December 2008 Archives

You, dear reader may never have seen our house. So in order to better help you add your own mental pictures to this mental drivel, I thought I might include a wee picture. With this in mind, I asked R to get busy with her pens, and she has knocked up this handy, helpful diagram:

For those who didn't see it, David Mitchell's column in the Observer made me laugh so much that I choked on my porridge.

To one and all...

A morning spent knocking over aisle displays in the shopping emporia of Islington. What fun! It's infuriating how many shops have clearly been laid out in order to give the correct widths and turning spaces to enable a wheelchair user to negotiate the space with ease, only to have the branch manager or some other plank clutter every last piece of floor space with displays of tat that no-one really wants.

 You can tell that it's stuff no-one really wants, as it doesn't warrant a proper shelf space. It's usually hilarious knick-knacks containing any of the following words- golfer, Dad/Mum/any other relative, friend, willy, best, chocoholic, worst, shot, party, imbecilic, symptom of the worst excesses of our wasteful, consumption obsessed economy, etc.

I took a break from arranging these aisle displays under my wheels and went for a coffee and a sandwich at a well-known sandwich chain that rhymes with get-a-sponger (well, almost). Having purchased my food and hot coffee, I realise that all the 'eat-in' spaces consist of high stools and shelves at my eye level. I grumbled at the staff, though it's not really their fault, and they offered to help me with anything I might need. A nice offer, but I couldn't see them getting out a jigsaw and a hammer, so I declined graciously.

Then I spent five minutes playing the get the sugar and spoon into the cup of scalding coffee game. The one where you try and keep the hot liquid out of your eye/ off your lap while still managing to drink it and look nonchalant at the same time. I am indebted to my time spent playing wheelchair basketball, as I can now hit a three-pointer with a sachet of sugar with relative ease.

The coffee fired my system up enough to enjoy the neon display on a hoarding in Upper Street which is an aesthetically pleasing version of a left-brain/right brain test which highlights something called the Stroop effect (no, nothing to do with how many waffles you can eat. One for any Belgian readers, there).

The idea is that you have to read the colours and not the words...

I must confess I was very concerned when R came back from nursery a couple of weeks ago professing to having, "A secret."

She went on to tell us that she saw two men fighting by a building.
"One man hit the other man and it was on the other side of the street by a window and it's a secret and I mustn't say anything because it's my secret."

P and I looked at each other aghast. After R was in bed, we tried to unpick the 'secret', but we were puzzled. Had someone been taking R to see some bare knuckle fighting?  Had there been an altercation in the street when she was in nursery? Or at the nursery itself? Maybe they are secretly hothousing the children into martial arts? Creating a gang of tiny Ninja assassins disguised as toddlers...

Well, today the mystery was solved. The secret bit was just R trying to grasp the concept of a secret after a reference in a children's book. Obviously she's as crap as her dad at keeping secrets, because she insisted on telling us repeatedly that she had a secret and then what the secret was.

And the men fighting? A picture of some boxing on the window of the bookies we go past on the way to the nursery.
I shudder to think what 'secrets' she's been blurting out at nursery. No doubt Social Services will be kicking our door down any time soon.

This slab of pure comedy gold from The Onion back in '01...

As I may have mentioned in the past, one of the medications that I take to combat my neuropathic pain is Amitriptyline. This is a medication that was originally developed as a tricyclic antidepressant, but has been found to be effective in reducing the symptoms of nerve pain. I have been taking the stuff since I was in hospital, but I cannot honestly tell you if it's doing anything. So I have decided to creep up to the maximum dose, and if I find no improvement, I shall come off it altogether.

So, that's why I'm taking 100mgs of the stuff every night. Only thing is, last night I forgot on account of being feverish. I realised my mistake this morning and thought the best thing would be to take them straight away.

Well, that mental picture you have just painted is probably spot on. I went from fine to very not fine, to queasy, and then passed out. It was all very scary for P, who thought at one stage that I had stopped breathing. Luckily a loud snore provided reassurance that I was still here.

Still, it was all pretty frightening stuff for a while there. It has made me change my ambivalence about all the pill popping. And has made me more determined to identify things that aren't helping and kick them into touch. Metaphorically speaking, obviously...

I was kidding myself. Delusional. I honestly thought that me, collector of ailments and virtuoso of the gentle, pitiful moan, that this time I would not succumb, despite R and P both going down with it.

And it's real, 100% guaranteed influenza. I know this not because I have been snogging geese, but rather that my temperature today has been up around the 40c mark.

Sadly, the extra bonus symptom that I have to contend with when I have a fever is a sensation akin to having knitting needles driven into my thighs every few minutes. Coincidentally, P has taken up knitting, which makes me a little suspicious. But that is mainly the combination of the fever, the heady mix of various pharmaceuticals and a lack of sleep last night. I actually started hallucinating this afternoon.Sadly it was all rather mundane, peripheral vision a bit wobbly as I sat Buddha-like, cross legged and wearing virtually nothing. At one point I imagined myself to be sitting atop a mountain. But then the phone rang, and there was an audible 'pop!' as my revery was replaced by someone asking if my name was Nisnad, or Nangtod or something.I became very confused. Maybe that too was an hallucination, but of an auditory kind.

Luckily I didn't receive any guests, as I'm sure I must have looked shocking.

That was until R came back from nursery and blew raspberries on my tummy. Surely that's the way to reach enlightenment. I began to imagine monasteries full of Buddhist monks blowing raspberries on each other's tummies. There could even be a surprise hit CD in it, too. Well, if the Gregorian/Benedictine mob can do it... Although I'm sure producing a very strong liqueur must have helped them break down Monastic inhibitions.

Sorry for all this drivel. I'm going to stop now and chase a sleeping tablet into bed.
I leave you with R's insghtful portrait of me. Kind of sums it all up, really.

Before you all start the whole 'Man Flu' thing... No, not me this time, but my beloved wife P who has succumbed to a proper feverish, aching  'flu.

Meanwhile, R has retained the cough of an asthmatic miner who smokes 40 Senior Service a day.  It is an endearing sound that only serves to enhance the glamorous shine of the perma-snot on her top lip. The combination of colds and cold weather makes me suspect that it will remain there until the big thaw.

So far I have dodged this particular bullet. Not quite sure how or why seeing as I've had every cold in the UK in the last few months. Perhaps the cold virus wants more of a challenge. My immune system up to now has used the bullying victim's tactic of lying down and hoping they get bored.

Of course I have enthusiastically joined in the mutual reassurance of parenting where we all get together over a coffee and tell each other how it's really good for our little cherubs to go to nursery/school and come down with everything short of bubonic plague. It helps to strengthen their immune systems, we say. Mind you, if mine is anything to go by, it doesn't count for shit once you become a parent. I have been cheerfully joining in with the big germ Swap Shop for months now, and I just keep getting sick. Go figure.

 So just for once, I get to look after my family rather than the other way around. It make take me a little longer to do some things, but it's good to feel useful. The only thing is, it has coincided with me increasing my dose of Amitriptyline. The result is that I am spending a significant part of the day wandering around the house in a daze when I'm not taking the odd nap. Maybe I'm not being useful... Maybe I just think I am. Maybe I haven't written this at all, but merely thought it. Ouch. My head hurts...
 
Talking of hurt heads. On a more cheerful note, I leave you with this gem. The more times you watch it, the funnier it gets...