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SIGHTING THE END…? May 4, 2024

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I well know that these blogs are sometimes criticised as being overly depressing, but as I’ve always argued, they’re merely – merely! – a consequence of what I read, hear or observe happening in my world, or the wider one we all inhabit. And starting with the latter, well I think we can all agree that it’s in a terrible and dangerous state and on a smaller scale, so is the UK… but for once I’ll park all that.

However I will as promised report on last month’s attempts to abandon my smartphone in favour of a small, very basic Nokia 106 in an effort to curtail my enslavement to digital tyranny and simplify and improve the quality of my life. Which has been a flat-out failure because… well firstly the Nokia takes a full-size SIM card and my smarty-pants Huawei Y6 takes a nano-SIM so swopping from one to the other – which thanks to a YouTube vid – isn’t impossible, but is very fiddly. However after several attempts I was able to start using the Nokia only to find that it doesn’t throw up my list of contacts so to make call or send texts I had to keep referring to my laptop address book, which rather defeated the whole idea unless I started compiling a new one or waiting for people to contact me.

So then I enquired of my provider, EE, if I could buy a full-fat SIM card using my same number to avoid the fiddling and no I couldn’t. But I they would flog me a new SIM with a new number for a princely £17.50 a month – currently I pay £6/month – which also turned me off the idea. So that little experiment hardly got off the ground although I began trying to limit my smartphone use to early morning, lunchtime and early evening in order to give my brain a rest and do other stuff that’s more rewarding and less algorithmically addictive. However…

Appearing erratically though they always have, this may be my last self-obsessed, unapologetically subjective rant for a long time if not ever, and here’s why: Although by their very nature and with the exception of 15 year-old influencers flogging snake-oil, most bloggers avoid delving into the minutiae of their personal lives, mine has gradually overwhelmed every other, arguably more objective, interesting and meaningful aspect of day-to-day reality.

Some of this has to do with reaching an age when friends and peers are dropping off their perches with increasing frequency and conversations with or about those that aren’t tend to major on medical conditions that twenty, ten or even five years ago wouldn’t even be on our radar. That heightened awareness of our mortality, coupled with the steady reduction in familiar friends and faces is further worsened by the realisation that by choice I have no children or grandchildren, nearby siblings nor – through no lack of trying! – do I have a lover or partner to seek support from, or simple companionship with when I get seriously ill, which is what I am now… and indeed in an unwelcome state of enforced quarantine where I’m lucky if I manage one hoarse, spluttering phone call a day with a bemused well-wisher.

In trying to bring this blog to a close I have tried several times to simply list the sequence of my afflictions, their diagnoses by an overstretched NHS and the physical and mental effects that they’re having on me which, by the way, ironically included missing the funerals of two very dear friends and yet another canal trip I’d been looking forward to for months,  but I’ve abandoned that now as they inevitably read like catalogues of self-pity. Suffice it to say that I am unable to rise above it to the point where I can think, much less write, about anything else.

So I won’t and if nothing else dear reader, you’ll thus be spared my biased, sketchily informed blather about the worst excesses of this wretched world we’re living in.

HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE… OR MAYBE NOT April 4, 2024

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I ended Tuesday’s scrawl by announcing that in an effort to staunch the screentime addiction that bedevils so many of us, I’m about to forswear my smartphone in favour of a simple ‘burner’ device. What I didn’t address in that bald, if not bold proclamation were some of the underlying reasons for such a dependence.

Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO, is one of the more obvious ones, and one that the software designers fervently focus on when designing and updating social media and indeed almost all smartphone applications. Whether it’s keeping up with friends and family in a way that required more physical effort in the Bad Old Days (BOD), or being tempted to buy or do things that we’d otherwise have to work at or for, FOMO tethers us to our smartphones for hours on end, which I also touched on previously.

Paradoxically of course, FOMO is also a big cause of the anxiety epidemic, and its attendant loneliness, that I referred to in Tuesday’s blog.

But as observed in the first of a new series, ‘Helen Lewis Has Left The Chat’, on Radio 4 this week, services like WhatsApp and SnapChat enable a simple slip of the digital tongue to trigger misunderstandings which then quickly become toxic and often cause great mental and emotional distress, especially when used within dedicated groups, because recipients just can’t stop themselves jerking their knees in a way that they probably wouldn’t face to face. Which is exacerbated by the weird – wired? – sense of entitlement and self-importance texting seems to induce.

Now humans weren’t evolved or designed to use electronics, especially use them for absurd amounts of time every day, and ironically, it’s the short attention spans we’ve become habituated to courtesy of excessive screentime that are actually part of the smartphone’s allure: we know subconsciously that if we are bored or sated by an item we’ve read or watched, a mere swipe or click can lead us to something else and so on and so on.

Which is of course why children, whose brains have become developed by and are now wired to expect endless streams of seductive digital information, are experiencing serious and widespread learning difficulties. Which in turn prompts classroom disorder and violence against teachers, sometimes even from outraged parents of little Emily or Otis, who valiantly try to address it. (According to the National Union of Teachers, one in five teachers claim to have been on the receiving end of this). Indeed Education Secretary Gillian Keegan last week announced plans to “minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms”, albeit some three years after her government first called for a ban on phones in schools!

I fear that like so much that plagues our digitally-obsessed society since the BOD – and just wait ‘til Artificial Intelligence really kicks into gear – this may be a case of horses and stable doors, but there is one area where the smartphone, or even just the basic mobile, can prove beneficial. According to Age UK, “…more than 3.3 million people in England over the age of 65 live alone, and more than a million older people say they go over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour or family member.” A whole month!

Yes, people can become socially isolated for a variety of reasons, such as getting older or weaker, no longer being the hub of their family, leaving the workplace, the deaths of spouses and friends, or through disability or illness. But whatever the cause, it’s shockingly easy to be left feeling alone and vulnerable, but for many a mobile phone offers at least a partial solution to that and if their brains haven’t become inured to the digital physiogeny.

I actually have a friend and know of other oldies who, like I’m about to, just use basic mobiles to talk and minimally text family and friends but interestingly, that’s to make arrangements to meet for tea, coffee or a pint, compare notes on a book, t.v. programme or film or hook up for a wider social occasion. In the BOD we used landlines for this, and I’ll admit to being a bit of a luddite who still makes as many on mine as I do on my smartphone.

So for those 3.3 million people the mobile has or could become something of a lifeline. But in case you haven’t got or won’t get one, Age UK has conveniently suggested some antidotes to the loneliness that many of us feel to varying degrees. The list includes: smiling, even if it feels hard; getting involved in local community activities; filling your diary… oh yes, and learning to love computers and keeping in touch by phone!

So I’ll let you know how I get on with my twelve quid Nokia 105…

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NOT FOR SISSIES March 18, 2024

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Possibly due to being relatively incapacitated and with too much time on my hands, blog-wise I’m on a bit of a roll nowadays so here I go again…

The first topic raised when I had a drink with an old friend last Thurs was the number of funerals we’d been to in just the past two months, and a greasy spoon lunch with another the next day quickly echoed that. Which almost inevitably had us all swopping notes on our own heightened sense of mortality and physical ills, the latter prompted by my hobbling around on a crutch and the imminent passing of a very dear old friend, once so sparky and active but now suffering from a terminal brain tumour, who could no longer see and could barely manage to talk to me when I visited earlier that week.

All of which reminded me of Bette Davis’s quote: “Getting old is not for sissies.” But what follows is not an exercise in self-pity but I hope instead a modest dissertation on the realities of ageing, and how to deal with it.

I begin with a metaphor: Our bodies are essentially machines which like the cars and motorbikes I’ve spent a lifetime obsessed with, wear out as they get older. And the more complex they are, the more prone they are to that and breaking down, especially if poorly maintained. Testimony to that is the two cars and five ‘bikes I bought new never broke down before I sold them, but then I rigidly stuck to the manufacturers’ maintenance regimes and in the case of my off-road ‘bikes, applied upgrades and preventative maintenance!

And it’s true that middle class obsessions with defensive body maintenance, as exemplified by gym membership, chugging down ‘health’ supplements, foreswearing tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed foods, taking up yoga, tai-chi and the like are the behaviour of the ‘worried well’ who fret about their mortality. Someone close to me used to playfully chide me as being one of their number, but rather changed their tune when diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening ailment and is now on serious meds for the duration.  And an ex-colleague who’d made a lucrative living catering to the aforementioned neo-hypochondriacs was hospitalised with serious nutritional disorders stemming from their extreme dietary regimen.

But apart from the meds I’m on for high blood pressure and cholesterol, and more recently sciatica, I’ve deliberately avoided overdoing all that, instead relying on long walks, cycling and modest upper body exercises, fairly sensible diet, eschewing roll-ups and limiting boozo the wonder drug to keep my own figurative house in order. Which although it might sound a bit smug, is probably little different to most of my friends, peers and possibly you, dear reader.

However during the course of those aforementioned conversations, which even 20 years ago would likely have been mainly about music, films, parties, jaunts, cars, ‘bikes, aircraft, boats, books and even – gulp – our relationships, instead covered health issues associated with getting bloody older. And as I alluded earlier, after initial pleasantries, so many conversations with friends and peers of my age quickly become litanies of ailments, the plain evidence of bodies and brains wearing out.

So amongst those of us in our 70s, the ones that didn’t die in their 60s or earlier – by the way, that’s seven in my case – many have had (or now need) replacement hips or knees, heart operations, strokes, cancers of various types (25% of the population we’re told!) and other essential remedial work which nevertheless has changed their lives, often not for the better. Others have succumbed to Alzheimer’s or like me, sometimes can’t remember what we went upstairs to get or words we want to put on the page, the names of rock musicians or actors we youthfully revered, or an email we should’ve answered yesterday. Hair loss in both sexes, faded libido and inability to ‘perform’ adequately even if it hasn’t, false teeth or implants for the better off, arthritis, deafness, sight loss, changed facial and body shape, diminished bone density and spatial awareness… the list goes on and on and I don’t believe that anyone in their 70s does not know someone who hasn’t experienced such things.

However even if we reluctantly accept that some of the above are inevitable as we wear out, and that death will eventually come and hopefully quickly and painlessly, there’s still much to cherish which trying to maintain a positive attitude is essential to. Okay, that’s sometimes not easy, especially for those living alone without anyone to cheer, reassure or care about, if not in extremis, for them.

And in my opinion this life-enhancing –­ if not life-saving! – positivity means keeping your brain and body working as best you can without succumbing to hypochondria, fitness addiction or as with some mega-rich loonies, cryogenics and syphoning off and transfusing your children’s blood! And that in turn could embrace using your time for fun, travel and adventure and whatever that means to you – but spare me cruise ships – plunging yourself into hobbies new or old, chatting with and visiting friends, reading, learning and doing more than just slopping in front of t.v. And if your career is over, volunteering for things that make others, and maybe you, feel good but not, dear gawd, that requires polarising social media.

Oh, and to return to where I started, piloting beautiful, exquisitely engineered and powerful machines at high speed into the sunset high on, well if not drugs these days, adrenalin… which is at least one thing that age cannot wither!

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ON OUR LAST LEGS March 3, 2024

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Further to last week’s sciatica-focused outburst and morbidly curious, I revisited posts I made when I was last incapacitated in the summer of 2022 – in that case following a minor ‘bike accident – and noticed a couple of similarities which will inform this one. Firstly:

“My much bewailed singleton (or cantankerous old bugger) status means that a few kind neighbours are now regularly prevailed upon to help me out, some even cooking the odd meal as standing in the kitchen for prolonged periods is awkward and painful.”

Of course I’m hugely grateful for such ministrations again now, but still living alone I’m even more embarrassed than usual to ask for help in ameliorating and coping with my enforced isolation. And “cantankerous old bugger” was a hopefully amusing self-deprecation of the sort familiar to my long-suffering reader but I mention this here for its relevance to another line from that August 2rd 2022 blog, namely:

“…the upside – if you can call it that – of all this (my inability to move around much), is that is has allowed me more time for reading and binge-watching films and streamed t.v. and, of course, thinking.”

But the recreational activities prescribed by my current incapacitation are now informed by the need to arrange myself physically in such a way that the leg pain, often extreme, is minimised which means lying prone, standing up or sitting in a straight-backed chair, i.e. less t.v. and more reading. As for the “thinking”, well last time that augured more than the usual angry blogs about the State Of Things, whilst now it’s more about my own place in the world, a world that has become dominated by the state of U.K. healthcare which I am inescapably dependent on or arguably, a victim of.

Leaving aside “my own place in the world” which I’ve regularly wittered on about over the years, last week my firsthand experiences of hospital and local GP ‘care’ (sic) bemoaned an NHS in crisis and the dreadful lack of joined-up management between Welsh and English health services which an article in yesterday’s (March  2nd) Times Magazine threw into grim perspective. Titled ‘The NHS Is Like A Warzone’ it painted an alarming picture of worn-out staff, often in tears at the end of lengthy shifts and exiting the profession in droves, as well as run-down facilities and shortages, some I’d recently experienced myself. And my friend Frank’s recent experiences when requiring urgent cardio-vascular surgery, as he recalled in a post-blog comment, provided an even more serious critique.

The original and admirable Bevan-ite slogan ‘Free at the point of delivery’ in principle remains. Yet with so many NHS services outsourced to profit-motivated companies and the inexorable rise in demand, some of it via the national obesity epidemic which our government refuses address so’s not to upset Big Food, I genuinely fear that in order to stay healthy, get treated for and recover from ailments and live to a ripe old age with dignity and security is now nigh impossible.

Of course there are exceptions – notably cancer treatment if it’s diagnosed early enough – but for many the only route to healthcare more widely is to go private and this, too, I’m now being forced to take. Since this wretched sciatica kicked off, I’ve spent hundreds of pounds on physiotherapists and osteopaths who from a position of ignorance I had to research myself, if to little or no avail, and I was talking to John, another fellow sufferer, albeit whose sciatica is the consequence of an underlying malady who has spent even more, and another friend, Kate, who some years ago outlaid many thousands and ended up in Harley Street for the steroid injection which almost overnight solved her problem.

And at an appointment with a largely disinterested nurse at my local surgery – there was over a fortnight’s wait to see who I once regarded at ‘my’ doctor – I learnt that there’s another fortnight’s wait to see an NHS physio who in any case wouldn’t manipulate my spine to try and free the offending trapped nerve but would instead refer me elsewhere!!! So it’s back (sic) to research and badgering previously afflicted friends for recommendations to privateers, ideally chiropractors who are adept at clicking vertebrae rather than varying types of massage… and laying on of hands for heaven’s sake. (The local listings magazine which I contribute to and indeed help distribute, though obviously if guiltily not this month, includes pages of ‘Complimentary Medicine’ purveyors most of whom seem unqualified except by trade bodies which provide medically irrelevant initials after their names, and who seemingly pander only to the well-heeled, worried well).

So where this leaves me is that despite the industrial-strength painkillers perhaps masking any tangible signs of recovery, I’m hopeful that I will eventually return to a life once lived, even though that may be a life without long, spine-pressuring car journeys and/or a reliance on the state to look after me when I can’t or I fall ill. Depressing? Yes, at least for now. But as I wrote last week, it further enhances my admiration for those worse off than me medically… and financially. Oh, and with lots more thinking time available, I’m limbering up for future tirades which hopefully won’t be about the NHS.

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PAIN IN THE BUM… AND BEYOND February 27, 2024

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It began with a brief trip to London, the first for ages by car via a friend’s funeral in Hereford but ended… well it hasn’t actually ended but 13 days later I am about to attempt to drive back to Wales primarily, and ironically, to attend another dear friend’s funeral.

‘Attempt’ because in the interim I have been in near constant pain, the most excruciating I’ve ever experienced and that includes a couple of ‘bike accidents, some horrible backaches and a few migraines… but not, course childbirth! The root cause is sciatica which extends from my left buttock down in my thigh and calf and which for three days made it almost impossible to get out of bed without nearly fainting from the searing agony and obliged the dear friend I am staying with, happily Jenny is an ex-nurse, to fold me into an Uber and take me to Homerton Hospital A&E. And I’m telling you this not out of self-pity – heaven forfend! – but to pass on my firsthand experience of an NHS in terminal decline, mainly due to government mismanagement and inadequate funding.

In fact on a Sunday afternoon, after triaging by a polite but clearly weary nurse, I had to wait ‘only’ three hours to be seen… not by a doctor but a prescribing nurse who without bothering with a physical examination or X-ray, identified the sciatica for what it obviously was and gave me some serious painkillers but not the strong anti-inflammatories he said I needed, “Because we’ve run out”!!! He said I should get my GP to issue a prescription and forward it to chemist in London but when I rang my GP I was told that being in Wales, it was illegal to do do that to a chemist in England!!!  And the only way around this was to go back to Homerton and ask them to make out a scrip for a London chemist which despite further almost intolerable Uber rides, we then did the next day.

I should now add that I’d had mild sciatica for some three weeks before I left Wales which was bearable apart from sitting down and getting up, and I twice visited an osteopath there but as well as his un-advertised Reiki technique, which is frankly medical mumbo-jumbo, he made damn all difference, except of course to my wallet.  And the A&E medic, and my personal Florence Nightingale, told me that the four hour car journey here greatly exacerbated the condition during which I should’ve stopped every 30–45 mins to relieve the nerves trapped in my spine that were causing it. She also sternly told me a physio rather than an osteo was what I need but guess what, even the physios at the hospital I’d attended, and even the ones who worked privately out-of-hours, couldn’t see me for some three weeks!

And it gets worse, or even madder. By the following Saturday, I’d run out of the meds I’d got from A&E and was advised that there was now a 5 – 7 hour wait at A&E because of the current five day junior doctor’s strike, so going back for more was hardly an option at a seriously overburdened hospital. Another desperate call to my Welsh GP surgery elicited the fact that they’d have to get my records from the Homerton – which unsurprisingly they couldn’t – before they’d issue a repeat scrip which of course could only be honoured in Wales, and anyway I’d have to nominate a friend to collect and post it to me in London. So at the time of writing I now have a physical appointment booked there just prior to the funeral… always assuming I can manage the drive home.

Quite apart from my empirical and yes, hyper-critical encounters with an ailing, disjointed and underfunded NHS that’s left me still floundering in severe discomfort and pain, this all brought home how ghastly it must be for people who live in constant suffering with arthritis, osteoporosis or the like, to whom I’m now in massive awe of. And as we’re all getting older and thus prone to conditions that incapacitate, it is, I’m afraid, only going to get worse, as my admiration for them gets greater.

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