This was to be a hernia repair. Possibly the result of lugging a humongous 32-inch Sony CRT television set up two flights of stairs a couple of years ago (as at least two people who will read this will no doubt remember). On the other hand, who knows? ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The hernia is nothing serious, spotted early, and highly treatable. From the surgeon’s perspective, entirely routine. Ah, Consultant Surgeons, those well spoken individuals who have graduated from being titled “Doctor” to “Mr”.

I have undergone two (more accurately, one, twice, thanks to inept tree climbing) surgeries during my teens and have no harrowing memories of either event beyond having to eat a bowl of prunes for breakfast. Thankfully, they had evolved to suppository laxatives by the second of that pair.

There was one significant difference now: in my first experiences, I remained in hospital for several days, but here, I was scheduled as a day-patient, arriving at the hospital at midday, then being released during the evening of that same day, probably “around five-thirty”, they explained.

I sat in my allotted chair at my allotted bed – number 9 – awaiting the string of admittance staff. The bed was fully loaded with oxygen and all manner of we-can-deal-with-anything paraphernalia.

First a nurse to check my details. Then the ward doctor to re-check the same details. An anaesthetist to cover additional details (plus the previous ones). The surgeon’s assistant to discuss the procedure’s details (and check some of the initial details), and… well, you get the picture by now, I’m sure.

The underlying theme of all the activity in this pre-op ward is clearly to ensure you are who they think you are. It gets a little tedious, but instills confidence you’re not going to wake up missing the wrong limb.

Between these repetitive exchanges I pretended to snooze – sometimes slipping into the real thing just to fool anyone ’s suspicions – in order to avoid inadvertently encouraging those kindred day-patients about me to engage me in conversation. I was particularly trying to avoid Mr. “I’ve got the heart of a 25 year old woman” opposite.

Fun in the pre-theatre anaesthesia room consisted of manipulating the bleeping of the pulse monitor.

Once the surgical team arrived to make the final preparations, I will admit to being anxious. No attempts to slow the beeping worked as they jabbed in the necessary pipework. As I started to drift off, I can remember my vision blurring and the beeping accelerating.

I never expect to remember absolutely nothing while under anaesthetic. While coming round, I am convinced I have simply dozed off and am still awaiting the procedure. But, gratefully perhaps, there is simply nothing. If you have never experienced it, it’s quite disconcerting.

Once awake, it was back to the day ward for some toast and a cuppa (that’s when you know you haven’t been whisked out of the country while asleep), and a couple of hours of close monitoring to ensure you are recovered enough to head home.

Unfortunately, I was not. Whether a reaction to the anaesthetic, or a dose of pain-killing morphine, I turned the day ward into a scene from ER television. Doctor and nurses buzzed around me when my blood pressure dropped and I leaked sweat out of pretty much every pore. The result was saline drip, oxygen, and the decision that I would have to remain in overnight for observation.

I was concerned for Jen. Myself, I knew I was safe in good hands. But also knew she would be forced to head home and leave me unexpectedly at the hospital.

The day ward is just that: day, no night shift. So I was carted off to Ward 4 for my overnight observation. One of the day ward nurses stuck with me until she was absolutely sure I was stationed and my new keepers fully in the picture as to what had happened and what was required of them.

A long, troublesome night followed. A typical shared ward with snoring, calls, buzzers, wandering staff and patients, but the a most comfortable bed. What little sleep I managed was disturbed by the regular blood pressure, pulse and temperature monitoring.

The following day was uneventful. The food delivery guy and I had a little exchange about not wanting lunch. “I’ll be gone by then” I insisted. He offered me a good natured, knowing nod as I was still sat in my bedside chair as he wheeled past with his lunch delivery trolley. I was let out soon after.

Throughout the process, even through the weeks of the consultation process and initial tests, I cannot fault the way I was treated by the staff at two hospitals. Thoroughly communicative, friendly, patient, and understanding. I felt as if each one cared, about me, about what I was going through, how I was feeling. I felt they genuinely wanted to make me comfortable, well and to have me feel safe and secure.

I went through a relatively minor procedure, with a hiccup. But I have come away from the experience with a respect and trust for the staff. I would have no concerns about putting myself in the hands of these people again in the future.

Of course, I’d much prefer to not need them!

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Our typical exploratory excursions, sans GPS, consist of defining a destination or three, making a wrong turn or two, and at least once impulsively detouring to explore something that whispers of old stuff to look around.  ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

On the way to — some place or other, I cannot quite remember now — we spotted a sign easily translated even with our muy poco Español as: Castle of Castles. Both enthusiastic about historic fortifications and ancient sites, we made a rapid u-turn and headed for Castell de Castells.

The village of Castell de Castells, like so many Spanish mountain communities, clings to a steep hillside. A major road passes by its feet, and the promise of the “castle of castles” — with no immediate visible battlements, towers, or walls upon approach — taunts passers-by to head in amongst the jumbled buildings. 

Town planning

If there was ever any strategic planning in the layout of a rural Spanish town, then it was surely made over far too many bottles of suspiciously cheap wine, with no further attempt to settle the plans under the assumption they were appropriately laid down the first time. 

The streets of Castell de Castells appear to lead you perpetually uphill, taking you deeper and deeper into the clutches of the town with each neck-straining twist and turn. They rapidly transform from ‘quite narrow streets’ to ‘nothing more than gaps between rows of houses’. They become so narrow, that a pedestrian navigating the same ‘gap’ must dive into a doorway recess to allow a car’s passage (I am convinced one woman we saw on two occasions had to breathe-in, too).

You might expect such a constricted passages to have a one-way system to avoid vehicles meeting when travelling in opposite directions. You would be wrong. These were officially two-way roads, as highlighted by a sprinkle of other cars here and there, tucked into corners and recesses, facing in different directions. Thankfully, we were spared the opportunity to negotiate (in Spanish and Bad-Spanish) as to who should reverse and give way. (A negotiation made doubly tricky by the roads being too narrow to exit the car and attempt the exchange in the first place!)

You find yourself on the same stretch of road more than once, but no matter how you try, you are ever facing in the wrong direction to attempt to back-track to your point of entry. Perhaps the other vehicles collected in nooks are simply the abandoned transport of previously entrapped tourists who had similarly never discovered a way out.

There are corners, too

Dead-ends are commonplace. Tangled streets taunt the weary with the promise of escape, only to terminate with an un-drivable incline, or someone’s garage.

After several twists and turns, enough at least to have us make the decision to forget the castle and simply get the heck out of the town, we spotted a street notably wider than the rest. Along it were several parked cars, and some building work in progress. There appeared to be a left turn at the far end. “Hey!” we exclaimed, “This looks like a road people use more regularly.” We turned and found ourselves being forced to turn left into the narrowest street of all.

I suspect you think I am exaggerating, but the 90 degree turn into this street — which after perhaps two car lengths then turned 90 degrees to the right — was barely wide enough to accept our little Ford Fiesta hire car. We sat for a moment considering the options and decided reversing to be the better choice (the other roads were still narrow, but nowhere near as narrow as which lay that ahead). 

Decision made, I crunched into reverse, looked in my mirror and saw a van rapidly approaching from behind. Hemmed in! “This is how they get you,” I thought, “trap you in a corner then close-off each opportunity to escape until your hopes of freedom dwindle into mere hopes of survival.” Perhaps the entire village had become infertile and the only way for them to avoid extinction was to trap unwary travellers and gradually transform them into locals. At least I would more quickly become fluent in Spanish.

Our hesitation in negotiating the gap ahead prompted the van driver to emerge. “We are lost!” we admitted in our best phrase-book Spanish, expecting the patient local to suggest how we should reverse and be on our way.

Instead, he reeled off a series of directions that, with no hesitation or concern for vehicle size relative to street width, clearly indicated we should just pop on ahead to the left, make a right, then another right, and finally sweep left. We asked that he repeat, slower, after we informed him of our poor Spanish, and he did so, gesticulating more dramatically to assure us our path lay ahead. I simply stared, eyes front, predicting how our hire deposit was about to be scraped off the sides of the car as we attempted to make our way along what were, to our guide at least, perfectly adequate streets.

I am not sure how we did it

But we did. With wing mirrors adjusted for maximum view of the extremities of the car’s rear, we made out clutch-grinding way around the first corner — I estimate with around a centimetre to spare on the driver’s side — then the almost immediate right turn with a similar margin for error. The final right turn, again a full 90 degrees, posed the additional challenge of being briefly but sharply up hill. Hastily patched house wall corners suggested not everyone had survived the manoeuvre unscathed. 

The roads then almost immediately widened. Still not ample space for even the most careful two-way traffic, but compared to our recent experience a veritably motorway. 

I realised we were still heading up. Other than a brief descent into the street with the parked cars, we had been nose-up all the while. 

Unsure of exactly where this hopeful, wider road might take us, we drove slowly past a group of workmen, waiting for them to begin shouting and gesticulating that we were about to drive into another dead end. But all was well. A sharp, low-gear drop and we found ourselves on a major road once more.

I have driven around many narrow paths in both Spain and Malta, but never have I had to negotiate such ridiculous slivers of wing-mirror scuffing streets. I believe we might have been the talk of the town for the next few days as the tourists that got away.

Castell de Castells

Apparently, the area is a regular focus for walkers and mountain bikers. The castle does indeed exist, and, according to Wikipedia, consists of remains of an old Arabic fortification – I guess that should be more accurately termed Moorish fortification. There are also some nearby rock formations forming a natural arch, and remnants of 5000 year old cave paintings.

There is certainly enough reason there to revisit Castell de Castells one day and look around properly. I hope by the time we return, they have Park-and-Ride.

jEN’s post on Castell de Castells

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OK, perhaps not, but in the somewhat unlikely case you did, and have been gnawing on your knees for just over a month wondering, I though it about time to witter on about 2009. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

My name is Neil and I’m having a difficult time with tech

As the real world grows increasingly entwined to the virtual world, I grow increasingly indifferent to its siren song. Once the focus of endless hours wading through page after page of dross with the shimmering hint of something worthwhile just around the corner, now a useful tool when I need to learn the etymology of “adrenaline” (discovered in 1901, in case you are interested).

It has taken me some time to isolate the technology ailment I am just starting to heal, but it boils down to interference. The web is noisy – I doubt you would argue that. As a result it has in the past become not a distraction, but simultaneously irritating and useful, but always diverting. Like a  neighbour who is happy to chat over the fence with a cuppa while imparting his priceless gardening tips , who continues to mow your lawn while he’s out doing his own, yet plays Radio 2 just a tad too loud in the morning when you’re struggling to get up to full speed productivity, and parks his car sticking just a little too far out on his drive so you invariably have to reverse carefully around it.

Each year I spend less time feeling my internet activities are genuinely productive and fulfilling.

The facebook to wrench a thousand hairs

After much grumbling deliberation, I recently created an account with the dreaded facebook. From the moment of verifying my email address, the level of frustration followed by sheer exasperation at how poorly applied the site is in terms of how one is forced to use it, has taught me never to be optimistic again.

It is clearly designed to keep you logged-in whilst trying to decipher what on earth is going on, obsessing about the various activities of “friends”, and generally constantly filtering out noise – which does not end when one logs out (the infamous facebook bacn).

The facebook experience sums up my growing frustration and feeling of wasted energy with tech in general.

There is simply no time for this waste

A theoretical weekday for me – should everything run to schedule:

• 0630: Up and grabbing breakfast whilst Breakfast meanders along on the TV and I try just once to remember the weather forecast for more than 5 seconds after it has been broadcast.
• 0700: A scan through both work and personal email inboxes to establish messages requiring later attention. Inbox Zero by 0730 is the aim, and achievable most days. I also catch up with overnight twittering.
• 0730: Time to get cleaned-up (are you sure you want all my bathroom-related activities?)
• 0800: Deal with personal emails, blog posts, various other online activities such as messages, networking, commenting, reading, research, all that stuff.
• 0930 – 1900 work. Of course there are breaks for lunch and appropriately dispersed mugs of coffee.
• 1900: Dinner. Usually with a little TV as background.
• 2000-2200: Writing time (~900 words written, or a chunk of editing). TableRappers doesn’t just happen, you know.
• 2200-2300: Wind-down. Try to relax a little so that sleep is achievable at a reasonable hour.

That, at least, is the theoretical, optimum daily schedule. It rarely comes together as planned, particularly after my West Coast USA work colleagues reach their morning at around 5pm UK time. Creative time is, as you can guess, at an absolute premium. Today, as an example, dinner was not until 2030 and right now, it is 2348 and I am, for some reason, suddenly driven to complete this post.

How much creative energy is being sucked into my tech void?

More than I am prepared to continue losing, that is for sure. My non-commercial creative activities, such as drawing and painting in particular, must be shoe-horned into that schedule in the slivers of free time that opens up here and there. 

What pains me the most is to have the most fulfilling, challenging, and enriching activities bullied into dusty corners by everything else. 

And yet…

When managed, the internet, and technology, is a wonderful resource. Having recently rekindled an unceasing battle with creating just one satisfactory painting in watercoour, online resources have helped me to understand how to move my explorations forward. 

However, I wonder how much further I might be in this creative development if I simply traded the online research time for painting and exploration. 

So 2009 is about using the internet less?

In a way, perhaps. More accurately, it is about taking control, about harnessing the positive whilst pushing the negative, unproductive, and unfulfilling off a very high cliff.

I believe if I can release the grip of much of the interfering technology, it will make elements of my days far more productive, thus opening up genuine free time not only to explore mor creative activities, but perhaps also sociaising and spending time with family.

You might say in undertaking to write a novel, I am bringing the added pressure into my day to day life. Only someone who does not understand the creative urge would consider that a worthy suggestion.

2009 is about simplification, about setting aside the unproductive to enhance the productive, discarding the worthless in exchange for the fulfilling. 2009 is about change.

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It’s not the writing itself that keeps me chained to the keyboard night after night, but the result of that effort.

The second draft of Persistent Spirit is now over 72,000 words, and the most recent audiobook episode (Chapter 18) was painful beyond measure. Each sentence had to be teased out, then re-worked, then trashed and re-written, then sliced up and transformed into two episodes – and it’s not as yet in a finished state for print. Sometimes the words just flow, but that is all too rare, and brief.

I suspect most of us have a romantic picture of the writer. Holed-up in their chosen rural location, conjuring people, places, and events from thin air and rolling around in the financial fruits of their labours. While I suspect there are a handful who can boast something along those lines, the vast majority have to eek out precious hours of writing time amongst their busy lives while retaining the day job to survive. Friends are almost forgotten. Family is neglected. Cinema releases whiz by and invites to social gatherings grind to a halt on the expectation that you’ll not be attending. Oh, and the writing itself – the act of stringing sentences together to tell a story – is damn hard work.

I am unable as yet to fully comprehend what it is that drives me to continue Persistent Spirit – and plan the next handful of Table Rappers books. It may be the manifestation of pure thought, ideas about locations, characters, and events that were so intangible several years ago, and are now not only solidifying, but being shared with others. That, for me, might be the key. I love the characters, and if anyone else had written and published TableRappers, I would likely be a fan of the books. I have a passion and a joy for what I am developing, and I want to share that with as many people as possible. If that truly is my core motivation, then the next few years are promising to be a very satisfying time.

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