Terry and Relative Dimensions in Space

Being a long time Doctor Who fan I have often pondered what I would do if I owned a TARDIS. Notwithstanding what rooms I would have in a seemingly infinite interior I wouldn’t necessarily put a time machine to good use.

Some people would happily go back in time and explore Victorian England, having tea with Charles Dickens or heading off to the Great Exhibition. I’d probably end up in one of the many Gin houses, half cut on potentially toxic spirits and singing bawdy songs around the ‘old Joanna’.

In others hands they might steer the time travelling craft into the future a few hundred years to see what Earth will be like. Although you’ll have to bear in mind that, if these global warming disciples are right, you’ll need to take some shorts and sun cream, and maybe some flippers so you can get around East Anglia because the sea will have reclaimed the land by then. Mind you, the locals of East Anglia are ahead of the game on this count and have already evolved webbed feet for just this eventuality. 

Leave a TARDIS in my hands though and it’d be wasted on me. I don’t want to go back and see what life was like during the industrial revolution. It was grim and miserable. I’ve read about it in books. I don’t want to be standing on the beaches of Hastings in 1066 because for one thing, I’ll probably be stood in the wrong place and, secondly, if I do happen to be stood with a good view of the battle I’ll probably end up with an arrow in my eye rather than that of the intended regal recipient. 

I’d just play it safe, maybe just go back 30 years or so to a time I remember. I can wander round the Isle of Wight reminding myself of all the shops and places I used to go to when I was a kid. Actually, this is a bad example. The Isle of Wight has changed so little in 30 years I could do that now without the aid of a time machine.

Seriously though, I’d probably just swan back to 1982 and go on a pub crawl because I didn’t use to do that sort of thing when I was 8 years old, or go to the cinema to watch ET the first time around as my parents wouldn’t take me when I was a kid.

I might go further back I suppose, I could head back to 1964 to catch up on the episodes of Doctor Who that were shown but are now lost from the BBC archive. Honestly, I’d use a time machine to go back in time to watch a creaky 1960s TV show about an old man with a time machine. This marvellous contraption is wasted in my hands I tell you.

I suppose I could go back and find myself from the past to give myself some wise advice but, even though it’s just me talking to me as a child, it still seems a bit creepy. Not that I’d be prepared to listen to myself anyway, I’d still make the same mistakes.

“Seriously, listen to me, don’t get that racing bike because although it looks cool and everyone else has got one you’ll never get the hang of the gears and your chain will fall off all the time. Oh, and you shouldn’t buy those red jeans, but if you really must, don’t wear them with that yellow shirt. Oh, and don’t pick GCSE Music as an option because the girl you fancy who plays the flute doesn’t fancy you and you’ll have gone off her by the time the new school year starts”.

So it seems my best bet would be to go back a few weeks and buy that EuroMillions ticket with the winning numbers. Which, when you think about it, seems a bit pointless when I could probably get more if I just flogged the TARDIS instead.

I'm a fool to myself.

 

Any Dream Will Do

Dreams are peculiar things. The present Mrs Hayward claims she doesn’t really get them, but then she also claims not to get much sleep due to my deafening snoring. In my opinion my snoring is an excellent security measure. No night-time intruder is going to tackle the house where, given the sounds emanating from within, a large and cantankerous Wild Boar is on the loose. 

Last night though I had a very vivid dream, one of those where, at the time, you have no doubts that it’s actually happening regardless of the bizarre things that are occurring. It did however provide me with a marvellous idea that will revive British industry. Bear with me.

Firstly I was at a British seaside resort in the summer, so tourists were milling around amongst shops selling postcards and sticks of rock. Not knowing exactly where I was I approached one of the shops to take a look at the local newspaper hanging in a rack outside. It turned out I was in Southend.

I’ve never been to Southend  myself, although the present Mrs Hayward’s cousin currently lives there, coincidentally working on the local paper. Having said that I also had a discussion earlier that day with some colleagues at work where both Southend and Margate were mentioned so it’s no surprise that my brain later recalled this fine Essex resort.

For some unknown reason I was unnecessarily excited about seeing the pier, the longest in the world no less, at a whacking 1.34 miles long. Who said you don’t learn anything on this blog? I’m educating, entertaining and informing all at the same time. I think I may be channelling the turbulent spirit of Lord Reith, but I digress.

So I headed to the pier and caught the train to the end of it (yes, there’s a train on the real pier, I really must go and take a look some time). Now, this is where the dream should have sent out warning signs to me that things were not all as they appeared. It turned out that there, on the end of the pier, was Kings Cross station. Yes, Kings Cross. The same Kings Cross that sits, landlocked, in the middle of London. 

In the dream, however, it all made perfect sense. It also seemed to be absolutely natural when I spurned the tube for a trip on a water taxi (just up the steps, on the roof) that was soon rushing me along what I thought must be the River Thames like an aquatic railway, complete with stations and platforms and everything.

It seemed to my delirious mind the perfect way to get about. I can picture myself on the boat now, I can see the seats with their blue patterned design and the view out of the window as we whizzed past offices and shops and parks. 

I remember thinking that I was surprised that this turn of speed doesn’t erode the riverbank and then, even more weirdly, I remembered I’d had a previous dream about much the same thing once before. I felt quite pleased that my dream had finally come true. 

I looked at the water taxi map on the wall of the boat (a pseudo tube map thing, all different colours for different ‘lines’) and worked out that I’d get off at the stop after the Strand, which now had a water course running through the middle of the street. As it was I went to the end of the line. I noted where I was, Gandforth apparently. No, I’ve no idea where that is either. 

Shortly after I arrived and disembarked  at Gandforth, I woke up, disappointed that I’d found myself in bed at 4am and I wasn’t in actual fact making use of this great new innovation. This dream, and the memory of sailing majestically through the capital at speed has stuck in my mind most of the day and I’ve concluded that I must be a genius, even if I do say so myself. 

It was a wonderful way to get about, so much nicer than being rammed in the sweaty confines of the London Underground system. 

So let’s get a campaign up together for London, and the rest of the UK, to revive the quite frankly flagging canal industry. Before long there’ll be aqueducts everywhere and water taxis….no, water buses, double decker water buses,……. oh what the hell, triple decker water buses sloshing around everywhere. 

This, in my unconsidered opinion, is the future. You heard it here first.

Screen Test

If I was a responsible motorist I would know exactly what was happening underneath the bonnet of our car at any given time. I don’t mean I would necessarily know the precise workings of the internal combustion engine, but I’d know the basics, like the oil and water levels and, well, notice if everything wasn’t exactly tickety-boo.

Things do not improve beyond the bonnet either. I’m vaguely aware of tyre pressures but I’d really only notice if the tyre was flat at the point that I’m frantically revving and the car is dragging itself along the road on its rims. I occasionally give one of the tyres a kick if I have doubts about it, just like I saw grown men do when I was a kid but I frankly have no idea what I’m looking for. Perhaps they didn’t either, perhaps this is one massive blag by men since time immemorial.

I do sort of envy those who keep their car sparkling clean without resorting to the economy wash at the Morrisons petrol station, and those who have a glove compartment full of useful things like maps and travel sweets and chamois leathers, rather than rammed full of the present Mrs Hayward’s CDs. If you’re a fan of poor quality cheesy music it’s a treasure trove. If not, then like me you are trapped in a motorised equivalent of the worst nightclub in the world. There’s not even a bar to speak of although I’m working on it.

However the basic thing I can do is manage the screen wash. I know what screen wash is and I know where to put it. The problem is, due to a total lack of organisation, I never know how much is in there at any given time. Consequently it always runs out at totally inconvenient moments. Yesterday morning was a case in point. It ran out on the way to work. 

I am organised in that I have a bottle in the boot but this doesn’t help when a dirty and unnecessary lorry chugging up the A15 passes by and douses the car in muddy water and I then find out I can do nothing to clean the windscreen as the screen wash has run out. Compounded to this the windscreen wipers are also unaware of this change of circumstances and they just merrily wipe the mud more broadly across the windscreen just in case they were worried that I actually might have some sort of visibility.

So there I was, in a layby, on a cold and wet Wednesday morning, pouring a glut of screen wash into the car. This led me to think there’s an obvious design flaw here. There should be a little light on the dashboard to tell me when the screen wash is nearly empty. Then I could, at my leisure, sort it out, like I do with petrol. There could even be a little watery fanfare if necessary. 

Surely the technical bods at our leading car manufacturers could run to that, after all they don’t want me to end up in a ditch do they? That wouldn’t be a good advert for their cars at all. 

I think I’m going to work on this idea......what? I don't need to. Some cars already have this feature? D'oh! Back to the drawing board.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

So far all 2012 has brought me is a feeling that I’m a right sick note. I started the year with the remnants of a bad back. Rumour has it that it’s sciatica as that runs in the family (on my mother’s side) and I’ve had it before. This time it was brought on, in my medically untrained opinion, by lugging a tumble drier upstairs on Christmas Eve. Well, we have a small kitchen and we needed room for beer, you know how it is. Some things just have to make room for the greater good.

Consequently three days later I innocently raised my left leg in the shower to wash it and a snapping sound in my lower back indicated that I was to spend the no-mans-land period between Christmas and New Year waddling around awkwardly with a pained expression on my face.

Then, I get that sorted and I have a lump removed from my neck. That, as I mentioned last time, left me sore and grumpy as hell. It also left me quite dazed and I still have no feeling in my left ear but that, as I’ve discovered, is because the surgeon severed some of my nerves during the operation.

The nice lady on the NHS Direct Helpline said she “wasn’t surprised” to hear this when I called her three days after the operation as I believed that the local anaesthetic hadn’t worn off. Well I was surprised because no-one had bothered to tell me that this might be an outcome. Mind you, as regular visitors to this blog will recall, I should be thankful for small mercies as I’m lucky to have come away from that whole experience with my dignity intact, so to speak.

Now I have a third issue. At the weekend I bravely decided to return to the gym. I had been a member a couple of years ago but I’d quit as it wasn’t working for me. I was too distracted by the endless poncing about and homo-erotic grunting from the more pumped-up individuals that frequented the place, and that was just the women.

The problem was that I never had a purpose, a goal if you will. When I started running last year I knew that my aim was the Fun Run. I knew what I had to do. So that’s why this time the gym will be more regularly patronised by me.

You see, my boss at work does this thing every year at the end of June. Her and her other half, and loads of other folk, travel up to Wales, and then the Lake District, and then Scotland, and they climb three whacking great big mountains over the course of about three days. Actually it could be less than three days if I checked the itinerary, but either way it doesn’t drag out. You may have heard of other people doing it. It’s called the Three Peaks Challenge.

So, knowing that I had run a comparatively small distance she emailed me last autumn to see if I wanted another challenge. Still on a high from doing something vaguely active for charity I concluded in my mind that I would. How difficult could it be?

Fast forward a few months to last weekend and the owner of the gym, a chap called Harvey (not the one from Celebrity Fat Club, or whatever it was called) was getting me to warm up on a cross trainer for 15 minutes. For the latter half of this so-called ‘warm up’ he set the machine to replicate climbing a mountain.

Now I think I’ve got reasonably strong legs. It’s always been one of the more flattering areas of my body and was honed back in the 90s when I used to go drinking with good friends who all enjoyed trying new and exotic real ales, which led us to traipse up hill and down dale, often at speed so as to make it to the final pub by last orders, in search of a different beer.  My legs have therefore had extensive training. Having said all that, I got off this cross trainer and my legs could barely support my weight any more, they had been reduced to two quivering streaks of jelly.

The punishment didn’t end there though. He then put me through the paces with some sort of kettle weight where I had to swing this weight up to eye level whilst standing and then squat down as it swings back through my legs. This for me takes some thinking as if I don’t concentrate I’ll be stood up at the wrong time and a 12kg kettle weight will wipe out my gentleman’s area, and no-one wants to see that.

Not content with this he had me climbing up a step thing whilst carrying weights, then on some weight thing where I had to tiptoe to lift it using my shoulders, then another where I was flat on my face lifting some weight behind me with my calves, and it went on. I was a sea of perspiration and pain. It was tough and made me realise that climbing these mountains may be trickier than I thought, but if I train it’ll be fine. All this will get easier.

Come Saturday, and motivated by the previous day’s activities, I went for a walk. Just a gentle 3 to 4 miles. I’d planned a route that took me via the local Adnams shop so I could pick up a couple of interesting bottles of vin rouge for a quiet evening in with the present Mrs Hayward. I’d taken a rucksack and everything.

When I returned home I realised that I was becoming stiff, and not in a good way. By the end of the evening, and despite the red wine I realised that I was limping. By the Sunday morning I couldn’t actually put weight on my left foot without howling like a wild animal. My calf muscles on my left leg were shot to ribbons. I was injured. My non-existent glittering football career was plainly over.

So, for the second time in a month, there I was waddling around in pain. Today is an improving picture but if I sit in one place for too long it takes me a couple of minutes and quite a bit of childish whimpering before I can get moving.

However, I can take something positive from this. No matter how much pain I am in, no matter how hard the training will be, at least when these muscles ache because they’ve never been used before, (not even during the heaviest of beer moves, even the legendary Salisbury-Weyhill-Andover-Winchester-Southampton move) then I am at home and can sit down. Or have a bath.

If I don't do the training then this will undoubtedly lead me to the unfortunate and somewhat embarrassing situation of becoming trapped halfway down Mount Snowdon and being airlifted to safety by an heir to the throne.

Mind you, that would be quite a story. 

One Lump or Two?

There I was, some months ago, in a foreign country, enjoying a nice cold Spanish beer after the rigours of lying on a sunbed and occasionally drifting to the pool, when a good friend asked me quite out of nowhere about the lump on my neck. Had I had it looked at? Well no I hadn’t. It had been there a few years but had, during the course of the year, grown a little and was making itself more obvious than I would have liked.

Lumps in places where lumps shouldn’t be are, on the whole, unattractive things. Once it’s a lump that’s grown to the extent that it scares small children or forces adults to stop in the street and point at the freaky lumpy necked man then it’s really time to do something about it.

It was a cyst. I knew it was, I’d had one before, right next to my nose. That had been spliced out of me by an officious, ball breaking female surgeon, and I have a discreet scar on my face to show for it. So I was unafraid of getting this one sorted out, I had just not been unduly concerned about it up to now.

All this resulted in myself and the present Mrs Hayward being stood outside a surgery in a surprisingly residential area of Spalding on Saturday lunchtime. I had been referred here by a GP although the whole thing was starting to become quite seedy and suspicious as I hovered by the back door ringing a bell. Eventually a nurse appeared and pointed me towards a seat in an unlit corridor and dashed off back down the corridor. 

I was left pondering whether there was some lump related emergency elsewhere within the surgery when, suddenly, like the Shopkeeper in Mr Benn, the surgeon appeared seemingly out of nowhere. 

Remaining professional as ever he called out “Mr Hayward” to a corridor containing just myself and Mrs Hayward, as if someone else may have been hiding under a chair. I stood up and was ushered into a small office, had a brief consultation whereupon I signed a form which I assume exempted him from any liability if he accidentally cut my head off.

I was then given some blue plastic shoe covers to wear, presumably on my feet, and was led through to the surgery. I asked if he wanted me to remove my jumper but he seemed satisfied that all was well and I jumped up on the operating table. 

The nurse was busying herself around the room and eventually approached me with what looked like a small shovel attached to a piece of electrical cord. 

“I just need to place this under your back” she said.

“OK” I replied, not knowing what this would be for, but then I’m not medically trained in such matters.

The surgeon casually pointed out to the nurse that she wouldn’t need this device, and she looked quite confused. I watched as she wandered off to the side to look at my notes and then it all became clear to her. 

“Oh,” she said, “you’re not having a vasectomy are you?”

I laughed, assuming this was some sort of joke to lighten the mood, but it became clear that this was genuine confusion and she had to hastily re-adjust the operating table and seek out the proper equipment. 

She even had to check the notes for the next patient but concluded the vasectomy wouldn’t be for that individual either as it was a woman. However this being Lincolnshire, who can say?

I would like to think that had she started to head downstairs, if you know what I mean, I would have pointed out the error of her ways but I have a rather dangerous habit of waiting to see how things play out.Thankfully the surgeon had more of a clue about what was going on and that, for me, was the important thing. 

The worst thing about the whole procedure was the anaesthetic being administered. I knew it would be, that was one thing I hadn’t forgotten about my last cyst based surgery some 20 years ago. 

Hopefully you’ve never been stabbed in the neck. It’s painful, even if the stabber is fully trained and only brandishing a needle.

Before long though, the anaesthetic worked its magic and I couldn’t feel anything so the surgeon got to work splicing and digging around and snipping with scissors. The sound of scissors cutting through flesh is not one you really want to hear so close to your ear, especially when it’s your flesh, but I was surprisingly relaxed, more by the thought that I’d had a lucky escape with the whole vasectomy thing.

The whole thing was over in a flash, and before long I was being sewn back up.

As I was guided out I saw my extracted lump sat on a metal tray, all red and gristly, about the size of a sugared almond. It was, very briefly, like saying goodbye to an old friend.

I drifted back out into the corridor and Mrs Hayward took me home. Within hours my day took a turn for the worse as some of the anaesthetic slowly wore off and a throbbing pain engulfed my head. I tackled the pain with painkillers and, when they didn’t work, with red wine which worked much better.

Sunday was a better day pain-wise, although I was now feeling nauseous and dizzy courtesy of the red wine/pain killer/anaesthetic mix.

Mrs Hayward was particularly surprised by the inch long row of stitches I have in my neck. She'd got it in her head that this surgical procedure would be no more invasive than poking around in your ear with a cotton bud so when I removed the dressing for the first time she began to understand why I was complaining about a pain in my neck. 

Mind you, for all Mrs Hayward's many positive points she can never be described as a modern day Florence Nightingale and for her the only pain in the neck she was concerned about was the one sat whinging on the sofa drowning out the EastEnders omnibus.

Thankfully the pain has now subsided for the most part and the stitches will be coming out in a week. 

A curious feature of all this is that not all of the local anaesthetic has worn off, some 60 hours after it was administered. A good part of the right hand side of my face and my right ear is completely numb still. It felt very strange to shave this morning when I couldn’t feel my skin. Very weird indeed.

I’ve posited to Mrs Hayward that I might have a personal injury claim as a result of this. Well, you never know, where there’s blame there’s a claim. 

Back By Unpopular Demand.....

To all those miseries and killjoys who spent the Christmas period grumbling and griping about tinsel and snowmen and general festivities and fun, all I say to you is, are you happy now? 

Are you happy that most people have turned their joyful twinkling lights out? Happy that the house looks bare and empty apart from the stray Christmas present you’d opened on the big day but had since forgotten about and the unopened box of Toffifee (where the hell did that come from??). 

Are you happy that you had to do something other than slump in front of the TV to watch an old film you’ve seen a dozen times before, that other something being nothing more exciting that getting yourself up off the sofa and going back to work, crammed on public transport with all those other miserable looking people this morning?

January is the worst month to start a year with. I hate it. It’s still dark all day, we're less forgiving about the cold weather, and I’ve spent far too much cash on topping up the drinks cabinet with expensive spirits which I now feel bad about drinking because I’m supposed to be de-toxing according to so-called 'experts' in the papers. 

I guess it’s put there, right at the beginning of the year, to make us all feel like things can only get better. 

It’s a long month though. It’s only the 3^rd and I’m wishing my life away, praying for February. The mornings don’t even start to try and get lighter until the weekend you know. How rubbish is that?

Of course if you have a birthday in January I’m sure you enjoy it more. A rare splash of colour in an otherwise dark and gloomy month. I would raise a toast to you but according to the news if I don’t stop drinking my ears will explode, or something.

Actually, I’ve just had a thought; I have some Single Malt de-canted. I say de-canted, it’s in a hip flask – don’t ask!! I’m sure it’ll go off if I don’t drink it. In fact it would be downright rude not to. Who needs ears anyway?

Happy (glug, gulp) New Year! Maybe January isn’t going to be that bad after all.

Hic!