Surf's Up

I don't have much to report this week, apart from the fact that I'm still coughing and making noises like a broken hairdryer, but I seem to be enjoying it more. Oh and I found some really nice coffee for a quid in my local Co-Op, thus proving that socialism isn't all bad.

I've been finishing off a project for a local firm and writing a report for a client up in the Midlands, and have been active on Twitter, trying to pimp my arse to Americans. So I watched the Obama inauguration on teh Interwebs and somebody said Obama was 'our first surfer president', which reminded me of an erudite remark Fathorse made a while back (that's erudite with a capital rude) about what a doss degree subject Surf Science at the University of Plymouth is.

Obama is the first Hawaiian president, and when he flashed a 'shaka' sign during the inauguration ceremony, according to the Honolulu Star Bulletin, " it caused chicken skin to ripple across Hawaii like a tidal wave of, well, rippling chicken skin." Phew, wow.

I have a neighbour who works at Plymouth Uni. He's a senior lecturer in Tourism Management and his specialist subject is social anthropology of surfing. Well, the dude's American, so he's probably an expert.

Except he's from Kansas.

Not noted for the quality of its beaches

Students who are not capable of the rigorous academic standards required of Surf Studies or Tourism Management can now go to Falmouth and do an honours degree in Performance Sportswear Design.

Hard-working students revitalising the SouthWest's economy


Yeah, right

Medical Advice

I had a long conversation with the practice nurse at my GP's surgery. She tells me that I have had a viral infection, and a bacterial superinfection; I am not in danger of getting pneumonia or anything worse, but I must drink plenty of fluids, and not so much coffee and alcohol.

I am not infectious at this stage, so I can work and have meetings with people, but be aware that I am weak and still recovering, and can expect to be very tired for a while yet.

I'm reassured that I don't have a dreadful rare tropical Bruce Chatwin disease, and Sigourney Weaver is not about to burst out of my chest. It's the tiredness I don't like.

I struggle with tiredness, and always have done. I feel like a small boy who wants his daddy.

Monday Morning

Say it quietly, but I may be getting better.

That nasty taste in my chest that was here yesterday has gone away. I woke when the alarm went off, feeling quite good, and - not exactly full of energy, but with a desire to do something.

It's the last day of my course of penicillin. I'm not going to phone the doctor until tomorrow.

I feel happy. I have a destiny to fulfil.

I shall spit.

Normal

There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas-covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.

[DOUGLAS ADAMS]

I'm still feeling foul and filthy today, but not downhearted. I am a nice man with dirty things inside of me. I have resolved to call my doctor first thing on Monday morning.

I am ill. It is normal. Six weeks of it. It bores me.

Letting Go

My sleep patterns for the last 72 hours have been 14 hours a night and no more than 6 hours of wakefulness before I crash again. I'm posting this just before I cook lunch and take my medication, so if it kicks off and knocks me out again, you'll have this news to think about.

My lungs were playing chords again in the night, and the sounds reminded me of the the synthesiser noises in the background of this song.



On Thursday afternoon, I stayed alert and had a great discussion with my Local Wise Woman about all the blocked-up, accumulated, unresolved emotions - all the things I need to get off my chest, you see?

Most of these are very, very old, and a lot of them are about birth trauma. That makes sense of all the distress I experience when I'm coughing, and the conviction I have that something is trying to force me out against my will. Because, once upon a time, that's exactly what did happen.

I posted way back about a demon that left my soul. Well, I underestimated the multitude of horrors I've been carrying around. This is illness is turning into a major letting go for me.

When the room is quiet
The daylight almost gone
It seems there's something
I should know
Well I ought to leave
But the rain it never stops
And I've no particular place to go

Just when I think I'm winning
When I've broken every door
The ghosts of my life
Blow wilder than before
Just when I thought
I could not be stopped
When my chance came to be king
The ghosts of my life
Blew wilder than the wind

Well I'm feeling nervous
Now I find myself alone
The simple life's no longer there
Once I was so sure
Now the doubt inside my mind
Comes and goes but leads nowhere

Just when I think I'm winning
When I've broken every door
The ghosts of my life
Blow wilder than before

Just when I thought
I could not be stopped
When my chance came to be king
The ghosts of my life
Blew wilder than the wind
JAPAN

Tired and In Pain

It's a quarter to four in the afternoon, and I am
absolutely shot at. Tired, and in pain.

I hate it when anything attacks my head and lungs.
It feels like a struggle for existence.

How am I supposed not to wish I had never
been born, under the circumstances?

Once again, I'm on the verge of telling you an interesting
story, and I'm going to go to bed instead.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you this amusing word puzzle.

Diseases that would make lovely baby girl's names

I slept oddly. My lungs were playing chords.

I could hear them making sounds, like bagpipes that had been left in a corner, with a dog sitting on them. They don't feel inflamed today. I think this means I am getting better.

I've been spitting. Isn't that a funny thing to feel optimistic about?

I am moving around very slowly, but I want to eat. I'm going to walk to my local shop and buy fresh bread.

For some reason, if you search Google Images for "dog with bagpipes", you get a picture of President Abraham Lincoln.

Local Wise Woman

Yesterday afternoon I paid a visit to my Local Wise Woman (LWW), where I gained some remarkable insights into my relationship to my body, and the relation between my feelings about my current illness and some things that happened to me when I was a small child.

And I came home full of enthusiasm and wanting to blog about it.

But I also felt incredibly tired, so I didn't switch the computer on. I ate some grilled chicken and went to bed at eight o'clock.

Gordie Is Officially Toxic

I went for a walk yesterday morning, then went back to bed at two o'clock and stayed there. When I woke up at 7:00 am, the radio was playing this lovely chilled out tune.



I love Yael Naim's voice, and this is a great song, but I have no patience right now with songs that compare being in love with being ill. Because I do feel really sick right now, and it's not about romance.

Although, of course, it could be about my relationship with myself.

Another lyric that kept coming into my head yesterday was 'Meet Me In The Morning' from Blood on The Tracks

They say the darkest hour
Is right before the dawn

Because I really hope that the drugs my doctor gave me are doing me some good, and the pain I feel right now is them doing their work. But of course, Bob goes and sings:

But you wouldn't know it by me
Every day's been darkness since you been gone.

Well, Dylan is Dylan, and he always writes his best stuff when he's having a hard time with his woman, and his breakup with Sara Lowndes produced two of the greatest albums ever... but c'mon you old genius, there's more to life than cars and girls.

Vomit, Damn It!

I used to have a German teacher who thought it was the funniest joke to say the German question and answer

Womit? (What with?)
Damit. (With that.)

as "Vomit! Damn it!" Since he was teaching a class of fifteen year old boys, his sense of humour was pretty much on the ball. ("Womit" is also Derbyshire slang for "go home", which must confuse any German tourists.)


In the nineties, I had a friend who described himself as suffering from Bulimic Amnesia ("I eat too much and then I forget to throw up.")

This thing I have going on in my chest is really challenging me. I have some stuff (some truly unpleasant stuff, actually) inside my lungs, which I need to get rid of. But I'm experiencing my symptoms as something inside me that is trying to drive me out of my own body. I have made a Major Metonymic Mistake. Meh.

I should be thankful I don't have Ariel's problem. The prospect of sex with a new partner makes her throw up. She's married now, so I hope that means the problem has subsided. I recommend her book and website Offbeat Bride, if you're thinking of getting unorthodoxly hitched.

Drinking: nothing at all
Listening: The Simpsons, through the wall.