Là Obar Bhrothaig '22

Every year I look forward to the sixth-of-April anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, and this time was no exception. It's one of the special days of the year for me, when I do some festive / leisure things I don't usually do, reassess my backlogs / to-do lists and so forth.

Well, in the end it didn't exactly work out that way this year.

In the end I was so feeble I did only a very few of the usual things. Instead, towards the evening, I finally faced reality: I just couldn't cope on my own any longer. So I decided to accept the doctor's advice and apply for a place in a hospice, and mailed Black to make the apropriate steps.

Funny thing is, this is what I'd been wanting to do for some months now, but until recently saw no way of accomplishing it. In an odd way I'm looking forward to the experience.

Quote: George Mikes: How to be Decadent

 

If you have to decay, decay with elegance and grace. 

(p 254 in the How to be a Brit omnibus)

Yes, I should accept that I'll probably never again be able to work full time, walk several miles in a oner, leave this country even for a week's trip, will have to think twice each time before spending any money, take conscientious care of my diet and regimen and so on. But maybe, with a bit of luck, I'll be able to go through the rest of my life without feeling, behaving and looking as a victim of some tragedy, preserving instead my mental faculties and my dignity.

Quote: Malachy Tallack: The Valley at the Centre of the World

He was terrified of losing everything he had, so he’d convinced himself he had nothing to lose.

(about Sandy's father, p 98)

Maybe that's one of the mistakes I did myself after discovering I was probably exiled forever: having had lost so much throughout my life I convinced myself I'd lost everything, and consequently also lost all interest in the future, carrying on merely out of inertia and remnants of defiance.

Advices and Queries - 29

"Although old age may bring increasing disability and loneliness, it can also bring serenity, detachment and wisdom."

Unfortunately, while the former are now taking an increasingly heavy toll on me, the latter seem hardly to be even beginning to approach.

Hösten

Well, the hated summer is finally over. It was even harder to get through than usual this year, but it seems that somehow I've managed. I weigh less than 50 kilo, suffer from bellyache and backache on a daily (or rather, nightly) basis, can hardly stand or walk without bending forward for more than a couple of minutes, blurred vision began reoccuring, dozing off during the day is often a must, skitters basically chronic, and so on; most worrying of all, there were recently even some signs of possible old-age incontinence.

But the temperatures are eventually back to normal, and after resting for a week, doing more or less nothing but lying in bed and reading, I've started at last a serious attempt to get back in shape, pull myself together and (re)commence doing all those things I've been, willy-nilly, neglecting for months. Like blogging, for instance.

Collared dove

When I first heard one calling earlier this year I had to use the RSPB website to identify which bird it was at all. This is actually not such an unusual pattern in my life: (1) Live and learn. (2) Use it or lose it. (3) If you did lose it, go back to point (1).

Last week for three consecutive mornings one was cooing while sitting on the tree just beyond my window (which, incidentally, I've been so far unable to identify, although not for want of trying). I wondered whether it would actually nest there, but I haven't seen it for the last three days, so probably not. Somehow I miss it.

 

Bord och stolar

Nyligen läste jag att många köpte skrivbord och/eller skrivbordsstolar när de började jobba hemifrån.

Jag förstår inte folk som lever utan skrivbord och kontorstol trots att de inte behöver. Faktiskt, det är det första jag köpte varje gång jag flyttade. (Nej, andra - efter en ny vattenkokare. Men ändå.) Skriver de där människor inte ens? Det är så mycket lättare med ett lämpligt bord och stol ...

(Okej, jag förstår inte heller dem som använder mobil när de kan använda bärbar dator. Jag är en gammal stofil.)

Chemoradiotherapy over

If going through several examinations (while still attending at work) until getting the diagnose was the first stage, then preparations (like having a catheter and PEG tube inserted) for and the actual therapy was the second. One which is, after the last rays yesterday and the last dripping today, finally over too.

It would be a lie to say it was as hard as the previous stage, or as my previous radiochemotherapy four years ago. In fact, during the first half I could actually feel my state slowly but surely improve. But later I began gradually tiring more easily instead, days when I hardly did anything other than what I thought really necessary becoming more frequent. Going out for a radiation session might only take a few hours, but once back I would as likely as not just have a meal, doze (or not) in bed for a couple of hours, and maybe later do a bit of language studies before going to read in bed again. I would eat significantly less as well, although surprisingly I kept my weight all through.

Well it's over now, and a month-long third phase begins. Except for going the messages I shouldn't have to leave my digs more that once a week - although I think I better take a constitutional now and then, just to get some fresh air. The main thing is getting my strength back, partly at least (I suspect a month is too short to get from 50 kilo back to 60, the more so as for another week the side effects of the therapy are expected to continue), and catch up on all the things I have been neglecting.

And then on 2nd March a CT scan, with results the next day. I hope that till then I'll write here about other things than my health. I naturally want to get these things off my chest, but doing so I feel unpleasantly like one of those old geezers for whom their own health is the only remaining interesting topic of conversation.

2020

I remember that having a New Year's Day stroll twelve months ago I felt it in my bones that this year would be better that the one before. So much for my power of clarvoyance.

Because we all know what happened: Covid-19. Which didn't affect me personally as much as most; instead, I developed a tumour again, oesophageal this time.

Of course, things are rarely all bad. A silver lining of all those lockdowns was that Tommy had much more time to reply my mails. In fact, he began writing comparatively long ones, ones that resemble letters more than social media messages.

And during one of the less restricted months I went again, after several years, on a trip with my friends from college. It wasn't one of the best trips I had with them over the years, yet it was good enough to be a highlight of the year.

And so on. But all in all it was a bad year indeed. Basically I was just going to work, reading books (in a pub when possible - ay, I did enjoy that), struggling to keep up with my language(s) studies, scarcely fulfillling self-imposed tasks faster than adding new ones, and insidiously becoming sicker and sicker.

I don't feel anything in my bones tonight. But mere reason tells me that unless the cancer (or something else) kills me - which unfortunately at the moment doesn't seem at all improbable - the next year can hardly be as bad, let alone worse, than the one which is eventually almost over.*

* it's still not been midnight in my homeland, although it's already past it here in my exile

Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

"And what is there to do?"
"Continue, slowly, and wait for luck to change."

(Mr Frazer & Cayetano Ruiz inThe Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio) 

Recently I've begun pacing myself, because there's really nothing to really strive for unless and until my luck changes. If it doesn't, all that remains is to have a wee bit fun now and then while waiting for the final curtain to fall.

 

--------

The end of the day had always belonged to Nick alone and he never felt right unless he was alone at it.

(Nick Adams in Fathers and Sons) 

I'm not a loner by nature, it's more a case of having been most of my life unhappily lonely because of circumstances, but to properly unwind before turning in I do need to be for a while on my own.

 

--------

Then there were times when you had to write. Not conscience. Just peristaltic action.

(from On Writing (published subsequently to The First Forty-Nine Stories)) 

 

Usually I don't have enough time to blog nearly as much or often as I would like to, and I miss it. It doesn't matter that nobody reads this blog, it's about the pleasure of putting one's ideas down on paper or making them appear on a laptop screen, which pleasure comes regardless of whether or not anybody else will see them.

 

Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending

My memory has increasingly become a mechanism which reiterates apparently truthful data with little variation.

(Tony Webster (narrator), p 64)

 

One would think that growing older, and having been through more, you would have more to recollect, and in one sense you do; at the same time it seems that the older I am, the more I'm actually returning, again and again, to a number of the same memories. (Not just memories: the same is true about topics / opinions, songs, to a certain degree even books, and so on ...)

 

Autumn's approaching

Seems like I've got through another summer. Somewhat strangely, it was even more tiresome than usual, despite not being as torrid as several of the most recent ones, and despite my not boozing as much as a consequence. Maybe I'm ageing faster than I'm willing to admit to myself. (Incidentally, yesterday it was 30 years since I first crossed the English-Scottish border. Thirty fucking years. As were allegedly the last words of David Cassidy, "so much wasted time". Then again, it wasn't all wasted. There were a lot of good times I wouldn't have dreamed of happening in my wildest dreams those three decades ago.) Anyway, time to do more again than just keep going.

 

 

Cracking sternocostal joints

Not cracking as in 'excellent'. Cracking as in 'cracking fingers'. Until a few weeks ago it hadn't even occurred to me that the joints between the ribs and the sternum might crack at all*, but unless my sternum (which is where the cracks actually sound/feel to come from) can crack by itself, it must be them.


* in fact until I've just looked it up now I thought there were no joints, that the ribcage including the breastbone was just one solid bone, like a red deer's antler - so much for what I still remember from biology lessons  ...

Tactile deprivation

In Paul Greer's novel Less the main character sadly ponders that while two gays can't walk hand in hand on a street in Morocco, two straights can't do it in Chicago. I suspect that he's right: that in general, the easier it is somewhere for two gays to openly show their love, the harder it is for two straights to show their friendship and not be perceived as latently gay. Homophobia, instead of vanishing, simply taking on a different form.

And between gays and straights ... Even my best friends, who are in every other way perfectly relaxed about my sexuality, would be wary of touching me as freely as they would another straight. For my part, the more attractive I find somebody, the more studiously I avoid touching him. And the less you can touch people you love, the more unpleasant are touches of those you don't, so you avoid that as well.

Consequently, reading about all those people who are so distressed at suddenly being unable, because of the lockdown, to hug their nearest and dearest, it's actually hard to be compassionate and not just grin and think "for fuck's sake, you only have to endure for a few weeks or months something I've been suffering from almost all my life, and in all probability will go on suffering from until I die".

Day shifts going on

It was bad enough news when the company doc didn't allow me doing three shifts. Now there are so few orders for the work I'm meant to do 'primarily' that I'm helping elsewhere, which isn't too bad, but it also means only doing day shifts. I've just finished a fourth week, but I just can't get used to it.

True, I can get through the working week by getting up in the wee small hours, sitting at the laptop until it's time to go to work, then having a few pints and going to bed. The last time I even managed to do things I meant to do on the day I meant to do them before going to work, as opposed to on the following night. But being up mid-morning is so unnatural to me that I can't stick to the pattern over the weekend. I can just about manage Saturday, but on Sunday I have to return to bed after sunrise, and on Monday I have to start getting used to the day-shift rhythm all over again.

Even the day shifts' only advantage, lunches which are varied and prepared by somebody else, don't make up for the resulting tiredness and increasing backlog of things I'd like to do in my spare time. And the end of this day-shift run is nowehere in sight.

Où sont les neiges d'antan ?

Sure, even in my childhood a white Christmas was something rare, only talked of as commonplace by the old ones (whose own memories may moreover have been distorted). But proper snow, one which would not only settle, but last for several days even in towns and cities, at some time during the winter, was something we took for granted. During my four winters in Glasgow I hadn't experienced snow that would outlast twenty-four hours once, which I put down to the place's climate, but I'm not sure I've seen it ever since in the two cities on the Continent where I'd spent the following five winters (including this one) either. I miss it. What kind of winter is it without snow? Like spring without blossoms, summer without sun or autumn without turning and falling leaves ...

Off key

I lost the ability to sing in falsetto so long ago that I've learned to accept it as an unalterable fact. I've grudgingly accepted it too when later I noticed that my vocal range was progressively getting narrower. But when I decided the other day to learn the lyrics of A Guid New Year to Ane an' A', and discovered that despite having heard it umpteen times I couldn't sing it in tune, it was a rather nasty surprise. I'm exercising it and getting there, but heck, it should come quite natural ...


(originally posted on WordPress)

A. A. Milne: Winnie-the-Pooh

After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends. Somebody spoke to me only yesterday.

(Eeyore) 

I have around half a dozen friends so close we’re still friends years, even decades after the time we used to meet on a daily or at least weekly basis. The problem is we no longer do, and I have nobody to really talk to more often than every several months or so.

 

 

 

 

(originally posted probably on WordPress)

 

Christmas party

I never liked company parties, but this wasn’t one. This was just a bunch of us oldish guys who’d once studied together using Christmas as an excuse to meet in a pub. And it was fine, although I could only stay for two coffees before leaving for a night shift.

What surprised me most* was that MM, whom I hadn’t seen since mid-90s, changed so little I recognised him immediately. To him the old joke “we’re no longer young and handsome, we’re simply handsome now” actually applies. He’s a year older but looks ten younger than me I guess.

It also seemed to me that, oddly, the guys who, unlike Falcon and me, never needed specs in our college days, were getting presbyopic much faster than the two of us. And that Black and maybe Köln were as hard of hearing as I am these days. (Or maybe I just speak lower than is customary in this country, who knows. The pub was as clamorous as the factory I work in, so we had to resort to shouting as well, and that’s not exactly my forte.)

My leaving was a wee bit frantic, as it would be in a teeming pub I’d never been to before, but never mind. I just hope the next time we meet I’ll be able to spend more time with them.

   

* There was a minor surprise along the way there: the central railway station is fully open again, after just a year or so under reconstruction. I had expected it would last several.

(originally published on WordPress)

Insignificance

What’s hard to accept, especially for an avid reader like me, is that in my own book of life I may be the main character, but in the books of other people’s lives I’m at best only a very minor one. It’s not that my life is so uninteresting, it’s that I don’t belong to any community, that I have no one to share my joys and sorrows with …

 

(originally posted on WordPress)