Category: Personal

Yes really, wild boars…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night and the night before we have been visited by one or more wild boars. They are a bit of a pest around here. They have made a mess in two large patches of the lawn which will cost hundreds to repair. There is nothing that I can do about it now being incapacitated. The wildlife has already been more present in the garden as I/we have been spending less time there due to the arthritis. They are reclaiming it.

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We have called the local Mairie and members of the “hunt” are due to visit during the day. It is one of those things which you do not need, wild boars messing up the lawn. Hopefully the hunt geezers will have some suggestions. I cannot shift our heavy gate at the moment. Maybe there is some other way of scaring them off. Maybe piggie is still on the premises.

Something needs done in case the little buggers come back tonight…

If they manage to get it, it could add to the Christmas festivities…

That me and Kevin we’re just not the same…

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Although I do have a research paper co-author who is a University Challenge quiz winner and am a regular viewer of past series of University Challenge which  I quite like, I am not the same as Kevin. Since we have been watching YouTube re-runs my average score has risen to the point where I might even be a slightly above average quiz team member. I have been accidentally learning the answers to questions. I can respond Pavlovian to certain questions. I am now slightly programmed.

We try very hard to get people to fit to our preconceived ideas, notions and prejudices about how people should or ought to be. Very few measure well to the perfect Kevin yardstick. We reach for that shoe horn and try real hard to squeeze them into the shoe we have imagined for them. If people are not  sufficiently like Kevin we can be upset and complain. We may discard them outright because of their lack of apparent Kevin-ness. We can throw the poorly made Kevin ersatz out with the tepid and soapy bathwater. Kevin himself never gets the blame it is merely the poor attempt at Kevin-hood. Kevin is a perfected and illusory ideal.

I am pretty sure that in a number of contexts that I am not sufficiently like Kevin to be taken seriously and thereby can be easily discounted. People do not believe me because I am not like Kevin. Kevin is the reason that many things have gone wrong or not even gotten started.

Anway enough about Kevin.

Tonight we have Beef Karai on the menu.  I am going to use the last of my hand ground Karai spice mix to do us a curry. Not sure yet if I am going to add some flaked almonds but probably will add a few dried apricots. To make it a tad more Persian inspired. We will see.

I have made it up to the local supermarket to participate in the shopping. I walked around mostly using only one crutch. Bit knackered now…can be done.

Last night I upped the codeine and managed for the first time to get near six hours sleep. If that continues tonight I will be well happy.

The next hurdle will be driving up to the physiotherapist’s clinic. Possibly early next week. It is already a lot easier getting in and out of the car than before I had the operation. The guidance in the US and UK is more contra than here. Things here can be a bit loose {imagine shoulder movement and hand gestures}.

Unfortunately I am still technically speaking obese. Although I have lost ~4 kg in just under two weeks I am still defined obese, a fat bastard. According to the NHS web site I have to lose another 8 kg to stop being obese. Not sure if I am supposed to aim for that or not…

I will be more like Kevin then…

Total Hip Replacement – 9 Days In.

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When I was looking into getting this done I found that the available information on line was a mix of promotional advertisement for services, mildly patronising video and that statistical outcome based discussion was sketchy. Urban legend, in other words the ubiquitous they, say that for everyone they know the operation went well and the results were better than before.

I understand that I am at the lower age demographic for osteo-arthritis induced hip replacement and that my disease was more advanced than most. This means that I was probably more handicapped to start with.

The question that always came to my mind was, “who had the first hip replacement and how did they persuade the poor soul to let them loose with the hacksaw?” “Which genius was sufficiently convinced that they could make things better?”

It is pretty clear to see that without operation my decline would have continued and perhaps accelerated. In this sense it could be said that advanced osteo-arthritis is by way of a slow killer. The will to live is gradually ground away like pepper corns in a pepper mill. It is an erosion of body and hence life.

I was ready for the operation.

My dressings are due to be changed tomorrow and thanks to the technical excellence of French medicine so far all seems ok.

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The overall experience at the relatively new private hospital at Plérin has been very good. The cleanliness and general ship shaped and Bristol fashion of the place build confidence. Having experienced several operating theatres I can safely say that the facility there is the best I have been in. The team were very good.

The sense I get is that the whole thing has been a tad over dramatized on-line. But maybe this is testament to the high quality of care I have received. A lot of stuff on-line is old and perhaps historically out of date.

I did not expect to be able to tie my shoe laces in under a week.

I did not expect to be able to open my legs in “box-split” direction as far as I can.

I did not expect to be able to pick things up from the floor…

The weirdest thing is, without doubt, feeling movement and motion in my right hip socket.

The pain levels have been tolerable though modern hospital medicine errs on the side of under medicating. Our GP is of a different view, old-school, and more keen to prescribe pain relief. We have a stocked home pharmacy so to speak. The wife has been very helpful and understanding.

In comparison to when I had fractured my left femoral neck six years ago the experience has been much easier so far.

But nobody has mentioned the difficulty sleeping which I am experiencing. Which for me is perhaps the most difficult part of the recuperation. I have sufficient medication to completely zonk out but I am aware that this comes with constipation and an elevated risk of fall. I have had two nights with two periods of around two hours continuous sleep over the weekend which has been an improvement.  

This is the area I am keen to see improve fast.

It can see the improvements in movement already. I am able to stand and cook stir-fry for around 40 minutes; I can take a shower and on Friday with the aid of crutches I walked around half a kilometre at the local port. Because I have experience from the injury before I have an inkling of time scales.

I can walk around the house with a single crutch. This has confirmed that I am in fact left handed. The amount of stuff I use my left hand for has become so obvious as that is my single crutch hand. I was “trained” to be right handed. But is pretty obvious I am not.

I have walked ten metres without any crutches. So I can see the progression.

I estimate that I could probably drive the car. It is easier getting in and out than before the slice and dice. The advice is not to drive and while I am still a visitor to the “opium den” this is wise. 

Boredom during the waking hours of night is perhaps the most irksome. Luckily shit TV is a good soporific.

All in all I am feeling a whole lot better and am more functional than we had anticipated and planned for. All those preparations have worked out worthwhile and made it easier for us both. It is mildly surprising in a pleasant way.

We shall see how things progress…

What is on my Dance Card?

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Most of the preparations have gone ahead. I had an argument with a loo seat yesterday. I was trying to fit a replacement one and I could not get the old fitting to budge. Erring on the side of caution I did not force it. It is a bit of a botch but it will have to do. The nurse had said that I should not do DIY in case I get a cut and thereby raise the preoperative risk of infection.

Tomorrow I am due an operation with general anaesthetic.

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Which means this time tomorrow I am scheduled to have had my replacement hip fitted. I might be back in my room. This schematic looks benign, the one below less so.

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I suspect that I will have a lot of bruising and maybe my leg will be a little blue…it does not look dainty or genteel. I will be wearing sexy stockings and be on the heparin injections.

The hospital bed has arrived and is installed downstairs here in the office and physio appointments are in the diary.

I probably won’t be adding to the blog for a while and will have to make old-school paper notes of any dreams.

I don’t know how well I am going to respond to the general anaesthetic. Ten years ago I had post-operative recall of watching the surgery from above. This was either an out of body experience or a dream. I have done even more meditation since then including things which you will not find discussed anywhere. I am sure that I will be physically unconscious, I am  not sure what my consciousness as a whole will do. In principle and assuming nothing goes wrong the surgery should take less time than the laparoscopic colectomy for the T3 tumour I had in 2015. I am less likely to wander off as it were.

I am going to be relying on people, those at the hospital and the wife here at home. The estimate is that it will take a couple for weeks for me to be able to get into a normal car. I will be on the compound during this time. I will be on crutches.

In the near future it is the hospital tomorrow and here thereafter. Maybe in a couple of weeks we can go for a hobble up at the seaside. I should be back at the stove cooking by then…

So not a lot on the dance card…

For the Avoidance of Doubt

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It is possible that people can overinterpret things and see meanings which are not there. They may imagine personal messages which do not exist.  

This blog is discursive {at best} and exploratory. It is often quasi-stream of consciousness. It is not intended as any form of guidance or teaching. There are ramblings etc.

I have a lot of time on my hands…

If you are imagining that I am in some way providing you a steer, a lead or any such thing then you had better consult a psychology professional or better still call the mothership. Maybe it is time that you were beamed back on board?

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I am a retired person living on below the fulltime EU minimum wage and my time is allocated to gardening, DIY, cooking and watching TV. On occasion we go for a walk up on the coast. That is the physical plane reality. I rarely meditate these days because I no longer need to.

I am hopefully due a hip replacement operation soon and that is as far as my ambitions go. It is not very complicated.

If you are imagining anything more grandiose you might not be well grounded.

I am not seeking anything…I will struggle with more than any fleeting contact with people “off compound”. I am unlikely to leave the department before end of summer next year.

That is all…

Pyjamas and Preparation

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The places where one is most likely to bang into someone by accident are nodal points, points with high average footfall. These include hospitals, airports, train stations and supermarkets inter alia. I have in the past met people “by accident” at such places. When we went back to the UK recently I knew that there was an increased chance of bumping into to someone I once was acquainted with at Gatwick airport. To meet them in rural Britanny is unlikely. My “circle” extended briefly into the “circle” of others. No such meeting occurred. Fate did not see fit to organise an encounter. Of course in spy novels and films “chance” meetings can be engineered. Were I to bump into someone from my past locally, I would err on the idea of engineered rather than chance. The only people we meet in the local supermarket are the wife’s hairdresser and the geezer we bought the house off. These are spatially likely given our normal trajectories.

Living like we do our normal circle extends 20 km in radius with extensions to 50km for occasional hospital and coastal visits. The chances of me crossing circles is zero outside these ranges.

At the last hospital visit the nurse said that I am not allowed to be “balls out” and must therefore buy some pyjama bottoms at least. I bought some at the M&S outlet in Gloucester Quays. I have some stumpy short fat bloke track suit bottoms on order and a new pair of Crocs in the post. They were not doing a pre-diabetic special offer on the joggers. My hospital wardrobe is taken care of. I can wear my “Trust me I am a Doctor” T-shirt, my psilocybin zwitterion and “breaking bad” ones too. As a rule of thumb hospital temperatures are adjusted to encourage the growth and spread of penicillin resistant bacteria and  upper respiratory tract viruses. I need to get my flu and covid vaccinations done next week. Hospitals are always too hot.

Will they shave my chest again to put cardiac monitors on during the operation? Yeah probably… more itching.

We need to look at placing the second mattress on our bed. To get a loo seat raising contraption and perhaps a litter picker for dropped things. We have a prescription for a hospital bed which will sit here downstairs in the office. We will have the local nurses visit; they are already practically a part of the family. I’ll get a yellow sharps box for my pre-filled heparin syringes post hoc. I was OK injecting myself last time. We have got laxatives to counter the morphine induced arse-corks. I need to check the plumbing to the cess pit. I have 15m of plumber’s rods. This may be done next week.

The initial guess from the nurse is that I will go in on a Friday for the slice dice and drill. Assuming I can stand day one, I will probably be sent home Sunday. The physio thinks I will be housebound for two weeks. After that I may be able to get into a car. In France the pharmacies are shut Sundays so we need to make sure that I have a good opiate stash.

I am due a coronary CT-angiogram next week. Because of the holy Trinity of fat, fags and booze there is a mild concern. This may or may not turn up something, it could be that last obvious showstopper.

This morning I was pleased to wake up without some weird London based stress bunny dream. It seems so far away, another world. I am 95% sure now that I won’t go ahead with the idea of trying to apply for a quantum telepathy patent whilst I am incapacitated. It would only make the dramatics worse.

I don’t know why I keep getting these dreams. I personally think I am at peace with all that palaver and have been for years. Maybe I am kidding myself. Maybe the dreaming is just showing the unresolved issues of others.

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

If I had a pretty head I would try not to worry it.

Only a few weeks to go and the pepper mill in my right hip might be replaced with something less frictional and painful. I may even be able to put my own socks on…

It is probably best to have no expectations. The only thing for sure is that it will in some way be different and I will have wound closures and bruising. A physio is due to visit soon after the butchery.

Three weeks from today…I could be on my way to the block…

How We View Things – Jeans or Robes?

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Although there is advice to never judge a book by its cover that is exactly what most people do. They place stock in appearance. They also pay a lot of attention to the ubiquitous omniscience of “they”. After all “they” are the font of all wisdom.

I know that it is the simplest thing for me to don my £1000 leather jacket, put on a freshly ironed grandad shirt, my black leather shoes and put my Ray Ban “Matrix” sunglasses on top of my head. I can walk into a store or building around here and will be treated differently. Instantly they will imagine I am not “from around here”. I know that I can walk with confidence up to reception at a posh hotel and be treated well. My mother used to joke that I was “to the manor born” in the sense that I was not in awe of posh settings. I have confidence. We could suggest that comes courtesy of Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines paying my school fees at a mid-range English preparatory school in Gloucestershire.

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How we treat others depends on many things. If we have a sense of entitlement and imagine ourselves grand we might treat others like plebs. From our Olympian view others are beneath us. We may disrespect others and treat them poorly feeling justified in doing so. We may deign to offer an audience to the serf or underling. We may imagine ourselves the purveyor of knowledge to the ignorant or superstitious.

There is a joke here in that I was aiming to incarnate in Bhutan, I saw the dragon of Cardiff and found my mother’s womb there. Hence I wear jeans and not monk’s robes. I know beyond any doubt that if I met people with whom I have had a passing acquaintance whilst dressed in robes, without warning, it would be for them a non sequitur, and perhaps a complete mind fuck. They would not be sure as how to react or behave. They certainly would not offer me a scarf for me to offer them in turn, blessings therewith.

If I wore robes people would instinctively behave differently towards me. A book covered in Levis’ 501s reads differently.

I’ll wager that people may struggle to understand how I view things. In the previous post I mentioned that gossiping about someone is a form of bullying. If we gossip among ourselves we do not imagine it bullying. If we see it in a soap opera on TV we clearly see bullying. Why is East Enders different from our “normal” reality?

Although some may guess that they understand how I think and where I am coming from, I’ll postulate they are mistaken. Unless they have done two decades of meditation, read and understood a thousand science journal articles, read hundreds of patents and extensively researched the occult and Buddhist literature they are unlikely to have a similar intellectual background or mind.

But people can judge me and “understand” me from what I choose to put up in a hobby-blog. You might judge this book from the internet cover you are currently perusing. You may imagine that I am something like I was a couple of decades ago. The sense of humour might be similar but that is about it.

To reiterate.

I have never appointed a spokesperson or port-parole. Anyone claiming to speak on my behalf, know my mind or what I want; is a liar and a charlatan. Such a person is also a bull shit artist and very untrustworthy. If they are claiming any form of current acquaintance that is extremely unlikely given that I live a hermit-like life.

If we make shit up about people that is evil and a form of bullying. It can be slanderous and libellous. If my reputation is damaged by made up shit it prevents me earning a living or helping sentient beings.

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Boring – Not Again…

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As we were driving up to the supermarket I remarked to the wife that it is boring getting the same type of dream over and over. The themes of being gossiped about, checked up on, snooped upon and the jungle drums banging out long into the jungle night, recur.

The theme of people trying to be clever and cunning seems never to stop. Baldrick is perennially reaching for his famed planning turnip. The endless secret squirrel speculation and so-called “information gathering” keeps cropping up.

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Inspector Clouseau has a new case to work on at the Louvre so why are they still interested in me?

It is pretty simple.

“If you want to know, ask me!”

Asking the monkeys will not help. Try using a Clouseau voice…

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I know that there is a theory that if you put enough monkeys together with typewriters you will eventually get the works of Shakespeare. But that seems a rather indirect route.

I am not in any way flattered by the notion of people gossiping about me. I consider that to be bullying and very rude. I am not interested in political machinations. If a whole bunch of people are collectively doing things behind my back I am not only crippled but outnumbered. That is bullying nasty behaviour. It has an unpleasant stench and is pretty much evil. It is a bit sad and un-impeccable.

Same shit different day…

Name Dropping – Power by Association

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The two cormorants and one heron are, as is usual these days, stood around the pond. Mr & Mrs cormorant seem now settled and it is Heron the larger today. I can get within 10 metres of  the male cormorant before he can be arsed to take any evasive action. We might say that we have integrated with the French wildlife. We could put our feathered friends down on our citizenship application. There cannot be many fish left in the pond!! These are wild birds.

The prefecture has opened up the process of renewal of right to stay for those admitted under the Brexit fiasco / deal / bullet in the foot. The chances are we are OK. But there is a small significant risk that we will be refused and booted out. I have no names to drop, am not affiliated with any society or institution. I have nobody to vouch for me or act a guarantor. I am in no way special and thereby subject to the normal rules for normal people. Our fate lies securely in the hands of the French administrative system. We will provide them the kilograms of paper work they seek. Mild OCD can sometimes be helpful.

A few years back ~ 2017 I was attending an Institute of Physics { IoP } Entrepreneurship event. A geezer from a Southampton uni. fibre optic laser spin out was there talking, as were other tech transfer people from uni. and institute. They were talking about the start-up funding valley of death. My affiliation was down as “freelance”, the usual euphemism for unemployed. I did mention in passing the ancient history of the laser spin-out I was involved in in order to secure an invitation.

{Strangely the event in no way made use of me.}

It was one of those prolonged slow death by finger buffet events. As is my custom my event name tag was pretty much in my trouser pocket. I mentioned to a bloke that I had been at Imperial and he then proceeded to name drop my name, to me. He claimed to have met me and implied that I was even some kind of loose pal or associate. I had no recollection. I encouraged him to provide more information and was told that I was something of a controversial figure with the CEO and investors. I was not gifted the subtle aroma of roses. It became apparent that the CEO had claimed that he had done and invented many of the things which he had not. This geezer was claiming some kind of power by association with me, to me, without knowing who I was. I resisted the temptation to really drop him in the shit and made my excuses for another irresistible prawn in crispy breadcrumbs. I had always thought that the CEO was a bell end and this was more anecdotal proof.

There is a certain type of person who cannot resist the temptation to name drop and claim power by association. In martial arts circles it is to some master or great thousand year old lineage. The association is almost invariably exaggerated. Some of these are impossible given the unidirectional flow of time and age at death. But hey, what is a mere detail? Why let it get in the way of a good story or narrative?

People once used to drop the name Epstein to claim power by association, Prince Andrew is now out of favour and the pile on ramps up. People who claimed power by association to him now drop him like a lead balloon. People can’t wait to pile on like a bunch of piranhas. Those that fed on his name now feed on his disgrace. Human beings are great, are they not?

With the reliability of a politician’s promise I could name drop whoever I want. Probably the most famous person I ever met was George Best. I once pissed next to him at a urinal in the Dover Street Wine Bar when we were both under the influence. I saw him several times there in the wee small hours after pub closing time.

If I listen to what one of the voices in my head told me then I was a very close disciple of Siddhartha Gautama. Which means that I can claim to have met him and maybe hung out. I doubt that such a thing merits either kudos or power by association. There is no way of checking with a dead and cremated person from 2500 years ago. The vast majority of people would not believe me. Therefore there is no power associated with such a thing.

More people may have believed the geezer who claimed that he knew me. My stock now is low. So it would be a bit of a waste of breath to make such a claim of association.

People pay a lot of attention to names and reputations. A referee from a top Johnny university is deemed good. People rarely check if things are made up. They believe reputation until such time as the tarnish arrives and the pile on starts. Previous association then becomes a big negative. Plague sets in and any association even by extended barge pole denied.

People are fickle and the herd-made reputation is both time varying and impermanent.

The great Gods of “they” are punitive and vengeful. They also lack self-awareness and honesty.

It is all a bit shabby really…

Today’s Best Guess

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Our trip to the UK did not give a definite binary answer. We have the notion that a return to the UK is not a definite no, nor was it a resounding yes. It was a damp squib. We do need to downsize to a smaller house and garden. This is possible in France assuming we don’t get kicked out. It is less financially possible in the UK, though I might earn some pin money doing “A” level science tutoring there. We are probably not welcome elsewhere in the world given that we may struggle with meeting immigration criteria because we are not loaded and will be a burden to the health system. Our use as post-mortem fertilizer is limited.

On the cards is one and probably two hip replacement operations which takes us through to mid 2026. We do not know how well I will respond and the Damocles sword of the wife’s myeloma remains pendant. We are vey unlikely to leave the department before next summer. Which times the house move for autumn ’26.

Irrespective of what happens in the alternate reality of dreams and the machinations of Rubio and Hegseth et al., life here is unlikely to alter much. There does not seem much for me to do and my residual fate looks very minimal. I foresee paint brush and secateur. That is about the scope. We live adjacent to the world and our interaction with it is small and without infliction.

People can struggle with the difference between is and should. They can have idealised ideas about how things are supposed to be. It can be a bit of a mind fuck for them when reality differs.

My days of reaching out and inflicting myself of the world are largely past. I do not see the world as something I have to solve. People will do whatever it is they do. There are lots of important people doing things they deem important. Watching “University Challenge” with men dressed as women makes me glad that I do not have to tread in that minefield. I am in more ways than one of a different age. A visit to the Orange telecoms shop reminds me that I am a fossilised alien living among lunatics.

Of course there could always be a curve ball or a googly. The best guess is a fizzle out relatively free of drama…

That is how things look today…