Sad story

 Randomly heard through Facebook that someone I used to know had died a few years ago.  The person was too young and had a difficult life.  

The person was really a friend of a friend.  I had asked myself, 'what happened to x?' and I looked on facebook and found an answer.  However, it isn't really an answer, only more questions that really are not for me to ask.

We all face difficulties in life and we all walk different roads.  I'm glad that I'm on my road and I gave my young son an extra cuddle this evening.  We have done some family stuff over the weekend and we'll do more during the week.  I'm a lucky man and I realise that not everyone is that lucky.

Mining youtube

I'm on holiday (whatever that means in COVID times) and the baby and my partner are in bed.  I've been listening to old nineties indie music on youtube and I've found a couple of curios.  A version of 'Dicso 2000' by Pulp with Nick Cave on vocals and beyond that, a pub rock version of the same.

The world is indeed a strange place.  

I was also watching some old Travis videos and Iw as struck by how young they all look.  They are all 4 or 5 years older than me but they looked like children in 1999, at the height of their success.  Odd.

It's late now and I better head to my bed.  I'll have stuff to do in the morning but the internet is a strange and interesting place at times.

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Over the past few months I've worked my way through The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher and it's been pleasant.  Over the past 20 years Butcher has created a well rounded Dresden-verse focusing on the life and times of Harry Dresden, professional wizard and private investigator based in Chicago.  The books have spawned a short lived TV series, lots of comics and a few role playing games.  A great franchise.

The books seem to work a bit like a role playing game with Dresden developing from book to book, levelling up and encountering new challenges that push him further and further.  In later books there is some focus on the various attempts that are made to corrupt Dresden by supernatural entities.

In difficult times Harry Dresden is a great distraction.  There are two more books being published later this year and I'm looking forward to reading them.

I had initially intended to be more enthusiastic in this post as I genuinely loved the books - just read them.

Life under lockdown

Because of my job I still have to go to work every  day.  I use public transport and for a while it was frightening.  It's probably a bit less frightening now as I've become numb to it, to a certain extent but there is still dread.  It's important not to become complacent.  This virus is bad and it can fuck you right up.

One person that I knew, our old neighbour, has died.  She was a great lady and it's sad.  Other than that a couple of my patients have been seriously unwell with it.  The virus has a multi-system effect, messing up coagulation, causing blood clots everywhere as well as a cytokine storm type effect as well as the lung problems.  It can fuck you up bad.

I've read a lot of dystopian fiction and we aren't quite there yet but we have witnessed a failure of Johnson-led UK Tory government.  The current projection is ov 50,000 excess deaths.  Many of these are in the elderly and disabled which will give the austerity driven Tory party their jollies. The virus is ripping through care homes, killing old people..  The pseudo-clown our English compatriots elected as Prime Minister was ignoble enough to catch the virus himself after shaking hands with everyone on a COVID ward.  What a fuck nugget.

The reason for his short stay in iTU has been a source of much speculation but Johnson has lost weight and he doesn't have the fortitude for method acting so I suspect the fucker was actually sick.  However, in the face of 50 thousand deaths that were potentially avoidable my sympathy for this devil is limited.

There is little that I can write that has not already been written about this shit show.  Brexit will proceed like a runaway locomotive and the UK will hit a wall and pretty soon we will be the 53rd state of the USA.  Eating chlorinated chicken, steroid filled steak and paying through the nose for health insurance while the disaster capitalists in the Tory party are laughing all the way to their offshore banks.

Newspapers saying that teachers should be heroes.  Why should a teacher risk death to teach maths to a bunch of disinterested secondary school kids?  Why should a care worker die due to a lack of PPE?

Alexander Boris Johnson fiddles with himself while the UK drowns in its own stupidity.

being a dad

I've been a dad for a couple of months now and it's amazing, better than anything else I can think of.  My son has an amazing smile and great eyes.  He mainly seems to poo, puke, eat and sleep but he giggles a bit too.

I'm looking forward to doing lots of father son things and making him watch star wars, read marvel comics and listen to punk rock.  He may or may not like these things, it will be up to him.

I wish my dad had met him and that his mothers dad had met him.  Sadly, life isn't always what you want.  He does have an uncle which is good too.

Fatherhood and pregnancy have kept me busy over the past few months so only getting a chance to update the blog now.  Will post more stuff when I get a chance.

our unelected Prime Minister

Prime Minister Alexander B Johnson.  Expensive Eton education, plays the clown, pretends to be a man of the people, known to be fairly devious and self-serving when away from scrutiny.

It has been suggested that he doesn't always tell the truth.  In the past, I am led to believe that he has been caught mixing up facts with fiction.  Not really someone you would choose to trust.

He has a reputation for infidelity.  Not nice, infidelity.

He's smart but probably not as smart as he believes himself to be.  He is not someone who I would trust to run the country well and at present he doesn't really seem to be leading anything at all.  He has lost his majority in the House of Commons.  He has lost his first 4 votes as PM.  He has lost his temper when people have asked him difficult questions.

I did respect some members of the Tory party and I was sad to see these people treated with disrespect by our unelected PM.

Shit often floats but it is difficult to polish a turd.  Even with a very expensive education at Eton.

Posh Boys by Robert Verkaik

In a time when unelected Prime Minister Alexander Johnson (Eton) and fellow snob Rees-Mogg (Eton) in combination with the 'intellectual powerhouse' Dominic Cummings (Durham) are currently trying to subvert UK Parliamentary democracy by 'taking back control', Posh Boys by Robert Verkaik reminds us that they represent establishment power.  They learnt of their entitlement via the Public School system in the UK.

Verkaik tells the story of how Public Schools came into being to educate the poor but now cater to oligarchs and the aristocracy with fees of up to £40,000 per year.  'Did you go to school?', the semi-masonic question that one old Etonian may ask of another suspected Etonian underlines the elitist belief that only those educated privately matter.  I was interested to learn that Cambridge Analytica was founded by two old Etonians.

Posh Boys describes how the real 'elite', in place due to inherited wealth and not merit, feel that they have the right and the ability to subvert our democracy and take back control for themselves.

Worth reading.

Diagnosis - TV series

Diagnosis is a Netflix TV series based on the New York Times 'Diagnosis' column written by Dr Lisa Sanders.  Lisa Sanders is an attending physician (a consultant in the UK) who previously contributed to House MD as a medical advisor.  House MD is one of my favourite medical TV shows.

In Diagnosis she looks at 8 diagnostic challenges.  The majority of these cases are neurological in origin.  To reach diagnosis in these cases she published a column online and invited people from around the world to make suggestions.  In several cases a diagnosis is reached.

This is almost an exercise in folk medicine, with random strangers making diagnostic suggestions.  Unsurprisingly Lyme disease is mentioned a lot and unsurprisingly positive Lyme tests suddenly appear.  In some cases I was not satisfied with the ultimate diagnosis and in at least one case I think the patient was unsatisfied.  A lot of mistrust of doctors is vocalised which is common.  Some doctors are good and some doctors are bad.  All doctors make mistakes and all doctors get things wrong.  Some diagnoses are hard to understand and will be refused by the person with the symptoms.

As a medical TV show, I enjoyed this, partly because it was mainly neurological problems and partly because it is what I see in clinic on a regular basis.

Worth watching.

Spiderman - Far From Home

This was the first time I'd been back to the cinema since my film buddy died a few months ago.  He was a big Marvel fan and I'm sure he would have liked this.  I managed to persuade my partner to come along with me but she likes Spiderman and enjoyed the last film so it was OK.  She hasn't seen the last two avengers films so some thing were a bit odd but she did enjoy it.

Far from home features Mysterio, one of my less favoured Spiderman baddies.  Mysterio worked fairly well in the film although the plot was bubblegum, a but dumb.  Spiderman basically goes on a European tour and becomes Night Monkey (a property that should be developed).

There are some nice city scenes and some big fights.  The characters are funny.  It's an 'up', cheery film after the doom and gloom of the last couple of Avengers film.  It's probably the superhero film I needed to see today.

There will be more Spiderman films and they will probably be better but I enjoyed this.

Close Quarters by Angus McAllister

I saw this book in Waterstones the other week and I was intrigued.  I decided to check it out on my Kindle and I'm glad I did.  I got through the book in a couple of days and I very much enjoyed it.

I lived in the west end of Glasgow on and off between 1995 and 2008.   I did the university thing and the young professional thing and the overpriced rent for slums thing.  I also spent time renting elsewhere in the UK and interacting with factors.  I would not repeat any interactions with landlords or factors for fun.

McAllister is a retired solicitor who was a law professor.  He published books on Scottish property law.  He knows the hell of flats in the west end and psychopathic neighbours.  I recognised the geography of the book, the pubs and the characters.

Some of the reviewers online found the mid-section of the book a bit slow but I really appreciated the detail which added emotional weight to the story and fully filled out the details of the hell that Walter Bain subjects his neighbours to.

This book is funny and true to life.  Worth a read.