News from the horsepiddle

I hesitate to write this, as it may look like whingeing and I know there are folk a lot worse off but, well, it’s a real life story, so please just treat it as faithful reportage.

As many of you know, I have been blessed with sciatica and, last December, a man with a very sharp knife rummaged around inside my lower back, decompressed two spinal nerves (good job he reads Wikipedia because that says: “Sciatica is generally caused by the compression of lumbar nerves L4 or L5” and those are the bad boys he zapped) and caused half of one of my discs to become the subject of an “ectomy”. I don’t suppose he actually rummaged an awful lot as I would hope he knew precisely the spot to target; I had my GPS with me just in case.
A month or so after that, I was able to drive my car again (the condition had previously prevented my lifting my left leg to operate the clutch) and everything, if not totally dory, was definitely hunky. Sad to relate, things took a turn for the worse about two months ago and I am back thanking Providence for scientific advancement in the field of analgesia (from the Greek an-, without, + algesis, sense of pain). You can learn a lot reading this blog. My GP told me I should have had an assessment three months after the last one (March) but I’d heard nothing and, when I rang the Orthopaedic Department to make an appointment, the clerk confirmed I should indeed have had one in June. I’d heard nothing.

Anyway, I went the other day and, after asking me to roll my left trouser leg up (which is quite difficult these days, since the knee and ankle are often swollen up to about 1½ times normal size), the doctor made me do some pushing and pulling movements with my foot and then discharged me. Apparently, there is nothing more that can be done surgically to rectify the problem and the period since I had the surgery (11 months) is very short in terms of its effects, which can very commonly take 18 months or more to precipitate a marked improvement.

Things seem to have stabilised over the last week or so to the extent that I am able to walk around the house (slowly) without the walking stick and it only hurts when I walk, as opposed to all the time. It’s not so bad. At least I can play games on the new Wii as long as I stand fairly still. I’ve got a wireless nunchuck and everything!

Letter to a dead Goon

Dear Mr Milligan,

I am so sorry. I know that you’re dead (and, by the way, I suspect I may be one of the few people who actually believed you when you said you were ill) and I bitterly regret that I never had the opportunity to shake your hand before you shuffled off this mortail coil. I am, and always have been, a great admirer and avid devourer of your work – in literature (Puckoon and the Adolf Hitler series spring immediately to mind), radio (The Goon Show – what else?) and television (too many classic appearances in a multitude of programmes to mention). Make no mistake, you were a comic genius in life and the legacy of your work will ensure the continuation of that status even though you are gone.

I am not necessarily a staunch supporter of the quote of that famous Greek bloke, Chilon of Sparta, popularised by the Italian theologian Ambrogio Traversari in 1432, when he translated it into Latin to the now well-known and oft used de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but I respect its obviously well-meant moral assertion.

However, upon a recent sojourn to town, during which I had occasion to visit the local Sue Ryder shop, I bought a copy of your book Robin Hood according to Spike Milligan, the existence of which I am ashamed to admit I was hitherto unaware and was more than happy to fork out £1.50 for the privilege of owning it. I have now read it from cover to cover, having felt obliged to do so.

It is shite.

Yours faithfully, Lois.

P.S. I am really sorry.

Gateshead

This is where I went last week for my association's annual one-day seminar. An iconic view. I flew from Southampton to Newcastle in the company of a colleague who had said to me at the outset, “You don’t mind if I don’t talk to you, do you, only I’ve nearly finished my book and it’s really good!” Well, I didn’t mind as I was myself in the final stages of a particularly riveting Jeffery Deaver.

Anyway, despite not speaking to each other, the journey could hardly have been described as quiet – I reckon the volume control for the propellers was broken. The outside toilet was a bit awkward, too. On arrival, one of the first things to strike me was the open friendliness of north-eastern folk, like the Metro employee who took the trouble to come out of Gateshead station to street level with us, just to give us detailed directions to the Hilton Hotel. I didn’t even take offence at the old lady walking behind me who took the mickey out of my suitcase which seemed to have a mind of its own when it rocked on one wheel then the other as I pulled it along. She laughed as she told me she thought it was “contrary” in that wonderful accent.

We arrived at the hotel, somewhat bedraggled – it was cold, wet and windy - and, when I checked in, the receptionist explained that, although there was a room available, it was a disabled one and did I mind? I held up my walking stick in silent affirmation. When I got into the room, the bathing facilities were breathtaking (about the same size as reception, I reckon) with a huge walk-in shower which I used so many times over the two days I was there, I probably won’t need another wash for at least, ooh, five or six months at least.

I was also very gratified to note that, far from having been phased out (I seem to remember there wasn’t one in the last two hotels I’ve stayed in, despite one being there previously), the trouser press is alive and well; my socks were done to a turn - and lovely and warm, too. Something else I thought had also been phased out on health grounds was the mini-bar; the one in my last hotel was empty. Perhaps this was naive of me, but, when I checked on this occasion, the fridge was chock full of goodies - including, of all things, a packet of Mates. Well, it was very warm in the room.

All in all, a very pleasant and interesting trip, but, unfortunately, I saw little of the city. Wuh divvnt gan oot in bad wethah, ye knah. Tara.

You need to keep hold of your widgets

I decided to tart up the blog with a new template - what d'you think? I quite like it and I tried quite a few before plumping for this one, which is called "Notebook". I got it from this website but I'd like to give you a tip; if you're thinking of mucking around with your Blogger template, copy and save all the scripts and code for your widgets. Because when you download the XML file and upload it to Blogger, it tells you that several most of them are about to be deleted. Why they can't be retained in this process, goodness only knows. Anyway, keep hold of 'em.

Tuesday Challenge #26 - "Summer Holiday"

At last - an entry! Being away oop north until late afternoon Monday and allowing the deadline to creep up on me unawares has resulted in a somewhat rushed effort, comprising pictures from a recent visit to a museum near me called the Ringwood Town and Country Experience. Good job I had them on my laptop (good job I had the laptop with me). When I'm able to upload it to Flickr (which I spent an hour trying this afternoon), I'm going to call it "Let Bygones Be Bygones". Good, eh?

Here is the News

I thought it was about time. Look what's in our garden. I know it's a cucumber because of this: I just managed to take the picture before the yellow alien attacked me. There are also chillis: And strawberries - there are (and have been) more than one, honest! And lettuces: And one or two nice flowers: And today, I went geocaching to add two to my massive total of finds (36, now; don't mock, I've got a poorly leg). On the way, I saw this three-on-one action: Haha, fooled you. I found some pizza growing naturally on a tree near one of the caches: Yesterday, I treated myself to something I've been meaning to for a while. A digital compact. I only had the DSLR and you need a wheelbarrow to take it with you to parties, weddings etc. The compact will slip nicely into my shirt pocket. All of the above were snapped with it and I'm quite pleased with it so far. It's a Canon PowerShot A1100 IS (for the uninitiated, that stands for Image Stabilisation) and it's got a 4x optical zoom, video, and everything! Who knows? There may be more news soon.

Tuesday Challenge #22

Grrr! Oh, sorry, I growled because, despite four attempts, I couldn't e-mail Stu my choice for last week's challenge in time. Apparently, the French internet was being crap when I tried and, when we reached Cherbourg, where we camped for a couple of nights at the end of our holiday, there wasn't even a mobile phone network available! Anyway, I would have submitted this one, which, I think, is the best of my mediocre bunch at the moment. Click for bigness.

Tuesday Challenge #9 - "Vertigo"

#9 required the subject to be at least 30 feet below the camera. This is my entry, which was taken at Askerswell, Dorset, on the way back from Teignmouth on Sunday. Sorry to JG, because it is very similar to hers and I fiddled with lens blur etc. but the tilt shift effect isn't very good, I'm afraid.

Keeling Schedules

After I retired from local government early in 2004, a couple of very nice people gave me a part-time job as Website Manager for the Association of Electoral Administrators, an organisation of which I had been a member whilst I was working full-time. Yawning already, Omally? Tut, I thought you had an open mind. Oh no, that was last week!

All right, so I could keep mentally active by doing Brain Training on the Ninbongo DS but this is real life and involves real people and I interact with several of them every day and spend time with hundreds of them at Conference (including giving an after-dinner speech to over 400 of them one year concerning my vasectomy; I just tarted up this old blog and it seemed to go down fairly well). I promise I’ll come to the point quite soon.

I send out a newsletter every Friday to all 1,560 members and always include a final item under the heading “Weekly Ramblings”, intended to amuse and prove that there is humanity among the dry-as-dust trappings of electoral administration. I’ve actually pinched a good deal of material from this blog, adapting it as necessary, although I’ve used pretty much all I can and now have to write new stuff; something always seems to come up, though. Like yesterday.

Do you know what Keeling Schedules are? If you are familiar with the law, you probably will. Put simply, they comprise the text of a piece of legislation with bits in bold showing any wording inserted by a subsequent piece of legislation and drawing a line through what’s been taken out. With me so far? I thought I might find out a bit more about Keeling Schedules so I could pass on some interesting information to our members, especially since one had recently been issued which was of significant interest, what with the European elections looming.

I reckoned they must have been named in honour of the chap who came up with the idea and so, very early on Friday morning (about 10, I think), I commenced using the power of the internet to assist my investigations. I got quite excited when I came across the name of Dr. David Keeling linked to Schedules, only to be disappointed to discover that he is merely the head of the Department of Geography and Geology at West Kentucky University, and the Schedules are simply his term timetable; why they are not called that as opposed to “semester schedules” (pron. skedules) is beyond me. I glossed over the flight schedule for the Jet Charter and Air Charter Service to and from Cocos Keeling Island (no, neither do I) as being irrelevant, as was the list of TV Schedules for Liise Keeling, who is, apparently, a stunt woman who has performed in many films and TV series from 2001 to date, including the memorable “Monk”; unfortunately, imdb.com fails to tell us what role she played in the episode “Mr Monk Meets Dale the Whale” (2002). Her listings reveal that she was mostly a “stunt double”, “stunt performer” or “stunt driver” but I did wonder what particular qualities were necessary to bring to the set of the 2008 film The Rocker as a “stunt waitress”. Perhaps, as most American waitresses are, she was adept at juggling with eggs over easy, pastrami on rye, bagels, cookies, and interminable steaming jugs of black coffee, all probably whilst wearing roller skates.

I was becoming a little dispirited by now and the only vaguely interesting information I could come up with was the schedule of rowing events in the 2008 Olympics, involving the South African, Shaun Keeling, all you would ever need to know about scheduling a conference call between the Cocos Keeling Islands and Luxembourg (bearing in mind the time difference) and the service schedule of the funeral for Jimmy Keeling in Allegre, Kentucky, in July 2008. Finally, I had some success. Wikipedia - of all things - tells us that Keeling was the MP for Twickenham between 1935 and 1954, the year of his death. I am unsure of the circumstances surrounding the development of his Schedule (pron. “shedule”) but I found one or two references, despite being riddled with mental fatigue by then. The well-known work Legislative Drafting by V. C. R. A. C. Crabbe explains (at p. 147) that the device is named after Mr E H Keeling (later Sir Edward Keeling) who, with Mr R P Croom‑Johnson (later Mr Justice Croom-Johnson) came up with the proposal.

A bloke called Bennion who subsequently rubbished Keeling’s system in Statute Law (at pp. 278-9) came up with something called a Jamaica Schedule, but I reckon he was just jealous and I dismissed that out of hand as well as a summary of Montesquieu’s Principles, Thring’s Rules and Ilbert’s Questions and Advice. In my book, Keeling is a hero and anyone who can come up with something that can be used to demonstrate the practical effect of the Loan Relationships and Derivative Contracts (Disregard and Bringing Into Account of Profits and Losses) Regulations 2004 and the effect of the Deregulation (Weights & Measures) Order on the Weights and Measures Act 1985 has to be worthy of commemoration. That's what I think anyway.

Tuesday Challenge #7 - "Out of the frame"

This is my entry to Stu's Tuesday Challenge #7 ("This week, the subject is absent from the frame. This could be for various reasons - location: your subject is present but off to one side of the frame; temporal: your subject was present but has now gone.") Hopefully, this bird-bath speaks for itself! It looks slightly less rubbish than the original colour version, by the way. I think I'm enjoying this and I'm hoping to come up with a real belter one day!

Tuesday Challenge #6 - "Blue"

Well, after driving around forest roads for an hour yesterday with nothing blue leaping out at me, I returned home a little jaded. Then an idea hit me; I had the CD of that name by the great JM so I took a picture of the front cover and one of the back and, with a bit of twiddling with hue, saturation and rotation, I ended up with this. I hope taking a picture of a picture taken by someone else and all the post-production shenanigans won't render it invalid! I've got a horrible feeling about #7!

Tuesday Challenge #5 - One Out Of One (and lamp-post update)

This is my entry to Stu's Tuesday Challenge #5, taken from my hotel window early Tuesday evening. I missed out on #4 - "Red", because I haven't seen anything red for - oh - days, now, plus, since Sunday, I've been a very busy boy in Brighton and, anyway, as you all know, there's nothing red there. The only post-production I did was to straighten the horizon (damn that little buoy). In other news, the lamp-post has been taken away!

A little light relief

Every Thursday, I meet some friends at the pub and we have a few games of pool, a foaming brew or two, and a laugh. My mate Roy gives me a lift. He duly arrived and, as I left the house, I saw a man wearing a luminous yellow jacket and a safety helmet. He came over to speak to me.

Man: ‘scuse me, mate (pointing to the grass verge next to our house), d’you know if there used to be a street lamp here?

Me: Well, I’ve lived here for 23 years and there’s never been one here during that time.

Man: Only, we’ve been told to replace it.

Me: See my previous remark above.

Roy: Perhaps someone nicked it.

Me: Haha.

Man: Haha. Look at my map – it’s definitely marked as being here. See? Number 5.

Me: So it is, but, as I say, to my knowledge, there’s never been one here.

He then wandered off down the road, looking for the elusive Number 5 lamp-post. We thought no more of it especially as he did not appear to have a replacement street light about his person and went to the pub. We related the incident to our friends with great merriment until, about five minutes later, we saw a lorry go past with a street lighting column on the back. I suggested that perhaps Yellowcoat had misunderstood his instructions and the order was for installation rather than replacement.

Ten minutes or so later, S phoned me to say that she had had a conversation with Yellowcoat after she noticed he was erecting a lamp-post. As far as I can tell, her conversation with him went something like this.

Wife: Would you mind telling me what you’re doing?

Yellowcoat: We’re replacing the street lighting column.

Wife: How can you replace it, there’s never been one here.

Yellowcoat: Well, it’s shown on the map and I’m sorry I’ve got no choice but to do what I’ve been instructed.

Wife: But I don’t particularly want a street light here; there’s one across the road, two behind us at the end of the Close, and one just along the road two properties away. Anyway, I don’t want a light shining into the house all night.

Yellowcoat: Oh, you needn’t worry about that – it only shines straight downwards. Anyway, there’s no electricity.

The whole thing was becoming quite farcical. Resigned to our enlightened fate, S went indoors and telephoned the County Council Highways Department, where a very helpful lady was, er, very helpful indeed and even rang back as promised. Apparently, the previous (non-existent) street lighting column had to be replaced for safety reasons as it was too close to the road. The new one is now closer than the old (non-existent) one was – or, rather, wasn’t. Apart from that, our drop kerb access will have to be dug up to have electrickery installed – we will only be inconvenienced for about a couple of hours and there won’t be any problem as long as we had been given authority to use the drop kerb access – ahem. Well, I spoke to a Highways Inspector yonks ago and he said he would come and inspect – well, that’s his job – and let me know if there was any problem. He never let me know any such thing, so that’s all right, then. I hope. Anyway, the Council are going to write to us with an explanation. They’ll probably just tell us they’ve installed a nice new street light. Let’s wait and see.

With our house as the centre, there are now five street lights within a radius of 150 yards. It’ll be like living in Blackpool.

Hold the front page

This is my entry to Stu's Tuesday Challenge #3, "Front Page", and is intended to be for a magazine called, perhaps, "Gun Dogs Weekly/Monthly/Quarterly". Or maybe "Dangerous Toys"; take your pick. As for post-production, I had great difficulty finding a suitable indoor location and had to, er, artificially enlarge (only slightly) the grey board behind the subject, plus cropping and faffing around with levels. This is fun - I think.

Picture it

I've always been a keen photographist but have long suffered from apathy, followed by enforced inactivity. However, I have to thank Stu for the weekly (er, what else would it be?) Tuesday Challenge because it has galvanised me into action and, although I missed out on #1 (People at Work) through a bit of silliness, to be honest, I am going to try and put an entry in every week. #2 (Water) was a somewhat hurried effort and I've got an idea for #3 (Front page) for which I had several failed attempts this afternoon - better luck over the weekend, hopefully! Anyway, I've resurrected my Flickr account and uploaded some miscellaneous piccies which you can see here. I need to keep practising!

Val-deri, val-dera, my knapsack on my back

Well, this is my last gasp entry to Stu's Tuesday Challenge #2 "Water". I had to deliver something somewhere so I thought I'd take my gert big heavy camera bag (that's the knapsack) with me and try and find some water, bearing in mind time was running out. So this is a view from a bridge on an old disused railway track (now called the Castleman Way) in Ringwood. Not being overly experienced in the photographery department, I had to tweak it by adjusting the levels and jiggered with the saturation a bit. I even used an ND8 filter so I could use a shutter speed of 3 seconds - I couldn't make it longer as that took me up to the maximum aperture of the lens - how about that?! It was possibly my first solo escapade since being challenged in the movement department - and I left my stick in the car! Mind you, it was only about 50 or 60 yards away from where I'd parked. Well, there it is; I wasn't actually singing 'The Happy Wanderer', though I felt like it.

Lightning conductor

This is my entry to Stu's Tuesday challenge "People At Work" (nearly too late)! It was taken in the summer of 2006 when I went to see Maris and her band perform in Bournemouth Pleasure Gardens. Whilst I didn't get a model release form filled in, I did upload all the pics to FlickR and send the link to her so the band could see them. I wonder if that's (nearly) OK?

Take one tablet at night – and duck

So – the inclination to start blogs with “So” is continuing, as is the medical slant to them. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m just telling it like it is.

So (see?) - my annual diabetic review came up last week and, for the first time, I am now on medication, to add to all the other remedies I’m taking. Blood sugar - slightly up; cholesterol – slightly up; kidney function – very good indeed, actually; liver function – quite acceptable (hmmm); blood pressure – slightly up; weight – one at a time on the scale, please.

My medical centre (particularly the Sister who runs the Diabetes Clinic) is most assiduous in the care of patients with the condition and I have nothing but the highest praise for everyone there (I know nearly all of them by name and they of course know and love me). After all, one of the practice nurses had to handle my bare feet, sloshing blue gel all over them and pushing a pen-like instrument around that amplifies the sound of the pulses; sadly, it drowned out the classical music being piped into the treatment room but all was OK and, although not 100% kicking, I am apparently alive. And I was able to put my socks back on all by myself.

One of the new medications is called Simvastatin which is in tablet form; the label stuck on the box contains the dosage instruction: “Take ONE at night, avoid grapefruit.” Having never been attacked by anyone wielding that particular fruit, I am now on constant alert after taking one of the tablets in case some conscientious objector to statins chucks one at me. D’you reckon I’m being over-cautious?

In other news, my free travel pass came today so I will no longer have to bite the bullet and fork out the £1.20 flat fare to use the local bus to go just one stop to the pub. I’m going to try and drive my car next week – wish me luck with lifting the clutch! Ooh, and I nearly forgot, I also had a letter from those lovely people at the NHS to tell me that I would be receiving a Bowel Cancer Testing Kit in a couple of weeks – I can’t wait to play with that.