Let me tell you about my day.
Normally my life is a pretty dull affair. I get up, I go to work, I go home, I eat, I watch telly, I sleep. There are sporadic periods of neurotic angst thrown in to spice things up now and again, but for the most part I've become a rather dull version of myself now that I'm into my late 30's.
But today was different. And not in a good way. The morning was unremarkable, except for an unwelcome fire drill. Every Wednesday morning the fire alarm goes off at work and is duly ignored. Everyone knows it's a test. But today it went off for a second time. In a this-is-not-a-test sort of way. So we grabbed our coats and headed outside. For me this means waiting next to a lift which has recently been shut off and needs to be operated by a colleague with an evacuation key. All of which delays my exit long enough to ensure that when I get outside I am at the back of an army of students discussing I'm A Celebrity, TOWIE and Embarrassing Bodies. When I finally found my colleagues the freedom of being outside the office had clearly got to some of them. The level of banter was beyond banal.
An hour later I risk another foray into the outside world for my dinner. It was an ill-fated decision to say the least. As I was crossing the road three of my work colleagues walked up next to me. I asked them where they were going and they told me that they were going to Hemingways, which is a cafe just across the road from work. I go here often, but this looked like a girlie lunch and I didn't want to impose. Besides I had already half decided to take the risk of heading into the city centre. I say goodbye and we go our separate ways.
As I'm rolling down Stanley Street in Liverpool, towards the city centre, I'm thinking of just about everything except where I am going and what I am doing. Suddenly, quite inexplicably and unexpectedly, I hit a crack in the pavement. Before I even know this I am on all fours on the pavement, crawling around groping for my wheelchair. It's all very undignified but I manage to stop it before it rolls through the front window of the bloody Lobster Pot. As I do this, at least three people stop to try and help me. Everyone means well, but there are times when you wish that they didn't. It may sound harsh, but wouldn't it be better if, in this kind of embarrassing scenario, everyone just turned the other way and pretended that nothing had happened? Unless I'm mortally wounded then I don't really want help after falling out of my chair. I'm not mortally wounded, but my left wrist is very sore. You can write your own jokes about that.
The lunch-time that never ends moves on to Burger King, where another well-meaning able-bodied person gives up his seat for me. There are literally no other seats available, so it's a kind gesture. The kind of help you want if you are hungry and have just suffered the indignity of doing an Ashley Young in a busy Liverpool street. Just as I am about to leave I run into an old mate from my old basketball team. He tells me that he is not married any more (he got married about five minutes ago as far as I'm aware) and that he and another of my friends aren't really seeing much of each other. I tell him to get it sorted and promise to get in touch. I'll probably end up playing referee as the two of them try to outdo each other in the field of vodka-induced pettiness, but a good night will be had by all nonetheless I'm sure. As long as I can get the two of them in the same room.
I'm very late back for work by now and yet I run into another acquaintance. I relay my falling-out-of-chair story and he dazzles me with tales of going to Italy, Amsterdam and Sydney. This man is hardly ever in the country. Not a bad way to live your life, and it is genuinely nice to catch up with him. Same goes for the other bloke. A rare positive on a day of absurd levels of indignity.
The next of which comes at the Boots across the road from work. Not only have I hurt my wrist on my lunch break, but it also transpires that I have a searingly damaging dose of the screaming ab-dabs. The shits, not to put too fine a point on it. I need something to stop it, quickly. Again I have made a poor decision. All I asked for is a standard box of Immodium. The type you can buy over the counter almost anywhere. This isn't Breaking Bad. I'm not trying to buy Crystal Meth. I just want to stop shitting. At that point I am shitting through spaces which consider the eye of a needle to be spacious and roomy. Yet they are not going to sell me the tablets. They ask if I am on any other medication and, without thinking it through and lying blatantly, I admit that I am on medication for my kidneys and my sodium levels. If I had known that the inquisition which followed was going to take place I would have lied. I just never expected it to be a problem. It caught me off guard. Rather like the shits itself does. So anyway I am there fully 10 minutes waiting for the Boots staff to stop conferring about whether I can take Immodium without spontaneously combusting. The staff and I have a staggeringly unintelligent circular conversation about this and I'm reminded of the Monty Python sketch in which the man goes in for an argument and complains that all he is getting is contradiction. This isn't an argument. Yes it is. No it isn't. And so on.
JUST SELL ME THE FUCKING IMMODIUM.
At last, mercifully, thankfully, they agree that it is safe to sell me the Immodium. Who would have thought it? I've only been taking it for a bad stomach for pretty much my entire life. It would have served the jobsworth right if I'd have failed to hold on any longer while I was waiting and endured a Spud-From-Trainspotting soiling moment. That doesn't bear thinking about, clearly, but there might be those who would consider shitting on someone's shop floor to be a suitable form of revenge for contributing to the delay in halting my illness.
I'm feeling better now, you will be glad to know, although my left wrist is still a little bit sore. It's only ten to 5, however, and I am about to phone the chemist about my other medication which is often a challenge that Anneka Rice would baulk at.
It's just another day.
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Tuesday, 5 November 2013
14 Years
I always seem to start my pieces with something negative, and let it go downhill from there. It's not intentional. I suppose it is just who I am. In fact, I wasn't going to write this today at all. It's alarming and depressing to note that my blog quadruples in popularity when someone dies.
But there's a bigger picture here. Today marks the 14th anniversary of the death of Paul, a man oft-mentioned on these pages, and I want to mark the occasion. This is the best way I know how to do it. And rightly so that he should be mentioned because he was a great man in so many ways, and was taken cruelly and inexplicably from us at just 26 years of age back in 1999. So much has happened since then. Often I think about this. What would he have made of everything that has changed in the intervening years? How would he have felt about the sad loss of Jo a couple of weeks ago? As I write his team, Manchester City are 4-1 up at half-time against CSKA Moscow in the Champions League. At the time of his death they had not long since won promotion to the second tier of English football after a barely credible play-off comeback against Gillingham at Wembley. It's hard to imagine City playing against Gillingham again any time soon, cup draws notwithstanding. And he would have loved that. That and Wigan's Grand Final and Challenge Cup double this year, the first time any team has achieved that since Saints in 2006. I can assure you he would not have thought very much of that.
Which takes me back to Easter 1996, the first season of Super League summer rugby. Until then we had spent far too many an afternoon freezing our proverbials off at either Knowsley Road or Central Park as all the important fixtures took place in the winter. It's strange to think now that I actually went to Central Park with him on numerous occasions. I'd never go and watch that wretched mob now but at the time it seemed like a natural and sensible thing to do if Saints were playing away. How very old fashioned. Paul probably talked me into it. We both loved our rugby and so the opportunity to go along and cheer on our hated rivals' opponents on any given day was one we relished.
But back on that April day in 1996 we were both at Knowsley Road legitimately supporting our own teams. The only obstacle to a good day being had by all (aside from the result inevitably about to put someone's nose out of joint) is that we were rip-roaringly drunk before we got within half a mile of the ground. I remember spending more time than is reasonable before a game in the Bird I'th Hand pub on the corner of the road where the old ground used to be. I was only going to get worse. We arrived at the ground to find the very limited disabled area three deep. Paul used to joke that half the Wigan-watching disabled public spent every hour at the ground watching the grass grow, so it was no surprise to find them occupying their seats already. And it wasn't as if we were early. Nowadays I can get into the new stadium five minutes before kick-off and still be guaranteed my space. Which is how it should be in a civilised world where I have paid in advance for a ticket. But in those days it was first come, best dressed and we were stark bollock naked. Metaphorically speaking.
So I left him there. You would think that as the one on enemy territory Paul would be the one to bolt, rather than sit behind the crowded mass of people trying to squint between gaps to catch a glimpse of the action. But no, it was me. I left him there on his own and went back to the pub, a lone impostor who had only got into the ground so late because I was somewhat prolific at suggesting we go for a beverage before games at St.Helens. To be fair he rarely argued about it, if ever. Anyway, somewhere in the midst of my unbridled joy at the 41-26 Saints victory (Danny Arnold scored a hat-trick and blew a kiss rather pretentiously at the Sky camera which I loved at the time) I gazed into my pint and felt some sympathy for him. I knew he would be fuming, insisting that none of the Wigan players get their wages this week, and questioning the parentage of the referee.
I'm afraid that the post-match celebrations back at the pub are a bit of a blur. If he was here now I doubt he would remember them any better because he was busy drowning his sorrows with some enthusiasm. It wasn't until a few weeks later when we were at another game at Knowsley Road together that we happened to notice someone familiar in the match programme. They were running a 'face in the crowd' competition, the winner of which would receive a prize from the Saints club shop. To the disgust of both of us we looked a little closer to find that it was him. He had been photographed at some point during Saints derby win, looking tipsy and quite glum. I was affronted at the idea that a Wiganer had won the prize, and he was affronted by the very notion that he would ever touch, much less wear, any Saints merchandise.
But he did. It wasn't a replica shirt or even anything noticeably peppered with Saints logos. Instead it was a rather smart and almost neutral looking blue sweatshirt baring the name of our sponsors at the time, McEwans Lager. For months, maybe a couple of years afterwards he wore it regularly for basketball training, a constant reminder of the day he was the 'face in the crowd' at a ground he talked quite happily about burning to the ground most of the time. In jest, of course. He was a peaceful man at heart. All of which seems to me to be a good deal more ironic than a black fly in your Chardonnay, and above all a great memory.
'Maybe you're the same as me.....we see things they'll never see......you and I are gonna live forever.......'
But there's a bigger picture here. Today marks the 14th anniversary of the death of Paul, a man oft-mentioned on these pages, and I want to mark the occasion. This is the best way I know how to do it. And rightly so that he should be mentioned because he was a great man in so many ways, and was taken cruelly and inexplicably from us at just 26 years of age back in 1999. So much has happened since then. Often I think about this. What would he have made of everything that has changed in the intervening years? How would he have felt about the sad loss of Jo a couple of weeks ago? As I write his team, Manchester City are 4-1 up at half-time against CSKA Moscow in the Champions League. At the time of his death they had not long since won promotion to the second tier of English football after a barely credible play-off comeback against Gillingham at Wembley. It's hard to imagine City playing against Gillingham again any time soon, cup draws notwithstanding. And he would have loved that. That and Wigan's Grand Final and Challenge Cup double this year, the first time any team has achieved that since Saints in 2006. I can assure you he would not have thought very much of that.
Which takes me back to Easter 1996, the first season of Super League summer rugby. Until then we had spent far too many an afternoon freezing our proverbials off at either Knowsley Road or Central Park as all the important fixtures took place in the winter. It's strange to think now that I actually went to Central Park with him on numerous occasions. I'd never go and watch that wretched mob now but at the time it seemed like a natural and sensible thing to do if Saints were playing away. How very old fashioned. Paul probably talked me into it. We both loved our rugby and so the opportunity to go along and cheer on our hated rivals' opponents on any given day was one we relished.
But back on that April day in 1996 we were both at Knowsley Road legitimately supporting our own teams. The only obstacle to a good day being had by all (aside from the result inevitably about to put someone's nose out of joint) is that we were rip-roaringly drunk before we got within half a mile of the ground. I remember spending more time than is reasonable before a game in the Bird I'th Hand pub on the corner of the road where the old ground used to be. I was only going to get worse. We arrived at the ground to find the very limited disabled area three deep. Paul used to joke that half the Wigan-watching disabled public spent every hour at the ground watching the grass grow, so it was no surprise to find them occupying their seats already. And it wasn't as if we were early. Nowadays I can get into the new stadium five minutes before kick-off and still be guaranteed my space. Which is how it should be in a civilised world where I have paid in advance for a ticket. But in those days it was first come, best dressed and we were stark bollock naked. Metaphorically speaking.
So I left him there. You would think that as the one on enemy territory Paul would be the one to bolt, rather than sit behind the crowded mass of people trying to squint between gaps to catch a glimpse of the action. But no, it was me. I left him there on his own and went back to the pub, a lone impostor who had only got into the ground so late because I was somewhat prolific at suggesting we go for a beverage before games at St.Helens. To be fair he rarely argued about it, if ever. Anyway, somewhere in the midst of my unbridled joy at the 41-26 Saints victory (Danny Arnold scored a hat-trick and blew a kiss rather pretentiously at the Sky camera which I loved at the time) I gazed into my pint and felt some sympathy for him. I knew he would be fuming, insisting that none of the Wigan players get their wages this week, and questioning the parentage of the referee.
I'm afraid that the post-match celebrations back at the pub are a bit of a blur. If he was here now I doubt he would remember them any better because he was busy drowning his sorrows with some enthusiasm. It wasn't until a few weeks later when we were at another game at Knowsley Road together that we happened to notice someone familiar in the match programme. They were running a 'face in the crowd' competition, the winner of which would receive a prize from the Saints club shop. To the disgust of both of us we looked a little closer to find that it was him. He had been photographed at some point during Saints derby win, looking tipsy and quite glum. I was affronted at the idea that a Wiganer had won the prize, and he was affronted by the very notion that he would ever touch, much less wear, any Saints merchandise.
But he did. It wasn't a replica shirt or even anything noticeably peppered with Saints logos. Instead it was a rather smart and almost neutral looking blue sweatshirt baring the name of our sponsors at the time, McEwans Lager. For months, maybe a couple of years afterwards he wore it regularly for basketball training, a constant reminder of the day he was the 'face in the crowd' at a ground he talked quite happily about burning to the ground most of the time. In jest, of course. He was a peaceful man at heart. All of which seems to me to be a good deal more ironic than a black fly in your Chardonnay, and above all a great memory.
'Maybe you're the same as me.....we see things they'll never see......you and I are gonna live forever.......'
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Back To The Hospital
I'm afraid that following on from last week's rather sad entry this column isn't going to get a great deal cheerier. I have to take the story back to the hospital. I feel a terrible compulsion, a duty even, to finish the tale.
So we left me having just received some relieving news from the urologist. It's Thursday tea-time, July 25 2013. Emma has to go. Apart from the odd trip to the scanning lab with a bag of piss on my knee, she has been by my side for the last 17 sleepless hours. Both of us are sleepless, but she is bedless. She's spent the entire time sat in a less than luxurious chair trying to help me make sense of all the rubbish that has spewed forth from the mouths of medical professionals. She can't take tomorrow off work aswell and, since I am now just mildly grumpy and suffering only from palpitations I am assured will get better, it is better if she leaves me to it and tries to get back to normality. She will be back tomorrow night when they inevitably refuse to discharge me.
Taking her place are some members of my family. I really appreciate their visit though it drives me quite mad at times. Without them here, all there is to do is stuff my face with junk food (which hurts because I'm getting oral thrush from all the drugs I have been on) and listen to the craziness going on in the ward around me. More on which later. For now my dad, my sister and two of my cousins are kind enough to visit in what is still, despite the improvement in my fortunes since seeing the urologist, an hour of significant need.
'I'll give you a kidney'. says my cousin Jo.
It's the first thing that comes out of her mouth when she sees me. Or at least it is the first thing I remember her saying. She might have asked me how I was or how long I was going to be in or something, but looking back at it now my memory is almost certain that she skipped all of that and just decided instead to offer me one of her kidneys. As kind an offer as this is it has a couple of basic flaws. Firstly, I don't need one and, despite what nonsense has been discussed by the medical people so far, nobody has suggested that I do. Secondly therefore, such an offer could be construed to be a little on the negative side. As if I don't need one right now, but trust me our kid you bloody well will do one day and then what will you do? While Jo and my sister Helen discuss at length which one of them will be donating the kidney that I don't need I turn to the men, my dad and my other cousin Alex for a less dramatic level of conversation. Alex has brought me more football-related literature than I am hoping to have time to read in here. I'm pleased that it will relieve the boredom when everyone has left, but find out later that concentrating on trying to read actually increases the intensity of my palpitations. That kind of luck is unsurprising to me. Things have been a bit that way in the last few weeks.
Before they go Jo and Helen kindly agree to go to the hospital shop downstairs for me (I'd go myself but I'm still attached to a large bag of urine). They return with the greatest gift a hospital patient can receive. Yes, there is some junk food because I'm about to be bored enough not to worry about how my mouth is, but there is also a fan. Not just any old fan. A Spiderman fan. Writing this three months later I can report that I still have it. As I type this I can see it sitting on the old PC in the corner of the room. The PC that broke about six months ago and just sits there uselessly while I manfully carry on trying to write blogs like this on my laptop without losing large chunks of articles due to its erratic nature. It's been ok so far tonight. I need something wooden to touch.
With Emma and the rest of the family gone I really start to notice my fellow patients on Ward 1C. The first thing I notice is that three out of the four of us are called Stephen or Steven. The one exception is the man to my left, Michael. Michael seems to be profoundly deaf and can only speak at a very hushed volume. To my eternal shame I don't know any sign language despite the fact that there were one or two deaf children at my school. So even if Michael had wanted to communicate he would have been up against it with an uneducated communicator such as myself. I don't think he is much in the mood for it anyway. At one point during his stay he has four or five members of his family and medical staff around his bed trying to convince him to go for the infamous camera down the throat scan. I never find out exactly what he is in here for but I am happy to report that Michael eventually agrees to go for the scan, so hopefully his condition has improved since then. He was moved to another ward in the middle of that very night for reasons you never get told nor really feel it is your business to ask. Hospital is a bit like that.
Also moved that night is Stephen/Steven number one in the bed opposite mine. But not before he has found time to describe to me his love for all things military. He was in the army, and is here now because of the after-effects of a blast in Afghanistan. His lungs got damaged by the cloud created by the explosion. He can't eat or drink anything without throwing it back up. He also is going for the infamous camera down the throat scan at some point. Only he is a lot more cheery about it. His best army tale is of his friends in the boxing team. Anyone of them, he assures me, could easily be a world champion in the professional ranks. Not being the shyest person in the world I can't stop myself asking the obvious question. If they could be world champion boxers (who don't forget make millions of pounds) why would they not do that instead of going out to obscure parts of the world risking their lives. Particularly in a conflict which began in what can best be described as morally, politically and legally suspect circumstances. They just love the army, he explains. The camararderie. The mess halls. I nod enthusiastically while scepticism engulfs my entire being. I like Stephen/Steven number one. He's both prinicipled and thoroughly entertaining. But quite mad, I fear.
Stephen/Steven number two lying in the bed diagonal from me is not so entertaining, but he has it rough. He needs to take on oxygen at regular intervals due to whatever disease he has been struck by. Not only that, but I count five times during one day that he has to endure the dreaded blood gases test. This is no ordinary blood test. I had one myself in the observation ward early in my visit, and the pain is pretty shocking. The injection goes right into the bony part of the wrist just where it meets the bottom of your hand. His dismay at being subjected to another of these tests increases with each one and it is hard to watch. It's also hard to get to know Stephen/Steven number two. When he is not being violated by blood gas tests he mostly sleeps and breathes heavily through his mask. He is also moved to another ward in the middle of the night before the end of my stay.
Eventually the others all settle down to sleep for the night. With the palpitations preventing me from hitting the land of nod I just lie there listening to the sounds of the hospital. The nurses chatting, the deathly howling of what sounds like a tortured child down the corridor, and the thunderous beating of my own heart, particularly at the precise point when my sleep-craving eyes attempt to shut.
So we left me having just received some relieving news from the urologist. It's Thursday tea-time, July 25 2013. Emma has to go. Apart from the odd trip to the scanning lab with a bag of piss on my knee, she has been by my side for the last 17 sleepless hours. Both of us are sleepless, but she is bedless. She's spent the entire time sat in a less than luxurious chair trying to help me make sense of all the rubbish that has spewed forth from the mouths of medical professionals. She can't take tomorrow off work aswell and, since I am now just mildly grumpy and suffering only from palpitations I am assured will get better, it is better if she leaves me to it and tries to get back to normality. She will be back tomorrow night when they inevitably refuse to discharge me.
Taking her place are some members of my family. I really appreciate their visit though it drives me quite mad at times. Without them here, all there is to do is stuff my face with junk food (which hurts because I'm getting oral thrush from all the drugs I have been on) and listen to the craziness going on in the ward around me. More on which later. For now my dad, my sister and two of my cousins are kind enough to visit in what is still, despite the improvement in my fortunes since seeing the urologist, an hour of significant need.
'I'll give you a kidney'. says my cousin Jo.
It's the first thing that comes out of her mouth when she sees me. Or at least it is the first thing I remember her saying. She might have asked me how I was or how long I was going to be in or something, but looking back at it now my memory is almost certain that she skipped all of that and just decided instead to offer me one of her kidneys. As kind an offer as this is it has a couple of basic flaws. Firstly, I don't need one and, despite what nonsense has been discussed by the medical people so far, nobody has suggested that I do. Secondly therefore, such an offer could be construed to be a little on the negative side. As if I don't need one right now, but trust me our kid you bloody well will do one day and then what will you do? While Jo and my sister Helen discuss at length which one of them will be donating the kidney that I don't need I turn to the men, my dad and my other cousin Alex for a less dramatic level of conversation. Alex has brought me more football-related literature than I am hoping to have time to read in here. I'm pleased that it will relieve the boredom when everyone has left, but find out later that concentrating on trying to read actually increases the intensity of my palpitations. That kind of luck is unsurprising to me. Things have been a bit that way in the last few weeks.
Before they go Jo and Helen kindly agree to go to the hospital shop downstairs for me (I'd go myself but I'm still attached to a large bag of urine). They return with the greatest gift a hospital patient can receive. Yes, there is some junk food because I'm about to be bored enough not to worry about how my mouth is, but there is also a fan. Not just any old fan. A Spiderman fan. Writing this three months later I can report that I still have it. As I type this I can see it sitting on the old PC in the corner of the room. The PC that broke about six months ago and just sits there uselessly while I manfully carry on trying to write blogs like this on my laptop without losing large chunks of articles due to its erratic nature. It's been ok so far tonight. I need something wooden to touch.
With Emma and the rest of the family gone I really start to notice my fellow patients on Ward 1C. The first thing I notice is that three out of the four of us are called Stephen or Steven. The one exception is the man to my left, Michael. Michael seems to be profoundly deaf and can only speak at a very hushed volume. To my eternal shame I don't know any sign language despite the fact that there were one or two deaf children at my school. So even if Michael had wanted to communicate he would have been up against it with an uneducated communicator such as myself. I don't think he is much in the mood for it anyway. At one point during his stay he has four or five members of his family and medical staff around his bed trying to convince him to go for the infamous camera down the throat scan. I never find out exactly what he is in here for but I am happy to report that Michael eventually agrees to go for the scan, so hopefully his condition has improved since then. He was moved to another ward in the middle of that very night for reasons you never get told nor really feel it is your business to ask. Hospital is a bit like that.
Also moved that night is Stephen/Steven number one in the bed opposite mine. But not before he has found time to describe to me his love for all things military. He was in the army, and is here now because of the after-effects of a blast in Afghanistan. His lungs got damaged by the cloud created by the explosion. He can't eat or drink anything without throwing it back up. He also is going for the infamous camera down the throat scan at some point. Only he is a lot more cheery about it. His best army tale is of his friends in the boxing team. Anyone of them, he assures me, could easily be a world champion in the professional ranks. Not being the shyest person in the world I can't stop myself asking the obvious question. If they could be world champion boxers (who don't forget make millions of pounds) why would they not do that instead of going out to obscure parts of the world risking their lives. Particularly in a conflict which began in what can best be described as morally, politically and legally suspect circumstances. They just love the army, he explains. The camararderie. The mess halls. I nod enthusiastically while scepticism engulfs my entire being. I like Stephen/Steven number one. He's both prinicipled and thoroughly entertaining. But quite mad, I fear.
Stephen/Steven number two lying in the bed diagonal from me is not so entertaining, but he has it rough. He needs to take on oxygen at regular intervals due to whatever disease he has been struck by. Not only that, but I count five times during one day that he has to endure the dreaded blood gases test. This is no ordinary blood test. I had one myself in the observation ward early in my visit, and the pain is pretty shocking. The injection goes right into the bony part of the wrist just where it meets the bottom of your hand. His dismay at being subjected to another of these tests increases with each one and it is hard to watch. It's also hard to get to know Stephen/Steven number two. When he is not being violated by blood gas tests he mostly sleeps and breathes heavily through his mask. He is also moved to another ward in the middle of the night before the end of my stay.
Eventually the others all settle down to sleep for the night. With the palpitations preventing me from hitting the land of nod I just lie there listening to the sounds of the hospital. The nurses chatting, the deathly howling of what sounds like a tortured child down the corridor, and the thunderous beating of my own heart, particularly at the precise point when my sleep-craving eyes attempt to shut.
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
A Sad, Bad Day
I told someone I would stop scribbling this pointless drivel. But my head is positively spinning with the events of today. So call this catharsis. Or call it pointless drivel. Whatever.
At about 10.50 today I learned that one of my oldest friends had passed away. A former friend if we're being ultra analytical about it. I hadn't seen much of her in recent years due to her dopey but quite understandable choice of partner, but when you have known someone since you were three years of age it's always going to have an effect if you lose them, regardless of the current set of circumstances. There are a lot of memories which come flooding back. More on which later.
Ten minutes after learning this I had to go into a meeting at work. At which point I was laboriously moaned at for half an hour about things that are not remotely my fault. Basically I was hung out to dry and made to feel like a lazy loafer when in fact my workload is barely credible. So by 11.20 or so I am shocked, saddened, fuming and a little emotional. The second meeting of the day was a blessed relief. When the rage takes hold of me at work I can poison the atmosphere with the best of them. I was far better off discussing equality and diversity issues than sitting at my desk quietly steaming and resenting every moment of it.
So back to Jo, my friend who passed away yesterday. Like the countless people with disabilities who I have known and lost before her, she deserved better than this. She was just 40 years old. There is no sensible reason why someone with Spina Bifida should pass away at that age. Jo had some health issues recently and spent some time in hospital over the last 12 months, but it still came as a major shock to me to learn that she had gone.
Thirty-five years is a long time to know someone. You end up with a lot of history, not all of it that sensible. Every year we would be made to play Joseph and Mary in the school nativity play. We probably didn't mind at the time but it became a source of great embarrassment to both of us. Particularly for me in the last few years when I made the transition from being a simple non-believer to an out-and-out enemy of religion. Jo kept her faith all along. I think she found some comfort in it, especially after the passing of her mother from cancer a few years ago. Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure she ever recovered from that blow emotionally. She was very close to her mother and I think she relied on her for many things before her illness.
I have other silly Jo memories. When I was about six she dumped me for someone called Carl Lynch. Quite what an eight year old and a six year old were doing believing they had a relationship is one for the psychiatrists to work out, but I remember being very upset and angry about the whole affair. Angry and upset would come to be the things that I excelled at the most, culminating in my latest meltdown at work today I suppose. All of which pales into insignificance in the context of what has happened to Jo. It's all just so bloody unfair. Shit meetings and poisonous office atmospheres are probably options that she would snap your hand off for given the opportunity. In that respect I should think myself lucky, and I do. Relatively speaking.
Sadly Jo has not been so lucky and she will be sorely missed by many people. Myself included. It doesn't matter how long you have gone without seeing someone, the finality of knowing that you won't have the opportunity to see them again is difficult to come to terms with. Add in the fact that she was a similar age and had the same disability as I do and you could find yourself going down all kinds of fearful, paranoid roads. Why were she and all the others before her chosen to leave us while I carry on poisoning atmospheres and trotting out pointless drivel?
I don't know, is the short answer. And I'm not sure I want to think about it too much. I'd rather think about the positive memories of Jo. Before the dopey partner. Before the tragic passing of her mother. And before the onset of what turned out to be a catalogue of ailments which have taken her far too soon. Goodnight Jo. You didn't get a fair go. But you'll always be remembered fondly.
At about 10.50 today I learned that one of my oldest friends had passed away. A former friend if we're being ultra analytical about it. I hadn't seen much of her in recent years due to her dopey but quite understandable choice of partner, but when you have known someone since you were three years of age it's always going to have an effect if you lose them, regardless of the current set of circumstances. There are a lot of memories which come flooding back. More on which later.
Ten minutes after learning this I had to go into a meeting at work. At which point I was laboriously moaned at for half an hour about things that are not remotely my fault. Basically I was hung out to dry and made to feel like a lazy loafer when in fact my workload is barely credible. So by 11.20 or so I am shocked, saddened, fuming and a little emotional. The second meeting of the day was a blessed relief. When the rage takes hold of me at work I can poison the atmosphere with the best of them. I was far better off discussing equality and diversity issues than sitting at my desk quietly steaming and resenting every moment of it.
So back to Jo, my friend who passed away yesterday. Like the countless people with disabilities who I have known and lost before her, she deserved better than this. She was just 40 years old. There is no sensible reason why someone with Spina Bifida should pass away at that age. Jo had some health issues recently and spent some time in hospital over the last 12 months, but it still came as a major shock to me to learn that she had gone.
Thirty-five years is a long time to know someone. You end up with a lot of history, not all of it that sensible. Every year we would be made to play Joseph and Mary in the school nativity play. We probably didn't mind at the time but it became a source of great embarrassment to both of us. Particularly for me in the last few years when I made the transition from being a simple non-believer to an out-and-out enemy of religion. Jo kept her faith all along. I think she found some comfort in it, especially after the passing of her mother from cancer a few years ago. Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure she ever recovered from that blow emotionally. She was very close to her mother and I think she relied on her for many things before her illness.
I have other silly Jo memories. When I was about six she dumped me for someone called Carl Lynch. Quite what an eight year old and a six year old were doing believing they had a relationship is one for the psychiatrists to work out, but I remember being very upset and angry about the whole affair. Angry and upset would come to be the things that I excelled at the most, culminating in my latest meltdown at work today I suppose. All of which pales into insignificance in the context of what has happened to Jo. It's all just so bloody unfair. Shit meetings and poisonous office atmospheres are probably options that she would snap your hand off for given the opportunity. In that respect I should think myself lucky, and I do. Relatively speaking.
Sadly Jo has not been so lucky and she will be sorely missed by many people. Myself included. It doesn't matter how long you have gone without seeing someone, the finality of knowing that you won't have the opportunity to see them again is difficult to come to terms with. Add in the fact that she was a similar age and had the same disability as I do and you could find yourself going down all kinds of fearful, paranoid roads. Why were she and all the others before her chosen to leave us while I carry on poisoning atmospheres and trotting out pointless drivel?
I don't know, is the short answer. And I'm not sure I want to think about it too much. I'd rather think about the positive memories of Jo. Before the dopey partner. Before the tragic passing of her mother. And before the onset of what turned out to be a catalogue of ailments which have taken her far too soon. Goodnight Jo. You didn't get a fair go. But you'll always be remembered fondly.
Tuesday, 24 September 2013
The Hospital Drama - Part Three
A cancelled scan is not ordinarily a big deal. I'm sure there are many of you reading this who have, from time to time, suffered the inconvenience of having scans, maybe even operations cancelled. But the thing was this. My scan was going to reveal the extent of my kidney damage over the last six years. It would determine whether or not I would be allowed to continue to urinate through the conventional body part. And it was cancelled because of a mix-up with a couple of porters.
What I perhaps should have known but did not was that porters have absolutely no authority to decide what time a patient can be taken for a scan. That's not that surprising. They are porters, not medical people and so to have them scheduling scans seems a stretch. What is surprising is that they don't seem to know this. They have no business offering anyone any more time to 'settle in' to a ward they have just arrived on. No matter how distressed and possibly terrorised the patient might be. And I was.
And so it was not long before the arguments began to rage. I was rather pointlessly (or so it seemed) trying to explain to the nurse that I did not refuse to go for my scan and that rather I was twice offered more time by the porters. There were more phone calls back and forth. The initial upshot was that since I had not gone at the agreed time, for whatever reason, my slot in the running order had been taken and the best they could do was fit me in first thing the next morning. It's understandable that they want to work to a strict schedule. They have lots of patients to see and very probably cannot afford to waste time waiting for me to decide when I am sufficiently calm to turn up. The first signs of a weakening in their stance comes when the nurse who had been making the calls offers me a CT scan. This will involve the tedious, painful ballache that is having more injections in my already Incredible Disappearing Veins but at least it would be done today.
No it wouldn't. Another bogus offer had been made. While they had room on their schedule to conduct a CT scan, they then informed me that actually this method of scanning was not recommended for patients who had damaged kidneys. Something to do with the dye they use when they are pricking holes in you. A part of me was relieved at not having to go through the whole human pin cushion thing but a significantly more sizeable part of me was further distressed at this news. It was around 3.00pm at this point. Under the terms of their offer I now had to wait another 18 and a half hours to find out my fate.
Another phone call was made to the lab. If the 10 minutes or so that it took was any barometer, the next 18 and a half hours were going to feel like several lifetimes. Yet finally it was worth the wait. The nurse came back and informed me that, miraculously, unfathomably given their previously adamant refusals, I would be able to go for my ultra-sound scan at 4.35 that afternoon. The chances of pissing through a hole carved into my person had not reduced any, but it was some comfort to know that I would not have to wait so long to get the news.
Shortly after the relative high (I was taking any encouragement on offer at that point) of getting my scan appointment back, there came the setback of another encounter with our friend the lady doctor from earlier. Mercifully she had not come to discuss my future toilet arrangements but instead to interfere with my genitals. And not in a good way. Quite matter-of-factly, almost cheerfully, she informed me that she needed to place a permanent catheter into my you-know-what. Why? Was this a rehearsal for what life might be about to be like, post-scan? The explanation was actually that they needed to monitor the flow of my water for a sustained period, maybe a day or two. So from the original prognosis of being in overnight until they could control the potassium, I was now resigned to at least the next 24 hours and probably 48 in the hospital. Not only that, but I would have to suffer the great indignity of having my knob grabbed by a twenty-something, smart-arsed female doctor who I had already decided I did not like. And it wasn't just the knob-grabbing I objected to, but also the insertion of a catheter which seemed roughly the size of a garden hosepipe. That had to hurt. It did.
There followed a pointless argument between myself and the doctor about my level of discomfort (both embarrassment and pain) as opposed to the level of necessity of the permanent catheter according to the urologist. I hadn't even got to speak to the urologist yet, but I was being assured by this doctor that the permanent catheter was the only real way to monitor my condition. It seemed odd to me that of all the many doctors who insisted on prodding me and asking me personal questions on my arrival, the one person they had not sent to investigate me personally was the urologist. Before I could think of an alternative the female doctor had me in her grasp and began inserting the hosepipe. She suggested I might feel a pinch, which was rather like telling Joan of Arc that she might start to get a bit warm.
When the porter arrived I did not hesitate this time. Interestingly they did not send either of the two who had contributed to my predicament. A third porter was tasked with the job. In truth, they could have sent Hannibal Lector to trundle me down to the scanning lab and I would have taken my chances of not being devoured with a nice chianti somewhere along the way. Getting on to the chair which was to transport me was not at all straightforward. With a permanent catheter inserted it was actually very complex. Wherever you go, it goes. Eventually I managed to clamber on to the chair and, carrying the most unsightly and humongous bag of what can only be described as my own piss on my knee, was wheeled off to have my long-awaited ultra sound. By the way, not only do porters not have the authority to schedule scans, they also don't see it as part of their job description to help you complete your journey to the lab. I was left in a corridor for a good five minutes before a member of staff came out to wheel me in to the scanning lab. Another dance with the piss bag ensued until finally I was on the table getting smothered in gel. I was relieved to note that it was not cold. Last time I had an ultra-sound the gel had been freezing cold, just adding to your anxiety and the feeling of wanting to be anywhere else but on that stretcher.
I was taken outside into the corridor a few minutes later, scan complete. Again I was made to wait for a porter to pick me up so we could make the undignified return journey of the wee carriers. An hour later something incredible happened. A man I seemed to recognise approached my bed and began to pull the curtain around it. Not a man I had seen since I was admitted, but someone from a hospital visit in the past. My old urologist. He walked nearer to address me and explained that he had seen the results of my scan. I winced inwardly and awaited all manner of possible calamities about to unfold. Except they never did. He told me that there had been very little damage to my kidneys since my last scan. He also said that a permanent catheter (for longer than the day or two that he also informed me that he had in fact ordered the female doctor to initiate) would be no good for me and that I should continue to use intermittent catheters. A permanent catheter would only increase the risk of infection in my case, he said. A wave of relief shot through me but I just felt drained, physically and emotionally after everything that had unfolded in the last 24 hours or so. What he could not tell me was how to stop the palpitations which I was still experiencing, although they had become something of a side issue. For that I would need to consult with the other doctors, including my new girlfriend.
I was not out of the woods just yet.
What I perhaps should have known but did not was that porters have absolutely no authority to decide what time a patient can be taken for a scan. That's not that surprising. They are porters, not medical people and so to have them scheduling scans seems a stretch. What is surprising is that they don't seem to know this. They have no business offering anyone any more time to 'settle in' to a ward they have just arrived on. No matter how distressed and possibly terrorised the patient might be. And I was.
And so it was not long before the arguments began to rage. I was rather pointlessly (or so it seemed) trying to explain to the nurse that I did not refuse to go for my scan and that rather I was twice offered more time by the porters. There were more phone calls back and forth. The initial upshot was that since I had not gone at the agreed time, for whatever reason, my slot in the running order had been taken and the best they could do was fit me in first thing the next morning. It's understandable that they want to work to a strict schedule. They have lots of patients to see and very probably cannot afford to waste time waiting for me to decide when I am sufficiently calm to turn up. The first signs of a weakening in their stance comes when the nurse who had been making the calls offers me a CT scan. This will involve the tedious, painful ballache that is having more injections in my already Incredible Disappearing Veins but at least it would be done today.
No it wouldn't. Another bogus offer had been made. While they had room on their schedule to conduct a CT scan, they then informed me that actually this method of scanning was not recommended for patients who had damaged kidneys. Something to do with the dye they use when they are pricking holes in you. A part of me was relieved at not having to go through the whole human pin cushion thing but a significantly more sizeable part of me was further distressed at this news. It was around 3.00pm at this point. Under the terms of their offer I now had to wait another 18 and a half hours to find out my fate.
Another phone call was made to the lab. If the 10 minutes or so that it took was any barometer, the next 18 and a half hours were going to feel like several lifetimes. Yet finally it was worth the wait. The nurse came back and informed me that, miraculously, unfathomably given their previously adamant refusals, I would be able to go for my ultra-sound scan at 4.35 that afternoon. The chances of pissing through a hole carved into my person had not reduced any, but it was some comfort to know that I would not have to wait so long to get the news.
Shortly after the relative high (I was taking any encouragement on offer at that point) of getting my scan appointment back, there came the setback of another encounter with our friend the lady doctor from earlier. Mercifully she had not come to discuss my future toilet arrangements but instead to interfere with my genitals. And not in a good way. Quite matter-of-factly, almost cheerfully, she informed me that she needed to place a permanent catheter into my you-know-what. Why? Was this a rehearsal for what life might be about to be like, post-scan? The explanation was actually that they needed to monitor the flow of my water for a sustained period, maybe a day or two. So from the original prognosis of being in overnight until they could control the potassium, I was now resigned to at least the next 24 hours and probably 48 in the hospital. Not only that, but I would have to suffer the great indignity of having my knob grabbed by a twenty-something, smart-arsed female doctor who I had already decided I did not like. And it wasn't just the knob-grabbing I objected to, but also the insertion of a catheter which seemed roughly the size of a garden hosepipe. That had to hurt. It did.
There followed a pointless argument between myself and the doctor about my level of discomfort (both embarrassment and pain) as opposed to the level of necessity of the permanent catheter according to the urologist. I hadn't even got to speak to the urologist yet, but I was being assured by this doctor that the permanent catheter was the only real way to monitor my condition. It seemed odd to me that of all the many doctors who insisted on prodding me and asking me personal questions on my arrival, the one person they had not sent to investigate me personally was the urologist. Before I could think of an alternative the female doctor had me in her grasp and began inserting the hosepipe. She suggested I might feel a pinch, which was rather like telling Joan of Arc that she might start to get a bit warm.
When the porter arrived I did not hesitate this time. Interestingly they did not send either of the two who had contributed to my predicament. A third porter was tasked with the job. In truth, they could have sent Hannibal Lector to trundle me down to the scanning lab and I would have taken my chances of not being devoured with a nice chianti somewhere along the way. Getting on to the chair which was to transport me was not at all straightforward. With a permanent catheter inserted it was actually very complex. Wherever you go, it goes. Eventually I managed to clamber on to the chair and, carrying the most unsightly and humongous bag of what can only be described as my own piss on my knee, was wheeled off to have my long-awaited ultra sound. By the way, not only do porters not have the authority to schedule scans, they also don't see it as part of their job description to help you complete your journey to the lab. I was left in a corridor for a good five minutes before a member of staff came out to wheel me in to the scanning lab. Another dance with the piss bag ensued until finally I was on the table getting smothered in gel. I was relieved to note that it was not cold. Last time I had an ultra-sound the gel had been freezing cold, just adding to your anxiety and the feeling of wanting to be anywhere else but on that stretcher.
I was taken outside into the corridor a few minutes later, scan complete. Again I was made to wait for a porter to pick me up so we could make the undignified return journey of the wee carriers. An hour later something incredible happened. A man I seemed to recognise approached my bed and began to pull the curtain around it. Not a man I had seen since I was admitted, but someone from a hospital visit in the past. My old urologist. He walked nearer to address me and explained that he had seen the results of my scan. I winced inwardly and awaited all manner of possible calamities about to unfold. Except they never did. He told me that there had been very little damage to my kidneys since my last scan. He also said that a permanent catheter (for longer than the day or two that he also informed me that he had in fact ordered the female doctor to initiate) would be no good for me and that I should continue to use intermittent catheters. A permanent catheter would only increase the risk of infection in my case, he said. A wave of relief shot through me but I just felt drained, physically and emotionally after everything that had unfolded in the last 24 hours or so. What he could not tell me was how to stop the palpitations which I was still experiencing, although they had become something of a side issue. For that I would need to consult with the other doctors, including my new girlfriend.
I was not out of the woods just yet.
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
The Hospital Drama - Part Two
So we left me on my way to bed after an evening spent in the not so splendid surroundings of A & E at Whiston Hospital. The next morning, after a pretty uneventful night I woke up early and watched the Saints game. It was a triumph which I will not bore you with here, but I was still not feeling as I should. I passed the rest of the day watching all manner of shit television programmes which I inexplicably insist on recording despite the fact that, unless I'm off sick, I have no hope of finding the time to watch. The White Queen? Come on. I am vehemently against the monarchy so why do I give two shites about the antics of Richard III? And besides, isn't that just rhyming slang for taking a dump? I followed this rubbish with a quite awful film called Battleship in which Taylor 'Friday Night Lights' Kitsch goes out to sea to fight seemingly indestructible alien vessels. I can't recall exactly how it ended because I was becoming ever more focused on my deteriorating condition. I'm guessing Rihanna whailed the aliens into submission.
It is difficult to describe how I felt. I had the anxiety of wondering what acidosis might be, and of wondering whether I had done the right thing in discharging myself the previous evening. Despite my not very big or clever Facebook status announcing that I had, I was starting to get the feeling that I almost certainly had not. That feeling was only added to by the fact that I was still experiencing waves of palpitations. By the time some intellectually challenged woman had contrived to trap herself in her bedroom with a psychotic killer in an episode of Luther I was really struggling to achieve any peace. So I went to bed. Not for long.
At about 1.00am I woke up suddenly with some serious palpitations. These were much stronger than anything I had experienced up to this point. My heart was pounding at 1000 miles per hour and I was panicking wildly. I felt like I might have a heart attack, which might sound fanciful but if you are experiencing something like this for the first time your mind wanders to all sorts of dark places. That it was during the dead of night in the pitch dark only added to my hysteria. After a couple of attempts to get back to sleep I gave up and got up. Every time I would get close to dropping off to sleep the palps would ramp up again to the point where breathing became something I had to think about. Added to this was the chilling tingle down my arms which is closely associated with heart trouble. I didn't get any more sleep on the couch but at least I had stopped disturbing Emma.
On Wednesday I remember (aswell as more shit television) a long telephone conversation with my mum. She was concerned about what I told her about the kind of night I'd had, and about what acidosis might be also. Somehow, even though normally I am the kind of person who would jab myself in both eyes with a pitch fork before I'd agree to go into hospital, I had agreed by the end of our conversation that if I had a repeat of the palps that night then I would go straight into the hospital. By the time Emma and I went to bed I hadn't talked myself out of it. It seemed like I had no choice at that point. It was the only sensible course of action. The palps were not just going to stop of their own accord. And they didn't. Within 10 minutes of going to bed, and again just at the point where I was about to drift into sleep I jolted up as the palps swept through me again. Heart pounding, arms tingling, I woke Emma and we got straight up and prepared for the hospital. We were expecting a somewhat longer stay this time so we actually packed a bag of overnight essentials. It was a grim thing to have to do, given my rising phobia. Yet at this point all I wanted was for someone to do something to stop my heart pounding so violently. I didn't really think about how many nights in hospital that might entail. At the back of my mind was the fact that I knew I was heading face first into that scary kidney scan also, but again there seemed little alternative.
We can probably skip the A & E part. It was almost identical to the events of two nights earlier. Blood tests, blood pressure, ECG, waiting. And waiting, and waiting. We spent what remained of Wednesday night in the observation ward. I was zonked out on a bed trying to slow down the palps but suffering from sleep deprivation. Emma was in a chair next to me suffering similarly. As morning arrived we were visited by at least three, maybe four doctors who each wanted to carry out an examination and ask the same questions. Have you got any pain? Are you on any medication? Are you allergic to anything? The final doctor who examined me was accompanied by a young female doctor. The doctor count was rising faster than my phobia at this point. What they said plunged me into a world of terror and, with a mind like mine, no small amount of depression and anxiety. Having been told by another doctor that I should only be in one more night, just until they could reduce the potassium which had risen again, this new pair had other ideas. They began talking to me about my kidney scan from six years earlier, this despite the fact that I had always been adamant that I did not want to know if there was nothing they could do to improve the situation. They were not deterred as they went on to describe how I might be treated to the delights of a permanent catheter, or another surgical procedure which basically entails bypassing the normal method of urinating and having your water escape from an altogether different, artificially created, orifice.
The deadly duo left me with that thought for a few very dark hours indeed, until I was finally, at about 1.00 Thursday afternoon, moved up to an actual, real ward. As the nurse pushed my bed around the different corridors en route to the ward I remember catching a glimpse of the doctor who had wanted me to stay in on Monday night. She made eye contact but didn't say anything to indicate that she recognised me, but I couldn't help but think that she would be thinking 'I told you so'. So now not only was I depressed and feeling hopeless, I was fairly humiliated also. Finally I arrived at Ward 1C where two nurses immediately greeted me. Nurses are great, don't get me wrong, but I was not at that point ready for the way they went about their business as if I hadn't just been told that I might need life changing surgery. To them I was just another patient, just another day in the life and they couldn't see what all the fuss was about. I was so edgy that I was very reluctant to even allow them to take a simple swab of my throat, something which I was informed is mandatory for anyone who is a guest in these dubious surroundings.
Just at the point where they were helping me to transfer from my observation ward bed to the 1C bed a porter came in and announced that he was here to take me for my kidney scan. I let out an expletive and wondered aloud how it could have taken them nine hours to get me on to a ward but only a matter of seconds to disturb me again to take me for my scan. I'd already had one scan which I thought would be enough, but I was now being advised that I would need an ultra-sound. The porter seemed to empathise with my plight and offered to come back in 10 minutes. To give me time to 'settle in'. I was glad of the respite so I agreed, but within two minutes another porter arrived to take me for the scan. I explained that another porter had agreed to give me 10 minutes only moments before and he, like his colleague, was unfazed by this and agreed to let the other man come back for me at the agreed time. Only nobody came back. Half an hour passed. Then an hour. Soon after that I could hear one of the nurses arguing my case. She was telling whoever she was speaking to that I had been told by not one, but two porters that I could have a little more time to adjust following my arrival. This debate carried on for a few more minutes before the nurse came into the ward to explain the outcome of the discussion.
The scan would not be happening today. So the possibility of life changing surgery would continue to hang over me for at least another 24 hours. I was booked in for another scan at 9.30 on Friday morning. But for today my scan was cancelled.
It is difficult to describe how I felt. I had the anxiety of wondering what acidosis might be, and of wondering whether I had done the right thing in discharging myself the previous evening. Despite my not very big or clever Facebook status announcing that I had, I was starting to get the feeling that I almost certainly had not. That feeling was only added to by the fact that I was still experiencing waves of palpitations. By the time some intellectually challenged woman had contrived to trap herself in her bedroom with a psychotic killer in an episode of Luther I was really struggling to achieve any peace. So I went to bed. Not for long.
At about 1.00am I woke up suddenly with some serious palpitations. These were much stronger than anything I had experienced up to this point. My heart was pounding at 1000 miles per hour and I was panicking wildly. I felt like I might have a heart attack, which might sound fanciful but if you are experiencing something like this for the first time your mind wanders to all sorts of dark places. That it was during the dead of night in the pitch dark only added to my hysteria. After a couple of attempts to get back to sleep I gave up and got up. Every time I would get close to dropping off to sleep the palps would ramp up again to the point where breathing became something I had to think about. Added to this was the chilling tingle down my arms which is closely associated with heart trouble. I didn't get any more sleep on the couch but at least I had stopped disturbing Emma.
On Wednesday I remember (aswell as more shit television) a long telephone conversation with my mum. She was concerned about what I told her about the kind of night I'd had, and about what acidosis might be also. Somehow, even though normally I am the kind of person who would jab myself in both eyes with a pitch fork before I'd agree to go into hospital, I had agreed by the end of our conversation that if I had a repeat of the palps that night then I would go straight into the hospital. By the time Emma and I went to bed I hadn't talked myself out of it. It seemed like I had no choice at that point. It was the only sensible course of action. The palps were not just going to stop of their own accord. And they didn't. Within 10 minutes of going to bed, and again just at the point where I was about to drift into sleep I jolted up as the palps swept through me again. Heart pounding, arms tingling, I woke Emma and we got straight up and prepared for the hospital. We were expecting a somewhat longer stay this time so we actually packed a bag of overnight essentials. It was a grim thing to have to do, given my rising phobia. Yet at this point all I wanted was for someone to do something to stop my heart pounding so violently. I didn't really think about how many nights in hospital that might entail. At the back of my mind was the fact that I knew I was heading face first into that scary kidney scan also, but again there seemed little alternative.
We can probably skip the A & E part. It was almost identical to the events of two nights earlier. Blood tests, blood pressure, ECG, waiting. And waiting, and waiting. We spent what remained of Wednesday night in the observation ward. I was zonked out on a bed trying to slow down the palps but suffering from sleep deprivation. Emma was in a chair next to me suffering similarly. As morning arrived we were visited by at least three, maybe four doctors who each wanted to carry out an examination and ask the same questions. Have you got any pain? Are you on any medication? Are you allergic to anything? The final doctor who examined me was accompanied by a young female doctor. The doctor count was rising faster than my phobia at this point. What they said plunged me into a world of terror and, with a mind like mine, no small amount of depression and anxiety. Having been told by another doctor that I should only be in one more night, just until they could reduce the potassium which had risen again, this new pair had other ideas. They began talking to me about my kidney scan from six years earlier, this despite the fact that I had always been adamant that I did not want to know if there was nothing they could do to improve the situation. They were not deterred as they went on to describe how I might be treated to the delights of a permanent catheter, or another surgical procedure which basically entails bypassing the normal method of urinating and having your water escape from an altogether different, artificially created, orifice.
The deadly duo left me with that thought for a few very dark hours indeed, until I was finally, at about 1.00 Thursday afternoon, moved up to an actual, real ward. As the nurse pushed my bed around the different corridors en route to the ward I remember catching a glimpse of the doctor who had wanted me to stay in on Monday night. She made eye contact but didn't say anything to indicate that she recognised me, but I couldn't help but think that she would be thinking 'I told you so'. So now not only was I depressed and feeling hopeless, I was fairly humiliated also. Finally I arrived at Ward 1C where two nurses immediately greeted me. Nurses are great, don't get me wrong, but I was not at that point ready for the way they went about their business as if I hadn't just been told that I might need life changing surgery. To them I was just another patient, just another day in the life and they couldn't see what all the fuss was about. I was so edgy that I was very reluctant to even allow them to take a simple swab of my throat, something which I was informed is mandatory for anyone who is a guest in these dubious surroundings.
Just at the point where they were helping me to transfer from my observation ward bed to the 1C bed a porter came in and announced that he was here to take me for my kidney scan. I let out an expletive and wondered aloud how it could have taken them nine hours to get me on to a ward but only a matter of seconds to disturb me again to take me for my scan. I'd already had one scan which I thought would be enough, but I was now being advised that I would need an ultra-sound. The porter seemed to empathise with my plight and offered to come back in 10 minutes. To give me time to 'settle in'. I was glad of the respite so I agreed, but within two minutes another porter arrived to take me for the scan. I explained that another porter had agreed to give me 10 minutes only moments before and he, like his colleague, was unfazed by this and agreed to let the other man come back for me at the agreed time. Only nobody came back. Half an hour passed. Then an hour. Soon after that I could hear one of the nurses arguing my case. She was telling whoever she was speaking to that I had been told by not one, but two porters that I could have a little more time to adjust following my arrival. This debate carried on for a few more minutes before the nurse came into the ward to explain the outcome of the discussion.
The scan would not be happening today. So the possibility of life changing surgery would continue to hang over me for at least another 24 hours. I was booked in for another scan at 9.30 on Friday morning. But for today my scan was cancelled.
Friday, 30 August 2013
The Hospital Drama - Part One
I haven't written anything for a while you may have noticed. For the past three weeks that has been due to the fact that I am world class in the field of laziness. However, for the three or four weeks before that it was due to the fact that I was either ill, in hospital or both.
It all started the week I came back from Portugal. By the way I will finish that story also. There are a few more things that happened on that holiday that I'd like to tell you about but that's for another time. For now I had gone back to work on the Tuesday after we got back to the UK. For the first couple of days in work everything was fine but by the Thursday I was beginning to feel very peaky indeed. I had booked Thursday afternoon off that week anyway because the Ashes series was starting. What? There can't be anything better to use one's annual leave on than vegging around on your sofa watching a couple of sessions of test cricket. Especially the Ashes. People who say it's boring just haven't got the patience or, dare I say it in some cases, the intellect to appreciate the longer form of the game. Anyway I didn't see any cricket that day.
I went straight to bed. Obviously I have had illnesses before but it would normally take a particularly nasty bout of the bubonic plague to stop me from watching the Ashes. This must be serious, I thought. I was feeling nauseous without actually being able to vomit, had an impressive variety of bladder and kidney pains and was roasting hot. The fact that 2013 was one of those rare years when summer actually arrives was not helping in all of this. Anyway I just gave up and went to bed as I say. By the time Emma came home from work at about 6.00 I didn't feel any better. I got up briefly but I don't remember eating anything before going back to bed a few hours later.
I had planned another afternoon off on the Friday but that wouldn't be necessary. The symptoms had just got worse and so I called in sick. Annoying when you know you are only due in for three and a half hours but this was getting perilous. In any case I am quite sure my colleagues had had enough of me wretching at my desk and having to look at me as I turned ever more green. The weekend I remember passed in a blur of illness and anti-biotics but by Monday I was starting to feel a little better. Not much, but the improvement led me to believe that I might be alright to go back into work the following week after four or five days rest. That was what I thought before I went to the hospital for a blood test. Because my doctors kept insisting that my water test results showed no evidence of an infection I had agreed to go and have a blood test. There had to be something there if the anti-biotics were making me feel slightly better so I thought that a blood test might show something up that the water test had not been able to. All of which was straightforward enough. I still felt rough but it was no great hardship to get the blood taken. It was not until I got home and tried to rest again that things got tricky.
At about 4.00 I was watching some over-rated Robert Redford film about a man who runs for office in California (or somewhere) and then finds out that everyone and everything about Californian (or wherever) politics is corrupt. Who would have thought it? Anyway before I find out what happens to this man the phone rings. It's my GP. He tells me that the blood test I have had earlier in the day shows that I have very high levels of potassium. So what? you may ask. He also says that high potassium is extremely dangerous for the heart and that I need to go into A & E as soon as possible to have treatment to lower my potassium levels. He tells me that if I do not go for the treatment then the condition I have is potentially fatal. Potentially Fatal. He actually uses that phrase. So little more than a week ago I'm on a beach in the Algarve with hardly a care in the world yet today I'm going to die. Potentially, obviously. How things change. At the precise moment he tells me this, and I can pinpoint it exactly in my memory, I start having heart palpitations. Small at first, like the feeling you get when you have a bit of a fright. Maybe like you think you have forgotten something important, but then it goes away when you realised that you have remembered it after all. My palpitations only subsided temporarily though. They began to return every few seconds, even as Emma and I had a pointless argument about whether I should go for the treatment or not. I said I wasn't going but Emma said I was, and it kept on like that for a little while until I reluctantly agreed to go.
It had been a long time since I had been in an A & E department. Hospitals just aren't for me. I don't trust doctors and I'm paranoid enough to believe that the health service considers those of us with physical limitations to be expendable. If I were to write a list of names here of the people I have known with various disabilities who are no longer with us and who left us at a ludicrously young age it would take you the rest of the day to get through it. There are countless, some of them really close to me, others just acquaintances. But it scarcely matters. Once you have seen death among your peers you start to wonder a lot about your own mortality. How am I here and they are not? Something went wrong somewhere. Surely someone could have done something? I remember one morning I was on the school bus and we pulled up outside the house of one lad to pick him up. There was a black van outside the house which didn't mean that much to me at first. At that age I had never seen anything like it. But the lad had died that morning and presumably the van was there to take the body away.
Anyway, I consider that the best way to avoid adding your name to the list is to not go to a doctor or a hospital unless you absolutely have to. Just don't let them get their hands on you and complicate things, is my philosophy. As long as you feel well, who gives two shites if your kidneys are working at roughly the same level as your legs? But of course now, as we go back to the plot, I'm being told I have heart problems. Potentially Fatal heart problems. Now this is different gravy. I know my kidneys aren't going to kill me just yet but my heart? How do I know what state that is in? I've never had to have a scan or an ECG or anything. What I do know is that it is currently palpitating at the rate that Usain Bolt turns his legs over in the 100m. Still, at the back of my mind is the knowledge that it has only been doing so since the doctor told me I had Potentially Fatal heart trouble and so maybe the palps (as they became known) are a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm ill because I'm being told I'm ill. Or something.
At this point the first of my paranoid theories about hospitals is crushed. I had been expecting to spend at least three, maybe as many as six hours waiting around with my palps before seeing anyone who resembles a medical professional. This despite the receptionist's suggestion that it would be 'about 40 minutes'. I wasn't having that. My only memories of being in an A & E department are of endless waiting, with around one person being called in to see someone every hour or so, or so it seemed. The receptionist was wrong, but only in as far as it didn't take as long as 40 minutes for my name to be called. I was ushered into a small room where I told my story so far, and then was taken down a corridor into one of the examination rooms. There was some waiting at that point but nothing on the scale I was expecting. That would come later, but for now it wasn't long before a young man came in asking more questions and informing me that I would need some further tests. What they call 'obs'. Observation or something. Basically what they mean is another blood test, a blood pressure reading and an ECG. Unlike earlier in the day the blood test was particularly difficult. The young medic, apart from looking like a villain in 24, was the first of several cack-handed medical staff who had an inability to find a worthy vein in either of my arms and so just settled on a strategy of butchering me. That's not racist by the way, the 24 thing. If it is then the makers of 24 are racist. Regardless, our friend stabbed me three or four times before he was happy that he had taken a good enough blood sample.
Of course the other thing about this particular Monday was that Saints were playing at home to Wigan that evening. Being off sick and feeling decidedly off colour I had already resigned myself to the fact that I would not be able to go to Langtree Park as I would have normally. But I had thought, before the call from the doctor this afternoon, that I would be able to continue my convalescence in front of the television watching the game. I didn't really expect the win that eventually materialised but that wasn't the point. It was just about seeing the game. But that didn't happen. What happened instead was that I was hooked up to a drip for the next two hours and had various forms of fluid pumped into me in an attempt to lower my potassium levels I supposed. Though it was mostly painless one of the fluids, a type of glucoze or some such, caused my arm to feel a little dead when it was entering my system. It felt like I had been punched in the arm repeatedly. It got a little too uncomfortable at which point the nurse came around again, messed with a few wires and syringes and helped it ease slightly but not quite satisfactorily. It would take 15 minutes for all of the fluid to drain into me and so I just had to put up with it. All the while trying to find the best position in which to ease the heart palpitations.
At the end of this I had expected to be able to go home. Not so. I was then transferred to another room. An observation ward. Not quite a real ward, although I got a bed, but not quite an examination room either. There we waited, and waited, and waited. All this time I had been thinking that it was the people in A & E who made you wait when in fact they had nothing on the people in the observations wards. We had been told that I would need to speak to a doctor before I could be discharged. The trouble was that there weren't many of them about and they were still busy wandering from patient to patient handing out their daily titbits of bad news. I was getting very stressed. I had not stayed in hospital since I was about seven years old, and that as I remember had been some laughable attempt to 'straighten my legs' or something. What 30 years of avoiding hospitals while watching your peers pass away in sizeable numbers does is cause a phobia. At this point, I wasn't staying in hospital unless my life was at genuine risk, and not just because I was missing the game.
Finally the doctor turned up. I can't remember her name but she was very nice. As surprised as I was by that, I wasn't surprised when she didn't give me the answer I was looking for. She told me that she thought it would be best if I stayed in for the night so they could monitor me. My potassium had lowered (after yet another blood test) but they still wanted to take a longer look at me. I was adamant that I was not staying but she said that they would need to see further evidence that my potassium was continuing to decrease to be comfortable with discharging me. That would mean another blood test and another couple of hours waiting around for the results. It was already after 10.30 in the evening by this time. There was one more thing she could do, she said. She could take a blood gases test, the results of which could be obtained more quickly. Within about 10-15 minutes. That sounded good to me, though I would come to loathe blood gases tests as things progressed. For now I was quite happy to have another injection, this time in the vein that sits right on the bone between your wrist and your hand. It's lot more painful than a standard blood test, although this doctor was quite skilfull because I don't remember thinking that at the time.
As promised the doctor came back around 10 minutes later and confirmed that my potassium had dropped again. But still I was not being discharged. That was because she also told me that they had found something called acidosis as a result of the blood gases test. She couldn't explain what that was, or whether it was a genuine threat, or even whether it was a new phenomenon or something I had always had given that I had never had a blood gases test before. She wanted me to stay in to explore it further, and to take a closer look at my kidneys. That meant another scan. At this point I had not had a kidney scan for six years. I was absolutely certain that they must have declined considerably in that time but I really didn't want to know. Like I said, if you feel well then just get on with it until you don't. I stuck to my guns and told the doctor that I was not staying. She brought me a form to sign to confirm that I was discharging myself against their advice and I was more than happy to do so. I felt fine apart from the palps which had eased, and which I was still sure were only there because the doctor had frightened me earlier. Having had the ECG earlier, I was confident that there could be nothing wrong with my heart because they would have mentioned it. I signed the form and we went home. Not in time for the match and I was too tired to watch the repeat that night. I would watch it in the morning.
But my troubles were not over. Not by a long way.
It all started the week I came back from Portugal. By the way I will finish that story also. There are a few more things that happened on that holiday that I'd like to tell you about but that's for another time. For now I had gone back to work on the Tuesday after we got back to the UK. For the first couple of days in work everything was fine but by the Thursday I was beginning to feel very peaky indeed. I had booked Thursday afternoon off that week anyway because the Ashes series was starting. What? There can't be anything better to use one's annual leave on than vegging around on your sofa watching a couple of sessions of test cricket. Especially the Ashes. People who say it's boring just haven't got the patience or, dare I say it in some cases, the intellect to appreciate the longer form of the game. Anyway I didn't see any cricket that day.
I went straight to bed. Obviously I have had illnesses before but it would normally take a particularly nasty bout of the bubonic plague to stop me from watching the Ashes. This must be serious, I thought. I was feeling nauseous without actually being able to vomit, had an impressive variety of bladder and kidney pains and was roasting hot. The fact that 2013 was one of those rare years when summer actually arrives was not helping in all of this. Anyway I just gave up and went to bed as I say. By the time Emma came home from work at about 6.00 I didn't feel any better. I got up briefly but I don't remember eating anything before going back to bed a few hours later.
I had planned another afternoon off on the Friday but that wouldn't be necessary. The symptoms had just got worse and so I called in sick. Annoying when you know you are only due in for three and a half hours but this was getting perilous. In any case I am quite sure my colleagues had had enough of me wretching at my desk and having to look at me as I turned ever more green. The weekend I remember passed in a blur of illness and anti-biotics but by Monday I was starting to feel a little better. Not much, but the improvement led me to believe that I might be alright to go back into work the following week after four or five days rest. That was what I thought before I went to the hospital for a blood test. Because my doctors kept insisting that my water test results showed no evidence of an infection I had agreed to go and have a blood test. There had to be something there if the anti-biotics were making me feel slightly better so I thought that a blood test might show something up that the water test had not been able to. All of which was straightforward enough. I still felt rough but it was no great hardship to get the blood taken. It was not until I got home and tried to rest again that things got tricky.
At about 4.00 I was watching some over-rated Robert Redford film about a man who runs for office in California (or somewhere) and then finds out that everyone and everything about Californian (or wherever) politics is corrupt. Who would have thought it? Anyway before I find out what happens to this man the phone rings. It's my GP. He tells me that the blood test I have had earlier in the day shows that I have very high levels of potassium. So what? you may ask. He also says that high potassium is extremely dangerous for the heart and that I need to go into A & E as soon as possible to have treatment to lower my potassium levels. He tells me that if I do not go for the treatment then the condition I have is potentially fatal. Potentially Fatal. He actually uses that phrase. So little more than a week ago I'm on a beach in the Algarve with hardly a care in the world yet today I'm going to die. Potentially, obviously. How things change. At the precise moment he tells me this, and I can pinpoint it exactly in my memory, I start having heart palpitations. Small at first, like the feeling you get when you have a bit of a fright. Maybe like you think you have forgotten something important, but then it goes away when you realised that you have remembered it after all. My palpitations only subsided temporarily though. They began to return every few seconds, even as Emma and I had a pointless argument about whether I should go for the treatment or not. I said I wasn't going but Emma said I was, and it kept on like that for a little while until I reluctantly agreed to go.
It had been a long time since I had been in an A & E department. Hospitals just aren't for me. I don't trust doctors and I'm paranoid enough to believe that the health service considers those of us with physical limitations to be expendable. If I were to write a list of names here of the people I have known with various disabilities who are no longer with us and who left us at a ludicrously young age it would take you the rest of the day to get through it. There are countless, some of them really close to me, others just acquaintances. But it scarcely matters. Once you have seen death among your peers you start to wonder a lot about your own mortality. How am I here and they are not? Something went wrong somewhere. Surely someone could have done something? I remember one morning I was on the school bus and we pulled up outside the house of one lad to pick him up. There was a black van outside the house which didn't mean that much to me at first. At that age I had never seen anything like it. But the lad had died that morning and presumably the van was there to take the body away.
Anyway, I consider that the best way to avoid adding your name to the list is to not go to a doctor or a hospital unless you absolutely have to. Just don't let them get their hands on you and complicate things, is my philosophy. As long as you feel well, who gives two shites if your kidneys are working at roughly the same level as your legs? But of course now, as we go back to the plot, I'm being told I have heart problems. Potentially Fatal heart problems. Now this is different gravy. I know my kidneys aren't going to kill me just yet but my heart? How do I know what state that is in? I've never had to have a scan or an ECG or anything. What I do know is that it is currently palpitating at the rate that Usain Bolt turns his legs over in the 100m. Still, at the back of my mind is the knowledge that it has only been doing so since the doctor told me I had Potentially Fatal heart trouble and so maybe the palps (as they became known) are a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm ill because I'm being told I'm ill. Or something.
At this point the first of my paranoid theories about hospitals is crushed. I had been expecting to spend at least three, maybe as many as six hours waiting around with my palps before seeing anyone who resembles a medical professional. This despite the receptionist's suggestion that it would be 'about 40 minutes'. I wasn't having that. My only memories of being in an A & E department are of endless waiting, with around one person being called in to see someone every hour or so, or so it seemed. The receptionist was wrong, but only in as far as it didn't take as long as 40 minutes for my name to be called. I was ushered into a small room where I told my story so far, and then was taken down a corridor into one of the examination rooms. There was some waiting at that point but nothing on the scale I was expecting. That would come later, but for now it wasn't long before a young man came in asking more questions and informing me that I would need some further tests. What they call 'obs'. Observation or something. Basically what they mean is another blood test, a blood pressure reading and an ECG. Unlike earlier in the day the blood test was particularly difficult. The young medic, apart from looking like a villain in 24, was the first of several cack-handed medical staff who had an inability to find a worthy vein in either of my arms and so just settled on a strategy of butchering me. That's not racist by the way, the 24 thing. If it is then the makers of 24 are racist. Regardless, our friend stabbed me three or four times before he was happy that he had taken a good enough blood sample.
Of course the other thing about this particular Monday was that Saints were playing at home to Wigan that evening. Being off sick and feeling decidedly off colour I had already resigned myself to the fact that I would not be able to go to Langtree Park as I would have normally. But I had thought, before the call from the doctor this afternoon, that I would be able to continue my convalescence in front of the television watching the game. I didn't really expect the win that eventually materialised but that wasn't the point. It was just about seeing the game. But that didn't happen. What happened instead was that I was hooked up to a drip for the next two hours and had various forms of fluid pumped into me in an attempt to lower my potassium levels I supposed. Though it was mostly painless one of the fluids, a type of glucoze or some such, caused my arm to feel a little dead when it was entering my system. It felt like I had been punched in the arm repeatedly. It got a little too uncomfortable at which point the nurse came around again, messed with a few wires and syringes and helped it ease slightly but not quite satisfactorily. It would take 15 minutes for all of the fluid to drain into me and so I just had to put up with it. All the while trying to find the best position in which to ease the heart palpitations.
At the end of this I had expected to be able to go home. Not so. I was then transferred to another room. An observation ward. Not quite a real ward, although I got a bed, but not quite an examination room either. There we waited, and waited, and waited. All this time I had been thinking that it was the people in A & E who made you wait when in fact they had nothing on the people in the observations wards. We had been told that I would need to speak to a doctor before I could be discharged. The trouble was that there weren't many of them about and they were still busy wandering from patient to patient handing out their daily titbits of bad news. I was getting very stressed. I had not stayed in hospital since I was about seven years old, and that as I remember had been some laughable attempt to 'straighten my legs' or something. What 30 years of avoiding hospitals while watching your peers pass away in sizeable numbers does is cause a phobia. At this point, I wasn't staying in hospital unless my life was at genuine risk, and not just because I was missing the game.
Finally the doctor turned up. I can't remember her name but she was very nice. As surprised as I was by that, I wasn't surprised when she didn't give me the answer I was looking for. She told me that she thought it would be best if I stayed in for the night so they could monitor me. My potassium had lowered (after yet another blood test) but they still wanted to take a longer look at me. I was adamant that I was not staying but she said that they would need to see further evidence that my potassium was continuing to decrease to be comfortable with discharging me. That would mean another blood test and another couple of hours waiting around for the results. It was already after 10.30 in the evening by this time. There was one more thing she could do, she said. She could take a blood gases test, the results of which could be obtained more quickly. Within about 10-15 minutes. That sounded good to me, though I would come to loathe blood gases tests as things progressed. For now I was quite happy to have another injection, this time in the vein that sits right on the bone between your wrist and your hand. It's lot more painful than a standard blood test, although this doctor was quite skilfull because I don't remember thinking that at the time.
As promised the doctor came back around 10 minutes later and confirmed that my potassium had dropped again. But still I was not being discharged. That was because she also told me that they had found something called acidosis as a result of the blood gases test. She couldn't explain what that was, or whether it was a genuine threat, or even whether it was a new phenomenon or something I had always had given that I had never had a blood gases test before. She wanted me to stay in to explore it further, and to take a closer look at my kidneys. That meant another scan. At this point I had not had a kidney scan for six years. I was absolutely certain that they must have declined considerably in that time but I really didn't want to know. Like I said, if you feel well then just get on with it until you don't. I stuck to my guns and told the doctor that I was not staying. She brought me a form to sign to confirm that I was discharging myself against their advice and I was more than happy to do so. I felt fine apart from the palps which had eased, and which I was still sure were only there because the doctor had frightened me earlier. Having had the ECG earlier, I was confident that there could be nothing wrong with my heart because they would have mentioned it. I signed the form and we went home. Not in time for the match and I was too tired to watch the repeat that night. I would watch it in the morning.
But my troubles were not over. Not by a long way.
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Portugal - Part 3
Have you even read parts 1 and 2? I only ask because different people have said different things to me about each one and it seems that some of you have read one and some of you have read another and some of you have read both. I don't want to waste your time by forcing you to go over old ground or anything, I just think some of this crap might make more sense to you if you have read each of the previous two installments.
On Sunday morning a man stole our seat at the breakfast table. There were no recriminations, no whailing or gnashing of teeth as they say, it just happened and nothing was said. We'd got up at around 8 in order to get down to the restaurant for around 9. We had plans to visit the Tourist Information Centre and then leave ourselves enough time to do whatever came off the back of that. Which was nothing, but more on that later.
For now there we are in the restaurant, trying to find a free table. It's very busy so we end up somewhere near the back, but it's a table for two with not too many other seats close by so it seems like a suitable enough place. I pull the chair out of the way. I could transfer on to it from my wheelchair but I am a lazy bugger at the best of times and I didn't feel much like transferring into and out of my wheelchair every time I wanted to get up for another course, or a brew or a glass of juice or whatever. Besides, I'm already aware of the possibility that someone might steal our place if we leave nothing there to indicate that it is taken. So I move the chair and we go off to the breakfast buffet.
We only grab a bowl of cereal for now but this takes long enough in the crowds. It's very busy. We get back to our table a few minutes later to find a man sat there with a plate in front of him, about to tuck in to his breakfast. He has put the chair which I moved back at the table and is sitting on it. Clearly he has not given any thought to why it had been moved. Now, he just looks at me like a frightened deer looks up from his grazing when he hears a suspicious noise, and then goes back to his bacon and eggs. We find another table and resolve that moving a chair away is not going to be enough in future. We'll have to get our juice first and place that on the table before we go off to find our food. If that doesn't work there is always my hat, but I'm worried about it getting stolen also. It's every man for himself in this place.
This is the bit where you might need to have some knowledge of what is in the first two pieces in this surprisingly elongated series. The first thing we have to do after breakfast is get the room situation sorted out. We had been promised an opportunity to look at a room with an ocean view (which we had booked and paid for, but not got on account of some access concerns) and then decide for ourselves whether to stick or twist, as it were. However, yet more light years pass by in the reception queue before we are told that there is not a room available to view just yet but there will be by 11.00 if we would like to come back then.
We leave in search of the Tourist Information Centre. Which does not exist. We have only walked a short distance and made a couple of left turns before we find a map mounted on a small billboard. It has every single place of interest in Vilamoura marked on it. Supermarkets, mini-golf, car-parks, the beach, the marina. Everything. If there is a Tourist Information Centre it will be on this map. We walk on a little longer and pop into a shop which is advertising excursions. Glancing quickly around at what's on offer we ask about the possible whereabouts of the Tourist Information Centre and are told that it is 'in the next city'. The lady, who to be fair has better English than I have Portuguese, does not however seem to have the required vocabularly to expand on where the next city might be. Lisbon? Porto? Braga? Weston Supermare? Copenhagen? We don't know and it scarcely matters because we are likely not getting there today anyway. There is no time to go to the next city, wherever it is, before we have to get back to the hotel at the agreed time to finally sort out which room we will be spending the next six nights in.
Just after 11.00 we return to the hotel, do the queue dance (not a lot of movement but a very regular, slow tempo), and are eventually given the key to room 234. Easy to remember, not so easy to live in. As we had suspected (and so to be fair had the receptionist but that wasn't our beef with him) it has a very narrow bathroom doorway. Staying here would mean jumping out of my chair every time I wanted to pay a visit, and placing another chair in there for me to climb on in order to use the mirror to wash, brush my teeth or shave. I'm willing to give it a crack if the ocean view is that important but Emma won't hear of it. She's not happy about it but she's also insisting that we are better off where we are in the junior suite. It's hard to disgree. So we stay put, hand back the keys to 234 and pay for another six night's key rental for the safe deposit box in room 126. Another €15.
In the absence of any tourist information we go back out on to the marina to look for some other entertainment. After a long, long but highly pleasant stroll we happen across a row of stalls selling sea cruises from the marina. A greying man who speaks reasonable English if a little too quietly and creepily hands us some leaflets. We pore through them quickly and decide we might like something a bit shorter than the three hours we endured in Tenerife. The memory is still vivid of all those people vomiting into their sick bags on the choppy seas that day. I'm not normally sea sick, but after three hours of looking at other people go green and baulk you can't help but feel a little queasy yourself.
In the literature we find a two hour cruise called the Sunset Cruise. It sails in the later part of the evening, meaning it might offer a little respite from the searing heat, but the key thing is that it is only two hours in length. We think we can cope with that amount of time without being sick. Hell, we might even enjoy it. We ask the greying, quiet man about it but he informs us that the Sunset Cruise won't be sailing. Furthermore it never sails because there is never enough interest in it. He needs at least six people to make a booking to make it worth his while, he explains, but since he won't take any names or accept any money for it it is going to be incredibly difficult to reach that particular target. So in effect what he is saying is that it is a non-cruise. A mythical cruise like something out of a Sinbad movie. It's Jason And The Fecking Argonauts. Do we get a Golden Fleece as a free gift just for enquiring? No. Not even a free Parker pen. We get to make another choice or bugger off. After some more deliberation we opt for the three-hour cruise which looks as though it might provoke the least vomiting. It sails at 4.00 this afternoon and we are to return here to the marina at 3.45 when he will tell us where the boat is. As if it is a game show with clues or something. Where's Anneka Fucking Rice?
When we get back there the secret of where the boat sails from is staggeringly underwhelming. He tells us to go to the end of the marina (some 30 yards from where we are currently situated) and wait in a raised area in the shade where we will sea the boat come in. More waiting then, but mercifully the boat is on time. It is a catamaran but, having been assured by our friend that it is fully accessible we discover that this is only really a half-truth. Three-quarters, maybe. There are ramps down from the marina to where the boats are all docked but as we approach our catamaran I turn left towards it and discover a large ramp leading to it. It's a ramp, so that should be fine right? Wrong. It is a ramp with little raised grooves on each side of it, the reason for which is a mystery to me. I have to be physically lifted over these and then over the slight gap between the 'ramp' and the boat. So it's accessible if you don't mind being lifted on in your chair by two burly Portuguese men who don't speak much English. I don't, but some people might.
The cruise itself is enjoyable enough but our prediction that three hours might be a little overdoing it is not far off the mark. An hour or so in the boat stops near the rock formations and the caves at which point you can, if you are able, get off the boat and on to a small dinghy which takes you into the caves for a closer look. Emma changes her mind about whether to do this at least twice but ends up having a go anyway. She can't drink the sickly white wine they have offered us (it's free, at least) so she's sober enough to be able to step down on to the dinghy. I remember thinking that everyone else was being helped with their life jackets as they prepared to get on to the dinghy, but Emma and I seemed to be invisible. I'm pretty sure this is the curse of one who spends too much time with the likes of me. I have a level of invisibility at times that Harry Potter's cloak could not help you match. Anyway the man ignores her but she manages to sort out the life jacket herself and off they go. A small boy has a life jacket on but finally decides that he won't get in the dinghy. His parents try to coax him in and he screams the proverbial blue murder. In the end his mum goes alone while his dad waits with him. While they are away I finish Emma's wine while some of the people for whom there was no room in the dinghy (including the little boy and his dad) dive into the water for a bit of a swim. They're making two trips so they will get their turn. There's an acoustic version of Eye Of The Tiger playing on board which I quite like, but can't for the life of me fathom out why anyone would bother to have found it. It seems painfully obscure but no doubt it is on one of the many cash-cow Rocky Soundtrack albums that have been churned out down the years.
The cruise back to the marina is long and I start to feel a bit green towards the end. By the time I am hoisted off again by the burly men I am pleased to be back on land. We're off out for our first proper evening meal of the holiday this evening. Since we are so fond of Nandos, we have chosen to sample some of the chicken piri piri on offer at one of the many restaurants for which we were handed leaflets on our travels yesterday. It doesn't turn out to be quite like Nandos.......
On Sunday morning a man stole our seat at the breakfast table. There were no recriminations, no whailing or gnashing of teeth as they say, it just happened and nothing was said. We'd got up at around 8 in order to get down to the restaurant for around 9. We had plans to visit the Tourist Information Centre and then leave ourselves enough time to do whatever came off the back of that. Which was nothing, but more on that later.
For now there we are in the restaurant, trying to find a free table. It's very busy so we end up somewhere near the back, but it's a table for two with not too many other seats close by so it seems like a suitable enough place. I pull the chair out of the way. I could transfer on to it from my wheelchair but I am a lazy bugger at the best of times and I didn't feel much like transferring into and out of my wheelchair every time I wanted to get up for another course, or a brew or a glass of juice or whatever. Besides, I'm already aware of the possibility that someone might steal our place if we leave nothing there to indicate that it is taken. So I move the chair and we go off to the breakfast buffet.
We only grab a bowl of cereal for now but this takes long enough in the crowds. It's very busy. We get back to our table a few minutes later to find a man sat there with a plate in front of him, about to tuck in to his breakfast. He has put the chair which I moved back at the table and is sitting on it. Clearly he has not given any thought to why it had been moved. Now, he just looks at me like a frightened deer looks up from his grazing when he hears a suspicious noise, and then goes back to his bacon and eggs. We find another table and resolve that moving a chair away is not going to be enough in future. We'll have to get our juice first and place that on the table before we go off to find our food. If that doesn't work there is always my hat, but I'm worried about it getting stolen also. It's every man for himself in this place.
This is the bit where you might need to have some knowledge of what is in the first two pieces in this surprisingly elongated series. The first thing we have to do after breakfast is get the room situation sorted out. We had been promised an opportunity to look at a room with an ocean view (which we had booked and paid for, but not got on account of some access concerns) and then decide for ourselves whether to stick or twist, as it were. However, yet more light years pass by in the reception queue before we are told that there is not a room available to view just yet but there will be by 11.00 if we would like to come back then.
We leave in search of the Tourist Information Centre. Which does not exist. We have only walked a short distance and made a couple of left turns before we find a map mounted on a small billboard. It has every single place of interest in Vilamoura marked on it. Supermarkets, mini-golf, car-parks, the beach, the marina. Everything. If there is a Tourist Information Centre it will be on this map. We walk on a little longer and pop into a shop which is advertising excursions. Glancing quickly around at what's on offer we ask about the possible whereabouts of the Tourist Information Centre and are told that it is 'in the next city'. The lady, who to be fair has better English than I have Portuguese, does not however seem to have the required vocabularly to expand on where the next city might be. Lisbon? Porto? Braga? Weston Supermare? Copenhagen? We don't know and it scarcely matters because we are likely not getting there today anyway. There is no time to go to the next city, wherever it is, before we have to get back to the hotel at the agreed time to finally sort out which room we will be spending the next six nights in.
Just after 11.00 we return to the hotel, do the queue dance (not a lot of movement but a very regular, slow tempo), and are eventually given the key to room 234. Easy to remember, not so easy to live in. As we had suspected (and so to be fair had the receptionist but that wasn't our beef with him) it has a very narrow bathroom doorway. Staying here would mean jumping out of my chair every time I wanted to pay a visit, and placing another chair in there for me to climb on in order to use the mirror to wash, brush my teeth or shave. I'm willing to give it a crack if the ocean view is that important but Emma won't hear of it. She's not happy about it but she's also insisting that we are better off where we are in the junior suite. It's hard to disgree. So we stay put, hand back the keys to 234 and pay for another six night's key rental for the safe deposit box in room 126. Another €15.
In the absence of any tourist information we go back out on to the marina to look for some other entertainment. After a long, long but highly pleasant stroll we happen across a row of stalls selling sea cruises from the marina. A greying man who speaks reasonable English if a little too quietly and creepily hands us some leaflets. We pore through them quickly and decide we might like something a bit shorter than the three hours we endured in Tenerife. The memory is still vivid of all those people vomiting into their sick bags on the choppy seas that day. I'm not normally sea sick, but after three hours of looking at other people go green and baulk you can't help but feel a little queasy yourself.
In the literature we find a two hour cruise called the Sunset Cruise. It sails in the later part of the evening, meaning it might offer a little respite from the searing heat, but the key thing is that it is only two hours in length. We think we can cope with that amount of time without being sick. Hell, we might even enjoy it. We ask the greying, quiet man about it but he informs us that the Sunset Cruise won't be sailing. Furthermore it never sails because there is never enough interest in it. He needs at least six people to make a booking to make it worth his while, he explains, but since he won't take any names or accept any money for it it is going to be incredibly difficult to reach that particular target. So in effect what he is saying is that it is a non-cruise. A mythical cruise like something out of a Sinbad movie. It's Jason And The Fecking Argonauts. Do we get a Golden Fleece as a free gift just for enquiring? No. Not even a free Parker pen. We get to make another choice or bugger off. After some more deliberation we opt for the three-hour cruise which looks as though it might provoke the least vomiting. It sails at 4.00 this afternoon and we are to return here to the marina at 3.45 when he will tell us where the boat is. As if it is a game show with clues or something. Where's Anneka Fucking Rice?
When we get back there the secret of where the boat sails from is staggeringly underwhelming. He tells us to go to the end of the marina (some 30 yards from where we are currently situated) and wait in a raised area in the shade where we will sea the boat come in. More waiting then, but mercifully the boat is on time. It is a catamaran but, having been assured by our friend that it is fully accessible we discover that this is only really a half-truth. Three-quarters, maybe. There are ramps down from the marina to where the boats are all docked but as we approach our catamaran I turn left towards it and discover a large ramp leading to it. It's a ramp, so that should be fine right? Wrong. It is a ramp with little raised grooves on each side of it, the reason for which is a mystery to me. I have to be physically lifted over these and then over the slight gap between the 'ramp' and the boat. So it's accessible if you don't mind being lifted on in your chair by two burly Portuguese men who don't speak much English. I don't, but some people might.
The cruise itself is enjoyable enough but our prediction that three hours might be a little overdoing it is not far off the mark. An hour or so in the boat stops near the rock formations and the caves at which point you can, if you are able, get off the boat and on to a small dinghy which takes you into the caves for a closer look. Emma changes her mind about whether to do this at least twice but ends up having a go anyway. She can't drink the sickly white wine they have offered us (it's free, at least) so she's sober enough to be able to step down on to the dinghy. I remember thinking that everyone else was being helped with their life jackets as they prepared to get on to the dinghy, but Emma and I seemed to be invisible. I'm pretty sure this is the curse of one who spends too much time with the likes of me. I have a level of invisibility at times that Harry Potter's cloak could not help you match. Anyway the man ignores her but she manages to sort out the life jacket herself and off they go. A small boy has a life jacket on but finally decides that he won't get in the dinghy. His parents try to coax him in and he screams the proverbial blue murder. In the end his mum goes alone while his dad waits with him. While they are away I finish Emma's wine while some of the people for whom there was no room in the dinghy (including the little boy and his dad) dive into the water for a bit of a swim. They're making two trips so they will get their turn. There's an acoustic version of Eye Of The Tiger playing on board which I quite like, but can't for the life of me fathom out why anyone would bother to have found it. It seems painfully obscure but no doubt it is on one of the many cash-cow Rocky Soundtrack albums that have been churned out down the years.
The cruise back to the marina is long and I start to feel a bit green towards the end. By the time I am hoisted off again by the burly men I am pleased to be back on land. We're off out for our first proper evening meal of the holiday this evening. Since we are so fond of Nandos, we have chosen to sample some of the chicken piri piri on offer at one of the many restaurants for which we were handed leaflets on our travels yesterday. It doesn't turn out to be quite like Nandos.......
Monday, 8 July 2013
Portugal - The Next Bit
When I left you we had finally got into room 126 at Hotel Vila Gale Ampalius in the Algarve resort of Vilamoura. Well over three hours have passed since we pulled up outside in a taxi. There's been lots of waiting around which is inconvenient, but on the positive side it allows plenty of opportunity for eating and drinking. Now we want to go out and explore, to see what is around us. But as always, the phrase 'there's a problem' is hurtling towards this tale. There's a problem.
We have lots of valuable items which we don't necessarily want to be carrying around everywhere with us, but which we also don't want to leave lying around the room for the cleaners to make off with. We have passports, flight documentation, money, house and car keys and kindles. The good news is that there is a safe deposit box in the room, but of course the bad news is that it is not working. I'd had to go back down to the reception, with it's endless queues, to rent the key. Complicating things further is the fact that we are still not sure if we will be changing rooms the next day, so I have to pay for just one night's key rental. This costs €2.50 which is much less of a concern than the further 20 minutes or so it takes to get it. Yet the real problems start when I get back to the room and find that it doesn't work. The box won't close. The instructions for use would be fairly simple for the average 8-year-old, but since there is a possibility at this point that I am losing my mind I keep trying over and over to no avail. Emma has several goes at it too, but it's not closing. I ring reception.
Having said that they would send someone up to look at it straight away it is slightly infuriating to find ourselves still idly waiting around the room 20 minutes later. I ring them back and am told again that someone will be up to look at it straight away. It's all a bit like when you ring a taxi to get you to town and it doesn't turn up, so you ring them back and they tell you it's on its way. What that means is that they have forgotten but they will do it now, thanks for the reminder. No apology. That would be an admission of responsibility. Another 20 minutes pass. Emma picks up the phone and makes what is the third call to reception to report the faulty safe deposit box. It's getting on for 5.00 in the afternoon, almost five hours after our arrival and we still haven't got out of the door.
It takes another 10 minutes for a lady to arrive with some contraption for testing the mechanics of the safe deposit box. She fiddles around with it for a minute or so and confirms that it is indeed broken. She tells us that she will need to go back to the technicians and get them to have a look at it and I resist the temptation to ask why they didn't send a bloody technician in the first place. But it will take 20 minutes for the technician to arrive and then probably another two days or so for him to diagnose the problem and either fix it or replace the box. Emma's drawing a line here and insists that the woman skips the part about finding out what is wrong with this box and just replace it now. At least half-way apologetically the woman agrees and so some time later a man comes in to replace it. It takes him roughly about the same amount of time it would take a half-wit receptionist to Instagram her dinner. An hour to organise, a matter of minutes to replace. At this point my head resides somewhere in the vicinity of the shed, but I'm just relieved that we can now get out of here and have a look around.
The marina at Vilamoura is arguably worth the wait. You'd expect the glorious weather in this part of the world but the rest of it does not disappoint. It's packed with bars, restaurants and shops and some stunning views. There's also some serious water transportation on show. Some of these boats are probably worth more than my house but it is still a nice thought to wonder what it would be like to own one and have the freedom to be able to set sail in the sunshine and forget about hotel receptionists and safe deposit boxes. We stop at a place called the '19th Hole' for a couple more beers. There are a couple of golf-themed places around the marina and it is clear that golf is a very popular activity around here. We see many large groups of men hauling their clubs on to coaches as they set off for their golf trips. I'm insanely jealous of this as I have always wanted to be able to play golf. Technically I can because they have accessible equipment for this sort of thing these days. But it is expensive and, aswell as being beyond my means financially, is beyond my level of get up and go, which regular readers will know barely exists. It would take a bit of organising and I'm normally too busy working or updating my Facebook status.
We have had the misfortune to sit next to two quite creepy forty-something men shamelessly out on the pull. Mixing in these circles was not intentional. When we sat here there were two young girls sat quietly chatting at a table nearby. We'd hardly noticed them until they were joined by two of the sleaziest, hairy-arsed letches in southern Europe. The worst thing about this is that the two impressionable girls are buying it completely and making arrangements to meet up with the men later on. I supposes you could accuse me of more jealousy in my disdain for these two reptiles, but Emma seems to find them equally repugnant. Later, we actually avoid going into an Irish bar because Emma has spotted the four of them going in there. We've had enough sleaze for one afternoon. Get a room, but if you do make sure the safe deposit box is working.
We'd been ascending a staircase when we saw them. Though Vilamoura Marina has fantastic access in the main there is an area which is only accessible via a set of stairs. But these are not just ordinary stairs. As a nod to the need to comply with the ever more complex access laws in Europe someone has had the bright idea of placing a small ramp at the end of each step. My even brighter notion that this would therefore make access possible was somewhat optimistic. We make it, but it's a deathly struggle and there is absolutely no way to go back down the way we came without utilising our health insurance. We have no choice but to go up a second set of steps with these token effort ramps at one side, and then walk all the way around on the main roads to get back on to the marina. Before we do so we take in a different Irish bar, one free of sleazy men chatting up jail-bait, but heavily populated by stray cats. What it also has is free Wi-Fi and a disabled toilet, so it gets the nod for a couple more beers.
The night ends back at the 19th but after what has been a very long day we are running out of steam. There is a live band on and just before we leave they play a Duran Duran song called 'Save A Prayer' and I can't help thinking that it might have been far more apt if they had played 'Rio' following his unexpected appearance on our flight.
We have lots of valuable items which we don't necessarily want to be carrying around everywhere with us, but which we also don't want to leave lying around the room for the cleaners to make off with. We have passports, flight documentation, money, house and car keys and kindles. The good news is that there is a safe deposit box in the room, but of course the bad news is that it is not working. I'd had to go back down to the reception, with it's endless queues, to rent the key. Complicating things further is the fact that we are still not sure if we will be changing rooms the next day, so I have to pay for just one night's key rental. This costs €2.50 which is much less of a concern than the further 20 minutes or so it takes to get it. Yet the real problems start when I get back to the room and find that it doesn't work. The box won't close. The instructions for use would be fairly simple for the average 8-year-old, but since there is a possibility at this point that I am losing my mind I keep trying over and over to no avail. Emma has several goes at it too, but it's not closing. I ring reception.
Having said that they would send someone up to look at it straight away it is slightly infuriating to find ourselves still idly waiting around the room 20 minutes later. I ring them back and am told again that someone will be up to look at it straight away. It's all a bit like when you ring a taxi to get you to town and it doesn't turn up, so you ring them back and they tell you it's on its way. What that means is that they have forgotten but they will do it now, thanks for the reminder. No apology. That would be an admission of responsibility. Another 20 minutes pass. Emma picks up the phone and makes what is the third call to reception to report the faulty safe deposit box. It's getting on for 5.00 in the afternoon, almost five hours after our arrival and we still haven't got out of the door.
It takes another 10 minutes for a lady to arrive with some contraption for testing the mechanics of the safe deposit box. She fiddles around with it for a minute or so and confirms that it is indeed broken. She tells us that she will need to go back to the technicians and get them to have a look at it and I resist the temptation to ask why they didn't send a bloody technician in the first place. But it will take 20 minutes for the technician to arrive and then probably another two days or so for him to diagnose the problem and either fix it or replace the box. Emma's drawing a line here and insists that the woman skips the part about finding out what is wrong with this box and just replace it now. At least half-way apologetically the woman agrees and so some time later a man comes in to replace it. It takes him roughly about the same amount of time it would take a half-wit receptionist to Instagram her dinner. An hour to organise, a matter of minutes to replace. At this point my head resides somewhere in the vicinity of the shed, but I'm just relieved that we can now get out of here and have a look around.
The marina at Vilamoura is arguably worth the wait. You'd expect the glorious weather in this part of the world but the rest of it does not disappoint. It's packed with bars, restaurants and shops and some stunning views. There's also some serious water transportation on show. Some of these boats are probably worth more than my house but it is still a nice thought to wonder what it would be like to own one and have the freedom to be able to set sail in the sunshine and forget about hotel receptionists and safe deposit boxes. We stop at a place called the '19th Hole' for a couple more beers. There are a couple of golf-themed places around the marina and it is clear that golf is a very popular activity around here. We see many large groups of men hauling their clubs on to coaches as they set off for their golf trips. I'm insanely jealous of this as I have always wanted to be able to play golf. Technically I can because they have accessible equipment for this sort of thing these days. But it is expensive and, aswell as being beyond my means financially, is beyond my level of get up and go, which regular readers will know barely exists. It would take a bit of organising and I'm normally too busy working or updating my Facebook status.
We have had the misfortune to sit next to two quite creepy forty-something men shamelessly out on the pull. Mixing in these circles was not intentional. When we sat here there were two young girls sat quietly chatting at a table nearby. We'd hardly noticed them until they were joined by two of the sleaziest, hairy-arsed letches in southern Europe. The worst thing about this is that the two impressionable girls are buying it completely and making arrangements to meet up with the men later on. I supposes you could accuse me of more jealousy in my disdain for these two reptiles, but Emma seems to find them equally repugnant. Later, we actually avoid going into an Irish bar because Emma has spotted the four of them going in there. We've had enough sleaze for one afternoon. Get a room, but if you do make sure the safe deposit box is working.
We'd been ascending a staircase when we saw them. Though Vilamoura Marina has fantastic access in the main there is an area which is only accessible via a set of stairs. But these are not just ordinary stairs. As a nod to the need to comply with the ever more complex access laws in Europe someone has had the bright idea of placing a small ramp at the end of each step. My even brighter notion that this would therefore make access possible was somewhat optimistic. We make it, but it's a deathly struggle and there is absolutely no way to go back down the way we came without utilising our health insurance. We have no choice but to go up a second set of steps with these token effort ramps at one side, and then walk all the way around on the main roads to get back on to the marina. Before we do so we take in a different Irish bar, one free of sleazy men chatting up jail-bait, but heavily populated by stray cats. What it also has is free Wi-Fi and a disabled toilet, so it gets the nod for a couple more beers.
The night ends back at the 19th but after what has been a very long day we are running out of steam. There is a live band on and just before we leave they play a Duran Duran song called 'Save A Prayer' and I can't help thinking that it might have been far more apt if they had played 'Rio' following his unexpected appearance on our flight.
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Portugal - The First Bit
It's 3.30am on Saturday June 29 2013. I've only been in bed for four hours. I've been to watch another dismal Saints performance, a 24-12 loss to Hull KR, details of which will be documented elsewhere. By the time I'd had a brew and sat through half an hour of Sandra Bullock talking about being in a plane crash it was 11.30pm. Nevertheless I have to get up. I have a flight to catch. Fortunately I'm too disorientated by sleep deprivation to remember any of the details of Sandra's aeroplane experience so I'm not put off. It couldn't have been any more frightening than any of the things she went through on that bus with Keanu Reeves anyway.
We're flying to Faro, Portugal at 7.35am. Neither of us have ever been to Portugal before. It's the unknown, in that respect. So unknown is it, in fact, that Emma's completely forgotten when she's asked where she is flying to at the check-in desk at Manchester airport. She tells me later she couldn't even remember what country we were flying to at that point. Luckily I'm on hand to provide the real tricky information to the girl on the check-in desk. We'd been lucky also to reach that point much sooner than expected. When we arrived there were the usual queues, but a lady working for the Monarch airline advised us to go straight to the front. There were surprisingly few dirty looks from those who were in the queue, standing around wearily leaning on their suitcases.
So at this point things are going far too well for comfort. There is no sign of the drama that always accompanies any attempts I make to travel and which keeps this column up and running. Even the bus driver at the airport car park had seen us struggling with the luggage and pulled up to let us on, despite our not being particularly close to a designated stop. Actually let's be factual. Start as we mean to go on. He had seen Emma struggling with the luggage. Moving luggage is one of many areas in which I am totally and utterly useless. I have one pair of hands and so the choice is simple. Hold the cases and go nowhere, or propel my chair and leave the luggage-carrying to Emma. Fear not anyway, for the travel problems are coming.
The first of these is the delay of the flight. After joining an unreasonably long queue at the bar we have managed to purchase a couple of alcoholic drinks, but looking up at one of the many flight information monitors dotted around we can see that the flight will now depart at 8.00. It may or may not be coincidence that this happens just a few seconds after I remark that since we had taken so long to get served we could do with an extra 20 minutes before taking off so I could finish my pint. Be careful what you wish for, they say, although I think it's rather unfair that I've never had a wish come true that quickly in the previous 37 years of my life. These are unusual circumstances anyway. Airports are one of few places where it is perfectly acceptable to consume alcohol at 6.30 in the morning. The only other occasions I can think of are trips to see Saints at Wembley. Once I opened a bottle of whiskey at something like 5.15am. It's little wonder I'm such a picture of health. When Emma writes on her Facebook she is in a bar with a Desperado and a bacon sandwich I somehow feel compelled to point out to her friends that a Desperado is a beer, and that she is not referring to me.
The flight itself is uneventful. I sleep through most of it. The only thing of note to report is the surreal experience of being dragged backwards on an aisle chair to my seat, and looking up to see Rio Ferdinand trying to look patient as he waits for me to get my shit together and get to my seat. It's not every day you inconvenience a former England captain. I remember thinking that I had grave doubts about how flying economy class was going to help prolong his club career, not to mention the 17 rounds of golf he is no doubt going to play during his stay in the Algarve. After an uneventful taxi ride we arrive at Hotel Vila Gale Ampalius at around 12.15pm and the queuing begins. Waiting is something you need to be good at if you are going to stay at the Ampalius. It takes 35 minutes to reach the reception desk and attempt to check in. While queuing I notice the lifts are at the top of a small flight of stairs. What I can't work out is how I'm going to ascend them. But Emma's checked all this out with the usual military precision, hasn't she? She's very good at this. Organisation is another of the many things that I am totally useless at. Yet neither of us can see an obvious way of getting to the lifts. There's a ramp on the other side of the lobby leading to the bar and restaurant, so maybe I have to use that and go all the way around the back somehow? The wait gives us enough time to figure out that there is actually an opening in the corner of the room which leads to a ramp behind a wall which is not visible from the queue. First panic over, we won't have to be moved to another hotel like we did when we went to Tenerife in 2008. We got an upgrade to a lovely hotel on that occasion, but we had a very bad first day.
This particular first day isn't going all that swimmingly now. When we finally get to the desk we are told that the room will not be ready until 2.00, which is roughly an hour and ten minutes from now. We are able to use their luggage storage room, however, so with little other idea of what to do we head out to the pool bar for a drink Another beer, naturally. To be fair the pool area is beautiful. There is a rather steep ramp leading down to the pool and bar which is going to be a challenge but there seems plenty of space and therefore opportunity for lounging around. We've been to far too many hotels where securing a lounger has been impossible without staying up all night but we should be alright here, I think. Emma's fiddling with her phone because she can't get a signal.
At 2.00pm we go back to the queue. It's another 20 minutes before we get to the front. This is mesmerising to me because there are not that many people in front of us. Everyone who hits the front of the queue seems to spend endless amounts of time discussing their issues with the gormless reception staff. There are three of them, which should be enough to see everyone through quickly but this is never the case. When it's our turn we are told that the room still isn't ready and will be another half an hour. Probably because I have been up so long at such a relatively early hour of the day I am a little peeved at this, and tell them so. The girl looks at me blankly as if she has forgotten all of the English that she knew 30 seconds ago. The upshot is that it doesn't matter what I say, we're not getting in the room for at least another half an hour.
Not wanting to have to come back a fourth time we leave it an hour before our third visit to the never-ending queue. We grab a quick lunch in the bar area which is again a top notch place. There's hardly anyone around because they are all outside so it's peaceful and the food isn't bad. And there is more beer involved so what is not to like? We go back to the queue at around 3.15 and are finally granted admission to our room, whereupon there are more problems. We have booked and paid for a room with an ocean view. The view we have is of what looks like the top of the reception area. It's a giant concrete slab. Sitting out here for lunch is not going to be idyllic. Emma's particularly put out by this and, staggeringly, finds the patience to go back into the queue. She is then told that none of the disabled access rooms have an ocean view. They sell this to us by letting us know that we have been given an upgrade to a junior suite. Not unreasonably, Emma argues that we might have been told that none of the disabled rooms have an ocean view at the point of booking. If we were going to get an upgrade anyway we could have booked the cheapest room available, or else found a hotel with accessible rooms and an ocean view. We are told that we can look at a room with an ocean view tomorrow and see if it is suitable. It seems a long shot given that the receptionist's negativity but we agree anyway. We have stayed in some dodgy rooms in our time so it might just be possible.
Which brings us to Saturday evening and a chance to explore the resort, suss out the bars and restaurants and get suitably intoxicated. At which point Portugal, The Next Bit, will unfold......
We're flying to Faro, Portugal at 7.35am. Neither of us have ever been to Portugal before. It's the unknown, in that respect. So unknown is it, in fact, that Emma's completely forgotten when she's asked where she is flying to at the check-in desk at Manchester airport. She tells me later she couldn't even remember what country we were flying to at that point. Luckily I'm on hand to provide the real tricky information to the girl on the check-in desk. We'd been lucky also to reach that point much sooner than expected. When we arrived there were the usual queues, but a lady working for the Monarch airline advised us to go straight to the front. There were surprisingly few dirty looks from those who were in the queue, standing around wearily leaning on their suitcases.
So at this point things are going far too well for comfort. There is no sign of the drama that always accompanies any attempts I make to travel and which keeps this column up and running. Even the bus driver at the airport car park had seen us struggling with the luggage and pulled up to let us on, despite our not being particularly close to a designated stop. Actually let's be factual. Start as we mean to go on. He had seen Emma struggling with the luggage. Moving luggage is one of many areas in which I am totally and utterly useless. I have one pair of hands and so the choice is simple. Hold the cases and go nowhere, or propel my chair and leave the luggage-carrying to Emma. Fear not anyway, for the travel problems are coming.
The first of these is the delay of the flight. After joining an unreasonably long queue at the bar we have managed to purchase a couple of alcoholic drinks, but looking up at one of the many flight information monitors dotted around we can see that the flight will now depart at 8.00. It may or may not be coincidence that this happens just a few seconds after I remark that since we had taken so long to get served we could do with an extra 20 minutes before taking off so I could finish my pint. Be careful what you wish for, they say, although I think it's rather unfair that I've never had a wish come true that quickly in the previous 37 years of my life. These are unusual circumstances anyway. Airports are one of few places where it is perfectly acceptable to consume alcohol at 6.30 in the morning. The only other occasions I can think of are trips to see Saints at Wembley. Once I opened a bottle of whiskey at something like 5.15am. It's little wonder I'm such a picture of health. When Emma writes on her Facebook she is in a bar with a Desperado and a bacon sandwich I somehow feel compelled to point out to her friends that a Desperado is a beer, and that she is not referring to me.
The flight itself is uneventful. I sleep through most of it. The only thing of note to report is the surreal experience of being dragged backwards on an aisle chair to my seat, and looking up to see Rio Ferdinand trying to look patient as he waits for me to get my shit together and get to my seat. It's not every day you inconvenience a former England captain. I remember thinking that I had grave doubts about how flying economy class was going to help prolong his club career, not to mention the 17 rounds of golf he is no doubt going to play during his stay in the Algarve. After an uneventful taxi ride we arrive at Hotel Vila Gale Ampalius at around 12.15pm and the queuing begins. Waiting is something you need to be good at if you are going to stay at the Ampalius. It takes 35 minutes to reach the reception desk and attempt to check in. While queuing I notice the lifts are at the top of a small flight of stairs. What I can't work out is how I'm going to ascend them. But Emma's checked all this out with the usual military precision, hasn't she? She's very good at this. Organisation is another of the many things that I am totally useless at. Yet neither of us can see an obvious way of getting to the lifts. There's a ramp on the other side of the lobby leading to the bar and restaurant, so maybe I have to use that and go all the way around the back somehow? The wait gives us enough time to figure out that there is actually an opening in the corner of the room which leads to a ramp behind a wall which is not visible from the queue. First panic over, we won't have to be moved to another hotel like we did when we went to Tenerife in 2008. We got an upgrade to a lovely hotel on that occasion, but we had a very bad first day.
This particular first day isn't going all that swimmingly now. When we finally get to the desk we are told that the room will not be ready until 2.00, which is roughly an hour and ten minutes from now. We are able to use their luggage storage room, however, so with little other idea of what to do we head out to the pool bar for a drink Another beer, naturally. To be fair the pool area is beautiful. There is a rather steep ramp leading down to the pool and bar which is going to be a challenge but there seems plenty of space and therefore opportunity for lounging around. We've been to far too many hotels where securing a lounger has been impossible without staying up all night but we should be alright here, I think. Emma's fiddling with her phone because she can't get a signal.
At 2.00pm we go back to the queue. It's another 20 minutes before we get to the front. This is mesmerising to me because there are not that many people in front of us. Everyone who hits the front of the queue seems to spend endless amounts of time discussing their issues with the gormless reception staff. There are three of them, which should be enough to see everyone through quickly but this is never the case. When it's our turn we are told that the room still isn't ready and will be another half an hour. Probably because I have been up so long at such a relatively early hour of the day I am a little peeved at this, and tell them so. The girl looks at me blankly as if she has forgotten all of the English that she knew 30 seconds ago. The upshot is that it doesn't matter what I say, we're not getting in the room for at least another half an hour.
Not wanting to have to come back a fourth time we leave it an hour before our third visit to the never-ending queue. We grab a quick lunch in the bar area which is again a top notch place. There's hardly anyone around because they are all outside so it's peaceful and the food isn't bad. And there is more beer involved so what is not to like? We go back to the queue at around 3.15 and are finally granted admission to our room, whereupon there are more problems. We have booked and paid for a room with an ocean view. The view we have is of what looks like the top of the reception area. It's a giant concrete slab. Sitting out here for lunch is not going to be idyllic. Emma's particularly put out by this and, staggeringly, finds the patience to go back into the queue. She is then told that none of the disabled access rooms have an ocean view. They sell this to us by letting us know that we have been given an upgrade to a junior suite. Not unreasonably, Emma argues that we might have been told that none of the disabled rooms have an ocean view at the point of booking. If we were going to get an upgrade anyway we could have booked the cheapest room available, or else found a hotel with accessible rooms and an ocean view. We are told that we can look at a room with an ocean view tomorrow and see if it is suitable. It seems a long shot given that the receptionist's negativity but we agree anyway. We have stayed in some dodgy rooms in our time so it might just be possible.
Which brings us to Saturday evening and a chance to explore the resort, suss out the bars and restaurants and get suitably intoxicated. At which point Portugal, The Next Bit, will unfold......
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
Robbie And Olly
I went to see Robbie Williams on Friday night.
As with everything else in my life, I did this 10 years after it was 'cool' to do so. But you know my thoughts on 'cool'? Cool is so uncool. Regardless of what year it is (what year is it?) my thoughts on the controversial subject of Robbie Williams have not changed. I liked 'Lazy Days'. I like 'Not Like The Others'. I just didn't get chance to see him when he played Knebworth, and before that I was not the sort of person who went to gigs. My first live gig was Pink in Manchester in 2004. I was 28 years old. But I've always been a big Robbie fan. There you have it. Get over it. I'm not listening to Muse or Kings Of Leon because you tell me to and because they are not 'commercial'. I worry about people who give up on their favourite things because they have become 'commercial'. You're taking something enjoyable out of your life because other people have cottoned on to its value. Like a child who doesn't want any sweets at all if he has to share them with the other children.
So Robbie, anyway. He's been playing at Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, which is another good reason to write this piece. Just to see how many times I can mention the Etihad stadium and so annoy my Manchester United supporting friends. By the way, I can confirm that to my disappointment, there is a Bell Stand at the Etihad, but not a Bell End as has been suggested in some more whimsical pro-United circles. Anyway since I went to the penultimate Robbie show I had already seen how much trouble other people had been having getting there through the chaotic traffic. One horror story in particular told of a journey from St.Helens to Manchester (roughly 30 miles or so) which took three and a half hours. So I was glad that we had already thought this through and decided to stay over. The truth is we'd have stayed over if all other traffic had been banned from the M62 for the weekend, but as it turns out getting there early was a good idea.
Shockingly, the Premier Inn costs £135 on the weekend when Robbie Williams is in town. Most other times of the year you can get in for half a bag of grapes. The only thing that is not Premier is the price. Or something. I know someone who apparently paid £200 to stay in the Lowry where Robbie and his support act, pork-pie and braces wearing warbler Olly Murs, were staying. So I suppose you might say I got off lightly but this is a Premier Inn we are talking about. It's the very definition of basic, and our room had no soap and a sliding door to the bathroom which could best be described as temperemental. Of course as Dawn French will testify, this is not the first time that Lenny Henry has been economical with the truth. Now every time I see that advert it is going to remind me of the extortionate price, the faulty door, and the quite absurd amounts of people trying to use the check-in machines at the same time when we arrived. When did real life human receptionists stop existing, anyway?
Suitably unimpressed we decided to get out as soon as possible. It was already around 3.00 by the time we had checked in (and been given a room key which did not work and had to be replaced). There's a Wetherspoons on the corner of the street where the Premier Inn is situated so we spent the afternoon in there, eating an enormous fish (Fish Friday, of course) and drinking bottled beers available at £5 for two. That's reasonable in this day and age, and a quick look at the menu confirmed this. One bottled beer normally costs £3.45.
Suitably lubricated we can leave my penny-pinching there and move on to the tram journey. The leaflet which came with the tickets claimed that the Etihad Stadium (that's where Manchester City play, don't you know?) is only 20 minutes walk from the city centre. This might be true from somewhere in the city centre, but according to the information we picked up from the hotel it was more likely to take around 45 minutes. We considered it for a few seconds and then decided that we would be ok getting a tram before the gig. People arrive at different times so there shouldn't be too much of a scrum to get on. It's at the end when the problems start. I remember queueing for what seemed like hours in the rain to try and get a tram back to the city centre from Old Trafford after Grand Final defeats for Saints against Leeds in both 2007 and 2008. We repeated the trick in 2009, invited Wigan to crush our hopes in 2010 before allowing Leeds another chance in 2011. Only we weren't there after 2008. Emma had stood in one tram queue too many and trying to get any of my mates organised for a trip outside St.Helens for any reason is a bit like trying to get Ian Brady to finish his lunch.
Unlike on some other occasions the staff were very helpful. The only problem was that some trams which passed through were chock full of Robbie Williams gig-goers with about as much intention of leaving the tram as I have of having the Wigan coat of arms tattooed on my face. We had to let two go before one arrived with enough space for us to get on. The way was cleared for us to get on first and then we just found a space by the opposite door where I wouldn't get sat on by a fat lass who has drunkenly lost her balance. There were an abundance of these.
The rather pretentiously named Etihad Campus tram stop allows you to disembark right outside the stadium. A lift takes you out of the massive queues of people trying to ascend the stairs at the same time, and you come out just outside the stadium surrounded by food outlets. It's like the food court at your local shopping centre, except it's not McDonalds and Pizza Hut but smaller outlets, possibly independent. Spicy Rat, or something. We pass and try instead to find the right entrance. It is around 7.00pm and Olly is due on in half an hour. While it is possible to live without a rendition of 'Army Of Two' or whatever, you want to get your money's worth. And besides I'm curious to see what he's like. I just like live music and it's not like he can't sing or anything. X-Factor produces some proper talent. I just don't want to sit there and watch while it gets slagged off by self-important gits like Cowell and Barlow. Especially since most of it then disappears from public view, rendering the last 20 Saturday nights of your life a complete waste of time.
So finally we get in and are shown to our seats. It's a mixed bag of pleasant surprise and a weary feeling of 'there's always something'. On the plus side we are sat together. This might seem a small thing, but anyone who has ever been to a rugby league game at Castleford will know that there is no guarantee of this. Same here, as an unfortunate pair of girls are split up. One is sat in the seat next to Emma, while the other, the wheelchair user, has to sit the other side of me, two seats away from her friend. It's quite scandalous to note that in the 21st century it is not possible to accommodate one wheelchair user and her able bodied friend in seats next to one another in a modern stadium at a concert by one of the biggest musical acts in Britain. But that's where we are. They take it in good grace whereas I would have been throwing my beer at the stewards and questioning their parentage. What's worse than the lack of organisation here for me though is the 'it doesn't really matter' attitude of the staff. It's like she should be glad they let her in. As if to say, 'you're at a Robbie Williams gig, enjoy yourself!' Yeah, but she paid for the fucking privilege just like everyone else and deserves a modicum of respect. To borrow a phrase from Robbie, 'what shape of insanity' leads them to think that this sort of treatment is ok? I'm sorry to moan, but Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard wouldn't serving its purpose if it did not point these things out. Yes, it has a purpose...
The other problem is the shape of the stand. The roof hangs over quite low, meaning that if Emma stood up she was unable to see all of the stage. The stage was a little smaller than you might expect in any case, but the main problem here was that Robbie made his entrance from a position way up on top of the giant sculpture of his head which sat at the back of the stage. Both of us had to lean forward to then look up to be able to see him as he swung down onto the stage in the style of an old fashioned stuntman. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Olly played first, decked out in his pork pie and red braces combo. His dancing was a little Monty Python, but there's no doubting his vocal abilities. The only gripe I have is that he was on slightly later than billed and so must have played for not much more than an hour. He knows he is second fiddle and is making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to steal the show, but in many ways that's a shame. On the other hand it is good that he leaves us with some time before Robbie comes on to go back into the battlefield that is the queue for a beer. They kept it simple by offering few options but this didn't completely eliminate the nuisance that is people failing to make up their minds and spending four days getting served. Fortunately most of the queue-chat was good natured gallows humour about brewing it yourself, or the classic 'just run them all over'. As Blackadder once said, I thank God I wore my corset for I fear my sides have split.
And so back to Robbie. We've talked about his entrance so let's move on from that. The whole thing was just splendid from start to finish. Proper Robbie. Anyone who starts a gig by saying 'allow me to re-introduce myself, I am Robbie Fucking Williams' is not going to go into his shell once the music starts. And he didn't. It was an extravaganza of showmanship and plain old dicking around. But in an entertaining, amusing fashion. My highlight was Better Man. This is one of the greatest Robbie songs but he rarely plays it, and it is never played on the radio. But here he took out a guitar and plunk-plunked his way through it with great gusto. To be fair he played both chords faultlessly. Simplicity is genius. You can keep your concept albums and your Dark Side Of The Moon.
It's all here tonight, from Come Undone, Feel, Hot Fudge from Escapology to Strong, Millennium and She's The One from I've Been Expecting You. And lots in between including versions of The Blues Brothers' Minnie The Moocher and Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side. At the end of the latter he mischievously muses that 'soon this will all be someone else's dream'. Along with a quick blast of Everthing Changes, this is the only nod to Take That on offer. But then this is Robbie, so that's ok. I would have liked a bit of No Regrets (another of my favourite Robbie songs) but you can't have it all. Remember, I got to sit next to the person I arrived with. How lucky am I? He doesn't sing Different either, contenting himself with just Not Like The Others from the Take The Crown album. It's perhaps an admission that the audience aren't here to listen to the new stuff so much as they are here to jump up and down to Monsoon and drunkennly well up to Angels. It's the obvious finale. It's probably written in Robbie's contract somewhere that if he plays a gig without ending with Angels he will be stoned to death at dawn the next morning. Before that we see Olly again for the duet Kids. He's no Kylie Minogue but somehow it works out alright in the end.
As expected, getting the tram back was a little more challenging. There was less help and more crowds, until one helpful soul advised us to get out of the queue and just get straight in the lift. From there the queues got significantly smaller which was merciful since I was becoming significantly more drunk and on the very edge of Pain In The Arse status.
I can't remember a lot thereafter, but I wouldn't mind betting that I got there in the end.
As with everything else in my life, I did this 10 years after it was 'cool' to do so. But you know my thoughts on 'cool'? Cool is so uncool. Regardless of what year it is (what year is it?) my thoughts on the controversial subject of Robbie Williams have not changed. I liked 'Lazy Days'. I like 'Not Like The Others'. I just didn't get chance to see him when he played Knebworth, and before that I was not the sort of person who went to gigs. My first live gig was Pink in Manchester in 2004. I was 28 years old. But I've always been a big Robbie fan. There you have it. Get over it. I'm not listening to Muse or Kings Of Leon because you tell me to and because they are not 'commercial'. I worry about people who give up on their favourite things because they have become 'commercial'. You're taking something enjoyable out of your life because other people have cottoned on to its value. Like a child who doesn't want any sweets at all if he has to share them with the other children.
So Robbie, anyway. He's been playing at Manchester City's Etihad Stadium, which is another good reason to write this piece. Just to see how many times I can mention the Etihad stadium and so annoy my Manchester United supporting friends. By the way, I can confirm that to my disappointment, there is a Bell Stand at the Etihad, but not a Bell End as has been suggested in some more whimsical pro-United circles. Anyway since I went to the penultimate Robbie show I had already seen how much trouble other people had been having getting there through the chaotic traffic. One horror story in particular told of a journey from St.Helens to Manchester (roughly 30 miles or so) which took three and a half hours. So I was glad that we had already thought this through and decided to stay over. The truth is we'd have stayed over if all other traffic had been banned from the M62 for the weekend, but as it turns out getting there early was a good idea.
Shockingly, the Premier Inn costs £135 on the weekend when Robbie Williams is in town. Most other times of the year you can get in for half a bag of grapes. The only thing that is not Premier is the price. Or something. I know someone who apparently paid £200 to stay in the Lowry where Robbie and his support act, pork-pie and braces wearing warbler Olly Murs, were staying. So I suppose you might say I got off lightly but this is a Premier Inn we are talking about. It's the very definition of basic, and our room had no soap and a sliding door to the bathroom which could best be described as temperemental. Of course as Dawn French will testify, this is not the first time that Lenny Henry has been economical with the truth. Now every time I see that advert it is going to remind me of the extortionate price, the faulty door, and the quite absurd amounts of people trying to use the check-in machines at the same time when we arrived. When did real life human receptionists stop existing, anyway?
Suitably unimpressed we decided to get out as soon as possible. It was already around 3.00 by the time we had checked in (and been given a room key which did not work and had to be replaced). There's a Wetherspoons on the corner of the street where the Premier Inn is situated so we spent the afternoon in there, eating an enormous fish (Fish Friday, of course) and drinking bottled beers available at £5 for two. That's reasonable in this day and age, and a quick look at the menu confirmed this. One bottled beer normally costs £3.45.
Suitably lubricated we can leave my penny-pinching there and move on to the tram journey. The leaflet which came with the tickets claimed that the Etihad Stadium (that's where Manchester City play, don't you know?) is only 20 minutes walk from the city centre. This might be true from somewhere in the city centre, but according to the information we picked up from the hotel it was more likely to take around 45 minutes. We considered it for a few seconds and then decided that we would be ok getting a tram before the gig. People arrive at different times so there shouldn't be too much of a scrum to get on. It's at the end when the problems start. I remember queueing for what seemed like hours in the rain to try and get a tram back to the city centre from Old Trafford after Grand Final defeats for Saints against Leeds in both 2007 and 2008. We repeated the trick in 2009, invited Wigan to crush our hopes in 2010 before allowing Leeds another chance in 2011. Only we weren't there after 2008. Emma had stood in one tram queue too many and trying to get any of my mates organised for a trip outside St.Helens for any reason is a bit like trying to get Ian Brady to finish his lunch.
Unlike on some other occasions the staff were very helpful. The only problem was that some trams which passed through were chock full of Robbie Williams gig-goers with about as much intention of leaving the tram as I have of having the Wigan coat of arms tattooed on my face. We had to let two go before one arrived with enough space for us to get on. The way was cleared for us to get on first and then we just found a space by the opposite door where I wouldn't get sat on by a fat lass who has drunkenly lost her balance. There were an abundance of these.
The rather pretentiously named Etihad Campus tram stop allows you to disembark right outside the stadium. A lift takes you out of the massive queues of people trying to ascend the stairs at the same time, and you come out just outside the stadium surrounded by food outlets. It's like the food court at your local shopping centre, except it's not McDonalds and Pizza Hut but smaller outlets, possibly independent. Spicy Rat, or something. We pass and try instead to find the right entrance. It is around 7.00pm and Olly is due on in half an hour. While it is possible to live without a rendition of 'Army Of Two' or whatever, you want to get your money's worth. And besides I'm curious to see what he's like. I just like live music and it's not like he can't sing or anything. X-Factor produces some proper talent. I just don't want to sit there and watch while it gets slagged off by self-important gits like Cowell and Barlow. Especially since most of it then disappears from public view, rendering the last 20 Saturday nights of your life a complete waste of time.
So finally we get in and are shown to our seats. It's a mixed bag of pleasant surprise and a weary feeling of 'there's always something'. On the plus side we are sat together. This might seem a small thing, but anyone who has ever been to a rugby league game at Castleford will know that there is no guarantee of this. Same here, as an unfortunate pair of girls are split up. One is sat in the seat next to Emma, while the other, the wheelchair user, has to sit the other side of me, two seats away from her friend. It's quite scandalous to note that in the 21st century it is not possible to accommodate one wheelchair user and her able bodied friend in seats next to one another in a modern stadium at a concert by one of the biggest musical acts in Britain. But that's where we are. They take it in good grace whereas I would have been throwing my beer at the stewards and questioning their parentage. What's worse than the lack of organisation here for me though is the 'it doesn't really matter' attitude of the staff. It's like she should be glad they let her in. As if to say, 'you're at a Robbie Williams gig, enjoy yourself!' Yeah, but she paid for the fucking privilege just like everyone else and deserves a modicum of respect. To borrow a phrase from Robbie, 'what shape of insanity' leads them to think that this sort of treatment is ok? I'm sorry to moan, but Memoirs Of A Fire Hazard wouldn't serving its purpose if it did not point these things out. Yes, it has a purpose...
The other problem is the shape of the stand. The roof hangs over quite low, meaning that if Emma stood up she was unable to see all of the stage. The stage was a little smaller than you might expect in any case, but the main problem here was that Robbie made his entrance from a position way up on top of the giant sculpture of his head which sat at the back of the stage. Both of us had to lean forward to then look up to be able to see him as he swung down onto the stage in the style of an old fashioned stuntman. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Olly played first, decked out in his pork pie and red braces combo. His dancing was a little Monty Python, but there's no doubting his vocal abilities. The only gripe I have is that he was on slightly later than billed and so must have played for not much more than an hour. He knows he is second fiddle and is making absolutely no attempt whatsoever to steal the show, but in many ways that's a shame. On the other hand it is good that he leaves us with some time before Robbie comes on to go back into the battlefield that is the queue for a beer. They kept it simple by offering few options but this didn't completely eliminate the nuisance that is people failing to make up their minds and spending four days getting served. Fortunately most of the queue-chat was good natured gallows humour about brewing it yourself, or the classic 'just run them all over'. As Blackadder once said, I thank God I wore my corset for I fear my sides have split.
And so back to Robbie. We've talked about his entrance so let's move on from that. The whole thing was just splendid from start to finish. Proper Robbie. Anyone who starts a gig by saying 'allow me to re-introduce myself, I am Robbie Fucking Williams' is not going to go into his shell once the music starts. And he didn't. It was an extravaganza of showmanship and plain old dicking around. But in an entertaining, amusing fashion. My highlight was Better Man. This is one of the greatest Robbie songs but he rarely plays it, and it is never played on the radio. But here he took out a guitar and plunk-plunked his way through it with great gusto. To be fair he played both chords faultlessly. Simplicity is genius. You can keep your concept albums and your Dark Side Of The Moon.
It's all here tonight, from Come Undone, Feel, Hot Fudge from Escapology to Strong, Millennium and She's The One from I've Been Expecting You. And lots in between including versions of The Blues Brothers' Minnie The Moocher and Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side. At the end of the latter he mischievously muses that 'soon this will all be someone else's dream'. Along with a quick blast of Everthing Changes, this is the only nod to Take That on offer. But then this is Robbie, so that's ok. I would have liked a bit of No Regrets (another of my favourite Robbie songs) but you can't have it all. Remember, I got to sit next to the person I arrived with. How lucky am I? He doesn't sing Different either, contenting himself with just Not Like The Others from the Take The Crown album. It's perhaps an admission that the audience aren't here to listen to the new stuff so much as they are here to jump up and down to Monsoon and drunkennly well up to Angels. It's the obvious finale. It's probably written in Robbie's contract somewhere that if he plays a gig without ending with Angels he will be stoned to death at dawn the next morning. Before that we see Olly again for the duet Kids. He's no Kylie Minogue but somehow it works out alright in the end.
As expected, getting the tram back was a little more challenging. There was less help and more crowds, until one helpful soul advised us to get out of the queue and just get straight in the lift. From there the queues got significantly smaller which was merciful since I was becoming significantly more drunk and on the very edge of Pain In The Arse status.
I can't remember a lot thereafter, but I wouldn't mind betting that I got there in the end.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
Man Of Steel
I've completely given up on my film blog, so in a cynical attempt to get you to read my thoughts on the films I see I'm going to write about it here. Still here? Then we'll begin.
Following on from Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and....yes....Iron Man 3 comes another metalic-themed super-hero flick, Man Of Steel. Thankfully this is not a reference to Sam Tomkins who, to paraphrase Bill Shankly, I wouldn't watch if he were playing at the bottom of my garden, but to the character formerly known as Superman. Cast in the leading role is Henry Cavill, a man hitherto known only to me for his turn as Albert Mondego, son of the dastardly but quite brilliant Fernand Mondego in a version of The Count Of Monte Cristo also starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce aswell as the ubiquitous James Frain and the late Dumbledore original Richard Harris. If you haven't seen this film then please do. The Count Of Monte Cristo is one of the greatest stories ever told and this is a tremendous update on it. It's also got Luis Guzman in it, and you can't go wrong with Luis Guzman. Or the quite unpronouncably named lady who plays Mercedes.
But is Man Of Steel any good? Well yes it is. It was always going to be better than the Brandon Routh version of a few years ago, but I was pleasantly surprised by how favourably it compares with the original Superman films of the 80's with which this version has most in common. Cavill is sufficiently older now to not remind me of Albert whenever he is on screen and anyway I'm told that he has been in The Tudors since then and several other things of note. I couldn't watch The Tudors on account of it casting Joss Stone as the ugly one who big fat Henry VIII didn't want. That struck me as a bit like casting David Beckham as John Merrick. I know, we've all seen 'Goal' and there's no way he'd pull it off even if he was ugly enough.
Man Of Steel is a star-studded affair. Aside from Cavill it features Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner and Laurence Fishburne, but the show is well and truly stolen by Michael Shannon. Fans of Boardwalk Empire will know him as Nelson Van Alden (or perhaps George) but here we seem him taking on the role of General Zod, a classic Superman baddie from the Christopher Reeve era, then played menacingly enough by Terence Stamp. Shannon's take on Zod is different, and the clothes are certainly an improvement on the 80s' garb sported by Stamp. However, what strikes you most about Zod is that he has a stronger motive for being fanatically hell-bent on destruction. It isn't just a hobby as it seemed to be for Stamp's incarnation of Zod. Crowe also has more to do than his predecessor in the role of Superman's father Jor-El. Those of you expecting him to do a Marlon Brando and disappear in the carnage on Krypton might be pleasantly surprised. Unless you don't like Crowe in which case you'll probably get very annoyed. Crowe's Brando-esque scenes at the start of the film are CGI heavy, with all scenes set on Krypton looking and feeling much more like a Star Wars prequel than any of the super-hero films we get beaten over the head with these days.
So is there anything not to like? Certainly not Amy Adams who is spellbinding as Lois Lane. Whether or not she was chosen for the aliteration of her name I'm not so sure. If that is the case then I suppose we should all be grateful that they did not choose to cast Susan Sarandon or Priscilla Presley. On the downside although Man Of Steel is action packed and really moves, some of the fight scenes are too long and are tediously repetetive. And if it is possible to have too much flying in a Superman film then this is it. These are minor quibbles but the film could probably have been 20 minutes shorter and you have to suspect that the extended action is down to the current obsession with all things 3D. Watching it in 2D as I prefer to do, you can still see which scenes are made almost entirely to suit the 3D audience. More worryingly, the action could be so relentless because director Zack Snyder doesn't think we as an audience are clever enough to cope with too much dialogue or character development.
The script too could have done with some extra work. Hearing Zod pronounce that there is 'only one way this ends, either you die or I die' can only lead you to the conclusion that he can't count. Though it is not clear how important mathematics was on the Krypton curriculum before it all went tits up. My personal favourite though, and the line which reminded me most of Blackadder's classic 'have you vanquished the nibble pibblies?', was Zod's instruction to one of his minions to 'release the world engine!'. Also, look out for liberal use of the word 'codex' which I am convinced exists only in this film's universe.
Man Of Steel is left wide open for any number of sequels, and I'll be among those lapping them up. If they're all as good as this first effort than that might not be any bad thing.
Following on from Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and....yes....Iron Man 3 comes another metalic-themed super-hero flick, Man Of Steel. Thankfully this is not a reference to Sam Tomkins who, to paraphrase Bill Shankly, I wouldn't watch if he were playing at the bottom of my garden, but to the character formerly known as Superman. Cast in the leading role is Henry Cavill, a man hitherto known only to me for his turn as Albert Mondego, son of the dastardly but quite brilliant Fernand Mondego in a version of The Count Of Monte Cristo also starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce aswell as the ubiquitous James Frain and the late Dumbledore original Richard Harris. If you haven't seen this film then please do. The Count Of Monte Cristo is one of the greatest stories ever told and this is a tremendous update on it. It's also got Luis Guzman in it, and you can't go wrong with Luis Guzman. Or the quite unpronouncably named lady who plays Mercedes.
But is Man Of Steel any good? Well yes it is. It was always going to be better than the Brandon Routh version of a few years ago, but I was pleasantly surprised by how favourably it compares with the original Superman films of the 80's with which this version has most in common. Cavill is sufficiently older now to not remind me of Albert whenever he is on screen and anyway I'm told that he has been in The Tudors since then and several other things of note. I couldn't watch The Tudors on account of it casting Joss Stone as the ugly one who big fat Henry VIII didn't want. That struck me as a bit like casting David Beckham as John Merrick. I know, we've all seen 'Goal' and there's no way he'd pull it off even if he was ugly enough.
Man Of Steel is a star-studded affair. Aside from Cavill it features Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner and Laurence Fishburne, but the show is well and truly stolen by Michael Shannon. Fans of Boardwalk Empire will know him as Nelson Van Alden (or perhaps George) but here we seem him taking on the role of General Zod, a classic Superman baddie from the Christopher Reeve era, then played menacingly enough by Terence Stamp. Shannon's take on Zod is different, and the clothes are certainly an improvement on the 80s' garb sported by Stamp. However, what strikes you most about Zod is that he has a stronger motive for being fanatically hell-bent on destruction. It isn't just a hobby as it seemed to be for Stamp's incarnation of Zod. Crowe also has more to do than his predecessor in the role of Superman's father Jor-El. Those of you expecting him to do a Marlon Brando and disappear in the carnage on Krypton might be pleasantly surprised. Unless you don't like Crowe in which case you'll probably get very annoyed. Crowe's Brando-esque scenes at the start of the film are CGI heavy, with all scenes set on Krypton looking and feeling much more like a Star Wars prequel than any of the super-hero films we get beaten over the head with these days.
So is there anything not to like? Certainly not Amy Adams who is spellbinding as Lois Lane. Whether or not she was chosen for the aliteration of her name I'm not so sure. If that is the case then I suppose we should all be grateful that they did not choose to cast Susan Sarandon or Priscilla Presley. On the downside although Man Of Steel is action packed and really moves, some of the fight scenes are too long and are tediously repetetive. And if it is possible to have too much flying in a Superman film then this is it. These are minor quibbles but the film could probably have been 20 minutes shorter and you have to suspect that the extended action is down to the current obsession with all things 3D. Watching it in 2D as I prefer to do, you can still see which scenes are made almost entirely to suit the 3D audience. More worryingly, the action could be so relentless because director Zack Snyder doesn't think we as an audience are clever enough to cope with too much dialogue or character development.
The script too could have done with some extra work. Hearing Zod pronounce that there is 'only one way this ends, either you die or I die' can only lead you to the conclusion that he can't count. Though it is not clear how important mathematics was on the Krypton curriculum before it all went tits up. My personal favourite though, and the line which reminded me most of Blackadder's classic 'have you vanquished the nibble pibblies?', was Zod's instruction to one of his minions to 'release the world engine!'. Also, look out for liberal use of the word 'codex' which I am convinced exists only in this film's universe.
Man Of Steel is left wide open for any number of sequels, and I'll be among those lapping them up. If they're all as good as this first effort than that might not be any bad thing.
Thursday, 13 June 2013
A Mind Like Mine
It's not difficult to get inside a mind like mine.
A mind like mine. I'm not even sure there is such a thing. The more I think about them, the more I think my mental deficiencies could be unique. My mind is not a depressed mind. I've read up on depression and there are all sorts of symptoms involved which I have never experienced. Pains in the chest, falling over with lethargy, extreme insomnia. I have had anxiety and shortness of breath but I've also got one third of a kidney and had high blood pressure. There may not be a mind quite like mine.
Which as I say is not difficult to affect. Something happened today, something so small and matter-of-fact to most people that it barely merited a second thought, much less hundreds of words on my mental state. It was enough to send me on a downward spiral, however, and to ensure that I became quite unbearable for the rest of the day. The nature of it is actually too personal, too close to the bone even for these pages. Taking this refusal to divulge into account I'm not actually entitled to be offended by it. But I was. Mostly because I was just struck by how ignorant and intolerant we are, and yes I include myself in that. It made me feel small and abnormal, which is again not a conviction toward which I need much coaxing. We live in a judgemental society in which you have to conform to certain norms. Sometimes it is taken to extremes like trying to dictate what music you should like, what sport you should watch. Some norms we don't even think about because 99.99% of the population are able to conform to them. Nobody ever thinks about the 0.01% of the population who for whatever reason cannot. That's not intentional, it's just how people are. But try telling that to a mind like mine in the middle of a dull Thursday morning. At that time, a mind like mine thinks it's completely intentional, and feels utterly dehumanised.
The vagueness of this piece is probably working hard against the possibility of it resonating with anyone or making any sense. Suffice to say that I have spent the day being obnoxious towards other people on account of the fact that I don't like myself too much. But you knew that. If you have been here before, at any rate. People who have been here before and want to read about someone who likes himself are not here now. They are on IMDB or Simon Bleeding Cowell.com or whatever it might be. The point here is that I regret my behaviour, but also that I want to put across the clear message that actually I can't help it. I spend a lot of time telling people who would call me 'mentally weak' or whatever that they wouldn't last an hour if they woke up in my situation. This is mostly true, but it does not mean that I myself don't struggle with it aswell from time to time. To put this in some sort of perspective though, a friend of mine is going through something at the moment which to my uneducated mind is a lot more daunting than waking up in the morning and remembering that you can't feel - let alone control - your legs, or several other bodily functions that others take for granted. I try to take inspiration from this person's courage and, well, just bloody well man up. But there are times, like today, when the best I can do in the 'manning up' stakes is to sit there and quietly seethe instead of saying what I actually think. Today was one such time.
You'll be glad to know that my day got progressively better after that. I had my Charlie Bucket moment when I opened my tickets for next week's Robbie Williams gig in Manchester, and discovered that another friend of mine has read these pages. I always welcome the news that someone new has read this nonsense. Reaching people, entertaining them or making them smile or even just think for even a moment or two is the whole point of it. That and a bit of catharsis. Now that I have written this here I won't have to have the 'debate' verbally. I'm pretty hopeful that come tomorrow I won't even have to think about it again, much less discuss it. Which is handy because there won't be time amid the puerile debate about whether we should all be chuffed to bits that it is Friday, or take my view that it is just another day. As rubbish as all the others, or as good as any of the others, depending on events yet to be determined. It's amazing how long we have made this discussion last.
As tedious as it is, a mind like mine will welcome its triviality. I'm a much better man when I'm dealing with the trivial.
A mind like mine. I'm not even sure there is such a thing. The more I think about them, the more I think my mental deficiencies could be unique. My mind is not a depressed mind. I've read up on depression and there are all sorts of symptoms involved which I have never experienced. Pains in the chest, falling over with lethargy, extreme insomnia. I have had anxiety and shortness of breath but I've also got one third of a kidney and had high blood pressure. There may not be a mind quite like mine.
Which as I say is not difficult to affect. Something happened today, something so small and matter-of-fact to most people that it barely merited a second thought, much less hundreds of words on my mental state. It was enough to send me on a downward spiral, however, and to ensure that I became quite unbearable for the rest of the day. The nature of it is actually too personal, too close to the bone even for these pages. Taking this refusal to divulge into account I'm not actually entitled to be offended by it. But I was. Mostly because I was just struck by how ignorant and intolerant we are, and yes I include myself in that. It made me feel small and abnormal, which is again not a conviction toward which I need much coaxing. We live in a judgemental society in which you have to conform to certain norms. Sometimes it is taken to extremes like trying to dictate what music you should like, what sport you should watch. Some norms we don't even think about because 99.99% of the population are able to conform to them. Nobody ever thinks about the 0.01% of the population who for whatever reason cannot. That's not intentional, it's just how people are. But try telling that to a mind like mine in the middle of a dull Thursday morning. At that time, a mind like mine thinks it's completely intentional, and feels utterly dehumanised.
The vagueness of this piece is probably working hard against the possibility of it resonating with anyone or making any sense. Suffice to say that I have spent the day being obnoxious towards other people on account of the fact that I don't like myself too much. But you knew that. If you have been here before, at any rate. People who have been here before and want to read about someone who likes himself are not here now. They are on IMDB or Simon Bleeding Cowell.com or whatever it might be. The point here is that I regret my behaviour, but also that I want to put across the clear message that actually I can't help it. I spend a lot of time telling people who would call me 'mentally weak' or whatever that they wouldn't last an hour if they woke up in my situation. This is mostly true, but it does not mean that I myself don't struggle with it aswell from time to time. To put this in some sort of perspective though, a friend of mine is going through something at the moment which to my uneducated mind is a lot more daunting than waking up in the morning and remembering that you can't feel - let alone control - your legs, or several other bodily functions that others take for granted. I try to take inspiration from this person's courage and, well, just bloody well man up. But there are times, like today, when the best I can do in the 'manning up' stakes is to sit there and quietly seethe instead of saying what I actually think. Today was one such time.
You'll be glad to know that my day got progressively better after that. I had my Charlie Bucket moment when I opened my tickets for next week's Robbie Williams gig in Manchester, and discovered that another friend of mine has read these pages. I always welcome the news that someone new has read this nonsense. Reaching people, entertaining them or making them smile or even just think for even a moment or two is the whole point of it. That and a bit of catharsis. Now that I have written this here I won't have to have the 'debate' verbally. I'm pretty hopeful that come tomorrow I won't even have to think about it again, much less discuss it. Which is handy because there won't be time amid the puerile debate about whether we should all be chuffed to bits that it is Friday, or take my view that it is just another day. As rubbish as all the others, or as good as any of the others, depending on events yet to be determined. It's amazing how long we have made this discussion last.
As tedious as it is, a mind like mine will welcome its triviality. I'm a much better man when I'm dealing with the trivial.
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