On Getting my Life Back.

It is twenty four days since the 'op'. A progress report on Life after New Knee. (LANK) a somewhat drug induced post so bear with me, please.

Knee replacement under an epidural is mind bending. The operation itself pain free, it is reminiscent of being on a building site; a lot of banging, hammering, sawing and good humoured workmen going about their business. Seemingly you are a 'honoray workman' for the day and are included in 'banter' around the table. The whole event was somewhat surreal. Though I was not prepared for a surgeon, viewed through my legs hold up in the air a large, bright orange fish which he carefully painted; I reckon it was a large tuna or a small shark. (In fact, as I realised later, it was my 'operational bound', leg which the surgeon was painting with iodine prior to the 'op') At this point a screen was put in place that ruined further viewing of the procedures. Spoilt sports!

Time went quickly, the 'op' was over and I was placed on a small ward housing other patients with similar afflictions. I would love to tell you recovery is pain free; I would be lying! But it does not go on for ever or so I am told! We celebrated my wife's sixty fifth birthday on the ward. (What some men will do to avoid spending money on their wives!)

I have never taken so many drugs in my life. As I speak I am still taking 15-16 tablets a day, including painkillers. The result is I live at times on the fringes of the 'real' world. (One night all our beds were placed upright. Bizarre. a good job we were strapped in! Powerful stuff, morphine and the like. And our house, in Derby has been transported to St Annes. I still check its location  on waking up three weeks later!)

I attended physiotherapy for the first time.. To see so many geriatrics peddling for England puts me to shame. But hopefully I'm getting there. What is it they say, 'No gain without pain'.

By the way, the heart 'problem' created far more interest than the boring old knee. I think the fact that it has been ignored for some considerable has caused other peoples hearts to beat faster. Nobody likes dead patients. Only joking. I'm thinking of giving my body for medical science. Though not yet I hope!

There are, I believe sixteen theatres in this section of the hospital.As far as I know teams of surgeons carried out around forty five knee replacements etc on the day in question. God bless the NHS.    

Ground Control to Major Ken

Back in the world of the semi living. Knee replaced 22nd May. Not nice but necessary. What would we do without hospitals. I thought I was important in life being a teacher. Silly me! We are not in the same league as doctors and nurses.
I have never had so many visitors nor popped so many pills. A major reason being the discovery of heart murmur in the pre-op for the knee surgery.(Seemingly an ongoing problem.)  Evidently life is going to be busy in the near future.
I am walking, only just, with 'arm' crutches but surely it can only get better. Life is definitely precious. We two old fogies certainly think so. Will return shortly when my mind is hopefully clearer. Thank you for all your kind thoughts. I hope those who visit me don't feel neglected. Everyone of my followers is valued and all comments are read. Thanks, I am a lucky man in life.

Life is Never Simple.

    The more observant of my readers may notice that I'm late posting. But as the title suggests, life is never simple.

    My wife and I are of 'senior years' so age and health matters feature highly in our declining years. My wife has had heart related problems for some time, a cause for considerable concern. Not helped when Paulette was examined and discharged by the hospital; the only person not knowing she had been discharged being my wife. Thus many weeks lost and many anxious moments suffered before a new 'opinion' as to the problem was reached. Paulette had a 'stent' fitted this week; hopefully better health beckons for Paulette at long last.

    I attended a 'pre-opp' examination for a knee replacement surgery recently. Only to find a mysterious heart murmur is making surgery a possible problem.

Two hospital visits later, intense examination of my heart completed and I should, I say should be at the hospital entrance at seven on the morning of the 21st of May. complete with nightshirt and slippers. (Will it be dark at such an ungodly hour?)

    Again it has been\still is a very fraught time. In all the coming and going it is impossible to gauge the state of the NHS. Paperwork, administration seems to be 'the be-all and end-all'. And I used to think computers would be the answer to all our problems! Nevertheless most of the people experienced at all stages have been magnificent and you can only judge at the end of the day by personal experience. (I am wary of scurrilous newspapers like the Express and the Mail whose personal agendas are unhelpful, political and often downright dangerous.)

    At times I have thought NHS stood for No Hope Sadly. Truth told we are lucky to have the NHS. I got the impression it is stretched beyond belief, for many, many reasons but boy oh boy. without it we are nothing. I have followers from all parts of the globe. I am all too aware not all are as lucky as we in this underrated isle.
    There is no doubt I personally would be long since gone if it were not for a nationalised health service, warts and all. I had a life saving operation when hours old and have continued in like manner ever since. Strangely enough, one thing I've never had is warts! My posting is likely to be erratic in future months. (I am also due another knee replacement in September.) Life is never easy and seldom mundane. If I'm more grumpy than usual, forgive me. Here's to a better summer and if not, cheer up, it will soon be Christmasf

Shut My Eyes, What Do I See.

    I was a full time secondary school teacher for around seventeen years; that's well over six thousand days. The vast majority of the time pleasant enough but not memorable to any degree. 

    I honestly believe all we ever experience is stored in our brains while ever we are 'alive'. The vast majority is so fleeting, unimportant that it registers for the shortest of moments; but its still there, I'm sure. I find myself recalling experiences from school on occasion.  I'm not sure why, something unknown acts as a trigger; not always welcome. 

    At the school were over two thousand pupils and in excess of one hundred teachers. I have experienced many strange things, including two occasions where teachers were actually arrested on the premises. Obviously unusual occurrences, most days are repetitive, mundane, almost boring; teachers in the main are ordinary in the extreme, having the same highs and lows, expectations, problems as anyone else.

    Don was a teacher fairly new to the school, taught Business Studies, aged around thirty two, married with children. I was a union rep so made a point of talking to anyone fairly new to the school. In Don's case it usually took the form of commiserating when he had to cover for absent colleagues, a bone of contention with all teachers. A pleasant, quiet man similar in so many ways to many of the other staff at this unexceptional establishment.

    On one particular day Don travelled into school as normal. An ordinary day, seemingly. He finished at the normal time, got into his car and travelled home; a distance I suppose of around fifteen miles. (Next day nobody commented as to Don's demeanour or behaviour being strange in any way.) 

    Don parked his car, changed into his 'jogging clothes' and went down to the local park. Plus Don carried with him a can he had placed to hand in the garage before he left for work in the morning.

On arrival at the park Don poured the contents of the can over himself and lit a match. The contents were of course petrol. (I am told by a fire officer that death is mercifully swift, by suffocation.)

    I'm not even sure as to why this event from so long ago has replanted itself in my consciousness at this present time.  But it has played on my mind this week several times. I do not wish to dwell on this tragic event. But do you know what baffles me most. If you knew you had planned your 'end' later in the day would you go through the motions of 'normal existence' prior to so horrific an action. How terrible, how sad that none of us realised his torment prior to that bell signalling the end of the school day.

    This week is the traditional May Bank holiday week. Particularly a family time. Enjoy yourself. Particularly those in a position to enjoy the blessings of children and grandchildren. Plus we need to give others a little of our time. We are often blind as to what is happening beyond the end of our noses.  

Round and Round in my Head

It's been a funny week. And not particularly funny ha-ha. I had a pre-op medical to set getting a new knee in motion. Only a problem came to light. My heart seems to have some sort of murmur, irregularity, not evidently present a couple of years ago. Strangely enough my wife has always maintained I stop breathing in my sleep (sleepacchnia). Scary stuff. So what happens next; You tell me!

This getting old malarky is a bit of a drag at times. You spend most of your time visiting doctors, dentists or hospital.  So much to do, so much to remember. Do you have nights where you lie in bed with a million and one things on your mind; I'm not the only one surely. And that leads to even more things going round and round!

I have always, always believed that everything that you've always experienced is still in your mind, right until the day you die. The difficulty is in recalling it, in any meaningful way. It took me years to recall my e-book (A Childhood Revisited) and that only covered fifteen years. I reckon I could do another but I haven't the heart. As an experiment last week I lay in bed and recalled anything that came into my head. The following surfaced:

My motorbike TNU137  1957

Derby County playoff versus WBA at Wembley 2007

Ruby Murray, who I reckon sang down her nose. My first love. 1955 (Softly, Softly)

Mundesley school camp in 1953

Little Miss Muffet junkets. Around 1950

Grannies funeral, the snow howled down at the graveside, just like a scene out of Dickens.  1978

A real football, one up on the rich kids, courtesy of an uncle in Derby.   Around 1951

Arriving on Chesterfield station to a new job, very reminiscent of High Noon.  1965

I started to wonder how much could the mind actually store. Stephen Hawkins reckons it can store 10,000 Oxford Dictionaries. Somewhere else I read it can store one trillion gigabytes of memory. I've studied it a bit but it soon loses me when it starts talking about petabytes and synapses. Some clever devils suggest the brain can grow with how much it NEEDS to grow! Thats a bit convenient, surely!

This all gets a bit deep but its partly an age thing I suspect. It all gets a bit personal when you reach seventy!

So many, many things to ponder. I wonder why we have spells of going round and round and spells of comparative 'sanity'. If I was mad, would I know I was mad or would I need someone to tell me? Here we go again. As Arthur English used to say 'Play the music! Open the cage!

Fame or Infamy

    I'm just an ordinary person who has lived mainly in two places. By coincidence both have been in the news for completely different reasons; both will be immortalised for ever.

I live in Derby, a midlands city that houses Crown Derby pottery, Rolls Royce aero engines and Derby County Football Club. Very much a railway place originally, an industrial city that limps on in hard times. Home of Joseph Wright the painter and few others. A place that from now on will be infamous as the home of the notorious Mick Philpott.

    Mick was well known in Derby. He fathered seventeen children by five different women. He lived with a wife, mistress and eleven children in a council house not far from my house in Derby. He appeared on the Jeremy Kyle Show and in a documentary with Ann Widdicombe. He had plenty of time to do so as he had not worked for many years. He amused himself by playing snooker in an extension to his house, amusing others on a pub kareaoke machine and 'dogging' with his wife and best friend Paul Mosley in and around Derby parks. On occasion he appeared in the media demanding a larger house from the local council and stated in no uncertain terms that 'Britain was going to the dogs.'

    Mick Philpott would still, I imagine, be living the proverbial 'life of Riley' were it not for a tragic, stupid, horrific mistake he made in May 2012. He and his friend Paul Mosley hatched a plan to set fire to his house. He, Philpott was to rush into the house and rescue the six children. He would appear a hero, the council would supply him with a bigger house and his mistress Lisa, who had left the house recently with her five children would be blamed.
    The deed was done, the fire got out of control and the six children in the house perished.                

    In March 2013  the despicable trio were sentenced for manslaughter. (Mairead his wife may not have taken part but was complicent.) Mick Philpott was sentenced to life in prison, Mairead and           Mosley seventeen years.         .

    There is so much more one could say.  Suffice to say Derby will be forever immortalised for the existence of a dangerous, feckless, bullying braggart whose whole existence it would be hard to justify. We in Derby have had months of publicity we could do without. I would be amazed if, irrespective of where you live  in the world, you haven't heard of Mick Philpott. He is, I assure you, not typical of the place.
    I lived in Grantham, Lincolnshire for four years. Nothing much happens in Grantham. They had a railway accident in 1906. They still talk about it! Mind you, both my children were born there; there wasn't too much to do of an evening! Isaac Newton was born just outside. A very clever man indeed but I'll take you a bet. I reckon Mrs Thatcher's fame will eventually outshine that of dear old Isaac.
    There's a statue dedicated to him in the town. There's no statue of Margaret Thatcher in Grantham, yet, but I've no doubt it will come. They don't rush things in Lincolnshire! I used to reckon the Lincolnshire motto was 'Never do today what you can leave 'til tomorrow.'
     Lady Margaret Thatcher died this week, aged eighty seven. Her father, Alfred Roberts kept a grocery store in the town and was also Mayor.     .

    His daughter Margaret took an interest in politics, became an MP and eventually the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Love her or hate her, there has been an outpouring of comment that will no doubt continue for many moons to come.  The Philpotts of this world become infamous; the Thatchers, I will be kind and say, probably famous. The only certainty in life is that we all eventually die and eventually leave some sort of legacy.What memories are you going to leave behind and what is your town or village famous for?

Sod's Law.

    The news has been dominated by the policewomen in Norfolk who tripped over the curb whilst investigating a possible burglary. She claims she injured herself so she is suing the garage owner. Pathetic is the most moderate language that springs to mind. If you want an easy life don't join the police force.

    I wouldn't normally be interested except that it reinforced a theory of mine that the world is ruled, not by a mysterious god on high, but simply by that mysterious force, known as Sod's Law over here and Murphy's Law by our American cousins.

Most of you will know the axiom 'Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.' Its a perfectly NATURAL tendency for things to go wrong wherever possible. Plus things don't just go wrong, they do so at the most annoying moments. (or when you least need it.) There are mathematical formulas for all this. It's all a bit clever for me, but if you are interested, look up NULL HYPOTHESIS; very scientific, very intriguing.

    When I was a small child I 'borrowed' a bike. I was going to take it back, honest! Only I wasn't very good at riding it as I wasn't used to riding one and I fell off. I broke my arm; definitely Sod's Law. I wasn't as big as the other kids. So I tried extra hard to do what the other kids did. I swung from the cricket roller like they did; only I fell off and broke my arm; definitely Sod's Law. When I worked for F W Woolworths we were all young and daft lads together. We sent the empty lift back down with a matchstick in a buttonhole. Only the lift came off its runners and there was no-one in the lift to stop it. One very broken lift and five very scared, hard to find stockroom boys; definitely Sod's Law personified.

    No doubt the policewomen is after a 'payout'. Its a legal situation, involving money, money and more money. But note I mentioned the legal situation, and the law is a funny thing; not 'funny ha ha'.   IF, note IF her lawyer can get Sods Law incorporated, officially into the British Legal System she's laughing. Everything and anything from hence on will be attributed, officially to 'Sod's Law'. Look at the possibilities; look at the potential! (Falling over a curb, no problem, it was bound to be there.) This is the future, remember, you've read it here first. 

    Stick your head outside the door, step outside and wait for something, anything to happen. Life will never be the same again. Hurrah for Sod's Law to be made official; I can't wait.......