Reason to be grateful!

I went out to lunch a week last and didn’t come back home for eight days!

It wasn’t the food, you understand – my lunch was excellent (and slimming) with special excellence reserved for the Tast home made tiramisu, oh, and the excellent sangria.  But basically within the limits of my regimen.  Sort of.  The real problems with the day started, or perhaps continued, when we walked from the meal to the post office to get the latest instalment in the series of archaeological books from National Geographic that was waiting for me there.

I took a few paces and had to ask for Toni to stop while I got my breath back.  This was not normal and we headed for our local medical centre.  There, because of the suggestion that my condition might be connected to the heart we were seen in super quick time and were talked to by a very personable doctor who went through the usual tests.  At the end of the series, we waited for a new prescription to be offered, but instead we were told in a matter-of-fact sort of way that I should go to hospital and that an ambulance had been called and I was placed in a waiting wheelchair.  Protocol.

There is nothing that concentrates the mind more than an immanent ride in an ambulance.  Looking out at the passing motorway and the cars and lorries on it through the semi-frosted panes of glass in the ambulance windows I had the semi-detached feeling of someone who has been suddenly placed in an oddly disorientating position of a person whose very physical stability had been called into question.

I was processed efficiently and I was soon wearing one of those terminally unflattering white cotton smocks, lying on an unnecessarily uncomfortable wheeled bed with a chest full of stuck-on electrodes.

Although I spent an uneasy night, it was as nothing compared to Toni’s night of absolute torture on a stock issue metal hospital chair!

For anyone who has been in hospital the contents of the next days will be familiar: blood tests, blood pressure readings, temperature readings, radiological tests, and on and on, day after day.  At least I progressed to a more comfortable bed!

Rather than give a daily account of my time there, I will choose a few instances of what happened and leave it at that.

“Your chest is too hairy!” remarked one radiologist who was ripping off electrodes as she spoke, and removing clumps of said hair at the same time.  Indeed, in hindsight, I would shave my chest were I to go into hospital again.  Not only is removal of the electrodes somewhat painful, but also if you have to sleep with electrodes attached (and if you are a restless sleeper as I am) then each toss and turn will dislodge a lead and fumbling to replace them is a hit and miss matter and lord alone knows what my erratic reconstruction actually did to the readings!

If your diet stipulates that it is very low fat and salt free, then most commercial eateries are going to struggle to give you something appetizing.  The soups that I was offered were generally insipid and one or two were impossible to define in terms of what they might have been made of!

The first meal that I was (eventually) given was of a series of small yellow sausages that looked, frankly odd.  I cut one of them open and I was unable to identify what the interior of those cylinders might be composed of.  I ate them.  All.  I was hungry.  But I was no nearer to identifying what I might have eaten.  They remain imprinted on my memory, though not on my taste buds.

My next evening meal was of some unidentifiable and completely tasteless white fish fillet garnished with a slice of lemon.  The lemon tasted like the smell of cheap toilet cleaner, but again, I ate it all.

I don’t want to be unfair to the hospital, these were two stand-out awful meals, the others that I had during my week’s stay (given the restrictions of my diet) were more than acceptable and they certainly made the most of the limitations that they had to work with to ensure that we had something half-way tasty to eat.  Though, I have to say, it was never more than halfway!

Meals were one way of ordering the day.  Whatever else was going on, the times of our meals was the one certainty in our ward lives.  Once one meal was finished we could start thinking about the next.  Given the tests, scans, blood taking, pressure measuring, injecting, pill popping, temperature taking and consultations, it is hardly surprising that any form of stability is more than welcome when intrusive but essential things are being done to you!

I didn’t manage to sleep for any real length of time for the first five days in hospital.  The bed that I was first put on was extraordinarily uncomfortable.  I sleep on my side and that was not a possibility on that bed of pain.  It is also very difficult to get any rest when you are linked via stick-on electrodes to a machine that bleeps, buzzes, flashes various colours and periodically inflates a blood pressure cuff.  To say nothing, of course, of the abnormally normal sounds of an emergency unit at work 24 hours a day and therefore through the night.

When I was eventually taken from the emergency unit to a four bed ward, it was quieter outside the ward but there were different noises to cope with inside.  

All of the members of our ward needed oxygen and all the ways of delivering it to individuals come with their own sound signatures.  The quietest one is the nasal feed where a tube is looped over the ears and under the nose where two small tubes jut out and into the nasal orifices.  This type just adds a low level hiss to the sound landscape.  The nose and mouth mask is louder and makes a variety of noises depending on the intensity of the oxygen flow and whether a medicinal filter had been added.  The worst form of delivery was a small portable machine with a larger diameter tube which, when turned on sounded like a jackhammer!

Then there were the noises of the men.  I know that I snore, but I didn’t have an opportunity to add my orchestral part to the nocturnal symphony of groans, shouts, wheezes and coughs that was a normal night.

The day started at some time after 6 in the morning as each patient was attended to.  One man had to be changed; another had to have his blood sugar level checked.  The lights would come on and go off again and again as the day got under way.

After a breakfast (for me) of a couple of small French toast rounds with some sort of fruit slime, together with something I have not had for over 25 years: a cup of milky instant coffee!

The most interesting test that I had was in radiography where, lying on my side with the operator’s over me so that my side was firmly lodged under her arm, I heard the actual sounds of my pumping heart and the different sounds that different parts of it made.  

And that is one of the things about being in a hospital and undergoing the probes that the doctors have to make: all that it inside is brought to the outside.  You can see the beats of your heart, you can hear the sounds it makes, you can see the force of your breath, and you can count the oxygen level of your blood.  Your internal organs become photographic images.  No part of your inside or outside is away from prying eyes!

The end of the investigation was that I had a thrombosis in my right leg, that thrombosis had probably been the cause of pulmonic embolisms that effected both my lungs and had some slight effect on my heart.  I had had, in effect, the equivalent of a heart attack but in my lungs.  I was told that it was serious and that I was lucky that it had been discovered before it was too late.

For the next six months or so I will have to alter my way of life and take things easy.  For the next two weeks I am confined to the house and I have been told to do the minimum of moving about and if I have to, to do it slowly.  

After two weeks I might be able to go for a very short walk and gradually build up my distance bit by bit.  My swimming (1,500m every day) has been terminated.  Perhaps in a couple of months I might be able to do four slow lengths of breaststroke.  I cannot use my bike.  I cannot drive the car for a couple of months.  And so it goes on.

And I don’t really feel ill!  If I take a deep breath I can tell that there is still some sort of tension, but, basically, I feel fine.  But I’m not, and I have to keep remembering that simple fact if I want to get better.  And believe me, I do!

I am very grateful for the care and attention that I received in Viladecans Hospital from doctors, nurses, orderlies, cleaners and caterers: it was exemplary and there is no doubt that their ministrations have saved my life.  

I will never forget that.

Where are they now and what have they done?

As Noel Coward never wrote, “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap cardboard is!”

This seemingly nonsensical perversion of the original quotation was in my mind because Toni is clearing out boxes of things that he has not looked at for years.  As I was typing on the third floor I could hear little squeaks of pleasure from a floor below as each old-new item was brought into the light.

Lots of them were tickets: a ticket to a Wales v Italy game in Cardiff; a ticket to “We Will Rock You; another to The Tower of London; an entry to an ‘adventure’ park in Mexico; a ground plan of the Prado in Madrid; a year book showing me with 11D, my last form; a stand ticket to Cardiff City; a ticket for the Mecano musical in Madrid – these ageing pieces of card, some from almost twenty years ago were not just reminders of places visited, but also with whom, and the development of a relationship.

The speed with which plan, followed ticket, followed photograph was a breathless cavort through a couple of decades of life past and a consequent focus on life present.

This ripping open of memories actually chimed in with a piece of writing that I was attempting to start that centered on somebody musing about where his schoolfriends were now.  As I wanted to portray a retired person (like myself) I was thinking about how many of my schoolfriends I knew about.  They are now all of retirement age, so how many have I kept track of?

And the answer is very few.  

With confidence I can only claim to know one friend form my schools and he I have now known for fifty-six years.  

Of my class from Primary school I now know no one.  The lives of the two classmates that came with me to the same high school are closed books now.  One classmate from my area of the city I know about because he is a national figure.  Just two people out of thirteen years of education!

My secondary school produced professionals, so the probability is that the majority of my fellow students became doctors, teachers, researchers, engineers, academics, managers, businessmen, media sorts, thriving in their chosen professions, becoming well known within their own circles, but not achieving break out international fame.

I wonder if, like those pieces of card unearthed from an ignored plastic case, there would be a similar breathlessness, if all the grown up kids that I have been educated with could be brought together and what we have (or haven't) achieved through the years would amount to.

Speculation, but interesting speculation.  What difference have we made.  Though talking about a 'we' when it is merely a concept as there is nothing 'real' to link us all, apart from the happenstance that we shared teachers at some times in our lives and well before we had started out on our chosen professions.

My father always said that he never went to reunions because, "You send the first five minutes saying what you are doing now and then you get down to the real purpose of these affairs, drinking!"  And my father was no great drinker!

Perhaps speculation is best safely left to subject matter in literature - or even what I might write!

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Lean times?

 

 

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I do admire a country where it has the good grace to rain during the night.  This morning, bright sunlight and a brisk 14C to stimulate the circulation of the blood.

Although wittering on about the weather is enticing, it is not really apropos to what I should be talking about.  Viz. The Great Diet.  Again.

Although it feels as if we have been under the Self-Denying Ordinance for most of our lives, it is in fact, merely five days that we have been watching what we have been eating.  Five bloody days!  And this is supposed to go on months!

While the horror of that last statement has time to settle, snake-like, on the tenderer parts of my brain, the other parts of my brain which are not dedicated to thinking of food and drink wondered about my use of the phrase Self-Denying Ordinance and where I first heard it and what it meant, rather than what I have made it mean in my little universe.  When I use the phrase I take it indicate a signal piece of self restraint: like buying a stalls seat for the Opera rather than the front of the Dress Circle or buying the paperback version of an Art Exhibition catalogue rather than the hardback.  You know, pulling back from excess until it hurts!

I remember that the phrase is somehow connected to the Civil War and must surely be something that the Roundheads invented, as it lacks the self-indulgence of the Cavaliers, as they were not noted for the self-denying aspects of life.  I assumed that it was to do with Religion (with a capital ‘R’) and therefore Oliver Cromwell and one or all of the Puritans, Levellers, Ranters, Anabaptists, Quakers and my favourite of the sects, the Muggletonians.  I’m sure that I have missed some of the groups out that contributed to The World Turned Upside Down, but I am impressed with what I can dredge (albeit without much further detail) from my memory when I really try!

So, as a sort of knowledge is ever but a few brief clicks away, I Googled the phrase and found out (reminded myself?) that the Self-Denying Ordinance of 1645 was originally a bill which stated that no Member of Parliament (The House of Commons or The House of Lords) could hold any command in the army or navy.  Thus, neatly stopping inept (and King supporting) nobles from continuing command of any military force.  Unsurprisingly the House of Lords, composed as it was entirely of nobles, rejected the bill and a compromise bill was written which stated that parliamentarians from both houses who were military commanders would resign from their commissions, but could be reappointed.  This winnowing of the command of the military facilitated the eventual formation of the New Model Army.

Which is all very interesting (at least to me) but apart from the few minutes Googling, did not take my mind off what else there was to eat.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not as if we have done without lunch.  We went to our local restaurant, the one with the un-paralleled views of the Med and had a three-course meal!

My starter was a salad (good!) of quinoia (good?) green leaves, carrot and cherry tomato  (very good!) with feta cheese (baddish!)  I restrained myself from adding oil and ate no bread.  My second course was prawn and spinach stuffed sea bass (good! good! good!) and the drink that accompanied it was cold water (superb!)  No wine, no bread, no extra oil!  A positively saintly meal, at least in calorie terms.

And yet, I hear a faint clearing of the throat, as if the unasked question about the desert were hanging in the air.  Ah, yes, the desert.

OK, to be absolutely truthful I happened to catch a glimpse of the tart of the day that was based on Ferrero Rocher (extraordinarily bad!), and I was hooked.  And I did eat.  But, as a sort of culinary justification I did also eat half a slice of melon and, surely that must count for something in my over-weight defence?

I accompanied the meal with a 1.5L bottle of water and I drank the lot.  I am sure that this is excellent, but perhaps we should not have gone straight from the meal to the shops as Toni wanted to buy an auger.  And I am prepared to bet that that is the first time that I have used that word in an ordinary piece of writing.  I think that the only other time that I have found a use for such a word was in a distant crossword, where I can remember (with the skeleton of two letters already in place) thinking to myself that I knew what the word was and then feeling very smug with myself for so doing!  Anyway, the search for the auger was also matched by my more urgent search for a toilet.  There is a lesson to be learned there, I think.

As the daylight fades and twilight steals up on the dieter, the temptations of the night approach.  I don’t know why it is that darkness encourages hunger, but it does, and sometimes, no often, no always, a piece of raw cauliflower or carrot does not send the demons of hi-carb desires back into the shadows.

I am sure that Toni is not going to let me forget my desert backsliding, and it is right that he does so.  I am hitching my lack of sliming motivation to the more Puritan regimen that Toni has adopted.

Here’s a drink (of water) to the world turned upside down and self-denying ordinance!

Cheers!

-o0O0o-

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When does a good read become a bad life?

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I resisted for as long as possible, and then I gave in and bought it.

And what’s more I didn’t go for my daily swim so that I could read it.  I haven’t finished it yet, but I have decided to limit my indulgence so that it can be spread over a longer period than my usual reading speed will allow.  It also gives me time to take it in.

I am talking, of course, about “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff.  I bought it legitimately via one-click for my Kindle, though I note that there are various ways of downloading it illegally on the Internet too.  I take the view that a workman is worthy of his hire and therefore, even though I do not have the physical book in front of me, I have the words and therefore I suppose that I have paid a fair wack of money to the author.  That last sentence stands as a sort of accusation to the subject of Fire and Fury who would regard me as SAD for not taking advantage of someone when the opportunity arose!  I spurn him as I would a rabid dog!

The only volume to which I can compare Fire and Fury is another book that I read with equal incredulity, “Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle in America and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else” by Joe Queenan.   But the difference between Dan Quayle and 45, was that Quayle was only the vice president, not the incumbent sitting at the desk in the Oval Office.   

For those of you unacquainted with the idiocy and ineptitude of Quayle then allow your fingers to take you on a magical journey where the Internet preserves some of his finest pronouncements for posterity.  I would urge you to start your visit with https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle

and if that whets your appetite, you could do worse that purchasing Joe Queenan’s book.  The worthless Quayle stayed a heartbeat away from the Presidency, but now we have Grade A garbage as President and a frightening bigot fawning in the background ready to take his place!

Back to Fire and Fury.  It is difficult to read this book as political analysis, not only because sources are not acknowledged and there is a certain amount of literary leeway in describing meetings in which Wolff did not participate in the manner of fly-on-the-wall reportage, but also because I simply do not want to believe that what I am reading is a remotely accurate description of how the most powerful nation in the world is functioning - or rather not even remotely functioning.

In some ways the petty infighting, scheming, rivalry, lies, corruption, deceit, mendacity, incompetence, arrogance, contempt and narcissism could be seen as an eloquent critique of capitalism and democracy.  They don’t work.  But, on the other hand, the book could also be seen as an even more eloquent testimony to the strength of institutions in the United State as they are still surviving in spite of the complete odium with which the President of that country regards them.

In my history classes in college I was taught that the Great Man or Woman of History approach to the past was outmoded, far more important were the social and political movements that produced those people or allowed them to flourish. 

It may be perversely comforting to think that a monster like Hitler was somehow uniquely ‘evil’ and that the abstract malevolence contained inside his damned soul corrupted all around him, but how did the figure-of-fun Hitler hawking his writing round the Bierkellers of Berlin get to be the dictator of Germany?  How did his pernicious doctrines find acceptance?  For an answer you have to look at the past history of German, the social conditions pertaining and the way that the political situation opened the way for the Brownshirts and Nazism.

In the same way Wollf’s book shows a completely dysfunctional White House with virtually no one with any idea of how to run the country.  The ultimate authority is a child-like narcissist with the attention span of a Homer Simpson (but without Homer’s endearing features) and he is clearly more interested in playing golf and being nasty about Clinton and Obama than getting to grips with the useful operation of power.

Since Wolff’s interest centres on eighteen months in the life of 45’s campaign and tenure in the White House, Wolff does not (so far as I’ve read so far) go into the reasons for his being there - just how did he do and she fail it?

I must admit that I am convinced by the description of the whole Trump Election Campaign, the whole shebang, being a play for what happened after he lost the election.  In his wildest dreams he never expected to win, but was looking forward to the billions of dollars of free publicity in giving him greater leverage in the media so that he could become an ‘even greater’ star.  All his ‘people’ worked with him so that they could find good jobs when the campaign failed.  This would explain why they didn’t bother to divest themselves of questionable financial links - after all, these would only pose embarrassing questions if 45 was successful and, as that couldn’t possibly happen, all the skeletons would stay safely in the cupboard.

Let’s take another view of the election.  Forget running for president, imagine this instead.  Suppose that Michelangelo died before completing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and that a crazed Pope announced a competition for its completion with a prize of absurd importance and a guarantee of worldwide fame for the successful artist.

Some artists would be cowed by the immensity of the undertaking, some would feel that they were unworthy of the commission, some would think about it and then think again, and some of the best artists would also put themselves forward citing past work as evidence that they could do it.

And then imagine that I decide to throw my paintbrush onto the palette, so to speak.  Although I am fascinated by the history of art, I am, alas, no painter.  My greatest artistic achievement in the plastic arts is a series of drawings in a small sketchbook that I did as my mother’s birthday present from a holiday I took in Turkey.  And those drawings are only acceptable when viewed through the accommodating critical maternal eye!

However, let me take a leaf out of Trump’s approach and apply it to my application.

 

Hi everyone!  What a fantastic crowd, this is the largest crowd ever assembled to hear an artist speak.  True!

Everyone knows that the Arts in Rome are fixed.  There is a swamp of artists in the city who manage (what a surprise!) to get all the best commissions.  They are wealthy and out of touch and don’t care about you.  It’s got nothing to do with skill, but with who you know.  If you have a Cardinal in your family, or better still a Pope then you are part of that charmed circle which deliberately excludes new, exciting and popular talent from showing itself.

And what if I don’t know the techniques of fresco?  Is that really so important?  Is that the only way?  What are we not being told about this commission?  We need to know the truth about this and many other things!  A truth that has been kept away from the ordinary people, the people who matter!  There was a time when Rome was respected throughout the world, when the word Rome meant something.  Rome is more than a few daubs on the ceiling.  Rome is you, the people; you are the shining glory of what we once were and what we can be again.

I do not paint for myself, indeed if I give myself over to this commission I will suffer financially, but I do not count the cost.  I think only of you and of how we, together can Make Rome Great Again!  Run Raphael Out of Town!  Give Veronese the V sign!  My art is your art, and your art is our art: together we will Make Rome Great Again!

Thank you!  Thank you very much!  Thank you!

As I read through Wolff’s destruction of Trump’s White House, I think about what might happen next.

It is very dangerous to assume that just because Trump is uniquely unqualified socially, politically, educationally, morally, sartorially and every other -lly that you can think of, that he will actually resign or be impeached or be otherwise removed, but say for a moment the tenure of the 45^th president was ended.   

This is the succession:

1         The Vice President                                        Mike Pence

2         The Speaker of the House of 

           Representatives                                             Paul Ryan

3         President pro tempore of the Senate      Orrin Hatch

4         Secretary of State                                          Rex Tillerson

5         Secretary of the Treasury                           Steven Mnuchin

6         Secretary of Defense                                     Jim Mattis

7         Attorney General                                           Jeff Sessions

Hardly a glittering list. 

Mike Pence terrifies me; Paul Ryan is spineless; Orrin Hatch is very old and on the point of retirement, and that someone like Jeff Sessions is on any list for any post of responsibility is depressing to put it mildly.

Right I’ve depressed myself sufficiently to go back to Fire and Fury and switch on my ‘fiction’ button in the brain and have a good read!


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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                               smrnewpoems.blogspot.com