Blancmange Steak

Despite not knowing whether I will keep my job, I've been proactive and applied for another job. The details of it are neither here nor there at the moment, but I figured if there was something I could do being advertised, I might as well beat the rush. Work knows and are being very supportive; I was even praised for my sanguine attitude - but I figure that's mainly because everyone else is running around predicting the end of the world.

My feeling is that if it's going to happen then get on with life, don't sit around waiting for the next shitty thing to happen. It's an unusual stance for someone so historically a glass half empty person, but this is the new "Now I've stopped smoking I expect to live till I'm 80 at least" kind of attitude, I should have had all along.

Of course, living till I'm 80 could be one long pain in the arse. I've been avoiding talking about my health for almost a month (yes, I've been keeping tabs) but that's been mainly because I got bored writing about it, so my loyal and growing band of readers must have been getting to the chopping their ears off with any available sharp vegetable stage. Don't get me wrong, there's something cathartic about exposing your soul (or in my case, my spine) to the world, but you can only say ooh and aah so many times before people are actually wishing you would die.

The amitriptyline appears to be working, albeit slowly and with its own bizarre set of side effects. It is essentially a muscle relaxation drug, so I take them at night before bed and wake up the next morning feeling human; if I don't take them, I wake up feeling like someone has dropped me from a moving airplane, one flying at 40,000 feet. Whether or not they are helping me get the feeling back in my midriff and my left leg is debatable. It seems whenever I do get some feeling back in these places, it's accompanied by pain, which is both... um... painful and reassuring. The reassuring part is because I realise that I still have feeling there, it's just on an extended holiday. As I said have said quite often, it is a pain in the arse, literally.

The upshot is that at times I'm needing to use my stick; this is down to the fact that my left ankle is shot to shit. I have about 20% of the expected use and that is frustrating. It's weird as well because I can tell it to do something and it just sits there and looks at me. I can stand on my toes, it even thinks it's doing it, but I look down at my feet and my right foot is arching like a porn actress in full flight, while my left foot is doing the limpet... It is a mixture of crazy and annoying; I'm sure it must be like amputee's who get itches on phantom limbs, only slightly different.

If, like me, you think that my ankle being buggered is a weird thing considering I had a prolapsed disc and am suffering from sciatica, then you wouldn't be wrong. It seems strange that something so far away from the source should be the thing to suffer the most; but the entire left hand side of my body is seemingly on some kind of protest; even my shoulder is getting in on the act and that's had corrective surgery on it. I feel like that character Frank Gorshin played in the original Star Trek, who was exactly half white and half black, or was it the other way around?

I don't have a long term prognosis on it; I am waiting to see if the surgeon thinks I'm worth an appointment and the biggest fear I have is that I won't regain enough fitness to be able to do a full time job. I'm a long way from retiring and therefore a long way from having to be poor by circumstance rather than choice. Something like DLA does not, as first believed, pay you enough money to do anything but survive; so it isn't like I could work part time and get my money topped up by a benefit. I am, however, beginning to comes to terms with the fact that I am now disabled and therefore I'm beginning to see how being disabled is unfair and almost a burden to society.

I did get my special chair finally set up the way it should be today; for nearly two years I've had it set up how I thought it should be set up and I'm not surprised it was more of a chore sitting in it than an aid. It's remarkable what an expert can do! Laura was lovely, very helpful, very affable and very pregnant!

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My mate Wilky gave me 15 CDs of Tangerine Dream stuff the other day. The first 5 were Tangents, which is/are a selection of old songs remixed and remastered and the other 10 a kind of conceptual mega album of stuff recorded in the last few years.

I know why he gave them to me now. He must really dislike me...

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Downloaded Being Human USA and Skins USA last night. I was looking forward to seeing what they did to them, but Being Human USA is by the same people who brought us Haven (see http://farkynell2.blogspot.com/2010/08/rainbow.html for a reminder of what a fantastic series I thought that was). The amazing thing is that Haven has been renewed for a second season, while Stargate Universe hasn't been renewed for a 3rd. Sometimes you have to wonder about Americans, then you see and hear Sarah Palin and it all fits back into place.

The good news is that the real Being Human is back on Sunday, 9pm on BBC3.

I haven't watched Shameless USA yet and I'm thinking it might end up being like a number of other US TV shows. I download it and then lose the will to watch it.

I'm half expecting a Misfits USA, a Holby City USA and Only Way is Essex USA in the next batch of press releases, maybe even an Episodes USA, where a husband and wife writing team from Hollywood come to England and are forced to work with June Whitfield...