Another Pair Of Eyes

Interval

There follows a short interval: “Drinks are available at the bar, and the play will resume in 15 minutes time…”

Or 7 days time, in my case: fingers crossed. Sad times, in a way – come the 4th, my last long summer holiday ever is over. Next summer I have my elective, admittedly – its not strictly uni work but it’s no holiday either. After that, it’s attachments over every summer, then real work as the foundation training kicks off, up through junior doctorship to registrar and senior registrar and then to consultant, eventually to retirement, and the accompanying holidays! A sweeping summary of a life, but it missed all the good bits – they are hidden there, and I look forward to them. Bad times lurk in the shadows, of course; some are vaguely predictable (endings), others not so. I don’t look forward to them so much, but no light without shadow, hey?

A lot has happened in the last 21 years, I wish I could remember more of it instead of having the memories bleed into each other; one long night out, one extended day of lectures. Bits and pieces stand out for their uniqueness in one sense or another, periods differ and boring sections kind of slodge together into the Uninteresting Parts Of Life (abridged), and in between valuable things are lost. Such is life.

Still, there’re a lot more gems to be found. Once the interval finishes the play resumes in earnest, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

This blog did not turn out how I expected it to.

Bottle life in memory.

Rotation & Failures Thereof

This year I am on rotation, and the first rotation for my group is Mental Health.

Oddball. It’s the strange one, the one that doesn’t fit with the usual rhythm of medical practise. I’m not sure if I’m pleased with it or not – surely a stint in Ordinary Medicine, if there is such a thing, would have been a more elegant introduction? Still, done is done and it’s set – daunting, but exciting. It will be interesting to see how it goes, I think. Going to be a nervous first few days…

That is not, however, the reason for the title of this blog post. Yesterday I was very down and out, and while at least a decent healthy portion of that can be attributed to the Time Traveler’s Wife, there is more to it than that. That post on aging didn’t come entirely out of the blue, either.

Basically, I was meant to be going on a big, albeit significantly shorter and faster, cycle ride this Thursday. Now, I’m not. The reason? My knee won’t co-operate with me – on a hard training day a short while back I began to feel it, and it whined about it for 36 hours. Well, knee, you win. I drop out, I give up, I cease and desist. Enjoy it while you can because over the next year I am going to hammer you.

Aging

ARROGANCE WARNING: This post may come across as arrogant and self-indulgent. This is not the way it is written – it is written in a mildly ironic tone of voice with a touch of wistfulness and a sprinkle of resentment targeted at my knee*

‘What?!’, I hear you cry, ‘a post about aging from you, at the ripe old age of one-and-twenty years? Outrageous!’

Well, indeed. Not so much about aging in the aging population sense of the world, but aging in the sense that I experience it at the moment. That is, aging as the appearance of limitations.

Day ‘t was when I was younger and my body was, to me, flawless. I had perfect vision, excellent balance, ridiculously sensitive hearing; I could do anything and never get aching joints or stiff limbs. I could eat anything and never put on weight. I had fast reflexes, skin that wouldn’t burn, sprinters speed.** My sense of smell was pretty rubbish, but hey. When things were too heavy or similar, I knew that in future I’d have the strength to manage – my limits were still expanding. Life was good.

Now, I am no longer like this. My vision is still good, but its not perfect – one eye is slightly off. Ever so slightly, only noticeable when trying to manual focus through a camera viewfinder, but it is a flaw and it affects my photography with that eye. My knees can’t deal with the endurance of my legs anymore – cycling last year cast that into sharp focus. I get stiff muscles easily, and am no longer so indefatigable – bed at half ten often seems preferable to a night spent awake until 1 or 2. I’m not much of a sprinter at all, and my skin burns after a day in the sunshine. Eating cookies makes me fat.*** My reflexes are good, but they are nothing to write home about, and my hearing is no longer so sharp. I have aged, and even though none of the above are even worth complaining about in the grand scheme of things, I still miss that fierce vitality and feeling of being unstoppable. Sure, I’m much stronger now**** but that stamina isn’t of much use when my knees just give up. Weakest link in the chain. Sigh.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this post. I feel kind of out of it today, combination of the Time Traveller’s Wife, a potentially major disappointment in addition to that, the boredom of not having a job beginning to wear through the last of my patience. I’m not sleeping well and I’m less at home in myself than usual.

Jarring.

* there is a very dark look that goes there.
** I was INVEEEENCIBLE (cue tank of liquid nitrogen)
*** CURSE YOU cookies, you’re tasty triple chocolate goodness is too much for my willpower to withstand!
**** remember when you were a kid and you wondered at the seemingly infinite strength of your parents? (was there anything they could not do?)

…

“Always….”

“Oh God oh God-”

“World enough….”

“No!”

“And time….”

“Henry!“

Opening it and reading the first page I got shivers down my spine.

And Lucy was right, it is very human, beautifully so.

Still brilliant, and still devastating.

I finished it.

The Time Traveler’s Wife

I read The Time Traveler’s Wife a few years ago, while on holiday in Iceland. I read it in the tent over a couple of days, and I’ve not been able to face it again in the intervening time. I don’t think any other book has managed to cause me such emotional trauma before or since. It now stays on the shelf, a heavy presence, and I’ve not been able to muster the will to once more open it up.

The other day I went to see the film – it was as good as it could have been, I think. It was brilliantly cast, well done and the omissions would not have been too obvious to those who’d not read the book (mainly the darker aspects – the father, the fighting, the other side of Gomez). On the plus side, sections including Alba were actually better in the film than in the book. Overall, it was up and down and it reflected the theme of the book, and that was good. It was still pretty melancholy, but it was manageable.

Now, though, I have a problem. Watching the film has awoken the echoes of the book, and I don’t think I can hold off reading it anymore. It’s on my mind again, daily, and I know that dusting off the battered cover is the only way to resolve the matter. And I don’t want to, because it left such an impression before. I don’t know whether I’m trying to avoid the pain it caused last time, or whether I’m afraid it won’t do the same this time around.

Here we go again.

The Woman In Black

What an amazing piece of theatre it was. The atmosphere and the suspense projected from the stage, the lighting and the set and the way the actors really drag you in, really fire your imagination. Using only two (three?) people, and a very simple set of props – a big basket full of clothes and paper, a few chairs, some glasses and a hat stand, the two actors conjure up graveyards, churches, bedrooms, offices, trains and streets. Two characters become closer to 8 or 9, each instantly recognisable, and there is even a dog. The magic of it is in the sound, the lights, the fog – it is so well orchestrated, so elegantly planned, so powerfully evocative. There were times you could have cut the tension in the theatre with a knife, there were people jumping in their seats and shrinking back from the stage.

Truly shows what is lost in film.

And yes, it’s pretty creepy! However, go see it if you can, and bring some friends. Well worth the effort and truly astounding.

Price

It’s easy to read that 204 Britons have been killed since 2001 in Afghanistan. It’s much harder to see all their faces.