Rough Steez

I feel I could moan for England this afternoon. I'm well aware that many people think I could moan for England most of the time, but this afternoon I feel decidedly moantastic!

It started this morning with The Observer and an article about Morrisons, the supermarket renowned for pretty low quality, and their insistence that they couldn't serve a 50 year old woman a bottle of wine, because she might have been buying it for her 17 year old daughter, who had just accompanied her on the weekly shop. Morrisons have a regular habit of being the Jobsworth Supermarket and the management's decision to back the staff and manager of the shop in question made my blood boil.

Then my own shopping excursions found me in Sainsburys and the unrelenting march of Christmas. In recent years we've seen the invention of a new, 5th season. We have Spring, Summer, Autumn, Christmas and Winter now. Autumn now officially lasts from September 21st to October 1st, when the season of Christmas replaces it and that lasts until about January 8th, when Winter makes a belated appearance. Of course, if retailers had their own way we would still have four seasons - Christmas, Easter, Summer and Halloween/Bonfire season: the first would start at the end of the last and go all the way through until Cadbury's Cream Eggs are in the shops and they would stay there until the disposable bbqs and rows of ribs, steaks and cheap shitty burgers come out. I fucking hate consumerism and commercialism...

You can buy a Sainsburys Yuletide Chocolate Log with an expiry date of October 11th. What the fuck is that about? Are there really a huge number of complete and utter wankers out there? I'm waiting for the house down the road to put its decorations up. We thought they might be Hindus when we first moved here, but they're not - they're just complete and utter tossers. Last year the decorations went up two days before the end of October. I swear if they go up earlier this year I'm going to fucking torch the house and all inside!

Last night, I discovered that an old friend and a good friend of my brother-in-law has cancer and has been given not very long. He's 35 and that just makes this year the tops as far as young people dying. 2009 will go down in my annals of history as one that's best consigned to the depths of memory. It has been a shit year, so many deaths, so much pain, and enormous amounts of stress and to top it all off, we look like we're going to get a Conservative government next year. There is little reason to stay in this shit hole of a country. Perhaps the best thing to do would be find a cave somewhere and just hide in it for the rest of my life...

Something else that depressed me this morning, that, by rights, shouldn't have. On Friday 16th October, it will be exactly 20 years ago that Squonk!! opened its doors and I began my short but fun career as a comic book retailer. It still gets talked about today - just last week my brother Ron was at a comic mart and met a couple of lads (ha, I call them lads, they're in their 30s now) who were frequent visitors to the shop. They sent their best and Ron was amazed that they should have nothing but good things to say about me!

20 years... Fuck... This means that people like Jay Eales, Scott Goodman, Simon Coleby, Matt DeMonti and many others have been my friends for that amount of time. Time flies, no doubt. All these youngsters who ventured into my self-styled community centre are all in their 30s or 40s now and probably lead far more sensible and normal lives... well... maybe not, but it does make you realise that the older you get the quicker everything becomes. I'm dreading ever hitting 70+ because the way time seems now, it'll probably be even faster by then.

The last 20 years has been something of a rollercoaster ride; retailer, journalist, columnist, editor/publisher, award winner, homeless worker, and now working with young offenders - it's been a path I would never have expected to have taken; but at least I'm happy with my lot. Yeah, I maybe could have had a far more successful - economically - life, but at least I don't feel 47 (in my mind) and I don't think I'm a boring middle-aged man, like so many boring middle-aged men I meet.

I have a full calendar of gigs to attend in the coming months, despite saying after seeing The Charlatans two years ago that I would only go to gigs where I could sit down - because of the strain it places on my back. But in the coming months there's The Flaming Lips, Gomez, Charlie Barnes, Pineapple Thief, Porcupine Tree and I have developed an urge to want to go and see something a bit different...

I've recently been extolling the virtues of a Bristol-based electronic duo called Fuck Buttons. I like progressive electronica (I'm a huge fan of Hybrid) in a big way - it probably springs from my love of Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre and prog rock and the fact that my once drug addled head loved rave music. Fuck Buttons are like rave for the space rock generation; yes it's repetitive and has umpteen million beats per second, but it's hard, relentless and not for your fans of Robert Miles or Euro pop synth bollocks. The new album Tarot Sport is probably one that you'll either get straight away or be completely baffled by. It should be played loud and I have this real urge to go and see them live - if they do live in the conventional way. I think it's because I'd like to see if they are as BIG live as they on record and from an anthropological stand point - I'd like to see what other kind of people are into this strange hybridised music. Tarot Sport has been on constant rotation this last week, much to the disgust of the missus.

One of the better things to happen recently was concluding an article/interview with Sel Balamir of the mighty Amplifier for my Comics Village column, which, it appears, is a little more frequent than it once was. That's probably down to the fact that I've had lots to talk about - even if it's just going over old ground a lot of the time. A little sidebar to this; Amplifier's new album, due out soon(ish) is called The Octopus; just this week I read that pictures of octopuses are not as popular as they once were...

The awesome Team Squonk, the quiz team that I've been in for a few years, has hit a rich vein of form recently and the team kitty now boasts well over £200 in winnings - which should pay for the six of us to go out for a meal at least twice, which is nice.

Oh and I made up with my good friend who I'd fallen out with. We were both being silly really, me probably more so, so all's well that ends well, eh? Now I just have to rebuild bridges with the other 400...

The shoulder is becoming the bane of my physique again. All the optimism seems to have evaporated and I'm growing increasingly paranoid that there's something else amiss with it. The problem is it's a different kind of problem, and not nearly as painful, but still bad enough to have me reaching for lesser strength painkillers. I have almost 80% mobility back and I do things I haven't been able to do for a couple of years; but it aches and it goes numb; the latter being a whole new wrinkle; and it doesn't like some things I do and complains vigorously during and mainly after I've done it. I mean, I'm swimming again and before the op swimming was a real bonus, now it isn't - despite returning to swimming proving to be most surreal and weird!

I'm resisting going back to the doctor's because I'm aware that it was a major operation and it might take a few months for it to be fully operational; but the longer it goes on, the more aggravating and annoying it's becoming. Plus, it's been a saga that has gone on far too long and it would seem almost disrespectful for me to resurrect it after the last 4 months...

What have I been watching recently?

Flash Forward is Lost-lite, but it's an intriguing premise and I'm enjoying Joe Fiennes growling his way through a generic Yank accent.

Fringe just gets madder and madder and I know there's people out there who gave up on this, but like Lost, you shouldn't have. Plus Walter Bishop is one of the best TV characters created in recent times.

The Vampire Diaries is Twilight but with a little more... bite. It's a Kevin Williamson show, which shouldn't put you off and if you can get passed all the teen angsty shite, there's an intriguing story in there fighting to get out.

Stargate Universe is something I urge Battlestar Galactica fans to avoid like the plague. It's essentially BG crossed with ST: Voyager and don't be fooled by Robert Carlyle's presence, he phones it in. It tries hard to be gritty and realistic, yet feels completely soulless and derivative.

Heroes - the new season is as crap as the last one - avoid like the above.

The new series of Dexter kicked off with a cliffhanger ending to end all cliffhanger endings and that after just 1 episode. This is the best TV on TV at the moment.

And, to top it all off, I started watching Smallville, only 8 years after its début. Michael Rosenbaum - Lex Luthor - is fucking awesome, it's a shame the rest of it feels like a rehash of old Buffy plots. I'm almost at the end of the first season and its one of those shows that promises much but just teases you in the end. I'm going to stick with it though, because it's the Christmas season now and there's going to be fuck all to watch on British TV...

(Delayed) Postcards from Dorset

Day 1: The Journey From Hell

My next door neighbour put the mockers on it when he said, "Saturday morning, this time of the year, should get down there with no trouble." If only...
To be fair, the first half of the journey wasn't too bad; we got to Oxford and beyond it with barely a stop, but then we hit a bridge replacement and resurfacing just south of Oxford and north of Newbury. This is where it really started. We left at 10.00am and hit the first patch at 11.20am; we'd got over 70 miles clocked, but the next 30 took us to almost 12.30. I still wasn't worried, but as we approached the M3 we hit a wall of traffic that stretched as far as I could see in front - we were up high, so I could see it all spread in front of me. It then took us over an hour to move 3 miles and when we started again, we needed to stop for a break. The dogs' needed watering and so, to some extent did we.
I opted to push on for the New Forest; pull of around Ringwood and stop for half an hour, but as we hit the M27 we hit another wall of traffic, so we came off at Lyndhurst and figured that was as good a place as any to stop. We headed for The Oak Inn in Bank and took a load off of feet, had a pint and I found a cep.
We headed out of the New Forest at 2.20 and promptly got lost; we eventually met back up with the road we wanted about 3.30 and made good time from that point. We got to Southampton as our company for the week arrived at Wareham station; we were only about an hour behind schedule, but as we were picking them up from the station and had to drop me and the dogs off first we were going to be late. Not quite as late as we thought.
We made up for lots of lost time and got past Wareham at 3.50 only to be hit by a police roadblock. There had been an accident on the only main road from Wareham to Swanage and as we were halfway between the two we had to go cross country. As did every other bastard on the Purbeck Peninsula...
We got to the cottage at 5.10. We were knackered and hungry and the wife went straight back to pick our friends up as the road was now clear - it took her less than half an hour...
That should have been the end to our horrendous first day, but it wasn't. I needed a beer and so did Roger, so we went to a pub in Langton Matravers, which was a bit new and while it sold local ale, I thought there was another pub in the village - there was; it was shit and some wanker in a white van almost took the side of my car off driving like an arsehole down a country lane - he managed to smash my offside wing mirror to pieces though. I decided not to tell the wife about it until the next day...

Day 2: I've (not) been here before...

The OS maps came out and we decided to head off for Kimmeridge Bay in the morning. It was warm and sunny, but from the look of the picture on the left it could easily have been at any time of the year.
I swore I'd been there before; it looked familiar and I even could remember how I'd seen it, but as the wife proved, there was no way at all we could have been there or I could have seen it the way I believed I did as there was no other road leading to the bay and it was on private land and you could only get to it via one road, which I had never been on. I concluded that I must have seen it on a postcard and it stuck as an actual memory, but, you know, the weird feeling is still there. Nice tea shop in the village that would have benefited enormously by being a real ale pub.
From there we headed in land; we needed shopping and Wareham had a Sainsbury's and from there we headed home after a not too long day but one that took in a lot of countryside. Roger and I did the pub thing again and this time found (or in my case re-found) The Square and Compass in Worth Matravers, which is one of the best pubs you will ever go to and then the Scott Arms in Kingston, which we were to discover sold some of the best pub food we've ever experienced.

Day 3: Back to the New Forest

New Forest ponies and at least two of my dogs don't mix, so we had to be selective about where we went and we all thought it might be an idea to do parts of the New Forest that we'd never done before and this we did with ease. It might not be the biggest National Park in the country, but it's certainly the easiest to lose yourself in.
But, we found several nice walks and I found very few mushrooms; the warm and dry weather for the last month had really stymied the mushroom season, yet again, and today was proving to be no exception. Yeah, I found some, but only one that would end up in the pot. Nice bracket though, the one to the left.
The dogs got wigged out by an aged glass collector in Emery Down and almost caused a scene, so we decided to make a quick exit.

Day 4: How the expected ends up being less than expected.

Tuesday was forecast as the warmest day of the week and we decided to take Roger and his other half to Studland, but first we went to a country park in Swanage (but more of that later). Studland beach is world famous; it's owned by the National Trust and it's ideal for dog
walkers (after October 1st) and, oddly enough, naturists. We didn't see any nudists, but we saw plenty of dogs off their leads.
We spent a good hour there, where Marley decided she wanted to bury her mum in the sand. Then we went to the pub I'd been enthusing about all year - the Banks Arms. We'd had a great pub lunch and some excellent beer there three years earlier and figured not much would have changed.
Not much did, apart from there being 9 real ales on sale, none of which were particularly nice and the food menu had changed and we had bugger all choice. In the end, we settled on something neither of us fancied, which turned out to be reasonable in a Bird's Eye Vegetable Fingers kind of way. The dogs also caused a scene when the dray men arrived and scared the shit out of them by dropping barrels out of a van close to the pooches. It ended up being the most disappointing afternoon of the holiday.

However, we did see this, which was the Globe at Dursford Country Park and yes that is the
sea behind it. Dursford has one of the most crazy country parks I've ever seen and it has nothing to do with the National Trust, which has its bonuses. As well as this monstrous great globe of the planet, there are caves, a lighthouse, a castle and some utterly terrifying viewpoints. Plus a nice little cafe that Marley decided was worth checking out...
There are also loads of stone benches, evenly distributed around the park and each one faces in a different direction - no two seats point the same way. As you can see by the sun's reflection on the sea, it was a glorious day and our morning there was much more enjoyable than Studland.

Day 5 - The dull and humid day.

This probably had to be the weirdest day of the holiday. It was very overcast, yet warmer than the preceding two days; it also didn't actually rain but we got the car wet to the point of windscreen wipers a couple of times.
The day started at Lulworth Cove; venue of a previous great holiday and something of an inspiration for me in the past. The place doesn't change much and I suppose that's how the locals (and the World Heritage Trust) like it.
From there all the way over to Bridport; the women wanted to go shopping and I wanted to sit in the garden of the Woodman and drink ale. This is exactly what happened, but Roger insisted on dragging me around Bridport for an hour while we imitated shopping and acted like a gay couple out with our motley hounds. I did everything but mince up the street.
The journey back took us to Chesil Beach; somewhere I'd never actually set foot on. It really is quite an extraordinary bit of tidal peculiarity, as the picture above doesn't really show. On from there and up into the clouds; we took the coast road to Weymouth - a shit awful dump of a town - and ended up driving through clouds; it's like fog but wetter.

Day 6: Chapman's Pool and lunch to die for.

I'm rather pissed off. I took several pictures of this wondrous day and for some reason none of them were on my camera phone when I uploaded them. There was a picture of my jeans, but none of what turned out to be the highlight of the week.
We decided to go to Chapman's Pool, which on the OS map looked like a mini Lulworth Cove but almost completely inaccessible. The trip would involve walking probably a couple of miles and should end up somewhere splendid; at least that's what I was hoping for.
In the end only me, the wife and Roger took the plunge, so to speak, and what a plunge it turned out to be. We missed the direct path down by a matter of feet; Roger even took a photo of the view and missed this new, large, path that had been constructed; so we took the long way and it was much better and infinitely easier to walk along. We then reached the place where the paths divided, Chapman's Pool was down another 100 foot, through gorse and bramble, but a well worn path. Still, we had no real idea of what to expect. When we finally got there we were greeted by a beach, unusual for round there and a cove about a quarter of the size of Lulworth with nothing in it but two boat housings and for some strange and unfathomable reason, a small hatchback car. We stayed there for nearly an hour, the sun blazing down, the dogs swimming and running about like loons and we were virtually alone, except for a man fishing and another couple with a dog.
The journey back was quicker, but much, much harder. We took the short route and my legs are still feeling it now.
From there we went to Kingston, a small village near Corfe Castle and to the Scott Arms. Quite a wonderful pub with possibly one of the best views I've ever seen from a pub garden - Corfe Castle and the surrounding countryside, all sweeping below you. The beer was excellent - DBC's Jurassic and the food was unbelievable. I had the wild mushroom risotto and the wife had sun-blushed tomatoes with pesto linguine and rocket salad, both were exceptional value and at least good quality restaurant standard. We decided that we'd have to come back for lunch again the next day.
I ended up getting quite pissed and let the wife drive, for the first time ever on a holiday, she broke her not driving rule and ferried me back to the cottage.

Day 7: The sun-tanned anti-climax.

We decided that the last day should be about slumming it. We went to Swanage to the world's oddest recycling tip, with the best view ever; we bummed around Swanage town, me sunning myself in the park with the dogs, the others doing their shopping. We went back to Dursford Park and I got wigged out by the unbelievable lack of safety barriers along the cliff walk. I got so bad we had to go back, not because I was scared I'd fall over, but because I just knew Marley probably would go sailing over.
We then went back to the Scott Arms for lunch, which was just as good, before heading to Church Knowle to the animal sanctuary we donate money to annually. Roger and I went to the pub and it was shut. We popped into Corfe for an hour and had the pint we wanted earlier - an almost perfect pint of Summer Lightning, as clear as a bell.
By the time we got home it was later than most of the other days, but we all felt like we'd had a good relaxing and enjoyable holiday. How fucking boring is that?

The journey back was uneventful and took 3 hours and 15 minutes, including a 10 minute stop at Newbury; compared to the 6 hours it took to get down, I was grateful. I discovered that the latest wrinkle in my shoulder saga hasn't gone away and I now have an almost unbearable numbness that creeps into my upper left arm. I'm also convinced it aint fixed properly. I also found out that if I sit in the car for too long my right leg all but seizes up. Jesus, I'm going to be a bundle of laughs if I make it to 70+...

Now, I have another weeks holiday. As much as I hate the fact I've only been back at work 3 weeks and I'm off for another 2 again, I have so much leave to use up... I expect I won't do anything that I'd really like to do and I'll be wishing I was back at work by Thursday...

Of loss and prawn cocktails

Or Week-ending Odds n Sods...

It's been a bizarre week in many ways. It started a bit like summer and it's ending with me sitting here in no less than 3 layers - September has arrived like a March. I started the week with more friends than I finished it with - and amazingly that isn't a reference to my job - which I have learned in the past is something I don't ever discuss on these pages. But, my return to work was just about every one of my worst paranoid nightmares come true - and on the whole it could have been much better...

It's been a week of change for some of my friends. Tonight, an old friend came round for a cuppa and seems reborn. She's is on the verge of finally walking away from a loveless and at times terrifying relationship that has been going on almost as long as my own terrifying (but for different reasons) relationship. It was a remarkable change in many ways and left me hoping this wasn't a false start. I've seen people in similar situations who still end up staying put.

I watched a film that could well be the best film I've seen in the last 20 years. District 9 just happens to be an extraordinary SF film that could just appeal to people who hate anything SF, fantasy or horror related. Yes, it's choc-a-bloc full of aliens, weird technology and almost impenetrable South African accents, but it's just fucking brilliant. Take away the aliens and the technology and this could be a desperate tale of apartheid.

On Monday, I argued with a good friend; one of my dearest. It was the culmination of weeks of growing anger between both of us. You know how it is, sometimes someone special or important in your life and you start to see things slightly differently and instead of doing the sensible thing and sorting it out, it ends up driving a widening wedge into a tiny, repairable wound. I think its human nature to take things too far sometimes. Plus, there's always a victim, whether it's between friends, lovers, husband & wife or a couple in a 50 year friendship - one person will at some point feel that not enough is being done by the other. I've had friendships where I've felt I've done all the hard work and I'm sure the same could be said vice versa. The mind is a powerful weapon against your own well-being and once you start to lose trust in someone, your brain will exacerbate the inkling - the brain is a fantastic place to grow things; not just positive imaginative things, but dark and negative ones too.

This falling out can be blamed on many things; both of us are probably trying very hard to out-justify the other in our own heads; but it boiled down to one thing in the end - honesty or the lack of it. But its difficult when you're as tenacious, as I am at times, to sit back and take things as they come and I had a little too much time on my hands to dwell on miscommunications and false expectations. It's horrible being let down, for whatever reason it might be, but sometimes the fall out is much worse...

Subsequently, that and a dreadful pub lunch experience and a thundering headache spoiled Bank Holiday Monday and flowed into the Tuesday - my last day before returning to work - meaning that most of the good intentions I had about my final days of sick note land failed to materialise.

However, things perked up on Thursday when I met up with someone I hadn't seen for nearly a year - proving to me at least that times flies far too fast the older you get. For Cam, it seemed like ages since the last time we saw each other, for me it seemed like yesterday we were in a studio in North London being photographed for another weird and wonderful picture by my old buddy Mitch. Cam's 24, so that probably explains why the last 11 months seemed much longer than they did for me - but I have all manner of time theories that I can't be arsed to go into. Much was consumed and I discovered a new meaning to the word 'special'.

I remember saying recently that I'd had one of the best weeks of the year; despite not having had anyone die for a while and not having the pain and stress I've suffered for best part of 2009, and despite meeting up with an old friend and having some good times; this week has been one of the worst, not just in 2009 but for many years. It's been bad in a mentally debilitating way. It's been a week to sap your confidence; for delivering damaging metaphoric body blows and if I wasn't trying to be so (unusually) positive about things, I probably would have been reaching for the antidepressants again.

Talking about pain; my left arm hates me. It's going through a series of exercises to rebuild the muscle that has wasted away over the last few months and despite me only having a flimsy bright pink stretchy thing (I'm moving to a green one on Thursday) it's proving to be bloody hard work and at times it leaves me with a dull ache, not to different from the dull ache I started to get back in December. Or in other words, I'm still not entirely convinced about Mr S*****'s 100% fixed proclamation. That's probably a mixture of fear and resignation that I can't be lucky enough to have something done quick, efficiently and without further complications - I still find it too easy to take the glass half empty route...

On a more positive note - Roger and I found a decent pub hosting a small but perfectly formed beer festival. The Red Lion in Broughton (near Kettering) is yet another pub we've found in the county that seems to be abandoning 16 lagers and John Smiths in favour of something a little more palatable and real. Lovely old building, very friendly landlord and it looks like it has potential to be a potential eatery (but I won't hold my breath about that).

I somehow suspect the next week could get worse than the one just gone and current circumstances are hardly going to make me a nice passive bystander. I need, yes I really am going to say this, a holiday. Ideally 2 weeks on a Caribbean beach with no hurricanes forecast; so Dorset in mid-September will have to suffice.

The Passion of Lovers (Part 2)

More football meanderings, so just move along until next time...

It's an international break and nearly 2 weeks without club football again, so i thought I'd look over my predictions made at the start of August and see if I've got anything really wrong:

Manchester United - right - said they'd be there or thereabouts and I see no reason why not. No longer convinced they can win it easily though, but that's a prediction made at my peril.

Chelsea - wrong-ish - at the moment they look capable of winning the league without a new big signing.

Liverpool - right - need quality outside of the Fugitive and the Pin-Up boy; too many hiccups already.

Arse-nal - right - I said anyone would be stupid to write them off.

Citeh - woefully wrong - they already look capable of not conceding a goal, ever and they have strength in depth.

Aston Villa - probably wrong - said they were most likely to break the Top 4 but despite beating the Red Shite at Anfield, I'm not convinced this team can keep up with the pace that others are setting.

Everton - right-ish - said they'd struggle for consistency and if their 65 games so far is anything to go by, then yes, they will.

West Ham, Fulham - right-ish - two teams where it really is too early to tell.

Blackburn, Bolton, Portsmouth - right on the nose - all three look like relegation material and will just hope there are others worse.

Sunderland - wrong - have had a solid start to the season and are showing signs of resilience.

Burnley - wrong - could be this year's Hull.

Wigan, Birmingham, Hull - right - all woeful strugglers, Birmingham look the most capable of putting up a fight, the other two will be on the receiving end of good hidings lots of times.

Stoke - wrong - look like being this year's Stoke, but better and with players that can win games in their side, which is remarkable, because this is Stoke.

Wolves - jury's out - I still think they'll go down, but they might have teams below them now.

Tottenham - WRONG - 4 leagues wins out of 4, a 5-1 demolition in the cup of Doncaster and have been top of the league and are now 2nd on goals scored. It couldn't get any better and what can possibly go wrong? Modric has broken his leg; King has torn a groin muscle; four other players are unlikely to return before October. Man Utd and Chelsea are next and the realist in me knows that 2 points would be sensational.

Back to work tomorrow, so all this frivolity may stop!

Short cuts

The physiotherapist feels the surgeon has done a bang on job with my shoulder and he reckons, once I've built the withered muscles up again, it should be a 95% minimum successful operation. Mr S***** saw it two days later and went one better - he reckons it's 100% cured!

Is that the fucking bee's knees or what?

To be fair, my shoulder has been remarkably excellent for the last week; yes there have been aches and pains, but the majority of them are through use after constant inactivity. There was also the minor gunge fest that happened when I thought everything was finished, but now I just have this small hole and a reluctance to study it in any detail...

It's just a shame that the new me has been condemned to doing what the old pre-op me spent so much time doing - nothing! It appears the fates have transpired against me all week, to prevent me from doing things I'd planned; which led me to examine this whole 'planning' lark.

I think anyone who knows me will agree that I'm not a control freak, by any stretch of the imagination, but at certain times I become the champion of control freaks. these are usually when I plan something. I'm a bit meticulous about my preparation; I like to make sure that everything is in place before venturing forth. If there's one thing that pisses me off it's when the best laid plans go awry. I hate it when they go wrong from something related to me, so imagine what I'm like when it's something that could be avoidable and involving the target of my plan? Take this week as an example; at least three things I had planned ended up not happening. There were three very logical reasons for them not happening, but it still left me at a loose end, unexpectedly.

I probably wouldn't mind so much, but the last 12 weeks have been hell, either because of or the recuperation of my shoulder, has meant that I've been housebound and the few occasions I have been out have been few and far between. Some one said to me last week, "Hey, you've had the entire summer off, what are you moaning about?" ... Yeah, I have haven't I? I managed the garden most days; the corner shop became a real highlight of the day - I'd try to have to go there at least daily. I became an expert at losing free money on Facebook's Texas Hold'Em and during July I sat and watched it rain... If you'll pardon the obvious comedy value remark - I'd have given my left arm to have had a summer where I could have been free of pain and able to have achieved all the things I might have planned. As it is, the summer (and it has been better than last year) simply floated past my office window like the grains of sand in an hourglass.

I also had a pretty good week last week, so this week has been an anti-climax of sorts. But I did eventually get to meet up with an old friend; who just seems to get better with age.

I hate Bank Holidays, mainly because we end up doing nothing on them. Normally, had I been at work for any period of time, I treat a bank holiday a bit like Christmas day - a chance to have a lie in. But this time around, because I've got itchy feet and an urge to actually do something before I go back to work, I'm a little disappointed that all we have planned is a possible trip to a pub this evening (Saturday). I appreciate that as this weekend is the busiest of the year and any thoughts I might have of travelling anywhere on Monday should be curtailed, but...

Of course when plans go awry, I normally find something to do in their wake; however, because I've already plumbed new depths of boredom over the last 3 months, finding an alternative is a little like trying to find a needle on Jupiter. However, I have at least been writing again. I finished a 3000 word synopsis of a story I'm pretty desperate to make a move on. I'm approaching it in a different way than usual and I sort of have it tagged as a teenagers book, although one of the characters is foul-mouthed, so I'm having a small quandary about that. The peculiar thing about this idea is that it contains a lot of ideas and characters I have used in other ill-fated and came-to-nothing projects - proving indubitably that there is a value in writing anything, even if it never comes to anything.

I've also been working on another story, something completely different - in terms of genre - for me. I'm doing it as an experiment more than anything. The bottom line is this - I have to exercise my left arm because the muscles have withered - I also have to exercise my brain, because the most taxing thing I've done with it in recent months has been to play Scrabble. Which is why I'm probably popping up all over the place at the moment - I have loads of words that have built up like a dam and they're just bursting to get out on the page - regardless of whether they make any sense or not. It's one of the most positive feelings I've had for months.

Right... I have a weekend of nothing to liven up!

Wild Horses (contains made up words)

Despite the death of Morris the duck (saved from someone's Christmas table a few years ago and given a fitting retirement surrounded by girls, a nice pond and plenty of food), this has been a week where I've been trying to extol the virtues of being positive. Me and optimism have always had an uneasy relationship; normally it all goes a bit the way of the pear just around the time I start thinking, 'hey, things are looking up'.

I suppose most people think that, or even are subjected to it, on a regular basis. The thing is I've never regarded myself as being a pessimist, despite supporting Tottenham Hotspur; and even when I've been whining about the crap things that have happened to me, either through no fault of my own or by the actions of others, deep down I've always thought 'it'll get better'. I might not say it; but maybe I'm superstitious and one of those people that thinks if you say it out loud it will have been heard by someone.

Which, in a weird way either suggests that I'm a Christian at the core of my being or I've been indoctrinated by religious icons for so long, I subconsciously think that if there is a God then knowing my luck he has a direct line to my vocal chords (not, as many will suggest, he'd need it with my booming voice). Because, I suppose being a pessimist is a bit like being the hired wailer at a funeral; you're there to illustrate the 'I told you so' approach to reactions. It's all gone tits up - I told you so. Pessimists are also here so that optimists and even-keeled people can be pissed off with someone other than God, especially if they are atheists.

But, despite all of this, I woke up earlier this week and thought: I've been bored beyond belief, I've been let down and abused and I've literally wasted the last 3 months of my life and the running thread through it all has been me sitting around feeling sorry for myself because I've got a disability, or because I've had an injury that has left me incapable of doing things I could do with aplomb 2 years ago. Shit happens and I know this better than most people and yet I'm still here to tell the tale, I'm still here to annoy and pester my friends and family and I'm still ready and willing to accept that as I get older, more shit is going to happen and there aint a lot I can do about it, so I might as well make the best of the situation (and if the last paragraph reads like it could be the lyrics to an old blues song, I do apologise).

So, faced with a limited time before I return to the daily grind and the knowledge that time goes even faster when you actually want to do things; I decided that between now and September 2nd I'm going to do some stuff. I've already made two new friends in the last week - I mean real friends, not just another so-and-so on Facebook; I've started work on a new story, which in a way is reworking of several elements from old stories that might have wormed their way into an infinitely better tale; I've decided that another new 'friend' should be given a little more leeway, because I've perhaps not been particularly fair to him, I've been to a gig and walked around town on a lovely summer's night. I've also been crowing about this year's horticultural successes, talking with the neighbours, going out with my Godson and his fiancee and speaking to old friends - again, actually contacting them or being contacted by, rather than through the medium of social networking. Surely 'social networking' should be called unsocial networking because you can literally have a relationship with a person without ever speaking to them in person or over the phone. The Internet allows people to make friends, but I'm betting the majority of them don't end up in each others gardens every summer for BBQs and wife swapping parties! But I'm betting if you speak to people directly, there's a better chance of it happening.

It does have it advantages though, I don't deny that. I've had a quote from my review of 2000 Trees, from this blog, used on a musician's website and possibly made a new friend out of said musician in the process. Plus, I even learned some priceless information about a guy that I know; which I'm sort of hoping will come back and not just haunt him but bite him so hard on his substantial arse that it leaves teeth marks on his pelvis!

There have been, as there always are, elements to the week that have put a dampener on what would otherwise have been the best week I've had this year! But, shit happens and even the wife has noticed that recently the histrionics and Victor Meldrewisms are being replaced by a far more Zen Phil. Shit happens and you know something? When it does, it's done - end of; move on.

Of course, this new approach to life might have the longevity of one of my many ill-fated attempts at stopping smoking, but equally, it might last as long as my vegetarianism and even longer. My eldest brother Ronnie, he doesn't smoke - never has, doesn't drink, apart from really sugary shit and is the world's biggest fretter and worrier; he's a passive road-rager (ie, he'd never chase anyone or start a fight, but he'd work himself into a frenzy of frustration and stress all on his own), he had a heart attack when he was my age. I've always joked that I've known how I was going to die - it would be from an aneurysm sustained from going apoplectic at some wanker in a Nissan Micra. Stress and sporadic pretend bi-polarism (one minute I'm lovely, the next I'm Robert De Niro in Raging Bull) in a car will be my downfall, but I've noticed in the 20 odd miles I've driven in the last week (yay!) that I've barely even noticed the arseholes. I have to keep this up.

The next week brings a physiotherapist appointment, two days prior to my surgical check up with Mr S*****; a lunch date with an old (as in from a long time ago rather than her age) and exceptionally lovely colleague; two days with the missus - we're planning a day trip on Monday and a duck rescue mission on Tuesday. We've got a lunch date on Sunday with my nephew; a meal at my favourite restaurant tomorrow, beer on Tuesday and Thursday night; the first episode of season 4 of Dexter to watch, an impending Bank Holiday weekend and suddenly I have 2 days and 2 evenings free between now and returning to keep kids on the straight and narrow.

I also love the fact that even though I'm still getting some discomfort with my shoulder, I can, for the first time in as long as I care to remember, sit down and type 5,000 words in a single sitting. This is about 4,500 words more than I've managed since last year. My brain, that has been raging with ideas all summer, finally has its outlet back. I need both hands to type, otherwise I'd never keep up with myself. It's a good job that every time I had an idea I remembered to write it down - some of them will wither and die, but one of two might just be the right ones to let in.

Of course, it all might change tomorrow and something is sure to go wrong and on Sunday Tottenham's great start to the season will come to a thundering halt at the hands of the wife's own football preference, so by Monday, when we're due to go out for the day I might be reaching for antidepressants again and prophesying the end of civilisation as we know it... but until then, you're all fucking lovely! MWAH!!!

Positive negativity

It is now over 3 week since I went under the knife - the time has flown by slowly...

I sometimes wonder if there's some divine spirit who follows me around waiting for something to fuck up my day. You know what I mean; you're standing in the queue at the supermarket and either the till breaks down or the person in front of you has decided to pay for an entire months shopping with pennies; or worse still they're friends with the person on the checkout and you stand and watch while every other queue slowly disappear out of the exits. Or you've been told by a utilities company that they can call between 8 am and 6pm, no specific time - in this day of modern technology, they can't give you less than a six hour window - so you're desperate for a pint of milk, some tobacco, a paper, anything that requires you to nip down the corner shop for 90 seconds, during which time they have managed to arrive, wait and then write a card out saying they missed you! These are just a couple of things that seem to dog me; but even little things have a habit of accumulating until something insignificant makes you go ballistic.

July 31st, I arrived at the spic and span Woodlands Hospital, situated on the A14 between Kettering and Rothwell - itself not very convenient for me, but it would have been had I been at work. It was the day of my operation, the one that would sort out my shoulder. I was admitted at 12.20, was in my room by 12.25 and for the first 20 minutes I was fussed over, visited by physios, anaesthetists, nurses and the pre-op surgical team. I was told the op would be done about 3pm, so that from about 2pm I'd need to get myself ready - slip out of my clothes and into a gown - it did up at the back, I had one usable arm - this was slightly ironic.

At 12.45, I sent the wife home; she doesn't like hospitals and I didn't see the point of her sitting there watching the test match with me when she could be with the dogs or doing something constructive. When she left, we had not seen another hospital staff member since 12.35. A nurse poked her head round my door at 2.05 to check to see if I had my gown on. The next time I saw anyone from the hospital was at 5.25...

I was cold, I was getting very hungry and more than anything else, as every 15 minutes ticked by I got increasingly angry. At 5.00, I decided that if someone hadn't been to see me by 5.30 I was going home. I decided to go and have a piss - I had an en suite, it was a private hospital despite me being an NHS patient. I had barely been in the toilet, didn't bother switching the light on, when someone was in my room, switching the toilet light on and barging into the loo, while I had my old man in my hand. "What are you doing?" I asked, rather perplexed.
"Just checking to see if you're alright," as she walked past me into the cubicle.
"I can manage a piss, thank you."
"I've seen it all before," she said while doing something behind my back.
"I don't care, that's not the point. I've not had my op, I'd like some privacy please." She ignored me and I could feel the red mist descending. I finished up and turned to face her. "I'd like you to find out why I've been waiting so long for my operation? I've been sitting here since midday and I've not heard anything."
"There's probably been some delay."
"Well, find out and tell me, please." She left and I started to feel like minutes were lasting hours.

At 5.15, I walked out of my room for the first time and to the nurses station, where the woman who had barged into my loo was doing some filing. "Well?" I said to her, but she had no answer for me, she hadn't been able to find out for me because she had been doing other things. I stormed back to my room, tore the gown off of me, got my clothes back on and walked out of the room. I walked up to the nurses station where three nurses were looking at me confused. "I think this is fucking disgusting! If Mr S***** wants to operate on me, tell him he's going to have to chase me down the road, I've phoned my wife, I'm going home. This is as unprofessional as I've ever seen!" Turned on my heels and left. I was apoplectic - I mean, I was raging so fucking hard that if anyone had tried to stop me I think I would have decked them with my good arm.

I got out the front of the hospital; phoned my GP's office, it was 5.30, but I hoped someone would be there, I needed to a) off load and b) get some help. Fortunately my mate Christine was on reception and she told me to calm down, to breath, count to 10 and just take it easy, they would sort it out, but I needed to calm down. Suddenly, Mr S***** appeared at the window, beckoning me back in; while I had the doctor's office on the phone still, I bellowed at the surgeon, "If you fucking want to talk to me, talk to me here!".

Anyhow, Christine calmed me down, Mr S***** managed to coax me back into the hospital and we went and sat down in his office and he started to apologise profusely; this was probably designed as a stress reliever and anger pacifier - I was far to angry for either to work. "Damned right you should be sorry, this is disgusting. Nearly 5 hours freezing my arse off, starving hungry and nobody could be arsed to come and tell me that there was a delay. I'll be fucked if I'm having the op now, I'm hungry, I'm furious and I feel that this is a private hospital treating an NHS patient like shit." To be fair, he took on board everything I said and agreed with me, actually encouraged me, to make a formal complaint - which I did, right there and then, in writing - it took me 10 minutes, but it outlined all of the above and the terrible attitude of the nursing assistant who appeared to want to see my cock.

I left with the information that it probably wouldn't be until the beginning of September before the operation could be rescheduled. I walked up towards the A14 with the intention of meeting the missus and a man in an Audi pulled next to me. "Are you the shoulder man?" He asked quite passively, I was still fuming. I nodded, and he launched into an apology, very similar to Mr S***** - the table needed for my keyhole surgery was double booked and the other surgeon was essentially monopolising the table. My op, scheduled for 3pm, was put back to 4, then 5 and eventually to 7pm, which would have meant an overnight stay, which I wasn't prepared to do. I said that I didn't feel it was his or Mr S*****'s fault (the man I was talking to was the assistant surgeon) but I was disgusted by the fact that I was just seemingly abandoned, it wasn't like they'd been forewarned that I was liable to lose my rag.

I got picked up; I wasn't happy and I went home. I pity the wife, she had 30 minutes of me venting my frustration - but, she is used to it by now.

As I walked through the front door, the phone was ringing. It was the Theatre Manager from the Woodlands. She also attempted to tell me what I'd been told twice before; I told her that I knew the reasons, it was the lack of communication and attitude of some of the ancillary staff that pissed me off. I could have said I wanted all the nurses to beat themselves with sticks as retribution and I think she might have agreed. Contrite is too simple a word for the hospital's new found attitude. Subsequently, I was offered the first operation the next morning. I would need to fast after 10pm; I would be expected to be at the hospital by 6.30 - we renegotiated to 7.30 and they would get it done first thing. I agreed, the wife agreed to take me. Game on.

Half an hour later, the Woodlands General manager called; she too could not apologise enough; in fact the apologies were coming so thick and fast that there almost seemed like a falsity to them. Half an hour after I got off the phone to her, another call from the hospital - just to go through with me what I needed to do again. I was apologised to again.

Fast forward a few hours; it's now 7.35 on Saturday morning and I was being readmitted and attended to by a new bunch of nurses. I was in my gown by 8pm and being walked down to theatre at 8.07. By 8.20 I was out like a light and at just after 10am I was woken up in the recovery room. Much of the next few hours were a bit of a blur; but I was home by 3.30.

Mr S***** declared the operation to be a success. I had a 2cm section of shoulder blade removed, which was impinging on my upper arm and shoulder muscles; it was cleaned up and realigned, all through a keyhole!

And to be fair, the recovery has been good and the immense pain I was warned about didn't really appear. There have, however, been more cock-ups. I was supposed to attend physiotherapy, starting a week after the op, but because of the ... unfortunate events... things got confused; I asked the physio - a different one - I'd seen on the Saturday if there was any way my physio could be moved to Northampton, as I am literally 20 minutes walk from it, whereas Rothwell was a long haul and I wasn't to drive a car for a fortnight. The Saturday physio said she's find out all I asked her and get back to me with answers before I left. Did she? Did she fuck!

So, I've been without physio and all I've had have been some basic mobility exercises to do. That changed on Friday when I went to have the sutures removed and to see my doctor about another - related - problem. He phoned the Woodland, and I believe chewed them a new arsehole, I especially believe this by the stroppy woman who I spoke to yesterday on the phone, who clearly wasn't feeling as contrite as the rest of her colleagues. I, it is fair to say, put her right. She didn't like it, but she didn't really have an answer to any of my points. Suffice it to say, I have my first physio session, at the Woodland, next Wednesday morning - better late than never?

Maybe not. The other reason I went to see my own GP was because after a honeymoon period after the painkillers ran out, my shoulder had started to... hurt again. My doc put it down to bruising of the bone and secondary bruising which was only then beginning to come out - he also warned me that the pain would probably move down my arm before disappearing. This seemed totally feasible and he's a doctor and I'm not.

However, the pain is getting worse; much much worse. The original pain is gone; I have about 95% movement back in my shoulder and I can do things, like scratch the small of my back with my left hand, which I haven't been able to do for months and months. This is great news. However, I can't pick anything up without a sharp jolt of pain shooting through the top of my shoulder; it's also really really tender; far worse than it was 10n days after the op. It also doesn't like me twisting my arm, moving it in a fast manner; in fact, I can move it, but not much else... The pain is also different; instead of a thumping ache and stiffness, I get a sharp acute pain, like someone digging a knife into the top of my shoulder... and, as of this morning it's worse still. In fact, the pain when it happens pisses all over 90% of the pain I had suffered from my shoulder in the last 12 months. I am, justifiably a little bit worried...

Perhaps it has something to do with me not having had proper physiotherapy or it might just be a secondary problem that has now been brought to the fore by the fixing of the primary one. I don't know and I'm not seeing Mr S***** until August 28, this is 5 days before I'm due to return to work. I still have hardly driven a car since the I went off work; I'm not feeling particularly confident about it at the moment either. I also really can't afford more time off of work; it won't be long before I'm entering the realms of 50% pay and I really can't afford that.

Because I'm a glass half empty kind of guy, I'm now worrying that I might end up being at work with a problem that is actually more acute than the initial problem - you see, despite the fact I was advised not to drive, there have been a few weeks in the last 10 where I could easily have gone to work; I actually felt like a fraud. I'm now counting down the days to work and I am genuinely worried that I'll go back with a problem considerably worse than the one I went off with...

The problem is I need to get back to work - not for the money, but for my fucking sanity. I've been so bored recently that I've considered writing a blog entry about free on-line poker games and the complete and utter tosspots that inhabit these places (me included); how on-line Scrabble is both liberating and annoying and my friends theories that computers cannot randomly generate letters randomly enough. How my potato crop has been unbelievably better this year than last; my apricot tree and other horticultural tales.

I grew a beard; then shaved it off.

Um...