Not a Snowball's Chance in Hell

It snowed.
There might even have been a couple of inches of the stuff in Dublin.
And yes, it's been cold, though not in Malta where our Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey is currently sunning himself.
Anyway, it snowed and we had ice and fog and frost.
And yet another national crisis.
Following hot on the heels of the economic collapse (international problem, not our fault says the government) we had the floods (global warming, not our fault says the government) and now the big freeze (climate change, not our fault says the government).
Soon to come will be public service strikes (not our fault, blame the unions, the government will say) summer drought (see above) winter gales (see above) and half a million unemployed (see above).
I can say one thing for certain.
If I ever plan to have a piss-up in a brewery, I will not be asking any members of our current government to organise it.
I see snow on a rope in the back garden. I will not be asking any of them to kick it off.
Because they are inept. They have proven themselves unable to face any of the challenges thrown at them.
They prevaricate, they procrastinate, they delegate. But they don't actually do anything.
There is only one thing for it.
I'm off to build a snowman with Charlotte.
Note the word 'build.'
I wonder if there's a grant of any kind going?

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Grumpyitis

HARD TO BE GRUMPY WITH CHARLOTTE ABOUT, BUT I MANAGE IT

God, I've been busy!
Doing what?
Well, that's what I've been trying to figure out. I'm not entirely sure.
I know that I've been busy with Charlotte. She was two a week or so ago. And I've been very busy picking up all the toys she got for her birthday.
There are some toys she likes less than others. Likes them less, that is, until you try to pick them up to stash them in the attic or somewhere else that isn't the kitchen floor. Then she loves them.
She's growing up really fast. She's even losing interest in Iggle Piggle and the others in the Night Garden. Moved on to Tom and Jerry if you don't mind.


How long before it's Girls Aloud?
So Charlotte has had me busy at least some of the time.
I've been busy working too. Have to earn a crust. And so I'm doing whatever is asked, and what with work and Charlotte, my day seems too short.
That is to say that it's too short for what I really want to do, what I am, apparently, very good at and what, I am often told, is my full time job.
Grumbling. Giving out. Moaning. Whinging. Complaining.
Victor Meldrew, he of One Foot in the Grave is, compared to me, something of a comedian.
I have noticed myself that I am now complaining about just about everything.
I complain about people with no manners.
I complain about litterbugs.
I complain about the people who rip us off.
I complain about politicians.
I complain about reality television.
I complain about football players.
I complain about shop assistants who chat to each other while you're waiting to be served.
I complain about rude waiters.
I complain about lousy food in restaurants.
But then, so do most people.
The problem with me, is that I complain incessantly about other drivers. How dare they park where I wished to. How dare they pass me out even if I am driving slowly. How dare they have bigger, newer cars. In fact, how dare they use to road.
I complain about shop assistants. How dare they serve other people.
I complain, not just about reality television. I essentially complain about all television.
I complain about young people.
But I also complain about old people, middle aged people - all people.
I complain so much that I think it's become a complaint, a medical complaint.
Grumpyitis.
Most men my age seem to have it.
But mine, I fear, is probably incurable.

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It's Going To Be Some Year....

2008 has arrived at last.
I was waiting for it with some excitement and not a little fear.
Because, one way or the other, it's going to be a big, big year for me.
Sometime in the next 12 months, hopefully in the next three or four, I will have a Bone Marrow Transplant.
If it works, I will have the chance to resume a normal life.
If it doesn't, well, if it doesn't it could mean no change.
Or no life.
Obviously, I've asked a lot of questions about this treatment. It's astonishing, really, that medical science has actually come up with a blunderbus to fight certain cancers. As one of my doctors said; 'We have very few golden bullets."
So they kill all the cells. Good and bad.
And that makes the transplantee very, very sick. It means living in an isolation room for weeks. It means not seeing my little daughter Charlotte for six to eight weeks. That will be one of the hardest parts of all.
It means six to twelve months of not feeling very well.
But it could mean a new life.

I hate hospitals. i don't if it's because I have spent so much time in them or if it's just a kind of phobia.
So deciding to do this hasn't been easy.
But one thing made the decision easy.
Charlotte.
Anything that will allow me to spend more time with her, is worth it.
There is, of course, a problem with finding out as much as you can about something like this.
All of what you discover, isn't good.
There are sad stories, stories about people suffering a great deal. There are tragedies.
But I try as hard as I can to concentrate on the stories of hope and the stories of people given back their lives.
Next week, I see my doc and tell her to start making the arrangements.
Although they harvested healthy bone marrow from me some years ago, they will, in the first instance, see if they can find a donor.
That raises the possibility of Graft versus Host disease which can be bad.
But if it all goes to plan, the results could and should be excellent.
Eight weeks without holding my daughter. Eight weeks without a kiss from her.
And even when I see Connie, she will be wearing a surgical mask.
They tell me'll I'll be too sick to care, which, in a perverse kind of way, is good news I suppose.
I hope to keep up the blog while I undergo the transplant and in the subsequent months.
So if you have a mind which is interested in things medical, this is the place for you.
I'm going to need some courage.
And your prayers please.

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Some Things Change, Some Don't

IT’S almost Christmas.
It’s easy to tell how close Christmas is if you live in Dublin.
There are more vomit stains on the street.
There are more drunks and they appear earlier and earlier each day as Christmas Day gets closer.
Nobody will let you out into the ever worsening traffic jams.
Clampers are in overdrive.
Virtually every shopper in every shop is rude, behaving in a way they wouldn’t dream of at other times of the year.
You can’t get into pubs.
There is more violence, both on the street and domestically. It is almost inevitable at Christmas time, that some unfortunate woman will stab her husband, invariably fatally, after he arrives home drunk and penniless without money for food or presents for the children.

More people drink and drive.
Everybody is short of patience.
And children are greedier than ever before.
It’s likely that each of us are at least a little bit guilty (I know, I know, it’s like being a little bit pregnant) of at least some of the behaviour outlined above.
And I know that when someone my age talks about it being worse now than ever, other, younger, people put it down to my being a grumpy old man.
They’re half right.
I AM a grumpy old man.
But I am a grumpy old man because it IS worse than ever.
I wonder how much of Ireland’s new found wealth ended up, literally, going down the toilet?
Poverty, you see, has a disciplining effect. I you haven’t got the money to drink, you can’t drink.
If you haven’t got the money to splash out on ridiculously expensive and utterly unnecessary luxuries to hand out as presents, you can’t buy them.
If you can’t afford cocaine - or the new favourite in Dublin, Champagne, vodka, red Bull with a spoonful of cocaine stirred into it - you can’t buy it.
Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days. Well, not all the way back.
But it would be nice if we lived in a country run by people who were less concerned with their own salaries and more concerned with the fact that they expect pensioners to live on one-twentieth of what they pay themselves.
It would be brilliant to live in a wealthy country that had sufficient schools for its children.
It would be marvellous to live in a country which had a health service rather than a health system.
Ireland is now the kind of country where three young people died from cocaine overdoses in one week.
It is the kind of country where suicide is epidemic.
It is the kind of country where we wonder not if there will be another gangland murder soon, but only when and where it will be.
And it is the kind of country, where Christmas is seen as an opportunity to get drunker more often than normal, where cocaine supplies have been bulked up for the festive season, where prices go through the roof, where selfishness abounds and where, it seems, there is more concern about what’s on television or what is going to be the Christmas Number One, than there is about people and more especially, the people who are concerned about where they will get shelter on Christmas Day, where they will get something to eat and who they will have, if anyone, to talk with.
The Christmas message is all but lost.
Children, I would bet, wouldn’t mention the birth of Jesus in their top five Christmassy things.
And that is profoundly sad.
Because while celebrations, gifts, giving and receiving and traditional fare all have their part to play at this time of year, so too do decency, charity, prayer and reflection.
Last year, I had what was, I suppose, a slightly selfish ambition for Christmas.
It was to be able to stand on the altar in Mount Argus with all the other mums and dads and children, during the children’s Christmas Day Mass, with my daughter Charlotte, as they sang the Our Father. It is a tremendously moving moment every Sunday, but especially on Christmas Day.
I achieved that ambition.
And this year, it is exactly the same.

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Paddy Murray Is (a bit) Unwell (this time)

DAMMIT.
Back in hospital.
The cure didn’t cure me.
I have no intention of going into all the gory details (and believe me, they’re gory) but suffice to say that the ghastly infection in my foot is still doing its worst.
It’s damned sore - up around 9 out of 10 (on a male scale. It’s probably only about 4 on a female scale.)
I have been pumped full of so many antibiotics, that I’m pretty sure, 99 per cent of the world’s infections wouldn’t come near me. Wouldn’t dare.

Sadly, I’ve got the macho one per cent, the Rambo of blasted foot infections, the one nasty piece of work that is doing to my foot what Eric Cantona (bless him) once did to a loudmouth fan.
So the little bag has been packed again, the bottles of water have been purchased, the sweets stuffed into my little locker, my toothbrush and razor laid neatly beside me and I’m back in my jim jams, back in a hospital bed and thoroughly miserable.
Well, no. That’s not fair.
I’m miserable. But it’s not thoroughly.
I know that what’s wrong with me is relatively serious. It’s not as bad as, say, leprosy. But it’s a lot worse than a grazed knee.
So while hospital is where I don’t want to be, it’s the right place to be.
I desperately miss Connie and Charlotte. I hate saying goodbye to the little mite (that’s Charlotte, not Connie) even though I haven’t been much fun for her these past few months.
She thinks daddies are people who lie on couches complaining all the time.
If and when I get better, and if prayer makes people better I’m half way there, I am going to play with Charlotte all day every day until I can stand it no longer.
Or until she can stand it no longer.
Today, I was seen by a total of five doctors. Sometimes, it takes five doctors with different specialties to come up with a solution to a difficult problem
And my foot is a difficult problem, a bit like the rest of me.
It’s not been the best three months of my life.
But three years ago, I was in hospital for a long period.
And that ended with me being given the cheerful new that I was no longer editor of the Sunday Tribune because ‘we want someone who’s there all the time, not someone who’s sick.’
Hopefully, i am in more secure employment these days. And anyway, the Sunday World is a better newspaper than the Sunday Tribune. At every level.
And, of course, three years ago, I probably had some daft picture of Eric Cantona or Denis Law or maybe even some place in the South of France as my screensaver and desktop display.
Now, I have Charlotte’s picture.
And even when some days are a bit dark, that’s always there to cheer me up.

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