London Musings

The following was done on my PDA over the course of the day I went up for a scan in the Royal Marsden.  It’s unedited, raw and full of typos.

LondonHow do you pass the time in London? The answer is simple, sit in a cafe and read, or, visit the V&A. I have just tried to visit the V&A but gave up after I realised that I would easily need the best part of an afternoon to really focus on the immense volume of the content that they have. Multiple galleries are spread through a vast complex of halls, corridors and crannies. Everything needs to be savoured, unless one is willing to risk mental indigestion.
Laura wants to visit too, so I feel it’s a bit cheeky to just go in and start roaming around without her being there.

I have decided to break in tradition and leave the Marsden for lunch, finding a small cafe (name escapes me), I am tucking in to a panini and a nice cup of coffee.

Everytime I come to London, I play a game. Spot the famous person. This includes people who are either famous or who bear uncanny resemblance to a famous person. So far…

Margaret Beckett
Jeffery Archer
Doctor off This Morning (who got discraced for plagerism).
Gillian McKeith

The journey was, as ever, ardous. Making any sort of long journey on an empty stomach is hard enough. Thankfully the chap I was sat next to, although a giant of a man, did not insist on cuddling up to me like the other guy I sat next to last time I came up. OK, so he wasn’t in his arms embracing me, but it was all a bit too comfy for my liking. A modern phenomenon that I noticed is the tendency for people to turn whole sections of the train in to mobile offices. Ridiculous as it is, everyone seems to have a laptop which they just have to get out and tap away at. Please note, this is a PDA with a keyboard, and when I find the drivers it’ll have wifi too. But for now I use my phone which has wifi.
The train was on time, which left 25 minutes to sprint across London, down tubes and up escalators. I was 5 minutes late but that’s only because I had to stop to ask a suspicious looking Spanish chap where CT Scanning was. By the way, he wasn’t suspicious because he was Spanish, but the hair was just too slick for my liking.

Right, back to the hospital.

1:26pm

I’m back, the hospital cafe was full so I have decamped to a nice comfy sofa, somewhere in the Marsden wing. The thing that really sucks about this process is the waiting. I know my appointment will come and go, it might be an hour or two hours before I am seen.
I am hoping that the trend will continue, and that I’ll be told there has been nochange. I can’t say that this is going to happen, but one can dream. If anything did happen, I wouldn’t know about it as the nodules in my lungs are tiny.

So what if something happens? They say that there has been movement, and I have to have radiotherapy. Oh well, if it is to be then it is to be. I would be thankful that I would be treated as to now, they have decided that the nodules are too small to be treated. One must remain philisophical about things like this.

The thing I hate about London is the way people look at you. A sideways glance, shifty and suspecting. Yes, I know its London and “thats what people do”, but it seems to be nearly everyone who makes eye contact…

To Outpatients… 2:26pm

The waiting was like death itself. A painful sentence, tension made more by the hubbub of the giant waiting room. I really did expect them to say that there was no change, however in my naiviety i guess I was asking for trouble.
Although the doctors have said it’s nothing to worry about, 2mm of growth in a year is really something to worry about. In time, I’ll get used to it and learn to cope with it, but at the moment it’s crap. Something else to worry about. I will read back at this one day and realise I was either overreacting or I’ll wonder why I was so blind to what might happen yet. So…

Appointment was an hour late anyway, but I left the hospital and just decided that the point in hiking up to Oxford Circus.

8:44pm

I’m on the train going home. Thank God, or whoever rules this joint.
I got to Waterloo and then had to walk around trying to find somewhere to sit. Waterloo, like most of London is devoid of bins. Rubbish has to be either quietly hidden away or stashed in a bag and then quietly hidden. Or put in a bin if you ever find one. After deciding that Costa was the best place to sit down, I bough a new notebook in Paperchase and a coffee from Costas. Time passed and soon I had to board the train, however, I read the wrong time on the ticket (I read 0642) and forgot about the 24hr clock, got totally confused and ended up confusing the lady on the information desk. I saw the ticket inspector and he pointed out to me that I did in fact have the right tickets. Confused but happy I got on the train, found my seat and put my stuff on the rack, then along comes a nice chap who sits next to me until Sherborne.

So I am nearly home, I miss my wife and my cats and now I know that things are now a little different.
Something that did cheer me up was the worlds chavviest girl that got on at Basingstoke, she had a full on conversation about weed and sleeping pills with some guy, very loudly so that the whole train could hear. I’m glad she did as it made me chuckle to myself. I also scraped together enough change to buy a cuppa so that was also good.

I’m back

After an abstinance, I am back.  I have taken a leave of absence from writing anything vaguely recollective or memorable as not much has really happened that warrants me sitting down and recounting it bit by bit.  But, as it seems of late, I have been recovering from operation number three which has been quite substantial.

Operation number one (use the word rather then the number, as it’s good english so I am told) was to remove a lump of scar tissue that was bothering me, biopsy had shown nothing weird.  Operation number two was to do a wide area exision of the scar tissue and surrounding stuff.   Histopathology reported that disease was in the deep margins, and finally operation number three was to remove deep margin (bottom layer of tissue) and possibly bone too but I hope they’ve not taken too much as I don’t have much grey matter to speak of at the best of times.

So, have a look at the photos which I will post of facebook and be suitably repulsed by the staples and the way it’s all gory and ick, because I am.  Shame it was a bit too late for halloween.

Today has been spent, very much like yesterday, playing poker and losing badly.  Bad decisions and a long list of really bad hands, coupled with painkillers and a limited concentration span mean that it was a bit arse.  Plus lots of All-Ins from people who really shouldn’t go All-In, J-x’s and low pairs etc.  Nuff poker ranting.

I don’t have much in the way of energy, but I found my copy of ‘The Book of Heroic Failures’ which I exchanged my sister for at a car boot sale.

‘The Worst Whirlwind Romance’

They got married 69 years after they first got together…

Wondermentalist was wondermental

Saturday night was great fun.  We only stayed for half of it as Wife needed picking up, Lois and I were both buzzing with poetic goodness as we braved the rain coming back to the car.  Buzz.
I am in a sort of poetic/creative vacuum at present.  I have lost the motivation to write anything, partially down to some sort of grammatical dementia I seem to be suffering from, and partially down to sheer laziness I expect.  I am trying to read more, but I wonder if I am forcing myself to write when really I don’t want to write.  Maybe I want to stick to poetry? Or nothing.
I am going to go to the hospital in a moment to have them examine my head, literally.  My scar hurts and it’s getting bigger, although its not incredibly urgent I need to have it looked at and get them to give me some silicone gel (breaks down the scar tissue). 

I guess I need to work on writing articles more then anything, at least that’ll have me heading in the right direction and I could earn money too? Depends where I submit it.