My Mother used to say that I was so awkward that sometimes my left arm didn’t know what my right arm was doing. She might be right, but for the last few weeks my right arm has been asking what my left arm has been doing all these years. Ever since I had my unplanned meeting with the bitumen on St Kilda Road, my right arm has decided to work to rule. He doesn’t mind lifting the odd cup of tea or tapping out a few keystrokes like this. But you only realise what your dominant arm does when it refuses to do anything in the bathroom involving effusions or teeth brushing.
This is where my left arm comes in. Or doesn’t as the case may be. I realise now that lefty has been taking it easy all these years. Happy to carry the odd suitcase or shopping bag, but only if righty is busy. Happy to do his share of scratching duties and to provide a target for my right hand during applause.
But he’s basically a free loader whose purpose in life seems merely to give me some symmetry.
Righty has done all the important things. Won all those arm wrestling contests that I’ve been secretly taking part in all my life (unbeaten in the last 20), flipped the remote control at home or the calculator at work to the immense annoyance of anyone I’ve ever lived with or shared office space with. And of course he’s the one who reaches out to shake hands with his corresponding appendage on anyone I meet. I’m not wearing a cast and give up on the sling after a week or so after discovering that it was pretty useless and wasn’t even enough to get somebody to offer me a seat on the tram.
As a result, it’s not clear to people I meet that righty is only operating at about 20% strength and in particular doesn’t like been turned clockwise. So when I meet people they tend to offer their right hand in salute and like a fool I tend to offer mine. It’s not doing a lot from my reputation that they first experience people have of me is a weak handshake and a grimace.
I’ve noticed that everyone offers the right hand when shaking; even people who are left handed in every other respect. It makes me realise that this might be the last injustice in the western world and I’ve played my part in perpetrating it. We’ve sorted out women’s equality and racism and yet the right hand is allowed to take a leading role in life while the left has to hide in the shadows, spending a lot of his life buried in a pocket while the right gets on with all the fun stuff.
For example, when I was a young fellow, trawling the discos of Dundalk in search of Northern Irish girls desperate to escape the troubles for a night and willing as a result to put up with my thick tongued mumbling, it was my right hand that partied. The dancing style of the day was minimalist. We’d sway gently to new romantic electro twaddle masquerading as music, with our left hand planted firmly in the front pocket of our skin tight cords, while our right arm moved from side to side with all the grace of a farmer herding cows towards the milking sheds. Righty got to lift all the beer we drank for Dutch courage and if I was lucky, got to hold the hand of some soft skinned daughter of Ulster as we queued for our coats.
Looking back I noticed right hand dominance in India. They have embraced a lot of things from the west like motor cars, mobile phones and the Internet. But they seem to have turned their back on knives and forks. The Chinese have an excuse for this, being able to do things with chopsticks that I would struggle to achieve with an entire kitchen of instruments. But the Indians still use their hands to eat, a practice that would be fine if their cuisine didn’t involve so much sauce and yogurt. When I dined with Indians I noticed that they only use their right hand when eating, which is impressive when cutting Nan bread for example. When I asked them why they didn’t let their left hand join in the fun, they looked at each other nervously before explaining that old leftie is used for another purpose which is not hygienically matched with eating.
It seems that toilet paper is the other western invention yet to be embraced in the sub continent.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be living in a left dominated world, while the right goes through an intensive training process. I’ve never broken a bone before so I don’t have much experience with the healing process. The fact that I feel no pain is a blessing but doesn’t help with getting the arm back in order. I often forget there is a problem for example and find myself in embarrassing situations, particularly ones that involve leverage like getting off a sofa or out of a bath.
I certainly won’t be taking righty for granted any more. Once he’s up and running again, I’m going to take him off the strenuous arm wrestling circuit and get him a nice massage every couple of weeks. It’s time I started spoiling my appendages. They are the only ones I’ve got.
Many people have asked me if my accident has made me re evaluate life. I’m not sure if it’s that profound. I certainly care more about my body now and I’ve lost that feeling of invulnerability which used to shadow me. We are brittle and when you bend us we break. Which reminds me of something else my Mother used to say: “Look after your body and your body will look after you”. I’d salute that, if only my arm was up to it.
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Tuesday 20 April 2010
This Week's TV Guide
In April 1916, my grandfathers started walking to Dublin from opposite ends of Ireland. Their goal was to take part in the rising that had erupted in Ireland’s Capital over Easter weekend, when a rag bag bunch of Irishmen took on the mighty British Empire. Neither of them made it to Dublin as it happens and never met each other either.
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
Monday 5 April 2010
The Great Crash of 2010
March 31st 2010 is a day I’ll remember forever, if only because I was asked to state that date about 100 times by several concerned health service staff. Ironically I’d been to see David O’Doherty the night before and he mentioned that we probably have only ten important events in our lives and the rest of the time is pretty boring. What I wouldn’t give for a little tedium now.
I left home at 8am and for the first time ever I forgot my keys. That suggested something was up. Twenty minutes later I was cycling to work when one of those ten important events happened.
I don't remember much about the crash. I was tearing down St Kilda Road as fast as an over weight cyclist like me can go when I think another cyclist braked suddenly in front of me. I went over my handlebars in what I assume was a triple summersault with tuck, last seen in the 10 meter diving competition at the Beijing Olympics.
Next thing I remember I was on a gurney in the trauma centre of the Alfred Hospital being fussed over by a lot of pretty women in uniform. They wheeled me in for a CT scan which was pretty scary. Head injuries were their main concern while not being whisked to a spaceship was mine as being slid into one of those things is like being transported in a claustrophobic time machine.
I was taken back to the trauma area so a doctor could stick a few stitches in my forehead while telling me she was the only member of her family that can't sew a hem in a skirt (which didn't fill me with confidence) and she checked my blurred vision with an eye chart application on her Iphone. God bless Steve Jobs and his philanthropic work, I thought. The only problem is that Iphones have a power saving devise which causes them to go blank after a few seconds of non-use. When this happened 30 seconds into my eye test, I let out a shriek, assuming I’d gone blind. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box at this point, I should stress.
When it was all done and dusted and my cycling gear had been cut off me in the best traditions of ER, they broke the news to me that I had fractured my right eye socket, just in the place where my glasses had smashed into my face (so I'm blaming my Buddy Holly specs for that one) and broken the arterial bone in my right elbow. I think that's the funny bone, so this blog would have been twice as witty if it was still intact, but more worryingly, that's my drinking arm and also the one I use for scratching, so I'm going to be sober and itchy for the next six weeks.
What they didn't tell me and left me to discover for myself was that I had met the road face first and as a result I look like a side of uncured bacon. My mister universe application will have to be put on hold.
They kept me in overnight for observation. They seemed mainly concerned about the eye socket and how vision was poor in my right eye. I pointed out that this was due to my short sightedness and it would have been fine if my glasses hadn't been smashed earlier, but you can't tell these health care professionals anything.
As a result, I have to go back on Tuesday morning to have a titanium plate put into my eye socket (which will make airport security interesting in the future).
The arm is bothering me more to be honest. I get spasms when I move it which are as a painful as childbirth (at least my own birth which is the only one I'm familiar with) but they've given me pain killers that would knock out a horse. Having said that, they would have shot a horse if he was in my condition but only after they had stopped laughing at the sight of a horse on a bike.
My wounds are being dressed three times a day by my loving partner and I'm catching up on loads of DVDs. The only problem is that my only working glasses were smashed in the crash and I can't wear lenses as my eye looks like a blood orange. So I'm condemned to wearing prescription sunglasses. Now I know how Bono feels, permanently living in a sepia world.
Despite all of the above, I actually count myself lucky. St Kilda Road is busy on a Wednesday morning and I fell just inches from the menacing wheels of several large automobiles. Also head butting the road is not a sensible activity and could have led to serious noggin problems. Clearly my mother was correct when she said that my brain was in my backside.
I was also lucky with my timing as Emergency rooms are at their quietest at that time of the week. I got excellent care, with specialists queuing up to prod me as the day went on. The morphine also helped it must be said and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that all the fussing and hi-tech equipment didn’t bring out the little boy in me.
They kept asking me where I was and what date it was to check if the old brain was working. But I won’t forget 31st March, 2010 in a hurry. It was my first time ever in an ambulance, first ever stitches, first ever broken bone, first ever night in a hospital as an adult, first ever time in a wheelchair.
I’m at home now, learning to use my left hand for things that nature never intended and licking my wounds. The good looks are slowly coming back but the confidence to get back on a bike might take longer. Next time I’m wearing a motor bike helmet and a suit of armour.
I left home at 8am and for the first time ever I forgot my keys. That suggested something was up. Twenty minutes later I was cycling to work when one of those ten important events happened.
I don't remember much about the crash. I was tearing down St Kilda Road as fast as an over weight cyclist like me can go when I think another cyclist braked suddenly in front of me. I went over my handlebars in what I assume was a triple summersault with tuck, last seen in the 10 meter diving competition at the Beijing Olympics.
Next thing I remember I was on a gurney in the trauma centre of the Alfred Hospital being fussed over by a lot of pretty women in uniform. They wheeled me in for a CT scan which was pretty scary. Head injuries were their main concern while not being whisked to a spaceship was mine as being slid into one of those things is like being transported in a claustrophobic time machine.
I was taken back to the trauma area so a doctor could stick a few stitches in my forehead while telling me she was the only member of her family that can't sew a hem in a skirt (which didn't fill me with confidence) and she checked my blurred vision with an eye chart application on her Iphone. God bless Steve Jobs and his philanthropic work, I thought. The only problem is that Iphones have a power saving devise which causes them to go blank after a few seconds of non-use. When this happened 30 seconds into my eye test, I let out a shriek, assuming I’d gone blind. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box at this point, I should stress.
When it was all done and dusted and my cycling gear had been cut off me in the best traditions of ER, they broke the news to me that I had fractured my right eye socket, just in the place where my glasses had smashed into my face (so I'm blaming my Buddy Holly specs for that one) and broken the arterial bone in my right elbow. I think that's the funny bone, so this blog would have been twice as witty if it was still intact, but more worryingly, that's my drinking arm and also the one I use for scratching, so I'm going to be sober and itchy for the next six weeks.
What they didn't tell me and left me to discover for myself was that I had met the road face first and as a result I look like a side of uncured bacon. My mister universe application will have to be put on hold.
They kept me in overnight for observation. They seemed mainly concerned about the eye socket and how vision was poor in my right eye. I pointed out that this was due to my short sightedness and it would have been fine if my glasses hadn't been smashed earlier, but you can't tell these health care professionals anything.
As a result, I have to go back on Tuesday morning to have a titanium plate put into my eye socket (which will make airport security interesting in the future).
The arm is bothering me more to be honest. I get spasms when I move it which are as a painful as childbirth (at least my own birth which is the only one I'm familiar with) but they've given me pain killers that would knock out a horse. Having said that, they would have shot a horse if he was in my condition but only after they had stopped laughing at the sight of a horse on a bike.
My wounds are being dressed three times a day by my loving partner and I'm catching up on loads of DVDs. The only problem is that my only working glasses were smashed in the crash and I can't wear lenses as my eye looks like a blood orange. So I'm condemned to wearing prescription sunglasses. Now I know how Bono feels, permanently living in a sepia world.
Despite all of the above, I actually count myself lucky. St Kilda Road is busy on a Wednesday morning and I fell just inches from the menacing wheels of several large automobiles. Also head butting the road is not a sensible activity and could have led to serious noggin problems. Clearly my mother was correct when she said that my brain was in my backside.
I was also lucky with my timing as Emergency rooms are at their quietest at that time of the week. I got excellent care, with specialists queuing up to prod me as the day went on. The morphine also helped it must be said and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that all the fussing and hi-tech equipment didn’t bring out the little boy in me.
They kept asking me where I was and what date it was to check if the old brain was working. But I won’t forget 31st March, 2010 in a hurry. It was my first time ever in an ambulance, first ever stitches, first ever broken bone, first ever night in a hospital as an adult, first ever time in a wheelchair.
I’m at home now, learning to use my left hand for things that nature never intended and licking my wounds. The good looks are slowly coming back but the confidence to get back on a bike might take longer. Next time I’m wearing a motor bike helmet and a suit of armour.
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