Amateur Brain Surgery

As forecasters predict snow for the UK are we any better prepared than we were back in February?

You may recall that earlier this year we experienced around five weeks of proper winter weather with many people prevented from getting to work, the biggest issue being the hazardous driving conditions.

But the UK always seems unprepared for bad weather. I may be over generalizing because the people who live in the North appear to be far more able to cope than us southern softies. The slightest flurry of snowfall and many schools are closed, trains are cancelled and lots people (including me) stay at home rather than go to work.

So are we any better prepared this time? I doubt it. Gritting trucks soon ran out of material back in February and with this year’s local authority cut backs I doubt if more has been spent to stock pile essential supplies of grit.

So if it does snow this week or anytime this winter, the chances are we will see the same sort of disruption throughout the South East that we saw back in February. So be prepared for more school closures, unusable roads and maybe a few unplanned days off.

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On a recent trip from Scotland I saved over 50% on Edinburgh Airport Parking by booking in advance.

If The Nurse was freed from prison, she could walk into any chemist and pick up a plethora of health testing kits. 

For a few quid she could examine her cholesterol level, blood pressure and blood sugar, test for allergies and find out whether she’d caught any number of lurid STDs.

For a few quid more she could have her DNA tested to see if she had a genetic propensity for nasties like cancer and heart disease.

At the same time she’d probably be following the trend for poking oneself in various intimate places on a regular basis to check all’s well. If she was a bloke she’d be fondling her own testicles every five minutes just in case they’d mysteriously swollen to gargantuan proportions while her attention was elsewhere. 

OK, it’s good to be aware of your body on a common sense level. But is it a good idea to obsess about it? Do we really need to poke and prod, test and re-test our bodies, treating them like unexploded bombs?

The Nurse thinks it’s all a bit intense and panicky. Surely it can’t be good for you to expect your poor body to explode the second you take your eye off the ball?

Instead of pestering it with endless enquiries and questions, she’s leaving her body in peace to get on with being healthy.

The Nurse is delighted to discover that, from a genetic perspective, she’s 50% black. 

The Nurse has a little Brother. He’s had his DNA analysed by Oxford Ancestors to find out the family’s genetic origins. 

The test establishes where your great, great, great, great (etc) granny and grandad originated. It traces your rellies back through the millennia, as far back as they can go in an unbroken line. Right back to your original maternal and paternal ancestors.

The results? The Nurse’s paternal origin lies with a clan who lived in the Middle East about 50,000 years ago. Later they migrated back to Africa where most of her genetic descendants are found today. She only shares 2% of her paternal DNA with the UK population but she has 98% in common with Western Africans.

On the maternal side her great, great, great (etc) granny belonged to a clan who lived in Portugal 17,000 years ago. Over the millennia they moved up through Spain and France to Britain and then further northwards to Norway, Finland and Arctic Russia where The Nurse’s genetic clansmen live today.

The Nurse is enjoying the irony. She has dark red hair and freckles. Her brother has bright red hair and freckles. But they are both, fundamentally, 50% black. Black ‘n’ proud.

Very cool. And a big one in the eye for Nick Griffin and co. Because The Nurse is feeling particularly provocative today she’s challenging Nick Griffin and his BNP membership to take genetic tests and establish their ancestry. As far as we know, Nick Griffin might be half black too.

Ha! The Nurse finds that most amusing. She crouches, rocking, on her hard iron bed, grinning in the half light… 

The Nurse is getting on a  bit. She’s long in the tooth. Her intimate bits are heading south fast and she automatically lets out a wheezy old lady groan whenever she sits down.

But is she finding the ageing process terrible? Not particularly. There are loads of advantages to getting older. Here are The Nurse’s top six reasons for relaxing and enjoying the ride.

1. At last, you can finally distinguish your arse from your elbow. Decades of experience mean you finally begin to understand who you are and what you want.

2. You know what you like – and what you don’t like. All those years spent experimenting and practising. Now you know exactly what you like and what you don’t like. You’ve tried and tested the lot. Now you can start enjoying yourself properly.

3. Age is a great disguise. You no longer give a flying stuff what other people think and they don’t notice you anyway. You can sail forth into senility secure in the knowledge that you can do, think, eat, wear or say almost anything you like. Most younger people will dismiss you as an old nutter, or simply fail to acknowledge that you exist. As you age, you become wonderfully invisible.  

4. You’re wise. Ok, so your bum’s gone a funny shape. Your face is roadmapped with craters. Your feet hurt and your elbows are giving you all kinds of gyp. But, in compensation, you’re as wise as an extremely wise person from a very wise place. You might not be pretty. But you sure ain’t stupid.  

5. You keep warm and dry. No more foolish youthful clothing. You’re in cagoul and waterproof trousers territory now. The agonies of high heels and following fashion belong in the past. Next stop? The thermal vest department. Yay!

6. It’s inevitable. Everyone gets older. Trying to stop, slow or deny ageing must be one of mankind’s most pointless endeavours. Why not loosen up, let it lie and spend your remaining time concentrating on achievable, realistic goals instead of trying to stay young? 

The Nurse despises foxhunting.

While she is deeply suspicious of banning things - censorship being the thin edge of a very nasty wedge - cruelty is never acceptable.

So she was interested to see, during a recent edition of the BBC’s Country File, a hunt spokesman confirm that if the Conservative Party won the next election they’d seek to reverse the foxhunting ban. 

Outraged, The Nurse emailed her local Conservative council member. Here’s what she wrote:

“Recently on Radio 4, a politician from each party joined a programme where they were asked to give straight ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers to questions, with no dissembling. I found this tremendously refreshing because politicians never answer straight questions. They go straight into spin mode, which is the single biggest reason why I am so reluctant to trust them. 

I would like you to answer a question ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on behalf of the Conservative party.

On TV’s Country File programme a fox hunter made it clear that the Conservatives would re-instate foxhunting, repealing the current law, if they were elected.  My question is: If the conservatives win the next election, will they bring back foxhunting? Please answer yes or no. 

It’s that simple. I look forward to your answer with great interest.”

The Nurse emailed her local Conservative council member on 18th November. But so far she hasn’t even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement. Never mind a response. Which doesn’t exactly fill her with confidence about the toffee nosed, poncey bastards.

Her next step? The Nurse will be writing to someone higher up the Conservative food chain and see if they’ll deign to answer. 

The more pressure the better. The Nurse is appealing for like-minded folk to ask the same question of their local Conservative Party candidate or council member. Let’s pin the wriggly buggers down and get a straight answer out of them. 

UPDATE 30 Nov: The Nurse has received a ‘no’ from both Conservatives and has filed their replies in case she needs them later!

The Nurse has been watching a lot of telly recently. And she’s been amazed by the sheer choice of products available for consumers to choose from.

She’s wondering whether there’s a connection between all this choice and climate change?

Here are two off the cuff examples. Do we really need:

• hundreds of different kinds of shampoos, conditioners and hair products?
• countless different car marques?

Viewed objectively, all this choice seems pointless. But is it also immoral, damaging to our environment?

Back in the olden days The Nurse remembers having a choice of just a few shampoo brands. After all, despite what manufacturers claim, shampoo is just shampoo. However much they fiddle with the formula, it does the same job. The ’science bit’ is all bollocks. 

The same goes for cars.

A car’s job is to get you from a to b. As such you either need a big one, a medium one or a small one. In a sensible world that’d be your choice. 

As it is, the core function of cars is the last thing manufacturers use to sell their vehicles. Instead they focus on empty, glib things like ego, taste, wealth, status, lifestyle and - whether you’re male or female - how big you want people to think your dick is. Figuratively speaking.

The Nurse wonders how far and how fast  our collective carbon footprint would drop if there was simply less choice across a whole load of core product sectors.   

The only problem is that having less stuff means fewer people are employed making stuff.  But surely we can’t carry on consuming all this rubbish like there’s no tomorrow?

The Nurse dreams of a simpler world where consumer priorities make sense in the context of the global climate issues we all face.

Boring? Probably. But she’d rather be bored on the moral high ground than have her ego stroked while the planet fries.  

The Nurse thinks it is a good idea to give Nick Griffin and his spiritually bereft BNP henchmen the oxygen of publicity at every opportunity.

Why? Because every time the man opens his nasty mouth he makes himself look even more of a wanker.  

We can’t go round banning schools of thought, theories, attitudes or political parties. That makes us just as fascist as Nick Griffin and co. If not more so. Move in that direction and we’ll be burning books before you know it… if you were outside the BBC protesting last night, stick that up your silly politically correct arse and swivel on it.   

Having heard clips of Nick Griffin’s contribution to Question Time this morning on Radio 4, The Nurse is celebrating (any excuse). As she’d expected Griffin appears to have shot himself in the foot quite spectacularly, a number of times. Wonderful stuff. Keep it up, Nick.

If we prevent the likes of the BNP from expressing themselves openly and legally they’ll only go underground. Then they’d benefit significantly from the mystery and dubious glamour than underground stuff tends to engender, especially in the rebellious, young and stupid.   

On the other hand give them enough rope, let them loose on the media and the arseholes’ll soon hang themselves all on their own. 

The BNP’s arguments don’t stand up to intelligent scrutiny. Hate and intolerance shine through like a beacon whenever they’re given the opportunity to expound their ugly theories. 

Last night Griffin exposed himself as an ignorant, cruel buffoon. When Questions Time airs, millions of people will be able to see and hear him make a complete arse of himself and his party.  Brilliant job. Well done BBC.

If The Nurse stands on a chair, she can just about catch a glimpse of sky through her prison cell window. Today it is grey and rainy outside. 

She’d bet her last quid that everyone’s moaning about it. Dissing the UK’s weather is a national pastime. But The Nurse thinks there’s a lot to be said for four higgledy piggledy seasons. Even though they rarely do what they say on the tin.

Here’s The Nurse’s top five reasons for appreciating the British weather.  

• Cardigans:  How many other nations have cardigans at their disposal 365, 24/7? In spring you can chuck on a light wool cardi to protect you against those sharp little winds that otherwise find their way between your cracks. In summer cotton cardigans trimmed with lace bedeck our town centres and beaches, many slung casually across sunburned shoulders or knotted at the waist against weather related emergencies. During the autumn we drag thick wool cardigans out of mothballs. Perfect for crisp leaf-kicking, conker-knocking walks in the countryside. And in winter we bundle ourselves in our warmest cardis whenever we venture outdoors. An Englishman’s home isn’t his castle. It’s his cardi.     
• Four fashion seasons:  Ladies… imagine how bored you’d be if you only had one set of clothes to wear all year round. Eternally stuck in strappy sandals, you’d never experience the joys of a kinky boot. 
• Saving money: Bouncing Poms are what Aussies call Brits who emigrate to avoid the UK’s weather, but miss it too much and bounce back home a couple of years later. Learn to love the British weather and you’ll potentially save a fortune boomeranging around the planet and back just to avoid a bit of drizzle.
• Great gardening: The Nurse was a keen gardener before she was caught and imprisoned. Throughout the spring, summer and autumn she’d enjoy countless different flowers and plants coming into leaf and flower then dying off. In winter she’d eagerly await the first green shoots, usually around the end of January. If we had a climate, rather than weather, we’d be stuck with the same plants all year round. You’d never experience the thrill of seeing the first snowdrop.  
• Balmy summer evenings:  You know those rare summer evenings when the air is sweet with flowers and the breeze is warm even after sundown?  When sound is muffled and softened by the heat? Everyone’s smiling. People sit outside pubs and cafes chattering, mellow and chilled. The pavements give off the day’s warmth all evening. Birds sing sleepily long after dark. Lovely. The Nurse doesn’t think she’d appreciate perfect summer evenings half as much if she had them all year round. As it is they’re completely magical.  

OK, the weather’s shite today. But - as the saying goes - there’s no such thing as bad weather. Just the wrong clothes. The Nurse recommends we apply British stiff upper leg, delve deep for our favourite autumn cardigans and head out into the rain with big, foolish smiles on our faces. In a few short months, it’ll be spring! 

It’s been a few weeks since I last posted any details of how my weight-loss plan has been going. This is because it came to a grinding halt and then went into full speed reverse with a week of liquid lunches and a weekend binge on kebabs and fast food.

Everything was going so well. I’d managed to avoid the liquid lunch crowd, instead choosing to nibble on some healthy vegetable based snacks and taking vigorous walks in a nearby park. I’d also teamed up with my old mate Chemical Dave to do help out at a few night-club DJ gigs. But it all went horribly wrong a couple of weeks ago when there were several birthdays at work.

Normally birthdays at work are celebrated with card signed by everyone in the office and maybe some cakes. But these two birthdays were a 40th and a 35th and both of those involved insisted that we all go to the pub for lunch, which we did. One of them was on a Friday so the lunch time session was followed by a post-work session that finished up in an Indian restaurant with a table full of irresistibly tasty Indian food.

This was followed, on Saturday, by a night out with Chemical Dave, DJing at a local nightclub. But this was followed by a late night visit to an all-night cafe and a huge plate full of fried food that they call the ‘gut buster’.

Inevitably, when I weighed myself the following week not only had I regained the pounds that I had lost over the previous weeks but I had managed to put on another 6 pounds of unwanted fat. Staring at the scales I plunged into a pit of despond which has previously prompted me to stuff even more fattening food into my flabby gob. But I resisted.

Chemical Dave gave me a call to tell me that he’d been telephoned by the woman he’d met at a gig some weeks previously, who he had called ‘Hypno Ho’. She had offered to give us both free Hypnosis sessions at here Harley Street clinic, but Dave had lost her number. Clearly she was quite keen on seeing Dave again, hence the telephone call. So Dave is now setting up an appointment for us both to pay her a visit and I am praying that a little hypnotism is what I need to get me back on track for the Winter.

You’d think with global warming continuing apace, a person who didn’t drive or fly would be respected. Not so. 

The Nurse applied for a loan recently, only to find that everyone thinks she’s dodgy as fuck. A criminal, money launderer, illegal alien, ID thief or worse. She has experienced all sorts of hitches, running the gauntlet of suspicious solicitors, edgy lenders and paranoid financial advisers.

Why? Although The Nurse’s credit record is absolutely immaculate, she doesn’t have a passport or a driving licence. 

It appears that having one or the other, preferably both, makes you a legitimate citizen of the UK. Without them you’re a non-person.

The Nurse doesn’t have a driving licence because she doesn’t drive. She doesn’t have a passport because she doesn’t want to travel overseas. She’s in prison and couldn’t globetrot even if she wanted to, but it is the principle of the thing. She is doing her best to be environmentally responsible and she is determined to minimise her carbon footprint. 

Sadly financial institutions and the legal profession don’t see it that way.

The Nurse’s birth certificate isn’t good enough. Because she hasn’t any photo ID, she has had to prove her identity several times during the loan application process. Witnessed documents, statements from her doctor, signed confirmations that she is who she says she is… all manner of weird and wonderful paperwork.

Finally in possession of her cash, The Nurse is nevertheless left feeling insulted. Here she is, doing her best to be green, and she’s treated like a criminal. OK, she is a criminal. She’s a mass murderer. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t a legitimate UK citizen, born and bred.

The Nurse never thought she’d view national ID cards as a good thing. But, having experienced the hassle of being without any other form of ‘acceptable’ identification, she’s beginning to wonder.