I was recently diagnosed with Prostate Cancer, by chance, as it happens. I was sent for a scan by a urologist to check on problems with pissing, and what happened is that I was that he discovered a small cancer in my prostate!
Images of the difference between “ordinary” cells and cancer cells
This after the public section of the health system had been mucking about for several years, I went there, I was seen by a nurse, who reported to a doctor, (oh, I took a test piss, filling a bucket with piss) and that was repeated time after time….. So I got fed-up with this routine, so I went to a private Urologist instead.
There were about 5 cancer cells to be found in there, and he ordered another scan to check out how far it was and if it was curable, and this one discovered that there were no others, so it was a case of dealing with 5 cancer cells.
So sent me to a cancer specialist, who took one look at the scan, and decided that I needed to be irradiated at once…. So she set this up, so I had to go for 39 sets of radiations in another hospital – the one I saw her in didn’t have the capacity to deal with this.
This was painless, but boring………..
And entailed loads of driving too, about 70 km per day! But it worked!
In the end I was declared free of cancer cells, and I pissed 2 times a night as opposed to every three quarters of an hour… Which was a great relief. But the only thing was the “hot flushes” that I suffered from, as a result of the hormone injections I had – the idea was to stop the testosterone adding to the cancer, but it was a dreadful thing! I had “hot flushes” every few minutes, which was a real drag!!!!!!! And it went on for about a year as well. And I am still getting it at night, sadly.
But otherwise, I am cured completely, which is GREAT!!!!
While living in Singapore, (I was about 10) I found myself in hospital with a Chinese resistance fighter, who had been condemned to death by the British government, and who was, apparently, in a really bad way of health, and so the British government felt that he was too ill to be executed!
He was in hospital to get him into good health and then the British would take him out and hang him!
As I spoke Chinese (I went to a Chinese school – that will be a subject of another post https://ozthoughtsblog.com/2016/02/03/more-colonial-life-singapore-again/) and his guard was a Sikh who didn’t speak a word of Chinese, so I found out what was planned for him and it has made a real impression on my ever since as a heartless example of how governments work.
He explained how the British had promised a bunch of Chinese to stay in the jungle as they were losing it to the Japanese and when the British came back (!) they would pay them handsomely to continue the struggle on their behalf.
So in due time, when the fortunes of war went around and the British came back to Malaysia, the Chinese came out of the jungle and went to the British to be paid……
But the British had no intention of paying them, and kept putting them off with all manner of excuses. So in the end, the Chinese simply went back into the jungle, and took up arms against the British Planters instead of the Japanese.
The Chinese Communists were not involved in the beginning, but quite quickly became involved, as part of their struggle against the British elsewhere.
It was a real introduction to the way governments work for me.
On my father’s side I have the pleasure of having descended from a splendidly eccentric collection of odd-balls.
My Great Grandfather and Grandfather, who were Grant Duffs, were variously governors of the Bank of England, Honorary Colonels-in-Chief of that wonderful Scottish regiment, the Black Watch, oh, and also The Baron Monkswell, the current holder of that title being my cousin Gerard, who upon entering the House of Lords made it possible for a bunch of militant feminists to abseil into the chamber of the House of Commons during a sitting.
His father, Larry Collier – a splendid bloke who I was very fond of – was one of the very curious British things, a lord and a Communist, and only felt able to sit in the House of Lords as it gave him a chance to actively pursue his aims as a life long Communist. Well, like many British Communists, he left the Communist party in 1956 when the Russians violently invaded Hungary and suppressed the move of the Hungarians to move away from Communism.
He is also notable for his work in the ’30’s in helping refugees escape from Nazi Germany – by the simple expedient of marrying them, getting them to Britain, ensuring that they thus became British citizens, and then divorcing them. I gather he managed this a number of times. Trump would love him!
And my favourite, Granny Lilly as she was known in the family, was a wonderful woman, whom I had the good fortune to know before she died. She started out as a Lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria then became active in the fledgling British Communist party, where, as with most of her kids, she remained an active member until 1956, when much disillusioned, she left the party. One of her most notable feats was during a Communist International in Geneva in the ’20’s where it was solemnly decided that good Communists should support and practice free-love, she stood up and announced that she had been practicing this for years, and thought it was a splendid idea – this went down like a lead balloon with the others there, as they approved of the idea, but in reality, not the theory.
She was also notable for climbing a mountain in Crete with Bertrand Russell (an unlikely pair if there ever was one!), which was renamed in her honour by the Cretans as Mount Lilly, which I believe it still is called.
Furthermore, she chain smoked Woodbines, a very cheap and nasty cigarette, and used to stay in the Dorchester Hotel when in London, always taking a room that overlooked Park Lane, a very “posh” street in the centre of London. Here she used to wash her underwear and hang it out of the window over Park Lane to dry… A real no no as far as the hotel bosses were concerned, but no one dared to try and stop her doing this, as she was capable of being very much the Grand Dame at need.
A lovely, kind and superbly eccentric woman who was much loved by all who knew her – apart from the owners of the Dorchester perhaps.
Up to now it has been a very varied, enjoyable and for me at least, entertaining life for the most part. So far I have managed to live in something like 11 different countries and had a pretty wide range of professions, all (well most of them) totally enjoyable and I continue to find life both fun and an interesting challenge. And plan to stay as long as I can to see what comes next.
The beginning in Britain: So I shall begin at the beginning, seems a good place to start.
For me this was on 28th June 1942 in a hospital in North London during an air-raid. Many years later my mother told me that as I was being born, young German pilots were dropping bombs all around us in an endeavour to bring my life to a stop before it had begun – Happily they failed in this simple aim.
My mother (on the right), her sister Liz and a Sailor called Joe (apparently) Being romantic in the middle of a war.
To make it even more memorable for my mother, she tells me that on the floor below her room, a large number of religious people were conducting a very noisy and fervent prayer meeting. So killers above, singers below, and generally a noisy affair – A good start to a life I feel, and one that probably was more formative than she realised at the time.
Lorraine and Gerry Striding out in war time London. Gerry was my real father.
Obviously my memories of my first few years are vague, more a series of impressionistic pictures and sounds. Why is it that we can never remember things from the first 5 or 6 years of our lives? Always struck me as rather odd that – probably the most dramatic period in most lives, and we can’t recall a damn thing about it. Lousy arrangement I have always felt.
For me the most powerful part of this impressionistic period consists of a feeling of anxiety whenever I hear that particular type of siren that was used by the British to warn of air raids. Even now at the good age of 78 I still have this whenever I hear that particular wailing sound. A feeling of discomfort and a strange feeling of fear of I know not what. Odd but powerful. The only other thing I can bring to mind of my first few years is a sort of overwhelming greyness and women in dark coloured bundled-up clothing and large dark hats. I suppose fashions then were somewhat depressing, but I seem only to remember the worst of them. And a general sensation of dreariness and poverty. Not a good set of memories.
I gather that shortly after I had been born, a V1 rocket landed just outside the house we were living in in London, and the drawer (yup, drawer in a chest of drawers, a normal place for small babies to sleep in then as one was protected from flying glass and falling debris in there) was shot out and across the room with me sound asleep in it. I always was a sound sleeper, something I shall return to later in this saga. So I survived the war unscathed and went on to start growing up as one does. The only other memory of the period before we went to Australia that I can recall is the snail races that we held in the nursery school I went to. We each collected and brought snails to school for this purpose, and the idea was that all our snails were lined up at one end of the classroom, and whoever’s snail got to the other end first was the winner. Of course most of the snails didn’t co-operate and wandered all over the place but not to the end point of the race. Silly, but fun.
By this point my mother and father had divorced (no idea why) and my mother had married a splendid Australian soldier who had been based in England preparatory to the invasion of France (Plastic surgery for wounded soldiers and airmen being his thing). This man, Russell Cole was the man I regarded as my father, and loved him deeply, a strong and very likeable man, if given to silences – He was a dentist by the way.
OZTHOUGHTS 