I went for an MRI – turned out to be a horrible but retrospectively amusing experience, I suppose. Just to be clear nothing awful to report about results just the process.

Just reviewed this blog. This has been written in the daytime, when the I am a lot saner. Not half as good is it. Bit contrived to be funny. Ughhh. Actually quite horrible like from a second rate 1970’s book of humorous stories written by a washed up TV weather forecaster. [think my Dad owned that book) Never mind. I will leave it. Make sure it never gets included in the complete works.

So – pain and very poor mobility.

It was in Tescos car park. As we approached all I could see was a ladder sticking out of the back of an articulated lorry – and yes I really did think and report to Maria that I would be able to manage to climb up it. Needless to say they had a disabled lift and all the works. I also needed a wee. On that front they were less well prepared. They didn’t have one and the nearest was a good trek and my capabilities at that time amounted to about 20 strides of wheeless zimmer. I was assured that it would only take 20 minutes to do the scan but then the staff who had a slight ‘Kwikfit’ vibe checked my MOT on Spine booking and said 40 minutes. I began to sweat. Relief appeared to be at hand when I offered to take a quick leak in a bush, however due to the Tesco security cameras and the reluctance of the staff to license this anarchy this was out too. 40 minutes, I would have to call upon my SAS training and just push through. ‘Oh by the way’ I said in the waiting area accompanied I must say by some very pleasant amusing and trying to be helpful fitters – ‘I have a cough does that matter?’The verdict seemed at first to be don’t cough. The sweat began to stream. This was modified to  ‘don’t cough when the machine makes a noise and if you have to squeeze the buzzer so we can pause the recording and redo it.’ ‘The whole of it ?’ I said.  Imagining a never ending cycle of pauses and rescans. ‘No just that particular scan.’ I could say I was reassured by this but I was actually too far gone and complete panic was setting in. Off we set to walk to the scanner. I reached for my zimmer, ‘can’t take that, it will stick to the wall and we won’t be able to remove it.’Needless to say I had forgotten this as well. So like Fonteign and Nuriev me and fitter sort of danced toward the scanner. He must have been taught a fancy way of how to do it safely because he held both his hands in front of him clutched together high on his chest just like a ballet dancer and I hung onto those somewhat romantically as if readying myself to do a show stopping pirouette.  Next step lie down flat. Basically I had forgotten the degree to which my body currently resists that simple idea and given that my anxiety had induced a plank like rigidness from my top to my toes this was gonna hurt and it did.

So to summarise, needing a wee, not allowed to cough, painful back – I had 40 minutes to prove that I could survive interrogation by benign funny helpful but unknowingly cruel physical and psychological torturers. It wasn’t quite over. They tried to attach a face cover, initially quite patiently but then with more than a little kwik fit elbow grease. I let out an oww so they gave that up presumably leaving my face exposed to whatever Chernobyl lay in wait within the tube. They stuck in some silicon earplugs and then bizarrely some headphones on top of those which appeared to be broadcasting the voices of sirens luring me onto some rocks or previous patients plaintively keening to be allowed to go for a wee till I realised it was the gunk on my chest weasing and echoing back down the line.

The system tells you how long each scan will take. I think the longest is 5 minutes the rest are three or four so I paced myself and held on until the gaps and then coughed. As each scan passed I told myself that at least I would not have to repeat that one and by the end of the 40 minutes I was reasonably calm almost ready for another go. NOT.

It was over. I was jovial and they said I had done really well. I felt like a child. It was nice. I didn’t need a wee anymore.

Finally, can I say I know people who put up with so much more pain and fear than I do but I have been told not to be so self effacing and modest so for me this little victory was actually quite big so I feel quite proud. Bravo me.

Recently It was suggested I write within a day, three short examples of Flash Fiction for Christmas. I think it was on Christmas Eve. Anyway, in that same spirit of less self effacement I think they turned out pretty good so I am going to post them one at a time. I wrote about them before in this blog but that bit vanished when the app crashed and stopped publishing. Last time I explained them and apologised on behalf of them. This time I won’t.j

The skateboard park

Santa was already there despite it being Christmas Eve he had been there all day, just hanging out. He didn’t need to skateboard as he had a sleigh that was faster and could carry passengers and presents. So he just sat on the concrete and watched the children play.

The children were troubled. They had been told to watch out for men, on their own hanging about watching, so they called the police who were too busy and said that Santa was well-loved and they didn’t need to worry.

One of the brave girls asked Santa what he was doing and said he should be out doing his deliveries. He agreed but didn’t budge. So the girl went back to doing some quite showy offy tricks. Santa clapped obligingly which warmed everybody’s heart and made the atmosphere much better and jolly as you would expect.

Eventually Santa stood up tightened his belt and Rudolf knew him well enough to know that this meant it was time to go. So off they both went. The other children went home to leave mince pies and sherry out for Santa even though it would have been easier to give it to him before he left. Only the brave little girl stayed to show off some more.

To me.

I have been blogging away in the night while under the influence of steroids but my app stopped publishing, so now I have lots of material in a bit of a mess. I have been advised by the beloved one that brevity is a virtue and that I do go on a bit, so rather than it wait until it’s in the Bodleian I will publish it in chunks that may have succumbed to chronological hysteria.

I suppose the headline news is I am currently pretty incapacitated, bit like, but not as bad as 10 years ago. Pain is well under control and frankly that’s really the only thing that can break my spirit so I am perfectly cheerful. There is always an absurdist element that overwhelms the orderly progress of serious medical care and I suppose I relish those moments at least in retrospect. I will relay those in due course. Hopefully on Thursday there will be a bit more strategy and a bit less bumbling about but you never know. Meantime I read, I write, I stagger with next doors zimmer – poor Jenny 78 can’t shower till I get my new one – delayed by Amazon (we gave my last one away – hmmm over optimistic), I eat a lot (that’s steroids again) , I learn German, watch disturbing German movies with subtitles, watch you tube videos on film theory and demand 24 hour care from Maria. The latter is a source of guilt but insufficient to prevent me from demanding it anyway. All in all I am a slothful, fat, drug addict. Great company – do drop by!

I don’t acknowledge New Years I don’t care. It’s nothing personal. Don’t be offended.

‘So Chris if it’s not new year, when do you feel an urge sufficient to put finger to iPad and write a blog post.’

(Unusually I have reviewed this blog post) You can skip the next two paragraphs (what a load of drivel) the proper post starts with ‘Two dear friends from my opera directing past sent us a Christmas card.’

But then on reviewing it again I have decided to save that stuff until another post.

My oft repeated response has been, “when I need to vent something and like an over inflated balloon I will explode if I don’t” – but that’s not entirely true. A certain combination of factors must also be present. If I am too over inflated, – let’s call it very worried, then the distance I need from the emotional hot spot, – let’s call it oh my god someone is going to die, I am going to die, my favourite cat it going to die or that old favourite Maria, has been, will be, wants to be abducted by aliens,  is not sufficient to elicit the ‘write a blog you will feel better response.’ So in this case dear reader, no news can mean bad news (don’t forget I am always the dear reader I write this for)  but let’s not panic, no news can at the best of times mean  good news, because there is no hot spot emotional or otherwise to require an evaluation of distance to be triggered  hence no blog post, blessed relief for all. Got it. I am not sure I have – and yes I am in steroid, pain killer, and double dose chemo heaven, that special place where just about any combination of words posited sufficiently early in the morning seem like drops of the profoundest wisdom until you read them a few months later and they reveal their true value – None nothing nichts. So let’s carry on writing nowt.

One of the things that this disease can trigger is liver/kidney problems. If you have blood in your wee or trouble going or not going to the toilet then ring the hospital. Anyway a day or two ago I had none of those issues, but my hands did turnbright yellow. Now one of the symptoms of serious illness is hypercondria so my brain leapt to ‘yellow skin = internal organ failure probably liver.” It did not leap to ‘you have just been handling a brand new pot of Curcumin tablets, derived from that yellowish of Indian cuisine herbal delicacies turmeric.” By the time it had, I had (1) opened the curtains to check if the sun was rising and had had somehow miraculously imparted its hue through the curtains onto my hands, (2) checked whether my reading light bulb was failing and spreading yellow rather than white light into the bedroom and (3) scrutinised my face with my iPhone camera searching for tell tale signs of ‘sunflower syndrome’ where selected boldly extremities go the colour of a well known Van Gogh flower arrangement. Yep it was one those drug induced moments of hallucinatory fear that I had quite forgotten I would experience in irrational waves until my brain remembers that the kind of poison currently being administered is the good kind and stops scaring the pants off me.

Two dear friends from my opera directing past sent us a Christmas card. I checked that the e-mail address I had for them was still connected and to my delight…………….