If my recall is accurate, Margaret Mead, the renowned American anthropologist, who studied and wrote books about communities in the South Pacific, was once asked when she thought men were happiest. She considered this profoundly important question for a time, then answered, 'when they are preparing for the hunt'.
This may explain why, my brother and I, newly inducted into the arts of fishing from the beach, sought to replenish (in my case 'plenish') our freezers with mackerel, bass, codling, ray and any other pescatorial booty that might come our way. Thanks to Kate granting us access to her wonderfully-secluded family 'retreat', we were able to sally forth for a few days into beautiful Dorset in pursuit of our prey.
Two days later we had spent something like twelve hours on the steep shingle beaches of the Jurassic coast. (Please put aside now any temptation to make mention of how appropriate this might be for a couple of dinosaurs......) By the time we packed away our thoroughly-drenched gear on Tuesday evening, the English Channel had yielded one small, strange fish called a 'father lasher' (Myoxocephalus scorpius) and a writhing, slimy elver.
The only mackerel we saw was the one we bought for bait to supplement the ragworm in which we had invested so heavily. Even that fish disappeared when a patrolling herring gull swooped and carried it away while I was distracted by the waves momentarily threatening to o'ertop my wellingtons.
There is no question; the setting was magnificent, when you could see the biscuit-coloured cliff for the rain; the sea was majestic, though it consumed considerable amounts of equipment that we insisted on throwing into it in the forlorn hope that the sea might let us have it back again; the beach was impressive in its dramatic, pebbly banking though it made climbing and descent an exhausting effort - and the weather was - just awful.
And yet............... we can't wait for the next expedition. We had a great time. We eagerly anticipate fresh sight of the sea, the promise of (fishy) food, the prospect of exploring, encountering that primitive, DNA-embedded, residual instinct established in the Era of Evolutionary Adaptation - the thrill of the hunt.
................ and this trip with my brother was further evidence of my 'rehabilitation', my ability to survive without the ministrations of Diana . At this rate those of you who are still reading this will be 'wanting your money back'.
Not much chance of that, I'm afraid.
Friday 27 April 2012
Sunday 22 April 2012
How green is my tea leaf?
Some more good news for 2012.
Last Friday, I had an ophthalmology appointment with the consultant at QEH. Of the three areas I attend, ophthalmology and oncology at QEH, orthopaedics at ROH, the most hard-pressed is usually the first. My appointments for the eye clinic are often re-scheduled and on arrival the wait times are longer, the waiting areas more crowded - but the staff are great.
In particular, I can only sit, chin-forward into the head-stablising 'iron mask' in an eye-drop induced miasma of admiration, while the consultant manages the constant flow of demands made of her. She tries, very hard, to focus on my condition but others need her input and she is invariably accommodating.
Anyway, enough of this heroine-worship; she investigated my eye for the incipient retinal occlusion (see earlier post; October 23rd 2011) and pronounced it 'recovered'. Her thinking is that the haemorrhage was the result of hypertension linked to the kidney tumour and its removal helped remedy that problem - but she could not be certain. Obviously, this is another reason for close monitoring of my blood pressure.
Di believes that the 'secret ingredient' in this latest bit of good news has to do with my, with our, dairy-free, vegan-when-possible diet with its emphasis on green tea, 'nutriceuticals', unprocessed foodstuffs, organic-when-affordable/available vegetables and low-alcohol intake.
The medics are more sceptical. When time allows they are polite but put faith in medication and surgical procedure. We wouldn't discount these inputs (!) but have need of something additional that gives us a measure of control.
I certainly have good reason, of late, to thank drug therapy for improvements in managing the tiresome (for you and myself!) condition with the back and leg. We took Joe back to Durham yesterday and I drove for more than half the 7 hour return journey. That represents a huge improvement and must I think, be associated with the recent additions (see 9th April 2012) to the drug regime - much as I might like to put it down to the green blood coursing through my veins!
P.S. The bit above, about the admiration I have for my eye consultant, puts me in mind of a story about an exercise that I used to set classes collectively sentenced to follow an eight week module with me on 'drug education'. One homework required the collection of a number of newspaper articles that featured drugs in whatever shape or form, legal or otherwise. The aim was for groups to make a collage which would lead to discussion and penetrating insights about media coverage of the subject. I scanned all articles when they resentfully made their way back to my classroom.
One of these was a small column about a young woman who had spotted a child struggling in a river and gone into save him or her. All very interesting but I couldn't make out the drug connection and asked the student to explain. A confused girl shrugged her shoulders and muttered something unintelligible. I really wasn't sure that I wanted to spend more time on this but quickly re-read the article. Again it was about a young woman, a drowning child, a rescue and celebration of a selfless act of bravery.
'I'm sorry', I said, now seriously intrigued, 'I still don't see what this has got to do with drugs'.
The pupil pushed the headline, that had become detached from the article, under my gaze; HEROINE SAVES CHILD IN RIVER DRAMA.
Geddit?
Last Friday, I had an ophthalmology appointment with the consultant at QEH. Of the three areas I attend, ophthalmology and oncology at QEH, orthopaedics at ROH, the most hard-pressed is usually the first. My appointments for the eye clinic are often re-scheduled and on arrival the wait times are longer, the waiting areas more crowded - but the staff are great.
In particular, I can only sit, chin-forward into the head-stablising 'iron mask' in an eye-drop induced miasma of admiration, while the consultant manages the constant flow of demands made of her. She tries, very hard, to focus on my condition but others need her input and she is invariably accommodating.
Anyway, enough of this heroine-worship; she investigated my eye for the incipient retinal occlusion (see earlier post; October 23rd 2011) and pronounced it 'recovered'. Her thinking is that the haemorrhage was the result of hypertension linked to the kidney tumour and its removal helped remedy that problem - but she could not be certain. Obviously, this is another reason for close monitoring of my blood pressure.
Di believes that the 'secret ingredient' in this latest bit of good news has to do with my, with our, dairy-free, vegan-when-possible diet with its emphasis on green tea, 'nutriceuticals', unprocessed foodstuffs, organic-when-affordable/available vegetables and low-alcohol intake.
The medics are more sceptical. When time allows they are polite but put faith in medication and surgical procedure. We wouldn't discount these inputs (!) but have need of something additional that gives us a measure of control.
I certainly have good reason, of late, to thank drug therapy for improvements in managing the tiresome (for you and myself!) condition with the back and leg. We took Joe back to Durham yesterday and I drove for more than half the 7 hour return journey. That represents a huge improvement and must I think, be associated with the recent additions (see 9th April 2012) to the drug regime - much as I might like to put it down to the green blood coursing through my veins!
P.S. The bit above, about the admiration I have for my eye consultant, puts me in mind of a story about an exercise that I used to set classes collectively sentenced to follow an eight week module with me on 'drug education'. One homework required the collection of a number of newspaper articles that featured drugs in whatever shape or form, legal or otherwise. The aim was for groups to make a collage which would lead to discussion and penetrating insights about media coverage of the subject. I scanned all articles when they resentfully made their way back to my classroom.
One of these was a small column about a young woman who had spotted a child struggling in a river and gone into save him or her. All very interesting but I couldn't make out the drug connection and asked the student to explain. A confused girl shrugged her shoulders and muttered something unintelligible. I really wasn't sure that I wanted to spend more time on this but quickly re-read the article. Again it was about a young woman, a drowning child, a rescue and celebration of a selfless act of bravery.
'I'm sorry', I said, now seriously intrigued, 'I still don't see what this has got to do with drugs'.
The pupil pushed the headline, that had become detached from the article, under my gaze; HEROINE SAVES CHILD IN RIVER DRAMA.
Geddit?
Thursday 19 April 2012
Ears and eyes.
When I was involved with the world of counselling one of the axioms I learned was, 'you listen with your eyes'. In my secondary school teaching this proposition was satisfyingly puzzling to students. I used to routinely set up the class to undertake an exercise that would demonstrate the truth of it. This was one of my more successful lessons.
Birding with Dave has taught me a new axiom - 'you see with your ears'. While I, as with our recent visit to the RSPB reserve at Middleton Lakes near Tamworth, tend to walk with my eyes forward scanning for birds (but also plants), Dave is tuning in aurally. He invariably hears and understands acoustic meaning before I do. He can distinguish different warbler song, a reed bunting call or a dunnock serenade. As a result his use of sight is then often directed and acute while mine is still engaged in generalised scanning.
On the other hand he isn't so good with his umbellifers.
A few days before this trip I received an email from Betty, the wife of Bob, who had been a teaching colleague of both Dave's and myself. Bob had retired a few years before me. I knew, from bumping into him at the QEH Cancer Centre, that he had prostate cancer that had metastasised to the spine and other areas. Her message told me that he had returned to hospital following further complications with his spine. The information was to the point; he would never walk again.
Yesterday, Di and I visited him and he took us through the events since our last meeting. His voice was strong in the telling but understandably emotional when pausing to confront his new reality. Betty and Bob are ordinary people facing adversity with extraordinary courage. The tears that fill our eyes are for all of us.
'Tuning in' can be both rewarding and painful.
Birding with Dave has taught me a new axiom - 'you see with your ears'. While I, as with our recent visit to the RSPB reserve at Middleton Lakes near Tamworth, tend to walk with my eyes forward scanning for birds (but also plants), Dave is tuning in aurally. He invariably hears and understands acoustic meaning before I do. He can distinguish different warbler song, a reed bunting call or a dunnock serenade. As a result his use of sight is then often directed and acute while mine is still engaged in generalised scanning.
On the other hand he isn't so good with his umbellifers.
A few days before this trip I received an email from Betty, the wife of Bob, who had been a teaching colleague of both Dave's and myself. Bob had retired a few years before me. I knew, from bumping into him at the QEH Cancer Centre, that he had prostate cancer that had metastasised to the spine and other areas. Her message told me that he had returned to hospital following further complications with his spine. The information was to the point; he would never walk again.
Yesterday, Di and I visited him and he took us through the events since our last meeting. His voice was strong in the telling but understandably emotional when pausing to confront his new reality. Betty and Bob are ordinary people facing adversity with extraordinary courage. The tears that fill our eyes are for all of us.
'Tuning in' can be both rewarding and painful.
Thursday 12 April 2012
The rare delights of Bringsty Common
Just back from my regular early morning walk over Bringsty Common - and still in recovery!
Joe's abed and Di has escaped back to Brum - something about a singing engagement at Symphony Hall. Apparently, she's part of the warm-up act for the CBSO's, Dream of Gerontius - nothing that couldn't have waited. I'm inclined to think that she simply wanted to get away from our male conversation - all clipped, morose and monosyllabic.
But seriously, if you want to introduce some cardio-vascular work into a morning stroll get a dog and come here to the Common. Better still borrow my dog, - that is, our dog - well, even 'our' dog is a tad presumptuous. You won't get much of a conversation out of Woody but he'll always be there, some 15 yards behind you, moving with the same head-down, doleful, hip-rolling gait.
You could then, of course, take the gentle or the head-on ascent of Watership Down. If the latter, be aware that when you are struggling the most, the chiff-chaffs have this intensely irritating habit of laughing at you from hawthorn trees that line the path. They insistently giggle, if not monotously, then no better than di-otously. It's not as if they have the output of an avian string quartet!
As you climb, head-down and Woodylike, you can study the minute tunnel entrances of the local burrowing bees and admire the splashes of eponymous colour from the dog violets, which, the display board in the car park tells me, are the food plant of the rare, pearl-bordered and heath fritillaries.
If you are at all like me and accompanied by someone with greater lung and thigh capacity, you can even pretend to find it important to stop from time to time and pompously intone, surreptiously-garnered, secondhand information.
All of which leads me to say that if anyone is to blame for this sudden arrival of blogging omnibuses look no further than Del and her recent expression of interest.
I'd give you her contact details but that might only serve to encourage a disproportionate act of vengeance.
Joe's abed and Di has escaped back to Brum - something about a singing engagement at Symphony Hall. Apparently, she's part of the warm-up act for the CBSO's, Dream of Gerontius - nothing that couldn't have waited. I'm inclined to think that she simply wanted to get away from our male conversation - all clipped, morose and monosyllabic.
But seriously, if you want to introduce some cardio-vascular work into a morning stroll get a dog and come here to the Common. Better still borrow my dog, - that is, our dog - well, even 'our' dog is a tad presumptuous. You won't get much of a conversation out of Woody but he'll always be there, some 15 yards behind you, moving with the same head-down, doleful, hip-rolling gait.
You could then, of course, take the gentle or the head-on ascent of Watership Down. If the latter, be aware that when you are struggling the most, the chiff-chaffs have this intensely irritating habit of laughing at you from hawthorn trees that line the path. They insistently giggle, if not monotously, then no better than di-otously. It's not as if they have the output of an avian string quartet!
As you climb, head-down and Woodylike, you can study the minute tunnel entrances of the local burrowing bees and admire the splashes of eponymous colour from the dog violets, which, the display board in the car park tells me, are the food plant of the rare, pearl-bordered and heath fritillaries.
If you are at all like me and accompanied by someone with greater lung and thigh capacity, you can even pretend to find it important to stop from time to time and pompously intone, surreptiously-garnered, secondhand information.
All of which leads me to say that if anyone is to blame for this sudden arrival of blogging omnibuses look no further than Del and her recent expression of interest.
I'd give you her contact details but that might only serve to encourage a disproportionate act of vengeance.
Wednesday 11 April 2012
The want of time
Kate and Leon's (farm)house is on the edge of Bringsty Common near Bromyard in Herefordshire. Each morning, I'm the first out of bed to feed the dog, the chickens and to release the geese from their shed. Not that the geese are appreciative. They always impatiently and raucously insist that I attend to them first and then when I do, they arrow their extended necks first upright, then head down and issue menacing hisses and squawks at me. I retreat to deal with the less aggressive bantams.
Then, because I'm here with Di and Joe who, vampire-like, loathe the rays of the rising sun, I decide to take the dog for a walk. This golden labrador, who answers to the name of Woody, when he can be bothered, is both very placid and lugubrious. As I head down the lane that leads to the common he lopes along behind me, never complaining and never much inclined to take an interest in our route. I head for the summit; a Watership Down sort-of-hill topped by a small copse of wind-sculpted trees. Hazel and Fiver have yet to arrive as I climb the steep approach, my thighs on fire from the exertion. When I pause, Woody pauses; he sees no need to overtake me. For his benefit, I pretend to look at the view, take deep breaths and move on.
At the top, I slump onto a seat thankfully gifted by the family of the former blacksmith and postmistress and admire the landscape with its undulating quilt of field and woodland. In the distance the outline of the Malvern Hills and its associated treelined ridges rise and fall as though pegged like dark sheets to an invisible clothesline in the sky.
Last night we had watched the BBC Horizon programme about modern methods of cancer treatment and the hope they offer particularly for people of my generation. If you saw it, my circumstances were similar to the woman who had advanced melanoma. Her condition was inoperable; only the new types of targeted drug therapy could offer more time.
Who, on this hill, would be indifferent to the want of time?
Then, because I'm here with Di and Joe who, vampire-like, loathe the rays of the rising sun, I decide to take the dog for a walk. This golden labrador, who answers to the name of Woody, when he can be bothered, is both very placid and lugubrious. As I head down the lane that leads to the common he lopes along behind me, never complaining and never much inclined to take an interest in our route. I head for the summit; a Watership Down sort-of-hill topped by a small copse of wind-sculpted trees. Hazel and Fiver have yet to arrive as I climb the steep approach, my thighs on fire from the exertion. When I pause, Woody pauses; he sees no need to overtake me. For his benefit, I pretend to look at the view, take deep breaths and move on.
At the top, I slump onto a seat thankfully gifted by the family of the former blacksmith and postmistress and admire the landscape with its undulating quilt of field and woodland. In the distance the outline of the Malvern Hills and its associated treelined ridges rise and fall as though pegged like dark sheets to an invisible clothesline in the sky.
Last night we had watched the BBC Horizon programme about modern methods of cancer treatment and the hope they offer particularly for people of my generation. If you saw it, my circumstances were similar to the woman who had advanced melanoma. Her condition was inoperable; only the new types of targeted drug therapy could offer more time.
Who, on this hill, would be indifferent to the want of time?
Monday 9 April 2012
Thoroughfare toTupperware.
As I write I'm sitting on a comfortable sofa, warmed by a large log stove in Kate and Leon's place in deepest Herefordshire. Along with their part timber-framed farmhouse we are sitting their dog, Woody, a couple of unfriendly geese and a sizeable group of bantams.
I'll concede now that my strategy of leaving a lengthy gap between 'posts' in order to elicit a collective pleading from you lot, has failed. My only compensation has been a single request from Del that I make a further effort - because she at least is reading the blog.
I guess that the most significant development, of late and of a positive nature, has been my recent experience of travelling, beginning with a solo expedition to London. I had been to stay at Kathy's before - in the years B.C. I recall the view from the top-floor window of her terrace house in Greenwich of the London skyline; the glimpse of St Paul's, the Eye and from another window, Canary Wharf and the Millenium Dome. I'd thought these wonderful sights but knew that when she realised that long-harboured wish for a place on the river, the view would be even better.
But those plans went back to a time when John was still alive and more than 6 years had now passed since his loss to aggressive bowel cancer. We'd reconnected after a long gap in those early traumatic months. There had been many tears and occasional forays into our shared ancient history as fresh-faced, exuberant undergraduates in the late 1960s.
Then. when I was diagnosed she had visited Brum and drawing on her experience of a long journey into loss, she had some wise and calming words to offer.
But since her move to that riverside flat, I had been unsure about taking her up on the offer to visit. How would I cope with travelling on my own? Would she understand that, post-op and on-chemo, I am not as I was? So, when she offered to both pick me up from Euston and return me the following Monday, I was greatly and gratefully, relieved.
That journey from the station to Greenwich turned out to be more eventful than I would have wished. An accident a few days prior to our meeting had resulted in her use of a courtesy car sporting gadgets she had yet to master. On a beautiful spring morning we over-revved and hand-braked our way across the busy, bustling, thoroughfares of the city.
I had, of course, imagined the river aspect as described in numerous phone conversations but the reality when we reached the penthouse living space was simply stunning.
From the picture windows and the balcony beyond, the span in view was a cinemascopic 180 degrees of an expansive, tide-swollen, swirling, chocolate-grey, River Thames. To my right the Millenium Dome nestled amid the low-rise buildings like an outsize and unexploded, WW2 mine. Across the water the towers of Canary Wharf competed for my attention led by the tall, blinking, obelisk of One Canada Square. Ahead, on the opposite bank some considerable distance from the facing riverside apartments I could see the distinctive outline of the Gherkin and the Eye; to my left Wren's Naval College, the masts of the Cutty Sark and the sky-piercing Shard.
The lazy, endlessly shifting, riverscape is so different to the buzzing world at ground level with its narrow Georgian streets thronging with excited young tourists and local residents.
The weekend of walks and words went well. I feel I can make further excursions into the old world where I once moved so unthinkingly.
But first there was another part of my new world with which to contend; the consulting room of my oncologist at the QEH Cancer Centre. At the end of my two-week drug-free period I returned from London for the news on how I was progressing. The young female doctor said I was doing very well to have reached this point, the end of five cycles and still on the maximum dosage of the powerful anti-cancer drugs. Apparently it is elderly, slightly-built women who suffer most from side effects and have to either reduce their dosage or come off the medication altogether.
Which is a nice way of saying that the toxicity is diluted for fatties like me.
She took some interest in my new regime of analgesics following the visit to the palliative care doctor (see last post) and when I reported that they had made little difference after an encouraging start, she prescribed additional medication.
I am now taking so many pills each day that Boots have submitted a planning application to open a branch next door to our house, I need special computer software in order to co-ordinate my drug regime and a large set of tupperware boxes to serve as containers.
This is the reason for our retreat to a Herefordshire idyll; our Moseley friends and neighbours are unhappy about the proposed pharmacy but more especially, they are distraught about a possible renaissance in 1960s Tupperware parties.
I'll concede now that my strategy of leaving a lengthy gap between 'posts' in order to elicit a collective pleading from you lot, has failed. My only compensation has been a single request from Del that I make a further effort - because she at least is reading the blog.
I guess that the most significant development, of late and of a positive nature, has been my recent experience of travelling, beginning with a solo expedition to London. I had been to stay at Kathy's before - in the years B.C. I recall the view from the top-floor window of her terrace house in Greenwich of the London skyline; the glimpse of St Paul's, the Eye and from another window, Canary Wharf and the Millenium Dome. I'd thought these wonderful sights but knew that when she realised that long-harboured wish for a place on the river, the view would be even better.
But those plans went back to a time when John was still alive and more than 6 years had now passed since his loss to aggressive bowel cancer. We'd reconnected after a long gap in those early traumatic months. There had been many tears and occasional forays into our shared ancient history as fresh-faced, exuberant undergraduates in the late 1960s.
Then. when I was diagnosed she had visited Brum and drawing on her experience of a long journey into loss, she had some wise and calming words to offer.
But since her move to that riverside flat, I had been unsure about taking her up on the offer to visit. How would I cope with travelling on my own? Would she understand that, post-op and on-chemo, I am not as I was? So, when she offered to both pick me up from Euston and return me the following Monday, I was greatly and gratefully, relieved.
That journey from the station to Greenwich turned out to be more eventful than I would have wished. An accident a few days prior to our meeting had resulted in her use of a courtesy car sporting gadgets she had yet to master. On a beautiful spring morning we over-revved and hand-braked our way across the busy, bustling, thoroughfares of the city.
I had, of course, imagined the river aspect as described in numerous phone conversations but the reality when we reached the penthouse living space was simply stunning.
From the picture windows and the balcony beyond, the span in view was a cinemascopic 180 degrees of an expansive, tide-swollen, swirling, chocolate-grey, River Thames. To my right the Millenium Dome nestled amid the low-rise buildings like an outsize and unexploded, WW2 mine. Across the water the towers of Canary Wharf competed for my attention led by the tall, blinking, obelisk of One Canada Square. Ahead, on the opposite bank some considerable distance from the facing riverside apartments I could see the distinctive outline of the Gherkin and the Eye; to my left Wren's Naval College, the masts of the Cutty Sark and the sky-piercing Shard.
The lazy, endlessly shifting, riverscape is so different to the buzzing world at ground level with its narrow Georgian streets thronging with excited young tourists and local residents.
The weekend of walks and words went well. I feel I can make further excursions into the old world where I once moved so unthinkingly.
But first there was another part of my new world with which to contend; the consulting room of my oncologist at the QEH Cancer Centre. At the end of my two-week drug-free period I returned from London for the news on how I was progressing. The young female doctor said I was doing very well to have reached this point, the end of five cycles and still on the maximum dosage of the powerful anti-cancer drugs. Apparently it is elderly, slightly-built women who suffer most from side effects and have to either reduce their dosage or come off the medication altogether.
Which is a nice way of saying that the toxicity is diluted for fatties like me.
She took some interest in my new regime of analgesics following the visit to the palliative care doctor (see last post) and when I reported that they had made little difference after an encouraging start, she prescribed additional medication.
I am now taking so many pills each day that Boots have submitted a planning application to open a branch next door to our house, I need special computer software in order to co-ordinate my drug regime and a large set of tupperware boxes to serve as containers.
This is the reason for our retreat to a Herefordshire idyll; our Moseley friends and neighbours are unhappy about the proposed pharmacy but more especially, they are distraught about a possible renaissance in 1960s Tupperware parties.
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