Colonoscopy

 

I feel sure that the title of this blogpost will have sent dozens of visitors fleeing to the hills. However, Yorkshire Pudding is a blog that does not shirk away from potentially unpleasant or controversial subjects. One day The 47th President of the USA, the next day a colonoscopy. Very similar subject matter when you stop to think about it.

Okay so why did I need a colonoscopy this morning? Let's recap. On the night of March 14th my face became a ghost's face and I fainted - collapsing on the floor in an unseemly heap. In addition, when I sat on the toilet shortly thereafter, I discovered that I had deposited bright red blood. This continued for the next twenty four hours. Both highly unusual events were most certainly linked to my first dose of an anti-hypertensive drug that was new to me. It is called doxazosin.

And so I was referred to The Royal Hallamshire Hospital for a colonoscopy which happened this very morning. Yesterday, I had to starve myself and drink two litres of a special polyethylene glycol-based laxative called "Moviprep". By the way, "Moviprep" has nothing to do with settling down on the sofa with a bucket of popcorn and a fizzy drink to watch a movie (British English: film). Instead, it has everything to do with effectively flushing out one's bowels ready for examination by a gastroenterologist.

And so I lay there with my knees up on the trolley as a nice Polish doctor called Anna pushed an endoscope way into my rear end. I was sedated and calm and I watched the entire show on a big colour screen without wincing with any kind of pain or discomfort. Surprisingly, there were no advertisements for "Bran Flakes". It was like a mini-starship was venturing  deep into a nether world in search of distant civilisations. I had never had a colonoscopy before.

They found a polyp that was cleverly removed with a tiny metal claw that lives right next to the camera lens. Anna's supervisor - an oriental gentleman with thinning hair and gold-rimmed spectacles said that he thought this might have been the source of the bleeding event. The polyp will be sent for analysis and I will later have a follow-up appointment to receive the informed verdict.

They put me in the recovery room for an hour and brought me a cup of tea and three bourbon biscuits. Because I had been given an intravenous sedative, Shirley came to pick me up from the hospital. It is less than two miles from our house - so very convenient.

I must say that the entire team in the endoscopy department were brilliant. Kind, competent and efficient - each performing his or her role in a proper, professional manner. I was in safe hands from start to finish. If I was rating the department on Trip Advisor, I would happily give them a glowing five star review. God bless the NHS!

Weekending

"The Visionary" (1989)

at Mar-a-Lago

Where is the 47th President of the USA this weekend? Do you really need to ask? He's at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida of course. He flew down there from Washington DC aboard Air Force One - a Boeing 747 - on Friday afternoon and he will be flying back on Monday morning.

It is the same most weekends. And why does he do this? Well, it is mostly to rest and relax, play golf and meet up with his chums. Apparently, he has taken to hosting dinners at which guests pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of dining with him.

The cost of each flight alone is about $1 million but there are many other costs surrounding security. The bill for these weekends away falls on American taxpayers. No thought is ever given to the blatant waste of aviation fuel and the 47th president's personal carbon footprint.

One might have imagined that a president's "to do" list would be as long as your arm, requiring very long working weeks at the political grindstone - but not so with #47. Effectively, he only puts in half a working week though I imagine that he still takes classified documents to his private mansion, scanning them briefly as he sits on what Americans sometimes call "the john".

As the Mar-a-Lago weekends are now part of an habitual presidential pattern, many of #47's fans now know when and where to wait for his motorcade - ready to wave and cheer.

One of them is a 31 year old landscaper and food delivery worker originally from Indiana. He is called Bradley Collier. After a recent presidential motorcade passed by he said, “Today was special.” This time, the limo seemed to roll slower and closer to the 'sidewalk', giving Collier a better glimpse of the president. “There’s nothing cooler than that,” he said, "other than Jesus Christ.”

Has there ever been a lazier president than the current incumbent? His time sheet speaks for itself and yet, as in the pitiful mind of Bradley Collier, #47 has in the eyes his doting support base taken on the character of a messianic figure who can do no wrong in spite of the evidence stacked against him.

By the way, the painting at the top in its ostentatious gilded frame is not some kind of jokey internet meme. It is genuine and hangs upon the barroom wall at Mar-a-Lago. In Trumpworld, truth is not only stranger than fiction but more horrific too.

Blanche

 "I don't want realism. I want magic!" - Blanche Dubois in "A Streetcar Named Desire"

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Blanche DuBois is one of the most significant female characters in modern drama and she is central to Tennessee Williams's 1947 play - "A Streetcar Named Desire".

Following a month long run at The Crucible Theatre here in Sheffield, the very last performance of Josh Seymour's version occurred this very evening with Joanna Vanderham playing Blanche. Shirley and I saw the show yesterday evening.

Blanche is a flawed character who finds it quite impossible to fit in. She is vulnerable and dreamy, partly aware of her weaknesses and partly in denial about them. It is almost as if she is not really of this earth but is perpetually seeking a higher plane of existence. She says, "I live in a world of fantasy, and it’s a much safer place to be" but she also recognises that she is a social being: "I need people to validate my existence."

Joanna Vanderham as Blanche

In The French Quarter of New Orleans, she come up against the aggressive obstinacy of her brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. He is not prepared to pander to her whims and treats her like an unwelcome intruder, challenging her domestic habits and just about everything she says. His wife, Stella, begs him to be kinder to her sister but his cruel taunting persists. It is as if he can see right through her.

Oddly, in the Sheffield production, Stella Kowalski (née DuBois) was played by a black actress - Amara Okereke when she is meant to be Blanche's sister. I think that Tennessee Williams himself would have been surprised about this even though Amara Okereke was a very capable  performer.

The performance we witnessed definitely did justice to the text and to the spirit of the play and Joanna Vanderham certainly fitted the role of Blanche very well. However, I think that if I had been the director there would have been some subtle changes. 

Remembering that the setting is New Orleans in the summer, I would have had an electric  fan whirring silently and Blanche would have dabbed away perspiration with a handkerchief or cooled herself with a paper fan. That southern sultriness should contribute to the conditions in which the often  heated dialogue takes place. I would have also had a slightly older more battle-worn actor playing the part of Stanley Kowalski.

Imagery

 

Last weekend, Ian's girlfriend Sarah took a photograph of the three little cousins together. They were in our front room round the coffee table. From left to right there's Zachary, Margot and Phoebe. Sarah uploaded the image into an A.I. facility and requested a Japanese Anime version of it. This charming picture is what emerged a few seconds later.

There are one or two significant differences between the anime version and the original image. For example, the A.I. facility has turned Phoebe's cuddly sloth friend Monty into a rabbit and Margot is now looking at the camera when in the real picture she was looking down at the book on the table.

I have tried to use a similar A.I. facility. This slightly dated but happy photo of Shirley and the little ones...

became this monstrosity...

I can see me wasting away yet more hours on the computer playing around with this kind of online software. Who needs real life artists any more?

Nearby

Just four miles out of Sheffield, Hathersage is a substantial village set in the lovely shelter of The Hope Valley. St Michael's Church is located just outside the main village - a brisk walk away. Famously, the churchyard contains the grave of Robin Hood's loyal lieutenant - Little John whose cottage was close by. 

Above, I spotted that lone daffodil when I was perusing the graves in the churchyard extension. I guessed that I could achieve an eye-catching image with the church spire and an old yew tree as the scenic backdrop. Though I say it myself, I think it worked.

Below, you can see the same church snapped from Baulk Lane with some crows in flight. The house on the left is the old vicarage. It was here that the writer Charlotte Bronte stayed for three weeks in the summer of 1845. She was visiting her old friend Ellen Nussey whose brother Henry was the vicar of Hathersage for three years.  Charlotte and Ellen got to explore some of the nearby countryside together. It is pretty clear that those three weeks impacted upon the creation of "Jane Eyre" which was first published in October 1847.

Our spring weather has been quite perfect in recent days. On Tuesday, I decided to scratch an itch that had been in my mind for quite a while. When driving out of the city towards Fox House, I had frequently spotted a lone gatepost on the skyline and I wanted to get close to it.

Clint was duly parked by Blacka Moor Plantation and very soon I was vaulting clambering over a chained five bar gate into rough pastureland. Up the slope and I soon arrived at the finger of gritstone .

Out there, most of the drystone walls were tumbledown affairs. At the edge of one field, I spotted a large sarcen-like stone laid upon its side. It made me wonder if it had once been a standing stone, toppled by early farmers who sought to tame the wild landscape of Houndkirk Moor.

There are several significant ancient sites in the immediate area and just two hundred yards away, old maps suggest the presence of an ancient standing stone called "Fingerem Stone" but nobody knows anything about it. No sighting of it has ever been written down as far as I know. It's so tantalising.

Quiztime

 

The Quiztime theme on this occasion is the moon - as the image above suggests. As per usual, there are ten questions and the answers will be given in the "Comments" section.

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1) About how far is our moon from Earth?

(a) 238.5  miles (b) 2,385 miles (c) 23,850 miles (d) 238,850 miles

2) Who is this guy? 

Clue:- He was the Apollo 11 Command Module pilot who did not get to step foot on the moon on July 20th 1969.

3) What is the Swedish word for moon?

(a) månen (b) lunen (c) moon (d) stjärna

4) Which one of the these is NOT one of the "seas" of the moon?

(a) Sea of Fecundity  (b) Sea of Islands (c) Sea of  Dollars (d) Sea of Tranquility

5) What is the surname of Mary - creator of the award-winning Florida blog "Bless our Hearts"?

(a) Jupiter  (b) Moon (c) Magdalene  (d) Neptune

6) Around half the height of Mount Everest, what is the tallest mountain on the moon?

(a)  Mount Hegseth  (b) Rainbow Mountain  

(c) Mons Huygens  (d) Montagne Grande

7) One of the founding members of The Who, who is this crazy drummer? (He died in 1978 at the age of 32)

8) The moon has eight phases but which phase comes immediately before a full moon?

(a) waning gibbous (b) first quarter (c) waxing crescent (d) waxing gibbous

9) In total, how many American astronauts have walked on the moon?

(a) five (b) nine (c) twelve (d) twenty three

10) In which 1961 film did the song "Moon River" first feature?

(a) "West Side Story" (b) "Breakfast at Tiffany's"  

(c)  "The Young Savages" (d) "The Guns of Navarone"

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That's it folks! How did you do?

"Flow"

At one thirty this afternoon, I set off walking to the city centre. It is about two miles from our house. I opted to walk purely for the exercise. Along Psalter Lane, down Cemetery Road then under the inner circular road.

My destination was The Showroom Cinema. The film I had in mind was "Flow" as recommended by John Gray over at "Going Gently". "Flow" won the Best Animated Film Feature award at this year's Oscars, becoming the very first Latvian film to win any kind of oscar.

There are no human voices in "Flow". No words. But we do hear the wordless voices of the nameless central characters - a cat, a lemur, a secretarybird, a Labrador dog and a capybara.

They find themselves together in an old boat, sailing over a flood  which keeps rising - inundating most everything. There is incidental music which enhances the action and is never obtrusive. Later, the flood subsides and they are back on terra firma.

There is joy in "Flow" as well as terror. It was meticulously crafted. At times, the visuals are breathtaking but I noticed that the animals never seemed to get wet  even when they had been swimming in the flood. Was that a purposeful choice or a technical challenge too far for the animators?

"Flow" has a magical, very beautiful quality about it and it is easy to get lost in the artifice. Is it about anything? Does it have a purpose? Why was it made? I am not sure that I could answer any of these questions but what I can say is that it provides a unique cinematic experience. I guess that you just have to go with the flow of "Flow".

Portraiture

 

What a fine portrait of Donald J. Trump was created by  artist Sarah Boardman. It hangs in the Colorado State Capitol Building in Denver. Through this well-executed portrait, Ms Boardman has disproved the old saying, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". 

Cunningly, the artist has taken years off the sitter who in real life appears much more haggard and confrontational. Any photographic close-ups of his facial complexion reveals a surface that is not unlike our moon but through Ms Boardman's brushwork, his skin appears as smooth as rendered fat.

...Oh drat!  While creating this blogpost, I have now discovered that President Trump has railed against Ms Boardman's painting. He doesn't like it, saying this: "Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before."

He has demanded the removal of his portrait. Oh what a shame for Sarah Boardman! Perhaps he will prefer my picture of him - made with some of our Phoebe's felt tips and crayons. Though I say it myself, I think it genuinely captures something of the true essence of the man...

Running

Ian on the way up - dispensing with his training top

Today was the day of The Sheffield Half Marathon. Plenty of roads in our sector of the city were closed off to enable some 8,000 runners to stride out safely into the nearby countryside before swinging back to the finishing line in the city centre..

I stood in the middle of Ecclesall Road and watched them coming up the hill. Great waves of competitors and  I was struck by the obvious realisation that each one of those runners was different from the next. Tall and short, fat and thin, male and female, black and white, young and old, dressed  in running gear or dressed like bananas. On and on they came, their feet thundering on the tarmac.

Amongst them was our forty year old son, Ian. He had travelled up to Sheffield for his mother's birthday and decided to squeeze in this half marathon as extra preparation for The London Marathon at the end of next month. He is not a competitive runner but his training has been building well and he finished in the middle of the field today.

Sheffield is Great Britain's hilliest city whereas the London marathon route is as flat as a pancake. Getting up to "The Norfolk Arms" pub at Ringinglow will have been demanding for all of today's runners but at least the descent would have been a comfort. What goes up must come down.

There's Ian on the way back down  waving at me.

I am very proud of our Ian's effort today but sorry that my photos of his participation were pretty poor. I just didn't see him coming. I am also pleased that I got to see 86 year old John Burkhill bringing up the rear -  pushing his pram up Ecclesall Road. He has raised well over £1,000,000 for Macmillan cancer nurses in the last fifteen years. What a legend!

Swarming

This blogpost is largely a memo to my future self about a significant health week in which issues  and question marks seemed to swarm around me like bees. 

Nine nights ago I fainted for the first time in my adult life. I am convinced that this was an adverse reaction to Larbex XL - an alpha blocker that  had just been added to my cocktail of anti-hypertension pills. That same night something else occurred that had never happened before. I deposited bright red blood in the toilet bowl and this kept happening for the next twenty four hours. It was alarming.

On Friday the 14th, I had a doctor's appointment which resulted in me having bloods taken on Monday morning. I should have left three stool samples but constipation had set in over the weekend. I was finally able to supply those samples on Tuesday morning.

On Tuesday afternoon I visited The Charles Clifford Dental Hospital for an operation - the surgical removal of a small granular cyst from the corner of my mouth. All went well but I need to go back for re-examination and the results of the biopsy.

On Wednesday, a receptionist at the local surgery phoned me about the bloods that I had provided on Monday. She said that something of concern had shown up and that I needed to have my bloods taken again on March 31st. There was some mention of diabetes but I didn't take it in. What was said seemed to be outside the sphere of an admin person.

On Friday morning, I had to attend the central clinic on Mulberry Street for pre-operative assessment as I have an operation coming up next month with the urology department at The Royal Hallamshire Hospital. This concerns a stricture in my urethra  - quite close to the point where it reaches the sphincter that leads into my bladder. The pre-op appointment lasted for ninety minutes.

On Friday afternoon, I went back to the doctor's surgery for another appointment - this time linked to the stool samples. I think the doctor I met is Egyptian though I had never seen him before. He seemed kind and competent. 

Of course the laboratory had found blood in my samples. Not surprising when these samples had been taken from my first stool after the night of the fainting. 

The doctor, who I think was called Dr Ahmed, said he accepted that Larbex XL almost certainly caused me to faint but the release of blood suggested that something else was amiss unconnected with the new drug. What a hell of a co-incidence that would be!

He asked if it would be okay to refer me for a colonoscopy which in layman's terms means a camera up my arse and in spite of myself,  I agreed to this.

So you may see what I mean about health matters swarming around me. I am sick of it. Once I was an urban superman with little need for medical professionals but now my frailities are coming home to roost. I can't even plan any holidays because of potential appointments around the corner. Maybe this is the beginning of the end.

Lambie

 

Phoebe called her lamb "Lambie" which seems to me a perfect name for a recently born lamb. Lambie was born at Whirlow Hall Farm a month ago. Like the other "Lambies", Phoebe's was a greedy guts - guzzling the warm bottle of freshly made up milk as though tomorrow might never come.

A good fund-raising  idea by the staff at Whirlow Hall Farm - pay £10 and get to hold and feed a lamb. They have been offering this for years. Last year, Phoebe was very apprehensive and could not bring herself to even touch the baby sheep but this time she happily got in the pen with her grandma as her face filled with delight.

Lambs are famously associated with springtime. Christians associate lambs with  Jesus of Nazareth - the carpenter's son.. I did not think that I would see The Lamb of God at Whirlow Hall Farm but there he was staring at me from his pen and slightly out of focus...

Impermanence

The art of drystone walling - by the path to Totley Bents

On Tuesday morning, I undertook the same circular walking route that I have followed four or five times a year for the past thirty five years. According to my "Casio" calculator's advice, that means I have completed the circuit around 150 times. It is located  on the southern edge of Sheffield - by car, less than ten minutes from this house.

The weather changes, the seasons change and the walk is never quite the same. In those thirty five years there have been many physical changes too. The wooden stable from which two horses used to peer at me  has now fallen down and mosses clothe the rotting timbers. A large brick garage has been turned into a swish house down by Blacka Brook. The boy who used to play in the tree house is now most probably a man, building a new tree house some place else for his own children while the old tree house collapses, forgotten. 

As I walked, I sang a made-up song that is gradually emerging from deep within me, forcing its way to the surface:-

Oh where have you gone my bonny lass

And where have you gone my darling?

These questions hang upon the breeze

Like kestrels o'er the moor

Fortunately perhaps, nobody was passing by to hear me. I had the route to myself apart from a solitary jogger.

At Lenny Hill, there's a brand new memorial bench. Who was Trish Brooks?

Perhaps it was this Trish Brooks - a local primary school teacher who died from cancer just last September at the tender age of 63. It makes sense that it should be her. "We will love you and miss you forever"...

Anyway, it is a good place for a new bench - replacing the one that went before it.  Hopefully, Trish's bench will last thirty or forty years as her loved ones themselves grow old. Nothing lasts forever - even the drystone wall at the top of this blogpost is impermanent, ephemeral.

Trish's bench on Lenny Hill

How clear and fresh was the air on Tuesday morning as I strolled along to Totley Bents. I halted once again to take my millionth photograph of "The Cricket Inn" and this time I also snapped a picture of the new pub sign on Penny Lane...

Then along to Avenue Farm and by winding Redcar Brook - back to Shorts Lane. To my right there was a sheep pasture  but I had to do a double take. Standing there amidst the sheep was a deer. They are skittish creatures but slowly I took out my gun camera and managed to get some rather unsatisfactory pictures of the misplaced animal before reaching Clint, parked  against the new drystone wall south of the Far Nova mansion that has replaced Shorts Lane Stables... now consigned to local history...

"Adolescence"

Wow! This week I have watched the T.V. mini-series "Adolescence" - courtesy of Netflix. My apologies to you if you cannot access Netflix.

Set in a  town in northern England, the drama focuses chiefly upon the Miller family and their thirteen year old son Jamie. There are four episodes and the immediacy of each episode is greatly assisted by keeping the camera rolling. No breaks - just long , continuous shots.

The core storyline touches upon some difficult modern issues such as: What is masculinity? The largely unbridled influence of social media upon young people's lives is also questioned. Teenagers sit in bedrooms staring at their screens with their headphones on but who knows what is really happening in those lost hours and who cares anyway?

I don't wish to give too much of "Adolescence" away as there will be blog visitors out there who intend to watch the series in the next few weeks. In TV entertainment, I am not someone who is drawn to crime drama. In fact, usually, I spurn it - but this was different. In my humble opinion, it deserves all of the plaudits it has already received.

Stephen Graham as Eddie Miller is as brilliantly earthy as always and Erin Doherty played the role of a visiting psychologist to perfection but for me the real star of the show is Owen Cooper in his very first TV appearance - taking on the challenging role of  thirteen year old Jamie Miller who is accused of a dreadful crime.

The official trailer is provided below though I am not sure that it will be accessible in foreign lands like Australia and the USA. Anyway, I think the official trailer possibly gives away too much....

Courting

My maternal grandfather was a coal miner and so was his father before him. Most of the  men on my mother's side of the family worked in the coal industry. It was what South Yorkshire was all about for a hundred years - getting that black gold out of the earth - to service other industries and to warm people's homes.

Their lingua franca would have included terms like "pit prop", "shaft", "deputy", "overman", "tubs", "brakesman" and "banksman" and they would have shared an intimate knowledge of underground work. They belonged to a kind of brotherhood in which they relied upon each other in ways that surface and white collar workers will never know. At home, bodies blackened by coal dust, they washed themselves in tin baths by the fire.

I am a man but at work I was never a man like those men. I didn't get dirty, nor did I strain my muscles or fear methane or chilling underground noises. I dressed in a suit with a collar and tie and used my intelligence, my mental energy and my command of the English language to sail through my weeks. I used terms like "assessment", "potential", "target", "poetry", "written expression", "comprehension", "accuracy" and "pen". I showered in the morning, shampooed my hair and shaved my face.

In December 1977, our two very different worlds collided when I was invited to a job interview at Dinnington Comprehensive School, close to Dinnington Colliery. I blogged about that day thirteen years ago and here's the key scene which made that memory stick forever...

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    The interview went swimmingly. I dodged and dived and batted responses back to them that left all but one of them smiling - they surely had their chosen candidate in front of them. Then the headmaster, Mr Ingham, turned to the chair of governors. "Ahem! Have you got any questions Mr Burkinshaw?"

    A hush filled the room. I was expecting something highbrow pertaining to the advertised post. Then Mr Burkinshaw cleared his throat.

    "Aye 'edmaster, ah've just got wun question to ask 'im... "

    All eyes of the interview panel turned to him with expectation or was it embarrassment.

    "Are ye courting?"

    This irrelevant question hung in the air. 

    

    I rapidly processed it, quickly judging that the chairman was trying to clarify my sexuality. Good god, in a pit village like Dinnington they wouldn't have wanted any puftas on the staff! I was tempted to say to Mr Burkinshaw - "No, I'm not courting but you seem like a nice boy!" Instead I spluttered something about my Scottish girlfriend and how we were in a serious relationship though I refused to embellish my response with the details of my red-blooded heterosexuality...

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You see, Mr Burkinshaw was a coal miner and coal mining was what he probably saw as real work - man's work. He would have known the same working vocabulary as The Whites - my grandfather and great - grandfather. Perhaps, instinctively, he struggled to appreciate that being  an English teacher could also be proper man's work.  But if I had been gay or asexual - what would it have mattered? It was my competence, my ability to do the job that should have been his sole concern.

Rabbits

The title of this blogpost should have been "Sport" but at the last moment I decided to rename it "Rabbits" - even though it has absolutely nothing to do with rabbits. You see, I was pretty sure that if the post's title remained "Sport" then a lot of regular visitors would simply give it a wide berth. There are, after all, a lot of people out there in the backwaters of the blogosphere who do not care a fig for sport.

However, I have always enjoyed sport - well most sports. I love football, rugby union, rugby league, cricket, tennis, golf, athletics, bowling, snooker, darts and rowing. I am not interested in any equestrian  sports or indeed any other so-called sports that involve animals.

With me not feeling too well over the weekend, I watched quite a lot of sport courtesy of the magic  of television. 

On Saturday, I watched three big rugby union internationals from a tournament called "The Six Nations". First, Ireland scraped home against Italy in Rome. In the evening, France overcame Scotland pretty convincingly but in the late afternoon England hammered Wales in Cardiff - winning by 68 points to 14. The England performance was masterful. Men against boys.

Sunday meant football. Proper football. Not the stop-start, highly-padded, ultra-tactical "American" variation nor the thuggish testosterone battles known as "Australian Rules". No - I am talking about association football.

At lunchtime, the two big Sheffield teams competed in The English Championship with Sheffield United beating Sheffield Wednesday by one goal to nil. Then a bit later, down in London, in The English Premier League, Arsenal beat Chelsea by the same score.

In the early evening, it was the final of The English League Cup. After seventy years without a domestic trophy, Newcastle United overcame Liverpool by two goals to one. It was no doubt thrilling for every Newcastle fan in the world and for neutrals like me - a great match to watch. Newcastle deserved their victory after all those "nearly" years and I am happy for The Magpies.

Sport means so much to so many people. For many, the teams they support are connected with their very  identities. Choosing a team can be like choosing  your tribe and of course getting lost in sport can allow you to look away from everyday cares and woes - if just for a little while.

And that is the end of my rabbiting about sport for today.

Local hero Dan Burn lifts the cup for Newcastle United

Resistance

 

US Senator Bernie Sanders telling it like it is - on Friday.

Representative for Connecticut, John Larson - telling it like it is in The House of Representatives this past week.

Six

At an eating establishment near Atlanta, Georgia they serve a massive 6lb burger in a bun. There it is above. If you eat the entire plateful you don't have to pay. The woman in the picture - Molly Schuyler- actually managed it even though she is as thin as a rake. I guess that the perspective in that picture is a little deceptive... but just a little.

Six pounds. That is how much weight I have lost in the past ten days. Mostly down to "The Yorkshire Pudding" diet that I explained on Thursday. However, yesterday's dietary diversion may have helped.

On Friday I ate a small bowl of "Ready Brek" for breakfast, a banana for lunch and a vegetable "Cuppa Soup" for tea/dinner/supper with just one slice of buttered toast. You see, I wasn't feeling well.

I am pretty sure that I had a bad reaction to my first doxazosin tablet - an alpha blocker that is designed to increase  blood flow somehow and decrease high blood pressure. Well that little white pill knocked me for six.

Just before midnight on Thursday my tummy started to rumble. It was as if diarrhoea was brewing and I needed to release the internal pressure. However, it wasn't that simple.

At one o'clock I looked in the bathroom mirror and I was shocked by my ghostliness. All the colour had drained away from my face. I had become a church candle version of myself.

It must have been around two o'clock that I fainted for the first time in my adult life. Fortunately, I did not injure myself. I woke up lying between the downstairs shower room and the adjacent corridor wondering what the hell I was doing on the floor. 

After five minutes, I pulled myself up. Still Ghost Pudding was staring back at me from the mirror.  I will not go into detail about the toilet bowl contents but let's just say the colour was alarmimgly bright red.

I got an appointment with a doctor yesterday afternoon. She was keen to eliminate other possibilities but if this wasn't to do with the doxazosin then my name is SpongeBob Squarepants. It's now 48 hours since I took that tablet and my body has still not returned to normal. Oh woe is me!

Daffodils

Perennial daffodils in our garden are living proof that the wheel has turned and we are heading for  another summer.  Of course, winter may yet exhale its  dying breaths because that is what March and early April frequently permit.

This is not the first time that I have blogged about daffodils. Back in March 2017, I even posted a self-penned poem called "Daffodils". That was eight years ago.

It is likely that daffodil bulbs were first brought to The British Isles by Romans almost two thousand years ago. Furthermore, it is believed that all daffodil species had their origins in a few wild varieties that grew in the woods of the Iberian peninsula (Spain & Portugal) and northern Morocco.

It is hard to imagine these British islands off the edge of Europe without daffodils. They are gaudy, vigorous flowers that trumpet defiantly to the world. There's no subtle delicacy about them. They shout  out, "We are yellow and we are strong!" 

Many is the year that our daffodils have poked their heads from the ground far too early - before wintertime was even half done. You might think they would be killed off by snow and freezing temperatures but they always defy logic and come bursting through yet again with an harmonious "Ta-da!"

The images of  this year's crop were snapped on Wednesday afternoon. They flourish in the shelter of a privet hedge - one of the sunniest spots in our garden. By  July they will be retreating to the earth from whence they came but I have no doubt whatsoever that they will be back again next year.

Nineteen

For four decades I never weighed myself. If I had to be weighed by a medical professional, I always asked them not to tell me  my weight. I didn't want to know. We have some bathroom scales but I had never stood upon them until eight days ago.

I had been contacted by The National Health Service in relation to a lung screening programme. Like all others in my age group who were agreeable, I was to be asked a series of questions over  the telephone to determine whether or not I should move forward to the next stage - a full-blown MRI scan.

However, in order to proceed with the questions there were apparently two vital pieces of information they needed - my height and weight. I was trapped. Just before the scheduled call I ascended our stairs and stood on the scales. Six feet below I could see the number "19". Nineteen stones. Far more of me than there used to be.

There and then I decided to shed some weight and have already  started what I call "The Yorkshire Pudding Diet". This is a diet that I have dreamt up myself without reference to any dietitians or so-called experts in the field. It does not involve any Yorkshire puddings. Because it is my own invention, I am sure I  am more committed to it than I would otherwise be.

Essentially, the diet is this:-

No snacks apart from bits of fruit

Breakfast - fruit. Mostly homemade fruit salad with whatever we have in.

Lunch  - microwaved fresh vegetables with predominantly tenderstem broccoli, sliced carrot and leek. Sometimes eaten with a small tin of sardines or mackerel in a tomato sauce.

Dinner (Yorkshire: Tea) Just the same as always. Tonight, for example, it will be steak pie from the butcher shop at Bents Green with homemade chips (American: fries), garden peas and gravy - followed by apple and bramble crumble and custard

Yesterday's lunch

For seven days, I have stuck to this diet and I swear that I have not craved extra food or snacks. Hopefully, gradually, this regime will see my weight falling. I am leaving it a while before I next get back on those righteous scales. At first, my goal is get down to eighteen stones and then we will see where we go from there.... seventeen, sixteen, fifteen - rather like the countdown for a rocket launch... or a skeleton launch.

This is the first diet I have ever been on my life. I know that if I can become less big it will enhance my chances of reaching eighty and seeing my grandchildren reach adolescence. That's big motivation I think.

By the way, my answers to the lung screening caller mean that I am not being put forward for the MRI scan.

Phlegm

Phlegm has featured in this blog before. He is a mysterious artist and muralist - rather like Banksy. Based in Sheffield, he has adorned numerous buildings around the world with his distinctive designs. He works exclusively in monochrome, creating often huge fantastic murals that are characterised by imagined beasts and a sense of strange foreboding.

I had heard that there was a new Phlegm mural on Eldon Street so I wanted to see it with my own eyes. However, Shirley told me that the massive mural I had previously spotted on Headford Street had been replaced with something even better so I wanted to see that too.

Mural on Headford Street and detailed view at the top of this post.

With senior bus pass in hand, I set off into the city centre - remembering my trusty camera. To tell you the truth, the new Eldon Street mural was a little disappointing and parked cars prevented an unhindered view of it. However, the new Headford Street mural certainly has the "wow" factor. It is on the side of the old "Eye Witness" cutlery works building which has been converted into an office and apartment block.

Phlegm has been painting away for two decades now. I guess there are more mythical beasts in his head - just waiting to be let out. It is interesting that he makes no obvious political commentary or protest in his work and nor does he seek to celebrate natural beauty or the real environments we occupy. Fantasy and free expression appear to be all.

Lying on a psychiatrist's couch, I bet that Phlegm would have a fascinating tale to tell and it would be his own tale - not anybody else's.

The new Phlegm mural on Eldon Street