Feb 20 - Docs, Tweets, Black Holes & Pics

Well, here we are in Feb and Life continues to stimulate, bamboozle and entertain. It’s been a little over a month since the last letter but so much has happened. Last Tuesday for example, I spent the day in hospital. For those of you who care, let me stress, it was nothing serious just gazing at the walls mainly. I had a silly little problem with my left eye - a shadow had been there for a few days, obstructing vision. This was too specialised for my GP so he sent me to a hospital in Boston (15 miles away), as it has an eye clinic. This was to their A&E with a letter that they would use to refer me to the clinic. He should have just phoned the clinic direct. That’s what the A&E doc did.

As I was checking into A&E, answering the usual standard questions; name, d-o-b etc., there was a mum and her 12 year old daughter at the next window. By the nature of these queuing arrangements, nothing is private so I was able to overhear their interview without even having to lean over. It seems the little girl had taken some paracetamols.

“How many tablets did you take?”

“11, no…  12.”

Mum woke up - “Hang on! You told me it was 8!”

“Yes, then I took four more after that.” was the matter of fact reply.

This world has grown too sophisticated for me. I don’t understand how a child can know about overdoses or even consider trying one - let alone be so blasé about it. My childhood toggled between who might be available to kick a ball around with and what was for dinner. Anyway, as we sat in the waiting room awaiting further attention, she seemed fine, playing with her phone during which time mum popped out every now and then to take mobile phone calls. No whoop-whoop klaxons, no people running about like ants, antennae gesticulating wildly, in fact there was no great rush to deal with her so I’m guessing that 12 paracetamols is not worth a crash cart and a stomach pump.

After nearly two hours, I was called and did all the usual standard sight chart tests and was told by a very kind doc that he would call the eye clinic and get me seen that day. He added how surprised he was that my doctor didn’t know he should have done that in the first place, saving me a wasted A&E visit - and of course, their time too; a little left and right hand disconnect in the NHS.

The clinic nurses added their own sight tests and then an hour later, I saw a doc who asked the usual questions again. I suppose this is necessary so as not to make a mistake about who you are or what medication you may be taking. So I described my meds which I expected her to recognise as bog-standard blood pressure and diabetes treatments.

Have you ever see Grey’s Anatomy and other hospital dramas where as they are elbow deep in a patient’s chest or head, and yet having a casual chat about their own lives? I get frustrated by this as I think they should be paying more attention, especially if they’re fiddling with your heart or your brain, however, I dismiss it as a scriptwriter’s device and unrepresentative of real life. How mistaken I was. This is how they work.

With my face held in a frame so that she could peer into each eye to establish the cause of my problem, the ongoing conversation with her nurse showed that the consultant was more interested in the fate of a mutual friend who had just been dismissed. My eye seemed secondary.

She diagnosed a burst blood vessel behind the eye and she then proceeded to give me dire warnings about blood pressure and diabetes. I reminded her that the meds I had listed earlier should have told her I already had diabetes - “Oh, yes.” We closed that sessions with me being sent off for a scan of the back of the eye to ensure no complications arising from the burst blood vessel.

Scan complete, another hour later the consultant assured me of no deeper problems and that I should get my blood pressure checked by my surgery and a blood test conducted as that might signify diabetes. I saw no point in mentioning for a third time that this had been diagnosed eight years ago and we’d talked about it twice already. It must just have been a busy day.

Do you watch Horizon? I record their programmes and watch them in small bites. Their content is complex and yet explained in lay terms and simple English by professors of this and that. However, as the minutiae is a steady stream of complex concepts, I have to stop the recording and wind back (several times) to keep on top of the idea being touted and the general thread. Black holes for instance, are apparently not the demons that was once portrayed. There is just the one in each galaxy and it is in the middle. So the chance of being swallowed by a Black Hole is minimal, though, to be fair, no one knows what one is or what happens when you enter it. A big surprise was that they make nearby stars orbit them like planets orbit stars. And there was me thinking stars didn’t move. Ah well, live and learn.

Other Horizon programmes have included human intelligence, what leads to one’s personality, weight control, diet, longevity, hacking and fracking. While everything is explained in simple terms, today’s available knowledge is mind-boggling. I never realised how much science is going on in the world - quietly, without fanfare. Thank Heavens for remote controls, pause and rewind.

One thing that scientists seem to accept without much argument is that there is no such thing as a ‘fact’, largely because as science is always moving forward, what is a fact today is disproved, challenged, revised, mutated or extended tomorrow.

Science does this all the time. In my lifetime, as a child - fat was good for you, then as an adult - bad for you, then good again, in moderation. Eggs, with all their cholesterol - same thing. Then - protein is good for you - but too much protein is bad for you. Salt and sugar, same thing, touted as bad by the Broad Brush Brigade - but animals in the wild seek out salt licks as they need salt to stay alive - and sugar occurs naturally in most foods. Before Galileo and Copernicus, the Sun went around the Earth. All the scientists said so, admittedly in many cases, because when it started to look like this was not the case, the Catholic Church insisted via threats that they persist with the geocentric fiction as it suited their politics. So, at present, the fact is - facts are transient.

Add to this the Rashomon effect - which is from a film of that name. In the film, based on a story In The Grove, a bandit kills a samurai and rapes his wife. This is witnessed by a woodcutter. In court, all four characters give their account of events, the samurai’s story being told via a medium, yet all tell different stories. Literature has now embraced this as a recognised format where you can tell a story from the point of view of multiple characters, all saying what they believe is true and factual - and yet contradicting each other. So much for facts.

Today is March 10^th and I heard a laugh-out-loud funny exchange on the radio this afternoon. It was about the tweet by 20 year-old Gemma Worrall that is trending. She tweeted “If Barraco Barner is our president, why is he getting involved with Russia? Scary.” There were two women debating this unfortunate tweet on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 programme. One was a teacher defending the girl and young people in general. The other was a business leader who was not at all impressed with today’s educational standards.

On the one hand, it is admirable that a 20 year-old beautician has any awareness at all of World Affairs. On the other, it is a worry that (i) she thinks Obama is our president, (ii) she doesn’t know how to spell his name, and (iii) she can’t see that this might be the start of WWIII (as predicted by Nostradamus - but that is another story). Back to the argument on the radio. The teacher defended the girl by saying that “many of our young people are not registered to vote”. I don’t see what this has to do with anything but she felt the need to stress it a couple of times. It seemed to be the main pillar of her stance and as such was a massively-irrelevant smokescreen.

The business leader came back with a number of arguments criticising the tweet and what it signifies, and, i.e. the parlous state of education in this country and how inadequate general knowledge is. The girl not knowing Barack Obama is not OUR president - then, by extension, what the political system is in this country - illustrated that. This dammed teachers and the education system for letting kids leave school unprepared for life as an adult. As I reflect I have to ask - when was it ever otherwise? How many of us knew our arse from our elbow when we left school?

The teacher got vexed about the fact that the business leader had insulted the girl several times (personally, I don’t see how this could have been avoided), and tried to anticipate her rebuttal by saying “I suppose you’re going to insult her some more.” Own goal. The business leader said “No, I’m going to insult you.” and proceeded to do just that - most eloquently. It was a delight to witness.

There is a debating trick used by some people which rests on the fact that criticising anyone is off limits. Excessive politeness has to be shown by all parties. Many accept this blindly (don’t know why). If you reject this though, the world is your oyster and you can kneecap opponents easily. Point out the flaws in an argument in simple language and by implication, show your opponent to be a dimwit. The business leader did just that, criticising the teacher and the teaching profession at large - not unfairly as the girl has a stack of GCSEs (allegedly) and yet still comes out with this gem. She also attacked the easy acceptance by society, that young people have no obligation to have any basic General Knowledge and should not be expected to take the trouble to think before they speak.

The teacher lost hands down as the business leader was more eloquent and confident enough to state harsh truths calmly, without emotive language, in a public forum. She added that there is little real knowledge today as the unseemly dependence on Google has made what passes as knowledge - shallow and transitory. Until today, it has never occurred to me that our young voters might not know the political system in this country or who the major world leaders are. I didn’t get the vote till 21 but I’m pretty sure that at 20 I knew the difference between Harold Wilson and Richard Nixon. If they have the vote at 18, is it really asking too much to expect adults to know how the electoral system works in this country?

The poor girl, apart from announcing very publicly her grasp of world affairs, world leaders and spelling, is now getting cyber-bullied, thereby announcing her lack of understanding of the purpose of Twitter. The only point to Twitter that I can see is, to provide a vehicle for anonymous death threats as soon as someone opens their mouth and puts their foot in it. Long may this last.

Talking of World Wars, did you see ’37 Days’? This was about the run up to the Great War. While I knew it was started by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, I never knew why that was so key. If you missed it, I recommend a viewing via iPlayer. Apart from good acting and great scripting, it was a gripping unfolding of world-shattering history with all its nuances, that they never taught us at school. Well, maybe they did. I might have been looking out of the window.

I believe I have mentioned Spalding Photographic Society previously. It is a camera club where I go once a week to learn the technical aspects of photography from photographers whose knowledge is reflected in their photographs and competition judges or speakers with letters after their names.

These competitions are judged by experienced people from other clubs, usually with proven experience and a wealth of photographic qualifications achieved not just by sitting exams but also by getting photos published and winning competitions themselves. Our competition entries are assessed and then given marks out of 20. Judges go to some lengths to tell you why they like a photo or describe as kindly as possible, its shortcomings. I take copious notes on their comments and now have several pages on good practices, or common mistakes and what it takes to eliminate them.

As it took me a while to learn the presentation criteria for entries, I only entered my first ever competition last week. This is in the PDI format where Projected Digital Images are shown via a projector. The other format is Print. This too, has constraints, principally to do with size and the way a print is mounted. I have yet to master that side but PDIs are easy so I started there. The main reason for entering the comp was not to win it, although that would be nice - but to get an experienced judge’s comments about the good and bad technical attributes of my photos.

We all take photos of which we are proud but when you see the good stuff, it is another dimension. Little things that the professional does that we might not notice, all add to the general enjoyment of a pic. It this that I want to learn. I have just upgraded Photoshop Elements 9 to Elements 12 and am about to start learning the new features. Elements will remove spots from faces, make people thinner or fatter, change skies, change the colour of a flower, brighten or darken anything - even create objects that don’t exist but can be made to look realistic. When done with care and subtlety it can improve a photo indiscernibly. That’s what I’m aiming for. Brightening eyes & teeth, softening, sharpening, straightening buildings, painting over cracks, removing tourists who wander into a picture to add nothing but a distraction from the main point of interest and maintaining the photo’s balance. A few of my entries are below. More on this in the next letter, Judging is on the 19^th.

 

 

 

Stephen got me a book at Christmas about Grumpy Old Men. Should I read anything into this? (Boom Boom!) Does my first-born have a particular image of his dad? What did I do to warrant this? At any rate, it is a well-written book, entertaining and amusing; a by-product of the TV series that was so successful a few years back. In reading it however, it occurs to me that there is a corollary. Old men, while naturally grumpy, also have plenty for which we should be grateful and therefore should also remark on.

In examining my own life, I see a full and charmed one. The main thing it has brought is a fruit-basket of experiences, along with a love of English that allows me to recognise, analyse and assess a situation - then, after due consideration, complain about it to anyone who will listen. This is the one aspect for which I am truly grateful.