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From Music Teacher to Magic Fairy Dust Practitioner 19 May 2013 3:14 AM (11 years ago)

My friend is a music teacher.  She's put in a lot of effort over the years.  She started to play the violin, age seven and practised every day throughout her childhood and adolescence. She did a degree at the Royal Northern College of Music and then she toured with some of the country's most famous orchestras, such as the Halle.

Eventually she trained as a teacher (a year's course, the Postgraduate Certificate of Education) and has been travelling round schools teaching the violin ever since.

From the above I hope that you can understand that she had all the proper qualifications to call herself a music teacher.  She teaches the violin - - sometimes to small groups of children, sometimes to a class of thirty-five, with an assistant to help her.

She needs an assistant to help the children because really the violin is quite a tricky instrument.  Somewhat harder than the triangle, or even the recorder.

It costs me to admit this cruel fact because actually I'm a pretty damned good recorder player.  My violin skills, however, are nil.

On a recorder, provided you cover the correct holes and don't blow too hard (and, admittedly, some people find this difficult, at least at first), your recorder will produce the note you're aiming for.

However, it's a bit different on the violin - you have to press your fingers down in exactly the right place to make the note, and the only way to learn how to do that is to practice.  Lots and lots and lots.

But now, the education authority that my friend works for is planning some changes.  She will no longer be known as a music teacher.  Oh no.  She will be a Music Practitioner.

So - - - what's the difference, I hear you ask?

Where else have we heard the term "practitioner"?  Well, I associate it with those kind of Complementary Health practices.  Homoeopathy, where you dilute things down to nothingness and give them to people and the placebo effect kicks in and makes them feel better.  Indian Head Massage, where you rub someone's head and they find it relaxing and the placebo effect kicks in and makes them feel better.  Reiki, where you kind of wave your hands over people and channel some mysterious energy and the placebo effect kicks in and makes them feel better.  Aromatherapy, where you make the place smell nice and the placebo effect kicks in and makes them feel better.  Sprinkling Magic Fairy Dust - - - and so on.

No, you guessed, I'm not a big follower of complementary medicine and for some of these things you have to train for how long? - ooooh, it can be as much as a few weeks! - - to get a certificate saying you're qualified.

But hey, what, therefore, is the difference between a Music Teacher and a Music Practitioner?

A Music Practitioner can stand in front of a class of thirty-five children playing the violin without an assistant!  Amazing!  And why is this? - - - Oh - - because a Music Practitioner, not being a teacher, doesn't need an assistant, because a Music Practitioner is not actually going to teach, they are going to MAKE MUSIC TOGETHER and who cares what the hell it sounds like.

Oh yes, and by the way, a Music Practitioner is paid about a third less than a Music Teacher.

NOW we understand.

This Week's Activities 18 Apr 2013 12:21 PM (11 years ago)

I've had a really busy week this week and will write more about our adventures in Wales last weekend shortly.

However, in the meantime, here's an account of my mother's activities.

On Monday she did a lot of gardening.

On Tuesday she helped her gentleman friend clean out the pond, so the frog spawn would have nice clean water to hatch out in.

Yesterday she did some gardening during the day and went to see a play in the evening.

Today she's done some gardening and now she's gone to the pub quiz with her gentleman friend.

Tomorrow, Friday, my mother will go for her blood test prior to her fifth lot of chemotherapy, which will be next Monday.

On Saturday it will be her eighty-ninth birthday and my brother's coming over from Amsterdam to join us.

If you ask her how she is, she looks at you as though you're a bit daft and says "I'm fine, of course."  She was six and a half stone in December.  Now she's eight stone.

Did I think, back in December, that I'd be writing such a blog post in April?  No I jolly well didn't.  Amazing.

A Bit Poorly 7 Apr 2013 10:47 AM (12 years ago)

All winter I've been expecting to get some illness - some kind of cold virus-type-thing -  and all winter I've been worrying about it, because of my mother.

Because my Mum is having chemotherapy for peritoneal cancer, this makes her more vulnerable to infections.

I work with student doctors of course and they work with ILL PEOPLE!  Also, because they are young and working in lots of new environments, they tend to pick up lots of infections.

So all winter I've been in front of groups of students who have been coughing and sneezing.  There's usually one in the corner, deathly pale and huddled up in a coat, shivering.

"Emma, are you okay?"

"I've just got a cold.  ATISHOO!  I don't feel very well."

Anyway, I had triumphed!  All the Autumn term, all the Christmas holidays, all the Spring term and no nasty germs had got me!  I was beginning to feel rather proud, and remembering my Grandma, my mother's mother, who simply never got a cold no matter how much you sneezed over her.

"Don't worry, I won't get it.  I don't ever get colds."  And she never did, ever, and she died age 93.  (I'm convinced she only died when she did as a gesture of defiance against the old people's home where she lived, where they were trying to make her eat salad, which she had always regarded as entirely pointless.)

Anyway.   I think I managed to resist all these student germs because of having built up a good immune system during years of teaching sniffling adolescents who were infected with vile germs.

Now then, colds with me usually start with either sneezing a lot or a sore throat.  The sneezing type of cold tends to progress very fast into the runny-nosed type, but at least it doesn't last long.  The sore throat type, however, makes me feel dreadful for days before exploding into the twenty-tissues-an-hour kind and then turning into a hideous cough and bunging up my ears.  Bah.

So there I was, in the Easter holidays, feeling rather smug at having avoided all these infections - - and then I started coughing.  This virus is a whole new and exciting thing.  No sore throat or sneezing for me, oh no.  It went from a standing start into "hey, I think I'm going to COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH COUGH" - - - and so on.

It makes it very hard to sleep and also makes my stomach hurt from all the coughing.  Worst of all - and I know everyone will be VERY sorry to hear this - I am losing my voice.  Heartrending!

Of course, I'm worried that my mother will get it and so have tried to keep some distance from her, but she's not having any of it.  Every time I go near her house (and she lives next door) I explain and ask her to keep back, but she won't.  She's too worried about me.  When I didn't go over to see her, she simply came over to see me.  "Anything I can do?  Can I make you something to eat?"  I keep telling her that it sounds a lot worse than it is, but she's not having it.

She's making ten times more fuss about my cough than she ever did about her cancer.  The over-eighties are made of stern stuff.

Behind the Clock 3 Apr 2013 12:41 PM (12 years ago)

We have been sent a copy of the letter that my mother's cancer consultant has sent to her GP.  It is full of such phrases as "excellent response to treatment." The cancer marker has "plummeted".  They are going to continue with the two remaining lots of chemotherapy and then do a CT scan to see what's going on - - though the letter makes it clear that they are both amazed and delighted by her progress.

Meanwhile, the snow has almost - though not quite - melted.

So my mother's gentleman friend has been out painting benches in the garden and Mum, wrapped up warmly in trousers, coat and hat has been out digging in the garden for much of the day.

"The soil's really not too difficult to turn over at all," she said.  "Of course I'm slower with the spade than I used to be but I still got quite a lot done."

She'd been thinking about it.  Not about the cancer:  she's been thinking about the garden.

"The thing is," she said, "I've been thinking what a boon a garden is.  It always gives you something to do.  Always makes you think of new ideas.  I've left the spade out there for tomorrow."

One of my Mum's foibles has always been that she never likes to pay bills. It isn't that she can't afford to pay them - it's simply that it's not a job she considers a priority.

So, when I was a child, she always just put the bills behind the clock on the mantelpiece and then waited until red versions arrived and then, finally, paid them.

Now I have all her bills paid by direct debit so she doesn't have to do that any more.  But with anything she doesn't like, she puts it behind a metaphorical clock and refuses to pay it any attention.

At the moment, my mother is out in the garden.  Her cancer is behind the clock.  Long may it remain there.

A Walk in the Land of Eternal Winter 1 Apr 2013 10:29 AM (12 years ago)

There were quite a few trains - some on branch lines, some on main lines - but their hooting didn't seem to bother the wildlife at all and actually I rather liked it.


We walked for five and a half miles, stopping to have lunch in the excellent, unpretentious cafe which is sensibly positioned in the middle.

We saw lots and lots of birds from the many hides on the route, from the common garden birds - blackbirds, bluetits - to ones I know but don't visit our garden - willow tit, chaffinch - to ones I haven't seen so often - lapwings and redshanks.  I have only mentioned a few kinds - - we saw dozens.  It was great.

Although the numbers of visitors increased during the day, it was never crowded and always delightful - - though still very cold.

"It's freezing," I said to Stephen, (actually it was about two degrees centigrade but that's still jolly cold) "and I still haven't seen any coltsfoot yet this year."

By pure chance, we walked a few yards further and there they were.  A small glimmer of hope that there may one day be a proper Spring.


Sometimes at this time of year the daffodils are almost done flowering.  This year they are still in bud, shivering.

However, when we were nearly back at the visitor centre, we saw another hopeful sign.

The Visit - - and a photo - - 30 Mar 2013 10:50 AM (12 years ago)

Yes, I know.  It's been a while.

I've had SUCH a busy Spring - - rushing all over the place teaching and doing medical roleplay and I have loved every moment of it.

There have been many enjoyable moments in this work but I think my favourite was working with a medical student who'd been struggling to reach an acceptable standard and who said to me at the end of the session, "Thank you for bearing with me, and for staying enthusiastic - I know I was really difficult to work with at the beginning."

I went out walking on air!

When I haven't been working, I have been mostly spending time with my Mum.  She was diagnosed with peritoneal cancer in December.  The cancer marker in the blood, which should be below 35 in someone who doesn't have cancer, was 6,900 at diagnosis, which speaks for itself as to how ill she was.

They weren't sure whether chemotherapy would help, as she was so frail and her weight had dropped to six and a half stone from her usual seven and a half (fourteen pounds in a stone, if you're American and don't do stones!)

The first chemo made her very sleepy but she tolerated it well otherwise.  Just before the second chemo, four weeks later, the cancer marker had dropped to 2,600 and she was quite a lot better - - walking with a stick, but walking.

Just before the third chemo they measured the marker again.  It was 253.

And just before the fourth chemo (of six) which she had last week, it was 82.

Since I work with doctors a lot, some of whom are cancer specialists, I haven't been able to resist hustling them into corners and asking "Is this as amazing as it seems to us?"

Everyone, including the doctors looking after Mum, agrees that it is.  "Right at the very top of anything we might expect" seems to be the verdict.

My private theory - and I've no proof of course - is that her previous astonishing level of fitness has helped her to  do so well.  Tremendously athletic in her youth, she's been out gardening for several hours a day ever since her retirement.

Mum has not so much fought cancer as ignored the whole thing completely.  "When do I have to go to the hospital again?" is about all we get from her about it.  Meanwhile, she's been out helping her gentleman friend (who has looked after her wonderfully well) build a snowman.  She can walk without a stick and is almost back to how she was before she got ill last October.

She'll be eighty-nine on April 20th and I feel so privileged to have had this extra time with her.  The Bexley Wing at St James's Hospital where she's being treated is a model of good practice.  Wonderful.

Some of our lovely Lancashire relatives came over to visit Mum, and us, today - they had been planning to come in January but couldn't because of the snow.  This visit was nearly snowed off too, but thank goodness they got here and it was really lovely to see them.  Very many thanks to Dorothy and John for coming and to Claire, John's daughter, who drove them here.

They brought some old photos and in amongst them was one which absolutely astonished me.  It was a photo of the Communist and my mother on their wedding day.  I'm not sure whether this was in 1949 or 1950 - they were never clear about it themselves - but they both always insisted that no such photo existed.  "All the photos were terrible," they said.  "We threw them away."

But this one's great!  I don't know why they didn't like it.

 My mother - age about 24 in the photo - looks delightful and is instantly recognisable.  The Communist looks like a mad professor and is already losing his hair, at 25.

It is so lovely to have it, and so very, very strange to see it after all these years.  The doctors back in December were pretty convinced that my mother would be dead by now, so I'm delighted to have the photo whilst she's still alive and enjoying herself so much.

Doctors Speaking English 24 Feb 2013 6:04 AM (12 years ago)

Here's something that I believe very strongly.

It's that when you're ill, whether in hospital or at home, you should not, when talking to a doctor, have to struggle to make yourself understood.

Furthermore, you shouldn't be struggling to understand the doctor.

So I welcome this new ruling that, from April, doctors from the European Union will have to prove their skills in English before being put on a list to practice in this country.  There'll also be cross-matching so that if you're turned down for poor language skills in one part of the country you can't pop up in another part of the country and work there.

At the moment you have to prove your language skills if you're from outside the EU, but not if you're from within it.

Does that seem ridiculous to you?  Yes, it does to me too.  If I were a doctor, and I wanted to practise in, say, France, I'd expect them to check that my French was somewhere above the "two glasses of wine, please" level.

Of course, even though many of us have been saying this for years, it took a patient's death to get something done about it.  A German doctor gave a patient a fatal overdose in his first and last shift in the UK.  He'd previously been turned down by Leeds (three cheers for Leeds!) for poor language skills and then taken on by Cambridge.

The trouble is, language is always a sensitive issue - - people can say they're complaining about language skills when they are actually being racist.  "That doctor's English isn't good" can mean "That doctor's foreign and his skin is brown and I don't like that."

I have found, both from experience in real life and in medical roleplay, that a good doctor is good no matter where they are from.  We all tend to have a more ready trust in someone who looks as though they come from the same cultural background as we do - - but take it from me, a good doctor can overcome any distrust in the first minute.

So the fact that some people use language as an excuse for racism shouldn't get in the way of the fundamental issue - - which is that of language.

So they are going to bring in language checks on doctors from the EU; a good thing too.  My only concern is who's going to set the level of language, and how is it to be checked?

One of the things that overseas doctors tend to struggle with is the appropriate level of language, and they sometimes tend to use medical jargon ("hypertension" rather than "high blood pressure") because, as a Malaysian student said to me a few years ago, "It's all English to us."

Who, therefore, will check the language skills?  Doctors?  Patients?  It would be great to provide follow-up assistance too, to help the doctors' English get even better.

It's a crucial area, I think.  I hope that they'll put enough effort and resources into thinking it out.  Many thanks to Silverback for sending me the link to the BBC news item.

In the Dreamtime, a Lion 10 Feb 2013 7:04 AM (12 years ago)

I can't believe that it's been so long since I've written a blog post but it's been partly because things have been going remarkably well for my mother.

After her first chemotherapy, the cancer marker in her blood dropped by 60%.  It's still high, but she's a lot better and can now go out into the garden again on her own.  Since then she's had another round of chemotherapy, which went well and didn't give her many after-effects other than to be a bit sleepy for a day or two.

So I've been spending a lot of my spare time - which there isn't much of - with her.   I've been having a good time "in the moment" which, as I've written before, isn't like me at all.

The days have been fine.  However, as is usual with me, if things aren't too bad during the day, then my mind gives me hell when I'm asleep and I have lots of bad dreams.  Some are nightmares - - others just vaguely sad, or vaguely annoying.

Last night the first dream I remember was that I was about to do an open-water swim but I couldn't find anywhere to put my glasses whilst I swam.  All very difficult.

The second one was a bit more odd.  I was auditioning as a presenter for some hospital radio station and I thought that, with all my experience in working with medical students and suchlike, I might be in with a chance.  But sadly, they auditioned everyone else and when it got to my turn the Bright Young Thing in charge - all red lipstick and high heels -  said "I'm sorry, we don't need to see any more."

I was really upset, and said so.  "Ah well," she said, in overly-bright tones.  "At least you came to the audition."

"And how does that benefit me?" I said haughtily, before waking up.

Now I can see that all that kind of thing incorporates lots of my daytime worries - - losing my glasses, not being able to see, not being able to do something I really want to do, the injustice of the way that actors are treated - - - etc etc.

Then I went back to sleep and woke at about six o'clock with a surprisingly optimistic verse in my head.

I think I've said before that this does happen to me sometimes.  I invent rhyming verse in my sleep.  I had an image in my head of a rather jolly lion wearing a top hat covered in sequins - - this lion had the positive, cheery personality of my mother's gentleman friend, and some elements of a children's book that Olli once owned, called The Lion In the Meadow.  But more than that I cannot explain.

Here's the verse: make of it what you will.  If I could paint, I'd paint it.

In Summer the lion's in full twinkly time of his hats.
In Winter he wanders and ponders on thises and thats.
In Spring he turns green, cos he can and for no other reason
And in Autumn he roars, just because it's his favourite season.

Living in the NOW 19 Jan 2013 6:28 AM (12 years ago)

I've always hated all those motivational books with NOW in the title.  All about living in the moment, spiritual enlightenment, blah blah - - in general, anything like that kind of stuff makes me very uneasy at best and very angry at worst.

From time to time, well-meaning people have always said to me that I should live more "in the moment" as they call it.  Then I feel a quiet smugness when, five minutes later, they ask whether I have some nail scissors/a towel/some tissues/a metal detector/a spare engine for their car - - and I produce the item from out of my capacious handbag.

I don't live "in the moment" and I don't rely on luck, or fate, or whatever to help me.  I just don't believe in them.  I believe in other people, though, of course, and they help me a lot.

I'm a planner, a preparer, a think-of-every-eventuality type.  What am I going to teach to the students?  Where are we going on holiday?  Always I look to the future and plan it as best as I can.

This is having to change, because of my Mum's illness.

She is terminally ill with a rather rare cancer - omental peritoneal cancer.  (Don't read the link if you're imaginative - the symptoms of it are common to many other conditions so it's quite scary!)

For once, I'm having to live "in the moment".  Every enjoyable conversation that I have with her, every pleasant visit (she lives next door) is suddenly there to be treasured.  Her gentleman friend is looking after her brilliantly, making her the foods she likes and filling the house with the flowers that she loves.

Because it's winter and there's snow, she isn't quite as furious as she might be that she can't go out gardening.  Because she has short-term memory loss (she's 88) she keeps momentarily forgetting all about the illness and just enjoying the present.

We are having lots of visitors - - all coming to see her, and that's great.  I'm not sure if she knows that some of the far-flung ones are coming to say goodbye.  My take on it is that if she asks any questions I will answer them honestly, though as kindly as I can.  If she doesn't ask, I won't make her discuss things.

I'm trying to enjoy the present too, and there are plenty of good things.  That was an interesting morning with medical students.  That was an enjoyable trip to Blackpool to work with doctors.  That was a good film.  Those highlights of Michael Parkinson's interviews were brilliant.  That was a really good pub meal with friends.

At the moment I feel I can't plan any trips away - - and planning holidays and little trips away has always one of my favourite things, so it's left me rather confused.

All my emotions are heightened - I find I laugh or cry even more easily than usual (and that's REALLY easily!)

I think it's probably good practice for me, this living-in-the-moment time, this there-is-only-NOW feeling.  I'm not used to it.  It's a very, very strange time.

On New Year's Eve 31 Dec 2012 12:02 PM (12 years ago)

It's been a strange Christmas, all warm and festive and in some ways very enjoyable, but always with the lurking realisation that it could well be my mother's last one.

Today she started chemotherapy at the excellent Bexley Wing of St James's Hospital in Leeds.  So far, everyone there has been a model of best practice - kind, welcoming, thorough, knowledgeable - and hence there has been none of the panic from my mother which has characterised previous hospital visits.

She was sitting in a comfortable recliner armchair and they put a cannula in her arm to deliver the drug.

First they sent some saline through it to check it was working properly, and then after about ten minutes they started the carboplatin.  It took about half an hour to go through.  It did make her very cold but we worked out that this was because it had been in the fridge and she now had a chilly drug flowing through her.

After a little while she said that she was hungry so we got her a coffee and a tuna sandwich - it seemed quite incongruous to watch her eating it with the drip in her arm.

There were about ten people in the room having similar treatment, many - like my mother - with their families round them.  My mother had my brother, her gentleman friend and me.  I felt sorry for the ones who were on their own.

As each person's treatment finished, the machine that was using made a little pattern of beeping sounds, a bit like the spaceship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

Mum never did work out where these beeping noises were coming from, but she took great exception to them.  Her indignation every time a machine beeped was providing amusement to some of the other patients and definitely lightened the atmosphere in the room.

After a while she got fed up of keeping her hand still and kept bending her wrist, which caused the tube to kink and the alarm buzzer to sound.  The kindly nurses patiently kept restarting the machine, but Mum couldn't really understand why she needed to keep her hand still.

"Mum - - no - - don't move your - - oh.  Too late."

Finally she was done and released to come home, where she fell asleep but is now awake and seems fine.

It can, however, take a while for side-effects to show so we'll be keeping a close eye on her and they have given us a twenty-four-hour number to ring if we have any questions or concerns.

I've never liked New Year's Eve:  all I can ever think of is all the sadnesses of the past year, and I find it hard to count my blessings and think of all the good things, and then I get cross with myself for being that way and I get even sadder.

This year is, in a way, the saddest of all.  But it doesn't totally feel that way because of all the warmth and love and care that my Mum is getting from many different people.  So no matter what happens, I will always remember that.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year: thank you for reading my blog.

Fat Cow 16 Dec 2012 9:32 AM (12 years ago)

I went swimming today, for the first time for about three weeks, and I loved it.  I always love swimming, except for that one time.

That one time was about twenty-two years ago.  We were staying in a cottage in the Lake District and the owners had done some kind of deal with a nearby hotel so that the people staying in the cottage could use the swimming pool.

I had Olli - who was then a baby of about eighteen months - with me, and my mother, and the Communist - I don't think Stephen was swimming that day.

When Olli was ready to get out of the pool, my mother kindly looked after him so that I could swim on my own for little while longer.

When I finally came out of the pool, there was a mother and a little boy - age four or five - in the changing room.  It was one of those open changing rooms with no curtains on the cubicles.

The little boy looked at me.

"Fat cow," he said.

Now then, okay, I'd recently had a baby and had put on a bit of weight but I wasn't THAT big.  I was about a size eighteen.  But because I had been slimmer than that before my pregnancy, I was definitely sensitive about my weight, especially when trying to get changed in an open changing room with this child staring at me.

"Fat cow," he repeated.

So I waited for his mother to say something: to reprimand him or simply to scoop him up and take him out of there, with an apology to me on the way.  If that were my child, I thought, I would want the ground to swallow me up.

She said nothing.  She continued to dry herself.  The little boy was already dried and dressed.

"Fat cow," said the little boy, again.  "Look at the size of that.  Fat cow, eh?  Fat lazy cow.  Why's she out, looking like that?  Fat cow."

The mother continued to get dressed, and to say nothing.

I didn't speak either.  I was mortified.  I got dressed as fast as possible, fled the changing room and kept the whole incident to myself, for years and years and years.

This afternoon I told my brother about it.  Why on earth would a child of that age say something like that?  Where had he heard those words?  Why did the mother remain silent?

Although I found the whole incident very creepy, and it haunted me for years, I don't blame the boy.  Something deeply unpleasant was going on in that child's family, I'm sure.

The boy will now be in his late twenties.  I find myself wondering where he is now, and how he turned out, and what happened to him, and what happened to his mother.

Thank You, Bexley Wing Ward 98 4 Dec 2012 11:37 AM (12 years ago)

For many years now I've been involved in Communication Skills teaching to doctors and other healthcare professionals such as nurses and pharmacists.

More recently, I've been teaching on a course for medical students which includes such topics as patient safety and professionalism.

During the Communist's illness four years ago I noted with despair many incidents of unmotivated, careless and uncaring staff and some of these incidents I have been using as teaching materials for the students.

Today, at the Bexley Wing of St James's Hospital, Leeds, they gave me a glorious example of how things SHOULD be done and I felt like cheering.

My mother was there for a CT scan-aided biopsy.  She has a tumour in her abdomen:  that's all we know really.  Today's procedure was to find out what it is and how far it's spread.

It's a newish unit, all sparkling clean and we (Mum, her gentleman friend and me) were shown into a large single room with a bed, chairs and its own bathroom.  They greeted us all with offers of tea and coffee, which we gratefully accepted and which arrived at top speed.

Mum had to drink some fluid before the scan to show up on the scan, and also she had to have a cannula put in.

The nurses talked her through everything.  They introduced themselves, were warm, kind and positive and happy to explain everything several times.

She had to get changed into a gown and then transfer to a trolley and at all times when she was moving about they carefully checked that the door was closed so nobody could see in.

A friendly porter took us down and then another nurse explained that the procedure would take about half an hour so Mum's friend and I could go for a coffee.

When we came back I knocked on the door (as I'd been asked to do) and was told that Mum would be out very soon.  And so she was.  The radiologist came out and told us that the biopsy had gone very smoothly.

Mum had no pain from where they had put the needle in her abdomen to take the sample.  Another friendly porter came and said he'd be taking her back to the ward "in two minutes".  Then he came back in two minutes and explained that there'd been a slight delay with the paperwork so it would be two more minutes.  Such attention to detail is so helpful when you're in a strange place and don't know the procedure.

Back on the ward, Mum - to my amazement - declared she was hungry and a meal instantly arrived.  Chicken soup, fresh ham salad and sponge pudding and custard.  Of course she couldn't manage all of it but it was excellent quality and she loved it.

She had to wait for four hours to make sure she hadn't had an allergic reaction or any bleeding.  Mum wanted to get home and got a bit impatient but the staff were so lovely to her that she stayed calm.  She was simply not the same person as the hospital-phobic person she usually is.

Today was a shining example of the National Health Service at its very best and I will be quoting it to my students next term as a standard to accomplish.

"It was lovely to meet you," said the young doctor as we were about to leave.  My mother reached forward and kissed her.

Soon we will get the results and I am pretty sure that it will not be good news.  But I know I'll be forever grateful to Mum's gentleman friend (who has been just wonderful) and to all the staff who helped to make this day so much better than it might have been.  In terrible times, they have made all the difference.

The Day the World Changed 1 Dec 2012 12:33 AM (12 years ago)

I don't know when your world changed, but mine changed - and not for the first time - on December 9th, 2008, which is when the Communist died.

It changed again last Tuesday.  My mother had a scan at the hospital on Monday to find out about the cough.  She had a cold and it turned to a cough and, in spite of two courses of antibiotics, the cough wouldn't shift.

The hospital said that we would get the results in seven to ten days - - unless they found something.

They found something.  We were summoned to the GP on Tuesday to get the bad news.

The cold had been a red herring.  The fluid on Mum's lungs was caused by cancer somewhere in her abdomen.  They don't know where yet, or how far it has spread: she has a "CT scan-aided biopsy" on Tuesday to find out.

This means that she has another scan which shows them where the tumour is, and they take a sample of it, under local anaesthetic, so that they can find out where it is and how aggressive it is and decide what to do next.

Of course, I help to train doctors in breaking bad news.  And I knew it must be bad news, of course, before we got there, because we had been summoned, and because I was becoming deeply suspicious of the cough.  I couldn't help observing and assessing how the GP broke the news.

He was trying very hard, but just not doing terribly well.  He had a strong foreign accent and a lisp as well so poor Mum couldn't hear a word that he was saying.  After a bit of him yelling "YOU HAVE A TUMOUR IN YOUR TUMMY!" I took to repeating everything he said in a way that Mum could understand.

"Tummy" is a word that should never, ever be used in a medical consultation and when I'm in charge of everything I'm going to ban it.  It is Meaningless Baby-Talk.  I knew that by "tummy" he didn't mean "stomach" - - he meant "somewhere in her abdomen".

So after he'd said "tummy" to me a few times I drew myself up to my full height and said, probably slightly pompously, "I do some work for the Yorkshire Cancer Network so I do have some idea of what you're talking about."

Mum's gentleman friend was there too and is being absolutely brilliant in looking after her and keeping her cheerful.  She's simply not able to eat really so has lost a stone in the past month - - and she was pretty tiny to start with.

My mother is eighty-eight.  She has had a long life and has been astonishingly fit and well for almost all of it.  So this is sad, but it shouldn't be seen as a tragedy.  I know that.

However, it feels pretty bloody tragic to me.  My world has changed.  Oh yes.

In Praise of Figs 25 Nov 2012 1:11 PM (12 years ago)

I've become a little bit obsessed by figs.  They're slightly on the fringe of well-known fruit in Britain.

They are known mostly in the biscuits called Fig Rolls.  These have a hard, rather tasteless outside and a squidgy brown sticky middle.  As a child, I was never sure about them - - but kept right on eating them, in the hope that this would help me to make up my mind.  I didn't know what a real fig would look like and in fact didn't see one for years.

Of course, in earlier times, Syrup of Figs was known as a cure for constipation so people - in Britain at least - thought of them as a kind of medicine and not there for pleasure at all.

Then, about ten years ago, somehow I acquired some fresh figs and wasn't sure about them.  They have an outside that tastes of - - well, freshness I think is the best way to describe it.  There are lots of tiny, sweet, sticky seeds in the middle and the whole thing takes a bit of getting used to.

Whilst I was seeing if I might get used to them, I threw a bit of fig out of the window, because it was a bit too ripe.

I thought no more about it until some time later a shoot with strange leaves appeared.

"Where did you get the fig tree from?" asked a friend of ours who happened to see it.

Ohhhh yes, of course.  Fig leaves.  Mainly known for covering Adam and Eve's naughty bits.

The fig tree grew for several years,  I loved its rather exotic look.  It happened to be in a sheltered spot so managed to survive in these chilly Northern climes.  It was just beginning to produce figs when sadly it was blown down in a gale.

These days, because of my diabetes, I don't eat many sweet things, apart from fruit.  I saw some figs in the supermarket and thought I'd give them a try.

I loved them.  They tasted of hot summer evenings.  Whilst they're in season, I keep buying some every time I see them in the shops.

The checkout man today wasn't impressed with the ones I bought today, though.

"In my country the figs are much bigger than this," he said.  "The ones you get here are the size of cranberries in comparison."

So, of course, I asked him where he was from and it was Croatia.  The Communist helped to build a road there just after the Second World War.  I wonder whether they ate any of these large Croatian figs in the breaks between digging.

Standing Room Only 22 Nov 2012 11:32 AM (12 years ago)

The 17.07 train from Manchester Oxford Road to Scarborough was late, which meant that lots of extra commuters piled onto it.

This didn't please me, as it was the train that I was catching home after a day working on a medical students' exam in Manchester.

The train was already full and pretty soon it was so full that a few people couldn't get onto it at all.  It looked like those trains in India where people sit on the roof.  Except you'd be daft to sit on the roof of a Manchester commuter train, because it's always raining in Manchester.

The conductor apologised over the speaker system for its crowdedness and pointed out that some passengers would get off at Piccadilly and some more at Stalybridge.

So they did - - but a few more got on.  The train remained packed.  I was crammed into a corner, standing up of course.

I'm not good at standing up for prolonged periods because of my bad leg (I had a thrombosis in it, years ago).  Luckily my leg wasn't too bad as I'd just had a good walk along Oxford Road from Manchester Royal Infirmary where I'd been working.

A pleasant young man tried to get me a seat when one became free but I was the wrong end of the carriage and someone grabbed it.

The conductor, in another announcement, asked anyone sitting who could stand to stand so that others could sit.  Nobody moved - - well not in the carriage I was in, anyway.

The conducter, in a further announcement, said that he would be coming through the train to see if there were any spare seats.  I didn't think that there would be - in fact I knew there weren't! - but nevertheless he came past me a few minutes later, heading down the train.  He didn't speak to me but I knew he'd seen me - I was the oldest person standing.

Five minutes later he was back.  "I've found you a seat," he said.  "It's only one of those folding ones, I'm afraid, but it's the last seat on the train so I hope you won't mind.  I've got someone keeping it for you."

I followed him and, sure enough, there was a seat waiting for me.  So from Huddersfield to Leeds, I could sit.

Hurrah for that conductor who was really working very hard to ameliorate a really difficult situation.  I've been on packed trains before with no apology, let alone help.

The only downside is - - hey, I thought, I must look about a HUNDRED AND FIFTY.  I had been playing a 65-year-old all day (MUCH older than my actual years.  Yes, it DID take all my acting skills, I'm glad you mentioned that).

When I got home I realised that I was still wearing the hospital wristband that the students had used to check my identity in the exam - they had to check my name, date of birth and hospital number, just like in real life.

It gave my name as Mary Johnson and my date of birth as 4 March 1947.

Afterwards I thought - - what if I'd collapsed in a heap on the crowded train and they'd taken me to hospital and found my wristband?  Can you imagine the confusion?  "This woman says her name is Daphne but it says on her wristband that she's Mary.  Shall we just assume she's insane?"

Not Like My Mother 21 Nov 2012 11:09 AM (12 years ago)

My mother's not used to being ill.

My grandmother - her mother -  wasn't used to it either.  She never got colds.  If you had a cold she'd be all "Oh, don't worry, you can give me a kiss, I never get colds."  And she never did.  Not ever.  Not once.

She was still out doing the gardening till she was over ninety and finally died at ninety three, from I'm not sure what - - all her component parts all giving up at once, I think.

But suddenly, my mother, who is eighty-eight, is ill.  She got a cold nearly four weeks ago and just hasn't shaken it off.

She had a chest infection, and had two courses of different antibiotics, and the cough got better but actually she's feeling worse.  She's not really eating.  She's not even gardening.  Today I don't think she's even been outside.  This is really, REALLY not like my mother.

She's very cheerful, because her gentleman friend is really looking after her and keeping her spirits up.

Last Friday she had a chest X-ray and on Monday she got the results.  She has fluid on her right lung.  The GP was rather mystified by this and decided to refer her to a chest clinic.

Now then, Mum and her gentleman friend (who is considerably younger than she is and totally "with it" mentally) rather got the impression that this referral would happen very fast and indeed it has been marked "urgent" by the GP.

But it seems to have been put under the legal definition of "urgent" which is for when cancer is suspected (I don't think - though I don't know - that this is the case with my mother).  So this legal definition of "urgent" is "within two weeks".

What that means, therefore, is that she has fallen off the edge of the GP's treatment (because they are baffled) and not yet been picked up by the hospital.  Meanwhile she's drooping around, being cheerful, but getting weaker.

Tomorrow we're going to ring the doctor and ask for a home visit.  She's been out several times to the doctor and I want to draw their attention to the fact that she's eighty-eight and she's ill.  They need to know that cheerful-but-droopy is not how my mother normally is.  They need to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, before it gets to the stage where they have to admit her to hospital, because she has a phobia of hospitals and being in hospital would not be - to her - conducive to recovery.

This is my mother, who likes walking on the hills and swimming in the sea and gardening and I'm just don't want them thinking "Oh well, she's eighty-eight, no wonder she's ill."  I'm not having it.

At the Eye Clinic 17 Nov 2012 11:05 AM (12 years ago)

It's been a while, hasn't it?  Over a month.  A long gap.

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about the flashing lights in my left eye.  I was coming out of the University one day back in September when suddenly there was a little firework display of white light in my left eye.

Eventually it was diagnosed as a vitreous detachment (and here is a very useful article about it).

It's when some of the jelly pulls away from the retina at the back of the eye, causing you to see little flashes of light.  Eventually they stop (or the brain gets used to them and screens them out) but mine haven't yet and are especially troublesome in dim light.  It also comes with "floaters" and I have lots of those - still with my left eye it's like looking through a film of Vaseline.

Although, in the article mentioned above, it says that a vitreous detachment is unlikely to lead to the retina detaching - - well, it can do.  And the Communist had a detached retina in his old age.  A black curtain descends in your eye and then you can't see.  So it was worrying me.

Finally I had an appointment at the eye clinic at the hospital.  It's a gloomy department, built in the Seventies, crowded, with long waiting times (a notice asks you to be prepared to wait up to two hours).  Silverback kindly gave me a lift there and waited with me, which I very much appreciated.

I remembered taking the Communist there, about five years ago, after his retina detached.  It was very difficult as he was in a wheelchair then and there was nowhere to put the wheelchair without blocking a corridor.

Firstly I had some drops put in to dilate the pupils and had a brief eye test and then the waiting began.  Doctors came out of a series of rooms, collected a folder for each patient and called their name.  Most of the folders were very thick.  "Look out for a thin one," said Silverback, "as this is your first visit."  Good point!  Finally a doctor emerged, picked up a thin folder and - yes - called my name.

He peered into my eye, very thoroughly, for what seemed an age.  He shone hideously bright lights into it (I hate bright lights in my eyes.  In restaurants I always sit with my back to the window.)

After a lot of peering (and a very clear explanation of what he was doing, which I appreciated), he went off to fetch another lens.

"I'm just going to anaesthetise your eyeball" he said, putting some drops in my eye.  This, I have to say, is a sentence that doesn't suggest a lovely time to follow.

He got something resembling a contact lens with an instrument attached and stuck it on my eyeball and squidged it about.  It didn't hurt of course - - but it was one of the strangest things I've ever had done and I didn't enjoy it, I can tell you.

Apparently half the gel has detached.  If the rest then detaches cleanly all will be well.  If it pulls some of the retina with it, it won't be well and they may have to operate to pin the retina back.  (All together now - - EWWWWWWWW!)  Apparently people who are very short-sighted (like I am) are prone to this vitreous detachment.

There's not much I can do except wait and hope it all gets better.  I'm going back to the eye clinic in four weeks.

Meanwhile, it's very very annoying.  My eye gets tired very quickly, especially looking at a screen, and I'm finding it a real problem in my work for the actors' agency.  After a little while, my eye just wants to close.

So I haven't been on the computer nearly as much as usual and I've been missing reading blogs and everything.  But at least I'm back to blogging - I've missed it.

My Friend's Weekly Lunch Break 14 Oct 2012 8:32 AM (12 years ago)

A friend of mine is a peripatetic music teacher somewhere in England.

Let's say he teaches the clarinet.

Peripatetic music teachers travel round from school to school.  They teach, in general, small groups of children how to play instruments.

My friend - like many peripatetic teachers, I'd guess -  works without breaks because otherwise he wouldn't get to enough schools in the course of a day.

In his timetable, he is given twenty minutes to travel from school to school and these schools are often - nay, usually - several miles apart.

So he finishes in one school at, say, eleven o'clock and then has twenty minutes to travel to the next school through the city traffic before starting there at twenty past eleven.

You may by now have worked out that this is a slightly unrealistic schedule, what with city traffic being what it is, and what with children wanting to talk to you at the end of the lesson, and what with the car not being parked actually inside the classroom.

But someone Up High has decided that because it sometimes takes my friend more than twenty minutes to reach the next school, he is spending two hours of his supposed teaching time every week having a lovely break driving round in relaxing traffic, rather than spending it teaching.

So they have given him an extra couple of hours' teaching at the end of Friday afternoon, running an after-school group.

Because he complained that he was finding it all rather exhausting, with this constant rushing from place to place in an unrealistic time scale and never any breaks, they have given him a lunch break for the week.  It's on Monday morning at half past nine, for two hours.

He's going to try eating five sandwiches during this time, one for every day of the week, but is slightly concerned that by, say, Thursday afternoon, he may be getting a bit peckish.

Of course, if he continues to complain I expect they'll find a solution to the problem.  And it will be to get rid of all peripatetic music teachers.  You read it here first.

Flu Jab 25 Sep 2012 12:31 PM (12 years ago)

I went with my Mum for our annual 'flu jabs this evening.  They had a real production line going at the doctor's.  "Take off your coat before you go in - - roll your sleeve up - - "

The nurse was doing the actual jabs - I barely felt mine because the doctor, sitting across the room, was telling me I needed to have my blood pressure checked and I need my diabetic review.  I was able to tell him, with only a bit of pride, that I had my blood pressure checked last week, and it was fine, and I have my blood test for my diabetic review booked for tomorrow.

Whilst all this was going on my Mum had her 'flu jab too, and then we came home.

Then, by coincidence, I watched a BBC4 drama, The Forgotten Fallen, about the 1918 influenza epidemic, and one doctor's struggle to keep it under control in Manchester.

It has been forgotten, this epidemic.  The first I knew of it was about twenty years ago when I read a book called Lock Keeper's Daughter - it was about - - you guessed - the daughter of a lock keeper on the canals.  But the shocking thing about it was that she had had a mother and six elder siblings - - and they had all died in the 1918 epidemic.  I found it very hard to imagine what it must be like to have your whole family wiped out like that, so suddenly.

The 1918 influenza outbreak killed many young, healthy adults, including soldiers who had survived all the horrors of the First World War.  It killed fast - - many were dead within twenty-four hours.

My mother has all my grandfather's letters from the trenches in the First World War.  I typed them out a few years ago.  They go right on well into 1918 and yet as far as I remember there's no mention of the influenza epidemic so perhaps it didn't affect my family much.  Or perhaps he was trying not to worry my grandmother, who was nine years younger than he was and would only have been twenty in 1918.

I think the 1918 epidemic has been completely overshadowed in our minds by the fact that it happened just after the Great War.  But the figures at the end of the programme were amazing.  228,000 people killed in Great Britain and seventy million worldwide.

How quickly we forget.

Flashing Lights 23 Sep 2012 6:27 AM (12 years ago)

So I'm back.  I can't believe it's so long - five weeks - since I've written a blog post.

Firstly, I was away - - from mid-August to the end of August - and then I was busy.  I plunged straight back into working with the actors' agency and also with the medical students, plus some work with nurses too.

I've just started teaching on a new course for medical students.  Well, it's new to me, though this is the third year it has run.  Most of the other teachers working on it have done it before, and I want to do it as well as possible, so it's taken a lot of work to get ready for it.

Our summer holiday was wonderful.  Down through France, a week in Northern Spain, and then back through France again.  Temperatures over forty degrees.  Mediaeval hill villages.  Mountain scenery.  Swimming in the gloriously warm and clear Mediterranean.  Everywhere we went I wanted to stay longer - - except for Tarrega in Spain, which is where our car broke down.  Although it was traumatic at the time, it meant we had to stay an extra two nights in Alquezar, which is a stunningly beautiful mountain village.  Wonderful.

I have a few stories and I'll be telling them to you - - !

But then I got the flashing lights.  Yes, I planned to start blogging again last week but suddenly my left eye developed its own little firework display.  No colours though - just white light, flashing like crazy.

Which, when you're in bed, in the middle of the night, and everything is dark, is scary.  It's scary when you open your eyes and see a lot of white flashes.  It's even scarier when these continue when you've shut them.

My eyes are SHUT!  Why can I see LIGHT?  PANIC!

All this working with doctors and medical students has given me a kind of lay knowledge of a lot of medical conditions so of course I had a think about the worst ones first.

Brain tumour?  No, I didn't think so, I didn't have any of the associated symptoms.

Detached retina?  Now, I wasn't sure - - I knew that can cause lights, but I thought there would be other symptoms too.  The Communist had a detached retina in his mid-eighties so I knew a little bit about it.  I was pretty sure it wasn't that - - but not certain.

Migraine?  Well, I've had three migraines in my life.  One when I was a teenager at the seaside, one when I was teaching and one when I was pregnant.

The one when I was teaching was the scariest - - I suddenly went almost completely blind and had to leave a very difficult class, secure in the knowledge that if I didn't get someone else there fast to cover for me there wouldn't be much left of the classroom.

Anyway.  Doctor?  Optician?  Accident and Emergency?

Yes, well, soon, I thought.  I'm not missing my trip to Chester Zoo.  (More about that later, too!)  And I've got some work to do for the actors and some filming to do and some third-years to teach  - - -

So finally on Friday I went to the nurse (the doctors were all booked up).  But she went and found a handy GP (as I thought she would), who peered at my eye for ages and said he didn't think it was a detached retina (there'd be more symptoms) and he thought it was migraine, because you can get migraine without the headache.  They were very thorough - I was in there for over half an hour.

Then on Saturday I went for an eye test, which was due anyway, fortunately.  My eyesight has never been of the best.  I have blogged previously about my first ever eye test, age five.

"Just read the letters on that board, dear."  "WHAT board?" - - And so it was discovered that I needed glasses - - !

The optician yesterday was great.  She took ages and was really thorough - I had some "floaters" in my left eye and hence kept failing the peripheral vision test - I had to do it three times until finally I passed it!

Because of the "floaters" and because the flashing lights were in a particular part of my eye, she concluded that it wasn't migraine.  Apparently there's a gel sac attached to the retina which can detach - it's NOT the same as a detached retina which is far more serious - and sometimes bits get left behind, and if they do then you see a flash of light every time you look in that direction, and have "floaters" too from the bit that's come off.

Eventually it should subside - - and indeed it is doing.  The firework display is now down to only a few sparklers.

But it was very frightening, I can tell you, and I feel very fortunate that it wasn't anything worse.

I'll be back soon to tell some tales of other things.

Off to Sunny Spain via Sunny France 13 Aug 2012 7:58 AM (12 years ago)

Well, what with work, the Olympics and trying to learn the WHOLE OF SPANISH I haven't been blogging much recently.

However, I will blog some more - - - but not for nearly three weeks, probably.  For Stephen, Silverback and I are off on a summer trip abroad.  We'll be travelling down through France to Northern Spain and then back again - - so we're hoping for some sunshine after the weeks of rain that we've had in Blighty this summer.  I'm anticipating a bit of Scenery so will be taking the camera, oh yes.

Update:  A couple of blog posts ago I wrote about Wendy the Disappearing Cat.  After very nearly twenty-four hours we found her under a distant bed: she had quite a bad infection but is now a lot better (and our vet's quite a lot richer.)

I've enjoyed learning Spanish from both the excellent Michel Thomas course and the BBC Quickstart Spanish audio courses.  I can't really do JUST audio courses - I need to see things written down before they'll go into my head.  I haven't had much practice speaking except in the comfort of my own living-room, but at least I can follow written Spanish now.

I did Latin and French at school and have done some Italian since and if you throw these three languages up in the air and add a few extra words they seem to come down as Spanish.  Unfortunately I do tend to break into Italian occasionally, and probably also into an entirely new language that I've just invented.  We'll see how it goes.  But I have really enjoyed it and would love to do more.

So - - now we're off to sunny Spain and ever-delightful France too.  Back soon!

Wrong About the Olympics 11 Aug 2012 8:32 AM (12 years ago)

So.  I was wrong.

Well, that's not a thing I say very often.  Probably because, of course, I'm hardly ever wrong.  Obviously.

What I was wrong about was the Olympics.

When Britain got the gig a few years ago, the first thing that happened was that some overpaid designer came up with that terrible logo.  You know the one - it looks like a jigsaw puzzle that won't quite fit together.  Or - if you have a filthy mind, which I obviously don't -  like a copulating couple.  Anyway, it's hideous and I decided from that moment on that I didn't like these Olympics.

Then I heard about all the cuts in other areas that were happening to fund the Olympics, and all that corporate rubbish where McDonalds were a big sponsor - - - and yes, I have been known to eat the occasional McDonalds' burger - say once every six months - but I don't think that McDonalds and athletics sit happily together.

And then there was the scramble for tickets where big companies got lots and The Rest of Us didn't get any, or not many, and they were all very expensive.  Also I knew that transport in London is generally both crowded and difficult - - and I couldn't see how they could possibly cope with the extra crowds.

Then there's the thing that here in Britain we're known for a Good Effort and I thought that's how it would be in the medals table.  Well tried.  A few bronzes, maybe the occasional silver or gold.

To sum up, I thought it would be a sort of unmemorable damp squib, with lots of traffic problems.  And it would probably rain throughout, like it has done all summer.

I'd always enjoyed watching the Olympics right up to Beijing which happened when the Communist was ill and so I didn't see any of those Olympics.  I'd forgotten that I'd really enjoyed previous Olympics in the days of Olga Korbut and David Hemery and many, many others.

I did enjoy watching the progress of the Olympic Torch round the country, though - - - and then I thought well, I'll just watch the Opening Ceremony, and see what I think - -

It was fantastic.  Quirky, very British, endlessly entertaining and superbly creative.  I loved it.

Then the Games started and I've spent every spare moment watching sports that I like - such as swimming - and events I've never heard of before - such as the keirin in the cycling - and bizarre sports like rhythmic gymnastics and handball, and some sports that I swear were drawn up on the back of an envelope by someone under the influence of alcohol.

Team GB has done brilliantly and achieved many well-deserved medals and left me - as many others - wondering why we hear hardly anything of these amazingly skilled people, when our media is full of dreary reality television stars who are skilled at  - - well, only at self-promotion.

Of course, the athletes from my home county of Yorkshire have done particularly well and I've enjoyed seeing various tables suggesting that if Yorkshire were a country it would be seventh or eighth in the medals table!

It's been a fantastic fortnight.  I've loved it, and everyone I speak to - even those who don't like sport in general -  seems to share my feelings.

Congratulations to Team GB and to everyone involved.  It's been wonderful.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat 2 Aug 2012 7:37 AM (12 years ago)

Wendy the cat is suffering from a type of dermatitis which makes her skin all itchy, with the result that she licks it, especially on her legs, and pulls all the fur of and it all gets inflamed.

Just before we went to Tenby, at the end of June, she disappeared for three days, outside, and just when I was sure she was dead, there she was, yelling indignantly outside our bedroom window and I let her in, very relieved to see her.

She's always had the ability to disappear.  I think she shape-shifts, becomes completely flat and slithers under doors.

We took her to the vet and explained that we were going on holiday and that she was going into the cattery whilst we were away.  It's a good cattery, and the vet thought that might be a good thing as it would give her skin time to recover.

So he gave her a steroid injection, and we kept her indoors for a week, and she got markedly better, and off we went to Tenby.

When we got back and collected her, she seemed fine but has refused to leave the house ever since.  Clearly something out there has traumatised her.  Perhaps another cat - - perhaps one of the local foxes - - or the vet suggested she might have got herself shut in somewhere.  That's quite likely, as she has always been keen to climb into any open car.  It's a shame that she's become scared like this, though, as she was such a bold, brave cat before.

Then her skin started getting bad again so we booked a vet's appointment for yesterday.

With typical cat instinct - she HATES the vet's - she disappeared all day.  I knew she was in the house, but simply couldn't find her.  Finally she emerged at about four o'clock for something to eat - - and I never did see where she'd come from.

Our house is quite large and there are lots of nooks and crannies - - but I thought I'd searched them all!

We took her to the vet who explained that one reason she might have been hiding was that she had a high temperature - - it looks as though her skin's become infected.  He gave her an injection of antibiotics and suggested we should bring her back on Friday, with a view to giving her a steroid injection for her skin then, if she was well enough.

She didn't seem too ill - - we brought her home and she ate a large meal - - and then she disappeared.  There simply was no way she could get out of the house - - and yet I can't find her.  That was nearly twenty-four hours ago.

I have checked cupboards, the cellar - though the door to it was firmly shut - all the nooks and crannies of the house - - but I haven't found her.  Of course now I'm worried that she has simply curled up, gone to sleep and died - - and yet she didn't seem particularly ill.  So it's a mystery.  I've done lots of different jobs today, but I can't really think of anything else.

Perhaps she overheard us booking her another vet's appointment for tomorrow.

Wendy, if you're reading this - - please come back!

Accident on the Motorway 25 Jul 2012 12:59 PM (12 years ago)

I left the house a few minutes before quarter to six this morning.  I needed to be near Manchester Airport, sixty miles away, for a job working with medical students, by half past eight and I wanted to leave plenty of time.

Lovely quiet roads - - hardly any traffic - - so I made my way to the M621.  No traffic - - and then, as I passed it, a sign flashed on.  I thought it said something like "Junctions 25-26 Closed".  Nooooo!

Then, suddenly, stationary traffic.

I had the radio on and after the six o'clock news came the traffic report.  A lorry had overturned on the M62 and that part of the road was now closed and expected to be closed for some considerable time.  Traffic was building up in the area.

It certainly was.  We inched forward and it took an hour or so to get to the next junction, which was where all traffic had to leave the motorway as it was closed.

They had not had time to put up diversion signs and so all the traffic left the motorway and had no clue where to go next.

So I made a wild guess as to a suitable route, hoping the satnav would work it out eventually, and set off that way.

But, of course, so did many other people.  More stationary traffic.

By about half past seven I had gone another couple of miles and it was at this point that I realised that, even if the traffic jam cleared - which it was showing no signs of doing - I was going to get to Manchester very, very late as by the time I got to near Manchester I would be stuck in all the normal rush-hour traffic there.  I had set off early to avoid precisely this.

Then my leg began to get the feeling it gets when it's about to get cramp.  I had a thrombosis years ago in my right leg and one thing it doesn't like is stop-start driving in heavy traffic.  When I do get cramp in it it is like the worst pain imaginable the whole length of my leg and I can't do anything except yell a lot.

Then I saw a sign for Leeds.  I took a deep breath - it was a really big decision as I pride myself on my reliability - - and set off for home.

I got home at about quarter past eight.  Two and a half hours and a total of twenty miles.

I apologised to the person I was working with - who ran the class on his own and I'm sure it went really well - but I felt terrible.  I hate letting people down.  How unlucky, I thought.

Then I saw the report of the accident.  A lorry had hit a car and the two people in the car had been killed.  The accident was at ten to six.  I reached the motorway just a few minutes after that.  I was about five minutes behind the accident.

Suddenly I stopped feeling unlucky and started to feel really, really fortunate.



 

The Porridge Diet 16 Jul 2012 7:08 AM (12 years ago)

Here's a poem by the late Goon, Spike Milligan:


Why is there no monument
To Porridge in our land?
It it's good enough to eat,
It's good enough to stand!

On a plinth in London
A statue we should see
Of Porridge made in Scotland
Signed, "Oatmeal, O.B.E."


I'm very fond of porridge.  I saw on telly that the cattle drovers in Scotland used to make themselves a big pot of porridge in the morning and it would give them enough energy to keep walking until the evening.  I have a memory that they put some of the cow's blood in it too in a kind of black pudding.


Anyway, it's good stuff, porridge, high in fibre, high in protein.


At the beginning of May, I went to the doctor and complained like mad that one type of my diabetes tablets, Metformin, made me feel queasy all the time, and the other kind, Gliclazide, made me so hungry that I would find myself looking at bits of furniture wondering whether I might gnaw on them if lunch was a bit late.


I had, therefore, piled on some weight because somehow the eat-everything-in-sight effects of the Gliclazide overrode the feeling-sick effects of the Metformin.


The overall effect was not good.  In spite of the swimming, I was gradually getting fatter AND feeling queasy almost all of the time.  And what is bad for diabetics?  Yes, being overweight.  Sighh.


So I said all this to the doctor.  And he said, to my amazement, that I should give up all the tablets and just see what I could do with diet and exercise.


So I have.  


Now then, nobody ever tells you  how much they weigh, do they?  They'll give you every sordid detail of their sex life but not their weight.  I'm bravely going to tell you mine.


My weight had soared to a positively slightly plump - - ohh all right then, FAT, thirteen stone three.  Not actually as fat as you might think even though I'm only little because I really do have the build of a Russian peasant - - broad shoulders!  But FAT.  


And now, in two and a half months, I am down to a very nearly sylph-like twelve and half stone.  (Yes, yes, okay, okay, not QUITE sylph-like - - but getting there!)  So I've lost about a pound a week and that's great - I hope it will continue.


I think my method is mostly down to porridge.


Every day I have a large bowl of porridge for breakfast.  Half a mug of oats, a whole mug of milk and an extra gloop of water.  Microwave for three minutes.  Add a handful of frozen raspberries, or sometimes a banana (okay, occasionally both!) and then microwave for another thirty seconds and sweeten with just a bit of Canderel or other artificial sweetener.  (Yes, eat your heart out, Jamie Oliver).


I'm being careful with the rest of my diet too, of course, and eating lots of fruit and veg - luckily I love all fruit and almost all veg! - but the filling properties of porridge really help.  


Perhaps I should expand this blog post into a book and hope for a Christmas best-seller.  Daphne's Porridge Diet.  You read it here first!