Goodness Gracious Great Balls Of Ice!

I have been thinking for a little while that perhaps now is the time I should be changing my car. My current chariot is a modest 10 year old Ford fiesta which I bought when it was just two years old. Unfortunately it is now due to have its timing belt replaced which petrol heads among you will know is an expensive job as it is a 'wet belt' so requires a lot of labour to do the work. Obviously given its age, I have to decide if it makes financial sense to fork out lots of cash to ensure it keeps running effectively or trade it in for something newer. It's tricky though as it's been a very efficient and cheap to run motor, giving me much pleasure on longer runs where its smoothness shines through. This is in stark contrast to what went before when I had a small Mazda 2 which although fine for a while, developed an irritating fault after I'd had it about a year where the air-con periodically switched from ' pleasantly warm environment' to 'couldn't care less' and resulted in the freezing of my nether and all other regions, and in winter caused my gentleman's assortment and bric a brac sundries to shiver uncontrollably inside of my designer boxers despite my frantic efforts to keep warm by furiously trying to de-mist the windscreen with a cloth, thus allowing partial vision and ensure the car did not leave the road and plunge into a ditch!

Now I can almost hear the outcry from sections of the readership of Jap-crap but that would I feel be unfair because before this fault materialised the Mazda had been by far the best car I had owned, even if that was not a difficult honour to achieve when compared to the likes of my Fiat Punto mk1 which just about went from nought to sixty in the same day, my other little Ford which never went above 38 mph according to its faulty speedo and countless other wheelie bins I have had the misfortune to drive. I say drive, though for some of them that may be a little misleading, As you can imagine at my age I have been the proud owner of some vehicles which now fall very much into the vintage class. So it was more like being the helmsman aboard a Trans-Atlantic yacht, caught in a force 9 gale. In fact one of my previous vehicles had a steering wheel of such huge dimensions it would have been better suited to an eighteenth century Tea Clipper and it was more than a little disconcerting that despite having 'size' on its side it still failed to have much impact on the aim of the wheels no matter how many heaves I made on it. That and the drivers door window which would periodically shake itself down and in winter expose me to the gale force south-westerlies that this area is renowned for carrying enough rain to irrigate the Sahara desert and allow rice to be grown in the passenger footwell!  A friend of mine, who incidentally wears corduroy trousers, has leather elbow patches on his jacket and earns an obscene amount of money investing other people's money, has recommended a Volvo for my new wheels, an incredibly unhelpful suggestion when the German cars are out of my price range and the Volvo is a pound more! Of course the Volvo has more stars for safety than Alan Sugar has apprentices and looks like a very lovely car but I'm not sure I need 5 airbags to deploy every time I burp at the wheel so for now the search continues, for as long as it takes, through the long and very hot summer and on into the autumn.

No problem though, I've got the perfect car for sweat free motoring, thank heavens for the fiestas air conditioning!

                                                                       jealous or what!

Chirps, There's a b in dumb you dumby!

I like to consider myself one of life's lifelong learners, which I suppose is just as well as I am destined to never accrue enough knowledge to ever feel completely at ease when dealing with all the movers & shakers that I meet on countless occasions while roaming about the Tamar valley happily whistling "the only way is up" so I was pleased recently to acquire some information which should ensure that I never make myself look a complete plank when encountering these people and also will be fairly handy should I ever have to take a cognitive assessment, as it seems fashionable to take these all the time these days if you really want to stand out!

Now, I know what you're thinking, why would someone with a do/1 degree in smugness from Horrabridge university need to take a cognitive assessment? well you just never know when you're going to need to prove your vanity to the world do you? I mean listen up, The president of the United States himself takes these assessments regularly to prove his fitness for office so why wouldn't I take one to show my complete unfitness to write this absolute pile of diaper dung Huh? Only a dumocrat would think it was a bad idea to offer myself up to take an assessment and have my results revealed and scrutinized by all so that great mirth could be had when it is realized that I possess all the cognitive dexterity of the average sideboard!  I'd have to be a complete dumby.................Wouldn't I ? ...................

Anyway, I have contacted a neurological physician , a Dr Killum, to conduct my assessment at his earliest opportunity and look forward in the meantime to ending a few wars, overturning a few red cards and possibly building a ballroom onto the end of my 2 bed house so I can entertain my friends and neighbours before boring everybody shitless on Struth social when my results are revealed as I just know that I am going to ace it! oh yes, they will never have seen a QI so big! They'll want me to give all kind of motivational talks, team talks, pep talks, Ted talks, you name it they'll want me to talk about it! I bet you'all can't wait or contain your excitement can you? Well take a breather as I have booked a holiday for next week, a Luxury cruise on the strait of Hormuz!! It was incredibly cheap, any cheaper and the travel agent would literally be paying me to go! Well I thought I can't go wrong here, I would literally be a right Dumby if I turned it down and you all know that I'm not a Dumby right? .......................

RIGHT??.........

Ah forget it!

Authors note:

•  No democrats were harmed in the making of this post. 
•  Dr Killum would like to point out that despite his unfortunate name he has never actually killed anyone...............deliberately.  
• Calamity cruises report that the Strait of Hormuz Cruise has sold out.

 

Reflections from a bridge.

 Do you have a minute to sit and listen to all of the good things in my life?

Yes, a minute of your time is I fear all that would be needed, no need to fear boredom, as like a leaf caught in a backwater while the mainstream drifts by, I must dance to the repetitive tune of the swirling current that takes me along, yet takes me nowhere.

All I can do is watch life at work all around me, bees fervently gathering from plants at the waters edge in an abstract hover while crows provide backing vocals for a soprano thrush perched on a branch reaching far out above the water.

All are mindful of the inky blue cloud which has appeared on the horizon casting doubt on all this fine day had promised. Later will come the rain and then the flood that will carry me away, but not too far, just downstream until I am trapped in the next slow moving whirlpool, the prisoner who earns remission by doing time for the crime he did not commit.

The future frowns on me with murky features indistinct, or is that a trick of the shimmering water? wish now I could stop the imminent  onslaught from the heavens, perhaps a rainbow?..

No, just a dream from the man seeing reflections from a bridge.

 

Passing Moment

Storm bird fly away,

Rise up and circle, seek a fresh terrain

And I think not of you as friend nor foe,

for like outstretched arms our bond is broke.

A passing moment was all the time we had,

and we ran and we chased and we both learned how to be sad,

but a passing moment is a time that's already been,

like two ships of light that pass in the night unseen.

Now we're headed away from each other 

and life's choppy seas are getting rougher,

but there's no help for a helpless cause,

nor words in a silent pause.

Fate has claimed two more hearts,

like an actor playing both parts.

So storm bird won't you fly away

and don't you look back in yearning,

for there's nothing at all here to be gained

as a passing moment is a moment in time not returning.

Chirps is in a No Pro-state!

                                                                      Image courtesy Landor associates      

I thought it fitting that I should give the readership an update on the Chirps Vincent prostate debacle which was highlighted in the 'Chirps is in a right pro-state' post.

Well, to cut a short story considerably shorter it turned out that my dearly beloved prostate, which had served me very well up until this point and was considered a fine member of my bodily parts and other appendages collection, was deemed to be in a state of somewhat disrepair which required action be taken to rectify this situation as a matter of urgency!.............or did it?

Now that last remark was not designed to be glib or confuse anyone who may be wondering quite naturally, 'well did it or not' but things can seem a little fuzzy when your sat across from a urologist who calmly states that unfortunately some of the biopsies recovered from your prostate contained cancerous cells!

I blinked a couple of times before exhaling and merely said 'Rrrrrright' as if this was in some way a quite expected thing for the doctor to say to me and I was totally fine with it! This though only disguised the fact that my mind was whirring and 'right' was the only word that would come! Fortunately the physician continued explaining that my 'gleason' score was 7 (3-4). This indicated that the cancer was not overly aggressive in nature, though some cells may grow moderately quickly over time, it may be that the slow growth may not give me any symptoms or shorten my life at all if left alone. So you see, possibly no urgent treatment needed at all.

The surgeon gave me three options to consider with regard to what happened next.

The first of these was something called 'Active surveillance' which is basically doing nothing other than monitoring the situation with further regular Psa tests and further imaging if indicated.

The second option was treatment of the cancer which could involve radiotherapy with hormone therapy or the third option which was a removal of the prostate by means of a radical prostatectomy with keyhole surgery using what was referred to as the 'da Vinci' robot which hopefully would be a 'cure' for want of a better word.

Unusually for me I ruled out the first option straight away. The reason being that I am one of life's eternal worriers and I would be totally consumed by thoughts of the cancer growing while I sat at home waiting for my next Psa test!

I gave some thought to option 2 but decided in the end to plump for surgery. I was emboldened by the fact that the surgeon would be using a robot named after one of the great old Italian ancestors of mine, Leonardo da Vincey, a useful painter & decorator whose girlfriend Lisa, was a real moaner apparently.....

Well two months on and the surgeon has confirmed that the cancer appears to have been totally in the prostate itself with 'clear margins' to the edge of the gland and as such I am free of cancer! Woohoo!!! Sadly though I am not clear of urine leakage, one of the known side effects of the surgery and may not be totally continent for some time yet!

Having said that, of course I'm happy with the results so far and looking forward to the spring and summer when I can be out and about much more, confident that I wont be leaving a trail of a slightly damp, claggy odour for the neighbourhood dogs to follow!

I bet you all wanted to know that last bit didn't you?.......

Later gators!