God got to the seventh day, but wasn’t happy – there at the end – on the fringes, so he took three and a half giant steps backwards and sat down to protect his space on a lump of sandstone rock, right there in the middle of Myddle, and he liked what he saw, so he moved in.
One day, he thought. One day, when I have got past the worst, when I have sat here long enough to find comfort in my mid-life tummy spread; one day, on that day, I will think about moving on out to confront the end again. Until then, I will sit in. But every now and then, just on the odd occasion, I will treat myself, and take a step back – not a big step, more of a shuffle, just to take a sneaky peak at what might still be going on at the beginning of things, before I make my way back again to the Myddle.
Copyright owned by Jay Cool, March 2019
Inspiration taken from the village of Myddle, the birthplace of my Grandfather, and from the poem ‘Make Believe‘, by Padraig O Tuama.
*Disclosure: I only review books that I have selected for my own enjoyment, and the views expressed are, therefore, even if a little batty, completely genuine. You need to be aware, though, that this review has an affiliate link, meaning that if you click through to Amazon and choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to yourself.
Before reading this inflammatory book, ‘The Inflamed Mind’ by Edward Bullmore, it had never occurred to me that the pain in my arthritic big toe, might be linked to my down phases. As a blogger and creative writer, I had great faith in my super-goddess powers as the central link to all things weird and wacky. Now I know the truth: I am still at the centre of everything – it’s just that the everything keeps growing!
Today, I know that if my toe starts to scream, it’s just giving me advance warning of a serious mood change – an avalanche of depression, that might keep me under for days, weeks, if not months.
Luckily, I have developed a few of my own strategies for keeping that avalanche iced up on top of my window – where it belongs!
Crack an egg (boosts your serotonin levels) into a desert bowl, burst the yolk with a fork, and heat for 1 minute in a 750W microwave oven.
Plop the now-rubbery egg between two slices of unhealthy white bread and make it edible with a generous sprinkling of dried chilli flakes.
Dunk it into the mug of instant tomato soup, you’ve just prepared (read the instructions on the packet for that bit!).
Eat it!
At this point, if you are middle-aged, you may start to steam, but … do not be alarmed! It is not so hot out there in the real world that the ice will melt and the avalanche will fall down anyway – you are just having a hot flush! The moment will pass (eventually). Step out of the front door to speed up the cooling process.
Smile and get busy writing your blog and the avalanche (even if it does still melt), will divert itself elsewhere.
Take heed of this cautionary note: DO NOT REMOVE YOUR BACKSIDE FROM YOUR SPECIAL WRITER’S SWIVEL CHAIR, THINKING THAT YOU OUGHT TO COLLECT THE LAUNDRY FROM YOUR DAUGHTER’S (OR YOUR SON’S) ROOM. CONSIDER WHERE THE DIVERTED AVALANCHE MAY NOW HAVE LANDED – AND STAY PUT RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!
Ignore the fact that your toe still hurts – just write a poem about it and become an Ecstabeing!
Follow my wise advice and you will be at one with the macrophages. Macrophages, for those of you who have not yet had the good sense to read Bullmore’s book, are immune cells that guard the peripheries of our bodies.
Our macrophages inherit ‘the wisdom of their ancestors’, each being ‘innately prepared to recognise at first sight an enemy it has never seen before’ (p.36). The problem being that, sometimes, our macrophages use ‘carpet-bombing tactics’ (p.40) and, once they have prevented an infection in one’s toe spreading, being akin to lazy little sprogs, they hang around for too long. And, just like sprogs, they get ants in their pants, becoming hyper – so hyper, in fact, that they start to destroy the healthy bits of us.
Rheumatoid arthritis, it seems, is a disease caused by by a pile-in of macrophages when our immune system starts ‘fighting with itself’. The inflammation in my big toe is causing my whole body to be inflamed. And my ‘whole body includes’ my ‘brain’ (p.58) (and yes, I know that, in my case, the brain bit is debatable!).
According to Bullmore, then there are some horrid things called cytokines swimming around in my blood. These little gossip-mongers, released by the mean-spirited macrophages that hang around in my painful toe, proceed to travel up my body and bully their way through my blood-brain barrier. Once safely ensconced in my brain, the cytokines are unable to resist blurting out stories about their birthland.
Hence, my crazy cytokines can be held solely responsible for all of the dark times in my life. And, it really does feel good to have something, rather than someone, to blame!
For this reason, I would definitely recommend ‘The Inflamed Mind’ to anyone out there with an ache, or a pain, even if the pain has, at times, made the mistake of presenting itself in the flesh!
Copyright of the review owned by Jay Cool, March 2019
‘Icicle’ image courtesy of Pixabay.com
*See disclosure at top of page, before clicking on the image-link below.
From left to right: Angstbeing, Wellbeing & Ecstabeing
If being okay, calm and mellow, they think, is to be well. Then, to be well, I think, is to be a well being.
To measure my own wellness, being a being, I pinch my skin; it feels like flesh, only mildy hairy, threaded through with purple veins and sprinkled over with freckles – easily bruised and, now, a little crook.
Crook, because my skin retains its pinched and wrinkled look for a little longer than once it did; than once it did for the once-was-me being of a child-being.
And this crooked thought, of a crooked-once-was-smooth skin, fires up my anxiety-hunters – the little people, who live within me; the ones who slave away at gathering up my little pieces.
My little snippets of worries – picked up, poked at, and popped into leaky sacks.
I know that my mouth is crook. I see my crooked mouth in the mirror; lop-sided, hanging there – just mulling things over. Completely crook. I am convinced that this is the work of my anxiety hunters; my nasty little in-beings, dumping their leaky sacks down upon my synaptic nerve – too lazy to even mop up the overspill!
Is to be well to be straightened out? To smooth out one’s skin with the magic of moisturiser? To contort one’s synaptic nerve muscles until a mouth twists itself back into a straight line – a line that goes straight from A to B, without any blips or wrong-turns in between? If I shifted my house onto a flat plain, and walked down this hill to join it, would I be a little less crook? Would being me, be being well?
Would I be a well being?
Something erupts inside me. I know this because my skin, once pinched and crook, now twitches and yells at me. And I know this because the other side of my mouth (the side that is not crook) is in lift-off mode, leaping up and beyond my not-crook ear (the one minus the edge bumps), taking itself off and launching itself onto Planet Ecstasy. It’s laughing, guffawing – high on fumes of rotten spillage!
At this moment, I know that a well being I am not. To be a well being, is only to be a tinsy-bit better than to be a crook being, and I don’t want to be crook – or well!
In this moment, I become aware that I have transitioned. I have become my own ecstabeing.
Your letters, your handiwork, your loving endearments, underlined with rage, with jealousy and possession.
Sent to me, not to be uplifted, not to sit proud – up there on my shelf. Not that.
Sent, instead, with intention; the intention to download, to crush, to weigh me down, to hold me in servitude – to you; to prevent me – from stepping out.
The weight of it, of the box, of the dark place full of letters, of the letters full of little bits of you. Little, bitty, disposable. Insignificant.
I step up to the box and knock it
down, seeing the truth of it,
treading on it and
crushing it, at
the same time as recalling light-hearted moments, the child in me, gathering up sheets of soft snow; squashing them into snowball heads, and I take care to not quite lower myself down to your exact-same level,
I gather you up, squish you, and pack you – into a ball, a head. Straightening up, I dribble and kick, dribble and kick, dribble and kick, and then I shoot
your head, your mashed-up paper brain. I shoot it out; out and into my garden, out and into the open mouth of my chiminea.
To be honest, I feel a tad inconvenienced that I, Jay Cool, have been summoned to a comedy gig in Lamarsh.
Not that I’ve got anything against village folk, but as you know, I, Jay Cool, am more than a little partial to the mango cider available at my local – Sudbury’s Brewery Tap! Also, its well know that Suffolk’s country bumpkins get around, not by four-by-fours, as in other rural posh-holds, but by stilts. Stilt-walking as the only way to survive in these marshy flatlands. And, the village name Lamarsh fills me with a sense of foreboding before I even step foot outside my own front door.
‘Edward Lear’ by pixabay.com
Still, he who must be obeyed is this evening the sealer of my fate. PJ, I heard you. I heard you and I obeyed you. And here I am. And here you are.
PJ, at Lamarsh Lion, Essex
Much as I am relieved to find you stilt-less, when’s this show going to start? I’m here to see the young sprite, Nigel Lovell.
Okay, so Nigel’s here too and I have to say that he does look dashing in pink. Perhaps he’s not so young, though! I mean, what young thing, what up and coming young comedian would start up his set, joking about the perils of middle age?
Still, at forty-six, he’s younger than this particular specimen of middle-age, so I’m sticking with my initial perception of him. A young sprite.
A young sprite rabbiting on excitedly about being ‘posh, pretentious and patronising’. Posh because he was ‘raised by both parents’. Get with it, Nigel! Nobody who wears a floral pink blouse and pullover is posh. And I also doubt that both your parents were present for anything other than their initial coupling!
‘The Young Sprite, Nigel Lovell’ courtesy of pixabay.com
Nigel’s next joke about his wearing a jacket from his ‘dead dad’s’ wardrobe, in this context does, however, have a ring of truth about it. According to a search on Bing, then boars are only kept for a couple of years, at which point they are turned into bacon for the crime of being too fat and heavy to mount and mate with a pig.
‘Nigel Lovell’s Jacket’ courtesy of pixabay.com
Anyway, whilst I’ve been honing up on my pig-farming skills, Nigel’s been impressing the punters with his expertise on the topics of Postman Pat, Doctor Who and dildoes. He really ought to be making his fortune going up against the Chaser, rather than living on the breadline telling jokes in East Anglian pubs. The Lamarsh Lion might be generous as far as venues go, but really Nigel, your last gig was in Haverhill! And its really not the thing to joke about torched cars in Haverhill. Really! How low can a comedian sink?
Still, as we say goodbye to Nigel (he’s dashing off early to rescue his car, before the angry punters still on his heels from Haverhill, catch up with it and torch it), we say hello to an offcut from one of Nigel’s props – Dodsy Dildo!
Dodsy Dildo’s next on the billing, and he’s all the way from the lost property box of Watford’s most famous comedy gig venue (the name escapes me). Nigel, why didn’t you tell us you’ve also gigged in Watford? It’s a step up from Haverhill, isn’t it? Although he’s actually a dildo, Dodsy claims to identify as a man, who models himself upon his heroes Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking. Yes, I understand that my readers might like an illustrative example here, but I really don’t think it a great idea to Google (or Bing) this one! You will just have to imagine a Brian Cox dildo lookalike, and do your best to avoid it’s very large and very white teeth (ouch!), however endearingly they might be enticing you (or themselves in) with their big cheesy smile.
‘Brian Cox’ image, courtesy of pixabay.com
Not content with being a grinning dildo, Dodsy’s relaying tales about the various types of fluff that can get trapped beneath one’s foreskin. Now I’m excited! Ever heard of the ‘Naval Fluff Collection’? Perhaps I could start up business as a middle-woman, collecting low-cost samples of fluff, from other regions, and selling them on at a profit. And, no, I won’t be personally collecting up the samples! PJ! PJ! Where are you when you’re needed? I have a new business venture for you. How do you fancy being proprietor at the new ‘Naval, Toe and Foreskin Fluff Museum’?
Fluff aside, then Dildo Dodsy’s barely finished his set, when Nigel breezes back in! Seems he’s forgotten something.
No, Nigel Lovell. No you can’t take Dodsy’s ‘Fluff Jar’ with you! Hands off! It’s mine!
But, much to my relief, Nigel’s only come back for his mobile phone. My business plan is still safe, for now. Must get that jar to the patent office ASAP!
Slight problem.
How am I going to broach the subject with the fluff supplier? This is even more of a problem than anticipated. Dodsy’s gone! Whilst I’ve been coming up with a plan to make millionaires of all of us, he’s been booted off the stage (carpet) by none other than Trevor Bickles!
Trevor turns out to be a lad from the East End of London. (Could add a bit of regional variety to the fluff collection! No?) Our Trev is even more dodgy than Dodsy. He’s telling us all about his deals with dodgy men on dodgy corners. Claims that’s how he got his Abibas trainers, but sounds to me, judging by the way he keeps pausing to scratch himself down below, that he obtained something far more dubious than dodgy footwear. Dodgy or itchy, then Trev’s also pretty funny in a cute Biggles sort of a way. (No, Trev, you are deluded; you don’t look anything like the Milky Bar kid – not unless you scoffed all the stock!)
The dodgy is becoming increasingly dodgier. Paul Merryk’s next up!
PJ, where did you get this lot from? You been hanging around on street corners? Not only is Paul dodgier than the preceding dodgems, he’s also desperate. He’s ‘fifty-three’ years young (he claims – reckon he’s knocked a few years off!), and he’s telling all of us punters how ‘sexy’ we are. Strangely, he’s not looking in my direction. Even more strangely, his eyes are fixed upon an elderly lady with a zimmer frame. Not, that one can’t be sexy with a zimmer; in fact, they are great for a spot of pole dancing. It’s just that a minute ago, Paul was telling us about his penchant for ‘rubenesque’ ladies (you’re looking in the wrong direction, Paul), whereas this one looks like she’s toning up for the next season of Britain’s Got Talent. Still, it takes all sorts to make a couple! And the oldies are lapping it up with Paul – they love him! (And so do us middlers!)
And, talking of couples, then I’m not so happy with the partner I’ve struck up with for the evening. A pint of Coca Cola! What was PJ thinking of, booking us in for a gig in Lamarsh? Next time, PJ, book a gig within walking distance of Chilton. I’m a bit of a hermit, generally, and I’m not usually dragged out of my storage container unless I can see a pint of mango cider at the end of the rainbow.
Please PJ, please stick to The Brewery Tap!
Copyright owned by Jay Cool, February 2019
Suffolk Punch Comedy Club gigs take place on the first Wednesday of every month, starting at 8pm, at The Brewery Tap, East Street, Sudbury, Suffolk. Come and join in with the laughter! Free entry. Donations to the charity pot, in support of prostate cancer research appreciate.
Is this the time? I ask myself.
Today, I know that if my toe starts to scream, it’s just giving me advance warning of a serious mood change – an avalanche of depression, that might keep me under for days, weeks, if not months.
The Silly-Savvy Salopian in Suffolk: read, believe and write ... 