Month: October 2023

“You won’t get in there with jeans on,” she tells me as I pick her up from Victoria. She’s worrying about a bite on her face. She’s already run up the hill to the station in Brighton with a big bag. Now she’s in the big city and she’s booked me birthday lunch at The Wolseley. That’s next door to The Ritz. Mum used to use The Ritz as a loo whenever we were on Piccadilly and I never thought about what I was wearing back then, but maybe the fact she was always dripping with gold and Hermes silk and I was twelve – that allowed the gatekeepers to overlook any clothing infractions on the part of her spawn. And challenging her would have been too much effort.

I put on some flannels.

We walk there, down the river and then up through Pimlico to Buck House and then through Green Park, but we are early. I’m on the mum-trail now though so “Let’s go to Fortnums” comes easy and next thing we know, Lou and I are surrounded by expensive biscuits. We get off lightly. We buy some house coffee and some chocolate. We get out of there for less than a pony which is winning. Our table awaits.

17:45 is a strange time for dinner but Lou couldn’t get any other so I’ve skipped lunch and I’m starving. I get through the bread in seconds. We share a Leek and Potato Soup and a Salmon and Dill Thing. This menu would be very comfortable in the eighties, so they’ve had time to get it right. Main course is Goulash for me and Bream for Lou. We’re both on the Prix Fixe cos neither of us own an international conglomerate. I’m still off the booze and Lou is never on it, which takes one of the greatest expenses and temptations off the list. I don’t even ask to see the wines in case they make me weep.

They give me a birthday eclair. It’s the only photo I’ve got. It’ll have to do.

Lou is staying over at mine. I’m on an early sleep and wake routine, largely because Boy ramraids my face at dawn every day no matter the dream. A late birthday treat from lovely Lou. A close to tourism as I ever get in my city. A considered meal, just enough and everything done really well. Personality and care from the waiter. Now for my first night without those fecking antibiotics.

I feel like a basketball. All I’ve done is walk around a bit and think about stories. It’s these damned antibiotics. Better than dying of blood poisoning, but wearing. Weary. That’s how I’m feeling. Ground out.

Believe it or not I’m running a bath. All the environment stuff I go on about and that has been a nightly occurrence for a long time. I cooked Amatriciana and Frank and I ate it just now and it’s as if someone pumped suet at high speed into my navel.

The dentist this morning sucked his teeth and told me I’d have to sell the farm. I’ve kicked it all down the road too far. Time to bite the bullet. I had to bite the X-ray things again today and I was almost sick on the dentist. “Whoever took out your back teeth has got a lot to answer for,” and that was my mum trying to stop me from having snaggle teeth from overcrowding as a child. She succeeded but now I haven’t got enough teeth.

Still, nothing that everything I earn for the next six months can’t solve.

Boy is being very persistent because he wants me to play ribbon with him. He’s been sleeping in my bed all day while I’ve been yomping and having my face poked. Still, I’ve got ten minutes in me I guess.

Hopefully his sojourn here will be over soon and he can be restored to his home, but it has been a delight to have this pudding underfoot. I’ve never known a cat less inclined to get out of the way, and his kamikaze tendencies extend to sleeping by my feet every night. He is definitely influencing my dreams though. Things have been very catty the last few sleeps.

How lovely to be working creatively outdoors in this long long lasting Indian summer. Joyful.

Mackerel sky at sunset. We met up at half past three at The Flask. Logistics with a paper maché chicken. I’m trying out material with myself and random passers by. Trying to blend facts with joy to create the right cocktail. I can swear as much as I want, and I’m actively encouraged to shoehorn politics into it. The wonderful thing about truth is that it is frequently madness. True stories can be told dry or messy and I find that the messy tellings taste better. “Two old men drunkenly squabbling in a carriage” is a more human view and just as true as “renowned essayist debating philosophy with celebrated doctor on their return journey to London”.

I’ve been thinking about death and bodies and vampires and psychics and philanthropy and love and heaven and hell. Bullets and booze. Hanging and housing.

I can’t drink at the moment cos of the metronidazole and I’m loving it. I get home light and airy. This evening we zipped through the pointers and then at the top of parliament hill, looking down over the lights of London, a group of Hare Krishna gave us tasty vegetable curry in plastic plates, and a semolina pudding that didn’t match the promise of the curry, but free and given with that kindness that marks an unusual but still very active group of believers. I couldn’t join as it’s too focused and limited, but there’s not much to choose between vibrating the universe through singing “hare rama” etc and vibrating the universe with “immortal invisible” “nam myo ho renge kyo” “om” whatever your noisejam might be. It’s all resonance and shared breath and finding the weight of the silences between.

I’m home now and thinking of the noises I’ll be making on the heath. How will we annoy the local residents this time? Which odd people will start to attach themselves? Will I manage to do it all without drinking? Watch this space kids.

Bathtime.

I was supposed to be taking it easy today. I ended up running around all over the place. Carrying heavy stuff up and down stairs. Driving all around London.

The day started by loading in my first EVER Ocado order. Then at twenty to eleven on a Saturday I correctly gaged it as the right time to go to A&E for something minor. These antibiotics – they’ve been pretty slow in fighting the infection in my gum. 4 days on metronidazole doesn’t seem enough despite the fact it saps my energy. I needed at least one more day to ensure that the course was completed and I wasn’t manufacturing the next generation of bioweapon in my face. Frankly I find erythromycin more effective for dental things, but it isn’t listed as being so. The good thing about this metronidazole is you can’t drink. I would be completely whacked out if I was having alcohol on top of how I’m feeling tonight. The bad thing is, it’s almost as impotent as penicillin these days. Finish your courses, kids!

Half an hour in A&E and I’m in front of a doctor who looks at my gum and agrees with me and grabs two more days from the stash. “Definitely take one more, but the sixth day you might be able to stop. You have to finish the course but this stuff will exhaust you.” She also gives me a pack of codeine. “I know what dental pain is like.” More so than my fucking dentist.

Then I went and got a bed, loaded it into a lift, carried it to the car, shoved it in (just), tied the boot closed with a shoelace, took it home, unloaded it, took it 3 floors in the lift and pulled it up the final one, built a bed, put the mattress on it. Boy helped.

Now I am no longer sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I was drenched in sweat. I had a wash, cooked a chicken korma, went to rehearse the Halloween walk. My legs feel like jelly. I have no desire to be awake. “Just take it easy all day tomorrow,” says Lou and I’m rehearsing from half 3.

I’m just home. Curry was waiting for a quick reheat and it provided a cushion for those pesky antibiotics. Sleep now, thank the lord. I’m pooped. Pain is finally just an occasional background hum, or when I’m biting.

A nice quiet day around the house with Frank and our low level pain. I just attempted my first solid meal with some sausages and mash. Ate it mostly with my mouth at a 90 degree angle, and the whole cooking and eating thing left me feeling pretty whacked out. Most of the day though, as you might expect of me, I’ve been remaining pretty upbeat, to the extent that one dear old friend couldn’t compute why I was being cheerful, as if we all have to be constantly morose when we’re in pain.

One extremely decayed tooth is out. Its neighbour is still trying to kill me, but once my extraction hole is healed I’ll pay someone a ridiculous amount of money to kill the nerve and fill the tooth with non reactive latex. What else did I have to spend my money on, hey? I have been trying to persuade the dentist by phone to give me a prescription for decent painkillers. Before the antibiotics brought down the infection it was a klaxon through max strength ibuprofen and paracetamol. Sadly they are a new dentist to me, and despite obvious pain they were cagey about prescribing anything at all. Fuckers. I don’t know how Tristan got that bottle of morphine from the doc.

I didn’t need it, truth be told, after last night. Still I was using an opportunity to get some in case last night happened again. I like to know there’s something in the house for when I accidently cut my arm off. But yeah, its not their first rodeo so no go bobo.

I was being cheerful through the pain. That’s who I am. It’s a lovely day in October, I’m finally taking action on an ancient series of dental issues, so despite the pain it is progress and progress is good.

Still it is barely 7pm and I’m looking longingly at my bed. The pain is draining over time but I fear I might not have enough antibiotics for the size of the infection. Plus there’s strong emotional bollocks running alongside my day that I won’t write about for fear of exacerbating it. I think that has hugely added to my feeling of being wrung out.

Oof.

I’m just gonna get in a bath, read my kindle and then snuggle with this little sausage.

Oh good heavens. I’m home from a tooth extraction. The anaesthetic is wearing off. But the pain is still there so it is possible, as the dentist observed, that the real source of the pain could be the tooth next to the one he pulled. That tooth had to go for sure. But yet, maybe I’ll have three days more agony to recover from the extraction and then a root canal. The very thought of it is bringing me out in a cold sweat.

The pain was totally gone from the injection so it’s possible that this is just a miserable return of sensation and that things will settle. Everything tastes of blood. I really really am not happy in my own skin at the moment. Thankfully to my huge relief it transpires that the charity auction I thought I was running on Sunday is November 8th not October 8th.

This returning pain is like nothing I have experienced yet. Wowee. Pain is just a warning mechanism etc. But this is not going to be a fun night. No sireee. Fuck.

I’m writing this early as the anaesthetic isn’t even fully worn off yet. I suspect that with an extraction so close to it I can’t get it rooted for a few days. I’m honestly not sure how I’ll manage if it stays at this level. It’s constant and like a clamp. I’m having to work really hard not to tense all the muscles in my face. Oh please let his just be post extraction pain and not that we did the wrong tooth first. Hellfire.

I have a comfortable room and a hot bath is possible. Some form of sleep will come. Oh pain. Oh pain. Oh horrible pain, why so near my brain.

I think the pain might exhaust me towards sleep. Or it might abate. I have some ten year old tramadol from a chef. Might be the time for that? Gods. I’m scared I will run out of stamina and just be a gibbering wreck in 3 three days time if it continues at anything like this level. I’m shivering. Frank is recovering from major surgery in the room next door. What a fucking pair.

owie.

I’m such a wuss. One second I’m blustering around announcing what a high pain threshold I’ve got. Next second I’m laid low by a tooth. Thank God I cleared my diary this week for Frank. If this had happened just a week ago it would have been a disaster. As it is it is just pain. Might affect Halloween walk practice a bit, might make it hard to catch Lou before her tour starts. But I don’t have to start work at 6 tomorrow morning…

So much for the plan where I was gonna be a tower of strength for Frank. You can’t predict toothache. Poor guy has had to put up with my pain for two days, and I’m vocal. Now I can’t stop shaking as soon as I get out of bed.

Antibiotics again soon, and one more ibu and codeine for all the difference they make. Then I’ll try and sleep. Long night ahead. Long few days I fear.

—

Hot bath and time and it has dropped in pitch a little and I fear that it was magnified by returning after the total absence left by the anaesthetic. Life is pain, but we mostly put it to the background. This too shall pass. I’m staying up 2 more hours to have my second dose of antibiotics and then maybe an actual sleep.

Today I woke up in the middle of the night to that old familiar pain. I never made it to Turkey. The tooth that has been the bane of my adult life has started shouting again. I usually have a course of antibiotics handy but I think I’ve lost them. Somewhere I’ve got the entire packet of “that’s what we give for bullet wounds – you’ll only need two max and frankly one will do it.” Good old Doctor Jesus in Tabuk. I’ve had two courses out of him, and taken 3 each time as you never want to make something resistant. Somewhere there’s four more. Hopefully I won’t need them but I fear I might. I’ll rummage later.

There’s really no choice but to bite the bullet. Teeth are teeth are teeth. They are in our face. I’ve avoided spending for too long now. Time to blow my fee from Scotland.

I’m home and it is peaceful. I’m gonna lure Boy into my room with treats as he bonded hard to Frank when I was in Scotland, and Frank can’t have him jumping up. He’s convalescing. Cat energy will be healing. Heavy cat suddenly on the wound will not. So… I’ll try and persuade him that even though I’m just a mattress on the floor that still counts as a bed. He can’t quite compute it at the moment.

Constant pain is tiring, and I’ve been max dosed with the best ones that come over the counter. Frank has been prescribed codeine and doesn’t want it. I’m trying everything I can to get him to let me pick it up rather than let the prescription go to waste. If he doesn’t want it, I do. I’m gonna try to go to sleep soon even though it’s barely 9, but I’m dosed to the max with over the counter stuff and I still can barely think. I’ve located the cipromax so I’ve got big guns if I need them. Somewhere I’ve got a ten year old tramadol. Root canal pain really sucks.

Boy has no desire to sleep with me and is attacking Frank’s closed door. He hates closed doors generally, and particularly if it leads to the room he prefers. My tooth hurts despite maximum dosage. It’s 9pm. I’m going to attempt something like sleep through the pain. Or maybe I should eat a cipromax.

On top of the multistorey car park on Putney High Street there’s a very active car valet service. It ain’t cheap – £38 cash for the whole shebang. But there aren’t enough hours in the day. Bergman was sitting under a pine tree when I was in Aberdeen. His interior bore all the hallmarks of a working car too. Chocolate stains in the seats, toothpicks in the cup holders, coffee stains on the carpet. He needed some tlc.

The clean-up showed lots of new marks. He’s been keyed a bit on the driver’s side, or I pulled in too close to a tree. His sensors are oversensitive so I keep moving when they’re solid beeping. He has picked up wear and tear. I still love him but I feel we might be moving on before long to stay ahead of emissions targets. I’ll have to get him touched up though if I’m gonna get a good price for him. Need to find the log book too.

Today was about reclaiming hospitals as well as getting the car cleaned. A close friend had surgery. They’re keeping him overnight but I arranged to drive him in and then keep him company after he woke. He was groggy but happy it was successful. General anesthetic is a scary thing on its own, and coupled with surgery it can hang over your thoughts in the run up. Despite a very early morning, I was bringing my brightest face. And largely the experience helped me realise hospitals can be a place for getting well again. I’m gonna pick him up at half ten tomorrow in my newly cleaned chariot. Might locate my chauffeurs hat as well. He’ll convalesce here and I’ve largely cleared my diary in case it’s tough and he needs basic help type things done. I’m not certain how much help he’ll need but I’m game to try my best. He’s been a good friend to me lately.

On a run for lunch and snacks I found myself anxious about any decision I made that allocated time to myself. I had to deconstruct the PA habit when, if I’m on a shopping trip, I absolutely have to be as quick as possible. I stopped for a moment and quietly ate my lunch with no sense of hurry. My time is my own again. But I’m still exhausted. Was up at crack of dawn.

Back in London, and I’ll be here a good week now. The cat I’m looking after has bonded to Frank but he’s got his own life going on so I’ve chosen to actively take the cat-care now. I’ve finished the doc and spent a bit of time with Lou. I need to start my duties. Domestic cats can’t feed themselves more than they can find, and we haven’t had mice here for a long time, so it’s currently this expensive gastro stuff until I can work out what he’s used to. Katkin, I’m told. Maybe I can get round her flat and see. I keep expecting her to get out of hospital and relieve me of my responsibility, but it might be a while yet.

Still warm in London just, in this early October. I haven’t missed the heating, or my electric blanket. Tomorrow is an early start, and I’m gonna try and make it into an admin day. I’ve got so much stuff backed up.

Today I had Chris round my flat to try on costumes. He ended up with a black surplice and a stupid hat, and my magic flouncy shirt. I’ll get them back. It’s for the Halloween walk, and we are concocting plans. It’s never high art but it’s a friendship group doing stuff around their lives and it’s fun. If we sell out it kinda just about makes financial sense for us.

Then we drove to Highgate. We persuaded The Flask in Highgate to let us store our dead chicken in an old kitchen. They were awesome about it. We’ve been wanting to start there for ages, and this is why. Very haunted, well located, friendly staff. If only it was less than £7 for a pint of Asahi.

I’ve got free a bottle of Cardamom Gin to experiment with. Apparently it needs ginger. Not tonight though. Tonight I’m about to get into a bath and then crash. Early start. Long day. Send positive vibes.

“It’s just a tree,” some people are saying, and yes it is, this 300 year old sycamore senselessly felled in the Scottish borders. This is true. It is only 300 years old, and whoever cut it down did it simply because they are cabbage.

In the Northern Americas you can’t call a tree “old growth” until it’s over 150 years old. Loggers are taking down trees in Canada close to the age of the gap tree all the time, as they push it up to 250. Recently there were a few at 500 or more gone. Then look in the rainforests. God alone knows the age of some trees logged to make space for meat and palm oil, or burnt in arson designed to clear the land there for the same purposes. It is said that some trees lost recently in Brazil were over 5000, but … hard to get to and not as photogenic. They were cut down because societally we blind ourselves to the consequences of our short termism.

Idiots are mimics, so we are likely to see a few more well loved trees going down in the next few weeks, especially if the papers give some twit a platform out of the sycamore. Comfortingly idiots are also idiots so we are likely to see them lose an arm or drop the tree on themselves.

Why should we care about these trees more than the idiots who cut them? They bring more joy to more people. They are more pleasant to look at. They help make things nicer for humans. I don’t want to know the reason, or to pillory the idiot. Let’s use it to try to deepen the conversation.

This is not mine. It is referring to a much older protest rhyme, older than writing but written down and thus preserved in the 17th Century as

“They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.”

Forever it has been thus. I was upset about that tree but I guarantee the pitchforks will be handed out by the Daily Mail. They’ll be the ones to run with a bad picture of someone and incitements to cut him down.

If we were upset by this tree, particularly those like me who have never seen it and never knew of it existing until it was felled, perhaps our focus needs to be on why we were so upset and what habits we are clinging on to that make the same thing happen to millions of older less photogenic trees. The higher up the chain we are the more we can do. Check your stuff for Palm Oil. Watch that meat…

I ate roast lamb for lunch. It was great and I didn’t feel guilty. These shifts are hard and societal and slow to effect. My lamb was well sourced – The Sussex Ox is very good for that – but it was still meat. Beef is the biggest bastard. But we all have to change things completely and we need to do it much faster than we have. It has started to catch up to Rishi now, but big shifts are hard to manage and can be enough to make people angry enough to do fucking dumb things with chainsaws.

After lunch I went to see my favourite tree in the area. It’s a 1600 year old yew that people have propped up with wooden supports. It has a face. It is covered in berries – don’t eat the stone or you’ll die. It is gorgeous and there is comforting evidence of generations of people trying to stop it collapsing under its own weight. Sometimes we can be such dicks. Sometimes we can be heroes. I guess it is about trying to weight it away from the negative as best we can.