Of Mutts and Metal Legs.

It has been close to four years since my last post. Last time I posted anything on this blog, the word "covid" was either completely unknown or merely an unfortunate misspelling of the classification of members of the crow family. There has been much upheaval for me personally as well, which might explain the dearth of written work completed in these intervening years, but since I currently find history repeating itself somewhat, I felt inspired. 

I am currently laid up, and have been for the last month, with another broken ankle. I say "another" as if I have injured the other one this time, when in fact it is not just the same leg, but also the same bone as in 2010. Given that I was relatively new to blogging when I first broke my fibula and much more prolific in those days, I have been feeling somewhat of a sense of deja vu since this most recent injury and today the urge to commit my musings to a digital paper substitute too much to ignore any longer. 

On June 30th I took the incredibly wise decision to take my friend's dog for a run on the field close to our house, wearing only my office jacket, in light rain. I didn't think I would be out very long. Sammy is very low maintenance. You let him off the lead and lob a ball repeatedly until he gets tired, then you go home. I wasn't going to get that wet. However, no sooner had I let said dog off the lead and lobbed said ball, that I slipped and fell, on my very first step to follow his direction, down the hill that led onto the field, sliding on my backside until my already metalicised ankle met the ground at the bottom first and broke again on impact. I managed to call my husband who came immediately and between him and another neighbour, the dog was eventually taken home and an ambulance called, since, after Paul managed to get me up to the path, it was too treacherous trying to get to the car, which was parked as close as possible but still quite some distance away. After a full hour since the fall of sitting in the pouring rain, the ambulance arrived and managed to take me to hospital. (There was quite a bit of wrangling as Sammy didn't want to leave me so it wasn't as straightforward as today's prose indicates).  

I finally got a bed on the orthopaedic ward at 5.30AM the following morning, a good ten hours after the fall. The surgeon advised me that I was both lucky and unlucky: lucky, because the metal plate that was already in there from 2010's break had protected the part of the fibula it was bolted to. Apparently it would have been a much higher break were it not for my pre-existing Meccano set; however, I was substantially unlucky because this meant that the lowest point of the bone, where the plate did not extend to, was in rather a mess, and not only that, the break had impacted the nearby ligaments and tendons etc. The Plaster of Paris semi-cast I had been put in at about 2AM had not done anything to prevent the fibula and tibia from trying to separate above the foot and surgery was necessary the same day to not only replace my existing plate with a much longer one, but also to insert a special elongated bolt to keep the two bones together atop the foot, otherwise I would not walk again. The surgeon later told me, once the combined effects of morphine and general anaesthetic had worn off enough that I could fully appreciate the situation, that the surgery had gone well but the bone growth over the previous thirteen years meant that to get the old plate out he "had to do a lot of chiselling." I had been his first surgery after lunch. I do wonder if lamb chops had been on the menu. 

AND SO THE RAPID DECLINE INTO MIDDLE AGE BEGAN

Yesterday I turned 35 and whilst I dare say there has been plenty to write about in the three years since I last posted something, I have never felt so inspired by an event as I was yesterday to gather my weary thoughts into something cohesive and entertaining.

As birthdays go this one was run of the mill until about 6 o'clock in the evening, and I had been dreading it for some time, having a burnt-in memory of my mother telling my eight-year-old self that since she had read somewhere that the current life expectancy for most people was 70, 35 was the new middle age. Clearly our aging population has put paid to that statistic but things we learn in childhood tend to stick.

I went to work and discovered that my colleagues had been kind enough to get me a card and a book of inspirational quotes by the late Irish writer and Catholic priest Fr Daniel O'Leary. My lovely husband had still been very drowsy when I left for work but he had managed to tell me we would do the card and present in the evening so he could give it his full attention. I was to be home by six because we also had to call at my Mum's house.

Dutifully, at 5.45PM I called to say I was almost home and ask if I ought to wait in the car. After several attempts to get through, a very frazzled Paul answered, telling me he wasn't ready and asking me where en route I was. The answer clearly didn't please him and he said when I got there he supposed I had better come in the house whilst he got ready.

Nose quite out of joint, I harumphed and muttered to myself all the way home: it was my birthday and we were going to be late for Mum's and late home, meaning I would likely be shattered for work in the morning. I got home feeling rather sorry for myself but was gratified to see that the gardener had been and tamed the front lawn. Next I was concerned: the front door was ajar and our front door is never ajar unless someone is about to go through it. Even if Paul had managed to get ready to go out in the five minutes it took me to hang up and get home, he wasn't anywhere to he seen. I stepped in the house.

The house was deserted but I could see through the living room, into the kitchen and out the back door. Paul was standing in the garden wearing overalls, with three eastern European men behind him. "Hello, darling, happy birthday!" he called cheerfully when he saw me. The men behind him chimed in with "happy birthday" too. So the new gardener was late arriving and hadn't finished out back yet. Didn't I feel ashamed for being bad tempered in the car?

As I went through to the kitchen to say a proper hello, I spied a mahogany stool I'd never seen before with dark green upholstery, just like the two chairs upstairs. All of the boxes, tools, badminton racquets and other ephemera had also gone from the back wall of the kitchen. I laughed and was about to say "Did you find a piece of furniture you didn't know you had when you cleared up?" when the big dark wooden something or other in the garden by the back door caught my eye.

The whole time I'd been taking in the scene I hadn't noticed that Paul was standing in his overalls next to a large upright piano, and the other gentleman were behind it. Behind them was my open back gate and behind that was a large white lorry. How it got up our ginnel will remain a mystery to my dying day.

"Happy birthday," Paul repeated, followed by his backing group from Bucharest. "This is for you."

He said much more after this but I was frankly struggling to take it in. My mouth fell open and I couldn't speak to anyone. Apparently the piano in my garden was Paul's birthday present to me. Had everything gone according to plan it was going to be in the kitchen with its stool (which wasn't part of the set upstairs as it happens) bedecked in a rather large ribbon by 5 o'clock so I could come home and see it. The only problem was that when the delivery men (so, not gardeners) brought the piano from Altrincham, it was discovered that it wouldn't fit through the front door no matter what angle was attempted. I had walked in on them having just given up trying to get it in the back door. The only solution was to take not only the door off but the entire frame out, for which no one present had the tools or the time. Plan C was that for an extra sum of money (because it was now six and they were meant to have arrived at another job at 5.30) the delivery men would take the piano to my Mum's house, because she had nice, wide double patio doors. I'm so glad she moved house last year!

Neither Paul nor I had any cash on us and about the only thing I could properly take in at this stage was a need for cash so I briefly and belatedly thanked Paul for the gift, and the delivery men for the happy birthdays and dashed back to the car to get to Morrison's cash machine. By the time I got back it had been decided Paul should show them the way so he grabbed the money and left in the car.

By this time it was about 6.15 and in the silence of the house I had time to think. I went into the kitchen to make a coffee and sit with it on what I now understood to be a piano stool. Distracting as the preceding events of the evening had been, it was not until this point that I noticed I couldn't get to the coffee as all of the stuff that had been cleared to make way for the piano was now stacked up against the kitchen cupboards, facing where it had been when I'd left for work.

I turned to check if the stool was sturdy enough to hold me and discovered a hidden compartment under the seat, inside of which were several books of sheet music, including ABBA's greatest hits and a compendium of TV theme tunes. Events took their toll and I dissolved into a fit of giggles and slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor instead.

I did eventually get to my Mum's house,  but not before about an hour of cleaning the back door and sorting through some of the paperwork that formed the mound barring the way to a brew as I waited for Paul to get back and then get party-ready. My Mum was still staring in stunned amazement at the piano in her living room. When we arrived at a quarter to eight.

We ate, drank, played the piano, laughed and played games, and my niece told me she had picked the earrings her mother bought me because she knew "Kerker will love them because they are very weird."

Not for the first time I felt like my life had turned into a sitcom, but the birthday I dreaded the most was the best birthday I ever had.

THE PRETENSE OF A TOLERANT MIND

There has been a creeping trend for growth in the sphere of Christian-bashing. I say 'bashing' rather than some more intellectually acceptable adjective because my problem lies not with those who have a healthy suspicion of all believers in 'imaginary friends', as they would call it, but those who preach tolerance on one Facebook or Twitter entry, and then practice exactly the opposite. The atheist who believes that all people of any faith in anything unseen are a bunch of idiots is no threat to the believer. He is a worthy opponent, uniform in his prejudices and not in the least discriminatory.

However, I have found the majority (though by no means all) of those people proudly re-tweeting and sharing posters that make fun of various aspects of what they erroneously believe is the unified faith of Christianity, are also those who are proudly 'tolerant' of all other ideologies. Perhaps it is felt that as the West was formerly the Christian West, this is acceptable.

A few points: when you ridicule the virgin birth, you also insult Islam, with the Qu'ran using an entire chapter to detail the life of Mary and the conception of her son without the aid of a human father.

When you refer to the idiocy of the creation story you firstly make the mistake of lumping one or two small denominations of Christianity in with the larger majority who view the first chapter of Genesis as not literally about naked people being conned by a snake. You are also interestingly unconcerned with the other myriad religions, modern and ancient, which make outlandish claims for how we came to be here. Ancient Greece and Egypt have a few eye-popping theories no one dares take the Mick out of because it's fashionable to follow the ancient ways again.

Homophobia was bequeathed to Christianity by traditional Judaism. Opposition to abortion and Euthanasia/assisted dying, is actually a strongly held belief by some modern pagans.

Religious beliefs on this earth of ours are as diverse as are the people who hold them. Sharing a witty meme on Facebook that sounds about right but which you haven't actually checked the truth of does not make you Richard Dawkins. It makes you the religious equivalent of those who only voted Brexit because they believed the Daily Mail when they told them 'it was them foreigners what took our jobs.'

CHARITABLE YOUTUBING IS ACCEPTABLE

Once again it is day erm (mark 2) of the YouTube fast and I have unfortunately been forced into breaking my own rules, in order to watch and then share a video of The Proclaimers' great 1000 Miles for a friend who sadly did not understand the below joke. So you see, this was a charitable thing, and only my second misdemeanour, so all is still well.

NOT DYSPRAXIC, APPARENTLY....

It occurred to me as I was typing that last blog post that I have previously written not exactly extensively about my dyspraxia, and yet the recent news that this was actually a misdiagnosis has gone unmentioned. I was told just at the end of Summer last year by a neurologist that I did not in fact have dyspraxia after all. All symptoms, some of which have actually disappeared the older I've got, were actually down to a mixture of severe PTSD (which I had no idea could make one clumsy but I'm reliably informed by another professional who knows that it can), fibromyalgia, and resulting migraines.

DAY ERM OF THE NO YOUTUBE CHALLENGE

Well, it's Day Erm of the no YouTube Challenge. 'Erm' because I'm not 100% sure what day last week it officially began as the date of my first blog is the last date I watched something on YouTube, Blogger uses Eastern Time, which does not correspond with Greenwich Mean Time, which I'm on, and I did cheat slightly yesterday evening at a friend's house when she delightedly introduced me to a prank call show from some years back. The way I see it, it's like that Friday steak at a non-Catholic dinner party. It's your fault you forgot to mention that you only eat fish on Fridays, so if your host cooks a hunk of disallowed grub, you smile, eat and make a mental note to either not go to dinner parties on Fridays or forewarn people to save embarrassment.

Other than that, I have been good, and when I can be bothered (maybe tomorrow) to check my diary, where I noted the date of this challenge's commencement, I shall state on the next posting, exactly where we are up to. For now, whatever Blogger claims, I'm writing this at 11.25PM Old Lancashire Time, and I was on a coach for five hours today, with a dodgy mobile that wouldn't even play the radio properly, so do excuse me if I go back to Classic FM.

ANOTHER GIMMICK FROM ANOTHER WRITER IN THE HOPE OF GETTING PUBLISHED ONE DAY....

Yesterday afternoon I watched my last YouTube video for the next twelve months. I'm not sure whether to squeal with excitement or weep like a small child who has dropped their ice cream. It has been at the back of my mind for some time now that maybe (just maybe) I spend too much time watching videos on the internet. I have done mini web-'fasts' before here and there - no internet for a day; no Kindle for a week - but I've never felt the need to make a big, dramatic statement like this one before. And I still hadn't, just eleven minutes before the end of my last YouTube video till May 2017.

This short excerpt from Michael Voris on a religious form of time-wasting spoke to me more loudly and clearly than when (potentially) the angels knackered my Kindle yesterday so I was reduced to the drudgery of powering up the laptop when I could be bothered or waiting for Mr B to come off the big PC. Voris makes a very good point, that even the best-intentioned research can turn into nothing more than spiritual or intellectual porn if you should be doing something else but you just can't switch off. Maybe you are watching a university professor talk about philosophy, but if you suddenly realise you're several hours passed your bedtime and this is lecture number 47, you're just as much of an addict as someone who can't pass up on a playlist of cats playing the piano. Not that I've ever watched 47 videos in a row. As far as I'm aware.

I used to write a novel a year (sadly unpublished, yes, though there was that one novella...). I'm fairly certain I haven't even written my first poem of 2016 yet. And that Rosary novena to Our Lady of Pompeii would probably feel a lot less rushed if I wasn't also cramming in the offerings of Voris, Hahn, Kreeft and Barron, to name just a fraction. We had best not mention the Star Wars fan theory videos or ultimate diva playlist I have managed to compile lest it start to sound like I live on the cursed video site. Oh no! I just realised I've nowhere to hear Shirley now! Barbra's fine: I have CDs.