Another Pair Of Eyes

Displaced

I am, in three words, not quite right. I can’t quite put my finger on it – I’m more tired because I have to get up an hour earlier now I’m on cardio, I sleep very lightly in the early hours as a result of endlessly getting up early.* Vicious cycle. When I sleep, I dream vivid, repeating dreams. I have a complete loss of interest in cardiology, which reflects on to my love of medicine as a whole and hence my work output. Luckily I have found another notebook which has endocrinology notes in it and a lot of spare pages, so I’ve fallen back on thyroid function and adrenal crisis for today and will turn the other notebook back to front and start GI scribbles tomorrow. I just can’t get excited about something which by virtue of starting half an hour earlier (and that for no explainable reason) requires me to get up a full hour and fifteen earlier in the mornings. And isn’t very gripping, either.

I think I need some sunshine, and a week off. Roll on Easter.

*last night a text woke me up. my phone was on my bedside table, on silent, and I was woken up through closed eyes by the light that the screen cast on my ceiling.

Tabloids

I was going through some old files on my familiy’s old OLD computer when I found a folder filled with a few of my homeworks etc from when I was in year 7. Apparently aged 11 I still had a healthy cynicism when it came to tabloid reporting. This was based on ‘Stone Cold’ (if I remember rightly) and the assignment was to write a tabloid-styled article based on the ending of the book.

Strange reading things you wrote more than a decade ago…makes you feel old.

Car

The other day I was driving on the M27 when, due to the swift up-cutting action of another vehicle I was forced to push harder than I’d like on the brakes. So I did. The front discs kicked in sure and steady, the back drums did sweet fuck-all and my car tried to burrow into the asphalt.* Turns out the rear drums were completely destroyed, the brake fluid for them gone, and the pads ruined. Wonderful (and when did all that happen, anyhow?).

Anyway, that cost me a trip I really rather wanted to make, to do something I really rather wanted to do, and £185. Sod. They say, though, that every cloud has a silver lining. Whether there is one here is for me to see, and for you to find out.

*or would have done if the back wasn’t too heavy for it to actually flip. ‘t was quite alarming.

About

I am still alive, but screamingly busy juggling an assignment, a new placement, the remnant of the old placement, and all the other aspects of student life with an small extra portion of wasted time dedicated to those lovely folks at the SLC who STILL HAVEN’T GIVEN ME A LOAN and I have no more money left. Up shit creek, basically. AANYway.

Busy. Yes. To distract you from this anaemic post, I give you this which I found this and thought was rather funny:

Strangely satisfying, even though its petty. I’ll write something of dubious worth at a later date.

Parable

Once upon a time there was a boy who was besotted with a girl. She was perfect to him in every way and he wanted to impress her. He saw all the other boys impressing girls with their knowledge of the world, so he resolved to learn more about it. He read the news every day, and he learned the way politics worked, and he became more skilled at debating that he might impress the girl like the other boys. But as he tried to talk about the knowledge he’d accrued, he found the girls just wanted him to listen.

So he decided that he would become a sensitive listener. He spent hours listening to the girl talk about her problems, offering support and friendly comfort. He became trusted and close to her, but she saw him as a trusted friend and instead of falling for him, went off with another man filled with jokes and laughter.

So the boy resolved to learn to laugh and make others laugh, and this he did. He found jokes and practised banter, getting the balance between offensive and uninteresting just right. He practised dry wit and sarcasm, and he became good at them for they were the national type of humour. He made the girl laugh, sometimes even getting her to cry with laughter, had her laughing so hard she couldn’t eat or breathe for it. But the girl didn’t take him seriously, and they went off with a guy who didn’t seem to have any particularly defining characteristic except for the fact he was kind of right for her.

And the young man realised that actually, that was the way things were. And he resolved to learn patience.

I found this in my Drafts folder, written some time ago. Reading it, I couldn’t see a particular reason why I didn’t post it, so here it is for all to see.

Tinkerer

So I have received various bits over the last week and spent about an hour or so changing things, acquiring tools, or similar, and my bike now looks rather better; see below.

Unfortunately, in changing the tyres I realised that the wheels weren’t exactly what one might call ’straight’ so I reckon they too are going to need replacement eventually. Lameness, because a set of half-decent wheels is upwards of £120, for which I could buy a bike.

STILL that’s no hurry, and I am absolutely loving the tinkering and fiddling and resetting the brakes and gears to make the whole machine flow better. It is downright satisfying, somehow, to get your hands dirty, to take something which isn’t really all that great and make it better yourself, not just have someone else do it for you. It lets you actually understand what makes up your bike/computer/scarf or whatever it is you are modifying or making. I think it’s a combination of that, my dislike of wasting bits, and the feeling that this bike/computer/scarf you are creating is unique. It’s yours, nobody has one like it anywhere, and so be it. All you knitting/sewing people will understand, I’m sure.

So there.

Progress is progress.

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.