https://youtu.be/6Krv2MT6UCk

Check out the side effects of just one of my drugs in the video above – needless to say now that I have read about them I have them all! The highlight is – “take this drug and you might get cancer” – well bugger me I hadn’t thought of that! something else to add to the worry list.

i am sorry i keep going on about my treatment but when it isn’t pissing me off it fascinates me. What a funny way to treat a disease, to poison the person with it and make them ill and susceptible to other diseases. Its quite medieval like sticking your head in a beehive to get rid of head lice – yes there really was something like that – must be true cos i saw it on TikTok (btw must delete it again – addictive).

Today I begin my week off the the two cytotoxic drugs so i hope by Friday to be back out clubbing with Maria (family dont know this every Friday night we like to do the Micklegate run in York finish off by groping some fire officers and puking up our donners in the back of an Uber) until it all kicks off again on next Wednesday after seeing my consultant for a checkup to make sure my system is coping – it is i’m pretty sure.

When i get cheesed off i remember Lisa’s friend who has been on an even more extravagant gift basket of daily drugs for years and years and just gets on with it – but for now, for me its quite new, to start each and every day with a ritual swallowing routine that lasts several minutes after which you feel a lot worse than you did before you started – which is fairly bad after a night of pissing and not pooing or vice versa. Perhaps it would help if i had a sacred space where this event could unfold (make it a bit more special like getting that wafer thing from jesus – ‘communion’ its a word like epiphany that i can never remember) and maybe some Roman house gods to guide me, a few candles, incense, even humanist prayers (is there such a thing somehow i doubt it) accompanied by humming or whale noises or Enja but just gulping them all down and trying not to gag on the steroids – (aaaahhhh – they are disgusting if you get one under the tongue and it starts to dissolve)

-sort of trivialises the idea that these innocuous little babies sealed in their little silver cradles are my life force – without them i am a gonna. I feel a poem coming on – — – — — — — – – – nope its gone…

YUK – the most noticeable side effect, other than the constipation which is now under control (phew), is the taste bud decimation. i actually spat a sausage out while watching ‘Call My Agent’ (grab on netflix ‘toot sweet’) – i don’t think i have spat something out with such ferocity since primary school orange sponge – i actually tasted like one imagines a partially embalmed slug to taste (flabby/firm and chemically) – and it was an expensive Italian sausage from a posh deli – what a waste. i plan to leave this story as is but it is a tiny weeny bit of a lie because maria believes the culprit to be bad defrosting hygiene rather than my taste buds but that takes us off topic and spoils the story – but yeh its likely they were on the turn. We may have been ‘infected’ by Nonna quaint country ways – she sticks uncooked italian (the same incredibly expensive) sausage in the fridge and leaves it to dry out for a few weeks so she can eat it like salami – if Maria find its she bins it and tells her off – but i think some sneaky amateur meat curing maybe going on – Uncooked pork, ‘matured for a month’ in a slightly damp old fridge, ingested by a 90 year old who has no functioning chewing teeth and a continuous gippy (putting it mildly) stomach is probably not in the manual of health eating for the older person, but we apply the philosophy extolled by the pharmacist who queried the combination of drugs Maria was collecting for Nonna (apparently a dangerous combo) until Maria said her Mum was nearly 90 at which point the Pharmacist congratulated her on her longevity pronouncing ‘if she can get to 90 on that combo then she’s doing brilliantly and nobody should mess with that.’ so lashings of class A drugs for tea for Nonna.

for me most things taste bland (which is fine) – salt and sweet perception seems to have disappeared a few things are really gross – biggest loss chocolate and sweeties both of which maintain the textural features but taste a bit they might be trying to be good for you because they contain a chocolate substitute made from deodorised cuttlefish extract and the sort of sand you keep your pet lizards in. Side effect of the thalidomide – WEIGHT LOSS – i wonder why? But thats a bonus i suppose.

Tuffin 9

The shed was once grandads. He is dead with coughing all his life. I was a bit sad as he was an inventor like me but I was glad because we got all his tins as well as his shed. I don’t think grandad liked anything other than things and wrestling. I know that because he left one hundred and forty one tins called old Virginia with different things in them. Some of them have just one thing in like a door bolt or a chain but others have hundred of little things like staples or washers. Some things are sticky and some are dry and chalky. Although he has painted what they are on the side of the tin I had to ask dad what a grommet was and he said be careful. Grommets don’t look dangerous but I suppose you never know. Swallowing would be fine as they have a hole in them, you could still breath. I suppose you could put one on your willy because that how they make dogs stop being bad so it might work on boys. It didn’t work at all on March so you might end up going on holiday and never coming back.

I know about the wrestling because we watched it together on Saturday afternoons and it was the only time he didn’t cough because he was too busy shouting. Once he shouted so hard he kicked his bottle of beer across the carpet. After that the room always smelt nice but grandma said it made her sick and that grandad made her sick and that she would sit in the kitchen, but she stayed in the sitting room and watched the wrestling with us which was nice because she let me lean across her lap like a dog.

I miss my dog. I wish he wasn’t dead.

When I grow up I will bring my March back to life and my Grandad but not my Grandma. I may have to turn on the worm hole again.

Mum had dropped a milk bottle in the new fridge and it had split the plastic shelf. Now she is crying on the bed.

I want to invent something with the bag of taps. I have decided that they have been put there to stop me using the electric saw. I respect that because all tools are dangerous in the wrong hands. There are probably a hundred taps in the bag. Why would a house need a hundred taps? That’s fifty baths or sinks or twenty five of each type. That’s very clean people or clothes or washing up.

I note the connection with my remaining hole and write it down as a clue in my list.  It seems that someone has planned to makes lots of new baths to go with mine. I think about keeping this a secret as it might be important but the cat had my tongue so I let it out to Jill. She says her dad will know because he has some medals from the war. I tell her not to tell him yet because of his gun.

Brainwave!

That’s what I will make. A tap makes a perfect gun. That way if Jill’s dad were to want to kill us instead of the rats I could defend us. It’s a pity the rose perfumed wax didn’t explode as my book on guns (opened so many times the glue holding the pages has dropped out so it no longer a book just pages) tells me I need a propellant. There is no mention of rose petals or wax but there is mention of charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur in five/seven/five proportions to make gunpowder. The best charcoal is made from willow, it says, so I roast my cricket bat in the old bread bin using dads blow torch. It takes a long time and a lot of paraffin at at the end of it my head hurts and my eyes hurt a lot. Jill says that’s a good sign.

Tomorrow I will ask Dad to get me some some saltpetre and sulphur.

When I grow up I want to be a pyroman and to fix mum’s new fridge.

I started a big moan and then my site went wrong (problem with the migration for as you may note I am now on a uk domain run by Lisa’s totally brilliant brother Khairil – thoroughly recommended for all your web technical concerns – bloody genius in my view and loves my phone box!) – anyway i am looking 9 months pregnant with twins as against my usual 4 months with a single. Its really gross but bloating and constipation is a side effect – joy oh joy – i really need to strengthen my core to hold it all in or get a girdle. i am really not to keen on my body at the mo – i feel it might be letting me down – my brain however is a strange fusion of excitement, verbosity and ‘articulateness’ – i am churning out Tuffin stories – and my online teaching sessions this week have gone really well – or at least thats what i think – the students may not agree – but my memory is shot and i keep dropping things – blimey old and crap or what. The zimmer is being dragged out the loft cos the old back is a bastard again but during the day i can walk about just fine its at night and the trips to either do nothing consequential in the bowel department, not to be able to pee because that shuts down at night (so i probably have prostate cancer as well) or pee for five minute stretches cos some drug or other makes you pee like an open drain pipe. I am pissed off!

but actually feeling very creative – doing a lot of work – with Khairils help i have been able to resurrect the old CrestNetwork site – the proudest achievement of my academic career- where my short film with Lee Ridley can be seen plus videos of Maria singing weird stuff with speech synthesisers for Russian TV and a load of other weird stuff with speech tech.

oh danger danger – am i living in the past? – resting on a few old achievements to make me feel worthwhile – yep – oh never mind.

Here’s some more Tuffin

Tuffin 6

Now that I only make inventions I only have time for one hole so I shut the worm hole, fill in the compost hole and that just leaves the bath. I think Dad would be cross if I did something with that as the bathroom would be empty and we would all be dirty. Jill is still nice so I didn’t need to take her off my list of people but Andrew is new so he has moved to the top.

My bike has two cross bars but they are thin. This isn’t a mistake it’s modern. It troubles me a bit because I expected one cross bar but as the bike cost dad £16 and Andrew’s cost his dad £14.00 its higher on the list. His has white tyres mine are black with white round the edge. We scramble with them so they get messy and end up the same colour . Jill can’t play because her bike doesn’t have a cross bar at all. She wee’d in the middle of the road when I told her. I looked but Andrew didn’t. She laughed at him but only as a joke. I think I like Jill best but there is a problem with her bike.

I have invented a cross bar for Jill. I found a stick in the wood near the station and cut it to the right length with my hacksaw. This is not the right saw but it’s the only one I am allowed. I want to use the electric one grandad made from an old washing machine but someone had left a bag of old taps on it and I can’t lift it off. I sellotaped the stick onto Jill’s bike and she is really pleased and promised not to wee in the road anymore. Andrew is pleased about that. Jill scrambles with us now all the time. She is quite fast because of the cross bar. When she wins Andrew sings a song about the crossbar. “Crossbar star I love you.” It goes.  I can’t remember the rest but it’s good. I think Andrew might prefer Jill’s bike to his. He needs a hacksaw.

When I grow up I want to use the electric saw and give Andrew my Hacksaw.

Here is a list of our scramble races.

Round 1 Winners
Me
Me
Andrew
Jill
Me

Round 2 winners
Me
Jill
Jill
the rest of the races weren’t recorded as they were just for fun

Overall winner Tuffin (Me)

Tuffin 7

When I am not inventing I like to watch the pigeons on our roof. We get loads because Jill’s dad has built a pigeon house in the back garden next to the pond. So before they go to bed the pigeons  walk around the roof of our house. I suppose they are not tired yet.  I give them names and voices. If I am with Andrew or Jill I talk outloud but if I am on my own I talk inside my head as if I am inside a wireless. I wonder what would happen to the pigeons if I turned the worm hole back on and they accidentally flew inside. Where would they go. Would they fly off and meet that dead Pekingese. That would be bad because they make nice cooing noises and nobody would know they were there because of all the snorting from that dead dog.

I love wireless’s  even if they don’t work. As well as making saws from washing machines Grandad knew how to fix them. He gave me a bread tin full of radio parts. Some are glass, some are China and some are rubber a few are made of wax. I lit one like it was a candle using dads blow torch. It melted but didn’t burn much. The smell was bad so I mixed in some rose petals to cover it up. I thought I had invented a fire perfume maker. Andrew thought it smelt ok but would probably work better as an explosive so we hit it with a hammer but that did nothing so we threw it all away and went back to the pigeons but they had gone to bed.

When I grow up I want to be a perfumer.

Now I have three holes and lots and lots of stones. My three holes are –

The worm hole in my room that means I don’t ever have to be a child

The hole next to the compost where I can smoke my pipe like dad and sleep with Jill

The bath that is really another compost hole but indoors and drains and drains.

You know about my stones.

This was enough things for me to start my research at the library.

The library was a lorry. At first this confused me as the normal lorries carried bread and coal not books. This one has a door in the side and steps and a rubber stamp and a librarian called Linda that my mum knows from Bexley where my Nan is in hospital for trying to cook her head in the oven. Linda doesn’t mention this but she does say that the book my mum wants is in, so my mum is pleased and doesn’t have to pay. I ask for books on worm holes and stones but Linda suggests ‘Bom the Little Drummer’ so I take that instead. It’s a good book because Boms’ drum rolls down the hill and that gives me an idea for an invention so instead of holes and stones I ask if l can have a book on inventions. Linda says she will bring one in a fortnight when I return Bom. That’s the trouble with libraries you have to give the books back. The best thing about a book is keeping it. That’s more important than reading it. I keep my books on my shelves in order of how may times they have been opened. The unopened ones are the best but I only have one – ‘The Observers book of Freshwater Fish’ – Auntie Margaret got it for me so I could look up ‘minnow’ but after she gave it me she also tried to cook her head in the oven so Dad said best to leave it shut.

When I grow up I want to be an inventor and invent something round like a stone or a hole or a wheel – something that goes somewhere.

Dad gives me his old pipe. Jill and I move to a hole we dig next to the compost.

We cover the top of the hole with an old table top and some sacks. Inside it’s dark and cosy. We make a carpet of grass cuttings on the floor and dig a second small sideways hole as a cupboard where we keep Dads pipe. “Our hole is our home now” I say.  I take the pipe and place it between my teeth and blow. “See” I say. Jill laughs and presses another layer of grass clippings onto the floor. “It’s really soft” she says. “Feel.”  I push my fingers into the grass and blow on the pipe. “The hole smells of Dad.” We laugh and push each other and make rude dad noises and smells. Then Jill makes cups of tea and keeps things tidy while I smoke my pipe and keep guard. We try lying down. The hole is just wide enough that we can lie head to toe our faces pressed into the wall of mud on either side –  as we do so the rain falls. We pretend to sleep until the hole begins to fill with rain. We don’t dream. Then Jill has to go home to have tea and mum gives me a bath. When I get out of the bath I leave a lot of wet grass and mud behind. “Look the hole has come inside” I say to mum as it drains and drains.

When I grow up I want to dig a hole to Australia.

So 2:33 am and not quite the walk in the park I was hoping for.

Just completed week one of the new drug regime. Certainly nothing too terrible or too gross. One thing is apparent again this time – drugs designed to do one thing or with side effects that spring off one way prescribed alongside drugs drugs designed to the opposite thing with side effect springing off the opposite way are always going to have unpredictable outcomes. One imagines seedy night clubs in exotic third world locations featuring arm wrestling bouts between rival treatments ‘wake him up’ no sedate him’ bung him up’ no loosen him.’ At some point one hopes the body just goes ‘ahh grow up you lot – I am just going to sit here nice and calm until you lot are friends again.’ They are not friends yet.

Before I go on I want to apologise, no I don’t, I want to warn you, that one totally reliable outcome of my cancer cocktail is I become aggressive, not physically, but verbally. The worst occasion was after my one night in hospital with chronic constipation, an episode I am ashamed of to this day – sorry NHS! Sorry Maria! Sorry Arthur! – when I went into a total victor meldew melt down just because they were late getting a form signed to discharge me. What was worst was it was (in my mind anyway) a highly articulate and analytical tirade calling upon my most effective language skills honed in the court rooms of academic conference meticulously dissecting all the key components leading up to the intolerable extra hours spent blocking a comfy bed in a valuable NHS resource. I probably said most of that. Alternatively it may have come across as a straight to Video court room drama staring an actor called Brett something defending a client called Carlene something facing ‘the chair’ for murdering her oil magnate husband who has actually arranged for a body double to be killed in his place in order that he can implicate his wife, divorce her without paying alimony and move to Columbia with his drug dealer chauffeur and gay lover. Either way it was crass and mean. True I was seeing everything around me with a fur coating as though all the walls were made of hirsute meringue however that was no excuse for the Jeckell and Hyde performance I provided to family and the ward. Sooooory! That day I used up all my unreasonable patient credit and I vow not to do it again.

But I will be unreasonable about everything else.

I have no great gripe with the Royal Family. I would like to see the institution dissolved and restored to it rightful ‘museum relics the nation is justifiably a little ashamed of’ status but other than that I don’t have any great issues. But to point out the obvious about Phil = lots of equally important individuals who haven’t spent their years living in palaces and crashing cars and have also done their duty (whatever that vacuous sentiment means) are dying everyday, currently a good number of them before their time. No individual matters anymore than any other. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the queen, the prime minister, Johnny Depp are-famous and privileged and arrogant and ok at times and boring and funny and hungry and sad and tolerable and intolerable and that’s it – they are not deities – nobody is, deities don’t exist – and if they did, and were any good, the last thing they would want would to be worshipped – so enough is enough no more pap and ceremoany no more suffocating coverage BBC, no more mawkish members of the general public saying things like ‘we won’t see another one like that.’ He was a posh, occasionally amusing, often racist big gob who persuaded a lot of middle class young people that you prepare for life’s ups and down by going orienteering or volunteering to sing daisy daisy in an old people’s home for two weeks before you go to Uni to learn how to be a hedge fund manager. Guillotine the lot of them – oh who said that? – get back in your box bad druggy Chris!

Yet again I contemplate giving up my Labour Party membership as the balls of the party shrink like a docked rams testicles. Ok I know this kinda hackneyed macho language is unacceptable but have you seen the time I am writing this? We need Jess Phillips as leader she doesn’t want or need balls. True she is not exactly the socialist ideal we had with JC (Corbyn not Christ) but she has what it takes and she can communicate effectively though to the northern red wall and the Notting hill virtue signallers like me. What a pity she decided she wasn’t up to it, but isn’t that the most commendable act that clearly demonstrates her leadership credentials? Labour Party membership for me had always been a uncharacteristically balanced act on my part. There is no party in the World that actually represents my political views, unless Noam Chomsky decides to become a party one day, so my civic responsibility is to support the party that gets closest. Under Corbyn I felt I belonged – he fucked up big time not dealing with the anti-semitic legacy of some of labours super-pack – but he wanted to do lots of things that will have to come to pass sooner not later if humanity is to make it past my sisters latest grandchild’s 50th. Keir’s solution to JC’S electoral train wreck is to promote patriotism. WHAT! Patriotism is what inspires the right! Leave Boris to do the Trumpian flag cuddling. KEIR we are the left, we promote Internationalism it’s kinda the opposite. What party are you leading. I find him very boring and he’s a lawyer and I don’t like lawyers as a rule. Guillotine the lot of them – oh who said that? – get back in your box bad druggy Chris!

Tuffin 3

My stones are kept in my room under the bed. It’s the room I was born in – the one with the worm hole. Nobody knows they are there except me and Jill. Jill lives next door and has a guinea pig and her dad has a gun that he uses to shoot rats that bother the guinea pig even though the guinea pig is really a fat rat. Perhaps that why the rats bother the guinea pig, to get back at her for being fat. They also have a pond so that’s where we get the stones. Someone has pretended the pond is a beach by putting stones like the ones at the seaside all around it. We take them when nobody is looking specially her dad, we don’t want to get shot like the rats. We take them up to my bedroom crawl under the bed and pretend we are in the bank, counting the stones, saving them for later, writing a list of them in order of specialness. The best ones are smooth and flat just like coins. Jill says her brother knows how to skim coins like that so that they skip across the water. I wonder if I will ever be able to do that when I grow up.

When I grow up I want to go to the seaside and skim coins and be rich. I want to marry Jill and sleep with her so we can share our dreams and talk about them the next day.

Here is my list of the top 10 stones – they are all boy stones – no copper values

Name	Value
David	£1
James	15/-
Peter	12/- 6d
Robin	10/-
Clive	7/- 6d
Keith	5/-
Steven	2/- 6d
Simon	2/-
John	1/-
Randy	6d

Tuffin 2

Like a bath that never empties the worm hole stays open and drains its contents into the back garden of number nine. Dad is angry as it leaves a wet stain down the wall  and a permanent puddle that threatens to undermine the foundations of the house. So he says!  I believe this to be a moan, not a proper problem. Moans are common in comfortable families they substitute for proper problems when there aren’t enough of those to go round.

At age four dogs are my favourite thing and I love them and think about them all the time. When I grow up I want to work in a zoo for dogs.

Also

Dogs are great – Corgis are the greatest – Corgi cars make me think of driving one day and that makes me feel big.

March our Corgi dog presents a problem not a moan. Unlike April and May (we still see them from time to time around the village – I think March may be a cousin but I am not sure) he is predisposed to activity and is in a permanent state of emergency as if he had a siren and blue lights. In an emergency he killed a Pekingese dog that belonged to Number Fifteen – broke its back. Nobody in the Rise liked the Peke except Number Fifteen of course (they must have, as they had two the same (everyone in The Rise seems to like to keep pairs of dogs – perhaps it’s about symmetry or an offer or good luck)) they made a sound like a pig not a dog so people hated them. Dogs should sound like dogs in the same way as people should talk not bark. Anyway even though March only killed one of them, Number Fifteen complained to the police and so March went on holiday to a kennel. He never came back so I guess he must have liked it. That was the last dog we ever had. I expected another one to come through the worm hole but the worm hole never does things if you expect them. I find you need a real thing to sustain an interest, just imagining doesn’t work, so without a real dog, on my fifth birthday I decided I liked stones better. After all I had lots of those – oh and cats but more about that much later.

When I grow up I want to drive a car and look after pumas.

I have been obsessed by a character called Tuffin for a good while now. He appeared publicly at the end of the Easter Broadcast but he has had quite a number of private airings in various stories and poems. As I have a tendency to wake up early with the drugs ringing in my brain and need something to do other than Pinterest and TikTok and the Guardian and Ebay I have started writing very short chapters of what may turn out to be ‘The Life of Tuffin’ (working title). I am disinclined to set myself the goal of writing a novel/saga/epistle/memoire (its such a cliche and i wont do it anyway – much too much work) instead I will drip feed each tiny chapter as a blog post as frequently as my inclination and productivity permits – they will never be more than 500 words and usually less. They will all be first drafts usually completed in less than 30 minutes (so if your feedback refers to such inconsequential details as spelling and grammar please refrain from providing it cos i don’t care). My plan is to polish and reassemble them once I have lots.

I don’t expect anyone to actually read them but the possibility that somebody might is sufficient motivation to drive me away from videos of poor doggies being rescued from the ice at the last second or delivery drivers throwing parcels over garden walls that haunt me in the early hours if I am left to my own rudderless devices. See what i did there – two different meanings of the word devices captures both my mental state and the physical act of Ipadding that gives rise to said mental state.

They will be set against the ‘eau du nil’ tint below so you can navigate around them if you are not interested or really annoyed by them. Mind you if that’s the case you must always find this blog uninteresting and annoying unless you have a voyeuristic fascination in me and my illnesses, enjoy reading stuff where i show off off about my family, love a bit of pretentious arty crap, enjoy an ill educated rant about politics and religion from an opinionated arsehole, or just relish being able to spot the incorrect use of the semicolon and over use of the —- dash.

Anyway tough! let us proceed with Tuffin Chapter 1 – see what i did there Tough -> Toughin -> Tuffin

I am on a roll today!

Tuffin 1

The two Corgi dogs are named April and May. Dad doesn’t enquire why, nor does he note the coincidence, but he dutifully takes them to the woods and attempts to persuade them to do their number twos. Despite the encouragement, the dogs indicate by acts of canine prostration, that they would prefer to stay in the warmth of the back seat of the Austin A40 parked outside Number 9 The Rise. The Austin and the Corgis belong to the midwife concurrently encouraging June (my Mother) to push me out of her womb into the front bedroom of number nine The Rise, the 6^th detached house looking up the road from the station, on the left-hand side of the road.

I note the coincidence, the processional nature of the dogs names leading to my mother’s name as the first of many pleasing patterns, puzzles and serendipitous occurrences that give rise to my arrival in England on January 16^th 1957 at 4:37 pm covered in my own and my mothers number twos and provide my first dataset (see below) for a lifetime obsession with recording such happy accidents.

As I arrive, and to  the midwifes and my mother’s surprise, the excessive faecal lubrication causes me to slip through a space time worm hole (that has formed in the front bedroom of Number 9 The Rise, while dad is out dog walking and thus unable to prevent it –  thus i find myself circumventing mother’s breast, Terry nappies, Farley’s rusks, the horror of polio vaccinations, rides into the village on the back of my mothers bicycle in a rusty baby seat that rasps my thigh red and all the ensuing and inconsequent crying, fully prepped as a four year old in short plaid trousers with matching shirt [a two piece),  knee length tan socks, lace up brown shoes, a hand knit cardigan courtesy of Auntie Barbara and sporting a silk tie that will in various manifestations will remain around my neck until a trip to Italy one August many years years later persuades me, as a result of the inordinate heat, to take it off. It is July 1961 and I emerge from the worm hole with my own Corgi dog called March and I am called Tuffin.

Dogs	Mother – mine
March – mine	June
April – midwifes
May – midwifes
January 16th 1957 -> July 16th 1961	Days lost in worm hole 1643
	Hours lost in worm hole 39,432
	Minutes lost in worm hole 2,365,920