Us

I wrote this about six years ago - almost to the day, in fact.
Stumbled up on this today while cleaning out my e-cupboaard
it seems so ruthlessly insightful
anyway, here goes
a blast from the past ...

''I am getting to be a real butt aperture, with a generous amount of MCP (male chauvinistic porkiness) added on top. Anything that goes against my wish and against my “Greater Scheme Of Things” upsets me terribly and then I am so irritated and generally crappy that selfishness oozes out embarrassingly from every pore.
Today her hospital informed her that they do not have accommodation for her for Aug. 2002 – Feb. 2003. This is less than 1 month before the next job, today being the 8th of July, with her job starting on the 7th of Aug. When she told me about it, she sounded so lonely and scared that it broke my heart. She said she was in the library searching the net for some sort of accommodation (that was pretty serious, she avoids the library like the plague).
I did the most sensible thing I could do – I panicked. I was in a raging fit. I imagined myself throttling the office staff in her hospital, contacting the BMA and making a case out of it, writing letters in triplicate with carbon copies and blind carbon copies to everyone concerned.
About half an hour later, I was in the middle of such a letter when I called her again and she told me that SHE HAD NOT INFORMED THE OFFICE STAFF UNTIL ABOUT ONE MONTH AGO (remember that the job was confirmed in March which means she never enquired about accommodation till 3 months later!)

Let’s stop here.

Think about the facts.

Why did I feel so angry?? Because I love her??

Oh, yeah! Heard that one before.

The honest answer remains, I did what I did because it was a spanner in the works, against my GSOT (Greater Scheme Of Things) and I can't allow it, can I?

I mean, to work up an anger, to shout at her for not enquiring about her accommodation (by the way, I still feel it was justifiable), it just shows my obsession with GSOT above everything else. It embarrasses me, at the same time, I can’t let go (like the mother of a serial killer/rapist/psychopath – she knows her son is wrong, but he’s still her son), it’s an obsession I don’t want to correct.
She says I am looking for headaches when I don’t have any. She is right, I should let her sort her problems out, me saying all this undermines her confidence and makes her feel that she can never be independent, but at the same time, a small voice in my head says “well, she is just too irresponsible right now, you have to sort her out, or she will go against your GSOT”

Its tough fighting against yourself, as I now discover.

I think about it more and more. In my universe of uncertainties, she is the Reference Point, the imaginary axis around which my world revolves, the pole star that defines the pole, the 0 that gets me started, my launch pad, my home base, my soul keep. But, when I've been out fighting the dragons, only to come back and discover that my castle is not where it used to be (especially if the aforesaid dragons are hot on my tail!) I feel, well, to say the least, kinda stupid.

No, I don’t feel betrayed; I know better, she never ever betrays me, it’s beyond her. It’s more of a nuisance, like the runs of ill-sustained VT on the cardiac monitor, like discovering that your gun has jammed just after you challenged the psycho in the corner to a duel.

An irritation, like nettle rash.

I call her again and tell her so.

She didn’t eat me alive (only vegetarian on Mondays)

Hmmm…I wonder why she muttered: 'Olanzapine by syringe driver'

Very strange.''

what does it take - the short version

it takes 5 years and 93,000 miles

what does it take ...

to be where you want to be?
to do what you want to do?
to love who you want to love?
to live how you want to live?

it takes a decision
with a pinch of denial
and a hint of a daydream

it takes the love of friends
and the tears of loved ones

it takes desire wrapped
in love and sealed with
a drop of
molten passion
- for what you believe in
- for when and where
--you want to be

it takes the journey of
a lifetime shedding excess
baggage on the way -
- looming black boxes
of pride and anger
and arrogance lie
by the wayside
like rusty old cars

it takes the fall of
frustration and the
rise of confidence

it takes the sweetening
of bitterness with a
sprinkle of hope

it takes
the absolute certainty that ...
this is the work you really want
and the love you really crave
and the place you really like
and the life you really choose

it takes the humility to
remember your mistakes

and the gratitude to
acknowledge your friends

and the love to
try your best

and the strength (oft borrowed!) to
see things through

and the (pigheaded) stubbornness
to keep your head low
and your eyes straight
and just swing away
with all your might-
-till you feel your arm ripping out
to keep swinging
and not stop to hear that
resounding CRACK
as you finally connect and
the ball goes sailing
to remind yourself
(yet again!) -
-to swing away
with all your heart
and enjoy the pain
in your torn shoulder

... for the game
has just begun ...

finally, alone in the dark,
as you lie down
and lick your wounds
and nurse your arm

you realise
(every day
every night)

that it takes
more than anything else

the good fortune

to be

a friend
to the best friends
a man could have

and a son
to the best parents in
the whole wide world

Ray of Brilliance

Ray Bradbury seems to be a writer whose brilliance shines through quite unpredictably - like an unannounced flash of lightning which burns a likeness of his nocturnal mindscape into the reader's brain, leaving a lingering after-image which is not altogether unpleasant.

Well, judge for yourself, this is from Frost and Fire - a short story about a human(oid) race living on an unfriendly planet where 'normal' lifespan is reduced to 8 days - with an accelerated aging process which plants a paralysing fear of mortality in everyone from the moment they are born - knowing that their days are numbered irrevocably.

'Birth was as quick as a knife
Childhood was over in a flash
Adolescence was a sheet of lightning
Manhood was a dream
Maturity a myth
Old age an inescapably quick reality
Death a swift certainty'

Why then, I wonder, does this description of an 8-day lifespan feel so much like my own, at least as far as I have lived and what I expect from the rest?

As I read the struggle of that far away race to gain an extra day of life and to find answers for a 'normal' life span, I felt suffocated by my guilt - for wasting the time I have.

Now that is the sign of a great writer, when his words from a different time zone, frozen on paper, makes me feel a certain frantic desperation for all the things I have not yet done ...

Peptic verse 2 (hope nix)

so what happens then?

a new job
a new car

goodbye old life

the only thing certain is uncertainty

Peptic Verse (a rag man)

As I drive up the motorway to work this weekend while
my friends - who I dearly love and yet rarely meet - are
scattered amongst the bedsheets like random
dream wisps, I think of the road I have travelled
in this foreign land miles away from the warmth of home

At 24, I came here chomping at the bit,
eager to prove my worth,
let the whole world know:

I HAVE ARRIVED

(thank you all for waiting)

Aound me was a glowing sphere of youth and opportunity
anchored on ME by invisible cables, drawing upon
my sheer brilliance at it's centre for it's existence

I never veered from the fast lane
I dipped my lights for no one

At 26, I was sure of what I knew and I was sure
of what they knew, I was sure that what I knew
was more than what they knew and I was sure
that they knew they needed to know what I knew

My right foot stayed firmly on the pedal
I stopped not for amber

At 28, I saw chinks in my armour,
pointed out by others and at times by myself,
during the endless nights of insecurity when
I probed and prodded for weaknesses

The cars around me sped past while
my gaze fell frequently upon the fuel gauge

At 30 denial helped, although I had to change (reluctantly)
my drop down menu selections for the first time

My faithful ride looked weatherworn
(tiredness is infectious)

And yet maybe
just maybe...

all it needs is a new angle

a fresh

perspective

(peptic verse for some)

British values

There is a lot about in the UK press these days about the importance of British values and how all immigrants should adopt these values (the list includes a sense of fairplay, justice, dignity and respect).

I have sometimes wondered whether the British are 'hijacking' what are essentially universal human values and calling them 'British' (in fact I still believe there is an element of this involved).

However, something happened recently that made me think: 'Now that's what I call British values because this will not happen in many other countries', i.e., in the fairplay shown by the powers that be, there was something uniquely British.

The background to this is that the Department of Health (DoH) brought in a set of measures to curb the employment opportunities of non EU doctors in the UK National Health Service (NHS) two years ago. This move was challenged by the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO) in the High Court where they lost. Following this, BAPIO took the case to the Appeals Court, where in a landmark decision, three senior judges found in favour of non-EU doctors.

Not satisfied with this outcome, the Government took the case further, to the House of Lords, the only avenue for judicial review above the Appeals Court in the UK.

The following is taken from the House Of Lords hearing on this issue (on the 30th of April 2008):

''With effect from 1 April 2003 the Immigration Rules were amended to expand a programme introduced in January 2002 and known as the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP). The object of the amendment was to facilitate the entry into the country of highly-skilled non-nationals who would be an asset to our economy. …. the HSMP applied to all skilled occupations and was not confined to the medical profession, although the selection criteria were such that most International Medical Graduates (IMGs) would meet them.

(The Department of Health had) concerns that the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) might prove an alternative route for International Medical Graduates to obtain appointments as junior doctors. So the Department proposed that the HSMP be restricted…, so as to exclude IMGs at postgraduate training level from the HSMP. An amendment of the Immigration Rules to this effect could not, however, be agreed with the Home Office, with whom the responsibility lay for amending the Rules. So the Department (of Health) decided to take action on its own. It did so by issuing, on 13 April 2006, the guidance attacked in these proceedings.

To speak of the guidance being “issued” is to suggest a degree of official formality which was notably lacking. It appears that the guidance was published on the NHS Employers’ website in terms approved by the Department, but no official draft, record or statement of the guidance has been placed before the House, which has instead been referred to an e-mail beginning “Dear All” sent by an official of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office in response to confusion caused by some earlier communication. It is for others to judge whether this is a satisfactory way of publishing important governmental decisions with a direct effect on people’s lives.

Until April 2006 the Government had encouraged IMGs with HSMP status to come to this country in the expectation that they would get work in the National Health Service. The aim was that these skilled migrants would help staff the Health Service. In fact, for some years, it must have been clear to the Government that, due to a change which it had itself initiated soon after taking office, from about 2005 there would be an increased supply of home-grown medical graduates. In order to try to provide jobs in the National Health Service for these home-grown doctors, in April 2006 the Government issued advice to NHS trusts in England. (Similar advice was issued for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.) The advice was intended to free up places by making it impossible in practice for IMGs with HSMP status, including those already in this country, to obtain appropriate NHS posts. In my view, that was unfair to the IMGs with HSMP status in this country because the Government thereby dashed the legitimate expectations which it had fostered and on which they had acted. The advice was accordingly unlawful.

Obviously, the Government could have achieved its objective if it had amended the Immigration Rules. For various reasons, it chose not to do so. But, if it had chosen to try to amend the Rules, it would have required to pay the political price of subjecting the proposed change, and its highly damaging effects on the IMGs with HSMP status in this country, to the scrutiny of Parliament.

I would dismiss this appeal (by the Department of Health) with costs.''

So you see, there is a certain 'British sense of fairplay'

On a larger scale

this confirms what my father always says:

'If Truth is on your side ...

you have nothing to worry,

because sooner or later

it will out'

There is still hope -

thanks to

the House of Lords (in this instance)

and my father (always)

Where do jokes come from?

According to MultiVac (Asimov's brainchild) jokes are part of an elaborate alien experiment and all humans are lab rats. Apparently this is why we cannot remember where jokes come from and we are unable to make our own.

But I have tried:

Q: what did Arial whisper to Times New Roman?
A: I am font of you

But then MultiVac also says puns are all that we are capable of and they don't count

Hmmmmmm.......

Thank you Mr Eliot

I said to my soul, be still,
and wait without hope
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love
for love would be love for the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
but faith and love and hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought:
so darkness shall be the light
and the stillness the dancing.

Heard this on Radio 4 the other day.
The words resonate
with a special meaning
in my current state of mind:

wait without thought
for you are not ready for thought

Very likely that I am frantically
carving out a mental escape hatch,
a slick denial chute perhaps

but I don't care
the words are soothing
like my mother's hand
on my feverish brow
(a lifetime[?] ago):

wait without thought
for you are not ready for thought

what's my age again?

As I squeeze a little multicoloured
cylinder of toothpaste on to my
sleepy brush yet again I wonder
why I bother with days and
years and birthdays when
it would be simpler to just measure
my age in toothpaste - after all
I use the same amount each day
and replace the tube religiously
without fail - I am my own
timekeeper - my mathematically
inclined neurons (a minority) whisper
my age - one hundred and ten
tubes of toothpaste - accurate
- down to the last squeeze

ever wondered ...

whether Gabriel García Márquez would have been as reknowned an author had he chosen to call his best seller 'Love in the time of profuse watery diarrhoea'?
Somehow does not have the same ring to it, I think
Makes me want to slap people who spout philosophical nonsense like 'what's in a name?'

raindrops on...

depends, really

I remember those never ending monsoon rains
not anything like the half-hearted attempts
people call rain in this part of the world-
-no more than a spoilt child's sniffles

monsoon rain overwhelms you
drowns your thoughts
reminds you of the sheer
recklessness of nature
at its arrogant best

as the wind rattles the exquisitely
carved solid teakwood
windows of huge art deco houses

thunder (g)rumbles like an old
man - arthritic and always complaining
about the weather
about being dragged out into
the cold wet sky
but nonetheless dazzles
with his unpredictable flashes of brilliance

little rivulets rush down the road
like a bunch of chattering boys
when school is out
they push and shove and
run up the embankments
carefully crafted to keep
low lying houses dry - why
do people bother

the milling crowd under
black umbrellas lean into
the rain as if the weight of
their communal shoulders would
push away the clouds
and the column of water
- a solid sheet curtain
blotting out all senses
filling the void with
an onomatopoeia
yet to be coined

and when finally
nature has had it's say
when the last rivulets have
bubbled off to hide
in the undergrowth

the sun comes out
and lights up the little
droplets clinging on
to the dark green
fleshy leaves and
the unashamedly yellow
flowers

raindrops on...
















Thanks to photocheese for bringing back a childhood memory