The Madness of Don Juan

Reading the sort of things that I write on Facebook I can only conclude that I'm going slightly mad. Endless rambling observations of the minutiae of my life, tripped up by clauses, parentheses, addenda, foot-notes and appendices. It isn't communication, which I suppose it must appear to be on the surface, as it actively discourages discourse; I'm already answering my own up-dates, colouring them, mucking about, lampooning or subverting the content. What is it for?

This week's ear-worm classic is Bry Ferry's version of the Everly's "The Price of Love". There's a "handsomeness" to the guitar riff that is very satisfying but it also has, Bry being Bry, castanets, a trumpet solo and Ladybirds style backing vocals all over it. I love the old arrivest fool!

Belfast Kills Me

So...notable events. Kelly's back on the steroids. Tori visits us from the Spa Town over the weekend. Poor Tori. We get word that while Kelly is being summoned to the hospital from her counsellor's office, across town Granny Mullan becomes ill and is admitted to hospital. She dies the following afternoon. Sunday and Monday Kelly spends at the wake (I only manage the Monday)and Tuesday is the funeral (they do things quickly here). Meanwhile riots break out in the Short Strand area of east Belfast (confusingly it is apparently the UVF beating the shit out of a strongly UVF area. But that's local politics for you - I don't understand it at all). Helicopters buzz the house all night.

Today Kelly is irritable from the get go - even doe-eyed Dee can't raise her spirits. People instantly panic that the steroids are sending her manic again, even though the situation, circumstances, symptoms and dosage are all different. I attempt to convince myself that sometimes a crab is just a crab. But I'm kidding myself.

Have found out that the shoes that I bought in London, without trying them on, are the wrong size. I asked the assistant for the right sized shoes and he brought me the wrong ones. I just spent an hour circumnavigating the city, which has no street signs or if it has they are obscured by scaffolding on a semi-permanent basis. I found the "Doc Shop" in the incongruously delightfully named "Pottinger's Entry". The shop is empty bar the bloke behind the counter. He is a standard Belfast male in that he is fat and bald with blurred tattoos on fore-arms that are crossed over his chest. Before I came to Belfast I would have found this look a threatening proposition but it's so ubiquitous here that it has no meaning at all - skinheads have spunked their currency in this town!). His arms remained crossed throughout our transaction. "You didn't get those here," he said. "I know," I say, "I got them in London," "Let's have a look at them, then," he says. The bag is between us on the counter. He makes no attempt to move so I open the bag and show them to him. "I can't do anything about it. We're an independent," "So why did I have to show you the shoes?" He shrugs.

On the bus home I'm sat between a crying baby and three shouting tramps. Belfast your'e pushing me.

Back in the hospital again. Kelly's doctor has phoned her at her counsellor's and advised her that because of problems with her liver she may need to start a course of steroids again. This after we had already accepted that she would need to stop her hormone therapy and start another course of chemo (described as "light" chemo, in the manner of a subtle hammer). That was a knock. The hair loss is predicted to be "light" as well. But the steroid treatment is devastating; it's the same treatment that produced her massive manic period over Christmas; the treatment that saw her running to the respite house and then onto the hospital, that made her scared and mistrustful of even her closest family and saw me banished from our house before she would return to it. The dose is lower and there has been no direct-to-head radiotherapy this time and she is still sleeping (she was sleeping an hour a night at the height of her mania)but it is still shit scary.

The Madness of King John

Back in Canary Wharf waiting on a mysterious doctor's appointment: a doctor Philips potentially on the 9th floor of my least favourite building in London. I'm early and enjoying my first Earl Grey of the day outside Canary Wharf people watching: if these are people.

Everybody is in business or in the business of selling food to people in business so everybody is corporated to the max. The only dash of colour is from Cleo Rocos' hair as she strolls past, arm in arm with an elderly woman whom I took to be a relative or possibly just somebody who got caught up in her personal gravity, stately as she sweeps past the charcoal drones. Suits are worn like armour here, with only silly old fallible human heads sticking out the top giving the game away. Men's shoes are positively medieval; great long black swords of shoes, conical and curling. Nobody looks comfortable, nobody can walk properly, shoe-horned into this hostile environment. Only the shoe-shine guy looks content, reading to himself as nobody bothers him; these people don't need a once over with a chamois, they need a hammer and a forge.

Had my first psychologist's appointment at Hell House. My brain had tricked me into believing that it was at 9.30 instead of nine, so I was late out of the door and no bus came. A good start; I barely had time to fill in the "Are You Going To Commit Suicide in the Foyer" pamphlet before the psychologist was on me. Her name is Alice, she had big sad Greek eyes and she barely said a word for the next hour as I took her on a whistle-stop tour of my life over the last couple of years. At the end she commended me for my "calmness" and recommended that I see her a lot more often than she had originally planned so either she is hot for my sad wisdom or she thinks I'm about to cut loose with a high-powered rifle from the roof of the Finsbury Park Mosque.

Doctor number two coming up now so lets see how that pans out...there is a history of this being pointlessly stress filled so we'll see what happens.