Gender confusion

Picture the scene. It is a Sunday lunchtime in a perfectly agreeable pub. We are gathered there to celebrate a milestone birthday for Brother number 1. Several generations are there. The menu is full of options and the beer choices are multiple.

Katie is in driving duty. It is the best of all outcomes.

My sister-in-law is pregnant, very pregnant. She pulls Katie and me to one side as we arrive.

"My mom and dad are due in a few minutes," she says. "The only thing is, they don't yet know the sex of the baby. They chose not to know."

Pretty much everyone else around the table knows the gender of her baby. We've known this for ages. We've talked about it at length, discussing name choices, nursery decorating options, the full nine yards.

To be honest, it's got to the point where we don't even think it newsworthy.

But here's the thing. Once someone tells you not to mention something, it is impossible to do so. Or at least, colossally difficult.

There then followed a really anxious hour or so. I felt like I was parsing everything to myself before saying it. Mere small talk was a potential minefield. Could my choice of condiments possibly give away the gender of my nephew/niece to be?

No, I tell myself. Don't be ridiculous. But then I have a vision of me blurting it out somehow. A table-load of faces looks at me with disappointment. To be honest, I'm not surprised. I snap myself out of my reverie and attack the roast beef, hoping that doesn't somehow indicate the sex of a foetus in some cultures.

We managed to get to the end of the meal without divulging any secrets, but it was tough.

This* is why I never joined the Army. I'd be terrible under torture.

Postscript: my nephew was actually born less than a week after this meal. I don't need to watch what I say anymore. Which is just as well.


*(Yeah, because that's the only reason.)

Talkin' 'bout my operation

Well, this has been a fascinating seven days. It started off last Monday with an overnight stay at one of Birmingham's most exclusive addresses. While the room was nice and the food seemed OK, I don't think I'll be mentioning them on TripAdvisor. Not after one of their employees came at me with a sharpened instrument.

Things started to look a little iffy when we showed up at the wrong hospital. There are two BMI hospitals in Edgbaston and I assumed I'd be having the operation at the same one where my consultation took place in December. That would have been sensible. It's why I hadn't properly checked the details beforehand. The receptionist said: "You're at the wrong place," with a weary sigh and handed out a pre-printed map to the correct one. All of this in a manner which suggested this happened to her several times a day.

None of this was doing my prevailing anxiety any favours. We found the right place, parked up and were shown to my room. They asked me what I wanted to order for my evening meal. Forms were bandied about with gusto. Then the blood pressure test started.

I mentioned I was a little anxious, didn't I? I get even more stressed out when someone puts a cuff on my arm and inflates it. How does a blood pressure reading of 220/170 sound? I'm no expert, but apparently that's a little on the high side, unless you're a Komodo dragon.

I am not a Komodo dragon.

After a degree of humming and hahhing they said they'd try again later. In the meantime I changed into the theatre gown and glamorous DVT stockings. Katie gave me a look which suggested she'd probably never found me more attractive than that moment in time.

The grumpy resident doctor - a Russian who was having no truck with the whole concept of bedside manner - came back to check my blood pressure several times. It seemed as if he took the steadfast refusal of my figures to reduce as some sort of slur on his professional standard. "This is just anxiety," he said. "In my country they would have let me give you diuretic. But here..." he sighed and let the rest of the sentence go.

After a while a terribly nice chap took me on the bed. That sounds wrong but I'm not changing it. The anaesthetist inserted a cannula in my hand, flicked a switch and asked me to count to ten. I don't remember anything after five.

Waking up in the recovery room, people fussed around me and my surgeon gave me a grin and the thumbs up. Which was nice, but someone appeared to have put a sofa up each nostril, plus my throat appeared to have been sandpapered from the inside. I was hooked up to a drip and an oxygen mask, which seemed to be bit overly dramatic, but I thought I should let them get on with it. They wheeled me back to my room, where Katie was waiting, checking through the dinner menu.

After an hour of real discomfort they removed the bolsters from my nose. This (a) made it possible for me to breathe through it properly, and (b) was quite possibly the grossest thing I have ever seen. After some touching moments where we probably called each other rude names, Katie went home and I settled in for the night. Doctor Soviet came back in and was pleased with my 130/70 reading. I laid awake, read and pressed a button every couple of hours to summon lovely, angelic nurses. With liquid morphine.

Katie was a little put out the following morning when we had the discussion with my surgeon about post-op care. "It used to be the case that tonsillectomy patients went for ice-cream and jelly," he said. "But that's not the current advice. Eat normal food - a little scratchiness helps, actually, as it helps to keep the area clean."

As we walked out, Katie reflected: "I've gone and bought the European soup mountain. Now what?"

"Wouldn't it be more accurate to refer to it as a soup lake?"

I got a look for that.

I've been housebound now for seven days, taking painkillers on a two-hourly basis when awake. Nothing too drastic - a bit of codeine and several other over-the-counter ones. They're not 100% effective and at times eating has been painful. Really, tears-in-the-eyes, banging-your-foot painful. Maybe it'll help me reconsider my relationship with food. After all, when you've been hurt by a cottage pie you tend to revise your opinions.

But the other night Katie took a call from her aunt, who was asking after me. Her aunt is in her 70s and is currently undergoing treatment for cancer, meaning she has to drive to a hospital 20 minutes away several times a week for chemo. And she was asking how I was.

I feel such a fraud.

The delightful gentleman

It's official. I'm a 'delightful gentleman'. Well, that's what this letter I've got from the surgeon says. He's written to my GP, thanking him for referring me, a 'delightful gentleman', to him. I don't normally get reviews like that - the best I've had to date is 'prompt and efficient payer' on eBay.

I don't mix with surgeons, as a rule. But I've got this problem, you see. I've mentioned it before, in fact. I appear to be having problems with breathing and sleeping. I can't do both of them at the same time, for starters. Over the last couple of years I've had my various tubes - well, the airways anyway - prodded and poked by the best in the Midlands. I've spent the night dressed as a Poundland Darth Vader. All to no avail.

So just before Christmas I went to see a surgeon. He actually has a title with rather too many syllables in it, but basically he's a chap who knows his onions. And when someone with all those syllables inserts a camera and says: "Ah ha - I think I see the problem," then I'm going to listen.

As a result, I'm shortly going into hospital for an operation. Well, two operations, actually. Something called a septoplasty, then a tonsillectomy. The septoplasty is designed to sort out my comedy nose. Sadly, as it's an internal op, I don't get to choose a new nose, which is a shame as I quite liked the Adrien Brody look. Never mind. And the surgeon recommended whipping out my tonsils at the same time as (a) it might improve my breathing and (b) there's a two-for-one offer on in January.

By the way, when you're due an operation, do not, under any circumstances, look it up on Google. Or, for that matter, on Youtube. It tends to give you pause for thought, that's all I'm saying.

So I'm a bit nervous. In fact, to use the vernacular, I'm ever-so-slightly bricking it. It's not the operation so much. I'm not that worried about someone coming at my face with a sharp implement; I've drunk in enough Birmingham pubs, so I'm used to that. It's the general anaesthetic that's causing me concern. What if it doesn't go to plan? Although I will admit that there would be a delicious irony in that happening, given that I'm going through all this so I can sleep better.

But here's the thing. I'm sick and tired. Literally. I want to start sleeping again. I want to get on better with the people around me, not being distant and grumpy with friends, family and colleagues. I want to be better at doing the job that I enjoy, not falling asleep in meetings and feeling unwilling to do more.And I want to be able to spend the whole night in bed with my wife, not having one of us creep off to try and snooze fitfully on a sofa somewhere.

I don't want superpowers. I just want to do what everyone else does. When people say they've had a good night's sleep, I always think, "show-off." So that's why, on Monday afternoon, I'll be having this done to me. Hopefully I can be a delightful gentleman once more.

Random musings 2013

The year is six days old. Colour me tardy.

Each year since 2008 I've done this. It's become an annual tradition. Which is what you expect from something that you do each year. There's a clue, right there.

It's very simple - just pick up your iPod (or similar), put it on shuffle, write about the weirdness that ensues. This is what it looked like last year. And you can do the same too - just write about it in the comments. And you're not allowed to skip over the dodgy things in your music collection.

Right then. Hold onto your pants. This might not be pretty:

1: Dream Theater - Scenes From a Dream Act II, Scene 9 - Finally Free

Oh dear. I've spent a lot of the last few weeks trying to convince the new chap at work that I don't just listen to prog rock, and now this happens. In fairness, Dream Theater aren't prog rock. They're prog metal, managing in one fell swoop to combine the two least fashionable genres in music. It's a concept album about a man who re-imagines himself as the victim as a historic murder case. Or something. To be honest, I'm not sure. There are lots of widdly guitar solos and ludicrous lyrics. Quite frankly, this is not helping.

2: Paul Weller - Sunflower

This is from his Wildwood album, which I think I love more than is entirely healthy. Ah, the memories. Driving around with this on at full blast. An afternoon in the Clent Hills with SheWhoMustBeObeyed, pre-marriage, before we'd moved in together, when a sudden rainstorm meant we had to take cover in the car. Ahem.

3: Sigur Ros - Viorar Vel Til Loftarasa

Silence. Then industrial noise and feedback, which gradually fades. Guitars and piano come into the foreground, playing a mournful refrain. The bass provides a counterpoint. Ethereal strings act as a celestial choir. The drums enter gently about four minutes in. You look at the screen and realise there are still six minutes to go. An echoing voice starts, enunciating in a hybrid of Icelandic and elvish. Not one to choose for your ringtone, then.

4: The Proclaimers - Let's Get Married

I didn't 'get' The Proclaimers when they first came out. Then I heard one of their songs (Sunshine on Leith) and had to have one of my brisk walks around the block. ("No, I'm fine, it's just something in my eye.") I got their Greatest Hits, found it to be choc-a-block with close harmonies, challenging pronunciation and cracking tunes, like this one. It's really rather ace and includes lines like, "You can get a cat, just as long as it barks."

5: Scott Matthews - City Headache

He's a singer/songwriter in the folk/indie vein. Now, I know what you're thinking, but you're safe from any Ed Sheeranisms. He's from Wolverhampton, so practically up the road from me. This is from his first album, Passing Strangers. Which you are going to buy. Look into my eyes. Try if you can to ignore the Dream Theater earlier on - I can be trusted sometimes.

Right. Now it's your turn. Five random tracks, no skipping, put them in the comments.

Retail armageddon

In the 1968 film Coogan's Bluff, Clint Eastwood played a young deputy sheriff sent to New York from the wilds of Arizona. There's a scene where he's in a New York taxi cab. As he goes to pay the driver, he asks: "How many stores named Bloomingdales are there in this town?"

"One," says the driver.

"We passed it twice."

I was reminded of this exchange earlier today when Katie and I were shopping in The Largest Tesco in the Western Hemisphere, given that we'd passed the olive oil section for a second time and appeared to be going nowhere.

I'm here to tell you - as if you needed to be told - that doing a food shop two days before Christmas is right up there with 'putting your head in a lion's mouth' on the list of stupid things to do.

There is a list. I've checked it. Twice.

We knew that this was going to be a bad idea, but had no choice. So this morning found us in a car park the size of Hampshire, fixing the shopping trolleys with a thousand-yard-stare. And so it began.

Due to the unique way our Sunday trading laws are framed, we weren't allowed to buy anything until 11.00am. However, the good people of Tesco were more than happy to let us, and several thousand others, into their store an hour early for browsing purposes. As long as no money changed hands for that first 60 minutes, no-one would be breaking the law and God would be happy.

So far, so good. But the rising panic was palpable. People were contemplating the festive season. People were thinking about what drink to get in for Auntie Doris. People were fretting at the thought of the shops being closed for two days. There was a wall of humanity, armed with debit cards. It wasn't pretty.

I was on trolley duty. Katie had made a list. Unfortunately, this was a list written with a completely different supermarket layout in mind, so her carefully-planned order was knocked for six. At one point we were randomly throwing things into the trolley, completely swept away in the moment.

"Take the trolley into the next aisle," she said, "and wait for me. It'll be quieter there."

The next aisle happened to be the one with the fresh turkeys. Let me remind you, dear reader. It was two days to Christmas. I was an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was like a tank battle, but less pleasant.

Katie came around the corner, packets of random carbohydrate in hand, and surveyed the scene. "Oh for God's sake. Move into the next aisle then."

I meekly wheeled into World Foods and regarded the fenugreek leaves. It seemed to be the only thing to do.

She caught up with me and deposited the ingredients of a tiramisu. "Right then," she fixed her jaw grimly. "Booze."

The beer and wine section at Yardley Tesco is renowned. It is spoken about in hushed terms by drinking men and women the world over. It would put George Orwell off his breakfast. If he were still alive. And, for that matter, sitting down for breakfast. Visiting it on Christmas Eve Eve is akin to juggling with live dynamite. We fought our way through the masses of wine-seekers and beer-hunters. The chap with the trolley in front of us had two bottles of Baileys, one Jagermeister and one Midori. That's what they make cocktails from in Hades, I reckon.

This wasn't a shopping expedition, it was survival.We eventually emerged, blinking into the daylight like Chilean miners. "Never again," we mouthed in unison as we joined the end of a queue. A queue to leave.

Next year I'm doing this online, even if I have to book a delivery slot in October. It's the only way.

Christopher and me

We're zipping through the 21st century at a rapid rate of knots, aren't we? And although I'm very disappointed that the hover boots I assumed would be in shops by now haven't yet materialised, the human race reaches new heights of development with every passing year.

They've got bacon-flavoured mayonnaise in America, you know. Truly we're reaching a pinnacle as a species.

But at the same time as we've become very clever at lots of stuff, we've shed some of the old ways. We're not imbued by a sense of tradition. Sentimentality appears to be a thing of the past. And with that thought, I'd like you to study this picture.

This is one of the oldest things I own. It's a St Christopher medallion, designed to be stuck to the dashboard of a car. It has a magnet on the back, long since augmented by a blob of Blu-Tack, added when car manufacturers stopped making cars with metal dashboards.

My dad gave it to me in 1989 when I started driving. It had previously graced the dashboard of his cars, from the Morris Minor he got in the sixties when he passed his test, the bizarre Soviet-built Moskvitch he had in the following decade and the Datsuns he drove when helming something with the dynamic characteristics of a WW2 tank around the streets of Birmingham lost its charm.


I suppose the idea of having the patron saint of travellers hitching a ride with you was that you could be protected a little. For all I know, my grandfather may have passed it to Dad, which means it's been around for a while.

Dad was still driving when 19-year-old me came home with my first car, a 1974 Mini 1000. He took one look at this car, bought for £250 from the local auction. He regarded the bodywork, gently blistering away under the black paintwork. He noticed the lack of bumpers, the wheels on spacers, the odd noise it made going over bumps. He gave the St Christopher medallion to me, probably realising that my need was greater than his.

Of course, St Chris wasn't going to provide me with an impenetrable safety bubble. There was the time I lost a wheel from that Mini, becoming an impromptu tricyclist on the M6 motorway during an Easter bank holiday. Then there was the day I parked the newly-repaired Mini in the side of someone else's Ford Cortina. A retro road traffic accident, if you will.

But St Christopher came with me, from car to car. There was the Escort that was essentially a moving collection of Ford parts held together by rust. The Renault that financially ruined me. The MG BGT with exhaust pipes the width of howitzers, so I could be heard across several time zones. (When I sold that car, I could hear the clinking of champagne glasses coming from our neighbours' houses.)

There was The Incident We're Still Not Talking About. No-one said St Christopher was going to prevent accidents. But as before, I was still in one piece, able to get out of the car afterwards. Taking my lucky medallion with me, of course.

The other week I took delivery of a brand new car. It's so far removed from the crates I used to tool around in that someone visiting from another planet would be hard-pushed to recognise them as being broadly the same type of object. It's a lovely car, shiny, comfortable and (hover boots aside) crammed with an almost obscene amount of gadgets and doohickeys. The instruction manual makes War and Peace look like a pamphlet.

But there was one thing I added - the St Christopher medallion from Dad. After all, we might be all grown up and developed. But a little bit of tradition does no-one any harm, does it?

Pah Rum Pum Pum Pum

Now this takes the biscuit, thought Mary, as she lay back down on the hay and stared at the ceiling.

It was bad enough that she’d found herself in this situation in the first place. It had raised more than a few eyebrows,and it was fair to say not everyone fully believed her story. All things considered, Joseph had been very understanding. Having said that, there was still a little flicker of suspicion in his eyes from time to time.

But that was no excuse for the travel arrangements. She’d told him time and time again that a donkey ride was not exactly ideal for a heavily-pregnant woman, but he hadn’t listened.

“The census is taking place this winter,” he’d said. “We have to go. These Romans don’t muck about.”

But then to find out, after the most uncomfortable three hundred miles she’d ever endured, that he’d failed to book any accommodation at the other end? That was too much. He might have been a carpenter from the sticks, but surely even he could have realised that all the hotels would have been full? It was the holiday season, after all.

So far, so bad. But when he’d suggested bedding down in a stable she seriously began to wonder if he’d lost his mind.

“Joseph – are you quite mad?” she’d asked. “I don’t know if perhaps it’s escaped your attention, but I am with child. Quite heavily with child. So heavily, in fact, that I think a light sneeze on my part and we’ll need a two-seater donkey for the trip home.”

“I’m sorry Mary, but this is all there is. It’s got to be better than sleeping on the streets.”

Her mouth tightened into a grimace. She said, “My cousin Valerie had a home birth. It was lovely, by all accounts. And do you know why?”

He shook his head.

“The distinct lack of domestic animals. That’s why.”

She reluctantly agreed to have a look at the stable. It was every bit as awful as she’d imagined. Small, cramped and distinctly lacking in what you could call home comforts. And then there were the other inhabitants. She didn’t mind the lambs so much, but the oxen were really trying her patience. But the night was drawing in and there was really very little more she could do.

It must have been all the stress that had caused the baby to make its appearance. It was not an experience that Mary would have liked to repeat again in the near future, but at least he appeared healthy. Exhausted, she lay down while Joseph fussed around her.

Then there were the shepherds.

“Begging your pardon, but we’ve been told to come,” they had said, wide-eyed and trembling in the cold night air. It was unexpected, to say the least.

“Who does that?” Mary asked after Joseph had eventually shown them out again. “I mean, is this normal for this part of the country? Do you often get agricultural workers making unannounced appearances at occasions such as this? What next, olive-pickers showing up at funerals?”

“They just wanted to pay their respects, Mary. And, look on the bright side, you got a lovely sheepskin rug off that last one.” Mary rolled her eyes.

“Oh yes, it’s positively luxurious in here now, isn’t it?”

There was another knock at the door.

“Oh, now what?”

The knock was followed by a booming, heavily accented voice. “We come from afar, to see the newborn.” Mary looked accusingly at Joseph. “It’s like an open day here, isn’t it? See what they want, will you, and get rid of them.”

But the three kings were not quite so easily put off. There was something in their manner that made it clear they weren’t going to wait for the morning. Their robes and headgear bore the marks of a long, sand-blasted journey. And it was clear that they’d spent a lot of time recently in the company of camels.

“We followed a star,” one of them said. “It brought us here tonight.”

Mary said, “Gentlemen, that’s a lovely story. Perhaps someone should write it down sometime. But if you don’t—“

“We have gifts for the young one.”

“Well, why didn’t you say? Please, come in, sit down. Pull up a sheep. So then, this star....?”

Actually, Mary had to admit that the three kings were quite nice. Gold's always good to have, and the frankincense would help to mitigate the general ox-based atmosphere that appeared to be prevailing. She wasn’t certain about myrrh, though. Was it some type of antelope? Never mind, she told herself.

Eventually the kings, with much bowing and scraping, left the stable. Mary and Joseph allowed themselves to relax. But then, just when they were getting ready to settle down for the night, a young boy came in.

“I have no gift to bring,” he said quietly. “Can I play you a tune instead?”

By this point, Mary was completely exhausted. She wasn’t thinking straight and just nodded wearily.

The boy pulled out a snare drum and a pair of sticks.

This cannot end well, thought Mary.