Don't Drive at Me

I’ve had eighteen years of writing this blog. Gosh. I had to go and check that. Yup. Kicked it off in 2008, or last week as it’s otherwise known. It’s indicative of something, I suppose, that I started doing this back when lots of people were doing it and I’m still doing it after practically everyone else has stopped. I think it demonstrates how I’m not very good at letting things go. Old shoes, books, blogs. If I’ve got something I tend to hold on to it.

None of which has much of anything to do with this week’s post. If there is any relevance in that first paragraph it is probably this; After eighteen years of (more-or-less) weekly posts, it becomes quite easy to categorise the entries into quite a small list of subjects. I tend to wander around in the same circles I have always wandered around. A list of recurring themes for the 900 or so posts on here might include ‘Stupid Things I do', Trying to Write’, ‘Memories of Childhood’, ‘Movies’ or, in latter years ‘The Cat’ or, in latter months, ‘The ‘Thing.''

Another of these regularly revisited categories would certainly be ‘The Poor Quality of Driving in the World.’ I seem to have come back to this time and time again, usually with some instance of less-than-optimal interaction out there on the road, each time with a slightly different complaint. I’m aware that it’s one of the less engaging themes I pursue but you type where your heart takes you with this type of endeavour and I am often taken there, out onto the road, the footpath, the pedestrian crossing.

I think the reason I often swerve back to this subject is potentially interesting. It’s almost a ‘split personality’ kind of a thing. When I’m on foot, observing the ways of the everyday motorist, I maintain a stoic, frequently troubled aspect. But, when I’m behind the wheel myself, I can sometimes step back and see myself as the kind of prick who would piss me off if I was standing on the pavement watching me go by. Does that even make sense? Split personality stuff is tricky at the best of times.

Which takes us, rather convolutedly, to this week’s subject matter, which can be summed up neatly by the title of the piece. Don’t drive at me.

I think this is a relatively new thing. Or maybe I just started to notice it when my ambulatory skills became a little compromised in recent months. No, we won’t talk about the ‘thing’ again except to say that I may not be able to get out of the way of oncoming traffic as nimbly as I used to. Perhaps that’s why this behaviour is now on my radar where it rarely seemed to be before.

What is it, is this:

At a pedestrian light, or a zebra crossing, or, lord help us, a courtesy crossing, cars will stop and I will cross. Sometimes the driver will wave me across impatiently as if I am some waif who has been permitted into their sitting room to light the fire. “Get it done and begone as quickly as possible, fool!” Man, that pisses me off. The implication is that the driver’s time is more important than mine because, to quote David Byrne, they’re behind the wheel of an automobile. While, to quote Richard Pryor, the only thing I’m pushing is my Hush Puppies. ‘Verily, fuck you,’ I say to myself as I amble across in front of the belligerently gesticulating hand of the driver.

This relates to my current problem. It’s perhaps a second cousin to it. But it isn’t it.

What it really is, is this:

Cars stop and I amble across. Then, when I’m about half way over the road, and when I’m often right in front of the waiting car, said car starts to ease forward. Gently, gently, rolling towards me, encouraging me on, and almost brushing my declining butt as I pass beyond the fender of the car.

I don’t like this. That’s the point of this week’s blog post. I don’t like that shit one little bit.

Granted, my example is an extreme occurrence. Not every car brushes me as I get past them. But this gentle rolling towards me as I cross, that is a very real and a very regular thing now. “I’ll let you over,” the driver seems to be saying to themselves, “but I’m going to give you the absolute minimum time to do it. I’ll roll towards you a bit, as you walk, where’s the harm in that? Eh? Eh?”

Where’s the fucking harm? You tow rag, you asshole. I’ll tell you where the fucking harm is.

You are pinning my life, or at least my continued wellbeing, on your clutch control.

Here you are, easing towards me, letting your clutch pedal out gently. Coming at me but under such wonderful control. Supposing your foot slips or your control slips? You are a millimetre from leaping your horrible little motor forward and hitting me, rolling gently towards me as you are. And for what? Where are you going with such sacred urgency that you can’t just sit and let me cross the goddamned road without spaffing your need to get on all over my day.

It annoys me. Can you tell?

Don’t be rolling forward gently at the poor soul crossing the road in front of you. You’re not in that big a rush and, frankly, you’re not that good a driver. Sit there like a good person and let me get over the road. Then on you go.

I sometimes think that if those public service driving adverts had a little more swearing in them, they might have more impact.

I’m here if you need some input on that.

Puddy Has Not Been Up to All Sorts, Really

At the end of last week’s blog post I intimated that our cat, Puddy, has been up to all sorts of stuff. This was a bit disingenuous because, as the title suggests, Puddy hasn’t been up to all that much remarkable stuff really.

Sorry for misleading you.

To explain, I was just concluding a series of posts about an illness I’m busy getting over. Enough said. At the end of the last post (blows trumpet) I said I’d give you a break from the illness updates and threw in how Puddy, “... had been up to all sorts and you needed to be told.”

Here’s a couple of reasons for this patent untruth.

Firstly, quite a few people seem to like the posts about the cat. I suppose they show a rare human side to me. Also, in fairness, Puddy has provided me with some darned good stories. Not least how she died, was retrieved, stiff and cold, from the roadside, placed in the coal bunker on a purple blanket and then came back to life (sort of). You can get that story by clicking here if you want to. It’s got a bit of an Easter vibe about it, now that I think of it.

Secondly, it’s like the ending of Back to the Future. In that finale, Doc comes back from the future, all geared up in spacy gear, in his funked-up flying DeLorean. “It’s your kids,” Doc pants, “Something must be done about your kids.” It’s a line that sets up the whole new adventure to come, a future world of possibilities. So, yes, I did the same with the cat. The second Back to the Future was a load of old cobblers and so is today’s post. But the hook? The hook was good, man.

So, accepting that there are no amazing tales to tell, what of Puddy? How fares she?

At the moment, she’s sleeping soundly in the front hall in her basket with one of those heating pad things under her, even though it’s not all that cold. These days, she spends as much time in the house as she likes. She generally spends most of her indoors time sleeping but, when she’s awake, she likes to be out in the neighbourhood, arguing with the other cats and haranguing the local wildlife. When not asleep and indoors, she watches telly, studies the fire, rolls around, and stretches out and chases treats across the room with a scary intensity.

We kind of thought she would become a more tactile cat as the years progressed and maybe that will still happen. But I wouldn’t bet on it. Puddy is a detached cat in almost all respects. She shows involvement by the aforementioned rolling around, occasional rubbing against calves at mealtimes, and a very rare low volume meow when something important needs to be imparted. But she does not welcome touch or fusses or any kind of direct human contact. With one notable exception, Patricia. Patricia is, of course, my lovely wife. Puddy permits gentle head fussing from Trish and certainly seems to enjoy and welcome it. Anyone else had better approach her at their peril.

Puddy… well she’s a cat, isn’t she? We never had one before so everything she does is like the first time any cat in the world did anything of the sort. Which we know is not true but still sometimes it seems so. When she licks her paw and repeatedly washes her face with it, that’s the greatest thing ever. That and a hundred other stupid little things. She also manages to do exactly what you don’t want her to do at the exact time you least want her to do it.

I just looked back over blog posts and it’s five years this weekend since Puddy had her litter in our garage. That was the moment it all began for Trish and the Cat and me. It’s been a silly, infuriating, and lovely time and one senses the cat could have taken or left it all without too much anxiety either way. Still she’s been well cared-for and that will continue to be the case for as long as we have her.

So, there you go, nothing new on the Puddy front. I got you here on false pretences. Sorry about that. 

Except… wait… maybe there is one tiny thing.

The most relevant new development in the Puddy saga? Did you notice it? It came right back there in the very first line of this post. Puddy is no longer the semi-feral cat who strayed into our garage and had kittens. No longer the errant street cat who pissed in my car when I accidentally left the door open.

No. Puddy is our cat now

95%

Once more, my apologies that the blog posts have been a bit intermittent thus far this year. Apologies also that this year’s posts, such as they are, have been little more than the ‘Guillain–Barré Diaries.’ This trend will continue for today’s entry and then I’ll try to give it (and you) a rest.

I feel these posts may be useful to me in years to come if the gods spare me. Who knows, they may also be of some minor use to someone who will walk, or shuffle, the same path as me.

As the title suggests, I would now rate myself as 95% recovered. Not everyone may necessarily agree with my assessment. It has been a (mostly) unrelenting wave of personal positivity that has at least helped to carry me this far this quickly. So why stop now? In the spirit of ‘Fake It Til You Make It,’ I am at 95% and there I shall stay, at least until I hit 96%.

So what does that mean, in actual terms? In my slightly biased view, it means I can now present a front to the world which is convincingly well. I can present myself so that a person meeting me might say, “I thought you were sick,” which is quite satisfying. I can walk pretty darn well, so long as I focus a little on it. I can climb stairs until the cows come home… a time when it is often necessary to climb stairs. I can walk to work and work all day and walk home again. I can tie my shoelaces and button my shirt in a manner that no longer draws sympathetic attention. In a recent examination, the reflexes which were markedly absent are mostly back and the huge tuning fork, which previously brought zero results from many corners of my frame, now vibrates joyfully through my bones. In a dodgy moment on a road the other day, I picked up speed to get out of the way of a car that was bearing down on me and a passer-by remarked, “you’re running now!” and I replied, “only when some fucker tries to run me down.”

So, yes, I’m back. 95% worth.

So, what of that other 5%? What does that constitute?

Mostly, it’s the darned tingles. That’s what they’re called, it seems, although I personally think it’s too small a word. Until I learned the word ‘tingle’ I referred it the sensations as ‘buzzing’ or ‘pins and needles,’ neither of which was quite right. ‘Tingle’ is good but it does need that capital letter out front, to add at least a bit of oomph to it. For it is no small thing. As I sit and type, and 24/7, my hands and feet tingle constantly. Finger tips are highly sensitive to touch, creating an electric shock effect every time I touch the keyboard. This has been a constant since the early onset of the syndrome and it currently (currently, get it?) shows little sign of easing. That is okay. I know it will abate over the coming months as the Myelin Sheath that ‘insulates’ my nerves slowly rebuilds itself. Until then, I have grown accustomed to the tingle and can work around it and with it pretty well. I’m typing away good-oh at the moment and the tingle is the tingle. I hear that it fades away, rather like a light being very slowly turned down, until it is one day gone. Or not. Some people of my age group may be left with a residual tingle. I’ll live with that if that’s how it pans out. I’ll consider myself lucky.

I believe that there are things you can consider taking, to ease the tingling. But my understanding is that it is better for me to get as much sensory input as possible, rather than dulling anything down. For some people, their own personal tingling might simply be too much to bear and drugs will be required. Again, lucky me, I can get by with my level of tingle and so I do.

Without diving too deep in this bit, feelings are at 95% too. 95% of the time I feel so lucky that I was in a position to recover as quickly and as well as I have. Others have needed much, much longer. And, let's be clear, my good fortune here has not been due to strength or wisdom or good looks on my part. It has been 95% luck, pure and simple. If I’d been worse, as other people often are, I would still be in my chair. So, if you ever end up there, it’s not a competition. Just keep doing everything you can to get better, for that was the other 5% that got me here, and that’s all that you can do.

As for the other 5%, feelings wise. Well, I sometimes think about how I was on the 14^th of January and how I am now. Now I am a man who can walk well, so long as I focus. I can work hard, so long as I know I will be very tired afterward. I can type, so long as the tingle remains my friend. Because sometimes, late in the evening, it is not my very best friend. It’s more like a slightly irritating schoolmate, who turns up late to the reunion, and only wants to talk about how terrible you were at sports.

95% of the time, though, I walk out in my town and I see Spring coming to the trees on the Mall and I know I wasn’t expecting to see that this year. I revel in my new-found strength, in walking and in general resolve, and I look forward to all the good things to come, now that I know I can handle a little bit of the bad.

That last part sounds a bit like a creed…

Normal service will now resume in these-here parts.

The cat is up to all sorts… you need to be told.

K  x