Queer Putch and me

Pics to follow:

Sunday- Snow, a lot. While driving. Not fun
Monday- Walked on snow to work to be one of the few in the office. Watched people in cars unable to drive. Walked home on snow and ice. That large black gap was a deep cold puddle.
Tuesday- Walk to work on ice all the way. Not fun. Walked home on some cleared pavement and ice.
Wednesday- Walk to work on pavement and ice. Walked home on mostly cleared pavement.
Thursday- Walk to tube on mostly cleared pavement, still ice and snow in the centre of town despite rain overnight. 10 mins out of the central city, snow still uncleared and unmelted white just off the paths. Snow (or more correctly ice) still on my car.

And now they are predicting more snow my way....

Am sick of it, the cold makes my bad leg impossible- it is locked solid and constantly in cramp. Old ladies sprint pass me in the street.

The snow outside, the pain in my leg from the cold, is nothing compared to the pain inside.

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If you feel you want a blow by blow account...
 

Was talking with a friend last night who is going through now what I went through then and it made me realise what I have been missing for seven years.  

The Film now has a website.

http://www.theloversandfightersconvention.com/index.html

Saw the nearly final cut of the film the other night- apart from not being able hear myself due to "oh look it's me, do I look like that? Do I wave my hands like that? What am I saying?" running through my head- it is a fabulous film, showing the wide range of talents we all have, and being funny and moving and rather fabulous.

One of my lines

“You don’t often see a body like mine on a public stage. But hey, I could get laid from this…” – Words spoken by Dr Jane, performer and raconteur in The Lovers and Fighters Convention

When I get bad sinus infections my Drs in NZ advised Nasal Lavage. I can only beleive that he has never done this himself.

It all sounds so innocuous. "Just was your nose with warm salty water"

In reality it is close to drowning. Take warm salty water and fill your nose with it, then try and clear some airway to breathe, gasp in some air and then cough snort etc to get all the water out of your nose. Repeat until the water runs clear.

The saltiness of the water is a fine balance, too little and it is not effective, too much and you can spend the next 20 mins dry wretching.

Actually it works wonders on sinus inections and blocks. I just hate the sensation so much.

I've been really sick the last couple of days, was sickening for a week or so and took a turn for the worse, nose blocked, dry wretching coughing, and just exhausted. Going to the Drs tomorrow morning so hopefully find out what the problem is and get something to fix it.

It has slowed me down a lot- a serious sinus attack with some sort of chest cold. Apologies to all of those I am behind with on emails etc.

Just had my Facebook account Deactivated due to unspecified T and C violations....Major ARG as many people only know my contact through there.

If you know me on Facebook as Absolut Queer- look out for Alfonse Debonair - my new FaceBook name

My first Prom, chosen because R got tickets for that night. A new piece first, 15 minutes of industrial/spaghetti western sounds about Chicago.

Then Mahler's 6th. Not a piece I have heard much before. Sit and let my mind just flow with the music. Takes the first movement for my mind to quiet and flow with the music, focus less on the artistry and more on feeling what emotions the music stirs.

By the 2nd movement I am in a forest covered in snow and mud, for miles around all you can see is the same repeated view. Trees are grey, sky is slate, snow and mud mix to the same colour.

3rd movement, walking through the same space, seeing a flower out of place, and before I can see or savour it's scent it is trampled and I am forced along. The snow and mud cake my trousers, and they become grey as well.

4th and last movement, same place, same bleak greyness. There are two very loud thud bangs in the piece (the Hammer of Fate) which are like shots or falling branches around me.

And then the final chord- which sends shivers down my spine, and still does at the memory, so lost in the music emotions. Others describe it as a Guillotine blade falling, for me it was the shot that hit...and then the last seconds of dying music lying in the mud as it all fades...

Yes- nothing like a good uplifting piece of music....Absolutely wonderful...

I'm stressed at the moment, to the point where my mentor notes I'm heading backwards. Poor bloke fights through my defensiveness and anxiety to hit me with a clue stick a couple of times. Yes stressed, look at what's going on...

Then leave the meeting and the world I have been fighting against suddenly turns and presents the gifts it's been working on:

I got most of what I've been asking for - help where I needed it, and arriving soon ish.
Then once I got the breathe space, all the pieces I'd been mashing togeather fell into place, and I got to my feet and could move and think.

The more I get to think, the more I realise I've been making the right choices during the firefighting, and I'm not in any corner, and I've missed nothing I should have spotted.

Then I had a dream last night...I was trying to photograph something, and every time I moved this roiling black cloud moved into frame, and while it was beautiful it kept destroying what I was trying for, and no matter where I went it rolled towards me, then I was enveloped inside the cloud, and it wasn't as I expected, it was full of dandylion head like things, that were soft, and once I stopped flinching flowed past without even touching me, almost like driving in snowfall on the motorway. And I realised, I was still walking to where I was supposed to be going.

Yes- even My brain is hitting me with a clue stick at the moment.  Sort of reassuring in an odd way.  Still wish it would now let me sleep.

Stockholm exhausted me, but arrived back to a lovely letter from my Aunt, that I need to actually pen to paper to reply to.  Birthday was fabulous and had a lovely surprise today.

My friend R, at one point made a mould of the Lewis chessmen, well when I say at one point, in the year or so around when I was born. I had seen them around her house, and heard the full tale but not the time frame. While having renovations of the heating, a cache of chessmen was found.

In choosing to give me a bishop, I have a chess piece, made my a friend, in the year I was born, that has a cane (like me), has a penchant for flowing robes and theology but an odd background and providence

Yeah, it's been a while. This weekends been pretty rough.

Well, Sunday was a doozey...

Spending time with M, exploring the area we've both moved into (we live about 10 mins apart by bus) and suddenly M goes totally pale and we pop into a pub to have a drink and sit down. M goes to the bathroom and I think it's been a while...wander over and find her slumped over the toilet seat sobbing in pain. Get the pub manager to call an ambulance and sit with M and wait. About 10 minutes later we're on our way to A&E with a very unwell M.

4 hours later (in a flash back heavy environment- and not just the mild...oh that's a flashback...but the full on disorientating flashbacks) they have decided it's nothing that needs urgent attention and we can go home. Back to M's and seeing someone who usually bounces of the wall curl up into a little snoozing ball. I head home as I have early meetings.

Monday am I have meetings so off to work early to more meetings than I need, calling M way too often. The joy of the NHS and getting registered with doctors, means I run over to M and help her with the doctors (it is a game where you have to use just the right words in the right way), and then run back to work to a plethora of meetings. While coming back to work get a phone call from a friend. Realsiing now that the collaborative everyone puts in ideas way of working at S has pervaded my ways of thinking- and replying back to a poster with your mockup in response works in S but not elsewhere. So replying with my versions of the draft poster was a faux pas into someone calling me up and having a 15 min go at me for doing so. Not in any space to do anything more than apologies and take the verbal. Get back to work and shed a tear at my desk (my desk mate shows some capactiy to read emotions). Spend the rest of the day beating myself up, and trying to double guess myself (my poor desk mate reviews 5 emails). Finally at the opera (Rakes Progress) the whole puzzle falls into place, and I realise just how the collaborative thing has seeped into me- nothing I have done in the past 7 or 8 months has been even allowed to be "mine", and I just had to loose any thought of ego or ownership.  This pervades even my photography where the whole thing is conceived as a collaborative effort. Now I know, I can watch, catch and control this.

Now home. Feeling totally physically and emotionally exhausted.

At Dad's claytons funeral (the funeral you have when you don't have a body- his was in the pathology lab terrorising the students) I read a eulogy that started

"My Dad was the best Dad in the world." ...

So maybe I should explain this some, pertinant at the moment as on Friday it is the 6th anniversary of his death.

My Dad was always there on the sidelines cheering me on, whether it was something I was good at, schooling, or mediocre at, swimming, or just a good trier at, atheletics, music school, or down right appalling at, gymnastics, he was there. At my Masters capping my Dad and my Gran were sat in the front row, and all I could see looking down from the stage was both of them beaming with pride. He was the other person in the household hooked into the "National Programme" and reading the paper cover to cover. He was also determined we should have the childhood he dreamed of, and was not just on the sidelines, but on the water slides with us, just another big kid.

Oh we argued. Lets not deny that. When I started university and he was forced into an early retirement due to his health, we argued. When I left home he was laying bets on how long I'd be away, but once we stopped having to live togeather, we started to enjoy seeing each other.

One of my strongest memories is at Gran's funeral, having said goodbye to Gran in the way I always would "Have a good week", and being held in an embrace, hiding my eyes from the sunlight, in old spice and brylcream and best shirt and suit smell. One of the few embraces I can remember strongly, and Dad saying "No more tears, cry now and no more tears".

Then when I came out to my family, at 25 having not had any sort of relationship but knowing I wasn't straight. My Dad had told me for 25 years (exactly as it was my birthday) that he would love me no matter what, and I knew that coming out was a no matter what. My Dad turned and said "that is the bravest thing I have ever seen you do" with such pride and admiration in his voice.

We knew nearly 8 years ago that Dad had serious cancer, a lung cancer with a survival to the first year after diagnosis of >5% with surgery.  We fought long and hard to get him surgery, he was a fit 69. Surgeon agreed as long as we understood there were 3 outcomes, 1 he died on the table, 2 he was sewn back up and would die within 3 months, 3 the operation removed the cancer and we got more time. A week before this, I fell off my skateboard and smashed my ankle badly. No one minded as we all had something that could be easily fixed to focus on. This is why, despite the ongoing problems with my leg, I never get angry about it. Serendip is in the most unlikely places.

Becuase Dad and I were recovering at the same time, we started phoning each other. For nearly 18 months I would have a daily phone call with my Dad. I'd get home and there would be a message "This is just your Daddy, calling to see how you are. Give me a call when you can", a cheery touching base. I was the only number he ever called and the only person he would talk to for more than 2 mins on the phone. His advise on work situations was invaluble "Tell them to get Fucked", as it usually made me stop and think about what I did want. For 18 months we spoke daily apart from about three days. One of those was in the week he died, and was the sole regret between us, that we hadn't called each other that day. By missing it once, we both realised how much it meant and how much we would miss it.

How close am I/was I to my Dad? On seeing Dad and I for the first time, Barb burst out laughing that they had perfected cloning. We sat alike, we have the same mannerisms, sense of humour and the same bloody mindedness. It was that bloody mindedness that got me through the PhD.

The cancer had got into his brain, and was in all areas. Dad and I joked if the one at the back of the brain would win over the ones in the frontal lobe (it did, he had his compost menti mostly in a pile). Before he had radiotherapy we had photos taken of all the family, and you can't beleive he is weeks from the end. My favorite one of the set is Dad and I on the end of the park bench trying to squish up to let Mum and John sit down (Four people, Dad and I the smallest, fitting on a bench made for 3), We are laughing and silly and it is a lovely memory to have.

I did tell him I would miss him, he worried I would get sick again like after Gran, I reassured him that I would take drugs and cope with it. We both tried not to let the other see us cry and I went home leaving him waiting for a hospice bed (he never got there, he was too sick to move once one was free). The next day I bought in the 80% complete draft of my thesis (printed by Fern in an amazing gift to give me) for Dad to read, and from his reaction you'd thought I'd given him a Nobel Prize. He got years worth of pride about the acheivement done in several hours.

Dad died on his wedding anniversary being married to my mother for 33 years to the hour. A final romantic gesture, from someone who reckoned meeting my mother was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Me and my brother were the others.

Sometimes I miss him a lot, I wish he was here to tell all the things I am up to. Sometimes I only miss him when I walk in the door and know there will be no phone message tonight.