We moved from Chalk Farm to Southgate when I was 6 and it was like a different world. There was green everywhere, instead of grey. There was an area of grass right outside our house, about half the size of a football pitch, which we called 'The Green'. And it was ours. When I say 'ours' I mean the few kids who lived in a house facing The Green. That would include kids from the 6 newly built 3 storey houses in a cul-de-sac called Linden Way - me and my brother from number 94, Deborah and Emily from 92 and Jonathan and Philip from 96. (The latter two had older brothers, but both were teenagers and less interested in our patch of grass than they were in other grass, I perhaps erroneously and judgementally conjecture). And then, from the semi detached houses on the other side of The Green, there was just Sergio, a spoilt and annoying kid of Italian descent who we sometimes played with and sometimes told to fuck off. The third side of this triangular oasis had flats, full of old people I suspect as no one came out. There were lots of old people around that area. Poor bastards. We must have annoyed them by climbing over their fences, ringing their doorbells and running away and being generally noisy during the long hours we'd be playing out in the area. Kids who didn't live right next to The Green rarely used it, not out of fear, more apathy, but when they did, we didn't like it. Kids get territorial, like dogs. We didn't piss on The Green to mark our territory though. We only pissed on it when we were bored and thought no one could see.
The great thing about The Green was that it was big enough to play football on, jumpers for goalposts OBVIOUSLY; and when the ball went into the road, which it always did, because there was nothing fencing us in, we would just continue playing in the road. Few cars drove past, it was a quiet, leafy suburban set of streets, away from the nearest main road which linked Southgate and Oakwood tube stations. And in the summer, The Green attracted bees, butterflies and wasps, which we'd catch in fishing nets. We'd let the butterflies go, and the bees usually; but the wasps we'd keep in jam jars and then find garden spiders to put in with them in order to see who would win a gladiatorial contest. The spiders usually did.
There weren't any trees bigger than saplings on The Green, but there were two small, conspicuous round bushes, which you could sit in, push each other onto or piss against. Usually it was just Philip from next door who did that. His hobby was pissing or snotting everywhere in the local area.
Saturday, 28 March 2020
Tuesday, 24 March 2020
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 4 - Seamus' snot-drop, vomit-inducing milk and Janet and John's Special Needs)
I went to nursery in Gospel Oak and all I can say about that was that it had a big sandpit. And after that I started at The Rosary Roman Catholic primary school in Belsize Park. My teacher was called Mrs Morgan. For some reason, years later when me and my brother were in the bath together (obviously not a LOT of years later) we had a running joke in which one of us would put a wet flannel on our head and say, "I'm Mrs Morgan". I have absolutely NO idea why. My memory of my first teacher was that she didn't walk around with a wet flannel on her head. In fact, the only time she might ever find her head soaked would be if she went too near Seamus when he shook HIS head. Seamus had a permanent snot-drop hanging off his nostril. I say permanent, but I suspect it dropped (or flew) off at times, but then it was soon replaced by another snot-drop. His head was like a leaking bucket of glue.
Seamus is the only kid in my class at The Rosary that I can recall, but the faces in an old photo that my mum has mostly look familiar. For some reason, in that photo, everyone is sitting on the floor listening to the teacher telling a story, everyone in their own clothes. And behind them, sitting on a chair and in full uniform is me. Arms folded. Standing out a mile. I don't remember being bullied, but I certainly looked like I should have been.
School milk was still available (although Thatcher had 'snatched' it away in 1971, for some reason we still had it in 1974, so maybe the church paid for it). But it wasn't stored in a fridge, so by the time we got to drink it, late in the day, it was warm and full of cream. Cream in milk makes me want to throw my guts up and from that point onwards I refused to drink milk (except in milk shakes) until I reached adulthood and discovered semi-skimmed. I was quite a fussy eater too and Mrs Morgan's assistant used to swap her 'grown up's' chocolate sponge cake and custard dessert at lunch time for my vomit-inducing (and vomit-looking) bowl of rice pudding.
My favourite reading material at this time was the 'Topsy and Tim' series of books. Topsy and Tim were a cooler version of 'Janet and John'. They were 70s kids. Janet and John talked to each other like they were pensioners living in the 1930s. Or as if they had severe learning difficulties. Outside of school, I'd get books from Primrose Hill library, like 'Meg and Mog' and 'The Mr Men.' Years after moving away from the area, I found a 'Meg and Mog' book which had a Primrose Hill library label in it and I worried for ages that I'd get into trouble. I walked past that library just a few years back on the way to a restaurant with staff from Haverstock School and even then I felt a bit anxious, like I'm still on their 'Wanted' list with a fine that has since increased to something like my annual salary.
Seamus is the only kid in my class at The Rosary that I can recall, but the faces in an old photo that my mum has mostly look familiar. For some reason, in that photo, everyone is sitting on the floor listening to the teacher telling a story, everyone in their own clothes. And behind them, sitting on a chair and in full uniform is me. Arms folded. Standing out a mile. I don't remember being bullied, but I certainly looked like I should have been.
School milk was still available (although Thatcher had 'snatched' it away in 1971, for some reason we still had it in 1974, so maybe the church paid for it). But it wasn't stored in a fridge, so by the time we got to drink it, late in the day, it was warm and full of cream. Cream in milk makes me want to throw my guts up and from that point onwards I refused to drink milk (except in milk shakes) until I reached adulthood and discovered semi-skimmed. I was quite a fussy eater too and Mrs Morgan's assistant used to swap her 'grown up's' chocolate sponge cake and custard dessert at lunch time for my vomit-inducing (and vomit-looking) bowl of rice pudding.
My favourite reading material at this time was the 'Topsy and Tim' series of books. Topsy and Tim were a cooler version of 'Janet and John'. They were 70s kids. Janet and John talked to each other like they were pensioners living in the 1930s. Or as if they had severe learning difficulties. Outside of school, I'd get books from Primrose Hill library, like 'Meg and Mog' and 'The Mr Men.' Years after moving away from the area, I found a 'Meg and Mog' book which had a Primrose Hill library label in it and I worried for ages that I'd get into trouble. I walked past that library just a few years back on the way to a restaurant with staff from Haverstock School and even then I felt a bit anxious, like I'm still on their 'Wanted' list with a fine that has since increased to something like my annual salary.
Monday, 23 March 2020
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 3 - London rooftops, Getting kissed 40x and the Spastic Box)
Bridge House was 6 storeys high and you could access the roof. The view from there was amazing. You looked down onto the top the Roundhouse, across Camden Lock market towards Camden Town, the West End, the Post Office Tower. Early 70s rules on Health and Safety decreed that a waist high metal bar around the perimeter of the roof was sufficient prevention against a young child falling to his death. So my parents let me go up there on my own. Or at least, didn't stop me from doing so.
At ground level there were scary concrete sheds for residents. It was unusual for anyone to have a car. Dad had a bicycle which he kept in our concrete shed, but I wouldn't go in there due to the infestation of killer spiders. I say 'killer'. They were daddy-long-legs spiders and tended to remain static. But I was sure that if I'd gone in there, they'd jump on my back like in that final Jon Pertwee storyline in Doctor Who.
Next to Bridge House was a pub. And my parents must have known the managers, because I was allowed to go round there and play with their daughter outside of opening hours. It was an intriguing and exciting play space for kids, full of scruffy luxury with its dark red interior, strange sofas and beer-soaked carpet emitting an enticing odour. The daughter was slightly older than me and far more forthright. She once pinned me to the carpet in order to kiss me, then proceeded to count each kiss. She got up to 40. So it wasn't just my first kiss with a girl, it was my first 40 kisses.
We didn't have to walk far to the shops, just across the road and next to the tube station. The sweet shop obviously held the biggest attraction for me, especially the bubble-gum machine outside. You needed the wrist strength of a weightlifter to turn that bloody knob on the bubble-gum machine. There was also one of those large charity boxes chained up outside the shop, a figure of a boy in callipers, a sign encouraging you to give to 'spastics'. Spastic was such a 70s word, but got banned later, because of its association with people who had disabilities; but we tended to use it just for people who were a bit crap at something. The sweet shop was run by Monty, one of those friendly chaps who enjoyed talking to kids. Nice bloke, but come the 1980s he probably had to stop being friendly to kids as people started to get paranoid about that sort of thing being a bit noncey. Most of the time it wasn't.
There was a grocery shop where there had been a dairy on the corner next to the tube, where Chalk Farm Road split into Haverstock Hill and Adelaide Road. We were in there quite a lot. Sometimes I was in the barbers over the other side of the road. And on a rare occasion, Marine Ices. I couldn't get over Marine Ices. A restaurant just for serving ice-cream. I've never known the like of it. It was still going 40 years later when I was working in Haverstock School, but it moved location during that time. The barbers was still there too, but under different management, a right moany bastard. As for Monty, well, he'd also gone by then. Hopefully into happy retirement and not paedo-jail.
At ground level there were scary concrete sheds for residents. It was unusual for anyone to have a car. Dad had a bicycle which he kept in our concrete shed, but I wouldn't go in there due to the infestation of killer spiders. I say 'killer'. They were daddy-long-legs spiders and tended to remain static. But I was sure that if I'd gone in there, they'd jump on my back like in that final Jon Pertwee storyline in Doctor Who.
Next to Bridge House was a pub. And my parents must have known the managers, because I was allowed to go round there and play with their daughter outside of opening hours. It was an intriguing and exciting play space for kids, full of scruffy luxury with its dark red interior, strange sofas and beer-soaked carpet emitting an enticing odour. The daughter was slightly older than me and far more forthright. She once pinned me to the carpet in order to kiss me, then proceeded to count each kiss. She got up to 40. So it wasn't just my first kiss with a girl, it was my first 40 kisses.
We didn't have to walk far to the shops, just across the road and next to the tube station. The sweet shop obviously held the biggest attraction for me, especially the bubble-gum machine outside. You needed the wrist strength of a weightlifter to turn that bloody knob on the bubble-gum machine. There was also one of those large charity boxes chained up outside the shop, a figure of a boy in callipers, a sign encouraging you to give to 'spastics'. Spastic was such a 70s word, but got banned later, because of its association with people who had disabilities; but we tended to use it just for people who were a bit crap at something. The sweet shop was run by Monty, one of those friendly chaps who enjoyed talking to kids. Nice bloke, but come the 1980s he probably had to stop being friendly to kids as people started to get paranoid about that sort of thing being a bit noncey. Most of the time it wasn't.
There was a grocery shop where there had been a dairy on the corner next to the tube, where Chalk Farm Road split into Haverstock Hill and Adelaide Road. We were in there quite a lot. Sometimes I was in the barbers over the other side of the road. And on a rare occasion, Marine Ices. I couldn't get over Marine Ices. A restaurant just for serving ice-cream. I've never known the like of it. It was still going 40 years later when I was working in Haverstock School, but it moved location during that time. The barbers was still there too, but under different management, a right moany bastard. As for Monty, well, he'd also gone by then. Hopefully into happy retirement and not paedo-jail.
Sunday, 22 March 2020
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 2 - Doctor Who, a Golliwog, Stuart Hall)
My cuddly toy collection reflected the one in 'Play School'. Almost. I had a Big Ted, a Little Ted and a Golliwog. My bedroom in Flat 29, Bridge House was downstairs. Upstairs was a long rectangular lounge, the caramel brown settee in the middle, dividing it in half, creating an area for a dining room table. That also meant that it was easy to hide behind the sofa during Doctor Who. Everyone talks about hiding behind the sofa during Doctor Who, but I imagine most people had theirs pushed against a wall, so really I was one of the few who lived up to that urban myth. And Doctor Who was really fucking scary. The earliest I can remember was one story with dinosaurs, when Jon Pertwee was in the role and also his final episodes before regenerating into Tom Baker, in which spiders jumped on people's backs. Pretty scary. Then I can remember everything about Tom Baker, from his first storyline with the giant Robot onwards. I became obsessed and played it constantly, going into a wardrobe and pretending it was my TARDIS, collecting the cards that came free with Weetabix at that time. And I had my earliest crush, on Sarah Jane Smith.
Of course, none of the above has changed even to this day. Except the Golliwog, I don't have a Golliwog anymore. And the teddies. I grew out of teddies after the head fell off Little Ted when I was seven. But everything about Doctor Who.... that's the same.
I can't picture much more about the inside of number 29, Bridge House. We had a gold fish, which Dad must have won from the Bank Holiday Fair on Hampstead Heath. I fed it once and most of the tub of fish food fell into the bowl. The poor fucker ate himself to death.
We once had an evening visiting our neighbours, whose flat I can't picture now nor then, as it was thick with cigarette smoke that evening. But we played the board game version of 'It's a Knockout'. I loved that TV show. Who would have thought Stuart Hall was a nonce? You could have knocked me down with a large foam hammer into the water.
There was another neighbour a floor or two below, a boy about my age, called Rodney. My mum reckons he was a spiteful little bastard, but I don't remember that. I just remember his huge jar of sherbert lollipops. Mum warned me not to eat too many as they would give me diarrhoea. Once, I ate too many and had diarrhoea. I was round Rodney's flat at the time and created carnage in his toilet. More carnage than I could cope with, so I shouted to him to go and get my mum, quick. Mum came with Aunty Sharon, which made the whole thing even more embarrassing. I stayed away from sherbert lollies for a good while after that. Weeks probably.
Of course, none of the above has changed even to this day. Except the Golliwog, I don't have a Golliwog anymore. And the teddies. I grew out of teddies after the head fell off Little Ted when I was seven. But everything about Doctor Who.... that's the same.
I can't picture much more about the inside of number 29, Bridge House. We had a gold fish, which Dad must have won from the Bank Holiday Fair on Hampstead Heath. I fed it once and most of the tub of fish food fell into the bowl. The poor fucker ate himself to death.
We once had an evening visiting our neighbours, whose flat I can't picture now nor then, as it was thick with cigarette smoke that evening. But we played the board game version of 'It's a Knockout'. I loved that TV show. Who would have thought Stuart Hall was a nonce? You could have knocked me down with a large foam hammer into the water.
There was another neighbour a floor or two below, a boy about my age, called Rodney. My mum reckons he was a spiteful little bastard, but I don't remember that. I just remember his huge jar of sherbert lollipops. Mum warned me not to eat too many as they would give me diarrhoea. Once, I ate too many and had diarrhoea. I was round Rodney's flat at the time and created carnage in his toilet. More carnage than I could cope with, so I shouted to him to go and get my mum, quick. Mum came with Aunty Sharon, which made the whole thing even more embarrassing. I stayed away from sherbert lollies for a good while after that. Weeks probably.
Stupid Things I Remember about Growing Up (Part 1 - Self indulgence, burnt cushions and a horrific knee injury)
In a futile attempt to avoid the vanity and self-importance associated with an autobiography, and fully aware that for years I have been posting many absurd childhood memories on this blog, I've decided to fill some time during this period of COVID-19-avoiding self-isolation by amusing myself (and possibly about 3 or 4 others) with some kind of self-indulgent chronological (and probably unreliable) narrative of (other) stupid things I remember about growing up.
Part 1 then. Begin at the beginning. My earliest memory? Just an image of our front room in Flask Walk, Hampstead, when I was about 2 years old. I can picture the caramel-brown settee we had there. I'm told that I took a cushion from the settee and put it next to the electric fire, causing the vinyl on its underside to melt and burn. I don't recall doing that. But I remember the burnt cushion, as we kept the settee for several years afterwards. Me and my brother would joke that someone had just sat on it and farted really badly, that's why it was all burnt and melted. As you know, most of our humour revolved around farts, poo, bums and lavatories.
My next memory was moving into Bridge House in Chalk Farm (I was 3) and my Dad and Grandad struggling to get that brown settee upstairs to flat number 29. They tried the lift, but I don't think it would fit. I was scared of lifts in those days. Justifiably, as they did often break down. You'd have to wait to be rescued and you'd climb out of the opening where the bottom of the lift overlapped a bit with the external door, and you'd look underneath to see the lift shaft plummeting down into the dark and you'd believe it went all the way to Hell (thanks to a Catholic upbringing, but more of that later).
Around this time, possibly even slightly before, I have another memory of being told that my brother had just been born and we were to go to the hospital to see him. I was hugely excited. But unfortunately I was also at the top of a slide. So instead of sliding down (which would have been too slow, as those slides sometimes were, you know, when there'd be too much friction and you'd stall and have to drag yourself down by pulling the sides) I unwisely decided to run down it. I fell knee first onto the concrete at the bottom, cutting myself, but in my mind this cut was magnified into a huge flap of skin peeling off to expose a few square inches of flesh. It was only the promise of an ice-cream that prevented me from continuing to wail as if in the throes of dying of crucifixion; but I suspect that in reality I had a graze on my knee.
For the next 3 years we lived in Bridge House, moving to flat 2 at some point and there is a whole load of stupid things I remember about that time; so I'll keep that for parts 2 onwards in order to keep this bite-sized enough not to bore you to oblivion...
Part 1 then. Begin at the beginning. My earliest memory? Just an image of our front room in Flask Walk, Hampstead, when I was about 2 years old. I can picture the caramel-brown settee we had there. I'm told that I took a cushion from the settee and put it next to the electric fire, causing the vinyl on its underside to melt and burn. I don't recall doing that. But I remember the burnt cushion, as we kept the settee for several years afterwards. Me and my brother would joke that someone had just sat on it and farted really badly, that's why it was all burnt and melted. As you know, most of our humour revolved around farts, poo, bums and lavatories.
My next memory was moving into Bridge House in Chalk Farm (I was 3) and my Dad and Grandad struggling to get that brown settee upstairs to flat number 29. They tried the lift, but I don't think it would fit. I was scared of lifts in those days. Justifiably, as they did often break down. You'd have to wait to be rescued and you'd climb out of the opening where the bottom of the lift overlapped a bit with the external door, and you'd look underneath to see the lift shaft plummeting down into the dark and you'd believe it went all the way to Hell (thanks to a Catholic upbringing, but more of that later).
Around this time, possibly even slightly before, I have another memory of being told that my brother had just been born and we were to go to the hospital to see him. I was hugely excited. But unfortunately I was also at the top of a slide. So instead of sliding down (which would have been too slow, as those slides sometimes were, you know, when there'd be too much friction and you'd stall and have to drag yourself down by pulling the sides) I unwisely decided to run down it. I fell knee first onto the concrete at the bottom, cutting myself, but in my mind this cut was magnified into a huge flap of skin peeling off to expose a few square inches of flesh. It was only the promise of an ice-cream that prevented me from continuing to wail as if in the throes of dying of crucifixion; but I suspect that in reality I had a graze on my knee.
For the next 3 years we lived in Bridge House, moving to flat 2 at some point and there is a whole load of stupid things I remember about that time; so I'll keep that for parts 2 onwards in order to keep this bite-sized enough not to bore you to oblivion...
Thursday, 13 February 2020
Recovering from a bastard bloody heart attack
In my head, I've felt like an old man since I was 16 in 1986, when pop music went all shit and I threw myself into the 60s and 70s, avoided dance clubs, holidays in Ibiza and fashion. And I maintained my old man outlook on life as I moved from young adulthood into middle age, intolerant of anything fast, fatuous or fun (in the youthful sense, that is). And no doubt, you all might have noticed this. But in one important respect, I had NEVER felt like an old man. And that was physically.
Despite avoiding gyms like the plague and viewing jogging as a modern version of Dark Age monks' penitential self-flagellation, I maintained a reasonable level of fitness and healthiness that is underserving of my lack of effort in that regard. Which is why, on my first post-heart attack long walk - from hospital ward to car park - I was appalled to discover that physically I had become, albeit temporarily, I'm assured, a slow and feeble OLD MAN.
The car journey home - with my wife at the wheel, as I'm not allowed to drive just yet - brought with it the stark reality that I had better not gesticulate at other drivers with my routine sarcastic hand-clap or more occasional wanker wave, because, should anyone get out and come looking for a fight, unless they are under 4 stone with the strength of a lettuce, I 'd get a right hiding. Even that Stu Francis from 'Crackerjack' could beat me up, based on the fact that he could at least 'crush a grape'. I can't. But then it occurred to me that I'd probably get a right hiding from a good proportion of fellas on the road anyway and yet this has never stopped me reacting provocatively to selfish, arrogant or aggressive drivers. Having managed to avoid proper fisticuffs since the one time when I was about 8 (which I won, hence my faultless fight record of 1-0-0), I have acted with complacent impunity both on the road and public transport (where, as it has been documented, I often trip up rude people). I suspect, that as I'd had a similar attitude towards my health, this will one day catch up with me just as the heart attack did.
My first 'practice walk', on the day after my discharge from hospital, I managed 200 metres up the road, before feeling the need to turn back; and again, this was at such a pace that by the time I passed by the neighbours' plastic recycling bins for a second time, they had started to biodegrade. Yesterday, my wife kindly dropped me off at the cinema to watch the 1pm matinee of '1917'. If you ever go to the cinema for a mid-week matinee in school term time, you might notice that it's full of pensioners. I was the only one in there who hadn't lived through 1917, the year, never mind the film. And yet, I was still getting overtaken on the stairs. Anyway, I got a bus most of the way home, but this still left what would normally be a 15 minutes walk, but which ended up taking me 30 minutes. The embarrassing thing was, it required me to walk past a school after home time. Embarrassing, because I wasn't walking any faster than someone who would be seen as 'loitering' outside the school. And because I don't look like an old man who should be strolling that slowly, I assumed that I looked like someone very dodgy, in the 'Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise' sort of way.
The other key feature of my recovery that I feel the need to share with you, is the slight adjustment to my diet. I was reading the little booklets published by the British Heart Foundation that the hospital gave me, full of advice on changing your lifestyle to avoid a repeat incident. The problem is, it had case studies. And the photos of the people in the case studies looked nothing like me. I read about Paul and his heart attack and how he changed his diet; and I looked at the picture of Paul and I thought, 'Of course Paul had a heart attack, look at the fucking state of him.' Despite not being like Paul, I have acquiesced to some key changes in my diet - limiting dairy products, cutting down on red meat (especially the bacon, as it was the bacon that done for me) and on chocolate and avoiding saturated fats, animal fats, all that sort of stuff that gives you bum cheeks to inadvertently knock things over with in shops.
You'd think as well that this lifestyle change (and life changing event) would be a topic of conversation when I went to see a GP a couple of days after my discharge, as directed. You might even think that she'd open the conversation with "How are you feeling?" given that she had my notes in front of her. You might even think that SHE would lead the conversation with a series of questions to explore how I'm getting on, what I'm doing to look after myself, how it might have affected me mentally, etc. As it turned out, she did none of these things. She said, "What brings you here?" (which she knew, she had the notes on her screen) and I replied, "A heart attack" and she joked, "What? Now?" before we entered an awkward silence while I expected her to ask me something. I had my list of what to say and thus skipped over the section on how I was feeling to my list of questions, all of which she answered monosyllabically with no follow-up questions of her own. I asked about the theoretical likelihood of a person being stressed without knowing it and if that could have been a contributing factor to the attack. Short answer and no follow up to conclude if I had been stressed or what might have caused me to be so.
Maybe I'm being an intolerant old man, but this appointment was late Friday afternoon, the GP was young, she was probably distracted, thinking about getting home and going out that evening. To a dance club. For a fast, fatuous and fun night out.
Despite avoiding gyms like the plague and viewing jogging as a modern version of Dark Age monks' penitential self-flagellation, I maintained a reasonable level of fitness and healthiness that is underserving of my lack of effort in that regard. Which is why, on my first post-heart attack long walk - from hospital ward to car park - I was appalled to discover that physically I had become, albeit temporarily, I'm assured, a slow and feeble OLD MAN.
The car journey home - with my wife at the wheel, as I'm not allowed to drive just yet - brought with it the stark reality that I had better not gesticulate at other drivers with my routine sarcastic hand-clap or more occasional wanker wave, because, should anyone get out and come looking for a fight, unless they are under 4 stone with the strength of a lettuce, I 'd get a right hiding. Even that Stu Francis from 'Crackerjack' could beat me up, based on the fact that he could at least 'crush a grape'. I can't. But then it occurred to me that I'd probably get a right hiding from a good proportion of fellas on the road anyway and yet this has never stopped me reacting provocatively to selfish, arrogant or aggressive drivers. Having managed to avoid proper fisticuffs since the one time when I was about 8 (which I won, hence my faultless fight record of 1-0-0), I have acted with complacent impunity both on the road and public transport (where, as it has been documented, I often trip up rude people). I suspect, that as I'd had a similar attitude towards my health, this will one day catch up with me just as the heart attack did.
My first 'practice walk', on the day after my discharge from hospital, I managed 200 metres up the road, before feeling the need to turn back; and again, this was at such a pace that by the time I passed by the neighbours' plastic recycling bins for a second time, they had started to biodegrade. Yesterday, my wife kindly dropped me off at the cinema to watch the 1pm matinee of '1917'. If you ever go to the cinema for a mid-week matinee in school term time, you might notice that it's full of pensioners. I was the only one in there who hadn't lived through 1917, the year, never mind the film. And yet, I was still getting overtaken on the stairs. Anyway, I got a bus most of the way home, but this still left what would normally be a 15 minutes walk, but which ended up taking me 30 minutes. The embarrassing thing was, it required me to walk past a school after home time. Embarrassing, because I wasn't walking any faster than someone who would be seen as 'loitering' outside the school. And because I don't look like an old man who should be strolling that slowly, I assumed that I looked like someone very dodgy, in the 'Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise' sort of way.
The other key feature of my recovery that I feel the need to share with you, is the slight adjustment to my diet. I was reading the little booklets published by the British Heart Foundation that the hospital gave me, full of advice on changing your lifestyle to avoid a repeat incident. The problem is, it had case studies. And the photos of the people in the case studies looked nothing like me. I read about Paul and his heart attack and how he changed his diet; and I looked at the picture of Paul and I thought, 'Of course Paul had a heart attack, look at the fucking state of him.' Despite not being like Paul, I have acquiesced to some key changes in my diet - limiting dairy products, cutting down on red meat (especially the bacon, as it was the bacon that done for me) and on chocolate and avoiding saturated fats, animal fats, all that sort of stuff that gives you bum cheeks to inadvertently knock things over with in shops.
You'd think as well that this lifestyle change (and life changing event) would be a topic of conversation when I went to see a GP a couple of days after my discharge, as directed. You might even think that she'd open the conversation with "How are you feeling?" given that she had my notes in front of her. You might even think that SHE would lead the conversation with a series of questions to explore how I'm getting on, what I'm doing to look after myself, how it might have affected me mentally, etc. As it turned out, she did none of these things. She said, "What brings you here?" (which she knew, she had the notes on her screen) and I replied, "A heart attack" and she joked, "What? Now?" before we entered an awkward silence while I expected her to ask me something. I had my list of what to say and thus skipped over the section on how I was feeling to my list of questions, all of which she answered monosyllabically with no follow-up questions of her own. I asked about the theoretical likelihood of a person being stressed without knowing it and if that could have been a contributing factor to the attack. Short answer and no follow up to conclude if I had been stressed or what might have caused me to be so.
Maybe I'm being an intolerant old man, but this appointment was late Friday afternoon, the GP was young, she was probably distracted, thinking about getting home and going out that evening. To a dance club. For a fast, fatuous and fun night out.
Sunday, 2 February 2020
Bastard bloody heart attack
Hubris, if you haven't heard of it before, is an ancient Greek concept in which someone gets a bit over-cocky and pisses the gods off, causing them to send some thunderous shitbolts his way as a form of revenge, knowing that this would shut the bastard up. For as long as I can remember, I revelled in my ailment dodging, my body's refusal to succumb to human illnesses, the tiny return I got on my NHS contributions and the suggestion that I was in fact some kind of Kryptonian immortal.
Then last week I had a heart attack.
No one saw this coming, but on reflection I might have avoided it by not eating a double round of bacon sandwiches every day for nearly 6 months. And not pouring a large dollop of tomato sauce and hubris on each round. And occasionally a slice of Swiss cheese. Or if I hadn't gone to Edinburgh a few weeks before. It's no coincidence that this was my first trip to Scotland, where heart attacks are viral and as a foreigner I don't have the immune system to cope with it. I think I caught heart attack up there.
I'll spare you the details of the attack, as clearly those who witnessed it pretty much shit themselves, while I decided to indulge in some distracting gallows humour. (Except to say that it was nothing like it is on telly or in films, where someone just clutches their arm and keels over into the tomato plants. I almost wore out the carpet scratching at it in pain for 15 minutes before the paramedics arrived.) Instead, I want to inject some typically lavatorial, black comedy into the story of my 2 days recovering in hospital.
It's true, that in situations like this, knowing that an ambulance is on the way, you do reflect on your choice of underwear; and I was reassured to remember that I had chosen a recently purchased, nicely-fitted pair that was 2nd from the top of my pile, over an old baggy pair right on top, which was detaching itself from the elastic waistband and beginning to show signs of perishing around the gusset.
Once in theatre, about to be moved from trolley to operating table, fully conscious as it was only an angioplasty, the medical staff - nearly all young women - instructed me to help them get my t-shirt and then trousers off by pulling them down over my bum. Not a problem. Then someone said, "Sorry, and your pants, please." "Not my pants," I moaned, but these were still whipped off and I groped at the theatre gown they'd put over me in order to cover my essentials. Then they helped shift me onto the table and I asked, "What about my socks?" I was told I could keep them on. "No, take them off, I look silly." You have to keep some dignity.
They had to stick a tube in through a vein from wrist to heart in order to inject some dye to help locate the blocked artery and then pop in two stents to widen it; and they had a choice of going up through my groin or from my wrist. Once I saw them shave my wrist, I worked out why this was the preferred option: They'd saved themselves 20 minutes and two bottles of shaving foam.
I was wheeled onto a ward to recover and told not to get out of bed for 24 hours. In order to go to the toilet, I could use a cardboard urine bottle or if necessary (it wasn't, as I'd crimped a few out already over the weekend) a bed pan for anything more solid. I was told to drink as much water as I could and it would be easy to roll over onto my side in bed to use the urine bottle or they could help me stand up and do it. I opted for the rolling over. But this didn't work. Obviously. I could have guessed it wouldn't. After all, when blokes in public urinals have a case of the nervous 'no-go', they don't decide to lie on their side on the toilet floor to try it from that angle. Therefore after many hours of horizontal futility, I got myself onto my feet to try with the support of gravity. At first, still nothing, except the anxiety that someone would walk in on me with my gown gaping open at the back and my arse hanging out. Which they did. Eventually, come about 2am (12 hours since my last wee, pre-heart attack), the dam burst.
The acoustics at that quiet time of night in an airless hospital ward, with an empty echo chamber of a cardboard urine bottle providing a receptacle, meant that a man pissing like a horse could sound like the Niagra Falls. Almost a minute into the exercise, you start to wonder how close you are to filling it. You can't see. You shake it to try and gauge how full it is, because it's certainly getting heavy; so heavy, you fear dropping it. You wonder if you'll feel it before it reaches the lip. But, as luck would have it, I finished just before it reached what would have been labelled the 'fill level' if it had been a Pot Noodle pot. Then, as you place the container on its flat side on the table next to your bed, the spout sits at a 45 degree angle, so you worry again it will pour out; but I was about 2 mm short of that happening. The next morning I filled two more within 15 minutes of each other. A nurse came to take my blood pressure and went to move the trolley where I'd placed them both..."WATCH OUT!!!" I panicked, and just in time, we averted a curtain of warm piss being sent across the bay.
There were 4 bays on my ward. Opposite me was an old Jamaican man with the deepest bass voice you've ever heard. He'd clear his throat in the night and it sounded like an earthquake. Then you'd hear him mutter, "Mercy, Jesus!"
Next to me was a Romanian man, who got told off for giving himself oxygen, because it was there, why not. He didn't speak English. They'd ask him a question and he'd reply, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no."
But at an angle from me was the world's more boring, moany old bugger I've ever had the misfortune to lie and listen to for 48 hours. He must have phoned every one on his contacts list to "update you on how I'm doing" which meant repeating the same sorry-for-himself story of his ailments in a loud, monotone monologue that would have sent each listener diving for an open oven door. Without noticing the irony, he'd finish each long call with, "But you know me, I suffer in silence." He was in for a stroke, but my guess is that he also had a charisma by-pass, which had obviously been a success. You'd feel sorry for him, as I sometimes do for life's dullards, but he was both creepily flirty with the nurses and a bit entitled in terms of his moaning at them for things he wanted done. Charmless nurk. And he didn't draw the curtain when pissing into his cardboard pot.
I had a space age bed, which adjusted itself every 5 minutes to stop you getting bed sores. The mattress would mould itself to your body, by sinking where you lay and rising in the gaps. So you'd be trying in vain to sleep at night, hear the buzz of the bed kicking into action and feel something work its way up the crack in your arse. (I assume this was the bed. It was dark, but I didn't think anyone had wandered over.)
Finally, a word about the food. My hopes were raised when I first arrived on the ward and was given jacket potato and beans. The latter are of course "good for the heart" but made me want to fart and with those acoustics, this was not the place. Some severe muffling was required. But come the next day, I opted for beef stew for lunch and macaroni cheese for dinner. Because I love both. Or rather I love my wife's version of both. The potential to ruin both dishes is limitless I found. The beef stew was fat and gristle in tasteless, phlegm-textured gravy with a dumpling as soft as an overbaked biscuit. The macaroni cheese challenged me to work out if I should eat it or use it for grouting between the bathroom tiles. The mashed potato it was served with, I hid under my pillow so I could start to tunnel out in the night.
So, there you go, every cloud has a brown lining or at least something dark to laugh about afterwards. Until the next time (blog, not heart attack), adios!
Then last week I had a heart attack.
No one saw this coming, but on reflection I might have avoided it by not eating a double round of bacon sandwiches every day for nearly 6 months. And not pouring a large dollop of tomato sauce and hubris on each round. And occasionally a slice of Swiss cheese. Or if I hadn't gone to Edinburgh a few weeks before. It's no coincidence that this was my first trip to Scotland, where heart attacks are viral and as a foreigner I don't have the immune system to cope with it. I think I caught heart attack up there.
I'll spare you the details of the attack, as clearly those who witnessed it pretty much shit themselves, while I decided to indulge in some distracting gallows humour. (Except to say that it was nothing like it is on telly or in films, where someone just clutches their arm and keels over into the tomato plants. I almost wore out the carpet scratching at it in pain for 15 minutes before the paramedics arrived.) Instead, I want to inject some typically lavatorial, black comedy into the story of my 2 days recovering in hospital.
It's true, that in situations like this, knowing that an ambulance is on the way, you do reflect on your choice of underwear; and I was reassured to remember that I had chosen a recently purchased, nicely-fitted pair that was 2nd from the top of my pile, over an old baggy pair right on top, which was detaching itself from the elastic waistband and beginning to show signs of perishing around the gusset.
Once in theatre, about to be moved from trolley to operating table, fully conscious as it was only an angioplasty, the medical staff - nearly all young women - instructed me to help them get my t-shirt and then trousers off by pulling them down over my bum. Not a problem. Then someone said, "Sorry, and your pants, please." "Not my pants," I moaned, but these were still whipped off and I groped at the theatre gown they'd put over me in order to cover my essentials. Then they helped shift me onto the table and I asked, "What about my socks?" I was told I could keep them on. "No, take them off, I look silly." You have to keep some dignity.
They had to stick a tube in through a vein from wrist to heart in order to inject some dye to help locate the blocked artery and then pop in two stents to widen it; and they had a choice of going up through my groin or from my wrist. Once I saw them shave my wrist, I worked out why this was the preferred option: They'd saved themselves 20 minutes and two bottles of shaving foam.
I was wheeled onto a ward to recover and told not to get out of bed for 24 hours. In order to go to the toilet, I could use a cardboard urine bottle or if necessary (it wasn't, as I'd crimped a few out already over the weekend) a bed pan for anything more solid. I was told to drink as much water as I could and it would be easy to roll over onto my side in bed to use the urine bottle or they could help me stand up and do it. I opted for the rolling over. But this didn't work. Obviously. I could have guessed it wouldn't. After all, when blokes in public urinals have a case of the nervous 'no-go', they don't decide to lie on their side on the toilet floor to try it from that angle. Therefore after many hours of horizontal futility, I got myself onto my feet to try with the support of gravity. At first, still nothing, except the anxiety that someone would walk in on me with my gown gaping open at the back and my arse hanging out. Which they did. Eventually, come about 2am (12 hours since my last wee, pre-heart attack), the dam burst.
The acoustics at that quiet time of night in an airless hospital ward, with an empty echo chamber of a cardboard urine bottle providing a receptacle, meant that a man pissing like a horse could sound like the Niagra Falls. Almost a minute into the exercise, you start to wonder how close you are to filling it. You can't see. You shake it to try and gauge how full it is, because it's certainly getting heavy; so heavy, you fear dropping it. You wonder if you'll feel it before it reaches the lip. But, as luck would have it, I finished just before it reached what would have been labelled the 'fill level' if it had been a Pot Noodle pot. Then, as you place the container on its flat side on the table next to your bed, the spout sits at a 45 degree angle, so you worry again it will pour out; but I was about 2 mm short of that happening. The next morning I filled two more within 15 minutes of each other. A nurse came to take my blood pressure and went to move the trolley where I'd placed them both..."WATCH OUT!!!" I panicked, and just in time, we averted a curtain of warm piss being sent across the bay.
There were 4 bays on my ward. Opposite me was an old Jamaican man with the deepest bass voice you've ever heard. He'd clear his throat in the night and it sounded like an earthquake. Then you'd hear him mutter, "Mercy, Jesus!"
Next to me was a Romanian man, who got told off for giving himself oxygen, because it was there, why not. He didn't speak English. They'd ask him a question and he'd reply, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no."
But at an angle from me was the world's more boring, moany old bugger I've ever had the misfortune to lie and listen to for 48 hours. He must have phoned every one on his contacts list to "update you on how I'm doing" which meant repeating the same sorry-for-himself story of his ailments in a loud, monotone monologue that would have sent each listener diving for an open oven door. Without noticing the irony, he'd finish each long call with, "But you know me, I suffer in silence." He was in for a stroke, but my guess is that he also had a charisma by-pass, which had obviously been a success. You'd feel sorry for him, as I sometimes do for life's dullards, but he was both creepily flirty with the nurses and a bit entitled in terms of his moaning at them for things he wanted done. Charmless nurk. And he didn't draw the curtain when pissing into his cardboard pot.
I had a space age bed, which adjusted itself every 5 minutes to stop you getting bed sores. The mattress would mould itself to your body, by sinking where you lay and rising in the gaps. So you'd be trying in vain to sleep at night, hear the buzz of the bed kicking into action and feel something work its way up the crack in your arse. (I assume this was the bed. It was dark, but I didn't think anyone had wandered over.)
Finally, a word about the food. My hopes were raised when I first arrived on the ward and was given jacket potato and beans. The latter are of course "good for the heart" but made me want to fart and with those acoustics, this was not the place. Some severe muffling was required. But come the next day, I opted for beef stew for lunch and macaroni cheese for dinner. Because I love both. Or rather I love my wife's version of both. The potential to ruin both dishes is limitless I found. The beef stew was fat and gristle in tasteless, phlegm-textured gravy with a dumpling as soft as an overbaked biscuit. The macaroni cheese challenged me to work out if I should eat it or use it for grouting between the bathroom tiles. The mashed potato it was served with, I hid under my pillow so I could start to tunnel out in the night.
So, there you go, every cloud has a brown lining or at least something dark to laugh about afterwards. Until the next time (blog, not heart attack), adios!
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