The New News: Hair today and bald tomorrow

Thirteen days ago some highly skilled people injected me with a combination of drugs that made me unconscious and kept me like that while other highly skilled people cut me open in two places, put their hands inside the cuts, and took pieces out of my body.  Some of the bits they took out were located by earlier injecting me with radioactive material, and then using a small geiger counter, ticking away like an insane watch, to trace what they were looking for: the sentinel lymph gland in my armpit. 

Then, while the surgeon was rummaging in my breast for the original lump, some other highly skilled people with astonishingly advanced equipment studied the gland to see whether this cancer I’ve got had spread. It had, and so they concluded the operation by removing all thirteen lymph glands from my armpit. Then they sewed up both the cuts they had made,  and I was awake and back home by 8 that same evening.

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made” says the psalmist. Yes, the fearfulness quotient is increased when one has cancer, and knowing that it had spread as far as my lymph glands ratchets up the fearfulness considerably. The lymph appears to be a kind of distribution network for the body, with the lymph glands as the central sorting office from which unpleasant parcels of tumour cells can be dispatched to all locations. If it has reached there, where else has it got to?

So, two days ago, more radioactive material was pumped into my arm and a few hours later (I made a flying visit to the Norfolk Community History Club in the meantime) I lay fully clothed but with empty pockets on a gurney while a flat screen in a box hanging from a gantry clanked and crunkled its way very very slowly from my head to my toes. It started off about a centimetre above my nose, so close that the cross-hairs on the black screen blurred out of focus, and made adjustments (clunk) and shifts (crunkle) as it edged along to keep the same distance throughout. The point of this was to scan my bones, which the radioactive material would show up, in order to find out whether any cancer cells had set up shop there.

Now, bone cancer is easily the most frightening possibility I’ve had to contemplate so far, in this little vortex of “how bad can it get?” that we have been living in since December. Bone cancer is pretty fucking bad. So it’s extremely pleasing to report that the scan shows I don’t have it. (It shows I’ve got arthritic knees, but that I knew already).  Hurrah.  (Amazing how one’s perspective changes: in October 2013 I’d have been horrified to be told I had cancer: by February 2014 I’m delighted not to have a worse one).

This pleasing news was delivered to me yesterday by Mr Pain, the wonderfully-named surgeon who did the lymph and breast cancer removal. He’s wrongly named, too, because not only are the scars extremely neat and unobtrusive, I’ve had surprisingly little pain and my arm is fine (there’s sometimes loss of movement after lymph removal, but not for me).

Since then he’s been looking at the bits he cut out, or talking to the people who have, and the news is not so bad. 3 out of 13 lymph glands had cancer cells, and I still have to have a CT scan to check that those busy little distribution centres haven’t distributed them anywhere else. The cancer itself was about the size of the top joint of my thumb: it was medium aggressive, and responsive to oestrogen, which means, as I’d already been told, I’ll have to take an oestrogen blocker - but that it should help.

First though I’m going to have to have chemotherapy, starting quite soon. It’s going to make me feel like crap, I’m probably going to lose my hair, and we can’t go to New York in March as we planned, dammit. But it has a good chance of killing off the remaining cancer cells lurking about the place. After that I’ll have radiation on my breasts, and an oestrogen blocker to take for the rest of my days. 
But - and this is important - we’re still in the territory signposted “curable”.

So quite soon, probably before the end of this month, I’m going to cut all my hair off and shave my head. 
My hair is, at this present moment, waist length, last cut by someone other than myself in September 1985, when Sarah Peters trimmed my fringe for me before a job interview, and it will be strange to be without it. I was last bald in 1960, when I was a few months old, and I suspect my nut on my shoulders will look like a pea balanced on a drum, but there it is. It may regrow some day, though it will quite likely come through white this time.

Oddly enough, shaving my head has been a fantasy of mine for some years. I intend to keep my hair, plait it, and sew it into hats and things. 

I may also get a tattoo on my scalp, just for kicks. 
Gotta do something.

A Mistake

When I was but a sproggette, I was good at reading. I enjoyed it, too, partly because we were a bookish family (my father's study, lined with books and dark red curtains, is in many ways my ideal room) and heavily into words, read to and rhymed at and recited over from the earliest ages.

Plus of course every Sunday we got together in a large building with many of our neighbours and spent an hour or so repeating responses, listening to readings, singing hymns, hearing sermons and reciting prayers - some of which were in Latin (my father's missal was bilingual: Latin and German).

Being able to read, and then reading a lot, and then reading about reading and writing about what I had been reading seemed to be pretty important things to do. Everybody I met seemed to agree on that.

Eventually I fetched up at university, only negatively by choice - the careers advice at my school consisted of what university might accept us to do what subject-and naturally I chose to read my "best" subject at school: English. I really enjoyed it, and through reading, discovered
Philosophy, Politics, Criticism and such like exciting stuff.

All that time, as I did my BA and then my first Masters Degree, it seemed as if there was nothing so important, nothing so valuable as to read and to read well, to discuss what had been read with others who had read the same, to fine tune one's critical apparatus, to read what others had written about what you and they had read .... and there would be no end to it, but that was fine, that was what CULTURE consisted in, that was the cutting edge of what it's all about, and we were on it.

And now, 30 years later, it has become apparent that I was completely wrong.

The cutting edge, the place where our culture is making itself, is science, much of which is expressed in a language that I and most of my literary chums can barely read: maths.

I feel a bit of a twit now - though I'm still glad I read most of those books (if I had my time over again, as Woody Allen said, I probably wouldn't read The Magus).

Not that there's anything wrong with being able to read stuff and understand it, but never again will I be able to confuse reading a lot with the cutting edge of culture.

More politics, sorry

People were turned away at the polling stations. Young people were told to allow older people to go first, then by the time they got to the head of the queue they told the polling station was closed. In some places not enough ballot papers had been printed and people could not vote. In some places, would-be voters sat in to demand their right to vote.
Third world?
Nope, the UK.
Not everywhere, not all over, and almost certainly thanks to incompetence and antiquated systems rather than actual fixing - although there are enquiries going on in some places into the use of the postal vote, where suspiciouly large numbers of voters have suddenly registered from the same address.
It was a hard fought election and the majorities in many places are very slim - just a few votes between winning and losing the seat. In Oxford West, for example, after an ill-tempered campaign in which the sitting MP was described on leaflets as "Doctor Death", the winner polled only 176 more votes than he did.
What effect has the lost votes had around the country? Nobody knows, and the only way to find out is for individuals who believe they have been prevented from voting to mount an individual challenge in that constituency. If their challenge succeeds there can be a by-election.
Our voting system is often described as "first past the post". This is true on two levels. In the constituencies, the winner is the one with more votes than the next candidate, even if it's only one more vote. In Parliament, the party with more seats than the others gets to form the government - which means that all the ministries are headed only by members of that party, only that party gets to sit in the Cabinet (the inner circle) and the leader of that party becomes Prime Minister. Latterly, ministers and Cabinet members have even been appointed directly by the Prime Minister not necessarily from members of parliament (or, conceivably, even from members of the party of government), so important roles in government are taken by people who have not been elected to anything at all. Lord Young, part of Thatcher's government, was the first I can remember.
The situation at the moment is that the Conservatives, polling a minority of the votes cast overall, have more seats than the next party, Labour, but not more than Labour, the Lib Dems and all the small parties put together. This means that if they tried to pass any laws - especially laws that not all their own members agree with - the other parties could defeat them, and a government that cannot legislate cannot govern.
But Labour and the Lib Dems, polling a majority of the votes cast between them, don't have enough seats to pass laws if the Conservatives (and perhaps a few of the parties with one or two or three seats between them) oppose them.
So neither party can govern.
It's an irony of the situation that the two major parties which campaigned on electoral reform demonstrated the need for it by getting 52% of votes cast, but not 52% of the seats. The Lib Dems, for example, with nearly a quarter of the popular vote, got fewer than 10% of the seats.
This is why the negotiations between the Tories (who oppose electoral reform) and the Lib Dems (for whom it has been a platform for many years, and who stand to benefit most from it) are a bit delicate just now...
In the meantime, how would we know whether our elections are fair, or whether unfair tactics have been used, or whether local parties have lied to the electorate? Oddly, there is no central data monitoring, as Ben Goldacre explains:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/08/bad-science-election-data

Well, I wasn't going to blog about the election but it's been so interesting, and I've been thinking about it far too much for my own good. Plus my Facebook status updates were getting longer and longer... so here it is.

Interesting times - first hung parliament since I was a teen. Good. Labour did not deserve to win again after their record in power. Iraq mainly, but also so many things to chose from... mainly, for me, from turning themselves into Tory-lite, cozying up to the markets, the "faith" pressure groups and worshipping power and empire at its most naked in the GWBush adventures.

Unmitigated Toryness would be a disaster to all but the super-rich and the financial markets -as usual. The fact that they've got a smooth and emollient PR man at the head doesn't mean they have changed, expecially when you get... well, I was going to say "get below the surface", but Chris Grayling, the man who believes it's OK to discriminate against people, is shadow Home Secretary, which is hardly subterranean. Home Sec. is the third most important government minister.

The Lib Dems deserve some recognition of the fact that so many people in the country actually support them and their policies. It will be interesting to see how it pans out and will require negotiation and compromise - rather alien to the British tradition which is usually more adversarial and either/or.

Electoral reform may be on the cards now, at last, though that will be a tough one for the Tories, as they had specifically ruled it out. Right out. Right up until the morning after the election when they realised they'd have to offer some kind of sweetener to the Lib Dems to let them take power. So they've promised an all-party committee to bury it, I mean look into it. Classic political delaying tactic, given that there is likely to be a second election within a year. I hope Clegg has more sense than to accept.

Lib Dems also want to end Trident, a hugely expensive piece of junk which enables us to destroy Moscow if we really want to. Why we should want to, and why we should carry on with this vanity project left over from the Cold War is something nobody seems able to explain, but both Labour and the Conservatives have said we MUST keep it, because... er... we must.

Historically, Labour was against Trident, and only swung over to pointless militarism as part of the NuLabour project, which has done us so well in the last 13 years. It did get Labour into power, though and cast off the spectre of the mid 80s when they campaigned on a disarmament ticket, were slated as tools of Moscow and thrashed at the polls (though a majority of the voters voted against the party that won - more arguments for electoral reform, of course). But the Conservatives are generally the more military party.

And the Lib Dems want closer ties with Europe, which is a deep rift among the Conservatives still.

Tricky then for the Cons to work with Lib Dems, though as Cameron really really really wants to be PM and as his leadership style is extremely "kitchen cabinet" and centralised, he may manage to force his backwoodsmen and women to accept a deal, at least for the moment. He has a following wind in terms of media support, for now, and could possibly manage by offering deals and then blaming the Lib Dems if they fall through.

Tricky also for the Lib Dems to work with Labour, though they are in many ways more naturally allied. Labour promised electoral reform in 1997 (though forgot about it when they won a landslide under the winner-takes-all system), for instance. But Labour is very grubby and shopsoiled now, and Brown is no asset. Lib Dems might well lose popularity if they seem to be shoring up a government that the country thinks is well past its sell-by date.

So, yes, very interesting. A goodish result, I think, (and the first Green MP elected, hurrah!) but the exciting thing is what comes next.

Standby for a power struggle within Labour coming shortly, and before that, look out for what Clegg does next...

A roof over my head

Been very quiet for a while. Partly work and then holiday in England, during which I was offline for a massive 12 days (and saw the sun once, for half of a morning). Then back at work and job hunting - ah dear. I may just have possibly ever so very slightly mistimed my resignation, as the job market is pretty poor at the moment in my target areas and lots of people I would like to work for not hiring. Hey ho... Will be attending the job fair at TESOL Arabia next weekend and hope there will be a couple of possibles.
In the meantime, work on the tiny hovel in England has restarted and moved into phase ... what is it now? Phase 97? 324? I've lost track. Anyway, after the stripping of the carpets and the cleaning which was more like archaology, and tearing out the hideous fireplace, and putting in the woodburner, and new windows, and new doors, and a new boiler, and central heating, and underpinning the walls... we're now getting a new swing-a-rat kitchen and swing-an-undersized gerbil bathroom, yippee yiy yay!
Naturally as things get replaced or improved new defects occur - I was alarmed by a leaky roof blackened with mould, and news that the roof over the bathroom (a flat roof cobbled together in the 80s) was in a bad way. So we're getting a sedum roof put in (aka a living roof or a green roof), which I've thought was a great idea ever since I heard of them. Basically the roof is planted with a dense carpet of small plants that don't need that much care, so that instead of yet more tarmac - bad for runoff and flooding - there is at least something busy photosynthesising away. It won't reverse global warming, but it is quite a nice thing. Pity I can't grow veg on it (not strong enough for any depth of soil - the roof I mean, not me) as our garden space is the size of a tablecloth.
So it looks likely that come July I'll be back in the UK and jobhunting at a bad time, but I will have a niceish house to do it in. Count blessings... ONE.

Gruesome

I grew up a Roman Catholic, in a London parish attached to Ealing Abbey, a Benedictine foundation. The Abbey also runs a school, run and taught by monks and lay teachers, where all 3 of my brothers went, and where my father taught History, Classics and advised on careers.

In recent years one of the monks (a former head of the junior school) was accused of sexually abusing boys, suspended from serving, and investigated by the police. Dom David Pearce was found guilty and jailed for 8 years. The Charity Commission has investigated and criticised the Abbey for its handling of the case - you can find the report here:

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/investigations/inquiryreports/benedicts.asp

I remember Father David well - and remember that my brothers and their friends disliked him greatly. Perhaps now I have some idea why that was!

What makes it more appalling and baffling is that he continued to abuse after he was suspended and under police investigation. I can't imagine what he was thinking (was he mad? was he addicted? did he think he was immune?)

It also seems pretty clear that the Abbey did not do enough to protect young people in their care, and that they need to sort themselves out. The Abbot apparently apologised during Mass to the parishioners, but I wonder whether lessons have actually been learned.


A personal sideline on the story - and a terrible warning, if you like - is that David Pearce had himself been a pupil at St Benedicts. He left the 6th Form intending to become a dentist, but my father, who was his careers advisor, made the following note about him: "priest?"

For years after my father's death, my mother mentioned that as an example of my Dad's wonderful insight....

Arrghhhh!

Of course if Pearce had gone on to become a dentist and abused young lads from that position of trust, the profession of dentistry would have been horribly tarnished instead.

My, my, it has been a while...

Yes indeed.

The expression "stupid busy" that I read in an excellent blog called "Sheepdogs and Wolves" lately comes to mind. In my case, that perhaps should just read "stupid".That's me at work, but at home also been a bit pushed.

We had our first guests to stay for 10 days, and great fun it was too - I got to do a lot of stuff in 10 days I probably wouldn't get round to doing over a couple of months, plus there was that panic that set in just before with me thinking "beds... we need beds! And spare towels! Oh, and curtains! Must have curtains!!" (Which reminds me, I still have to pay for them...)

The result is we finally furnished the spare bedroom (only been in the house for 6 months!), and thanks very much to our excellent neighbours for lending us another bed.

I think they had a good time. We enjoyed them being here, too.

A Question of Citizenship

The course materials include a 2001 article by Mark Perensky which talks about having "digital citizenship" or being a "digital immigrant".

A curious choice of metaphor (are no immigrants citizens?).

I wonder whether I could be described as a "digital refugee", or with a nod to the tabloid press, a "digital bogus asylum seeker."

If we have to play that game I would hope one day to consider myself a "dual nationality holder", with one passport from the digi-realm and the other from the world of what I'd like to call "heritage technology" - ie books, pens, paper, etc.

Well I suppose it was just a modish sort of terminology, but I prefer the driving license metaphor.

I don't actually hold a car driving license either, and only a fraction of an ICDL, but at least it clearly refers to skills which are either acquired or not acquired.

In the meantime, another aspect of illiteracy strikes me every time I open this blog. Because of where I am based, the front page always appears in Arabic first. I can read a couple of words of Arabic (generally when I already know what they mean: it's the same with Thai).

I've now located where the "change language on this page" point is. There is no icon but I can remember the place - which will be fine, until the site gets revamped.

This is part of the problem most users face, and I'm sure "cut off dates" (Perensky's sensitive euphemism for age) will not make any difference.

No matter where people come in on this thing, they will constantly have to be relearning and unlearning as things get changed, "upgraded", and generally superseded by other things.

Of course the older we are the harder it is to learn new stuff - but that applies to everything else as well.

A sixteen-year old relative of mine has been grumbling about the changes to the Facebook interface...