It’s one of those dreary, drizzly days that puts me in a dismal humour; lacking in motivation to do anything other than potter around the house, noting all the little jobs that need doing, but not doing them.  Consumed by ennui, yet unwilling to do anything to break myself out of it.

The most pressing thing on my mind is what to have with the chicken pie that I have planned for my dinner.  I don’t have to make the pie, but I can’t be bothered to move the Little Dog’s water bowl so that I can open the freezer door to hunt for frozen vegetable accompaniments.  I think I’ll just have pie and pie for tea.

Tempted as I am to return to bed for a snooze, I shall resist.

Days like these are important, if only to make you not want to have them too frequently.

Ultrasonography is witchcraft

There are a number of medical imaging techniques that can be employed to look inside a person’s body.  I get x-rays, and x-ray images are easily interpreted by anybody with a basic knowledge of anatomy.  CT scans provide cross-sections of the body, which again can be pretty easily visualised by anybody who knows what goes where in the body and  who can imagine what a body might look like if it’s put through a virtual meat slicer.

Ultrasounds though?  Honestly?  No way, it’s all just made up, I’m certain of it.

Having had a couple of ultrasounds recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that radiologists’ minds aren’t right.  I mean, just look at this schematic:

How can tell if you have one of these from one of these?

Anyway, my radiologist yesterday saw “something” in the region of my left inferior parathyroid gland, but it didn’t look like the second image above.  I knew there was something going on when she spent about ten minutes pressing and probing the same area, asking me to swallow, more pressing and probing.  All in silence.  She was very good, went over the background of what she was looking for and explaining what was what. She told me there was something there, but it’s atypical of an adenoma, it might be something on or near or associated with my oesophagus.  She’s going to consult with her colleague and probably organise different imaging to have a look at it.  It’s probably an undiagnosed siamese twin.  Or a tumour.

But this is it, isn’t it? Imaging looks at things, ultrasound essentially listens to things.  How can you tell what something looks like by bouncing soundwaves off it?   I know I’m a person of science, but some things just do not compute in my brain.  Like x-ray crystallography, that’s a load of old bollocks too.  No disrespect to Franklin, Watson and Crick, but it takes a very special mind to be able to do that sort of thing.

Nil points

It’s Eurovision tonight: the annual event that was initially conceived to bring the countries of Europe together in song, to celebrate our differences and similarities by demonstrating how much we all love a good sing song.  These days it’s just another excuse for queers to get together for a party and for the rest of us (queers) to bemoan the competition’s politicisation and the fact that everybody in Europe hates the UK.

I haven’t watched this spectacular for years, but tonight I might settle down with Belgian beer, French wine and German dog and immerse myself in the glamour.

There are some things that I find intolerable.  Actually, there are many things that I find intolerable and I’m sure I’m not alone in my irritation at:

• Perfectly able-bodied people using the lift to ascend or descend just one level.  They enter the lift, their backs turned to me.  They MUST be able to feel my death stare burning a hole in the back of their stupid, lazy heads.
• Those who enter MY segment of a revolving door.  Back the fuck off!  What the hell are they playing at?  I’ve a mind to stop dead and make them stand in there with me while they explain their need for proximity.  “Oh, you expected me to push for you, did you?”.  Tossers.
• People shuffling along the street, paying no attention to their surroundings because they’re too engrossed in whatever is so fascinating on their mobile phones.  I watch them as they approach me, heads down, in my mind I am the man with no name, sizing them up, waiting for the point that they bump into me.  I do not alter my path to accommodate them, I stand my ground and make them move.  Another battle against ignorance won.
• Those who walk slow-paced in a gang of three or four abreast ahead of me on the footway, taking up the entire width so as to make overtaking them impossible.  THIS is why cattle prods should not be illegal.
• Women who use the ladies’ to fanny around in front of the mirror.  Just fuck off!  I’m trying to have a wee, and they’re there, messing about in their handbags, doing their hair and putting lippy on.  Don’t they have any idea of privacy?  Clearly not.
• Umbrellas.  Get a hood or a rain hat.  Don’t take up valuable space or my eye out with your stupid, ineffective contraption that is no more than a piece of cagoul fashioned into a flimsy structure with wire coat hangers.  You see them, trying to avoid the rain as if they are made of sherbet, fighting the wind that is turning their brolly inside out.  Fools!
• Those who drop litter.  Die on fire, all of you!  We waste over £1bn a year in this country tidying up after these people.  £1bn that should be spent on essential services.

This is not an exhaustive list, I could go on, and on, and on.  The list grows on an almost daily basis and today, my list has grown again, this time because of anglers.

Angling NOT a sport.  It’s an excuse for lazy-arsed blokes to sit around and do fuck all instead of getting a proper job.  How can they justify spending an entire day sitting by a lake?  There are anglers who occupy the banks of the lake in the country park where I take the Little Dog for his walk.

They’re a shifty bunch at the best of times, the smell of skunk weed being smoked often emanates from their locations and I can’t ABIDE people who take drugs, especially in a location that is frequented by a) me, and b) families.  They leave litter; this is despite them having the ability to trundle around to the car park with trolleys full of whatever the fuck they keep in there, but oh no, they can’t take their disposable barbecues with them.

But these misdemeanours pale in comparison to the horror that I discovered last night.  Me and the little feller were out enjoying our evening walk when he suddenly darted off into the woodland leading to the bank of the lake.  Through the bush I could see him eating something, so I called him back, assuming it was a dead rat.  When he finally came to me, with his prize, he dropped it to the floor.  It took a few seconds to register what it was, but once I did, I recoiled in disgust at… a massive human poo.  After chastising him and finally getting him to move on, he did the same a few metres along the path and he came back with yet another huge human poo.  The dirty fucking bastard twatting anglers have been shitting in the woods, not burying it, just leaving it there.  Filthy fucking pigs.

Needless to say, the Little Dog had his face and mouth cleaned pronto, I’ve never been so grateful for carrying wet wipes in the car.

I came home to compose a “disgusted of Stoneclough” e-mail to the Park Rangers and to ask whether I could be considered for the Country Park Forum.

Why are some men such revolting beasts? I’ve a mind to go down to the woods while they’re there and fling shit at them as they admire their carp.  “So, what did you catch today?”

“A 5lb carp and 2kg of angler shit.”

Honestly.  I bet they didn’t even wipe their bums either.

Obtuse, stupid, fuckwitted, ignorant, thick.

I could do a mnemonic and create a whole new word… let’s see.

O
S
F
I
T

Sofit?

Foist?

Tifosi?

Sitof?

It’s not a mnemonic, it’s a one of those other things, can’t think of the word, and it’s not even one of those.

Anyway, I’ve been dealing with thick people today. I find it so frustrating that people who are in relatively well-paid jobs can’t be arsed to use their brains.

I’d expect most people working in a similar sort of role as me to be abel to interpret a simple spreadsheet. I’m sure “working knowledge of Excel” is an essential criterion of most job descriptions for that sort of job. So when I get an e-mail saying “I couldn’t quite work out your spreadsheet, so I’ve interpreted in a Word document instead. Do you want me to send you that?”, my immediate response is “DO I FUCK!”.

What do these people want? Should I learn interpretative dance moves that tell them how much is in their budgets and what they can spend it on? It would certainly make things a lot more interesting, if only for the sake of getting me into a leotard for the first time in thirty years, but seriously, what is WRONG with some people?

The classic one is “why isn’t all of this word showing in this cell on this spreadsheet?”

“Because the column isn’t wide enough”

“Oh, do I have to make the text smaller?”

“No, you can make the column wider”

“How do I do that?”

“What grade are you again?”

Promoted out of harm’s way.

I think I get impatient with people because I tend to find things out for myself. If I don’t know, I’ll ask somebody, make a note of what they say, then keep that in my notebook of knowledge. The same has gone for using computers and software, I’ve never had any training and I just learned by using stuff, a bit of trial and error, but I got there. So why can’t other people be the same? Why are they so, basically, crap?

People can be brilliant, fun, stimulating, but they can also be exasperating and downright infuriating. Most days I’m fortunate enough to encounter those on brilliant end of the spectrum, but despite a few rays of sunshine today, the majority of my dealings were with people who were, to put it politely, exasperating.

Bring on tomorrow and a new day of challenges. I shall be practising rolling my eyes and tutting in my sleep.

Something amazing just happened as I was trudging upstairs to bed: thinking about a meeting that’s in my diary for this Wednesday, I groaned at the prospect of having to be out of the office for an hour or so tomorrow. “Oh, but that’s not until Wednesday and tomorrow’s Tuesday. Oh no, it’s only Monday today!” My head cleared as I recalled snippets of events from yesterday. “Hang on, yesterday was Monday… today is Tuesday.”

So tomorrow is the hump of the week after all.

I must say that I prefer Moesday to Tuednesday, but nothing beats Le Weekend.

The F word
Talking of beets, I’ve got some in my fridge. They’re a superfood, apparently. In years to come, all these idiots who evangelise about the latest superfood will realise that they were being taken in by the latest fad for what I call “fresh produce”. A real superfood would be something like a massive pepperoni pizza that actually makes you lose loads of weight, reduces cholesterol, fixes all your broken bits of DNA and gives you whatever figure you happen to choose for yourself. If the figure you choose for yourself happens to be like mine, then Domino’s Pizza have exactly what you’re looking for right now.

I have a problem with food in that I can’t stop eating it. There’s no secret, magical way to having a healthy body and an appropriate weight: eat sensibly, move around a bit, don’t drink too much booze. I eat rubbish. Vegetables are a bloody chore, I could happily live off meat and carbohydrates and I have to pretend that I’m really enjoying anything that has a high cellulose content. Apart from peaches, nectarines and plums of course.

Exercise hurts me and always has done, so even the prospect of physical activity makes my joints and muscles ache. Why is this? Running should be exhilarating and fun, but you don’t do running in PE at school, you do standing around freezing your tits off while the teacher shows you how to throw a fucking ball. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the physical activity in that? Riding a bike can be fun, but I’m too much of a pussy it’s too scary to go onto the roads… and I live in a valley, so any destination involves a humiliating and lengthy push of my bike up a bloody great hill. Maybe I’d have more success if I traded in my Penny Farthing for something with gears and brakes.

Booze has become a pleasant weekend treat for me. I love not drinking on a school night. I love having a clear head for the majority of the week. I love having a clear head all of the week in all honesty. I’d recommend that everybody who drinks regularly goes teetotal for at least six months, it’s a very liberating experience.

From my experience, and this may only apply to me, I had to go for years without having any alcohol to really appreciate this rather than going through motions one weekend to another, just waiting for time to pass before I could get hammered on a Friday, Saturday, errrm, Sunday, well, most nights. Of course booze = empty calories + a compulsion to have pudding chips and gravy on the way home from the pub -> huge weight gain -> feeling crap -> an endless cycle of booze, chips, weight gain, feeling crap. Where’s this going? Oh yes, so, I hated all of that, who wouldn’t? These days I just feel pretty exhausted most of the time without needing any alcohol to help me.

But still, I’ll probably get drunk once or twice over the weekend. This will induce me into ordering a takeaway or two, stay up late watch crap TV then make me feel so rubbish the following day that I don’t go on quite the walk I’d intended with the Little Dog.

So yes, there you go. To anybody who complains that they don’t understand why they can’t lose weight, stop lying to yourself, it’s not your glands or your hormones, it’s you.

Now, I’d better put this to bed before I go and raid the cupboard for some tinned sardines or four year old sultanas. Even those raw beetroot seem very appetising at the moment.