<< december 2004 >>

Murdery Christmas

You may remember Stan's Christmas animation from last year, which was delightful. Here's this year's: it too makes me hoot.

THE Christmas argument

Satsumas: a more Christmassy smell, but a weaker taste. A less consistent taste as compared to clementines, which have a sharper, more pronounced zing, this being equal in nearly all tested clementines. More seeds perhaps in your average satsuma however the cling factor of the pith is greater meaning a peeled clementine appears more 'naked' once de-skinned. A satsuma however is blessed with looser skin whereas I have to employ the teeth-bite-open manouvre on a clementine (despite having stopped biting my nails a long time syne). I prefer clementines for their sweetness and fine skins. Stan prefers satsumas because he always likes best the thing he's just eaten though he claims it's because their sourness is pleasing.

Sorry Phoebe - I loved your blinky Christmas logo so much I'd to make one too!

Model of Health?

Stan is currently slestering some biscuits in chocolate (he's too much of a gastro-freak to spread it anywhere else: humph!) We've had an afternoon of baking: a flourless chocolate cake and lebkuchen. He took a childlike wonder at the alchemy of egg whites, sugar and whisk-power, in grinding cardamom pods and in stamping out love hearts from the christmas-scented dough.

This certainly isn't getting my assessment done, which is clanging away in the back of my head: "what about me?" it pleeps, "you seem to enjoy yourself when you're with me." Instead of procrastinating in the usual way as I did during my 1st degree (sock ironing, oven cleaning), I seem to have developed a new insidious way of not actually doing what I should be: it's called doing a literature search. So, I have spent a few weeks reading many extremely interesting articles both in tangible books and electronically, getting to grips with OVID, a massive on-line medical database. I feel almost expert on the causes and social factors of postnatal depression, however of the 2000 words I have to write, I've done around 49. My theory is that because I've sooked in so much in the way of fascinating information (salutogenesis and cultural iatrogenesis being two of the more fancy-sounding areas I would like to discuss) having to whittle it down to 2000 words is going to be impossible. At least 400 of those words have to address the history of the area in which I did my clinical placement, and services available to its inhabitants. With at least 300 on my chosen subject and their personal circumstances and medical histories, I have 1700 words to explore PND with reference to my subject inside a framework of a model of health like this one:

aaaaah!

From the kitchen comes the audible noise of Stan counting:

"There's eighteen biscuits there"
"Oh right, that's a warning is it?"
"No, it's just because I know you're greedy"

Yes, that is a gnarled squash from Halloween in the background.

"I don't know what the country’s coming to - everyone trying to be better than their betters: mink coats and no manners"

I hooted out loud at Lady Beldon when she muttered that to the divine Mrs. Miniver in the film of the same name. Lady Beldon wouldn't quake at tramps in the street.

A lesson in self-obsession and turtle snouts

Tramp avoidance syndrome: a mind-numbingly pathetic belief that a homeless man actually notices that you have passed him three times in one day, wearing three different outfits, two different hairstyles and two distinct make up 'looks' (clean, professional for daytime and then slightly sheeny defined eyes and rosy cheeks for evening). Such a belief will generally drive the sufferer to needlessly cross roads whilst anxiously pretending to rustle in a bag (third different that day) in case of accidental Tramp to Girl ocular interaction. This syndrome is worst when all these meetings occur within 3 hours of each other.

• 1.30: walking home after early finish of clinical placement.
  Clothes: black smart trousers, chocolate brown polo neck, dark denim blazer. Flat red shoes.
  Hair: swept up in a silver clasp. Hair off face conveys professional air.
  Make up: natural.

meet The Tramp: make eye contact because he usually says hello to Stan after they met watching Meadowside Granary (picture here - not of Stan and The Tramp!) be torn to the ground (note: this took a long time - Stan & The Tramp were not co-habiting at this time, watching said building's destruction)

• 2.30: walking to boot repair shop with three large plastic bags of shoes to be repaired.
  Clothes: casual Seven For All Mankind jeans, worn rolled up with knee length dark camel boots. Chocolate brown roll neck and mid brown faux fur gilet. Navy blue beret with hair down.
  Make up: sweaty natural

meet The Tramp: make eye contact, (I think, I am a good 200 yards down the road from him). Diagonally cross the road (devilishly busy crossroad too) so that I am on wrong side for the cobblers. The Green Man is taking his time to show his face thus The Tramp ends up waiting for The Green Man too. Anxiously and ostentatiously rustle in bag (3rd different one that day) and pretend to make phone call.

• 4.30: walking to underground to meet Pamevila (Happy Birthday!) & go to see Bridget Jones' Diary.
  Clothes: foxy Citizens of Humanity jeans with high wedge 40's style shoes. Op-Art print rayon shirt (present from The Lovely Stan) under a black slash neck, three quarter-sleeve gansey. Long dangly beaded earrings (bought in 1994). Green silk scarf and dark denim blazer with a rhinestone brooch in greens and purples.
  Hair: down, slightly curly and studied-ly bedraggled.
  Make up: natural yet with a more defined 'evening' eye - thin lining of burnished gold along upper lid.

meet The Tramp: make mortified eye contact as The Tramp sways out of Labroke's betting shop and I walk by in another outfit, another bag, different makeup two hours after seeing him last. I am mortified to have met the same person in three different outfits within 3 hours. Particularly seeing as The Tramp lives nowhere and obviously doesn't have my extensive wardrobe in which he can Barbie-doll it round Partick in all day.

• edited to add: "Turtle Snouts" was slyly inserted by Stan, unbeknownst to me. It is a phrase I've always threatened him with - "do anything and I'll hack into your eBay account & put 'turtle snouts' in as a feedback response for the lastest bike screw you've bought - that'll bugger up your eBay rating for once & for all"... Needless to say: he's getting it - and not in a good way.

Our finest gifts we bring pa-ram-pam-pam-pam Ra-pam-pam-pam, ra-pam-pam-pam

Today, after lectures I 'found myself' to be sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea in my hand, pillow at my back. Oh how snug it was. Then the TV got switched on and the channels began to flick. On VH1 the flicking stopped as showing was a programme about our nation's favourite Christmas songs. Number 20 was the 1989 re-recording of Band Aid's Do they know it's Christmas?

Featuring heavily Cliff Richard, Kylie Minogue: watching it was like sitting in a time machine. Kylie - singing as tunelessly as she does today - lacked the very odd Jocelyn Wildenstein face she's started wearing in public these days. There was Big Fun, Sonia and every 27 year old's fantasy 15 years ago, Jason Donovan. Some of my chums (elbow....point...yes - YOU!) were in love with that floppy-haired sex-god. I can't remember being so but certainly I copied his casually ripped jeans. I may have been too in love with Joe Elliot from Def Leppard at the time.

Flicking over though once Maria Carey came on as the next Christmas song, I found a channel with some new-fangled band: a racket of guitar and a try-hard video. Another song came on. 'That one sounds just like the last, doesn't it Stan?' (sharp intake of breath) .....am I an old fogey now?'

Anyhoo, my favourite 'pop' Christmas songs are the odd Little Drummer Boy by David Bowie & Bing Crosbie, A Spaceman Came Travelling by Chris De Burgh, Ring Out, Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull and Winter Wonderland by Peggy Lee. I'll have a think about favourite carols - oh how I love Christmas music!

Pour some sugar on me...yeah, in the name of love

Yes, we all had our crushes: Alison on Michael Brandon, the male sleuth on Dempsey & Makepeace (I'm sure she had voodoo dolls of Glynis Barber) and musically on Bryan Adams (I have to admit to being rather partial to him: I recorded the video to Everything I do, I do it for you off that saturday video show & watched it over and over, pausing only to write down the words the craggy-faced one sang as he strummed his electric guitar while standing, wide-legged on a castle's ramparts) and Debbie on Marti Pellow. Dawn has escaped as I can't remember her main obsession of the time, though as she had a love of the records of Jive Bunny, she will not go unmentioned. Such is the advantages of being the writer - I have craftily filtered out all my own dreadful musical likes of the time ('you think Def Leppard are cool Christine?!') and have featured those who cannot defend themselves. How cruel.

polkadotdoubletrouble

Look! polkadotmittens.COM . Who'dve thought such a silly word would be so transatlantically popular. .co.uk folks, register those .coms now.

Lentils, wind and tea

Last night we had a beautiful dinner of lentils: thankfully I'm still smit with my cold, and after coughing over Stan's face all night ("I thought I was hallucinating about a breeze in the room, but it was YOU all along, hacking in my face!" - Stan), neither of us were able to perceive the progress of the stuff through our digestive tract.

A month ago or so, on a gorgeous crisp Glasgow saturday, we walked from our flat to Tchai Ovna, a rickety tea shop off Otago Street in the west end. It's busy, hot (calor gas heaters) yet cold (age-old damp building) and packed with the furniture you see outside charity shops on sunday mornings, disposed of in a midnight flit by former-owners, giddy with the ownership of their new DFS sofas and chairs. We ordered daal and a platter of lebanese 'stuff' and exotic teas and perched, sooking in the heat. It's the sort of place where moving out of the 'bubble' of space you've been occupying means certain shivers as you come into contact with utter chill. The food was great, and since then I've been meaning to try to make a similar thing. And by complete accident, I did: here's my recipe - sorry for the rather crap quantities and utter vagueness of timing.

nursing knowledge: part 1

A little medical knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. Stan, according to me, has half a sacrum. This I diagnosed while giving him a massage with his new eucalyptus oil mixed with some sweet almond oil. (We're so holistic these days with our pumpkin seed muffins and oils and exercise). For all his life he's managed to hipple about with his vertebral column half supported within his pelvis.

The Tissue Chap

The Tissue Chap has a lot to answer for. Severe irritation and a crusty snout: such is the lot of a cold-sufferer. I am off to make a cream to alleviate my intense suffering. In a world of sham elections (who 'da thought the USA & the Ukraine had so much in common?) and famine, solace (or if you prefer, ignorance) can be found in whipping various oils over a pot of bubbling water.

My transition from drinking & smoking layabout into clean living homemaker is almost complete: I've started making my own face cream. With a lot of help from this eBay seller who imports shea and cocoa butters from a co-op of women in Africa, I'm managing to alleviate my sore red cheeks & nose with beautiful blends. For night, shea butter, jojoba oil (cleansing), frankincense (anti-ageing properties), wheatgerm oil (nourishing) and a tiny drop of lemon oil (balancing - though not to be used during the day). These have been melted then whipped together, cooling to form a soft melting balm with sinks in deliciously. No additives, no chemicals.

oh, hello there!

Gosh - fancy seeing you here: have you been waiting long? "No" was the collective sigh of no one across the digital collective that is the internet, "you're so last year, didn't even notice you'd gone".

Theories of nursing, models of nursing, theories of health, models of health, theories of cognitive development, theories of ethics... vertebrae, pleurae, manubrium, intercostal spaces... ionic basis of action potentials, blood flow velocities...

all this, sooked into my head: after a fashion. Stop whistling Stan, I'm studying. Stop channel-hopping Stan, I'm studying. Stop poking my cheek Stan, I'm studying. Stop not making me tea every hour Stan, I'm studying. Dreaming visceral dreams of organs and vessels, of books and failure, these past few months have sped by with an astounding whoosh.

Today I am off ill, but should be on my 1st clinical placement with a Health Visitor. Days, I step back as I enter a cosy living room with F - my mentor - and marvel that these people are taking me seriously as a health promoter. As they talk, they look to F and to me, looking for reassurances, advice and support. I hold babies and young children with a confidence and authority as to their care and welfare I didn't know I had. It's amazing what an engraved plastic badge: University of Glasgow, Christine Groundwater: Student Nurse, can do to prop up your self-confidence.

After the holidays, it;s back to book & lecture-based learning: six weeks of theory, ethics and biomedical sciences before another 4 week placement. This shall be in 'Care of the Older Adult', which I'm looking forward to. Some in my class are dismissive of older folks: boring. Have they ever seen the looks on older folk's faces when they're asked about their lives? That attitude really pisses me off: old folk being a nuisance, & now I'll sound so hectoring and sanctimonious: if it weren't for old Mr McShuffle or Mrs FitzBit-Doolally there's a huge possibility we wouldn't be who we are today. Gah!

Anyhoo...outside dry frost clings to the rooves and I can hardly see the neighbour lurking, peering through the accidental gap in her blinds. We put up our decorations today, maximising time spent with the baubles and lights. Our tree is 2 foot tall and that's with the angel's hair bouffed up. It's strangled with lights and mini glitterballs, but looks so cosy and christmassy. Ah, christmas. Usually I like to bake a cake for Stan's Ma, bake florentines and lebkuckhen to give away and generally be a sickening Delia-type, all organised and calm, smug with my stack of home-made goodies to thrust at people. This year it's all rush & nothing done, as you may have noticed given I've updated nothing since september. I have however discovered a fantastic vegetable I like to use in everything we eat: sweet potato.

sweet potato, bacon & lentil soup

1 onion, chopped
2-3 rashers of bacon, chopped into cubey things
a grain of flour (my this I mean a tablespoon or so - you know I'm rubbish at quantities)
3 large sweet potatoes, peeled & chopped into chunky cubes
a fair grain of red lentils (two good handfuls maybe)
a kettle of boiling water
a ham stock cube if you feel it needs extra meatifying (some bacon's gey crap these days)

In a big pot and using a smidge of oil, cook your bacon, then add the onion. After 5 mins
or so, chuck in the flour. Cook for a few minutes then add the lentils. Stir through the
sweet potato and pour over the still super-hot boiled water. Bring to a gentle boil and leave
for 20 minutes, at which point test a cube of sweet potato and squidge a lentil or two. Once
you're happy they're cooked, get a tattie masher and randomly squash the solid into the
liquid. Season, though you really won't need much salt (unless you're a Salt Addict like
the Lovely Stan) and add lots of black pepper. Yummmy.