First up my apologies for not posting for ages. I’ve been busy. Sure you understand. From now on, I’m planning to change this thing a bit and stick a post up on the first of the month every month… Format’s changed as well. Suggestions welcome. Also apologies for the lack of dates, progression, structure or meaningful content. This month's offering is a bit short on value, I'll try and remedy this next month.


Start up with something that’s wide open to misinterpretation, not that I care. Have a quick look at this:

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/12088.php

Then there’s this

www.moleculewear.com/420-10-studies.php


though I’m reffering to the first link in the paragraph that follows.


Now I am not a fan of recreational cannabis use. Nothing against people using it, fine by me, but for every one Carl Sagan, who attributed much of the best thinking of his career to it, there are a thousand dropped out wasters who don’t find anything more beautiful or, enlightening in it than a desire to play X box or watch Sky Sports. By all means smoke as much as you like, I’ll be off doing stuff. Elsewhere.

CBD occurs naturally in cannabis. CBD is good, CBD is primarily good because it balances out THC. It’s an antipsychotic. It makes traditional forms of dope MUCH safer than the relatively new, high potency strains which are grown under LEDs by the Vietnamese.

But that’s not why I’m warbling, no, I’m warbling because right now I want to burgle somewhere off the M4 and throw some bricks at David Blunkett. I doubt he’d duck, which would in no way make me feel guilty.

You can’t buy or get a prescription for CBD. You can’t get a prescription for it because the Nazi party who have just relinquished power have denied, categorically, for 13 years that ANY component of cannabis might be helpful for ANY medical condition, and you can’t buy it, because it isn’t fun. It’s not the bit that gets people stoned, that’s the THC. You could separate the two out and sell/ prescribe the CBD, having binned the THC, and there’s a research lab off the M4 which does just that… but because of Comrade Blunkett and his fellows, I can’t get my hands on that… which means that if I were to take advantage of the research above, I’d have to smoke some standard cannabis, bought from Vietnamese gangsters, and get nothing done all day. Don‘t like X box, don‘t like Sky Sports, DO have a life to get on with, so thanks but no thanks. If you supported the drugs policy of the last government, I respectfully request that you navigate away from this page, because I fundamentally believe that you will, before long, have blood on your hands. Mine.



www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7751142/Mobile-phones-Is-there-an-epidemic-on-hold.html

Frankly I don’t care what’s got me… no harm crying over spilt milk and all that… but I’d rather it didn’t happen to you! Who knows…

There was someone last week, in a public loo, who managed to go directly from the urinal to the hand drier without using the basin. It was horrible enough that I thought I’d share it with you.



Right, back to the think. I am thinking about the fact that Mr. Bahngoo, the neurosurgeon, told me on Friday about the symptoms I could expect to go with Radiotherapy. Redness, muscle tiredness, mental exhaustion, depression. Ok. This is interesting. I’ve got to state now, that if you’re ever diagnosed as being terminally ill, I highly recommend that you get the news from Mr. Bahngoo, his professionalism was just SO spot on, completely up front, but completely compassionate in his demeanour, I haven’t seen many performances that good… not that I’m suggesting you don’t have better things to do!

What interested me was that, as a doctor, who sees patients in a mechanistic way, with symptoms for treatment, he drew directly from physical symptoms to mental ones without a dividing line. That was good, that was VERY good, because it immediately made me realise that this is the correct way to see it. So far I have been extremely happy and have had a degree of equanimity since diagnosis, but I am aware that as my physical health fails, which it one day will, that may change. I think the key thing here is going to be to recognise that changes in my mental state will be no different than changes in my physical state, and that I must learn to ride them out with patience and acceptance, just as I think I’ve already figured out how to accept and ride out the physical tumour. I may get down, I may get despondent. This is ok, this is something to be accepted. Of course I may just keep on smiling, it’s entirely possible that my current sunny disposition won’t be so easy to shake as he thought, but I am preparing myself for dark days, and think that they will not be there to be overcome, but to be accepted and even, in a way, relished. Everything is to be relished. Especially relish, with burgers. And chips, with mayonnaise.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism


Is a rather wonderful entry. I like that particular school of thought, it appeals to my rational mind and my dislike of woolly thinking… though it’s far from perfect! I don’t think that any suffering which arises has any greater reality or validity than any pleasure, at a philosophical level, so it makes sense not to distinguish between them at an intellectual level, and to try to bring them together at an experiential level also. Easier said than done! I’m working on the relationship between E.M. and Zen, how they fit together, or whether they simply don’t. And when I say “working”, I do of course, mean uselessly musing. I suspect that Richard Dawkins would call my religious status “sexed up Agnosticism”. Oh well.


Right, doing some thinking… about some of the uglier bits of my personality. About two or three years ago I was thinking about money, and how to get it, and the fact that I’ve never seemed to be particularly good at that. It occurred to me, after some contemplation on the bedock, that I had some rather unattractive attitudes towards quite a lot of rich people. Not the ones I admired, the Genghis Khans and Soichiro Hondas of this world, but the ones who I didn’t think had contributed anything, the Simon Cowells and Michael O’Learies. And princes Harry and William (both of whom I consider, like their dad, to be monumental wastes of space). Since I could see no contribution that these people have made to humanity, why should they be rewarded? Somehow, I’d come to conflate contempt with envy, and under scrutiny, it was doing me no good what so ever, and worse, contributed to a general, systemic belief in some notion of meritocracy, whereby people should get what they deserve. I don’t want people to get what they deserve, I want them to get incredibly cool stuff! Why should it bother me if Simon Cowell makes billions, it’s no skin off my back, it costs me nothing, any resentment I feel for him (and I should make it clear I have NOTHING but contempt for X Factor or the public who worship it), only hits back against me, not him. So I figured out that as far as I’m concerned I hope the greasy git gets richer and richer, he’s welcome to it.

I think there’s something analogous to my journey into environmentalism here. About a decade and some ago, I started getting more concerned about climate change, and yes, I was well ahead of the band wagon. Having previously been pretty well travelled, I gave up flying, almost entirely, as part of my bit to save the planet. I never had a driving license until two years ago, so trains were always part of the picture, but I took them with a certain sense of “doing the right thing”. I never explicitly reprimanded any of my holier than though friends, working with disabled goats in the Sudan, or doing their gap year holidays planting Pine trees in the Amazon, because I didn’t really think it my place to do so… but I certainly got pissed off by them. Couldn’t help thinking that if you wanted to do some good, you should start at home, and if you want a holiday, you should admit it.

I think I was right then, and I think I am right now. I think that there is a huge attitude amongst the public, or at least the eco friendly public, that thinks that climate change is someone’s fault, and that they should be punished. It is of course, someone’s fault, it’s everybody’s, more or less… but punished? I am getting a bit sick of the response of nice middle class people to anyone buying a car which isn’t a Prius. Sure, get a Prius if it’s the car you want, don’t let me stop you, but please, PLEASE don’t think that by spending money on a car you are doing anything, ANYTHING AT ALL that’s good for the planet. You might be doing something less bad for the planet than buying a Porsche Cayenne, but that’s it… if you want to do something good, you’ll actually have to lag your loft, you fat lazy Northern bastards! Buying a Prius is a statement, not an action.

Who’s going to get me my Ferrari? 599 GTO and yes, I AM STILL WAITING… come on peeps, I don’t have for ever you know??? Anyway, to whoever it comes from when it is delivered, a hearty thank you!

And I’ll tell you what, I know who it’ll come from: someone rich. You don’t get to be buying Ferraris unless you’ve made some money and I doubt many people do that who aren’t quite money savvy, that is to say in some ways frugal! Why beat up the car industry for making things which release CO2, when it is essentially run by (like all companies) accountants? They’re as keen to minimise energy use and materials and everything else that costs, as anyone on the planet… but unlike Mr. Fat Lazy Northerner, who can’t be arsed to check whether his doors and windows shut properly, they do something about it. They continually strive to attack waste.

A German manufacturing plant which is perpetually striving to make itself more efficient, or a whinging hippy who’s flying out of Heathrow to go and save the rainforests from the gorillas… who’s the ecowarrior there?

I can’t stand the idea of the Third Runway at Heathrow and I am seriously considering getting involved in action against it. Why? I have to be clear with myself that it’s for the right reasons… I despise BAA and really don’t care about the employment of anyone under their umbrella, they’re lying scum and frankly if you go work for the devil, I ain’t going to be doing you any favours… but am I sure it’s because they’ve lied through their rotten teeth about their being a need for it, that I want to see it sink, not because at some level I feel a sense of moral superiority for having avoided air travel for so long?

(I’m now rereading this on the 24th and today BAA dropped it’s planning appeal, have it Glenda Jackson, you low life scum!)

Ivan BLOODY Nobel. Who was this twat? Seems to have had the same idea as me, but to have done so five years earlier, ie write a diary about having a brain tumour… vicious bastard even stole my buggering title, “like a hole in the head” well I was using that little line on FB LONG before I found his diaries on amazon. Wanker. Fucker’s selling for charity too, how twee is that? At least my idea of selling my blog was for money for booze and fast cars. Not some sickly rubbish about supporting Medicine Sans Frontiers, who can frankly fuck off. My bloody idea, stolen. At least he’s dead. Worse than Shakespeare, who frankly nicked all my best lines.

Right, it’s school tomorrow. First day back at term. Beginning of year two. I’m going to see everyone and explain that I’m terminally ill. For the first time. That’ll be fun. Ok, ok, it won’t be fun, but I’ve got to do it, and I’ve got to do it right, and if I do, that’s a really good thing, that isn’t just a getting through it thing, that’s a really better than that thing.

I think we’ll have the standard sit around on the stools in a circle and talk through business for the new term, handouts for new students, stuff about invoices etc… then Anthony’s going to let me speak a bit… I know most of them know, because the lovely lot wrote me a card when I collapsed, at the end of last term. Some will know from the blog or FB that I’m aliened up, some won’t, so I think it’s best to go at it quite gently, for the benefit of those who don’t have a clue and who I’m not on such informal terms with, so I’ll probably just describe what’s happened chronologically, starting it as an explanation of why I wasn’t in at the end of last term. I’d like to make it jokey, and see if I can actually get people laughing, but it’s a bit of a risk… it’s one thing with mates to have everyone laughing their heads off about your brain tumour, it’s a bit different with colleagues- or is it? Could mention that I’ve got very good at asking for stuff, because I think that the reason that people offer to help so much is that they really want to, and that means that their fear is that you won’t accept help and time and attention and love, so if you make it plain you will, I think they can feel relaxed about the situation. They aren’t out of control.

And I fundamentally believe that every single person in the Alexander School is a good and kind person, so there really isn’t any need to be over formal or precious about any of this shit.

I just found this and find it funny:

derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2010/05/funeral-home-presents-deceased-motorcycle/

I was wrong. I like being wrong, means you’re learning something. I’ve been thinking that how I tell everyone about what’s up is massively important, to start things on the right, forwards moving terms… well the words ain’t so important. 1st day back today and made a little bit of a speech about what’s up, and it really didn’t matter what I said, people are so instinctive about communication, and so much of it’s non verbal anyway, that everyone seemed to just realise that I’m fine and that we can just get on with being as normal… big relief, big weight off me knowing I don’t have to be careful the whole time, but can just rely on people’s intuition to help them into it. Then of course it’s time to take advantage and try and take them somewhere beautiful…

Scanners, remember that film? I’ve been trying to make people’s heads explode by concentrating on them really hard..


Anthony I was talking to and I figured this. When you get told you’re terminally ill (a point I’ll return to), it’s a good time to stop and think “what do I really want to do in life, what do I want to BE doing in life…” and the fact that having had a month to do so, I’ve been faced with the sure and solid realisation that it’s what I was doing before I discovered I was ill, well that is pretty incredible. How many people are lucky enough to have their ideal life already in place without having even thought about it.

Those words. “Terminally Ill”. I’ve been avoiding them I realise. That’s a relatively rare discovery, I’m quite sure I’m being avoidant about all sorts of stuff, it’s human nature, but to catch yourself ain’t easy… and I’m asking myself why I haven’t been that comfortable with them. It’s not the fact of death that lies behind them, I’m fine with that. It’s not even letting people know that death is a distinct reality with me and that it isn’t going to go away accept by arriving. I’m fine with that too. I think it’s just the association, the creepy, crepuscular, ghoulish phrase itself… I think it’s a purely linguistic aversion. There aren’t a lot of funny ways of saying “terminally ill”, which is a shame, because there’s much to laugh about… Not sure I’ve got a point here, but if you’ve read this far, I doubt that’ll surprise you!

I have had what I think is a good idea, and a repeatable one: Emotional Blackmail Week. It’s an event for the summer, everyone’s been super keen to say that if there’s ANYTHING they can do to help, I must let them know… well after this term and radiotherapy, I’m likely to be a bit wiped out, so I reckon if I get a load of people down to Dorset, to stay in tents for a week, I could get them to do an hour or two each, per day, sorting out the garden, decorating stuff, building the greenhouse etc and they’d love it! In exchange for an hour a day, they can lounge on the lawn, swim in the sea, play in the pub… what could be better fun? They win, I win, it’ll be like a little hippy commune with an alien infested messiah preaching and giving orders. What fun!

Pity the fool who says “cheer up sunshine, it might never happen!”… It’s about the most unforgivably vicious, annoying, stupid thing a person can say and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it without wanting to do some violence (and I say this speaking as someone who assembled their own moral compass from bits out of the spare parts bin, and never bothered to calibrate it). Problem is, for the last month I’ve been so indomitably smiley, I can’t imagine anyone saying it. Oh well…

BISHOP!!! I’ve had a bishop on it! Some darling, kind, wonderful family friends went to a church, and despite (I think) knowing that I am NOT a christian, they asked the bishop to include me in prayers… which he did! So I had the whole congregation praying for me… I find this more charming than I can say. I suspect that if God didn’t want me to have a tumour, the silly cow wouldn’t have given me one in the first place, but I am still very charmed by all the people who have included me in their prayers, of whom I know there are a fair few. Not my religion, not a religion I’ve got a lot of time for, BUT, a commitment to my wellbeing which I would find it hard not to adore, even were I to want to. Which I don’t. Dawkins can fuck off.

So, who wants a piece of my mind? Honestly, it’s free to anyone who wants it, the only stipulation being that you’ve got to be extremely careful and not make a mess when you’re getting it out. Oh and I get to stipulate which bit… you’re not having the neocortex!

I can’t find the third end of the candle, but when I do, which I will, I will light it. Two and a half hours sleep and into yoga… bit confused today.

I really want Gordon Brown to lose this election. He’s done things to the economy that I wouldn’t do to Kiera Knightly. And I’m a sick little puppy.

90% of men who’s wives get cancer, cheat on them.

90% of men are NOT bad, immoral people. 90% of men who’s wives get cancer simply can’t cope with the inability to do anything. As a boy, it’s your given role in the universe to look after your woman. So when you can’t… I think that’s when boys go running about acting like arseholes, because they can’t cope.

www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml


Well, according to the BBC, Rachel’s got a boy brain and I’ve got a girly one… but then we’ve also got our gender identities, which is what lays out the above problem, so I’m in safe hands with her. I just realise what she must be feeling in terms of wanting to do something, anything to help, and not having a chance to… if things were the other way round, I’d be in pieces.

According to recent research, women typically react to stress by becoming more social, men react to stress by becoming less social. For hunter gatherer societies this makes perfect sense… males stress when they need to fight other males, females stress when they need help, for example with child rearing and food distribution. In conjunction with the results from the above link, that could explain why I’m having a relatively easy ride of it.

I’ve been preoccupied by that quote from Luther, “I more fear that which is within me than that which comes from without”. I am beginning to see some really beautiful irony here. I am quite aware of some rather gruesome instincts within my own psyche. I think it’s better to be aware of these and monitor them than to hide from them or deny them, and simply not having them isn’t something which is an option. I found some reference to Luther as being part of the tradition of psychoanalysis in a book I picked up in school today, called “Life Against Death”, completely randomly as I’d been thinking about that quote not a minute before… I am aware that if the truth be told, I am dealing with two aliens. There’s the tumour, and then there’s the ego. It’s almost as though the two of them are fighting in the same arena and they’re at times fighting against each other.

Leaving the oncology department this morning, all these people, all this seemingly endless parade of stunningly talented people who’ve all managed to pull off what I didn’t: to study and get qualified and DO something. I’m still two years away from that. And they’re all there looking after me. And some of them are younger than me. I may have spent some time bitching about delays and waits, but the fact is, I’d be a bit pissed off if there wasn’t a bit of a wait to see the doctor. These people are an exceptionally high quality resource provided free at the point of use by the public. Imagine that with another resource. Free motorbikes on the state. Free strippers on the state. I love the NHS, it’s phenomenally good as an institution, it’s one of the best things about our society, that it’s happy to run it… the doctors’ time is a resource, and should be used accordingly. You’re running any operation, you’ve got to make sure that the most important components are in operation as much of the time as possible. That involves not having delays whilst they’re doing nothing. You’re building a plane, you don’t keep a box full of wings lying around while you go looking for a nut, you keep a box of nuts lying around so when the wing’s ready, you can bolt it straight onto the other wing. I’d rather be part of a shuffling system that involved me being kept waiting, than part of a shuffling system where I couldn’t get seen at all.

7th May 2010. I’m beginning to suspect that an attempt to murder me is being made by communists and idiots. When I asked the oncologist yesterday if he had any advice about apricot kernels, raw food and snake oil, I was serious about the first two. They are things I’ve been advised to eat as a means of promoting some sort of biochemical magic tricks to keep healthy and alive. He sounded like he’d heard it all before. He had. Many, many times over. I am quite sure of it. “Apricot kernels contain cyanide and there’s no known reason to eat them, fruit and vegetables in their raw state are good for you anyway, so eat them, and there’s nothing to suggest that you should bother with the sharks’ fins”. I’m sorry? “Shark fins. The theory is that because sharks don’t get brain tumours, it follows that eating their fins will make yours go away. It won’t.” I like sharks. I wouldn’t want to eat a shark. I’d rather get bitten by one, something I spent quite a bit of effort attempting last February. I vaguely remember something about this in the film “Deep Blue Sea”, in which psycho crazy super sharks are being bred to provide brain nutrients for a mad scientist’s dad. Thanks but no thanks, I don’t think I need the shark tissue injections just yet. Scaffolding doesn’t get brain tumours and I’m not going to start on injecting that. Or eating it. Nothing against fish in general mind you.

Then in school today, someone mentioned alternative therapies. Communists and hippies and idiots are trying to get me to put my faith and my money in their charlatan witchcraft. I haven’t really looked into it all yet, but I know they’re out there and they’ll take me for a ride any which way they can… and the problem with that is that some of them are honest, hard working, dedicated people who just want to help me get better, and worse still, some of them can probably help. If it was just a case of saying “bah, alternative health, they’re all loonies” and moving on, it’d be easy, but the fact remains that people do find health benefits in all sorts of avenues of the well being industry other than the NHS, so I’ve kinda gotta look at them. Beyond the obvious exercise and diet, I think there are plenty of things which might simply have a strong de-stressing effect, and that’s got to be a good idea. Then there’s the “there, there” effect, the placebo ish, sense of recovery which comes with having someone who knows what they’re doing taking care of you. Be it a massage, acupuncture, whatever.



I’m banned from SCUBA diving. This is exceptionally gutting but makes sense. A seizure is a pain in the arse, but it’s going to be a much bigger pain in the arse at 40 meters, when I’m trying my level best to get nitrogen narcosis for fun and suddenly discover I’m convulsing. On the plus side, I might get my driving license back eventually… for a bit! Two years after the end of treatment… so if I have Radio and then get lifts and taxis for two years… I’m also extremely aware that if I’ve now had it for SCUBA, I’ve done pretty well. I spent half a year’s pocket money on a SCUBA course when I was 16 and then spent a decade trying to persuade ANYONE I knew to come diving with me, unsuccessfully. Then my dad and I decided to go, when I more or less got the cottage in Dorset finished… it was the most amazing holiday I think I’ve ever been on, diving twice a day on coral reefs and seeing the most phenomenal range of aquatic life. I failed to get bitten by a shark, but aside from that I think I got everything out of it that one could get out of a diving holiday… never to be repeated, never to be bettered, it’s there, a memory which makes me feel the universe smiled at me last year.


I’m wondering how this ends. I know full well how it ends of course, but I would like a bit more detail. I want to know what it’ll be like when my mental faculties collapse and leave me stranded, I want to know what sort of “me” that’ll be anyway, given that it clearly won’t be the same “me” that’s typing this. I really, REALLY don’t want to be a vegetable, needing cleaning up and watering and slow talk, and it could likely get a LOT worse than that… I can handle the idea of not being as bright as once was, of not being creatively minded, of being forgetful, I can stand most of the brain falling apart, blind, forgetful, unimaginative etc but I don’t want to end up unkind and angry. I am seeing the neuropsychology department at Kings on Tuesday for a two hour assessment, this will be a benchmark against which they can test changes in my mental state over time. I will ask then about the likely outcome in terms of joining the laughing academy and generally being a dribbling idiot… what I want out of them more than anything is a list of red flag symptoms, things which I will know are a sign that I’m in decline. When one of them comes up, I’ll know what to do, but if none come up, it could get to being too late for me to do anything about it, and that does scare me, unlike pretty much anything else. Ho Hum.

10th May 2010. My great aunt Cherry has just died. She was 96. That’s pretty good going… She’d been in hospital with double pneumonia, was getting confused about stuff and repeating herself when I last saw her… so it ain’t such a bad deal. If there is an afterlife, I reckon she may have met her new boyfriend by now.

Enjoying watching my ambitions die. I keep on repeating phrases such as “it’s a funny thing” a lot… well what can I say? It’s pleasant witnessing my priorities change and drop off. There’s the obvious “climb the pyramids, swim with dolphins” type stuff, but beyond that, it’s rewarding finding resolution to more fundamental ambitions, financial success, raising a family… you can’t simply decide to let go of such things, but fortunately I don’t seem to need to, they just seem to be slipping away when I look at them, and I don’t mind at all. Attachment falling away I guess.

I’ve got a real love hate relationship with writing. I know logically that I’m quite good at stringing a few sentences together (though rereading this now it’s painfully poor (3rd June). Yesterday a wonderful colleague of my dad’s dropped by three bottles of whisky, because she’d been reading my blog and it mentioned that I’m fond of whisky. Amazing! I’ll be writing tasting notes of them up on here I think. On the other hand, I’m usually HUGELY dissatisfied with anything I ever write. When I reread it, the prose just seems shockingly bad. It’s why I’m so rubbish with correspondence. I have no idea how many letters I’ve chucked in the recycling rather than post over the years. Or how many hours I’ve spent staring at blank pieces of paper and not known what the hell to do with them.

Brain tumours aren’t generally described as cancerous or non cancerous by the medical profession as it’s not a helpful term given their particular behaviour… but in looking for resources to help, it’s definitely a helpful search term! I’m finding the whole cancer survivors world of the web a bit “tofu and rainbows” for want of a better term. And girly. There’s an intriguing site called my.crazysexylife.com/ which I like the look of… it’s got loads of forums and I like the emphasis on the focus and drive that the big Casino brings, but my goodness is it all tie dyed women’s stuff! There’s a blokes’ forum on it that hasn’t had a post in a year and no other signs of male involvement… and a LOT of chat about wheatgrass smoothies, ayurveda and related hippyism. Where’s the group for blokes with brain tumours who like eating bacon sandwiches and trespassing?

Talking of sandwiches… When I eat a sandwich, I eat the crust first. Not a proper, baguette stylee afair where the whole thing’s going to be delicious, I’m talking service station egg and cress. Crusts first. Rachel’s exactly the same. We do the delayed gratification thing, and I wonder if I get it right, or if I sometimes delay gratification beyond the point of reward and lose track of it a bit… for example as a child, I’d hoard Easter eggs till they went white and horrible. Just because I didn’t think it was something you could or should really do, just to gobble chocolate, and I couldn’t find the right balance.

Yesterday I opened a bottle of whisky. I like whisky and I have mentioned this fact. An INCREDIBLY generous and wonderful colleague of my dad’s, who has been reading this thing, brought some round. We’d never met. Three bottles. Can you believe that? I couldn’t.

Well. It was a Diagio selection, Clynelish, Talisker and Caol Ila. All wonderful. I couldn’t decide which to open. Then it occurred to me that I’ve got a sodding brain tumour and I opened all three.

I conducted a tasting session with a bad friend, a little of each, and we made some notes. They were complimentary but sadly unrepeatable, even on this thing. Instead, I shall try to summarise my feelings towards these three wonderful bottles, if you want educated notes, try Jim Murray or the late Michael Jackson (and yes, it was the same Michael Jackson, you didn’t know he was a major figure in the whisky world? More fool you!)…

Caol Ila. I have always had a problem understanding Caol Ila. For one thing I used to pronounce it wrong, it’s actually more like “Kyle Ee La” according to a Scot I met, and for another it’s hard to taste. It’s a South Isla and as such is from my favourite part of the whisky world… indeed my bottles of Port Ellen, the only fluid investments I’ve ever made, and ones which I have never even dreamed of ever opening until recent events, is just round the corner. (And no, I haven’t opened them yet, and no, I probably won’t let you know if and as and when I do)… so Caol Ila ought to be right up there with Ardbeg and Lagavulin, probably my two favourites… and it basically is. It’s just a bit, how can I put this, contrary? It’s delicious, it’s wonderful, but it’s not quite what you expect. It’s like meeting a cage fighter and discovering he’s into knitting, not what you’d expect. So it leaves you unsettled. South Isla whiskies are all headlong rush, like being strapped to a tank as it charges into battle… smoke, iodene, engine roar, war! Caol Ila has a soft side. It’s like being handed a bunch of flowers in the middle of the battle. Thank you, but, er… whut??? Don’t get me wrong, this is an absolutely wonderful dram, and extremely elegant… I just don’t expect such elegance when I’m in the company of big burly trawler men… which is how I see the neighbours. Oh yikes, just looked at a map. It’s about as far North on Isla as you can get. No wonder. That’ll explain it. Idiot me. Blame the alien.

Talisker: If Talisker were a dog, it’d be a really, really great dog. Perhaps a Staffordshire Terrier. Grrr! I doubt it’d make as good a cat, but that’s ok, I love dogs too. It’s been described by others as volcanic, and by me as delicious. It’s a spicy, fiery whisky… another island creature, though this time from Skye, it’s never learnt the rules of polite behaviour in society… it’s the sort of whisky that whispers “go on!” in your ear, when you’re thinking about stealing a motorbike and riding it really fast. It’s peppery, large in every way, a bear hug of a dram. I found this on a website: “the high phenol content and distinct taste may prove challenging for the casual whisky drinker.” Enough said. To my mind, the “casual” whisky drinker is a damned fool and a waste of space, they don’t deserve this stuff. It’s like the notion of “casual” sex. “Casual whisky drinking” should be regarded in the same way as “Extreme golf”, namely with at best suspicion, and in all probability with deep contempt. You’re a human for goodness sake, drag as much experience as you can out of this existence. Roar! Oh Talisker, I am alive!

Clynelish. Now this one is a bit more cat. Which is appropriate given the creature on the label. My tasting notes on this one would have to include the word “whiskyish”, this is indeed, the most whiskyish whisky I’ve ever tasted. This may be related to the fact that it’s the first whisky I ever bought, or it may be because Clynelish is THE most archetypal whisky there is. This is a whisky that wears tweed and knows all about golf and grouse and Glasgow. Not that it’d live there, it’s a rural whisky… The label shows a wildcat, and I’m tempted to think that’s about right. My first thought was that Clynelish would be a bit of a pedigree, perhaps a British Blue or a Burmese… but don’t be taken in by the sophistication of the beast, at heart there is something wild here, something untamed. Something that stalks the moors by night and leaves no trace when the cattle disappear. Something red in tooth and claw, but with feline intelligence in the place of Talisker‘s canine enthusiasm. I can think of few things I prefer.

I am told that the wonderful woman who dropped by with these delights, has since become a mum… so please raise your glasses and “ah bless” loudly, to the wonderful Christine Braamskamp. THANK YOU!!!!!!! They are wonderful.

And to the rest of you, yes I did just use the word “are”, not “were”… the cork is not a single use device you know!

Yep, it’s all about me, me, me… but then again, what did I expect I’d be talking about. It’s a sodding blog for god’s sake. Oh and talking of that I was looking at crazysexycancer.com and my goodness, I thought this blog thing might be a halfway novel idea, then I thought the book I mentioned had got there first, now I think that EVERYONE ON THE PLANET with the slightest little tumour seems to think it’s a good reason to start a blog! There’s tons of ‘em.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yep. Morality. Someone at school was putting forth that morality and ethics derive from community. I couldn’t disagree with this more fundamentally. This involves the populus coming together to recognise rules for the greater good. This to me is a practical, efficient way of ordering what is right and wrong, of determining what’s ok and what isn’t… if someone’s aggrieved, they let everyone know, it gets sorted. But that’s the remit of the law. NOT of morality. If morality is worth a damn, it’s internally derived… you don’t kill kids, not because the rules which you’ve agreed to tell you not to kill kids, but because it’s kind of an obviously dick thing to do.

So how does an individual arrive at a sense for morality? If it’s not something prescriptive, how do you prescribe it? Teach it? And if you can’t teach it, how the blazes is it meant to survive? How are we meant to operate as individual creatures within a society, beyond the necessarily minimal requirements of the law? I chose my Alexander school in large part because there was an emphasis, it seemed to me, on not just having done 16 hours a week of sitting down and standing up, but on learning to be a proper teacher. So last year we had a module on basic counselling skills. A phrase which stuck with me was “unconditional positive regard”. It’s what counsellors are meant to approach their patients with. It applies equally to A.T. in fact I don’t think you can teach with anything other than UPR in your head. Or compassion as Buddhists might call the same thing. It’s a basic precept of Alexander that the goal of Alexander lessons is to install an internal Alexander teacher in your pupil. In other words to render yourself useless as quickly as possible. I like this idea a lot.

It essentially means that the aim of Alexander, more or less, is to give your pupil unconditional positive SELF-regard as quick as you can. It’s not a question of making people permanently happy any more than it’s about making them permanently sit up straight. It’s about equipping them to deal with whatever they may face, be it happy or sad, with the same sense of equanimity. THAT, THAT INCREDIBLY INDIVIDUAL, INTERNAL THING, THAT is where I think morality derives from. Because I DO NOT BELIEVE that humans, when they are operating at their most efficient and unimpeded, when they are acting without self imposed interference, are prone to cruelty or unkindness or wrong. I have a higher opinion of my species than that.

Of course in the final analysis, morality and ethics, whatever the hell the difference is, both derive in practice from the interaction of individual and community, so we’re both wrong.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INFP

I like the Myers Briggs model, and it’s irrelevant to me whether it’s grounded in any intrinsic truth or not. It’s a useful model, whether Derren Brown likes it or not. Perhaps I could cease to be an INFP, perhaps not. Who cares. (Incidentally, Brown’s thoughts on the subject are, to my mind, meaningless, the brain can be observed to hard wire into specific patterns between the ages of six months and three years, so to dismiss personality as a “ridiculous” notion is absurd).

Question is, if INFPs are the quasi priest class of the community, who ministers to them? I have always ministered to myself, never really had time for anyone else’s advice or counsel, and when I’ve sought it, I’ve always found an embarrassed silence, as whoever I have asked has realised they don’t have a lot to say. Or just found that what they have to say isn’t helpful… So I need time alone. That’s an incredibly strong INFP thing, and something I have scarcely got at all since the seizure a full month and a half ago. Not just a snatched couple of hours on the sofa, but a few days of quiet, with nobody around, no TV, no radio, just me and the wind rustling the branches of the trees and perhaps the cats meowing for food. God I crave that!

There are so many people on the cancer forums who are really, really anti cancer. I don’t get this. The alien’s just an alien, it’s really no different from me, just going about it’s daily routine and trying to survive… though I can’t say I see it’s long term strategy as being all that impressive on this front. But what’s the point in getting angry with it? Would that help? There’s a site which is full of people misspelling canser, or canSer, due to a feeling that they respect it so little they won’t even bother to spell it right. Why? You think it cares? Course not. I like to think that if I were on my way to school tomorrow morning, turned around whilst crossing the street and suddenly realised I had mistimed it and was about to be hit by a bus, assuming there ain’t time to jump, I like to think I’d smile at that bus. It’s just a bus. I like buses, why would I not like this one, just because we’ve met under unfortunate circumstances?

Check this out, it’s quite remarkable!

www.ted.com/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_medicine.html

Not to mention this…

www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

Now I don’t want this to be misinterpreted, and it’s NOT an attempt at coercing anyone into committing a criminal offence, but if anyone does happen to have David Blunkett’s head lying around in a bucket, I’d quite like to make a lampshade out of it.