I have suffered for many years from back acne. I don’t exactly have the healthiest-looking skin elsewhere on my body*, but I am distinctly more comfortable with my t-shirt on in public. Nevertheless, it was never bad enough to prompt me to approach the doctor and get antibiotics. That was until I got a boil.

This was almost exactly six months ago, for I remember going to an after-show party in early December and drinking alcohol-free Becks all night** because I was wary of mixing ethanol and penicillin. My mother, who is allergic to penicillin, has always been nervous about me taking antibiotics, but I reassured her that I had taken penicillin before to no ill effect. The only thing that worried me slightly was some digestive discomfort, but I chalked that down to the death throes of my gut flora. After two weeks of 500mg four times a day the boil went down, leaving a large cyst which my GP assured me he could remove under local. I then started the follow-on course of minocin (a tetracycline derivative) for the back acne, to prevent a relapse.

Within 48 hours I was in bed, shaking like a bad flu case and so depressed I was convinced I wouldn’t see the morning. It also made me so stupid I didn’t realise it was the antibiotic’s fault. It was only three days later (on Christmas Eve, no less) after I’d missed a dose due to travelling that I worked out what was going on. It took me nearly a month to get back up to full speed.

Meanwhile I went back to the GP to get tests done. Everything came back normal apart from elevated blood calcium – not dangerously so, but significant. The usual side-effects of hypercalcaemia are fatigue (check), digestive problems (check), depression (hard to tell, since I have a seasonal depressive disorder, but check), osteoporosis and kidney stones (oh please, no). More tests (including the now infamous “bring your own pee to work day”) and a chest x-ray later, I was diagnosed with primary hyperparathyroidism, which came as something of a relief considering the likely alternatives (e.g. sarcoidosis).

I was referred to a consultant endocrinologist, who arranged some more tests. The most interesting of these was the sestimibi scan: this involved being injected with a large syringe full of radioactive technetium-99 and lying perfectly still with my nose pressed up against a photographic plate for five minutes each time at increasing intervals – this ended up taking most of the day. I didn’t see the moly cow itself, but I did end up with a funny taste in my mouth for a few hours, and I got some reading done.***

Diagnosis: lower right parathyroid adenoma. This is good, as I have four parathyroids and can live quite happily without the broken one. I was therefore referred to a private surgeon for a minimally invasive parathyroidectomy. A month later, having heard nothing and still feeling the depression, I booked a last-minute holiday to Australia to visit my brother and Get Away From It All. Of course, Sod’s Law intervenes and I get my surgical consultation for the week before I’m due to come back. I try to reschedule, but the earliest date I can get is three weeks later, as the surgeon only opens his private clinic on Mondays, and there’s a bank holiday in the way.

I go to Australia anyway, because I Need To. While I’m there the fatigue and depression recede slightly – sunshine really does help.

The surgical consultation (running late, and mercifully brief) consists of the surgeon going through the exact same questionnaire as the endocrinologist, before declaring his agreement with her suggested course of action. He does give me the pleasant news that as it will be keyhole surgery**** they will superglue me back together instead of stitching. I will still have a small scar on my neck – two fingers up from the sternum and about the same wide – but they’ll only keep me in hospital for one night, if even that.

Of course, when I went for the pre-screening on Friday last, they felt legally obliged to tell me all the ways it could go wrong. If they can’t find the offending gland with the endoscope (they’re only 2mm across), they’ll have to give me the “second smile” full thyroid opening (which involves cutting the muscles) and stick the fingers in. Or they could damage the right recurrent laryngeal nerve (an odd beast if ever there was one), which can lead to problems with, you know, speaking, breathing, that sort of thing. Am I worried about that? No. The thing that freaks me out is the general anaesthetic. One of Poe’s little slices of death, like sleep and boredom.

I go under the knife in about 36 hours, subject to OR availability. And I’ve still got that damn cyst…

* I am a typical Irishman: dark hair (going white these days), blue eyes and ginger skin.
** Surprisingly pleasant, although I still prefer the real stuff.
*** I have an ever-increasing stack of novels to get through, but most days I struggle just to stay up to date with the news.
**** Radioisotope-guided endoscopy – that means a funny taste in my mouth again I suspect.

Here I am, heading down the motorway again back to Galway, enjoying the last bit of dual carriageway I’m going to get for another 150km or so, and I notice that either I’m going blind, or my headlights are shafted. I struggle on, but once I hit Fermanagh and the tail lights in front of me melt away, I realise if I don’t wash the muck off the headlights soon, I’m going to drive straight through a hedge. Then on cue, the windscreen washers run out of juice and I can’t see anything at all. So I stop in the usual garage in Enniskillen and head for the water tap.

In this case it really is a tap. Most petrol stations have a pistol thing on a hose, but this one has a big standpipe and a plastic watering can that’s been driven over so many times it holds a quarter of its original capacity and leaks like a flowerpot. The car gets a wash and a drink, half of it straight over the engine block and flashing to steam, and I head into the shop to buy chocolate for myself and some washer detergent for the car.*

I’m a hundred metres up the road before it hits me that I put the detergent in the expansion bottle. I end up spending twenty minutes flushing the bubbles out of the coolant system with the flower-pot watering can, while trying not to slip on the rapidly forming ice sheet beneath.

Plonker.

I’m now quite late and heading over the border into Leitrim, where the Gards are using their blue flashing cats-eyes to warn of black ice on the freshly relaid, mirror-smooth road surface. The road gritters have been working all afternoon north of the border, but it’s immediately obvious their southern counterparts are all on holiday, or in bed, or drunk under a table somewhere.

Filling up in Collooney**, I smell warm rubber – the front tyres look a little deflated. This particular garage has an insane compressed-air apparatus that won’t clip to my tyre valves properly and I can’t hold on by brute force because the button is on the wall and only works while you hold it in.

Three and a half hours into what is rapidly becoming a four and a half hour journey, it comes to my attention that there is a light somewhere illuminating the inside of my car and flashing irregularly. My first instinct is that somebody behind is taking the mick, but a glance in the rear view mirror shows only a distant car behaving quite sensibly.

What is that flashing? It’s not anything inside the car. The guy behind isn’t flashing his lights or bounci… holy shit, where did he come from?

Right in front of me, a car has appeared out of a side road and is doing about 30km/h. I’m doing 120, and there’s another car coming the other way.

Drop anchor, hold on and pray.

It takes me another couple of km to calm down. Then I work out that the flashing light is the trees passing in front of the nearly-full moon.

This driving is going to kill me.

–

* Lacking sterling cash, this was bought with a ten-euro note that they gave me last year’s exchange rate for. Mutter.

** No, I didn’t fill up in Enniskillen – petrol is still much cheaper south of the border.

Raindrops falling from the black sky into the light. Passing traffic throwing puddles up into spray. Flags pulled out hard by the brisk wind, shaking their stiff poles. The little red car by the door of the hotel, awaiting its master.

He returns! Quick, play dead!

The starter motor sighs weakly, unable to turn. Dials light briefly, then fade. A death rattle emerges from the heart of the machine.

But, but, I didn’t leave the lights on. What the hell?

The Man attempts escape at his usual velocity. Denied. Clutching his jacket around him as the wind gnaws on his bones. Copper teeth spark against steel. Keep her lit.

Keep her lit.

–

Morning light smothered by endless grey. The city calls to its people. Cars, buses, bicycles (the fools!) ply the wet streets, their morning dance rehearsed beyond conscious recall. Only interruptions in the routine stand out from the endless flow of days.

Particularly the expensive ones. Like taxis.

–

From the shed comes the grey ammonite. Awoken, sated, electrified. Out into the fresh darkness it rides between the master’s feet, to bring home the fallen.

Raindrops. Light. Traffic. Flags. The little red car by the door of the hotel, awaiting its master.

It starts first time.

And it came to pass that Andrew was alone at home, with little to do. And yea, the Plasmafish did offer his company for the evening, as it was the Oyster Festival and the Plasmafish’s cousin was competing in the oyster-opening championships. Verily, did the cousin triumph in his trials* and much merriment was had in drinking the black stuff and eating oysters.

OK, then. AN oyster. We now know from experience that the black stuff is traditionally drunk with oysters to wash away their taste.

After what seemed like an inordinately short period of time, the cousin left with select family members and so Andrew and the Plasmafish were once again at a loose end.

- Let’s go somewhere else for another pint.

Right you are.

Pub crawling in Galway is embarrassingly easy. If you started at Eyre Square and had a pint in every pub on the way to the bridge, I doubt many would be able to stagger beyond Cross Street. But we made straight for one local emporium of renown and pushed our way to the back bar.

- My turn. Two pints of the black stuff please.

+ Tuuuu pints, oyyyy.

Thanks! Er, so, what part of the North are you from?

(At this point, the temperature in the bar drops at least fifteen degrees, and both bartenders turn to glare at the idiot who’s just opened his stupid gob.)

+ WE’RE from the Southern part of the North.

Oh, really? Hehe. You mean Monaghan? … er, Dundalk?

+ Donegal.

Hehe. Er, yes of course.

- Want to sit over there?

Oh hell, yes.

In my two years in Galway, the laid-back-horizontal capital of Ireland, that was the first time I had ever been self-conscious about being a Northerner – even the Plasmafish commented on the palpable chill. From my (admittedly limited) experimental data, I can now confidently report that if you are in Galway and hear a Northern accent, there is a 90% chance they’re from Donegal, and a 25% chance they have a sense of humour about it.

The rest of the evening we spent enjoying the Princess’s new band, chatting up Finnish girls, stealing borrowing pint glasses, eating kebabs, smashing pint glasses, bleeding and talking a lot of shop. But you don’t want to hear about all that.

Bro and the Karate Kid arrive in Dublin Airport in 36 hours precisely.**

* He will be representing Ireland in the finals on Saturday, which I shall miss. Go on, ye boy ye.
** Go to Portadown. Go directly to Portadown. Do not pass Galway. Do not collect
200 euros.

It is often said that the main difference between DC and Marvel is that DC characters live in the fictional world of Gotham and Metropolis, while Marvel characters live in the real world. This was always an exaggeration — Washington DC has appeared in DC Comics (Lex Luthor for President!), and Marvel has plenty of preposterous locations (Genosha? The Savage Land?!?!). In truth, both have their glossy, escapist fare (Superman, Fantastic Four) and their gritty, tortured antiheroes (Batman, Hulk).

In this decade we have had a surplus of Marvel movies, which have generally been very watchable (can we pretend the Fantastic Four never happened?), some quirky independent stuff (Hellboy), and DC were left in the starting blocks. The X-Men and Spiderman in particular have been satisfying franchises, but both suffered from the dreaded sequelitis. In the X-Men case, I put the blame squarely on DC’s poaching of Bryan Singer to direct their dramatic-tension-free Superman fluff (ooo, Superman lifts something… ooo, he lifts something bigger… ooo, he lifts something enormous… aw, he’s sick… ah, he’s better… what, was that it?), which just goes to show that even a good director can’t make a silk purse out of a steaming turd. It seemed that Marvel’s star was in the wane, and DC’s only decent outing (Batman Begins) was a once-off.

Then came two pieces of wonderful news: Robert Downey Junior was cast as Tony Stark (inspired!), and Christopher Nolan was making a Batman sequel. Maybe the superhero movie wasn’t dead after all. Except neither Iron Man nor Batman are, strictly speaking, superheroes. One is a billionaire playboy with no superpowers who dresses up in a high-tech suit that lets him fly around fighting criminals, and the other… er…

Batman Begins was most enjoyable. After Joel “I made a good movie, once” Schumacher successfully morphed Burton’s Batman franchise into a remake of the 60’s TV series minus the anarchic comedy (“You’re not taking me to the coolaah” … oh my sides) it seemed the Caped Crusader was once more a figure of fun. A return to darker, brooding, dramatic form was the only way out, and Nolan gave us just that. This was the first screen Batman that asked the obvious question: how insane does a man have to be to run around at night dressed as a bat fighting crime? But the slightly preposterous climax (all the water pipes and train lines pass through the one building?) strained disbelief slightly, and the city’s blatantly Gothic/Deco ambience made it clear that this was still DC’s fictional dreamworld.

The Dark Knight is a bucket of ice water to the face.

The city of Gotham is no longer cheesily virtual; every building and every street is convincingly real. There is no mansion (it burned down in the last movie), so Batman makes do with a shipping container and a large basement. It’s still a Hollywood action movie; the car chase sequences in particular being as far over the top as you would expect; but the subtext takes it far beyond the usual popcorn fare. Even supposedly “gritty” superhero movies (X-Men being a prime example) have a relatively simple morality at their core. In The Dark Knight, Nolan asks much more unsettling questions. How do you deal with an enemy who has no rational desires? Can you fight terrorism without doing their work for them? Is everyone corruptible? Who will do the lesser-evil things that must still be done? The parallels with modern events are uncomfortably visible.

The Joker is a force of nature, an embodiment of chaos. Like the evil genius in Seven, his only desire is to corrupt and destroy, to prove to the world that evil lies within everyone. The movie isn’t particularly graphic; many of the most violent events are implicit, to even greater effect. It is, however, established early on (and often thereafter) that this script follows no formula, that there are no lines that it won’t cross, that it is less rollercoaster ride and more skydiving with no parachute.

Excellent.

Act 2, Scene 1. The busy dining room of a tourist hotel in Mallorca. The furnishings are wooden, practical and dated. ABG and GF are searching for a table, carrying their buffet dinner. ABG spots activity around the chiller.

ABG: Look, they have free wine with the meals. How continental.

He grabs a bottle of El Cheapo from the chiller and they sit at an unoccupied table. A middle-aged WAITRESS appears.

WAITRESS: Bonjour. Flobbleobbleobbleobbleob?

ABG: Er…

WAITRESS: English?

GF: English, yes.

The WAITRESS deftly pockets the bottle of wine and waves a reproving finger at ABG.

WAITRESS: Not for you.

The WAITRESS leaves. ABG’s jaw drops open.

ABG: But I’m not English…!

GF: She was just asking did we speak English. Don’t get upset.

ABG: I’m not so sure about that.

The WAITRESS returns with a wine list and gives it to ABG.

ABG: This wine is ten times the price it is in Carrefour up the road. Water, please.

The WAITRESS leaves. ABG glowers and mutters under his breath.

ABG: Racist bastards.

GF: Sigh.

Act 2, Scene 2. The same, two days later. ABG and GF have just sat down with their buffet dinner. The same WAITRESS appears. She does not appear to recognise them.

WAITRESS: Bonjour.

ABG: Bonjour.

WAITRESS: Voulez-vous flobbleobbleobbleob de boire?

ABG: De l’eau, s’il vous plait.

The WAITRESS is visibly shocked.

WAITRESS: Pas du vin…!?

ABG: Ah, oui. Une bouteille de rosé, s’il vous plait.

The WAITRESS leaves.

GF: What are you doing? I have no money with me.

ABG: Ssh.

GF: You don’t have any money either…

ABG: Ssh.

The WAITRESS returns with a bottle of El Cheapo and proceeds to uncork it.

ABG: Merci.

WAITRESS: De rien. Bon appetit!

The WAITRESS leaves. GF’s jaw drops open.

ABG: Du vin?

Act 2, Scene 3. A room in the same hotel, shortly afterwards.

GF: I can’t believe you just did that.

ABG: Bwahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa!

It has been almost exactly four months since I moved out of the PDRP, but there is still one piece of unfinished business that just will not die.

The phone bill.

Every month I get a helpful little email telling me that my new phone bill is available online. I have phoned up about it on several occasions, and each time my outstanding balance has been cleared. But next month, the whole thing starts again.

I’m now really thankful that I cancelled the direct debit at the bank.

Yet another announcement that the excellent but budget-deprived classic TV show will be remade, but this time with Sky One on board. Do it properly, guys – Battlestar Galactica has set the bar really high.

Blake’s 7 set to wobble its way back to television screens – Times Online

I looked out of the window in work earlier and saw my trusty Accident sitting alongside a car from Poland and one from Austria. Elsewhere in the car park there are vehicles from Germany and Spain, and there have on occasion been French and Czech examples hiding amongst the locals.

Mine is the only car without the blue-flag-and-country-code tag.*

The UK is the only EU country which doesn’t provide tagged numberplates by default. You can ask for them specially, but they are rare in NI. This is probably because nationalists don’t want a numberplate saying they aren’t Irish, and unionists hate the way it says “GB” instead of “UK”, which implies that NI isn’t British.** Oh, and they hate the EU too. Even non-EU countries are getting in on the act, with Isle of Man cars sporting a fetching equivalent in red.

Less forgivable, and potentially dangerous, is the UK’s bloody-minded resistance to metrication. Since the removal of imperial speed-limit signs in the Republic a couple of years ago, the UK is the last bastion of non-metric units in Europe, and second-last in the world (the other being the USA). Confusion on crossing the Irish border will doubtless soon (if it hasn’t already) be a significant factor in some fatal road accident.

Just bloody Get It Over With, dammit.

* Unless you count the BMW with the BMW badge where the stars should be.
** It makes my blood boil not for political reasons, but because the people who made the decision obviously didn’t know what they were talking about. I choose to believe in stupidity over conspiracy – the latter requires too much competence.

Rehearsals are hotting up for the latest musical*, and terror is striking the hearts of those who understand what’s going on. Today I finally discovered what my face looked like on the first day of dance rehearsals when I arrived late and saw them rehearsing the tap routine.

There are people in this show who own their own tap shoes. They tend to be the same individuals who wear the bizarre-but-cool high-arched dancing trainers. They were also the ones who picked up the tap moves instantly on the first day, while us normal beings stood at the back of the room and shat ourselves. At this point we’d only skimmed over one other routine (half a routine in my case) and I was already in a really bad mood. I walked out and seriously considered quitting the show.

Several rehearsals later, I am getting to grips with pretty much every other routine but that one. Even after being shown through it veeery slowly several times, it’s just an impossible blur. You might as well throw me out of a tree and tell me to fly. Fifteen years after the fact, it feels just like I’m back in PE class at school, and the impotent, homicidal rage it spawns is undimmed***. “What planet are these people from!?!?” I exclaimed to the Artist, who was still reeling from my slightly-too-convincing homicidal rage impression.

But today’s real victim was the one guy who had unluckily managed to miss just those few rehearsals where the tap fiasco had previously been exhibited. A combination of ashen face, dropped jaw and barely concealed outrage appear to be the symptoms. I just had to give the poor guy a hug.

Not quite sure he appreciated it, mind.

* The Hot Mikado, Galway Town Hall, 13th – 19th April. It’s really good!
** We had only three weeks to learn the dance routines last year, which was insane.
*** You know those seemingly harmless youngsters who secretly plot to massacre their classmates with an automatic rifle? I know how they feel.