It was coming up to Christmas in 1987. Ireland was going through a recession not unlike the one it now faces. Property developers were going bust like three day old balloons and Dublin airport was filled with families welcoming home emigrant children.
I had the good fortune of having a job in a recession proof industry at the time. We were nominally an accounting practice but at the time, we made most of our money from liquidations and receiverships. As a card carrying Socialist, I had the occasional squirm of conscience in carrying out this task but most failed ventures were pubs and hotels run by dodgy businessmen who deserved little sympathy.
But sometimes we’d come across a deal that pulled at the heartstrings. Property developers do not normally fall into this category. These days they have a reputation up there with war criminals and pedophiles at the moment but unfortunately they don’t live in splendid isolation. When they go down, like a king at the top of a deck of cards, they bring down lots of ordinary people with them.
The guy we were dealing with was building a school for the Government (probably the only building work going on the time) and had employed a number of sub contractors who worked for a year on the project and were promised payment upon completion when the government cheque would come in.
It was a façade based on the never/never. He ran up an overdraft with the bank and ignored the advice of his accountants that it was all going to end in disaster. And so it did. When the cheque came in from the Government, it was barely enough to pay off the bank and accountants. And so, the poor old subbies who had worked for a year with no pay were left with nothing.
Lots of them turned up at our office, anxious for news on whether they would get any payment. We didn’t have the heart to tell them that Capitalism looks after it’s own and in a dog eat dog world, it’s no fun being a poodle.
It didn’t take us long to see that a massive fraud had taken place. The bank could see the writing on the wall and was ready to pull the plug and force the company into liquidation. The company’s auditors convened a hurried meeting between the bank and the development companies Managing Director. They stupidly left a copy of the minutes of that meeting on the file they handed over to us and we didn’t need to be Wikileaks to spot its importance.
The deal they struck allowed the company to continue until the government payment came in. On that day, the developer wrote and cashed two cheques. One for his outstanding salary from the business and the other for the company’s accountancy fee. What was left wasn’t enough to cover the overdraft at the bank but it brought it down to a level they could live with. The following day, the company went into voluntary liquidation and the taxman and the sub contractors were left with nothing but sour memories.
I called into my boss’s office with the news of this crime and I felt pretty chuffed with myself. I worked in a sleepy provincial town and it wasn’t often that you caught the countries biggest bank and the town’s largest auditors in a massive fraud. He saw it differently of course. Business was business back then and he wasn’t about to sue the people who gave us most of our insolvency work. I tried to argue but he convinced me that the sub contractors wouldn’t be helped anyway and I gave in.
Two days later I was working late when a knock came to the front door. I answered it and two guys in leather jackets asked for my boss. He was the official liquidator and his name was on all the letters we had sent to creditors. They claimed to represent one of them, a carpenter that was owed about 11 grand, a year’s income in those days. I explained that the boss wasn’t in but they didn’t seem to believe me. It was at that point that one them pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun sticking out of his belt. Suddenly I felt like I was trapped in a gangster movie and that Buggsy Malone was going to appear and rescue me.
I’d like to say I did something heroic, but all I could muster was a croaky response that I would do my best to get word to my boss. I eventually tracked him down and two days later the managing director of the development company met the carpenter and handed over an envelope containing approximately 11 grand. I was left pretty disillusioned by the whole affair, particularly as I’d sat in several meetings where the developer had sworn to my face that he had lost everything in the collapse.
I guess I learned never to trust developers after that which might explain why I never got caught up in the property frenzy that defined Celtic Tiger Ireland. It also shows that Irish Banks didn’t just learn dodgy practices in the naughties. They have always been more interested in protecting their own interests with scant regard for the little people or the law.
The other party to come out that affair smelling badly was the accountants. As one myself, I’m pained to admit that they were major conspirators in the black economy that poisoned the 1980’s and they also haven’t covered themselves in glory in Ireland’s recent troubles. Think of all those bankrupt banks that received clean audit reports or insolvent builders that were allowed to trade for longer than they should because some accountant had said they were in the black.
If you’re looking for culprits in the wreckage of the Irish economy, then look no further than the Accountants, Banks and builders. I just hope that there are no guns involved these days.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Thursday, 9 December 2010
How many Economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
Back in the dark days of 1981, I was about to enter my last year of secondary school. It was a time of big decisions. How would I spend my 50p pocket money that week? Should I ask my mate Dave to pass a note to a girl he knew that I fancied? And what should I drop from my final exam list. In our school, you studied eight subjects until the beginning of your final year. Then you had to drop one before the final push for glory.
In my case, it was a choice between History and Economics, or a toss up between the future and the past, as it was explained to me at the time. After some thought,(well as much as I could squeeze in between thinking about girls and football) I decided to drop Economics. I was much more comfortable with the ghosts of the past, than I was with the uncertainty of the future. My previous year in class had thought me that if you put two Economists in a room, you’d end up with three opinions.
It was custom to stand outside class on the first day of final year to break the news to whichever teacher you were spurning. Most of them took it well as you were normally dropping a subject that you hated and were crap at. And the teacher generally held similar opinions about you. I was in a more delicate position. Economics was actually my best subject. I scored top marks in class the previous summer and our teacher; Mr. Dunne treated me like I was John Maynard Keynes.
There were eight of us waiting that day and apart from my good self, the other seven had been told to be there to discuss their future with Mr. Dunne. Some would be told to drop Economics altogether while the rest were been shipped down to the lower level class where the only requirement for entry was that you knew which end of the pencil to use for writing.
Most of them took it well but one poor soul made a last desperate attempt to cling on. “Mr. Dunne, I think I am well placed to excel in Economics, I have a fundamental understanding of the concepts and I think my summer exams demonstrate this”, he said in a staccato voice which suggested that he was repeating a prepared speech his Father had drummed into him the night before.
“You got 14% in your summer exams”, Mr. Dunne said drily. The poor soul looked indignant and his face reddened. “I got 15% sir”, he blurted.
I wanted to point out that there was a 7% difference in their assessments, which was within the margin of error of most economic forecasts. But I sensibly judged that neither of them were in the mood for humor.
Finally I was alone with Mr. Dunne and got to deliver my break up speech. I started with a “It’s not you, it’s me” approach and moved into a more “Can we still be friends” tactic when this wasn’t working. Mr. Dunne was pretty upset and told me I throwing away the chance of a top grade in my final exams. I was prepared for this however and explained that I had confidence that I could obtain the same grade in History. At this point, he asked me to wait where I was while he summoned my History teacher from the staff room. I watched the two of them march towards me and felt happy that my favorite teacher was coming to defend me. Alas, he had surrender in mind.
“Why are you dropping Economics”? He asked. “Mr. Dunne here tells me that you’ll get an A in your Leaving exam.”
“I think I’ll get an A in History too”, I confidently replied.
“No, you won’t, you’ll get a C”, he told me.
I was shocked at the betrayal, but dug my heels in. A year later I opened up my exam results and found that my History teacher was right. I was disappointed and asked myself “if only”. If only he’d been as good at teaching as he was at predictions.
Twenty nines later however I am regretting that I didn’t stick with Mr. Dunne. Who would have guessed that economists would suddenly become sexy? It’s hard to turn on the TV these days or open a newspaper and not see some pointed head guru tell you that the world is going to hell in a handcart. The Irish media is certainly full of that and the website irisheconomy.ie is probably more subscribed these days than pornography. Economists are lining up to say “I told you so” when most of them championed the Celtic Tiger and told the Irish people there would be a soft landing. In hindsight I think they meant that Ireland was going to land in the shit but they didn’t explain it that way.
I notice that five of the top ten bestsellers in Ireland now are written about or by economists. Who would have thought that if I’d just stuck with it, I could have fulfilled my dream and become a published author. I suspect I would have been greedy however and tried to corner more than just the dry economic market. I would have told the story of the death of the Irish Tiger by having vampires attack the Central Bank (for the teenage girl market) while having the female head of the ECB fall madly in love with the evil master of the IMF and have them engage in wild sex in a back room of government buildings while the Minister for Finance filled in the country’s bankruptcy papers upstairs. I can see Hollywood buying up the rights as I type, with Jennifer Aniston and Russell Crowe in the lead parts.
Perhaps I could find a role for Mr. Dunne. Although I dropped economics that year, he thought me enough to see that the bubble was bursting and it was time to get the hell out. For that I am very grateful.
In my case, it was a choice between History and Economics, or a toss up between the future and the past, as it was explained to me at the time. After some thought,(well as much as I could squeeze in between thinking about girls and football) I decided to drop Economics. I was much more comfortable with the ghosts of the past, than I was with the uncertainty of the future. My previous year in class had thought me that if you put two Economists in a room, you’d end up with three opinions.
It was custom to stand outside class on the first day of final year to break the news to whichever teacher you were spurning. Most of them took it well as you were normally dropping a subject that you hated and were crap at. And the teacher generally held similar opinions about you. I was in a more delicate position. Economics was actually my best subject. I scored top marks in class the previous summer and our teacher; Mr. Dunne treated me like I was John Maynard Keynes.
There were eight of us waiting that day and apart from my good self, the other seven had been told to be there to discuss their future with Mr. Dunne. Some would be told to drop Economics altogether while the rest were been shipped down to the lower level class where the only requirement for entry was that you knew which end of the pencil to use for writing.
Most of them took it well but one poor soul made a last desperate attempt to cling on. “Mr. Dunne, I think I am well placed to excel in Economics, I have a fundamental understanding of the concepts and I think my summer exams demonstrate this”, he said in a staccato voice which suggested that he was repeating a prepared speech his Father had drummed into him the night before.
“You got 14% in your summer exams”, Mr. Dunne said drily. The poor soul looked indignant and his face reddened. “I got 15% sir”, he blurted.
I wanted to point out that there was a 7% difference in their assessments, which was within the margin of error of most economic forecasts. But I sensibly judged that neither of them were in the mood for humor.
Finally I was alone with Mr. Dunne and got to deliver my break up speech. I started with a “It’s not you, it’s me” approach and moved into a more “Can we still be friends” tactic when this wasn’t working. Mr. Dunne was pretty upset and told me I throwing away the chance of a top grade in my final exams. I was prepared for this however and explained that I had confidence that I could obtain the same grade in History. At this point, he asked me to wait where I was while he summoned my History teacher from the staff room. I watched the two of them march towards me and felt happy that my favorite teacher was coming to defend me. Alas, he had surrender in mind.
“Why are you dropping Economics”? He asked. “Mr. Dunne here tells me that you’ll get an A in your Leaving exam.”
“I think I’ll get an A in History too”, I confidently replied.
“No, you won’t, you’ll get a C”, he told me.
I was shocked at the betrayal, but dug my heels in. A year later I opened up my exam results and found that my History teacher was right. I was disappointed and asked myself “if only”. If only he’d been as good at teaching as he was at predictions.
Twenty nines later however I am regretting that I didn’t stick with Mr. Dunne. Who would have guessed that economists would suddenly become sexy? It’s hard to turn on the TV these days or open a newspaper and not see some pointed head guru tell you that the world is going to hell in a handcart. The Irish media is certainly full of that and the website irisheconomy.ie is probably more subscribed these days than pornography. Economists are lining up to say “I told you so” when most of them championed the Celtic Tiger and told the Irish people there would be a soft landing. In hindsight I think they meant that Ireland was going to land in the shit but they didn’t explain it that way.
I notice that five of the top ten bestsellers in Ireland now are written about or by economists. Who would have thought that if I’d just stuck with it, I could have fulfilled my dream and become a published author. I suspect I would have been greedy however and tried to corner more than just the dry economic market. I would have told the story of the death of the Irish Tiger by having vampires attack the Central Bank (for the teenage girl market) while having the female head of the ECB fall madly in love with the evil master of the IMF and have them engage in wild sex in a back room of government buildings while the Minister for Finance filled in the country’s bankruptcy papers upstairs. I can see Hollywood buying up the rights as I type, with Jennifer Aniston and Russell Crowe in the lead parts.
Perhaps I could find a role for Mr. Dunne. Although I dropped economics that year, he thought me enough to see that the bubble was bursting and it was time to get the hell out. For that I am very grateful.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
The papers here are full of stories about the Irish bailout and the fact that some toff in England is marrying a poor person. Although to judge by the house her parents stood in front of when they were on the news, I’d have to guess that the Brits have a different view of what poor means to the rest of the world.
Ireland is certainly poor at the moment if the media is anything to go by. But then again I also read that it’s still the third richest country in Europe. Which I guess just goes to prove that there are lies, damned lies and everything the Irish Government has said for the last three years.
At least Ireland can be proud of its diaspora (with the exception of myself and the disproportionate amount of us who end up in jail in the countries we choose to live in). I recently visited two museums hoping to find some reference to the Irish in Victoria. One thing I noticed when I arrived in this fine state is that there is no obvious Irish part of town. The Greeks, Italians, Chinese and Indian communities all have their areas, mostly built around food. Needless to say the Irish are unlikely to build up a reputation in the culinary department but it does disappoint me that the only obvious influence we have here is the amount of Irish pubs in the City.
There are lots of people with Irish names but most of them speak with Aussie accents and upon inquiry it turns out that their nearest Irish relative came here on a wooden boat where the only metal was around their ankles.
The immigration museum was my first stop. It was full of exhibits about “ten pound poms” and brave Vietnamese who spent six months in a leaky boat in the 1970s. The only reference I could find to the Irish was on a small computer screen at the back where you could click on a country and find out how many people from that place ended up in Victoria. It turns out that we mainly came here in the years after the Great Famine to escape hunger and seek fortune on the gold fields. Two hundred thousand arrived then, but we’ve only been coming in dribs and drabs since.
The other museum I visited was in a little place called Port Fairy, famous for a folk festival held every March that is dominated by Irish acts. But it turns out our only influence there was to give the town it’s original name of Belfast, which they sensibly changed after a few years when the realised they were twinned with a place best known for sectarian violence and fried bread for breakfast. Port Fairy sounds much more benign.
But those Irish people who came in the 19th Century have left a great legacy in Australia. Peter Lalor from Laois is my favourite as he is often identified with the birth of democracy here. He led the Eureka rising in 1854, when a thousand minors, most of them from Ireland, formed Victoria’s first trade union and formed a stockade against the tyranny of the government. They were smashed by the army but their deeds became famous and are thought to be the reason why Australians have a healthy disregard for authority and a strong believe in giving everyone a fair go.
They had their own flag, which can be seen on every unionised building site in Melbourne and amongst football supporters when they want to demonstrate a communal feel.
I reckon my homeland could do with a touch of that communal feel at the moment. As an Irishman abroad I’m wavering between embarrassment and relief at the moment. Embarrassment as anyone who hears my accent is quick to point out that my country is a laughing stock. Asking for a bailout is bad enough but when you’ve spent the previous ten years displaying your wealth to the world like a premiership football star, the world tends to take pleasure in laughing at your hubris.
But I lost this embarrassment when a Greek person asked me how Ireland got to this position. People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones and it demonstrated to me that the whole world is in a pickle and Ireland is merely the latest cab off the rank.
Relief is my more common emotion because I can now take on the hubris previously shown by my countrymen (I picked it up for a bargain at a recent liquidation sale). I got out just in time in seems and can smugly say; “I told you so”. Except I don’t say this because I’m too sad for all the friends and family I didn’t bring with me.
Before I left, there was a General Election and I tried to convince as many people as possible not to vote for the government. I failed in that respect and that government has now destroyed the country my grandfathers fought to set up. Their latest act of folly is to seek a bailout from the IMF at an interest rate that Tony Soprano would be embarrassed to impose on a late paying drug addict. When I was a young fellow, the IMF went into countries like Argentina and various places in Africa. Ireland is now part of that of that sad club. Although I have to say it’s rich of the IMF to come into a country and lecture them on fiscal restraint when the IMF are part of the global capitalist structure that caused all the problems in the first place.
But there is a risk of course that we’ll do what Irish people have done for centuries and blame everyone else for our woes. It wasn’t the IMF, or the Germans or the Brits who made us buy holiday villas in Romania on 100% credit. It’s tough times ahead for Ireland and I just hope a new leadership emerges. We could do worse than have the ghost of Peter Lalor emerge and return to the land of his birth.
Ireland is certainly poor at the moment if the media is anything to go by. But then again I also read that it’s still the third richest country in Europe. Which I guess just goes to prove that there are lies, damned lies and everything the Irish Government has said for the last three years.
At least Ireland can be proud of its diaspora (with the exception of myself and the disproportionate amount of us who end up in jail in the countries we choose to live in). I recently visited two museums hoping to find some reference to the Irish in Victoria. One thing I noticed when I arrived in this fine state is that there is no obvious Irish part of town. The Greeks, Italians, Chinese and Indian communities all have their areas, mostly built around food. Needless to say the Irish are unlikely to build up a reputation in the culinary department but it does disappoint me that the only obvious influence we have here is the amount of Irish pubs in the City.
There are lots of people with Irish names but most of them speak with Aussie accents and upon inquiry it turns out that their nearest Irish relative came here on a wooden boat where the only metal was around their ankles.
The immigration museum was my first stop. It was full of exhibits about “ten pound poms” and brave Vietnamese who spent six months in a leaky boat in the 1970s. The only reference I could find to the Irish was on a small computer screen at the back where you could click on a country and find out how many people from that place ended up in Victoria. It turns out that we mainly came here in the years after the Great Famine to escape hunger and seek fortune on the gold fields. Two hundred thousand arrived then, but we’ve only been coming in dribs and drabs since.
The other museum I visited was in a little place called Port Fairy, famous for a folk festival held every March that is dominated by Irish acts. But it turns out our only influence there was to give the town it’s original name of Belfast, which they sensibly changed after a few years when the realised they were twinned with a place best known for sectarian violence and fried bread for breakfast. Port Fairy sounds much more benign.
But those Irish people who came in the 19th Century have left a great legacy in Australia. Peter Lalor from Laois is my favourite as he is often identified with the birth of democracy here. He led the Eureka rising in 1854, when a thousand minors, most of them from Ireland, formed Victoria’s first trade union and formed a stockade against the tyranny of the government. They were smashed by the army but their deeds became famous and are thought to be the reason why Australians have a healthy disregard for authority and a strong believe in giving everyone a fair go.
They had their own flag, which can be seen on every unionised building site in Melbourne and amongst football supporters when they want to demonstrate a communal feel.
I reckon my homeland could do with a touch of that communal feel at the moment. As an Irishman abroad I’m wavering between embarrassment and relief at the moment. Embarrassment as anyone who hears my accent is quick to point out that my country is a laughing stock. Asking for a bailout is bad enough but when you’ve spent the previous ten years displaying your wealth to the world like a premiership football star, the world tends to take pleasure in laughing at your hubris.
But I lost this embarrassment when a Greek person asked me how Ireland got to this position. People who live in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones and it demonstrated to me that the whole world is in a pickle and Ireland is merely the latest cab off the rank.
Relief is my more common emotion because I can now take on the hubris previously shown by my countrymen (I picked it up for a bargain at a recent liquidation sale). I got out just in time in seems and can smugly say; “I told you so”. Except I don’t say this because I’m too sad for all the friends and family I didn’t bring with me.
Before I left, there was a General Election and I tried to convince as many people as possible not to vote for the government. I failed in that respect and that government has now destroyed the country my grandfathers fought to set up. Their latest act of folly is to seek a bailout from the IMF at an interest rate that Tony Soprano would be embarrassed to impose on a late paying drug addict. When I was a young fellow, the IMF went into countries like Argentina and various places in Africa. Ireland is now part of that of that sad club. Although I have to say it’s rich of the IMF to come into a country and lecture them on fiscal restraint when the IMF are part of the global capitalist structure that caused all the problems in the first place.
But there is a risk of course that we’ll do what Irish people have done for centuries and blame everyone else for our woes. It wasn’t the IMF, or the Germans or the Brits who made us buy holiday villas in Romania on 100% credit. It’s tough times ahead for Ireland and I just hope a new leadership emerges. We could do worse than have the ghost of Peter Lalor emerge and return to the land of his birth.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
American Pie
It’s 9pm in Zio’s, a small Italian restaurant in Sydney that specialises in selling tiny portions to tourists who will never come back. The staff are getting a bit frazzled because Tony the boss wants the clientele turned over every 45 minutes. So when you’ve just put your fork down after eating the seven pieces of Tortellini that they call a ‘main’ meal they shove a menu for desert under your still hungry nose.
I don’t normally eat afters but the main course didn’t fill me and I start to understand their business model.
As I’m pondering over the tiramisu or gelati a bunch of Americans come in. You can tell they are yanks because of their size. Europeans tend to have one fat friend in every group (I used to rent myself out for this purpose). But Americans are the opposite. They are a bunch of fat people who hang around with one skinny guy that they abuse for having an eating disorder.
They spent an age studying the menu while the waiter hovered over them. Ginny ordered first. “I’ll have the side salad with no olives and no dressing”. Now I don’t like olives myself but I’ve never found the need to refuse them. They are fairly easy to spot after all and I usually push them to the side and then offer them to one of my dining companions who doesn’t mind something with the taste of rubber and the texture of an old boot.
But Americans can’t look at a menu without changing it. Louis was Ginny’s companion. He wanted the Veal Cutlet with no breadcrumbs, presumably working under the assumption that the chef had a live calf out the back and could kill and prepare it any way you chose.
The waiter tried to explain that most of the food was prepared earlier and when you order it, they basically just heat it up. He might as well have said that he fiddles with small boys by the look the Americans gave him.
I assume they think everything is cooked fresh which is ironic considering they come from a country that invented spray on cheese and food that tastes like it was cooked in the 1970’s.
But it’s easy to poke fun at Americans. They offer a big target after all. Some of them are smart it must be said. My bosses, bosses boss (basically a lot of levels above me) was in Melbourne this week and she came across as a smart lady. She understood there are 14 hours difference between here and New York in Winter and 16 hours difference for the rest of the year. Seems logical to me that clocks change one way in the Northern hemisphere and they change the other way in the Southern. But it seems to confuse most Americans who think it’s normal that I should get up at 4am for a conference call.
I’m sitting here typing this on an Apple Macbook that was invented in America (although probably built in a cave somewhere in China) while listening to music on Youtube, a website also set up by clever people in California. And if you want to see more smart Americans then go and watch “The Social Network”. It’s full of nerdy yanks doing complicated things with maths and computers that leads them to set up Facebook.
I saw it last week in the company of three hundred Gen Y kids. A group of them sat in front of me and as the opening credits rolled they took out their smart phones in unison and logged onto Facebook so that they could poke their friends (I believe that’s the technical term) with the witty message that they were watching a movie about Facebook while surfing the website. It was all very 2010 and made me feel suddenly old.
The social networking phenomenon has passed me by. Although that hasn’t stopped Linkedin sending me messages every day telling me that the world and his brother want to connect with me. I may not know much about these sites, but it’s clear to me that Linkedin is the next big thing. Myspace is now an abandoned theme park and Bebo has gone back to being the name of a Spanish clown and not a means for 12 year olds to post dodgy pictures of their teachers.
Facebook might have thought it had a clear run of that space on the web reserved for people without the social skills to talk to real live humans, but Linkedin is coming up on the rails. I received an invitation to join three years ago and invites to connect to others used to come in every six months or so. But this week, I’ve received three. So I’m going to make some predictions. Jesse Eisenberg will win next years Oscar for best male actor and Linkedin will overtake Facebook in membership. It’s aimed at desk bound professionals after all and they spend more time on the internet each day than even the Gen Y people.
Back at the restaurant, Ginny pulled out her Blackberry, the communication toy of the sort of people who prefer Linkedin to Facebook. “I’m just going to email Steve in the Santa Monica office. He told me this place was excellent and they can’t even do a Decaf Double Shot Soy Latte. I’m not going to listen to him again”.
“Isn’t it like 10 o’clock in Santa Monica or something?”, Louis said. “Is that 10 o’clock in the morning or the evening?” replied Ginny. A strange calm descended upon the table which made me realise that the best way to shut Americans up is to ask them a timezone question.
The moral of the story is that you can’t reduce a country that has produced both Woody Allen and George Bush to a simple cultural stereotype. And anyway, we’re all part of a dynamic global community now. One in which Ginny had just unfriended Steve, her erstwhile restaurant suggester.
I don’t normally eat afters but the main course didn’t fill me and I start to understand their business model.
As I’m pondering over the tiramisu or gelati a bunch of Americans come in. You can tell they are yanks because of their size. Europeans tend to have one fat friend in every group (I used to rent myself out for this purpose). But Americans are the opposite. They are a bunch of fat people who hang around with one skinny guy that they abuse for having an eating disorder.
They spent an age studying the menu while the waiter hovered over them. Ginny ordered first. “I’ll have the side salad with no olives and no dressing”. Now I don’t like olives myself but I’ve never found the need to refuse them. They are fairly easy to spot after all and I usually push them to the side and then offer them to one of my dining companions who doesn’t mind something with the taste of rubber and the texture of an old boot.
But Americans can’t look at a menu without changing it. Louis was Ginny’s companion. He wanted the Veal Cutlet with no breadcrumbs, presumably working under the assumption that the chef had a live calf out the back and could kill and prepare it any way you chose.
The waiter tried to explain that most of the food was prepared earlier and when you order it, they basically just heat it up. He might as well have said that he fiddles with small boys by the look the Americans gave him.
I assume they think everything is cooked fresh which is ironic considering they come from a country that invented spray on cheese and food that tastes like it was cooked in the 1970’s.
But it’s easy to poke fun at Americans. They offer a big target after all. Some of them are smart it must be said. My bosses, bosses boss (basically a lot of levels above me) was in Melbourne this week and she came across as a smart lady. She understood there are 14 hours difference between here and New York in Winter and 16 hours difference for the rest of the year. Seems logical to me that clocks change one way in the Northern hemisphere and they change the other way in the Southern. But it seems to confuse most Americans who think it’s normal that I should get up at 4am for a conference call.
I’m sitting here typing this on an Apple Macbook that was invented in America (although probably built in a cave somewhere in China) while listening to music on Youtube, a website also set up by clever people in California. And if you want to see more smart Americans then go and watch “The Social Network”. It’s full of nerdy yanks doing complicated things with maths and computers that leads them to set up Facebook.
I saw it last week in the company of three hundred Gen Y kids. A group of them sat in front of me and as the opening credits rolled they took out their smart phones in unison and logged onto Facebook so that they could poke their friends (I believe that’s the technical term) with the witty message that they were watching a movie about Facebook while surfing the website. It was all very 2010 and made me feel suddenly old.
The social networking phenomenon has passed me by. Although that hasn’t stopped Linkedin sending me messages every day telling me that the world and his brother want to connect with me. I may not know much about these sites, but it’s clear to me that Linkedin is the next big thing. Myspace is now an abandoned theme park and Bebo has gone back to being the name of a Spanish clown and not a means for 12 year olds to post dodgy pictures of their teachers.
Facebook might have thought it had a clear run of that space on the web reserved for people without the social skills to talk to real live humans, but Linkedin is coming up on the rails. I received an invitation to join three years ago and invites to connect to others used to come in every six months or so. But this week, I’ve received three. So I’m going to make some predictions. Jesse Eisenberg will win next years Oscar for best male actor and Linkedin will overtake Facebook in membership. It’s aimed at desk bound professionals after all and they spend more time on the internet each day than even the Gen Y people.
Back at the restaurant, Ginny pulled out her Blackberry, the communication toy of the sort of people who prefer Linkedin to Facebook. “I’m just going to email Steve in the Santa Monica office. He told me this place was excellent and they can’t even do a Decaf Double Shot Soy Latte. I’m not going to listen to him again”.
“Isn’t it like 10 o’clock in Santa Monica or something?”, Louis said. “Is that 10 o’clock in the morning or the evening?” replied Ginny. A strange calm descended upon the table which made me realise that the best way to shut Americans up is to ask them a timezone question.
The moral of the story is that you can’t reduce a country that has produced both Woody Allen and George Bush to a simple cultural stereotype. And anyway, we’re all part of a dynamic global community now. One in which Ginny had just unfriended Steve, her erstwhile restaurant suggester.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Annus Horribulis
I went back to work last week and a lot of people said to me, “it’s been a tough year, hasn’t it?”
I have to admit it has, but people don’t know the half of it. I mean Collingwood won the flag, didn’t they? But I’m looking on the bright side. I’m still here, I’ve been given the all clear by the cancer doctors (although once you’re in that system you never get out of it). And as my sister said, there are only seven weeks of the year left and if I don’t step in front of any buses between now and then I should be okay.
I guess most people lose a parent or two at some point in their life and have the occasional accident which might necessitate a visit to the local hospital. And one in three people get cancer. But I think it’s fair to say that I’m pretty unlucky to experience all this in the same year. Annus Horribulis was a term invented by the English Queen when she found out one of her sons was gay, one was an incurable womaniser and the other was talking to plants while his wife was sleeping with everyone in Britain with a double barrelled name.
I’m sure it was tough on her but I think I’ve trumped her.
The year started off badly. I swam in a river on Australia Day (January 26th) and picked up giardia which took me six weeks to shake. Mainly, I admit, because it took me that long to visit a doctor. I spent two weeks of that time in India which might sound like a double whammy, but actually that’s the best place to be if you have the shits because nobody turns a blind eye in India if you jump up and rush to the toilet and come back sweating.
Unfortunately, I spent the following week in Singapore, a country so proud of it’s cleanliness that I wonder if they use toilets at all.
I got over that in time to smack my face off St Kilda Road on the last day of March. I spent a couple of nights in hospital then which introduced me to the delights of the Australian medical system. Little did I know that by year end I’d be an expert on how to adjust the angle on hospital beds, how to operate the remote control for the TV (which is more complicated than key hole surgery) and crucially, how to negotiate an early release, because hospital is prison without the fun of football games in the yard.
I just about got over that when my mother decided to help me earn some air miles by traveling twice to Ireland in the space of three weeks. She earned a few herself, mind you, on her trip to Heaven.
I was getting over the jet lag from the trips to Ireland when my wisdom tooth decided to give out. Probably because I’d subjected it to twenty or so airplane meals over the previous three weeks, including some tasty mints that help your ears while landing while simultaneously setting about your teeth like a jack hammer.
I had it taken out by a nice lady dentist who was slightly horrified when I told her that I wanted to take the tooth home. I think dentists want to keep them and sell them to ivory poachers or something. She seemed very possessive anyway. Getting it taken out was fine but a few days later the place it came from got infected. Nature abhors a vacuum and it filled mine with food that I was too lazy to get rid of. I turned into a baby with the pain and had to plead with a young dentist in Singapore to sort it out. Her solution was to give me a bottle of pink liquid and a syringe and to encourage me to do it myself. Strangely enough it worked, which means that if my annus horriblus continues and I contract diabetes before year end, I will be well practiced in the art of self injecting.
Sport is often a positive distraction in times of misery, but this year it has followed my run of bad luck. Back home my beloved home county were robbed of their first title in fifty years by the worst piece of refereeing since England were awarded that goal in the 1966 World Cup. I follow AFL football over here and given that sport usually involves liking one team and hating another one with all your passion, I chose Collingwood for the latter. And needless to say in the year of misfortune they broke a twenty year duck and won the Grand Final.
But I guess that the plus side of getting cancer and surviving it is that you get a new perspective on life. For a start I’ve realised how many friends I have and how lucky I am to have a supportive and loving partner. Plus I’ve received cards, emails and presents from so many people I am truly humbled.
I think it’s time to stop and smell the flowers which is opportune because spring came to Melbourne this week and our street alone is awash with roses and colours that would give Willy Wonka a fit. I enjoyed the racing carnival last week and made my first visit to the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation. I’m not a big horse fan I admit. I couldn’t eat a whole one, although having said that I’ve actually eaten more of them than I’ve ridden.
I visited an Oncologist last week (a word I couldn’t spell never mind understand four weeks ago). He told me things are looking good but once the Big C has visited he likes to come back. So I’m booked in for a session of chemo next Wednesday which won’t be fun but will put me back on same level as the landbubbers (those of you who haven’t surfed on the Big C). And then it’s only 43 days until year end. Boy will I celebrate New Year’s Eve - my second life begins on January 1st!
I have to admit it has, but people don’t know the half of it. I mean Collingwood won the flag, didn’t they? But I’m looking on the bright side. I’m still here, I’ve been given the all clear by the cancer doctors (although once you’re in that system you never get out of it). And as my sister said, there are only seven weeks of the year left and if I don’t step in front of any buses between now and then I should be okay.
I guess most people lose a parent or two at some point in their life and have the occasional accident which might necessitate a visit to the local hospital. And one in three people get cancer. But I think it’s fair to say that I’m pretty unlucky to experience all this in the same year. Annus Horribulis was a term invented by the English Queen when she found out one of her sons was gay, one was an incurable womaniser and the other was talking to plants while his wife was sleeping with everyone in Britain with a double barrelled name.
I’m sure it was tough on her but I think I’ve trumped her.
The year started off badly. I swam in a river on Australia Day (January 26th) and picked up giardia which took me six weeks to shake. Mainly, I admit, because it took me that long to visit a doctor. I spent two weeks of that time in India which might sound like a double whammy, but actually that’s the best place to be if you have the shits because nobody turns a blind eye in India if you jump up and rush to the toilet and come back sweating.
Unfortunately, I spent the following week in Singapore, a country so proud of it’s cleanliness that I wonder if they use toilets at all.
I got over that in time to smack my face off St Kilda Road on the last day of March. I spent a couple of nights in hospital then which introduced me to the delights of the Australian medical system. Little did I know that by year end I’d be an expert on how to adjust the angle on hospital beds, how to operate the remote control for the TV (which is more complicated than key hole surgery) and crucially, how to negotiate an early release, because hospital is prison without the fun of football games in the yard.
I just about got over that when my mother decided to help me earn some air miles by traveling twice to Ireland in the space of three weeks. She earned a few herself, mind you, on her trip to Heaven.
I was getting over the jet lag from the trips to Ireland when my wisdom tooth decided to give out. Probably because I’d subjected it to twenty or so airplane meals over the previous three weeks, including some tasty mints that help your ears while landing while simultaneously setting about your teeth like a jack hammer.
I had it taken out by a nice lady dentist who was slightly horrified when I told her that I wanted to take the tooth home. I think dentists want to keep them and sell them to ivory poachers or something. She seemed very possessive anyway. Getting it taken out was fine but a few days later the place it came from got infected. Nature abhors a vacuum and it filled mine with food that I was too lazy to get rid of. I turned into a baby with the pain and had to plead with a young dentist in Singapore to sort it out. Her solution was to give me a bottle of pink liquid and a syringe and to encourage me to do it myself. Strangely enough it worked, which means that if my annus horriblus continues and I contract diabetes before year end, I will be well practiced in the art of self injecting.
Sport is often a positive distraction in times of misery, but this year it has followed my run of bad luck. Back home my beloved home county were robbed of their first title in fifty years by the worst piece of refereeing since England were awarded that goal in the 1966 World Cup. I follow AFL football over here and given that sport usually involves liking one team and hating another one with all your passion, I chose Collingwood for the latter. And needless to say in the year of misfortune they broke a twenty year duck and won the Grand Final.
But I guess that the plus side of getting cancer and surviving it is that you get a new perspective on life. For a start I’ve realised how many friends I have and how lucky I am to have a supportive and loving partner. Plus I’ve received cards, emails and presents from so many people I am truly humbled.
I think it’s time to stop and smell the flowers which is opportune because spring came to Melbourne this week and our street alone is awash with roses and colours that would give Willy Wonka a fit. I enjoyed the racing carnival last week and made my first visit to the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation. I’m not a big horse fan I admit. I couldn’t eat a whole one, although having said that I’ve actually eaten more of them than I’ve ridden.
I visited an Oncologist last week (a word I couldn’t spell never mind understand four weeks ago). He told me things are looking good but once the Big C has visited he likes to come back. So I’m booked in for a session of chemo next Wednesday which won’t be fun but will put me back on same level as the landbubbers (those of you who haven’t surfed on the Big C). And then it’s only 43 days until year end. Boy will I celebrate New Year’s Eve - my second life begins on January 1st!
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Cancer Ward Two
When you put down your pen at the end of your last exam you are no longer a student. When you have sex for the first time, you are no longer a virgin. And when you are diagnosed with cancer you are no longer something. And what that something is I’m not quite sure. But that’s what I’m trying to get my head around.
I got good news during the week, which I guess is relative in the current circumstances. There is no indication that the cancer has spread beyond the tumour that now sits in a jar in some suburban pathology lab.
But if there is one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it is that there is no obvious destination. Nobody is going to say to me, “Thank you very much, you’ve been a model patient. Now toddle along on your merry way. You are cured.” Once you’ve entered the cancer building, you never really leave.
There is a sequence that you need to follow when you get on this merry go round. Ultrasounds, blood tests, surgery, CAT scans and more blood tests. It’s a familiar story to those that have waited in corridors for news of relatives and friends but it’s a world that was unknown to me until three weeks ago.
I now have lots of relatives and friends anxious to hear news of me. And I can’t help feeling that it’s actually worse for them. They are helpless and impotent. They want to do something, but apart from the occasional joke to keep my spirits up, there is not much they can do.
I, on the other hand, just have to lie back and let the doctors do their thing to me. My only job is to design a strategy to win the war that my own body has declared on me.
I’ve gone through all the emotions from denial (it’s not a lump, it’s just the way I’m sitting) to despair (why me, when I was just about to embark on my dream career as a porn star) to anger (how could you do this to me body, after I bathed you once a week whether you needed it or not).
The doctors are looking after my physical recovery, although their advice could be distilled into a single message, “wear tighter underpants!” But it is my job to manage the mental recovery.
I think it was Freud who said that our biggest battle in life is with ourselves. I’m not sure, but I know that Tony Soprano said “we are our own worst enemies”. And that’s never truer than when you are touched by cancer. This isn’t a virus that I developed after being with someone I shouldn’t have or an infection I picked up after exposure to dodgy flies or insects. This is something my own body did to me, the ungrateful pup. And the response will have to come from me.
There are some upsides of course. I’ve managed to get down to the target weight that I’ve longed for these past fifteen years. I’ve also been banished to the sofa for a couple of weeks which has allowed me to catch up on all those DVDs that I’ve been hoarding. And what has this taught me? Woody Allen is no longer as funny as he once was and Pedro Almodavar is a sick Spaniard.
My home confinement has also coincided with coverage of the Commonwealth Games. I’m a sports fanatic but any competition that is weak enough to allow Jersey to win medals does not appeal to me. Australia takes the games seriously for reasons that are beyond me. The coverage is so one eyed that it makes English commentary on the World Cup sound like the enlightened prayers of Buddhist Monks.
I have to confess that I’m a poor patient. I used to dream of being able to lie on my back and watch any DVD I choose. But it truth, it becomes pretty boring after a few days and I realise now that I’m a social animal who craves conversation and the opportunity to make people laugh.
But one thing people keep saying to me is that positive thought is the most important thing at the moment. So I’m treating this like a second life. An opportunity to start again and to leave behind all the anxieties I used to have (to be honest, they all seem insignificant now anyhow) and to embrace life.
So I’ll be doing that over the coming weeks while I wait on word from the doctors on what my follow up treatment will be. I’ll be telling the people I love that I love them. I’ll be savouring the freshness of hops in a cold beer. I’ll be licking the side of the ice cream bowl and crying when I see Chilean miners emerge from seventy days trapped in the bowels of the earth. I will re embrace all those emotions I chose to bottle up these past twenty years while I worried about superficial things like careers, property prices and whether my belly looked big in my favourite t-shirt.
This is a chance to start again. To see the world in a new light and I want to embrace it with both arms. Because at least I still have two of those.
I’m still not out the woods but at least I can see the clearing ahead. I have to see the specialist on Wednesday for the results of my last blood test. No doubt there will be some treatment after that. Much of this journey is about waiting for appointments, for tests or for your body to do its thing and settle down. But I take heart from those Chilean miners. They have shown us that waiting can be worthwhile if it brings redemption and a chance for a second life.
I am buried in a dark hole at the moment but I can hear the rescue shaft being dug and I know that I will shortly breathe clean air again.
I got good news during the week, which I guess is relative in the current circumstances. There is no indication that the cancer has spread beyond the tumour that now sits in a jar in some suburban pathology lab.
But if there is one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it is that there is no obvious destination. Nobody is going to say to me, “Thank you very much, you’ve been a model patient. Now toddle along on your merry way. You are cured.” Once you’ve entered the cancer building, you never really leave.
There is a sequence that you need to follow when you get on this merry go round. Ultrasounds, blood tests, surgery, CAT scans and more blood tests. It’s a familiar story to those that have waited in corridors for news of relatives and friends but it’s a world that was unknown to me until three weeks ago.
I now have lots of relatives and friends anxious to hear news of me. And I can’t help feeling that it’s actually worse for them. They are helpless and impotent. They want to do something, but apart from the occasional joke to keep my spirits up, there is not much they can do.
I, on the other hand, just have to lie back and let the doctors do their thing to me. My only job is to design a strategy to win the war that my own body has declared on me.
I’ve gone through all the emotions from denial (it’s not a lump, it’s just the way I’m sitting) to despair (why me, when I was just about to embark on my dream career as a porn star) to anger (how could you do this to me body, after I bathed you once a week whether you needed it or not).
The doctors are looking after my physical recovery, although their advice could be distilled into a single message, “wear tighter underpants!” But it is my job to manage the mental recovery.
I think it was Freud who said that our biggest battle in life is with ourselves. I’m not sure, but I know that Tony Soprano said “we are our own worst enemies”. And that’s never truer than when you are touched by cancer. This isn’t a virus that I developed after being with someone I shouldn’t have or an infection I picked up after exposure to dodgy flies or insects. This is something my own body did to me, the ungrateful pup. And the response will have to come from me.
There are some upsides of course. I’ve managed to get down to the target weight that I’ve longed for these past fifteen years. I’ve also been banished to the sofa for a couple of weeks which has allowed me to catch up on all those DVDs that I’ve been hoarding. And what has this taught me? Woody Allen is no longer as funny as he once was and Pedro Almodavar is a sick Spaniard.
My home confinement has also coincided with coverage of the Commonwealth Games. I’m a sports fanatic but any competition that is weak enough to allow Jersey to win medals does not appeal to me. Australia takes the games seriously for reasons that are beyond me. The coverage is so one eyed that it makes English commentary on the World Cup sound like the enlightened prayers of Buddhist Monks.
I have to confess that I’m a poor patient. I used to dream of being able to lie on my back and watch any DVD I choose. But it truth, it becomes pretty boring after a few days and I realise now that I’m a social animal who craves conversation and the opportunity to make people laugh.
But one thing people keep saying to me is that positive thought is the most important thing at the moment. So I’m treating this like a second life. An opportunity to start again and to leave behind all the anxieties I used to have (to be honest, they all seem insignificant now anyhow) and to embrace life.
So I’ll be doing that over the coming weeks while I wait on word from the doctors on what my follow up treatment will be. I’ll be telling the people I love that I love them. I’ll be savouring the freshness of hops in a cold beer. I’ll be licking the side of the ice cream bowl and crying when I see Chilean miners emerge from seventy days trapped in the bowels of the earth. I will re embrace all those emotions I chose to bottle up these past twenty years while I worried about superficial things like careers, property prices and whether my belly looked big in my favourite t-shirt.
This is a chance to start again. To see the world in a new light and I want to embrace it with both arms. Because at least I still have two of those.
I’m still not out the woods but at least I can see the clearing ahead. I have to see the specialist on Wednesday for the results of my last blood test. No doubt there will be some treatment after that. Much of this journey is about waiting for appointments, for tests or for your body to do its thing and settle down. But I take heart from those Chilean miners. They have shown us that waiting can be worthwhile if it brings redemption and a chance for a second life.
I am buried in a dark hole at the moment but I can hear the rescue shaft being dug and I know that I will shortly breathe clean air again.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Sailing on the Big C
I watched the epic Grand Final on a big screen in O’Donnell Park in St Kilda, in the happy company of two thousand Saints fans. They played Collingwood in the final and St Kilda was the only place in the City safe from the nasal toned hell of Pies supporters.
The game ended in a draw which is about as rare as a Collingwood fan with a full set of teeth. As soon as the final siren went and the delirium of the crowd was reduced to anti-climatic mutterings, the Gods decided that we had frolicked in the sun for long enough.
As the crowd drifted towards the trams and the welcoming glow of St. Kilda beach hostelries, a great tempest moved in from the bay, hurling sand in its wake and changing the colour of the sky to tar.
“You have tested and tasted too much my friends”, God seemed to say. “Now its time to go home”.
It’s now Friday after the Grand Final (and the day before the replay that has gripped the City’s imagination all week) and I feel like God is passing on the same message to me. About ten days ago I found a lump in a place where men are not supposed to find lumps. I went through the whole gamut of emotions from despair to denial before finally presenting myself to a doctor. I was immediately subjected to indignities involving long needles and a stranger fondling those parts of your body that should be reserved for mothers up to the age of four and after a gap of twelve years or so, girlfriends and wives thereafter. When the doctor kept saying “oh dear, oh dear” I knew something was up.
But despite the ever increasing sense of doom that these procedures induce, there is a strange sense of calm that settles over you once you have handed over responsibility for your care to the professionals.
I’m quite happy now to sit back and be prodded, injected and cut open by a host of medical practitioners. It’s as though it is their problem now and not mine.
That was on Monday and events took on a surreal life of their own thereafter. I had stepped on to the medical rollercoaster and all I could do was hold on and wish for the best. I went for an ultrasound on Monday afternoon where a nice man chatted to me while he ran a warm nozzle over my little fellows. Then his tone changed and I knew that he spotted the fatal flaw. He didn’t want to tell me but I caught a glimpse of the screen and even to my untrained eye, a picture painted a thousand words.
The next stop on the roller coaster was the Urologist, a nice man in an opulent suite in the Freemasons Hospital. In the past, Freemasons were as popular in my Catholic family as the Klu Klux clan but believe me that feels irrelevant when you’re sailing on the stormy waters of the Big C.
He became the third person in two days to have a little fondle. It didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis. He sat me and my partner down and calmly explained that in two days time he would be cutting me open like and extracting my left testical. Then he asked if we had any questions.
Looking back I wish I could have thought of something smart to ask. Such as, “what led you into this line of work?” or “Will I get to keep it afterwards”.
But truth be told, I was a mass of confusion and could only mumble out some idiotic enquiries about whether it would hurt or not. Thankfully I had someone with me who could ask the important stuff and between us we managed to come away with a clear idea of what lies ahead.
Then I did what all right thinking Irish people would do in a situation like this. I went out and got drunk. We had a sort of wake for lefty and a promotion ceremony for righty who has agreed to take on sole responsibility in the future now that I am dispensing with the joint CEO model.
Thankfully, I’d sobered up by Thursday morning when the operation was due. I had rarely seen the inside of a hospital theatre before this year. But 2010 is swiftly becoming Annus Horribilus. I am now an expert on the Australian health system and I could probably be trusted with carrying out some simple operations myself at this stage.
The surgeon came to see before they put me to sleep and asked if I minded if a work experience student sat in during the operation. I said it was fine as long as he wasn’t holding a scalpel. It turned out to be a 16 year and I can only assume that he was given the job of holding my Willy while they shaved me. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
I woke up a couple of hours later and felt pretty sore and a little lighter. Lefty must have weighed more than I thought. For such a life changing operation, they don’t waste time. I was out of hospital by 5pm and back on the sofa where I expect to spend a lot of time over the coming days.
While I wait for the wound in my groin to heal, I’m a little bit of limbo. I have to get a CT scan done next week to see if the cancer has spread. There is a good chance it hasn’t as they say that testicular cancer is one of the better ones to get if you are looking for full recovery. Although at the moment that’s like telling me that having one leg cut off is better than two.
I’ll get some more blood tests and then revisit the nice specialist in his opulent suite in two weeks. He will tell me which fork my life will take from here on. I hope it’s not the one less taken.
The game ended in a draw which is about as rare as a Collingwood fan with a full set of teeth. As soon as the final siren went and the delirium of the crowd was reduced to anti-climatic mutterings, the Gods decided that we had frolicked in the sun for long enough.
As the crowd drifted towards the trams and the welcoming glow of St. Kilda beach hostelries, a great tempest moved in from the bay, hurling sand in its wake and changing the colour of the sky to tar.
“You have tested and tasted too much my friends”, God seemed to say. “Now its time to go home”.
It’s now Friday after the Grand Final (and the day before the replay that has gripped the City’s imagination all week) and I feel like God is passing on the same message to me. About ten days ago I found a lump in a place where men are not supposed to find lumps. I went through the whole gamut of emotions from despair to denial before finally presenting myself to a doctor. I was immediately subjected to indignities involving long needles and a stranger fondling those parts of your body that should be reserved for mothers up to the age of four and after a gap of twelve years or so, girlfriends and wives thereafter. When the doctor kept saying “oh dear, oh dear” I knew something was up.
But despite the ever increasing sense of doom that these procedures induce, there is a strange sense of calm that settles over you once you have handed over responsibility for your care to the professionals.
I’m quite happy now to sit back and be prodded, injected and cut open by a host of medical practitioners. It’s as though it is their problem now and not mine.
That was on Monday and events took on a surreal life of their own thereafter. I had stepped on to the medical rollercoaster and all I could do was hold on and wish for the best. I went for an ultrasound on Monday afternoon where a nice man chatted to me while he ran a warm nozzle over my little fellows. Then his tone changed and I knew that he spotted the fatal flaw. He didn’t want to tell me but I caught a glimpse of the screen and even to my untrained eye, a picture painted a thousand words.
The next stop on the roller coaster was the Urologist, a nice man in an opulent suite in the Freemasons Hospital. In the past, Freemasons were as popular in my Catholic family as the Klu Klux clan but believe me that feels irrelevant when you’re sailing on the stormy waters of the Big C.
He became the third person in two days to have a little fondle. It didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis. He sat me and my partner down and calmly explained that in two days time he would be cutting me open like and extracting my left testical. Then he asked if we had any questions.
Looking back I wish I could have thought of something smart to ask. Such as, “what led you into this line of work?” or “Will I get to keep it afterwards”.
But truth be told, I was a mass of confusion and could only mumble out some idiotic enquiries about whether it would hurt or not. Thankfully I had someone with me who could ask the important stuff and between us we managed to come away with a clear idea of what lies ahead.
Then I did what all right thinking Irish people would do in a situation like this. I went out and got drunk. We had a sort of wake for lefty and a promotion ceremony for righty who has agreed to take on sole responsibility in the future now that I am dispensing with the joint CEO model.
Thankfully, I’d sobered up by Thursday morning when the operation was due. I had rarely seen the inside of a hospital theatre before this year. But 2010 is swiftly becoming Annus Horribilus. I am now an expert on the Australian health system and I could probably be trusted with carrying out some simple operations myself at this stage.
The surgeon came to see before they put me to sleep and asked if I minded if a work experience student sat in during the operation. I said it was fine as long as he wasn’t holding a scalpel. It turned out to be a 16 year and I can only assume that he was given the job of holding my Willy while they shaved me. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.
I woke up a couple of hours later and felt pretty sore and a little lighter. Lefty must have weighed more than I thought. For such a life changing operation, they don’t waste time. I was out of hospital by 5pm and back on the sofa where I expect to spend a lot of time over the coming days.
While I wait for the wound in my groin to heal, I’m a little bit of limbo. I have to get a CT scan done next week to see if the cancer has spread. There is a good chance it hasn’t as they say that testicular cancer is one of the better ones to get if you are looking for full recovery. Although at the moment that’s like telling me that having one leg cut off is better than two.
I’ll get some more blood tests and then revisit the nice specialist in his opulent suite in two weeks. He will tell me which fork my life will take from here on. I hope it’s not the one less taken.
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