Here is a random list of things that have changed in Britain in the five and a half years since we moved away.
It was 12-06 when we left. It was 06-12 when we returned. That makes it easy to remember for filling in forms. And it's tidy. I like life to be tidy. It so often isn't, that when there are little tidy things like this, it makes me happy.
Pharmacists can now dispense a decent level of medication. Yay. This makes total sense. It was being talked about when we left, I seem to remember, but now it's really happened. So I went and got some antibiotic eye drops for conjunctivitis, without having to prostrate myself in front of a doctor's receptionist, begging abjectly for an appointment. I just needed a few prompts from the pharmacist, who was helpful enough to give them to me. "Not sticky? Just red and itchy? Are you sure not sticky? How about first thing in the morning, when you wake up? A bit sticky then, perhaps? Yes..? Ah, it's sticky. It's just that that's one of the symptoms I have to hear." I love it when people beat the system.
A first class postage stamp is now 60p. What? Don't be expecting any birthday cards from me any more. If Amazon can deliver large, heavy packages for free, why does the Royal Mail need 60p to deliver a small, light card? They ought to be paying us, actually, for feeding those red boxes and keeping them in business. Just before we left, the Royal Mail changed the way they charge for packages. Instead of the simple weighing of a parcel, they'd introduced a system which required the counter staff to weigh it, measure it, see if it would fit through a slot, balance it on their head, do a cartwheel with it between their knees, and spin in on a 50p piece. It seemed a little over-burdensome to me. I hate to say "see, I told you so", but here we are, with a first class stamp at 60p. I only remains for me to make a joke about the Royal Mail and the front page of the Sun. Consider it made.
There are an awful lot of tv channels - more than you can shake a tv remote at. Perhaps there were in 12-06 and we just didn't subscribe to them. We weren't missing much. There are the five old favourites, and then several hundred others, which repeat what was on the five old faves, either a few hours later, or a few years later. I shouldn't complain really. It's quite useful for us. If we want to watch today's tv, we can. If we want to pretend we're in a time warp and have never been away at all, we can do that too.
Smartphones. They're rather good, aren't they? Husband and I have each got one. We didn't plan to, and the very thought of us owning one each had our children smirking and giggling. They felt rather protective of us, and wanted to come shopping with us, to help us sort out our phone needs. I think they worried that we'd be sold a tv remote at smartphone price, and come home proudly brandishing it, not realising we'd been ripped off. Oh they of little faith! In fact, we went to Tesco, got a fabulous deal, and came home rejoicing that there is at least one thing that is seriously cheaper in Britain than it is in America. Come to think of it, why isn't there an app that allows you to change channels on the tv with your smartphone? That would save you the enormous effort of having to put it down on the coffee table, and pick up the remote, and then do the same manoeuvre in reverse. You could save seconds. Valuable seconds. This is the 21st century. It does rather worry me, though, that the country is being run by Tesco, not the government. Which one, honestly, has more influence over our daily lives?
My waist. I used to have one. I definitely did. I remember it well. I don't now. It must be to do with climate change and air pressure, or something like that. Very odd.
There's one thing that hasn't changed. For this, I join the many-voiced chorus of Americans who have lived in, or even just visited, Britain. Oh, Mixer Taps!! Why don't we have them over here? How hard could that be? I can't tell you how backward it feels to have temperature discrimination in our taps, when you have been used to the unsegregated flow of a simple mixer tap. O... M... T...!!
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Showing posts with label body parts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body parts. Show all posts
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
In the Powder Room
I am writing this post as an entry into the competition hosted by In the Powder Room. The prize is a couple of nights in London’s Hoxton Hotel, and a ticket to CyberMummy 2011. The challenge is to write a post about who you would like to meet in the powder room of the Hoxton Hotel. This is my entry. (If you want to have a go yourself, the details are here, but you're probably out of time. The deadline is at 8.00pm on 31st May.)
I have an idea. It’s just a tiny little germ of an idea. I believe it’s quite a good idea, but it’s one I know I’ll never pursue under my own steam. I would like to see it become reality, but I know that if it ever does, it will be by serendipity. Perhaps the powder room at the Hoxton Hotel could help. Perhaps it could be the setting for a chance meeting. I don’t know exactly who the other person in that unplanned encounter would be. We’ll come back to her later. But I see us getting chatting in front of the mirrors, the conversation starting with the trivial, but moving to deeper waters. I’d share my idea, and it would catch her imagination, and she’d say “What a fabulous thought, and funnily enough, it just ties in exactly with a project I’m involved in. Can you give me your name and number? Would you mind if I contacted you? I’m so glad we started talking. I’m so glad I happened to come into the powder room just now.”
My idea is this: I would like to have a go at being a model. Not a full-time job, not a long-term commitment. Just one short contract to prove I can do it. You see, two years ago this Saturday, I had a double mastectomy. When that happens, you have all kinds of choices to make, about whether to have reconstruction or not, and if so, how to go about it. All of a sudden, just as you’re dealing with words like 'cancer' and 'prognosis' and 'percentage chance of survival beyond five years', you also have to think about whether you want to have squishy boob-like objects implanted underneath your skin, or whether you’re happy to wear them in a bra over the top. For all kinds of reasons which I don’t have space for here, I opted for the latter.
So far I’m happy with that decision, though of course I have times when I think “Should I? Shall I? It’s covered by insurance…” Of course I do. But mostly, I have come to the conclusion, intellectually and emotionally, that I’m happy in my own body as it is. It’s terribly ironic. The years my body was at its best, when I was young, hadn’t been pregnant, had nice boobs, were the times I was most critical of it and unhappy with it. Now, wrinkly saggy tummy and flat scarred chest, I really quite like it.
Hang on a minute, though. When I say I want to be a model, don’t race ahead with the scheme. I’m not thinking Vogue or the catwalk at London Fashion Week. No. I have in mind the Land’s End catalogue, or some other publication for the mature woman. You know the kind of thing. Smiley women of a certain age in tasteful pastels. I’m tall, and maybe slim enough (maybe...). I scrub up ok from time to time, and I can look wistfully out at sea vistas with the best of them. My hair is, unfortunately, a rather over-bright red hue at the moment, (it said “root beer” on the packet – since when has root beer been red?) but it’ll wash out over time, and I’m sure they can shade that down before sending to print. In any case, don’t they have armies of attendants with make-up and hairstyling skills to make you look presentable before you go in front of the camera? And can’t they do clever things with airbrushing? I mean, if the worst came to the worst, couldn’t they photoshop Angelina Jolie’s head onto Pippa Middleton’s body and call it me?
Now you’ve got your heads round my idea (your own heads, not Angelina Jolie’s), I’ll tell you why I want it to happen. When I had my mastectomy and was trying to make sense of it, and what it was going to mean for the future, imagine what it could have done for me if a friend had sent me a Land’s End catalogue with a post-it sticker on the front saying “look at the inside back page”. There, alongside a headshot of a woman with hair a rather startling shade of red, could have been an article which read:
Iota, who appears on page 32 in the unadventurous knitwear and sensible trousers section, is a breast cancer survivor. She opted to have a double mastectomy, and has chosen not to undergo reconstructive surgery. But doesn’t she look great?! She had no previous modelling experience, and says that before she had cancer, she hated being in front of a camera. We asked her how it felt in our photographer’s studio, and she told us “I loved it. At first I was nervous, but everyone was great and put me at my ease. By the end, I was feeling so attractive and feminine, and that’s a great feeling when you’ve been through breast cancer surgery.”
Wouldn’t that have been a hope-giving, comforting, encouraging story to have read? Do you see how I could now BE that story for other women?
Who, then, do I need to meet in the Hoxton Hotel powder room to make this idea happen? Is it the marketing manager of Land’s End? Is it an advertising or PR exec? Is it someone from a breast cancer charity? Is it a journalist, or a photographer? It’s someone who has come into contact with breast cancer in their own life, I’m sure, either facing it themselves, or standing alongside a friend or relation who has done so. Who is this person? I don’t know, but if it’s you, please come and bump into me. Come along and tell me “I’m so glad I happened to come into the powder room just now”.
.
I have an idea. It’s just a tiny little germ of an idea. I believe it’s quite a good idea, but it’s one I know I’ll never pursue under my own steam. I would like to see it become reality, but I know that if it ever does, it will be by serendipity. Perhaps the powder room at the Hoxton Hotel could help. Perhaps it could be the setting for a chance meeting. I don’t know exactly who the other person in that unplanned encounter would be. We’ll come back to her later. But I see us getting chatting in front of the mirrors, the conversation starting with the trivial, but moving to deeper waters. I’d share my idea, and it would catch her imagination, and she’d say “What a fabulous thought, and funnily enough, it just ties in exactly with a project I’m involved in. Can you give me your name and number? Would you mind if I contacted you? I’m so glad we started talking. I’m so glad I happened to come into the powder room just now.”
My idea is this: I would like to have a go at being a model. Not a full-time job, not a long-term commitment. Just one short contract to prove I can do it. You see, two years ago this Saturday, I had a double mastectomy. When that happens, you have all kinds of choices to make, about whether to have reconstruction or not, and if so, how to go about it. All of a sudden, just as you’re dealing with words like 'cancer' and 'prognosis' and 'percentage chance of survival beyond five years', you also have to think about whether you want to have squishy boob-like objects implanted underneath your skin, or whether you’re happy to wear them in a bra over the top. For all kinds of reasons which I don’t have space for here, I opted for the latter.
So far I’m happy with that decision, though of course I have times when I think “Should I? Shall I? It’s covered by insurance…” Of course I do. But mostly, I have come to the conclusion, intellectually and emotionally, that I’m happy in my own body as it is. It’s terribly ironic. The years my body was at its best, when I was young, hadn’t been pregnant, had nice boobs, were the times I was most critical of it and unhappy with it. Now, wrinkly saggy tummy and flat scarred chest, I really quite like it.
Hang on a minute, though. When I say I want to be a model, don’t race ahead with the scheme. I’m not thinking Vogue or the catwalk at London Fashion Week. No. I have in mind the Land’s End catalogue, or some other publication for the mature woman. You know the kind of thing. Smiley women of a certain age in tasteful pastels. I’m tall, and maybe slim enough (maybe...). I scrub up ok from time to time, and I can look wistfully out at sea vistas with the best of them. My hair is, unfortunately, a rather over-bright red hue at the moment, (it said “root beer” on the packet – since when has root beer been red?) but it’ll wash out over time, and I’m sure they can shade that down before sending to print. In any case, don’t they have armies of attendants with make-up and hairstyling skills to make you look presentable before you go in front of the camera? And can’t they do clever things with airbrushing? I mean, if the worst came to the worst, couldn’t they photoshop Angelina Jolie’s head onto Pippa Middleton’s body and call it me?
Now you’ve got your heads round my idea (your own heads, not Angelina Jolie’s), I’ll tell you why I want it to happen. When I had my mastectomy and was trying to make sense of it, and what it was going to mean for the future, imagine what it could have done for me if a friend had sent me a Land’s End catalogue with a post-it sticker on the front saying “look at the inside back page”. There, alongside a headshot of a woman with hair a rather startling shade of red, could have been an article which read:
Iota, who appears on page 32 in the unadventurous knitwear and sensible trousers section, is a breast cancer survivor. She opted to have a double mastectomy, and has chosen not to undergo reconstructive surgery. But doesn’t she look great?! She had no previous modelling experience, and says that before she had cancer, she hated being in front of a camera. We asked her how it felt in our photographer’s studio, and she told us “I loved it. At first I was nervous, but everyone was great and put me at my ease. By the end, I was feeling so attractive and feminine, and that’s a great feeling when you’ve been through breast cancer surgery.”
Wouldn’t that have been a hope-giving, comforting, encouraging story to have read? Do you see how I could now BE that story for other women?
Who, then, do I need to meet in the Hoxton Hotel powder room to make this idea happen? Is it the marketing manager of Land’s End? Is it an advertising or PR exec? Is it someone from a breast cancer charity? Is it a journalist, or a photographer? It’s someone who has come into contact with breast cancer in their own life, I’m sure, either facing it themselves, or standing alongside a friend or relation who has done so. Who is this person? I don’t know, but if it’s you, please come and bump into me. Come along and tell me “I’m so glad I happened to come into the powder room just now”.
.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Body parts: missing in action
Day 15 of 'The Daily Post' - and my 200th blog post.
It’s amazing, when you come to think of it, how many body parts you can do without. Your appendix, tonsils, adenoids, gall bladder…
I made an inventory of the bits and pieces that I’ve lost. I'll start with my wisdom teeth, which I had out in my early 20s. Haven’t missed them at all. I had all four out at the same time under local anaesthetic. This didn't strike me as particularly unusual or brave at the time, but since then, I've only met one other person who hasn't had a general anaesthetic for four simultaneous wisdom extractions. I did ask the dental surgeon why he did all four at once, and he replied "It's not a very pleasant procedure, and I usually find that if I do two, then the patient doesn't want to come back and have the other two done." Actually it wasn't too bad.
Back to the inventory:
The boobs, of course.
A lymph node.
My hair.
Three moles – one which I didn’t like the look of a few years ago, and then a couple more in the armpit/chest area, that the breast surgeon removed as a bit of a freebie (“Have a mastectomy, and I’ll throw in a couple of molectomies for you.”) They were going to analyse those, but the lab lost them, which I have to say, didn’t inspire my confidence. The breast surgeon reassured me: “it’s not as if they lost them, really. It’s just that they’ll be in a huge bank of thousands and thousands of samples, and we could ask for the lab to go through all those samples and find them, but I really honestly think that would be wasting someone’s time, because I had a good look at them and they weren’t at all suspicious.” Which might have been medical speak for “my resident fouled up and forgot to send them to the lab”. I decided not to pursue the matter, since I had had all my moles checked at my annual well woman appointment, and those ones had indeed been deemed to be not worrying.
Looking at this list, it reminds me of a song. When the season is right, I can sing:
On the fifth day of Christmas, I had removed from me:
Five hundred thousand hairs (rough estimate)
Four wisdom teeth
Three brown moles
Two lovely boobs
And a lymph node.
Poor impaired me!
.
It’s amazing, when you come to think of it, how many body parts you can do without. Your appendix, tonsils, adenoids, gall bladder…
I made an inventory of the bits and pieces that I’ve lost. I'll start with my wisdom teeth, which I had out in my early 20s. Haven’t missed them at all. I had all four out at the same time under local anaesthetic. This didn't strike me as particularly unusual or brave at the time, but since then, I've only met one other person who hasn't had a general anaesthetic for four simultaneous wisdom extractions. I did ask the dental surgeon why he did all four at once, and he replied "It's not a very pleasant procedure, and I usually find that if I do two, then the patient doesn't want to come back and have the other two done." Actually it wasn't too bad.
Back to the inventory:
The boobs, of course.
A lymph node.
My hair.
Three moles – one which I didn’t like the look of a few years ago, and then a couple more in the armpit/chest area, that the breast surgeon removed as a bit of a freebie (“Have a mastectomy, and I’ll throw in a couple of molectomies for you.”) They were going to analyse those, but the lab lost them, which I have to say, didn’t inspire my confidence. The breast surgeon reassured me: “it’s not as if they lost them, really. It’s just that they’ll be in a huge bank of thousands and thousands of samples, and we could ask for the lab to go through all those samples and find them, but I really honestly think that would be wasting someone’s time, because I had a good look at them and they weren’t at all suspicious.” Which might have been medical speak for “my resident fouled up and forgot to send them to the lab”. I decided not to pursue the matter, since I had had all my moles checked at my annual well woman appointment, and those ones had indeed been deemed to be not worrying.
Looking at this list, it reminds me of a song. When the season is right, I can sing:
On the fifth day of Christmas, I had removed from me:
Five hundred thousand hairs (rough estimate)
Four wisdom teeth
Three brown moles
Two lovely boobs
And a lymph node.
Poor impaired me!
.
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