How does one explain the, mind-numbing, anxiety that grips one at the thought of doing something unusual? The unusual, is the prospect of having a couple of nights away, the first time for a few years that I’ll be leaving the homestead, apart from a day and a night in hospital after an exploratory op on my throat. My extraordinary sensitivity to unexpected noises is hitting me with a vengeance once more, heightened no doubt by the extraordinary shattered experience induced whilst entertaining a very easy guest.
Having recovered (?) from that downturn in a much quicker time, than any kind of recovery had been taking in the past few years, I was feeling suitably confident to contemplate this little adventure until I started surfing the net for accommodation. This net search, somehow, brought home the reality of how major a step it was going to be, to leave the safety blanket of my familiar domicile for an hotel a mere sixty-plus miles away.
At present, I’m rather tense and panic-ridden; my self-confidence, which usually rides reasonably high, has temporarily sunk to a new low. Are the muscular aches, and bruised (feeling) chest and stomach muscles, simply an emotional response to the prospect or, are the excruciating onslaughts on every tendon and nerve ending, that were for quite a while my regular bedfellow, about to make a re-appearance?
How does one explain the mind-numbing anxiety? For the present I cannot; now is the time to steel myself for action, the spirit is vaguely willing but, the flesh is extraordinarily weak!
- living and frequently struggling with moderate M.E. -
where (bad) health, faith, politics and the joys and troubles of daily life collide.
ME
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Friday, September 08, 2006
Foxy Goings On
The Oxcliffe Vixen, soul-mate of The Oxcliffe Fox, has now gone public in the blogosphere. The Fox will have to look to his laurels!
A further New Poem Alert
I've just posted a further poem on Mal's Factory, entitled A PISCINE PLOY. The garden is currently providing a rich seam of delight!
New Poem Alert!
I've just posted a brand new poem (entirely this morning's vintage) entitled 'A Spun Illusion' on 'Mal's Factory'.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The High Cost of Security
The whims and fancies of one’s health play hard to follow. After a couple of days of reasonable progress, including a surprise advance in terms of stamina and muscle elasticity, today began in reverse gear. Perhaps, in the first place, a slightly later bed-time, last night, as I was catching up on the missing thirty years, with a friend from distant university days who is currently visiting us, contributed to a more exhausted entry into the new day. Add to that, the fact that any major sustained conversational practise has been, for the past couple of years, beyond the scope of my physical and emotional reserves and, a slight decline in my improving resilience levels was perhaps inevitable!
As if a conspiracy was afoot, at about ten minutes to ten the telephone rang. My beloved had taken the car in for its service and MOT, before setting off for an appointment in town and, you’ve guessed it, the call was for her; it sounded to non-automobilised Malcolm, like some alien gobbledegook. I’d already dropped the phone onto the floor, as I fumbled my way from the Land of Nod, in the attempt to answer it and, they wanted to know where the key was for the locking wheelnuts. Now, where does one start looking for something unknown which should have been in the car in any case?
Tried Helen’s mobile but, it wasn’t switched on ….. P-A-N-I-C …. More P-A-N-I-C, my chest is crushing the breath out of me, I start aching in each untoned muscle of my body, I want to scream! Did the dealer from whom the brand new vehicle was purchased ever supply such an item, which seems a quite essential piece of equipment? When my beloved returned, from town, she had no memory of ever stumbling upon such an item and, that was even after the garage had shown her what it and its container should look like!
Current state of play is that the garage are going to obtain a new set of wheel hubs(?) complete with key and, will break the old ones off on Friday morning, perform the necessary tests befor replacing them. [Perhaps it’s all part of a less than subtle capitalist ploy, whereby one has to pay for unnecessary replacement items because the dealer had omitted to supply a necessary bit of equipment!]
For my beloved, all this sounded warning bells; what would have happened if the car had a flat tyre, there would be no way to remove the wheel, nor was there any way to test / inspect the brakes (the cause of all this kerfuffle in the first place).
The result of this experience; a physically and emotionally S-H-A-T-T-E-R-E-D Malcolm!
These locking nuts may be a security measure but, I can’t help feeling that they bring with them their own dangers. It’s rather like the threat to civil liberties imposed by governments, upon their own citizens, (when their countries are fighting an illegal war against a country that didn’t pose a threat in the first place), in response to a heightened terrorist threat largely of their own devising.
As if a conspiracy was afoot, at about ten minutes to ten the telephone rang. My beloved had taken the car in for its service and MOT, before setting off for an appointment in town and, you’ve guessed it, the call was for her; it sounded to non-automobilised Malcolm, like some alien gobbledegook. I’d already dropped the phone onto the floor, as I fumbled my way from the Land of Nod, in the attempt to answer it and, they wanted to know where the key was for the locking wheelnuts. Now, where does one start looking for something unknown which should have been in the car in any case?
Tried Helen’s mobile but, it wasn’t switched on ….. P-A-N-I-C …. More P-A-N-I-C, my chest is crushing the breath out of me, I start aching in each untoned muscle of my body, I want to scream! Did the dealer from whom the brand new vehicle was purchased ever supply such an item, which seems a quite essential piece of equipment? When my beloved returned, from town, she had no memory of ever stumbling upon such an item and, that was even after the garage had shown her what it and its container should look like!
Current state of play is that the garage are going to obtain a new set of wheel hubs(?) complete with key and, will break the old ones off on Friday morning, perform the necessary tests befor replacing them. [Perhaps it’s all part of a less than subtle capitalist ploy, whereby one has to pay for unnecessary replacement items because the dealer had omitted to supply a necessary bit of equipment!]
For my beloved, all this sounded warning bells; what would have happened if the car had a flat tyre, there would be no way to remove the wheel, nor was there any way to test / inspect the brakes (the cause of all this kerfuffle in the first place).
The result of this experience; a physically and emotionally S-H-A-T-T-E-R-E-D Malcolm!
These locking nuts may be a security measure but, I can’t help feeling that they bring with them their own dangers. It’s rather like the threat to civil liberties imposed by governments, upon their own citizens, (when their countries are fighting an illegal war against a country that didn’t pose a threat in the first place), in response to a heightened terrorist threat largely of their own devising.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Parting is such dry sorrow
Over the last couple of evenings, my beloved and I bade a lingering farewell to an old friend. It is with a degree of sorrow that this old friend has departed from these premises, never to brighten our glasses again. This companion, who has helped through many a shared imbibing, was Ferdinand Pieroth’s ‘Nussdorfer Herrenberg’, Pfalz, 2001. The grape variety, Muller-Thurgau, is frequently belittled as a mere ‘workhorse’ but, who wants a pedigree racehorse that all too swiftly passes its prime? Although fully earning its description as trocken, memory tells me that the 1998 vintage outshone it in the dryness stakes but, not in all round satisfaction. It’s always a pleasure to find a wine that is both easy drinking and, desirous and deserving of more sustained attention.
With a year or twos aging, the wine attained a remarkable smoothness, by no means monotone on the palate and, a flavour which defied all the clichéd categories into which I am able to sort sundry styles and varieties of grape. It seems strange to extol the virtues of a friend who I am incapable of describing but, fond memories will linger on. One of these days, we’ll be cracking open the first bottle from our 2005 case, an event which I look forward to with a degree of nervous anticipation.
Admittedly, I’ve tasted many a finer, more complex wine from
This is not posted in the hope of receiving any complimentary bottles but, should there be anyone desirous of making such an offer, it would be difficult to decline.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Politics and Selfishness
Yes, we'll take the skilled workers from a country where their skills may be desperately needed! Yes, we have taken the unskilled when it helps us to keep down wages of our lowest paid!
Guardian Unlimited Politics Special Reports Permit scheme to cut flow of east Europeans
Guardian Unlimited Politics Special Reports Permit scheme to cut flow of east Europeans
We Are Such Stuff .. as irreconcilable differences are made of
Cuba, Iraq, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the ‘Big Bang’, evolution, faith and, intra-religious squabbles. What could all these items have in common?
Each of these topics was touched on in my chats over coffee, at ‘Open Church’ this morning, alongside the usual formal niceties and small talk. Oh, how easy it is to find a simple solution to most of the world’s problems but, how lacking is any kind of political will to practise them!
On the one side we have self-centred, greed fuelled ideologies, which provide freedom for those who have the wherewithal and, a graduated scale of misery for numerous others; on the other hand we have those ideological positions upheld only by a degree of repression, partially the result of having to resist external malevolent forces, and yet, against the odds, manage to produce a better quality of universal health-care and education than that proffered by some more affluent neighbouring ‘free’ societies. To be honest, if you’re at the bottom of the heap, it doesn’t help to ‘know’ that one is free, if all that freedom entails is the right to be trampled on, and snubbed, by an uncaring greed-motivated minority (and their many sheep-like minions – the men who like to “rattle their chains to show that they are free”).
*******************************
Yet again, a rambling posting spews forth from what was supposed to be a simple comment on my morning. The intended report would simply have said: “Once again, I managed to kill two birds with one stone. A visit to ‘Open Church’ entailed exercise (in terms of the walk to and from) and socializing (conversation over a cup of coffee). The walk back, after having been sat for fifty plus minutes, seemed to pace itself at about 60% of the speed assumed on my outward journey. Apart from my usual drowsiness after such exercise and, the return (since yesterday evening) of a discomforting numb tingle, from little finger to wrist on my left hand, my general decrepitude casts few shadows on my enjoyment of the day.”
*************************
A further posting today, 'A human voodoo doll once more', can be found on Hirsute Antiquity (Malcolm's blog on My Space). On Mal's Murmurings a new posting 'The Avian Feline Connection' can be found.
Each of these topics was touched on in my chats over coffee, at ‘Open Church’ this morning, alongside the usual formal niceties and small talk. Oh, how easy it is to find a simple solution to most of the world’s problems but, how lacking is any kind of political will to practise them!
On the one side we have self-centred, greed fuelled ideologies, which provide freedom for those who have the wherewithal and, a graduated scale of misery for numerous others; on the other hand we have those ideological positions upheld only by a degree of repression, partially the result of having to resist external malevolent forces, and yet, against the odds, manage to produce a better quality of universal health-care and education than that proffered by some more affluent neighbouring ‘free’ societies. To be honest, if you’re at the bottom of the heap, it doesn’t help to ‘know’ that one is free, if all that freedom entails is the right to be trampled on, and snubbed, by an uncaring greed-motivated minority (and their many sheep-like minions – the men who like to “rattle their chains to show that they are free”).
*******************************
Yet again, a rambling posting spews forth from what was supposed to be a simple comment on my morning. The intended report would simply have said: “Once again, I managed to kill two birds with one stone. A visit to ‘Open Church’ entailed exercise (in terms of the walk to and from) and socializing (conversation over a cup of coffee). The walk back, after having been sat for fifty plus minutes, seemed to pace itself at about 60% of the speed assumed on my outward journey. Apart from my usual drowsiness after such exercise and, the return (since yesterday evening) of a discomforting numb tingle, from little finger to wrist on my left hand, my general decrepitude casts few shadows on my enjoyment of the day.”
*************************
A further posting today, 'A human voodoo doll once more', can be found on Hirsute Antiquity (Malcolm's blog on My Space). On Mal's Murmurings a new posting 'The Avian Feline Connection' can be found.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
It Is - therefore I type!
There have been times in my life when acquaintances have envied my laid-back approach to life; at other times, the pendulum has swung so far the other way that, I’ve been recognized as a sterling example of the stressed-out lifestyle. Alcohol and other substances have played their part in both extremes but, fortunately, *I haven’t become addicted to any of them. The major addiction in my life can be spelt out on the fingers of one hand: H – E – L – E – N!
Now, I don’t know where this little ramble is heading and, to be honest, I don’t really care. It seems like I’ve imposed upon myself a statutory requirement to write three blog posts on 30 August 2006#. I have no cause to be stressed-out, as it’s a self-inflicted statute but, nor can I be too laid-back, otherwise I wouldn’t come up with such stupid conditions.
Today, I contentedly drift in a state of semi-alertness, in the company of my beloved. I tap out words for the simple reason that the laptop exists.
[ * sad admission time – nicotine has its tentacles firmly embedded in mind and body! ]
# today’s other postings can be found here (on Hirsute Antiquity) and here (on Mal’s Murmurings)!
Now, I don’t know where this little ramble is heading and, to be honest, I don’t really care. It seems like I’ve imposed upon myself a statutory requirement to write three blog posts on 30 August 2006#. I have no cause to be stressed-out, as it’s a self-inflicted statute but, nor can I be too laid-back, otherwise I wouldn’t come up with such stupid conditions.
Today, I contentedly drift in a state of semi-alertness, in the company of my beloved. I tap out words for the simple reason that the laptop exists.
[ * sad admission time – nicotine has its tentacles firmly embedded in mind and body! ]
# today’s other postings can be found here (on Hirsute Antiquity) and here (on Mal’s Murmurings)!
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Anticipation Mounts
A relatively inactive day, surfing the web, grabbing the odd snack, spending a little while in the garden, passed remarkably quickly. It seems strange saying ‘relatively inactive’, I even ask myself “relative to what?” OK, I admit it; just a typically inactive day has passed smoothly enough, the only exercise being a little hand-in-handing walk with my beloved after her return from work. There’s always something special about these shared exercise periods!
*****************************
A week today, a friend from my university days, who I’ve not seen for the best part of thirty years, will be coming to stay with us for a couple of nights and, judging by the occasional e-mail he doesn’t seem to have changed much. [“I should say my needs are very small requiring only a] A toilet b] a Cup of Tea c] A good pub or something similar. I could even bring a sleeping bag if required.”]. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who, after a drink or two, could recite copious passages from Jack London’s ‘Call Of The Wild’ verbatim.
I’ve always suspected that the character of Geoffrey in the series ‘Coupling’ could well have been based on our impending visitor, for reasons too uncanny to detail; a lot of people would consider that an insult but, I trust that those who knew NG would treat the comparison with the same spirit of affection as that in which it is proferred!
After all that build up, I just hope that my beloved won’t be disappointed with the resultant visitor.
*****************************
A week today, a friend from my university days, who I’ve not seen for the best part of thirty years, will be coming to stay with us for a couple of nights and, judging by the occasional e-mail he doesn’t seem to have changed much. [“I should say my needs are very small requiring only a] A toilet b] a Cup of Tea c] A good pub or something similar. I could even bring a sleeping bag if required.”]. He’s the only person I’ve ever met who, after a drink or two, could recite copious passages from Jack London’s ‘Call Of The Wild’ verbatim.
I’ve always suspected that the character of Geoffrey in the series ‘Coupling’ could well have been based on our impending visitor, for reasons too uncanny to detail; a lot of people would consider that an insult but, I trust that those who knew NG would treat the comparison with the same spirit of affection as that in which it is proferred!
After all that build up, I just hope that my beloved won’t be disappointed with the resultant visitor.
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