Job's Worth, What's Yours

Some things need to be kept brief. My flirtation with the education system is over and one day I might talk about it, until that day let us draw a veil over it and here's why...

Today I was due to go and have my spirometry test; it has been scheduled, rescheduled, cancelled, re-booked and the way the world seemed to be conspiring to prevent me from having it suggested to this old paranoid git that it was body saying that something horrid is going to be found; that I have this dreaded COPD and that I am going to follow in my mother's footsteps - literally by slowly suffocating to death.

Guess what? I'm still going to have to wait. The pleurisy from a month ago hasn't been six weeks, so I have to wait until March 8 before I can have it done, provided I can steer clear of illness till then. But, that isn't the point. The point is that just two weeks since quitting my job, I was walking the dogs over Bradlaugh Fields thinking, 'God, I feel better today than I have for yonks'. And do you know something, I did. I felt fucking awesome. No aches and pains; no paranoia about my impending doom; no nagging stress from work - for fuck's sake I'm unemployed and not earning and I felt mentally more stable today than I have for 18 months!

I strode around the park, in the freezing cold, feeling alive. In fact at one point I got a bit wobbly light headed and realised that it might have been from a) exerting myself or b) fresh air. Either way it was a wobble that I thought felt nothing to be concerned about. I know what's going to happen, I'm going to get run over by a bus or a piano is going to fall on me, but before I went to the doctors' this evening I thought that perhaps 50 wasn't that bad after all.

Two things did come out of the appointment, even if I didn't get hooked up to some contraption. I have a peak flow of 370. That is pretty remarkable, especially as I thought I'd struggle to break 300 yesterday - but being out of breath and lung capacity aren't mutually or exclusively linked - and it proves that slowly it's getting better. And I'm not exposed to the Petri dish of disease that was the place I worked in.

I felt ill for best part of the last 17 months; except when I was on my summer holidays, but my lungs were so messed up I didn't appreciate it. 

Oh and the other thing that came back from my generally all clear blood tests. I have raised cholesterol and I eat too many peanuts. Roger, don't buy me peanuts any more, even if I tell you it's okay. If you tell me to buy them myself you know I never would, so...

So it seems that I am a well man - maybe not healthy healthy, but just unlucky to have suffered from a shot-to-pieces immune system, which with a bit of luck and no exposure to every virus known to man I might be seeing the end of it at last. I don't think my work and my health mixed well and while there are some damned fine people I shall miss and some fantastic kids, but the future feels a bit brighter. Yes, that sounds like optimism and considering I'm out of work, maybe I should not be so yadda yadda yadda...

Shall we do one of these?

Effercio et Ineptias 

• Very impressed with new tracks I've heard this week by Amplifier and Taipuva Luotisoura. Meanwhile The Guardian gave the new Steven Wilson album 5 stars out of 5.
• Does anyone know of anyone who might want to re-home a couple of year-old pups?
• I'm growing incredibly disillusioned with TV and have given up on a number of TV series I used to bore people about. I am, quite for what reason I cannot understand, enjoying Egg of the Dead, but as I said to some friends the other day: "Do you know what the Walking Dead needs (comic and TV series)? It needs to get fucking surreal otherwise it's just going to become as normal as the Rockford Files with dead people. What it needs is a gay camp Scottish zombie called Murray who has his own mind, only eats cocks and wants peace between the humans and zombies just as long as everyone wears pink and he's the queen. Obviously the introduction of a walking, talking, thinking and fashion conscious 'walker' would be a really radical move for everyone concerned. That or space aliens."
• It's snowing (this is Friday night) but not enough to get excited/annoyed/concerned/ about.
• I am currently re-reading The Shining after reading the Re-reading Stephen King articles/web page on The Guardian website. Any review that reminds the reader that any memories he or she has of the book are going to be completely contaminated by Kubrick's horrendous (my description not the article writer) movie adaptation, is good enough reason to see if he's right. So far he's not wrong.
• Fuckwit has forgotten how to park on his drive again.
• Gissa job?