Tuesday 22 February 2011

Tuesday 22nd February 2011

Don’t worry dear reader, you haven’t lost a day somewhere along the lines.  I didn’t write anything yesterday for a variety of reasons, primary of which was that I couldn’t motivate myself to do it.  I’ve decided to rethink my approach to this blog a little bit: if I can’t be motivated to write then I won’t.  That may seem lazy, but I’m concerned that if I force myself to post something, I’ll end up posting something dull.

Besides, other than the fact that it was Monday (always a drag in my head) there wasn’t a lot going on.  Cat was working until later because she teaches on a Monday night so I was only in the house about 40 minutes when she phoned to tell me which train she’d be on.

Off on a quick tangent here: when I woke up on Sunday I had a ringing in my ears.  This isn’t terribly unusual: we’ve all had raucous Saturday nights out in a club and woken up on a Sunday to discover that our eardrums haven’t forgiven us yet.  The thing is though, although I was out on Saturday night, I wouldn’t have described the pub as particularly noisy.  Anyway, Cat was in the kitchen last night whistling, and the noise hurt my ears so I decided to make an appointment to see my local GP.  I’m not generally one for running to the doctor’s: in fact, I used to joke about seeing the doctor once a year whether I needed to or not.  Maybe that’s a guy thing, I don’t know.  Anyway, I rang my GP this morning and got an appointment for tonight (got lucky there – registered with a practice that runs early and late appointments once a week for those of us that work.  Didn’t know THAT when I joined them).  According to my GP, I have slightly swollen eardrums (possibly due to a mild infection) and the potential for fluid build-up in the auditory canals.  I’m not on antibiotics for it, so hopefully the ringing will stop and my hearing will improve. 

Something interesting (and I think funny) just occurred to me.  When you’re a smoker, everyone who either has never smoked or who has quit will queue up to point out the damage that you’re doing to yourself.  And they are of course right (he says, staking his claim for the moral high-ground).  I’ve now been a reformed smoker for more than five years and wouldn’t go back to it for all the money in the world.  Actually, given what they charge now for a 20-deck, you’d need all the money in the world to support that habit.  Here’s the kicker though: when I was a smoker I was horribly prone to catching colds.  Usually by the time I got to the end of March, I would have had 3 or 4 colds since the previous Christmas.  I’d wake up, spend 3 or 4 days walking around like a human snot-ball and then it would clear up.  These days, I get one cold a year but the downside is that I spent about 3 months “building up” to getting a cold, then I get a bit blocked up and think I’ve got away with it, and then it hits me like an express train when I’m not looking.  Last year, I felt a bit crap about a week before my birthday, recovered in time for my birthday and then spent about 3 days on the couch (during my time off work of course) unable to function properly.

I’ve heard it said that most men are lousy patients.  I try not to agree with such (normally feminist) sentiment but on this occasion it’s right.  Because I don’t get ill very often, it tends to hit me hard when I do and yes, I’m a whinger. 

By the way, I’ve always liked the phrase “reformed smoker”.  Back when I started driving taxis in late-1998, I generally only drove for one person and she was militantly anti-smoking.  She would never miss an opportunity to give someone grief about smoking and of course, she would NEVER allow someone to smoke in her car.  Anyway, I did a couple of shifts for someone else and one night I was sitting on the rank when a girl I knew approached the car from the back and climbed in.  She asked me if she could smoke and when I hesitated, unsure about how to answer this, she told me that Roger (the owner of the car) would normally let her.  So I decided to let her smoke but made a mental note to check this with the man himself when I took the car back.  Besides, it meant that I could have one with her.

When I took the car home to Roger, I asked him what his position was on passengers smoking in his car.  His response was that he’d been a reformed smoker for 20 years and that smokers are basically like alcoholics: a man that drinks a bottle of scotch a day would be considered an alcoholic.  If that man then got clean and never touched a drop for the rest of his life he would still be considered to be an alcoholic, albeit a reformed one.  According to Roger, although he’d been off the fags for 20 years he was still a smoker, it had just been a long time since his last one!

Good night.

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