The View from Warrington Gastro

Only when you are forced to stop can you see how much the world around is moving, caught in a storm of madness. Only when driven to rest by illness or exhaustion can you hear the constant parade of howls, racing from one end of the street to the other like a random oscillator. Only when pinned down by a clump of bacteria do you notice how eagerly you have chased the gleaming clues.

Mon 15 Oct 24: I made a chicken casserole the previous week, and took some leftovers to have for lunch at work. Then in the evening, about 9.00, I stripped the remaining portions, heated the meat through in a frying pan, and mixed it with soup.

After eating this, I complained of feeling a bit queasy. He said ‘Here, take one of my antacid pills’. I refused since they were on prescription. A few seconds later I vomited a mass of soup all over the living room floor, and then staggered into the kitchen where I was sick again in the sink.

He spotted that there were some red patches visible on the floor and said that I should call 111 to get advice. We called them, described the incident, and they told us to get to A&E.

We tried calling Salford Royal but had no reply; we then called Warrington A&E to ask about the waiting time and were advised about 4 hours. So we drove across to W’ton, and booked in at the reception desk at about 10 past 10. While I was standing there I became very tired and hot, and had to quickly sit on a nearby chair (on somebody’s coat).

The staff found me a wheelchair, took me to another waiting area, inserted a cannula and took blood samples.

They fitted me with a saline drip and then moved me back to the reception area where we waited for several hours. At intervals I was called into the triage room where they measured my BP and then sent me back out.

I had been slowly drinking water and fresh orange juice, and was sick in the toilets at one point, normal looking vomit.

Eventually at about 9.00 am we were sent through and I was given more blood tests. The doctor said that he was happy that I was not in danger, but wanted to carry out a few more tests, so he sent me to have an ECG and chest x-ray. After the x-ray the radiologist said ‘go and sit in the waiting area’ so I went back to the seat. While we were waiting I took a swig of water – during the night I had not eaten at all – and suddenly felt nauseous and vomited blood.

The staff began laying absorbent mats on the floor; they put me on a trolley and sent me back to the casualty room.

I was transferred to the AMU ward where there were five other patients.

This department was very noisy, with yelling from further down the corridor. The other patients in the AMU tended to be older men, who were very impatient with the nursing staff, making sarcastic (and racist) comments about them.

I was hooked up to IV omeprazole and stayed in this ward a few days.

Then I was moved to another ward, but after just a few hours I was moved to the Gastro Ward A5. The staff explained that they would carry out an endoscopy, which meant I was not allowed any solid food for 12 hours.

They carried out this procedure, using local throat spray and a mild sedative. After this, I was returned to the ward, and the nurses carried on taking blood samples and checking my BP. They advised me that they had identified an ulcer, which they had clipped shut to make it heal.

The next day they said that my blood stats were slightly low, and they suspected that the bleeding had not been fully stopped. So they issued me with another nil-by-mouth order, and I had a repeat endoscopy.

After this, the consultant said that he wanted to make sure that they had completely solved the problem, and he wanted me to be booked in for a barium meal and x-ray. However, when I enquired, they told me that the radiology department only worked during the week, so I would have to wait until Monday at the earliest.

Then it was decided that I would have the stomach x-ray at a later date as an outpatient.

On Tuesday 22 I was informed that my blood test results had come back and that they were happy to discharge me.

Observations and intuitions:

Sat 19 October – I was in the AMU, where the patients were angry and frustrated, barking abuse at the nursing staff. From down the corridor we could hear various machines beeping, some raucous yelling, and the gentle ticking of an IV drip pump.

I was issued with tight stockings to wear in bed to stop me developing thromboses. At some point I looked round the ward – and at myself – and began to wonder what was the point of having a great healthcare system if none of the people has any chance of a meaningful career? Gradually I noticed that the other patients, one by one, were being visited by the consultant and advised that their treatment was complete and they would be free to go.

In the afternoon I was moved from the AMU down to ward E5, then after an hour they transferred me to the Gastro ward.

Sunday 20 October – I woke up at 5 a.m. and listened to Radio 3, ‘Through the Night’ which was playing soothing choral music. Then I started watching YouTube videos of ‘Measure for Measure’, where Isabella says ‘O, it is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant.’

Which reminded me of the Motörhead song, “Just ‘Cos You Got The Power” (that don’t mean you’ve got the right).

Because I had spent so long without having any food or sleep, my senses were starting to fray and mingle, like intersecting manifolds on a physics animation. There was something fascinating about the square tiles on the ceiling, and the pleated blue curtains that were used to shield the patients. When I close my eyes, the bed seems to gently sway backwards and forwards.

I was watching some concert footage of Pet Shop Boys in Hollywood: their stage set consisted of a grand electric light-show, and at one point the screen showed a set of upright white lines like marching figures. As they swayed across the stage, these lines made me think about the snake skeletons that lay sleeping in jars of formalin at Warrington Museum; gloomy cabinets with dusty typewritten labels from 1968.

It was forty years ago today: 20 October marked the death of physicist Paul Dirac. I was a chemistry student in those days, but I don’t recall ever being notified that this legendary figure had passed away. Of course, all the news coverage today is of Liam Payne, pop singer who died after falling from a hotel balcony.

Uncomprehending

Journal entry, 9 October 2024:
It was forty years ago today.

He was desperately handsome in that clone-y, eighties kind of way; dark brown hair that looked almost black, neat eyebrows and moustache, firm chin. I can’t remember what he was drinking. Not sure if I even bothered asking what his name was. Around us, the music PA was playing some Duran Duran and Gloria Estefan and Phil Oakey. Perhaps the other drinkers were watching us; I’m not sure.

Back in those days I used to smoke Lambert and Butler mild. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t notice the Kouros, incense of lust.

Eventually I asked if he wanted to come home with me. ‘No, sorry, I’m busy tomorrow’. Fair enough. I went to get another drink. What was I on in those days? Probably Gaymer’s dry cider. The cyanide (from the apple pips) gradually destroys the optic nerve. Looking is not seeing; the idea of being near this bloke, and then having to go home alone, created a sort of rigid framework of discomfort that joined my kidneys to my shoulder blades and knees.

I looked at my watch (blue Seiko analogue, white leather strap) and said I would need to make a move soon. His soft Welsh accent moved into the pause.
‘You know, I might like to come back to your place. If you still fancy, that is.’

Having resigned myself to the idea that he wasn’t interested, I wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘If you like, then yeah. That would be nice.’ But there was no lingering eye contact or cheeky smile, no tentative hand on knee or flirty remark.

We made our way down to Oxford Street tube station. As a train pulled in, I ran to jump on board; I heard him shout ‘Is this one ours?’, but as I turned to look the doors closed between us.

If it was on the big screen I would expect you to smile, or try to look concerned; but in real life it was pure, 24-carat agony as I watched him disappear. Perhaps at this point I should construct an elaborate fiction of how our lives proceeded to unfold in two parallel destinies, one in which we managed to board the train together, and one where we were separated, never to meet again.

His name was Phil/Stuart/Mike, and he worked as an engineer/window cleaner/abattoir foreman. During our first few meetings we went to the zoo/Tate Gallery/cinema, to see Gremlins/Dreamscape/Purple Rain.

Perhaps it’s better to have this immense catalogue of metastable futures, each one waiting to become; the reality might have been disappointing (it always is). We might have walked, unknowing, past one another in the street a few years later on. I can dip in and out of the might-have-been junkshop of memories that never were, creating false happiness from an un-remembered past.

Journal entry, 5 October 2024:
It seems that the wheels are coming off Labour’s election landslide juggernaut. After a brilliant start – appointing independent experts in the form of James Timpson, Patrick Vallance, and Richard Hermer to look after vital parts of government policy – Kier Starmer has been accused of hypocrisy for accepting gifts of clothing and tickets.

We are now looking forward to Rachel Reeves’ first budget; she is expected (according to Ye Expresse) to impose cruel and swingeing taxes on hard-working non-dom billionaires and public schools (whose assets increased by £600m in the five years leading up to 2020) which will force thousands of ordinary, hard-working families to go without food or heating until the Tories return to power in 2029.

Meanwhile, the global conflicts continue, with Ukraine and Russia engaged in savage warfare and Israel attacking Lebanon. Donald Trump (deranged Republican candidate) has suggested that Israel should launch an immediate attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.

The Conservatives are getting ready to elect their new leader, successor to the hapless Sunak. The four candidates are Jenrick, Badenoch, Tugendhat and Cleverly – as dire a manufactured pop group as you could ever hope to see. If these are the very best, I dread to think what the rest of the party members are like.

Perhaps, Instead, Because

The rippled waves of sunlight make  
Their way across the void, until 
They penetrate the mesophyll  
That knits the waiting sugars into place

A page has no conception of the book it helps create  
The leaf can never understand the tree; it  
Occupies a realm beyond experience.
Likewise, the heart and eyes  
And other parts of me lie trapped inside  
A mirrored cage of metastable ignorance

The second and the inch do not betray   
Awareness of the pound, which hovers in the wings   
Three isolated pawns, but when they meet  
Measure takes on meaning, and   
Another queen is ready to be born:
“The virus has no concept of disease“

I’m worried about the idea that we can no longer measure things.  If every recipe calls for ingredients to be weighed out in nanogram portions, and for ovens to be regulated to a millikelvin, and cooking times to be like Olympic sprinters, calibrated to the nearest hundredth of a second, then we can never complete a single task.
Later that day, I found a poems by Donika Kelly | The Poetry Foundation called

What Is the Measure

For M

I catalog what I cannot capture:
the sun, its ragged stumble into rockface,
the precise elevation of this plateau or the next,
the sea, of course, against which everything is measured.

My tools are insufficient, inexact.
For instance: there is no way to measure
the peak against the distance from the tip
of one ring finger to the other, no matter
my arms’ position: outstretched, limp, akimbo.

For instance: there is no way to weigh
the earth pushed out of earth
against the gravity of my body, its bones,
its sacs, its meat and animating light.

I submit:
I do not constitute the mountain.
This, in spite of the pallet of old quilts
and newly fallen maple leaves I’ve made
at its immeasurable base.

I submit:
I do not constitute the field,
although I have harrowed its length, its width
with my narrow feet, my slow step.

Never mind I hear what scurries
or scatters, what burrows or bounds.
Never mind I raise my hand to hover
the bent grass, the echinacea’s bald crown—

all of which withers or writhes,
all of which is new or nearly the same
before my foot’s next fall.

I submit:
As with the mountain,
                                    the field.
As with the field,
                           you,
ineluctable as a season, sun ragging the rockface.
Your arm, nearly as long as mine, your palm,
wider, your mouth a beginning, your eyes, of course,
against which everything else is measured.

You harrow and the summit writhes;
your broad foot falls, and the field, akimbo, gives up
its gravity, lets loose its bodies its bones,
thrums an animating light.
What Is the Measure, By Donika Kelly, Featured in Poetry, June 2023

The Disappearing Friend

Journal entry, 21 Sept 2024:
Last week, an extraordinary news story unfolded in Lebanon. Thousands of pagers and walkie-talkie radios suddenly exploded, causing deaths and injuries. It turned out that these devices were being widely used by the militant group Hezbollah and the attack was blamed on the Israeli intelligence forces.

This is part of an ongoing conflict which erupted on October 7 last year when a group of Hamas fighters invaded Israel, kidnapping hundreds of civilians and carrying out a series of rapes and murders.

The mobile comms episode was like something from a Ludlum thriller, and must have taken endless weeks of planning and execution, using covert allies. Surely the network of informants would have been able to alert Israel to the forthcoming attack on October 7, which could have been thwarted. And who knows where we would be now? 

It’s Saturday morning, and the Legend channel is showing a couple of ‘Twilight Zone’ programmes. We have glorious colour TV sets with LED screens and 4K image resolution and 7-channel digital stereo; but still, this B-&-W sixties drama is completely engrossing. And so often, after watching an episode of TTZ, you realise that this same storyline was turned into a lame Hollywood blockbuster thirty years later.

Class Report Week 1

The student joined the local school as a Teaching Assistant; in the maths class, he gave each pupil a postcard from the Tate Gallery showing a different picture. ‘Now, I want you to look at the picture and think of how you would describe it using mathematical ideas.’

The class of 14-year-olds looked baffled.
‘Hands up how many of you have pictures that show people?’ Three. ‘Has anybody got a landscape?’ Two. ‘Who’s got a picture of a machine?’ One.

And then he said, ‘Do you think that the image is a simple one, or does it contain complicated elements?’ A few seconds of silence, then two of the boys spoke over each other. (laughter)

‘It’s really simple at a distance, but close up there are lots of details. I don’t know how big the original painting would be.’ One of the girls held her postcard up and peered at it. ‘Lots of coloured squiggles. If this was a black-and-white photo, it wouldn’t be interesting.’

‘Is it interesting, then?’ said a boy in front of her. ‘Somebody thinks so, otherwise they wouldn’t have printed a postcard of it.’ The teacher asked her to read out the number printed on the back of the card.
‘Fourteen’.

‘Right, that is…erm, it’s a picture by Jackson Pollock. Some of his paintings have been sold at auction for…about fifteen million dollars. (shocked laughter)

The teacher stood up. ‘Right, next week I want you to bring in an equation or formula from a science book. Anything, long, short, mysterious; whatever. And we will try to generate a picture based on the formula, and see if this can help you remember or understand the original ideas. The bell rang. ‘Next week, then.’

Andy Report 1, March 1993:
I had grown bored with my rented room in Castle Bromwich (although I did like my landlord and I admired his handyman skills) so I started looking for somewhere closer to town. I went down to the local phone box and rang the Gay Switchboard number. ‘Hello, how can we help?’

I asked if there were any rented rooms on their books. It turned out that the chap on the phone did happen to know of someone who was looking for a lodger. I took the phone number, and rang the prospective landlord to arrange a viewing.

Late that week I left work and caught the bus into town, where I called into HMV and purchased a couple of cassette singles (since I didn’t own a turntable): Little Bird by Annie Lennox, and Sweet Harmony by The Beloved. Then I caught another bus to Balsall Heath, and went to visit the house.

The room was nice; a small double bed, a wardrobe, and a huge framed poster of ‘Fred’, the garage mechanic, by Herb Ritts. I said yes, I like it, and if acceptable, I would move in. My new landlord was called Andy; ‘Don’t worry’ he said, ‘If you move in here, you’ll see life.’

Andy Report 2, March 2000:
Went to visit Andy in Lytham. I was due to stay at his shared house on Saturday night, but the housemates were not going away until Sat afternoon, so I stayed at Trades Hotel on Friday night and then went to see ‘A Clockwork Orange’ at the Odeon.

Andy Report 3, Wed 26 April 2023:
Went to visit Andy again, Robbie has travelled down from Dumfries to see him and sort out a GP appointment. Andy is very unsteady and forgetful, hasn’t been to see the doctor in over 12 months. After leaving A-, we went to Peste and had a small carafe of red while listening to some groovy ambient music, after which we had dinner at Pho No 1.

Andy Report 4, 17 Aug 2024:
This morning, I rang Andy to see if he was back home from hospital. He was: he answered the phone and pretended to know who I was. We had a brief, not terribly coherent conversation which resembled an unhinged stream-of-consciousness drama.

Some people, when dementia strikes, will lose all inhibition and embark on a series of wild, profane and vulgar discussions, totally at odds with (what was perceived to be) their real character.
Perhaps it’s just the wrong way round.

Andy Report 5, 21 Sept 2024:
Rang Andy but had no reply. Called round, rang the concierge bell and explained who I was and whom I wished to visit. They let me into the building; when I got to Andy’s flat he was opening the door, so presumably they had called him on the security intercom.

The TV was on very loud (oddly enough, for all his health issues, Andy has always had good hearing) so I asked him to turn it down. The remote control has gone missing, so he just ran his finger down the line of buttons on the side of the set, and the picture vanished.

We tried to have a conversation, but the narrative was completely scrambled; I asked about his carers, and whether he went downstairs each day. He made some remark about carers emerging from cupboards and travelling around the flat.

The grey safe had been moved out of the wooden bureau and was sitting on the floor near the radiator. The flat was very tidy; no letters or papers or books. The old Andy was gone, far, far away, the old Andy who would drive through the night to go clubbing, and who would stand on the settee when dressing up for an evening out, who went with us to see Handel’s Messiah and the Rocky Horror Show.

In a curious irony, I passed a parked car on my way to his flat today; the window was open, and I could hear the radio playing ‘You Sure Do’ by Strike, a massive hit from 1995, the great year when Andy and I embarked on our vital career paths, achieving wealth and freedom.

Klorexadone Memorial

Journal entry, 6 Sept 2024:
Today’s news is all about small boats crossing the channel, or the Grenfell Tower enquiry, or the epidemic of opiates addiction, or Asian Hornets destroying the UK bee population, or the Lucy Letby inquest…
So I logged onto YouTube and watched a remarkable performance of the finale of Beethoven 9, performed by a grand united choir and the Karos percussion ensemble.

Then a few days later, I watched the Aurora Orchestra perform the same work from memory, with a fascinating pre-concert talk about the composer’s notebooks which he used to communicate with friends.

Have just started reading ‘Diary of a Mad Diva’ by Joan Rivers (who else?) which prompted me to begin this journal. Her writing is a bit (!) raucous and unhinged. Wait, make that appalling and disgraceful. But every so often, Joanie will let slip some careless remark which betrays how sharp she really is – firmly concealed intelligence.

Only much later did I discover that Wednesday (when I took out this library book) was the tenth anniversary of her death…

It occurred to me that perhaps early September should be the start of the new year – after all, the school year begins on September 5. The harvest is in, people are fed, babies are safe, and young minds are ready to embark on a new exciting adventure filled with hope. The Evening Standard carried a column by Fat Tony saying that September offered more chances to properly enjoy London, and should be treated as the new year period.

Journal entry, 7 Sept 2024:
My real name is Plethora, ‘cos my parents were worried that it would damage my sense of self if one of my classmates at school had the same name.
How shall we set up an algorithm to coordinate the various [shapes] and [colours] and [size] of objects standing on the canvas of an abstract work?

‘An Evening Walk’ by Wordsworth is a gathering of lyrical ideas – one wouldn’t normally try to consume all nine pages in one go, but would browse the text and dwell on those sections that chimes with one’s own experience.
This was written for people who lived in a world without electricity, or foreign travel, or mass education.

Cortex

I forgot to take a photograph of last night’s meal;
Tomatoes dying to be red, and 
Orange cheese and soft pink ham  
Are hiding in between the leaves Of British Raving Green

This purple bruise is all that I have left
To tell me that we shared some time, but still
I never really learned to sting the blues.

The tortured windows in the rain  
Cannot allow the hollow
Landscape to enjoy itself again, while  
Random leaves turn yellow and descend  
Like floating strands of melody that  
Make us wish this symphony would never have to end

The realm I used to occupy, where  
Shapes and colour dominate 
I now retreat and seek the comfort  
Of a shady vale where daylight  
Now and then emerges into texture and  
Becomes aware

I forgot how much it hurt to see  
An empty square of wall
Where once your photograph would wait  
To see me leave   
But now the frame that held your smile  
Is somewhere else, another line of trees  
And floating birds forget the shape of gravity

Sometimes Calvin gets angry with me; his entire body begins to shudder, and his eyes dart back and forth, their pupils reduced to tiny black spots. ‘Why did you do that?’ he will snarl. He is bitterly disappointed in me, since I wasted thousands of pounds in rent (during my student years) when I should have purchased a narrow boat and lived on the canal.

I have been instructed to send a direct e-mail message to the artistic director of ‘The Chase’, so I composed the following request, asking them to reconsider my failed application.

Earlier this year I was instructed by my partner to enter as a contestant for the TV quiz show The Chase’ so I began the process of completing an online application form. When I mentioned to Calvin that it required a 30-second video clip to demonstrate (I assumed) my screen presence, he said ‘No, we need to send something more than that!’ 

So he dragged me round various places in the city and I did short pieces to camera – the AJ Bell stadium, Old Trafford, the Rolls-Royce car outside the Midland Hotel. On one occasion, while others were drifting round town, smartly dressed for a night out, I was busy trying to read Wikipedia and write a script about the history of the Co-Op. We even went down the zip-wire in the slate quarry at Penrhyn and paid for the headcam footage of this ride.

Eventually, I submitted the form, along with a short clip of me by the Emmeline Pankhurst statue in St Peter’s Square. We never heard back from the production team, so I thought that my application had been rejected.

But Calvin is determined that I should carry on trying to get on this quiz show and win 90 grand which will go along with his savings to let us purchase a reasonably scruffy terraced house somewhere in Taunton or Lichfield.

He located your name as one of the senior team among the closing credits of ‘The Chase’ and insisted that I should send a direct e-mail message to you in the hope that my original application would be reconsidered. He also thinks that it would be possible to phone to check that you have received this message.

In order to obtain an e-mail contact for you, I have revived my old ‘Linkedin’ account. I appreciate that you will receive a huge number of genuinely important messages during the week, and so be unable to send a personal response. Meanwhile I am attaching a clip of my flight down a slate mine in Wales. ‘It will’, he said, ‘give them an insight into your personality.’ ‘What, grey and brittle?’ I asked…

Calvin responded, as he often does, by huffing and puffing. Then he lapsed into his sing-song Belfast accent and began to give me a running commentary about the buildings and streets through which we made our way.

Sometimes he would hold a conversation with himself; giving me occasional reminders that it was not himself but a deceased friend who was speaking.

Later, we got home; now that the dark evenings are drawing in, we live in gloom. To save money he has removed some lightbulbs from the hallway and the kitchen, replacing these with small battery-powered LED lights. All around the flat we have wax candles in jars, supposedly to provide cheap illumination.

The 30-second video clip was supposed to include my age, location, and something about my interesting hobbies. But I have no hobbies; my bike was stolen ten years ago, so I no longer travel round the UK to club rallies. When the Covid pandemic broke out I stopped going to the swimming baths. I no longer go to the writers’ club meetings, I don’t belong to any clubs, and since I’m employed by the Civil Service I try to avoid talking about work.

At home, we try to avoid talking about any of Calvin’s business projects since he is convinced that our flat is under covert surveillance, with listening devices hidden in books, electric sockets, and picture frames. So he will occasionally lapse into a scandalised Les Dawson-type speech pattern, the words shot through with gaps where he will silently mouth missing phrases.

Happy Birthday Mr B!

4 Sept 2024:  

Happy Birthday Mr B! Today is the bicentenary of Anton Bruckner, whose works are featured on R3 ‘Composer of the Week’.

The advent of Youtube has turned me into a cultural butterfly, unable to concentrate on anything for more than about four minutes, drifting randomly between ‘80s pop videos, political satire, and archive footage of Bernstein or Barenboim.

I don’t have the ability any more to sit through ninety unbroken minutes of Wagner or Strauss – or even the four-movement version of Bruckner nine.

So I decided to coach myself back into a state of endurance by reading ‘An Evening Walk’. Some bits of it get on my nerves, so after a couple of minutes I leaf through to another section. And then I stumble upon his angry poem ‘Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway’, lamenting the hideous vandalism and destruction of the English countryside caused by the spread of train travel.

And I remembered hearing about a programme – a R3 spoof, apparently – which claimed that Bruckner had been a steam-train enthusiast. Perhaps we should ask Simon Armitage to compose a ditty to explain why the HS2 line to Manchester was a dreadful piece of industrial carnage, and why its cancellation was a good and beautiful thing.

Words are corrupt; numbers alone are pure and true

Journal entry, 31 Aug 2024:
It’s Saturday morning and the Legend Channel is showing ‘Fabulous Journey to the Center (sic) of the Earth’ which sounds like a sequel to Priscilla but is actually a tacky mid-seventies FX-laden adventure story.

The Most Important Event in human history occurred this morning when tickets went on sale for the forthcoming series of gigs by Oasis. The band’s more rabid fans proclaim them to be the greatest rock musicians ever, simply because they hail from Manchester.

A recent BBC exposé uncovered the squalid conditions endured by residents in some flats in London. Their landlord, Jas Athwal, is the newly-elected Labour MP for Ilford South, and will probably not be supportive of any Commons motions which aim to uphold hygiene and safety standards in rented accommodation. His tenants reported black mould and insects in their dwellings, but backed down after a letting agent threatened them with eviction if they discussed the issue.

When I told my landlord that black mould had started appearing in the corner of the bedroom, he just said that I needed to open the windows more often. Part of the problem may be the curious new brickwork on the outside of the building, and the plastic window ledges – unlike every other flat, which has a neat row of angled bricks instead.

Many years ago, when I was preparing to leave sixth form and go to college, the teacher gave us all a pink leaflet produced by an insurance company. The paper warned us that ‘Rent is dead money! Never rent a property, always purchase your home!’ I was baffled by this, and cheerfully ignored the message. However, if I had discussed it with my classmates, I would have discovered that many of them lived in a white-collar semi-detached world, where a family support network would always be on hand to smooth the house buying journey with money, advice, and transport.
But this was part of the background noise of a middle-class childhood, and it was never discussed since everybody knew this already.

How carefully can we measure?

All the frenzied interest in the band Oasis has reminded me of a job several years back, when I worked on the development of a water-based coating system. The material contained a polyester resin, together with pigments, co-solvents and additives. Among the additive materials were a pair of surface-tension modifiers: a silicone and a fluorinated carboxylic acid.

Although we used the standard allowance of these materials, I decided to explore the idea of reducing the levels and seeing what effect it would have. So we tried using each additive at 0.1, 0.3, 0.7 and 0.9 percent in pure water and checking the surface tension of the solution.

Then we decided to see how the system responded to additive levels of 0.35, 0.40, 0.45 and 0.55 percent. This produced an interesting curve, with the surface tension gradually drifting down as the amount of additive increased.

And then we looked at further dilutions, with the amount of active material reduced to 0.005, 0.008, and 0.13 percent in water; again, a smooth curve was generated which indicated that, even at a zero concentration, we would see a surface tension well below the value for pure water. The dyneometer platinum ring was cleaned in 65 percent nitric acid between tests; and a standard calibration with pure deionised water gave 73 dyne per cm. We could never explain fully why the additives had the affect they did; nor could we convince the purchasing manager that using these costly materials was justified…

Another strange performance curve was obtained when we began to measure the effect of temperature on viscosity of water-borne coatings. The established wisdom states that a small rise in temp will cause the material to become less viscous – providing you don’t hit the phase change or melting point.

But when we checked the actual behaviour of the paint system, we observed an odd response; the viscosity showed an increase up to about 35 deg C, after which it declined rapidly. We speculated that this was because the emulsion particles swelled up in warm water to a certain point, after which the cosolvent started to escape and the particles shrivelled up.
This curious phenomenon was seen using both the cone-and-plate viscometer, and the B4 viscosity flow cup method.

Encounter

Journal entry, 24 Aug 24:   It’s Saturday morning and the Legend Channel is showing Lightning Strikes, about a malevolent entity that creates a thunderstorm, trapping the residents of a small town. Very apt, considering that today is Manchester Pride and the forecast is for ‘thundery showers’. And, presumably, lots of rainbows.

The Manchester Evening News has printed a charming piece (by Jenna Campbell, 20 Aug) about the Pride parade, explaining the timings, the route, and road closures. One section of this report reads:

“Manchester’s first Pride Parade was held on 20 February 1988, when a huge anti-Section 28 protest was held in the city centre. At the time, it was one of the largest LGBTQ+ demonstrations ever to take place in the UK, paving the way for the Pride Parades we see around the world today”

I’m sure that some youngsters may read this article and get the impression that no Gay Pride parades had ever been organised in the UK prior to this event.

The Daily Mail has recently become obsessed with someone or something called a ‘Molly-Mae’. I have no idea who this person is, but I know they have recently endured some kind of relationship trouble, and it is deemed worthy of the paper’s front page.

Meanwhile there are a few other minor stories doing the rounds: Ukrainian troops have entered Russian territory and destroyed a couple of bridges, Israeli forces continue to bombard Gaza and Lebanon with missiles, seven people including Mike Lynch have died in a freak weather incident when the luxury superyacht Bayesian capsized, and the funerals of three children killed in Southport – Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar – have taken place. And in Solingen, Germany, three people were killed and eight injured during a knife attack at a festival.

In the UK we now have a scandal concerning Carers’ Allowance, a benefit paid to people who have full-time caring duties.  People can also engage in paid employment while claiming this benefit, but their earnings must stay below £151 per week. Anything above this level cancels their eligibility, meaning they must repay any CA paid during that week.

Clever individuals with high income levels and smart tax advisers can engage in various tricks to avoid certain penalties; for instance, a person may end up owing Child Benefit tax if their income goes above 50k. But they can decide (at a later date) that they had actually been paying money into a personal pension or made charitable donations, which reduced their net income and cancelled the tax liability.

So surely if somebody ended up getting more than £151 from a part-time job, they could set up a charitable foundation (e.g. Skateboarding Penguins of Bolivia) and make a retrospective donation of the excess payment for that week.

After all, during his fraud trial in the US, lawyers for Mike Lynch argued that the extravagantly complex framework of financial structures used by Autonomy was a perfectly normal part of high-tech business and not in any way meant to mislead or confuse.

25 Aug 2024: Today’s episode of ‘Most Unexplained’ on the Legend Channel was about the shooting of JFK back in November 1963. Mysterious deaths, strange phone conversations, conspiracy theories. The film JFK by Oliver Stone is not available in any branch of HMV. And during his deranged campaign speeches, the orange one (Donald J Trump) has declared that, if elected, he will declassify all the documents relating to the assassination and its FBI review. He did make the same promise back in 2017, but about one percent of the files – some 15,000 documents – have significant redactions and their contents remain unknown.

In 1922, post-war euphoria had turned the world of culture upside down. Ulysses and The Waste Land were just the two biggest, brightest stars in a galaxy of experimental productions. And in Wales, the old ideas of what was seemly and proper were being tested, eventually seeing the Bardic Crown of 1924 being awarded to Edward Prosser Rhys for his poem ‘Atgof’, a meditation on the sensual world. This lengthy work provoked outrage for its discussion of carnal matters (including homosexual lust); but the judges must have recognised that the past was being swept away, and that the poem might be the vanguard of a new, exciting literature.

Excerpt from ‘Memory’, an English translation of ‘Atgof’.

“The secret arches of the brain! … We kept
No vigil on our thoughts, walled in from wrong
That grave, fantastic night. And as we slept
Our ears were tolling with the holy song,
We slept, half drowsily aware, unwilling,
Yet glad that each was in the other’s arm.
And so desire … the flame of our fulfilling
And sudden lapse of love’s ecstatic charms …
And then awake, remembering what had been
My brain became a pool of burning wroth:
My comradeship and love, alike unclean,
For all our sacring and our plighted troth.
Wilt thou not leave me now alone, Desire,
For I am sick to death of Life entire.”

(from ‘Atgof’, Edward Prosser Rhys, trans. Hywel Davies)
“Memory” by E. Prosser Rhys (queerwelsh.blogspot.com)

Encounter

I saw you standing by the open door 
Holding and withholding a promise 
Until at last, your grunting fingers  
Ran out of different places to explore

Just half a day was all we had to share  
And in that time we managed to  
Erect a whole new language,  
System of belief; the texture of  
An incoherent snarl would let us both pretend 
That what was true could  
Overlap with what was only cool

The hands were not afraid to hold  
The telescope that tried in vain  
To burn away a galaxy of sins 
But in the end it etched them into place

Crystals of fire dance within my brain 
I feel them as they 
Try to probe a cell’s dimension, and     
As the feelings build, you are transformed  
Into some kind of animal

I felt his dagger pierce the tragic hole, releasing  
Harsh bolts of brightly-coloured pain, and   
Desperately trying to inhale the  
Tangled mess of prayers and curses,
That spilled like poison from his eager mouth

Harpooned by lust, the membranes intersect;
Intensely focused corridors of bone 
Embrace the curved shadow of the lost machine; 
This must be how God
Beholds the world of men, and  
How he wants it to be seen.

A few years back, we went down to Swansea to visit Malcolm. It was twenty years since we had last met; we both looked a bit older. Over a Chinese takeaway we chatted about the old days, and I recalled that, back in the early nineties, during the Gulf War the newspapers had all carried a syndicated picture of a soldier under a hosepipe, with the caption ‘A cold shower for a hot soldier’.

Malcolm rose from the table and wandered over to his bookshelf; ‘What, you mean this one?’ holding up a page from a newspaper carrying that very picture. A magical, unexpected moment…

Mechanism of Despair

From The Longest Journey, E M Forster, 1907:

‘Why!’ cried the young man, ‘why, it’s What We Want!’
‘It’s called Essays’, said Ansell.
‘Then that’s it. Mrs Failing, you see, she wouldn’t call it that, because three W’s, you see, in a row, she said, are vulgar, and sound like Tolstoy…’

Forster’s world is inhabited by strange, buttoned-up creatures for whom restraint and decorum are paramount.
His people all belong to the same social class; or they take great care to avoid contact with anybody who might not have the right sort of breeding. This is entirely unconscious; they know exactly how to behave, and how people are expected to respond, in any situation.
Quite how Mrs Failing would cope if she knew just how vulgar the three W’s in a row were going to become ninety years later, is anybody’s guess.

Journal entry, 10 August 2024:
Mechanism of despair. Each year, on 12 May, we have a mass observation day when people record their daily life – where they go, what they eat, whom they see.

Sweetness and light.
But there are plenty of people  in the UK who either don’t know or don’t care about mass observation. Perhaps they have nothing to say; or perhaps we prefer not to listen to them when they decide to speak.

Over the past two weeks we have seen violent unrest in Britain, following the murder of three young girls in a savage knife attack.
When this news story first broke, many viewers quickly decided that this must be the work of radical Islamists or asylum-seeking migrants, and set about flooding the internet with rabid speculation and calls for protest.
There followed an orgy of violence, with high street shops, libraries and community hubs being attacked, police cars set ablaze, and Muslims being assaulted in public.

15 August 2024:
A-level results day. As usual, the news is full of beautiful young people holding A4 sheets of paper and tearfully hugging one another. They each have their Golden Ticket; the ruched curtains slowly rise, revealing a gleaming highway that leads to an exciting, prosperous future. It would be interesting to hear what employers have to say (in private, away from the microphones) about these gilded creatures.

A-Levels

I recall those days when all this land  
Was derelict and bare  
A great expanse of broken weeds    
And a tired shed whose walls of brick 
Could barely hold themselves in place

If you could use your telescope to probe 
The darkness in my cosmic folds
The map of our tomorrows would reveal
Who knows? Perhaps the stars are falling into place

I remember this day, a notice-board  
Whose modest burden was a list of names 
And letters, like windows that hinted  
At a future that would open like a rose 
But no-one yelled, or jumped for joy;  
Perhaps we knew the work had just begun.

Here’s your magic paper; roll it up  
And peer through this white telescope 
A bright horizon gleams so far away

Take the barrel, slide the letters into place; with  
Any luck they’ll form 
A silver key that you can use to blow the lock or    
Wind the clock whose drifting minutes  
Fade away like rings of purple smoke…

“A teenager is someone who is young enough to know everything”

The Acts of Youth, by John Wieners

And with great fear, I inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses, what little I have left,
what more can be taken away?

The fear of traveling, of the future without hope
or buoy. I must get away from this place and see
that there is no fear without me: that it is within
unless it is some sudden act or calamity
to land me in the hospital, a total wreck, without
memory again; or worse still, behind bars. If
I could just get out of the country. Some place
where one can eat the lotus in peace.

For in this country, it is terror, poverty awaits; or
am I a marked man, my life to be a lesson
or experience to those young who would tread
the same path, without God
unless he is one of justice, to wreak vengeance
on the acts committed while young under un-
due to influence or circumstance. Oh I have
always seen my life as drama, patterned
after those who met with disaster or doom.

Is my mind being taken away from me?
I have been over the abyss before. What
is that ringing in my ears that tells me
all is nigh, is naught but the roaring of the winter wind?

Woe to those homeless who are out on this night.
Woe to those crimes committed from which we
can walk away unharmed.

So I turn on the light
And smoke rings rise in the air.
Do not think of the future; there is none.
But the formula all great art is made of.
Pain and suffering. Give me the strength
to bear it, to enter those places where the
great animals are caged. And we can live
in peace by their side. A bride to the burden
that no god imposes but knows we have the means
to sustain its force unto the end of our days.

For that is what we are made for; for that,
we are created. Until the dark hours are done.
And we rise again in the dawn.
Infinite particles of the divine sun, now
worshiped in the pitches of the night.
John Wieners (1934-2002)

Taken from:

Taken from:
https://www.poeticous.com/john-wieners/the-acts-of-youth
https://projectmyopia.com/on-john-wieners/
https://www.poemist.com/john-wieners/the-acts-of-youth
https://www.poetrycritic.net/2015/11/the-acts-of-youth-poemwriter-john.html
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-wieners
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/queer-shoulders-at-the-wheel/
https://institut-epice.org/the-acts-of-youth
https://www.littermagazine.com/2023/12/review-pente-book-of-woe-by-john-wieners.html
https://www.wavepoetry.com/products/john-wieners
https://www.poemlyrics.com/fear/the-acts-of-youth-by-john-wieners/
https://library.syracuse.edu/digital/guides/print/wieners_j_prt.htm
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/john-wieners-letters-essay/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/926335.Selected_Poems_1958_1984

Britain on fire…

Journal Entry, 27 Jul 2024:
It’s Saturday morning, and the Legend channel is showing ‘Coast of Skeletons’, a 1964 Richard Todd movie that I have never seen before. It is impressive what they managed to achieve without the benefits of CGI.

Yesterday we went to see ‘Twisters’ at the cinema which involved some dodgy science about possible methods of calming a tornado. There were some epic disaster scenes which might have started life inside a computer, but which appeared totally convincing.

It reminded me of the Texas chemical plant that lost power in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey struck the area. When the refrigeration units were damaged, the unstable peroxide materials began to explode, sending huge clouds of acrid smoke over the Crosby district. The footage from this incident would have been priceless to film directors.

Last night saw the opening ceremony for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. It rained. A lot. And the transport network was attacked by saboteurs (again, we observe how the French language allows narrative to flow) unknown, who carried out arson attacks on the train lines leading to Paris. As well as the rain, and some surreal tableaux, we had the Olympic flag hung upside-down and a thrilling performance by Celine Dion.

Last week the news carried a story about an incident involving Greater Manchester Police. A violent altercation led to police officers being attacked by passengers at Manchester airport; a man was thrown to the ground, and one officer was filmed stamping on his head. This led to huge protest marches in Oldham and Manchester; the maverick MP Lee Anderson (trade unions, Labour, then Conservative, then Reform) declared that he wanted this officer to be awarded a medal instead of being suspended from duty.

In the news: three young girls have been killed and another eight injured by a knife attacker in Southport. A 17-year old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
This dreadful incident sparked off a wave of online speculation which led to protest marches and demonstrations around the UK, with right-wing activists hurling bricks and bottles at the police and mosques being threatened. The identity of the attacker (born in the UK to an immigrant family, originally from a country which is predominantly Christian) was eventually released to the media, but this failed to stem the flood of misinformation.

And in a remarkable display of poor taste, the GB News online portal carries a story today (4 August) headlined “Michael Johnson sticks knife into Dina Asher-Smith as British star fails to qualify for Olympics 100m final”, after the British sprinter missed out on qualifying for the final due to her slow start. Nice one, GBN.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/other/michael-johnson-sticks-knife-into-dina-asher-smith-as-british-star-fails-to-qualify-for-olympics-100m-final/ar-AA1obqcI

Dull Grey Sarcasm

Journal entry, 19 July:
Yesterday we enjoyed meeting with a couple of old friends. We had a light dinner of ham salad, followed by a bottle of champagne and three bottles of wine. Naturally, my head this morning felt rather vague and woolly.

Then we made our way home, and heard a couple of alarming news items: the previous night had seen riots erupt in Leeds, with vehicles and dustbins set ablaze. Then this morning a bug had affected Microsoft computer systems, leaving airports and GP surgeries unable to process bookings.

‘Global Chaos’ was how the press reported the episode.

20 July:
It’s Saturday morning, and LegendXtra is showing ‘Asteroid-ageddon’ again, all about potential chaos and mayhem caused by the impact of a giant meteorite.

In the real world, we are getting used to the delays and frustration caused by yesterday’s ‘Outage’ (widespread closure of communications, first used in the 1850s to describe the loss of electrical power) which left airlines and medical staff having to produce hand-written order forms, check-in slips and prescriptions.

This turmoil was not even the result of malicious activity by the many scammers engaged in constant warfare against the economic infrastructure of the capitalist world; instead, it was a coding error in an authorised protection system. The security firm CrowdStrike supplies network support to Microsoft, and one of their systems malfunctioned.

Many years ago I worked for a company who liked to do things on the cheap, using home-made testing equipment instead of paying an accredited test firm to evaluate their products. One of their testing units was a salt-spray cabinet, cobbled together from a set of plastic boxes hooked up to a tank of saline and with a feed from the compressed air line.

To monitor the pressure, two wide tubes had been half-filled with copper sulphate solution and were set vertically, held in metal clamps (the exact operation of this unit was never properly explained to me) against the wall.
One day the boss called me into the office and said he wanted me to set this machine running. ‘What you need to do’ he began, ‘is to open that tap there until bubbles just start flowing through this tube here.’

‘Sorry, what tap where?’ I couldn’t see what he was referring to.
‘Here’, (pointing impatiently down) ‘you see that brass tap in the pipe?’

‘Oh, yeah. That tap, I see what you mean’. Except, unknown to me, there was another brass tap hidden from view by a piece of pipework, and it was at this tap – not the one I could actually see – that he was pointing.

So I went down to the test room later, and opened the brass tap until air began bubbling through the pale blue liquid in the tubes. I knew that the copper sulphate was added to prevent the growth of algae in the tubes when the system was not in use and the water became stagnant.

The next day I was confronted by an angry workmate. ‘What have you been doing with that salt-spray? The whole room was full of steam this morning!’

I explained that I had set the machine running as instructed by my boss. When I showed them how I had opened the tap to adjust the air flow, they laughed. ‘Not that tap, the other one…didn’t you get the flow diagram to explain what the two taps are for?’

‘Diagram? No, what diagram?’ My two colleagues looked at each other in horrified silence, and it was at this point I began to realise that all my training and guidance at the firm had been left deliberately incomplete. Several tiny incidents and overheard comments made me aware that I was not being given the required information or skill sets to do my job correctly. It turned out later that the company had a policy of poaching skilled workers from rival firms, so they had never needed to provide any form of training to new staff.

I was reminded of this incident when Alan mentioned that he had been wearing blue plastic gloves while serving food at a social function recently; there was something amusing about the behaviour of one of my workmates.

‘Oh, one of my colleagues at work… she carefully uses a paper towel to open the fridge door before taking out her dinner. Obsessed with germs, always feverishly wiping everything down with disinfectant towels, using half a sink of hot water and four minutes to wash a single coffee-cup.’

And it occurred to me that the copper and nickel present in ordinary coinage would serve to kill any bacteria or microbes present on the skin, so just tumbling loose change between the fingers would provide thorough cleaning.

On another occasion, the boss called me into his office. I went in, cheerfully expecting to be asked about some test results or whether we had checked the latest batch of raw material.  Instead, he glared at me and said, ‘What’s all this I’ve been hearing about you?’

I was baffled. ‘Dunno, why? What have I – what am I supposed to have done?’.

It turned out that one of the guys on the works had complained about me being rude to them. The chap in question was a bit of a character, always messing around and trying to wind people up with practical jokes.

‘Oh, you mean Fred?’
‘Yes, Fred. He’s one of our longest serving members of staff. Very highly respected. You really shouldn’t insult a senior colleague like him.’

‘Erm, what exactly did I say that was so offensive?’ I asked. The boss frowned; ‘He just said that you didn’t speak to him in the right tone when he asked you a civil question.’

‘Oh, I think I remember’…I paused, and the boss raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I was walking through the workshop, shaking a small tin of paint to mix the powders into it. Everybody was there, laughing around with Fred. Then he turned to me and said ‘Hey, would you like to do that with my cock?’

‘Well’, I continued, ‘I felt really embarrassed since everyone was grinning at me and I wasn’t sure how to respond. So I just said to him, “Sorry, no thanks. I’ve had enough disappointments for one day already.”’

Somebody in the workshop tried to laugh but managed to turn it into an awkward cough. The place was completely silent. ‘Fred just glared at me and stormed out, muttering angrily. And I didn’t hear anything else about it until today…’
My boss looked uncomfortable. ‘Just remember, people don’t really appreciate sarcasm. You’ve only been here a couple of months; try to keep your mouth shut and your nose clean.’

Notes from a visit to the Hotel:
We visited the cemetery, many of the gravestones are made of slate instead of marble or granite. There is a lot of political anguish in the area about people who lost their homes and incomes because of the slate-mining. On Sunday we visited the castle, then went to find some lovely cakes, tea, and ice-cream.

In the harbour, tall masts sway gently like tranquilised metronomes.

Normally, all the pictures in a hotel restaurant will follow some kind of theme or unifying style – but here, the pictures are a completely wild and random mixture. There are photographs, some semi-abstract numbers including elements of printed text, organic-looking loops and veins on twigs. A blob of colour, trying to resemble a fruit; and something inspired by Malevich.
Gulls hang motionless, enjoying the view.

Then, later, a trip to the University; ‘Facvlty of Arts’. A printed panel outside tells us about the founding members of the department, and the distinguished characters who held professor posts. Back in the old days, this would never be allowed: “If a chap isn’t good enough to get into this place, then he’s got no business knowing about the history of the department!”

Later, I admire a painting by Pissarro, ‘Landscape after the rain’.  And a couple of works by Michael Ginsborg, curious mechanistic figures.
Then some pure white texture landscape-buildings (‘Uno-City’) by the ‘Langlands-Bell cooperative’.
There is a hefty book of works by Alison Wilding, including her ‘Zig-zag paintings’ and some relief sculptures assembled from sheets of ‘Crystacal’, a high-quality modified plaster material.

Granules of Entropy

We embroider the walls of the house with   
Tiny grains of delicate unruliness  
And as the wife admires the builder  
Whose legs and shoulders make her think  
About her nephew  
She doesn’t realise the rooms now taking shape   
Are not the ones she wanted them to be.

The circuit-board is still awake; channelling   
The sturdy microvolts from X to Y. We 
Cannot hold constant everything, there’s  
Always the risk of bad weather, or an injured back, or  
A traffic jam to bring the flow of changes  
To a halt.

During the construction, the builder   
Will conceal in occasional gaps  
A rolled-up note on thin paper, wrapped in foil 
A quote from Kafka, or three lines of Shelley  
And as the building is building itself   
These ideas will gather weight and  
Magnetise the finished walls, drawing birds and insects  
To hover and sing mysterious refrains

The energy available begins to fade, the  
Growing pile of waste is using up the void 
And spreading entropy in lightweight films  
That stop the rooms from taking shape  
As half-a-dozen facets intersect to bring 
The ideal home back into view