An Ocean and a Rock – Part 1

I am somewhat addicted to the road trip. I am also somewhat addicted to my Volvo. I am yet to get round to sleeping in it but plan to make every effort on this trip.

But first some background.

It’s not like I have any idea where I head to. I lay the map out on the table the day before and look for the bits with the fewest roads and go there.

Turns out there are an exceptional number of places in Ireland with little bays and little beaches and not very many roads.

But I have to picture what all of these look like in my head. And in my head they’re always sunny – which is always hopeful in Ireland. Either that or look them up on google and inevitably there will be lots of photos from flickr or videos on YouTube by some german guy. It gives you the gist of the place.

So anyhow. I’ve now ended up in Malin Beg. Somewhere west of the west of Ireland. West donegal to be precise. I don’t think there’s much between me and the Americas. Except the Atlantic ocean of course.
I drove 3 hours solid to get here through mist and fog – just to get here and find that it’s, well misty and foggy…

I still think it looks pretty sweet.

At the car park a duke of Edinburgh group were pitching their tents, a slightly concerned but impatient school teacher in attendance – “have you put the water on to boil yet, what are you two planning to have for tea?”. All that kind if thing.

The two blokes seemed to be loving it. I’m not sure the same good be said of the girls. Though I can’t really blame them if I had to walk Slieve League in the fog and rain I’d be pissed off too.

Funnily enough that’s what I have planned for tomorrow.

The beach is about a 100 yds below the car park (it may only be 50 but I’m kind of crap with vertical distances and 100 yds sounds like the kind of thing someone might say) and was thankfully deserted apart from the dying embers of a camp fire that I presumed someone had left.

So I pitched the tent. The nice new one I treated myself to for the birthday. The one I’ve only put up the once when me and skeeno tried it out in the living room.

So of course I put it up wrong to start with. It was to be expected.

Stoked the fire has best I could with the conveniently stacked fire wood and lit the mini grill and got the burgers going.

Only to find a rather sheepish young polish woman walking towards me wondering if she could maybe have some of the firewood that her and her boyfriend had collected for their camp fire this evening.

Oh dear. I appeared to have stolen not only their lit fire but also their firewood and ideal camp site on the beach.

I felt immensely bad about this. Not that they had left anything to suggest that it was their camp fire. It was just a fire and a pile of wood.

I decided against an ill advised rant about possession being nine tenths of the law – being somewhat uncertain as to how the law stands in relation to ownership of a fire already in progress.

After recent events in Belfast I could just picture the news headlines – Norn Irish prick steals vital heat source from homeless immigrant.

Turns out she’s polish and the boyfriend is Irish so all round I think I’m in the clear.

I did feel bad enough to go round the beach and collect them some new fire wood. It salved the conscience somewhat.

So with tent erected and burgers cooked and fire blazing – well maybe not blazing, more ’smoking intensely’ – I can finally settle down to read the book in peace. Though it does seem like an awful lit of effort just for that.

One love people get ready

As Col 4:15 would put it, a few of us meet on a sunday morning, before all the real chruches get going and take a wee look at the book of Acts and spend some time trying to work out “what it all means” so to speak.

Today we were covering what i always thought of as Christian communism, (before i had much of an idea of what either “Christian” or “communism” meant…) and in particular its application to how we live our lives.

And the phrases that kind of struck us most were “…the believers were one in heart and mind…” and “…they shared everything they had…”

Which led to a few genius suggestions by Fin:

1) we’re in such disarray and disagreement as a body of believers that we spend all our time trying to reconcile the church to itself instead of spending time trying to reconcile the world to GOD.

2) we may actually be better (or at least more comfortable) with sharing our possessions than sharing our lives together.

As a group of people we are not particularly materialistic, we have the usual young, enthusiastic Christian aversion to money and materialism – not that we necessarily live that out particularly well, we’re just uncomfortable with it in a distant sort of way.

Most of us do have a bit of an issue when it comes to doing life together. The people i love the most and count as my closest friends are exceptionally busy people. Life is there to be lived, and the world there to be changed and they are doing their very utmost to bring that about. I envy and applaud them for it. They put me to shame.

As a result they are often quite tricky to get round for dinner or get out to the pub for a night.

I miss them.

Too often, i have no idea what is going on in their lives. Yes, i know they are doing this and that, and that so and so’s married, and so and so’s having a baby, and so and so’s doing this job, but that doesn’t tell me very much about what is actually going on in their lives.

We need to figure out some way of doing this better.

If we do not figure out how to love each other then we are useless to the world around us. Though of course it’s also true that unless we get round to loving the world around us we’re just a bunch of narrow-minded self-preserving bastards.

It is interesting that amongst us (in our wee group so to speak…), different folk have different issues. Some need to learn that loving those outside the church is no excuse to avoid loving those inside the church. And there are some (like myself) who need to learn to take it outside so to speak. Just because I find it exceptionally difficult to make contact and relationship in the current context does not give me reason to hide behind my books and blogs.

What i meant to get round to but will save for another day (it’s 1am, i’m on call and the only people sober in the department are the staff – at least they were when i left), is something that has been bothering me for some time. I love my theology, and my books and erudite ideas by what seems like the whole (or at least important part of the) population of Maynooth. But when it comes to the 23 year old with 5 kids, no GCSEs, a life time of benefits and an alcohol problem (never mind an individual, how about a whole community…) – how do i explain the gospel? And more than flippin words – what does the gospel even look like from their point of view?

Criticism as inspiration

(via ruth gledhill in the times Saturday review)

“any preaching of the gospel which fails to constitute a scandal and affront to the political establishment is in my view effectively worthless”

Reason, faith and revolution: Reflections on the god debate

Terry Eagleton

Pictures of you part 2

Dublin is ridiculously expensive. Or at least it feels like that. I payed 3 euros for a take away coffee. I’d expect some kind of cocaine fueled, caffeine based beverage for that kind of money. Fancy coffee is off the eating out menu. Good thing I brought my own coffee with me – that’s how addicted I am.

So far we’ve had teaching from a dry, rather sardonic guy from offally who is like something straight out of a father ted script. And a couple of americans. One of whom struck me half way through to be rather like David brent. I’m hoping this will pass with time.

Not the most intellectually stimulating day covering mainly basic stuff that I’ve been doing for years. Tomorrrow will be a lot more fun when we get to play with the USS machines and get to pretend we’re radiologists.

After the course ended I went on a rather long dander round dublin. Started with St Stephen’s green and sat for a while contemplating the daily life of a duck then dandered past what looked like the fancy bit of Dublin.

All cities seem to have one of these. The bit where they keep all the embassies and government buildings and it’s all high gates and security guards and blackberries.

They do keep the museums there though they were all closed. Though I may have a go at a gallery tomorrow if I get the chance.

Galleries are an even odder experience than the museums. In the galleries I just dander round with the headphones on trying to look cultured while listening to Bruce.

From there I walked a while further finally finding myself in temple bar for the first time in my life. Lots of quite nice looking dark, grotty pubs but filled to the brim with Europeans and Americans sipping pints and deciding half way through and deciding that no, they definitely don’t like guiness.

There was even a guy playing Irish twee on an acoustic. Though I make it sound horrible I stayed long enough to get through most of the Irish times.

Dinner was in an oddly combined mexican/Italian restraurant called “from Mexico to Rome”. Decent feed all the same.

Through the wonders of facebook I’ve ended up at an open mix type gig at a pub in Dublin. A guy I went to school with is meant to be playing. I say meant to be cause I’ve been here for a good hour and a half now (making the best use of theo free wi-fi with all this blogging so I’ve not been bored) and the girl playing is a lot prettier than jay ever was and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably not actually him.

I think I may even, for the first time in my life, have been stood up. Not the worst of experiences so far anyhow.

Pictures of you part 1

I’m down in Dublin on a course. It’s the type of thing us professional types are meant to do.

I always seem to he in Dublin either for exams or courses. It’s a nice excuse to get down here. Dublin feels like a proper city. Like London but with more, you know Irish people in it.

It has public transport that seems to work, nice parks and even buskers to boot. When you’re from portadown all this is kind of exotic.

The fun of the journey starts with the train. I love the train. You’re probably aware of that. A long train journey on a sunny day through ireland is about as hood as it gets.

Unfortunately with the currency the way it is it’s full of southerners with bags full of shopping. All crossing the border to save themselves a fortune.

They also tens to be the more wrinkly members of society as translink give the golden oldies free rail travel.

Not that any of this is a problem. It just means you have to share thetl table with a few other people. This is a bit of an exception when it comes to norhtern Irish public transport. There’s usually (literally) one man and his dog on the train.

Several acadmeic papers on implementing clinical decision rules later I’m in Dublin.

The hotel was the cheapest I could find – cheap in Dublin being a whole different concept. Considering all that it’s pretty flippin decent.

I walked my usual walk. Past the custom house, down the Liffey, down o’connell street, through temple bar, onto at Stephen’s green to watch the ducks (I have a bit of a thing for ducks), back down grafton street and into a pub to watch one of the best footy matches I’ve seen in a long time.

Becoming more like Alfie

You seem to spend the first part of your life as a kid making yourself promises that you’ll never become like your parents. That when you have kids you’ll let them sit up till midnight snorting coke and eating skittles, cause you’d be a cool daddy.

Then you spend the rest of your life thinking that if you turn out near half as good a human and husband and parent as them then you’d be doing pretty damn well.

What happens when the heart just stops

30-09-08

So it goes.

I sit in the by window of the bedroom, listening to him breathe. Noisy, rattly breaths. He wakes only occasionally now. To pee. To take a few sips. He knows us. He knows what’s happening. He even makes the odd sarcastic one-worder (not having the energy for a full one liner).

But his voice is slurred and weak and he hasn’t even the energy to get the blankets off him on his own. This is what the sickness does to you. Leaves people the shell of what they used to be. I’ve seen it happen before. Just not to him.

So it goes.

Not like we didn’t know it was coming. Either from 4 months ago or even last year. We’ve thought about this. We’ve talked about this. We’ve planned for this. I don’t mean it makes it easier. I don’t know what it means. I’m not sure I have to.

Slowly (insidious as medics would say) he’s gone down hill. As the cancer grows and robs more of his energy and leaves him with more and more nausea and kinks and twists in his gut. As tiny blood clots lodge in the blood vessels in his lungs. As his poor starved liver stops making protein and all the fluid collects wherever gravity will draw it to. Week by week he could do a bit less.

There was of course the odd notable exception. Like the day they went to Newcastle and he ate a steak sandwich. Or the day the palliative care consultant came to see him and he was outside cleaning the drains. As mum said to the consultant: “this is gonna look bad…” I told dad they’d take his Graseby off him.

We’re grateful for what we had. He was glad to be here and we were glad to have him. I think that’s changed now.

I am remarkably calm. Though that’s not the right word. I’m not freaking out for some reason – I know I have done previously. The whole thing is a decidedly odd (and equisitely painful) experience.

4-10-08

And now he’s gone.

In the same way I’ve watched them all go before. We looked after him at home. We did everything. No nurse cared more than we did (and the nurses were great), rarely have I been so proud of my family, doing what they’ve had no training or experience to do before. I do this for a living in many ways, it is completely foreign to them.

I could watch all the signs that go with the event of dying. All the medicalised aspects of it. Knowing that there wasn’t enough blood and oxygen to his brain to deliver any kind of conscious awareness of what was going on. He was already gone. I knew this, but still… it’s my Da. He looked like all the other poor dying souls I’ve watched, but still… this was my Da.

Watching someone die is a strange and profound enough experience to start with, never mind watching it happen to someone you love dearly. I think this is part of why it has such a profound experience on people, and perhaps why it didn’t have such a big effect on me. His act of dying (the three or so hours form when he wouldn’t wake up until he was gone) wasn’t anything special. It was, as we’ve described it to people: “peaceful”. The bit that gets you is the sheer finality of it all. That the eyes won’t open again. That there’ll not be the sarcastic comments and the steely determination.

Amazing how quick something can go from being someone you have an intimate relationship to an odd looking body that bears little resemblance to the man you once knew.

I don’t understand emotion – I’m a man, none of us do apparently… But I mean on a physiological basis – the constriction at the back of your throat, such that you can’t even swallow, the pain, the sheer physical pain in your chest, the headaches, the inability to complete sentences, the way your face curls up like (to quote dear Ronnie…) “a bulldog chewing a wasp”. Why does loss affect us poor creatures so?

I wouldn’t want to have kept him here. At least not the last week or two, they’ve not been pretty. In some ways there’s this selfish desire just to keep them here, even if it’s only for a smile and a word. But you think about it and then you realise you wouldn’t want to keep them, not like this anyhow.

And then we were sitting there. With all that was left of Da. And what do you do. Where do you start? Simon phoned the doctor and all the important people, I sorted out Dad and all the medical stuff. Mum baked a pie. What else would you do? I was hungry. I don’t know why, but I was hungry. It was the best pie I’ve ever eaten.

The undertaker asked us would the house be “open” or “private” – Though according to Ruth ,when it says ”private” in the paper it actually means anyone can come to the house, but if it says “strictly private” then it’s private. That seems perverse. But it is Norn Iron I suppose.

People started to turn up at the house. And then more people, and more people. And here’s the difficult bit…

I am glad that so many people turned up to wish us well and grieve and tell stories. I am truly grateful for the hundreds of cups of tea and buns and sandwhiches. But there were frequent points when I was very close to standing up in the middle of the room swearing loudly “would you *&^%$£$% all go home and just leave us in peace…”

I didn’t.

Instead I went out to the garage to stroke the dog. The dog is therapeutic. Safer and cheaper than drugs and booze. The dog helps us cope. The dog has been walked and stroked within an inch of its life in the past few weeks. The dog is the single most happy and contented thing/creature I have ever met. Like colin the robot in the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy after Ford has rewired its pleasure circuits (for those who’ve read Hitchhiker’s then you’re with me, if not please read it…) Dog’s are good listeners. We could learn a thing or two…

I am sorry for thinking about such thoughts about such dear people who would come only to “pay respects” and encourage. In one of those odd ways I am both glad that you were there while at the same time I wished you weren’t. I think i’m allowed such confusion.

We bury them quick in Ireland. Two days later. I like to think it’s on the third day and all that… I don’t know why we bury them two days later. Makes the whole thing a bit more intense, but I think it’s a good idea none the less. Though how should I know, it’s not like I do this a lot…

We had a short service in the house before the trip to the church. 25 of us – pretty much the whole family, well those of us old enough to know what was going on – packed into the living room. An unbreakable and terrible tension in the room. Me and Simon waited outside for the minister to come. Both of us in our suits, white shirts and ties, greeting mourners as they arrived. I remember thinking we looked like bouncers. Like a skinny, more weedy version of Max and Paddy.

And then we followed the hearse.

To the church, along the road that Dad walked every sunday afternoon when he was a kid, turning just before we passed the house he grew up in, up roads where he walked every sunday morning with the aging BB old boys.

To the church he’d gone to since he was a baby, that both his and mum’s parents had gone to for all the generations we can trace. [And all of a sudden I realise why roots are so important. Da always said, as if stuck on repeat, "who you are, where you are from, to whom you belong..."]

Carried under the flags of the BB he’d been a founding member of, where he’d served for 40 years. Carried down the same aisle that he’d watched mum walk down on their wedding day so many years before. [Funny how funerals are so like, and unlike, weddings...]

To lie in his coffin at the front of the church filled with the 500 or so people who came to say that they knew and loved him.

To listen to the hymns that neither, me, Simy or Liz could even begin to sing without choking up on tears. We just stood as if the sheer volume and meaning from the crowd behind us could hold us up. ["From life's first cry to final breath.." is always a killer - i have watched lots of "life's first cry" waiting to resuscitate babies as they come out. I have watched my own Fathers "final breath" - this is a lyric with depth and meaning...]

To listen and watch as Dad’s best friend gave a eulogy where we all got reminded who he was – someone who loved well and was first class when it came to taking the piss out of people. People got insulted – Da would’ve been happy, he wouldn’t have had it any other way…

And then carried. By those who knew and loved him best, by those who were his family, as we walked behind, careful to look only at the coffin and not side to side, knowing that if we made eye contact we’d come to pieces. Odd that – on the one day designed for mourning, you spend the whole day trying to keep it together for the sake of those around you.

Then taken. Out into the pissing rain (good day for a funeral…) And me and Simy take the coffin, down the path to where we’ve buried the rest of his family. And I just repeat over and over in my head “thank you for the life you gave me, thank you for the happiness, thank you for the discipline, thank you for what you made me, thank you for everything… I’m gonna miss you.”

This and the horrible practicality that if I have to walk much further on a slippy path in these shoes then I’m gonna drop the coffin.

I remember my Granda’s funeral, the same grave, 15 years before. When, as they lowered the coffin they struggled to fit the coffin into the hole and I remember it being remarked that it was just “Billy (Da’s Dad) – stubborn to the last…”

Dust to dust, just like every funeral.

[Liz is for being cremated- she says she's scared of enclosed spaces and scared of being buried alive. I'm being cremated to save space. Or possibly cut up into tiny pieces by inept medical students with my stolen fingers being used in tasteless pranks... I fugure if GOD raises the dead, then the spread of my individual molecules, atoms, protons, electrons and Higgs Bosons throughout the diaspora shouldn't pose too much of a challenge...]

As we walk away, the BB old boys gather round the grave to do what they always do, to do what I’ve done before, and “bury their own”.

In the hall, there is tea. Cups of tea like you’ve never seen before. Trolleys of buns and huge vats of tea, all arranged and moving with military precision. There is nothing quite like dear church folk doing catering at a funeral.

We took up a position in the corner and waited for the onslaught. Two hours of handshakes, embraces and tears we were still there as the queue slowly diminshed. Most of it was a bit of a blur. People I had never met, hugged me, good country men shook my hand till the bones cracked. Almost everyone called me Simon. I developed a layer of foundation on my shoulder from all the embraces. It was, in the strangest way, enjoyable. Listening to people tell me stories about Da, from long before I was born.

You see, this is what I didn’t get. I considere myself an authority on my own Da. I had reason to think so. But I forgot that Dad had this whole other life before I turned up. He had 20 years before he even met Liz. This life where he met and loved people and did all kinds of stuff that I knew nothing about. People knew Da in all kinds of ways that I didn’t even think were possible. I am humbled.

For most of the time I was OK. I smiled and laughed and joked and practised our “funeral soundbytes” – it is impossible to say something original every time someone asks you a question about it so you come up with a few choice truths which somehow lose their depth of meaning with repitition.

But every now and again someone would appear in the queue who I hadn’t quite expected or someone who didn’t even know Da and had come solely for my benefit – and then I’d begin to wobble a bit. It goes down as one of the strangest experiences yet.

Your wedding day is cool cause you know and love everyone there, your funeral is the same, except you don’t get to be there. Da would’ve enjoyed it. Just shame he wasn’t there.

We only seem to get this many together if someone gets born, married or dies. Odd that. Odd, the traditions we have.

That night we all got letters from him. We knew we were getting letters. And that wasn’t the easiest. To read his handwriting, with all the nice things and him taking the piss (“Andrew, you knew you were always meant to be a girl…” Cheers Da) and at the end he’s signed it and I can’t go downstairs and say thanks. That’s the tricky bit…

Cheers Da.

Ronnie Neill

Born 29-3-48

Died 2-10-08

You can do better than me

If you talk to me about work (and i advise that you don’t) you will be quickly hit with a mix of enthusiasm, passion and frustration. Most of you have realised this by now and therefore stopped talking to me about it altogether. Ultimately only i find it this interesting. But occasionally some poor naive soul asks about my work and all of a sudden they’re pinned down under a wall of health policy, stories of dying people and how, to be honest, we often don’t really do that great a job of looking after people. By the end of the first pint, most people are moving swiftly toward the corner and onto the weather or the footy results. I don’t blame them, it is perhaps natural that only i am as enthusiastic about it all. This is not to say – as you might presume – that i think what i do is more important than what you do. I just know what i do is pretty important.

But there are a few people who talk about what they do with the same degree of enthusiasm and passion. And i don’t mean what you find most medics talking about – bitching and moaning about things that other people do wrong.

What i’m talking about is more like confession. Owning up to each other that we do not always do well. That in fact we quite frequently do badly and that we’d like to a whole lot better. These are our dirty secrets, fit only to be aired with a cup of coffee in confidence in the staff room.

So why are we so scared of admitting that we are failing our patients? Given that it’s something we do daily.

Part of it can be explained by the natural competitiveness in medicine. Say, for example you have a 12 year old cyclist hit by a car, with head and chest injuries. Waiting for him in the emergency department (apparently that’s what we call it these days, it used to be A&E. An ED seems to be different in that it sees more patients with less staff and gives them a worse deal…) will be at least 4 doctors (more likely 6 or 7) and a few actually useful people like nurses. The doctors will be of varying grades, varying specialities and with varying experience. In most cases (especially after a recent changeover of staff) most of the doctors will not know each other’s backgrounds and levels of experience (which is frequently different from seniority).

The astute observer can observe a bizarre performance. Like the pheasant’s tail in action. There is posturing and great fan fare and internal politics and people finding their place in the milieu of doctors. I know this because i have done this. I have spent evenings in resus rooms, trying to present the most obscure and complicated diagnosis to most impress the on lookers. If someone else mentions an equally obscure diagnosis that i have never heard of, i do everything not to let my ignorance show. I remember an ED consultant in Hawke’s Bay interrupting one of these such sessions of self-aggrandisement with a rather rude though salient comment that “aren’t we all having a nice wank…”

Simply talking the loudest and the most and leading the resuscitation does not ensure your place at the top of the professional pile. Consultants especially are notorious for not listening to what other parts of the team are doing – eg one consultant will say mid-resus “don’t give him more fluid” and within 20 seconds another will say “give him more fluid”. What is a junior to do…

Part of this reign of confusion can be assuaged by having people who know and talk to each other and perhaps, dare i say it, have a degree of respect for each other. This tends to eliminate a lot of the showing off and place finding.

The tangible arrogance that seeps out of doctors is difficult to deal with. From a human level, no one wants to admit they’re wrong, or the potential that they may be. At least certainly not in front of a colleague. On a professional level, self-confidence in decision making is encouraged. Unfortunately, too often this leads to the delusion that you’re somehow special, that unlike everyone else, you don’t get things wrong, you don’t miss things, you never make the wrong decision. This is a very dangerous place for you and your patient to find yourself.

We are perhaps victims of our own (or rather our medical ancestors) success. Penicillin, vaccination, transplants… There is an idea that the medical professional has the answer, however unsure we are about what the question is. While we are becoming largely distrustful of statements that people make – politicians, lawyers, criminals, moisturiser adverts… – there is still great credence given to ‘the doctor’. If the doctor says you’re OK, then you’re OK. The statement the doctor makes is often given more credit than it is actually due.

The problem lies in that people believe that medicine is an exact science. Which popular culture (and no doubt the medical profession itself) has tried to foster. It is however a big stinking lie. Medicine is not an exact science. It is merely educated guesswork. Sometimes the guesswork is more educated than others. People think this uncertainty applies to only the ‘clinical medicine’ of asking the patient questions and examining them, and that therefore scans and tests hold the key to concrete facts. This is also a lie. The scans and tests only contribute to the education of the guess.

Now this is not to devalue medical knowledge altogether, it is perhaps the best we have. However imperfect. But you must know – it is most definitely an imperfect science.

Which means we need to do better. In every single aspect. Something that seems to be getting lost in hitting targets and not eating or peeing over a 12 hour shift. There is not a tangible culture of excellence. Maybe there is, but it seems well hidden below the endless patients and targets and complaints. We are getting by yes. But getting by is hardly good enough.

I think it was done better when i was in New Zealand. That was partly resource driven. There were simply more resources, therefore we could do better. It was also driven from the top-down. The bosses expected a certain standard of care, and a culture of no mistakes. How else do you get better?

The desire, i think, is there. The desire to do better. The circumstances and structures are perhaps not there.

Efficiency does not imply excellence or quality of care. These are variables that are very difficult to measure and therefore very difficult to win an election with.

I have no easy answer to fix this. i have not the slightest desire to have any role in dealing with health policy and sit in meetings and argue over budgets. I suspect i don’t have the talent for it either. It’s as i tend to say, an important job, i’m just glad it’s not me that has to do it. In fact it would be easier to blame our failings on “the system” something institutional and anonymous and can be blamed on “the suits” in Whitehall.

But that’s probably a tad dishonest. Yes we are failing on an institutional and policy level, but we are also failing on a personal level. An overworked, demoralised, uninspired work force finds it all too easy to blame the system and is averse to admitting any personal failings. That perhaps they don’t advocate as vigorously as they should for their patients. There is a lack of personal responsibility for patients care. The expected level of care seems to be only a medico-legal one, not a moral one.

And this is where, i suppose, the responsibility is mine alone.

(Ooh) Heaven is a place on earth

So I suppose I better follow up on the last post and the bit about “not going to heaven when you die.” Before the crowd of pitch fork waving believers break down the front door and burn me at the stake for crimes against orthodoxy.

I can only recommend NT Wright and “Surprised by Hope” as a great unpacking of the idea of the Christian hope (where almost all of the following is plagiarised from) and what the Bible actually says about “the resurrection”. There were no mental or theological gymnastics, just a little recognition of a world-view that is assumed without reference to GOD’s word.

The central point of GOD’s redemptive narrative is the death and resurrection of JESUS. I suppose all of us could be happy with that. Some of us will focus a bit more on the death, some a bit more on the resurrection, but we could all agree that neither works without the other.

The central part, to the Christian hope is that CHRIST was raised from the dead. That he was bodily raised in physical form, a physical form that was undoubtedly different from the one he’d so recently been in, but physical all the same. The Bible is quite clear about the resurrected JESUS’s physicality, along with the fact that it not so simply physical as it had been before. And what was so stunning about this is that it is made quite purposely clear that JESUS did not return as a ghost, like Casper the friendly ghost or Nearly Headless Nick. This was something quite different. Indeed a big reason why the beliefs of “the way” in the first century were so unique. Lots of people had a notion of some “spiritual” non-physical continuance of existence. No one had anything like a body physically raised.

JESUS then leaves. Where he goes the Bible is remarkably unclear about – yes to Heaven – but what/where Heaven is is left undefined. Instead we have defined as somewhere “up there” which is why Yuri could (apocryphally) say that once he got up there that there was no GOD cause he couldn’t see him anywhere.

This is where the cultural assumptions come into play. That heaven is a place (somewhere else) with white fluffy clouds and fat babies with harps and bad aim. GOD has a white beard, and a James Earl Jones voice, everyone wears sandals and JESUS never, ever looks like he’s middle-eastern. Heaven is therefore the place where we go when we die, when we will finally be free from these terrible, nasty body things and we’ll float like spirits, free from such boring demands of physicality.

These are ideas that of course have developed within the Christina tradition (centuries of Christian art will give that away) – that does not mean that they are Christian ideas. The idea that we can discard our bodies and float like spirits is good old fashioned platonism (at least a Christian interpretation of it). The idea that the soul is the only important bit of life is not a Christian idea. The soul itself is rarely mentioned in the Bible, yet it is so prevalent in all our talk from salvation to resurrection. This is gnosticism revisited. These ideas are firmly embedded in our belief system but they are not Christian.

Let me emphasise then what is Christian. In CHRIST we have the example. When we die, he promises resurrection. And this will be bodily, physical, in some form not entirely different from what we already have. Though of course there will be some fundamental differences. When we are resurrected we will be resurrected, guess where? Right here. This is the key point. We get new bodies. On a new earth. Rev 21 tells us that CHRIST returns in glory not to snatch us from the evil jaws of the creation but that he returns to rule over the redeemed and renewed creation.

When I think about that I realise I already believe that. This is hardly any new kind of heresy, it’s just that my thinking has been muddied on the whole issue. Because of the underlying cultural (not biblical) assumptions, and all the terrible songs and hymns that we sing that lead us up the garden path in terms of resurrection theology. Let me put it this way. As Christians we believe what non-Christians think that we Christians believe about life after death:

Love of mine some day you will die
But I’ll be close behind
I’ll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the no’s on their vacancy signs

If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Death Cab for Cutie (I sang this song in my cafe gig in NZ cause I like songs that reveal what non-Christians believe about the meaning of life. Though only now I realise how far apart we are in our beliefs)

Most of you will have realised that I’ve left a bit out. That yes we die, and when CHRIST returns and makes everything new and rules on the new earth (not in heaven on the clouds with the fat babies – he’ll be bored with all that by then) that we will be with him in our cool new resurrection bodies, not floating round like disembodied shadows on the cave wall.

But what happens when we die? Do we not actually go to heaven when we die? This is where the tricky bit comes. The Bible actually has quite a bit to say about the resurrection and where it fits in. But it doesn’t say quite so much about the in-between. Is it some kind of cosmic hibernation? Paul speaks about preferring to depart and be with CHRIST. Which at first glance sounds like “going to heaven when you die” but surely he must mean something different – as it is he himself who goes on to say so much about the resurrection. Indeed CHRIST does the same. Leaving the disciples and telling them he will return. So where does he go in the mean time. He goes to “heaven” which is loosely defined though perhaps most useful as “with GOD” or “in GOD’s presence”. Beyond that the Bible does not have that much to say, at least not in specifics.

Again let me emphasise that when we die, and go wherever JESUS went to when he left the disciples, it is vital to realise that this is not the fulfilment of the Christian hope. The resurrection is the fulfilment. As NT Wright says. It is not simply life after death, but life after, life after death.

There are lots of implications of this. It’s important in that it’s a proper understanding and articulation of what the Bible says, and reveals it’s uniqueness in the hope that we cling to. That the body and the physical world itself is not evil – it is fallen, but not evil. When we die of cancer it is not that mitosis and cellular division and ultimately (well until CERN tells us otherwise) particle physics that is ingerently wrong – more that it is fallen. Our DNA itself seems part of the fall. Indeed it seems that even that will be redeemed.

[As an aside, there was also in the book a "factoid" about the human body that the actual particles (in terms of atoms and so on) are completely exchanged for different ones over a course of around 7 years (undeniably true to some extent -  though impossible to accurately measure). We (quite literally) are what we eat. And to be delicate - dispose of, in terms of skin, sweat etc...). Fascinating. Well if you like that kind of thing.]

It means that we are not to lock ourselves into Christian self-righteous ghettoes and pray that we’ll be raptured (whatever that means…) before this horrible sinful world gets the better of us. It tells us that GOD is in the business of redemption and renewal, and that both we and the creation itself are going to be renewed and redeemed and that it’s our role to inaugarate and announce the Kingdom of GOD by decalring that JESUS is Lord over all of it.

It’s important for lots of reasons, few of which are outlined here, so perhaps it’s just an exhortation to read the book, and more importantly read the Bible, and read it withoout the Plato-goggles on.

This desert life

http://www.pbfcomics.com/

Bushfire fairytales

As robbed from the door

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.

Note to Self

Christmas cards are always weird kind of things. There’s always a bit of a frenzy to get them done, and then you know that the only your post man will be delivering apart from christmas cards will be boxes from amazon.

I’ve mostly given up on sending them. Largely from laziness but also cause you inevitably find new ways of offending people by sending one person a card and forgetting somebody else.

I like buying pressies for people. Which are mostly pressies I would like myself. All books I buy people will inevitably be borrowed. I draw the line at wrapping the gifts.

Anyhow did receive this genius christmas card in the post. Which made me wonder whether someone was messing with my head or not.

The Gingerbread Boy

Once upon a time there was a gingerbread boy. He lived in the land of Faerie where people sat on tuffets from Ikea all day and princesses took long afternoon naps and small German children got eaten in houses made of chocolate. This was long before the introduction of the ASBO.

People used to ask where Gingerbread boy came from and sit back and wait for him to tell them long stories about storks and cabbage patches. But he only told these stories after he got one or two drinks into him. People in the land of Faerie will believe anything after one or two drinks.

The truth of the story was much more straightforward. Gingerbread boy was baked in the bakery by the Baker in Faerie town, just like all the other gingerbread men. He came from the same mould all the other gingerbread men came from. He was baked in the same oven and laid out on the same table to cool.

But something about Gingerbread boy made him different from all the others. There was something wrong with his mouth. He could see all the other gingerbread men laid out beside him, all identical with their little round icing mouths, each one painted with a kind of mock surprise at their own existence.

But Gingerbread boy knew his mouth was different. He knew that something must have gone wrong when the Baker had been icing his mouth. Maybe the bell of the door of the bakery had rang, maybe his cellphone had gone off, the vibration of the phone in his pocket jarring his hand at just the wrong moment. Maybe the Baker just didn’t care enough to fix the crooked sugary scar left on his face.

Something had gone wrong with Gingerbread boy. And now he was left scarred with a crooked line on his face where his little ‘O’ of surprise should have been.

Gingerbread boy knew he was ‘damaged goods’. And he knew what happened to all the other ‘damaged goods’ in the Bakery. He wouldn’t be fit to lie on the shelves behind the counter, waiting to be chosen for the little boy’s birthday party. To lie on the plate on the table, beside the birthday cake in the shape of a tank made from Cadbury’s flakes, just on the far side from the M&S cocktail sausages. He knew as ‘damaged goods’ he’d never make it to that birthday party. And going to birthday parties where what gingerbread men were made for. If he knew nothing else then he knew that.

He knew he was destined to end up with the other broken gingerbread men in the Baker’s basket in the back yard. Joining the other misfit gingerbread men, the ones with only one leg and three eyes. To make a feast for the Baker’s dog and the pigeons come closing time.

In a fright he sat bolt upright on the tray and glanced around him. The other gingerbread men just lay there like a Faerie version of the Terracotta army. With their little ‘O’s of perfection sitting smugly in the centre of their heads, somehow feigning surprise, as if saying ‘who? me? perfect?’ Gingerbread boy felt angry, wanting to rip the nose off the nearest gingerbread man just to spite his face.

But he knew his time was short. Soon the Baker would be back to fetch his most recent batch to go out to the front of the shop. Looking around him, he caught sight of an open window leading into the alley behind the shop, and made a leap for it. He caught a fleeting glimpse of his ‘scar’ in his reflection in the glass and promised himself he’d never look at it again.

And so began Gingerbread boy’s adventures in the Faerie. Most people know the story of what happened next. How he slipped away from the bakery, from the child in the street and then the pig in the wood, all who wanted to eat him. And how when he got to the river and realized he couldn’t swim across it was the fox who offered to take him across on his back. And how when they got to the other side the fox broke his word and tried to eat Gingerbread boy.

But most people don’t know that the story didn’t stop there. For when the fox turned on him Gingerbread boy pulled out a little bottle of pepper spray from his back pocket and that was the end of the fox’s treachery.

Gingerbread boy roamed far and wide and spent some time with Humpty Dumpty shortly before he discovered hard liquor and had his great fall. Once he saw red-riding hood’s wolf in a failed attempt to catch the three blind mice. When the wolf saw he couldn’t catch either a small, stupid girl or three visually challenged rodents he went into a bit of a decline and took solace with the troll under London bridge. Together they drowned their sorrows singing depressing songs that London bridge was falling down… falling down… falling down.

Gingerbread boy saw he wasn’t the only ‘damaged goods’ in Faerie. It seemed everyone bore the scars of their own story. But he wouldn’t let this stop him, for now he no longer had the bakers basket to fear. Gingerbread boy set his heart on making his fortune and becoming the envy of all of Faerie.

He started a business making stringed instruments for cats, and made lots of new friends till one day his dear friend the dish ran away with the spoon and broke his heart and the cow jumped over the moon with the profits to get away from the Inland Revenue. Gingerbread boy was left bankrupt and soon found out that although he could easily, and with one simple phone call, consolidate all his debts into one manageable repayment… he knew this just wouldn’t be enough.

Walking back alone through the woods that night, his icing mouth felt more crooked and snarled than ever. It felt continually in spasm, the pain sending jolts through his head. He was convinced that no one would stay with him, with his face the way it was. He thought that Faerie folk just use people like him and that he just couldn’t trust them anymore.

With a heavy heart he turned back towards town, giving up on his fortune he resigned himself to find whatever happiness there was to be had in Faerie town, and the Baker’s basket be damned.

He took a job sweeping the streets at night, once all the Faerie folk had gone to bed. During his lonely shifts he thought about the Baker and how careless he must have been to make such a slip while icing his mouth. Every night he always skipped cleaning outside the bakery, night after night the rubbish piling higher. He told himself this was revenge, but deep down he was scared to go too close in case he saw the other gingerbread men staring back at him from the shop window.

He found a flat on the wrong side of the tracks, down by the old graveyard where the demons and the goblins and the vampires lived. Working night shifts he found this the only place to get peace and quiet during the day so he could sleep.

Gingerbread boy soon forgot his dreams of birthday parties, or of making his fortune and being the envy of all of faerie or even finding whatever happiness he could. He forgot most everything. Except of course his crooked mouth and the painful spasms.

Gingerbread boy took to drinking to drown his sorrows, till his sorrows learned to swim. He changed to drugs till they didn’t work and just made things worse and it was just the needle and the damage done. He kept thinking that if it made him happy then why the hell was he so sad? He lost his job cleaning the streets of Faerie and spent his evenings off snorting lines of coke through $50 bills with the goblins down by the canal. He’d get drunk or high or both and get into fights with the goblins over who was going to go pick up the pizza.

One night he got so off his head, he started on about his time with the Baker and how this made him special and better than all the goblins. The goblins, who had been behaving pretty decently for goblins till now, could take no more of this upstart and turned on him.

Two days later he woke up in hospital with one gingerbread leg reduced to a gingerbread stump and with a white bandage covering the hole where his left cherry eye should have been. He lay awake in the hospital each night thinking of his scars, thinking of how damaged he was.

They made him spend time in rehab, though he tried to say no, no, no. He was trying to escape coming to terms with everything that had happened since he’d left the Bakery. He talked with smiling, kind-hearted people about getting his life back together but in his head he didn’t want to leave. Not knowing what he’d do whenever they let him out.

In time he got to like it there. He liked the kind-hearted people, knowing that a good heart these days was hard to find. One day a gingerbread girl turned up at group. She had purple Smarties for buttons down her front and a red liqourice lace as a scarf round her neck. But Gingerbread boy could she that she was ‘damaged goods’ too. Her right cherry eye was squeezed shut with her little green icing eyebrow tugged down to meet it. She looked like she was grimacing all the time.

Gingerbread girl didn’t remember the Bakery, she’d grown up with the old woman who lived in the shoe on the outskirts of town. She said she’d always been hungry growing up, as there was never enough broth to go round and the old woman was mean and was forever whipping them and sending them to bed. She’d ran away when she got the chance, but things hadn’t gone well.

She’d never worked out where she’d come from – she’d always been too scared of the perfect gingerbread men in the Bakery, to ever set foot inside and ask the Baker. She had no answers to why she was ‘scarred’. Her eye hurt so dreadfully all the time, and though she knew that everybody hurts, that everybody cries, sometimes… but she had no friends to take comfort in. And she was on her own in this life and the days and nights were so long, and she thought she’d had too much of this life to hold on…

So she’d taken a stack of sleeping pills she’d bought from the demons down by the canal. She took them all at once and she went to sleep thinking of princesses that slept for a thousand years only to be woken by beautiful frogs dressed as princes and… the sounds of sirens as the ambulance raced her to hospital. That had been three days ago, and well… here she was, a small, obscure section of the mental health act away from doing it all over again.

Gingerbread boy soon got to know Gingerbread girl. Nothing much changed, but it seemed like everything changed. Gingerbread boy was still stuck with his umbrella shaped candy cane as a crutch to get around, he still had no job, no money, and he’d forgotten all the dreams he’d started out with. But somehow this didn’t matter quite so much cause Gingerbread girl was his daisy through concrete.

They fell in love. Though Gingerbread boy merely fell over first, still getting used to his candy cane crutch. When they got out of the hospital they moved into the big shoe on the outskirts of town. The old woman having been accused selling dope to dopey the dwarf and evicted by social services.

Gingerbread boy got a job in the office of a company selling snow to Eskimos and carrying coals to Newcastle. And for the first time in his life he thought he’d found what he was looking for.

He forgot the old dreams of birthday parties, or of making his fortune, or of finding whatever happiness Faerie had to offer him. He even could see himself forgetting his ‘scar’ for a while. Like everyone he had good and bad days but when he looked at Gingerbread girl he thought if heaven didn’t exist what would he have missed and this life was the best he’d ever have.

I’d like to say they lived happily ever after, for that’s what happens to most folk in Faerie, but sometimes the story doesn’t always get told. Gingerbread boy got scared. Scared of the nightmares that came back to him, scared of the friends that scorned him, scared of the Baker laughing at him and throwing him in the basket. And most of all Gingerbread boy was scared of Gingerbread girl falling out of love with him.

Gingerbread girl had been working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when she met him. Who he was doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t really matter in this story. What mattered was that this ‘him‘ wasn’t Gingerbread boy. What mattered was that Gingerbread girl fell in love with him, and they had their own story to write from then on. And it was a good story as stories go, but there just wasn’t room for Gingerbread boy in it.

Gingerbread boy tried to write her a letter, tried to put things right. He told her how proud he was just to have her sitting with him and how if she were here he would admit that he was wrong. But it was too late, he knew that now it was over, there was no way he could stay sober, though it wasn’t like he tried. He remembered how the troll used to sing under the bridge, that his old man always said that hell would have no flames, just a front row seat, to watch your true love pack her things and drive away.

Gingerbread boy spent a week alone in the shoe. Lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Wondering how life could be this cruel. The spasms in his mouth came back, a continual reminder of how ‘damaged’ he was.

He lifted his candy cane crutch and hobbled out of town. He walked and walked and walked and then walked some more. Crossing the river just before dawn, he climbed the wall of the bridge and stood staring at the icy water below. And he thought how everybody hurts sometimes. But surely not this much.

And it was only then he remembered the bakery, and the other gingerbread men, and birthday parties. It all seemed so very far away, so very long ago. He stared at the water, but the cold scared him more than the fall and he climbed back down again and sat at the base of the wall with tears streaming down his face.

It was then he noticed the van heading towards the bridge, its headlights brilliant in the pre-dawn. Soon they were at the bridge and the van was slowing, indeed stopping. A voice called from inside,

YOU NEED A RIDE?

It’s not that the driver was shouting, just that his words were the brightest, most beautiful, most solid thing Gingerbread boy had ever heard, and emboldening or italicizing the type would never quite get that across. His words were of the sort that didn’t need quotation marks, when he spoke he needed no announcement.

Gingerbread boy climbed up beside the driver and mumbled a muted thanks, knowing that no matter how long he’d sat on that bridge he’d never have plucked up the courage to either leap off or walk away.

YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME DO YOU?, said the man. The words were laughing and rich, Gingerbread boy was sure there was a melody behind them.

Gingerbread boy looked around him and suddenly a smell hit him, his mind flooded with memories, the smell of day old bread. As the sun inched above the horizon he looked at the driver and realized that this was the Baker. And all of a sudden it hit him how odd that he’d so long hated a man he’d neither seen nor sought.

By now they were driving, through the wood that Gingerbread boy had first passed when he’d escaped with his life from the Bakery. At once, a myriad of different questions for the Baker arose in his head, why had he messed up his mouth so long ago? Why had he condemned him to the path he now found himself on? Why had he made it so hard for him? He was just beginning to order his thoughts when the Baker spoke.

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY DON’T YOU? THEY ALL DO… DON’T FEEL BAD LADDIE, IT’S THE WAY IT WORKS FOR EVERYONE. LET ME ASK YOU ONE QUESTION FIRST. WHY DO YOU THINK NONE OF THE OTHER GINGERBREAD MEN EVER RAN AWAY?

Something inside Gingerbread boy snapped, to put it simply he lost it. He told the Baker how he knew what happened to ‘damaged goods’ in the Bakery, he told the Baker how scarred and damaged he’d been left and he told the Baker (in no uncertain terms, using some pretty fruity expletitives he’d picked up from the goblins) how it was all his fault and how if he hadn’t been so darn careless then he’d never have had to run away. The Baker made no attempt to stop him and so before he knew it, Gingerbread boy had launched into the whole story. He told him how it all happened and what he’d been through, all the pain, all the suffering, all the loss, and always, always the spasms and pain from his scar of a mouth.

The van continued to bump slowly across the old road. Silence descended in the cab for a few moments.

INTERESTING THEORY I SUPPOSE, BUT YOU NEVER REALLY ANSWERED MY QUESTION ABOUT THE OTHER GINGERBREAD MEN, WHY THEY NEVER RAN AWAY. LET ME PUT IT TO YOU ANOTHER WAY. DID YOU EVER ASK THEM WHY THEY STAYED?

Gingerbread boy admitted that no, he’d never asked them, thinking back to how smug they’d been, just lying there in their perfection.

AND DID YOU SEE ANY OF THEM WAVE GOODBYE WHEN YOU LEFT?

Again Gingerbread boy said no, they all seemed far too interested into getting behind the counter than seeing him off. Silence fell between them again. A thought occurred to Gingerbread boy, why didn’t they ever show him any sympathy? Even a nod of the head in acknowledgement that he existed, damaged as he was…

But then come to think of it, Gingerbread boy couldn’t recall them nodding at all, couldn’t remember them ever doing much of anything to be honest. They just lay there, looking perfect. He wondered why he’d never thought about that before, it certainly seemed odd… The Baker continued as if he knew the answer already.

I WOULDN’T SAY I WAS SURPRISED WHEN YOU CAME OUT OF THE OVEN THE WAY YOU DID, BUT I WAS CERTAINLY PLEASED. PART OF ME DIDN’T THINK IT WAS SUCH A GOOD IDEA, IT CERTAINLY WOULDN’T HAVE GONE DOWN WELL WITH OTHER BAKERS. BUT I WAS SURE PLEASED ALL THE SAME.

IN A WAY I THOUGHT IT WAS SO OBVIOUS THAT YOU WERE SPECIAL, THAT YOU WERE DIFFERENT, THAT I DIDN’T NEED TO TELL YOU. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

And now, only now did Gingerbread boy understand. That he’d never seen the other gingerbread men do much of anything, because they couldn’t, because they couldn’t move so much as a cherry eye, and they never would. Simply being made of gingerbread wasn’t enough, something different had happened with Gingerbread boy. That he was more special than he could have imagined. At that moment his mouth went into spasm again, all the old scars and pain were jolted back again, worse than ever. It settled after a few minutes. The Baker spoke again.

SO I SUPPOSE IT’S ONLY FAIR I TELL YOU ABOUT YOUR ‘SCAR’ THEN. YOU SEE I WAS SO HAPPY AT SEEING YOU COME OUT OF THE OVEN THE WAY YOU DID THAT I THOUGHT IT WAS ONLY FIT THAT YOU LOOKED RIGHT FOR THE OCCASION. I MEAN, HAVE YOU EVER TRIED NOT FIGHTING THE SPASMS IN YOUR MOUTH?

Gingerbread boy felt the corners of his mouth twinge again, the beginning of another spasm but this time he took the Baker’s advice and didn’t fight it. And to his surprise the pain didn’t come. Indeed something else entirely came.

NOW LOOK IN THE WING MIRROR LADDIE

As he turned to look he remembered the only other time he’d seen his reflection and how it had been etched on his memory, the twisted snarl across his face. But what he saw now surprised him, so much that he was sure there was a different Gingerbread boy looking back at him. It must have been someone else, for surely the scar was gone and in its place was only… a smile?

SO MAYBE I GOT A BIT CARRIED AWAY, I JUST THOUGHT THAT IF YOU WERE SPECIAL ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO MOVE THEN IT SEEMED ONLY FAIR THAT YOU COULD SMILE AND ENJOY IT. MY HAND NEVER SLIPPED, MY HAND NEVER SLIPS, YOUR MOUTH WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO LOOK THAT WAY. YOU WERE MEANT TO SMILE. THOUGH I KNOW YOU NEVER CAUGHT ON.

AND WHEN I MADE GINGERBREAD GIRL TO GO WITH YOU SHE WAS MEANT TO WINK, AS A SORT OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO YOU. BUT SHE WAS AS SURPRISED AS YOU AT BEING IN THE BAKERY… WELL YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY, THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MICE AND MEN AND ALL THAT…

Something told Gingerbread boy that Baker hadn’t really meant the last bit, and that he’d just added it on to make Gingerbread boy feel better about the whole thing.

The van had stopped, though Gingerbread boy hadn’t noticed when. Words failed him.

WELL, YOU BETTER COME IN IF YOU WANT TO GET THAT LEG FIXED. IT’LL NOT TAKE TOO LONG BUT THERE’S NOT MUCH TIME TILL THE PARTY.

Without thinking Gingerbread boy found himself hobbling into what he now saw was the Bakery. He saw the rows of gingerbread men in the window. As ever, just lying there, as they always had been. Looking back he thought how silly he’d been to be scared of them, how silly he’d been about a lot of things. His mouth twinged again, but he knew now not to fight it, that he was made for the twinges.

He hopped up on a stool and up onto the table as the Baker kneaded some dough on a cutting board beside him. As Gingerbread boy lay there he thought back on all he’d been through, as the Baker took a hunk of dough and began moulding it around Gingerbread boy’s stump of a leg. The Baker spoke again.

RIGHT THEN, INTO THE OVER FOR 30 MINUTES AND THAT LEG WILL BE AS GOOD AS NEW

Gingerbread boy sat up in fright, just as he had done when he’d woke up for the first time in the Bakery long ago. His immediate thought was the heat, then the pain. He found himself lifting his body off the table, the fresh dough pulling away from his leg, leaving him as he started. He told the Baker that he’d been through enough, that 30 minutes in the oven would kill him, and that he’d get along just fine at the party with his candy cane crutch.

IT WILL HURT, YES OF COURSE IT WILL HURT, BUT SOON, DEAR LOVE YOU, SOON YOU’LL FORGET ALL THAT. YOU SEE YOU’RE GOING TO THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, INDEED YOU’RE THE GUEST OF HONOUR, THE DANCING SMILING GINGERBREAD BOY. YOU SEE YOU’LL NOT DO AT ALL JUST THE WAY YOU ARE

When the Baker mentioned the Birthday party, and dancing and smiling, he knew that that was what he’d always wanted to do, that more than anything else in the whole world that was what he wanted to do. Slowly and carefully the Baker lifted Gingerbread boy into the oven, burning his own arm as he did.

And it hurt, more than anything had ever hurt before, more than the ‘scar’, more than being ‘damaged goods’, more than being abandoned by his friends, more than his time in hospital, more than watching Gingerbread girl pack her things and drive away. But somewhere a still small voice was telling him about a birthday party and as the whisper continued the pain didn’t get any less but he could feel the corners of his mouth rising again, he knew that he was smiling. And he knew that he was going to dance as the smiling gingerbread boy at the birthday party, and you know what? That was just about fine by him.

Master of India

The hospital is a bit different from Craigavon. That’s only natural I suppose. It’s a bit more laid back. Dress code a bit more casual. In fact, documented in the DHB regulations is a statute that allows you to wear shorts and sandals to work. Though that was the seventies and folk would wear socks and sandals and shorts and a tie. Not just the germans then.

I call all my consultants (some more than 40 years older than me!) by their first names. I go round to their house for tea, we go on trips together. We take the piss out of the oldest consultant for being older than most of the patients. We behave in fact as if we were normal human beings to each other. A strange experience.

So on Friday night I got invited out for a curry. A benign thing you might say. Till I picked up JT (the other ICU reg – a 50 year old drifter of an orthopaedic surgeon from Surrey, bout 20 years ago anyhow) and realized that this was a curry that was 4 years in the making. Well not the curry itself – that would be a bit weird. But the night out itself was 4 years in the planning. Or at least in the being talked about.

So I end up in ‘the master of india’ in Hastings with JT, the head of the Emegency Department (an American guy), the only gastroenterologist in the hospital (a Glaswegian with a licesnse plate saying GUTSDR – I kid you not), a cardiologist (from Manchester) and a Scottish medical registrar. All these guys have pretty much emigrated here.

The original instigator of the curry was a welsh anesthetist, of the eccentric genius type. The third day I was working here I drove past him on the way to work. He was unconscious on the ground with paramedics and other docs (who’d been on their way to work) doing CPR. He died in the hospital he was such a big part of. I’d never met him but here stories about him almost daily.

So this was the curry in his honour, though he’d had many memorial services and stuff. This was simply to fulfill the idea.

And it was great banter. Such good curry it must be said. And I watched my senior colleagues get slightly tipsy and then merrily drunk. We talked mostly about medicine and characters from the hospital. Medics are weird. These guys were of the variety who enjoyed their job, it meant a lot to them. They liked to talk through things. I’m the same. Though I know it irritates the life of non-medics. Who I suspect are just bitter cause they hate their jobs. Or maybe they just don’t have the same inflated sense of self-importance that we do. You choose.

As usual I got the designated driver role and left a couple of them off at a bar in town at 11.30, hoping they’d make it home to their wives safely and not try to serenade them drunkenly at 2am.

I drove home, grateful for the experience (and the fact that JT payed) and loving the banter. And filled with a knowledge of acceptance and affirmation from my seniors. And then it was a guilty pleasure as I realized I take far too much joy in what people think of me. That the affirmation of my bosses means far too much to me. The Devil is crafty and I am more than willing to listen.

Merry Christmas everyone

Christmas means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But I don’t really care about them. For me Christmas is cold and wet and dark weather, my little felt stocking (ooh er missus – that didn’t sound quite the way it came out), all the Christmas decorations me and Simon made when we were kids. Well mostly Simon’s cause mine were mostly unrecognisable and were more ‘general pagan festival’ material.

Of course it changes as you grew up. When I found out that Santa was in fact real and not one of my Da’s mates in a funny suit then it changed my world entirely. Such a thing would. I don’t get up at 4am any more to open my Star Wars toys. Not this year anyhow.

I’ve worked the past two Christmas days but have woken up at home and slept at home, and this is the first time I’ve actually been properly away. I took my first real bout of homesickness the few days before Christmas as I realised how much I missed everyone. Plus it was grey and wet (unusually) and it just reminded me of home. I sat in the flat watched whole discs of Scrubs and read Johnny Cash’s autobiography. Feeling sorry for myself – needlessly so, a bad habit that I indulge far too often. Imaginary hard times and troubles are the excuse.

I’d planned to have a wee lie in on Christmas day itself – mostly cause I hadn’t slept the night before. A lie in round here means 9.30 or 10.00 or so. The people next door (a nice young family with an alarming number of pets including one of those miniature dogs with a rude name that I found trotting my flat one day when it managed to crawl under the fence) were up early cause they have kids and they were all excited bout Christmas. Though that wasn’t what woke me. I woke to the pumping bass of ‘crocodile rock‘, ‘rocket man‘ and I was convinced there was ‘don’t let the sun go down on me‘ in there somewhere. Sometimes Kiwis let themselves down so badly. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the kids CD, I think it was the missus who got the lovely Elton John CD. At least I hope so…

So lie-in ruined, I had brekkie, had a shower then got up and realised I’d got it all in the wrong order again and now had very wet jammies. Took a walk round the marina and was amazed by the emptiness of the place – it’s always buzzing round here and it was the first time I’ve seen it empty. Walking round the car park at the harbour mouth there was a wee old man in a car throwing bread at the sea gulls. I did my usual guessing what brought him here on a Christmas morning and I figured he was an old ANZAC war vet whose wife died a few years ago and now he spends Christmas mornings here feeding the sea gulls for company. This felt kind of tragic, but I do this to people all the time. I then realised he was aiming the bread at the sea gulls and was trying to hit them and given that they were really crowding round his car now I figured this was a self-defence tactic.

One of my bosses had invited me to spend Christmas day with his family and I took him up on the offer. It was great craic as we went to his friends house (an Irish couple, ex-teachers in Kenya,  the husband from the Castlereagh road and currently reading a Van Morrison biography – I liked them immediately). Had a wonderful Christmas lunch of turkey, ham and wait for it – beef as well. The day was going well. And even though it was someone elses family it was still kind of cool to be with a bunch of folk who grew up together and share their own idiosyncrasies and jokes. And they couldn’t have been more welcoming. They even bought me pressies which was entirely uncalled for.

Unfortunately I’d suckered myself into having to work from 5pm. One of those moments when you offer to do something for someone else for ‘brownie points’ but hoping, of course that they’ll not actually take you up on the offer. So I made a token gesture to one of the other bosses that I could work Christmas evening so he could get home and have a feed with his family. And of course he took me up on the offer.

Got home about 11.30pm and fell asleep in my clothes on the sofa while looking up Fructose 1,6 diphosphatase deficiency (we had a a patient in the unit with it) on the internet – guaranteed to put you to sleep I suppose. Woke in a sweaty, confused and nauseous manner at 5 am to ring home. I was top of the bill at the annual Neill family Christmas. I think I even managed to bump the queen off the top spot this year.

And so 14 of my family greeted me via webcam and skype from the far side of the world, and suddenly they didn’t seem nearly so far away. Disturbingly they had a cardboard Santa with an A4 sized head shot of me stuck over the face of the santa. Effigy is a word that springs to mind.

Fell asleep in the calm knowledge that I’m not forgotten (and that maybe I should ring my family a bit more often…) and that maybe I’m not that far away after all. Woke at 7.30am realising that I’d fallen asleep on the sofa again and I was now late for work and I was mostly adhered to the sofa – darn leather (sofa, not trousers that is…)

Psalm of single-mindedness

A psalm of single mindedness (that I found in a 1970s magazine!)

Lord of reality, make me real
Not plastic, synthetic, pretend phony
An actor playing out his part, hypocrite
I don’t want to keep a prayer list
But to pray
Nor agonise to find your will
But to obey what I already know
To argue theories of inspiration
But submit to your word
I don’t want to explain the difference
Between eros, philos and agape
But to love
I don’t want to sing as if I mean it
I want to mean it
I don’t want to tell it like it is
But to be it, like you want it
I don’t want to think another need me
But I need him, else I’m not complete
I don’t want to tell others how to do it
But to do it
To have to always be right
But admit it when I’m wrong
I don’t want to be a census taker
But an obstetrician
Nor an involved person, a professional
But a friend
I don’t want to be insensitive
But to hurt where other people hurt
Nor to say I know how you feel
But to say GOD knows
And I’ll try, if you’ll be patient with me
And meanwhile I’ll be quiet
I don’t want to scorn the clichés of others
But to mean everything I say
Including this

Tagliatelli (?) carbonara for one

-         half packet of not so fresh, fresh pasta from last week some time.
-         Two slices of processed ham
-         Sliced bargain, value cheese
-         50ml (a splash or so unitl the pan looks sufficiently full) fresh cream
-         few dollops of greek yoghurt that was lying in the fridge and looks good in a pan on cooking programmes.
Bring all ingredients to the boil by mistake cause you walk off to the other room during it and you’re not too sure of how the cooker works anyhow. Take all pans off the hob cause it’s boiled over. Panic and try to wipe off the cheese from the hot hob with cloth. Panic yet further when cloth melts onto hob. Burning acrylic/polyester everywhere. Turn hob back on. Wait until cheese in pan has melted. Realise you should have added corn flour or that stuff that they give people with strokes to thicken their feeds. Take pans back off hobs as boiling over. Mix all together in big pan. Taste. If vision still present consume. Realsie half-way through that adding some of the 15 bulbs of garlic that you bought to dish may have been nice. Resolve not to forget again.
Honey chilli beef with noodles for one:
-         left over steak from last night. The steak that you thought would be good like a sirloin but is actually tough as old boot.
-         Soy sauce
-         Chilli powder (do not rub eyes)
-         Half onion (do not rub eyes)
-         Rest of bag of cashew nuts from early September
-         Few spring onions till pile on chopping board looks obscene.
Cut up steak, narrowly avoid major artery. Consider risk of gout and heart disease. Dismiss risk. Put steak chunks in bowl and cover in soy sauce to ‘marinade’. Feel smug that you think you know what marinade means.  Think briefly about marmalade and wonder if words are related. Boil kettle. Add water to kettle and boil again. Add water to noodles. Attempt to read Chinese instructions on noodles and give up. Day dream briefly about Chinese symbol for ‘marinade’. Remove pan from hob as it boils over. Cook steak bits. Chop vegetables. Rub eyes. Place inedible bits of vegetables in waste disposal unit. Press button. Realise you put the chopped veg in the waste disposal unit and the inedible bits in pan. Swear. Consider sticking fingers in waste disposal unit to retrieve veg. Realise fingers are too big to fit. Swear. Chop more vegetables. Have inspirational idea to add lots of honey to pan. Do so. Drain noodles in sink. Loose 50% of noodles to join veg in waste disposal unit. Serve. Half-way through realise adding garlic may have been good idea.