Cumbria, land of the sausage

There was an Archdeacon who said:
'May I take off my gaiters in bed?'
But the Bishop said: 'No
Wherever you go
You must wear them until you are dead.'

Gaiter country, here in the Lake District, by which I do mean leg protectors not crocodilians. My love and I have been striding across fell and vale, beaten by winds and confounded by teh odd slippery rock, squelching over boggy peat and sheepshit. Very invigorating, rewarded with large plates of delicious simple food and ugs of steaming hot chocolate. I think we used the word 'lovely' in excess of one thousand times, to describe just about everything. Scafell Pike is not lovely, it is rather awesome in its jagged uncompromising mass poking up into the sky. It may be a mere one thousand metres in height but having clambered all the way up it it felt like a great deal more - the unobstructed vistas afforded from the top gave a sense of scraping the sky, as we were bathed in blinding sunshine and shoved by a bitter gale. I would have considered ourselves intrepid were it not for the thick streams of tourists of all ages (plus their dogs) covering the mountainsides. Some were magnificently equipped, clad in stiff jerkins of bright orange fabric, sturdy boots, telescopic walking sticks in each hand, tubes running to their mouths from space-age backpacks (presumably providing blackcurrant squash, or tea, rather than oxygen) eyes shielded from the near stratospheric glare by aerodynamic-looking shades. A few others though seemed to manage it in trainers, shorts, fleece and a sunhat.

dog dog dog dog dog

it's not a dog

rant

I was watching Doctor At Large today and enjoying it more than perhaps I rightfully should. I relished the joke about 'big breaths' for a chesty (and lispy) teenager, the pictures of musclemen stuck the the wall of the lonely houseofficers bedroom, his partner's lusty wife and much canoodling with blonde nurse who does so with anyone really, as long as there's a slap-up tea in it for her. I also relished Dirk, and his odd similarity to Cliff Richard - that quiff. Then i went for a steady jog around the Georgian streets of fair Islington and strained something in my leg. Then I ate a sandwich, and did some basic bodily functions. Throughout I respired, puolsated and began to chime to the sweet melodies that ride undulating beneath my pancreas, swelling up like a cactus in the rain whenever I sleep, or watch Newsround.

I shan't mention the war. It isn't a war though is it, just a bloody occupation, a semi-suppressed civil war perhaps. My personal loathing for GWB is unabated. It still beats me every time i see his obtuse little face on television, jerking about as bits of words fall out of his mouth in random order. You can see his speech writers mentally scooping the ejected syllables from his bib with a plastic spoon and shoving them back in again. Sadly though, he will never eat his words, even when the whole planet is flooded ('we were not prepared'), there is no food anywhere (despite free trade), no oil (even in nature reserves) and no forests (dug up to find oil). I know Bush bashing is pointless, unimaginative, shifting responsibility, oversimplifying etc, and sour grapes that social liberalism and economic conservatism seem to be failing (so in fact is social conservatism but either one will do if you have your head in the sand), but i can't stand him. So there.

Intensive care.

Everyone is asleep, except me and the nurses. Night shifts like these I have not known before, where I am not bleeped more than perhaps once a night, and I may even sleep too, in a bed made up for me in my own private room (smells a bit funny) with ensuite toilet facilities (though no mini soap in pink paper wrapper, or paper folded pointlessly into a point). And there I lie, dreaming about noradrenaline, positive-end-expiratory-pressures, chest pathology and naked ladies all in a jumble, only to emerge blearily into a brand new day refreshed (and probably smelling a bit funny), to stagger home via the bus and two or possibly three train journeys to my home where the light beams brightly in all day long.

One of my patients, a septuagenerian in after a large bowel op, is lying on his back arms held up in front of him, as though boasting of a perch of mythical proportions, or trying to bunch subjects up for a group photo. Occasionally he shouts, or waves his pale legs dangerously towards the edge of the bed, and we rush forward by turns to stop him pulling the oxygen mask off, or an arterial line out.
A lot of my patients never leave the unit. This is particularly distressing when someone who you initially had a conversation with slides inexorably into being a body with a cluster of increasingly intractable problems and another cluster of concerned and multiplying relatives surrounding it. Rocks and a hrad places, vicious circles, catch22s in abundance.

Tomorrow I'm going to lie in a park with my lady love, fail to revise for my exams, stick two mental fingers up at any sort of procrastination guilt, and languish shamelessly in a seam of utter dissolution and torpor.

By the way as I no longer live in the East of London i suppose I am writing under false pretences. However i'll keep the name for this blog as i may at least waylay those in search of the Wisdom of the East. Well the only nuggets I can offer are as follws:
1) peel or boil all fruit or vegetables
2) Nag Champa is the finest of Indian incenses
3) Herman Hesse