Video Schmideo!

Heh Heh, well I finally got my video for cftube looking the way I want, there's no stopping me now! I'm going to bore my relatives senseless with my holiday videos ;-)

Seeing the vid really makes me miss playing in the band; we split up a couple of years ago because we all had other things going on in our lives and possibly because of that we just lost momentum really. I think M (The singer) had a real gift for writing songs; the rest of us just added the sonic film-flam around his songs. Anyway; I am for hire, if only I can find a band that needs a guitarist...

Oink, Oink!

It feels a bit like I'm surrounded by the tentacles of Swine Flu at the moment. There have been a few suspected cases at Abby and Oscar's nursery; and today there has been a couple of suspected cases at my workplace. The company policy is to send the people home (quarantined) until their symptoms subside. That's the idea anyway; this morning one guy turned up feeling unwell with a temperature, and stayed around for an hour checking the NHS Direct website before being sent home, doh! All this makes my working from home seem very desirable, so I'm going to agitate to get my laptop setup so I can work from home.

We (Abby, Oscar, and me) have got colds at the moment. Oscar's terrible case of imaginary CF (;-)) continues; he's got a chest infection at the moment, if I put my ear to his chest I can hear the phlegm bubbling up, poor guy. R took him to the doctors yesterday as he was quite fed up, just not himself, with a slight temp. He's been put on a 5-day course of Amoxycillin. Because it's for kids it comes as a lovely yellow banana-flavour medicine. He doesn't like it though, and he's taken to spitting it out onto my work shirts, which now have lovely yellow stains on them ;-) Abby and me aren't too bad, I've just got one of those almost-colds that doesn't have full blown symptoms yet. I've run out of Vicks First Defence though, I couldn't get any at the supermarket either, I think it's sold out with all the concerns over swine flu. I don't think we've got swine flu (touches wood) though, the doctor said that the symptoms of swine flu present themselves very quickly and are quite severe, with persistant high temp. Roll on the immunisation jabs I say...

parte dos del Menorca...

Menorca came and went in a blur of sun, sea, sand, swimming pools, hyperactive children and more annoyingly hyperactive reps. We stayed at the Victoria Playa hotel, which was very child-friendly and did some really nice (half board) buffet food. The buffet was a bit bland but they did do some more adventurous traditional Menorcan dishes like tapas, lobster soup and a tripe casserole with chick peas and chorizo. Abby did OK with the food because there was a kids buffet section with chips, beans and ice cream. Oscar took a fancy to the french baguettes, they helped with his teething. I was eating like a king; a cooked breakfast every day with danish pastries, toast, something with chips for lunch and a full three course meal in the evening couretesy of the buffet. I swear a normal person would have put on half a stone after 6 days on that diet; I'd just gained 1 pound when I got back, Grrrr ;-)

The pictures below are from when we hired a car for a couple of days and went up El Toro, a mountain in the middle of the island with a church at the top. On a clear day you can see the whole of the island. from the top. We also went to the two main port towns on the island; Ciutadella and Mahon, they are both well worth visiting for their fantastic architecture. As for the kids, well, Oscar was a real handful (crawling everywhere, opening and closing doors, ripping up other peoples Heat magazine, putting our plane tickets down the hotel toilet, etc) and Abby had a great time, she's getting very confident in the water, diving underwater in the swimming pools and even ventured out quite far in the sea. She didn't quite get into the social side of things with the other children until the last couple of nights though. The only complaint I'd have is the rooms, they were a bit cramped with Oscar in a cot on one side of our bed and Abby in a single bed on the other side. This meant that we always woke up early because whoever woke up first would always wake everyone else up...

Well, ho hum back to work and I'm still ridiculously overworked doing two people's jobs. I'd complain if I wasn't so pathetically thankful of having a job in this recession (another friend of mine has just been made redundant and he's been working for the same company for 20 years+

Anyway, to cheer me up, here's is a little video of Abby's new favourite "wash up" song as she calls it (The Boy Does Nothing by Alicia Dixon), they play it a nursery at the end of the day when they're tidying up :-)

The water in Menorca don't taste like what it 'orta

Here's some pics from Menorca. Menorca's lovely, I'd definitely go there again. A cheesy Judith Charmers-style write up will follow when and if I get some time ;-)

I'm melting!!!

Phew! I can't cope with this humidity, it like living in a rain forest. Well it's 10 PM and I'm sat here with a sweat on, basically praying for some breeze to come along and cool me down so I can sleep tonight. Oscar's in the loft and I really feel sorry for him with it being the hottest room in the house; he's currently sleeping in just his nappy with a fan pointing at his cot. Bless him.

Went to the hossy today for the end of my IV course. remarkably the cannula stayed in despite all my (and Abby and Oscar's) efforts to make it fall out ;-). Blows are slightly less than what I would have hoped :( FEV1 2.9 FVC 3.85. I think I seem to get more out of the first week of IVs, although my chest is definitely clearer now. While the new doc went out to check my blood level results I had a look at my previous blows and apart from a magnificent 3.3/4.3 back in 2006 (post IVs and post 3 days in Wales by the sea), they've stayed pretty steady (from 2.9-3.0) when I'm well, can drop to 2.4 when I have an infection. Maybe it's wrong to obsess too much about FEV numbers, perhaps how we feel is more important ;-) Thank god for Immodium though! IVs always give me the runs these days, but taking two immodium tablets every day gave me surreally normal bowel movements while I was on IVs and even carried me through a mortal weekend on the lash in Blackpool. I'm starting to pay for it now though, now I've gone "cold turkey" on Immodium (this is an accurate analogy, because Loperamide is an opioid-receptor agonist, it basically dopes up the gut -like opium- to slow it down, luckily or unluckily depending on your point of view it doesn't cross the central nervous system like other opiates)...Oh yeah, the high para-protein levels of last month (I Googled it and it suggested scary complications with bone marrow) are probably spurious and nothing to worry about, and that is Proff Webb approved, so good news :-)

Right, it's panic stations because we're off to Menorca for a week of sun, sea and sand this weekend (maybe we should just stay here, it'll probably be colder over there) and I haven't even thought about all the things to get for packing. Some things I've done last week are:

• Gone clubbing in Blackpool with a cannula in
• Decided clubbing in Blackpool was pretty grim.
  
• Played a golf course with a terrible hang-over and a tubigrip over my cannula
• Lost over half a stone in sweat on the hottest day of the year on said course
  
• Had a really bad round after I pulled a muscle in my arm and decided to never play golf again because it's poo.
• Decided mountain biking and running are much better things to do than golf.
• Lost my jacket bought for me by my misses in the hotel in Blackpool, I've phoned them up but they can't find it, waaahhh!
• Vowed never to drink again because it turns me into a cretin the next day ;-)
  

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

I found this on the internet while searching for something entirely unconnected. It's my mum's favourite poem. She can never read it without choking up near the end. The weird thing is, she's now passed this onto me and I can't read it to the end without welling up. Parents eh?

"The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock: T.S. Eliot

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.


LET us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."

IV league

Outpatients on Wednesday. it was quite packed in the waiting room because the docs were away at a CF conference in France (Brest?) last week. I think I saw Gazza from the forum, I was going to say hello, but before I did he was whisked away into a side room. I never know what the etiquette is with other PWCF anyway; whether it is OK to chat with all the cross infection concerns these days. Anyway I was ushered in by a new CF specialist nurse (she's hot, but I didn't say that ;-)) FEV1 was relatively unchanged at 2.85 and FEVC was down a bit at 3.5, I had decided beforehand to go on home IVs barring some kind of miraculous turnaround in blows.

The doctor was new as well, is it just me or are the doctors getting younger and younger? I have to admit the first thing that runs through my head when I see a new doctor is "Oh god, can he/she fit a cannula?" I don't like being the guinea pig to some inept youth learning how to find a vein (Andy Jones was particularly bad for the first year I remember ;-)) I always get my IVs fitted on the big vein that runs at the back of my arms, I can do left or right, but obviously the left is more practical because I'm right handed. Other than that it was just a normal IV visit; cannula went in OK, after an initial scare when it stopped bleeding back. Standard procedure (for me) is to give me the first dose of Ceftazadine and Tobramycin, to check if there are any allergic reactions and then go round the back of the pharmacy to pick up the boxes of IVs. At that point I was going to ask the CF specialist nurse about Laura but then I decided against it; it would probably put her in an awkward position as she wouldn't be allowed to say anything due to patient confidentiality, and then I started to question why I wanted to know more in the first place. Anyway, before I knew it I was driving back with plastic bags and boxes of bottles, bungs, needles and syringes. I've put it all by the side of my bed. The Tobramycin dose has changed from 4ml twice a day to 7.5 ml once a day. I'm taking some kind of immodium variant as well because IVs seem to give me the runs these days.

I then discovered that I'd run out of needles for the Tobramycin finger-prick-test so I foolishly decided to do it with a normal green IV needle. I attempted it four times but the blood was not forthcoming so I had to ask the long-suffering R to do it for me. She didn't hold back, in fact it was a bit of a painful gusher, Ouch! No masochist, me ;-)

Out with the old, in with the new!

We've had four good years together; she's been there in my hour of need, she told me all about this great new drug called Dnase. We went travelling together, to Croatia, California, and Shanghai, she's never let me down (apart from America where she decided to run out of batteries halfway through the trip damn it.) But now, our relationship has run it's course and the end is nigh (sniff.) It's time for me to replace my old Ineb. And try the younger and smoother model...

OK, I think I've took the analogy a bit too far ;-) Anyway, first impressions; the new model unfortunately looks exactly the same (no sleek redesign by some young idiot like Ben from the Apprentice), but the original jaw-rattling shake it did when you breath in (sometimes so fierce you would end up droping it if you weren't holding it) is now a lot gentler and quieter, the beep is different too. I love my new Ineb ;-)

Me and R went to see the Doves on Saturday in Delamere Forest. They were great, the sound was really good. The field in which they played was like a natural outdoor audiorium. We left just before the last song to avoid getting stuck in the car park on the way out. Not very rock and roll but when you get all night baby sitters you have to make the most of them ;-) In out defence we did get to hear the final encore "There goes the fear" as we were walking back along the woodland path. Magical. Another obscure fact: I saw these guys play back in New Years Eve 1999 at the Night and Day cafe (Manchester), on that night they were the unsigned backing band for Badly Drawn Boy and were most famous for their early 90s hit under the name Sub Sub.