Time For A Moan

Today's been a day about me, me, me to an even greater extent than usual. Let me tell you why. I woke up around the dead centre of the night with a pretty bad ache running down the left side of my neck. It felt like the sciatic pain I sometimes have to deal with on my left leg and lower back had decided to migrate upwards. (Complete nonsense medically, of course, but it felt that way.) I thought the ache might subside. But it didn't. It evolved over the course of a restless hour or so into a grimace-inducing genuine pain, until I just had to get up and find some Panadol, with Noi supplying the necessary water. It was about two hours to dawn and I lay just about coping with a slightly subsiding ache. And then day officially arrived.

I'll not say anymore - because it's so boring - but I got through the necessary with the assistance of further pain-killers - the ones in the extra strong red packet. And now my neck feels a bit better, thanks.

Shakespeare has a great line about toothache in Much Ado, but I'm struggling to remember it. Not the bit where Benedick makes an excuse of having the toothache. I mean the For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently. (Just googled it.) Well, it's even more true about a pain in the neck.

Sort Of Heartbroken

When the story finally broke big about what Man City had really been up to and the cheating was obvious to all, I suppose I was a bit amused, and thought about posting something suitably cutting and sardonic. I didn't think about taunting City fans at work because there aren't any, but I'm pretty sure I would have done if there were. But something stopped me from gloating and I'm glad it did.

This wasn't out of a due sense of pity, I'm afraid. I'm just not that nice. I think what made me hesitate was a vague feeing of unease that what I was reading pointed to a degree of corruption that could make me fall completely out of love with the beautiful game now it's been ruined through egregious but inevitable greed. And the more material I've read and listened to since has served to add to my discomfiture. 

Case in point: an excellent podcast from the the Sports Agents concerning whether the Premier League is about to eat itself deeply depressed me when I gave it an ear today. Aside from the excellent journalism of Christoph Winterbach and the team at Der Spiegel I heard no positives. All's bleak & comfortless, I'm afraid.

Just Listening

I was talking to a colleague last week about music, and for some reason started to expound some of my ideas about the nature of listening to it. Even as I was talking it struck me how odd my ideas must have sounded, especially to someone not particularly interested in music. At one point I referenced just how much my thoughts were not exactly my own and how grateful I was for being influenced at a formative period in my life by those of Robert Fripp on all this.

I mention this today in relation to my stumbling across a striking version of his soundscape Pie Jesu this morning. I'm not sure how exactly the original has been cunningly mixed in with an orchestral arrangement of the original improvisation played by the brilliant Metropole Orkest, but the results are stunning. I'd melted entirely by the end.

Plus the music on this recording is preceded by some fascinating comments by Robert himself on the nature of listening from his own experience. Next time I feel I need to explain myself on this topic I'll just direct them to this and a man who really knows what he is talking about. 

In Extremis

It looks like there's no hope of any form of recovery for Kak Kiah. She's in a small room now, on a very strong painkiller, allowed 24-hour visiting. If she makes it back home she will be in a vegetative state. The family are likely to need to make big decisions in the next two days or so.

Very sad. And we got news today that our friend Norharyati's father died yesterday - in a hospice, not unexpectedly.

The comfort is that these have been long lives, well led. Ultimately the best any of us can hope will be granted.

A Good Place

Spent some time at NUH this evening visiting Kak Kiah. Was struck by my sense of the hospital as being in some significant way a good place to be despite the obvious fact that it deals in pain and, sadly, downright suffering. Paradoxical. Pointing to one of those everyday truths that underlie the mystery of existence.

A deep contrast to yesterday's truth about a very bad place dealing in its version of pain.

Bad News

Made a tough day even harder for myself by reading a piece about the plight of the Rohingya as it stands currently in the west of Myanmar. Not much of a 'feel-good' story - except for the brilliant journalism involved, at every level, and for the faint possibility that, if attention can be paid, perhaps some good can come of this. Perhaps.

Some Hope

We managed to get up to NUH in the early evening to visit Kak Kiah. Yesterday's fall was due to a stroke. They operated and got rid of the blood clot, but she's now in critical condition. It looks like the next 24 hours will be decisive as to whether she pulls through.

She looked pretty bad, frankly, when we first went into the High Dependency Neurological Ward, but after a time we realised she knew we were there and was making attempts to communicate with Noi. It sounded like she wanted a cup of tea. So there's hope in that.

And, as I've come to expect from NUH, the level of care looked excellent. As I've made clear in the past, Nurses are my favourite branch of mankind (womankind? personkind?) and everything I saw in the ward just now served to enhance that opinion. When Noi realised Kak Kiah was intensely irritated by something on her right leg one of the nurses came right over to explain what they'd already figured out the source of the irritation - a necessarily very tight dressing of a wound - and she would be given some painkiller through a drip as soon as they could unhook one of the drips that just had to be there for another 30 minutes or so. Impressive, very. And reassuring.

Fear Of Falling

Kak Kiah had some kind of fall in her bathroom this evening. Funnily enough we'd been talking about the possibility of her accompanying us when we next go up to Malaysia, but it looks like that's in doubt now. Waiting for more definite news about how she is.

Reminds me of when I was hospitalised in NUH four years back. There was a sign on the bed about the danger of me falling and the nurses were incredibly strict about whether I was allowed to stand up and walk. It all added to the debilitating sense of being a 'patient' with all the attendant helplessness.

We're lucky to have the privilege of lasting long enough to be officially old. But the second childhood part of it all is a distinct downside.

The Little Things

Noi has been out and about with one of her chums today, so I didn't see her until fairly late in the evening. She came back with an appointment diary for me for 2027, having somehow found one perfect for my needs. This diary is obviously far sturdier than the rubbishy ones that I've put up with for the last three years, so no worries about it falling apart come next June. In the great scheme of things the acquisition of a decent diary doesn't count for much, I suppose, but in the small scheme of things that gives welcome shape to my life it means a lot. Just thought I'd let you and the world know that.

Switching On

Stumbling into the living room around 9.00 this morning I was worried about repeating the lethargy of Saturday. To say I felt sluggish would be an understatement, and I foresaw a day of non-achievement. But how wrong I was, happily so.

By 10.30 I'd managed to get going on some work. Not marking, since I've finished the piles of scripts from recent examinations, but broadly speaking examination and end-of-year adjacent tasks. And these went well, helped by a cunningly curated musical accompaniment. And by 11.30 I found myself at my desk over at the staffroom getting some necessary printing done and feeling wideawake. 

Which remained the case for the rest of a day of reasonable accomplishment - well, at least in terms of the little world in which I operate.

There was even an unexpected high point on the musical front. I'd been spinning a fair bit of Steve Reich in the early afternoon and reminding myself of how stirring he can be when you don't just surrender to the hypnotically shimmering beauty of it all but make yourself listen. This culminated in 30 minutes or so of intense exposure to his arrangement of some of the Psalms, entitled Tehillim. If this doesn't wake you up to the mystery and beauty of the world I don't know what will.