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November 11th, 2009
07:43 pm
Sometimes, only a bake-up of tatties, onions and corned beef will do... plus garlic and mead. ooh, yeah, that's the stuff. It helps keep the blues away.
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September 20th, 2009
01:04 am - *hic*
I haven't drunk properly for montyhs, and tonght had enough to make me dizzy and tip my spelling, finally, over the edge...
One bottle of wine apiece, and a couple of liquor shots...
Anyway, walking back this evening from the pub with my other half, I waxed lyrical on my vision of human life, society and setting the world to rights. It seemed like good stuff. In fact, I know it was: reasonable, logical, for-the-benefit-of-the-many stuff. Why cannot this be feasible when sober? When tipsy, as I said to him, my mind feels less stressed with itself: more connected. I have a history of mental health distress, it's true, but I would never look to alcohol to be my 'cure', yet it is nice to "have a holiday outside my own head" and just... let go.
I have heard alcohol described as a 'powerful drug'. It is: to be used sparingly.
T'other half is downstairs partaking of drinking games with his brother and his brother's mates. They are being relatively calm and discreet for a bunch of drunken lads.
And I'm up here, thinking posting- anything- something to conform my ideas that I wasn't spouting total nonsense on the way home- is a good idea!
Current Mood: tipsy
Current Music: The Sound Of Merry Mirth Downstairs
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August 21st, 2009
09:12 pm - Billy Connolly Finds The Best Random Shite
"Albert Richardson Nelson (1952) East Belfast Film and TV V.I.P, Seeker of the peace, Part-time chandelier cleaner, A legend in his own time, Oppressor of champions, Soldier of Fortune, World Traveller, Bon vivant, All round good guy, International lover, Casual Hero, Philosopher, Wars fought, Bears wrestled, Equations solved, Virgins enlightened, Revolutions quelled, Tigers Castrated, Orgies organised, Bars quaffed dry, Governments run, Test rockets flown, Life president of the liquitarian society of Great Britain and Ireland...... .......LIFE IS A WASTE OF TIME.....TIME IS A WASTE OF LIFE....GET WASTED ALL THE TIME AND YOU'LL HAVE THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE!!"
Genius.
Plus, I discovered I can get back episodes of How Clean Is Your House? and Green Wing on the Channel 4 website.
And Snuff Box on Youtube.
I am happy.
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) amused
Current Music: Billy Connolly Live In New York 2005
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August 16th, 2009
05:34 pm - Back
Think not the bad of me (especially , whom I was unable to meet this time round, but there will be another time, I’m sure!!) but I am already home! I flew yesterday- because I missed my tiger too much!
So good to chill in the countryside with my old friend, La Hen and her doggie, Tessa. I particularly enjoyed the drunken film watching and competing psychological profiling over the mad ginger nutter from Jutland (check out Mørke: a truly Danish style thriller). Then to Malmö, for what was meant to be another week away, and I started to really notice the lack of someone to talk to! And although I was enjoying seeing the city and pottering about, I was really noticing the lack of tiger man!
Malmö was a grand place to visit. The hostel was fine: very new and outfitted by Ikea! Rather cutely, the dorm room was provided with pots of earplugs!
And I did have a jolly time: I investigated the castle, in which there was an exhibition about Nelson Mandela- and another about the seventeenth century spats between Denmark and Sweden! Blimey, they were certainly at each other’s throats for many years- but then, it’s a bugger when one’s old ‘empire’ decides to go solo, eh?! :-D
The city was also gearing up for its festival: lots of art, music and themed stalls everywhere. There was an environmental eco-friendly line of stalls, including one where you could mash your own smoothie with a pedal-powered blender, mounted on the handlebars!
The whole was colourful, and many cups of tea were consumed as I sat about, ogling it all! It’s fun watching these things being set up… the ‘to me, to you, watch out!’ moments as heavy timbers are heaved about… the art going up in stages. There were a couple of pieces of art on display sponsored by the modern art museum that I particularly took to. One were a couple of plastic-tubing-constructed-things. One was bell-shaped, one was more cone-shaped, and both stood over eight feet or more tall. I think they were modelled on traditional spun-dough cakes. The other artwork featured four speakers with telephone receivers plugged in, set in a square. When I passed in the morning, the speakers were making rumbling vocalisations. When I passed in the evening, it was in full swing. Kids were running from receiver to receiver, yelling into them, having twigged that noises made into the ‘phones is recorded, then repeated back four times, creating a cascading effect of whatever is yelled/ spoken/ sung into the receivers!
I enjoyed the parks, squares and even the flouncy weather: day one, the day I arrived, was pale, then drenched, and then pale again. I was feeling smug that I chose an inside table at the restaurant I had my supper in, watching the people outside jump and yelp as the large outside umbrellas ran rain off and down their necks! The next day was ambivalent weather-wise: I shopped to stop getting wet (thank goodness they are keen on English-language fiction: I was running out of reading matter!), wrote postcards and pottered about, getting a feel of my way around. I also popped into the largest church: white walled and very Scandinavian! Aside from one side chapel that still had surviving mediaeval fresco paintings on its ceiling and walls that reminded me of the fresco in Roskilde cathedral. In fact, while in there I felt a touch of peace in my lonely heart, as if given permission to do what I was thinking about… which precipitated a trip to an Internet café and my flight was altered online; brought forward by five days.
The next day (Friday) was castle and museum and art gallery day. The Governor’s House across from the castle-museum; a long, traditional building with an open upper area for exhibitions, had an African-themed photo exhibition on: ‘Then and Now’. These were fascinating photos of South Africa pre-1994 elections and then post Mandela’s inauguration. I also admired the city library; old brick and modern glass-fronted hybrid, and the amazing statues and art in the main park. Then, heading into town, I felt overcrowded and claustrophobic in the crowds of the first day of the festival, and so slipped into the cinema to watch G I Joe.
Yup, after the culture… I needed the daftness! It’s amazing to look at, utterly mindless plot-wise, and features Christopher Ecclestone as a main villain, for once: not side-lined as he tends to be in American films.
I enjoyed a supper of pickled herring, the remaining beetroot salad from lunch and boiled potatoes that night, evaded being chatted up by a Turkish gentleman, and went to bed, anticipating my tiger-man’s hugs and kisses!
The next day, and the trip from hostel to train station via bus and then the train trip to Copenhagen airport had no problems. But I had started very early as I wanted to avoid the panicked rush of the trip out! This started with me getting into Minty, my car, at around 2.15pm and realising that check in, in Gatwick, a good two hours and more away from my flat, closed at 4.50pm!
Anyway, returning home: five hours later and I finally checked in! Then it was just two hours till lift-off… things got ‘interesting’ back in the UK.
I picked up Minty from the long-tern car park, and we started to drive home… only for her overheating light to flick on, and we had to pause on the hard shoulder. A call to the break-down service and a cheerful bloke with a flatbed truck turned up and took Minty and I safely off the motorway and to a slip road and a Starbucks coffee shop. Here I awaited the technical bod, who came and fixed Minty. Her thermostat had jammed, resulting in poor cooling. Basically, she was too hot to handle! ;-D
I still got home earlier than I thought a break-down would mean, especially since I started off going the wrong way round the M25 London Orbital motorway. A turn off, turn-around and back we go… and then a quick freshen-up and scampered off to HUGE hugs from tiger and a big jar of chocolate spread-sauce that he had made that morning! What a man. We then *ahem* had the best night’s sleep for both of us for a week or so. Yup, we got it bad!
Today I had a jolly time cleaning the flat (D is a good flatmate, but ‘doesn’t do domestic’– his words! Although he had refrained from oiling the kitchen all over with a fry-up, bless him) and buying food to feed my handsome lad when he comes off paramedic shift. Also, this being Sunday, there was a quintuple-bill of How Clean Is Your House?. This is a rather fun TV show where a vocal pair of ladies inspect truly, awfully, nasty, dirty homes and clean them up, dispensing tips on cleaning tricks of the trade and teaching the inhabitants how to clean up after themselves. My anal need to clean and tidy likes watching the ‘before’ and ‘after’ bits!
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Music: Come Dine With Me on TV
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August 1st, 2009
09:37 pm - Update To: This Is Pretty Funny
Still at Lymington, same spot.
It's just not trying, is it?
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman?- Bryan Adams
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09:33 pm - The Other Side
That was flu. It might have been swiney. It was all crappy. Four weeks, mark you, from take-up to finish. And every symptom you’d expect except the snotiness and sneezing. It was remarkably self-contained, but there was much vomiting. That would be would stomach flu (flu in the stomach, gastritis) is like, then. Staggered over to A&E, was cannula’d up and filled up with IV cyclizine (wonderful stuff- the sickness just disappears like a bad dream, plus it makes you high a s a kite then sends to beddy-byes), IV paracetamol (works a damn sight faster and better than oral analgesia, because half of it isn’t metabolised away by your liver first before it gets where its needed) and fluids (I was thirsty after two days of failing to keep even water down!). After that lot, felt ever so much better and was gently booted out again. It was quite funny: the triage nurse, upon hearing I had “flu-y symptoms” and seeing I was in distress (I couldn’t stop weeping by this point), reached for a packed of masks: one for her, one for me. Then into a side room, and the doctor who saw me had the full gown-glove-duck-bill-mask going on.
Darth Doctor.
A few days later the gastritis settled enough to come off cyclizine, and then my ears and throat decided they would join in: by trying to turn inside out and exit my body by the nearest available exit..
Hmmm.
My gorgeous partner, C, had got better by this point; just as well one of us was! He was a star throughout and without him I’d have been sunk on gloom and very lonely. We toddled down to Devon the last few days of my throat-ear-attack to watch Status Quo at Powerham Castle: outdoors in the drizzle, rockin’ in a field like proper festival goers! There was a sort of ghoulish fascination watching the member of the band who had had heart problems and wondering if he’d collapse onstage… He didn’t. Despite this minor let-down, the gig was a lot of fun, and fair play to the crinkly rockers: still making a great sound!
It’s rather interesting to go through an illness. It feels like you’ve achieved something: scaled a peak, written an opus: something exhausting and eventful. The person at the other end, on the other side, it’s never quite the same person who went in. A lesson has been learned, somewhere: notes taken, bugs/ virus booted and overcome. It’s like there’s a cellular yaa-boo-sucks-to-be-you-sickness-every-antibody-in-da-house-say-oh-yeah party going on in one’s every inch, and one is so invited.
It used to be I’d feel quite different. This time, it was less of a great change, less of a clamber to anew plateau: less growing-up, more contemplative. Not so much a ‘new person’ as a ‘new point of view’. I wonder if this comes from being just over 30: does one’s reactions to events change, or is one simply less excitable over such experiences? I hope not: bubbles and neatly arranged rows if ‘things’ still send me giddy with joy.
I have small superstitions. Things One Must Do Or Not Do Or Else Something Will Or Will Not Happen. It’s a bit like spell-casting: proscribed things to do or not do to enable change. One of them is that, if I write down ideas for journal entries, they’ll not get written. Well, I wrote these ideas down- and yet here they are, logged up! With the exception of the final idea, the scrawl of which I cannot make out…
I saw G Force today. It rocked. Super agent guinea pigs? What’s not to like? Family values (give the world a hug), an environmental message, and a warning about relying to much on commercial goods- all in one part live-action, part animation film. What’s not to love? Oh, yes, and added fart jokes. And a psychotic hamster. And Bill Nighy. Looking good, my friend, looking good. Mock not the guinea-pig, for she is an animal far in advance of us in terms of sheer pragmatic good use.
Now I feel an urge to pet something small and fluffy…
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: The Sound Of The Oven Baking My Bread
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July 20th, 2009
02:34 pm - He's Probably Going To Ape A Bit, But...
...But in the spirit of 'Net whorage, here, advertising in glorious pixel-o-vision is:
http://pseudomiddleage.blogspot.com/ the blog of my gorgeous other half. :-D
Current Location: The Other 1/2's Laptop, His Room, Southampton
Current Mood: amused
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June 28th, 2009
08:04 am - Finland...
... is hot, bright, alcoholic, home-cooked, sauna-toasty, birch-branch-whippy and FULL OF BASTARD MOSQUITOS.
I know because most of them came to feast especially on me.
Summertime in countryside, lake-side Finland... I should have suspected! :-D
No Apocalyptica-spotting, but then, we were in deepest, 11-hour-brightest country-side away from the city, but within 50KM of Tampere. Closest town: Ikaalinen, and we were off lake Kyrösjärvi :-) We messed about on boats, in the lake, on the roads, saw pretty towns, ate icecreams, dodged seagulls (or failed to, in the case of one of the group), got sunburnt, played games, ate lots, drank more, and celebrated the fact that this years's Johannes festival only had fatalities in the low double figures. I rather fancied the fact that in a country physically several times larger than the UK, the populaiton is about the same as London!
Still, I understand better why:
a) Apo's music sounds as it does
and
b) How it would be possible to go stark, raving nuts in the countryside year-round. So quiet, so still... all work and no play makes S-Div dull boys and girls.. *twitch*
Yes, it was a good holiday. I can tell: I need about 3 days to recover!
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Mitch Benn Assortment
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08:03 am - This Came Via Email...
... and made me laugh out loud, for truly. Not just a 'lolz'.
The 'Middle Wife' by an Anonymous 2nd grade teacher
I've been teaching now for about fifteen years. I have two kids myself, but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own second grade classroom a few years back.
When I was a kid, I loved show-and-tell. So I always have a few sessions with my students. It helps them get over shyness and usually, show-and-tell is pretty tame. Kids bring in pet turtles, model airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that. And I never, ever place any boundaries or limitations on them. If they want to lug it in to school and talk about it, they're welcome.
Well, one day this little girl, Erica, a very bright, very outgoing kid, takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class with a pillow stuffed under her sweater.
She holds up a snapshot of an infant. 'This is Luke, my baby brother, and I'm going to tell you about his birthday.'
'First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their love, and then Dad put a seed in my Mom's stomach, and Luke grew in there. He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord.'
She's standing there with her hands on the pillow, and I'm trying not to laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me. The kids are watching her in amazement.
'Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts saying and going, 'Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh!' Erica puts a hand behind her back and groans. 'She walked around the house for, like an hour, 'Oh, oh, oh!' (Now this kid is doing a hysterical duck walk and groaning.)
'My Dad called the middle wife. She delivers babies, but she doesn't have a sign on the car like the Domino's man. They got my Mom to lie down in bed like this.' (Then Erica lies down with her back against the wall.)
'And then, pop! My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case he got thirsty, and it just blew up and spilled all over the bed, like psshhheew!' (This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming water flowing away. It was too much!)
'Then the middle wife starts saying 'push, push,' and 'breathe, breathe. They started counting, but never even got past ten. Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother. He was covered in yucky stuff that they all said it was from Mom's play-center, (placenta) so there must be a lot of toys inside there. When he got out, the middle wife spanked him for crawling up in there.'
Then Erica stood up, took a big theatrical bow and returned to her seat. I'm sure I applauded the loudest. Ever since then, when it's show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case another 'Middle Wife' comes along.
Genius.
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Tea Party- Mitch Benn
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June 3rd, 2009
11:46 pm - This Is Pretty Funny
Read the sign... and then consider; is it really necessary?!
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
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11:41 pm
It’s been a while since I wrote anything in here, so I figured I’d bash out a few thoughts. Random bits and pieces, really: things are coming in fragments these days. Maybe the sun is too hot and melting the brain-glue that keeps thoughts coherent and together.
Oh, well, here goes…
What I don’t like: that seminal phrase every trained professional likes to throw at you when you’re visiting their speciality: “what do you want to get from this experience?”
If I knew, I wouldn’t need to come, now would I?
Thing is, kids, here’s the clincher: they haven’t a clue, either, and are probably nervous of being asked curious, awkward questions by curious, awkward students, so by asking first, they get to bewilder us, the students, first, and save themselves from embarrassment.
It still annoys me. My mind goes blank, and my mouth opens and out comes the BS in Stalling Mode.
Then I look like I can’t strong a sentence together, let alone a sensible idea. I mean, this might well be the case at the time, but I’d rather not give it away.
Loneliness.
Not the content-with-my-own-company quietness; and some folks have that more often then others. I do. I go long periods wanting no one but me around. But then comes the creeping loneliness. That aching, heart-scooped-out-with-a-frozen-ice-cream-scoop feeling, and it kicks you in the gut and leaves tears and confusion in its wake. It’s like a desperate hunger for the soul. You know when you get so hungry you feel scooped-out and sick? That’s the pone. Only in the emotions.
It’s a bastard of a kick, and can take you completely by surprise. It’s a need, a profound, sudden need. It’s not like playing with blood sugar levels if those go gooey. There’s no drug in the world to help with hyperloneliness and the attendent condition; hypohappiness.
There are rabbits hopping about the green spaces near where I work at the moment.
It’s baby season, and the little ones are cute.
Some folks complain of vermin in city/ town areas: rats, bunnies, foxes, badgers, weasels, etc.
I say, bring them on! Then, when the food crisis comes, there are little nearby meat sources running about…
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
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May 25th, 2009
10:45 am - A Sense of The Strange
The other night I had a dream
I have a dream…
Had one.
And it perhaps was nothing more than ticking all the boxes for the proposed ‘wish fulfilment’ aspect of dreaming consciousness. You have a bad day? Kick it up in your dreams. Want a family? You’ll be cradling a dream baby.
It’s what the dream suggested I wanted that was a little… unusual.
I was a teenager (already I lost over a decade in years- no, it wasn’t a hankering for teenage years, which were not the most fulfilling or happy), at a university, with a warm, loving boyfriend and a bunch of friends who were preparing to perform a sort of satirical musical ‘prank’, down a wide flight of steps decided as perfect for the job, on-campus. The skit involved a tap-dancing Queen and I think a bunch of fat-cat bankers.
The campus was not one I recognised: seemingly too cosy and homily for any of the rather functional 1960s-built older parts of Soton Uni campus, and neither was it the clear, impersonal lines of the bright new shinier bits of Soton Uni. More like the sort of ‘set’ used to depict American high-school campus. And, again, the ‘high jinks’ were rather colonial in their tomfoolery and light-hearted fun, but this was definitely England, with British students.
It was the warm, safe feeling that registered with me: a good, loyal partner, good friends, a lack of worry… which led on to a rather interesting discovery.
It was ‘normalcy’. Normalcy as slightly clichéd friendship and relationship, as clarity, as unafraid, as ease of communion- as a steady, good boyfriend.
Do I seriously crave ‘normalcy’? Because in the point half between sleep and wake, I distinctly had the impression that I could only appreciate this dream because I knew what this ‘normalcy’ is not: what real life is: more fragile, volatile, exciting and dangerous. It was uplifting to be in among a group as loving, close and supportive as that dream-crowd was; to be with someone as utterly devoted and tactile as the boyfriend figure, but it was like a holiday to a place that’s nice to visit, but I-wouldn’t-want-to-live-there. Too stifling, because I know what lies beyond.
And a temperamental, highly-strung moo-bag like me prefers the uncertainty as a life choice, because it is more honest; more prepared for the vagaries of ‘real life’
Yet there must be people out there who live the cosy, slightly blinkered life as ‘real life’. Fine, I suppose, if you’ve not tasted beyond that state and know what dissatisfaction is.
Humans really do carry the seeds of their own destruction: how I willingly move towards the unknown, when a version of me, somewhere, could life the cosy life and be content.
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: A Postcard to Henry Purcell- Pride & Prejudice OST
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May 22nd, 2009
04:02 pm - June 4th: EU Elections
Got my postal voting form today. For my non-UK friends, on the 4th June, we are voting for who we want to represent us in Europe as a political body. I suspect my EU friends will have similar voting going on for the same reason.
Fifteen possible parties, each standing around ten candidates. Some of these parties tickle me.
In my area, I can vote for:
• BNP (The British National Party? http://bnp.org.uk/ I think not)
• Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship” (Politics and religion should not mix)
• Conservatives (er… nope. I have an allergic reaction to these guys. Too slimy. The main Opposition Party in the Commons at present.)
• English Democrats (is this the BNP by a sneak attack..? And ‘England for England’, non-GB party: http://englandunited.com/)
• Jury Team (Go Team Jury! http://www.juryteam.org/ that has this is a slogan: Politics for the People Politics without Parties Politics
with Principles. Sounds like either a return to monarchy or a sort of Viking voting system… hmmm... looks a bit kooky)
• Liberal Democrats (Jon (an old friend and Lib Dem bunny), take note… I have helped these guys stuff envelopes in Romsey. I’d rather vote for Jon as a person because he has passion in the democratic process. Alas he is not standing in my constituency, nor in his, being a party agent instead.)
• No2EU: Yes To Democracy (with the description” a coalition of trade unionists, political parties and campaigning groups which have come together to defend democracy here and across the European Union” their name rather suggests they don’t want to be a part of the EU. Make your minds up, boys! http://no2eu.com/)
• ProDemocracy: Libertas.eu (http://www.libertas.eu/ a total, open Europe. Nice idea, but I don’t think it’ll wing. Sounds a tad too euphoric, but they do have a natty countdown thingummy to the 4th June)
• Socialist Labour Party (http://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/ well, at least they are trying to stay true to original principles… But red is an angry colour, a bit in-your-face for my liking.)
• The Green Party (http://www.greenparty.org.uk/ Should run green issues as the active environmental department of a ruling body, but not be the ruling body, I think)
• The Labour Party (Our current rulers. I voted for them in 1997 when I first had the chance to vote, and it brought in Blair. Ok, it was needed change, but I still feel creepingly embarrassed. I feel sorry for Gordon Brown. He’s solid political material, not PM material.)
• The Peace Party- Non-Violence, Justice, Environment (http://www.peaceparty.org.uk/ Ok... so where do you guys stand on creatively releasing inbuilt human aggression and strong emotion? Nice idea, but it doesn’t scan in my long-term pragmatic view of human nature. Plus, sci-fi has told us many times over that utterly peaceful societies of humans are doomed internally or externally in the end. I agree with less violence, absolutely, but I don’t think it would hold water as the main ruling body.)
• The Roman Party. Ave! (http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?frmGB=1&frmPartyID=682&frmType=partydetail Score! Like a sort of post-modern ironic Monster Raving Loonies, I’m guessing, as I can’t find any more than the above on them. I’m tempted on sheer pique to vote for them. They have emblem pictures! http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?frmGB=1&frmPartyID=682&frmType=emblemdetail and ‘laracroft’ has done more digging: http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/eu-elections-the-roman-party-ave sounds a man fed up with politicos!)
• United Kingdom First (The name alone pits me off. Plus, they have nothing to suggest happiness about them http://registers.electoralcommission.org.uk/regulatory-issues/regpoliticalparties.cfm?frmGB=1&frmPartyID=864&frmType=partydetail)
• United Kingdom Independence Party (http://www.ukip.org/home Purple is the colour of sexual frustration. And they are supported by raving orange-skinned TV talk show hosts. Yikes)
Frankly, I want a party I can look up online to learn about. This gives them credibility and also enables me to make informed choice And, if not, that have to have a suitably tongue-in-cheek name that suggests a suitably tongue-in-cheek non-vote not utterly wasted on potentially letting in some seriously bad nutter, as opposed to a ‘Roman’. On this reasoning, the Lib Dems or Roman Party… Decisions, decisions…
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Radio 2
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May 15th, 2009
08:27 pm - Patient Empathy- The Result.
And so I wore a stoma bag for 24 hours as an exercise in patient empathy. And the results were interesting. Even though I have not had the trauma of major abdominal surgery, nor of learning to accept my bowel now empties from my abdominal wall, still I had the oddest feeling wearing the bag.
I was very conscious of its pr4sence. Under clothing modern stoma bags are very discreet, but still I knew it was there, and that counted. Despite being slim-line, I was very aware of a cracking noise due to the thin plastic that the inner bag is constructed from.
A lot of patients worry about odour (not an issue, really, unless they eat odour-inducing food and during bag change when it is physically removed from the body), and noise. Modern bags have charcoal-lined filters that allow flatus out when the gut produces it and it passes into the bag. This does, however, lead to a ‘clicking’ sound similar to the sound of a discreet fart passed by a very anally retentive person- you know, that sort of ‘put-put-put’ sound. I have assured them over and again, following my mentors’ experience, and being present when patients have passed wind, that it is mostly noticeable to them. Others will hear it, assume it’s wind and no more; there’s no need to draw attention to that fact it came out of a stoma bag that one wears.
The ‘crackling’ of the bag I felt as keenly, perhaps, as patients do that flatus-passing noise. A tiny thing, but so big to oneself.
In terms of the look of the thing; yes, it was discreet, but I discovered that wearing fashionable hip-hugging trousers was a no-no, really, and I would definitely think twice about any close-fitting tops. I hadn’t counted on it being so prescriptive in this regard. A lot of stomas are on middle aged and older people, who tend to wear loser clothing, but this made me stop and think, too.
It itched like billy-o, too. Towards the time when it would be changed, I really noticed it being there. Funnily, it itched most in the centre- in the untouched skin not covered by the sticky flange attachment.
And even a day later after removal, I can still trace the circle of its flange shape on my belly!
On the major plus side: while wearing it under my uniform, I felt much more a sense of kinship with my patients, and subsequently more confident about what I was saying!
I won’t forget the idea of trying it out ‘from the other side’.
I hope.
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) thoughtful
Current Music: The Chronicles of Riddick
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May 12th, 2009
April 29th, 2009
06:00 pm - I Just Figured It Out...
... Why I had such a bloody good time in Dublin this weekend just gone!
Naturally I would; I was wearing my fantastically pink and satin-y 'party-hearty'/ don't mess with the miss knickers!
Unleash the power of the underpants!!
Rwoar
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: accomplished
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April 25th, 2009
09:58 am - From Abroad
GRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAVES!!!!!
On another, unrelated note... the draft around one's nether regions when sitting on an areoplane loo is quite refreshing.
Current Location: Kinlay House Youth Hostel, Dublin, RoI
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April 24th, 2009
07:44 am - Dreams
Had a fascinating dream last night, featuring no less than four famous, talented people, blood and trickery, violence and harm, healing and resurrection, pity, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, a very clear sensation of being held and holding others close, memory loss and regaining, and a final meeting up a tall clock tower of someone who never gave up on me.
I passed through two, possibly three different scenarios. One person needed assurance, another needed to feel connected: I assured, I connected them, but there was no external detail to these except that we were all staying in the same house together. These two are in the same band and are married: it was as if they were having crises of personal belief and I was the buffer against which they found their feet again. One I think saw their marriage end with more equinimity than before. The other went back and gave his another go.
The third turned out to be beautiful but a cruel trickster with potentially fatal ‘gags’. They are also a member of the same band as those above. I awoke to find myself in a bunk (of a bunk bed) below them, covered in sweets and biscuits, but this was apparently bad: it meant I had been hurt somehow, or was about to, and I was; stabbed in some way not very clear to me. I did not die: I healed. I remember thinking; beautiful hands, cruel tricks. But the trick turned on them when I stabbed them in retaliation, and that leached the poison of evil thoughts from them. I held them and comforted them as they healed, and they moved on by. They wanted me to come with them, but I had somewhere else to go.
The last person was an a very well-known actor, especially here in the UK. They grew to love me, but I was scared by something, fled and was killed by a bad fall. They never gave up, using an aspect of their creative work to resurrect me (it was weird: because the idea worked in a plot line they managed to use that to justify using some sort of power or ability to help me in the same way. As if they used the plotline as a tool to control the energies surrounding my injuries and death and reverse them), and then their friends (co-stars) approached me- this newly-brought-back, scared and confused person- and helped me to remember a little and find clothes to cover my nakedness.
But when I saw the person themselves approach, I fled again, and hid; animal-scared. I slowly remembered more of what I should remember, and made myself go and find him, this benevolent presence. I saw him lying asleep, exhausted, on a bench in a pub up the top of this very wide clock tower-thing. I climbed all the stairs to get there; made an effort of pilgramage! I shook him awake and he was overjoyed, but a little wary to approach me in case I took fear and fled again. I stood rooted to the spot, and, delighted, he threw his arms around me. Then I remembered fully who I was, who he was, what he had done, how much it had cost him- he looked so tired and needed me to start over again- and I hugged him back. We were reunited.
I woke up before we kissed, dagnabbit!
I checked out online dream dictionaries. Naturally they were no help at all and more confusing than ever... but I was left with a feeling of satisfaction, of adventure overcome, of not wanting to wake up because the dreams were intense and exciting!
One of these days someone will invent a way of recording dream images; I’d make a mint on mine!
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Repo! The Genetic Opera- OST
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April 22nd, 2009
04:47 pm
I just realised I have taken such care to blog up the saga of: exploding bread and the naked loaf.
I need to find a life.
No, really, I do: think about it!
Maybe it's down the back of the sofa...
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
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April 21st, 2009
10:39 pm
I made bread.
It was fluffy and soft.
And exploded in the oven.
Merde.
C'est les pâte.. o'destin.
Mais oui, de trajet.
... And this, my friends, is naked bread
If you are easily shocked or offended, do not CLICK HERE FOR HOT BAKED ACTION
(This is what happens when braed explodes out of its crust in the oven.)
Current Location: The Flat, Southampton, UK
Current Mood: accomplished
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