Happy Halloween

I finally got one holiday right-on the day, too! Yes there is a God. And all the halloweenies will be out in force tonight. I don't mean the kids, I mean the adults (biologically, anyway). It's not even 9:15am and they're out getting rat-assed. This is the day when anything can happen-and does-because every villain is wearing a mask. Funny: the bigger the ego, the smaller the willy. Have you women noticed this? If you're just figuring this out now-what the hell! What took you so long?

I had a very underwhelming ten days since my last post. This was when I discovered that, the older I get, the shorter my fuse. I had a temper when I was growing up, but I thought that I had grown out of it. But now? Not so much.

Everything that could break-broke. One vacuum cleaner expired-very noisily-and I swore a few times, but then remembered that it was thirteen years old, and wasn't supposed to last more than around five years (the end of the extended warranty). I have a mini-stereo, sitting on a shelf, minding its own business, and it broke (fifteen years. Lucky me). The phone died, so I had to go out and buy another one. The final insult was when the broadband stopped working last week. That was it.

Everything that broke was really old, so I can be positive and say that at least they all lasted a long time. Add to that that nothing broke at Christmas, so I didn't have to brave the stampede of shoppers headed-well, everywhere. But the broadband? Grrrr....

This began a week-long fight with Virgin Media, the service provider of broadband, TV and phone-all of which decided to break down at once. I called it in. They didn't have a technician available until last Thursday. Okay, I said, give me a time. So I waited in, all afternoon, and nobody showed up, and nobody called, or texted to say that they had cancelled the appointment because a fault in the area had been fixed.

Did I go ballistic? Hell, yes. I had a go at the customer service people, who are located in Mumbai, and most of whom cannot speak English. I don't care where they are located. They could be on the moon, but at least hire people who can speak English. The last time I looked, I was in England. And before you start name calling, a huge number of customers are complaining to Virgin for that same reason: all services should be provided in this country, so that everyone can understand everyone else. And it got worse.

I had to fight all weekend to get a router sent so that I could change the defective one by myself. Easy: just unplug all the cables, plug in the new ones, call an activation number, and then restore the Virgin numbers onto my phone. Easy? Errr....no. Because Virgin, in their wisdom (of which they have none) sent the thing via a crappy service called Yodel. And Yodel is well known for never showing up, or showing up with broken packages. Did Yodel show up on Tuesday? I'll bet you know the answer to that.

To shorten a long story: I got through to Yodel and laid into them for 45 minutes, while they made incredibly feeble excuses. I laid into Virgin after that, and threatened to cancel my contract. I've been with them for ten years, I really was forceful (polite, no swearing, but very, very forceful).

Yesterday afternoon a Virgin technician arrived and changed the router. The whole thing took twenty minutes (he had to wait for everything to upload, then complete the installation). Then Virgin had the colossal nerve to email me and ask what I thought of the service. I told them. I hope that whoever read what I wrote still has a migraine.

I know that I said that I was going to retire from activism, quit fighting over things that I felt (and feel) are wrong. However...that doesn't seem to have worked out so well. When challenges present themselves, you cannot sit back and let people walk all over you. In the absence of having a weapon (forget that, I'd probably shoot myself by mistake), you just have to stand up, fight for your rights, and refuse to back down.

I told you about Toothless Terry the deranged tosser next door? A prime example of standing up for myself. Have I heard from the police? No. Have I heard from any of the senior managers? No. Am I carrying a can of mace with me wherever I go? Ummmm....I think I don't want to answer that, but I think that you already know the answer. Even if I got arrested for fighting back, I doubt that there would be a jury in the world that would convict me.

Maybe I would get a medal, or a lifetime supply of free flat whites at Starbucks.

It's Halloween. Maybe I'll just sit back and have a glass of wine.

Who said that life was never meant to be a struggle?

I'd like to go up to whoever said that and give him (or her) a good slap across the face. But-that has probably been said so many times in history-whoever said it first is probably dead. So-too late.

Life is a struggle-and, more than occasionally, a huge pain in the ass. But it's all we've got, so we might as well make the best of it. We're all going to die anyway.

Such a cynic! Absolutely. Things go well, and we're all hey, it's wonderful, life is great. Then a huge pile of shit falls on our heads, leaving us having to dig our way out of it, and once in awhile we even have the use of a shovel. Duh!

These two weeks have been like that: the boiler breaking, the vacuum cleaner dying (okay, it was twelve years old, so all good things come to a sad and sticky end.), the bin thief threatening to do me in (I'll have to practice harder with the elbow crutch-just in case I need to stick it in his eye and run. Too bad I can't run).

Remember the man who wrote the first line of his book: Life is difficult. Well, he wrote it, made gazillions, and then died young of -cancer? Heart failure? Whatever. He's dead. So that is the end of his life being difficult. And the guy who invented jogging? Dropped dead at 42. While jogging. Go figure.

I've been really thinking about life-especially the end of life. The first part of every year I get down because that was when I walked out, I had enough of bullying and abuse, so off I went. With nothing.
In May I feel down because that was the month I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and three weeks later I had the mastectomy-and then I had to wait to find out the results of the biopsy, so I would know how bad it was. It was bad. Call me lucky.

Then there is August-where the incompetents nearly killed me with gentamicin, destroying my life as I knew it (did they apologize? Hell, no). And the whole event began at the end of 2009, so it hasn't been a hellish nine years. It's been a hellish TEN years. Talk about a decade of a shitload...

Halloween (appropriate for the Brexit that will probably never happen), my birthday, Thanksgiving, and, of course, the dreaded Christmas-all approaching like the express train at the end of the tunnel. It's no wonder why I'm cranky, testy, impatient, and basically bad tempered. Me and probably most of the population.

The end of this year marks ten years; I truly feel that whatever I ever did to anyone in this lifetime I have paid for many, many times over. Enough already. Enough-but there is no surrender. None.

So now I'm remembering the old saying about how you define insanity: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results. It's time for some lateral thinking. Actually, it's time for some thinking. Period.

PTSD? Anger and hatred over injustice? Depression over what happened/what might happen/what could happen... all useless. The past is the past, and if I could change anything, I would. But wishing for things to be different will never make them any different. It'll just make me more depressed, more impatient, more bad-tempered, more cranky. And older. Who needs that?

My friend abroad beat cancer, but paid for the win with failing organs and seriously bad mobility. We talked about it when I phoned her the other night, and came to the conclusion that we both could be dead now. So maybe-just maybe- we might start thinking about how lucky we both are to have survived everything that was thrown at us. In ten years, I came very close-too close- to being a statistic. A dead statistic. And, after ten years, I'm finally discovering how lucky I am to just be alive. There are things that I am no longer to do-like racing cars, flying hot air balloons, riding a bike-and, of course, staying upright most of the time. But-maybe at some point I'll sit down and make a list of all the things I can do, and everything I could be grateful for-and, really, it's a long list.

I haven't gone soft-just the opposite. People still piss me off. I still get up in the morning and remember where I am, that 99% of 99% of people are complete brain-dead assholes who have no manners and less personality than a doorknob. But it's always been that way. I have met a few-very few-who are different. The rest all seem to be the products of inbreeding.

When you actually get this, and that nothing has ever changed, nothing will ever change, you find it easier to duck when they are coming at you. Usually. Hopefully. Why get upset (I'm still learning this lesson) by people who (collectively) have less intelligence than a termite?

That brings us up to date. I've got to go to Starbucks. And then I've got to buy a new vacuum cleaner. Who said that life has to be easy?

Fucky Bucky and the Cripplers: An Update

Now there's a novel name for a rock band-doesn't quite have the same ring as, say, Bob Marley and the Wailers, but it's the best I can do at the moment.

I discovered that Bucky (aka Fucky Bucky, or Matt Buckland, or Tombstone Teeth Goofy) has, after having been unceremoniously dumped by my hospital, returned (tail between his legs, no doubt) to-the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. What a hoot.

Hilary Longhurst, as you know, was the chief crippler in the gentamicin case, and has now bailed out and moved to a private hospital, where she can kill and/or cripple private patients for more money than she could get on the NHS. So who is in charge? The ferret-faced Sophia Grigoriadou, who was ignoring the entire gentamicin disaster for the two months I spent in the hospital. She was allegedly in charge-personally, I think that Grigoriadou, Longhurst and Phil not-so-Bright (now in Bristol, sharpening up his crippling skills) shouldn't be practicing medicine at all. Bucky and the cripplers should be doing something more suited to their abilities and personalities: cleaning public toilets comes to mind.

This means, of course, that with Longhurst gone and Grigoriadou in charge, Bucky was able to return to Barts Trust- aka Barts Never Trust-and hope that nobody will remember the fact that he was so humiliated that he had to leave in the first place.

My last words on the four incompetents until next August, when it will be ten years: what goes around comes around. Wait long enough and those who hurt you will get what they deserve. And I hope that the same people from the Royal London are still reading this blog. More humiliation for the cripplers is more than well deserved.

So that brings me to the latest news about my recovery-which is why I began to blog so many years ago-it almost feels like yesterday-although it doesn't.

I've made the usual rounds of consultants and their clinics-if it's Monday I'm here, if it's Tuesday I'm there, and so on. After nine horrible, depressing years-it seems like I'm good to go. What better news can there be-except maybe winning the lottery so I can get out of the area in which I've been stuck for the past nine years?

I told you about Toothless, Tattooed Terry, the nutcase who lives next door. And I'm sure I've told you about his friends: Sandra, who claims to have been married to a millionaire (who turned out to be a waiter in a pub. Not the owner. A waiter.), and Rob, who was a garbage collector for twenty years, and who is living with another nutcase called Tara, who keeps pointing to people and saying that she hates them and wishes they were dead (they have more class than to say the same thing about her, although it's probably crossed their mind).

So- a few weeks ago, we had a tenants' meeting, and I thought that I was going to see blood being spilled. It was like a geriatric fight club. In fact, it WAS a geriatric fight club. Rob-who is in his 60s- started picking a fight with Bob, who is 80, and another neighbour, who is nearly 90. Imagine the shouting and swearing (from Rob. Bob and the other tenant obviously were raised better), and Rob in Bob's face, pushing and shoving. Everyone else was shocked, but nobody made a move. Wise, I thought. Very wise decision, not to get caught up in a fight with people who are bigger than you are.
The housing manager had to separate them. Everyone else moved backwards.

In all the years I've lived in this country, I never lived in council accommodation-that is, property owned and run (usually badly) by the local authority. What an eye-opener. Our area is small, and looks so benign-unlike some of the tower blocks that wouldn't be out of place in worse areas. But there are vendettas left and right: this one hates that one, these people hate those people, and, of course, Tara, who just simply shouts that she hates so-and-so and wishes them dead.

When I first moved in here, I was only just out of the hospital, and I couldn't stand up, or see properly, or hear properly-I was so badly injured that I didn't have a choice but to move out of my lovely two story property, because a fall downstairs could mean a fracture of something important: like my skull, for instance. The hospital contacted the local authority, and they told me that this flat was the only one they had, but that everyone was disabled. They didn't say that there are people who are mentally disabled, or that they had to empty some of the mental hospitals and put people out into the community. What a challenge!

So now you are up to date, and I am going to Starbucks. Hooray for Starbucks. Hooray for some semblance of sanity. Next time I'll tell you about the rubbish bins and the Bin Thief. It's hilarious.