I Think I'm Going Back.........
I'm sat here in my eyrie with Jade Warrior oozing out of my speakers and taking me back thirty-odd years again. You know I had forgotten just how intricate, musical and challenging a lot of the stuff I used to listen to as a bum-fluffed teenager actually was. Jade Warrior especially was a band that embraced a lot of alien music - African, Chinese, Middle Eastern - and certainly didn't entertain commercialism in any shape nor form. Hence the financial struggle the various surviving members have experienced post band.Prog Rock. For years I was too embarrassed to actually own up to half my album collection. The sneers of Punks and New Romantics. The inexorable rise of the synthesizer ("we won't need drummers or guitars in the future - computers will take over") and the buttock-clenchingly 'far-out' hippy-drippy space speak of most of the protagonists made it difficult to defend in the face of - The Clash for example.
But as time goes by, the past gets re-evaluated and what was once risible suddenly acquires, well, if not street-cred then a certain grudging respect again. Radiohead anyone? The recent adaptation of Jonathan Coe's 'Rotter's Club' on BBC2 is a case in point. Although the punk movement takes centre stage in the novel, it's the Prog Rock background music and the Prog Rock posturings of two-thirds of the 'heroes' that people are talking about. The school magazine review of 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' and the Brummie father's inability to grasp Jon Anderson's concept of 'Velvet Sailors' was quality. Played for laughs by Mr Coe no doubt but - in my opinion - it hit the spot and nailed a moment in time perfectly.
A good result for City on Sunday and masterful displays from Messrs James, Distin and especially Dunne. That's four points we've taken off Chelsea this season. We're the ONLY team to have beaten them so far. This led to City fans chanting 'Can We Play You Every Week' towards the end of last weekend's encounter. Ho ho. Another big match coming up though - the derby. Can we reproduce the performances of last season and the one before? Well I hope so. After the 3-1 win in November 2003 and the 4-1 of February 2004, a 5-1 in 2005 would be just dandy. Here's hoping.
Me Dad's been back in the
My Dad went in last Thursday evening. It should have been Monday morning but they 'couldn't find his records'. Hello! Computers! Databases! Modern world! Surely not dog-eared files still? Well yes. Apparently.
So Thursday at 2:00pm he gets the call and I drive him and Mam down. At this point my Dad is chirpy and mobile-ish. He needs his walking stick but he is fine. After the probing on Friday morning they tell him he will be able to come home Friday night after
The next thing a harridan, a hard-faced, thin-lipped, probable potential patient-killer-for-kicks auxiliary starts her shift and fuck me what a miserable cow she was. Here's a hint love: "get a job you fuckin' like!". However, I had to think of my Dad at her 'mercy' after we had left so I had to keep schtum. We asked if his bed could be made so he could go to sleep (he was bolloxed). "I'll do it when I have time" replied thin lips with a couldn't-give-a-fuck smirk, "I'm just winding down for a bit". Winding down? She'd been on her shift all of forty minutes!
Anyway, come Saturday morning my Mam phones the hospital to be told Doctor hasn't been yet and they don't know if he's coming home and they'll phone her when they know one way or the other. At half-eleven they phone back. Doctor's been, he can go home, they're shutting the ward for the weekend can we have him out by 12:00! Caring profession my arse!
He was a shell of the man that walked in that place on Thursday. Skin like parchment, grey as a Mancunian skyscape and most definitely unable to walk more than 10 feet or so without assistance. Did anyone offer a hand? A wheelchair to the car perhaps? An ambulance home? No. Did they fuck. Gone and most probably already forgotten.
What is it about our society that treats the old with such disdain, such disrespect? Why is it that other societies - European ones - seem to embrace and take succour from the experiences and company of their old-folk? Why can't we?
I know this much. If that had been a Paediatric ward instead of a ward for blokes with urinary problems, there would have been a lot more care provided and, in the case of thin-lips, a lot less downright random nastiness. I just hope she's holy 'cos as she gets older she will be shitting herself for all her sins. But more realistically I hope she ends up in a ward with a thin-lipped, job-hating evil nurse (male or female) giving her enemas and bed baths. Now that I would pay to see.
Right, back to Jade Warrior before the nightly
Ellen MacArthur's boyfriend? Quiet type is he? A loner perhaps? He'd better had be.
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