FIRE DOG

There's something very special
about the time of year
when Christmas wraps around us
with end December cheer.
The hardest heart may soften
the cold perhaps to warm
and for a fleeting moment
there's shelter from the storm.
Children stir in slumber
their hopes beneath the green
and will they won't they contemplate
the presents of their dream.
The kitchen smells of roasting
of spice and heat and sprout
the family kiss each other
or brush a festive pout.
The Queen comes on the tele
and with reverence we hear
how well she reigned all over us
and next her Diamond Year.
The fire dog sits and takes it in
enjoys the extra food
she too is feeling Christmassy
or maybe that's our mood.
Does it really matter
if only for one day
we maybe think of some else
some other different way.
If inner true contentment
can find in you a place
on Christmas Day may you be
full of season's grace.

BUCKS AND FIZZ.

My champagne cork has never popped perfectly. Nothing has ever been as precise or as well ordered as it is in the magazines or on the tele. Even though I've been to some pretty glitzy places, on yachts, in top hotel suits, manor houses, chateaux, helicopters, ski lodges, island escapes and film sets, nothing deemed top notch has ever been like it is painted or talked about, like it's supposed to be through the rose tinted lens. The cork rarely pops from out of my bottle at exactly the right moment, in precisely the right way. It sometimes breaks up on partial emergence and the remaining stump has to be unceremoniously dug out or worse still pushed back which gives the wine instant extra gritty body it doesn't deserve. Alternatively it may fly out with such startling premature force that it ricochets off the ceiling catching the person you are trying to impress and inflicting a sharp cork burn on her cheek which is then quickly flushed away by the torrent of white foaming spume ejaculating from the bottle you are frantically waving about like some dithering India rubber buffoon. On most occasions it will probably come out with your tug and make no more noise than a bill hitting the door mat giving the whole celebration just as much excitement as the opening of a brown envelope. Pulling corks from Champagne bottles like James Bond is just not how it happens at my gatherings for such things. My world always falls short of the neat well ordered glossy one we are encouraged to expect.

On the other hand the rough bits have always been portrayed as rough as I imagine they are. Black and white photos of the starving in Africa or the Humbrol paintings by the artist who should have won this year's Turner Prize, George Shaw, are spot on. Stories of drought or Tsunami are vividly recounted and totally believable in their horrid detail. None of them would be short of their frightful mark. We sob as we watch children in need and text Sir Terry with promises of help as we mop away the distress. It's an annual TV extravaganza that makes Kleenex rich. We look forward to it and it doesn't fail to satisfy and each year we give more and more.

Why is this? And why is our expectation of good short of the mark? Very few of us can imagine Heaven while most of us can envisage Hell and all its damnation. I think it is because we are encouraged to strive for perfection, to shop for the "best", to go for gold, reach for the stars, smell like we're worth it. We're not encouraged to take part in earth quakes or genocide and there in lies the answer. We are sold the good things in life and not the bad even though it's sometimes the good things in life that make it bad. We pay to stay in the best, we struggle to climb that ladder of excellence and strive for perfection. The first thing a big lottery winner does is buy a new car, the second is to visit Disney Land. Both will disappoint and neither will live up to their imagined brilliance. That is why disappointment prospers.

So why are we let down? If we accepted reality a little more mightn't we find reality a better option? The anti-capitalist occupy protests that are cropping up and fading away all over the world are also a victim of the reality check. What exactly are the protestors expecting? What is their dream? They don't have a decent tag line between them and their collective disorganisation will mean that they will fail. To squat in a cold tent on a concrete pavement is not really an alternative to even the lowliest that Premier Inns has on offer.The London rioters took the flat screen t.v's and flashy trainers because they were told that these were the things to have and because they were allowed to by the police who were just not there. How funny that on the day of "the keep your hands off my pension" strike it was the shops that won. Shopping and often spending money we have not got on things we do not want is the hobby of our times.

So to be an anti-capitalist is a bit like becoming a Methodist instead of a Roman Catholic.

I'm not sure what the answer is other than to be happy with your lot. I agree that if your lot happens to be a little then you'll be forgiven for wanting a little more. It will sadly never ever be fare shares for all until the day when the air and water run out and even then there will be those who will survive just a little longer than the rest of us, those whose champagne corks always pop perfectly.

BIG EARS.

WHEN old men getter older

and their ears touch their shoulder

it may be a sign of content.

Terry Wogan and John Simpson

have ears when you glimpse them

like those on a bull elephant.

Some things don't stop growing

and there's really no knowing

what size an appendage might try.

The ears on old Wogan

are some sort of omen

if they flapped he'd probably fly.

While those on John Simpson

are less in dimension

he's still got his ear to the ground

but he may well say

it's much better that way

as you pick up the smallest of sound.

As I do grow older

I don't want my shoulder

to act as a perch for my ears.

I've only one gland

I'd like to expand.

It's the one worn down with the years.

WHEN WALKING WITH THE DOG

There is something therapeutic
and not to be disputed
when walking with the dog

the tightly coiled spring
the jumping and the din
when walking with the dog

the burst when off the lead
acceleration speed
when walking with the dog

the sniffing at the grass
and other canine arse
when walking with the dog

and will they come to heel
no shout or loud appeal
when walking with the dog

the stick or ball you fling
remains a distant thing
when walking with the dog

oozy mud or dirty puddle
never the edge always the middle
when walking with the dog

the thinking time you gain
the fresh air and the rain
when walking with the dog

plots you start to hatch
none the day can match
when walking with the dog

and in your dreams you may
travel far away
when walking with the dog

for journeys of the mind
need not be of that kind
when walking with the dog

you know where you have been
the people you have seen
when walking with the dog

and when you climb that hill
in front and running still
when walking with the dog

words cannot recite
the absolute delight
when walking with the dog.

the plea for more, the plaintive bark
the turning home before it's dark
when walking with the dog

And when your limbs grow old
you'll miss the muddy road
when walking with the dog

you'll still get an eager eye
the tilting head and sigh
when walking with the dog

the years may take away
the joy of everyday
when walking with the dog

and when you've had your last
they'll fly the flag half mast
when walking with the dog.

He will take the lead
and handle every need
when walking with the dog.

PAWS FOR THOUGHT.

The unbearable likeness of you
puts us both in a terrible stew
the difference between us
has always been heinous
and we don't share the same point of view.

My porridge gave you the hots
and the bed is so hard that it hurts
mummy Bear's done a runner
and baby's a goner
what more do you want Goldilocks?

REMEMBRANCE DAY.

The men and boys that died there
from villages and towns
in Somerset and Norfolk
from valleys and from Downs.
They marched away as heroes
to fight the Hun for King
and no one ever told them
it was a glorious thing

to die for King and country to be the glorious dead
to die for you and die for me and die for what was said.

I stood there with my Father
at every Remembrance day
watched him as the soldier
heard the words he'd say.
"We will remember them"
and then the bugle sang
a last post, a coming home
for those the final gang

to die for King and country to be the glorious dead
to die for you and die for me and die for what was said.

"O Valiant Hearts" we sing and cry
and even though not there
I think I understand the pain
of those that had the fear.
My forbears did it for me
fought the awful foe
stood up and were all counted
with reasons we don't know

to die for King and country to be the glorious dead
to die for you and die for me and die for what was said.

And still they do it for us
lay down their priceless lives
leave children without fathers
and black-eyed weeping wives.
We'll never learn the answer
as long as man is man
and King and Queen rule over us
to draw their awful plan

to die for Queen and country to be the glorious dead
to die for you and die for me and die for what was said.

The poppy with its redness
its black and beating core
grows from the blood in Flanders
and from the death of war.
We wear it on our collars
we wear it without shame
November is the timing
the month we say your name

to die for Queen and country to be the glorious dead
to die for you and die for me and die for what is said.

STUFF I WROTE BACK IN THE '60s WHEN LIFE SEEMED SIMPLE AND DREAMS WERE ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL.

WHAT monster is society
that seems to have priority
over me a mere minority.
For if my mere minority
became a large majority
we would have priority
and thus become society.

COSTA LOTA?

There really is no such thing as a free lunch. Sometimes, and if you stick firmly to your guns, you can hoover up the occasional free mouthful. When Club La Costa offered us the chance of a stay at half term in one of their hotel "resorts" in Cornwall for less than £15 a night, it seemed rather too good an opportunity to let some one else steal. The only string attached to the cheaper-than-staying-at-home weekend was that we had to agree to attend a short sales presentation about the joys of Club La Costa.

Hustyns was built by a boxer as a hotel hide away and it nestles in a ninety acre valley not far from Wadebridge which itself sticks out like a grubby belly button between the more elegant right and left tootsies that are Rock and Padstow. Hustyns with its rooms and white chalets is the sort of place you might like to rest your head provided they let you out to explore the real world up the over topiaried drive. It pretends to have everything but actually has very little that we wanted and the bed we tried to sleep in was as hard as a Cornish fishing boat's bottom. The ex-boxer has thrown in the towel and Hustyns has been taken over by Club La Costa.

We had agreed to our sales slot at 9.00 am on Saturday morning which we thought would then leave us the rest of the weekend to get over the experience and explore the places we wanted to see, the Eden Project one of them on our list.

The pre-meeting phone call announced that the Club La Costa representative would be collecting us at 9.15 am and asked if we were ready. We were we said. At 9.15 am Mike knocked at the door. He was dressed in his smart inexpensive dark suit, black shoes, and a Littlewoods shirt and coordinated tie all of which meant business and not necessarily of the holiday kind. He walked with us the long way to the reception and we were introduced to Anne, his manager and a feisty Scottish lady who made it quite clear that at the end of what ever it was we were about to receive, we would be expected to say either "Yes" or "No". Did we understand? "Yes" or "No" was my response and I sensed that Anne sensed she was facing another Culloden.

In the restaurant a table had been booked for breakfast. The other breakfasting families all had their dark suited representatives sitting with them (all had removed their suit jackets) and the restaurant took on the look of a colourful jigsaw puzzle with several wrong pieces. Most were in holiday mode, the dress code was colourful and relaxed apart from the men (and woman) in black.

There was no hint of selling over the full Cornish and the chat was about family and pets and the weather and how comfortable the hotel was and how much we were worth. Having a seven year old with you helps to keep things real and his conversation kept Mike on his toes and allowed me and the other half to eat our first meal of the day as we normally do, the odd grunt and nod being the perfectly acceptable form of communication. Having acted as the foil at the table, the seven year old wasn't wanted as a further distraction during the presentation and was whisked off into the Children's Room for a session on the Wii or some pumpkin drawing exercises, Halloween being just a few hours away. You cannot have a seven year old putting his oar in when you're trying to extract the life savings out of his mum and dad.

We walked to the Club La Costa nerve centre located in a wing of the Hustyns complex. The music that played in the open plan room was at a noise level that skilfully concealed all the conversations from the other talking tables. You could hear the words but because of Barry Manillo you couldn't decipher them. Mike got going. He produced the Club La Costa questionnaire. He wanted to find out if we were home owners and when we weren't struggling to pay the mortgage, where we liked to holiday. At that stage had we said in tents or as backpackers the presentation would probably have concluded and we'd have been shown the door. When we reeled off Hawaii and St Lucia, Sardinia and Zanzibar as just some of our last holiday destinations a little vein on the right of Mike's forehead twitched. When we confirmed the cost of these trips the lead in his pencil snapped.

If Mike was the monkey, then the hovering Anne was the organ grinder and at every critical point of the presentation she was summoned to make sure that everything was going to plan. After two hours and several cups of Club La Costa coffee I was keen to get to the punch line but Mike had to follow his sales training and lead us down the well trodden path that tried to prompt a "Yes" to every question. He took us through lots of glossy travel brochures just like the sort found under the bed of any travel agent. He showed us a video presentation of happy couples with fixed smiles lounging by an infinity pool and obviously Jennie Bond's new best friends. Ms Bond's smiling face endorses every other page.

If the moving images were not enough to persuade us that we shouldn't instantly demand contract and pen, we were taken from the comfort of the nerve centre and walked to chalet number 23. Chalet number 23 was something of a film set. It was Goldilocks meets Stepford Wives with a bit of Marie Celeste thrown in. The electric flamed fire was lit and shimmered like a TV screen half way up a wall. The black smoked glass table was laid up for eight , waiting to be used and the beds were made up in all three bedrooms without any sign of human life between the sheets. There wasn't a hair out of place. No socks or underwear drying in the bathroom. No hint of washing up, no Lego on the floor, no crumpled newspapers or dirty dog paw marks, no clutter anywhere and everything in place exactly where the set designer with the tidy fetish had wanted it to be. Chalet number 23 did it for us. We looked at each other in disbelief. It just wasn't real and if chalet 23 wasn't real then nor was much else we'd been listening to. We walked back to the nerve centre with Mike and he probably sensed that not all was going his way.

"Not much longer," he said.

Mike couldn't bring himself to the climax of the whole process and it was Anne that expected us to have an orgasm when she told us that we'd have to pay £15,995 and a £599 a year management fee to enjoy the holiday benefits of the club from now until 2067.

I pointed out that in 2067 I'd be 118 and probably not feeling like taking a holiday anywhere. Anne wrote "funny age" on the corner of her piece of Club La Costa paper. Undaunted she ploughed on trying for a multiple orgasm by offering us a trial membership for 34 months at £3,995 and she'd very kindly lend us the money, interest free.

It was quite convincing and the chink of wine glasses on the next table confirmed that another punter had signed up. However Anne hadn't bargained on another stumbling block brewing at our particular sales table. During the 34 month trial we were expected to take 6 weeks holidays with the first being one week in Spain or Tenerife at the fabulous Club La Costa resort which included the sort of freaky nothing-out-of-place luxury we'd just seen in chalet 23. Frankly if you combined chalet 23 with Tenerife, I'd rather spend a week banged up in Parkhurst.

"I won't go to Spain or Tenerife" said I instantly damping down Anne's passion. "And we're not going to say "Yes" right now. We're not going to be put on the spot." That was certainly the crux of it for my other half. Half the fun of holidays is deciding where to go and we certainly didn't want to be tied into some time share club that despite all the assurances from Anne, could go pop long before 2067.

Anne and Mike knew that they had lost us. Anne said as much.

"I told Mike that we should have drugged you at breakfast," was her light hearted if not hint-of-truth comment. We all laughed, falsely, with one of those interjections that try to conceal the embarrassment of the moment.

Apparently they convert 51% of all who go through the presentation process. 81% of those that succumb to trial membership go on to join the ranks of the 50,000 or so Club La Costa 'investors'. They need you to say "Yes" then and there because if you go away and think about it, you're bound to say "No". They really don't want you to think about it.

We walked away, collected our seven year old who was nearly four hours older than when we had last seen him, and enjoyed the rest of our weekend together back in the real world. For us the Club La Costa hadn't cost a lot.

A PENNY FOR THE GUY.

The annual village bonfire party usually provided a colourful interlude in an otherwise dull November. The school children in particular looked forward to the evening. A working party of dads built a giant bonfire in farmer Padgett’s field, the one that was next to the pub and had been kept as grass for as long as anyone could remember. This year’s effort was particularly grand because someone on of the organising committee knew someone who had a furniture factory on the trading estate and a very large wagon of wooden bits and pieces of surplus or broken furniture turned up in Padgett’s field.

“Looks like a chair mountain,” somebody said when they had finished building the pile which was indeed higher than the pub itself. Padgett always had the job of fixing the guy to the top and this year he was going to have to use one of his tractors and a front-end loader with its hydraulic extension in order to reach the dizzy height.The school children were encouraged to make a guy and on the two Saturday’s before the 5th, a few of the bigger children would take the creation into the local market town to raise money. All the proceeds went to the school and “the penny for the guy” collection normally yielded fifty pounds or there abouts.

The headmaster, Guy Watson, was delighted with the efforts made by his parents and their children and the money, last year it was one hundred and sixty pounds, was used to purchase some materials for the art classes. Running a C of E village school wasn’t easy and all contributions were gratefully received. Mr Watson was into his art and a firm believer that his children should be encouraged to express them selves right from the start.

“They must be allowed to find their inner creativity,” he would tell all new parents.

The headmaster had found his own inner creativity with Miss Penny Dugworth. Miss Dugworth had joined the staff of three to take charge of the infants. Miss Dugworth was fresh out of teacher training college and the village school was her first hands on job. Mr Watson wasn’t.

The two of them had been attracted to one another from day one. From the interview really. Mr Watson had never liked red heads. He always thought that people with red hair had short tempers, too much Celtic blood in their veins. He didn’t know why he’d carried the impression with him, but he had. He’d never been out with a girl with red hair nor ever kissed one. The first thing he noticed about her, after the shock of red hair, was her smile; a big mouth full of even tomb stone sized white teeth. It was the sort of mouth that dominated the face. It took complete control of the lower half and when it broke out into a smile, became the focal point for the whole thing. It was a big smile from a little girl, an innocent smile that drummed up naughty thoughts. Her big green eyes twinkled when she smiled, danced with fun and expelled her sense of humour. She wasn’t a beautiful girl but she did have an attraction, a youthful liveliness and intelligence that popped and bubbled around her. It wasn’t though precocious in any way. She’d flirt without perhaps meaning to. She was one of those people that would look directly into your eyes when talking to you. Would give undivided attention. She was one of those people that made you feel flattered, important. She almost had an aura, a static charge, about her, not a halo, but something that distinguished her from those around, those other pretty girls that Mr Watson would fantasise about, pour over from the pages of “Men Only”. She was short and slim and looked as though she had been a gymnast. When she wore a skirt, which wasn’t that often, her legs looked fantastic and what ever she wore, her bottom looked perfect. She was twenty something and therefore nearly twenty years younger than he was. From the first time he met her, he fancied her, couldn’t wait to get to know her, hoped she wanted to get to know him. Probably in his dreams.

They’d been working together for some months. Mr Watson was enjoying flirting with her more and more and found himself thinking about her on occasions when his mind should have been focusing on other more important issues. One evening during a half term she invited him to her flat at the top of a Georgian building in the market town. She cooked a sea food pasta and they sat together at a little round table in the flat enjoying the food and each other’s company. When she came to clear the empty plates, smeared with the juice of her cooking, he grabbed her hand and pulled her down towards him firmly but not in any way threatening. As she came down their lips met and they kissed, his thin ones beautifully engulfed by her big mouth, swallowed up with their pasta tongues circling each other. Soon pushing his chair back from the table, he manoeuvred her to his lap where she sat with her back to him. He started to kiss her nape, the vulnerable flesh covering the spine just before it reaches the brain. Her red hair was piled up somehow so that her slender neck presented itself as a new thrill. Before long the two of them were standing by the open window in the dark with only the outside streetlights to guide them. They behaved recklessly, without worrying about the consequences.

Mr Watson certainly didn’t want his wife to find out. They had to be careful. The headmaster didn’t want any accusing fingers pointing at him. In such a small community scandal was only a slip away. Miss Dugworth on the other hand had less to lose. She didn’t seem to care about her lover’s position. Not strictly true. She cared about it over her desk after school hours or in Mr Watson’s big four-by-four, or in the little bed in her flat, but she didn’t care about keeping the affair a dark secret forever.

“Why can’t we just come out of the closet Guy?” she asked him one evening.

“I’ve got my reputation to think about Penny darling. And my wife. God what would she do?”

Mrs Watson was a very wealthy woman. She’d been a Padgett before she’d married. Her father had left her half of his estate when he died. It wasn’t many village school headmasters that could afford to drive around in the latest Range Rover. So the relationship soldiered on behind closed doors with the headmaster and his junior member of staff getting deeper and deeper into each other’s emotions, each other’s inner creativity. There was gossip, ugly rumour but no actual proof. Someone on the parents committee thought that the headmaster was being over friendly to Miss Dugworth. The two other members of staff thought so too. They called her “teacher’s pet” behind her back. But no one had any actual proof that the two had been carrying on.

“Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” said one of the parents not long before the November celebration and the headmaster found himself under more scrutiny than ever before.

It was the vicar who approached him first.

“Everything er..all right Headmaster?” he asked after morning prayers on the Monday.

“Yes thank you vicar,” replied Mr Watson.

“How is Marjory? Haven’t seen her for months.”

“Oh my wife’s fine thanks vicar. Just fine.”

“Good. Pleased to hear it. You’re so lucky to have the love of a good woman.”

“Yes. I am aren’t I?” The headmaster said realising that he had the love of one and the lust of another.

Like all such “chats”, the vicar’s words fell mostly on stony ground. Mr Watson’s affair with Miss Dugworth had blunted the edge of his conscience so that he found himself justifying his infatuation with the younger woman. Marjory no longer really loves me he thought, but she did, perhaps not as much as on the day thirty years before when they married, but nevertheless, she still loved her husband. Like an accident waiting to happen, the triangle would turn pear shaped. Marjory would get to hear about Penny (“The Penny would drop,” he joked to himself in a macabre way) and then all hell would let loose. Guy Watson just couldn’t take the risk. He couldn’t afford to upset his wife, lose her and the school, his comfortable slot and respect in the community. He was playing with fire by playing with the red head.

“I think that we ought to stop seeing each other.” He spoke the words just like a headmaster would.

“What the fuck do you mean?” said Penny Dugworth, unlike an infant’s teacher.

“It’s just that I cannot go on seeing you and lying to my wife.”

“Does she know about me?”

“No. But she will. Someone will spill the beans.”

“I’ll spill the fucking beans as you so put it.” Miss Dugworth had never talked to her boss like that before.

“What on earth do you mean?” said the rather frightened headmaster.

“I mean that if you are trying to dump me and I think that’s what you’re trying to do, then I’ll go and see your wife and tell her just what extra curricular activities you’ve been getting up to.”

“You wouldn’t do that Penny darling.” The headmaster looked even more frightened.

“I fucking well would Guy darling.”

“Then let’s not rock the boat. Let’s leave things just as they are. Aye?” The headmaster couldn’t think what else to do. This was a situation he hadn’t expected. As he pulled up his trousers and tucked in his shirt and watched as Penny Dugworth slid back into her underwear and jeans, he knew for the first time that the affair had become sordid. He felt trapped in the classroom, boxed into a corner with the dunce’s hat on, a dark, messy, grubby place out of which he didn’t know how to crawl.

As often happens, when the dam breaks, you either sink or swim. Guy Watson swam; doggy paddled his way back to safety.

“I’m told that you and Miss Dugwold are, what shall we say, fairly pally.” Marjory Watson came up with the unexpected but expected statement over a Sunday breakfast on the morning when the clocks had gone back.

“Miss Dugworth?” replied her husband.

“What?” said Marjory.

“Her name is Penny Dugworth.”

“Well, Guy. What ever her name, are you being over friendly with her?”It all came out. The dam burst and Guy told his wife the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He spared her the gory detail but explained that he was now trapped in a dreadful relationship with her and that he was being virtually blackmailed by her. He said he was sorry, really very sorry.

“Well Guy,” said Marjory seriously as she sliced the top off her boiled egg. “You’ve been a bloody fool. I’ll have to have a word with the woman and you can stop seeing her. She’ll have to leave the school of course.”

“Of course dear,” said Guy with so much relief that it gave him a headache to go with his dry mouth.

True to her word, Marjory Watson spoke to Penny Dugworth who left the school immediately. She didn’t stop to say goodbye, didn’t leave a note for her lover and no one ever heard from her again.

The evening of the bonfire party arrived and the giant bonfire was set alight by the vicar. Right at the top, seated in one of the less broken chairs was the life-sized guy that the school children had made. Padgett had fixed it up there as he always had. It looked grotesque sitting on top of the flaming pile. It’s clothes, one of the headmaster’s old three-piece tweed suits, looked almost unused. The floppy felt hat that had come from Marjory Watson covered the straw hair on top of the rubber mask with its dreadful grin. Through the open slots for the eyeholes, a pair of green pupils looked out lifelessly.The flames licked higher and higher and the straw ignited just before the rest of the dummy.

“Look mummy!” said one of the excited children pointing to the disfigured flaming effigy. “The guy’s got red hair.”

“Yes dear, it’s flaming red isn’t it?” said the mother without really looking up from her hot dog wrapped as it was in its own bread roll straight jacket.

CHARGE!

GET your batons out boys
get your batons out
public displays of affection
deserve a decent clout.

Hit 'em with your shields boys
hit 'em where it hurts
snogging in a public place
bloody lefty flirts.

Charge 'em down and book 'em lads
throw away the keys
they'll be frightening the horses
and spreading STDs

So box 'em in or move 'em
hit 'em with your stick
making love not waging war
is enough to make you sick.

DYLAN

I paid my shilling
to hear Bob Dylan
and walked away wanting some change.

The words we once knew
have faded from view
the man I love has turned strange.

That old fellow growl
neither letter nor vowel
the sound and key both off ranging

it's best to recall
the guy from before
as the times they are a changing.

HOW MANY WOMEN DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?

The Chinese once wrote

a philosophical note

about how the men shouldn't shirk.

The view that evolved

for changing a bulb

was many hands make the light work.

What they failed to say

in a practical way

was what is the role for a woman.

I saw on a wall

the following scrawl

probably a rather bad omen.

"While men and dogs

were meant to roam,

women and children

should stop at home."

LIFE'S A BEACH.

When going to the beach
it's useful to reach
for a book you cannot put down
as often the views
will rarely amuse
and your friend is there to get brown.

She basks in the sun
without a lot on
first the back and now it's her front.
While you get well read
no matter what's said
you'll go home with a rather sore.......................

NOTHING LEFT.

It's not called criminalisation, it's bloody senseless crime

and it's not because of spending cuts or the thin blue line.

It's not impetus youth or even down to race,

the money in your pocket or the mask put on your face.

No doubt the mob has anger and rules where it goes

and those without an anchor cannot seem to choose.

But selfish mindless violence and taking what's not yours

can never be the answer, will never help your cause.

There's good and bad in all of us, we know what's right and wrong

there's no excuse for genocide or burning something down.

You take that pair of trainers or grab a new flat screen

to watch the starving children so hungry they can't scream.

So enjoy your thuggish riots, your arson and your theft

make sure you get enough because you've nothing left.

ARACHNOPHONIA

Way off, the sound of a telephone. The cobweb at the back of the mind trembles with its fine sticky silver lines quivering as though a trapped mite is struggling to escape from the frightful fangs of the eight legged marauder. Each frantic movement is sending a message to the grim hidden captor; every dreadful bug scream is a useless plea for help, a total waste of effort. The persistent alarm wails in monotonous urgency and gets louder. Ring ring. Ring ring. The chords screech down the wobbling, enticing, confused lines. In an instant of doubt and a trick played on the half witted, easily led semi consciousness, maybe the church bells from across the wooded parkland are being hammered by some trespassing somnambulist or perhaps it’s a front door summons by a hooded midnight rambler’s hard crooked finger pressed firm to the bell push or is it time for assembly somewhere, the signal that it’s time to move from here to there? Or from there to here of course with a neatly wrapped bundle. Sleep becomes drowsiness which then becomes urgency and the noise, the ring, is really a phone.

At early doors, say two or three in the morning, when the phone rings everyone knows, suspects at least, that the news is not good. Good news can wait. Bad news can’t. Such is the way we’ve given emphasis to it.

At last. "Hello."
"What dew mean?"
"Let me get dressed."
"I’ll be there in say forty minutes."

There is a scramble to put on the clothes that have barely had time to crease and a quick rinse with a glug from the fat Listerine bottle. Spit and go. Slotted in the fridge door next to the half drunk tart white, the semi-skimmed straight from the soft plastic milk bottle suddenly tastes of mint so just a token swig is forced to try and coat the film of alcohol from a few hours ago. Swig and go.

Driving in the early hours won’t take anything like forty minutes. Wombling badgers are the other traffic, two of them in a huff and the wily fox who pauses perilously in the headlights just to check them out. The vixen's tongue licks her lips in envy at all the insect life collected on the windscreen. Easy prey, but what a messy waist. The racing car slices through the million silky cords stretched out across the night time lanes, from hedge to hedge, nearly more violent, more destructive than anything on earth. All those spiders work in vain. Forty minutes. It could be done in thirty at the most.

Rushing towards distress. Her bed time cheeks are streaked with salty tears and useless make up. She sobs, cries real drops and wants her lover to be there with her.

"Please come Pudding," she implores.
"What dew mean?"
"I need you to be here now. It's not safe."
"Let me get dressed."
"I'll be there in say forty minutes."

Thirty more like as long as the warning red fuel light is only joking.

"Bollocks." Now of all times. On a cross country mission and low on diesel.

Old Proctor's farm would have some up in the yard in the green tank stuck up on bricks. If that was locked, one of his tractors could be syphoned. There is no chance of just driving in and helping oneself. Old Proctor's farm house stands like a sentry box overlooking the scruffy yard.
Stop in the gateway. Leg it. Find a can or plastic container and just take a gallon or two. Come back and pay Proctor in the morning. Or not.

The green fuel tank stinks of heavy fuel and the nozzle isn't locked in place. Typical of old Proctor. He is a slack sod thank God. Rinsing out the spray can with the red fuel, fumbling in the semi darkness brushing off the cobwebs that cling to everything and appear like very fine dusty net curtains to the low harvest moon. Spiders were here before the dinosaurs and their webs will hang around long after all of us have gone.

There is no warning as such. Just the sudden blast from a twelve bore that cuts Pudding in half. Old Proctor didn't miss at close quarters.

So he never did arrive, never did discover the reason for her upset. It might have been so different.

"What dew mean?"
"I need you to be here now. It's not safe."
"Let me get dressed."
"I'll be there in say forty minutes."
"What's up honey?" He might have asked to be told hysterically that a large spider had just woken her in nightmare, terrifying her with the softest touch of one of its eight hair covered legs. What she didn't know was that it had dropped onto her pillow, crawled through her flowing hair and across her right cheek to find her lips on purpose, something Pudding would never ever do again.

27 NO AGE AT ALL.

At just twenty seven you'd barely begun
You've made an impression just started to run
Your talent was genius your voice so mature
and words from your soul had heartfelt allure.
But what reckless demons slipped under your door
to confuse the girl you had been before?
You join all the others of similar vein
Hendrix and Jones and young Kurt Cobain
Joplin and Morrison just twenty seven
no age at all to be resting in heaven.

GAIN AND PAIN.

Sandra is the nice nurse who removes the tubes. About ten days after the op you are invited back to hospital as an out patient to have the catheter and its limpet like apparatus removed. The art and act of peeing has been taken out of your hands and given to gravity and a sort of drip feed system that requires you to empty the plastic bag strapped to your calf between knee and ankle. You empty the bag by turning on the tap hidden at the bottom of your right trouser leg and by placing your right foot on the loo seat you can aim the flow in the right direction. I guess that the sound of the liquid splashing into the loo must trigger an automatic response from the bladder because right away you need to pee. You have already in the plastic bag, but the sound and proximity of the lavatory makes you want to go when you can’t. That’s painful. While we are on the subject, having a number two is a whole different ball game too. Years of doing what comes naturally requires a different set of rules and once you’ve done the number two (no easy task) the seemingly simple and automatic job that always follows, the release of a number one, turns into a painful battle of persuading the bladder that it need not try to follow suit. There’s a pipe attached to take away the need but sadly the brain hasn’t caught up with the new plumbing arrangements. Another painful struggle follows.

At night the bag attached to the leg is plugged into a bigger reservoir strung up on a cradle by the foot of the bed. The first time we forgot to close the tap at the bottom of the overnight bag and the new off white bedroom carpet sprung a patch the shade of claret not chosen in the carpet showroom.

You can shower with your tubes and bag in place, thank the Lord, and to be able to cleanse yourself daily with a decent hose down, the hot soapy water getting into all those places where the unmistakable smell of illness can linger if it isn’t washed away and might make you reek of incontinence, is a treat. To wash, actually shower, is a wonderful highlight of the morning and something that is taken for granted every day becomes a slice of birthday cake with an extra layer of icing on the top.

You are advised to drink lots. At least two litres a day and that doesn’t include tea, coffee or wine. So what goes down comes out and frequent trips to empty the bag are obligatory. An over absorbing episode of something enthralling on the tele can lead to a bulging bag with the resultant limping off to the nearest loo with a Zeppelin like swelling in your trousers desperate to be popped.

So on the Thursday, the first day of the golf Open at Sandwich, Sandra gets the pleasure of removing the apparatus. I’m there at 8.00 am with the letter and instructions to bring two sets of underwear and a change of trousers. Like the start of the Open, they’re obviously expecting some wet conditions.

It’s rather good striding back into the familiar urology department feeling like an old boy. No longer a place with uncertain nooks and crannies, I know my way around and take my seat in the drab waiting area like a regular arriving at his favourite restaurant.

Sandra and a colleague soon get to work. After a few questions as to how things have gone, I’m flat on my back with the two nurses hovering over me studying the area of the recent excavations. It must look something like Clapham Junction down there. The dressing that the local nurse changed once and my other half did twice is removed and the nurses cluck their delight over the cleanliness of the particular wound. Staring as they are at my tackle, there’s no comment or clucking about how good that looks. It obviously doesn’t. In a matter of fact way and with some comments about the bruising Sandra asks me to breathe in. As I then breathe out again she does something and pulls the tube from out of my penis with the sort of practised dexterity that my grandmother had threading a needle with cotton. The sensation is not painful but rather a tingling and a relief. It’s probably the sort of feeling a shot gun has when it’s being cleaned with a pull through. You think that it’s going to be the worst painful moment of all so far, worse than say a foreskin moment in a fly zipper, but actually it’s not. Funny how the imagination gets to us all. The tube might have gone but in its place, cello taped into the gusset of your underwear, is an absorbent pad, an NHS nappy, to mop up any leaks.

Being rid of the tube is better than shaking off an unwelcome chat up at a drinks party. You feel free but you’re not as far as Sandra is concerned until you’ve had at least two decent pees and another via the flow meter. The day room is the place you take your seat and drink yourself stupid. It’s hospital water with, if you so chose, a hint of lemon cordial and the occasional cup of tea. Unleashed from the tubes its time for you to claim back the control. Easier said than done. There is obviously a degree of nervousness that everything will return to previous pre-op working order. All you can do is drink and wait, wait and drink. The day room occupants are others just like you or those waiting for a bed so that in a week or so they too will be just like you. Those waiting for a procedure are not allowed to eat or drink so you feel better off than them but try not to gloat as you gulp back plastic glass after plastic glass of nourishing liquid.

“Time to give it a go,” says the bloke opposite me and he gets up with his cardboard bottle and heads to the nearest loo with a look of competitive advantage on his ruddy face. He’s gone for some time but reappears clutching the cardboard container as though it were an Oscar.

I keep drinking but nothing happens other than I’m beginning to hate the cheap brand of lemon cordial on offer. Sandra bustles in and out of the room just to check on her boy’s progress.

“All right dears”, she says. I’m nearly inclined to ask for a large vodka and tonic or a pint of best but don’t.

The Open is on the television but there’s only one golfing enthusiast in the room and the fact that the conditions on the Kent coast are pretty rough seem to make him feel more comfortable about his surgical appointment and where he is.

Suddenly I need to go. The jug and a half full of water tinged with lemon has caused an urgency that cannot be ignored. I too grab one of the two bottles Sandra has earmarked and named for me. I enter the small room, drop my trousers and with the sort of sensation that a swarm of angry wasps is trying to fight its way to freedom through my pathetic penis, I pass water or is it cut glass. It is painful. The triumph of the exercise is none the less something to write home about. I emerge from the loo with the result and rush off to find Sandra presenting her with the warm grey cardboard container as though it was a bunch of rare blooms. She looks very pleased and not at all like someone just taking the piss.

The second bottle follows soon after and is less painful but still makes the eyes water in sympathy and the language foul. The flow test which measures the strength of the passing water is a disaster. The painful dribbles barely reach the bottom of the measuring receptacle designed for the job. The volume of noise is disproportionate to the volume of pee and the effort to encourage a strong flow hurts like hell.

Sandra is persuaded to let me go however.

“It will get easier,” she promises and I believe her. “I’ve got your histopathology report,” she continues. “The results from the pathology laboratory on your prostate. You’re all clear.” She says and it’s the best news I’ve ever heard. I burst into tears. I need the proof and Sandra goes off to photocopy the three pages of A4 that confirm the surgeon and his team have in fact removed all the cancer with the prostate, leaving nothing behind except the marks and the discomfort which is a tiny price to pay.

After a whole morning and some emotional phone calls to those I love, I’m let out. I leave a box of Thornton’s finest for Sandra at the front desk and almost jump into the waiting car to be driven back home with my bag full of nappies. The sun is shinning and the first thing I do when I get home is to change into some shorts just because I can. No more unsightly extra curricular plumbing. We drink a glass or two of fine white burgundy and thank God for being the true saviour. Getting rid of cancer is one of the best feelings anybody can have. Ever.

It was at about ten the same evening that the pain got really bad. Peeing became more and more difficult and when the urge forced a visit, the pain became just awful. They didn’t say it would be anything like this. Paracetamol didn’t take the sting away and each time there was an urge to pee, I could only pass a few drops with plenty of chords of agony. For the second time that day I cried. This time though not tears of joy but tears that said please help me; I’m in a lot of pain. It’s not nice seeing anybody crying with obvious distress. It’s especially upsetting when the tears are your own and at over sixty years old you should be rough and tough enough to take pretty much everything life throws at you.

We gave it until about 3 am. The NHS help line told us to go to Shepton Mallet hospital where a doctor would let us in. My other half spoke to him while I knelt on the bedroom floor by the bed doubled up in pain and saying that this can’t be right. The good doctor wanted a sample of urine and at the next excruciating attempt I cried a few drops into a glass jam jar. We gathered up the disturbed seven year old who had never seen his father crying real tears and screaming in pain before. We drove to the hospital and the good Indian doctor let us in and took one look at the red jam in the jam jar and said “Good God” in an Indian sort of way. He gave me codeine phosphate and a strong antibiotic and we were back home as the birds started to sing and painful dawn broke around us.

The pain was still intense and at eight in the morning we set off to the RUH in Bath, the place where the prostate had been removed. Urology told us on the mobile that we should go straight to A&E. We did as we were told and Tina, the friendly A&E nurse plugged me in to a morphine drip which took that sting away. The registrar who’d been on hand for my op came down from his department and felt my gut, sensed the extended bladder which made me look as though I should be rushed off to the maternity ward at any minute. We should have called for an ambulance hours before. You don’t think about dialling 999 when it’s probably the most obvious short cut to the relief and help needed.

I was given another catheter, a fresh tube and bag, and sent off to a surgical ward somewhere in the big hospital. They kept me in for a day and a night and drained off all the painful and infected fluid before sending me once again on my way.

So I’m home, tubes back in place, taking strong anti biotic medicine and awaiting the next instalment. I’m fed up, uncomfortable and feel that someone has got me firmly by the balls especially when I try to sit down. Apart from that I’m cancer free but I want my chocolates back from Sandra.

I’ll keep you posted.

ON BEING HACKED.

I’ve been ‘hacked’. No not by the Antipodean press baron but by a rather more skilful operator which proves as far as I’m concerned that the sword (actually scalpel) is mightier than the pen (probably laptop) any day.

It was Independence Day, July 4th, and we entered the building at 7.45 am as instructed. The surgeon arrived in his linen suit (no hint of golfing kit thank God) and was soon poring over my file. He was the sort of guy who didn’t look at you when he spoke to you but I knew that he knew all about me or that part of me he was planning to remove. He explained again the details of the task in hand which seemed an unnecessary step as I’d made the decision and didn’t really needed to be reminded that there was say a 2% chance of death or a 40% chance of infertility or that I’d have to spend the rest of my life in nappies. I’d been through all that and just wanted the man to get out his instruments and get on with the job. The paper work has to be done and I had to sign my consent. I didn’t get any written guarantee in exchange.

The preparation area is a room without a view or a bed. The Kiwi anaesthetist arrived unshaven and more casual than the surgeon had been and asked the questions. Had I enjoyed the full English this morning was how he questioned the nil by mouth requirement? His bed side manner cleverly reflected that of his next patient and besides there wasn’t a bed anyway. I slipped into the backless gown with the hospital logo splattered all over it like a watermark. Another young medic appeared and we shook hands (I shook hands with all those I met that morning. Manners maketh man and my mother would have been proud of me). We joked about steady hands and he reassured me that because he’d been on call over the weekend he hadn’t been able to touch a drop. There would be no shake in his fingers that Monday morning.

The trolley arrived and at about a quarter to nine I was wheeled off for surgery. The antechamber was where the Kiwi and his side kick gave me mine and before I could say “Actually I’d rather like to keep my prostate…..” I was out of it.

They took about four and a half hours. I cannot begin to understand the sort of skill with which they cut their way into and around the area. I cannot conceive the fine detail and precision that the team employed to do the task. Always one for a rather broad brush approach, I’d be as cack-handed as a ham-fisted giant in a doll’s house. I think I remember the recovery room and the talk of dogs.

“I’ve got a little Jack Russell,” I think I said but I couldn’t be sure. The team had all seen exactly what I’d got and none of them tried to correct me.

Wheeled into the urology ward with its six curtain lined cubicles, I was slotted in between two guys whose kidneys had let them down big time. I came round with more tubes than the Central Line and an oxygen mask that made me think I was flying off somewhere. I was. LaLa Land was where I was headed and the potent cocktail of anaesthetic and morphine took me off to levels that a sixties pop star would have paid good money for.

It was my left hand that worried me the most. It was swollen like an inflated rubber glove and full of pins and needles. Apparently the operation fills you up with air so I wasn’t having a heart attack. It was just full of wind. The surgeon came to see me and he looked really pleased with his morning’s work.

“It was a big one,” he said and I hoped that all the others in the ward had heard the news. “Big ones” is a term to be proud off when the talk is about anything to do with a bloke’s nether regions. I would have patted myself on my backless back if I could have done.

The tubes are taken away one by one until you’re left with the one that’s been inserted up your penis. It really is worse than a dirty joke. Not only have they taken away the gland that produces your off spring, they also shove a plastic pipe up the end of your Willy just to let you know that the job’s been done. It does I suppose negate the need to get up four or five times during the night but there are times lying there when you think to yourself what would be better, a quick trot to the loo down the corridor or a piece of plastic tube stuck up your todger? I’m afraid it’s all part of the treatment and when you buy in for the op, the tubes and the attractive Velcro tapes and 500 ml capacity Simpla bag with bottom tap are the Nectar points on offer.

The nurses that come and go are the salt of the earth. Theirs is not a glamorous job particularly having to deal with men’s leaks. One minute they may be administering a sip of water via another plastic tube into your mouth, the next inserting two suppositories designed to cause a motion.

My two were pushed into place on the second morning. I lay on my side with the thin curtain between me and the watching world. “Keep them there for twenty minutes”, said the green uniformed nurse in her tight latex gloves. Twenty minutes! It took about three before both of them shot out with a deafening and painful fart that mercifully hid the ricochet of the two medicinal torpedoes as they bounced off the thin curtain and scudded off along the ward floor to lie in dormant potency under some radiator. The thorough Polish polisher would find them the next day as she went about her cleaning shift.

In on Monday, out on Wednesday morning and back home. I’m the lucky one. Those that remain are planning their own escapes but sadly the only way out is to get a pink ticket as a result of the morning visit. The daily doctor was a smart young female with a stylish dress sense and bedside manner that would sit happily at any cocktail party. The guy next door gave her a lot of lip about how she’d kept him in and when was she going to sort out what happened next. She took control and in front of her team of four others took a firm stance. “You’ve just come out of intensive care and your kidneys are on the mend. We need to get your blood sugar count down before we can move you to the next stage. You have been very poorly.” The news wasn’t acceptable. The patient had lost his. He wanted to go home. I suspected that if he’d been allowed to go and they had unplugged him from his various support systems, he would have gone home for ever. The young doctor didn’t say it like that but she was firm.

Next in line, by comparison my chat with her was a social nicety. I told her about the farting episode and she smiled and dismissed me with a “Well done” and a look that not many years ago may have prompted a question of “What time do you get off work?”

Home is the best medicine. Sadly we don’t have an inexhaustible supply of on tap morphine and there is no one to ask you that bedside question, “On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?” “Twelve” is a good call and in hospital it gets you the attention you need. At home the care you get is equal to the care you need. You can’t fool your other half into thinking that you really are not very well but you try anyway. Paracetamol and cups of tea, elderflower and “Why not go up to bed?” are the new disciples. The discomfort, the pain and the indignity of the whole procedure rack you with self sympathy but your other half soon reminds you that child birth comes with a few unpleasant twinges. You pull yourself together. Grin and bare it.

Messages of encouragement flood in from those that love you and those that care and that in its self helps the healing process. That’s what friends are for and you hope that you can be as thoughtful when the tables are turned.

The tubes, those bloody tubes, come out on Thursday, eleven days after the op, and then the real process gets going, living a full and healthy life free from cancer. That will make all the pain and tears (yes there were tears on getting home) worth it.

The first visits from friends are always a joy. One who has been through the whole thing himself has been a great profit. Two others arrived and bought me some porn. “Apparently you need to get things moving as soon as possible”, they say with smutty school boy relish. It really does hurt when I laugh out loud but it will serve me right.

I’ll keep you posted.

MONKEY NUTS

WHEN life is a bitch

and you're feeling quite low

it's good to sit back

and go with the flow.

You know you'll get up

after one of those falls

because you've got guts

and bloody great .........

VERY P.C.

PROSTRATE, BUT NOT BROUGHT LOW. It’s not supposed to happen. But it does. Your doctor refers you to the hospital and you find out that you’ve got cancer. If you’re going to get it then apparently the prostate is the place. The success rate for treating prostate cancer when caught in its early stages is something to shout about. So is being diagnosed with the bloody thing. I suppose I was a sickly child. Back in the smoggy 50’s it was tonsils and adenoids that laid me low. Then, thank God, I enjoyed nearly four decades of rude health. There was the pony club finger incident when I neatly removed most of my right pointer with a sledge hammer while trying to encourage the posts for the bending race into the gymkhana show ring. That was operator error. 1999 saw the heart attack before my 50th birthday and some would say operator error repeating itself. It was perhaps a tap on the shoulder waiting to happen. It was in the genes, not helped by life style, fuelled by alcohol and encouraged by stress. The stent sorted it out and the daily pills have kept things ticking along nicely. It is quite a disappointment therefore to be told that I now have prostate cancer. Early stages she said, but then that’s a bit like being told you can’t bank the money when you’ve won the lottery roll-over. Getting up in the night to pee is a warning sign. Getting up three or four times every night becomes downright inconvenient and should send you off to see your GP. I saw mine a year ago and a blood sample showed my PSA at 4.8 was, so he said, ok. A year later and it wasn’t. It read 7.8 and the GP’s latex gloved finger told him and me that my usual walnut sized prostate had grown to apple proportions. There is no process in the UK where men of a certain age are screened for prostate problems. When I hit 60 I was sent a diy kit to see if I had bowel cancer. Happy birthday to me I thought as I deposited my sample on the paddle provided and posted it back to the unfortunate person who had to open the mail. I was sent an all clear. Discovering if you’ve got prostate cancer seems a hit and miss affair. Just because you can no longer pee up the wall with gusto doesn’t mean you’ve got cancer. “Can’t you reach over that five bar gate?” asked one of my farmer friends. “I’d be damned lucky if I could reach the toe of my Hunter wellies,” I replied. Flow is one thing they want to know about and before the further examination in hospital I had to complete a log of how much I drank and how much I then expelled over three days. My three days were not consecutive because I felt that the excesses on the Saturday, the day of the Calcutta Cup match, would present an unfair bias. The examination in hospital involves more drink. When you’re ready you have to pee into a bottle to give a sample and then a bucket like receptacle that reads the force with which you do it. I gave it my all not wanting to fail. Sadly the thin trickle was nothing you could write your name in the snow with. The biopsy itself involved lying down on my side with my knees up towards my chest with my exposed back-side towards the guy I’d only just shaken hands with. I had donned one of those unflattering hospital gowns with an open back and I could soon understand why. Prostrate for the prostate, a probe was inserted up my bottom and the experience was no more painful or humiliating than being beaten on the bare buttocks by a ferocious headmaster in front of the entire gawping school. The gland is scanned and a local anaesthetic is pumped into it. None the less a series of eight “shocks” surprise you. There’s a count down from the operator for the first and second but after that the anticipation is almost as bad as each jolting incision as they remove bits from you for analysis. You’re in and out just like the probe. I felt rather sorry for the man who had to do the job even though he does it day in and day out, so to speak. You see red for a few days with the first splash of pee and you feel a bit uncomfortable while you wait for the week to tick by. Getting the results isn’t opening an envelope. We, that is my partner and I, attended the department of urology once again. When my turn came and my name was called out over the heads of all the other drinking men gathered worriedly around the NHS water dispenser, I got up and followed the nurse in green. “Would your partner like to come too?” she said. This was the first warning shot that my results were not going to be good. Good news can be imparted with ease, face to face. Bad news needs to be shared between three or more. The words of the very proficient and perfectly charming Macmillan nurse didn’t hurt me. I wasn’t shocked. I half expected the news and when your body isn’t performing as it once did, when you’ve probably been putting off even talking about it, the c word doesn’t have quite such a sting. I knew it would be bad. PSA up, prostate enlarged, uncontrollable pee as weak as that from a gnat, the unpleasant biopsy and a feeling deep down inside that not everything was working or acting as once it did. My partner cried and the nurse sprang from her comfortable chair with a tissue. The options were gone through and it soon became clear that nothing is clear. Each case can be different. Each case will be different. You’re introduced to jargon that is going to become a part of your every day vocabulary for some time to come. You’re on a brand new and unwelcome learning curve where if expressions like ‘Gleason’ and ‘tumour involvement’ don’t put the wind up you, then ‘laparoscopic prostatectomy’ and ‘external beam radiotherapy’ actually make you want to get up and leave the room. If I was getting a buying signal from the nice nurse it was that surgery, the removal of the prostate, was probably right for me. She reassured me about the potential removals men, closed the door on ‘watchful waiting’ and ‘brachytherapy’ (firing a legion of radio active seeds into the prostate) and handed me my cancer file. The file was green which is probably more appropriate than a red one. Never the less when you leave the comfort of the private interview room and emerge back into the austerity and cold functionality of the general waiting area, all those thinking about picking up the helpful leaflets about sex after damage, stop and look. The green folder is a badge to those that know. It’s the cancer folder, a green plastic box file they give you. A gruesome present you’d rather not have to take home with you. The follow up copy letter to your GP arrives a day or so later and you can see in four paragraphs of type what the nurse told you in forty minutes. “You’ll be fine,” say all those you choose to tell because what else can they say. Actually one did get the wrong end of things and thought that the condition involved the removal of at least one testicle. There followed a moment or two of embarrassed laughter with that one. You are certainly not alone which is a source of encouragement. Everyone knows someone who has had it and by and large it’s good to talk. There are the horror stories (“I bled like a pig for weeks” OR “Zoladex turned me into a zombie”) but the friends and acquaintances I spoke to all had positive things to say. I guess that birds of a feather and all that and I’d far rather hear the first hand experience from someone I know than go on line to read things from those I don’t. It soon becomes obvious that my new condition is something that will affect not just me. It isn’t selfish and wants to share. We’re not sure what to say to our nearly 7 year old son, so we say nothing. He’s bound to catch the abrupt end of those conversations or phone calls and we do need to say something to him, I’m not sure what though. My partner is beginning to understand that her partner may no longer be able “to get it up”. She’s nearly twenty years younger than I am so the prospect of no more or restricted bedroom antics is not something she’d given much thought. Of even more concern perhaps is the idea of sharing a life with someone who is incontinent. A leaky partner would be worse than a wet weekend in Bognor. So I’m faced with a choice. From the eight different types of treatment available it seems that like some macabre quiz show my options are being paraded before me. The choice, as they say, will be mine. I will have to make a decision. It’s not whether to go private or use the good old NHS. The health service seems absolutely brilliant and, so I’m told, which ever course of treatment I select will be undertaken within 31 days. I could of course choose to do nothing. I think that would be silly. I like the common sense approach of one of my friends who has been and done it. He owns a car dealership. “If it’s an Audi A6 you’re after I’ll tell you all about it. If it’s a cure for prostate cancer then listen to the experts.” There’s a lot in that advice. It seems that everyone has their own take on what is a very common complaint. Some talk about it but there is a ‘manhood’ issue at stake and that’s something we can joke about but not really face. Just why the treatment works fine for some and not for others remains one of those great unanswered questions. I’ll soon take my turn. My number in the queue will come up and I hope after the event that other thing will continue to as well. I’ll keep you posted.

HAVING NATASHA FOR BREAKFAST.

As women went Natasha was OK. She’d do for the time being. She didn’t over nag and she wasn’t that demanding. She certainly wasn’t high maintenance like some other girl friends that could be mentioned. If the last one so much as winked at you it was a new pair of diamond studs for her gorgeous lobes. Natasha was quite good between the sheets, nothing to write home about, nothing too adventurous but you wouldn’t hurry to kick her out of bed. She was relatively happy with her lot. She had her own money and a job but not a fortune. She wasn’t always the prettiest girl in the room, but she scrubbed up well and you could count on her not to drop you in it or to say anything that would get you struck off the social register. She got on with your mother which was actually quite something even though she was N.Q.O.C. Your brother too but then he’d get on with anything you were going out with even if it had a broad Essex accent (actually especially if it had one). She’d always drive you home if drinking was the issue and although she was chatty with other men, she never over stepped the mark and you certainly wouldn’t find Natasha in the downstairs loo snogging with the sozzled host. She liked her food but didn’t over eat unless it was chocolate or olives. She could probably do with loosing a pound or two but didn’t think about going to the gym. Her taste in music was pretty similar to yours apart from the awful Take That thing and the music from the Missionary which was obviously a throw back to something from the past. She also liked East Enders which was fine as long as you didn’t have to watch it and she found Ricky Gervase funny when actually he was just an annoying little shit. Like Chris Evans.

Actually it was Chris Evans who brought things to a head. Natasha got up most mornings to go off to work and tuned in to the Breakfast Show on BBC radio two. She joined it at 7.00 every morning and just as the chirpy ginger headed DJ was starting up, Natasha was soaping down in the shower. The lather flow in both locations was full of froth. Over several weeks and months Natasha developed “a thing” for the DJ and “the thing” turned into a habit. Not a week day went by when she didn’t listen to the enthusiastic red head from his start to his finish. She would buy any and every newspaper and magazine that featured him and when his book came out she was third in the queue at the Waterstone’s signing and the store security staff had to ask her to move on after Chris Evans had said “Who shall I make this for?” and she’d replied “To Tache, the woman of my dreams.” Natasha became Chris Evans's stalker. She developed an unhealthy obsession. She hung onto his every word. She’d take time off work and go to the stores that he was opening. She’d wait for hours outside theatres and studios and Broadcasting House became as familiar to her as she was to its doorman. She went to his pub in the hope that he’d be there to serve her. The day she actually tipped over the top was when it was announced that Chris Evans was going to marry his new golfing girl friend also called Natasha. It was just too much. She grabbed the serrated bread knife and took a swing at me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so off hand about the news and my comment about a hole in one was probably misplaced. Anyhow the swinging bread knife missed my chest, thank God, carried on its forceful journey, glanced off the kitchen wall and finished its frenzied arc by impaling itself in the side of Natasha's neck. She’d stabbed herself in the jugular. I guess what I should have done was to call 999 right away. The paramedics could probably have stopped the bleeding if they had got to us in time. I didn’t. Natasha bled to death on the kitchen flagstones. It wasn’t my fault and you couldn’t really blame Chris Evans either even though it was his Breakfast Show.

She left a last Will and Testament which was rather unlike her. She wasn’t a great forward planner but had obviously made some recent arrangements in the light of her new attachment to Chris Evans. She was cremated and then in a private letter she had hand written to me, I had to get her on to the Breakfast Show with Chris Evans which wasn’t an easy task. I had some of her ashes of course and this was going to be the only way I could fulfil the request. I thought about posting them to the BBC but felt sure that there must be some sort of vetting system that prevented crank mail from reaching its target. I could have just left them in the plastic container they give you or tipped them in the garden or over the cliffs on that Coastal Path walk she loved so much. Every time I looked at Natasha in her little container I felt a twinge of guilt about not calling that ambulance soon enough. I felt that I really owed her something and besides if I didn’t carry out her instructions she wouldn’t leave me the £50,000 from her life insurance policy. It was £50,000 for me and £50,000 for her parents, which was very kind of her. However I had to provide proof to her lawyer that I’d done the deed. Getting her on the radio with Chris Evans wasn’t going to be that easy but I guess it was the least I could do for Natasha. So I thought about it. You couldn’t do something like that with his blessing. As wacky as he was, Chris Evans wasn’t going to let a complete stranger spread his ex-girl friend’s ashes over him in some macabre celebration. How would you do something like that without him knowing about it? That was the puzzle that got me thinking. I too started to listen to the show and it dawned on me that the DJ liked his grub. He talked about it, featured it quite a lot and so I hatched my plot. It actually wasn’t that difficult in the end. I sent round the new extra hot extra spicy pizza with its extra special dusted topping knowing that Chris Evans loved a food challenge and sure enough he tucked into the thing on air. So did Jonny and Lynn and Moira the news reader described the flavour as "interesting". My ex would have been ecstatic as Chris Evans raved about having Natasha for breakfast. I filmed and recorded the whole episode from start to finish so that I could prove Chris Evans had in fact had Natasha on the Breakfast Show. I wouldn’t have been able to do it for Natasha, wouldn’t have been able to get her quite so close to her hero had I not started going out with my new girl friend. She’s the producer on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show and she’s quite good at it too.

JUST ONE OF THE DANGERS OF SHOPPING AT ASDA

If you shop at ASDA
just 'cause you have to
beware of their roll back campaign.
Their bed for the beach
is as cheap as a peach
but it may cause some serious strain.

Down on the sand
with crabs all around
and that kid with a spade and the bucket.
What ever your view is
shop at John Lewis
and not with the store that says ........

PINKY AND PERKY.

When someone quite fit
is wearing the knit
that shows all the bumps and the ripples
like chapel hat pegs
the question it begs
is are those really her ........

It's rude to stare
at bulging knitwear
while she offers you cocktail bits.
"Will you have a nibble?"
she asks with a giggle
and all you can think of is ........

A left and a right
is a sportsman's delight
with pheasant or grouse, even duck
so it's not at all quirky
when Pinky and Perky
make your thoughts wander off for a ........

GETTING THE HORN

Going for the bull

a slow Spaniard will

step too close at a pass.

A jab in the gob

is a much better job

than a horn taken right up the ........

Grab a beast by its horn

but better not yawn

for the bull will bellow and grunt.

His noble frame

will win the game

because he's fighting a ........