Who's demented now??

London comes to me...

Me old cor-blimey geezers came up from that London: Gerry and Allen. 7 hour round trip. They met the old folks who thought they were wonderful (they don’t know them like I do).

Dad brought his fishing flies in as Gerry is a keen fly-fisherman too. He also cornered Allen to talk about cars - Allen was driving some huge Mercedes SUV.

My Dad - 'The Chatty Welshman'!

When they first arrived I was slightly discombobulated seeing familiar faces in my home environment - does anyone else get that or is it just me? People in their contexts or out of their contexts? A bit like a wedding where all the people compartmentalised in different parts of your life come together. Like a rabbit in headlights - felt slightly unreal, dream-like.

We did the Lambeth Walk through Wells - saw the cathedral, Vicar’s Close and Bishop’s Palace. I think they liked Vicar’s Close best. 

'Mad' Allen Osborn and Gerry 'Chopper' Boyle

A couple of Chelsea Smilers later we had lunch at the S&P. It was great. Lots of good-natured swearing and laughter. And also comparing notes about living in the sticks and the wacko racist nutjobs who do little or certainly less, to disguise their bigotry.

Really nice to see them. Much appreciated. 

...and I go to London

Despite the lovely day, I slept very badly that night. I just couldn’t get to sleep with underlying stress about travelling to London and so forth, and then I woke up way too early. 

I used to feel like that when I was running masonry jobs, thinking everything would go wrong. Lost a lot of sleep over a number of years.

Fell asleep several times on the coach trip on the way up. Each time I jolted awake, thinking I was about to pee myself. Anyone else get that?

Oh, okay then...

Got to Hammersmith pretty much on time. The MC on the coach has thankfully stopped making that joke about Ebaying lost property. Got out and jumped on the tube, to go to Piccadilly Circus.

Nice afternoon - but I had a heavy bag in tow.

The fashions in London at the moment are completely underwhelming. Baggy faded jeans, earth-shatteringly horrendous baggy woollen cardigans, beards and dresses, and ultimately look like you can only afford to dress out of a jumble sale.

Zero-style.

Ugly, unflattering clothes.

I walked to The Ralph Lauren flagship store. I'd recommend anyone to go in there. It really is something else. Like an Ivy League university from the 1930s in London.

As with all things, they’ve stopped making the one thing I always bought. In this case I was after RL Sullivan jeans, Buitoni-fly and no stretch. They even had a cardigan I was tempted by - half-jacket half cardigan. It was in cotton silk. 

I know, I know. Too many buitoni but they’re not plastic and at least it’s not regular soft fluffy wool. More like a jacket really.

Yes, that's what I will tell myself. It's not a cardigan, it's a jacket! 

(Remembers being admonished by upper middle class family 25 years ago: "It's not a sauce Geraint! It's a jus!")

I know, I know. Only £549.

Great plastic-surgery disasters of Mayfair

Filler here, filler there; filler everywhere. The unfeasibly rich doing their utmost to reclaim their former beauty and paying the price for their vanity.

Narcissus with botox.

Some are so grotesque they look like they're wearing a plastic mask. Demonic.

Body dysmorphia - must be.

No, you look great. Honestly...

Wimbledonia

That evening I stayed with Sophie and her daughter Olivia who I hadn’t seen for years, and who is now a confident young woman. 

All the young adults I knew as kids now seem more mature than me.

We had a lovely evening. I slept for 2 hours when I got to Sophie’s as I was shattered.

We had an amazing Chinese meal from Good Earth - a London chain. Just astonishingly good quality.

I felt like sending it to the 2 Chinese takeaways in Wells to show them how it SHOULD be done, rather than the care-free slop they produce which they then puke into the plastic containers.

I heard Sophie leave around 7.30 am. I had a shower, Oscar the lovely 12 year old brown lab was unresponsive at the top of the stairs, then had a banana and a cup of tea and left. What a beautiful road - huge bay windows - and front gardens. A conservation area too. Must have been built in the 1910s. Mostly occupied by families it seemed.

I looked up the house prices on Zoopla. Wow. 

The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery

Got into Russell Sq and did my usual of going to Pret for breakfast. Always a ton of foreign students around. Sat there and watched the world go by and do its thing.

Prof Warren said while I may or may NOT have dementia, the Semantic Variant diagnosis I originally had was incorrect.

I said I felt slightly fraudulent - so do I have dementia or not? My behaviour certainly changed and I got crazy angry until the Sertraline kicked in. And I do have problems with elision of words. My brain fog is as real as ever and despite my neuropsych tests it's increasingly opaque. 

He assured me it’s nothing to feel fraudulent about. The hospital is all about anomalous cases and they want to put me in a PET scan as the last MRI scans have shown the atrophy in my lobes has STABILISED!

There is something going on and they want to get to the bottom of it. 

A PET scan will show more the workings of my brain rather than just its volume, but is subsequently also prone to more of an interpretation - such is the complexity.

I did my yearly neuropsychology tests and was told it was pretty much the same as last year’s - it certainly felt harder. More brain fog, less cognisance that I’d got the right answers, and subsequently less confidence. 

I felt I was giving a best guess rather than knowing I'd got the right answer.

So who knows what I've got? 

And that was it for another year.

 

The New Age

Back to London

So on Sunday Dad drove me to the bus station with my suitcase and backpack to get the coach to Hammersmith. Just like being a teenager again. 

It should have been in Wells by 8.55 but it didn’t get in until 9.20, which meant we hit the traffic on the A303 (past Stonehenge) and arrived in Hammersmith at 13.00. I then missed my connection to Norbiton and was late for D&D at The Willoughby. 

(I get quite flustered and stressed by the thought of travel these days, but I never used to when I was , er, normal. Still, I still have the wherewithal to travel on my own, get tickets and plan an itinerary.)

It was great to see the pub so full. Rick, the landlord, has been brilliant to us gamers and allowed us to play on Sundays and Tuesdays as well as storing bulky terrain. Covid was like a nuclear winter to the hospitality industry so it’s great to see a renaissance in customer numbers. We’re regularly numbering 20-30 on Sundays upstairs, and now the Premiership has restarted customers were abundant.

It was great to be back in Greyhawk again (I’m talking about the D&D session now) where we encountered more cultists, but don’t worry: we killed them :)

Did I tell you I now have a group of D&Ders back in Wells? They are fantastic and we started a session last week. They are super nice and super enthusiastic. I can’t wait for the next session, but more to come on that.

Woken by scuttlin’

I stayed at Adrian’s house on Sunday night. I stayed in the room where he keeps all his exotic pets - you know the types, Amazonian tree frogs, hermit crabs, spiders, poisonous toads. 

My new bestie.

I put in my earplugs, put on my eye mask and went to sleep. I slept for ages only to be woken up at 3.30 by very loud scuttling of the hermit crabs in a tank. Little buggers.

The older I get the more I love nature. The yellow and black dart frogs are fascinating and beautiful - and barely 40mm long. The toad (about 50-60mm) has a bright yellow belly which I didn’t get to see which it bares to predators to say “ I die - we both die!” 

The hermit crabs so alien and weird  - scuttlin’ bastards. Fascinating nonetheless - picking up discarded shells as their new homes. Isn’t nature ceaselessly amazing? 

The Light Newspaper

Whilst in Wells, my friend Mark was visiting his Mother there. We were in The Crown, which - as anyone who enters there will be aware as it’s rather shouty about it - featured in the Edgar Wright film, Hot Fuzz.

We were enjoying a pint and Mark found a copy of The Light, secreted somewhere as though hidden with the intention it be found like a dirty magazine!

If you’re not aware of it The Light newspaper is a conspiratorial rag were QAnon theories meet the New Age. All MSM (Mainstream Media) is part of the deep state, scientists are too, 5G masts are there to activate the Covid vaccinations within us, and the usual stuff about Jews. 

This piece of toilet paper is sold on Glastonbury High Street, and I’m told the vendors are quite aggressive if you don’t buy a copy - which reminds me of Scientologists when you question their ‘religion’.

I left this particular copy with Adrian, and while we may laugh at its contents, there are enough lunatics who believe the wildfires on Maui were government made in order to clear the whole island so they can build a new ‘Smart City’ and control us all.

Despite the fact there is ZERO evidence to back any of this SHIT up.

Slumming it in Hertfordshire

I’m spending this week with my friends in Herts. They have a beautiful house, the sun is streaming down, and dragonflies, butterflies and buzzing insects are abundant.  In the distance past the swing hanging from a branch, Canadian Geese munch the grass. A lone swan and coot swim in the river by the weir, periodically a kite and a buzzard vie for airspace.

I’m sat at the magnificent dining table made by family friend Jim Distortion of Metal Machine UK. To my right is the beautiful designer kitchen. Bisto the enormous brown Labrador is somewhere around…

I made this promotional video earlier. Take a look: 

Another 3 days of this. Ghastly.

Then a few days in Kingston where I will see Jacqui and the dogs. Apparently Tomos is already missing me. 

I love dogs, but I’m also blessed with very kind human friends.