BLOODY PARKINSON’S: TRIPEWRITING

In case anyone wonders how I produce the written wordsof the Bloodyy Parkinson’s blog, with a shake greater than that of a maracas playing cocktail barmanin a force five gale, I thought I’’d simply type the first coupleof lines of one ofmy favourite poems, Casabiianca by Feliciia Hemans (1826), parodied by Ken Dodd and mmanny others as below:

Theboy sstood on the burning deck

When all before had fled

And when his feet had burned away

He stood upon hhis head.

That iillustrates how PD affects me. Far from the 10 fiinger typist I once was, I’m now a two finger typist at best.

And incidentally, some of my blog is true.

OTHER THINGS?

Towards the football season’s end I watched the mighty Brentford beat (very easily) the once mightier Wanderers of Bolton. At the final whistle I rose from my seat to find myself seemingly staring down into an abyss. For a moment I was stuck, unable to go forward, back or sideways and that’s in a tiny stadium. And so I had to sit down again before being ‘helped’ down to the ground by the throng. PD gets at your balancing capabilities as well as everything else you can think of. When I bought a round (Brentford’s Griffin Park is the only league ground in the country with a pub at each corner) I had to circumnavigate a pillar very cautiously in case of that old foe, beer spillage.

In the cinema I recently saw someone I know and went to shake hands, stepped up one stair and collapsed backwards dragging him with me. So we let go and I fell sideways into an empty seat and survived with just a bruised rib.

For another related example of PD inconvenience, turning over in bed is a bit of a nightmare as it can’t be done in one move. Say I’m asleep flat out and face down and wake wanting to turn right over or just onto my side, then for whatever reason, I have to turn my legs and then in a separate move, my trunk. Or vice versa, shift my trunk then my legs. Makes you feel pathetic. Similar problems arise in getting up from a low chair or sofa, or even rising from a bed which necessitates a rolling and simultaneous bending action.

Enough moaning. At least I sleep OK!

MEANWHILE....AT THE PUB

Wetherspoon’s have announced that they are selling the most central pub in SW15, The Railway. Cheap beer, attracting old and young, friendly, convenient for the station, no piped music, value for money food, range of well kept cask ales, spacious. Modelled on a fictional perfect pub – the Moon Under Water - invented by George Orwell for his column in the Evening Standard.

Who am I to question the logic of closing what looks like a successful operation, but its disappearance will create an awful gap.