Because I’m Worth It.
We don’t know why Auntie J hates the Scots so much. We did have one theory which might have explained it – but Grandma S swears that she never force fed any of her children lumpy porridge through their noses. The jury’s out on whether or not Grandma S is telling the truth – what with our own experiences with the coal shed and the knobbly stick with the traces of flesh and blood on it, we wouldn’t put it past her but, unless we want the Winlaton branch of the WI posse knocking at our doors in the middle of the night and dragging us off to what they euphemistically call their “summer fayre” it’s a theory we don’t mention. Instead we’ve put it down to the fact that she’s just never forgiven them for Bannockburn.
It’s not that she ever says anything bad about the Scots – which just proves that she has more self restraint than most. After all, as subsequent generations of English military commanders have found, the Scots make excellent targets for whatever you want to throw at them. It’s not even that she takes any direct action against them. Although her other half may (or may not be) single-handedly engaged in a series of remarkable successful attempts to remove most of the indigenous fauna (or at least the tasty ones) from the country, we have no reason to assume that this is done with her consent much less her blessing.
But there’s no other reason other than a hatred so vehement that it makes Edward Longshanks look positively genial which even goes part of the way to explain the destruction and carnage that for one day a year she visits on the tight arsed, pursed mouthed, downright miserable sods which clutter up this otherwise beautiful land
As I’ve mentioned before, Auntie J is the mother of the two blonde haired blue eyed chaos makers; otherwise known as my wonderful goddaughter A and my equally wonderful not goddaughter R. I have to attach the adjective wonderful before mentioning them, partly because they’ve trademarked it but mostly because on meeting them you do wonder a number of things. Mostly you wonder where their volume control is hidden.
These are the secret weapons Auntie J utilises against the Scots. Once a year, for one day only she sends them up to visit us. It’s only ever for one day at a time because otherwise all sort of UN regulations concerning the deployment of troops are contravened and it’s seen as a hostile occupation. Armed with digital cameras (ours) they drag us through the streets of Edinburgh snapping at the passers by, laughing at the silly men who wear skirts (and you would think that by now, what with all the magazines around, Scotsmen would realise that, A-line horizontally striped box pleats worn with white knee length socks is an ensemble that only looks good on a 15 year old anorexic and instead given their body shape – if they must explore their feminine side –then they should go for something in a straighter style and a plainer colour. A nice knee length pencil skirt in black for example, always looks smart and skims over those areas that it’s probably best not to draw attention to.) Scattering italics as they go, breaking all noise regulations with an abandon that F who regularly breaks noise abatement orders like they’re a layer of a mille feuille can only stare at in amazement and generally mocking everything that the Scots hold dear, (namely the Scots) they cause as much devastation as can be wreaked by a couple of whirlwinds in female form.
Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t bad kids. They aren’t perfect, but then they aren’t naughty or spoilt either. There isn’t a mean, vindictive, squalling bone in their bodies. They’re just exuberant. As far as I’m concerned, J & M should have a medal and a large annuity for life for accomplishing what seems to be the impossible these days – bringing up children who are free from all neuroses and psychoses. In short it should suffice to mention that being around them is being around the concept of what a child should be. And if I then go on to mention that A is 14 and R is 10 then you will see how unusual this is. By the time most children reach that age – they aren’t children any more; they’re bonsai versions of middle aged depressives.
As an aside here (which may seem a bit odd given the above paragraph in praise of my goddaughter and my notgoddaughter), I’d just like to ask if I’m the only person in the world who wonders exactly why Britain seems to have become so depressingly child centric. And why its first commandment seems to be “thou shalt not say no, to the fruit of your loins but will instead engage in a long and pointless discussion with it in tones of stress and near hysteria” It’s honestly not that I’m intolerant of children – it’s just that if you must take them out in public once they’re capable of independent movement – train them first. You’d do it if it were a puppy. I’m sick and tired of going to restaurants only to have my meal ruined either, by a parents too loud conversation with the waiter that outlines in graphic detail exactly what food groups the little so and so is allergic to and the effect that these foods have on their digestive system or by long and meaningless attempts on behalf of the parents to reason with the precocious darling they created over exactly what they want to eat. It doesn’t happen in France. The restaurants there are full of perfectly behaved children who are cosseted by parents, waiters and other diners alike but whose manners come straight out of a handbook on etiquette. Furthermore, what is it about parenthood that means once you’ve managed to reproduce (and its not that difficult – all it takes is a bottle of red wine and a memory lapse) that’s all you’re able to talk about for the rest of your life. Having once spent nearly two years working with someone who assumed that because she was engrossed in her child’s bowel movement I should be too, I feel that I’m entitled to speak out on behalf of the rest of us whose sense of humour may well be in the gutter but who’s intellect is still well above the contents of a potty.
Now as you may know, for the past few weeks I’ve been a bit unwell. I’m not going to go into any great and gory detail – the gist of it was that one night about three weeks ago now I started to feel a bit achy, put it down to flu and went to bed. Woke up three hours later unable to breathe without extreme agony, sat up all night (where I learnt that the most annoying thing in the world is to be awake all night in agony while your nearest and dearest – F and the real Hendrix Cat - sleep the sleep of the just beside you and that when faced with this the best action to take is some judicious pinching and prodding - on F – had I attempted to do this to the real HC then I would have lost a finger.) Got an emergency appointment at the doctors the next morning – got into the surgery – lungs clear and no cough but in great pain and apparently tachycardic with a pulse of 120 and so was told to go straight to hospital where in response to my frantic phone messages and being remarkable forgiving on account of the judicious prodding and pinching he’d had to endure the night before, an extremely worried looking F met me. They thought it might be a blood clot on my lung, but after a series of tests; including an X ray, removing most of my blood with a blunt needle (and how come doctors despite the years of training are unable to hit the vein first time but stab at you like they’re rehearsing the assassination scene in Julius Caesar, while nurses – despite the fact that they don’t have the years of training – can manage it first time and more gently to boot?) and several attempts on my patience (being called dear by a female doctor who was younger than me was one I nearly failed) which included being sat in a wheelchair in a corridor for 9 hours while clad only in a hospital gown which had no strings to tie it together at the back making getting out of the chair and walking past the rest of the patients who were also sitting in the corridor waiting to be seen) in order to get the to loo, an exercise in wall hugging (thank god I was wearing big knickers that day) anyway after all that, they decided at 8pm that evening that there was nothing wrong with me and that I could go home. This was after a bit of a hissy fit on my part when I demanded to be allowed to go home, because I figured that if I’d been sitting in a hospital corridor for 9 hours then despite the pain and the dizziness and the generally feeling like shit on a stick then there couldn’t be anything that much wrong with me and besides which I wanted a cigarette (one thing I did find out from the tests is that my blood oxygen levels are at 99% which means all these years of smoking have been for naught) Despite the fact that there was nothing clinically wrong with me I spent the next week unable to move from the daybed, too ill to move, read, eat or generally do anything apart from cry like a baby and generally be a right royal pain in the butt towards F whose patience never once ran out. Frankly, if I’d had to look after myself, I’d have smacked me in the face. With a blunt instrument.
But once the illness had worn off a bit and I could enjoy the fact that I was having some time away from a job that I’m taking obsessively seriously for no other reason than the fact that I’m pathetically grateful be paid for staying at home and playing with graphics programmes I began to be in a bit of a better mood. And then one day, like a bolt from the blue, a scene from the last visit of A and R came back to me…
We were walking down from Edinburgh castle and I was attempting to do my god- motherly duty by inspiring A with all the possible things she could do once she was old enough to venture out into the big wide world. With a wave of her hand she stopped me.
“When I grow up” she said decisively “I shall live in a big house in the country. I shall have 3 dogs and 2 horses and some children and lots of finches in an aviary”
“You’ll need a lot of money for that” I said to her “what are you going to do to make the money”
“I shall marry a vet” she said. “Because they are all rich and besides which it will be useful if the animals get sick because he will know how to treat them”
“And you will look after the animals and the house and the children” I said
“No” she replied “my husband will come home from work and he will do the cleaning and the shopping and look after the animals and the house and the children and he will cook dinner as well.”
“But A” I replied “what will you do?”
“I will be lovely” she said.
I can see her point. Out of the mouths of babes and infants…
March 27th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Thank god there are still young women who aspire to more than doing laundry and changing diapers! Good on her; fucking love it.
March 27th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
I know. A girl with her head screwed on right.
March 27th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
my darling, that was worth the wait! thank you! wonderful!!!!!!!!
1. did they ever figure out what was wrong with you???
2. agree 100% on the kids in public eateries thang.
3. that kid is going to be an empress!
please dont make us wait so long between posts. type with a long stick from the bed if you must. damn, y’all rites good!
March 28th, 2006 at 7:02 am
Hi FN
Thank you…*blush*
and no. They didn’t. They told me to go home and take paracetamol and that I must go straight back if I had any more problems breathing (apparently the air in hospital corridors is good for the respiratory tract. What I think it was - was just a really really bad case of flu that lasted for ages (although Judeboy insists that it was bird flu and that I should have been out coughing in crowded places)
March 28th, 2006 at 11:47 am
these symptoms have been bugging me for a couple of days now — i KNOW i’ve come across them before. they’re essentially that of a viral infection of the membrane that covers the lungs & heart. but there’s something else nagging somewhere at the subconscious, dammit.
but if it IS viral (sounds like it): ice pack/cool wet towel for the head and a hot body is the best death for it. avoid paracetamol in favour of aspirin - the one is potentially lethal, the other isn’t. i’d also be concerned about lots of microdamages to the heart, implied by the tachycardia IF it is a virus: i’d be immediately high-dosing on coenzyme Q10 to head off future problems, plus also fish oil (EPA 3 is heavily used by heart muscle and damage healing over and above its nerve usefulness). and since neither can hurt you nor contraindicate any medications so far tested, it can’t possibly hurt you to take them precautionally. and it could help enormously.
March 28th, 2006 at 11:51 am
i just remembered where i’d seen those symptoms before: WWI frontline medical reports. poor nutrition, high stress, unhealthy surrounds: oral/atmospheric infection.
March 28th, 2006 at 11:52 am
pleurisy
March 28th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
previous comment was a “eureka! memory!” moment. complete lack of exclamation marks etc kinda detracts from it, no?
bugger
sounds like your hospital came to the same conclusion but just didn’t bother telling you, especially given they were testing for non-viral causes (blood clot on lung). JESUS i love uk doctors.
Pleurisy
oh, and high body temp kills most viruses, but you have to protect the brain/nervous system as this is the part most swiftly damaged by high heat. hence heat + coolth on head is good for moderate temp. increases.
March 28th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
oh, and if it IS viral pleurisy AND you had tachycardia, you almost certainly have heaps of little microdamages throughout your heart’s muscle. do the CoEnzyme Q10 thing plus the fish oil thing. should sort it out tout suite.
March 28th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
welcome back!
it looks like Sal has the medical aspects covered so i won’t address them, save to wish you a speedy recovery and suggest that stress and little sleep resulting in painfully constricted airways and a feeling of impending doom could also just be an anxiety attack (which, on a scale of desirable ailments, would rate as an 8 or 9 to pleurisy’s 1, i guess).
adolescents as bonsai versions of middle-aged depressives will go down in history as the most apt and simultaneously hilarious definition of said age group in the early 21st century.
parents and children are just as poorly raised/ill-behaved in France as they are in New York, London and Milan (i don’t know about Tokyo). It’s like TV and politicians, people get the children, entertainment and government they deserve.
March 28th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Dr. Sal is in da house! Next time something on me breaks (any day now, i’m sure) I’ll know where to go. Fuck the NHS.
March 28th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Bloody hell - where to start?
Sal. Thank you so much for all the good advice - hopefully I won’t have to use it in the future but if I ever have to deal with this again I’ll know how!
Judging from the symptoms on the link you gave - yes it was pleurisy. I think that the reason that the hospital didn’t suggest that it might be that, was that one of the tests they did suggested that I was a borderline case for a bloodclot so they were all fired up about that and then once it was established that I didn’t have one they just stopped being so interested. (actually that’s not fair really - the dept I was sent too was rushed off its feet)
I did completely ignore the docs recommendations to take paracetamol cos I get really worried about what it does to your kidneys especially when they told me that I could take up to 8 tablets a day. I’m not keen on taking tablets anyway and that seemed to be a bit excessive. I didn’t think of aspirin though! Instead I did what every member of our family does when ill -I made some home made lemon barley water, bought a stack of heinz tomato soup and huddled down under a big coat on the sofa (I don’t know why a coat and not a blanket - its more comforting somehow).
The supplement info is brilliant - I do take the Omega supplements (oh I’ll be honest here - I have them in the kitchen cupboard along with all the other ones that I forget to take …I’ll move them to the bench so I remember) but I never even thought of coenzyme Q10 (mainly because although I’ve heard of it, I didn’t know what it was for and these stupid regulations they now have about vitamins means that Holland and Barrett have taken down all the labels that used to tell you!) I was/am worried about my heart rate - it’s been doing that for a while (and still is - I’ve now cut out all caffeine as well) which is odd cos if anything my heart rate was always on the slow side but I put it down to; not being as fit as I was, too much coffee and stress and too little sleep.
And, I’m ashamed to say - you’re also spot on the “poor nutrition, high stress, unhealthy surrounds: oral/atmospheric infection.” I used to pride myself on my ability to be a “proper” loads of fresh veg sort of cook but since Christmas I’ve have been too snowed under with work and too knackered when it stops to either shop or cook like I used to. Time to start again I think. F would do it, but he’s working longer hours than I am.
Can’t figure out where I picked it up though. Now I work from home I’m practically a recluse - I can honestly (but not proudly) say that during the week I rarely have time to leave the house and on the weekends my forays into the great outdoors are limited to a brisk walk round the botanical gardens or a trip to the local supermarket(one thing I do miss about london is the brilliant farmers market there used to be in Palmers Green - Edinburgh does have one but its not as good and its only once a month) I can only think that my mum picked something up from my auntie J (who had just come out of hospital after having pneumonia) and when she came to visit the week before this happened she passed it on to me. Too much work and too little sleep did the rest.
Bering. Thank you too. Its nice to be back! Actually the reason I didn’t wake up F or call a doctor when I was ill during the night was that I thought it was a panic attack. My mum (who’s absolutely disgustingly healthy)once woke up in the night convinced that she was having a heart attack - she had all the symptoms - chest pain, numb left arm, tight chest…got my bro to call for an ambulance which subsequently arrived sirens blaring and lights flashing. They hooked her up to all the machines, watched the readouts and then gave her a paper bag to breathe into… the embarassment nearly killed her.
I’m not sure about the children being as badly behaved in France as they are in England - or rather they are but there seems to be less of a child worshipping thing going on there (although it might just be within the families I know). At the aforementioned botanical garden cafe - I notice all the (predominatly) middle class parents who seem terrified of insisting that their children say please and thank you. Or seem incapable of saying “no” to their kids. I dont mind naughty kids who run around and make noise - thats normal and natural - but these little pasty faced whiny ones not only seem desperately stunted (hence the bonsai) but desperately unhappy/unfree to be kids too. Quite agree with you - children are born perfect, we create their personalities.
CB - Don’t say fuck the NHS - Not to try to put down the US but I’m always reminded of F’s story of when he was in LA and had the burst ulcer. He had been taking aspirin to the extent that they’d thinned his blood so much he was bleeding from practically anywhere. When his flatmate called the hospital the first thing they asked was “does he have health insurance?” and when she said no the answer was “well he’s gonna die then” He eventually did get seen - by going to somesort of charity (? -I’m not sure) hospital but he said that as he came round from the anaesthetic they were waiting with the HP papers for him to sign (hence his escape) At least I got seen more or less straightaway even if I did have to wait after that and all the nurses I encountered that day were absolutely wonderful. Nothing was too much trouble for them, they were always cheerful and they were incredibly gentle and patient with me…I had a bad reaction to an anaesthetic before an operation I had years ago and ever since then I’ve had a bit of a phobia about needles so I got a bit freaked out and teary when the doctor wanted to take blood - which I admit I wouldn’t have done if they’d let me have F in the room with me when they were doing it as I’d asked. The nurse thought it was a good idea - it was the doctor who didn’t. So actually, taking into consideration the attitude of all the doctors I encountered that day - which was patronising to say that least - you can say fuck the NHS if you then add “except the nurses”.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
but… i WANT to fuck the nurses
glad you’re ok now. from the sound of the heart thing, yeah definitely do both the fish oil and the Q10. the q10 will also help your fitness/maximum exercise ability. speaking of which, you’ll get as good a heart workout doing squats (with weights) and pushups as you will doing jogging, and much better than if you do it on a treadmill.
and re nutrition: yeah, UK fruit&veg is water (average 75% drop in nutrition between 1948 and 1998). but so is the meat, and the heart critically needs good meat. buy wild animals/animals that ran free. yes, it’s much more expensive per kilo. but if you eat till you’re not hungry, you’ll notice that you eat a fraction of what you do now. so the net/total cost is about the same. and you’re much healthier.
so: venison or rabbit from the UK. or cow from oz. http://big-island.co.uk. 4 square inches of steak will fill you up.
March 29th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
lazylink: big-island.co.uk
March 30th, 2006 at 12:47 am
you can… so long as you respect them afterwards…
I really agree with you re the veg thing. The stuff in supermarkets stinks - even the organic stuff. But then herebe and I were spoilt as mums always been into organic even from before it got fashionable so we were brought up on home grown veg. That’s one reason why I’m so desperate to buy a house this year - I want to grow cabbages!!!
Venison and rabbit I love and if I get my act together then I can order it from the relation who’s doing his best to decimate the natural fauna of scotland - we might as well have it from him as otherwise it just gets fed to the dogs (which is a shameful waste) I have no qualms at all about eating bambi and thumper!
Jogging I refuse to do - partly cos I’m to tall and it knacks my knees but mostly because my whole damn family is obsessed with running and doing competitive races and they get pretty fierce about it - my Auntie R actually elbowed my mum out the way in the last blaydon race - so that she could cross the finish line before her. Weights I have and so I’ll drag them out and put them beside the supplements. Have ordered the Q10 from Higher Nature which mum recommended as a good site for vitamins and supplements so will take them as soon as they arrive.
I guess its just about getting gresponsible again - which means that right now I should be in bed!