Wednesday 27 July 2011

Assess him, Assess him until he can't stand it any more...

So, in August I go to be 'assessed for work.' I'll be very surprised if they say anything other than 'we think you can work in some way shape or form.'

I very rarely talk about being ill because it is; a) boring and b) reminds me how ill I am which I really prefer not to think about. But I thought I might blog about it just 'cos fer an all that, as we like to say in Yorkshire.

I have Crohns disease which means my insides are all messed up and I can't get the required amount of nutrients from my food. I was also mis-diagnosed at first which led to me dropping down to six stone (I'm six foot one tall) and spending most of my time curled up in a little ball of pain on the floor. The mis-diagnoses was understandable as I didn't and don't show any of the classic signs, the only thing tests were showing up was the platelets in my blood (the stuff which makes it clot) were millions* of parts per whatever instead on hundreds of thousands. Which led to these cheery words from my blood specialist – 'we don't know what's wrong with you but you could have a stroke at any moment.' Hurrah! Oh wait, actually, not hurrah.

Nice bedside manner mr Dr.

They wanted me to have leukaemia because that fitted with my symptoms but despite a few bone marrow biopsies** I stubbornly refused to have blood cancer. Eventually, my wife put her foot down and refused to leave the Dr's office until he did something^. He arranged an MRI. She then did the same trick at my GP's and he referred me to my specialist. She is brilliant.

Crohns is commonly thought to attack the gut but it can actually attack anywhere. Dr J said if it's bad (and mine is) it's like having flu every day of your life. You're tired, you ache etc. Plus all food makes you feel sick so you tend to forget or avoid food*^. This makes you more tired. Also, the drugs I'm on are really strong (and turn up in scary biohazard bags which I love) and they mess with your body too.

So, here's me. My concentration is good for about half an hour if it's something I have to think about like, oh, I don't know, writing. After that I stare blankly or constantly second guess myself because I can't quite trust myself. Or I just plain fade off into a half sleep. I can walk, but on a good day every step is like walking on a pebbly beach, bad day like walking on glass. The bones in my shins always feel like they're splintering and my ankles often like nails are being driven in~. Sometimes I drop things for no reason, my hands just decide not to hold them anymore. It's called peripheral nueropathy. I probably have rheumatoid arthritis too but the crohns drug mask that and their the same drugs you would take for arthritis, but stronger, anyway so it doesn't really matter.

And this is me when I don't do anything and can rest whenever I want. I know, from experience, the more I do the worse I get until I'm back into the curling up into a ball thing. Then it's steroids and being a moon faced freak for a bit and muscle wastage and general unpleasantness.

Despite this, I finished a novel. I write in the gaps where I feel all right. Sometimes it's early in the morning, sometimes during the night. I grab those bits and write until I have to stop. I try and take the boy to the park every day and for a walk because he enjoys it so much and I can lean on the pushchair.

Now, I would love to work. I love art and books and technology and can't afford half the stuff I would like. I'd also like to lavish stuff on Rook. thankfully Mrs RJ earns enough that we can get by but if I could work we'd be a lot more comfortable. But I'm realist enough to know that no one would employ me. Would you employ someone who'll at best spend the day staring into space and at worst fall asleep at their desk and is also going to be off ill constantly because the immuno-suppressants mean I get everything and I get it worse?*~

Probably not. So it will be interesting to see what the government thinks. And if they do think I can work, what exactly it is they think I can do.

Sorry if this is full of typos***. I'm a bit tired you see...





* I originally typoed this as miloins which sounds like something Lady Chatterley's lover would say.

**NEVER have one if you can avoid it. It is a new sort of pain. Actually, you probably don't need told to avoid it as it's like saying 'don't get cancer.' Redundant RJ is redandant.

^ We'd had months and months of turning up, waiting five hours while I tried not to weep with pain only to be told each time 'no idea what's going on, see you in a month.' My wife had even pointed out to the blood Dr she thought I had crohns.

*^ It's not all bad though. I am medically advised to eat lots of sweets and hot dogs. WIN!

~Another good thing. The painkillers, although they contribute directly to staring blankly into space.

*~ I don't want this to come across as moaning as it isn't. My life is wonderful. I have a fantastic wife, a brilliant little boy and great friends. All this stuff I list is normal to me and I have a resolutely (possibly sickeningly) positive attitude about everything. If you met me you probably wouldn't know I was ill though I may appear a bit spacey. Also, the NHS are brilliant, my Dr and the two specialist nurses I see are utterly fantastic and always ready to help. If I didn't have to see them for my illness I would want to be friends with them.

***The spelling, the grammar, the horror. This may well be the worst thing. I didn't edit this much to give you a flavour. *twitch*

RSR

More from my archive of pointless nonsense.



Red Squirrel Rap (Unfinished due to the poet being mugged)

I’m a Red Squirrel with an AK
Going down, down to Mr Greys Dray
I ain’t taking no bullshit,
Ain’t turnin’ tail like a rabbit.
You seem to be in the ascendan-cy
Sayin this shit’s evoloution-ry
Try evolvin’ out a bullet
I Got a finger, got a trigger an I’ll pull it.

Take it Red Squirrel Pikey d.

Yeeeeeeaaaah mammal.
Yo ass is grass and those nuts is mine ‘n,
Trap your mind in my lyrical timin’
My magical rhymin’
My all freestylin’
It’s all sublime an’

ALL THE LADIES LIKE A BUSHY TAIL.
ALL THE LADIES IN THE HOUSE LIKE A BUSHY TAIL
ALL THE LADIES LIKE A BUSHY TAIL.
IF YOU LIKE A BUSHY TAIL SAY WHOOOAAH
WHOOOAH
LADIES LIKE A BUSHY TAIL SAY WHOOOAAHH.
WHOOOHAAAA.

{SOUND OF GUNFIRE} End.

Thursday 14 July 2011

W.I.P.

I think. this reboot of my Dead Dave novellas (pub 2003 and out of print as far as I know) will be the next project. A very rough start but if anyone is pootling by and wants to leave a comment that'd be a plus.





Value Voodoo.

Six thirty on a rainy saturday morning and I caught a job just as I thought I'd escaped the station scot free.

'Oy, Dead Dave, you still RAO?'

The desk sergeant, Ridley, pronounced the acronym like an old tom cat's last mewl. R.A.O. Meant 'Resources Assigned Otherwhere.' Having officers in the station that he couldn't use irritated Ridley profoundly. Almost as much as the grammatical irregularity of the word 'otherwhere'.

For myself, I knew 'Otherwhere' to be grammatically perfect but if I tried to explain why he'd think I was a lunatic. Well, he'd think I was more of a Lunatic.

'It's Detective Sergeant York, Ridley' I said. 'And I am R.A.O.'

I'm not partial to the nickname, 'Dead Dave,' either.

'Fuck you very much then, D.S. York,' he hissed at me through clenched teeth as I turned and reached for the doorknob.

I knew they were overworked and understaffed at Hillcrest Police Station. That'd been me once at that desk and desperate for help.

'Bloody hell,' I sighed turning back to him. I was rewarded with his pale lips meeting in a thin smile, his face gaunt. 'What is it, Ridley?'

'Nice and easy, just the thing for you and the dog,' he held out a piece of paper. 'Shoplifters at the Lot-O-Faygi.' His smile became more genuine. 'Thanks Dave.'

I only had one job on at the moment; a lot of people had not been going missing recently and that was unusual in a city of seven hundred-thousand. Clues were sparse. I could look into the shoplifting while I waited for someone else not to vanish. Besides, it would be nice to do some real world policing again.
I should have known better, once you've walked the streets of Umbraville you can never leave.
That's just the way it is in the Big Shady.


I took the dog van, even though it's cramped with Gladys and Aloysus riding in it.
Gladys always sits next to me; a glossy, black, English Bull terrier with fathomless amber eyes. He's a police-dog because that's what the forms say he is. The forms that tell people he's a dead one have been conveniently lost in the police bureaucracy-pit. He's my landshark and the best partner any copper can have.

Dead or alive.

It would be better for the meagre upholstery if Gladys rode in the cage but he likes to stick his head out the passenger side window. Besides, the cage is full. That's where Aloysus rides.

Aloysus looks like tramp whose been left to mature in a hedgerow for a few hundred years. He's a vampire, I'm not quite sure how old he is. Last week he said he was twenty three, the week before he was six thousand years old and personally witnessed God make the world. Aloysus is a committed Christian, or so he firmly believes. He wears a ratty old cassock, a large wooden cross around his neck and looks like a man made out of old sticks. If he gets the chance he'll tell you all about Jesus, at great length and, in sometimes literally, excruciating detail.

Al says a lot of strange things and causes trouble wherever he goes. On the plus side; vampires are pretty OCD and Aloysus loves filling out forms in exacting detail. In today's modern police force that makes him, despite the deranged behaviour, priceless.

Roadworks forced me to take the north road, doubling back past the derelict, Cape Malea' nightspot as the call to prayer rang out from a nearby mosque. The wind driven rain battered out a tattoo on the thin sides of the dog van as I wove through treeless suburban streets.

'Lot-O-Faygi' squatted in the centre of the Rieman Centre on the edge of the sinkhole Rieman Estate; a nineteen sixties experiment in uncomfortable modernist architecture The centre consists of, supermarket aside, twelve boarded up shopfronts and four pound shops. Misery touched youths kicked a can about on Reimann park, more mud than grass, opposite. Hyena eyes sparkling under their hoods as they clocked the dog van and took off, vanishing into a maze of streets where cameras would track their every movement.

Those cameras aren't ours. They're a metaphor for the entire Rieman estate. You're always being watched by something unfriendly.

Tuesday 12 July 2011

At a loose end.

It's a weird feeling, finishing a novel that you think might be good. I mean, it's gone, subbed to the first agent on my list who will, probably, turn it down but it has been a huge part of my life for a long time. Dither about, dither on the book, dither about doing something else.
Not quite sure what to do now. I could start the next in the series (it's meant to be a trilogy) but the doubt monkey is in the back of my head saying – 'what if the agent comes back with an 'it's awful from the concept up? Shouldn't you wait a bit?' And I could, I have other stuff to mess about with. I had some books out in 2003 (that long?) that were described as a B-movie Douglas Adams and I have a novelization finished. I put it to one side 'cos I was sure it wasn't quite there. I could go and mess with that. Or do the complete reboot I was playing with for that series but I'm not sure my heart is in it at the moment. I'm completely off the boil for short stories and it's not something that really interests me just now (unless I have a startling idea). I do have a script to finish for a theatre so I'll do that. Maybe a couple of three minute sketches for the same people. And I'm going to a thing about scripwriting for Auntie Beeb at the weekend.
But there's a time hole where the book was. I think I shall fill it with daydreams and see what comes of it. Cos I know in the end I will be doing The NovelII as I enjoyed doing no 1 so much. It's just about waiting for the right way of approaching it to strike.
Sorry, this wasn't amusing or silly or anything