When You're A (Small) Boy

Here's a lazy embed, but bear with me, embedding is a new trick to me and I'm very pleased with myself. Thanks to my IT Guru for showing me the way.

Anyhow, this made me laugh a long time ago and still does. Not just for Bowie's bizarre dancing either. What on earth was wrong with his little legs?

Half A Lifetime

After a few months of being Flirty Friends I decided to move things on a bit, so at lunchtime I went up to him and said "I'm going to Wendy May's Locomotion at the Town and Country Club tonight, and I think you should come." And he wisely decided to finally stop playing silly buggers, so when I got to Kentish Town tube there he was, waiting for me at the top of the escalator.

So we went dancing, and we had our first snog, just by the stairs, and it was 22 years ago tonight, and I'm still pleased to see him every evening when he comes home. But if he forgets what a Special Date it is, I'll have the house and half his pension. 

Freud-Vs-Farting Putty

By popular request (one third of my readership, thanks Cocktails), here's the anecdote about the Farting Putty. Bear in mind that I don't normally talk about my work in any detail, so this is a great treat.

A few years ago, we had a very happy period in my NHS life, when my Department was relocated to a lovely 1920's annexe while the main building was being renovated.  The atmosphere was relaxed and cheerful, the patients loved it, and everyone got on famously with each other and with their jobs. It was probably one of the most productive and creative periods of my life, therapeutically speaking, and one of the times when I have actively looked forward to going to work in the mornings.

We had a secretary called 'Rachel' who we all thought a lot of, a young woman who loved to laugh, but who was kind and sensitive with all the patients. Away from the stern eye of the Senior Shit we all flourished, and in between the serious work, there was a fair bit of play. One day Rachel bought a tub of very a very infantile substance called 'Farting Putty' for her nephew. It's a squidgy plastic substance, that makes a quite impressively authentic farting sound when you stick your finger into it, and we all had a good play around with it, regressing quite rapidly and eagerly into scatological stupidity one morning before getting on with our work. Silly stuff, but who doesn't love a fart gag?

Later that morning a patient rang me to change the time of their appointment. I swapped my lunchbreak so they could come in later, but forgot to enter the change in my timetable on the computerised diary where Rachel would have seen it. Hence, when she crept up the stairs at 1.30, Farting Putty in hand, she believed, quite reasonably, that I was in my office having lunch. Of course I actually had a patient with me. As often happens in my job, the patient was sitting quietly, possibly contemplating their Oedipal crisis.

Rachel stood outside on the landing and reproduced a volley of explosive, grunting farts with her new toy. On and on went the noise, salvo after salvo, straining, quivering, gasping, convincing faux- flatulence punctuated by her ridiculous laughter, while I sat inside and tried to retain some professional composure. Eventually my patient looked at me, and very calmly said, "I think there may be someone outside the door who has much bigger problems than me. Perhaps you would like to go and speak to them?"

My patient and I spent a fair bit of time on the counter-transference later in the session. I'm sure this sort of thing happened to Freud all the time. And as for Rachel, I got her sacked the same afternoon.

G'WAN MY SON!!!

I am having a lovely Tour de France so far. With all the drug-cheats finally gone (COUGH!), we're looking at a new, lean, super-clean bunch of athletes, giving their all over three weeks of pain and torment.

 The Caisse d'Epargne boys get my vote for Most Splendid Team Strip; they look incredibly impressive in their black and red uniform (however shallow  and peripheral that observation may be), but the Columbia team are a joy to behold in terms of dedication and tactical awareness (which is, I suppose, more what the whole thing's supposed to be about). Mark Cavendish's two stage wins have had me screaming on the edge of my sofa, and his slightly dopey (no pun intended) but totally confident presentation in the after-race interviews has provided some great comedy ("I'll 'ave ter call yer back, Mam, I'm on the telly!").

Up in the commentary box, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, in their matching shirts, continue to deliver Partridge-esque gems..."that's quite a volcano crater down there, Paul. Certainly must have made quite a 'pop' when it went off. Certainly." Paul Sherwen gets to wear out his favourite verb, to 'garner', which he has used eight times to date, and this year's endlessly repeated catchprase seems to be "As I've ALWAYS said, Phil, what you don't EVER want to do in the Tour de France is to ride at the back of the field," which though it may be true begs certain questions in those pesky areas where the roads narrow to less than a mile wide. It's all great stuff.

And how lovely to see tiny Gary Imlach lose all composure, and leap around like an excited elf, screaming "G'WAN MY SON" and thumping the comparatively somnolent Chris Boardman as Cavendish crossed the line yesterday. I do hope they're friends in real life.

Today the Tour goes through my favourite corner of France, close to Orieux and La Faloute. I wish I was there, but hey. It's not all bad. In two weeks time I will be in Paris, trying to find a bit of space from which to watch three seconds of blurred Lycra and legs whizz past me at 60 mph. That'll do.

How's Yer Father

I had 'older parents' - Mum was nearly 45 when she had me, and Dad was pushing 48 (which doesn't now seem at ALL old to me - isn't that strange?). Among other things, this meant they had both died by the time I was in my mid thirties. I was the first of my friends to go through this, apart from one or two very unlucky kids I remember at primary or secondary school who'd lost a parent very prematurely. Now, though, many of my friends' parents are in their seventies and even eighties, and real, dramatic changes are starting to set in. Formerly strapping and sporty Dads are suddenly smaller and more frail, their days on the squash court long gone, and once-elegant Mums have become little beige ladies, who worry about hoodies on street corners, and who fall and break their hips. It's a difficult stage for all concerned.

In a couple of cases, a surviving parent has faded away rapidly after the loss of a spouse, and tough decisions concerning care homes are having to be made. Roles are reversed as sons shake their heads over Dad's badly-managed bank accounts ("why didn't you TELL me you'd bought this worthless insurance policy? Honestly!"). Great sheaves of ancient papers are brought down from attic and pored over, the minutiae of a couple's life picked over, shredded or filed. Even when done with care and consideration (as with all of my friends) it must be sad and humiliating for the parent concerned.

And sometimes, inevitably, secrets reveal themselves among the faded snaps of 1960s picnics and old Christmas cards from Canada. A couple I know recently had the unpleasant task of trawling through forty years of B's Dad's personal records and effects, after B's Dad suffered a sudden, massive stroke. I've met B's Dad many times - he drank pints of beer with us at our graduation, and danced with me to 'Moonlight Serenade' at B and G's wedding. He could be a sod, and was prone to crass political sparring ("Bloody miners? Bring out the water cannon, I say!") but he was more often good company, full of stories about his time in a jazz band "before I met B's Mother and the fun stopped." I liked him, though I sensed B's mother had her hands full with him at times. When she died a year ago, after forty years of bickering, he had nothing to pit himself against, and his decline was swift.

And so it was that B and G came to be going through his papers and files a month ago, preparing for the house sale to fund his care. In a cupboard were two attache cases, which when opened did not yield the anticipated life assurance documents, but rather a selection of extraordinary and very specifically designed objects which were clearly meant for use in a good old session of heavy bondage. Harnesses, restraints, clips, whips, spiky rubber prostheses, and a couple of things they still haven't managed to identify. Plus, for good measure, a packet of black condoms (well within their use-by date) with a couple missing. It was Dad's Secret Life, now heaped in a small pile on the floor of his study. They sat and stared, apparently. Well, you would.

If this discovery had been made accidentally ten years ago, when B's Dad was still in his sixties with some sense of his sexuality still outwardly evident, we would probably have sniggered over it and maybe even felt able to tease him directly. But finding a trove of sex toys belonging to a lonely, ill old man of 74 feels quite different, we all agreed - disturbing, pathetic and sad.  They were packed back in the cases and boxed up. Although in all likelihood, B's Dad will never be able to use them again even if he wants to, they both felt it would be wrong to throw them away while he's still alive. As for asking him about them...never.

I've found out things about both my parents since they died which, while perhaps not unsettling on the same level as the contents of those cases, certainly caused a few posthumous ripples. Though I don't have any kids to freak out post-Big Sleep, I wonder if there's anything in a dark corner of my own house which I'd prefer not to have 'discovered' if I was run over by a bus tomorrow. Hmm. It's either a case of destroy all evidence preemptively, or live forever. I'll probably live forever.

Just slip out the back, Jack...

I haven't left that many jobs, and I've been quite lucky in that a few times I've left at the end of the year, so I've been able to blend my 'leaving do' in with the Christmas Party. This has generally meant that the proportion of attention focused on me has been reduced to a quick presentation and round of handshakes at the beginning of the evening, and then I've been able to slip away quietly, while everyone else throws themselves into getting seasonally plastered. Only once were my intentions rumbled by a canny and mean-minded boss who "couldn't let me leave" without an anecdote-filled speech and a chorus of "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow". I tried to hide under the carpet, but was dragged to the front to illuminate the room with my glowing red face. It's a surprisingly fresh and painful memory, given that it happened eighteen years ago.

So as I'm right in the middle of my six-week notice period, and have had three of the heaviest weeks of my working life (as I 'break  it', over and over again, to each individual patient that their Psychotherapy will be coming to a premature end), I am feeling quite literally 'finished', and I could really do with beating a quiet retreat on my last day. The patients have all been tremendously generous and gracious (those in the most wretched of circumstances proving to be, proportionately, the nicest of all), but their distress and fear has been impossible to conceal, and it's been tough going. Cards have started to arrive, some of which are very poignant indeed. I feel like a heel.

And patients apart, my colleagues want to give me a send-off of their own, and of course I wouldn't be so rude as to reject their kindness. I've managed to subtly impose a few little directives here and there (yes, supper at a very un-fancy local restaurant would be FINE, no, NO, there's no need to think about a nightclub afterwards, HEAVENS, NO, my days of karaoke bars are long gone (like they ever started), no I'll be fine getting the train home - you know me, I like my own bed - oh and it would be great if you could manage not to put me next to the Senior Shit at dinner). I think I've made it manageable, and if I don't get nervous and drink too much I can probably guarantee a pleasant time, and that I won't upend the table over the Senior Shit in a fit of disinhibited rage. As I'm always telling patients (more than ever in the last three weeks), endings are important and need to be handled carefully. My colleagues need to handle their end of this in one way, and I would ideally need to handle it in another, but it's a compromise, and after fifteen years, that's fair enough. Just as long as nobody wants to re-tell that anecdote from 1995 about the bag of grass, the one from 1997 about Mr Mohawk, or the one from 2001 about the farting putty. They are NOT FUNNY anymore. 

In the midst of this agony of embarrassment, I have received a letter to tell me that I have won another writing award, and that I am invited to give a short reading later in the year at the Barbican Library. That's the big one in London. So, once I get my leaving do out of the way, I can get on with cacking myself properly about this event. Sitting round a dinner table with a bunch of colleagues is going to be a breeze by comparison. What on earth was I worrying about?

The Things You Hear When You Don't Have Your Ball-Gag

The Royal Sussex County Hospital, Department of Orthopaedics, afternoon Out-Patients clinic. The waiting room is packed with an assortment of people, some of whom hobble through wearing moon-boot plaster casts or elaborate bandages. I feel a bit of a fraud marching in with not even the trace of a limp, but the consultant wanted another look at my knee and I'm not one to turn down a bit of attention when it's freely offered.

I sit down in the last free seat, next to a woman of about my own age. Her husband sits listlessly on her other side. The woman stares dead ahead of her and pokes around in her ears, while maintaining a constant flow of speech to her husband. Although her voice is not loud, it carries with surprising force around the waiting room, and even rises above the normal hospital sounds of phones, doors and footsteps. Everyone can hear her.

"So what did she say, then?" she asks. Her husband rolls his eyes. "I already told you," he says. "She said he'll be charged with assault for the nose, but not for the hand. They're not charging him for the hand 'cos Liam touched him on the back of the neck." The woman snorts. "She's going to have to deal with me on that one," she says, "And I'll tell you what, she's not going to like what I have to say, 'cos what I'm going to have to say is this, that law's a load of old rubbish. And she's not going to like me saying that. But I'm saying it. Where did you park the car?""Up the road," says her husband. She tuts. "Up the bloody road," she repeats. "I tell you what, I'm giving it three more minutes and then I'm going up there to that desk and I'm going to create merry hell. They're not going to like what I've got to say. Two o'clock, we're booked in for, and now it's twenty past, and I'm clocking up a quid in compensation now for every minute that goes by. So that's already twenty quid I'll be claiming, so actually I can sit here all day if that's what they want, only I'll be claiming for it if I'm still here at five o'clock and we're up to a couple of grand. Don't bother me. Money for sitting here, that's fine by me, that is. Only they won't like what I've got to say at the end of it."

Twenty more of the longest minutes of my entire life to date pass by in this vein, the woman never looking up or breaking pace, as she pontificates steadily on her plans to let an ever-expanding section of society know what she thinks of them. Doctors, magistrates, her next door neighbour, her next door neighbour's sister, her own sister, Ryan's teacher, Gemma's boss at the salon, that stupid cow who does her nails. They are all in for a good dose of her wrath, and take it from me, they won't like what she's got to say. They really, really won't.