The die/Di is cast.
We are going on holiday to Israel. We will stay with my son-in-law, Amichai's, family in Tel Aviv. Amichai, my daughter and their two children, Oren and Ella, will also be there. The invitation has been extended to us for some time now but was re-stated with renewed enthusiasm and generosity not long after my diagnosis last May.
So, it's been an expensive hassle getting medical travel insurance and it's a crazy time to go because it promises to be very hot but this is the right moment. I'm not sure how many other opportunities there will be and it feels important to make this connection with an outpost of the extended family. (Of course, for Amichai's parents, Rachel and Efraim, it is we in England who are the outpost - but you know what I mean.)
If I'm honest, I'm apprehensive, particularly about the travel but this has been a decision a long time in the making and having been made, will stand.
I had some indirect feedback from an ex-allotment holder the other day that suggested she saw me as somebody who was very cautious and unwilling to take risks. It's amazing isn't it from whence people get these strange notions?
Perhaps I will get the opportunity to blog on location, in Israel? Graphic, heat-stained images, tastes and aromas from the Holy Land - I need the boost in my stats. Oh! Did I mention that I can now get stats on how many people are reading my blog? and from which country? and the time of reading? and what the reader had for breakfast?
For some reason these figures have become important to me - tell your friends. I need more hits.
Monday 30 July 2012
Wednesday 11 July 2012
Living in the present - again.
I can only start from where I am. You see, I have been thinking about and half-starting this post for at least a week but for various reasons I have been unable to get onto a computer and so ideas have fizzled and spluttered and come to naught. But I will not return to where I was - I will begin afresh and in the present.
In the present. That is how I am advised to live, the way I have advised myself to live and in many respects it isn't an approach for which, in so far as I'm successful, I can take any credit, for, inescapably, it comes with the condition. And there are advantages in being 'in the moment' .... the heightened perception, the 'letting go' of old concerns, old worries ............ but there is also a high price to be paid...... the 'loss of a future'. We all do it don't we? Imagine ourselves within a future of indefinite length; one that enables us to think idly about moving house, making journeys, visiting family and friends, acquiring new skills, new hobbies. Something of that is lost when you live in the present - the loss of pleasure in an imagined life full of self-sustaining fantasy.
Enough of this whimsical musing! (Give them facts, Mr M'Choakumchild.......give them facts.)
OK. Here are some facts. We have just returned from a few days in Cornwall visiting the Eden Project and the Lost (now Found) Gardens of Heligan. We also managed to pack in a lot of other Cornish treats; visiting Pete and Kate in Launceston, Truro cathedral, the fishing villages of Gorran Haven and Megavissey, the Tate Gallery in St Ives, Lands End (should that be World's End given it's tacky, you-must-be-entertained-fed-and-watered-theme-park-with-souvenirs nature) and then on our return journey, Exeter and its extraodinary cathedral. All this, a birthday present from Diana.
As stated before - you know when you're ill - you get to go on more holidays. Live in the present.
I could write 'loads of stuff' about these five days - and I can't promise that I won't - but I must begin with a revivifying experience on the long journey to our holiday B&B just outside St Austell. Diana was driving and I had fallen asleep. This is not an unusual state of affairs. Diana is now used to me slumbering in her company; on the sofa watching tv, in the comfortable chair in the kitchen while she is cooking, in a noisy bar chatting with friends or family....... so it is understandable that she would simply let me drift off, head lolling forward like a discarded marionette as we motored down the M5 into what we already knew was likely to be a few days of very dodgy weather.
I began to stir when the pattern of the engine noise changed as we pulled off the road into the motorway services. Diana negotiated an unending series of turns and manoeuvres as I returned to consciousness. This was one of those areas that has to be approached by a roundabout above the motorway. The sign read, Bridgwater Services.
We avoided the hazard of confused people crossing the road in front of us and entered a concrete hangover from the late 60s or early 70s. It was a mini multi-storey car park with just two floors. It was dark, oppressive, low-ceilinged with parking bays just wide enough to accommodate Saxon chariots. It looked as though the builders had become so depressed by their efforts that they had walked away before completing the usual number of storeys. We found a space on the first, and top, floor and descended a dark, smelly stairwell to find ourselves having to cross the very hazards on which we had previously threatened to mow down other, now fellow, pedestrians.
My mood had been as grey and bleak as the experience but then something began to change. This was so awful, it was good! I was in a time warp and there is something wonderful about a discovery left over from a previous age, however naff, however ancient. By the time we had negotiated our exit I was cheerful and energised. Try this pick-me-up yourself, the next time you are down that way.
Children of course are good at living in the present and I'll admit to having already identified some early indications of the, illness-accelerated, onset of my 'second childhood'. Some might (if, of an uncharitable disposition) say my dependence on Diana for the completion of simple tasks, like tying my shoelaces, has been in evidence for a while but you should know that, for the second time in two years, I have been invited by a respected national institution to indulge in the practice of smearing my own faeces.
Now, I'm not saying that I can recall enjoying this activity as an infant but Freud and co. would have us believe that it's not unusual and part of an early stage of psychosexual development. So, when you reach the age of 60 years and enter the NHS bowel cancer screening programme, be aware that you are being indirectly invited to get in touch with your inner child.
I'll spare you the details of the procedure but I look forward to logging other instances of my innocence revisited.
Btw - I got an 'all-clear' from the screening programme. Live in the present.
In the present. That is how I am advised to live, the way I have advised myself to live and in many respects it isn't an approach for which, in so far as I'm successful, I can take any credit, for, inescapably, it comes with the condition. And there are advantages in being 'in the moment' .... the heightened perception, the 'letting go' of old concerns, old worries ............ but there is also a high price to be paid...... the 'loss of a future'. We all do it don't we? Imagine ourselves within a future of indefinite length; one that enables us to think idly about moving house, making journeys, visiting family and friends, acquiring new skills, new hobbies. Something of that is lost when you live in the present - the loss of pleasure in an imagined life full of self-sustaining fantasy.
Enough of this whimsical musing! (Give them facts, Mr M'Choakumchild.......give them facts.)
OK. Here are some facts. We have just returned from a few days in Cornwall visiting the Eden Project and the Lost (now Found) Gardens of Heligan. We also managed to pack in a lot of other Cornish treats; visiting Pete and Kate in Launceston, Truro cathedral, the fishing villages of Gorran Haven and Megavissey, the Tate Gallery in St Ives, Lands End (should that be World's End given it's tacky, you-must-be-entertained-fed-and-watered-theme-park-with-souvenirs nature) and then on our return journey, Exeter and its extraodinary cathedral. All this, a birthday present from Diana.
As stated before - you know when you're ill - you get to go on more holidays. Live in the present.
I could write 'loads of stuff' about these five days - and I can't promise that I won't - but I must begin with a revivifying experience on the long journey to our holiday B&B just outside St Austell. Diana was driving and I had fallen asleep. This is not an unusual state of affairs. Diana is now used to me slumbering in her company; on the sofa watching tv, in the comfortable chair in the kitchen while she is cooking, in a noisy bar chatting with friends or family....... so it is understandable that she would simply let me drift off, head lolling forward like a discarded marionette as we motored down the M5 into what we already knew was likely to be a few days of very dodgy weather.
I began to stir when the pattern of the engine noise changed as we pulled off the road into the motorway services. Diana negotiated an unending series of turns and manoeuvres as I returned to consciousness. This was one of those areas that has to be approached by a roundabout above the motorway. The sign read, Bridgwater Services.
We avoided the hazard of confused people crossing the road in front of us and entered a concrete hangover from the late 60s or early 70s. It was a mini multi-storey car park with just two floors. It was dark, oppressive, low-ceilinged with parking bays just wide enough to accommodate Saxon chariots. It looked as though the builders had become so depressed by their efforts that they had walked away before completing the usual number of storeys. We found a space on the first, and top, floor and descended a dark, smelly stairwell to find ourselves having to cross the very hazards on which we had previously threatened to mow down other, now fellow, pedestrians.
My mood had been as grey and bleak as the experience but then something began to change. This was so awful, it was good! I was in a time warp and there is something wonderful about a discovery left over from a previous age, however naff, however ancient. By the time we had negotiated our exit I was cheerful and energised. Try this pick-me-up yourself, the next time you are down that way.
Children of course are good at living in the present and I'll admit to having already identified some early indications of the, illness-accelerated, onset of my 'second childhood'. Some might (if, of an uncharitable disposition) say my dependence on Diana for the completion of simple tasks, like tying my shoelaces, has been in evidence for a while but you should know that, for the second time in two years, I have been invited by a respected national institution to indulge in the practice of smearing my own faeces.
Now, I'm not saying that I can recall enjoying this activity as an infant but Freud and co. would have us believe that it's not unusual and part of an early stage of psychosexual development. So, when you reach the age of 60 years and enter the NHS bowel cancer screening programme, be aware that you are being indirectly invited to get in touch with your inner child.
I'll spare you the details of the procedure but I look forward to logging other instances of my innocence revisited.
Btw - I got an 'all-clear' from the screening programme. Live in the present.
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