Doctor, No

Six months before I moved to Texas I had a blood test. The results came back confirming my being in possession of so much cholesterol that I could have caught fire at any moment, and that my blood pressure was so high as to facilitate my fighting crime as a sort of blood-gusher-based superhero by opening a vein and blasting criminals with a high-pressure geyser of claret.

'It's winter and everywhere is frozen,' I explained to my doctor, 'I've been sat on my arse for the last six weeks, but okay - I'll make the effort to get out and about a bit more.'

She wasn't having it and prescribed Simvastatin, which struck me as a little premature seeing as I felt fine. I had the feeling she was just really into writing out prescriptions.

After three days of taking the drug, I hadn't slept for so much as five minutes, hadn't even felt drowsy, and I wanted to kill myself. By suggesting that I wanted to kill myself, I don't mean to imply that I felt a little bit glum and went around with a frowny face. I mean that I wanted to kill myself. I therefore stopped taking the pills and immediately felt better.

My doctor told me off, saying that I should have consulted her before quitting the prescribed medication and that I'd been very irresponsible.

'It's because I couldn't sleep and wanted to kill myself,' I explained.

'Of course, there are sometimes minor problems of that nature,' she admitted, 'but side effects usually pass after the first couple of weeks.'

'I would have killed myself by then.'

I refused further medication, instead knuckling down to riding my bike fifteen miles each day regardless of ice and snow. Six months later I underwent another medical examination at a Harley Street practice, as required by the immigration people. My cholesterol was fine and my blood pressure was normal.

Gosh.

More recently I underwent a medical examination at the Oakwell Farms medical center, something required by my medical insurance. I came close to weighing 210lbs before Christmas and had therefore been trying to get my weight down, mainly just through increased exercise and less snacking. It seemed to be working, and I was down to about 194lbs when I went for the medical.

'Shouldn't I take off my clothes or something?' I asked.

'No. Just get on the scale,' said the nurse. 'Do you know how much you weigh?'

'I was 194lbs this morning.'

'Well, you're 205lbs now.'

'That would probably be the boots and the three layers of clothing.'

The examination was over in minutes and struck me as lacking attention to detail. The results came back confirming I had more cholesterol than anyone who had ever lived in the entire history of triglycerides, and my blood pressure was so high that I could have severed my feet at the ankles and blasted myself off into outer space like a human rocket.

The results pissed me off so I ignored them. For one thing, my blood pressure was usually normal when I had it checked at the periodontist's office three or four times a year.

Another couple of months later I decided to have yet another medical examination. It seemed like high time I should have a doctor stick his finger up my arse in search of prostate cancer, and I figured I might as well have a proper check up on the same ticket. I was exercising every day, losing weight and doing well, so I wanted to know just how well because the previous examination had been a bit of a joke.

The nurse weighed me, stood me next to a tape measure, filled five big Cumberland sausage sized test tubes with blood, and asked a string of questions.

Do you smoke?

How much do you drink?

How many fingers am I holding up?

Can you tell me the name of the president?

I pulled a face answering the last one, and so did she.

The doctor came in.

'Are you going to stick a finger up my arse?' I enquired.

'No. No. There's no need. Cancer screening is all part of the blood test these days.'

'Okay.'

'I see that you smoke,' he said happily.

'No.'

'You don't smoke?'

'No, I don't.'

He seemed disappointed. 'Well, your blood pressure is a little high.'

'Is it really?'

'Yes, if I could—'

'I can tell you now, I'm not taking statins.'

'Statins are used to treat cholesterol, not high blood pressure.'

'Oh okay.'

'Well, perhaps we'd better wait until the results of this latest blood test come back.'

We waited, but I'd already knew I didn't like the guy. He was younger and fatter than myself, and I was somehow the wheezing porker in the equation. I could already sense him angling to prescribe something. He seemed to be fishing around in my medical history for anything he could work with. That was the impression I received, and the phone call came a few weeks later.

'The doctor urgently needs to discuss the results of your blood test. You have so much cholesterol that we've had to invent a new number by which to quantify it, and your blood pressure is such that at first we thought it was simply that Hulk Hogan was somehow living inside you.'

'Oh fuck off,' I didn't say, not actually slamming the phone down. I made an appointment, then cancelled it and made another for a day on which my wife would be able to come along, because she works in healthcare and is fairly adept at bullshit detection.

We were bang on time because they charge twenty-five dollars for missed appointments, a fine imposed because they could have spent those minutes curing someone, and healing the sick is the only thing with which they are concerned. Forty minutes later we were at last ushered into the presence of my doctor.

'You have a 13% chance of contracting heart disease before you reach seventy,' he smiled.

'Well, no-one lasts forever,' I said, 'and 13% - aren't those about the same odds as I have of being hit by a meteorite?'

My wife pointed out something statistical regarding the hereditary aspect of heart conditions such as the one which had an alleged 13% chance of killing me. I didn't really understand all of what she was saying, but the doctor did, and didn't really seem to have an answer for it, not directly.

'So, is there any history of heart disease in your family?'

'It isn't really a disease though, is it? I mean you can't have a stroke because you ate a sandwich with heart disease germs on it, or have I failed to understand some aspect of my impending doom?'

'It's a very real condition,' he said, apparently not having grasped my point. 'Do you know if anyone in your family has suffered with heart trouble?'

'No-one whatsoever, although significantly more or less all of them have had cancer, which was the actual reason I came here seeing as that seems a more pressing concern from where I'm sat.'

'Well, you're fine on that score.'

'That's good to know.'

'Everything is looking good aside from the cholesterol and the blood pressure.'

'Well, I'm not taking statins as I already told you.'

'Statins have come a long way and have been greatly improved over the last couple of years.'

'I don't care. I'm still not taking them.' I reiterated the account given in the first nine paragraphs above, mainly because it seemed as though he'd forgotten our having met on the occasion of the examination which had yielded the results now under discussion.

'Yes, I've heard all about your NHS,' - he curled off a wry smile, almost a sneer - 'no diagnosis, just chucking a handful of pills at you and sending you on your—'

'There's nothing wrong with the NHS,' I said, noticing I'd used that tone of voice which expresses openness to the possibility of finishing the conversation outside in the parking lot. I wasn't having this fucking tosser running the NHS down.

'Well, for now we can consider other options, healthier eating and so on.'

'I eat healthy,' I said. 'I suppose you're going to tell me I should cut my McDonald's intake down to just four visits a day, or something of the sort.'

'We eat very healthily,' my wife confirmed. 'He does all the cooking and it's all fresh. We don't eat salty things.'

'You may not think you do, but even when you open up a can of Campbell's soup because it's in the recipe, well, the salt content—'

'That isn't,' I cut him off with just a hint of Margaret Rutherford in my voice, 'the sort of cooking in which I engage.'

My wife has a recipe book typed out by an ageing relative during the great depression. I barely recognise any of the recipes, which truly belong to a culture to which I am alien. Many of them seem to combine ingredients which are already recognisably food, a tin of mushroom soup poured over battered onion rings, then baked as a casserole - and the recipe concluded with a bewildering comment of sooooooo good or similar. It seems like the sort of cooking I tried when I was fifteen, baked beans plus a teaspoon of every herb or spice on the rack because if one is good, then twenty-six will surely be amazing. I like to think I've evolved beyond the culinary level of a bewildered teenager left to his own devices.

'I apologise if it seems like I'm on the defensive,' I said without feeling even remotely sorry, 'but you have to appreciate that I eat pretty well, I don't smoke, hardly drink, and I cycle one hundred miles a week, and you're telling me that it isn't enough. I may as well be sat on my arse scoffing pies and cakes all day for all the difference it makes. That's what you're telling me.'

'Well, I'd like you to imagine the effects of a stroke, being unable to speak, maybe one side of your body paralysed—'

Now he was trying to scare me, somehow imagining I had no idea what a stroke could be or how it might affect a person. 'Sure, but if you don't mind I'll just keep on as I am. I've lost a stone since Christmas and a little bit more drops off every week, so I'm not even sure what I'm doing here.'

'Well, we can see how you're getting on in another six months.'

'Fine.'

We left with no real intention of coming back. It seems I put on weight when I first moved to America, because the government forces us all to eat a cheeseburger whilst saluting the flag every morning; I have about a stone to go before I get back to what is supposedly my ideal weight for my age and height. I will get there, and if my blood pressure and cholesterol remain high then I'll just have to assume that's how it's going to be.

Funerals and Santa

I only met Skip Brooks twice. The first time was at a Devo concert in Austin. My wife pointed out a guy who resembled Skip, her cousin Jenni's husband, but we didn't say anything because we weren't certain of it being him. I don't know if that really counts as a meeting. The second time was at a Fixations gig in San Antonio. Skip was playing guitar for the Fixations, who were tremendous, and we spoke briefly after their set. So I didn't really know Skip and now I never will. He was fine this time last year. In April he discovered that he had cancer, and now he's gone. He had forty-seven years and that was it. It seems very unfair.

I know Jenni a little better, and it seemed to be mainly down to timing and circumstances that I never got to know Skip; which is a shame because I'm sure we would have had a lot to talk about, at least with the music. He had two young boys and was a great father and husband, which I know because it was plain to see, and so much so that everyone remarked upon his being both a great father and husband - which seems a rare thing.

The cancer was in his mouth. The operation sounded nightmarish. They had to remove his jaw, clean out the cancerous material, then reattach it. For a while he was doing okay, and then he wasn't. The cancer had returned and spread, and was so located as to cause fractures in his spine as it grew. It's difficult to imagine how his situation could have been worse. The end seemed inevitable. Jenni maintains that he kept his spirits up throughout what might justifiably be called his ordeal, communicating with sign language.

Today is his remembrance service.

We're at Trinity Baptist Church.

Skip was introduced to me as a punk rock preacher - mohican, tatts, piercings, and prone to belting out hardcore thrash numbers at his sermons. Coming from England, this combination took some getting used to on my part. I don't have anything specific against the religious, but belief in the man upstairs does not come natural to me. I refuse to identify as anything so tediously dogmatic as atheist because I don't see why I should have to identify as anything; and if your religion works for you, then I'm probably fine with that. Dealing with the world by means of metaphor is as good a way as any, up to but definitely no further than the point of voices in the head.

As a preacher, it seems Skip was tireless in his work with the homeless, those brought low through addiction, and others traditionally spurned by the more clean-cut - and not particularly Christian, it has to be said - representatives of the Baptist church. He was a guy who spent his life doing good things, and now he's gone.

Trinity Baptist is huge, and is presently full of friends, relatives, and those who probably wouldn't be here today were it not for Skip picking them up and setting them back on their feet. About half of the assembly have studded leather jackets and tattoos. One guy has the cover of the Subhumans' The Day the Country Died album painted on the back of his jacket.

The record came out in 1983 and it's now 2018 in a different country. My own pretend noise band once played on the same bill as the Subhumans, and I hung out with Dick Lucas and Trotsky - respectively the Subhumans' vocalist and drummer - as we watched Opera for Infantry, the other support act of the evening. They were nice people. I feel like I should tell this to the guy in the jacket, but I don't.

Jenni talks for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.

It's tough to imagine what she must be going through, what her kids are going through. She talks about how she met Skip, what he meant to her, and she gets through it just fine. It doesn't seem like she's reading from a script. She expresses herself very well and it's very moving.

Prayers follow, then further testimonials with greater emphasis on Skip the preacher, part of his world which I don't really understand, and to which I don't find myself drawn. It isn't that the sermons are all just words but I honestly don't know what else there is to be said. I barely knew the guy and yet his passing feels like something which had no right to happen, a great wrong which no amount of prayer can ever set right; but I guess it's just me.

At length we leave, Bess and myself, and we head to St. Luke's - straight there without first going home because time is tight. She and the women of her rock group have an event - referring here to a group of women who paint various designs on rocks, transforming them into objects given away in hope of bringing cheer to someone's day. The event is a Christmas rock exchange, the occurrence of which has been publicised through social media.

We are the second to arrive at St. Luke's parking lot. Sandy is already waiting.

'Where do you think we should set up?' she asks.

We gaze down at the St. Luke's rock exchange, a small circle of decorated stones on the grass verge at the side of the road. Members of the public are invited to leave rocks they have painted in exchange for anything which has taken their fancy. We have a table and the rock exchange is on a bit of a slope.

'Over there.' Bess indicates the corner of the parking lot, which is on level ground.

We unfold the table, spread out a table cloth, then set up the Christmas tree. Sandy wraps it in tinsel as the others begin to arrive. Some hang things from the tree. Others bring tins of cakes or cookies. Everyone seems to have brought more painted rocks, but it's still just five or six of us beneath a slate grey sky and it's kind of cold. Bess has told me this won't take much longer than half an hour. We're a sort of festive flash mob, you might say.

Another fifteen minutes pass and abruptly it all comes together. There are twenty or thirty of us now, and plenty of children. Santa strolls across from where he's parked his truck.

'Ho ho ho,' he informs us.

Santa is actually Byron, Bess's first husband. He's a goofball but in a good way, and without really trying. Being a first husband, his deeds occasionally give rise to the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there's an honesty to the guy that's difficult to resist, and he's consistent, and when you need someone to dress up as Santa, Byron's your man. He's done it before and Bess called in a favour, so here he is handing out candy to the kids whilst cracking jokes about reindeer on the barbecue.

Bess and I watch, impressed in spite of ourselves.

'He's one of life's natural Santas,' I observe.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe - attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate, Byron as Santa at the St. Luke's Christmas rock exchange…

The children hoover up all the available candy, and we hang out with gals for a while. Then, once we're done, everything goes back to the trunks of trucks and cars, and we drive home.

'Funerals and Santa,' I say to my wife. 'It's been quite a day.'

Rocks as Cakes

My wife's rock group - whom you may recall were introduced back in February - are partaking in a competition. A sandwich bar - which I'll rename Making Biscuits for the sake of keeping everyone happy - is hosting an event intended to benefit local foster children by providing school supplies. I'm not quite sure how it works, but the idea is that we all turn up and paint rocks based on the pastries sold at Making Biscuits. The manager of the establishment is himself a keen painter of rocks, and the first prize will be a $50 gift card.

Painting rocks is really my wife's thing, but she's recruited me to the cause for this one event in the belief that whatever I paint will blow the other contestants out of the metaphorical water. I'm therefore a ringer - a person highly proficient at a skill or sport who is brought in, often fraudulently, to supplement a team, as Wiktionary would have it; but there are worse ways to pass a Saturday afternoon so I've said yes.

We came along to Making Biscuits last night, checking the place out, how to get here, and to take a look at what sort of cakes they sell. I sat shivering for an hour listening to the women talk about babies, which was actually kind of miserable. Today I've been promised that the event won't take long, and that there will be more people. Also, I've brought a jumper and a jacket in hope of surviving the thermonuclear Making Biscuits air conditioning, which feels weird given that it's August here in Texas and that it presently takes about five minutes to roast a frozen chicken by leaving it out on the sidewalk.

Happily, they don't have the AC jacked up quite so high today, and there are maybe fifteen of us taking part which immediately puts me in a better mood. Aside from the manager, I'm apparently the only male in attendance, so it's probably a good thing that I'm reasonably secure in my masculinity and have never felt the need to drive a red sports car. A couple of tables are covered with pots of acrylic paint, jars of water in which brushes soak, and with freshly painted rocks drying at the centre where you might usually expect to find condiments as the women start anew with fresh stones. I buy a fruit tart from the counter. It's topped with slices of strawberry, kiwi, tangerine, and some sort of berry, so featuring a range of colour which should make it interesting to paint. I grab a coffee, take a seat opposite my wife, and we set to work.

I paint in the rough shape of the tart as a white outline. Some young woman sat next to me chatters away, just general conversational stuff with the inevitable emphasis on art and the country of my birth. I realise to my surprise that she's still in school, being somewhat younger than I am, although this probably means she's at university. After a while she finishes painting a stone so as to give it the appearance of a pastry, and resumes her proprietorial duties over some faux-martial arts attraction because another child has turned up wanting a go. Individual squares of wood are stacked near the coffee machine, presumably having been partially sawn through. Customers are invited to karate chop them in half. This is also something to do with school supplies for foster children.

I know a few of the women, so I ask about Mrs. Darkseid, a conspicuously absent rock painter whom I've renamed after the DC Comics villain in reference to her ruthless one woman war against free will.

'She has her own thing. Didn't you hear?'

I didn't hear. 'Her own thing, you say?'

'She organised a rock painting competition for today at some diner. I guess that's where she is right now.'

'Seriously? Same time and everything?'

'Yup.'

'What an amazing coincidence.'

'Yes, isn't it just?'

We all chuckle darkly to ourselves.

I've only met Mrs. Darkseid a couple of times and she seemed harmless enough, but her behaviour has since bordered on mania. The city now has several rock exchange spots, mostly situated in public parks and the like. The women paint rocks and leave them at the rock exchanges for others to take, or to swap with rocks of their own. It's something with no function other than to bring pleasure to those who take part. Most of this has occurred organically, just opportunities taken, things which such and such a person has decided might be a good idea or worth a try; but Mrs. Darkseid began to take a peculiarly proprietorial interest in what the rest of the gang were doing, telling them where they should have a rock exchange, deciding what it should be named and so on. At one point she issued a decree that no baskets were to be left at the rock exchanges. No-one took any notice, then suddenly rock exchanges were vandalised with baskets pointedly thrown into nearby bushes. Mrs. Darkseid of course expressed her anger at the thought of who could do such a deed, because even her own rock exchange had been hit by these monsters, so she claimed. There have been peculiarly batty text messages sent telling some of the women what they are allowed to post on facebook in relation to the painted rocks. Bess set up a rock exchange at the Mission Branch Library down on the southside of the city at the invitation of library staff who thought it would nicely complement the public garden and play area at the rear of the library; so it was done and I did my bit by painting a sign for it on a breeze block. Mrs. Darkseid involved herself - despite the undertaking having nothing to do with her - and had the library rock exchange moved to the front of the building, specifically to the parking lot, apparently for no reason other than as a demonstration of her mighty power.

In the meantime, we've finished painting our rocks, so we take them outside to spray them with glaze. They look pretty good as they dry, arranged as they are in the presently flower-free flower bed.

'You lot should try and have a rock exchange here,' I suggest.

There are a few nods and noises of concurrence, then we realise that Mrs. Darkseid would have a meltdown and get it moved across the parking lot to the side of the road - so as to share the magic with four lanes of heavy traffic or some other reason she'd just thought of. We laugh, because we still can't believe that anyone could be so screwy as to declare themselves supreme controller of something which was supposed to be lightweight and fun. It's a wonder that she hasn't taken to issuing home-made permits and membership cards.

The afternoon, which has actually been a lot more fun than I thought it would be, draws to a close, and the rocks are judged. My fruit tart comes in second. Bess tells me it should have won, but I really don't mind because I feel a little like an imposter and this isn't really my circus. Additionally, I've painted a representation of a pastry, rather than painting a rock so as to give it the appearance of a pastry - a detail required of competition entries which I somehow missed. The first prize goes to a rock painted so as to resemble a chocolate cake. The rock was one half of a stone which had been roughly spherical, and so the winner painted it so as to make it seem like someone had taken a bite from one side. To be honest, that's the rock to which I would have awarded first prize, were I judge.

Sometimes you just have to write these things down because you feel that otherwise no-one will believe you.