Amateur Brain Surgery

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.  

It isn’t all eco-doom and gloom. Here’s some good news about the environment…

Although fascinating, The Nurse’s weekly copy of New Scientist magazine rarely brings positive news about humanity’s rapid descent into global warming. But last week’s issue was different. 

It looks as though things might be changing. The Nurse wonders if we might look back at the first ten years of this century - with the benefit of hindsight – and see huge and fundamental social and cultural changes taking place. On a global scale.

Accompanied by an imaginary yet rousing trumpet fanfare, The Nurse is chuffed to report six positive environmental news stories:

• Greensburgh in Kansas, destroyed by a tornado in ‘07, has risen from the ashes as an eco-town. Almost every new home is packed with state of the art insulation and the latest energy generating technologies. Next they plan to build ten 1.25 megawat wind turbines, aiming to make the town self-sufficient in energy.    
• Todmorden, a small town in Yorkshire, has turned every spare space into a vegetable garden. Veg grows in the graveyards, school and hospital grounds… and the residents can harvest it for free. Todmorden hopes to be self sufficient in fruit and veg by 2018. 
• Vauban in Germany has banned cars. 70% of the suburbs’s residents recently gave up their cars in favour of trams and bicycles. They have an efficient CarClub to borrow from when they need a car. The remaining 30% have to park their cars on the outskirts and travel in by public transport.
• Costa Rica is well on the way to becoming carbon neutral.  The country already generates about two thirds of its energy from renewable sources. Since 2008 they’ve planted 12 million trees, partly funded by a tax on petrol. The next step? To offset the few carbon emissions they do produce. 
• China is already a world leader in delivering eco-friendly solutions. They’ve created cunning solar ovens t0 reduce wood and charcoal use throughout the developing world. And they’ve exported solar technology to sub-Saharan Africa. Watch this space!
• The Australian town of Bundanoon has banned the sale of bottled water. They conserve 200ml of precious oil for every litre of bottled water not produced. 

A whole load of people, in diverse communities all over the planet, are taking things into their own hands. This lot have got off their arses and actually done something. Rather than dicking about while Rome burns. The Nurse is inspired.

So, to action. This prison’s heating is abysmal. At least once every winter the crappy old Victorian boiler explodes. Last year four of The Nurse’s fellow inmates were boiled – then toasted -  inadvertently contributing four bodies’ worth of emissions to the UK’s carbon burden.  Apart from being utterly lethal  it probably boffs out more CO2 than several million farting sheep.  

The Nurse, unhappily aware that a long and boring winter is looming, always feels better when she has a project to get her teeth into.  This year, it’s veg.

She envisages fresh produce growing in every prison cell. Fruit trees in the yard. Digging up the jail car park, turning it over to spuds. And using the inmates toasted in this winter’s inevitable boiler explosion to fertilise the soil. Waste not, want not. 

My sister’s two eldest sons have now left home. The eldest is away on active service with the Royal Navy and the second eldest has just started at University. This has left their younger brother at home, alone with his parents who appear to be indulging his every whim.

The youngest boy, who is 13 years old, was diagnosed with a mild form of Asperger Syndrome a few years ago. He doesn’t really like to socialise very much, instead preferring to spend his time obsessively building model railways. His bedroom is now totally dominated by a large model rail network that takes up the whole room, just leaving enough space for his bed.

His latest obsession is Scalextric and his parents have allowed him to take over the garage with his huge Scalextric set. They’ve told me that he has shown very little interest in computer games but the latest Scalextric system that he was bought connects to a computer allowing him to race other enthusiasts anywhere in the world. Their hope is that this will encourage him to interact and socialise with others, over the internet, who share his interest and obsession.

However, the latest development is that the boy wants to integrate his model rail system with his Scalextric track and have both trains and cars running together in a large scale system. To build this system he needs space and the rooms in their house, and the garage, are apparently not large enough. So they are planning to build an extension to the rear of their house and knock down the rear wall of the garage in order to provide him with the space that he wants. They’ve already had some plans drawn up by an Architect and received quotes from a few builders. They’ve even been warned that the modifications to their home are likely to reduce its value, not to mention costing them many thousands of pounds to carry out. Are they going too far?

The young lad gets pretty much anything he wants, partly because he is the youngest, partly because he has Asperger Syndrome and partly because his parents simply want their children to have the luxuries that they didn’t have when they were growing up. But will this lead to the boy believing that the world owes him a living?

I’m a couple or three weeks into my new regime of healthy eating, plenty of exercise and no more liquid lunches down the pub and I’m pleased to report that I’ve dropped a few pounds. But not without some effort.

Last weekend, for the first time in ages, I helped an old DJ friend at a gig in Brighton. I didn’t really have to do very much, just carry a couple of record cases. But it got me off my fat backside and I enjoyed a great evening with my good friend Chemical Dave spinning the tunes.

The reason he is called Chemical Dave is a long story, but he’s had the nickname since school days and it helps to differentiate him from all the other Dave’s in our social circle: Hairy Dave, Surfing Dave, Techno Dave, Dave the Viking and Icarus. (Icarus is a guy called Dave who loves hang-gliding).

Chemical Dave played a brilliant support set, warming up the crowd for the main DJ on Saturday night at a popular Brighton club. We ended up in the VIP lounge enjoying a variety of free cocktails and some interesting company into the early hours of Sunday morning.

One of the interesting people we met that night was a dusky, slim, attractive young lady who told us that she was a Harley Street Hypno-therapist. She was a little bit wobbly due to the inebriants that she had consumed, and this appeared to inspire her to disclose all sorts of personal details about her life.

She told us that she had first been introduced to Hypnotherapy when trying to overcome her sex addiction. She went into great detail describing how her addiction took over her life. It led her into all sorts of dangerous situations and resulted in a whole series of dysfunctional relationships. But she managed to get it under control, although by the way she was throwing herself at Chemical Dave you might have thought otherwise.

Dave and I were both keen to know whether hypnotherapy could work for us. Me with my weight loss and Dave wants to stop losing things (he spends a small fortune on mobile phone insurance because he’s always losing his phone).

Hypno-ho (as we’ve chosen to call her) explained that it’s all about changing our habits and that is precisely what can be achieved through hypnosis.

She took us both to a corner of the VIP lounge and made a vain attempt to put Chemical Dave in an hypnotic trance. Afterwards Dave said that he was tempted to pretend that she’d been successful. But she was ultra-professional, if a little wobbly on her feet after consuming several Margharitas, explaining that the noise and distraction in the bar wasn’t really very conducive to inducing the required trance-like state.

But she gave Dave her smart business card (I think she fancied him) and told us that we could both have a free session if we visited her in London. So Dave and I are planning to head for the capital sometime soon to get a little professional hypnotherapy that we hope will help us to maintain our resolve, me to lose weight and get in shape and Dave to stop losing things.

Unfortunately Dave has already lost her card.

The hair care industry has got us all by the short and curlies. But The Nurse discovers that there’s much less to shampoo and conditioners than you might think.

You don’t get many luxuries in prison. The Nurse has often bemoaned the lack of decent shampoo. Most of the time her hair looks like a bird’s nest. 

So she was cheered to discover that almost all the ingredients in shampoo have bugger all to do with hair care. They’re mostly there to improve the appearance, smell, texture and shelf life of the stuff itself.

It’s no surprise that hair care TV adverts are actually bollocks. But The Nurse was intrigued to find out just how much of hair products’ contents are superfluous.

The detergent element, usually between 5-20% of a shampoo, cleans your hair. The rest of the stuff you’re paying for is:

• loads of water 
• bubble boosters, because detergent doesn’t foam on its own 
• oils to counteract the detergent’s drying effect
• emulsifiers to make the oil mix with the water
• emulsion stabilisers to hold the whole thing together
• a water soluble preservative
• an oil soluble preservative
• thickeners to create texture
• colourings
• UV stabilisers to stop the colour fading
• opacifiers to make it creamy or opalescent
• fragrances
• reducing agents to stop shampoo from fading your hair dye

Next time you see a TV ad with some silly bint fart-arsing around in a flower filled field, think twice before shelling out on expensive shampoo. You might as well choose the cheapest.

And the science bit? That’s bollocks too. Not only are hair care manufacturers’ claims completely unsupported by science. They’re also unregulated. In the words of one expert, they are “free to use just about anything in cosmetics and toiletries.”  

The solution? Try Cosmetics Unmasked: Your family guide to safe cosmetics and allergy-free cosmetics. Why bother? You’ll save money and reduce the amount of chemical shit you expose your poor self to every day. 

The Nurse is off to experiment with home made shampoo. Not on herself, of course. She’ll kidnap a fellow inmate… she’s worth it.

If you’ve read my previous post you will know that my doctor has just told me that my expanding waistline is the cause of my current embarassing incontinence problem. So I am now more determined than ever to shed those flabby excess pounds that have kept me from looking at myself naked in a mirror for many months.

I used to be a very active part-time amateur DJ, playing parties and the occasional club night here in Brighton. But I stopped when I was lucky enough to trap a poor unsuspecting girl into a long term relationship. Back in my DJing days I was slim. Hardly an ounce of excess flab anywhere. Lugging DJ equipment in and out of pubs and clubs at weekends, combined with frenetic dancing to high energy dance tunes, kept the fat at bay.

These days my girlfriend and I spend most evenings glued to the television while gobbling huge bars of chocolate, packets of crisps and lots of biscuits. And when we go out we no longer go clubbing. We go to restaurants and stuff our faces even more. This has now all stopped.

Here is my all-new DJ weight-loss plan:

• No more fattening snack-grazing in the evenings
• More fresh fruit and vegetables in my diet (on doctors orders)
• More water to be drunk instead of sugar laden soft drinks and beer
• Walking to and from work each day
• Take a walk every day at lunch time (rather than go to the pub)
• Teaming up with an old DJ friend to help carry his gear to gigs, which he has most weeks
• Hopefully take an occasional turn on the decks and get back into a bit of DJingDo a lot more dancing!

I’m not going it alone with this plan. My long-suffering girlfriend also has a few pounds to shed so she’ll be working with me.

So I’m optimistic that very soon I’ll be able to fit back into some of my old clubbing clothes and my embarassing little problem will go away. Bring on the glow sticks!

Take a listen to my old friend and supporter of the Amateur Brain Surgery club, Tony G., making sweet noises with his humble cigar box guitar. Now this is the kind of music I could listen to all day. Soulful sounds that will get your feet tappin’ – Excellent!