Foot Drop: Part IV...

At last. Some good news. I have seen a neorologist and he thinks the nerve damage is unlikely to be the early signs of MS. This is a major win. It was always an unlikely scenario, but having that particular fear rattling through my head for 10 weeks has not been a pleasant experience.

After much extensive prodding and poking and examining, he is pretty sure it's nerve damage to the fibular nerve. He is also quite optimistic that he can eventually repair it, though he has warned me that it may be a six-month process.

Neither of us still have any idea how it has happened. Generally, if i pick up an injury, it tends to be martials arts related. But I usually know pretty immediately if I have done something because the pain is instant. I am also good at monitoring my body for signs of wear and tear and knowing when to rest or protect something.

So I am now facing more tests and scans and examinations and other bits and bobs. I will also have some form of orthapaedic support for my foot. But there is forward momentum and, at some point, I will be fully mobile again.

In the meantime, I'll train what I can when I feel good enough to do it and not beat myself up if I can't train at the regularity and with the intensity I want to.

My martial arts journey is not over yet and I feared it may have been. It's just going to be taking a few quite side roads for a while...

Foot Drop: Part III...

Hospital waiting rooms are often pretty grim places and this one is no exception. But ill and injured people waiting to be diagnosed are probably not the happiest campers in the world.

There's also the additional thinking time, where all the worst case scenarios can run through your head. For me, these are irreparable foot injury and MS. Anything else will be a bonus.

So it's now a case of waiting. My life could be about change. I am trying to remain positive and see any outcome as a new beginning rather than an end. But it is quite a tough lie to maintain. It's also really tiring trying to be upbeat when you largely feel like getting angry and crying.

Frankly, I am well fucking bored with this.

Sheffield...

As a comic-obsessed teenager, I used to make regular pilgrimages from my home town of Goole in East Yorkshire to Sheffield. The South Yorkshire capital had an excellent comic shop and Goole did not, so it was a happy trip with happy memories.

Apart from the time I got caught bunking off school on my birthday and I got put on report. That was less good. 

I haven't been back to Sheffield for 30 years so a recent trip was an eye opener. The main two things that struck me were as follows:
I) The streets are filled with marauding gangs of unemployed male strippers, desperate to do a dance for you. One of the poor sods was so desperate that he offered to take all his clothes off to a Kajagoogoo song of my choosing just for a bite of my sandwich.
II) The hotel I stayed at had a large events room at the back and caped keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman and Tory-loving racist comedian Jim Davison were two of the turns on offer, with a four-course lunch and a chance for photos.

One of those things is actually true.

Back on the Baize: Part I...

This year, I've returned to playing competitive pool for my county pool team after taking four years off, and it's been an enjoyable return so far. 

In match one, I played in the B Team and played the maximum four frames. I played well in a couple of them, but I was pretty ropey in the other two. However, I got lucky and won all four.

In match two, I was promoted to the A Team and I played pretty well, but I missed chances to win two frames that I would normally have put away. I comfortably won the other two frames, though, with the final one coming at a critical time when the team was 20-22 down. 

At my best, I am a good county A Team player. But I'm still feeling my way back into it a bit, so I'm not at my best. I'm also having to relearn match pacing, how to stay focused during the day, and how to keep a consistent approach and rhythm.

I am putting some proper time in, though, and it will pay dividends at some point this year. With my foot injury looking medium to long term, I need something to focus my energies into that isn't too strenuous. 

It's good to have this long-term love. It's like spending time with a good friend you haven't seen for a while.

Foot Drop: Part II...

One of the benefits of having a swatted foot is that I'll need some type of walking aid to help my mobility. So I am currently looking at hand-carved walking sticks. 

I want something that is both beautiful and weaponisable. It could be a long search. 

In other news, I also have a new thing that has arrived from nowhere. It's an underactive thyroid gland, so I'm now on medication for life if I want to void fatigue, depression, nausea, constipation, lifeless hair and irregular periods. That last one may not apply to me.

It's nothing major and it affects one in 50 women and one in 1000 men. The fact that I am the one in 1000 men is obviously a blow to my masculinity as it suggests I am part-woman. The Missus says this makes me 'special'. I fear it was not a compliment, though.

Foot Drop: Part I...

It would seem the comedy injury with the medieval name isn't quite the japery-filled laugh I previously thought.

Because there's no obvious site or cause of injury causing the foot drop, there's some concern that it is nerve damage. And because there's no obvious site or cause of injury, there's concern the nerve damage may be caused by something else.

The best-case scenario is it's something the GP's missed that is trapping or damaging a nerve, and this can be fixed and I will eventually have full movement and motor control back of my foot. The middle ground is that the damage is permanent and this is it, so I'll have to negotiate having a twatted foot for the rest of my life. The worst-case scenario is some quite grim shit, which opens up a whole new set of fun possibilities. 

So I'm now waiting to be tested. 

To add insult to injury, I've also had flu to pile on top of the exhaustion and stress from work, and a vicious allergy attack paid a visit as well. I feel broken, my body is in revolt and I really don't like it. At night, I lay in bed, like a shit Uma Thurman when the bride has escaped the hospital in Kill Bill, willing movement in my foot.

To be perfectly frank, I have had better weeks than this. The last seven days can, quite frankly, fuck the fuck off.

Other Woman News...

Tonight was an all-too-rare night training at hapkido, followed by an hour in the pub with the Other Woman.

I am currently carrying an injury with the excellent name of Foot Drop. I like this because it sounds vaguely Middle Ages. The upshot of this, however, is that I cannot control half of the movement in my right foot, so my hapkido looks even less fluid and graceful than usual, regardless of the lack of regular class attendance.

In the pub, however, it was business as usual and topics covered included:
Oral sex and teddy bears
Meat Loaf and al fresco sex
Bothying and murder
Hollowed-out corpses and sleds
Cadavers and games of Name That Tune

The Other Woman remains one of the people I love most in the world. Few other people would encourage, inspire and create this type of illuminating discourse. Fact.

Happy Anniversary...

Me and the Missus recently celebrated 20 years together.

To mark the occasion, we spent several days in New York and we took the Boy and the Boy's Girlfriend with us. After all, he's he's a big part of our story together and they celebrate their anniversary on the same date, too.

We had a fab time and we did loads: a Nicks basketball game, lots of meals out, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park, Chinatown... We also headed to Brooklyn and visited Brooklyn Museum, which was an astonishingly good place with a world-class Egyptian collection and some amazing feminist art.

With the demands of my job currently insane, it was good to have some serious time with my family. We created good memories on this trip and these will sustain me through tough work times ahead.

The other thing that will sustain me is the thing that has always supported and sustained me. And that's the love of not just a good woman, but the love of the best person I know. And I've been blessed enough to have her in my life for two decades.

She's smarter than I am, tougher than I am and probably even prettier. She is without doubt the great love of my life and the best thing in it. And I hope she remains so every single day.

American Hustle...

History have done some pretty cool shows in recent years and they have successfully moved away from the idea that the channel only does documentaries about Hitler or UFOs. The pirate drama series, Black Sails, garnered rave reviews, and Vikings has been an international hit and is now well into its fourth series.

Ronnie O'Sullivan's American Hustle is one of the latest shows from History and it looks like it will be very good. 

The premise is simple: snooker champion O'Sullivan and TV pundit pal Matt Smith travel across the USA and visit four cities, namely New York, Chicago, Memphis and San Francisco; while there, they explore the local area, then head to the pool hall and take on the local champions to see if O'Sullivan can transfer his snooker skills to the similar-but-different arena of the US pool table.

The show is part-travelogue and part-pot-athon. It also features a host of infamous characters from the world of US pool, including Earl 'The Pearl' Strickland, 'Kid' Delicious, Johnny 'The Scorpion' Archer, Jeanette 'The Black Widow' Lee and Scott 'The Freezer' Frost.

The four-part series kicks off on Thursday 26 January. O'Sullivan genuinely looked like he'd thoroughly enjoyed the experience when he was discussing it at a press event, too.

Great TV Shows That Nearly Were: Part VI...

This game is slowly developing a life of its own. This happened with another idea I had for a game show, Call My Muff, which I actually made and road-tested with a group of friends while drunk. I really should approach a games manufacturer with this idea as I'm sure it's a goer.

But that was then and this is now, so here are the latest entries for Great TV Show That Nearly Were: 

Gash in the Attic: A team of experts aid money-hungry participants by exploring their lofts and outbuildings in the hope of finding a relative they can pimp out on the streets to raise funds to pay for a holiday or some other such nonsense.

 

Home and a Gay: Aussie soap opera following the folk of Summer Gay, who ironically are a town of redneck homophobes. Their views are challenged, though, when a prodigal son returns home and announces he now likes Borises rather than Dorises.

 

Dad's Barmy: Classic homage to a popular sitcom. This time, the dads in question are all living in sheltered accomodation in 2017. But they're suffering various types of dementia and think they're fighting the Germans in World War Two. It's bittersweet. Probably.

New Old Sayings...

'Beer then wine, you'll feel fine.'

'Beer then wine, then more beer then wine, followed by stout, prosecco, more wine and beer, and topped off with rum. This will make you feel less than fine.'

Stubborn But Not Stupid...

With work continuing to be an utter nightmare, I am struggling to make hapkido classes with any form of regularity. And with me moving to work on the other side of London next year, it's unlikely the situation will get any easier. 

This is a pisser. I have a 14-year relationship with the school and its teacher and seeing that slip away is quite sad.

On the plus side, my BJJ studies remain pretty consistent because I can train in the mornings and I can make classes before the corporate carnage of work begins. But there are times when sensible decisions have to be made, so if it's BJJ for a while and hapkido becomes a thing I do very rarely – or maybe even no longer do – then that's OK. It's better to train at something rather than at nothing.

It's important to persevere, but it's more important to survive and that latter attitude is one that permeates a lot of my current thinking. Because of work pressures, I am in survival and consolidation mode.

In a related story, I was sparring at BJJ a few weeks ago and an old war wound got caught and it hurt for a while. But I brushed it off and carried on. My partner smiled and said, 'Wolverine's tough!' My teacher walked by and replied, 'He's not tough. He's stubborn.'

My teacher's nearly right. For the record, I've never pretended to be tough, though I will begrudgingly accept stubborn. Put more simply, its just resilience. But I'm not stubborn or resilient to the point of stupidity and damaging myself. 

I generally know when to let a thing go... and that includes resistance to clamped-on armbars and any relationship I can no longer sustain. 

But we'll see how things go. There's no need to make any big decision just yet about what gives. I may have to at some point in the next two or three months, though.

Competition Time No.2

I lost my fight today and I have no complaints. I lost to the better fighter.

My initial gameplan of getting an early grip and pulling guard worked. But I couldn't secure the position and he escaped, then he threw me when I got up to my feet. From there, I failed to escape his top position and he eventually mounted me and choked me.

So, takehomes from defeat:

Plan: My plan was solid, but I wasn't good enough at executing it.

Mistakes: I didn't fight to collapse his posture enough and really secure full guard.

Other: In north/south on the bottom, I had no escape plan.

Other: I rushed from the point he escaped and stood up, and I should have been more composed and more careful.

It was a good day, though. Competing is always an education and I now have lots to work on before I compete again in either late January or early February.

Competition Time No.1...

Tomorrow I compete in my first BJJ tournament at blue belt. I know the guy I'm fighting and he's also a new BJJ blue belt and we're both black belts at other martial arts, so it should be a decent fight. 

His judo black belt and greater competition experience in that area means I'll have to be wary of his grip fighting, hip throws and trips. 

I'm slowly working out how to employ my standing wrist locks from hapkido, but I'm not confident enough to employ them in a competition environment yet. If I get a strong position on the floor, though, I'm confident I can spot the chance and hit them.

I'm on weight and I'm calmly excited. There is another LFF fighter competing, too. 

It will be a good day. And, even if it's a bad day on the mats for me, there'll be a learning experience somewhere.

Great TV Shows That Nearly Were: Part V...

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Futururistic ski-fi adventure. 

Fuck Rogers in the 25th Century: Futuristic sex challenge show with a specific target group of people called Roger in mind.

Premiership Darts

Premiership Farts: Members of the London Gay Men's Voice Choir trump in Eric Bristow's face. Louie Spence commentates.

Call the Midwife: Period drama about midwives delivering babies!

Ball the Midwife: Real-life adult drama about midwives making babies. 

Downton Abbey: Edwardian nonsense. 

Downton Shabby: A bunch of a bunch of Geordies squat in a castle, get drunk and shoot up. Jimmy Nail is the moral compass.

American Sad: A follow-up to The West Wing in which Donald Trump is president and everyone else is just sad.

I am also sure we can do something with CountryFile...

Great TV Shows That Nearly Were: Part IV...

Here are some more entries. 

The Other Woman has addd: 

Eight Out of Ten Cats Does Cuntdown: Panellists from Eight Out of Ten Cats throw leather-bound dictionaries at a line-up of Tory politicians. Coconut Shy rules apply.

I have added: 

Splay for Today: Unemployed actors and actresses show off a range of fuck cavities as they turn to prostitution to make ends meet.

Great TV Shows That Nearly Were: Part III...

My latest additions is:

Grand Designs: Some bloke who loves architecture shows moneyed but clueless middle-class twonks try to create a better home. 

Gran Designs: A lentil-eating, well-meaning gimp shows moneyed but clueless middle-class twonks how to create a better elderly relative.

The Other Woman also came up with the following: 

Through the Keyhole: Panel show that used to be presented by bespectacled vo-wel-el-on-ga-tor Loyd Grossman before he went off to make pasta sauces.

Through the Beyhole: A round-up of the idiotic nuggets spewed out of the ass of Beyoncé and other urban music stars. Russell Kane presents.

Great TV Shows That Nearly Were: Part II...

One-day International Cricket: Live! A full-day match featuring some cricketers from somewhere else other than England. That could mean Wales. Or even Scotland.

One-gay International Cricket: Live! A full 24 hours as the cameras film a solitary gay man or woman from another country playing cricket on their own. Richie Benaud and a token woman commentate. Other sporting talking heads pretend not to be homophobic.

Great TV Shows That Nearly Were: Part I...

The Other Woman refers to me as a Walking Filth Bucket but she can be equally disgusting, so I am inventing a new game.

It's called Great TV Shows That Nearly Were and the rules are simple: take a real TV show and switch one letter or add and remove one letter to make it a more interesting TV show. For additional points, you can also give a brief listing for the show.

Here is an example:
Great Canal Journeys: A well-famous actor enjoys another exciting adventure of discovery with his lovely wife.
Great Anal Journeys: See above.

This could run and run...

Wise Words...

UK protest singer, folk guru and all-round good guy Billy Bragg has been touring a new album, Shine a Light, with collaborator and US singer-songwriter Joe Henry. 

The album chronicles in blues and country music form a rail journey they made across the US from Chicago to Los Angeles. The album is fab and I'm a long-time Bragg convert, but I was very impressed with Henry, whose work I'd never come across.

Henry also said something very wise about the Trump victory in the recent US election. 

He said: 'This is where we are. It's not who we are.' 

I think that's as true of the Trump victory as it is of the UK Brexit vote. Both nations are currently on a path of anger, hatred and racism that seems intent on banishing any idea of compassion. 

It's not a good path. But it's also not a final destination.