I’m looking forward to Friday…

By the way, you can sponsor me here… http://mobro.co/Shades42

These guys crack me up. More over at IndieGogo.

(A couple of years back I bought Karen the War on Terror board game for Christmas. We have yet to play it…)

Anyway, we found him yesterday, in the grounds of Chelsea Royal Hospital.

He wasn’t alone…

Karen and David were in the first of four waves which set off at 09:30am. There was the option to run 1, 3 or 6 miles, you swung back round again to repeat the one mile  course for the longer runs.

After they ran we rewarded ourselves with a McDonalds musical Breakfast (Karen got David’s coffee & my griddled egg, David got my hash Brown and I got David’s sausage patty, ending up with a triple sausage & no-egg McMuffin). I also got to chat with the Leeds Lord Mayor and see the Vic Reeves family depart in a Taxi.

Karen was disappointed to find that the freebie hoops were rather lightweight, she could hoop for England at the Gym with substantial sturdy ones but struggled to keep the supplied one spinning for too long and quickly had to sit down. Conversely, David initially struggled but quickly got the hang of it at the practice and breezed through the two minute event. 25 successful hoopers were needed in Leeds for a chance at the record and there were probably three times that.

I can put a personal view on looking after your kidneys, though, from the frouhjt experiences of my old man, Neil Grey.

When he was young, my Dad was an indentured apprentice at Parsons, a huge engineering concern in the north east. He was a turbine engineer and started travelling around, building Power Stations. He was working on one down near grays in essex, when he had an industrial accident. I don’t know the details, but he fell off some scaffolding and injured his back. He was in traction in hospital for a long time, but eventually made what was assumed to be a full recovery.

However, many years later, in the course of an investigation for something else, it was found that one of his kidneys was no longer functioning, but that the other had become a super-kidney, taking on the full workload. As he progressed into his fifties, he initially found that his tolerance of a full bladder dropped to the point where he was likely to become incontinent within a few minutes of feeling the urge to go. (The consultant gave him some special cards he was advised to show whenever he was caught short, advising the recepient that the bearer had a medical condition and should be granted access to any facilites due to being in dire need).

Attempts to control the incontinence via medication actually had a detrimental effect- he would not need to go to the loo for days on end. The unintended consequences of this was a back-pressure from the bladder onto the working kidney. The tiny little muscle that relaxes in order to empty the bladder was eventually diagnosed as no longer detecting the signals properly so he was fitted with a catheter and a urine collecting bag. Unfortunately, however, his renal efficiency was now down to a very small percentage and he was permanently tired from all of the toxins in his bloodstream.

At this point, he was introduced to CAPD, Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis, a sort of half-way-house to full blood dialysis. The peritoneum is a layer surrounding most of the internal organs in the abdomen and there is actually a small space within. If you fill that layer with a saline fluid of the right concentration, then the fluid will absorb toxins from the body through the process of osmosis. In practical terms, it is necessary to drain off and replenish the fluid four or five times a day and there is a strict regime of having a bag ready in a warmer so that it is at body temperature when required. It tethers the patient for about twenty minutes as it takes half the time to drain the last solution out and then the new bag is connected to the plumbing and hung on a drip stand. You also have a short pipe sticking out of your tummy and need to ensure a sterile regime for connector cleanliness & replacement.

Now when Neil was on CAPD, he was working in a shop and living above, so fitting a regime around the need to change bags wasn’t overly onerous on him, but if he had worked somewhere else it would have been a lot more difficult with having to have stock and equipment at his workplace (or taking it with him). His previous job as a night mini-cab driver for a Company with no driver facilities whatsoever would have been untenable.

Something we didn’t appreciate when he first started doing CAPD was the quantity of consumables that the NHS would deliver to him and the amount of room it took up. A day’s supply of CAPD bags is about the size (and weight) of the boxes of A4 photocopy paper you see in offices and he would get deliveries of at least twenty of these every couple of weeks.

Now CAPD is only partially effective and as the kidneys continue to deteriorate, there comes the point where it is not quite enough. Eventually, he started to go for an occasional haemo dialysis, for which he was fitted with a substantial canula on one of his arms. Kiyney dialysis machines at the time were quite large but much of the mechanism was to do with pumping the blood smoothly through the machine and returning it to the body. The bit in the middle was the filter unit, where the toxins were trapped and seperated.

Neil would actually return from these sessions invigorated. After feeling like death warmed up beforehand, he would be full of the joys of spring for the rest of the day.

Eventually, Neil went onto full haemo-dialysis. By this time he had given up work due to ill health and was living in sheltered housing with my Mum (who was effectively his full time carer). He gradually developed additional conditions, like Diabetes. Someone with renal failure has to massively curtail their intake of fluids and eat a strict controlled diet. Much of the time he was just too tired and shagged out to do anything at all, even eat.

His post-dialysis day was the best, he felt human again. The day after, he felt ropey. The day after that, he felt seriously rough. So it went, week in, week out.

Eventually, he died in his sleep. The death certificate said heart failure, but at the end of the day nearly everybody dies of heart failure. It was his kidneys that killed him, a long, slow, tedious, monotonous death by chronic illness.

His one piece of advice to me? If you need to go, go, don’t hold it in. When the doctor asks if the waterworks are OK, tell him straight.

The official advice is a bit more wide ranging… (pdf)

The club had the inevitable pool table but also boasted a recording studio and what looked like a Chroma-key video room.

We all turned up in old clothes (Dobber Clobber) and were given branded T shirts to wear. I was on roller duty (one of those long handled ones for painting high areas) but first we had to wash the surfaces down with sugar soap, rubber gloves and all. I put on one of those all-over disposable oversuits with elasticated wrist and calf cuffs and was described as looking like a crime scene investigator.  Later on, I was stretching to pick up something and i heard (& felt) a big rip, as my paper suit split in twain.

It was a two day project but I was only there for the first day. Hopefully the day two team were able to build on our preparations & leave it looking much better than when we arrived.

The order of service is much the same each year and there is another tradition which I call “The slamming of the gates”.

My first couple of Services were in Batley as part of the Round Table. The events are very egalitarian there, everyone is invited into the Town Hall for a cup of tea and a biscuit afterwards and people can chat sat at tables.

My first one as a Morley Councillor though was a little more elitist, only the select few could go into the Town hall afterwards. (Well, it wasn’t a few, it was most people on the parade).

The procession lines up formally before the event, but afterwards, Councillors and dignitaries scurry off back to the Town Hall so that they can take the salute on the imposing Town Hall steps. The first year I stood on the steps, I was surprised to notice the custodial staff slamming the gates shut behind us as we entered the ceremonial entrance. This was repeated the following two years but with the retirement of the longest serving member of staff, it is a little more relaxed these days.

Today, I was running errands so I didn’t get to see all of the proceedings but I did see the gates get closed. The ceremony of the gates had a slight variant this year- firstly they were taking their time shutting them and it turned out that they were waiting for me! “You coming in then, Ian?” “No, I’m just a pleb now.” (Although David was keen to raid some biscuits).

Then, as they started to close the gates, Colin Challen MP came out, carrying a wreath (presumably to take to Rothwell, the other town in the constituency).

I was surprised to see he had several medals on his chest- a quick look on Wikipedia says that he was a supplier accountant for the Royal Air Force. Perhaps they aren’t medals for courage or valour then.

I tried to catch his eye to ask him how he was getting on with reading 1984, but he was oblivious to me. The Morley Mayor was happy to give me a wave for the readers though. (Sorry it is blurry, I wasn’t really paying attention).

Here is the ceremony of the excluding of the plebs.

As a consequence of this, I now have 59 eggs in my boot, destined for the Morley Entertainment Committee as a contribution to the Saturday Easter Bonnet Competition.

(If there are any left they will be taken round to old people’s homes).

I also noticed that they have labels on them confirming they don’t contain nuts!

(By comparison, Slimming World is £4.50 and WeightWatchers £4.95).

Now, I am a gentleman with a fuller figure and could do with losing a few poundsstones. Would such a class work?

The answer is a qualified Yes. I joined WeightWatchers a long time ago in the run up to my wedding and the weight came off with ease. (The class leaders like Men joiners as they generally do well if they are motivated to do so). However, I eventually wised up that I was paying for something that was a business, a very lucrative one that turns over millions of Pounds based on unrealistic expectations of many participants. I’m not saying that it is morally wrong, only that I didn’t need to add to their coffers.

Provided that I exercise to some extent and eat sensibly, I can keep my weight down. However, being housebound for a couple of months doesn’t help!

What is the impetus for joining the work Fat BastardsBusters? The Company has agreed to give a Pound to Charity for every Pound that we lose. I like the sound of that…

This is a campaign that the English National Health Service are running to encourage more of us to sign up to the NHS Organ Donor Register.

I’ve been on the list ever since I first found out about it, probably from when I first got my Driving License. (It may have not existed then, but I certainly remember filling in a Kidney Donor card with my first provisional license aged 17).

Karen was perusing a leaflet about it this evening (picked up at the hospital, I think) and agreed to register, although she feels rather squeamish about it. You can now do it online with a few simple questions. (They also have a number of pamphlets for those who are uncertain what their particular Giant Green Arkleseizure thinks about it).

I would encourage any Brits who have never got round to it to do so, by clicking on the heart below.

HOWEVER, should that dour bottler scumbag in Downing Street introduce the concept of “implied consent” then I will remove my registration in a defiant gesture of explicit dissent, including appropriate hand gestures. The State serves me, not the other way round.

ª Tom Sharpe, “The Ballad of Prick ‘Em Dry”

Brownie works in retail soft furnishings, managing a large shop.

Only two calendar boys left to go now!

However, I went to Brighton three times for the TMA Conference and in October 2002 I had the opportunity to visit the pier. The Trust organised visits on certain days and the previous year I was out of luck schedule-wise. We assembled in one of the little buildings on the promenade (the white octagonal one which doubled as the gift shop). We then signed liability waiver forms (which we were told probably wasn’t worth the paper it was written on) and dressed for the trip, donning hard hats, hi-viz jackets and even life jackets. I didn’t have my camera that day, but I have found some free use ones on the Web from a year or two earlier, photo credits Robert Shifreen.

Our first visit was under the land end structure, where we found the store of rescued pier flotsam. Much of it was ironwork from structural columns (many with screw-like bottoms) along with cross-braces, balustrades and decking. Our guide explained that much of the debris was left on the sea bed as it remained in-situ and didn’t deteriorate a great deal. At the time the Trust had ambitious restoration plans but they were to be rapidly thwarted over the next eighteen months.
The pier was linked to the beach by a long thin walkway which had a secure gate surrounded by razor wire to keep out the curious. This gate was unlocked and then re-locked after our party passed through it. We then walked towards the first building which was the oval concert hall which dated from 1916. Before we entered we were warned that we would not be alone…
…as we entered hordes and hordes of starlings shrieked and flew off through the broken windows and gaping holes in the roof.Our guide clapped her hands every now and again to chase away the more curious ones. The place was riddled with bird lime and here and there glimpses of the sea could be seen through holes in the floor. Even though it had been derelict for more than quarter of a century, it post-dated decimalisation and curling signage betrayed this.
We went further onto the walkway but could only go about half way to the far structure which was the 1897 1,400 seat Concert Hall which subsequently became a 1,000 seat theatre six years later. The reason our visit was curtailed was due to storm damage: one of the new walkway supports had been swept away over the weekend. The building was tantalisingly close- you could count the lamps in the West Pier sign which I had seen lit the night before. I had naively assumed that the pier was open for business again but on wanderi ng along to look at it, the warm glow of the sign and the floodlighting of the facade made it obvious on closer inspection that there was still an awful lot to do.
The visit was both fascinating and disappointing. It was rather ordinary in a way, the signs of recent use being familiar from other tatty seaside arcades & resorts of my childhood. It would have been better if we had been told at the start that we couldn’t go into the far building, as that was what I was more interested in. The photos of it online, however, show it as an (empty) arcade space rather than a theatrical space. A couple of months later, the first of the disasters happened.

The future of the pier is now all but doomed. However, a new vertical tower structure has been approved on the site- the i360 observation mast.

The Brighton West Pier Trust has a Website with buckets of background information about the Grade 1 structure that was the West Pier and their valiant (but in the end sadly futile) efforts to save i. The newsletters in the archive make fascinating reading for a social historian.

The 9th in a unique series of twelve. This is Coops, who was a Morley jeweller at the time. He was also the Round Table Treasurer back in early 2003. Coops was a late edition to the line-up and this shot was taken in my lounge with him sat on one of our Ikea dining room chairs (and David looking on bemusedly). He provided the barometer but a collectable spoon might have sufficed…

This is a complex object and took ages to actually resolve. Indeed, when I first teleported there I thought it was some form of surreal art structure and started looking elsewhere around the island. Here is a shot of it partially rezzed- the spheres eventually became the flags.  As ever, click on the thumbnails for a screen sized image.

This is number eight in a series of twelve made specially for the 2003 Ladies Night with all funds going to the community account. The Calendar was produced in early 2003 in almost total secrecy, although 11 blokes getting their kit off in a bed shop in Outwood is hard to keep secret.

The earlier calendar boys are in previous posts, check out out the Good Causes Category

The trophy was celebrating his first trip to Wales and meeting his first girlfriend. (ONLY JOKING!)

#7 in a series of 12 (& I’m #11).

Phil works in I.T. and originally had the nickname “sicknote” although he was re-christened “DSB” after various community activities…

Half the calendar gone now, six hunks to go (well, five hunks and a fat b*st*rd).

From Batley Round Table Standing Orders:

Trophies

• The Charter Booby
Established in 1996 (and transferred from Pudsey Table), awarded at every meeting by the incumbent for the member who has demonstrated he has “the wrong stuff”. Examples include coming bottom at events, fighting with minor celebrities, eating cheese with custard, scoffing kebabs during meetings, being a DSB (note 1) and generally making a pratt of oneself. The physical trophy is a large manifold-like plumbing item.

(Note 1- DSB is an abbreviation for something far too offensive to be enshrined in Standing Orders)

(To see back-issues of this meme, search on Calendar Boys)