Farewell Moonpig

We weren't really a pets family when I was younger.

My mum didn't like dogs (especially) or cats, the two animals that most youngsters want.

We did have goldfish, and you can guess how long they lasted. Ditto the tortoises that my sister and I had. Suffice to say that even a Blue Peter sanctioned hibernation box was not enough to stave off a Scottish winter 

Our youngest loves animals and always wanted some of his own, so a few years ago we got him a couple of guinea pigs. I have to say that those two furry potatoes - Twix and Moonpig - probably got us through the various lockdowns. When there wasn't really much to smile about, their uncomprehending little faces and endless demands for food brought a lot of delight to our family. I guess you had to be there.

We had been told that Moonpig probably had kidney issues and a couple of days ago I found her curled up in a footmuff and unresponsive to offers of her favourite nibbles. I thought she was dead but she was  obviously only stunned 🙂

It wasn't good though as a trip to the vet confirmed. He recommended putting her to sleep which we agreed to.

My son was really upset, but so was I. Partly at his distress, but also at the little animal going. They're so innocent looking. It's heartbreaking.

Anyway, I have dug a plot in the veg patch and we'll commit her there later when son gets home from school.

All very sad but I think she had a good life. I just hope the other one hangs on for a bit 

Crocked again

I'm starting to feel like an old banger at the end of its useful life.

The latest impairment is back trouble that seems to have arrived from nowhere. Well, perhaps not nowhere, but from some fairly mild cycling. I've had a couple of instances of lower back pain after rides. However, the latest came after driving.

We'd been up the coast for a pleasant Sunday in Thorpeness and Aldeburgh - a drive of just over an hour. I was fine on the way up but when we got home I could barely walk from the car - my lower back feels like it's been belted with a hammer.

I'm hoping a few days of taking it easy (all I seem capable of these days) will help, but it's pretty dispiriting when getting up from a chair needs forward planning.

Hope this passes soon.

On Brand

It has been a grimly fascinating few days following the stories about Russell Brand, which prompted this brain dump.

Supposedly, his behaviour was an open secret but it was news to me. With Savile, I can't remember when I didn't know of various horrible rumours about him. But that was all they were. I didn't really know what, if anything, he had been up to.

Nor did I know about the cheeky radio phone conversation between the two, who are now bonded forever in the public's mind. It does seem rather apt as they now represent a queasy attitude towards women that was prevalent in Sir Jim's Sixties and Seventies heyday, and came roaring back revamped in the Nineties and Noughties.

Maybe we can blame it all on the Loaded era but a lot of us were complicit. I remember buying the first issue of that mag - the Liz Hurley cover. It felt like a breath of fresh air at the time - witty, irreverent, immature, and sexy... or should that be sexist? No-one was quite sure even then. Things got a lot clearer with the pornification of magazines for morons like Nuts and Zoo - single entendres all round.

But the Nineties did feel a bit more relaxed than the previous decade. After the long slog of the Eighties, things did look like they could only get better. The economy was on the up, the Tories were on their way out, the music was fun, and everyone (of my age) wanted to party.

Meanwhile, the new Ladette culture was touted as letting women be more open about their sexuality. Inevitably that ended up benefitting men more than women. 

There is some great observation of this and the Britpop scene in Miki Berenyi's book Fingers Crossed. She writes about a fair bit of shitty behaviour by men at the time, and it's apparent that the breath of fresh air went stale fairly quickly.

The likes of Brand arrived and thrived in that confused not quite post-Lad culture where bad behaviour was still seen as colourful rather than a pain in the arse. 

It's ironic given his ranty takes on the evils of MSM and the establishment, they are what made his career. The Sun made him its regular Shagger of the Year. Saggy old Jonathan Ross clung to this damaged individual for relevance on his awful Radio 2 show. His big break was mouthing off on a glorified gameshow. His battalions of keyboard cranks would have not a clue who he was without the mainstream stamp of approval that he now disavows.

Brand's own heyday now looks terribly dated and his attempt at reinvention seems both calculated and desperate - like a creepy Hoxton David Icke.

Whatever he did - at the very least he has a creepy (that word again) attitude to women - he was enabled and celebrated by the prevailing culture at the time, which saw his Seventies throwback act as the new entertainment. A bit of a laugh.

That culture has shifted now and while the playing field is still not level, there is a recognition that certain behaviours don't pass the sniff test. 

The BBC and Channel 4 are currently scouring him from their archives. Coming a day after the Metropolitan Police announced it had received a report of an assault by Brand, and on the day when it says it has 1,000 officers suspended or on restricted duties, it looks like it won't be so easy to erase the mark of sexism in our society.

Don't catastrophise

I bumped into my neighbour yesterday. We've become sort of brothers in sufferance, swapping details of our latest ailments. This seems increasingly common at my age. Conversations with some male friends are like a Muppets Waldorf and Statler sketch.

Our latest meeting revealed he definitely has the more exotic conditions (Ectopic Beats? Loved their first album) which he bears very philosophically and with evident humour. As a patient he's my role model - I definitely need to be more like that guy.

A recent phone conversation with my cardiologist sort of reset my expectations. I had me usual 'something's not right' spiel which he gently worked through and left me feeling like this is how it is now. Not in an uncaring way but I guess he sees a lot of people in a worse condition than me so when I relate my tale of woe it just doesn't sound that woeful.

I still feel things going on that make me slightly nervous but I'm trying to be better at handling that - recognising what might be a biggie and dealing with those things that can be dealt with.

You have to work out some of this yourself. What makes you feel bad? What alleviates it? What to avoid? What to cut down on?

Some of this is personal JuJu I'm sure but if it works...

Anyway, that's where I am this week. Next, who knows?

Stronger, but slower

After my recent incident I'm happy to say that the past couple of months have been more 'normal'. 

Despite the setback, when I consider how I felt last summer I count myself lucky. I was getting weaker and weaker, more depressed, and without much spark. That's hopefully behind me now although it has been quite a slow process.

The next stage is getting back on the bike and it's what I've been looking forward to. My expectations have been higher than my abilities at the moment. Foolishly I thought I'd get on the bike and be not far off where I was prior to stopping riding. Oh no!

My legs are like lead especially when I hit a slope. I've got no top end at the minute. Hopefully I'll get a bit faster but at the minute it's a bit of a grind. Quite depressing when I compare my Stravas with last year, or with those of cycling friends. But if the choice is between being slower and still doing something I love then it's no choice.

But I'd like to get faster....

Not again

I was due to have a meeting with my cardiologist on Tuesday. This seemed superfluous as I was feeling great. I'd just finished my cardio rehab with a flourish - running and pushing it the hardest I'd done until then. Everything was good.

The day beforehand I started getting some chest pain. It didn't worry me unduly as I often get some mild irritation. However, it persisted after I went to bed and started getting worse. The pain became so worrying that I felt I had to call for an ambulance. It was the first time I'd done this since my first chest incident more than a year ago.

An ambulance came and took me to hospital for a check up - ECG, blood tests, chest x-ray. They're very thorough, and also very busy. I was there for nearly 12 hours.

The good news is that they didn't find anything. The worrying thing is that something happened and nobody seems to know what it might be.

One guess is that it could be the stents settling in but that's all it seems to be - a guess. It could possibly just be anxiety as there doesn't seem to be underlying weakness in my heart. The tests were all great.

Today I'm back home and it feels like nothing has happened, like it was a dream. I feel fine.

Hopefully it was just a blip brought on by something - feeling a bit under par, alcohol (not v much your honour but could it be a factor), something I ate or when I ate (I'm clutching here), the ever present anxiety? Who knows?

I had been all set to restart cycling this weekend. Maybe I still will do but there's now a slight hesitation. Should I just push through it? 

One other observation, and this can't be said enough. The care at my hospital was exemplary. Yes, I had to wait a while but they were exceptionally busy - they'd already diverted to another hospital that evening so I was lucky to get in. 

Despite this the people who dealt with me - paramedics, nurses, junior doctors, x-ray staff - were upbeat, patient and professional. I counted about a dozen people who crossed my path and no one dropped the ball. They are under huge pressure but stay on top of their game. 

Could it be better? Of course, but we should never take it for granted how good the service is.

One step forward

I'm nearing the end of my gym rehab period. This week was the fifth of six.

It hasn't been too taxing for me. I have reasonable underlying fitness and am relatively young compared to some in the class.

The sessions focus on cardio exercise - bike, treadmill, cross trainer - with some standing exercises and resistance work with weights and bands.

Perhaps I pushed it a bit harder this week but it left me slightly sore in the chest, which has upped my anxiety again. I feel like I've over exerted something despite not working at anything near what I would once have considered full gas.

The physio is keen for me to exercise outside of the class, as am I, but this has left me concerned about where I am. I mentioned intermittent chest soreness to the cardiac nurse but she seemed unconcerned as I've had three stents and seemed to think this was normal.

I've got a meeting with the cardiologist in a couple of weeks after being referred by my doctor the last time I saw him over this. I had been thinking that I'd be wasting his time but now, hooray, I have a genuine issue.

I'm being facetious, but I do swing from being wildly optimistic about my physical capabilities, to being convinced I can do very little.

The truth, as ever, is probably in the middle somewhere, but I don't know how close I am to finding out where, or what it means for me. 

In the gym

I've been nervous about exercising since 'the procedure'. Actually, since well before then as various medical people scared the bejeezus out of me. Then afterwards, things didn't seem to settle down for a bit and I was newly frit.

Chatting with a cardio nurse afterwards it is as mentioned that a cardio rehab programme might help rebuild my confidence. After a walking test - which is exactly it sounds - I was booked on to a six-week course. Today was the second one.

In some ways, I feel a bit of a fraud as the others in the group seem to have undergone more major ops, are older, or in worse shape than me (or all three).

I was chatting to one guy, who looked like an old Essex biker, early 60s, who had a double bypass and was telling me how he started 'leaking' from his chest wound on a post-op holiday flight. 

He actually looked in decent nick considering what he'd had done, and said he had been pumping weights before coming to the class, and wanted to get back to work as he was bored.

The others in the group are quite a nice bunch too. They all seem a lot less anxious about things than I am and there's an element of gallows humour about the situation.

During last week's session I took it pretty easy. Maybe a bit too much. This week the physio had me on my own and said he wanted me to work a bit harder.

We were doing a circuit of bike, walking machine, steps, and one of those ski machines, with some resistance and squats in between.

I was by no means flat out but it was the hardest I've worked for a while, and thankfully nothing went pop.

This is what made me feel slightly fraudulent. The class is quite hard to get on I'm told as there are lots of people (mainly men) with heart conditions. As I was powering away on the machines, I was wondering if the others thought I was taking the piss. Especially as I had running leggings on - honestly, they were all I could find clean. Most of my workout gear is for cycling. I haven't been to a gym in years. 

However, it has been really helpful to be in a situation where I can restart exercise and feel safe. That's definitely been worthwhile for me. Is it an appropriate use of NHS resources? I hope so. I'd quite like to have decent cardio health going forwards and exercise is an important part of that.

Having said that, I may not do all 6 weeks as I don't think I'll need them. I'm champing at the bit to get back on my bike, but sod's law I've picked up another injury.

I slipped on ice about three weeks ago and have injured my wrist. It was getting better but an exploratory gravel ride on Sunday seems to have rattled it again making it a bit painful at the moment. Maybe a road ride this weekend would be okay - not as much vibration through the wrist?

At any rate, I'm feeling good today.

Ups and downs

The past week hasn't been great. I experienced some stabbing chest pains last week, which morphed into more general soreness - like a bruise - and then became a third sort of pain that I might describe as like cramp.

That's a very inexact description and illustrates one of the problems of illness - getting across what's going on. It doesn't help that often by the time you see a clinician - as I did in Tuesday - the symptoms may have gone for a bit and you struggle to explain them. At times like this I end up being semi-apologetic, as if I'm wasting Doc's time.

It has been a bit depressing though as until a week ago I really thought I was back on the road to 'normal'. I guess it's not the most direct route.

On Monday I had been talking to an NHS trainer who left me feeling as if I was practically ready to do le Tour but by the following day I was in more despairing mode. Something doesn't feel right but is it just in my head? 

Having treatment hasn't been the panacea I thought it would be. I don't feel well but maybe this is as good as it gets going forward. 

The doc has put me forward for another cardio appointment which is hopeful. The aftercare hasn't been brilliant if I'm honest - maybe I'm expecting too much for what is quite a commonplace day procedure. 

It has really heightened my awareness of my body in a not very healthy way. Every creak or spasm or ache is a sign of imminent doom. Sometimes I wonder if I'll wake in the morning - I am aware how overdramatic that sounds.

It must be literally all over my face. I was out for a walk yesterday and encountered a couple of slightly oiled chaps wending their way down St John's Street from the 'Spoons.

As they passed I heard one call after me "Geezer! Geezer!" This came two or three times and despite the urge to ignore it and walk on I turned expecting to hear some nonsense.

He had what looked like genuine concern on his face. 

"Geezer. You alright mate?"

I nodded in the affirmative and gave him the thumbs up.

"You sure?"

Blimey! You tell me.