One day in the east

Yesterday I attended the funeral of the father of one of my great friends. It was a strange day, to say the least, but aren’t funerals always strange days? It started at 6am, when I dragged myself out of bed after three hours of sleep, organised myself, donned my suit and white trainers for driving (a seriously classy look), and left the house at 7.20.
Strange things were afoot, as for some reason they’ve cut down all the trees which ran by the side of Handcross Hill pour encourager les autres. It used to be like you were being transported into a secret world … ok, it was only the Downs, but there was an annunciative quality about the swishing Z-bends. Now it’s naked, the woodlands slashed and left for dead, the Z-bends turned into a Jacobean long S, the romance revealed as sluttery.
The journey is long and dull and I hit Norwich around 12.20. Simple. Follow the A47 to Yarmouth, and the the signs to Caistor St Edmunds. Simple.
Now, about satnavs. I don’t do satnavs. I find they ruin everything, ignoring the fact that they choose dumb routes. I see people using them for journeys they’ve been making for forty years. Satnavs make us mistrust ourselves, and they kill serendipity. Bastards. I may expound on this later.
But as was later noted ‘they took all the roadsigns down in 1940. And they haven’t put them up again. That is, there were no signs. Naturally, my map was elsewhere. So. What to do?
I asked a man driving a tanker. Well, he wasn’t driving it at the time, he was having his lunch. Resisting the urge to suggest I started from somewhere else, we colluded to work out a rough direction, and I flew off once more. As always, I started to think I ought to be panicking about the time when the one sign appeared … phew!
I arrived at the church with a few minutes to spare, and just as the Green Lincolnshire double decker drew up. 93A. Skegness. The route plied by John in his younger days. A touch typical of this family.
A typically well-organised affair, in a typically bijou Norfolk church, the tribute was given by Ed, and quite reasonably he had some trouble speaking, filling the first few seconds with semi-silence, until his two-year old daughter (who is astonishingly deft on an ipad) piped up: ‘what are you doing, daddy?’
It’s the pent-up propriety of a funeral which is the problem. It’s impossible to know what to say. ‘Thank you so much for coming’, is a common conversation opener. Usually one would reply ‘It’s an absolute pleasure’, or ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world’, or something similar. And so you do. And then think ‘oh, fucksticks …’
But that first peal of laughter in the church always changes the day, changes the mood from a funeral to a celebration.
I saw people I hadn’t seen for a few years, and was gently chided for not being particularly forthcoming about keeping in touch. My PD was alluded to without ever being brought up, and much cake was consumed. A fine man was remembered. He would have sat, unnoticed, in the corner reading. Perhaps he was.

Promises were made. Some of them may even be kept.

The evening disappeared in a glorious haze of beer and been-here-befores.

Plus ca change.

Dexter to sinister, part 2

Today I attended a ‘live’ net session, that is, one with three bowlers bowling rather than one machine repeating. This, I reckon, is a greater test of my newly sinister stance than the indoor school’s bowling machine, as the margin of error increases by, well, 500-1000% in terms of line, and a greater amount in terms of length. It also adds great variation in pace, flight, spin, swing and action – it’s a right pain in the arse moving the machine from over to round the wicket, a tactic many right-arm bowlers use against lefties.

Bowling right arm over to a sinister beast pushes the ball across the body of the batsman. LBW is very hard to get, and the wider delivery is at greater risk of a slashing drive. Yes, nicking off to slip is more likely, but that is generally the result of greed rather than need. Right arm round jambs the ball into the batsman’s body, making it harder to open the shoulders to any shot. Yes, tickles off the thigh pad are more common, but a shorter ball is more likely to catch the gloves and bounce up off the arm, shoulder or lid. As ever, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I batted twice. The first session was a mixed bag, and I was cleaned up by Jim the leg spinner a couple of times, playing round the ball. I did play some nice drives, however.

Two weeks ago I could barely play the pull shot, my most productive shot when right-handed. Now it’s vicious, as I not only seem to be able to time the shot better, but the strength of my right arm really unleashes. Because bowlers tend to have trouble adjusting their line, the ball on leg or wider is more common. Meat and drink.

It wasn’t merely spin today, as Tim, leading wicket taker in the division for a second year, was also netting. He’s quite nippy, and good fun to bat against. He struggled with his line a little in the first session, allowing me to work on the cut shot. Again, the strength of my top hand really came into play here. Very satisfying.

It was, as usual, my straight play which let me down. I still seem to be whipping across the line. Too much bottom hand – ironic considering why I’m switching …

It was the second session which changed everything. If you ignore the two beauts which Tim bowled when he got his line spot on, and the fine delivery from Jim which went past my outside edge and cut back to take out my leg stump, then it was a different story. I even drove quite fluently … in relative terms!

But the real eye-opener for me was the state of my bat at the end of the session. The marks on the blade are predominantly in the chunky middle. One defensive prod (a shot I rarely played right-handed) fairly pinged off the middle. So I’m seeing the ball quite well, it seems. I’ll work out why they’re mostly on the inside half of the middle soon enough.

But it’s progressing well. I still look clumsy sometimes, but the drives are coming on, and the cut and pull are almost weapons. But when one of our most talented batsman says he’s not only amazed how quickly I’ve adapted, but couldn’t do it himself, and one bowler quips that maybe I was left-handed all along, I have right to feel pleased.

Furthermore, it doesn’t kill my back now, and it’s feeling more and more comfortable. There is hope, I feel.

Unfortunately, only one more net before the operation. Then, well … not really looking forward to that, not one little bit.

Show and tell

When you’re diagnosed with a condition such as Parkinson’s, it changes things. It’s not the disease, because your physical condition doesn’t change as soon as those words are uttered – though with medical intervention symptomatic a certain amount of relief may come almost immediately – it’s that there is a label which can be attached to all manner of things.

In some ways, this is a great, great thing, because no longer do you blame yourself for certain idiocies that happen (my current difficulties with swallowing, or that ‘damn, everyone thinks I’m drunk because my left foot isn’t co-operating today’, for example), but can attach a label to it. Taking the reason out of the self does help.

Conversely, there is a tendency to begin to think of yourself in terms of disease. Certainly, the system sees you as a set of symptoms to be treated, or ignored, depending on circumstances. The modern world just loves putting you into a box, even though you’re never really going to fit into one. We’re far more complex than that, naturally, and resemble quite silly Venn diagrams more than boxes. Here, for example, is a (crap) Venn diagram of my physical self:

Pete exists in the tiny overlap in the middle, between cricketer, martial artist, PD sufferer, lover, shoulder, and gym goer …

this is obviously rather truncated, and will change as soon as my shoulder is operated on. The ratios will change, and, for example, cricketer, martial artist and gym goer will move from physical to potential or intellectual. Hopefully fucked shoulder will go too. I’ll probably add invalid to the mix. That leaves me as PD sufferer and lover. Oh. Er, moving swiftly on …

We don’t fit into the boxes that modern society wants. This is fine until we get a big box to be put in. No-one worries about the boxes until one thing turns up that effectively defines you to most everyone. PD becomes one of these things.

This may seem obvious, or perhaps irrelevant, but when it happens, you know about it. This is because we want to put ourselves in boxes too. It helps. But also it hinders, and any way that we can break out becomes very, very tempting.

During my last net at Hove, I was batting left-handed. Naturally. I was batting quite well, considering. I decided to play a switch-hit, that is, changing from left to right-handed as the bowler runs up. I did so. I bashed the ball mightily. I went back to left-handed. The coach taking the session next to my net remarked to the coach feeding the bowling machine that I batted pretty well right-handed for a lefty. He was quite surprised when told I was right-handed.

Now. Someone who didn’t know me naturally placed me in a box. Incorrectly, yes, but actually quite flattering. Were I to explain, I may or may not have to say, ‘I’ve got PD’ – it just depends on whether I was being falsely boxed.

Do I feel it’s better that someone puts me in the PD box, or the box they’ve chosen. If the former, I tell.

And telling somebody changes things.

From Dexter to Sinister

It was rather a shock when I saw the look in my consultant’s eyes. The fact was that he really seemed to be looking forward to getting me on the slab. He insisted on explaining how it used to be done in quite graphic detail, only to assure me that keyhole surgery was far, far better. Still, a type 6 slap lesion, encompassing 360° of my left shoulder, sounds quite bad. And so it is. Hence his unalloyed joy – it’s an opportunity for him to show just how good he is. This pleaseth me as it means he’ll do exactly that. In a youth, this would lead to fear, as they’d overplay their hand, but I suspect this will not be the case in this instance. I’m confident a great job will be done.

Such an injury (sustained in a ju-jitsu training session where instinct took over from training) takes a lot of recovery time. Four to six weeks with my left arm in a sling. Ouch. Life is going to be rather hard. Then three months of rehab before I can do any real training. Ouch once more. That means I’ll be trying to regain the strength on my left arm as the season starts. Ah. That’ll be awkward.

But lo! A solution presents itself.

For the past two years I have been suffering with a lack of control of my bat because the top hand, the left hand when batting right-handed, controls the bat. The PD means that the grip in my left hand is gradually but markedly weakening. I lose control of the bat.

Well, fuck it, say I, I’ll bat left-handed. I’ll change my entire batting style. This, I immediately perceive, will have three benefits:

  1. My top hand will be my right hand, a hand holding onto the manly grip needed to use my monstrous beast (of a bat)
  2. It’ll really piss the bowlers off.
  3. I will be able to learn from scratch – proper technique from the get-go.
  4. Finally, number four is simple – I’ll have an awesome switch-hit.

This is the difference:

It’s bloody hard. This will detail my trials and tribulations.

New beginnings, old endings

Every once in a while there is a wrench. Some small thing is pulled from your world and you know, just know, that things – the things that remain – will never be quite the same again. This particular instantaneous understanding occurred yesterday when I spotted a snake on the water butt. Not what one expects when living in sunny Brighton, but then, Brighton rarely delivers what one expects. This particular snake, however, held great symbolic significance. It has remained on the same spot on a particular shelf for quite some time, harmlessly coiled at the bottom of a bottle, covered in alcohol of some sort or another. Not the most palatable of spectacles, but when Si reached a particular stage of drunkenness, out the snake wine would come. In the words of several film noir, the snake was original, only the wine had been changed to protect the innocent.
At the time of writing, the snake has departed.
When I returned from my day’s thrills yesterday, Si mentioned that the previous night things had ‘got a bit out of hand’ – this out-of-handness included the smashing of the bottle somewhere in the street, and Si’s running down the road with the snake between his teeth. Definitely the end of the snake.
To me, the snake epitomised Si’s wanderlust, it was the symbol of his travels, and the promise of yet more peripatetic years. This morning we drove through the countryside to Gatwick, the roof off, music blaring. It was 4.30am. We arrived. He got out. He’ll soon be gone.

Or watch here
Si had gone from being an acquaintance to a friend to a landlord to a lodger to a very good friend. He is one of the gentlest souls I know, and one from whom I could learn a lot. He has decided, and rightly so, I think, that his future lies not in Brighton, but in Africa. He has a soul too big for a little village by the sea. It needs the expanse of a continent to encompass it.
The destruction of the snake is the clearest indication I can think of that Si has reached closure with one part of his journey, and is now embarking on the next leg. It’ll be the most difficult journey he’s ever undertaken, but the rewards will be great.
I wish him the best of luck, and the greatest happiness that this world can afford him. He deserves it. Sadly, he leaves my life just that little bit poorer.

The better part …

Discretion …

Is in the eye of the beholder. Not so long ago, I was interviewing a band, and the eminence gris, who led practically every answer, every conversation, and seemed to get a little frisky when he wasn’t in control (and to be fair, the whole thing was fundamentally his show, and a good one at that …) launched into more than one diatribe. The first was against screens.

I think screens are a big problem, generally … there are too many screens in life, I spent 30 years as a film composer, looking at screens all day and then when the computers came in round about 84/85 so i’m looking at that and I went right through that whole thing and by the time I got to the end of it, film composing, I would hardly look at the screen, and I would hardly look at the computer. Or encourage anybody else to do it. Don’t look at the things; listen. Because that’s how you find out.

Now, as I sit in the pub tip-tapping away, I think he’s got a point. But it’s not screens per se, but ‘screens’, that is, those screens which make decisions. Except they don’t. They react to a set of parameters. And these parameters hardly ever relate to real life. They are merely what’s nost convenient for companies to work with. Take our current broadband hell. They transferred on October 18th. Since then, nothing. Except ‘6 days’, which is what they’ve said three times. We have no internet. I can’t do what I’m meant to be doing. It’s costing me a fortune in beer, and life has been shortened as a result.

And all because no individual can make a decision. ‘I’ve given you the most compensation we’re allowed to offer’. That’s £20. Piss poor effort, children. Customer service means serving the customer, not bleating and saying this can’t be done, that can’t be done. I was under the impression that this was the 21st century. Perhaps not.

Someone fucks up at a restaurant – like when I was recently asked whether everything was fine with the meal. ‘Not really’, came the answer. ‘Oh’, she smiled, failing to understand. ‘Do you need me to call you a taxi?’

No idea of what to do other than repeat what’s on the card.

I recently reviewed a pub for one of those companies. The pub failed to hit half of the vital things. You know, upselling, all that crap. The review was quite poor … in relation to the criteria set by the company. But the very things they failed to do made it, for me, a more ‘real’ place. Staffed by people, not order cards.

He carried on later:

I think that’s just a general point, on a larger scale, the systematic decimation of apprenticeships, has been the ruination of this country, because that is actually how you learn. You sat there, a grumpy man did his job you’d then tentatively reach for something and he’d go ‘don’t do that because this’ll happen, that’ll happen, this’ll happen, don’t do it’. You learnt. Systems, which is what everything’s based on now, don’t work. All systems teach pople is how to work with systems. The systems themselves are mostly flawed as is the financial system which is why we’re all in the shit – if you make systems king, you’re fucked. If you make people, and what they know, what their hands know, what you actually know, not what’s in a magazine or something but what you actually know … you stick with that you won’t go far wrong.

Dammit, he was a bit of a pain, but he was on the money. The system culture infantalises people. It stops them from making decisions, so they become incapable of making decisions. Then when a real option comes along, well … they’re fucked.

This financial crisis is all down to the impression that if an economy isn’t growing by more than it grew before, it is in fact going backwards. This is dumb.

The internet was designed to enhance communication and lighten the workload. What it’s done is force us to find new ways to take up time. New ways to avoid actually doing stuff.

Anyway. Time I uploaded this …

Hard a port!

I’ve been rather unsure what to write today. If to write. Last night this happened:
I was particularly touched when a relation of mine indicated his suspicion that my sanity had recently become, well, compromised. It really is not the case. What’s happened is that certain great big gobs of reality have nestled themselves firmly in my bosom. I am not best pleased. I ought not be here, is the simple truth of the matter.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Now. That’s what you get for trying to write at 2.30am when your entire system is shutting down. The combination of insomnia and exhaustion makes sleep occur without happening – a slap around the face rather than the gentle caress of morpheus.
It’s tough to know how to follow so many consecutive vowels, though had they been the letter ‘e’ I might have made some quip about being all the vowels James Joyce was left with after finishing Ulysses.
What I really wanted to say was that yesterday, in some small, strange fashion, I managed a volte face of a rather interesting complexion.
One of the ‘things’ about this progressive, degenerative brain cock-up with which I am seemingly saddled is that it makes things change. Unexpected things change. Some of it’s the drugs, some the disease. Often these unexpected things are small things. But small things often have an impact disproportionate to their size, as well as quite regularly turning into big things while you’re not looking.
Shazam! Where the fuck did that elephant come from … and how the hell did it get into the bathroom?
All of this year I’ve struggled with two physical problems: my fucked shoulder; and my piteous left-hand grip. These problems have had many repercussions but have made my batting performances rather impressive, if you factor in the handicap. The top hand controls the shot, and the elbow should be high, the grip firm. The top hand is usually the left hand, so … a low elbow extension because of the exercise, and a feeble grip because of the PD. So most shots become rather weak, ill-directed. Concentration at a premium …
I am to have an operation on my shoulder in December to fix this type six slap tear. Minutes of fun. The rehab will pretty much end when the season begins. My grip will just become progressively worse.
Necessity is the mother of invention, or so they say. There is a way around it: switch to batting left-handed. Let’s face it, the switch-hit will be a breeze.
So, yesterday, I had my first net batting left-handed. And boy, was it ever weird. I played pretty straight.
As I packed up, smiling faces which had gently laughed at my less-than-fluid batting looked on in admiration as I explained.
I shall persevere … I just hope I can score runs …

One girl called Mo

Wondering how mo is faring this morning after her small bicycle crash last night. There I was, trying to blog, when I heard an almighty crash. A crash so almighty it sounded pretty comprehensively made of more than one individual. I tried to ignore it but said individuals were struggling with whatever they’d just dropped, and so I nipped out to help. I saw nothing at all … but I heard something. Then, by simply peering over on of the parked cars, I saw a rather diminutive lady tangled up in her bike.

I extricated her, ascertained that she was ok (ish), apart from what will likely be a monstrously bruised hip, and what I suspect will turn out to be a rather damaged shoulder. And walked her and her bike home. I’m not sure what will be hurting more … the hip, the shoulder, the head, or the ego …

A time and a place

There is, so the saying goes, a time and a place for everything. A place for everything, and everything in its place. I wonder, sometimes, if I haven’t simply stepped outside of my allotted time, or perhaps misplaced my place.

I am pretty certain, however, that where I find myself is not where myself is. It, I, am elsewhere. Observing my self: that is, myself observes my self. A sort of auto-surveillance. I took a wrong turn. Now I find it impossible to turn around. There seems to be no way to retrace the steps.

I think I left my ball of twine behind. My lifeline. The ties which bound.

Now they are not so much severed as they simply aren’t. It’s like belief – one either believes or one doesn’t. Neither, ultimately, have any greater claim to absolute authority than the other. The leap we take is one of faith: faith that there is a safety net; faith that there is none. Like Schrödinger, we have no idea whether the cat is alive or dead until we open the box … the act of opening forces what loiters inside to decide on its state.

In typically irritating fashion, Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment. That means, ultimately, that upon opening the box, the cat which exists in our imagination as a conceptual model of certain quantum properties of light, must not only make a choice regarding its mortal state, but must also persuade us, the opener of a conceptual box thus exposing the conceptual cat, that one certain way of thinking of it is correct.

And this, mark you, is a conceptual cat … something which exists only in the mind is attempting to convince us, or perhaps awaiting conviction, that one particular state is the right and proper state.

The cat asks us to place our certainty, to align ourselves securely with one socio-political principle.

Le chat est mort. Vive le chat!

There is, so they say, a time and a faith for everything.

My faith is unplaced. And I simply do not know how to replace it.