well that's a shitter

I wasn't going to post today.

I didn't pre-write any posts over the Easter weekend and I have to confess I'm struggling a bit with motivation (in a general sense, as well as in terms of writing a blog post), plus I'm way behind on reviewing rental DVDs so I couldn't just slap one of those up either.

However, browsing the BBC site I've just encountered some rather crappy news - Ian Banks has final stage cancer and is not expected to live for more than a year or so.  Here it is on the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22015175 ; and on the Guardian website - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-gall-bladder-cancer

I'm a big fan of Banks - his Culture novels are some of the best SF I've ever read, and I enjoy his mainstream stuff too - so this is particularly crappy.  He'd actually just started writing new Culture novels having not done any in a while, but it seems that the most recent (Hydrogen Sonata) will be the last.  A great shame.

I don't think I've ever blogged about it here, but my mother died from Cancer.  This was some time ago, but when hers was diagnosed it was "late stage" as well.  Cancer is a complicated (and odd) disease, but late stage is basically where the original cancer has spread to the degree that it's uncurable - and I mean that in a definitive sense.

My mum's original cancer was breast cancer, but by the time it was diagnosed it had spread to a quite catastrophic degree - it was in her bones, lymph nodes and liver.  It was actually the liver that delivered the final blow as it was essentially total liver failure that she died of.

Interestingly with my mum it was actually several years between the point she was diagnosed and the point she finally passed away and you get to late stage by having it for a long time without detection.  She didn't have chemo (there's little point when it's like that - it may add a few months but you feel awful for ages, so it's just not worth it), but I seem to recall she had a bit of radio-therapy, though nothing major.  I think they just wanted to knock a bit of it out to help extend life a bit and so she was in less discomfort.  She also had some other experimental treatment, though I don't recall what this was - whether it helped or not I have no idea.

One thing about this period that was different to what you'd expect was that she wasn't really in pain as such - she was fully active until the very last week and without being told you wouldn't even have known.  That's part of the problem with this sort of cancer - like Banks it's something that is discovered by a symptom that isn't directly related.

So my mum had breast cancer, but there was no big lump in her breast (it was a load of tiny cancers and she wasn't quite old enough to be having regular screening anyway) and it was actually a fractured bone in her spine that was the point of discovery.  She'd been riding with my sister while on holiday and been thrown off.  It wasn't a big fall particularly, but because the cancer had weakened the bone it fracture so she was in a lot of pain and went home on the train (I recall this day vividly) to see our GP.  That triggered a battery of tests to try to ascertain why the bone was so weak, eventually leading to the discovery of cancer.

odds and bobs

Thought I'd continue the smaller thoughts from last Friday.

Phone Hacking

The big news while we were away at Silverstone was the shit really hitting the fan at the News of the World over phone hacking. It's something that's been bubbling away for months, with several papers - the guardian and evening standard are the ones I know of - really rootling around trying to expose practices at several of the tabloid papers.

If you follow the news and current affairs you'll know all about it, but I have to say I'm in two minds about it.

Clearly the hacking of mobile phones was a practice that was endemic to, if not all of the British press, then certainly the News of the World journalists. And the real thing they've done wrong, to me, is deploying that technique on a routine basis and for everyone they ever came into contact with - good or bad.

Now clearly they were breaking the law and clearly hacking the phones of people like 7/7 victims is appalling. And I personally find the whole tabloid obsession with celebrity that means they also go around hacking and papping celebs appalling. Also the PCC was clearly a load of old pish.

The trouble is, if you neuter the press and make them always play by the law then you also remove their power to uncover real matters of public interest. With a free press and real investigative journalism you have the ability to hold those in power (be it politicians or heads of company) to account. So while I find a lot of what they did (and do) tasteless, I hope the baby doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater.

Work

Work has been horribly busy just recently.

I seem to have wound up in the situation where I'm processing more bids, yet also having to run projects and do other stuff besides. It doesn't help in particular that a key member of staff has been sent to do a contract down in the South West. Also while they've taken on some new staff, they're mostly part-time and the maternity cover for a work colleague has effectively been done away with before she's come back.

To be frank, what would really help would be a pay raise. that's kinda mercenary of me, but it's been years since I had a raise and while we've had a few additional benefits, none of them are of particular use or interest to me.

Shaving

Now here is a completely random one - I've decided to start shaving every day.

Okay, not every day, but every day for work. Previously I used to shave every other day - specifically on Sunday's Tuesday's and Thursday's. Now for reasons I can't be arsed to explain, I actually shave in the evenings, so I'd therefore be clean shaven on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Part of my reason for doing this was because good razor blades are expensive. I also have a very tough beard that blunts most blades quite quickly. So, by shaving alternate days I'd save money, as well as the more obvious time and effort.

However, recently I've noticed that my beard grows quicker and is also darker and stronger. I've always had a heavy beard, but now on those days I didn't shave it looks live I've not shaved in days.

I therefore decided to start shaving for every work day and it's been working out okay. I sometimes suffer from shaving rash, and to avoid this I have to use quite a light technique and so the slight irony is that where I used to go alternate days of very cleanly shaven then clearly unshaven, now it's like I'm permanently stubbly.

I think, on balance, it's better though, as the stubbly days were getting quite bad.