Sad really.

I have known sadness for it’s own sake and wallowed in a feeling which has no fact to cling to. It exists for itself, penetrating, insistent and conceited in it’s dominance. I could blame you, myself, an inanimate object, but this would be a fruitless exercise. Everything is grey, even the things I know are brightly coloured. No information is absorbed because everything is blank and passes me by whilst I cower within myself. Sorry I’m no fun. Sorry I don’t remember you as much as I should. Sorry.

She sings

Find this lady; she sings like an angel.

As I look back.

Why is it that looking back we always seem like we were so much better before? Do you feel that?
I have come to this conclusion on multiple occasions and each time I can't imagine what has gone wrong. Looking back on my own words they seem laden which such heavy thought that I can't imagine from where they escaped. Perhaps our products are greater than the processes we have to sense our way through and only looking back they can seem remarkable.
Today someone I admire greatly said to me, "to be a good scientist you must be me standing here, seeing you". Sometimes it feels like the things that are real that we haven't realised are so close that I almost realise, but then it's gone and I'm standing looking back at myself as I was, not as I am now, reading my own words in disbelief.

There's been a lot of rain recently. Then again, there's been a lot of rainbows too.

In other news...







It definitely runs in the family. This is my little brother, yes he is very cool, and yes he doesn't know how good he has got it. He doesn't even know he doesn't know. Actually, come to think of it he doesn't know he doesn't know he doesn't know.


I love it when these things just happen...


And as I'm on a role, here's a little taster of Israel ...

All in all.

All in all it was a big day today. Not one of those days you feel should be a big day, like birthdays and weddings (so I’m told). Just woke up and felt like I wanted to stay in bed, and didn’t. I presented a paper at a Journal club and my consultant, Mr Soltan, a inspiring man indeed, told me ‘I think you are going to be a good academic doctor’. It meant a lot, I don’t really know why, but it did. May it’s one of the things I want to be. I’d like to a be a good academic doctor. I’d like to be able to blow glass. I spoke to a lady who had had breast cancer, she was warm and I felt like we held something between us, not a thing which was of any particular use but it was there, and it felt good to be half of what was keeping it there. I tagged along with one of the registrars on call and watched whilst she put her entire arm inside a woman to remove what was left of the placenta after she had had a miscarriage. As blood turned red to black as it hit the blue drapes I felt a little weak. I felt the guilt of the joy I get from doing this. I felt like this might all be for nothing. As I was driving I listened to Ed Harcourt - til tomorrow then, it was nice. I don’t really understand things so much, sometimes you realise it more than others.

Preservative??

Who ever ever ever thought of putting vinegar inside a vagina in the hope of identifying cervical cancer? Why? Just Why?

Love: right conclusion, wrong disease

I was right after all (and not just filling a poster full of pseudo-insightful crap to put in the museum). The unpredictability of symptoms are (infact) as debilitating as the symptoms themselves.

And some more pictures from Ghana ...


An ant-house, as big as a person house (interrobang)






Charity is just like normal life.


Just because I think it needs to be said, has anyone heard David Bowies The Laughing Gnome ??

The scariest thing about Blackpool...

This, you put inside a woman.

This, you don't.

Someone once said...

i'd like to hear some of those other thoughts, all the same. why should you get to decide, all on your own, what's worth hearing?

Who missed the plane?

Scouts can lose anything.


Funny you should mention the flight. On the way to catch the plane the whole team and I (only 7 of us this time) we nice and early. We had all our extra bags of books and balls and needles (that took some explaining) checked in and went to look at the gate on the big flashing screen which makes everyone squint. We saw that there was no gate so we thought 'yes, its wandering time'. We all bumped back into each other approximately five minutes later and squinted back at the board which now said 'gate closed'. After a good minute of 'Shi..sugar', 'wheres my bag', 'where is moni...there she is' most of us started looking stupid running through Heathrow airport. The only one at the back moseying her way slowly was Naomi, the only Ghanaian at that point. We arrived five minutes later a little pink and a little more sweaty to find everyone sitting all leisurely-like at the gate. We bundled everything to the man at the gate and. 'Have you finished boarding? Is it too late for us too...'. 'Ah no' the decidedly Northern man said. 'We just do that because we were sick of the planes always waiting for someone on these flights'. Naomi got there a few moments later smiling to herself. I swear Ghana International is the only airline that has to trick it's customers into getting there on time.
Incidently, we had to wait for a passenger who was late.
It did get me wondering about all the people that are 'supposed' to be in all the places we find ourselves. Most of the time I assume that everyone who is infront of me is supposed to be there and no-one is missing. Sometimes, on the other hand, people are decidedly missing. This is one of those times.
x

My natural tendency would be to do things in reverse order, but at request Ghana first. There really are few words, which I know is a cop out, but here are a couple of pictures, because words, at least the few that I know, can sometimes fall flat. There will be more I promise.



There are many more images, memories, feelings about this place. They will spill over with time. The things echo in my mind are the colours, the cloth that dances brightly over dark skin. The fact that people there live without a burning desire for more which simultaneously evokes a warmth in me and a sadness. Without the will there is no change, but it is that same will that repulses me when I walk through the perfume department on harvey nicholls. Sometimes it feels like the only alternative to poverty that is allowed is a shopping centre and a cleaner cleaning a floor which is alreadly clean.

I was given much in Ghana: Food, interest in my beliefs, friendship, gratitude, knowledge, and I really wouldn't see it that I gave more than I received. Perhaps people should think a little differently about 'doing the right thing.' It really never felt like a chore, I never had to go hungry to feed another, it was never difficult at all. The only bad taste left in my mouth is that the change is so small, there are so many things which should already have been done.

A small number of facts which I learnt in Ghana follows : -
1. Ghanaians eat squidgy food in many many forms. Fufu, Kenke etc etc.
2. It's the only place I've seen where a series of million dollar houses can be built on a street with potholes big enough to house an entire car within their depths
3. Saying 'Ey' can mean approximately 25,421 different things
4. Every kiosk/shop/garage has to have something to do with God. 'God's will salon', 'Hallelujah tire repair'
5. I am an Obroni
6. A 12 year old boy in southern Ghana knows what Gonorrhoea is
7. Eating a coconut from a street seller couldnt be more fun
8. People are willing to get run over to sell you washing-up liquid off a basket on their heads
9. People sing and dance for no particular reason
10. Children are still children and I'm not sure that presenting them a starving little dolls to raise a pound or ten or a million will help their cause.

Watch it

I have, for a number of months, had a little black watch, which has travelled with me and my wrist at almost all times (minus showering). It has, amongst other things been taken along to Ghana (more on that later). It is fair to say too that it has taken a fair battering on the way, and during these few months it has had to be put to rest and resurrected with the (sometimes not completely voluntary) help of my local Argos. The first time it the strap broke I took it back to the shop accompanied by my fellow, who was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which it was exchanged, without a receipt, for a shiny new one. The second time it broke (I'm was beginning to think cheap watches are not necessarily the best investment) I took it back again. I had (again) lost the receipt, which I was rather annoyed at myself for. My fellow had a facial expression of vague scepticism at the thought of my being able to exchange the watch AGAIN without a proof of purchase. He was right that it was a little more of a struggle. The woman at the desk briskly informed me that I could not have an exchange because I had no proof of purchased. Initially I dejectedly stepped away from the desk. But then, something inside me said no, I was going to push it, and I was going to get an exchange. And that is exactly what I did. The woman firstly protest and then I asked to see the manager and somewhere along the manager overruled the decision in favour of an easy life. I got what I wanted and the woman at the desk just looked down and gave me the watch (and no receipt). I was left with a shiny new watch and another little mark on my morality. I couldn't help wondering where the line is between getting what you want and just being nice.

It's not the first time ive given thought to watches mind. I've always thought that analogue has something that digital will always lack. I realise that the likely audience will disagree in majority. It's just that you can see half a day, wrapped around you wrist. You don't just see 3:19, you see close to half past, you see that appointment at 4. Perhaps it's just my sense of numbers which is lacking.

There is also the moment I realised that stopping my watch does not stop time and that a watch doesnt really measure time at all. I really have my watch to thank for many of my most taxing questions. Read.

Before expectant silence

I wanted to leave a little note before I shoot off. I’m going to Ghana for a while, I’ll be back soon with pictures. I don’t really have anything of worth to say but it seems these things come along at their own pace (apparently I should consider revising my use of a reflexive pronoun, feel free to offer suggestions). So what’s happened? Erm, I passed my egghams, always a good thing. I’ve finished learning about lungs and hearts and guts and soon it will be on to babies and women and nutty people and such. I’ve done a project which I’m told was excellent but I’m not so sure, it’s probably a relative measure. I’m in the process of moving out of my house and moving in to Nowhere in Particular. People are moving away, I will miss them. I’m not much better at playing the guitar than I was many months ago but I have written some songs and had a play around. I’ve been here for nearly three years now, I would say Manchester is my home. I do, however, hold the view that we collect homes along the way, we never lose them, and only need reminding in the right way and it all comes flooding back.

It feels like I’ve reached a little bit of a ledge in life, when lots of things change all at once and you feel like you are about to drop into someone else’s life. I don’t know where I will be in a few months; come to think of it I don’t really know where I will be tomorrow. I can try and imagine, but it’d just be an ersatz reality.

As a complete aside Word is playing with me (again). I typed the word visage and then searched for a synonym, one of which it gave me was phizog, a word which quite frankly baffled me. It then told me wasn’t a word! Apparently it is ‘British slang for face’, who knew! Microsoft works my arse.

Have your cake and eat it

I don’t want to buy cake; I don’t deserve it, I’ve had it before and it’s not fair. I don’t want to go out drinking, I don’t want Birthday presents, I don’t want you to love me, I don’t want new shoes. I have to be missing at least one thing.

The world should be fair, right? I realise it isn’t, but that it’s most people want I think. It isn’t fair though. If it was fair something bad would have happened by now. I do enough bad things to deserve something. Some of those bad things are to test this point precisely and they never seem to work. I leave things around that I would steal and they don’t get stolen. I’m cruel to people and new people come and tell me they love me. How can you make someone feel as though there life is not even worth living and be made to feel that you are everything to another. I don’t get it. I’m more than tempting fate, I’m demanding fate, I want some karma. Otherwise this world is unpredictable, anything could happen at any time and that is what most people avoid thinking of for most of the time. Why do they drive to work everyday through rush-hour traffic at nine? Because then they know what tomorrow will be like.

I don’t want cake, so I don’t buy it. It’s not the guilt of being fat, because I’m not, and even if I was I’m hardly going to be prosecuted. No it’s a deeper guilt, a guilt of fortune. Why am I so fortunate? So I set these false limits, and that is what they are, entirely false. If I want cake I can have it, as Jarvis Cocker pointed out. I’m just a little rich girl, at medical schools who has decided she doesn’t want everything she can get. So what happens? I decide I don’t want the cake. A pretty thing arrives and says he’ll get the cake, then apologises for not letting me eat it immediately. Gets upset because he’s eating cake and I’m not. I eat cake. The battle is already lost and I’ve already won a thousand times over.

Please, tell me what the answer is.

Asking for trouble

The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run


You can’t ask a question without making an infinite number of statements. Take the question ‘Do you love me?’ Now this is not one of the best-out-of-five format that I am used to, and I must say it’s lucky that I haven’t be asked, or don’t remember at least. But there seems to be example after example of these questions and it’s taken much practice to even begin to consider the number of things that are being said when a question is asked.
At work I have learnt to hesitate a little and allow the chance for an answer before I’ve asked.
However, on one of the other hands there is the issue of not asking, and I can also see the side that says that you if you don’t ever ask you might never get. Of course if you do then get whatever it is that took your fancy, you have to live with having had to ask. For some this is less important, because other things get said anyway, and those can, apparently, be just as good for them. Don’t forget though there are other comments being made and you’d be a fool to miss them.
But what if you do ask directly and you still don’t get? Then you have to live with having asked and also having gotten nothing at all, except maybe a vague excuse for a reference.
Perhaps you get what you are given regardless of what you ask and you just end up frustrating yourself and others in the process.

Penny for your troubles?

I was walking today when I saw a little penny sitting on the road. Naturally I picked it up and began looking for someone to give it to when I began to wonder. Why is it that people need an adage to persuade them to pick up pennies? Isn’t ‘pick up a penny and you will have a penny’ enough? Why do we also need luck? Perhaps it’s a strange form of greed. I have, as it happens, seen a lot of people say ‘nah, its just a penny’ or even ‘nah its just five pence’, it seems that they are ashamed to become up anything that would be below their own threshold of worthiness. There is also the matter of the gain if passing the penny on to a friend. What about ‘see a penny pass it on because you don’t need it for now and you’ve got a friend who has £1.99 and wants to buy an over-priced coffee’? Perhaps before inflation eroded our pennies to dust people needed more persuading to share their pennies. Incidentally, anyone feel like a bad person?

This is NOT about Thursday

Let’s talk about Friday, because we all know about Thursday. Besides spending all this time talking about Thursday, you could miss Friday altogether, and that is a very dangerous thing. So I woke up Friday. Well waking up from being awake is probably not possible but I got up at least. Went to see doctors about the business of forensic medicine, booked appointments, sold cakes for the charity. Then it all got a bit strange. As I paced down Oxford Road a good friend bumped out of Oxfam and straight into me. Certainly a surprise and certainly a nice one. We went for a coffee and chatted, about roman emperors, friends, giving blood. The usual. We talked about qualities and shortcomings. He said that he couldn’t understand/stand the people who seem to cherish their inadequacies, the people who refuse to better themselves by refusing to let go of them. And I made the point that quite often our failures are also our strengths dependent on the surrounding situation. I’ll give you an example, a man who will work until he is sick will get the job done, and as well as it can be, at least by him. He is also the man who will neglect his girlfriend/wife/children/health. I suppose the trick is to position yourself in the situations which allow your weaknesses to become your strengths.

After the pleasure of coffee I tootled back to Occupation Health to be vaccinated against various horrible diseases which kill people daily. Drinking and needles in various limbs and I could soon feel myself drifting into the nether regions of my consciousness. Cant remember what I was thinking about but it was something wonky. Next thing I remember theres a nurses voice in my head muttering ‘open your eyes now’. All a bit strange. Then some more meetings, more cakes, and to top it off I drove to Leeds.

In other news, I can’t sleep (I don’t suppose its any blood wonder.)

An inspired title

My thoughts are wandering, I wrote this poem, its a bit rubbish but I might as well put it here for safekeeping.

A breath.
A kiss.
A mindless list.
A wish.
A way.
A wasted day.
A blur.
A haze.
A greenish daze.
A bond.
A bind.
A listless mind.

These things never have a plan, but im really trying my best. A few things are happening at the moment, exams are coming close, which always makes me incidiously lose tract of reality and enter some sort of horrible nightmare state. Today I learnt about Gurkas probably for the reason that knowing things is a treasure, and also they seem to have been in the news a lot recently. Is it me or is the idea of Martial Race completely bizarre? Which is the all-seeing-all-knowing race who chooses which is which? Oh yes, the British, I forgot. And yesterday about Lady Godiva, like I said the exams are coming up. Hello to any peeping Toms, if there are any around here.

Minging thing

A certain somebody said not long ago ‘you live in ming’. Simple statement, and eminently true, and I know said in jest, but nevertheless never a true word and all. Don’t get me wrong I’m not insulted, rather scared to death. It’s just that feeling that you might not be the thing that they thought you were, despite the repeated warnings. You know those things, the things about you that you wish weren’t true and that you pray to something celestial (if you are that way inclined) nobody will ever find out. I suppose it’s a balance between wanting to be understood and not wanting to be heard farting, seen picking your nose or caught growing something horrible in your dustbin. And if you think about it it goes a little further, because as honest as we think we are we are still different when alone. I will never truly know everything about you, and to an extent I can never not be trapped in my little skinbox (that’s demands a strange mental image.)

As an aside, isn't this painting lovely?