Someone sent me this romantic picture.

I think this fella must have been to the dentist and had a tooth pulled?

Just mentioned to Wendy that I’ve always had a bit of a thing for Beyoncé.

“Whatever floats your boat”. She said.

“No” I said, “that’s buoyancy”.

I actually quite like going to the dentist. I didn’t like it as a kid, but now I don’t mind at all.

Today I had to go to Ealing dental hospital to have a tooth pulled out. I had to go there because my regular dentist said it was too tricky for him, as the tooth was too broken. It had been filled lots of times and was too buggered to fill any more. Also he said that as I can’t get into his dental chair he might hurt his back bending over me in my wheelchair. There’s a certain irony there..,,

Anyway, the little female dentist at the hospital got the thing out, and I doubt she was that strong. She actually had me in a headlock while she pulled and twisted away with the pliers. She gave me 3 very big injections but it did still hurt to be honest. Pain is actually controllable I discovered long ago though. It is of course all in the mind. If you just change your attitude and reaction to it, you can alter it. When I could run, if I started to suffer then I would make myself smile as I ran. Just the act of smiling takes the discomfort away. Try it, it works. Of course you do look demented, running along grinning, but that’s ok.

There’s lots of blood in my mouth and I have to eat painkillers apparently. Maybe I will, we’ll see. It’ll bleed for a week and I am clamped to a cotton pad by clenching my teeth together.

She said my bone was very strong, which was a positive, and that I’d been a very good patient! Well no, I didn’t cry, or want to bother with the rinsey cup thing. That just makes you get dribble all over your chops, I find.

No alcohol for 48 hours, and avoid crisps for 10 days. Makes sense.

Here’s the mofo.

373. Use your Pee as a hot water bottle…

Tired of your feet turning into blocks of ice because you can’t move or feel them? Wear a snug around your legs in your chair, connect a night bag pee bag to your catheter, put it on your feet inside the snug so no one can see it, and Hey Presto your feet have a peehotwater bottle that’s exactly the right temperature as the rest of your body!

Genius.

Beware – your girlfriend will want to have it on her lap as it’s so toasty! ( Yes, true … )

I talked to a mate of mine yesterday on the phone. I hadn’t seen him since I was Best Man at my other buddy’s wedding ( me pre injury ). We raced together in the Andes and the Himalayas once upon a time. I called him Harold Shipman because he was involved in nursing homes, where there is ‘ quite a large turnover of customers ‘.

The wedding we met at last was 7 years ago and he was well, his wife was pregnant with their first child and general optimism prevailed for sure.

He was upbeat on the phone, as he always was, but I was surprised by just how much had happened to him in 7 years. For sure he could most definitely say the same for me.

They had a daughter, and his wife fell pregnant again. Their second little girl wasn’t so straightforward. She has lots that isn’t normal, from bladder and Bowels to kidney defects. She was on dialysis every day from birth almost. His wife donated a kidney, which was a success, though it will only last til his little girl is 13, as the match wasn’t exact enough. My buddy’s mum died suddenly 2 years ago, and then his sister’s horse threw her off, and she died from her injuries. He got into conflict with his business partner and is in an unpleasant situation where he will be leaving the business he started. An incredibly fit and athletic man, he has recently had to have both hips replaced ( in his 40’s ) and said I’d now really laugh at the way he walks. I probably wouldn’t, as it’s a damn sight better than not walking at all, but it made me laugh anyway.

If there is someone that can relate to his life challenges, it’s myself. After he had told me what had happened to him, I almost found myself saying ‘ you wanna think yourself lucky mate!’ But I stopped myself..

We were both laughing a lot on the phone, and that at least was the same as it always was.

As they say a lot in Wales ( where I’m from ) and up North ( where he’s from ) – as long as you keep your sense of humour and can laugh, you’ll be alright.

Too right.

It’s odd I think. What is it about the world that facts are underplayed, particularly when it comes to disabilities? I’d googled Edwyn Collins and found out about his 2 strokes and his speech problems. The information is written in a way that underplays completely how much he was affected, and how he always will be. You read the stuff and think ‘ oh ok, but he obviously made a full recovery then…’ I’ve seen this regularly, and experienced it first hand when people have said ( by text ) ‘ how is your recovery going? I’ve heard it’s miraculous and you are pretty much back to normal?’ This rose tinted view makes it easier to talk about I suppose, but it doesn’t do me any favours.

Edwyn Collins the singer cant walk very well, has completely lost the use of his right arm, and speaks very little, in short bursts of a few words. His band look after him and the audience loves him very much. It of doesn’t make a lot of sense, but when he sings he sounds perfectly normal! His singing voice is the same as before!

Top man, top night.

Here he is.

Going to see Edwyn Collins tonight. He had a MASSIVE hit with a song called Girl Like You, that just about everyone will recognise.

Interesting fella – he suffered 2 strokes when he was in his late 30’s and then had aphasia, which is where your intelligence is unaffected but you can’t always find the words, maybe can’t even read them in fact, and you have to develop coping mechanisms ( like calling things ‘ thing’ a lot ) while you work on your recovery, which isn’t at all a given.

If he starts singing ‘ I’ve never met a thing like you before..’ I’ll know he’s having an attack.

Brain stuff is so interesting isn’t it? I know from my own frontal lobe concussion that it changes you, in my case certainly a fair bit in the short term at least. My helper today was saying that his brother was involved in a car crash and his head hit something very hard. He got a temporal lobe injury. He was a sign writer by trade, but after the injury he literally had forgotten how to even hold a paintbrush… he had to COMPLETELY relearn his former skill, which he actually did.

And of course having written a post about things going better for me, I then have a sleepless night of horrendous spasming. That’ll be Sod’s Law then…

As it came a bit out of the blue, I’m now analysing what I did differently yesterday. The most likely villain was my consumption of blackberry pie, which although absolutely delicious was possibly ( to my metabolism ) fairly toxic. I’ll leave it for a week and try blackberries again and see what happens.. knowledge is power after all.

Something else happened yesterday as well. It seems that just because you have a stoma and your bum hole is relocated elsewhere ( essentially ) your old bum hole is still liable to ‘ shed bodily substances ‘. Well fuck me, the stuff that your digestive tract produces to make your poo slide through your body is actually the reason why your poo stinks. When that stuff just comes out by itself, without the poo to make it smell nicer, it’s atomic. Since I don’t have the capacity to sort myself out, then it fails to the person(s) I am with to hopefully help me ( ie do everything ) A strong stomach is a requirement, to say the least.

Wendy certainly lucked out when she met me….

Thanks to Mr and Mrs Marky P for dinner at theirs last night, and for the 🥧 of course.

I’m trying to adjust to the novelty of my life having become ‘ stable’. For 6 years it was chaotic, with unforeseen complications and disasters seemingly around every corner. I became understandably pessimistic, borne of my having to be realistic about just how often some bloody hurdle would appear in front of me. When you can’t actually jump at all, hurdles can look impossible to pass, but of course you can actually go under them or around them, which is what I seemed to do. For a bit now, no new hurdles have materialised, and that’s very good news! It also allows me to think without constant distraction, and also to ‘ enjoy ‘ the ‘peace’. I still have all the challenges 24/7 that come with paralysis, but, if you like, that’s all. I’ve found myself watching TV and even reading books, things that for ages I’ve just not been able to do, as I just couldn’t ‘ waste time ‘ on those unproductive pursuits. But now I can, it seems. Last night I watched a film ( and blimey there are so many to choose from when you haven’t watched films much for 15 years ). It was called The Big Short, and was about the collapse of the American housing market, which happened because a few savvy people realised the obvious – that the real estate just wasn’t worth the values that money making institutions had given it, and loaned loads of cash to people that they never should loaned to. Some of the film scenarios were I’m sure invented, but based on reality. They had one scene where a stripper ( yep – only talent was taking off her clothes- so possibly a short term career ..? ) had been loaned enough money to have 5 mortgages on 5 big houses. Yes, she had tenants paying the rent, but in the event of losing the tenants then she didn’t really have any kind of medium term guaranteed income. You get the gist I’m sure. Anyway, the whole system collapsed and banks went bust, with 6 million people ‘losing’ their homes ( as in the homes they should never have been allowed to ‘ buy’ in the first place ). Loads of people lost their jobs, and with that loads lost their health ( because that’s apparently what happens ) People die and people also commit suicide.

The system was totally corrupt and fraudulent. All sorts of regulations were introduced, but the footnote was that actually the same practices were reintroduced, packaged differently to look like something else.

I know the odd person that lives a lifestyle that is actually way beyond the one that they can actually afford, one just based on borrowing and debt, that ultimately can’t be repaid. Who knows how often people ride that horse all the way til they die, and never pay the debts back. It’s risky for sure, but obviously you can have a lot of fun with someone else’s money. It depends how you can cope with it when/ if your debt catches up with you and the mirage suddenly evaporates leaving you with just your pants/ knickers and flip flops…. your ‘ friends ‘ won’t bale you out, that’s for SURE…

Good film – watch it.

It’s actually quite difficult to write about the cases I saw without giving away my thoughts about the offences that had been committed ( and they were all ( found ) guilty ). Now I see why journalists just factually report the court accounts and then leave it to the reader to have their opinions on the verdicts.

The first case featured a little guy, slight and nondescript of 35 years old, bearing an uncanny likeness to Ian Huntley, the man that killed the 2 little girls. We went in just as his crime was being read out. He’d engaged in sex chat online with a girl, that got more and more sexual and involved him having sent graphic video of himself ‘ self pleasuring ‘ At some point the girl had typed that she was just 14 years old, and that hadn’t stopped him at all from continuing the sexual conversation, and was followed by him requesting pictures of her. Then it was revealed that he had been ‘ caught in a honey trap’ by an adult posing as a child in order to catch paedophiles, at which point I wondered if it was actually a crime, as it wasn’t actually against a minor. Apparently though that doesn’t matter and he was still guilty.

Then his defence solicitor spoke, and said that it was a one off out of character offence, a ‘ moment of madness ‘ that he was a man of previous good character, had no criminal record ( and it seems that they do now list all previous convictions to the magistrates in the course of the hearing ), was a divorced father of 4 girls, all of whom came to stay with him at the weekends ( the eldest being also 14 ) that he lived now with his mother ( that could vouch for his character ), that his ex wife had had no suspicions at all, and was happy to accompany their girls to stay also when the 4 girls stayed with him and that he would observe a curfew of the court’s choice. His current job as an employed gardener meant that he was able to pay child maintenance of £2500 per month to his ex wife, and if he was to lose his job because of being convicted of this offence then he would no longer be able to pay maintenance for the upkeep of his kids.

It seems that paedophiles don’t get a second chance, and immediately face certain conviction that is beyond the sentencing power of a magistrate, so he would have to be tried in a Crown Court, but the magistrate could decide whether to release him on bail prior to his appearance in Crown Court. They deemed his ‘ first offence ‘ serious enough to NOT release him on bail, and not let him near his four girls until properly tried, after which presumably he could never legally spend unaccompanied time with them as long as they are minors. It illustrated the catastrophic consequences of his actions one night – he would lose his children, his livelihood, his reputation and his liberty, all gone for ‘ the thrill ‘ of time spent on his laptop. His kids would forever be shamed, his own safety in and out of jail as a ‘ nonce’ would for ever be endangered, and his banishment from Society would be everlasting. I wondered what was going through his mind as they led him away. Was it actually a one off? Is that believable? Does it make any difference, as the one off crime is so reprehensible anyway..

Another man was up and he was there for driving whilst banned. He was hard of hearing, yet only about 30. He was unemployed but didn’t look like he should have been, if you know what I mean. He spelt out his address using the NATO phonetic alphabet- you know, the one where A is Alpha and H is Hotel etc. I had a thought that perhaps his hearing had been messed up by a bomb blast, and that he was once a soldier, and perhaps was ‘ retired out’ after his hearing was ruined. There was total confusion ref dates and whether he knew he was banned, so kept driving. and many references to his ‘ mental health ‘problems meaning that he couldn’t turn up in court twice before today’s hearing. Any kind of sentence was deferred pending further investigations. He seemed plausible enough when explaining his driving error, but you have to bear in mind that he had already been banned for something else. For me, as someone who had an unexpected accident and then lost his ability to work in his profession, I felt this man’s pain ( though as I say, I don’t actually know his back story )

Then a woman of about 40 was in the dock. She had been caught stealing expensive perfume from a department store. She’d fought off the security guards and also assaulted an off duty policeman that had intervened. Another crime of wrapping 3 bottles of expensive champagne in foil and making off through the store theft detection system ( which hadn’t worked because the alarm went off anyway) was taken into account.

She looked a mess, this woman, and as I say at least 40. We then heard that she was 21 years old , and a crack addict. She was a druggy because she’d been brought from Poland years before and made to work as a prostitute. Her life was a mess. She couldn’t get a job and had few prospects of getting one, so stole to feed her addiction. The Mag didn’t sentence her but referred her to the probation services and wished her good luck. Rehabilitation was the objective rather than banging her up only for her to reoffend once out..

The next ( young Asian ) fella was in for driving without a license or insurance, for the second time in a year. He was given £350 fine and 6 points, making 12 in total, so was banned for 12 months too. He had 1 month to pay. This seemed lenient? If he didn’t actually have a license how can he be banned from driving, as he shouldn’t be anyway.. I guess it means he just can’t even start learning to drive ( officially ) for 12 months. I didn’t get the impression from his face that banning him was going to stop him if he felt like taking his mum’s car again… but what do I know.

Another man was so drunk he was asleep in the dock and mostly unable to answer any questions at all. His girlfriend was in the court too, and kept shouting to him to wake up. The Court staff seemed to find it fairly amusing to be honest. The accused said he ‘ couldn’t take responsibility for his own actions ‘ after being told to by the Mag. He had been convicted in court 43 times previously and didn’t appear likely to suddenly reform his behaviour. He was already contravening his parole conditions from his last offence, as he was supposed to observe a curfew and not leave his ‘ home address ‘ between 7 pm and 7 am any night, but as the couple had just been evicted for not paying rent they were now somewhere else. They were told to go to Ealing Court at 9am the next day to change the address on his previous conviction, and he just said to the Mag – no mate, no way I’m going Mate I haven’t got any bus money mate.And I’m not drunk, I’m just tired, I haven’t slept for 3 days mate! The Mag didn’t seem to have another plan so the man was likely to be arrested shortly. It was all a mess. The couple left the court with her shouting it was ‘ all disgustin’ ‘ You got the impression that there wasn’t a lot of hope for these 2 and wondered what the answer actually was. They were definitely a couple that you would cross the road to avoid having to walk past, I thought. ( For me, that’s actually often not possible if there is no dropped kerb at hand – often I have to go quite a long way in a direction that I don’t want to go, just to cross a road. Some parts of London, especially the really old bits, have massive kerb heights and no dropped sections at all… but I digress. )

Interesting day, but definitely not an amusing one like last time…