?

Meanwhile, whilst this is the hot news in the papers, the Conservative government today put their plan to cut Working Tax credits before Parliament, where it was passed by 35 votes. This makes working people on lower-wages poorer. As the Labour MP, Frank Field said today “In one single move [the chancellor] has destroyed his 2020 election strategy because we heard the very powerful speeches the chancellor made saying the Conservative party was in favour of those individuals who got up in the morning, who did grotty jobs for very low pay and they passed the windows of their neighbours whose curtains were still drawn, who were on benefits. Those individuals who still rise to the work motive in this country, which is so important for both economic and human advance, will know as they pass those windows with the curtains drawn they do so on average with £1,300 a year less in their pocket.”

And we get outraged at someone not singing a stupid, irrelevant song as these trolls gleefully set about making the poorest people in this country poorer. For shame.

The Queen's views on this are unknown. So are God's.

18 and life...

It's eighteen years to the day since I started work at my current place of employment.

Some of my friends find that inconceivable, but in that time, I have done a number of completely different jobs in very different businesses, been outsourced, been insourced and been TUPE-d on no fewer than four separate occasions.  There and back again, you might say.

Twice.

I could have moved many times, and no doubt be earning loads more money somewhere else, but the simple truth of the matter is that work just isn't that important to me and I'm not that ambitious. I earn a decent amount and I generally like the people I work with and the work that I do.  I feel like I can make a difference in what I do, and I like to do as good a job as I can, but at the end of it all, it is just a job.

What more do you need to know?

In the last couple of years, I've had more fulfilment at work than I have in years.  Why? Well, it's because I realised that the only reason I really go to work is because of the people.  It's not the money; it's not the work... it's the people.  This may not be much of a revelation to most people, but it totally changed the way I think about my job and why I do it.  Maybe as a direct result of this realisation, I'm actually happy at work.  Eighteen years is a long time, and it took me a good chunk of that to get to where I am now, but I'd say that was worth the trip. I'm thinner, balder, older but better person than the guy I was when I started work in September 1997.

Perhaps I'd be better off jacking it all in and doing something more obviously worthwhile or by writing a novel or something.    Maybe I will.

Maybe I'm wasting my talent, but I'm not dead just yet and the only person whose opinion on that really matters is my own.  Besides, if I hadn't started work here, I wouldn't have met my wife....

Eighteen years!

Eighteen years, man and boy.  Hardest game in the world.

golden, fallen heart...

I had my hair cut at the weekend.

This is not a remarkable or unusual occurrence. It happens every three or four weeks. I like to keep my hair short, and this means pretty regular trips to the barber. I do own a pair of clippers, but the only time I ever tried to do it myself, I made a mess of it and haven't really be inclined to do it again since. C. used to do it for me, but although it saved me £8 a time, the cost was high in other ways (mostly that my hair is incredibly spiky and gets bloody everywhere when cut) .... and anyway, I don't mind a little natter with the barber once in a while.

Normally, I go on my own. But this week, C finished her coffee in town early and was waiting for me whilst I was still in the chair. An old colleague of mine was there too, and as we went to his wedding, my wife was happily making conversation with him as the final touches were put to my new 'do'.

When I joined them, C. cast a glance across my head and made some remark about how I now seemed to have a secondary bald patch developing, and that the two would surely meet before too much longer.

Charming, right?

She's right, of course.  There's not much point denying it.  I haven't had a fringe since about 1994.

The thing is though, I just don't care.  I realise that running a weblog with lots of pictures of myself might lead you to think otherwise, but I don't think I'm an especially vain man, and hairloss doesn't really bother me at all.  I actually started having my hair clippered before I realised that I was going bald (which wasn't until I was about 22 anyway), and it's been getting shorter and shorter ever since.  It's only this long now because of the beard.  When I'm clean-shaven and my hair is properly short, my wife likes to call my overall appearance my "chemotherapy look"... no hair and sunken cheeks.  Charming again, no?  She's a keeper for sure.

Thinking about it, it's remarkable that only two people in the last couple of years since I've had the beard have amusingly suggested that my head is on upside-down.  But as the bumper slogan on a Wicked Camper we saw in Australia put it, hair is a waste of testosterone anyway.  Have you seen what young people do with their hair?

another city goes by in the night....

Earworms of the Week

"The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" - Harry Belafonte

I often find myself so full of song that I simply can't contain myself and it bursts out of me. This often happens in the strangest of places. I once scared the life out of someone when skiing past them on a mountain, singing "Folsom Prison Blues" at full volume. I also spent a very happy ride up a chairlift, possibly on the same trip, by singing this beautiful bit of classic Harry Belafonte. I'm not sure what everyone else on the chairlift thought, but I really enjoyed myself. I'm keen to suggest this as a song for a future season at choir too. Quite apart from what a great bass part it would be, I can't help but wonder that, if we sang "It Must Be Love" by Madness in a cockney accent, what on earth would we make of this? And wouldn't it sound splendid?

"Ironic" - Alanis Morrissette

Memorably used (along with the rest of "Jagged Little Pill") by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in "A Trip to Italy", but for some reason well beyond my ken, has been stuck in my head all week. It's catchy, isn't it? And no, please don't bother yourself to tell me how ironic it is that Alanis doesn't really know what irony is. It's a song, innit. It's just a song.

"Tsunami" - Manic Street Preachers

Not a favourite of mine, but that opening guitar is going round and round. I must listen to this album, actually... stopping before the abomination that is "SYMM" comes on at the very end of the record. Worst song the Manics ever recorded? Well, for my money it is.

"We're Doing a Sequel" - The Muppets

It's that time of year again where I get to play musical godfather and make a birthday CD for the daughter of a friend of mine. It started for her fifth birthday, when I started with 5-4-3-2-1 by Manfred Mann. Last year opened up with the beautiful Burt and Ernie song, "My Favorite Number is six".... and now I need to think of an opening track that features the number seven. An early candidate was "Seven Days" by Craig David, but I'm not honestly sure that it's child friendly. The Clash, maybe? Seven Nation Army? In preparation, I've been absorbing the playlist that I made last year. It's hard to go wrong with this as a choice for the second track on your second CD, eh? Great song. I might put some Taylor Swift on this year. And Toto. And the Wombles. Nothing if not eclectic.

"Boris the Spider" - The Who

It's that time of year when spiders start coming indoors. As everyone knows, spiders speak with a scottish accent (a bit like private Frazer from Dad's Army). Our cat brought an earwig into the house the other day, and left the poor thing stunned on the carpet. We both peered at it.
"I think he looks Scottish too"
"He looks more Scottish than a spider does"
"Nope. Spiders are definitely Scottish"
"Ok"
This is the level of conversation in our house.

"Dry Your Eyes" - The Streets

Mike Skinner was ahead of his time, I think. He unique blend of styles sounded like nobody else fifteen years ago, but either the mainstream has come back towards him, or he's been massively influential, because this sort of style of thing feels much more common now. Maybe both. I quite like the version of this featuring Chris Martin off of Coldplay, but you can't go much wrong with the original. Plenty more fish in the sea.

"Gone Daddy Gone" - Violent Femmes

Another song with a killer intro. This popped into my head because I was thinking about Gnarls Barkley, who covered this... and although their version is decent, it's really not a patch on the original....

"Moonlight Shadow" - Mike Oldfield

Good grief. Really, brain? Really? Forever linked in my head with Dave Angel, Eco Warrior.

"Any Other Freckle" - Alt-J

I've just booked a couple of tickets to see them perform at Nottingham Arena in the winter. They seem an unlikely stadium band to me, but apparently it absolutely works (they've played Madison Square Garden, for goodness sake). You'd imagine they're too niche and awkward, but if a bunch of gibbons like Kasabian can do it, doesn't it warm the heart when an actually interesting band makes it. No one can tell me that this is a sexy song, though. If that's how you think it's done, mate, then I think you're doing it wrong.

"7 Days" - Craig David

Wasn't garage all basically rubbish? Did Bo Selecta ruin Craig David's career? Maybe he just wasn't all that talented.  He's no Mark Morrison, for starters.

"Wasted Years" - Iron Maiden

"Somewhere in Time" is not my favourite 'classic' Iron Maiden album by a long shot, although I did used to have the poster on my wall. I've been listening to some old Iron Maiden this week though, and it's always a real pleasure when this pops up. I remember when I was abotu thirteen and it was always a real triumph when Maiden got any airplay on the radio (even when they had a number one single!). Imagine my surprise to read a full, balanced review of their latest album in the Guardian, of all places. Maybe after all this time, they're finally becoming respectable. They're a landmark band for me and I really need to put more effort into listening to some of their more recent albums, because they're a great band and the music is still really good. You can't always be listening to "Powerslave".

Well, actually, maybe you can. It's brilliant.

That's it. Have a good weekend, everyone!

I'll be gone and you'll forget...

I had my bike stolen this week.

At some point between going to bed at midnight on Monday night and coming downstairs a little before 7am the next morning, someone came into our garden, ripped the hasp of the padlock off the shed and stole our bikes. It was a pretty clean job: nothing else seemed to be missing and I couldn’t even find the screws they’d pulled out of the door to get around the padlock. They’d just come in through the back gate and probably left a couple of minutes later with our bikes. Job done. They would have clicked on the security light as they passed, but my bedroom is on the other side of the house, and I doubt I would have seen or heard a thing anyway. For all I know, my cat might have popped by for a tickle from them, the floozie.

Unfortunately, these things happen. I’ve been told that I seem remarkably phlegmatic about the theft, but to be honest, what can you do? Far better that someone breaks into my shed and nicks the bikes than tries to break into my house and nick some stuff that isn't as easily replaceable. It’s not very nice to know that someone has helped themselves to my stuff, for sure, but it feels somehow far less personal that they only went in the shed. The bikes were insured, so it’s mostly about the inconvenience.

Thanks to this burglary, and because my bike is the main vehicle for my commute, I was forced to drive to work for a couple of days this week, and I have been reminded quite how much I hate it. It’s not just the traffic, either (although it is that too: I left work on Monday night at exactly the same time as a 50-odd year old guy who rides a bike as though he’s riding a penny farthing. As I was sat in a queue of traffic at the last set of lights before I turn off the main road for home, he cycled serenely past me. So, apart from anything else, it’s just quicker on a bike, even when there isn't much congestion). I miss getting up in the morning and feeling first-hand what the day is doing. Having that fifteen-or-so minute gap between home and the office or between the office and home, when the simple act of pedalling seems to clear the mind and relieve stress. I might not exactly feel the wind in my hair, but I do get to see the turning seasons and the baby bunnies and things like that. It just felt wrong coming to work wearing a proper jacket rather than my bike stuff. Maybe I’m just a creature of habit and hated the change to my routine (showering at home in the morning? What fresh hell is this?).

Luckily for me, I had another bike in storage: the road bike that I used to use for triathlons and decided was a bit too lightweight for a daily commute. It was locked up in the storage facility with C’s really expensive bike. Last night, when C. got back from Turkey and was able to let me into the storage, I picked up that bike, pumped up the tyres and was happy to get back in my normal routine this morning. Then it becomes about the smaller inconveniences: I still have my bike lights, but the brackets they sit in were on the bike; my D-lock was attached to the bike... stuff like that, and because I got the bike on a cycle-to-work scheme, I have to inform my employer of the theft, but they clearly haven’t built a process to handle that….. ugh.

The police have told me to keep an eye on sites like eBay and Gumtree, as stolen bikes apparently often turn up on there and they don’t hold out all that much hope of catching the culprits otherwise (it happens a lot round here, I'm told.... so perhaps I'm lucky that, in all the years we've lived here, this is the first time for us.  For ages, I actually used to keep my bike under a cover outdoors, for goodness sake.

If I do see our bikes listed, it will be interesting to see how much they’re asking. I’m not sure a fairly heavily-used and very dirty commuting workhorse that you need to be a giant to ride will be worth all that much.

What a shame if it turns out to be barely worth the trouble stealing it.

ring ring

Yesterday evening, my wife came into the house from the car clutching a ring. “What’s this?”
It was a woman’s ring. Metal with a decorative stone. Not really expensive, but not a cheap piece of crap either.
“Where did you find that?”
“In the cup holder in the car. Any ideas where it came from?”

I racked my brain and came up with nothing. Why on earth would there be a woman’s ring in my car that didn’t belong to my wife? I looked at my wife, and began to understand why she might have been asking the question.

Um.

I barely use the car. I cycle to work, and between the two of us, over the last three years, we have covered a grand total not much more than 12,000 miles. As a result, I don’t really keep all that much in the car… a spare pair of sunglasses, an atlas (once your satnav has tried to route you up the most ridiculous road in the world on Dartmoor, you soon remember the merits of an honest-to-goodness atlas), the service log book and a cable for connecting my iPhone to the stereo. Apart from various discarded tickets from various car parks, that’s about it. And if I don’t use the car very often, then you can imagine how rare it is to have a passenger who might then perhaps have left something behind. Never mind a *female* passenger.

At least I could explain why the ring had turned up now. We had the car cleaned last weekend, inside and out. They must have found the ring on the floor somewhere as they vacuumed and popped it into the cup holder for safe keeping. That was pretty honest of them, to be honest. We never would have known the difference if they’d just decided to pocket it. Good for them.

Meanwhile, my wife loomed over me for an answer.

Then I had a very distant memory of one of my colleagues losing a ring that she loved. I sent her a photo straightaway to see if was hers, and she confirmed that it was, indeed, her long lost and much cherished ring. Now all that remained was to try and remember why this ring might have ended up in my car. Why on earth would she have been in my car? To be honest, I’m not sure that my wife was all that reassured to hear that the ring belonged to my 26 year-old colleague. In fact, this fact probably raised at least as many questions as it answered.

We eventually worked it out: apparently I gave my colleague a lift to Birmingham airport for a day-trip we took to Dublin for work. She was running late when we met up at silly o’clock in the morning, so she had all her jewellery in her bag. By the time she realised the ring was missing, we were on the motorway and she just assumed she’d lost the it in the car park.

The date of that trip to Dublin? May 2014.

Well, I guess that shows how often I clean the car, anyway.

angels in the architecture....

Earworms of the Week

“Losing My Religion” – R.E.M.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” – Nirvana

I was listening to both of these records this week, and two thoughts struck me. The first was that both still sound ridiculously good, twenty-five years after their initial release. The second was that it seems absurd now to think that a band like R.E.M. or a band like Nirvana could ever be the biggest band in the world…. And yet both of them were. It would be easy to think that it could never happen again, and that the charts now are mostly just filled with anodyne, disposable crap. But really, was it all that different in 1991? Maybe in a garage somewhere, the next Kurt Cobain or Michael Stipe are sharpening their act and getting ready to take the world by storm. We can but hope. If Miley Cyrus and 1D are the best that we have to offer, then we certainly need it. They are extraordinary records though, aren’t they? (although, clearly Smells Like Teen Spirit now makes me think of that guy with a shovel)

“Calm Like a Bomb” – Rage Against the Machine

RATM have a facebook page that occasionally throws out posts asking for people to nominate their favourite Rage songs. Some songs are obviously prominent in any poll like that, but when I had a quick look down the nominations this week, this song jumped out at me. I think it’s an almost perfect distillation of everything that made RATM a great band: it’s furiously angry and the lyrics are spat out over a wicked guitar riff. Listening to David Cameron this week, this is also quite a lot like how I’ve felt. Well done to the Great British public for showing with every old pair of shoes and tents that they take to their local collection centre, whatever the newspapers and the rise of people like Nigel Farage may have us believe, at heart we are a compassionate people.  FEEL THE FUNK BLAST!

“Tied up in Nottz” – Sleaford Mods

Partly because of the lyric: “Weetabix, England, fuckin' shredded wheat, Kellogg’s cunts”, but also because Sleaford Mods are a breath of fresh air with every foul-mouthed line. I can’t remember the last time I heard lyrics this vital. Besides, who hasn’t woken up with shit in their sock?

“America! Fuck Yeah” – Team America: World Police OST

In my head, this is definitely the American national anthem. Rather worryingly, if you read the comments on YouTube, there are plenty of people who seem to seriously believe that this should *actually* be the US anthem, because it sums up their attitude to their country and the rest of the world. I think maybe this explains Donald Trump.

“Satellite of Love” – Lou Reed

A great song rendered divine by David Bowie’s sublime backing vocals.

“No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” - Sufjan Stevens

An album born out of the grief from his mother’s passing, “Carrie and Lowell” is compelling listening. There’s an article on the Guardian today talking about how music can ease grief, using this album as an example, with the writer explaining how it helped him enormously after the death of his father. I’m lucky enough that I haven’t had to deal with grief like that yet in my life, but the final “fuck me, I’m falling apart” on this song is emotionally devastating.

“Livewire” - AC/DC

Not one of their better known songs, but it’s one of my favourites. I don’t imagine that AC/DC are a band that get accused of subtlety very often, but this song is definitely subtler than their usual standard. Not a very high bar, admittedly……

“White Winter Hymnal” - Fleet Foxes

One of my favourite records and I was delighted to see that it was included in the list of songs we’re singing for the Autumn season at choir, which starts next week. It’s a beautiful record and works well in a vocal harmony (as Pentatonix do here)…. Although the bass part of that is mostly, “Dum dum, dum dum, dum dum, dum dum. Ooooh oooooh ooooh ooooh. Dum dum, dum dum.” Such is the life of a bass. We seem to do alright on “Stay Another Day” and the Wombles Christmas song though, so it’s all good.

“You Can Call Me Al” - Paul Simon

Someone at work was going on today about how they absolutely hated this song, and thought it was stupid and boring. Apart from immediately stimulating a conversation about how this was clearly nonsense, everybody in our immediate vicinity then started spontaneously humming the song…. As evidence that a song isn’t stupid and boring goes, that’s not bad.  What lyrics too:

A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

Also, can you name a song with a more memorable bass solo?

I’ll leave that thought with you and wish you all a splendid weekend………..

(oh, and look at what a thoughtful, balanced review Iron Maiden get for their new album... in the Guardian of all places! It really must be the end times.)

he's gone away...

Refugee Blues - WH Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

--

Amazing how one picture can completely turn around the opinion of most of our national press overnight, eh?  Even the Daily Mail, for goodness sake.  And the Sun, who earlier this year had an article describing migrants like these as "cockroaches".

It's sad that this has been happening for months and we did very little, but at least that seems to be changing now (there's been a fifteen-fold rise in donations to one charity overnight). If only there was an expression in the English language to reflect how a single picture can often have so much more impact than any number of words.

anger is an energy....

I'm sure that you've seen the terrible pictures from Turkey and from Greece as Syrian refugees desperately try to reach Europe.  I won't republish them here, but if you want to see them, then you can go and look at them over on the Guardian.

Shocking, isn't it?

There's been some debate on my feed on Facebook about how it's a step too far to publish and share these pictures; that we know that the death of a child is awful and we don't need to have those photos of a personal tragedy for one family shoved in our face.

I disagree.

Those pictures are hard to look at, and they should be shocking.  But it also serves an important purpose: it reconnects us with the fact that these people are human beings who are desperately fleeing a conflict zone.  In spite of what you may have read in your newspaper, they are not trying to come to Britain because they are seeking an easy life with free money and housing and healthcare.  They are fleeing their homes and leaving almost everything behind them as a last resort; they are risking their lives in a desperate attempt to get themselves and their families to somewhere safe.  From the other side of Europe, it seems to be easy for us to forget that.

As Herman Melville once wrote: 'Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."

It's easy to feel helpless, but there are things that you can do to help.

Oxfam have a page where you can donate to their response to the Syrian crisis.

If those images of that little boy on the Turkish beach have moved you, then Save the Children have a page where you can make a donation.

If you want something a lot closer to home, then my friend Abigail met a man today who is trying to raise £2,500 to fill a van with essentials to help the refugees in the camps at Calais.  You can pledge to help him towards his target here.

Meanwhile, our Prime Minister David Cameron, recently re-elected by the Great British public with a full majority in the House of Commons, is busy telling everyone that Britain is full and couldn't possibly take in any more refugees.  Germany will take in 800,000 migrants this year, and apparently we're looking at a maximum of 1,000 Syrian refugees (280 so far!).  Nigel Farage doesn't even believe that these people are genuine refugees.

Not good enough.  Nowhere near good enough.  Embarrassing, in fact.  We should be FURIOUS about this... at the very least, we should share those images to shame our spineless government into action and we should reach into our own pockets to help where we can.

Labour have made a right mess of things recently, but Yvette Cooper had it about right when she said today, "“Hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing from a new totalitarianism and Europe has to help – just as we did in generations past. We cannot carry on like this. It’s immoral, it’s cowardly and it’s not the British way.”

And here's Jeremy Corbyn:

"Nobody could fail to be moved by this harrowing and heartbreaking image, it should remind us of the situation facing millions of people desperately fleeing a terrible civil war. The government's response to the refugee crisis has been wholly inadequate, and we are being shamed by our European neighbours. It is our duty under UN law, but also as human beings, to offer a place of safety, and play a role internationally to share our responsibilities, and to try to end the conflict."

I'm sad and a little ashamed that this needs to be said. And people think Corbyn is a radical outsider.

waterfall....

I had my bladder scanned today. Well, I suppose there’s a first time for everything.

It was essentially an ultrasound to determine how much fluid remained in there after an evacuation.. If there’s more than about 150ml left in there immediately after you’ve had a pee, apparently that’s a sign that you’ve got a functional problem. I had 37ml, which I’m told was pretty good. Nothing to worry about, anyway.

Of course, my visit to the continence clinic this morning is yet another gift of my multiple sclerosis. MS has affected my muscle strength, and the worry is that some of the muscles that have been affected are the ones that control my bladder. It’s apparently relatively common for people with MS to experience a number of bladder-related issues, from leakage to full-blown incontinence. In my case, I’ve had a problem where my bladder doesn’t seem to empty properly, leaving me with an urge to pee almost immediately after I’ve just been. Under some circumstances, I also get a rush bladder, where I suddenly get a desperate urge to pee. As you can imagine, none of this is much fun. I mentioned it to my neurologist last time I attended the clinic, and I got referred to the continence clinic.

Before attending, I was asked to keep a diary for a week detailing my visits to the toilet. It was quite instructive. The very act of journaling each visit forces you to think about your visits. I’ve always been one of those people who goes to the toilet when it’s convenient, not necessarily when I have a desperate urge. After all, the wise man goes when he can and not when he has to, right? Well, perhaps not. As I charted each visit, I became much more aware of how often I go out of habit rather than out of necessity: I go before I eat my lunch and before I got to a meeting…. Whether I need to go or not. If you can squeeze out a bit, then it’s worthwhile isn’t it? Actually, maybe not.

The average person apparently pees between 5 and 8 times a day. According to my charts, I usually went 7 or 8 times, but occasionally went 10 or 11 times or more, with several visits in quick succession. My MS may indeed be affecting my bladder function, but the nurse in the clinic this morning suggested that I start trying to re-train my bladder (and my pelvic floor muscles) and to be much more aware of going when I need to go. I reckon I can work on that. Immediately after I got to work this morning after the clinic, I felt like I needed to pee at around 11:30. I said to myself that I would try and hold on until 12:00, and I actually made it all the way to 15:30. One possible explanation for this new found bladder resistance was that I didn’t have any coffee at all this morning. I would usually have a cup of fresh coffee from a cafetiere as soon as I get to my desk, but not today. The nurse at clinic suggested that, if my bladder function looked fine, then the problem was likely to be bladder irritation. Did I drink coffee, because caffeine is both a diuretic and a bladder irritant? Hmm.

Slightly reluctantly, I bought myself some decaffeinated tea on the way to work and didn’t make any coffee when I got in. One swallow does not a summer make, but it’s definitely given me food for thought and ample reason to think about what I drink. Actually, I’ll probably keep my morning coffee in my routine for now, but if I stop drinking caffeine after 10am, then I’ll see if it has any positive effect on my bladder later on in the day. Perhaps the clipper tea I bought isn’t very good, but the major drawback of decaffeinated tea that I’ve noticed so far is that it just doesn’t taste as malty as I’d like. But, if the alternative is to resort to medication (and maybe catheterisation), then it’s definitely worth giving it a shot,eh? I don’t actually find caffeine to be much of a stimulant: it doesn’t stop me sleeping if I have it after dinner and, although I drink proper coffee every morning, I don’t miss it when I don’t have it. Cutting it out of my life shouldn’t really be all that much of a wrench. I’ll give it a go, anyway. The nurse mentioned that probiotics might help too, so I’ve added them into my morning pill routine along with the fish oil, vitamin D, vitamin B complex, glucosamine sulphate and the magnesium & calcium that I take every day too. Why the hell not? Many more and I’ll be able to stop eating breakfast.

You guys are cool with this level of sharing, right? I’m pretty much set on full-disclosure when it comes to my MS, so...... I guess it's too bad if this is TMI.

**UPDATE**  There's a great fact sheet on Bladder issues and MS available from the ever-brilliant MS Trust.  Access it here.  I'm off to download a bladder diary app for my phone.  Oh, the glamour!