Adventures in A & E: my appendisectomy.

So, on a regular Wednesday afternoon I started getting some mild stomach pains. As afternoon turned to evening they got more intense, but not anything I hadn't felt before. Over the course of Wednesday night they got worse & stopped me from sleeping. I still wasn't unduly worried on Thursday morning, as they had wore off a little. Stupidly, I decided to go to work. By lunchtime I was suffering rather acutely. While I'd had similar stomach pains before, they had never gone on for quite this long. I managed to make it until 3pm before leaving work & headed for a drop-in centre. This is a doctor's office where you can just turn up without having to make an appointment with your own GP & they are super useful. For that reason I'm just waiting for the coalition Government to cut them. But I digress; the doc checked me out & prescribed me some co-codamol for the pain and some IBS drugs to settle my stomach down.

I was also warned to keep a close eye on where the pain was actually coming from. At the time it felt fairly general, but if it became localised down the right hand side, it could be the gall bladder or the appendix & I should get myself to A & E. No problem, I said; I'll keep checking. It seems as though merely ten minutes pass as I'm waiting for my prescription when I begin to notice the pain is concentrated more down the right hand side. The first instinct is to shrug this off as psychological - I'd been told to check for this & now I'm imagining I can feel it. The pain is so bad by now that I'm ready to weep or faint. Co-codamol to the rescue, then. The pain dims, but it doesn't disappear. Throughout the evening I continue to check on it & I am becoming more & more convinced that the pain is localising near my gall bladder or appendix. My wife remains skeptical. On Friday I wake up at about 6am & the pain is worse than ever. I stagger to the co-codamol and gulp it down. It is then I decide to go to A & E. After all, if I'm wrong, they'll just throw me out, won't they?

The first test is to explain things to the triage nurse, which I seem to pass because he admits me. Rach has to leave at this point, because she has to look after her dad as well as the kids. I change into a gown, pee into a cardboard container and wait for the doctor. He looks me over & sends me on for a surgical consult & x-ray. After the x-ray, I'm left in the corridor for a while as it's pretty busy. I overhear a consultation in a cubicle and am given my first slice of how bad things can be for other people. Talking to a doctor is a woman who has been admitted after having the crap beaten out of her by her boyfriend. She has a bruised eardrum & at least two cracked ribs. She is weeping, but is desperate to stop because the sobs rack her with pain. She talks in a thick Telford accent that makes her sound badly educated, which is a dreadful assumption to make based on only an accent, but it is difficult not to make it. It's like hearing a strong Southern US state accent and trying not to assume the one speaking is a pig-raping redneck. I don't make such assumptions about either accent, but only after giving the part of me that automatically jumps to conclusions a hard slap. She talks about how she doesn't want to involve the police, about how she hates her boyfriend but loves him as well, about how he's only been like this since he added steroids to his daily drug intake. Lying on my bed outside, I may only be suffering from mild abdominal pain, but my heart is breaking for that poor woman. The doctor, clearly knowing how limited his freedom to help her beyond treatment is, barely hesitates before offering advice and moving on. I wonder how he manages to cope being exposed to this routinely.

Next it's time to see a surgeon. I get wheeled into a little room where I wait. By now the painkillers I took at 6am should have long since worn off, but I still only have a mild discomfort where the pain used to be. I've heard that in cases of appendicitis that this is bad and means the appendix has burst. I still can't help feeling like I'm a fraud & wasting people's time when I'm not in any real pain. Then the surgeon comes in. Her name is Annabel. She is the chief surgeon today. She is outstandingly good looking. I am nervous when her hands are touching my skin only a few inches above my crotch while she is asking, in all seriousness, whether I feel anything. I tell her about the pain. She looks at me & says "I think it's time you said goodbye to your appendix, don't you?" As much as I loved Scrubs I knew that much of it wasn't true to life. It seems, however, that the bit about surgeons wanting to cut open every patient they see after a few minutes is absolutely true to life.

So I get taken to the surgical ward, being Ward 12 at the Princess Royal hospital in Telford, to await my fate. It's nil by mouth for me, so I get hooked up to a drip. Over the course of the afternoon I familiarise myself with the staff and patients on the ward. There's a guy recovering from a throat operation following a lifetime of smoking. Hooked up to a catheter and regularly replaced nicotine patches, he can barely speak & doesn't look comfortable. There's the guy that came in with penis pain & is now constantly leaking blood out of his pisser. The others are a collection of old guys who look rather checked out at the moment. The staff are, without exception, upbeat, friendly & clearly very busy trying to keep a lot of spinning plates going. Jackob is looking after me. He's possibly European, but his English is so good I can't be sure. He's assisting the nurses while training to be a paramedic. He's got a three month old daughter so we talk about our kids for a while. Around come the doctors for a brief examination & a quick chat with each patient. One guy has his operation delayed until Monday because his somethingorother levels are too high. Penis pain guy wants to speak to someone in charge because he's been bleeding for six hours & feels like nobody is doing anything about it. Then it's me. Another examination. Another chance for me to explain what's happened to me. He thinks my appendix might be stuck behind something like my colon, because the pain is a bit higher than it should be, but not high enough for the gall bladder. It might be some small thing that's next to my appendix, so they might make an additional incision. We'll do it this evening, ok? Sounds good I reply, while gulping. The final guy being seen is an old dude. As part of his examination, the doc has to explore his back passage for blockages or something. It sounds painful, with the poor old man shouting out and reduced to repeating cries of "Oh dear". You can't help but feel for the guy, for his pain & his loss of dignity. The doctors were as respectful as they could be under the circumstances, but the procedure had to be done. It is an unwelcome glimpse of the far future.

Annabel comes to see penis pain guy. He calmly (and quite reasonably) explains his complaint about feeling like he's been left on his bed to bleed while nobody does anything. Annabel tells him it's because there is no urology specialist qualified to treat him at Telford & she's spent much of the afternoon trying to get him a bed at Shrewsbury, but they are busy & reluctant to agree to the transfer. He still feels like there should be more that they can do. She explains a few procedures that may help to relieve him, but they are painful & probably won't work, which is why she didn't mention them before. She offers him the choice. He decides to wait. He feels better. She is marvellous. A few hours later, he's carted off to Shrewsbury.

10pm rolls by & I start to wonder when the whole thing is supposed to be happening. I've had no food & barely any drink since yesterday. I want it over with. A surgeon comes over to my bed & explains that it's not going to happen until tomorrow. An 81 year old guy has just been admitted whose small intestine has tied itself up in a knot, or something. Anyway, he will die soon without surgery, so my spot goes to him. They want to get to me as quickly as they can, because the longer it goes on, the more likely it is that my appendix will perforate and cause havoc. But for now, I can wait. He can't. It's a bit annoying, but hell, you've got to be pretty soulless to argue with that, haven't you? Imagine if someone you loved needed emergency surgery, but they died because someone having his appendix out got to go first. Not only that, but it was pretty damn cool of the surgeon in question to take the time to come up to see me to explain & apologise in person. So, I'm allowed a sandwich and a cup of tea before settling down to sleep. Back to nil by mouth in the morning.

The thing that's on my mind as well is worrying about how Rachel's going to cope looking after a three year old, a six week old, her father & me all at the same time. She's handling it magnificently, but the previous blog will tell you how I feel about her: http://experiment627.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-my-marriage-saved-my-life-and.html

It's the weekend so it's not surprising that the next patient in penis pain guy's bed is a drunken head injury & another example of the shit the less fortunate must wade through every day of their lives. He's chipper, friendly, drunkenly respectful & desperate to leave. He's pretty much a full-blown alcoholic & often sneaks off for drinks, forcing the staff to waste precious time finding him & taking him back to his bed. And yet, while this probably pisses them off no end, they continue to try to help him & not to condemn him. He signs a form to say he's checking out against medical advice & waits for his wife to pick him up. When she turns up she brings along an adorable little girl, which it turns out is one of two daughters this guy has. The sister (that's the badass nurse in charge) sits down with them & talks about what alcoholism can do to families & offers a number of ways to help him. By now he is a broken man in floods of tears, ashamed for risking the welfare of his family. As he leaves, you get the distinct impression that this has happened before & will happen again; that he has learnt nothing. And yet, the sister takes the time to continue to try. It seems important to her, as though the huge effort is somehow worth the negligible results.

The next guy on the bed is, yep, a drunken head wound. He wants to leave as soon as possible. He can barely focus, he can barely walk & he is contemptuous of any offer of help. Apparently he had about 30 pints last night, but a reliable source of information this guy is not. It transpires that he is a member of the armed forces and is based at Cosford. His CO calls & is apparently unimpressed. The guy still wants to leave and staggers around mumbling about this being a hospital not a prison, clearly in no fit state to go anywhere, with what look like seriously diminished mental and physical capabilities. The sister (the same one as before) cuts through the disrespect and pigheadedness to tell him in no uncertain terms that if he absconds against medical advice his career could be in serious trouble. She finally convinces him to go to sleep. As before, she perseveres with people who on the face of it don't seem to be worth the effort. It seems to be something that the people working here have in common.

And so, following a visit from the anaesthetist, who was nice & explained what was going to happen (and was the six millionth person to ask if I'm allergic to anything), my time comes. I get wheeled down to theatre. A couple of surgeons have a bit of a chat with me to help put my mind at ease. It's my first operation & my nervousness is clear to all. In goes the anaesthetic & it feels quite nice. I feel warm & like I'm on my fourth glass of wine. I'm asked to take six deep breaths. Not long after I pass out.

When I come to, one of the surgeons is checking me over. He asks me how I am. I am in pain. He gives me morphine. It doesn't seem to make a difference. I go back to sleep.

When I wake up again, Jackob is near. I'm back on the ward. He asks me how I am. I am still in pain. He can't give me anything more because I've already had a rather potent cocktail of painkillers. He checks my blood pressure, heart rate, breathing & asks me a few questions. They call it doing 'obs' or observations. He's a bit worried about how shallow my breathing is so he puts me on oxygen for a while. I spend the rest of Saturday afternoon drifting in & out of consciousness. I notice that Jackob is monitoring me very closely. At one point mom drops by. We chat for a bit, but I'm a little too dazed to really hold a conversation. I feel a bit uncomfortable, like my bladder is full, but I'm unable to pee. Jackob assures me it's normal & it's the last thing to start working again after an operation like this. I'm not allowed food yet, but I am allowed tea & water. Plus, I can have more painkillers. Rachel & Katie come to visit, but they can't stop long because Emily is in the car with nan outside - babies aren't allowed onto the ward. It's really good to see them. After they've gone I'm left with my book (Terry Pratchett's I Shall Wear Midnight - highly recommended) and my MP3 player. I settle down for the evening.

An old guy on the ward (the guy whose operation was delayed until Monday) complains about being in a lot of pain & feeling very sick. He is told they will sort his IV & painkillers out. He asks several more times during the next few hours. Finally he projectile vomits all over the bed, the floor & the guy who has just started his night shift. I guess this kind of thing is common in places like this, when everyone is so busy they just can't get to all the patients in time. Still, that wouldn't help me feel any less abandoned were I in his shoes. Eventually, he gets the help he needs.

I wake up in the middle of the night with terrible pains in my stomach - I'm sure it's because I desperately need to pee. The call button is on the desk behind my bed & so far I've only been able to get up twice with great difficulty. The pain is too much, so I force my way out of bed & press the button. I explain to the nurse, between gasps, what the problem is & what I think the reason is. She asks me to lie down on the bed so she can do a scan. It transpires that I am retaining 700ml in my bladder & that is definitely the reason for my pain. I am given a choice: get to the toilet & force myself to pee or have a catheter. I do not want a catheter. The nurse gives me the distinct impression that I am making a big deal out of nothing, so I suck it up & stumble slowly to the toilet where, third time lucky, I manage to pee. A little. It stops & starts a lot. I have to go about every 90 minutes or so for the rest of the night. The nurse was right - I was making a big deal out of nothing. If she'd mollycoddled me I might not have done it, so her approach, although it seemed a little harsh at the time, was exactly the right one. As with everyone working here, she knows exactly what she's doing.

Sunday morning. At breakfast time I begin the route to recovery by devouring cornflakes & toast. The drunken head injury in the other bed has been replaced by a guy who recently passed a kidney stone which, according to my mother is the most painful thing she's ever done. That would include childbirth. He's over the worst of it & is in good spirits. The doctors turn up then for the daily walk round. When they get to me they give me a little info on the operation. They were right about the appendix being behind the colon & one of them had their hand so far inside me trying to reach it that at one point it was buried up to the wrist. The guy is a junior doctor - not surprising as they probably cut their teeth on simple surgical procedures like mine. The scar is bigger than normal. The appendix had perforated as they feared it might, but the unusual location prevented many of the further complications that often arise as a result. I have about a 30% chance of infection. The way they were joking together and in such high spirits made me feel safe in their hands & reminded me again of Scrubs. I think maybe I watch that show too much.

I am moved, with kidney stone guy to a different part of the ward. We get chatting to an old man who in the 60s worked on the building of the Ironbridge power station. He has some fascinating stories. Talking to kidney stone guy later I hear about some of his experiences this weekend at A & E. At one point last night there were 12 ambulances lined up outside the entrance at once - a car crash I think he said. Earlier that day while he was reading his paper outside he saw a man & woman walk out of A & E. They stopped fairly close to him, where the woman said "It's your fault" to the man, to which he replied "No, it's your fault". They then proceeded to pound on each other as hard as they could until they were escorted off the premises by security. The rest of the day and night pass by uneventfully.

On Monday morning I am discharged. I have to wait in the discharge lounge for about five hours before the pharmacy can get my antibiotics and painkillers together. It's quite annoying, but not nearly enough to mar the gratitude I feel towards every single one of those people who helped me through this.

I'm a big believer in choosing the best person for a job & not choosing based on a statistic that says there must be a certain amount of each ethnicity to be sure it is fair. That is not equal opportunities to me, that is positive discrimination & it is crap. Having said that, there was a huge array of colours and nationalities working together over the weekend I stayed at Ward 12 of Telford hospital - English, Indian, Philippine, Asian; white, black & shades in between & never once did it become an issue for anyone. I'm so glad I live in a country that can employ talented immigrants alongside a qualified home-grown workforce within a medical organisation that is funded by taxpayers and run by the state. At the same time, I'm terrified at how the coalition Government & the bigoted Daily Mail appear to be succeeding in their attempts to undo it all. It's going to be a rough decade.

How my marriage saved my life and stopped me from becoming a self-hating wreck.

I've decided to write about how I am in awe of a woman. So in awe of her that I continue to be amazed she decided to marry me. Honestly, I still occasionally expect someone to tell me it's a big joke, as if anyone like her would ever settle for a douche like me. Obviously, as you'd expect, I think she's beautiful. As reasons why I love her so much go, however, that's a fairly poor one. I've known some gorgeous women (and men, for that matter) who have been complete bastards (and indeed, we've probably all come across an uggo with a heart of gold), so for the basis for forming a long term relationship it's no more than a starting point. Also, it's kind of on the subjective side, and there are no doubt people who genuinely wouldn't understand where I was coming from with the whole finding her beautiful thing. So, there's got to be more, right? Right.

Most people, at some point in their lives, hate themselves. They hate their own stupidity, they hate the way they look, the way they feel, or something. Well, I'm most people. If I was someone else, I don't think I'd really enjoy spending time with me. So if I hadn't met my wife and hadn't married her and started a family with her, where might I be? In reality, there's no answering that question, but I feel sure that it would be dreadful. Instead, I'm married with children. For a lot of people, this would be a nightmare, and like most people, I don't like kids very much. It is true what they say about it being different when they're your kids though. Loving my own children is (as it is in most people) an automatic genetic response to procreating (neither would I want to change that response even if I could). This is very different to the way I feel about my wife. She saved my life. To have the certain knowledge that, barring any utter catastrophe, the way I feel will be reciprocated for the majority of the rest of our lives is to be content. I'm still no big fan of myself, but when I consider that this amazing woman thinks I'm worth the effort of marrying, I remember to go a little easier on myself, because if she loves me, then I can't be all bad.

Sometimes technology is awesome.

Much of the time I'm a right old bastard when it comes to embracing the new. The prime example of this would be mobile phones, or mobile devices as they should be called nowadays, having evolved so far beyond simple phones as to be only one step away from taking over the world in an horrific trapper-keeper calamity. I still hate mobile phones, no matter how brilliant they undoubtedly are.

However, where I very much make an exception is in the way I'm beginning to consume music. For the longest time, online was anathema to how I thought music should be collected. I would always argue (rightly, I still think, in many cases) that there was no substitute for discovering music than spending an afternoon in a music store, browsing endless shelves of CDs. I arrived too late for LPs and I'm very glad of that fact, for they are shit. I like my noise crystal clear, thanks all the same. You know the 'warmth' those aficionados go on about? It's known by another name: poor quality. This attitude towards the humble LP would offer clues as to how I would come to embrace new technology in the future, but for the longest time I would not join the download bandwagon. In a way, I still haven't; I don't download music, I still buy CDs, but I no longer use music shops and NME (at least not exclusively, but I will forever be in debt to NME for turning me on to Polly Scattergood) to discover music I've never heard before.

Most bands still release music the old-fashioned way, but there are a few who've experimented with new ways of releasing music. Arctic Monkeys made a name for themselves largely through MySpace. Radiohead released the phenomenal In Rainbows online, allowing the buyer to choose their own purchase price. Ash have abandoned the old 'new record every two years, release a few singles, tour relentlessly, repeat' rut they had become stuck in, and are now almost at the end of their A-Z project, where they've released a new single online every month for 26 months.

But where the whole thing really came alive for me is upon the discovery of Blip (http://www.blip.fm/) via Twitter, and upon the receipt of an invite to join Spotify. Blip allows me to listen to other people's favourite music from around the world, and it's where I've discovered many previously unknown artists from The Veils to Mazzy Star, and countless weird and wonderful cover versions, like Blondie's amazing version of We Three Kings. It also allows me to interact with people the world over with similar tastes to mine (who would've thought there'd be an American who liked Echobelly as much as I do?) Spotify allows me to do similar things - I can tailor a radio station to my own tastes, I can share playlists with friends, and I can road-test albums before buying them (thank goodness I listened to the second Elastica album before wasting my money). I can see Spotify leading the way to future technology where CDs are extinct, and people listen to music by streaming it directly out of the ether, and when you find that rare gem of an album or song so good it changes your whole life for the better, you can share it with others who'll understand instantly, instead of just going on and on about it down the pub to people who aren't really that bothered. I would, of course, be sad to see my CD collection go, but I can honestly say I think it would be much better that way. Bring on the future!

The best example I have yet seen of how this technology can work happened recently, thanks to Twitter. Amanda Palmer, that most amazing woman from The Dresden Dolls, who is married to Neil Gaiman, that most amazing man who writes the most amazingly beautiful stories, was accosted by a young music student outside the Berklee College of Music. That's in Boston. The other side of the world from me. The young man was named Tristan Allen, and when he sat down in front of a piano in Amanda's house, proceeded to blow her away. She tweeted about it. She then went on to showcase Tristan's talent to the world via the live video streaming website UStream. The kid was genuinely incredible. He would take well known pieces like the Halloween theme or a Philip Glass song, and just improvise the hell out of them. Thanks to this technology, I was (via a computer monitor, obviously), in Amanda Fucking Palmer's house on the other side of the planet to the sofa I was sitting on, listening to an impromptu performance of genuine excellence by a teenage music student in real time. To be able to share in the goosebump moment with Amanda as she discovers something amazing for the first time is incredibly exciting. It's so far removed from meetings with record company executives and the suicide-inducing X-Factor that it was like a ray of perfect sunshine in the midst of a miserable day. See Amanda Palmer's blog about it, including the entire streamed performance, here: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/962861244/my-answer-to-grayson-chance-presenting-tristan. It's over an hour and a half long, so if you haven't got time to watch it all (although it is highly recommended), go to the duet at one hour twenty seconds and be as amazed as I was at the 10 minutes that follow.

This is the potential of this technology. This is the benefit of making everyone and everything connectable. This, hopefully, is the future of music.

Atheist or creationist? Still human, it turns out.

I read a piece online the other day written by a guy about losing his faith and becoming an atheist. The blog, to me, seemed a little bittersweet - I felt there was grief over the loss of the comfort of blind certainty that usually comes with a faith, and along with it the person he used to be, but it also had the feel of a man who was happy to have woken from a lifelong delusion and is able to see clearly for the first time. He now uses Twitter (@ZachsMind) to debate with people over their beliefs. Overall, he's usually pleasant and respectful towards the faithful and doesn't tend to criticise them personally, but he can get pretty disrespectful over their faith. I do share in his disdain for all religions, but where I occassionally disagree is where he sometimes insults people directly, particularly their (in his view) lack of intelligence. I don't feel that @ZachsMind does this to be malicious, but rather out of frustration when the set-in-their-ways creationists won't debate with him properly. But I do think a small number of Twitter atheists can be dicks. (If you're a Twitter atheist and are reading this: if I follow you, I'm not referring to you - I don't follow the dicks.)

Creationists (and all those of any faith), I can't deny, do believe in what I consider to be superstition and nonsense. As @ZachsMind likes to point out; if god does exist the sheer volume of unnecessary suffering and general shit in the world would prove beyond doubt that he is a dick and not worthy of worship. And yes, all those shitty religions are responsible in large part for many of the hateful attitudes in the world today - America's greed? That's because the bible told them to subdue the Earth. Violent Middle-Easterners? That's down to them being ridiculously caught up in the 'my god's better than your god...so I'm going to kill you' game. Homophobia? That's because god hated the gays. Obviously I'm simplifying a complex issue, and there are many, many people of every faith that don't completely misinterpret the message of their religion and try to live as decent folk. Like my christian mother or buddhist in-laws. And these people are not stupid. They usually have their faith because it's been ingrained upon them from a young age, and they cannot believe otherwise. It's not that believers are stupid, it's that it's human nature to take comfort from easy answers instead of really questioning the whole idea of a conscious, imaginary force providing your reward for you when you die. It's because the fear of death can become so palpable that telling yourself there is an everlasting existence for you in the beyond, or that you get to come back as something or someone else stops this fear from crushing you. Even the homophobic, Earth-subduing suicide bombers aren't really stupid, they're just conditioned from youth to think and to see the world in a certain way. When a person is conditioned in that way, it is almost impossible to break that conditioning later in life (making @ZachsMind's story a rarity, I think). At least, that's how I see it, although I base that entirely upon my own perception and not on anything actually researched, so I'm probably wrong.

So yeah, religion winds me up quite a bit. But it's not the individuals themselves. It's the pope making excuses for serial child-rapists. It's the educational systems that despite the fact that the answer to how we got here was answered completely and absolutely irrefutably by Charles Darwin over 200 years ago, won't teach evolution as the accepted scientific fact it is. It's the continued insistence of some faiths that women are somehow subhuman. It's a thousand other things that continue to hinder the development of a society based on free thinking, reason and true equality. You shouldn't behave like a decent human being because of some supposed god and his promise of an eternity of torture when you die if you don't, you should act like a decent human being because that's what decent human beings do.

However, atheists don't get off scot free either. Many atheists consider themselves superior because of their rejection of religion and have a nasty habit of personally insulting people of faith simply because they think differently. This is a typically human attitude, which is especially disappointing given their supposed rejection of unenlightened superstition and the acceptance of logic and reason. Insulting people of faith won't change them, it will them more stubborn and less open-minded. (Besides, the trend, as far as my limited research indicates, shows a general moving away from faith and towards atheism in the U.S. despite (or perhaps because of?) the idiotic Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and their retarded take on christianity taking centre stage so often, so they might not need to worry about it for long. Oh, and by the way, purveyors of the special Beck 'n' Palin brand of christianity, opposing the ground zero mosque on the grounds that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by islamic extremists is a bit like saying the religion itself is to blame. Which is a bit like saying all muslims are terrorists. Which is a bit like saying all catholics are paedophiles. Which, in direct contradiction to my earlier point (hey, like the bible!), is fucking stupid.)

It's not really surprising that whatever the faith or lack thereof, there are people who are cool and there are people who are dicks. Because, regardless of belief/non-belief, people are still people.

Sometimes I do fit in.

This is a follow up to the entry called 'Sometimes I don't fit in', posted back in May, in which I have further problems with the same woman, only this time, I don't feel out of place for not lying to my child and making her believe that she's the only thing that matters in the entire world. Familarise yourself with that blog before looking through this one, because I can't be arsed to repeat myself: http://experiment627.blogspot.com/2010/05/sometimes-i-dont-fit-in.html

So, after that minor drunken altercation in which she expressed to me her feelings about the correct way to bring up a stable, balanced individual, I recently heard her talking to someone else about how she hates these parents who treat their kids as though they can't do any wrong, and how they act like they're all that matters. At first I didn't understand what had happened - had our conversation in the pub got to her and had she taken the things I said on board? Probably not. On second thoughts, I considered that it may have been that morning's Horoscope telling her how to act. As the conversation continues it seems she's stressed because some kid was giving her boys a hard time yesterday. It is this kid's parents she's referring to. She continues by declaring, in all seriousness, that she intends to kill the kid if he does it again today. Yep, she will murder a child if her kids have a couple of bad days with an older boy. It turns out they're all on an outing somewhere today. If anything happens to them, she also makes it known that she will kill the adult supervision. She is not joking.

Obviously, I would die to protect my daughter. Obviously nothing is more important. Obviously I don't want anyone to bully or pick on her. But this woman's loud declaration of her intention to murder a child for acting out of line as well as the adults charged with supervising her children as if it's an attitude to be proud of is a dangerous over-reaction, and is the very same thing she is complaining about in other parents. She is incapable of noticing behaviour like her own in others.

As it turns out, the person she was talking to thought this was all a bit of a twisted way to go about bringing kids up, so I didn't feel like the whole world had gone mad like I did the last time this came up. When she acts as though my own, less-crazy take on things is terrible parenting and dangerous to my child, I don't know whether to laugh, cry or scream in her face.

Stephen Donaldson’s Gap Sequence – How far is too far?

Anyone who knows or speaks to me for more than a little while will learn that I am a reader of probably the least coolest fiction there is - sci-fi & fantasy. Although, and it's important to make these distinctions; not exclusively sci-fi & fantasy, and not shit sci-fi & fantasy - David Gemmell, I'm looking at you. When not shit, this type of storytelling can be extremely complex, and layered with multiple strands holding a distorted mirror to our own social and psychological issues. Try reading Iain M. Banks, Robert Jordan, Frank Herbert or (obviously) Tolkien, and then you'll see what I mean.

Sometimes, a series I read tends to be cleverer than I am (not, granted, a particularly difficult achievement), and I have trouble following all the nuances. A writer that often does this to me is Stephen Donaldson. I've recently finished Donaldson's Gap Sequence, which has troubled me somewhat. Donaldson is best known for his Thomas Covenant series, which caused me similar problems, although to a lesser degree than the Gap Sequence.

It's not that he's a bad writer - on the contrary, he's particularly impressive, which is why I can finish his novels despite my reaction. He tends to make his heroes a little more difficult to root for than your average. Which again, is usually not a problem, but I wonder if Donaldson takes it too far. Take Thomas Covenant for example, the hero in the Thomas Covenant series. In the first book Covenant is introduced as a recluse suffering from leprosy. He used to be a successful writer, but his wife and son have left him and he's looked at by most people with not a small amount of disgust. Donaldson's medical background (or possibly his father's - I can't remember at the moment and I don't have one of his books to hand) helps to give the character plenty of depth. Due to the standard magic/nonsense/event thing, Covenant finds himself in a fantasy land where his leprosy heals and upon retrieving the feeling in his nerves, one of his first acts is to rape a girl aged about 16 who was helping him. Now, there are two justifications for this in Covenant's own head - it's his first erection in years as well as the first time in years he's been able to touch or feel. In addition to this, his refusal to accept the place he's found himself in as real absolves him (in his own head) of responsibility. Clearly, this does not excuse him in the eyes of the reader, and over the course of a series of books, Covenant's unbelief crumbles and the consequences of the act are far-reaching and desperately tragic. He is not a man it's easy to come to like. This appears to be Donaldson's particular skill, or at least a recurring theme of his - no person or act is beyond redemption. As Covenant suffers under the consequences of his act, and as he attempts to undo the damage he caused, as the reader you do, slowly, come to empathise with him and accept him - even to like him. This is no small achievement of Donaldson's.

With the Gap Sequence I wonder if he went too far in the suffering he inflicted upon one of the main characters, if he made it too much of a stretch in his attempt to redeem one of the inflicters. The Gap Sequence is Donaldson's retelling of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Only the opera is retold in the form of a series of science fiction books. I told you some of these writers were clever. The character, Morn Hyland suffers more than any other character I could name - probably more than was really necessary. After the emergence of a previously unknown and uncontrollable condition causes the death of her father, Morn is captured by a truly reprehensible character and is repeatedly degraded, beaten and raped, sometimes in unpleasant detail. 'Detail' in this case doesn't mean so much the physical acts themselves, although that is sometimes there, but the emotional and psychological torment inflicted upon her. I think sometimes Donaldson loses sight of the point that fiction, particularly fantastical fiction, is supposed to entertain at least as much as it disturbs, and I very nearly decided to stop reading on a number of occasions. Upon engineering her own escape, Morn is abandoned by the very organisation she serves, and given as payment to a different, but equally horrid (possibly worse) character who continues the physical and mental abuse to the point where anyone would have lost their sanity. Indeed, Morn does, a least a little - for it to be otherwise would have been unrealistic. (Yes, I do note the irony of using the word 'unrealistic' when describing a science fiction story, but setting and characterisation are two very different things.) After these prolonged events, she is then, in her fragile state, expected to save her race and be a hero in the way these stories go. As talented a writer as Donaldson undoubtedly is, I questioned the need to put Morn through quite such an extended episode of horror. So damaged is she, that the happiest ending Donaldson can conceive for her is *SPOILER* to leave her weeping hysterically in a room by herself, struggling to gather the courage to face the world outside. Realistic, yes, but necessary? Both of the men involved have back stories and through them the reasons why they are the way they are become clear. As with Thomas Covenant, only ten-fold more, this does not excuse their actions. However, Donaldson continues his theme of redemption and one of the characters becomes a hero of sorts, someone to root for. After almost putting the series down so many times during the first two books, this was difficult to swallow, and made me not a little uncomfortable.

So why did Donaldson go so far with Morn? I don't think it's anything to do with him not understanding the trauma rape victims undergo, as the consequences and emotional states of those involved are realised in a way that clearly shows Donaldson understood the magnitude of what he was putting his characters through. I don't really know, but I can tell you that despite my best efforts, I kind of was rooting for this guy a little before the end. So maybe it comes down to Donaldson's continuing theme of redemption - anyone can be saved.

Or maybe I should shut up and think about something more useful.

Birmingham: sunny, bustling, multicultural; beautiful.

I went out with some friends this week to Birmingham to celebrate a birthday. Living in a backwater like Telford, the only places to really go out are Telford, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton or Birmingham. Telford is, frankly, shit, so mostly we go to either Shrewsbury (also shit, but posh as well) or Wolverhampton (less shit, but not especially brilliant). Birmingham is generally too far away to make it worth the effort, and it also tended to be a bit shit as well. This time, we all took a Friday off work and got the train down at Midday.

To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement - the place has definitely had some work done since I was there last. I know it's always had its fair share of fantastic things; old record shops; the Waterstones that fills a huge five-storey building with books; the pub that has a theatre on the first floor. However, those things aside, it always seemed a bit, well, drab. Grey. Maybe it was the weather, because sunshine really can do wondrous things, but this time the architecture looked more impressive, colours seemed brighter, and the whole place seemed cleaner and better maintained. It didn't feel like Birmingham used to feel. It felt more like London.

People thronged every street, which normally pisses me off something awful, but here it just made everything brighter and more cheerful. Me, who hates football, found it not altogether dreadful to be in a bar showing the World Cup. The bars were all playing great music, from Happy Mondays and Suede, through Blur, Pulp and Kasabian and onto Ellie Goulding and Florence + the Machine. Only a few momentary blips with Nickleback and Maroon 5 soured the soundtrack. After sampling a number of places, we settled on a relatively newly developed area on a canal full of different bars and restaurants. Fairy lights draping the bridge over the canal came on as the Sun went down. A band turned up on a small bandstand and started playing. The weather was great, the bars were full, the atmosphere was...bohemian. Don't get me wrong: I know a lot of Birmingham is shitty, I'm not that naive, even though many of my older and more cynical friends tell me often that I am. Funnily enough, my younger and slightly naive friends think I'm a bit cynical.

What I loved most of all though, is that people were fully mixing and integrating regardless of age, sex, race, anything. In certain circles, and in certain classes, at least where I live and work, there is a casual, supposedly inoffensive attitude of racism, homophobia and sexism. The kind of people that don't see anything wrong with the Daily Mail. The kind of people that hold Richard Littlejohn up as a beacon of common sense. It's not that these hateful attitudes have disappeared in our so-called enlightened society, it's just that the milder, more subversive form has become the accepted norm in too many places. I find it distasteful in the extreme, and I sometimes despair and wonder if it's everywhere. Well, it wasn't in Birmingham last Friday. Indian and Caucasian girls walked arm in arm, clearly either lovers or the very best of friends. Long-haired metalheads walked around with their blonde leggy girlfriends. Young black guys and old white men talked and laughed over the football, discussing the dissolution of Brazil's World Cup dreams. One girl was the spitting image of Scarlett Johansson - and that, I don't mind telling you, made my night. She was left to enjoy her evening with her friend without being approached by a pissed up bloke showing off to his mates. All the drunken walking arguments-against-evolution were probably back in Telford, diligently bothering anything female on two legs in sight. This is what a modern city should be.

After wading through the sinister, Daily Mail-fed attitude of non-acceptance and segregation under the surface of too many corners of my world for so long, to witness all these people simply enjoying time together made my heart feel good. And if that makes me a naive, wishy-washy, fuzzy liberal do-gooder as the Mail might label me, well then I'm proud to be exactly that.

It was however, really fucking expensive.