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Where the fuck's reverse?
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Factory Surgeons
I have started to feel that I am losing my edge writing this blog
I started it at the same time as I started as a cabbie in 05
And throughout that period
I have ridden along on a wave of random angst
And my own eventual demise
Though Spencer the cabbie will be back
Because although I don't think cabbies are born
I do think cabbie types are
And I am definitely one
So in the meantime I will have to stay sharp
Today I was feeling sharp enough
And was down at the hospital again
This time for the pre-admission clinic
Basically a little chat with a couple of nurses
About what is going to happen to me
And what I have to do to help everything along
They unrolled my fate in detail
And like all the other times
I reach a point
Whereby before I was bounding along slightly adrift
As if this is all happening to someone else
They say something
That galvanises the world around me
Making it hard and bright and more real
I can feel my breath and my presence
And know that it is happening to me
They had reached a point where they described the night before
How the nurses will help me shave various parts of my body
It felt like the precursor to an execution
Then they held me there with a clear rendition of the aftermath
The routine that will face me once I re-awaken
There followed more samples and tests
Then they answered questions
Ones that formed during doctor and surgeon sessions
But I never asked because of the intensity and brevity of the meetings
This was the last hospital visit before the big push
I left the nurses and went to the hospital restaurant
And helped myself to a big pile of cheap pasta
Whilst reading Stone Junction
It was very hot outside
I ambled along in the hot sunshine
Reaching the corner of my road
Breathing in the lovely baked atmosphere of the Italian restaurant
And there was a sight that most irritated me
Part of the “Which Italian restaurant has the biggest peppermill contest”
A waiter dispensing pepper with a mill the size of a fucking lighthouse
I would be sorely tempted to tell him to fuck off
I can put my own pepper on if need be
Just another excuse to bother you
Keep an eye you
Is everything ok sir?
Oh look
Sitting there at one of the tables was my heart surgeon
Mr Cohen
Still wearing his blue blazer
I returned home
Made a cup of tea
And started reading the booklet from the hospital
Towards the back was an introduction to the surgeons
There were four of them
At this I was shocked
Four operations a day...four surgeons
So that means that they often do two a day each
With the amount of people filing through that hospital
It just looked like a top level factory job
Maybe even some great minds need deeply repetitive routine
Maybe it's because I abhor routines
I sat back and recalled one of my early misadventures
A factory job at a large caravan fabricator
I had a menial job of cutting away plastic profile
To make way for wooden coving
I used to watch the gang behind me
They were called 'Furnies'
Short for furniture joiners
They had such an air of importance
When in fact...compared to other carpenters
They had become craftless robots
Their skill and memory eroded by the bish bash bosh of the assembly line
By local standards of the time they earned lots of money
A man on that line could afford to buy a Porsche
Yet when he came to renew his car
He turned up in the latest top of the range Ford Orion
There was just no style to the factory man
I wandered around in the empty house for a while wondering what to do
Wondering what I felt like doing
I have been off work now for over a month
And my twisted daily grimace has relented
I can breath and think
I returned to the computer
And continued to edit my way through a bunch of albums I had downloaded
A collection of Brazilian blues
I had thought when I first downloaded this stuff that somewhere in the universe
Musical waves would cross paths
And Samba and Rumba and Bossa Nova would change direction and tickle their way across the blues scale
I was right and unearthed a few gems
But it was like trying to find diamonds in the pennines
It was heavy going
As I listened...a gradual confirmation formed
The Portuguese language is alien to human music
It's hard to bear
The words are rough and angular
And lack rhythm and poetry
A forced jarring grind
Half an hour was the most I could do
Before I gave up and went to the toilet
"Good Lord!"
Lying in the bottom of the pan was an enormous turd...unflushed
It could only belong to my 7 year old son
35 to 40mm in diameter...disappearing around the bend
How the hell does a boy of his frame produce such a thing?
If only I could produce such a thing myself
I flushed but the big intruder hung on
Well I wasn't going to fight him
Maybe it'll be gone the next time I visit
I entered the hallway and yawned
I couldn't take any more Portuguese shouting
Time for my afternoon nap
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Winners
With a lack of information as to my true condition
I have to stick with taking it easy as much as possible
This has already proved tricky with Junior being off school for the summer holidays
Can we go play football dad?
Can we go on the trampoline dad?
And a whole series of can we's
That to me are can't we's
Yesterday I pulled off a stroke of genius
Though some will think
Oh my god what is he doing?
It's Chav training
I used his interest in drawing and colouring in
To lure him in to Horse Racing
Yesterday was Glorious Goodwood
And for each race we had to select a horse
Then draw and colour the outfit
Before thrilling to the encounter itself
It was a most enjoyable afternoon
And he was overjoyed to get the winner in the main race "Yeats"
It is odd though when you think of those people that would think it bad
Because in the wealthier classes
They think nothing of introducing the kids to horse racing and gambling
After the main race they interviewed a young kid of 10 on one of the walkabouts
He was dressed in a suit and was part of a kids racing club
He had been there loads of times
Horse racing is a great way to apply maths
In fact there are few better
It also requires study of statistics and decision making
Very dynamic in my opinion
A woman in the park asked me if I had noticed the recession
I said I had not....not mentioning being suspended
But in any case it needed pointing out
Cabs...though thought to be an economic barometer...are not really that accurate
Cabbies think that they are affected but it is mostly in their minds
For instance Saturdays started becoming more sparse
But that was because the cabbies thought there was a recession
So more of them came out than would usually on a Saturday
If you look at the most popular types of cab fare
It will remain unaffected for the most part
1. People who can't get about because of impediments in walking and getting up hills
2. People who need to get their shopping home and have no car
3. Train and Bus passengers leaving town with big baggage
4. People who are in a rush (most people these days) or too late for a bus to be any good
5. People who have just got to town (tourists) and don't know their way around
6. Sex in the city types who would never get on a smelly slow bus
7. The plum lazy
These make up most of the fares
And have hardly diminished in this perceived recession
I suggested she ask a florist
We then discussed 'that' record shopping statistic
I think it was for march or april...can't remember exactly
Which caused the Bank of England to threaten to put up interest rates if folk didn't curb this habit
Are the B of E guiding us into a recession?
One that they can control to some degree?
Rather than one that spirals like dust devil?
One thing that I have not heard mentioned
Is that when it comes to people spending as opposed to saving
Almost two generations have passed since people had good savings habits
Folks can't remember how to save
Do you ever hear people talking about their savings these days?
Even people I know who are on good money
Have no savings
Just spendings
As the summer (notionally only) kicks in
And I get used to junior being at home
I will inevitably be thinking all the time
Of how to keep him occupied
Because he is a whirring dynamo
So it was good to stumble on an old childhood favourite of mine
Tin Tin
The adventures of
I downloaded the whole lot
21 episodes
Doesn't sound like much
But I was quite surprised to find each episode lasting 40 minutes
Virtually a mini film in kids terms
But a wry little laugh to myself at how times have changed
At the time Tin Tin was one the kiddie brands of the day
But I can see why they are not bringing these back for a replay
It's high adventure
Guns...lots of them
Dead people...murders
Kidnapping
In one episode alone
There was guns kidnapping drug trafficking
And a Sea Captain who had a bad drink problem
Junior loves em
He's already half way through a second run
They don't make em like this any more
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Slight Retrospective
These last few days have seen an improvement of the mind
For the last few I have woken up normal
Instead of with a depressive hangover
I am enjoying the time off
And my mind slowly clearing
I can't go back to full swing of taxi driving
Because time off has allowed me to concoct other plans
But I fully intend to keep my badge
I like taxi driving
I do
It's a marmite type job
And I am of the 'I like it' type
I have given it some thought
And it is a combination of unknowns and challenges
Most jobs are known and without good degree of challenge
One would climb into the cab at the start of the day
Not knowing how it was going to pan out
You need good tactics and good decisions to earn the money
And to apply these you need to maintain clear concentration
As you tire
The tactics lapse and the decisive mistakes are made
Each ride the mind would rattle through routes
Interpret the punters needs
Consider road conditions and traffic
That were constantly being evaluated throughout the day
As the whole scene moved in an ever changing flux
New problems were always emerging
Pressing on me to decide what to do with them
It is the most mentally wearing job I have ever done
It was truly a bottomless pit
And I had definitely become captive to its madness
During my wembly visit
Where I made a pretty good unawares effort to kill myself
The host of the party that I went to was bending my ear
For me to help her brother out
In getting started with taxi driving in Brighton
I told her that it would take him some time to get a grip of it
But that I would do my best to help him out
He called me two days after I had had my license suspended
And with a bar like bend of irony
He not only had my best tactics at his disposal
He also had my cab
Having bumped into my former cabmaster quite by chance
As he was overheard asking a question outside the office
It all had a feeling of roundedness and tied ends
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Mister Doctor
This week I finally came out of no mans land
Of not knowing my situation with the hospital
I had an appointment with a Mr Cohen
I wasn't to know that heart surgeons don't use the prefix Dr
But a heart surgeon he was
With dark jaunty wavy hair
And a dark blue Oxfordian blazer
He cut to the chase pretty quickly
The only thing for me was heart surgery
In particular...a triple heart bypass
Despite the fact that I sort of expected this
It was sober and numb
Because it was a Mr not a Dr
I was at a crucial point
And I arrived without any expectation
I had to make a decision...right there
Whilst I was in no mans land for the last three weeks
I did a lot of reading
Trying to find if there was any other way...than this
I came across Chelation Therapy
It is a chemical called EDTA
That collects heavy metal from the blood and takes them out via the kidneys
It also reputedly breaks down calcified plaque
It is popular in the States taken in oral form or at clinics intravenously
I knew that I would need more evidence before I could confront my doctor with this
So I searched intensively
I eventually uncovered a large clinical trial
$30 million worth over five years
I dashed off to see a friend of mine who is a scientist with cancer research
She checked it out
And told me that it was at the end of the third stage
Which means that it had been proved effective
And that the side effects were acceptable
She also knew all about EDTA and confirmed the concept of it's use
Now armed with this new information
I had a dilemma
This proof didn't really help me
Because the only avenue open to me
Would be to pop over to America
Once the clinics had assimilated the results
But how long would this take?
And with no way of earning any extra money
How would I pay for it?
Then with further investigation I discovered that the whole thing was politically dubious
Oh the joys of the internet
Oh the joys of American medical politics
I mentioned the therapy to the surgeon
In a kind of weak attempt at avoiding the inevitable
My words kind of fell out of my mouth and rolled under the table
And I shook hands on a mega surgery deal
He said he was going to put me on the urgent list
Which means within the month
Each subsequent person I met along the medical chain that afternoon reminded me
That I was (shock) only 42
And there is not one budding Nancy Drew
Willing to delve into the mystery of how I got into this mess
Although I have a very positive outlook on these affairs
They will give me a fresh start
And a good foundation
It is having a depressing affect on my unconscious mind
For when I sleep
I seem to be aware of all of this
And it is playing out in strange vivid concepts
In epic performances
I can get up in the middle of the night for a piss
And say to myself
Right that's it Spence...quieten the mind...be still...rest
But the epic will continue from pretty much where I left it
And I awake worn and tired
With that buffer of insulating sweet buzziness that one associates with depressive weakness
And now since the school holidays have started
I am drawn from bed by Junior (6)
To play monopoly
By the time I sit down with the cuppa
He has already taken his first go
The game is made easier by the introduction of a new rule
To help it flow for a six year old
The Affordable Housing Rule
When you land on your own property
You get allocated a council house
The board soon fills up with housing
And one of us will topple
And by this time I will feel quite normal again
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20six stats
During the first months of this blog
I noticed with not a little trepidation
A cabby over in the States
Facing the sack over something that he blogged
Sorry no
Getting the sack and losing his licence
That was what I recall happening
He had hurled a bit of one sided criticism at a member of the public
And somehow they had winkled him out
Maybe he wasn't wearing a mask
I sat back in thought at the time
Like most bloggers of any nature I had covered my tracks somewhat anyway
But even now as I look back on that moment
It occured to me that with the right amount of determination
I myself could be unmasked
Back then as I sat in thought
I decided to put a blank counter button into the margin
So I could keep an eye on who was visiting
That being...if a base of Brighton readers should emerge
Then I would be aware of it
And be on my guard
One may think...but he's a hypocrit
He has a Brighton Bloggers button right next to it
And so I have
But it's one way
I am not a member
One can't read this page from that end
Was I being paranoid?..Too careful?
I couldn't be
The authorities round here take complaints quite seriously
And they will at least black mark you for a later date
You really have to behave yourself in this job
But all this is leading me somewhere else entirely
Something that happened a few weeks back
I went onto my page on 20six...to make a new entry
And noticed
Number of visitors was over 250
This was a surprise
I have noticed over the years
That most of the popular bloggers have a good degree of interaction going on
Which due to time is something I haven't been able to do
My visitors since the platform changed have been quite low
I went back to the particular blog that had attracted this mob
Thinking that I must have been heavily googled on some key word
But there was nothing unusual in that sense going on
Later on in the week I was rolling down the most read blogs list
Having now more time on my hands in recent times
I was starting to have a nose around a bit and join in a bit more
And lo...I stumbled upon myself in there up in the top ten
I went back and checked
Curious at how many visitors one needed to get up there
But it was only 70 odd
In the days after this I noticed the figures varied wildly
As my name slid up and down the top one hundred
It didn't make sense
So I decided to blow the dust off that counter button
To see who all these visitors were
And surprise surprise
It completely disagreed with the 20six statistics
It said that I had 8 visitors that day
Over the next few days I kept a check on it
The counter button is pretty reliable and eloborate
And sure enough
If somebody left a comment
They would be there in the detailed visitor information
I couldn't help but observe what was going on at the top of this list
I would read the top few
But I felt something fishy was going on
Maybe I'm just a daft old cab driver who doesn't get it
Who doesn't get why 'Falkanette' was number one
I read through it and at first thought that I couldn't understand it
Then on stepping back a bit
I thought no...this is gobbledygook
It looks to me like it's been written foreign and put through a net translator
It sits on the most basic template
And has existed for only a month
I used to puzzle away at why that fathead the 'Carlisle Cock' used to be so read on the old platform
But it is no puzzle compared to todays list
And lo...as I look today
It has turned into a small invasion
What is the point?
How is it done?
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Man for New Seasons
I've now been off work for nearly two weeks
Still no letter
I have slowly realised what a mind trap I was in
Working to that intensity
Is something you should do for a war effort
I have only just stopped behaving like a fly
It explains my irritability when I take a holiday
Go on holiday for a fortnight
And I take about ten days to come down from my job
And seeing as I never take as much as two weeks off in one go
I just don't get a relaxing holiday....ever
Being sick was going to be my only chance of a break
As my mind has cleared I have started to notice things
For instance our recycling bins
Which are out the out the front
Are packed with carrier bags that the dustmen won't take
I recall Mrs Dial putting a notice in the hall some months ago
Asking the neighbours to stop it
I took out a bin liner to try and dispose of them
But it got out of hand
It was like a massive string of magicians hankies
There were thousands of them
I thought I was going to vanish
Like the man in the swirling newspapers in 'Brazil'
So I battled with all my strength to force them back into the box
Instead I selected the two newest boxes with the bestest lids
And took them round the back
I don't like bothering the neighbours with 'issues'
If I can get around it I will
Now my last remaining addictions have gone
Under the surgeons orders of impending death
A more benign one has crept under my radar
Digestive biscuits...dunked in tea
I was buying too many small packets
So to save money I bought a twin tower
Still McVities of course
But was quite surprised to discover
That the biscuits in the over large packs are not the same
They are a different...harder grade
And took me a few days to accept them
Also the word 'lesbian' reminds me of 'biscuit'
I don't know why
"Would you like a lesbian with your tea Vicar?"
I have also noticed that the days are still going just as fast
Even though I am in rest mode
If I am to get the most out of this break
I must figure out how to slow it down
As I was washing the pots
Staring out the window
There was something else
Engraved into me by passengers constantly going on about the weather
The ones who think taxi drivers are weathermen
A pattern of weather seems to have settled in over the the last six or seven years
I don't think that the old seasons are relevant anymore
Here are the new ones
Warm Season (not hot) from May to July
Wet Season from July to late August
Autumn from late August to somewhere in January
Sprinter from somewhere in January to May
We figured that the planting information for vegetables is completely defunct
You can plant stuff whenever you want
There are no extremes anymore
Not for any length of time
It has all become bland
Like the colour of peoples cars and clothing
Like the correctness of their speech
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Bankrupto
Yesterday as an added little treat
To my never ending wave of complications
I had to visit the county courts
To make myself bankrupt
Armed with a 105 sheets of paperwork
And a book to read
I entered the waiting room
There were three other bankruptees present
I sat down and opened my book
As I did so the two to my left sparked up a conversation
With each other...not with me
It was an exchange list of credit misdemeanours
Really boring unintelligent observations
Please...fucking shut up
I can't concentrate on my book
After several forced attempts
My mind landed on my book
And I managed to shut the oinks out for a while
Half an hour later I was called to a room by a young man
He went through the paperwork
And passed things back for me to sign
During one of the signings I had to shuffle through a number of pages
I stopped
There occupying a whole half a page
Was a drawing in bright orange crayon
Of a flying man in a mac
I laughed and turned it round to show the clerk
"Junior must have drawn on this and put it back in the printer tray"
He laughed
And then said that it would be great if all the reasons for bankruptcy were presented as a cartoon picture board
Yeah
This man invested all his money in a magic flying mac company
But it didn't quite come off
I went downstairs and coughed up £500
Then back up to wait in another room
It was all over with a lot quicker than I thought
The Judge didn't want to see me
He just sign the papers in my absence
And I was told I could go
Hey hey....Soy Bankrupto
Or is it Estoy Bankrupto?
I returned home
And spent the afternoon watching 'The Ghost and Mrs Muir'
An old B+W movie with Rex Harrison
I love old black and whites
They are just perfect for afternoons
I woke up on the couch at around 4 o clock
I got up and consulted my new bus timetable book
My new travel bible for my new life as a pedestrian
There was a small matter of a doctors appointment
A week had passed since the hospital do
So I thought I better go and see the old boy and give him a bit of a progress prod
I got on the bus but was beaten to my chosen seat by a woman
So I sat in the middle at the back
Then the woman starts to chat loudly with another woman
About playing golf in the rain
And about summer colds being worse than winter ones
Then another woman got on and sat opposite
She knew the man next to me
And they fired up some vintage small talk
So small that my memory can't see it to relate it back
What the fuck is the matter with all these people?
Buses used to be full of people sitting in silence
Now they are all chatting to each other
I can't concentrate on my book
I had to move to the middle of the bus
So I could hear myself read
My doctor is old ex hippie
Quite charming
He ushered me in
Then mentioned he had heard a rumour of a heart operation
I thought he was going to say Dr Fu or Dr Holmberg
But no...he said...Mrs Lloyd
It was a taxi rumour...one started by myself
Mrs Lloyd is the wife of my ex-taxi owner
I forgot that she worked for a GP organisation
I waved it away and told The Doc my interpretation of the hospital saga
He still hadn't received any word of it yet
When I mention right side completely jammed
He sat forward...eyes wide
He inquired about chest pains
So I told him about the other day
He became quite excited at this
And started tapping about on his computer
Then he said that if I ever get another standing chest pain again
I need to ring 999
That spray that you used is to help relief from a mobile chest pain
Like walking up the stairs
Getting them while standing still can mean big trouble
Soon he was on the phone to the registrar in the cardiac department
They discussed my case at length
In between we discussed the topic of cholesterol
I was trying to kick start some kind of investigation into how I came to be in this situation
I asked how long a man can survive with a cholesterol level of ten
He didn't know
I would have to speak to a clinical pathologist about such things
And it would take months to get to speak to one of them
Bloody hell...just a simple short question...how long?
These specialists are like deities
You've got to make offerings at their temple for months before they will listen to your prayers
Then I threw in a clue that I had recalled
In 2000 I had a Toxic Erythema
A huge breakout of boils everywhere but on my head
The specialist at the time said it was liver related
Doctor looked interested
And looked it up on the history
At last possible progress
Aha...he said...Yeah
It says here you contracted it from swimming in a volcanic pool
What?...a volcanic pool?
I've never been near a volcanic pool
“What are you talking about?”
“That's what it says here...I'm not making it up”
I gave up that avenue..he always has that ability to throw me with the bizarre
I am not going to venture down that avenue until all this other nonsense is fixed
Once this is settled I will raise a mental army and campaign tirelessly to get to the bottom of all this
He finished the call to the registrar
They had come to an agreement
That I was a high risk
And that I should be put to the top of the list
It was now likely that I would be on the trolley within the month
He wrote out a prescription for some new drugs
Ones that were going to slow my heart down
I got the tablets from a late chemist
And am now doped
Any thoughts of industry have gone
I am doped
I stare at the telly
I am doped
I am Happy
I am doped
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