drinkingwithflies

I’d been lying unmoving in an Emergency Department bed for over five hours with a tangle of electrodes and IV tubes snaking out from my hospital robe. I'd had numerous blood draws, CT scans and heaps of other tests. The number of people coming and going into my room was going to cause the door to fall off its hinges. My visitors introduced themselves, asked medical questions, and left, and it didn't take long for me to figure out they were the members of my Gastroenterology team. They had identified what was wrong with me, and I learned they were operating tomorrow morning. On returning from pointing Percy at the porcelain, I suffered a bout of dizziness that reminded me of my time in Darjeeling, where I became aware of the dangers of llama spit. 

Sometimes time will slip away from you, and a series of medical setbacks in the last few months distracted me from my drinkingwithflies blog. I thought my latest journey to the Emergency Department would give me some quiet time to contemplate a blog posting but all it did, was cause me to think about Instanbul in the seventies and travelling along the Hippie Trail from the Iran border to Herat. And that was before I made it into a room in the Emergency Department and became transformed into a Frankenstein monster.

Mum inspected my socks, undies, shirts and anything else I wore for the slightest indication of a hole. I gave her every opportunity to be able to perform a daily inspection of my clothes because I’d drop whatever I was wearing when I was changing into my pyjamas onto the bedroom floor. It became part of her Tuesday night darning collection pile. After the dishes were washed in the sink and dried, mum sat at the kitchen table with the darning pile and her darning-sewing box. Her darning-sewing box was a MacRobertson's Old Gold Chocolate Box. Mum was a darning and knitting wizard. She knitted all my jumpers, cardigans, gloves, and anything I wore that was wool. Then came the fateful time when she knitted my school uniform jumper. I was a youthful adolescent entering the third form at an all-boys technical school. The jumper was a different stitch than the school jumpers bought at the shops and I became the subject of ridicule and mockery.

I’m at sixes and sevens with what to do with myself in the mornings. At first, when my morning recurring hospital visits were over, I was excited about having the morning time to myself to do nothing. As the mornings without the predictable hospital visits wore on, I was tiring myself out so much by doing nothing that I started taking mid-morning naps. Being at home with nothing to do has caused me to think that overdoing nothing might become boring and that maybe I should take up a hobby. But what hobby should I take up? I’m out of practice with hobbies. I put together plastic models and collected stamps as a youngster. Making plastic models showcased my ineptitude at painting bits and pieces of tiny plastic and staying inside the lines when painting sizeable bits of plastic. And stamp collecting only caused waves of youthful frustration. I’m having as much trouble choosing a new hobby as I do when choosing between a chiko roll and steamed dim sims.

I sometimes wonder why tourists, when they prepare their must-do list, include a city's and a country's most popular attractions when those sights are struggling with over-tourism. When I’ve stopped over in Sydney, I’ve found it's easier to take care of the must-do iconic attractions from the plane window rather than tootling around the city for a few days. On my last visit to Sydney, I spent a few days wandering around Barangaroo, enjoying fish and chips at Watsons Bay, gazing in awe at the wood escalator sculpture at Wynard Railway Station, and eating roast vegetables at the David Jones Food Hall. Inspired by the spirit of adventure, I decided to go on a 2-hour Saturday night dusk Haunted History Tour of Cockatoo Island. Cockatoo Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Sydney Harbour and is a short ferry ride from the CBD. The island is a source of intrigue and inspiration because of its convict history and heritage buildings. As the Sydney settlement grew from a colony into a city, its convict prison built became an industrial school and reformatory for girls, and later a prison barracks. Over the years, the islands sandstone foreshores were blasted with gunpowder to construct a dry dock for shipbuilding and repair and then a naval shipyard. A perfect setting for a Haunted History Tour. It seemed as if the noisy island glamping campers wandering about exploring their overnight island and the One Electric Day festival spooked the ghosts because our tour group didn't have any paranormal experiences.

The first car outside our house was a Vanguard, followed by an Austin, and then came a succession of the latest model Holdens. And thus, started our Saturday afternoon drives. We lived in a working-class Western suburb of Melbourne, so our Saturday drives were through affluent Toorak, South Yarra, Kew, and Camberwell, and sometimes to the Dandenongs and the cities of Frankston and Geelong. Dad never stopped the car on our afternoon drives, and I learnt to appreciate that a weekend drive is about the journey and its moment in time, not the destination. And just as we meandered through the city and suburbs on our Saturday drives, I did the same, years later, on a pushbike. I didn’t choose the bike over a car because I had a love affair with the pushbike. I was once again a penniless full-time university student. My Melbourne city and suburban bike ridings were before the age of the urban cyclist. There were no bike lanes or painted bikeways defined by plastic delineators to separate you from traffic and parked cars; you only became a skilful city cyclist through trial and error. As a young boy, I learned the perils of falling off a bike; and I learnt early in my city cycling to never ride on the tram tracks.

Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve loved fruitcake. Mum made a fruitcake every Sunday baking day, and I’d take a slice wrapped in greaseproof paper every day for my school lunch. I sometimes swapped my fruitcake with other boys for a coffee scroll or cream bun, but I never swapped with the migrant boys. Nanna’s traditional Christmas plum pudding was a big round moist fruit cake and was always the dessert at our family Christmas dinners. Nanna always cooked her pudding with threepences and sixpences, and we enjoyed eating the pudding as much as finding the hidden coins. And then I found out nanna would stuff coins into my brother's slice of plum pudding. I’m glad I learnt about the coins in my brother's pudding later in life. I could push it to the back of my mind and continue to remember parts of Christmas when I was growing up.

It wasn't that I doubted if dad and granddad would be able to throw together a camping trailer; it was that I didn't think they understood the existential aesthetics of a Masonite teardrop camper. Some would have doubted their carpentry skills. Granddad was a tinsmith by trade, but he had a collection of woodworking tools in his backyard shed, and dad was a smooth-talking suave salesman who was everybody's best friend and would give anything a try. They built the camper on a small trailer dad bought. I think they made the design up as they went, and it ended up as a small camper with a tiny door able to accommodate two people in sleeping bags. And so our camping holidays became camping and caravanning escapades and kindled my need to discover the inspiration and idealism of the Masonite teardrop camper that I sometimes slept in on family holidays towed by a FB Holden station wagon.

The fascia of our charming Tudor style house was water damaged, dried out and cracking. It was my first exposure to fascia board rot. Rainwater had also made its way under the cottages, asbestos asphalt roof shingles, and sections of the roof sheathing were areas of damp decaying moulding wood. The asbestos, cement roof shingle, replacement conundrum became a choice between slate or corrugated tin, the Australian iconic building material that’s now part of the countries cultural identity. A corrugated tin roof is the quintessential signature of an Aussie house. I've fond memories of playing on the corrugated tin roof of the house I grew up in. As a teenager, I'd sit alone on the roof and think about what would shape and determine my fate and make me the person I was yet to become; Dashers Milk Bar, The Powerhouse, and the ships berthed at Station and Princes Pier.

I was still apprehensive about my upcoming prostate biopsy even though having been told that it was standard practice to numb the area during the procedure. The day before it was to happen, I received a call from the hospital telling me the apparatus had just broken down and they were waiting for new probes to be delivered. Ever since the procedure was scheduled, I hadn’t given it a second thought how the samples of suspicious tissue were being harvested, and so the mention of probes sent my brain into overdrive. The procedure reminded me of the Luna Park Rotor and watching people puke after eating coloured fairy floss. I wondered if the probe and needle gun moving through my bunghole reminded the urologist of a boat ride through the River Caves.

For the last ten months, I have, on average, a couple of hospital visits a week, and they all involve needles, so you’d think I wouldn’t have a problem with being jabbed with a needle. A few weeks ago, when I was reclining in an infusion chair, I came to the conclusion I have a needle phobia and started to think about how I could stare the needle that was piercing my skin down and win. Using my experience in Instructional Design, I created a Cone of Needle Phobia. After I work through the various levels of my cone, Ill be looking forward to future infusions, MRI’s, PET scans, blood draws, and any surgeries that require anaesthesia.

My next project is to create a Cone of Latex Glove Examination Phobia. Or maybe I should follow in mum’s footsteps and seek the same reward she received when donating blood at the Red Cross Blood Bank; a lovely cup of tea and a selection of Arnott’s biscuits from which to choose..

For some time now, I’ve been wondering what it would be like, to go back and live once again in a place where I used to live. And so after not living in Melbourne, Australia, for thirty-plus years, I had this great idea to stay in Albert Park for a few weeks when I was booking a return Qantas ticket to the Land Down Under. Albert Park is a gentrified inner suburb of Melbourne, nestled between Albert Park Lake and one of the Port Phillip Bay beaches. Wide streets, charming heritage buildings, leafy parks and gardens, and the Village shopping area with its collection of open-air cafes are what makes Albert Park so charming. Thirty-plus years ago, before gentrification and upper-class affluence became the norm for Albert Park, I rented a flat in a two-storey Art Deco building a stone's throw from the Village.

Would living in Albert Park again be the same as it was thirty plus years ago?

I am struggling to understand the push back some persons have about being vaccinated. Like most Australians growing up in the fifties, mum made sure to have me inoculated against diphtheria, tetanus, polio, and other vaccine-preventable diseases.  I remember seeing photos of the young children suffering from the outbreak of a major polio epidemic in Australia in the late fifties. I launched myself into the Aussie right of passage in the mid-seventies and travelled the hippie trail from London to India. I carried a passport, Barclay's travellers' chequers, a fake international student card, an international drivers licence, and a yellow card. You learn to never worry about vaccinations when you get vaccine updates in a hospital in Greece and a small room in Instanbul. 

I've now come to think of my general practitioner as the flagmen or caretaker for my health. At every six month visit, he reminds me at the end of every visit with a countdown to my colonoscopy: it looks like five years until a colonoscopy John, well John 4 ½ years until your colonoscopy, four years to go until the colonoscopy, and so on. The day arrived, and at the start of my prep, I vowed to have the cleanest colon the gastroenterologist has ever seen, one that he couldn’t stop talking about in the break room for the rest of his working life. I didn’t wake up during this colonoscopy. The only memory I have of the procedure is smiling at someone I thought was the Gorton’s seafood fisherman wearing a clear face protective safety shield and arm protection nitrile gloves.

Bangkok in the mid-seventies was a city growing into a metropolis. You could still wander the streets and discover floating villages, shrines and spirit houses, street markets, food stalls and small restaurants. The Patpong district was the same area when it was a popular R and R destination during the Vietnam war: crammed with cheap restaurants, go-go bars, nightclubs with adult entertainment, and low-priced hotels.

Chiang Mia was yet to be discovered by world tourists and was a charming northern retreat to escape Bangkok and use a starting point for hiking trails into the mountains and village of the Golden Triangle. Small villages surrounded Thailand’s idyllic eastern beaches, and fisherman launched their boats from the white sands. A tuk-tuk or a local pick-up truck ride along a two dirt tire track took you to these deserted beaches. Imagine sleeping in a wooden hut on a small tree-lined bluff for several days.

Day in and day out, mum’s weeks were a repeat. Sunday was always cake baking and roast lamb dinner day, Monday washday, Tuesday cleaning and vacuuming day, Wednesday soaking the delicates and catch up on the washing, Thursday do part of the shopping day, and Friday was shopping day.

She had a method to her clothes washing even when a washing machine and metal troughs replaced her copper and cement troughs. The boiler attendants at the power station seemed to know the exact time on Monday mum would hang the washing out the clothes on the Hills in the back yard because that’s when the chimneys reigned black soot on everything. Every Sunday was sift, blend, mix, beat, stir, whip, and bake, and mum would produce a delicious array of lamingtons and butterflies, and vanilla slices and matchsticks; the epitome of Australian cakes.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never wanted to look at dead bodies. But after spending some time in Calcutta in the mid-seventies stepping over dead people on the footpaths and watching bodies burning on the cremation ghats in Varanasi, I started stealing furtive glances at the dead bodies during the funeral services for friends and family members. After receiving an invitation to my first costume Halloween party, I decided to dress as a Varanasi cremation ghat instead of a cowboy or magician.