HOLIDAYS AND PD

Apologies for the lack of recent blogs, but I have been on holiday for 3 weeks in France and Belgium. I also seemed mysteriously to run out of PD-related topics, as a result of which my posts seemed to move from 95% PD and 5% padding at the outset to 5% PD supported by 95% daft anecdotes or padding by any other name. Perhaps this was a good thing, showing that I could put bloody Parkinson’s to one side and take a more positive view of the situation. But as they say of a well balanced Yorkshireman, like myself, ‘he’s got a chip on both shoulders’ and so now I need a good moan.

Any road, as they say in Sheffield, I’m also now determined to be a bit more pint half full and won’t talk about PD unless relevant.

But first I just have to tell you a true story from my local Post Office where the man in front of me in the queue had a ferret on a lead tucked under his arm. He got to the front of the queue where the counter clerk said ‘excuse me, Sir, but the sign says no dogs’ (pointing at the sign which clearly stated this fact: not only no dogs but also no cats, though why anyone would want to take their cat to the Post Office defeats me). However, the man replied ‘it’s not a dog, it’s a ferret’. To which the clerk said conclusively ‘well, the Post Office regards it as a dog’, then he sold the man some commemorative stamps. Both parties looked perfectly happy. Not sure about the ferret though.

Back to PD, where I’m undoubtedly getting more clumsy. For instance over the weekend I spilled a milk jug all over the bedroom carpet, spilled red wine over the arm of a chair and spilled a bottle of mineral water over myself. The latter event occurred at the wonderful Olympic Studios cinema in Barnes while we were watching the Kray Brothers film, Legend. The water went over my lap and legs and my seat some 20 minutes from the end around the time they were killing Jack the Hat McVitie, so the damp patch I was sitting in allowed me to deeply empathise with McVitie in more ways than one. Try it for yourself. 

Meanwhile PD in France is much the same a s PD in the UK: for example, I swam across the Dordogne river and back and was completely cream crackered by the effort which meant I came ashore about 100 metres down river on the current and landed in mud so deep and sticky that I was planted like an Anthony Gormley beach statue, until pulled out by wife and friends on the end of a rope. Result: a win for PD which has turned my swimming back to the strength and endurance of a 5 year old.

The wine in the Bergerac region was cheap as chips and good quality for the price, and drinking lots of it decreased my shakes considerably. Result: a win for me and the wines of Bergerac, particularly the sweet Monbazillac.

We took the dog with us on her new passport, turned up at Eurotunnel in Calais and were rejected for not having a particular injection you have to have more than 24 hours before travel but not more than five days before. It was 8.30 pm. Raced off to the nearest vet via dangerous streets, some of which had been closed by police and rioters. Asked a local how to get to the vet (GPS failing) and he jumped into his mate’s Deux Chevaux and led us there just as the grumpy vet was closing. Vet jabbed dog and insisted on cash payment of Euros 95. Hotel in Dunkirk had last bed in town and was full of hookers and other shady characters and me, wife and dog. Hotel cost Euros 90 plus 7 for dog. It all seems like a scam to the benefit of vets and hoteliers and the restaurateurs/tourist trade as we had to wait all day to catch the shuttle on a very busy bank holiday. Wife and dog not talking to me.

Leaving wife and dog at home, I also spent a weekend at the fabulous Brussels Beer Festival (in the middle of Grande Place) with a side visit to Antwerp where we drank in the most amazing bar, possibly in the world, called the Kulminator, specialising in aged Belgian beers. Range, quality, atmosphere, service, like nowhere else on earth. Visit it. 

Finally there are fairies at the bottom of our garden. See photo. My wife has had the great (ha ha) idea of dressing the unsuspecting tree on our bit of pavement with a fairy door about a foot above the ground (as there is no ladder to get a foot up it’s obvious that fairies can jump!), together with fairy trinkets, and other shiny stuff. House prices have tumbled as a result, and now people have started leaving things such as a watch and two cowboys on horseback, though the cowboys have subsequently disappeared, probably to a neighbouring grotto.

Not sure how I got from PD to fairies. Perhaps it’s magic?

BEER AND BLOODY PARKINSON’S

In my 2 years since being diagnosed with PD I haven’t read a single paper on the close relationship between my PD and beer and hope to put that right in this blog.

But first of all and before I get into beer and PD I ought to mention this morning that I was at the municipal baths when a cockroach was spotted swimming in the slow lane. The general consensus in the changing room was that we shouldn’t get too worked up about it until they were spotted in the fast lane and presented a clear and present danger to swimmers. In the meantime I’m thinking of switching to a tighter pair of trunks for reduced access, so to speak (isn’t there an Amazonian toothfish or similar that can make its way up your tadger, so to speak?) .

Enough of wildlife for now.......When I was at University in the 60s we frequented a traditional, street corner local, the Victoria, round the corner from our hall of residence, run by an old, stooped cove called George. When you ordered a pint he shook so violently and spilled so much beer that that we clever young intellectuals would add ‘no George, let’s make it a half’. Perhaps George had Parkinson’s? If he did I can’t say that any of us asked or enquired, because it was just one of those quirks of older people. Shakin’ all over.

Jenni Murray of Radio 4 fame is often quoted as being asked if her elderly mother who had PD was drunk (for her mum PD had meant bad falls, broken bones, shaking and blank face, but not drunkenness).

On which point we went to Glorious Goodwood a couple of Saturdays ago and for the first time (apart from some teens in the post office) I could see people and male drunks laughing at my shakes. There were thousands of people enjoying a drink in the sun, many lying flat out on the grass. As I’m sure you are aware, walking over or round moving obstacles is quite a trial for a PD sufferer and so it was for me. I’ve not yet worn a PD wristband but maybe I should start? At least if I freeze at the races or in the swimming pool or on a zebra crossing someone may know what to do! Incidentally the organic burgers at Goodwood were less than glorious.

Yesterday was the start of the Campaign for Real Ale’s annual Great British Beer Festival, a fantastic event with thousands of like minded drinkers drinking hundreds of beers and ciders and eating great fresh local and regional British food. There are 150,000 members of CAMRA and not all sport a beard, sandals and a larger stomach than the average.

 

I’ve asked the docs about drinking with Madopar and the general idea seems to be that as long as you don’t go and get elephant’s trunk it shouldn’t do too much harm. My experiments show that alcohol helps you forget the shakes, steadies the hands and allows you to get two full pints from bar to table. Nevertheless my friends take no chances and willingly rush to help me carry their pints in my round back to the table.

They have even been helpful in advising on new career paths for a man with PD: human cocktail shaker being the most popular. I’m ignoring them.

Topics in the pub after the festival included: athletics dopers, Heart of Midlothian, beer quality, medical issues, football, Bob’s allotment and Edward Heath. No conclusions were drawn.

THE NAKED MEN

I’ve been trolled on Twitter. Where I tweet on real ale and Parkinson’s (spilling beer unites the topics). The trolling was for failing to create adequate CGI dragons.

Let me explain. I’m Peter Jackson and on Twitter I’m @peterjackson46. And I happen to share a name with the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit. As a result I received a fairly forthright critique of my filmic dragons from a bloke called Lloyd to the effect that he’d come and get me if I didn’t create more lifelike and less rubbishy effing dragons next time around. I was tempted to inform him that I’d use real live dragons next time but thought better of it as dragon fans are not on the whole much good at irony.

But enough of dragons for now and let’s hope Lloyd doesn’t find the bloodyparkinsons.blogspot or I’m a gonner. He might even confuse me with Shakin’ Stevens and blame me for This Ole House.

Which in a roundabout way takes me back to PD.

On being diagnosed I’d asked the Neurologist about tests to check the diagnosis, but they diagnose by physical observation and touch, not blood and urine or x-rays or MRI scans and treatment seemed to be based on eating sensibly, taking regular exercise and reading stuff. Only resorting to medicine to slow your decline when you really need to do so.

His patients all reacted differently, he said, so you couldn’t create or follow any strict rules; perhaps before taking medicine you might try CoEnzyme Q-10, swim, walk the dog, go to Tai Chi, and come back in 2 months time to discuss Dopamine replacement pills.

So I started swimming regularly at the local baths, first thing in the mornings and though getting up first thing is not always my cup of tea, it gave me a good feeling. Best of all though are the naked men in the gents’ communal changing room getting ready to put their trunks on and to plough up and down. They are not a homoerotic band but rather a group of like minded Roman Senators using the public baths as a forum for erudition, debate, discourse and discussion. They just relax and take their time to change, or to swim, or to sweat in the steam room, or to sing in the shower, and to dry and to dress.

A ‘typical’ topic of conversation might be the history of the Ottoman Empire and rather more topically the Anzac campaign on the Bosporus, or the films of Clint Eastwood, the activities of athe spy George Blake, or the role of women pilots in the Second World War. Which led to a discourse on the Doodlebug and the possibilities that Jerry might put a suicide pilot in each rocket. Not apparently something the average naked man would have volunteered for! Even the smallest naked man.

It was from them I learned that by the windmill on Wimbledon Common there had been at the end of the 19th century a military gun range, not far from the high street and that as weapons increased in power, so the risk to civilians doing their everyday errands increased. Then one day a bullet skittered down the main road scattering shoppers here and there and the rifle range was moved to the open spaces of Bisley. You can still see the earthen ramparts of the range by the windmill on Wimbledon Common.

In the meantime the Scottish divisions, when not terrifying the locals, spent their free time creating golf courses on the common, hence the existence of two Wimbledon golf clubs today.

Singing close harmony naked in the shower is also part of the changing room deal: particularly for some reason Goon Show songs, such as Ying Tang Tiddle I Pho (forgive my spelling or I’ll sing it for you) and I’m Walking Backwards to Christmas. With the shower doors open and / or closed.

Incidentally, some other really weiird guys shower in the public area and so keep their trunks on, squirting shampoo down the back and front of their trunks and shampooing their private bits in public so to speak. With more contortions than a champion snake charmer’s champion python.

I’ll update on the naked men on a regular basis, provided they are still talking to me.

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