Bad diary days

[Following is some of the stuff I'd been writing over the past 6 weeks or so, leading up to the surgery and finding out the cancer was back. At one point it was titled "the curious incident of the chinese seaweed in the anastamosis" but that was back when I was a bit more optimistic.

This does not make for pretty reading. So it goes. I tend to write only on the bad days. And they are not all bad. GOD is good. I have no doubt. How and why he does this I'm still working out. I will be for a while.]

I don’t seem to have either the grace, strength or understanding to deal with all this. Be it life in general or life in the specifics. I used to think when I was 16 that there was only so much my little mind could take and life continued on as crazy as it seemed then, then my head would explode with overload. I suppose that’s just universal teenage angst and paranoia. But maybe I still think the same. “Life is funny but not ha ha funny, peculiar I guess.”

The older I get the more perplexed and bewildered I seem to become and find myself in frequent awe of the chaos and bitter-sweet experience of life. I cannot handle this, I cannot handle the ups and downs and the continual pressure of a mere 27 years of memories. I’ll never make 50. Unless I get a jacket without sleeves and some valium.

Maybe it’s only today I feel like that. Sitting on a bench on the edge of Craigavon lakes, which on a day like today could be lake Garda it’s that pretty. Post-night shift, of a week where I’ve worried as much as I have done in a long time.

Dad is not well. The past month has not been good. Pain, sickness, loss of appetite, loss of energy. He remains a textbook of cancer diagnosis. This is like watching a tortoise approach you from a mile away through binoculars. Slow, inevitable.

We were never given any guarantees. And seeing as he was so well I took the optimistic side of every piece of clinical info. Not that it matters a jot. Not that there’s a single thing we can do about it. The sheer helplessness and impotence of the situation. Of waiting to be told that this will not end well.

Every day has been a fight to trust that GOD knows what he is doing. To trust that his love is more important and has more of a call on my heart than anything I can cling to. Every day I lose that fight many times over.

My head floods with a hundred images of people I have known or treated. The slow inevitable decay of time as things get worse. I know (as much as one can) what this will be like. Anticipation of the needle is the worst bit I think. When the needle’s in it’s never that bad. Maybe that’s optimistic.

Everyday life goes out the window. I could care less for what happens in anyone else’s life. All I care about is what will happen to our little family unit. Everything changes. Everyone goes eventually.

——

I find myself continually angry. At who or what I do not know. At friends when they ask, at friends when they don’t ask. At mum and dad, at GOD, fate, karma, at whatever I latch onto.

All of life is so desperately fragile. That we live and love, grow attached to each other and learn how to love each other and then we do not know what to do when they are no longer there. We love each other desperately, though I doubt that this is how we’re meant to.

The older we get the more entrenched we get in our own personalities and lives and loves and tendencies. And we do not like change.

All there is left is emptiness and bitterness and long grey silent afternoons staring at the walls with a heavy heart.

All that I devoted and gave myself to goes out the window. The books, the music, living here, working in the hospital, holidays, relationships, commitments. Everything is off the table.

You make plans and say GOD willing, and then he wills otherwise.

Vonnegut said that the reason everyone was so lonely and unhappy was that we had forgotten about extended families and our families were shrinking and becoming more and more separated and independent and all of a sudden when part of family goes then there’s nothing left to fill the gap, and that everyone would be happier if we just had bigger families.

Mum and dad are there to look after me and Simon. And then Simon and Ruth are there to look after each other and when Dad’s not there then me and Mum will look after each other and Simon and Ruth. And Si and Ruth will look after us. Families are there to stop people being alone.

All this gives me a dismal view of love and relationships. If any of us gets sick and dies then we are all affected. We have no choice to be dispassionate about each other’s fate. We are all in this (life that is) together.

Which makes me want to avoid loving anyone. As soon as you love someone you end up in the same shit together. So that whatever happens to them affects you and whatever happens to you affects them. The fact that loving someone hurts so damn much makes me want to sever all ties to anyone who may possibly care for me or who I might possibly care for. Cause that way I can’t hurt them (however unintentionally) and they can’t hurt me.

This is a miserable lonely view of life. As much as it appeals I will have no part of it - though it is a fight to run from it.

——
I don’t plan too far ahead. I say no to every request for appointment, commitment or meeting. Thinking I’m too fed up of letting people down at the last minute. I’ve applied for a job I’m not sure I want any longer and living in a house I’m not sure I’m gonna want to keep and going on trips I’m pretty sure I don’t even want to go on.

I’ve committed myself to a life of bitterness and sadness and holding onto all my grief and resentment as I neglect every opportunity and gift that GOD leads me too.

I’m OK alone. It’s just everyone else I worry about.

——

I’m sitting here in the house with Dad’s medical notes (shh don’t tell anyone) and my computer searching journals, pinning together all the scan results, all the info, putting it altogether to form a “probability judgement”, or in essence an educated guess as to how worried I should be.

I have spent all day fluctuating between optimism and pessimism (always ending up pessimistic of course…) over what might lie ahead. I am no oncologist, indeed I’m not much of anything but I am at least obsessive. There are 6 cases per million people of ampullary cancer. It is not top of our list of differential diagnoses. People say “glad you told me what that was” when I give my little Ronnie spiel. The ampulla of vater is a long forgotten piece of anatomical trivia lost in the memory banks of medical info.

I am somewhat of an (relative) expert. When it comes to Dad then I am the expert. I know all his scan results, all his blood tests, what his scans look like (little pictures in my head), all the procedures he’s had done. I know whose opinion to trust and I know whose to consider lightly (or simply ignore). This is only partly arrogance on my part. Though it may be largely denial.

——

A few days down the line and I “woke up feeling hungover and old” though I am neither. Two weeks of near constant fretting and anxiety, fluctuating between thinking dad is going to die horribly like all the other cancer patients (though they do not all die horribly, that is just how I remember it)- and thinking that he’s gonna be OK (well it’s a relative term). Not that there are ever any guarantees. “Medicine is not nearly as scientific as you think” as I tell all my patients. It’s “complicated, multi factorial and varies from patient to patient” as one of my old registrars told all his.

I had somewhat of a revelation on Friday, when dad told me he’d been vomiting up 2 day old food. All of a sudden light bulb’s pinged on above my head - a gastric outlet obstruction. A narrowing at where the stomach enters the bowel - possibly a complication of all the surgery (and all the associated complications) dad had 10 months ago. And so I descend into a frantic search of medical journals, books and google trying to find reasons to believe he can still be fixed. He went to hospital and they put a tube in his nose into his stomach and drained over 2 litres of green fluid that hadn’t been going anywhere, along with recognisable green Chinese seaweed that he’d eaten almost 3 weeks ago.

One of my Paeds colleagues was chatting the other day about the relation of personalities to doctors choice of profession. That paediatricians choose paeds cause they generally had stable childhoods and find themselves empathetic to kids. Though that got us thinking towards all the screwed up specialities (like EM and ICU) and what that made us. I think I had a pretty stable childhood, yet how come I ended up in the screwed up specialities, lying awake thinking about the continual tragedy and pain of all the people I deal with everyday.

I think I can fix everyone, I think that just given the time and the space and “let me do everything” then I can save everyone. Again and again (and again) I have been proved wrong. Yet the megalomania continues.

and after 10 months we’re back where we started. Waiting on decisions about surgery. Hoping above else that it’s fixable, hoping that this surgery will be the last, that this one will be a bit more straightforward. We try to joke and quip but this is harder. Or at least it seems that way.

——

I’m not sure I’m entirely well. All this thinking has done me no favours, the perpetual worry has changed nothing. I always find myself thinking is it worse or better to know what I know. Tonight it’s worse.

Is this what an “anxiety disorder” feels like? Is this what “not coping” feels like? I am too used to being invincible, I am too used to taking responsibility and bearing burdens and looking out for people. I know how to do that. I think.

My fear, or maybe resigned acceptance, is that maybe this is just life, maybe this is just what loving someone means. That this is just the way it works when you love someone.

I am back to fearing hearing the phone ring. Though he’s so much better now than he was 10 months ago. This is supposed to be easier. It just seems like it isn’t. Or maybe my memory is just that bad that i don’t remember what it was like.

GOD says trust me. I say I’m not so sure I do. Medicine is a losing battle.

——

It is hard to sit there everyday and watch him slowly come to pieces, losing weight, losing energy, losing hope. Or maybe that’s just me. My heart breaks to watch him. Yet I can’t do anything else. It hurts more not to be there. Tonight I’m not hopeful, tonight I’m not optimistic. Tonight I worry. I doubt anyone else’s ability to look after him properly, that each night I leave him, some muppet might screw up or miss something. I want to go on the ward and scream at someone that why don’t you fix him. Though this is all nonsense I know.

I’d be shouting at the wrong person. I was thinking how this would all be so different if he hadn’t got pancreatitis following the surgery. How he’d be so well and have none of the complications. But then I slowly realised the stupidity of the question. It shouldn’t be “why did he have to get pancreatitis?” but “why did he get cancer?” We ask the dumbest questions when it comes to fate and providence.

——

I find myself often as the appointed representative of the medical profession, of health care in general. I find myself standing in defence of all the idiots and all the mistakes that get made when you’re in hospital. I’m not sure quite why I feel the need to defend these people, and above all to defend “the system”. The system sucks. I know that.

I don’t find myself stuck in the middle, I put myself in the middle, defending an inefficient system, defending assholes who don’t seem to have the grace or wit to give patients the dignity they deserve. Maybe I’m just too much of a part of the system to criticize it, that somehow I’d be criticizing myself.

——

when anything happens to Dad, I withdraw. I give up on all the commitments in my life, all the relationships, everything goes on hold, down to all the little random jobs like buying loo roll. Yes of course I want the time and effort to dedicate to those I love the most, but do I occasionally use it as an excuse to simply withdraw into my little isolationist world? Yes I do.

——

Everyday we fail our patients. We get stuff wrong, we forget the dignity and respect that they deserve. We communicate badly, we ignore (instead of respectfully lay aside) their concerns. We blame this on a system which neglects the health of its citizens in pursuit of efficiency and budgets. And we are partly right to do so. But then we fail patients merely because we’re lazy, inconsiderate bastards. There are certain ways that we can’t avoid failing our patients and there are certain ways that we can. I have given up being the appointed representative of the medical profession. Shower of bastards the lot of them…

And so he’s back in the Mater. I’m reminded of John McClane’s immortal line “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” I try to reassure him that things can’t go as badly wrong as last time. Comforting, encouraging things like “sure you can’t get pancreatitis again, you don’t have a pancreas.” He’d be lost without my words of encouragement.

——

It’s the waiting that’s getting to him. He’s a smart guy. He knows that everything they’ve tried to get him feeding isn’t working. He knows that nothing is getting out of his stomach. He knows he needs an operation - and all that that entails. He just wishes they’d get on with it. I’m talking about Dad but then I think I could just be talking about myself in the third person.

This is unimaginably hard for him. I don’t consider that often enough. I don’t consider how long  day is in hospital. When you’re well enough to cut the lawn (as he is) but tied to a hospital bed by a central line and a tube in your nose. How long a day is when you’re woke at 5.30 from a sleep you only got to at 1am and were woken from once at 3am to check your blood sugar level. How long a day is when all you have to do is think about what lies ahead.

I like working in hospitals. This changes my mind about them.

——

Dad calls it Mater Mk II. I try to make it seem less than that. Though maybe it feels the same. Waiting. So much waiting. Dad has his operation tomorrow. And we’re not sure what that will bring. The fear remains - cancer. The dirty “C” word. If it’s there then we know we’re not going to win this battle. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to take that. I know I feel like I’ll not be able to handle it. Though I also know GOD gives and provides such for situations. Fear is desperately uncomfortable.

What I worry about tonight is that maybe this is the last day that I can think that he doesn’t have cancer, that he isn’t going to die (I mean sooner rather than later), that he’s still “fixable”. That I’m going to have to think seriously about when he’s not there. I just don’t want to have to think about that.

——

and so now I have to think about it. The word inescapable comes to mind. Today Dad his third major operation in 10 months and with the resounding clang of inevitability it appears the cancer has returned. Not that it returned today. The malignant (never a better word was uttered…) cells were there in the mesentery from the time of the first operation if not before. This was always a losing battle. We just didn’t know it was.

And so with one phone call from the surgeon, in the most wonderful and matter of fact medical language I find this out - I would choose no other way. I can no longer pretend that this is not happening. He said that statistically, recurrence of the cancer was what he was likely to find. And I think that maybe I was telling everyone the wrong thing. Maybe it was pure delusion to think that it was a complication of surgery and not the cancer returning.It’s just that living without hope isn’t much of a life. It’s hard to fight when you know you’re not going to win.

Everything changes but nothing changes. We get him home, we get him well. Life is left to be lived and lived well. And our lives on this earth are not to be so precious to us to be dragged out indefinitely, it is more about quality than quantity. “Living well is the best revenge…”

I phoned Simon and told him over the phone, feeling bad that he’s on his own in work. We went into the hospital at visiting time, trying to keep it together but knowing that he can read our faces like an open book. He was doped on morphine and still full of the anaesthetic. He asked had anyone spoken to the surgeon and I told him that the operation went well but that it was cancer that had caused the obstruction. Just like that. I told him. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do (though I have many ahead..) and he just smiles and says that he kind of hoped that it wasn’t going to be cancer.

——

Today he was more awake. To be honest he’d remembered little of yesterday, barely remembered me talking about cancer, lying there in a daze hoping it wasn’t so. But he knows. And he knows what it means. And I haven’t the slightest idea what that must feel like.

Today I am strangely calm. I know how this ends. I have an idea what lies ahead but we deal with that as it comes. None of us doubt that GOD is good. As odd as that sounds. None of us think that GOD has not been paying attention, or worse, that he wasn’t able to do anything about this. There will be anger and bitterness and resentment and questions (there has been already in my own heart), but it is possible to feel two ways at once and hold only one as true.

The nurse in charge of his morphine asking him questions about pain and was he too sore to cough and was he a smoker and he replied no, but he might start soon.

——

first of July and the oddest of days. We went up to visit dad and have a meeting with the surgeon regarding all that’s happened. And it’s not that we didn’t already know that time was short but to have someone, professional explain it to you makes it seem all the more like it’s happening. Lots of answers we knew were coming but still so hard to take all the same. Maybe we hoped someone would tell us that we had a good chance of having a reasonable amount of time. Maybe that was me just deluding myself.

Today was tough. All our eyes are puffy from too many tears and our heads are sore from too much crying. People write sad songs about their girlfriends leaving them or their seventh album only went silver instead of platinum. Maybe that’s only playing at sadness. Maybe that’s why people write far less songs about people dying, cause it hurts so much more.

I think I said before that we’ve in no way been unlucky in our “share” of suffering. But how do people deal and cope with even more than this. I suppose no one “copes” they just keep waking up each day and getting on with life and eventually maybe it doesn’t hurt so bad.

We (I keep writing “we” though it’s not as if anyone but Dad is sick. Though we all feel it. We all hurt.) do not know how much time we have left together. This breaks my heart even to type. But it’s to be spent as well as we can possibly spend it. “Dying well” is something to strive for, as horrible as it sounds.

We brought him home. Not that he’s perhaps medically quite ready for it but nothing we can’t deal with at home. And home has such a powerful pull, a word that seems to have become so much more full of meaning than simply where we lay our heads at night.

I don’t just mean the house and the family, I mean home where/when things will be put right. When all that is wrong is put right, when all will be changed, transformed, renewed, when life in all its fullness really gets going. The way to look at it is not “I’m gonna miss all this” but “I’m looking forward to finally enjoying it”.

So now he’s home I keep saying that we work it out from here. I have no idea what that means.

Cancer for the cure

So. Cancer it is then.

But he’s back home with us. We work it out from here.

Fixing a hole

Dad is having another operation in the morning. (what’s left of ) his stomach isn’t emptying because of a narrowing at the bottom of the stomach. He’s been in hospital for about 2 weeks losing weight. We’re back to drips and tubes and scans and tests. This is hopefully a complication of all his surgery last year but it could also be (as the surgeon put it today) “return of the disease”. So it goes.

Life is never straightforward. I’m not sure we’ve been any more “unlucky” than any other family. I know plenty who’ve had much worse. Not that that makes it any easier.

I’ve moved back home for a bit to stay with wee Liz and sleep with the phone beside me and try and take all the phone calls. I’m glad I’m here.

I have written much more over the past few weeks, I’m just not sure I’m ready to put it up yet.

[PS I love the blog titles, even if no one else does... I have this fantasy that somebody somewhere is googling them all. Sigh...]

Together we’re heavy

13 in a volvo?

Lame effort I say.

Though, to be fair i didn’t try to drive the volvo with 22 in it.

Puncture Repair

Too much time of late thinking about death and tragedy - though more thinking than actually experiencing (by GOD’s mercy). I have become an even less pleasant and cheery person than usual to be around (who’d have thought it…). Now to be fair I’ve tended to think of death in the light of eternity - that maybe death isn’t quite so bad after all - each day one step closer to glory and all that. This is not to trivialise death in any way, and yes it only applies to the deluded and easily deceived who believe in all this Christianity malarkey, but if we’re fighting a bit of a losing battle down here then at least we’ve won the war so one in the eye for the Devil on our way out the door.

I was thinking about all the important things people cling to when they’re sick, all the happy memories of past experiences - hence the canoe obsession - and how important it is to get back there again and thinking about how much you might miss the experiences when they’re gone. And then I got thinking the other way round that as good as enjoying the wonders of the Irish countryside is then the thought shouldn’t be “I’m gonna miss all this when I go” but “I’m gonna really enjoy this when I get there”. If the river Bann on a sunny day is something special then what are we to expect of the redeemed creation in our freshly renewed and redeemed bodies? If I’m gonna be bitter-sweet then let that be about what lies ahead rather than what lies behind.

And perhaps one thing to be thankful is that if Dad wasn’t in hospital waiting for some plumbing repairs then I’d be in a canoe in the middle of Lough Neagh, repeating last years trip in the cold and pissing rain. Small mercies and all that.

Weapon of choice

Things to make me miss NZ

Surfing

Crazy drunk Kiwis

Something in my eye

and this cannot be done unless each one regards as his own the weakness of another, putting up with it in all calmness until he whose welfare he has at heart is freed from it.

Augustine

When I get pissed off with people I love, I find in retrospect (after the sarcastic comment or cynical put down) that maybe I wasn’t the best at seeing it from their point of view. A sense of perspective of what it is like to stand in someone else’s shoes is sorely missed amongst humanity, and to our shame the church. We are too busy with specks in the eyes of others to spot the planks in our own.

Madame George

Footy tournaments as alluded to previously provide me great ways of wasting time in other wise boring and tedious situations, eg work, visiting dad in hospital (just kidding really) or indeed life in general. A good international is hard to beat (the stunning drama of Turkey v Czech Rep provided just that), though I’ve tired somewhat of watching club football. Give me the six nations any day over the champions league.

Of course when it comes to playing then give me footy any time. It is the beautiful game. Even when I’m playing

What many see as detracting from the game is the relentless play acting and diving. The dramatics and theatrics played out in even the softest challenge is quite something to see. Some see this as taking away from the game. Though it is a form of entertainment in itself.

A bunch of overpaid posers, ponces and women they may be, but they have their moments.

Fat Freddy’s Drop

Footy tournaments are wonderful distraction therapy. Watching terrible games twice a day, just in case you miss a cracker (yes I missed Holland-Italy…).

Though in work this has the added advantage of giving me something to do while waiting for the “magic cream” to cook on the kiddies.

Your child, safe in my…oops I dropped him…

My first born for a song

There are many things I love about church on the traditional model (whatever that means) as opposed to a more modern church service (again whatever that means…) like some of the liturgy, the reverence and respect given to our humble position before GOD, the mind numbing lifelessness of the congregation that reassures me I’m there for JESUS CHRIST and not my own entertainment - well maybe the last one is an unexpected side effect as opposed to something you might actually want.

But I will never quite get over the ability of a congregation to murder a perfectly good song. I’ve been doing music in the church for over 10 years. I have played in all variety of churches, all variety of songs with all varieties of quality.

Let me make plain that how we do the music is the least point of church (well not the least, probably what color the cushions in the pews are is less important but I’m just making a point) - we have so many more important things to do, like loving one another, learning what it means to love and follow JESUS, understanding what the Bible teaches, choosing the colour of the cushions in the pews etc… errr…  Maybe the music and the nature of the service can sit somewhat comfortably under these issues of priority.

But there comes a limit, that when you can ruin/massacre/throttle such a tune as In CHRIST alone then that’s something special. Tunes and melodies and (dare I mention it) the rhythm of a song and their effect on the emotions are not unimportant. Talented people have written these songs so that points of theological interest with significant implications are highlighted by certain chord movements (maybe the same is even true for Father Abraham though that may be pushing it…). To neglect these as mere artistic indulgence (and in some way putting your soul in danger of hell) is a big mistake and robs the song of much of its impact. Maybe we should just come out of the closet and declare ourselves reformed presbyterians and abandon the music altogether. Though maybe even the melody of unaccompanied music may be too much for us.

Even the fact we can’t have a good laugh about it all (and ourselves of course) cause we’re such repressed Presbyterians annoys me, in the same way we’ve lost the ability to applaud anything that happens in church.

We are so scared of making an idol of what the hand may make or the ear may hear or what the eye may see that we need to sit for a while at the feet of Galatians 4:15

Novocaine for the soul

For various reasons, mostly not having the internet yet in the new house, [NB I now have the internet, hence the post] I haven’t been writing much of late. Well in reality I’ve been writing lots just not online and not of the the most positive or cheery nature.

A couple of book recommendations:

- Rise and fall of modern medicine:
First recommended by on of my dear old ICU bosses in NZ. Covers 12 of the major medical discoveries that have genuinely transformed how medicine is done.

They almost all happened between 1930 and 1970. This may surprise you. One of the few things in medicine that continues to amaze me is how in the dark we are about almost everything that happens. We still can’t even cure the common cold. We can see that some of the drugs we give appear to make people better  though often we haven’t a clue why (we have plausible theories that often sound good but that’s different), and we certainly have a very limited idea of what actually causes many of the diseases we see.

We are flying somewhat blind. I hope this does not scare you. We certainly do the best we can, the best on the information we have, just that the information we have mightn’t be great. I’d still trust a pilot flying blind more than joe bloggs flying blind.

The other thing that struck me was how completely random and fortuitous all the great discoveries have been. For example we have been so lucky to be provided (never mind how it was even discovered) with a fungus that just happens to be lethal to many of the common bacteria that uses to kill so many in infancy and old age. It also happens to be almost entirely non-toxic to humans. And the funny thing is we haven’t a notion why this fungus happens to make this most fortuitous of discoveries. There is not the slightest evolutionary advantage for a fungus to produce an antibiotic, and indeed of the countless species of microorganisms only a tiny fraction happen to produce such useful chemicals. I find this distinctly odd. But comfortingly grateful none the less.

Back to TW in NZ. He was 67 when I worked with him. He started anesthetizing his first patients with drops of ether on gauze (though are you keeping up with Lost) and his only monitoring was watching the chest rise and fall and his finger on the superficial temporal artery. TW has seen a few things. Often I got the impression that the only drugs worth giving (at least to the ICU patients) were morphine, antibiotics and oxygen (though I have my suspicions about the oxy). The longer I do the job the less I disagree.

- Things the grandchildren should know:
Read in just over a day listening to my collection of Eels on shuffle. I find Mark everett a truly fascinating individual, between this book, his songs and the recent TV documentary about his father. Above all else there is honesty and comprehension of “the inevitable pain of being alive” (as David Bazan puts it). He also appears to have grasped something of the sweetness of life in “how I was thinking about how everyone is dying but maybe it’s time to live”.

Plus he has a cool beard, cool dog and smokes cigars. What more can I say. He makes nice tunes too if that helps.

King of the jailhouse

Reflections on two weeks in the house.

Generally - loving it.

Mostly pretending I’m back in NZ, with the nice wether helping somewhat.

Things I like about living in the house:

- interior design. Let me elaborate. I despise the IKEA nesting instinct, I despise cushions, I despise Laura Ashley (though perhaps not on a personal level). I despise a culture that buys and builds houses with five bedrooms for a couple with no family, and then expects us to furnish each one to a ludicrously expensive standard, with each room most definitely for show with no thought of simple practicalities.

But all the same I’m loving the interior design. The bile green of the living room walls has a certain je ne sais pas (more of a what the ^&%$?) about it, which is beginning to grow on me. To the point where I’m not sure I’d change it given the choice.

It’s furnished with the best that the second or third hand has to offer. The seats arranged in such a manner to be as conducive to conversation as possible (the irony of the man who lives alone having seating arranged for conversation…) The living room seats 13 comfortably. Nice

The office’s Mum’s painting (a landscape not a portrait…) graces the fireplace and almost matches. The stains seemed to wash off the walls easy enough. The B&Q lamps for a fiver do the trick nicely.

Aesthetics are important in their own way, it’s the materialism and the lack of thought for practicality that turns me off. I can’t imagine the “scruff is the new style” catching on.

- No TV - now the the major draw back will be the lack of social get togethers to watch footy and rugby matches but I think the lack of a TV is worth it. If it’s not there you can’t turn it on and waste whatever precious seconds may have been allocated to your short and often meaningless life. Also works with point 1) in that seats are always arranged to face the TV and never eachother. Really upsets the “room dynamics”.

- tunes, tunes and more tunes. Nuff said

- the legendary stir frys are back. Chop obscure vegetables, chop meat, add olive oil, balsamic, chillis, soy sauce and stir fry to the max. Add honey and cashew nuts just before the end. Winner.

- rather obsessive and disturbing cleanliness

- proximity to town, the park and the tow path by the river.

- being in a group of 30 houses yet I have not met a single Irish person who lives here. Everyone smiles enthusiastically and says lovely things (I presume) in foreign languages. Feels very international and exotic. For Portadown anyhow.

- the two Portugese kids who don’t know any better and wear Rangers tops everyday

- double bed

- people calling round, or being able to call people to come round. Apart from making me feel loved and popular, it leads to all kinds of wonderful graceful conversations and tete a tetes with your feet up and cuppa in hand.

- battering away at the guitar and singing along to a myriad of depressive dirges of my own composition.

The beauty regime

Now normally there’d be an ocean, and a beach and the water would go down the toilet the other way round. And normally I’d be warmer, and the car would be different. But mostly it’s the same. Feeling wise anyhow.

Beauty is an odd thing, it provokes an emotion or state of mind, not in a pretty girl type beauty way, but simple an open sky and the odd tree and an expanse of water, a good old fashioned awe inspiring vista.

When GOD created the world and saw that it was good then I imagined (in my madness) he felt somewhat like this - though I expect he was staring at something slightly prettier than the point of whitecoat on a summer’s eve (the first two weeks in may are the official northern irish summer in case you haven’t heard, prepare for snow by July…)
Memory gives you powerful associations for beauty and awe and wonder. This is not the estuary in Ahuriri, this is not Hawke’s bay, this is not a beast on the east cape. This is only Portadown on a good day. So why am I getting so excited about it…

Maybe I’m just having a good day, happy to be where GOD wants me, able to lift my eyes a tad to see that GOD is in the business of redeeming creation (a little bit of Tom Wright creeping in there…) and I’m here to be a part of that and even if it’s only one step closer to glory each day then at least the scenery seems to be getting better.

You never wash up after yourself

I suppose I’m having something of a moment. Indulge me. I’ve just discovered Bell X1 and it’s having an effect.

I have spent  a week on my knees. In no particular order, prayer, sticking needles in kiddies (I just can’t do IV lines while standing…), scrubbing skirting boards. It’s been quite a job, removing layers upon layers of grime and smoke grease from what is really quite a nice house underneath all the dirt. I feel like that chap in the white suit in Black Books who comes in to clean the shop. The oven is preparing itself for round 3 of Mr Muscle. I even have the white singlet and marigolds.

I have pretty much everything moved in except the books, just failing on my general rule that you should never own more than you can fit in your car in one go. I suppose I’ve been here for almost a quarter of a century, us westerners will always accumulate a trail of stuff wherever we go.

I have raided friends and family for pots, and pans and plates sofas. Anyone looking rid of their duplicate house wear is in for a treat. I have the most unmtatching house in the country. I love it.

And I know moving 5 mins down the road is hardly a big deal, surely NZ was further, and bigger. But somehow it still seems significant. Parents talk of empty nest syndrome but what do we talk about. Somehow this seems more permanent. Combining a birthday and moving out in the same week makes you act your age somehow. Whether or not you feel it.

I’m yet to meet anyone with English as a first language in my little cul de sac, I’ve had friendly waves from  a few Portugese guys and a few courteous nods of approval from some slightly inebriated Lithuanians in the corner. Makes the Garvaghy Road seem kind of exotic. My parents don’t even know where East Timor is (and I admit to being a bit dubious myself…), and here I have it on my doorstep. My Portugese is still limited to a fumbled “obregada” that I use with the Portugese mums in work after I’ve done their baby check. It gets a laugh, more from bewilderment that comprehension. Marks for effort…

Tomorrow I wake up in a strange bed, in what seems like a different world. Melodramatic or what…

Today I ran for miles [One step closer to Glory]

Well only 6.1 of them. It seemed long enough at the time. Leg 4 of the Belfast Marathon (only leg 4 mind you). Running down the Shore Rd with the fog over Belfast Lough and then through an industrial estate with odd but enthusiastic DJ’s and bands playing 80s classics to encourage us along the way. It encouraged me to run further away from them anyhow.

The marathon is kind of a social event, several thousand, mostly unfit but enthusiastic white guys, pretending for the one day a year that they’re really fitness fanatics, with no doubt countless thousands raised for charitable causes (both meritorious and dubious). It is almost the only day that NI is guaranteed sunny weather, if only to make it seem like hell for Joe Average.

I enjoyed it, even if it sounds like I didn’t. I enjoyed the BBQ at Jenny and Jose’s afterwards much more, relaxing in the sun eating bacon and steak off the BBQ and reading the paper. It rarely gets better than this. I could be in NZ easy enough. Just about enough to keep me here.

Finish your collapse and stay for breakfast

I suppose it’s been an eventful week, a confusing, often bewildering one. Just when you think you’ve got things sorted…

Da got sick again, collapsing in a shopping centre (and not at the checkout at the size of the bill either as he keeps saying to people) and subsequently had a rigor without obvious source. And so it was back to hospitals and needles and blood tests and scans and antibiotics and all the usual that we’ve come to be so scared of. And so it’s been a rough few days in a way, having to realise that maybe we’ll not “get away with it” the way we thought.

It was odd cause there were all these thoughts of sickness and pain and there he was as fit as he’d been the day before. All our hospital memories were in the Mater when he was proper sick, and struggled to do a lap round the ward. Funny how quickly me and Liz fit back into hospital visiting and little routines. The really odd bit is Dad being in the same hospital as where I work, so I can call in to see him every hour or so, and bring him a coffee and the paper, only heading back when I get paged.

I suppose I’d stopped thinking of the idea of the cancer returning, of all that that might entail. I’d filed that in the compartment at the back of my head of things I can avoid and don’t want to think about it. But this week I had no choice. There’s not the slightest thing we can do to stop it coming back (if it ever does), we are at the mercies of the gods. But when he’s so well, when he’s canoeing, and cutting grass and doing everything he ever used to do then it’s easier to avoid thinking about the possibility.

And then in the midst of this I find a house. I mean I find a house to rent, somewhere to live, the wait being the biggest bug bear in my so called life over the past few months, and of course I find it the very week I could care less for it.

But I have the keys to an end terrace house, that smells of month old cigarettes and has piles of mobile phone bills addressed to various Eastern European names in the hallway. With a slightly disconcerting dent in the bathroom door, looking distinctly like it’s been punched in. Maybe they were just impatient for the toilet in the mornings.

I move in next week all being well, to spend a week scrubbing sinks and vacuuming - if not a neat freak then I could easily be a clean freak. It’s stocked with wonderful charity shop furniture and even a fantastic 80’s TV with one of those crazy convex screens and individual buttons down the right side for each station. I love the place. I am excited.

And just back this evening from my first (well the other one I mostly missed) barbecue of the year at Rab’s, sitting squat on the ground in front of a charcoal fire, making African tea as the daylight disappears, pretending we’re all back in Africa and life is much more straightforward. My hands and clothes stink of smoke, my throat like after a cigar, my eyes tired and sore from the carbon, my heart warmed from the bant and the graceful conversation.

Afraid I’ll forget you, afraid I might try to

I used to write all my blogs sitting on my own in pubs in cafes. Mostly cause I didn’t know anyone for 15 000 miles and so I had the wonderful anonymity to be the weird guy in the corner of the pub on his own drinking his beer and typing way into his funny phone thing and silently sizing everyone up from a distance. Now being at home I’m rarely in a coffee shop or pub on my own (because I’m mr popular of course) and as a result I don’t get the writing done as it pops in my head. I have to save up the phrases as they form to write down when I get home. But of course I get home tired and sleepy and fall into bed with great plans to write the next day. And the day brings its own troubles and of course the moment is past and the phrases lost never to be recalled.

But tonight I’ll maybe make a special effort.

Had a lovely wee half day from work having worked all weekend. Though I say work it was actually a bit of a quiet one which mostly involved playing with the babies and rediscovering my technique for echocardiography. Except in babies they’re easier to get good images and they tend to have more holes in their hearts.

I spent the afternoon in preparation for the (the lovely) Gemma Hayes gig (more of which later) and listened to both her albums twice to get the melodies embedded in my head for the day.

Had the joy of getting the train down to Belfast (taking joy in such banal activities requires a certain knack), listening to (the lovely) Gemma in the headphone and reading Dickens and watching Armagh merge in to Down and finally to Antrim.

Found myself the sweetest cafe I have yet found in Norn Iron (we’re not exactly renowned for them…) in the Holylands and immersed myself in a Latte and the Irish News and a collection of simply wonderful tunes over the speakers (what cafe would play Arcade Fire, Clap your hands say Yeah, BRMC and Ryan Adams). After an hour or so they’d only played two songs I didn’t have on my computer. It was full of fresh faced students, whiling away the afternoon and a selection of bearded, wonderful indie boys who’ve never quite got over uni ending. I am home.

Skeeno joins me and I extend to him the sweaty hand of friendship (the downside of the Irish summer is that it is now warm enough for my palms to sweat - I fear the moisture is the first and most memorable point of contact with all whom I meet…) and we run through a brief catch up and wax lyrical on the benefits of having poetry in the pissers. The church rarely does what the world does as well as the world does but there are exceptions.

Sustenance in a Mexican in Botanic, and while not exquisite enough to make me cry was at least spicy enough to make my nose run. Me, Skeeno, Woodsy and two wonderful indie girls Skeeno knows from the Lowly Knights crowd. I find new people difficult, even more so cool people, or rather people I perceive as cooler than me  (which is most people). I worry I have neither the hair, the clothes or the opinions. Only rarely to get my head out of my own ass to be a human being.

My first gig in the Spring and Airbrake (any thoughts on the name) and golly gosh it was a good one. (the Lovely) Gemma Hayes has been pretty highly ranked for a while. As some kind of Irish angel of a troubador (I am perhaps carried away earlier). The duly required heckler (though in a nice way) shouted out Marry Me at the end of the first song, echoing possibly every man’s thoughts in the audience. (the lovely) Gemma gave a wry, slightly shy, almost embarrassed smile (I imagine that’s the only kind she does…) and continued to do what she did best - make me want to marry a girl with an Irish accent playing sad songs on an acoustic guitar. I made the mistake (though surely not) of standing in the middle 4 rows (not that it was a big enough gig to have rows) back, right where (the lovely) Gemma would stare as she sang, making me think she was staring at me, making me think that if I sang along with all the songs that maybe she’d marry me instead of the heckler in the front row

If the fajitas were not quiet exquisite then the band certainly were. I hold a deeply sexist view towards female guitarists which was left in tatters. There is something about professional musicians that make me want to give up the day job and wear skinny trousers and jackets over plain T-shirts. There is something in the drum fills, something in the reverb on the back pick up of the guitar, the gyrating guitarist with the resemblance to Michael Stipe, the slightly odd looking bassist who looks a like a roadie called in for the evening, the sheer tone of that voice…

But even with the encore, it’s got to end some time and the lights go on and the stage is empty and despite the set list in my hand, I’m in a rapidly emptying hall with my ears ringing and the M1 is calling me home.

That’s how I knew this story would break my heart

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

Robert Robinson. 18th Century

[With thank to Sufjan]

Soul Singer in a session band

If I didn’t already do what I already do, then I think I’d be a helicopter pilot. Or maybe I’d just be a helicopter passenger. Not that that’s a career, though I tried my best in NZ to make it so. The pilot bit would be a bit more exciting. I worked out most of the basics from watching Dean and Brent past the ventilator in the back of H-FZ. It seems something akin to patting your head and rubbing your stomach, with each limb moving in a different way, often at the same time. Maybe drumming a 5/8 rhythm would be similar.

And if both the witch doctor, and the helicopter pilot thing don’t work out then I might have a bash at making music, or at least making a joyful noise. I have dabbled in recording songs since I was about 16 and just learning what an open tuning was. These were mostly of the introspective, melancholic, depressing genre about some girl that didn’t love me who usually didn’t exist. Good to see things have changed at least…

Back in the good old days I remember recording first with two tape decks (don’t pretend you don’t remember tapes, you’re not a member of the iPod generation, just a wannabe…), recording one track then playing it back and recording over the top of that onto another tape with the accompanying hiss and warbled magnetic noises that come with dodgy tape decks.

My next big advance came with minidisc (whatever happened to minidiscs eh?) were I could use the same technique but with better results - by which I mean less hiss, my singing remained as bad as ever.

My studio (my bedroom above the garage in the old house) was transformed by the closure of the pirate radio station Country Star FM. This was perhaps the only fun thing that my dad got to do in his job as head of the RA (Radiocommunications Agency, not the paramilitary organisation) in Northern Ireland. Dodgy pirate radio stations would set themselves up with transmitters in hardened paramilitary housing estates in the knowledge that to be closed down you’d have to mobilise half of the British armed forces.

Anyhow Country Star FM kindly provided me with a squashed (yet entirely functional) SM58 and a greasy, malfunctioning sound desk. This brought to you such great Turf Brother hits as “where’s the milk” (recorded with the mic duct taped to a chair in the middle of the room and everyone in a circle round it) and “I’m the tractor driver (twisted tractor driver…)”. This was a new high point as one might imagine.

Shortly after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb and then Alan Sugar made his pre-apprentice career selling crappy amstrads and ruining Spurs and all of a sudden we’d entered the digital age. I first tried Cubase on my first laptop and found it cumbersome and hard to work out, and that was just the box it came in. I hate PCs, in a good old fashioned righteous anger kind of way.

And then there was Garageband, my first love. The king is dead long live the king. For the first time I could record lots of stuff simply easily and just like the Spice Girls (though maybe that’s unfair to the Spice Girls) there was enough digital gadgetry to make poorly written and woefully sang songs sound half-way professional

It also introduced me to MIDI, and software instruments, where the computer could make all the noises for you, but you had to draw all the notes onto a kind of scale thingy, which was wonderfully nerdy and time consuming and gave me great opportunities to disappear up my own ass and make no contact with the human races for weekends at a time. I eventually supplemented this with a 2 octave keyboard that I used to play the drums with and even dabble in pinyano on occasion.

But then I found myself unemployed for 6 months and had an offer of helping record/produce an EP for a good friend, and all of a sudden I was spending 8-10 hours a day in front of the computer (and ultimately upgrading to a MacBook Pro and Logic…) “mixing and scratching” as Simon calls it. This involves practically limitless numbers of effects, EQ, compressors, limiters and automation of tens of different tracks. It involved slicing up drum tracks to find just the right kick drum and making loops from drum rolls. It involved my finest Bloc Party impersonations, the occasional nod to Springsteen, Hayes, Bellamy, Wilson, Buckland, Evans, Greenwood, Woods and the ultimate of music maxims - less is more.

Not that I actually knew what I was doing, but just enough to make it look like I did. It’s easier when it’s someone else’s songs. Most importantly the fact that they’re much better than anything I could ever write but also cause you end up with not quite so much invested in them. I’ve recorded about 10 songs of my own and there’s only really two or so that I like (someone told me the only one Paul Simon still likes is Graceland, talk about overachieving…). You put too much into them and then get all fragile about them. It’s much easier when they’re someone else’s.

I listen to the songs now and keep thinking there’s something I could change. Raise the level of that guitar there, a bit less hi-end on that cymbal, but there comes a point you need to stop changing things or you’ll be there forever, endlessly lost in a mess of frequencies, track automation and snare drums that keep peaking no matter what you do…

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t so it for a living (despite the Godrich fantasy…), if only for a fact it took me over three months to do 5 songs relatively simply. I also run short of ideas pretty quick. There’s only so much you can do with double tracking the acoustics and harmonising the guitar riffs.

Anyhow, shameless (and overly long and technical) plug over with, you can have a (not so) sneaky listen

here.

Sleep now in the fire

I think I’m more ready to write blogs at 3am, when my eyes are dry and sore, and the silence in the house is deafening. I’m working tomorrow night shift (or is it tonight) so I’m doing my usual of staying up really late the night before in preparation for it. This normally means a lot of caffeine, a varied selection of salted snacks and a DVD or five. I just watched The Matrix. Still a good film, though downhill after the first one. Must go and listen to more Rage against the machine too.

This week has been an odd one. With lots of memories of Dad being sick (though he’s now well) all being dragged up (for one reason or another) and remembering how tough that all was and how gracious GOD has been. Things happen in your life and you’re forever changed, often without you realising what happened at the time.

Parents have also went to Coleraine for a few days so I’ve had the house to myself, and have taken to lighting the fire late at night and lying barely inches from it till the wee small hours of the morning till I fall asleep and wake up like CS Lewis at the end of the Great Divorce.

Also back out in the canoes in preparation for a repeat of the Portadown to Coleraine trip of last year This time I’ve invited almost everyone I’ve spoke to, indeed consider this blog a general invite. As most people respond with “I don’t have a canoe” then I respond with a Paisley-esque “canoes will be provided…”

Our next potential candidate was the youthful yet eminent Dr Carson, who accepted a quick paddle to Knock Bridge though I did have to talk him out of the full protective swimming gear. Our top moment was coming across a gigantic (cue image of man with hands widespread saying “this big…”) pike lying sunning itself on the surface, which swam away just before Gilly could flick into the boat with the paddle.

But to finish…

“Now I’m hunched over a typewriter
I guess you call that painting in a cave
And there’s a word I can’t remember
And a feeling I cannot escape
And now my ashtray’s overflowing
I’m still staring at a clean white page
Oh and morning’s at my window
She is sending me to bed again”