Somewhat Side-swiped

So normally I write about the inside of my cosseted middle-class bubble, chatting about plays or travels and generally being dismissive of things other people rate. As a rule I find that I rarely write about things that matter. Is this because of my stiff upper lip Britishness? Is it because sneering at things is far more fun to right about? Probably a mixture of the two. I am gonna have to take a step away from my British stereotypicality for a bit, so if you want one of my standard posts you may want to jump to the last paragraph, otherwise you may find yourself knee deep in a mawkish quagmire.

You see, I've had a couple of lumps on my neck. My doctor didn't know what they were so referred me to ENT, who also didn't know what they were.  They appeared; they were big enough to be noticeable; big enough to be worrying, but didn't seem to change or grow.

This week I got unlumped (I believe that that is the technical term for it, or maybe it's delumped). Which meant I spent most of Tuesday slowly dehydrating at the NHS's convenience.

Some observations:

1. All you can think about is the fact that you're not allowed to eat or drink. You try reading but you find yourself skipping to descriptions of food. You try listening to music, all you hear is running water. I'm not sure how people manage to work during Ramadan. They must have about 80% more will power than me. Or maybe the average Muslim is just a whole heap less gluttonous than I am.

2. Anaesthetists seem a lot more human than surgeons. Fairly sure this has been said before (Quite Ugly One Morning maybe?), I'm guessing that this is because anaesthetists are keeping you alive and out of pain whilst everyone else is Rubik's cubing your innards.

3. I've hit mawkishness in this post, may as well do politics too. I struggle to see how anyone who has had an operation is against immigration. An uninformed, still-hazy-after-a-general-anaesthetic guess reckons that about 40% of the people who prodded me on Tuesday fell into the bracket that UKIP would want rid of. I can't think of an end to this paragraph that isn't wildly patronising, so I'm going to let you finish it yourself.

So yeah, the unlumping went alright. I now have a knifefight scar (which is kinda cool) but even less coordination in my left arm, especially when raised (less cool) and have to turn my whole body rather than just my head (also inconvenient). I didn't get to keep the lumps, apparently they need to test them to find out if it's something more nefarious than common-or-garden lumpiness, which I guess means that this may not be the only dull / cloying post. Here's hoping it is.

Whilst we are being uncharacteristically sentimental let's do it properly. All things being equal, whilst not the most fun week I've had, I do fully appreciate that things could be a whole heap worse: I've not lost everything I own and my family aren't missing. Syangbo, Debendra, Greg: here's hoping your weeks get much better really quickly.

And fade the sentimentality out.

I didn't get American Buffalo, even with the very shiny cast (John Goodman! I didn't even realise he was still alive). Nothing happens. I'm not sure what I make of plays where nothing happens.

And on the Sixth Day...

Three years. Sorry I didn't see you for so long. I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened I was doing my thing and you were doing yours and, well, three years went past.

Three years. And nothing has really changed, yet so many things are just slightly different. There are more hipster burger bars in the Northern Quarter and The Cedar Tree has gone - the gentrification has just about hit Ancoats. There didn't seem to be any Fingland buses on the Oxford Road. Cornerhouse is closed. Urbis is now a football-museum-cum-man-creche. All the restaurants on the Curry Mile have changed their names. A fair chunk of my friends there have had babies. And there's a too zany by half announcement in the Pendolino toilet. There's a time and a place for zany announcements; a train toilet is pretty far from it.

I appear to be trampling mawkish nostalgia into the carpet. I'll try not to leave it so long next time.

Scrambled Aix

I was going to call this entry Aix and Panes, given that I walked myself into an achey wreck and have seen a lot of stained glass windows, but everyone appears to pronounce Aix like eggs, rather than aches. Addes to that my main memory of Aix-en-Provence is being too tired to function and spending my time bouncing from bench to bench.

Yesterday I spent the day in Marseille and walked my socks off. Benefit of hindsight, I should have got the bus. I'm an idiot. I'm comfortable with that.

I spent the morning walking around the Frioul islands, made famous by Chateau d'If - where that Edmond Dante escaped from. I was promised 100 species of bird. I got a lot of seagulls. I spent the afternoon getting to / on the beach. Fairly average.

Aix-en-Provence is suitably Provencey. All herb shops, lilac covers and wooden window shutters. It managed to tick all the French clichés: onions, baguettes, berets. Good to know some things are based on fact.

So stained glass windows. I've seen a fair few over the weekend, and the bulk of them have been mighty impressive. One little criticism, they are all kind of similar.  Just about all of them are four grumpy looking middle aged men staring into the mid distance. Surely there must be more to stained glass art than this?

Allons Enfants de la Patrie

Marseille is one of those places that I've been meaning to get to for absolutely ages. I didn't know all that much about it, other than it's the second city of our nearest neighbour and it begins with M, which is always a good sign for a city; I thought I would kinda like it but I really wasn't expecting this. It's all on hills and it's all made out of pink marble. I thought it was going to be flat, modern and industrial like Hamburg or Rotterdam. I didn't think that stepping out of Gare St Charles would give me a Wow moment with its marble staircase and view of Notre Dame. I wasn't expecting this 2600 years of history that keeps getting dangled in front of my face. Marseille gets a massive thumbs up.

Another city that I've been meaning to go to for ages is Carcassonne. Turns out how I imagined Carcassonne was impossibly romantic. I thought I actually knew things about the city. In retrospect everything I know is either based on Labyrinth (Mosse not Bowie, no Bog of Eternal Stench, although I will leave that open for you to insert your own stereotype joke) - which was mainly set 800-odd years ago (I've made that number up fact fans) so is possibly not the most reliable tourist guide - or the board game (and I didn't knowingly meet a robber, a monk, a farmer or a knight, although there was an awful lot of knight-based tat). I was expecting a medieval walled city pretty much on its own, operating as an actual working town. That's not what it was like. First off it was pretty far from a working town. It was faux-medieval and nose to armpit packed with people buying cassoulet and wooden swords. Not quite as romantic as I'd envisaged. It wasn't even a solo settlement - and I should have picked this up from the boardgame - there's a second walled city within about 400m. T'uh. Carcassonne was approximately as disappointing as Marseille exceeded expectations, so far I'm rocking an expectation neutral weekend.

The only thing that I did know about Marseille is that I needed to eat a bouillabaisse. How is bouillabaisse a thing? It was a murky, brown puddle of sand and shrimp legs. It was like eating a rockpool only didn't taste as fresh.