St Andrew's Day

On Friday the first snow of this year: it was falling virtually throughout the daylight hours and untypically settled, rather than thawed immediately or before the next morning. In fact it still remains on the grass and some roofs, with the help of a bit more snowfall on Saturday and today. So everything is that wee bit nicer now. Given that the minimum daily temperature had already been falling close to zero for some time, I think I can proclaim winter as begun, whatever astronomers may think about it.

After all, unless I'm mistaken, meteorologists will proclaim it as begun tomorrow.

Chemo round 2 ... and sister

Back in 2016 and last winter I had hardly any symptoms as a result of chemotherapy. However, I don't bear this FOLFOX one well. It makes me extremely tired and sleepy, and worst of all, a complete loss of appetite meant that during the three days of this round I ate almost nothing at all. But I survived and after having the pump removed yesterday my sister drove me back with three boxes of PEG food, which I began taking today. Hopefully it'll help me gradually put on some weight again, I'm around 47kg right now.

Incidentally I always suspected my symptoms resulting from various diseases were at least 50 per cent psychosomatic. So it's no surprise that after the pump's removal and later a short but pleasant chat with my sister at my place (the first such chat I've had with anybody since August) I felt much better, not just mentally but physically as well, despite the undernourishment and continuing lack of appetite.

I must wangle it so I see her more often. Likewise mail my other friends more often, blog more and become generally more involved on the Web again ...

Bent double

Another major problem is that the combination of belly ache and hypotension forces one into a stooping posture, whether one is standing or sitting. The vicious circle here is that the more time one spends bent double, the more the body gets used to it, seems to need it, so the more time one spends bent double. It's like addiction, in a way.

These days, I can hardly remain with my body straight for more than a few minutes at a time. Apart from the loss of time when walking somewhere or doing something on my laptop, when one stops to 'stoop and rest', this also means I can't have my hair cut or something done about my two incisors which have falled out quite recently (it never rains but it pours), because I couldn't stay in the barber's or dentist's chair for long enough for them to complete their tasks.

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.

Wasted mornings

One of my main problems these days is starting them too late. Of course, when I have some appointment, I only get up early enough to be there on time, and after returning and resting after the effort not much of the day is left; that's only to be expected. But even when there is no delay of this sort, I spend so much time lying in bed, whether dozing or reading some book, that by the time I finally find the moral strength to get out of bed and face the day, it's usually already the afternoon. Given how much time I have to spend resting between individual activities, and given that I go to sleep again well before midnight, there is obviously never time enough to eat enough, drink enough, perform all the desirable bodily maintenance and housework, check the news, answer emails, do enough language studies and so on.

As a consequence, despite my being on sick leave, my body continues to deteriorate and my backlog of various things to do is growing, rather than decreasing. Which in turn makes me weaker and more zestless, thus more prone to lie in for too long in the morning, and the vicious circle continues.

Terry Pratchett: Snuff

'My mum always told me money can’t buy you happiness, sir.’

Yes, Vimes thought, so did my ma, but she was glad enough when I gave her my first wages, because it meant we could have a meal with meat in it, even if we didn’t know what kind of meat it was. That’s happiness, isn’t it? Blimey, the lies we tell ourselves …

(Feeney Upshot & Sam Vimes, p 117)

It is refreshing to read a favourite author of yours attacking a cliché which has a grain of truth in it but has by constant repetition been turned into something very remote from it. Because of course there are some sorts of happiness no amount of money can buy, like true friendship or having good luck, but there are likewise many sorts of happiness that you absolutely can buy for money, from good food and drink to a comfortable home to a pleasant trip or book and so on and so forth ...

 

The flit

Amongst the things I failed to blog about was the moving of the flat in mid-July. It went exceptionally well, no doubt partly because the night before I worried so much I could scarcely sleep. I worried that, in my emaciated state, moving the desk with a friend of mine might be beyond my power; in the event we actually managed to move virtually all my possessions at one go.

The following day I handed the old flat over to the landlord, which went smoothly as well; I later even received about a third of the deposit. Considering I had expected something between zero and a half, it could be called a success.

J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

 

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any.  You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.

(Holden Caulfield)

For me the problem isn't about visual but about auditory pollution, but otherwise I absolutely agree: as soon as you find someplace that feels 'nice and peaceful', pretty soon somebody will start DIY, blethering or even shouting, playing music, whatever to make the place no longer peaceful. The only way to prevent this is simply being somewhere where there are no people.

But that, of course, has problems of its own.

 

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.

Terry Pratchett: Going Postal

 

There was work to do. It was dull, but it had to be done. So he did it.

(about Moist von Lipwig, p 440)

One of the few things I pride myself on is this: I'm certainly no friend of doing useless work, but when something has to be done, I'm not in the habit of shirking it or 'delegating' it to somebody else. It has to be done, so it will. Maybe that's why my flaws were often forgiven by my employers: they knew that if I get a dull but reasonable task I'll just go and do it, rather than look for excuses like far too many of the others.

Bannie Day 2021

Many years ago I began calling the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn 'Bannie Day' and celebrating it as one of the days which divided the year into its four seasons. It was a bit fanciful even then, and has become completely so by now, with summer beginning in May at the very latest, but old habits die hard (and following weather forecast for back home tells me it often still begins there in June).

Anyway, here's to summer - that is to say, to it being as short as possible. Then again, I'm about to move flat and there are indications that in the new accommodation I may just about be able to keep the indoor temperature well below the 30C which I sometimes can't get rid of here for what seems like eternity.

In the meantime, I'm simply trying to survive.

Paul Greer: Less

 

They might have done, many of them. So many people will do. But once you've actually been in love, you can't live with "will do"; it's worse than living with yourself.

(p 14)

This can be a problem not just with romantic relationships. Of course, like everybody I often do use and even enjoy substitutes for the real thing: e-reader for a printed book, e-cig for a tobacco one, masturbation for sex and so on. But I guess that just as often a substitute is even worse than total absence: an obvious example is the preferability of silence to music one doesn't like, or even music one likes but isn't at the moment in the mood for. And I remember how after my three boon companions in a certain town left it shortly one after another, I began visiting different pubs - on my own, because meeting those left reminded me about the absence of those three more painfully than solitude.

 

Catch Me If You Can

Not bad at all, although nothing outstanding either. Oddly perhaps, I found myself siding not with Leonardo DiCaprio's character but with Tom Hanks's one - not because I wanted the former to fail, but because I wanted the latter to succeed. After all, take away the former's physical attractiveness and there's hardly anything likeable left (although it's maybe not as bad as with his father, who seems to feel genuinely ashamed for having to do some honest work as a 'mere' employee).

Tommy's 30

Incredible. I still remember him as that post-adolescent young man in his early twenties that he was when we were staying close enough to see each other ... Incredible too (but marvellous!) that we still keep up with each other at least by emails after all those years.

HyperNormalisation

A film lasting almost three hours - throughout which I was unable to make out what the author [Mr Adam Curtis, as I then found out] wanted to say, except perhaps that he knew and/or cared nothing about history prior to his adolescence. It begins with the idea that plutocracy was more or less invented in 1975 New York, and it gets no better: apparently, doublethink in the USSR only developed in the 1980s and so on. At times it almost looked as if the film-maker believed that mankind waited for him to be born before politicians began to lie, media began to distort facts for propagandist purposes et cetera. Towards the end I actually began to wonder whether I wasn't watching something put together by a talented 13-year-old, still only discovering the basics of how this world turns round.

There are some faint hints the film was meant to say that politicians find the real world too complex and create a simplified picture of it. But then if that was true, surely the author wouldn't do the very same thing by presenting a world which is all about the US, the Arab countries* and Russia, and competely ignoring China?

 

* But not Afghanistan, which is ignored as well, it seems that after the 9/11 Americans went straight after Saddam Hussein without being bothered with Osama bin Laden.

CCIP retiré

Après presque deux mois, pendant qui je devrais visiter l'hôpital chaque semaine ou deux, juste pour recevoir un nouveau pansement sur mon cathéter central inséré par voie périphérique, une infirmière dans la salle habituelle m'a envoyé aujourd'hui à une autre infirmière, qui l'a retiré. Finalement, je pourrai prendre la douche sans emballer l'arrière-bras avec du film étirable.

Bien sûr, la sonde GPE dans mon ventre va rester plus longtemps ...

Gay lib in the arts

Yesterday I read an article in The Guardian in which film-makers and writers recalled 'gay' film scenes that had a profound effect on them; I also read quite a few of the comments of the article's readers remembering theirs; and it occurred to me that I could hardly recollect my own 'firsts'.

Maybe this is because I had to do without any while still struggling with who I was. As far as I can remember, the first film I saw that had homosexuality as one of the main topics was the 1994 Fresa y chocolate; and unless I'm much mistaken the first gay kiss I saw on the silver screen happened in 1997's The Full Monty (provided it was actually a kiss and not just an embrace) or in Wilde of the same year. But I had come out in 1989, and experienced my own first loving kiss - and more - in 1991.

Not that literature was any better. The first 'gay book' I came across was the 1993 anthology The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction. Up till then there were just hints (which I often even failed to decipher as such at that time), at best a minor character who was gay but not allowed to do more about it than say so.

In short, I had no 'revelatory' experiences of this kind. For all that, each time I watched or read somebody daring to go further in breaking the taboos surrounding us, it was a source of immesurable pleasure to me.

Rinn mi e

Tha fios gun robh mi caran nearbach, mar as àbhaist dhomh, ach cha do dhàilich mi e: chaidh mi dhan oifis agus thuirt mi dhaibh gum bithinn fàgail an àite. Agus cha robh iad a' coimhead mì-thoilichte idir; gu dearbh, mhol an tè mi airson 's nach robh mi ag iarraidh fàgail roimhe na trì mìosan a-rèir a' chùmhnant. Rud eile a chur iognadh orm 's e nach robh ùidh aca, nach do dh'fhaighnich iad, carson a bha mi ag iarraid falbh, gun luaidh air càit' a rachainn.

In for another flit

I've been staying in this former hotel room for over three years now. It naturally has its disadvantages, but on the whole it's tolerably good. So although I had begun to consider finding something better if the cancer was cured, when my sister and brother-in-law offered me last week renting a studio flat in their ownership, whose previous occupant had died, I was quite hesitant about it. But after the viewing I compared the advantages and disadvantages of the two places and concluded I would accept the offer.

It may be farther away from the city centre (probably more time wasted commuting), and it's in a block of flats within a housing scheme (probably more outdoor noise). On the other hand it has a balcony with a screen door (possibility to air the room regardless of my insectophobia), which doesn't overlook a yard like my window here (probably more natural light through the day); I'd have my own cooker, rather than using a public kitchen (making my meals as I wished); and I'd have internet via cable (presumably faster than my current wi-fi).

Of course, the main thing for me is always noise. There may be some noisy neighbour, kids living upstairs and so on. But the windbag of a neighbour I have here is often a real pain as well, and who can tell he wouldn't leave and somebody even worse move in?

So in the end I decided to follow the 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' rather than 'better the devil you know' advice. What troubles me a bit though is that I feel neither excited nor depressed about it. As if, given I'm not moving back home to Scotland, it didn't actually really matter at all.

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.